THE LIVING AGE. No. 996. 4 July, 1863. CONTENTS: PiG 1. Epigrams, . . . 2. DeQuinceys Remains, . 3. The English Court, . . 4. A ConPAerate Apocalypse, . 5. Heir Hunting, . . . 6. Miss Powers Arabian Days and Nights, 7. Mrs. Kembles Georgia Journal, 8. False Ground and Firm, . 9. Recent Visit to Paris, . . 10. Mene, mene, tekel, upharsin, 11. French Elections, . . 12. Prussia, . . . . Blackwoods Magazine, Reader, Saturday Review, Reader, Saturday Review, Reader, Spectator, Frasers Magazine, Spectator, 3 13 16 18 20 23 25 28 37 39 Spectator, Economist, and Press, 41 Saturday Review and Press, 43 POETRY.ThO Black Regiment, 2. Song for the Loyal National League, 2. In War Time, 47. When thou Sleepest, 48. The Flower, 48~ SHORT ARrIcLEs.Literary Intelligence, 12, 15, 22. The Nile.Mr. Petherick, 22. North American Review; National Quarterly Review, 36. Lord Clydc, change of name, 36. 9 PUBLISHED EVERY SATURDAY BY CO., B LITTELL, SON & OSTON. For Six Dollars a year, in advance, remitted dzrectly to the Publishers, the LIVING AGE will he punctually forwarded free of postage. Complete sets of the First Series, in thirty-six volumes, and of the Second. Series, in twenty volumes, handsomely bound, packed in neat boxes, and delivered in all the principal cities, free of expense of freight, are for sale at two dollars a volume. ANY VOLUME may be had separately, at two dollars, bound, or a dollar and a half in numbers. ANY NUMBER may be had for 13 cents; and it is well worth while for subscribers or purchasers to com~ plate any broken volumes they may have, and thus greatly enhance their value. 2 THE SECOND TRB SECOND LOUISIANA. MAY 27TH, 1863. BY GEORGE H. BORER. DARK as the clouds of even, Ranked in the western heaven, Waiting the breath that lifts All the dread mass, and drifts Tempest and falling brand Over a ruined land; So still and orderly, Arm to arm, knee to knee, Waiting the great event, Stands the black regiment. Down the long dusky line Teeth gleam and eyeballs shine; And t.he bright bayonet, Bristling and firmly set, Flashed with a purpose grand, Long ere the sharp command Qf the fierce rolling drum Told them their time had come, Told them what work was sent For the black regiment. Now, the flag-sergeant cried, Though death and hell betide, Let the whole nation see If we are fit to be Free in this land ; or bound Down, like the whining hound~ Bound with red stripes of pain In our old chains again! Oh, what a shout there went From the black regiment Charge! Trump and drum awoke, Onward the bondmen broke; Bayonet and sabre-stroke Vainly opposed their rush. Throuuh the wild battles crush, With but one thought aflush, Driving their lords like chaff, In the guns mouths they laugh; Or at the slippery brands Leaping with open hands, Down they tear man and horse, Down in their awful course; Trampling with bloody heel Over the crashing steel, All their eyes forward bent, Rushed the black regiment. Freedom! their battle-cry...... Freedom! or leave to die! Ah! and they meant the word, Not as with us tis heard, Not a mere party-shout: They gave their spirits out Trusted the end to God, And on the gory sod Rolled in triumphant blood. Glad to strike one free blow, Whether for weal or woe; L O1J 151 A NA. Glad to breathe one free breath, Though on the lips of death. Prayingalas! in vain That they might fall again, So they could once more see That burst to liberty This was what freedom lent To the black regiment. Hundreds on hundreds fell; But they are resting well Scourges and shackles strong Never shall do them wrong. Oh, to the living few, Soldiers, be just and true! Hail them as comrades tried; Fight with them side by side Never, in field or tent, Scorn the black regiment! SONG FOR TILE LOYAL NATIONAL LEAGUE, On the Anaiv sary qf the Attack on Fort ~Sumter, April 11, 1863. BY GEOHOE B. BOEEa. WHEN our banner went down, with its ancient renown, Betrayed and degraded by treason, Did they think, as it fell, what a passion would swell Our hearts when we asked them the reason? Ghor~usOh, then, rally, brave men, to the standard again, The flag that proclaimed us a nation! We will fight on its part, while theres life in a heart, And then trust to the next generation. Althongh~auseless the blow that at Sumter laid low That flag, it was seed for the morrow; And a thousand flags flew, for the one that fell true, As traitors have found to their soi~row. CherusOh, then, rally, brave men, to the standard again, The flag that proclaimed us a nation! We will fight on its part, while theres life in a heart, And then trust to the next generation. Twas in flashes of flame it was brought to a shame, Till then unrecorded in 3tory; But in flashes as bright it shall rise in our sight, And float over Sumter. in glory! ChorusOh, then, rally, brave men, to the standard again, The flag that proclaimed us a nation! We will fight on its part, while theres life in a heart, And then trust to the next generation. .7 EPIGRAMS. 3 From Blaekwoods Magazine. Few, indeed, were they who needed the warn- ing which Wailer most elegant of loves epigrammatistsputs into the mouth of his messenger, the Rose, Tell her thats young, And shuns to have her graces spyd, That had she sprung In deserts where no men abide, She must have uncommended died. Bid her come forth, Suffer herself to be desired, And not blush so to be admired. EPIGRAMS.* Wn live, it is said, in a prosaic and real- istic age. With all our modern science and modern refinements, our life is not so imag- inative, so gay, so insouciant1 as that of our grandmothers and grandfathers. Even con- versation, we are told, has lost its brilliancy. Women, who used to talk so charmingly, vi- brate now between slang and science. Men are either too busy or too languid to exert themselves to talk at all, unless to constitu- encies or mechanics institutes. Thefew who could talk well are suspected of keeping their talk to put into books. We all trite and read instead of conversing. And even read- ing and writing have become occupations rather than amusements. The warmest and most imnginativc lover never now pens a son- net to Delias eyebrow, or an impromptu upon Sacharissas girdle. The modern representa- tives of those charmers would only vote him a muff for his pains. Ters de societd are gone out of fashion altogether. Such poetry as we want (and we do not want a great deal) is done for us by regular practitionerslau~ reates, and so forth; we no more think of making our own verses than our own pills. Any man or woman who was to produce and offer to read in polite company a poetical ef- fusion of their own ~or a friends, such as would have charmed a whole circle in the days of Pope or of Fanny Burney, would be stared at upon reasonable suspicion of hav- ing escaped from a private lunatic asylum. Even if the offered verses should be warranted to contain the severest remarks upon a mu- tual friend, we of a modern audience should have strength of mind enough to rcsist the temptation. Perhaps society has grown more charitable and less scnndalous; perhaps it is only less easily amused. It could hardly have been comfortable, after all, to live in the nge of epigrams and im- promptus. It was, all very well for the Dc- has and Sacharissas aforesaid to have their charms celebrated by the wits and poets of the day; and though it is notoriously true that their admirers did not err on the side of reticence, female delicacy in those days was hardly startled by the warmth of the homage. A lady had no more objection to be compared to Venus than to the Graces. Epigrams, Ancient and Modern. By the Rev. J. Booth, B.A. Longinan and Co. The days when such verses passed from hand to hand, and were read instead of Punch and Mr. Darwin,were indeed a good time, as the American ladies call it, for the fair enchantresses who, strong in the charms of youth, had only to come forth to insure admiration; but it was quite a different case with poor Chloe, who was repairing the dam- ages of years with a little innocent paint, or with Celia, who had just mounted a new wig of her very own hair, honestly bought and paid for. human nature, we suppose, wns human nature then; and it could never have been pleasant to have ones little personal pe- culiarities, or some untoward accident, or slight social sin, done into verse forthwith by a clever friend, and handed round the breakfast or tea-tables of your own particular circle for the amusement and gratification of other dear friends, clever or otherwise. It was a heavy penalty to pay for living in an Augustan age. In this present generation, if you find yourselt the victim of a severe ar- ticle in a popular revie~v, you have yourself half solicited the exposure by being guilty of print in the first place; even if, in the hon- est discharge of your ordinary duties, you awake some morning to a temporary notoriety in a column of the Times, you can satisfy your feelings by stopping the paper; and in either case, you have the consolation of know- ing that probably a majority of your personal friends will never read, the abuse, and that most certainly nine-tenths of those who do read it xviii have forgotten it in a week. But the terse social epigram, of some four or eight lines, communicated first from friend to friend in a confidential whisper, and then handed about in manuscript long before it escaped into print, was remembered by the dullest dolt amongst a mans intimates, stuck to him all his li,fe, and, in many instances, became his only memorial to posterity. Like Sin- trams co-travellers, there was no escape from EPIGRAMS. its dreadful companionship; if bad, it was the more readily remembered; if neat and well- pointed, it was wore generally admired and more widely circulated. True, the author of the satire did not always put in the ac- tual name; the victim of his verse figured commonly under some classical alias; but everybody knew and none better than the unfortunate object that Grumio meant Sir ilarry, that Chremes stood for old Brown, and that Lady Bab was intended by Phryne. Even if there was nothing -more personal than a row of asterisks in the original, there were always plenty of copies in circulation with the hiatus carefully filled in. Let no one suppose for a moment that the polish and the humor of such productions made the attack more endurable. Few men, and perhaps fewer women, are of Falstaffs happy temper- ament, content to be the subject of wit in others. There is more sound than truth in the epigram which says, As in smooth oil the razor best is whet, So wit is by politeness sharpest set; Their want of edge from their offence is seen Both pain us least when exquisitely keen. End both cut deepest too, and leave scars that are longest in healing. Johnson was quite right when he pronounced, on the other hand, that the vehicle of wit and delicacy~ only made the satire more stinging; com- pared with ordinary abuse, he said, the difference was between being bruised with a club, or wounded with a poisoned arrow. One is surprised, however, on the whole, in looking over any collection of epigrams which were considered extremely good things in their day, to find how poor the majority of them are. They would read better, no doubt, to those who knew the parties. The spice of neighborly ill-nature, which gave them their chief zest originally, and made up for the poverty of the wit, is losthappily to the cool judgment of the modern reader. They are like the glass of champagne kept till it has lost its sparkle. A nicely printed little book, recently pub- lished, containing a selection (for a collection it certainly is not, though so called in the dedication), will impress this fact upon most of its readers. Of course, such jews desprit do not show to advantage when gathered to- gether at random, as these seem to have been. They find their best place as illustrations of biography or political history; often, an epi gram of four lines would require a page of j~refhce to make its point fully intelligible to an ordinary reader. But certainly, as one turns page after pt~ge of this literature of Society, one gets confirmed in the impres- sion that society was very ill-natured in those days. The science of making ones self beautiful forever, by the aid of paint and other accessories, is still studied by some la- dies, if we may trust law-reports and adver- tisements, and, no doubt, sharp-sighted friends detect this false coinag~ of beauty; but they do not mercilessly nail it down on the social counter, as in the case of poor Dorinda (whose real name was doubtless pei{ectly well known to her contemporaries) Say, which enjoys the greater blisses John, who Dorindas picture kisses, Or Tom his friend, the favored elf, Who kisses fair Dorindas self? Faith, tis not easy to divine, While both are thus with raptures fainting, To which the balance shall incline, Since Tom and John both kiss a painting. There is a sequel, too, even less gallant, which calls itself The Point Decided: Nay, surely Johns the happier of the twain, Because the picture cannot kiss again. The rude wits of society delighted in attack- ing these adventitious charms unconscious, probably, that in this as in many other things, the Greek epigrammatists had been long be- fore them. Ifere is one of the best amongst manyanonymous, so far aswe knowwhich we miss in Mr. Booths volume Cosmelias charms inspire my lays, Who, fair in natures scorn, Blooms in the winter of her days, Like Glastonbury thorn. If eer, to seize the tempting bliss, Upon her lips you fall, The plaistered fair returns the kiss, Like Thisbe, through a wall. Modern gallantry keeps its eyes open, and its lips to itself, under suspicious circumstances; and perhaps not being so readily taken in