Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 62, December, 1862 by Various
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Various >> Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 62, December, 1862
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I had come to feeling that I know most of the respectably dressed people
whom I met in the cars, and had been in contact with them at some time
or other. Three or four ladies and gentlemen were near us, forming
a group by themselves. Presently one addressed me by name, and, on
inquiry, I found him to be the gentleman who was with me in the pulpit
as Orator on the occasion of another Phi Beta Kappa poem, one delivered
at New Haven. The party were very courteous and friendly, and
contributed in various ways to our comfort.
It sometimes seems to me as if there were only about a thousand people
in the world, who keep going round and round behind the scenes and then
before them, like the "army" in a beggarly stage-show. Suppose I should
really wish, some time or other, to get away from this everlasting
circle of revolving supernumeraries, where should I buy a ticket the
like of which was not in some of their pockets, or find a seat to which
some one of them was not a neighbor?
A little less than a year before, after the Ball's-Bluff accident, the
Captain, then the Lieutenant, and myself had reposed for a night on our
homeward journey at the Fifth-Avenue Hotel, where we were lodged on the
ground-floor, and fared sumptuously. We were not so peculiarly fortunate
this time, the house being really very full. Farther from the flowers
and nearer to the stars,--to reach the neighborhood of which last the
_per ardua_ of three or four flights of stairs was formidable for any
mortal, wounded or well. The "vertical railway" settled that for us,
however. It is a giant corkscrew forever pulling a mammoth cork, which,
by some divine judgment, is no sooner drawn than it is replaced in its
position. This ascending and descending stopper is hollow, carpeted,
with cushioned seats, and is watched over by two condemned souls,
called conductors, one of whom is said to be named Ixion, and the other
Sisyphus.
I love New York, because, as in Paris, everybody that lives in it feels
that it is his property,--at least, as much as it is anybody's. My
Broadway, in particular, I love almost as I used to love my Boulevards.
I went, therefore, with peculiar interest, on the day that we rested at
our grand hotel, to visit some new pleasure-grounds the citizens had
been arranging for us, and which I had not yet seen. The Central Park
is an expanse of wild country, well crumpled so as to form ridges which
will give views and hollows that will hold water. The hips and elbows
and other bones of Nature stick out here and there in the shape of rocks
which give character to the scenery, and an unchangeable, unpurchasable
look to a landscape that without them would have been in danger of being
fattened by art and money out of all its native features. The roads were
fine, the sheets of water beautiful, the bridges handsome, the swans
elegant in their deportment, the grass green and as short as a fast
horse's winter coat. I could not learn whether it was kept so by
clipping or singeing. I was delighted with my new property,--but it
cost me four dollars to get there, so far was it beyond the Pillars of
Hercules of the fashionable quarter. What it will be by-and-by depends
on circumstances; but at present it is as much central to New York
as Brookline is central to Boston. The question is not between Mr.
Olmsted's admirably arranged, but remote pleasure-ground and our Common,
with its batrachian pool, but between his Eccentric Park and our finest
suburban scenery, between its artificial reservoirs and the broad
natural sheet of Jamaica Pond, I say this not invidiously, but in
justice to the beauties which surround our own metropolis. To compare
the situations of any dwellings in either of the great cities with those
which look upon the Common, the Public Garden, the waters of the Back
Bay, would be to take an unfair advantage of Fifth Avenue and Walnut
Street. St. Botolph's daughter dresses in plainer clothes than her
more stately sisters, but she wears an emerald on her right hand and a
diamond on her left that Cybele herself need not be ashamed of.
On Monday morning, the twenty-ninth of September, we took the cars for
_Home_. Vacant lots, with Irish and pigs; vegetable-gardens; straggling
houses; the high bridge; villages, not enchanting; then Stamford; then
NORWALK. Here, on the 6th of May, 1853, I passed close on the heels of
the great disaster. But that my lids were heavy on that morning, my
readers would probably have had no further trouble with me. Two of my
friends saw the car in which they rode break in the middle and leave
them hanging over the abyss. From Norwalk to Boston, that day's journey
of two hundred miles was a long funeral-procession.
