Chapter IX: Part 9

I hastened home to feast my eyes once more on the lovely form of my sylph. I felt that henceforth to combat this passion would be impossible. I applied my eye to the lens. Aninula was there,--but what could have happened? Some terrible change seemed to have taken place during my absence. Some secret grief seemed to cloud the lovely features of her I gazed upon. Her face had grown thin and haggard; her limbs trailed heavily; the wondrous lustre of her golden hair had faded. She was ill!--ill, and I could not assist her! I believe at that moment I would have gladly forfeited all claims to my human birthright, if I could only have been dwarfed to the size of an animalcule, and permitted to console her from whom fate had forever divided me.

I racked my brain for the solution of this mystery. What was it that afflicted the sylph? She seemed to suffer intense pain. Her features contracted, and she even writhed, as if with some internal agony. The wondrous forests appeared also to have lost half their beauty. Their hues were dim and in some places faded away altogether. I watched Animula for hours with a breaking heart, and she seemed absolutely to wither away under my very eye. Suddenly I remembered that I had not looked at the water-drop for several days. In fact, I hated to see it; for it reminded me of the natural barrier between Animula and myself. I hurriedly looked down on the stage of the microscope. The slide was still there,--but, great heavens! the water-drop had vanished! The awful truth burst upon me; it had evaporated, until it had become so minute as to be invisible to the naked eye; I had been gazing on its last atom, the one that contained Animula,--and she was dying!

I rushed again to the front of the lens, and looked through. Alas! the last agony had seized her. The rainbow-hued forests had all melted away, and Animula lay struggling feebly in what seemed to be a spot of dim light. Ah! the sight was horrible: the limbs once so round and lovely shrivelling up into nothings; the eyes--those eyes that shone like heaven--being quenched into black dust; the lustrous golden hair now lank and discolored. The last throe came. I beheld that final struggle of the blackening form--and I fainted.

When I awoke out of a trance of many hours, I found myself lying amid the wreck of my instrument, myself as shattered in mind and body as it. I crawled feebly to my bed, from which I did not rise for months.

They say now that I am mad; but they are mistaken. I am poor, for I have neither the heart nor the will to work; all my money is spent, and I live on charity. Young men's associations that love a joke invite me to lecture on Optics before them, for which they pay me, and laugh at me while I lecture. "Linley, the mad microscopist," is the name I go by. I suppose that I talk incoherently while I lecture. Who could talk sense when his brain is haunted by such ghastly memories, while ever and anon among the shapes of death I behold the radiant form of my lost Animula!

THE SCULPTOR'S FUNERAL.

Amid the aisle, apart, there stood
A mourner like the rest;
And while the solemn rites were said,
He fashioned into verse his mood,
That would not be repressed.

Why did they bring him home,
Bright jewel set in lead?
Oh, bear the sculptor back to Rome,
And lay him with the mighty dead,--
With Adonais, and the rest
Of all the young and good and fair,
That drew the milk of English breast,
And their last sigh in Latian air!

Lay him with Raphael, unto whom
Was granted Rome's most lasting tomb;
For many a lustre, many an aeon,
He might sleep well in the Panthéon,
Deep in the sacred city's womb,
The smoke and splendor and the stir of Rome.

Lay him 'neath Diocletian's dome,
Blessed Saint Mary of the Angels,
Near to that house in which he dwelt,--
House that to many seemed a home,
So much with him they loved and felt.
We were his guests a hundred times;
We loved him for his genial ways;
He gave me credit for my rhymes,
And made me blush with praise.

Ah! there be many histories
That no historian writes,
And friendship hath its mysteries
And consecrated nights;
Amid the busy days of pain,
Wear of hand, and tear of brain,
Weary midnight, weary morn,
Years of struggle paid with scorn;--
Yet oft amid all this despair,
Long rambles in the Autumn days
O'er Appian or Flaminian Ways,
Bright moments snatched from care,

When loose as buffaloes on the wild Campagna
We roved and dined on crust and curds,
Olives, thin wine, and thinner birds,
And woke the echoes of divine Romagna;
And then returning late,
After long knocking at the Lateran gate,
Suppers and nights of gods; and then
Mornings that made us new-born men;
Rare nights at the Minerva tavern,
With Orvieto from the Cardinal's cavern;
Free nights, but fearless and without reproof,--
For Bayard's word ruled Beppo's roof.

O Rome! what memories awake,
When Crawford's name is said,
Of days and friends for whose dear sake
That path of Hades unto me
Will have no more of dread
Than his own Orpheus felt, seeking Eurydice!
O Crawford! husband, father, brother
Are in that name, that little word!
Let me no more my sorrow smother;
Grief stirs me, and I must be stirred.

O Death, thou teacher true and rough!
Full oft I fear that we have erred,
And have not loved enough;
But oh, ye friends, this side of Acheron,
Who cling to me to-day,
I shall not know my love till ye are gone
And I am gray!
Fair women with your loving eyes,
Old men that once my footsteps led,
Sweet children,--much as all I prize,
Until the sacred dust of death be shed
Upon each dear and venerable head,
I cannot love you as I love the dead!

But now, the natural man being sown,
We can more lucidly behold
The spiritual one;
For we, till time shall end,
Full visibly shall see our friend
In all his hand did mould,--
That worn and patient hand that lies so cold!