by false colors, is not so bitter against those who wear them. There are blockheads amongst fashionable physicians in our own days, andjealousies, it is to be feared, are not unknown in the pro- fession; but they do not put their professional antagonism into the form of epigrams, as Dr. Wynter, Dr. Cheney, Dr. Hill, Dr. Lettsonn, Dr. Radcliffe, and a host of others did (or their friends and enemies did for them) in 4 / 6 EPIGRAMS. the days of good Queen Anne and the Ger- This, again, has escaped Mr. Booth, though man Georges. Dr. (afterwards Sir John) he has given his readers another, on the sub- Hill, one of those universal geniuses whom ject of Sir Richards unfortunate poem of the public is apt to mistrust, is the hero of Job a kind of poetical paraphrase of the some of the best of these medical squibs. lie Scripture original wrote plays as well as prescriptions. Poor Job lost all the comforts of his life, And hardly saved a potsherd and a wife Yet Job blest Heaven ; and Job again was blest; His virtue was assayed, ant bore the test. But,had Heavens wrath poured out its fiercest vial Had he been thus burlesqued ,without denial, The patient man had yielded to the trial; His pious spouse, with Blackmore on her side, Must have prevailedJob had blasphemed and died. For physic and farces, his equal there scarce is; His farces are physic, his physic a farce is. There is a little series of epigrams upon him which we cannot resist quoting here from Mr. Booths book, though they must be al- ready old acquaintances (as most of the best epigrams are) to all whose reading is not wholly of a modern kind. Some of the wits of the Literary Club,of which Garrick, John- son, Burke, etc., were members, began upon the unlucky physician as follows Thou essence of dock, and valerian, and sage, At once the disgrace and the pest of your age, The worst that we wish thee, for all thy sad crimes, Is to take thine own physic, and read thine own rhymes. To which is replied, by a sort of semi-chorus of the members, The wish should be in form reversed, To suit the Doctors crimes; For if he takes the physicfirst, Hell never read his rhymes. Dr. Hill himself is supposed to rejoin in an- swer) and if it were really his, the doctor would have had the best of it), Whether gentlemen scribblers or poets in jail; Your impertinent wishes shall certainly fail Ill take neither essence, nor balsam of honey, Do you take the physic, and Ill take the money. The anonymous quatrain on Dr. John Lett- som, the Quaker, is one of the very best of punning epigrams; its brevity may excuse its reappearance here If anybody comes to I, I physics, bleeds, and sweats em; If, after that, they like to die, Why, what care I? I. Lsrvsx. Sir Richard Blackmore, like Hill, was am- bitious to combine poetry with physic; and was dealt with no less severely by the popu- lar weapon. An anonymous octrain (of which the first six lines are weak) ends with this climax, which reads much better alone Such shoals of readers thy dd fustian kills, Thoult scarce leave one alive to take thy pills. W~ do not know where the compiler got this from, nor does he give any authors name: there were a whole volley of contemporary squibs flying about the head of this unfortu- nate translator, who had got himself into bud odor with the licentious wits of his day by employing his pen against the immoralities of the stage. This drew upon him the wrath of Dryden, Sedley, Swift, and others; and his reputation has suffered rather unfairly in consequence; for the jests against his pro- fessional skill were unfounded, whatever may be thought of his poetry. A volume was ac- tually published in 1700, in which the squibs upon him were all collected under the title of Commendatory Poems, etc. here is another of them which we have met with, as good, perhaps, also anonymous When Job contending with the devil I saw, It did my wonder, but not pity, draw; For I concluded that, without some trick, A saint, at any time, could match Old Nick. Next came a fiercer fiend upon his back I mean his wife, with her infernal clack; But still I did not pity him, as knowing A crab-tree cudgel soon would send her going. But when this quack engaged with Job I spied, Why, Heaven have mercy on poor Job, I cried; What wife and Satan did atteni.pt in vain, The quack will compass with his murdering pen, And on a dunghill leave poor Job again; With impious doggrel hell pollute his theme, Aud make the saint against his will blaspheme. Coleridges epigram upon Jobs wife is printed in the book before us, and is perhaps less generally known than some others Sly Beelzebub took all occasions To try Jobs constancy and patience He took his honors, took his health, He took his children, took his wealth, His camels, horses, asses, cows, Still, the sly devil did not take his spouse. 6 EPIGRAMS. But Heaven, that brings out good from evil, And loves to disappoint the devil, Had predetermined to restore Twofold of all Job had before His children, camels, asses, cows ; Short-sighted devil, not to take his spouse! The germ of this lies where very many good things lie unsuspeeted, and are oceasionally dug out and made~use of with very little ~c- knowledgementin the writings of St. Au- gustine; and has been used by Donne in one of his remarkable sermons, where Coleridge probably found it. The old divines im- provement of the passage beats any epi- gram that ever was founded on it Misericordem putatis Diabolum, says that father, qui ei reliquit ii orem? Do you think that Job lighted upon a merciful and good-natured devil, or that Job was be- holden to the Devil for this that he left him his wife? Noverat per quam deceperat Adam, says he; suam reliquit adjutrzc , non ma- rito consolationem; he left Job a helper, but a helper for his own ends. * We must have done with the physicians, only quoting some more recent lines, neat but not over complimentary, upon the trio who were in attendance on poor George ITT. The king employs three doctors daily, Willis, Heberden, and Baillie All exceedingly skilful men, Baillie, Willis, and Heberden But doubtful which most sure to kill is, Baillie, Heberden, or Willis. Law escapes these satiric rhymers better than physic. No doubt the lawyers were able to hold their own against the world in this as in other matters. Two~. or three clever thin6s of Sir George Rose nrc given in Mr. Booths book; but there are, we suspect, some still better in private circulation, per- haps rather too personal on contemporaries to be suitable for publication. The following, though it deals with names well known at the bar, is good-humored enough as well as clever. It purports to be The History of a Case shortly reported by a Master in Chan- cery : Mr. Parker made the case darker, Which was dark enough without; Mr. Cooke quoted his book,. And the Chancellor said I doubt. Of course the chancellor was Lord Eldon. But the editor should have given the sequel. his lordship soon after decided a ease against Rose, and, looking wag0ishly at him, said, In this ease, Mr. Rose, the chnneellor does not doubt! Mr. Booth has omitted one (or rather two) of the very best epigrams which touch upon the gentle~en of the long robe. We thought the lines were very well known, and they have certainly appeared more than onde in print, as a proposed Inscription for the Gate of the Inner Temple As by the Templars holds you go The Horse and Lanib, In emblematic figures, show The merits of their trade. That clients may infer from thence How just is their profession The Lamb sets forth their innocence, The Horse their expedition. 0 happy Britons! happy isle! Let foreign nations say, Where you get justice without guile, And law without delay. The reply is equally good Deluded men, these holds forego, Nor trust such cunning elves These artful emblems serve to show Their clients not themselves. Tis all a trick ; these are but shams By which they mean to cheat you; But have a carefor youre the Lambs, And they the wolves that cat you. Nor let the hope of no delay To these their courts misguide you Tis youre the showy Horse, and they The jociceys that would ride you. The universities have had their wits and their butts in at least as great abundance as the courts of law. Especially was this likely to 1)e the case in a society like Oxford, which maintained upon its staff, for many years, a sort of licensed jester, under the name Tcrr Filius, whose office was, at the Bachelor~s Conunencement, to satirize, with the most unbounded license, all the recognized author- ities. We feel sure that the Oxford social records might have supplied a collector of this literary sinaliware with some very toler- able specimens and we hardly think that Mr. Booth can have availed himself as fully ~Donnes Works, vol. iii. p. 332 (Alfords Edition), as he might have done of the current witti Mr. Le h made a speech, Angry, neat, but wrong; Mr. Hart, on the other part, Was prosy, dull, and long. Mr. Bell spoke very well, Though nobody knew what about Mr. Trower talked for an hour, Sat down fatinued and hot. E PT C~R A MS. cisms of his own University of Cambridge. lie gives us only a few of Porsons and these not his best. For instance, we might at least have had that upon Hermauns scholarship, in the English dress which the professor gave it The Germans in Greek Are sadly to seek; Not five in five-score, But ninety-five more; All, except Hermana And Hermanns a German. Of Oxford epigrams, we have a sin0le mod- ern specimen, by a living professor of well- known conversational powers, and a more ancient one, we suppose by a wit of the same college, on Dr. Evans (he was Bursar off St. Johns, as the editor should have explained) cutting down a row of fine trees there Indulgent Nature on each kind bestows A secret instinct to discern its foes The goose, a silly bird, avoids the fox Lambs fly from wolves, and sailors stenr from rocks; Evans the gallows as his fate fores~es, And bears the like antipathy to trees.~~ These, with Dean Aldrichs Five Reasons for Drinking, are all that he has gathered from the banks of Isis. There must surely be others of modern date current in the Ox- ford Common-Rooms, which mi6ht have been recovered, without much trouble, for a pub- lication like this, and which would have been better worth printing than some which have found a place there. We subjoin two or three which may be new to non-academical readers. It was suggested, some little time ago, to alter the cut of the commoners gowns proverbially ugly. This produced the fol- lowing Our gownsmen complain ugly garment~ oppress them; We feel for their wrongs, and propose to re-dress them. An alteration having been made in the statu- tory exercises for divinity degrees, by which two theological essays were required in future from the candidates, the following was circu- lated in congregation The title D.D. tis proposed to convey To an .11 double S for a double S .d. The honorary degree of D.C.L. having been declined by a distinguished officer, on account of the heavy fees at that time demanded, his refusal was thus set forth 7 Oxford, no doubt you wish me well, But prithee let me be; I cant, alas! be D. C. L. Because of L. S. D. This, again, on a proposal to lower the uni- versity charges upon degrees conferred by what is termed accumulation (i.e., when two steps are taken at once), is remarkably neat Oxford, beware of over-cheap degrees, Nor lower too much accumulators fees Lestunlike Goldsmiths land to ills a prey Men should accumulate, and wealth de- c y. All these are, we believe, from the same well-known hand, as the old collectors would have phrased it; flashes of the pleas- ant humor which, in all generations, has marked the lighter hours of scholars. As these are the latest, so the following is among the earliest which has come down to us: it will be found amongst the epigrams of John Heywood, of Broadgate Hall (now Pembroke College),circa 1550. He is said to have been the only person who could draw a smile from gloomy Queen Mary. So far as the point of the epigram is concerned, it might have been written yesterday. Alas! poor fardingales must lie i the streete, To house them no door i the citie is meete; Synce at our narrow doors they in cannot win, Send them to Oxforde, at Broadgate to get in. The followin~ can scarcely be reckoned amongst collegiate witticisms, its birth hav- ing been extra-academic. It is given by the editor with just enough of its history to give it interesta course which, if adopted in the case of some other epigrams in the book, would have well repaid in value the addition to its bulk George II. having sent a regiment of horse to Oxford, and at the same time a col- lection of books to Cambridge, Dr. Trapp wrote the following epigram Our royal master saw with heedful eyes The wants of his two Universities; Troops he to Oxford sent, as knowing why, That learned body wanted loyalty: But books to Cambridge gave, as well discerning That that right loyal body wanted learnino An epigram which Dr. Johnson, to show his contempt of the Whig0ish notions which prevailed at Cambridge, was fond of quoting; but having done so in the presence of Sir William Browne, the physician, was an- swered by him thus : 8 E P I4~R A MS. The king to Oxford sent his troop of horse, For. Tories own no argument but force; With equal care to Cambridge books he sent, For Whigs allow no force but argument. Johnson did Sir William the justice to say, It was one of the happiest extem- poraneous productions he ever met with; though he once comically confessed that he hated to repeat the wit of a Whig urged in support of Whiggism. This book is poor, too, in those scholastic epigrams of which a good many were in cir- culation in more scholarly