Bridgeport, waiting for Iranistan to rise from its ashes with all its
phoenix-egg domes,--bubbles of wealth that broke, ready to be blown
again, iridescent as ever, which is pleasant, for the world likes
cheerful Mr. Barnum's success; New Haven, girt with flat marshes that
look like monstrous billiard-tables, with haycocks lying about for
balls,--romantic with West Rock and its legends,--cursed with a
detestable depot, whose niggardly arrangements crowd the track so
murderously close to the wall that the _peine forte et dure_ must be the
frequent penalty of an innocent walk on its platform,--with its neat
carriages, metropolitan hotels, precious old college-dormitories,
its vistas of elms and its dishevelled weeping-willows; Hartford,
substantial, well-bridged, many-steepled city,--every conical spire an
extinguisher of some nineteenth-century heresy; so onward, by and across
the broad, shallow Connecticut,--dull red road and dark river woven
in like warp and woof by the shuttle of the darting engine; then
Springfield, the wide-meadowed, well-feeding, horse-loving,
hot-summered, giant-treed town,--city among villages, village
among cities; Worcester, with its Diedalian labyrinth of crossing
railroad-bars, where the snorting Minotaurs, breathing fire and smoke
and hot vapors, are stabled in their dens; Framingham, fair cup-bearer,
leaf-cinctured Hebe of the deep-bosomed Queen sitting by the sea-side on
the throne of the Six Nations. And now I begin to know the road, not by
towns, but by single dwellings, not by miles, but by rods. The poles of
the great magnet that draws in all the iron tracks through the grooves
of all the mountains must be near at hand, for here are crossings, and
sudden stops, and screams of alarmed engines heard all around. The tall
granite obelisk comes into view far away on the left, its bevelled
capstone sharp against the sky; the lofty chimneys of Charlestown and
East Cambridge flaunt their smoky banners up in the thin air; and now
one fair bosom of the three-hilled city, with its dome-crowned summit,
reveals itself, as when many-breasted Ephesian Artemis appeared with
half-open _chlamys_ before her worshippers.
Fling open the window-blinds of the chamber that looks out on the waters
and towards the western sun! Let the joyous light shine in upon the
pictures that hang upon its walls and the shelves thick-set with the
names of poets and philosophers and sacred teachers, in whose pages our
boys learn that life is noble only when it is held cheap by the side of
honor and of duty. Lay him in his own bed, and let him sleep off his
aches and weariness. So comes down another night over this household,
unbroken by any messenger of evil tidings,--a night of peaceful rest and
grateful thoughts; for this our son and brother was dead and is alive
again, and was lost and is found.
WAITING.
Drop, falling fruits and crisped leaves!
Ye tone a note of joy to me;
Through the rough wind my soul sails free,
nigh over waves that Autumn heaves.
Such quickening is in Nature's death,
Such life in every dying day,--
The glowing year hath lost her sway,
Since Freedom waits her parting breath.
I watch the crimson maple-boughs,
I know by heart each burning leaf,
Yet would that like a barren reef
Stripped to the breeze those arms uprose!
Under the flowers my soldier lies!
But come, thou chilling pall of snow,
Lest he should hear who sleeps below
The yet unended captive cries!
Fade swiftly, then, thou lingering year!
Test with the storms our eager powers;
For chains are broken with the hours,
And Freedom walks upon thy bier.
REVIEWS AND LITERARY NOTICES.
_Eyes and Ears_. By HENRY WARD BEECHER. Boston: Ticknor & Fields, pp.
419.
There is perhaps no man in America more widely known, more deeply loved,
and more heartily hated than the Reverend Henry Ward Beecher. This
little book, fragmentary and desultory as it is, gives us a key
wherewith to unlock the mystery both of the extent of his influence and
the depth of the feelings which he excites. It is but a shower of petals
flung down by a frolicsome May breeze; but the beauty and brilliancy
of their careless profusion furnish a hint of the real strength and
substance and fruitfulness of the tree from which they sprang.
Within the compass of some four hundred pages we have about one hundred
articles, most of which had previously appeared in weekly newspapers.