When on some blessed studious day
To my loved Library I wend my way,
Amid the forms that give the Gallery grace
His thought in that pale poet I shall trace,--
Keen Orpheus with his eyes
Fixed deep in ruddy hell,

Seeking amid those lurid skies
The wife he loved so well,--
And feel that still therein I see
All that was in my Master's thought,
And, in that constant hand wherewith he wrought,
The eternal type of constancy.
Thou marble husband! might there be
More of flesh and blood like thee!

Or if, in Music's festive hall,
I come to cheat me of my care,
Amid the swell, the dying fall,
His genius greets me there.
O man of bronze! thy solemn air--
Best soother of a troubled brain--
Floods me with memories, and again
As thou stand'st visibly to men,
Beloved musician! so once more
Crawford comes back that did thy form restore.

* * * * *

Well,--_requiescat_! let him pass!

Good mourners, go your several ways!
He needs no further rite, nor mass,
Nor eulogy, who best could praise
Himself in marble and in brass;
Yet his best monument did raise,
Not in those perishable things
That men eternal deem,--
The pride of palaces and kings,--
But in such works as must avail him there,
With Him who, from the extreme
Love that was in his breast,
Said, "Come, all ye that heavy burdens bear,
And I will give you rest!"

THE PRESIDENT'S MESSAGE.

As a mere literary production, the Message of Mr. Buchanan is so superior to any of the Messages of his immediate predecessor, that the reader naturally expects to find in it a corresponding superiority of sentiment and aim. When we meet a man who is well-dressed, and whose external demeanor is that of a gentleman, we are prone to infer that he is also a man of upright principles and honorable feelings. But we are very often mistaken in this inference; the nice garment proves to be little better than a nice disguise; and the robe of respectability may cover the heart of a very scurvy fellow.

Mr. Buchanan's sentences run smoothly enough; they are for the most part grammatical; the tone throughout is sedate, if not dignified; and the general spirit unambitious and moderate. But the doctrine, in our estimation, is, on the most essential point, atrocious, and the objects which are sought to be compassed are unworthy of the man, the office, the country, and the age. We refer, of course, to what is said of the one vital question with us now, the question of Slavery in Kansas; but before proceeding to a discussion of that, let us say a word or two of other parts of this important document.

The President introduces, as the first of his topics, the prevailing money pressure, which he treats at considerable length, with some degree of truth, but without originality or comprehensiveness of view. He profiles to inquire into the causes of the unfortunate disasters of trade, and into the remedies which may be devised against their recurrence; but on neither head is he remarkably profound or instructive. It is merely reiterating the commonplaces of the newspapers, to talk about "the excessive loans and issues of the banks," and to ring changes of phraseology on the vices of speculation, over-trading, and stock-jobbing. All the world is as familiar with all that as the President can be, and scarcely needed a reminder on either score; what we wanted of the head of the nation,-- what a real statesman, who understood his subject, would have given us,--that is, if he had pretended to go at all beyond the simple statement of the fact of commercial revulsion, into a discussion of it,--was a comprehensive and philosophic analysis of all the causes of the phenomenon, a calm and careful review of all its circumstances, and a rigid deduction of broad general principles from an adequate study of the entire case. But this the President has not furnished. In connecting our commercial derangements with the disorders of the banking system he has unquestionably struck upon a great and fundamental truth; but it is merely a single truth, and he strikes it in rather a vague and random way. In considering these reverses, there are many things to be taken into account besides the constitution and customs, whether good or bad, of our American banks,-- many things which do not even confine themselves to this continent, but are spread over the greater part of the civilized world.

Mr. Buchanan is still lamer in his suggestion of remedies than he is in his inquiry after causes. The Federal Government, he thinks, can do little or nothing in the premises,--a fatal admission at the outset,--and we are coolly turned over to the most unsubstantial and impracticable of all reliances, "the wisdom and patriotism of the State legislatures"! Why cannot the Federal Government do anything in the premises? The President tells us that the Constitution has conferred upon Congress the exclusive right "to coin money _and regulate the value thereof_," and that it has prohibited the States from "issuing bills of credit,"--which phrase, if it mean anything, means making paper-money; and the inference would seem to be inevitable that Congress has a sovereign authority and power over the whole matter. It may, moreover, touch the circulation of bills, by means of its indisputable right to lay a stamp-tax upon paper; and Mr. Gallatin long ago recommended the exercise of this power, as an effectual method of restraining the emission of small notes. Upon what principle, then, can the President assert so dictatorially as he does, that the Federal Government is concluded from action? If the excesses of the State Banks are so enormous as he represents, and so perpetually and so widely disastrous, why should it not interpose to avert the fearful evil? Why refer us for relief to the proceedings of thirty-one different legislative bodies, no three of which, probably, would agree upon any coherent system? We do not ourselves say that Congress ought to interfere and undertake by main force to regulate the currency, because we hold to other and, as we think, better methods of arriving at a sound and stable currency; but from the stand-point of the President, and with his views of the efficiency of legislative restrictions upon banks, we do not see how he could consistently avoid recommending the instant action of Congress. On the heel of his grandiloquent description of the evils of redundant paper money,--evils which are felt all over the country,-- it is a lamentably impotent conclusion to say, "After all, we can't do much to help it! Yes, let us confide piously in 'the wisdom and patriotism of the State legislatures,'"--which are almost the last places in the world, as things go, where we should look for either quality.