days. We have, indeed, Porsons upon poor Dido. Di-do- dum,which is rather schoolboyish, after all; but there is a much better one upon the same lady, which we remember to hayc seen somewhere in print, with the name of the re- puted author: Virgil, whose magic verse enthralls (And where is poet greater?), Sometimes his wandering hero calls Now Pius, and now Pater; But when, prepared the worst to hra~e (An action that must pain us), lie leads fair Dido to the cave, He calls him Du~c Trojanus. Why did the poet change the i~ord? The reason plain is, sure; Pius neas were absurd, And Pater premature. Some sort of historical arrangement of epi- grams might (like a good collection of carica- tures) throw an amusing light upon contem- porary history; and we should like to see .a careful collection attempted on this principle. One of the best of these quasi-historical jeux desprit in the collection before us is new to us, and may be so to many of our readers ON THE ROYAL MARRIAGE ACT, PA5SED 1772. Quoth Dick to Tom, This Act appears Absurd, as Im alive: To take the crown at eighteen years, The wife at twenty-five. The mystery how shall we explain? For sure, as well twas said, Thus early if theyre fit to reign, They must be fit to wed. Quoth Tom to Dick, Thou art a fool, And little knowst of Life Alas! tis easier far to rule A kingdom than a wife. These kind of gatherings, trifling as they are, are pleasant dalliance for the student of national history, and may even help to im- press the dry facts upon his memory. We remember Addingtons short-lived Adminis- tration all the better, if we chance to associate with it the witty French epitaph suggested for him, Ministre sol-disant, .M~decin maigre lui. It would be very easy to add to the few given in this little book. That of the Anti-Jacobin, on the Paris Loan upon Bugland, should at least have found a place The Paris cits, a patriotic band, Advance their cash on British freehold land But let the speculating rogues beware; Theyve bought the skinbut whos to kill the bear? The times that followed the Revolution of 1688 were perhaps the great age of what we may call historical epigrams. The bittej~ne~s of political hostility found vent in satiric verse, as well as in other less harmless outlets; and those who concealed their Orange or Jac- obite feelings from motives of self-interest, often indulged themselves with handing about this kind of political weapon, which was sometimes claimed by the authors in safer days. William on the one hand, and good Queen Anne on the other, were unfailing subjects. But the epigrams of that day had more rancor than wit; and even in the best, their coarseness generally forbids quotation. Swifts were, of course, the wittiest, and the least decent. None were so happy, and few so delicate, as that little epigram of his in prose, when it was suggested for the new kings coronation motto, Recepi, non rapui, and the dean rejoined that he supposed the translation was, The receiver is as bad as the thief. The Duke of Marlborough with his wavering allegiance, his penurious habits, and his uxorious fondness for his termagant Sarah, came in for a large share of this ques- tionable literary homage. Swifts epitaph upon him (Booth, p. 58) is too long for quo- tation, and there are more serious objections to some others which do not want for point. His new palace of Blenheim was ridiculed in strings of couplets, bad and good. One of the best is not in this collection; on the high arch built over the little brook in the park, The lofty arch his high ambition shows; The stream an emblem of his bounty flows. In order to understand the violence displayed in the language of some of these effasions, it is necessary to understand thoroughly the rela- tions between the parties, and the provocation EPI G~iAMS. which has been sometimes given. An epi- gram on Lord Cadogan by Bishop Atterbury, given in the collection before us, will strike the reader as mere rabid abuse, unless he re- members the circumstances which called it forth which should certainly have accompa- nied it by way of explanation. It ends thus Ungrateful toth ungrateful men he grew A bold, bad, boisterous, blustering, bloody booby. Atterbury had been imprisoned in the Tower on a very well-founded charge of treason. Such cases were embarrassing to the ruling powers; and in the royal drawing-room the question had been mooted, What was to be done with the man? Cadogan was present, and replied, Throw him to the lions. The brutality of the suggestion may excuse the Bishops retaliation. A contemporary epitaph on iBishop Ilurnet shows how the rancorous spirit of party pur- sued the dead with a bitterness which is really horrible, even if we charitably hope it was meant half for jest If Heaven is pleased when sinners cease to sin, If Hell is pleased when sieiiners enter in, If men are pleased at parting with a knave, Then all are pleasedfor Burnets in his grave. Perhaps the best of the Jacobite epigrams is one which Mr. Booth has not given C~ God bless the King! God bless the Faiths Defender! The devil take the Pope and the Pretender ! Who the Pretender is, and who the King God bless us all! is quite another thing. The modern definition of an epigram im- plies that it should have a spice of malice. We have adopted the Roman notion of it, contained in the Latin distich which the edi- tor takes as the motto for his preface. Oinne epigramma sit instar apis; sit aculeus illi, Sint sua mella, sit et corporis exigui. Of which he adds a rather washy translation, and which is perhaps rather difficult to trans- late; sooner than risk the attempt ourselves, we will give one which we find in an old miscellany, and which is at least more con- else than Mr. Booths The qualities three in a bee that we meet, In an epigram never should fail; The body should always be little and sweet, And a sting should be left in its tail. But the original meaning of an epi~raxu is 9 quite a different thing as Mr. Booth observes; it was merely an inscription, usually short, inasmuch as it was to be engraved on an al- tar, temple, or monumental tablet; and far from being bitter or personal, it was usually laudatory or simply commemorative. The well-known inscription at Thermopyke was one of the earliest and best which have come down to us: Go, traveller, tell it in Sparta that we lie here in obedience to her laws. Even when the Greeks extended the term to something more like our modern use of it a few short pithy verses with some special point in viewthey did not consider that a sting was any necessary part of it. Few of the Greek epigrams, except the latest, are satirical. But the Roman satirists adopted the form, and degraded the use, in which our English writers have followed them. But though popular to a certain extent in our minor literature, the epigram is not a thor- oughly English thing: it hardly suits the genius of the language. The Greek, the Latin, and even the French, preserve its point and neatness in a degree which our writers can rarely imitate. The Spartan brevity, the Attic salt, the neat turn of the Latin distich, arc of the very elements of its excellence; though there seems no need for quite so strict a limitation as Boileaus un hon met de deu nines orne. The Romans gave it the most pungency; but for simple elegance it has never been surpassed in its natural home, the Greek. Mr. Booth in this collection gives a good many translations from the Greek anthologynot always of the best specimens to be found there; though nothing can be more beautiful than this free version by Lord Nugent, fully worthy of the original I loved thee beautiful and kind, And plighted an eternal vow; So altered are thy face and mind, Twere perjury to love thee now. Or this again, which has no anthors name, On a statue of Niobe: To stone the gods have changed her ;but ia vain; The sculptors art gave her to breathe again. But comparatively few of us are aware of the extent of the obligations in this way to the Greek writers, of whom the very names are lost. Many which pass as English originals in this collection, as in others, are really only adaptations of the classical Greek idea. How EPIGRAMS. many of our present readers remember that the proverb which has such a true homely English sound that it seems as though it must be a native Theres many a slip, Twixt the cup and the lip. is the merest literal translation of a Greek versean epigram in the original sense an inscription on a drinking-cup? Did the French king know, when be uttered the fa- mous met, Apr~s moi le deluge, that he was merely quoting an anonymous Greek, of no one knows how many centuries before him? We forget in what English divines published devotions we noted a thought which struck us at the time as very beautifuland original, till we turned it up in the old An- thologia Give us those things which be good for us even though we ask them not; and those things which be hurtful to us, even if we ask them, withhold. Heathens, were those Greek~? they were not altogether wrong in the matter of prayer at any rate. Fas est et ab lsoste doceri.. There is a temptation to linger among the classics (especially after reading throur,h a book of English epigrams like the tailor who stands up to rest) to which we plead guilty, and for which we hope we have shown some excuse. Let us recommend, in reparation to the country gentlemen, an inscription for their clocks or sun-dials well worth adopting, and which may have the merit of novelty, for we have never yet seen it in an English versionan- other Greek epigram, in the real sense of the worda beautiful variation of the hack- neyed moral, Tempus fugit; we give the original below, * to make amends for any shortcoming in our translations Brief while the rose doth bloom; gather it straight No rose, but thorns, remain for those that wait. ~f course, even in English, there are epi- grams which can be classed as Moral and Panegyrical, as well as Satirical and Hu- morous; though the present editor can find only ninety pages of these latter to balance some two hundred of the more piquant and better remembered class, and even to do this, has thought himself at liberty to include a good many extracts that are not epigrams at all, such as long passages from Shak * Tb ~66dov hcjz& 4 Bat~v xp6vow ~ & wapiAi9~, Zy~v pi~art~ ob A6dov, d?2~d f3& i-ov. speare, Goldsmith, and Cowper, and from Aytouns Bothwell. After all, there are several which ~cem curiously out of place in this second division; the well known Bainea, vina, Venus hardly comes under the category of Moral; and we doubt whether the subjectof the following, whether spinster or widow, would have received it as ~anegyrical Though age has changed thee, late so fair, I love thee neer the~ worse; For when he took thy golden hair, He filled with gold thy purse. Some of the older complimentary verses are really elegant and worth preserving. Take this on the beautiful Duchess of Devon- shire canvassing Westminster for Charles Fox Arrayed in matchless beauty, Devons Fair, In Foxs favor takes a zealous part; But, oh! whereer the pilferer comes, beware She supplicates a vote and steals a heart. We do not care much for tributes of this kind to anonymous young ladies, though some of them are prettily turned enough. As has been remarked before, epigrams which have a personal history are by far the most interesting. Of these Mr. Booth has omitted several which were very easy to be found, and better in their way than very many of his selections. Such as these surely deserved a place for every reason ON MISS VASSAL (LADY hOLLAND) AT A MAS- QUERADE, FEB. 27, 1786. Imperial nymph! ill-suited is thy name To speak the wonders of that radiant frame; Wherecr thy soverei~,n form on earth is seen, All eyes are Vassalsthou alone a queen.