They embrace, of course, every variety of subject,--grave and gay,
practical and poetical. They are not such themes as come to a man
in silence and solitude, to be wrought out with deep and deliberate
conscientiousness; they are rather such as He around one in his outgoing
and his incoming, in the field and by the way-side, overlooked by the
preoccupied multitude, but abundantly patent to the few who will not
permit the memories or the hopes of life to thrust away its actualities,
and, once pointed out, full of interest and amusement even to the
absorbed and hitherto unconscious throngs. We have here no pale-browed,
far-sighted philosopher, but a ruddy-faced, high-spirited man,
cheerful-tempered, yet not _equilibrious_, susceptible to annoyance,
capable of wrathful outbursts, with eyes to see all sweet sights, ears
to hear all sweet sounds, and lips to sing their loveliness to others,
and also with eyes and ears and lips just as keen to distinguish and
just as hold to denounce the sights and sounds that are unlovely;--and
this man, with his ringing laugh and his springing step, walks cheerily
to and fro in his daily work, striking the rocks here and there by the
way-side with his bright steel hammer, eliciting a shower of sparks from
each, and then on to the next. It is not the serious business of his
life, but its casual and almost careless experiments. He does not wait
to watch effects. You may gather up the brushwood and build yourself
a fire, if you like. His part of the affair is but a touch and go,--
partly for love and partly for fun.
There are places where a severer taste, or perhaps only a more careful
revision, would have changed somewhat. At times an exuberance of spirits
carries him to the very verge of coarseness, but this is rare and
exceptional. The fabric may be slightly ravelled at the ends and
slightly rough at the selvedge, but in the main it is fine and smooth
and lustrous as well as strong. A coarse nature carefully clipped and
sheared and fashioned down to the commonplace of conventionality will
often exhibit a negative refinement, while a mind of real and subtile
delicacy, but of rugged and irrepressible individuality, will
occasionally shoot out irregular and uncouth branches. Yet between the
symmetry of the one and the spontaneity of the other the choice cannot
be doubtful. We are not defending coarseness in any guise. It is always
to be assailed, and never to be defended. It is always a detriment,
and never an ornament. No excellence can justify it. No occasion can
palliate it. But coarseness is of two kinds,--one of the surface, and
one in the grain. The latter is pervading and irremediable. It touches
nothing which it does not deface. It makes all things common and
unclean. It grows more repulsive as the roundness of youth falls away
and leaves its harsh features more sharply outlined. But the other
coarseness is only the overgrowth of excellence,--the rankness of lusty
life. It is vigor run wild. It is a fault, but it is local and temporal.
Culture corrects it. As the mind matures, as experience accumulates,
as the vision enlarges, the coarseness disappears, and the rich and
healthful juices nourish instead a playful and cheerful serenity that
illumines strength with a softened light, that disarms opposition and
delights sympathy, that shines without dazzling and attracts without
offending.
Here arises a fear lest the apologetic nature of our remarks may seem to
indicate a much greater need of apology than actually exists. We have
been led into this line of remark, not so much by a perusal of the
book under consideration, in which, indeed, there is very little, if
anything, to offend, as by the nature of the objections which we have
most frequently heard against this author's productions, both written
and spoken. We do not even confine ourselves to defence, but go farther,
and question whether the allegations of coarseness may not oftener
be the fault of the plaintiff than of the defendant. Is there not a
conventional standard of refinement which measures things by its own
arbitrary self, and finds material for displeasure in what is really
but a sincere and almost unconscious rendering of things as they exist?
There are facts which modern fastidiousness justly enough commands to he
wrapped around with graceful drapery before they shall have audience.
But do we not commit a trespass against virtue, when we demand the same
soft disguises to drape facts whose disguise is the worst immorality,
whose naked hideousness is the only decency, which must be seen
disgusting to warrant their being seen at all? So Mr. Beecher has been
censured for irreverence, when what was called his irreverence has
seemed to us but the tenderness engendered of close connection. Cannot
one live so near to God as that His greatness shall he merged in His
goodness? What would be irreverence, if it came from the head, may be
but love springing up warm from the heart.
One of the strongest characteristics of Mr. Beecher's mind, the one that
has, perhaps, the strongest influence in producing his power over men,
is his quick insight into common things, his quick sympathy with common
minds. He knows common dangers. He understands common interests. He
is sensitive to common sorrows. He appreciates common joys. Without
necessarily being practical himself, he is full of practical
suggestions. He is a leveller; but he levels up, not down. He
continually seeks to lift men from the plane of mere toil and thrift to
the loftier levels of aspiration. He would disinthrall them from what is
low, and introduce them to the freedom of the heights. He would bring
them out of the dungeons of the senses into the domains of taste and
principles. He believes in man, and he battles for men. With him,
humanity is chief: science, art, wealth are its handmaidens. Yet,
writing for ordinary people, he never falls into the sin of declaiming
against extraordinary ones. No part of his power over the poor is
obtained by inveighing against the rich, as no part of his power over
the rich is obtained by pandering to their prejudices or their passions.