Not being able to do anything himself, however, what does he urge upon the wise and patriotic State legislatures? Why, a series of flimsy restrictions, which would have about as much effect in preventing the tremendous abuses of banking which he himself depicts, as a bit of filigree iron-work would have in restraining the expansion of steam. Restrictions! restrictions! _toujours_ restrictions!--as if that method of correcting the evil had not been utterly exploded by nearly two centuries of experience! Mr. Buchanan calls himself a Democrat; he is loud in his protestations of respect for the sagacity, the good-sense, and the virtue of the people; his political school takes for its motto the well-known adage, "That government is best which governs least"; his party, if he does not, purports to be a great advocate of the emancipation of trade from all the old-fashioned restraints which take the names of protections, tariffs, bounties, etc. etc.; and we wonder how it is, that, in his presumed excursions over the entire domain of free-trade, he should have got no inkling of a thought as to the benefits of free-trade in banking. We wonder that so great a subject could be dismissed with the suggestion of a few petty restraints.

"If the State legislatures," remarks the President, summing up his entire thought, "afford us a real specie basis for our circulation, by increasing the denomination of bank-notes, first to twenty, and afterwards to fifty dollars; if they will require that the banks shall at all times keep on hand at least one dollar of gold and silver for every three dollars of their circulation and deposits; and if they will provide, by a self-executing enactment, which nothing can arrest, that the moment they suspend they shall go into liquidation; I believe that such provisions, with a weekly publication by each bank of a statement of its condition, would go far to secure us against future suspensions of specie payments."

Singular blindness! Mr. Buchanan lived for several years, as American ambassador, in England. It is to be presumed that while there he used his eyes, and possibly his brains. He must have noticed occasionally, at least, in his walks through "the city," the immense marble structure in Threadneedle Street, known as the Bank of England. It is certain that he has read the history of that bank, inasmuch as it is twice or thrice alluded to in his Message; he cannot be ignorant, therefore, that the "circulation" of England has essentially "a specie basis"; that no bank-notes are issued there for less than the amount of twenty-five dollars; that the banks at all times keep on hand "one dollar of gold for every three dollars of their circulation and deposits"; and that the laws of bankruptcy are alike rigid in regard to institutions and individuals. These are precisely the provisions which he commends to the adoption of wise and patriotic State legislatures as an admirable corrective for suspensions; yet he forgets to explain to us how it happens that the Bank of England, to which they are all applied, has virtually suspended payment six times in the course of its existence, having been saved from open dishonor only by the timely assistance of the government,--while the trade of England, in spite of the staid and conservative habits of the people, is quite as liable to those terrific tarantula-dances, called revulsions, as our own. Before urging his "restraints," the President ought to have inquired a little into the history of such restraints; and he would then have saved himself from the absurdity of patronizing remedies which an actual trial had proved ludicrously inapt and inefficacious.

With regard to the second topic of the Message,--our foreign relations,--it may be said that the positions assumed are frank, manly, and explicit; unless we have reason to suspect, in the slightly belligerent attitude towards Spain, a return, on the part of the President, to one of his old and unlawful loves,--the acquisition of Cuba. In that case, we should deplore his language, and be inclined to doubt also the sincerity of his just denunciations of Walker's infamous schemes of piracy and brigandage. Until events, however, have developed the signs of a sinister policy of this sort, we must bestow an earnest plaudit upon his decided rebuke of the filibusters, coupling that praise with a wish that the "vigilance" of his subordinates may hereafter prove of a more wide-awake and energetic kind than has yet been manifested.

But for the terms in which the President has disposed of his third topic,--the Kansas difficulty,--we can scarcely characterize their disingenuousness and meanings. We have already spoken of the object of this part of the document as atrocious,--and we repeat the word, as the most befitting that could be used. That object is nothing less than an attempt to cover the enormous frauds which have marked the proceedings of the Pro-Slavery agents in Kansas, from their initiation, with a varnish of smooth and plausible pretexts. Adroitly taking up the question at the point which it had reached when his own administration began, he leaves out of view all the antecedent crimes, treacheries, and tricks by which the people of the Territory had been led into civil war, and thus assumes that the late Lecompton Convention was a legitimate Convention, and that the Constitution framed by it (or said to have been framed by it,--for there is no official report of the instrument as yet) was framed in pursuance of proper authority or law. He does not tell us that the Territorial legislature which called this Convention was a usurping legislature, brought together, as the Congressional records show, by an invading horde from a neighboring State; he does not tell us, that, even if it had been a properly constituted body in itself, it had no right to call a Convention for the purpose of superseding the Territorial organization; he does not tell us that the Convention, as assembled, represented but one-tenth of the legal voters of the Territory; nor does he seem to regard the fact, that the other nine-tenths of the people were virtually disfranchised by that Convention, so far as their right to determine the provisions of their organic law is concerned, as at all a vital and important fact. By a miserable juggle, worthy of the frequenters of the gambling-house or the race-course, the people of Kansas have been nominally allowed to decide the question of Slavery, and that permission, according to Mr. Buchanan, fulfils and completes all that he ever meant, or his associates ever meant, by the promise of popular sovereignty!