~ ON THE TWO BEAUTIFUL MISS GUNNINGS. Sly Cupid, perceiving our modern beaux hearts Were proof to the sharpest and best of his darts, His power to maintain, the young urchin, grown cunning, Has laid down his bow, and now conquers by Gunning. ERSHINE TO LADY PAYNE. (He had con~plained of feeling unwell at her house.) Tis true I am ill, but I need not complain, For he never knew pleasure that never knew Payne. And in spite of its being anonymous (so far as we know) both as to author and subject, we should like to add this last to the editors collection 10 / EPIGRAMS. ON A PATCH ON A LADYS rACE. That artful speck upon her face Had been a foil in one less fair; In her it hides a killing grace, And she in mercy placed it there. We have not much faith in impromptus, which usually cost their authors much time and pains to compose; but we are glad to see again one of Theodore Hooks (who really had the gift of making them) which if the circumstances of its production are faithfully recorded, is one of the very best that was ever put into print. He is said to have been sit- ting at the piano, composing and singing one of those extempore songs in which he adapted a verse to the name of each one of the com- pany present, when a Mr. Wynter entered the room quite unexpectedly. Hook at once started off as follows Here comes Mr. Wynter, surveyor of taxes, I advise you to give him whatever he axes; And that, too, without any nonsense or flummery, For though his names Wynter, his actions are summary. Of such as are really epigrams in the orig- inal senseinscriptionsone of the best in the hook, and perhaps not so commonly known as some others, is that said to he still visihle at the Duke of Richmond Inn, at Goodwood, on the carved figurc-head (a lion) of Ansons ship the Centurion Stay, traveller, awhile, and view I who have travelled more than you; Quite round the globe in each degree, Anson and I hav~ plowed the sea; Torrid and frigid zones have passed, And safe ashore arrived at last, In ease and dignity appear He in the Ilouse of LordsI here. The collection is not improved by the addi- tion of a third class, containing Monumental Epigrams. If intended as a collection of gen- uine epitaphs remarkable for their terseness or eccentricity, it is anything but complete, and the thing has been much better done be- fore. But in point of fact it is a jumble of old tombstone verses, either genuine, or which have passed for such, with the playful or bitter last words which wits have sug- gested for their friends or enemies. By the side of inscriptions which are known to have a local existence, we find such things as tboldsmiths Madam Blaize, Moores lines upon South cy, and Punchs suggested epi- taph on a locomotive engine Her end was pieces. The classification of epigrams is 11 perhaps not very easy; but this kind of divi- sion into Humorous and Monumental is certainly the most illogical that ever was attempted. We wonder under which head- ing the editor would have classed the follow- ing verses, if he had happened to meet with them. They are an anticipatory dirge for Professor Buckland, at that time the great popular geologist, from the pen of Arch- bishop Whately. We do not know that they have been printed, except in the columns of a newspaper. Mourn, Ammonites, mourn oer his funeral urn, Whose neck ~ ye must grace no more; Gneiss, granite and slate,he settled your date, And his ye must now deplore. Weep, caverns, weep, with infiltering drip, Your recesses hell cease to explore; For mineral veins or organic remains, No stratum again will he bore. His wit shone like Crystalhis knowledge pro- found From Gravel to Granite descended~ No Trap could deceive him, no Slip confound, No specimen, true or pretended. Where shall we our great Professor inter, That in peace may rest his bones? If we hew him a rocky sepulchre, Hell get up and break the stones, And examine each strata that lies around For hes quite in his element underground. If with mattock and spade his body we lay In the common alluvial soil; Hell start up and snatch those tools away Of his own geological toil In a stratum so young the Professor disdains That embedded should be his organic remains. Then exposed to the drip of some case-harden- ing spring, His carcass let stalactite cover; And to Oxford the petrified sage let us bring, When duly encrusted all over; There mid mammoths and crocodiles, high on the shelf, Let him stand as a monument raised to himself. 1st Dec. 1820. The reader will find, in this last class, four Latin lines which have always been a puzzle to curious scholars. They are said to be found on a stone in Lavenham Church, Nor- folk Quod fuit esse quod est Quod non fuit esse quod esse ~ The ladies of Dr. Bucklands familyif not the professor himselfoccasionally wore necklaces of ammonites. EPIGRAMS. Esse ~iod non ease Quod eat non est erit esse. (We prefer leaving out the commas, as we have found the punctuation of other passages, whether the printers or the editors, of rather a hap-hazard character.) There is a translation givenone of several which we have seen, perfectly intelligible in themselves, but quite impossible to be got, by any fair grammatical process, out of the original Latin. The most plausible interpretation sug- gestedand if not the true one, it has, at least, tbe merit of great ingenuitygoes upon the supposition that the name of the deceased was Toly Watt. Then it comes out some- thing like this: That which was Toby Watt, is what Toby Watt was not; to be Toby Watt, is not to be what Toby Watt is; Toby is not, he will be. It is true that the Lavenham epitaph is said to be upon one John Wales: but we believe it exists else- where, with various readings: and it is by no means impossible the John Waless rela- tives borrowed the inscription, admiring it none the less that it was unintelligible. That some such play upon words is the key to the riddle, seems probably from another epitaph in Mr. Booths book Hic jacet Plus, plus non est hic, Plus et non plusquomodo sic? Of whic~a the following, said to be in St. Benets Church, Pauls Wharf, seems to be a free translation Here lies one .More, and no more than he; One More and no morehow can that be? Why, one J~fore and no more may well lie here alone, But here lies one More, and thats more than one. Such grim puns were not thought irreverent to the dead by the taste of the day. We are not fond either of monumental witticisms or monumental eulogy: if we must needs choose a poetical memorial, there is one in the book (which really exists at Peterborough) whose plain-speaking strikes our fancy Reader, pass on, nor idly waste your time, In bad biography, or bitter rhyme; What I am now, this cumbrous clay insures, And what I was is no affair of yours. It will be seen that we have been unable to compliment the present editor on his selec- tion. Especially we regret to see some of the modern personalities of Puneh copied into his pages. They may be excused in an ephemeral publication; they are not really maliciousindeed, nothing is more remark- able than their general good-humor and free- dom from bitterness, when the temptations of the professional joker are considered and they answer the intended purpose of raising a laugh. But in a book intended for the drawing-room table, as this seems to be, the same sense of propriety which has excluded some of the wittiest epigrams of former gene- rations on account of their grossness, should also have suffered verses of no remarkable brilliancy, which described living and late bishops (whose names are supplied in a note as Soapey and Cheesey, to remain in the files of periodical papers, or in the mem- ories of their admirers. FROM the American Publishers Circular for May, just received from Messrs. Trubner & Co., we find that Messrs. Ticknor and Fields, of Boston, announce a Life of W. H. Prescott, by Dr. George Ticknor, to be published in quarto, with illustrations; Messrs. Lippincott & Co., of Philadelphia, have in press the History of Charles the Bold, by the late Mr. Prescotts assistant, Mr. John F. Kirk; Messrs. Mason Brothers, of New York, will shortly publish a History of General Butlers Campaign and Ad- ministration at New Orleans, by Mr. Parton, whose Life of Benjamin Franklin has been looked forward to for several years; the Hon. Edward Everett is completing the manuscript of The Law of Nations, a book to which the pre- sent state of America will furnish much new and curious matter; and Mr. B. J. tossing announces a History of the Rebellion. Dr. Allibones Dictionary of Authors is getting towards com- pletion, and the MS. of the second volume will soon be in the printers handsthe letter S., and the Smiths in particular (there being no less than 680 authors of that name, of whom more than eighty are Johns) having been a sad stum- bling-block in the compilers way. MIcHEL CHEVALIER is engaged at this moment, by command of Napoleon ILL., on a large work on the internal resources of Mexico, drawn from reports prepared by special messengers, sent out for the purpose in the train of the French army of invasion. 12 From The Reader. DE QUINCEYS REMAINS. DE QUINCEYs writings hardly belong to what can be called current literature. They are now rather a portion of that past English literature of which we are proud as a national inheritance. Hence the comple- tion of the collected edition of Dc Quinceys works in fifteen volumes by Messrs. A. and C. Black of Edinburgh is a topic rather for our leading article than for one of our re- views. But it is an event that ought not to go by unchronicled. A few years ago, while De Quincey was yet alive, the only collected edition of his writings was an American edi- tion, which had been very creditably under- taken by an American publisher in order to meet the demand in the United States caused by Dc Quinceys fame. Based on this edi- tion there at last came forth a British. edition, superintended by De Quincey himself, and all but finished when he died. The present is a re-issue of that edition, with improve- ments and additions. The fifteen volumes ought to be in every library that aims at con- taining what is m\ost excellent in English literature. For Dc Quincey is one of our classics, one of our real immortals, and his remains are one of the richest and most pe- culiar bequests that have recently fallen in to the great accumulation of our standard Eng- lish prose. Whoever knows not Dc Quincey has his education in our higher English liter- ature. still to complete. What a strange life was Dc Quinceys! A dream rather than a life, a passive flitting to and fro, almost a disembodied existence, un- bound, unregulated by any of the ties and punctualities that bind and regulate ordinary lives! The end of it is within recent recol- lection. You were walking, perhaps, with a friend in one of the quiet country-lanes near Edinburgh; and there passed you timidly a strange diminutive creature, with his hat hung on the back of his head, at whom you could not help looking back, and whom, when you did look back, you found also stopping, as if in suspicious alarm, and looking back at you. That is Dc Quincey, your friend would whisper; and the diminutive creature would hastily move on, as if fearful of being caught, and disappear round the first turn- ing, the rim of his hat still sloping back over his shabby coat-collar. And so, in wander- ings about in the lanes and country-roads near 13 Edinburgh, in the vicinity of which he then had his homevaried by occasional disap- pearances, during which he could not be tracedwere passed the last years of a man who, some fifty years before, had been the companion of Wordsworth and Southey and Coleridge in the Lake-district, who had there- after started out from that illustrious group as an intellectual notability sui generis, and who, for thirty years or more, had been fa- mous in London and everywhere as the Eng- lish Opium-eater, and one of the finest writ- ers in the English language. Quietly and furtively, with all this retrospect of notoriety behind him, like some small and enfeebled ticket-of-leave man, amazingly afraid of the police, and dimly conscious that they might still have a right to him, did De Quincey flit about lanes and country-roads in his last obscure retreatoccasionally clutched and borne away in a cab (which was the only way of securing him) to be the lion of an Edin- burgh evening-party, when, after he had dis- coursed most bcautiful talk for hours, the problem would arise how on earth to get him away again. At last, on impulse or on sua- sion, out into the Night, as thef~erman novelists have it, he would go; and what be- came of him no one knew, and no one cared. And yet this strange life must, from first to last, have been a life of singular industry and labor. This singular being, this migra- tory and almost disembodied intellect, this little wandering anatomy, topped with a brain, whom a habit of opium-eating con- tracted in its early youth had loosened, as it seemed, from all the social realities of life, and almost from all sense of worldly respon- sibility, had been leading an indefatigable life of its ownall observation, all memory, all reverie, all speculation. Howsoever and whensoever he had acquired his scholarship, there were few such learned and accomplished men in his day as Dc Quincey. He had read enormously, without ever seeming to have books by him, much less a library. He had made himself his own encyclopmdia, and, wherever he was, could quote all that he wanted to quote, dates and references in- cluded, from memory. Then, not belonging to the world, but only as some merely intel- lectual spirit moving about in the world, he had taken note of everything in it, serious or humorous, and had forgotten nothing that he had once noted. With a memory thus DE QUINCEYS REMAINS. 