He builds up no influence for himself on the ruins of another man's
influence. The elevation which he aims to produce is real, not
factitious,--absolute, not relative. It is the elevation to be obtained
by ascending the mountain, not by digging it away so that the valley
seems no longer low by contrast.
For the manner of his teaching, he is not always gentle, but he is
always sincere. He speaks soft words to persuade; but if that is not
enough, he does not scruple to knock the muck-rake out of sordid hands
with a fine, sudden stroke, if so he may make men look up from the
rubbish under their feet to the flowers that bloom around them and the
stars that glow above and the God that reigns over all.
Thinking of the multitudes of hard-working, weary-hearted people whom he
weekly met with these words of cheer: sometimes homely advice on homely
things; sometimes wise counsels in art; sometimes tender lessons from
Nature; sometimes noble words from his own earnest soul; sometimes
sympathy in sorrow; sometimes strength in weakness; sometimes only the
indirect, but real help that comes from the mere distraction wrought
by his sportiveness, and wild, winsome mirth; but all kindly, hearty,
honest, sympathetic,--indignation softening, even while it surges,
into pity and love, and itself finding or framing excuses for the very
outrage which it lashes: thinking of this, we do not marvel that he has
furrowed for himself so deep a groove in so many hearts. Nor, on the
other hand, is it difficult to see, even from so genial a book as this,
whence polemics are not so much banished as where there is no niche for
them, should they apply, why it is that he is so fiercely opposed.
When a man like Mr. Beecher encounters that which excites his moral
disapprobation, there is no possibility of mistaking him. He flings
himself against it with all the strength and might of his manly,
uncompromising nature. There is no coquetting with the proprieties, no
toning down of objurgation to meet the requirements of personal dignity,
but an audacious and aggressive repugnance of the whole man to the
meanness or malignity. And the very clearness of his vision gives
terrible power to his vituperation. With his keen, bright eye he sees
just where the vulnerable spot is, and with his firm, strong hand he
sends the arrow in. The victim writhes and reels and--does not love the
marksman. And as the victim has a large circle of relatives by birth and
marriage, he inoculates them with his own animosity; and so, at a safe
distance, Mr. Beecher is sometimes considerably torn in pieces. Yet we
have no doubt that by far the greater number of these opponents would,
if once fairly brought within the circle of his influence, acknowledge
the truth as well as the force of his principles; and certainly it is a
matter of surprise that a man with such a magnificent mastery of all the
weapons of attack and defence should be so sparing and discreet in their
use as is Mr. Beecher. In this book, compiled of articles thrown off
upon the spur of the moment, with so much to amuse, to awaken, to
suggest, and to inspire, there is hardly a sentence which can arouse
antagonism or inflict pain. You may not agree with his conclusions, but
you cannot resist his good nature.
Long may he live to do yeoman's service in the cause of the beautiful
and the true!
_History of the War in the Peninsula and in the South of France from
A.D. 1807 to A.D. 1814._ By MAJOR-GENERAL SIR W.F.P. NAPIER, K.C.B.,
etc. In Five Volumes, with Portraits and Plans. New York: W.J.
Widdleton.
A new edition of the great military history of Sir William Napier,
printed in the approved luxurious style which the good examples of the
Cambridge University Press have made a necessity with all intelligent
book-purchasers, calls at the present time for a special word of
recognition. Of the merits and character of the work itself it is
scarcely required that we should speak. An observer of, and participant
in, the deeds which he describes, cautious, deliberate, keen-sighted,
candid, and unsparing, General Napier's book has qualities seldom united
in a single production. Southey wrote an eloquent history of the War in
the Peninsula, perhaps as good a history as an author well-trained in
compositions of the kind could be expected to produce at a distance.