Now this may be all that the President and his party ever meant by that phrase, but it is not all that their words expressed or the country expected. In the course of the last three or four years, and by a series of high-handed measures, the established principles of the Federal Government, in regard to its management of the Territories,--principles sanctioned by every administration from Washington's down to Fillmore's,--have been overruled for the sake of a new doctrine, which goes by the name of Popular Sovereignty. The most sacred and binding compacts of former years were annulled to make way for it; and the judicial department of the government was violently hauled from its sacred retreat, into the political arena, to give a gratuitous _coup-de-grace_ to the old opinions and the apparent sanction of law to the new dogma, so that Popular Sovereignty might reign triumphant in the Territories. At the convention of the party which nominated Mr. Buchanan as a candidate for his present office,--"a celebrated occasion," as he calls it,-- the members affirmed in the most emphatic manner the right of the people of all the Territories, including Kansas, to form their own Constitutions as they pleased, under the single condition that it should be republican. Mr. Buchanan reiterated that assertion in his Inaugural address, and in subsequent communications. When he appointed Mr. Robert J. Walker Governor of the Territory, he instructed him to assure the people that they should be guarantied against all "fraud or violence" when they should be called upon "to vote for or against the Constitution which would be submitted to them," so that there might be "a fair expression of the popular will." Nothing, in short, could have been clearer, more direct, more frequently repeated, than the asseverations of the "Democratic Party," made through its official representatives, its newspapers, and its orators,--to the effect, that its only object, in its Kansas policy, was to secure "the great principle of Popular Sovereignty." On the strength of these assurances alone, it was enabled to achieve its hard-won victory in the last Presidential campaign. Mr. Buchanan owes his position to them, as is repeatedly admitted by Mr. Douglas in his speech of December 9th last,--and the whole nation, having discussed and battled and voted on the principle, acquiesced, as it is accustomed to do after an election, in the ascendency of the victors. It prepared itself to see the application of the principle which had been announced and defended as so important and wise.

Under these pledges and promises, what has been the performance? A Convention, for which, inasmuch as it was illegally called by an illegal body, a large proportion of the citizens of Kansas refused to vote, frames a Constitution, in the interest and according to the convictions of the slenderest minority of the people; it incorporates in that Constitution a recognition of old Territorial laws to the last degree offensive to the majority of the people; it incorporates in it a clause establishing slavery in perpetuity; it connects with it a Schedule perpetuating the existing slavery, whatever it may be, against all future remedy which has not the sanction of the slave-master; and then, by a miserable chicane, it submits the Constitution to a vote of the people, but it submits it under such terms, that the people, if they vote at all, must vote _for_ it, whether they like it or not, while the only part in which they can exercise any choice is the _clause_ which relates to future slavery. The other parts, especially the Schedule, which recognizes the existing slavery, and that almost irremediably, the people are not allowed to pronounce upon. They are not allowed to pronounce upon the thousand-and-one details of the State organization; they are fobbed off with a transparent cheat of "heads I win,--tails you lose";--and the whole game is denominated, Popular Sovereignty.

What is worse, the President of the United States argues that this would be a fair settlement of the question, and that in the exercise of such a choice, the glorious doctrine of Popular Sovereignty is amply applied and vindicated. He admits that "the correct principle," as in the case of Minnesota, is to refer the Constitution "to the approval and ratification of the people"; he admits that the only mode in which the will of the people can be "authentically ascertained is by a direct vote"; he admits that the "friends and supporters of the Kansas-Nebraska Act, when struggling to sustain its provisions before the great tribunal of the American people," "everywhere, throughout the Union, publicly pledged their faith and honor" to submit the question of their domestic institutions "to the decision of the _bonâ-fide_ people of Kansas, without any qualification or restriction whatever"; but then,--and here is the subterfuge,--"domestic institutions" means only the single institution of slavery; and the Convention, in consenting to yield _that_ (and this only in appearance) to the arbitrament of the people, has fully satisfied all the demands of the principle of Popular Sovereignty! Their other questions are all "political"; the questions as to the organization of their executive, legislative, and judicial departments, as to their elective franchise, their distribution of districts, their banks, their rates and modes of taxation, etc., etc., are not domestic questions, but political; and provided the people are suffered to vote on the future (not the existing) condition of slaves, faith has been sufficiently kept. Popular Sovereignty means "pertaining to negroes,"--not the negroes already in the Territory, but those who may be hereafter introduced; for the monopoly of that branch of trade and merchandise, which is already established, and the future growth and increase of it, must not be interfered with, even by Popular Sovereignty, because that would be "an act of gross injustice." In other words, Popular Sovereignty is merely designed to cover the right of the people to vote on a single question, specially presented by an illegal body, under electoral arrangements made by its new officers,--which officers not only receive, but count the votes, and make the returns,-- while all the rest is merely unimportant and trivial. It is just the sort of sovereignty for which Louis Napoleon provided when he wished to procure a popular sanction for the numberless atrocities of the _coup-d'état_ of the 2d December.