14 DE QTJINCEY S REMAINS. full and ever becoming fuller, and wIth a fleation followed in the actual arrangement tendency at the same time to investigation, of the volumesprobably for the practical reasoning, and fantastic constructions of his reason, that the classes of writings theoreti- own ideas, he had, nearly all his life, and in cally discriminated, shade into each other; the main for the mere purpose of earning the but,theoretically, the classification is perfect; necessary sustenance of bread or opium, been and, had it been possible, we should have in the habit of throwing offnay, not throw- preferred an arrangement of the writings ac- ing off, for they were carefully written, with cording to it to any other arrangement cx- corrections and interlineationsarticles for cept the strictly chronological. In a collected magazines and other periodicals. Each edition of an authors writings, and especially article, when written, seems to have been in a posthumous edition, the chronolo~ical thrown over his shoulder, unregistered, un- arrangement, where possible, is always the filed, uncared-for; and yet, incessantly and very best. Leaving that matter, however, laboriously, he was writing fresh articles, let us attend to Dc Quinceys theoretical dis- Of books, or things originally shapedas books, tribution of the contents of these fifteen vol- he gave but one or two to the world; his nines. They might be distributed, he said, whole literary life was a succession of articles into three classes :I. Writings offact, r for periodicals. It seemed to be the same to niscence, and historical narration. Under such him where his articles went, provided they a head, though not precisely so named, Do brought him the small immediate payment he Quincey included a large and very interest- wanted- whether to periodicals of note or to ing portion of the contents of these fifteen obscure periodicals; and it is one of the odd- volumes. He cited the Autobiographic est things we know that this English literary Sketches as an example. These Autobi- celebrity, this veteran main of genius, whose ographic Sketches contain recollections of services the greatest periodical in the land his own life, and of his acquaintance with ) might have been glad to command at any Wordsworth, Coleridge, Southey and others; price, should have spent some of his last years but there are, in the fifteen volumes, many in composing articles for local periodicals, papers of the same order, not autobiographic, posting the packets of manuscript at the but more generally historical or biographic, Lasswade post-office, and fearing lest, from which are extremely substantial and valuable. being too late, they should be rejected alto- All Dc Quinceys literary biographies are gether. Not till the very end of his life, and worth reading; and we recollect his sketch then probably less on his own motion than on of Bentleys life as especially interesting and the urging of friends, did he set about col- thorough. On the whole, we will make but lecting his scattered papers, or indicating, one remark on this portion of De Quinceys from the lists in his memory, from what writings; and that is that, whereas we have miscellaneous quarters they might be col- found that the statements of all opium-eat- lected. And yet these scattered articles in ers of facts relating to themselves are to be all sorts of periodicals for some thirty or forty received with caution~ or even, where they years were what Dc Quincey was and now is are very picturesque, are to be punctually to the world; and the fifteen volumes in disbelieved, we have found,on the other hand, which they are now collected are, with the that, in general matters of history, opium- exception of a book or two, and some articles eaters are not necessarily inventive, but may left out as scarcely worth reprinting, Dc be extraordinarily exact and accurate. II. Quinceys total remains. Speculative writings, or writings addressed to It is seldom that an author attempts a the purely rational faculty. A large propor- classification of his own writings, and more tion of De Quinceys writings are of this seldom still that a classification which an kind; and, in our opinion, theseor those author does propose of his own writings is others in which criticism and speculation are satisfactory to others. Dc Quincey, how- blended with biography and historyare ever, in the preface to the collected edition of among his best. his was, indeed, a singu- his writings which he himself superintended, larly subtle and, as the Germans say, spitz- proposed a classification of these writings Jindig intellect; and, out of the class of ex- which cannot be improved upon. Neither in pressly systematic thinkers, we do not know that edition nor in the present is the elassi- a recent writer whose investigations of vexed DE QUINCEY S REMAINS. 15 problems are finer and more ingenious, or, more confidently to his ~3uspiria de Profun- what is more, whose conclusions are more dis. There is no doubt that he was right, distinct and trustworthy than Dc Quinceys. and that from these and other writings of Dc He reminds us here, both in matter and in Quincey specimens i~ay be cited of what may~ manner, ~f Coleridge~whom, indeed, in the be called prose-rhapsody or rich and weirdly main, he resembled more than he resembled prose-phantasy, such as can be cited from no any other of his predecessors.; and we would other English prose-writer. Nor, whatever say of him, as we would say of Coleridge, may be the intrinsic value of this style of that whoever is investigating any question. writing,is that value abated hy the fact that ought to make a point of seeing whether this Dc Quincey, as a critic of his own writings, thinker has s~id. anything about itconfident was aware of the peculiarity of this portion that, if he has, he has gone into the very of them. crevices of the subject, and made deep and All in all, since Coleridge s death, we know exquisite incisions in the right direction. In of no English writer, speculative in the cast all matters relating, in particular, to literary of his genius, without being expressly sys- criticism, and the philosophy of style and tematic, whose remains are a more valuable literature, De Quincey, like Coleridge, is bequest to British literature than those of De masterly; and his essays on such subjects Quincey. He died in the same year with are worth a score of the older English treat- Lord Macaulay; and, while all Britain was ises on Rhetoric. Nor, though De Quinceys ringing with proclamations of the national method i -subtle, are his conclusions unsound loss sustained by Lord Macaulays death, the or merely ingenious. His Letters to a young. sole tribute to poor old Dc Quincey was the man whose education has been neglected tribute of a few short and scattered obituary are replete with good sense, and are about notices in the newspapers. The difference the wisest advices on the subject of literary was proper as regarded the relative social culture we have ever read. III. imaginative importance of the two lives. And yet, per- Prose- Writings~ De Quincey claimed to be haps, the worth of Lord Macaulays literary a practitioner of a style of imaginative and remains, as compared with those of De Quin- rhythmical, or highly impassioned prose, of cey, is as the worth of some highly burnished which, in universal literature, there had been mass of a metal of gold and copper mixed, few precedents; and, as examples of such compared with the worth of an equal mass prose-poetry, he pointed to passages in his of pure white silver worked into foliage and Confessions of an Opium-Eater, and still frosted filagree. MESSRs. TRUBNER & Co. have just ready M. libraries of Normandy are possessed of most val- Frolichs Lords Prayers (with an etched dedi- nable collections of ancient documents, not a few cation plate and prefatory plate and ten etched of them relating to the early connection between designs lilustrative of the text), dedicated to the France and England. Princess Alexandra. In all these designs the subject proper is combined with arabesques of appropriate foliage. Thus, in the Lords Prayer, THE long-expected correspondence of Goethe the pimpernel and small corn-flower frame the with Duke Charles Augustus of Saxe-Weimar, design for Give us this day our daily bread; containing, it is stated, matter of the very highest the alms of triumphant beatitude support the interest, is now d~flnitely announced to appear at design for Thy kingdom come; thorns and the beginning of June. The work will be in two brambles hed0e in the designs appropriated to volumes, published by Voigt and Gunther, Leip- the averting temptation and the deliverance from zig. evil. The plates are exquisitely executed from graceful designs. TEE flint-hatchet difflcu1ty is at last settled. A popular curate in Hertfordsbire, in a lecture lately A LITERAHY association, under the title of on the connection between geology and the Bible, Society of Norman Bibliophiles, has just been said that these flint hatchets had been a difficulty established at Rouen. Its object is to collect and to some people, but for his part he had not ,the print rare works and manuscripts relating to slightest difficulty in the matter; he had no doubt Normandy. It is stated that many of the private that they were made by the Fallen Angels. THE ENGLISH COURT. From The Saturday Review, 23 May. THE ENGLISH COURT. Lo~noN saw a very strange sight last Satur- day. it saw carriage after carriage ~ ladies, old and young, in the brightest and gayest dresses possible, waiting quietly in a block far away towards Kensington and Regents Park, in order that, at the end of a May spring afternoon, they might reach the Pal- ace of St. James. There they sat, like sheep decked out for a sacrillce, smiling vaguely on the crowds that stared at them, bleating per- haps in an undertone to each other, but with- out power to move, losing gradually, first pa- tience, and then hope. These ladies were all going to court, and this is what going to court is practically like in England. They were the flower of beauty and wealth and fashion, on their way to pay their first hom- age to a bride. At last, after hours of ex- haustion, they reached the dingy, shabby little Iriansion where it is the fancy of English sovereigns to receive their subjects. They had then to squeeze, and to be squeezed, to lose temper and finery, to vent their feelings in those looks of fire which are to women a facile substitute for oaths. They had to fight as the wild eager outlaws from society fight to get a good place at an execution, and at last they reached the presence of the Princess. She, too, shared the pleasures of an English Court Reception. She had to stand bowing for hours until at last she could stand no lon- ger. E.tiquette tried to turn out nature with a fork, but nature came back. This was what all the state and ceremony and wealth and loveliness of England ended in. It is only England that could have had so much to throw away,nnd only England thatwould have thrown it away. There could scarcely be any sight more beautiful than the sight of an Eng- lish drawing-room as it might be; and there is scarcely any sight so aggravating and ludi- crous as an English drawing-room as it is. The spectacle of an Eastern durbar has ap- pealed to the imagination and gratified the taste of every successive generation of Eng- lishmen in India. The harmony of colors, the blaze of jewels, the repose and dignity of those there, the quiet, the order, the gran- deur of the whole, have never failed to charm those who have seen the spectacle. But Eng- land could gather a durbar of which india has never dreamed. If vast halls, and mag- nificence, and palatial stateif the treasures of art, and the delights of form and color, as accessoriesconld enhance the effect, we have them. Th~~ gay clothing, the blazing jewelry, the personal grace of Orientals would be eclipsed by the splendor of English dresses and the loveliness of English faces. The respectful homage which Orientals pay to their sovereign is repeated in England, but it has the additional worth of a selt~. respect felt by those who pay it, and of the genuine emotion of affection and iegard which an English sovereign awakens so easily. A drawing-room might be a delight to the eye, and a gratification to the sense of beauty and perfectiona link between the sovereign and the subject, and a tribute to the excellence of English charms. It is a crash, a dim battle of worn-out sufferers, an ugly, heart-rending disappointment. The fact is, that the times have changed, and the habits of th~ people are changed, but the ways of the court have remained the same A hundred years ago, the Palace of St. Jamess suited the sovereigns of the house of Hanover very well. They saw a limited number of people, and saw them in a friendly way. They knew something of the history of those presented to them, and were not above a taste for the gossip and scandal of an idle, sociable circle. They were like a family great enough to go on in their own way, and to expect that their neighbors should be pleased to drop in upon them. The days of the court pageantry which suited the tastes brought with them by the Stuarts from the old connection of Scotland with France, were no objects of envy to royalty in the early days of the Georges. Roy~dt~y had come from Germany, and in Germany royalty considers that the truly royal thing i8 to be simply the first family in the countrythe richest, and the best-born and the most pow- erful, but still perhaps one of the homeliest, simply because a family that is past rivalry is past affectation. The fashion in such fuat- ters was soon set; and England was quite content that its sovereigns should keep court as German princes are wont to do. So St. Jamess was pronounced to do very well. The aristocracy and a few adroit people at the top of professions made their w~~y into the pres- ence of the king and queen, and ate and chatted with them, as in these days country neighbors eat and chat in the great house of the district. Those old days are gone by, 16 ) THI~ ~T~GL1SU COURT. 