An old authority tells us that "it is hard to kick against the pricks"; and the President appears to have experienced the difficulty, in kicking against the pricks of his conscience. He had committed himself to a principle which he is now compelled by the policy of his Southern masters to evade, and is painfully embarrassed as to how he shall hide his tracks. He knows, as all the world knows, that this jugglery in Kansas has been performed for no other purpose than to secure a foothold for Slavery there, against the demonstrated opinion of nine-tenths of the people; he knows, as all the world knows, that if the Convention had had the least desire to arrive at a fair expression of the popular will, on the question of Slavery or any other question, it was easy to make a candid and honorable submission of it to an election to be held honestly under the recognized officers of the Territory; but he knows, also, that under such circumstances the case would have been carried overwhelmingly against the "domestic institution," and thus have rebuked, with all the emphasis that an outraged community could give to the expression of its will, the nefarious conduct which "the party" has pursued from the beginning,--and this was a consummation not to be wished. He therefore wriggles and shuffles, with an absurd and transparent inconsistency, to defeat the popular will, and yet mouth it bravely about "the great principle of Popular Sovereignty."

The President thinks that it is time that these troubles in Kansas were at an end, and we cordially agree with him in the sentiment; but he needs scarcely to be reminded that they never will be at an end, until the wicked schemes, which have been so long persisted in, to override the convictions and hopes and interests of a large majority of the Kansas settlers, are utterly abandoned by those who are in power.

Of the remaining and mostly routine topics of the Message we have no occasion to speak; and we only regret that the deficiencies of the most important parts are so glaring as to oblige us to treat them with undisguised severity.

* * * * *

THE WEDDING VEIL.

Dear Anna, when I brought her veil,
Her white veil, on her wedding-night,
Threw o'er my thin brown hair its folds,
And, laughing, turned me to the light.

"See, Bessie, see! you wear for once
The bridal veil, forsworn for years!"
She saw my face,--her laugh was hushed,
Her happy eyes were filled with tears.

With kindly haste and trembling hand
She drew away the gauzy mist;
"Forgive, dear heart!"--her sweet voice said;
Her loving lips my forehead kissed.

We passed from out the searching light;
The summer night was calm and fair:
I did not see her pitying eyes,
I felt her soft hand smooth my hair.

Her tender love unlocked my heart;
'Mid falling tears, at last I said,
"Forsworn indeed to me that veil,
Because I only love the dead!"

She stood one moment statue-still,
And, musing, spake in under-tone,
"The living love may colder grow;
The dead is safe with God alone!"

LITERARY NOTICES.

_The Spanish Conquest in America, and its Relation to the History
of Slavery and to the Government of Colonies_. By ARTHUR HELPS. Vols.
I. and II. London, 1855. Vol. III. London, 1857.

This work has a double claim to attention in America;--first, on account of its great intrinsic merit as a narrative of the beginnings of the European settlement of this continent; secondly, as containing a thorough and exceedingly able account of the planting of Slavery in America, and the origin of that system which has been and is the great blight of the civilization of the New World.

Mr. Helps is endowed in large measure with the qualities of an historian of the highest order. A clear and comprehensive vision, a wide knowledge and careful study of human nature, free and generous sympathies are united in him with a penetrative imagination which vivifies the life of past times, with a reverence for truth which excludes prejudice and prepossession, and with a profoundly religious spirit. The tone of his thought is manly and vigorous, and his style, with the beauty of which the readers of his essays have long been familiar, is marked by quiet grace and unpretending strength. There are many passages in these volumes of wise reflection and of pleasant humor. In the drawing of character and in the narration of events Mr. Helps is equally happy. The pages of his book are full of lifelike portraits of the great soldiers and great priests of the time, and of animated pictures of the scenes in which they were engaged.

Mr. Helps has investigated his subject with zeal, industry, and patience. He has sought out the original authorities, has brought to light many important facts, has redeemed some great memories from unjust oblivion, and has presented a new view of several of the chief features of the history. In a graceful advertisement to the third volume he says, "The reader will observe that there is scarcely any allusion in this work to the kindred works of modern writers on the same subject. This is not from any want of respect for the able historians who have written upon the discovery or the conquest of America. I felt, however, from the first, that my object in investigating this portion of history was different from theirs; and I wished to keep my mind clear from the influence which these eminent persons might have exercised upon it."

A considerable space in these volumes is devoted to an investigation of the character and condition of the native races of the continent at the period of the Spanish Conquest. This subject is treated with peculiar skill and learning, and with unusual power of sympathetic analysis and appreciation of remote and obscure developments of society. Another portion of the history, which his plan has led Mr. Helps to treat at length and with exhaustive thoroughness, is the early relations between the conquerors and the conquered, embracing the method of settlement of the different countries, the whole disastrous system of _ripartimientos_ and _encomiendas_, which, in its full development, led to the destruction of the native population of Hispaniola, and to the introduction of negroes into this and the other West India islands to supply the demand for laborers.

Another most interesting portion of his subject, and one which has never till now been fairly exhibited, relates to the labors of the Dominican and Franciscan monks, and their admirable and unwearied efforts to counteract and to remedy some of the bitterest evils of the conquest. Theirs were the first protests that were raised against slavery in America, and their ranks afforded the first martyrs in the cause of the Indian and the Negro. Las Casas has found an eloquent and just biographer, and Mr. Helps has the satisfaction of having securely placed his name among the few that deserve the lasting honor and remembrance of the world. The narrative of Las Casas's life is one of strong dramatic interest. His life was a varied and remarkable one, even for those times of striking contrasts and varieties in the fortunes of men; and in Mr. Helps's pages one sees the man himself, with his simplicity and elevation of purpose, his honesty of motive, his energy, his impetuosity, his courage, and his faith.