17 and the court has ~hanged in some degree, should scarecly wish to encourage this pas- and its relations to the people have also sion for going to court in people who have changed. There is no longer a small priv- no official reason for going, and who have not ileged set which is born to go to coart, and been born in the court circles. It lowers the which alone presumes to go there. Now, sition of the sovereign that royalty should every lady goes that is a little ambitious and be treated as it was in Paris, when the citizen- can afford the dress. England is much more king was expected to behave as a citizen to before the world; and a royal spectacle is a his fellow-citizens. Nor is it by any means matter of far more than local interest. I2he a duty to encourage the abandonment of the sovereign is now the head of the nation; and, old distinctions of station, the love for show, in matters of show and magnificence is to a the silly pretences involved in a general rush great extent expected to lead the nation and to court of nobodiesof ladies who are not represent it properly. The court and the in court circles, nor the wives or daughters upper society of England is daily more and of distinguished men. It is a very moderate more brought into intimate relations with the estimate to say that at least a fourth of those courts and the society of continental capitals; who go would be much better at home. and although there is little of the old Ca- Even if the sovereign is not entitled actually miliarity which was natural in the meetings to exclude them, the sovereign is not bound of members of small circles in frequent com- to facilitate their trying to blow themselves munication with each other, yet there is a out to the size of the proper court visitor. much more extended acquaintanceship than Many families, perhaps, will date the begin- there used to be, and the court is looked to ning of the pretensions that will harass and as a basis for this widely spread connection, cripple them for years, from the evil day The court has more to do than formerly, and when vanity prompted the desire to sit in has to do it for people who are not nearly so one of those blocked earriages, and fight in intimately bound up with its daily life, that disastrous crush. The conservatism of And yet drawing-rooms are still held at the English court in this respect has there- St. Jamess and ladies are crushed and wor- fore not been without its use and its justifiea.. ned to death, and royal brides fatigued to tion. Only the time has come when things exhaustion, rather than change the manners cannot go on as they are. It may be desir- with the times, and listen to the whisperings able that the English court should forego of common sense and the dictates of a proper some of the magnificence which it could so pride. But it must not be supposed that the easily command. Some sort of check may be English court acts without a settled purpose, pardonably imposed on presentations by hun- or without reasons entitled to considerable dreds and hundreds at a time. But it is a weight. The court clings, at the cost of all great pity that the business should be done so this inconvenience, to old customs, because absurdly ill as at present. These are not bad they are linked with something which it is times for royalty, and especially for royalty thought ought not to pass away. The royal in England; and the little drawbacks of happy family has lived for a century and a half in times must be taken with the advantages. It England on the plan of German royalty. It is a drawback on being lovable and pretty has been simply a family, but a royal one, and good, that the world likes to look at you and the only exception is certainly not one to sometimes when you had much rather not make it seem very desirable to abandon the have the bore of being looked at. It would old order for a new one. The court of the re- be pleasanter, perhaps, to have the glory gency was of the sort of brilliancy which is and the respect of royalty without the duties not liked by the English court or the Eng- often so unavoidably tedious. But it eannot lish people. It might not be safe to change. be; and an English sovereign has, if duty The constitution, to say the least, harmonizes is done, a very busy time of it. It is now a very well with the German theory of royal piece of necessary business to arrange the life. It might not be quite so well if our drawing-room properly, and a very little con- sovereign were like the sovereign of the sideration, once for all, and a very little cx- Tuileries, and spent millions in state shows tra trouble every summer would suffice to and in fetes and pageants for the world. And carry out all that is wanted. then, again, it is very natural that royalty THIItD axaIxa. LIYTh~G AGE. 1043 A CONFEDERATE APOCALYPSE. From The Reader. A CONFEDERATE APOCALYPSE. Anticipations of the Future, to Serve as Les- sons for the Present Time. In the Form of Extracts of Letters from an English Resi- dent in the United States to the London Times,from 1864 to 1870. With anAp- pendix on the Causes and Consequences of the Independence of the South. (Richmond, Va., 1860.) AMID the emotions produced by the intel- ligence now in course of transmission from America, it might appear almost preposterous to bestow any attention on an attempt to fore cast the lineaments of the Great Civil War on a scale as petty as if it rather concerned the squabbles of two principalities than the destinies of two continents. Yet this singu- lar work before us deserves notice, both as a curiosity and as a valuable testimony to the motives and feelings which impelled the Southern Americans to a conflict of the ex- tent and seriousness of which they had evi- dently avery inadequate conception. Pub- lished in June, 1860, six months before the secession of South Carolina, the hook is a de- liberate anticipation of the step, and a minute detail of its progress and results as visible to the prophetic eye of a fanatic and exasperated Southerner. The writer, however, is evi- dently a man of intelligence and cultivation, accustomed to political life, of mature years he remembers the blockade of 181215 and of good standing among his countrymen, as may 1)e inferred from the fact that his ap- pendix is reprinted from De Bows Review, almost the only respectable literary organ they posscss. The machinery employed is unexceptionable enough, being neither vision nor trance, but simply the correspondence of an imaginary Times reporter at Washington. Had we seen this volume on its first appear- ance, we might have objected to the improb- ability inherent in the character of aii Eng- lishman represented as the thorough-going apologist of slavery. It is needless to observe that we are now fully convinced of our mis- take. At first sight, confidence in the discernment of our prophet would seem impaired by his fixing the foreboded disruption for 1868. But we learn, on consulting his preface, that this is but a condescending accommodation of the mens divinior to the timidity of unbelievers. His own conviction is that secession will and should take place immediately upon the an- ticipated election of Mr. Lincoln. But there are, unfortunately, numerous submission- ists in the SoutWsouls so mean and das- tardly as to be positively unwilling to take up arms against their countrymen till they have received some injury at their hands. Magnanimonsly according these mean spirits eight years to arrive ~t a sense of propriety, he fixes the meeting of the secessionist con- vention at Atlanta, Ga., for January 20, 1868. Always, be it remembered, under protest. And, in fact, his views of Southern reasonableness reflect so much credit upon his discerrnnent that it is a pity to find them coupled with eC strong opinion that the North would never dare to en~,agc in hostilites at alla conviction which underlies the whole book. Let ns suppose ourselves, then, promoted to A.Ii. 1868, and able to bestow a hasty glance on the path by which we have trav- elled to Secessia. President Lincoln, it seems, was elected in 1860 by a small majority. Public indignation would not permit a South- ern vote to be offered for him a pretty comment on freedom of election south of Ma- son and Dixon. It is interesting to observe the improvement in the presidents appear- ance when brought into the light of prophecy. He was courteous to all, conciliatory to his personal enemies, and did not show any re- sentment against those who had been his loudest vilifiers. . . . His policy and admin- istration were praiseworthy, and respected for probity, wisdom, and firmness. . . . He maintained the dignity of the Government abroad and its respectability at home. So, at last, we have fiund a Southerner speaking well of President Lincoln. But the serpent entered Eden in the shape of President Sew- ard, elected in 1864. The first step of the new ruler was to offer increased inducements to immigrants, who, being mostly low and ignorant, naturally reinforced the Abolition- ~ists. Everybody connected with John Brown got a place, more particularly the notori- ous Helper, who was made one of the ncw Receivers of the Land Office. General Fremont became commander-in-chief; the rabid abolitionist, Joshua Giddings, was appropriately despatched to Ilaytithe Gov- ernment of which state returned the compli- ment by sending the Duke of Marmalade to Washington. Traffic on the underground 18 (I A CONFEDERATE APOCALYPSE. railway increased notably; and slavery disappeared altogether from the District of Columbia. The naval and military forces were augmented; six Northern States were divided for t~he purpose of manufacturing new senators: President Seward was re- elected; and the Gulf States seceded, elect- ing Mr. M. of South Carolina (Memminger, we presume) President, and Mr. C. of Ala- bama (whom we fail to identify) Vice-Presi- dent. Viewed by the light of actual events, the military anticipations of our Southerner seem the perfection of comicality. Operations commence by the capture of Fort Sumter not a very difficult operation, inasmuch as the garrison consists of one old sergeant. Fort Moultrie is next blockaded, and in due course reduced to submission, though not be- fore the seceders have had time to achieve a great moral triumph by unanimously repudi- ating their d~bts. In consequence wh.ercof, before the war had lasted three months, as many as one-fourth of all the usually labor- ing and self-supporting poor of the great northern cities, and throughout the manu- facturing rural districts, were paupers and beggars. This being the case, it seems sur- prising that the Northern Government could not collect more than seven thousand men for the invasion of the SoUth. After the de- struction of this force by the brave General S., the rest of the Slave States secede, Wash- ington is taken and made the seat of Govern- ment, a Federal army is demolished in Mis- sissippi, the Confederates win a naval battle, and their wicked enemies are reduced: to their last resort of exciting a servile insurrection. Need it be said that this also results in fail- ure, or that the prisoners were all hung as soon as a gallows could be erected among them the not~rious abolition-leader and apostle of insurrection and massacre, William L. Garrison, and with him seven negro and nine white public lecturers on slavery and abolition? Another invasion, under a son of John Brown, is similarly discomfited, not- withstanding the ingenious stratagem of the commander, who,, because of the manifest selection of the whites as marks for the Ken- tucky rifles, had ordered that every white should blacken his faceand had himself set the example. After the execution of this tactician and his officerswhich the failure. of the North to capture a single prisoner al- lowed to take place without any fear of re- prisalsthe Confederates had only to sit still and enjoy the spectacle of the total destruc. tion of New York by the work-peopleBos- ton and Philadelphia escaping with a slight singeing, as it were. After this it is hardly necessary to add that the North-Western States conclude a separate peace, that the European powers refuse to acknowledge the ineffective blockade, and that the curtain drops upon Secessia at the threshold of her millennium, and the Free States considering how best to get rid of the predaceous and troublesome New England States, with their pestilent fanaticism, and their political and economical position scarcely superior to those conditions of the present Republic of ilayti. All this seems sufficiently ludicrous; but, before joining in a laugh at our Southerners expense, it may be as well to consider how far we can afford to do so. Have we, as a nation, given evidence of a much more en- lightened appreciation of the contest, the principles it involves, its probable duration and issue? Have not the determination and resources of the Free States proved as great a surprise to most of us as to this unlucky Virginian vaticinator? Has not our policy been shaped by the conviction that the ter- mination of the struggle might be looked for: from one week to another? And has not this: delusion ruined our most important branch of industry by paralyzing every ra- tional effort for its relief? 