The three volumes already published embrace the progress of Spanish conquest from the first discoveries of Columbus to Pizarro's incursion into Peru. It is sincerely to be hoped that Mr. Helps may continue his work, at least to the period when the Spanish conquest and colonization were met and limited by the conquest and the colonization of the other European nations. Its importance, as a wise, thoughtful, unpolemic investigation of the origin and the results of Slavery, is hardly to be overestimated. The space allowed to a critical notice does not permit us to render it full justice. We can do little more than recommend it warmly to the readers of history and to the students of the most difficult and the darkest social problem of the age.

_Handbook of Railroad Construction, for the Use of American
Engineers. Containing the Necessary Rules, Tables, and Formulae for
the Location, Construction, Equipment, and Management of Railroads,
as built in the United States_. With 158 Illustrations. By GEORGE L.
VOSE, Civil Engineer. Boston: James Munroe & Co. 1857. 12 mo. pp. 480.

All who trust their persons to railroad cars, or their estates to railroad stocks, will welcome every effort to enlighten that irresponsible body of railroad builders and managers in whose wits we put our faith.

The work which we here notice is intended for uneducated American engineers, of whom there are unfortunately too many. The rapidity with which our railroads have been built, and the experimental character of this new branch of engineering, have obliged us to resort to such native ability and mother wit as our people could afford. The great body of our railroad engineers have had no training but the experience they have blundered through; and even our railroad financiers are men more distinguished for courage and energy than for experimental skill. Mr. Vose's book will doubtless be of great service in remedying these evils, by bringing within the reach of every intelligent man a valuable and very carefully prepared summary of such rules, formulas, and statistics as our railroad experiences have furnished and proved.

Railroad engineering and management have united almost every branch of mechanical and financial science, and have developed several new and peculiar arts; so that the successful construction, equipment, and management of a railroad require a rare combination of accomplishments. Managers hitherto have been too little acquainted with their business to settle many questions of economy, but they are now beginning to look upon their enterprises with cooler judgments.

The "Handbook" discusses several questions of economy, but seeks, especially in its rules and formulas, to avoid those risks by which economy has often been turned into the most ruinous extravagance. On the question of fuel, our author advocates the use of coke as the most economical and convenient, and every way preferable where it can be readily obtained. He also urges, on economical grounds, a more moderate rate of speed in railroad travel; thus showing that we may save our forests, our lives, and a considerable expense all at the same time.

The style is clear, and, for a work not professing to be a complete treatise, but only a manual of useful facts, the arrangement is admirable. The book is thoroughly practical, and touches upon such matters, and for the most part upon such matters only, as are likely to be of service to the practical man; yet it is quite elementary in its character, and free from unnecessary technicalities.

The book has, however, one great fault. It is full of errata. No carefully prepared table of corrections can make amends for such a fault in a book in which typographical correctness is of the greatest importance. To insert in their places with a pen more than two hundred published corrections is a labor which no reader would willingly undertake. We hope, therefore, that a new and correct edition will soon be published.

_The Life of Handel_. By VICTOR SCHOELCHER. Reprinted from the
London Edition. New York: Mason, Brothers.

It is a remarkable fact, and one not very creditable to the musical public of England, that the works of Mainwaring, Hawkins, Barney, and Coxe should remain for almost an entire century after the death of Handel our main sources of information concerning his career, and that the first attempt to write a complete biography of that great composer, correcting the errors, reconciling the contradictions, and supplying the deficiencies of those authors, should be from the pen of a French exile. And yet during all this time materials have been accumulating, the fame of the composer has been extending, the demand for such a work increasing, and the number of intelligent and elegant English writers upon music growing greater.

M. Schoelcher's work, though perhaps the most valuable contribution to musical historical literature which has for many years appeared from the English press, leaves much to be desired. Excepting a correction of the chronology of Handel's visit to Italy, very little, if anything, of importance is added to what we already possessed in regard to the early history of the composer. We look in vain for the means of tracing the development of his genius. The impression left upon the mind of the reader is, that his powers showed themselves suddenly in full splendor, and that at a single bound he placed himself at the head of the dramatic composers of his age. This was not true of Hasse, Mozart, Gluck, Cherubini, Weber, in dramatic composition; nor of Bach, Haydn, Beethoven, in other branches of the musical art. However great a man's genius may be, he must live and learn. To attain the highest excellence, long continued study is necessary; and Handel, as we believe, was no exception to the general law.

The list of works consulted by M. Schoelcher, prefixed to the biography, shows that he has by no means exhausted the German authorities which may be profitably used in writing upon the early history of Handel: indeed, the author, though of German descent, is unacquainted with the German language. We can learn from them the state of dramatic music at that time in Berlin, Leipsic, Brunswick, Hanover, Köthen; we can form from them some correct idea of the powers of Keiser, Steffani, Graupner, Schieferdecker, Telemann, Grünwald, and others, then in possession of the lyric stage; we can thus estimate the influences which led Handel from the path that Bach so successfully followed, into that which he pursued with equal success; and though the amount of matter relating to him personally be small, much that throws light upon his early life still remains inaccessible to the English reader.

The biography of a great creative artist must in great measure consist of a history of his works; and the great value of the book before us arises from the searching examination to which M. Schoelcher has subjected the several collections of Handel's manuscripts which are preserved in England, one of which, in some respects the most valuable, has fallen into his own possession. This examination, for the first time made, together with the first careful and thorough search for whatever might afford a ray of light in the various periodicals of Handel's time, has enabled the author to correct innumerable errors in previous writers, and trace step by step the rapid succession of opera, anthem, serenata, and oratorio, which filled the years of the composer's manhood. For the general reader, perhaps, M. Schoelcher has been drawn too far into detail, and some passages of his work might have been better reserved for his "Catalogue of Handel's Works"; but these details are of the highest value to the student of musical literature, and, indeed, form for him the principal charm of the work. The importance of the author's labors can be duly appreciated only by those who have had occasion to study somewhat extensively the musical history of the last century. For them the results of those labors as here presented are invaluable.

_Sermons of the_ REV. C. H. SPURGEON, of London. Third Series.
New York: Sheldon, Blakeman & Co.

There can be no doubt of the merit of these sermons, considered as examples of method and embodiments of character. Whatever elements of Christianity may be left unexpressed in them, it is certain that Mr. Spurgeon has succeeded in expressing himself. His discourses at least give us Christianity as he understands, feels, and lives it. They should be studied by all clergymen who desire to master the secret of influencing masses of men. They will afford valuable hints in respect to method, even when their spirit, tone, and teaching present no proper model for imitation. Mr. Spurgeon, we suppose, would be classed among Calvinists, but he is not merely that. Without any force, depth, amplitude, or originality of thought, he has considerable force and originality of nature. He detaches from their relations certain doctrines of Calvinism which especially interest him, and so emphasizes and intensifies them, so blends them with his personal being and experience, that the impression he stamps upon the mind is rather of Spurgeonism than Calvinism. He gives vivid reality to his doctrines, because they are incorporated with his nature,--and not merely with his spiritual, but with his animal nature. He is thoroughly in earnest from the fact that he preaches himself. His converts, therefore, are likely to mistake being Spurgeonized for being Christianized; for the Christianity he preaches is not so much vital Christianity as it is Christianity passed through the vitalities of his own nature, and essentially modified and lowered in the process. To understand, then, the kind of influence he exerts, we have simply to inquire, What kind of man is Mr. Spurgeon?

The answer to this question is given on every page of his sermons. He has no reserves, but lets his character transpire in every sentence. He is a bold, eager, earnest, devout, passionate, well-intentioned man, with considerable experience in the sphere of the religious emotions, full of sympathy with rough natures, full of mother wit and practical sagacity, but, as a theologian, coarse, ignorant, narrow-minded, and strikingly deficient in fine spiritual perceptions. These qualities inhere in a nature of singular vigor, intensity, and directness, that sends out words like bullets. Warmth of feeling combined with narrowness of mind makes him a bigot; but his bigotry is not the sour assertion of an opinion, but the racy utterance of a nature. He believes in Spurgeonism so thoroughly and so simply that toleration is out of the question, and doctrines opposed to his own he refers, with instantaneous and ingenuous dogmatism, to folly or wickedness. "I think," he says, in one of his sermons, "I have none here so profoundly stupid as to be Puseyites. I can scarcely believe that I have been the means of attracting one person here so utterly devoid of one remnant of brain as to believe the doctrine of baptismal regeneration." The doctrine, indeed, is so nonsensical to him, that, after some caricatures of it, he asserts that it would discredit Scripture with all sensible men, if it were taught in Scripture. God himself could not make Mr. Spurgeon believe it; and doubtless there are many High Churchmen who would retort, that nothing short of a miracle could make them assent to some of the dogmas of their assailant. Indeed, the incapacity of our preacher to discern, or mentally to reproduce, a religious character differing in creed from his own, makes him the most amusingly intolerant of Popes, not because he is malignant, but because he is Spurgeon. If he had learning or largeness of mind, he would probably lose the greater portion of his power. He gets his hearers into a corner, limits the range of their vision to the doctrine he is expounding, refuses to listen to any excuses or palliations, and then screams out to them, "Believe or be damned!" In his own mind he is sure they will be damned, if they do not believe. So far as regards his influence over those minds whose religious emotions are strong, but whose religious principles are weak, every limitation of his mind is an increase of his force.