19 HEiR HtrNT1I~G. From The Saturday Review. HEIR HUNTING. THE sufferings which people who have any- thing that can be dunned out of them by im- portunity are condemned to undergo at the hands of those who are impudent enough to dun them, have long been the subject of gen- eral commiseration. The system of Com- petitive Examination is believed to owe its origin chiefly to the anxiety of statesmen to rid themselves of the intolerable throng of applicants who were gathered rovind them by the hopes of patronage. The Mendicity So- ciety owes its existence to the absolute neces- sity of providing some protection against the swarm of beggars whom the merest rumor will draw round any man who has had the weakness to be guilty of an act of benevo- lence. It is said that a distinguished phi- lanthropist, who has had the misfortune to make his name famous by an act of singular munificence, has been fairly driven into a for- eign country by the lev~e of piteous cases that has taken to assembling round his street door. There are better-dressed beggars also, who do not beg less valiantly, though it is for other things. The great people who have the reputation of giving agreeable or splendid parties are severe sufferers from the imper- turbable assurance with which those who are laboring up the lower rounds of the fashion- able ladder petition for a card. But of all the sufferers of this kind, there is no set of people so deserving of pity as elder sons. The men- dicants by whom they are beset are not of the outcast class, who can be got rid of by an appeal to a police magistrate or a mendicity officer; nor is the favor for which they arc importuned a very small matter. Turbaned dowagers, of awful presence and remorseless tongues, laden with unmarketable daughters, and with the word Intentions trembling on their lips, are the lazzaroni by whom their footseps are dogged; and, like their Neapol- itan prototypes, these persecutors are always ready to turn to and abuse their victim if he refuses them the trifling dole of title and es- tates for which they are asking. Happily for themselves, the hunted ani- mals in question are comparatively rare. Loudon ball-rooms and country-houses are the spots in which their persecutors generally find them; but, like the Alpine chamois, ex- cessive hunting has made them scarce in their ancient haunts. They survive, however, in sufficient numbers to enable a careful observer to watch their habits in every stage of their troubled existence. The change that comes over thcm in the ci~urse of it is both striking and melancholy. The length of time during which tiny one of them has been the object for which some dowager has spread her toils may in general be inferred from the extent of timidity and caution he displays. On his first entrance into society, the elder son is cheer- ful, conversable, and trustful in his manner. He betrays no consciousness that his every gesture is watched, or that every phrase that falls from him is carefully analyzed, to find whether a latent or embryo proposal can be detected in its composition. He does not even know his enemies as yet. He will talk and laugh with a dowager, and listen to her com- pliments, and accept her invitations, and will speak of her to his friends as though she were nothing else to him but a rather ugly old woman, with a large development of skirt and head-dress. But the great sign that an elder son is still enjoying the bliss of youthful ignorance is the ease and composure with which he practises the manly accomplishment of flirting. He will plunge into a family of maiden daughters, if pheasants should lend him there, without a tinge of fear. He will sit by a young lady at dinner, if chance should thrust him into such aposition, and his appe- tite will never be blunted by a thought upon the dangers that surround him. Nay, he will devote himself to her all the evening, will bank with her at the round game, and turn over her leaves at the pianoforte; and at the end of it all, he will hand a candle to her mother, without a suspicion that those ma- ternal eyes are already glancing at him that question about Intentions which in a few days will send him a scared and breathless fugitive from the hall-door. Very different is the bearing of the elder son who has learnt wisdom in the bitter school of experience. lie no longer ventures willingly into danger. After a score of hairbreadth escapes, like the partridges in November, he is decidedly wild. lie is mentally scarred all over with the wounds he has received. Good-natured friends have confided to him more than once that Lady So-and-So is saying all over Lon- don that he has behaved infamously; and I his manner shows that he is no longer insen- sible to the constructions which may be placed on the ordinary politenesses which are only 20 /1 HETIL UUNTING. practised with impunity by younger sons. something of his former self still remains to him as long as only married women are in the room. He speaka and laughs at bisease, sits down wherever inclined, and does not shrink even from a t~te-~-t~te. But the mo- inent the form of a marriageable female dark- ens the doorway, a cloud comes over him. If he can, he flees from the open plain by the fire, and hides himself in distant corners or behind impregnable writing tables. if he cannot make his escape to a place of security, he throws himself upon the defensive by making hard love to the nearest married lady, or by taking a sudden but absorbing interest in the agricultural prospects of a country neighbor. Sometimes hard fate forces him to sit through a whole meal next to the ob- ject of his terrors, and then it is very pretty to watch his coy and maidenly embarrass- macnt. He is evidently puzzling himself the whole time how to draw the narrow imper- ceptible line which, in the case of elder sons, separates rudeness from love-making, lIe is calculating how many observations upon the weather it will be safe to make, and whether he can dare to desert that innocent subject of criticism without exposing himself to the risk oP being supposed to have behaved in- famously six months hence. His manner becomes very like that of a witness who has been put forward to prove an alibi, and is undergoing a severe cross-examination. At last, of course, he attains to a wonderful dexterity in the use of a glacial politeness, in which nothing matrimonial can be scented even by the keenest dowager nose. It is not all elder sons, however, who attain to this conversational agility. Many are taken in the process of learning how to elude their pursuers. In spite of all his care, many a one finds himself at last undergoing that dreaded interview in which the dexterous dowager drives in her last harpoon, by telling him in a i)roken voice, from behind her pocket-handkerchief, that she fears her dear daughters peace of mind is gone forever. Conscious of their weakness, the elder sons seldom run too close to danger. They prefer to flock together out of its reach. Just as a shoal of herrings indicates the neighborhood of a dog-fish, and as the terror among the small birds betrays the presence of a hawk in the air above, so if you see a number of elder sons congregated at one end of a break- fast or luncheon table you may be quite sure there is a young lady at the other. After a time, this phase, too, in the elder sons career pa~es away. The dowagers whose toils he has constantly eluded give him up in despair at last. lie is beyond the age when he can he expected to believe in the fracture of a young ladys peace of mind; and it is of no use asking for intentions when there are no intentions forthcoming. Noth- ing remains of his many hazards and narrow deliverances, but a quarrel with two or three families to whom he is supposed to have be- haved infamously, lie has not resumed, however, the unsuspecting gaiety of youth. lie has acquired a precautionary habit of sheering off at the approach of a young lady, to which he probably adheres. lie has also contracted a practice of keeping his hands in his pockets, which has attracted the observa- tion of the naturalists by whom the species has been studied. The reason is supposed by many to be analogous to that which induces the Persians who live in disturbed districts to cut their beards short, in order that their ad- versaries may have nothing to take hold of. This explanation, however, requires to be verified. It is needless to say that, in this advanced stage of elder-sonship, he does not dream of marriage. To propose it to him would be like proposing amalgamation to Federals and Confederates, or to Poles and Russians. A long course of social hardships and privations has made such an idea abhor- rent to him.. The resultsat least those re- sults which we can examine without lifting up the veil of our decorous social system are curious enough, not only with respect to the elder sons, strictly so called, but with respect to all who are in any degree worth being hunted down. Refined female society they will, as a rule, have, though they can- not ktve it in the conversation of young ladies, the greater number of whom are brought up to look on them with a purely commercial eye. The demand from such a quarter is pretty sure to create a supply; and as the young unmarried ladies are shut out by the manceuvres of their mothers, it must be furnished by those who have removed that disqualification. Snake-charming is a peril- ous amusement except with snakes whose fangs are drawn. The arrangement is, no doubt, a very pleasant one for the young men. Married women are in themselves more prac 21 HEIR HUNTING. tised, and, therefore, more agreeable talkers than young ladies: and even if they were not, a friendship which does not lead up to a question about intentions is necessarily a very mueh pleasanter and more comfortable kind of intimacy than one that does. But it is not to be expected that the prevalence of such a state of thin~s should be free from consequences of a more serious kind upon the morality and the repute of the classes among whom it exists. For the present the game appears to go on merrily. Skating on thin ice is a delightful amusement until the ice breaks and, perhaps, for~ some time after. But if the pastime should result in extensive scan- dal, no small share of the blame will belong to the dowa~er-system, and especially to the vigorous practitioners who have pushed it to such a length in our day. Tm NmE.Deeper in human interest than the reported discovery of the source of the White Nile, the geographical secret of many ages, by Messrs. Spoke and Grant, is the intelligence from Egypt that Mr. Petherick is not dead, as late news from that country represented him to be. He is alive and well, at Gondocoro. We now know that all the gallant men whom we have sent out into the great African desert, to extend the bounds of knowledge Baker, Petherick, Grant, and Spekehave, so f r, escaped the fate which has followed so many of our noblest explorers in every part of the worldFranklin, Leichardt, Burke, and many othersover whose graves we have had to write the glories of discov- ery. In gratitude for their safety, we can tell the story of their trials, and reckon up the gains of science. Our conjecture, made on the 9th of May, that Mr. Baker must have fallen in with Messrs. Grant and Speke on the upper waters of the White Nile, and rendered them important aid, turns out to have been correct. This adven- turous traveller was the first European whom they met on their descent from the tropics; and from him they obtained aid in money, stores, and boats. To him they communicated their discov- ery that the Bahr ci Abiad, the main stream of the White Nile, has its source in the Victoria- Nyanza lake; information which induced him to turn his face in another direction, towards the south-east, in search of another inland lake, which is supposed to feed a second branch of the White Nile. He will be lost to us for a year; though the public need not doubt that he will, in due time, turn up again. Lower down the stream they fell in with Consul Petherick and his gallant wife. The news which Captains Speke and Grant bring to London will excite attention in every city of the civilized globe. The source of the Nile was a puzzle in the time of Moses, and long before the time of Moses. The enigma is suggested on the most ancient monuments of Egypt; it excited the curiosity of Rameses and Sesostris ; confounded the wisdom of the Ptolemies; won attention dur- ing the Roman occupation ; amused the leisure of the Schoolmen ; tantalized the Portuguese Jesuits in the sixteenth century ; engaged the adventurous spirit of Bruce; aroused the wonder, and baffled the researches of Mohammed Au; and defied the zeal, the ability, and endurance of oar old correspondents, the Brothers DAbbadie. At length, the mystery is solved; and the source of the Nile is found, by a couple of Englishmen~ to be a lake about four degrees south of the Equa- tor, very near the position which Dr. Beke, so long ago as 1846, assigned to it theoretically. It is curious that the thot has been discovered not by following the waters of the river upwards from its mouth, the natural course of discovery, but by descending upon it from above.4the- nceum. MEssas. BACON AND Co. have published some interesting engravings of the Northern and Southern American statesmen and generals. Of course, the series contains General Washington, who, like the British king here, is an immortal institution in Arneriea, but whether as being a Virginian he is to be considered Southern, or as beina eager for the Union, Northern, we do not know. The most striking head by far is that of the Confederate President Jefferson Davis, whose perfectly calm and commanding face expresses more power of self-denial, more rest in its own strength, though not a more clear-cut purpose than even his public acts would enable us to ex- pect. There is power of intrigue in it r~ ther than thelove of intrigue, but endless and unscrupu- lous ambition. General Jacksons thee is disap- pointing; it is rather young, fat, and encumbered with padding in the lower part, and altogether gives the idea of a character that has not burnt itself clear, the fuel smothering the fire. Gen- eral Lees is, probably, not a good likeness, as it is a common-form military face. Of the Northern Generals likenesses, General Hookers has far the most character and ability; General Burn- sides forehead has run to seed, and General Scotts head looks simply thick. The head of General Banks has power and honesty; General MClehlans is that of an earnest youth anxious to learn.Spechaor. AN artificial slate, for use in schools, etc., is spokeh of as invented by a Mr. J. N. Pierce. Al- most any material may be coated with this slate, as with a wash, and then written or drawn on. The wash may be put on paper or linen, which may be rolled up. 22 MISS POWER S ARABIAN DAYS AND NIGHTS. From The Reader. MISS POWERS ARABIAN DAYS AND NIGHTS. Arabian Days and Nights; or, Raysfrom the East. By Marguerite A. Power. (Samp- son Low & Co.) FROM Lulu, the monkeywho ate the greater part of a composition-candle, a pot of pomatum, a quantity of tooth-powder, and the remains of an unfinished dose of rhubarb, all without the slightest inconvenienceup to the coarse, easy-going pasha who lets his favorites supply him with sham kid gloves at 5 a dozen, and 700 mirrors at 10,000 each, all Miss Powers characters are sketched with a firm clear hand that does great credit to the artist. There the hot-headed little horses, dirty lazy fellahs, fat prize-pig-like matrons, udder-guarded goats, sore-eyed chil- dren, etc., etc., clearly struggle, crouch, squat, hrowse, and heg under the glorious E~yptian sun and sky, or in the mysterious hareem, as scene after scene passes before the readers eye, with unwearying interest to him though he may have read dozens of hooks of Eastern travel before. And yet, though the picture glows with the warm light of that Eastern sun, and the memories of those old Arabian Nights that rejoiced our youth, the impression left by Miss Powers hook is a sad one. For, with the instinct of her race, she has tried to get at the facts of the daily life of the people among whom she sojourned; and these facts. prove not cheering ones, spe- cially those concerning the women, as well Levantine and Turk as Arab. Leaving the many other topics of interest in the book, we propose to extract an account of the feminine inhabitants of the land. Jntro~[uced by her friend Mrs. Ross, who has settled at Alex- andria, our authoress goes to affte at this town, where she sees the fat Levantine belles and their fatter once-belle chaperones. One of the latter she sketches thus She can hardly be forty, and her smooth face. yet bears traces of considerable comeli- ness. But the bright dark .ey~s are im- bedded, the nose is sunk, the smiling mouth is buried in swelling flesh; of neck there is no symptom; the head rests behind on a hump of fat, in front on a proturberance like the crop of a pouter pi0eon. . . . Yet she does not seem to mind it; there she sits, smiling benignly, the picture of serene contentment. These fatties have & special preference for French or English husbands; and the reply to the question Do such matches answer? is Cela depend: if the man wants a doll to play with; a child who can barely read or write, and never does either if she can help it; who talks nonsense in three or four lan- guages; who is not without a talent for cook- ery, and who dotes upon dressfor which she has not a talenthe may get on well enough with her. Unfortunately, in a very few years there comes to be so very much of her! ~ At Cairo Miss Power and her friends are asked to a Turkish wedding, that is, betroth- ment. The bridegroom is a boy of fourteen, son of the late Selim Pacha Titurigi; and his tutor gives him a weeks holiday to get mar- ried in. The bride is sixteen, a woman in body though not in mind, and her chief duty seems to be to sit on a table and be looked at. The visitors are received by a set of ladies of all colors, from black to fair, few young, and fewer still good-looking, a few hand- somely attired, others mere bundles of old clothesof whom one quietly takes off Mrs. Rosss pretty bracelet and asks her to make her a present of it. Pipes and chat go on from five till twilight, and then they are led into the presence of what appeared to me at the first glance some glittering image or idol, seated in the corner of the room on a high triangular divan of state, covered with crimson satin embroi- dered in gold. This was the bride. Round her neck was a gorgeous necklace of pearls, ememids, and diamonds, and, stran6e to say, on her oUin, and on either cheek, diamonds were stuck in little clustersI suppose with some paste or gum. For an hour and a half the poor bride sits to be stared at, taking no notice of any one. Afterwards, leaving the bride, they adjourn to dinner; a slave tears off strips from. a Tur- keys breast for them, and numerous nonde- script dishes are tasted. A determined-look- ing dame takes possession of Miss Powers locket-bracelet, and asks her for a lock of her hair to put in it and keep for a keepsake and tender souvenir of her! At last comes a message from Mr. Ross that it is time to ~o, and the ladies depart. Setting aside the Turkish womans fancy for their visitors bracelets, Miss Power says The manners of these women are pre- cisely those of children; children who lived 23 24 MISS POWER S ARABIAN DAYS AND NIGHTS. a life of perpetual idleness, who were for the most part considerably bored thereby, and who were pleased and amused to get hold of anything in the way of novelty, and disposed to be kind and courteous to the strangers who brought them a new sensation. Of course the blame for their present posi- tion is laid on their shouldersas here, too, the weak are always blamed for the faults of the strong; and ilalim Pacha, brother to the Viceroy, said to a friend of mine, Some of our women complain that we care little for them individ- ually, and ask why European husbands are content with one wife, to whom they can be fond and faithful. But how is it possible for us to attach ourselves seriously to one of our women? They have nothing to win re- spect and regard; they know nothing, they do nothing, they understand nothing, they think of nothing; they are mere children, utterly foolish, ignorant, and uncompanion- able; we cannot love them in your sense of the word. True, 0 Pasha! bat whose. fault is it? Of the Arab women our authoress sees only the outward ways: they are only fellah-ahs, fellabs or working mens wives, and about as ugly a set of women, looking only at their faces, as I was ever among. But their gen- eral bearing is highly graceful, their make slender, and they are seen to perfection when carrying their large water-pots, or goullas, on their heads. They seem, however, to he greatly in want of that famous tract of the Ladies Sanitary Association, How to Man- age Baby, for the children are generally very ugly and dirty, with lean limbs and great stomachs, and they seldom escape oph- thalmia, which not unfrequently causes the loss of at least one eye. You may often see them wrapped in a few rags lying on the wet ground outside the mud hut, while the woman is engaged in washing, cooking, or winnow- ing beans or barley, all of which operations she performs squatted on the earth. She never either sits or stands at any employ- ment. But though the sad condition of women in the East, and the dread indo- lence, indifference, immutability fatalism those great curses that lie on the heads of all, and never, never will be shaken off are fully brought out in Miss Powers book, yet the variety of beings and topics treated in it, and its admirable style, render it one of the most interesting books we have seen for a long time. We have Cairo with the sense it gives of a new phase of life, of totally new sensations, of vastness, of immutableness, of the past and present blended into one, of the thousand years as one day, the one day as a thousand years; Buckle, the most bril- liant, inexhaustible, and versatile of talkers; whirling dervishes in their maddened rock- ing; the English travelling-snobs, Brown and Browness; the hero Outram; the Italian assassins in Alexandria; Turkish dealers; flame-winged flamingoes; gorgeous point- setias; trees of roses; convolvuli vast in size, divine in color; camels, dromedaries, lions, Jews, and girafl~s; a princess always smok- ing; her adopted daughter in a -pink satin tunic and a cage; the Prince of Wales; lovely-eyed Maltese girls, etc., etc., etc.; and, at last, the hurry of Paris, and the cold, plashy streets of London. Certainly our fogs and mud are not a pleasant change from a scene like this The brilliancy and clearness of the at- mosphere are beyond all description, partic- ularly of an evening, just beibre the brief twilight veils the world. Often as we re- turned from our drive, about half~past fivevr six oclock, I used to gaze in rapture on the sight presented to us. Unspeakably clear and distinct lies the outline of the low sand ridges, dark against a daffodil sky 2 varying into rose, blue, and tale lilac hi ack, and still, and sharp, as thougheut in metal, stand up the bare stems and plumed summits of the palms on a background of burning gold, like the heads of saints in the old Byzantine p~- tures; and presently, out of the dark blue above, grows into brilliance a glittering cres- cent, with one large diamond of a star. All the East is in that picture (p. 86). F. MISS KEMBLES GEORGIA. From The Spectator. MISS KEMBLES GEORGIA. * THERE is but one argument for slavery which is openly produced in England, and that is something like this; slavery is, after all, but a name; in every country the laborer is subjected to the power of the capitalist,. and the compulsion of hunger, if not more severe, is more regular and persistent than the compulsion of physical pain~ For the rest, slavery as a form of labor has large com- pensations, the workman being saved from anxiety, from the dread of starvation, and from the terror of an old age of poverty and want. Except for the immutability of his condition, an incident accompanying free la- bor everywhere except in the United States and a small section of Europe, the slave is aa well off as the unskilled white artisan. We would recommend all to whom this line of argument seems effective to read a series of lettere just published by Messrs. Longman. They were written in 1838, by Miss F. A. Kemble, then the English wife of a planter in Georgia, whose estate on the island of Darien is now occupied by the Fed- eral troops, and were not originally intended for publication. The wife of a planter of strong Southern opinions, living on the profits of the system, and not moved apparently by any strong religious ideas, Miss Kemble bad singular opportunities for unprejudiced ob- servation, and the result is a condemnation of slavery more severe than any in which pro- fessed philanthropists would venture to in- dulge. It is a system based upon human misery and degradation, having no end save the owners profit, no bulwark except inces- sant terror. Miss Kemble, it will be remem- bered, was on a well-managed plantation, held by merciful owners, where punishment, by a rule of the estate, was strictly limited, and where the head man was himself a grave, intelligent negro. On this property she found the negroes lodged in wretched huts, with one room twelve feet square and two little side cabins like those of a ship. Two fami- lies, sometimes eight or ten in number, lived in each, sleeping on mattresses of strewn for- est moss, and covered with a pestilential blanket. Each house had a little garden, usually untended and uncultivated, and the inmates and swarming children were all * Journal of a Re8idence on a Georgian Plantation. By F. A. Kemble. Lougmans. alike crusted with dirt, covered with vermin, and stinking from the absence of any habit of bathing. The infirmary was a long build- ing of two stories, crowded with women who lay under every extremity of suffering, wrapped in dirty blankets, on the bare floor, and shivering with the cold. It was the women to whom Miss Kemble chiefly at- tended; among them the forms of suffering were manifold and terrible, for besides every kind of pain to which free laborers are lia- ble, there is one peculiar to the slave women, and of which Miss Kembles book is full till it is sickening to read. Slave-breeding pays well, and, as a consequence, the women, transferred to one husband after another, and at the mercy of every overseerhead- man Franks wife was quietly taken away while the authoress was there, kept a year by the overseer, and then returnedperish of childbearing. The women are stimulated by the pride of being valuable to the estate, and wretched creatures worn out with labor still exultingly told their mistress that they would yield plenty of little nigs for massa. They have frequently ten or eleven children, are flogged when pregnant, and three weeks fter confinemcnt driven back to work in the cotton field. The consequence is an illness not often mentioned out of a medical journal, pain in the hack, and every conceivable form of uterine disease. The one petition of these pool women was for a longer period of rest, and they were flogged for petitioning, flogged, as a pretty young negress herself told the story She had not finished her task one day, when she said she felt ill, and unable to do so, and had been severely flogged by driver Bran, in whose gang she then was. The next day, in spite of this encouragement to labor, she had again been unable to complete her appointed work; and Bran having told her that hed tie her up and flog her if she did not get it done, she had left the field and run into the swamp. Tie you up, Louisa! said I, what is that? She then described to me that they were fastened up by their wrists to a beam or branch of a tree, their feet barely touching the ground, so as to allow Lhem no purchase for resistance or evasion of the lash, their clothes turned over their heads, and their backs scored with a leather thong, either by the driver himself, or if he pleases to inflict their punishment by deputy, any of the men he may chodse to summon to the office; it might be father, brother, husband, MISS KEMBLES GEORGIA. or lover, if the overseer so ordered it. I turned sick, and my blood curdled listening to these details from the slender young slip of a lassie, with her poor piteous fi~ce and murmuring pleading voice. The rule is relentlessly enforced, the over- seers pleading, what is probably the truth, that if any excuses were accepted there would be no end to the contrivances to obtain the much desired rest. Among others, a poor woman called Mile, who could hardly stand for pain and swelling in her limbs; she had had fifteen children and two miscarriages; nine of her children had died; for the last three years she had become almost a cripple with chronic rheumatism, yet she is driven every day to work in the field. She held my hands and stroked them in the most appealing way, while she exclaimed, 0 my missis! my missis! me neber sleep till day for de pain, and with the day