This theological narrowness is unaccompanied with theological rancor. A rough but genuine benevolence is at the heart of Mr. Spurgeon's system. He wishes his opponents to be converted, not condemned. He very properly feels, that, with his ideas of the Divine Government, he would be the basest of criminals, if he spared himself, or spared either entreaty or denunciation, in the great work of saving souls. He throws himself with such passionate earnestness into his business, that his sermons boil over with the excitement of his feelings. Indeed, it is difficult to say whether our impressions of him, derived from the written page, come to us more from the eye than the ear. His very style foams, rages, prays, entreats, adjures, weeps, screams, warns, and execrates. His words are words that everybody understands,--bold, blunt, homely, quaint, level to his nature, all alive with passion, and directed with the single purpose of carrying the fortresses of sin by assault. The reader who contrives to preserve his calmness amid this storm of words cannot but be vexed that rhetoric so efficient should frequently be combined with notions so narrow, with bigotry so besotted, with religious principles so materialized; that the man who is loudly proclaimed as the greatest living orator of the pulpit should have so little of that Christian spirit which refines when it inflames, which exalts, enlarges, and purifies the natures it moves. For Mr. Spurgeon is, after all, little more than a theological stump-orator, a Protestant Dominican, easy of comprehension because he leaves out the higher elements of his themes, and not hesitating to vulgarize Christianity, if he may thereby extend it among the vulgar. It has been attempted to justify him by the examples of Luther and Bunyan, to neither of whom does he bear more than the most superficial resemblance. He is, to be sure, as natural as Luther, but then his nature happens to be a puny nature as compared with that of the great Reformer; and, not to insist on specific differences, it is certain that Luther, if alive, would have the same objection to Mr. Spurgeon's bringing down the doctrines of Christianity to the supposed mental condition of his hearers, as he had to the Romanists of his day, who corrupted religion in order that the public "might be more generally accommodated." Bunyan's phraseology is homely, but Bunyan's celestializing imagination kept his "familiar grasp of things divine" from being an irreverent pawing of things divine. Mr. Spurgeon's nature works on a low level of influence. Deficient in imagination, and with a mind coarse and unspiritualized, though religiously impressed, he animalizes his creed in attempting to give it sensuous reality and impressiveness. If it be said that by this process he feels his way into hearts which could not be affected by more spiritual means, the answer is, that the multitude who listened to the Sermon on the Mount were not of a more elevated cast of mind than the multitude who listened to Mr. Spurgeon's sermon on "Regeneration." But the truth is, that Mr. Spurgeon's preaching is liked, not simply because it rouses sinners to repentance, but because it gives sinners a certain enjoyment. It is racy, original, exciting, and comes directly from the character of the preacher. It is relished, as Mr. Spurgeon tells us in his Preface, by "princes of every nation and nobles of every rank," as well as by humbler people. But we doubt whether Christianity should be vulgarized to give jaded nobles a new "sensation," or in order to be made a fit "gospel for the poor."

* * * * *

_Roumania: the Border Land of the Christian and the Turk.
Comprising Adventures of Travel in Eastern Europe and Western Asia_.
By JAMES O. NOYES, M. D. Surgeon in the Ottoman Army. New York: Rudd &
Carleton, 310 Broadway. 1857.

Dr. James Oscar Noyes, the author of this book, is an American all over. He has the rapidity and eagerness of mind that the champagny atmosphere of our northern hills gives to those who are stout enough not to be wilted by our hot summers. For briskness, thriftiness, energy, and alacrity, it is hard to find his match. He has made a book of travels, and will make a hundred, unless somebody finds him a place at home where he will have an indefinite number of labors-of-Hercules to keep him busy,--or unless some African prince cuts his head off, or he happens to call upon the Battas about their Thanksgiving-time.

Here he has been streaming through Eastern Europe and Western Asia, so hilarious and good-tempered all the time, so intensely wide-awake, so perfectly at home everywhere, so quick at making friends, so perfectly convinced that the world was made for American travellers, and so apt at proving it by his own example, that his friends who missed him for a while not only were not astonished to find that he had been a Surgeon in the Ottoman Army, during this brief interval, but only wondered he had not been Grand Vizier.

In this instance the book is the man, if we may so far change Monsieur de Buffon's saying. It is full of fresh observations and lively descriptions,--perhaps a little too overlarded and oversprigged with prose and verse quotations,--but as lively as a golden carp just landed. It describes scenes not familiar to most readers, tells stories they have never heard, introduces them to new costumes and faces, and helps itself by the aid of pictures to make its vivacious narrative real. We are much pleased to learn that the work has met with a very good reception; for we consider it as the card of introduction of a gentleman whom the American people will very probably know pretty well before he has done with them, and be the better for the acquaintance.

* * * * *

_Dante's Hell_. Cantos I. to X. A Literal Metrical Translation.
By J. C. Peabody. Boston: Ticknor & Fields, 1857.

A man must be either conscious of poetic gifts and possessed of real learning, or very presumptuous and ignorant, who undertakes at the present day a _new_ translation of Dante. Mr. J. C. Peabody might claim exemption from this _dictum_, on the ground that his translation is not a _new_ one; but he himself does not put in this plea, and we cannot grant to him the possession of poetic power, or declare that he is not ignorant and presumptuous. He says in his Preface, with a modesty, the worth of which will soon become apparent, "The present is on a different plan from all other translations, and must be judged accordingly. While I disclaim all intention of disputing the palm as a poet or scholar with the least of those who have walked with Dante before me, yet, by such labor and plodding as their genius would not allow them to descend to, have I made a more literal, and perhaps, therefore, a better translation than they all." Mr. J. C. Peabody is right in supposing that none of the previous translations of Dante could descend to _such_ labor and plodding as his. In 1849, Dr. Carlyle published his literal prose translation of the "Inferno." It was in many respects admirably done, and it has afforded great assistance to the students of the poet in their first progress. Mr. Peabody does not acknowledge any obligations to it, or refer to it in any way. Let us, however, compare a passage or two of the two versions. We open at line 78 of the First Canto. We do not divide Mr. Peabody's into the lines of verse.

CARLYLE.

"Art thou, then, that Virgil and that fountain
which pours abroad so rich a stream of
speech? I answered him with bashful front.
O glory and light of other poets! May the
long zeal avail me and the great love which
made me search thy volume. Thou art my
master and my author."

PEABODY.