But that was its defect. It lacked that knowledge and judgment of a
complicated series of events which could be acquired only on the field
and by one possessed of consummate military training. On the other hand,
we can seldom look for any laborious work of authorship from a general
in active service. Men of action exhaust their energies in doing, and
are usually impatient of the slow process of unwinding the tangled skein
of events which at the moment they had been compelled to cut with the
sword. It is by no means every campaign which furnishes the Commentaries
of its Caesar. To Sir William Napier, however, we are indebted for a
work which has taken its place as a model history of modern campaigning.
The protracted struggle of the Peninsular War through six full years
of skilful operations, conducted by the greatest masters of military
science, in a country whose topographical features called out the rarest
resources of the art of war, at a time when the military system of
Napoleon was at its height, summing up the experience of a quarter of
a century in France of active military pursuits,--the story of sieges,
marches, countermarches, lines of retreat and defence, followed by the
most energetic assaults, blended with the disturbing political elements
of the day at home and the contrarieties of the battle-field amidst a
population foreign to both armies,--certainly presented a subject or
series of subjects calculated to tax the powers of a conscientious
writer to the uttermost. To furnish such a narrative was the work
undertaken by General Napier. Sixteen years of unintermitted toil were
given by him to the task. He spared no labor of research. Materials were
placed at his disposal by the generals of both armies, by Soult and
Wellington. The correspondence left behind in Spain by Joseph Bonaparte,
written in three languages and partly in cipher of which the key had
to be discovered, was patiently arranged, translated, and at length
deciphered by Lady Napier, who also greatly assisted her husband in
copying his manuscript, which, from the frequent changes made, was in
effect transcribed three times. By such labors was the immense mass
of contemporary evidence brought into order, clearly narrated, and
submitted to exact scientific criticism. For it is the distinguishing
characteristic of the book, that it is a critical history, constantly
illuminating facts by principles and deducing the most important maxims
of political and military science from the abundant material lavishly
contributed by the virtues, follies, and superabundant exertions of
three great nations in the heart of Europe, in the midst of the complex
civilization of the nineteenth century. The ever earnest, animated style
in which all this is written grows out of the subject and is supported
by it, always rising naturally with the requirements of the occasion. If
our officers in the field would learn how despatches should be written
and a record of their exploits be prepared to catch the ear of
posterity, let them give their leisure hours of the camp to the study
of Napier. The public also may learn many lessons of patience and
philosophy from these pages, when they turn from the book to the actual
warfare writing its ineffaceable characters on so many fair fields of
our own land.
_The Patience of Hope_. By the Author of "A Present Heaven." With an
Introduction by JOHN G. WHITTIER. Boston: Ticknor & Fields.
As the method by which an individual soul reaches conclusions with
regard to the Saviour and the conditions of salvation, "The Patience of
Hope" is worthy of particular attention. It does not, however, stand
alone, but belongs to a class. Its peculiarity is that it proceeds
by apposite text and inference, more than by the illumination of
feeling,--aiming to convince rather than to reveal, as is the manner of
those whose convictions have not quite become as a star in a firmament
where neither eclipse nor cloud ever comes. Evidently there was a most
searching examination of the Scriptures preparatory to the work; and yet
the ample quotation, often fresh and felicitous, appears to be made to
sustain a preconceived opinion, or, more strictly, an emotion. This
emotion is so single and absorbing that there is some gleam of it in
each varying view, and every sentiment is warm with it, however the
flame may lurk as beneath a crust of lava. Only from a richly gifted
mind, and a heart whose longings no fullness of mortal affection has
power to permanently appease, could these aspirations issue. It is the
tender complaint and patient hope of one whom the earth, and all that
is therein, cannot satisfy. Moreover, so pure and irrepressible is the
natural desire of the heart, so does it color and constitute all
the dream of Paradise, that the divinest Hope not only thrills and
palpitates with Love's ripest imaginings, but puts on nuptial robes.
Touchingly she pictures herself as "The Mystic Spouse,--her that cometh
up from the wilderness, leaning upon the arm of her Beloved,--and we
shall see that she, like her Lord, is wounded in her heart, her hands,
and her feet." Though sowing in such still remembered pain, she yet
reaps with unspeakable joy. She has now the full assurance that the
mystic and immortal embrace is for her, and in the fulness of her heart
cries, "When were Love's arms stretched so wide as upon the Cross?"
It is in keeping with such an aspiration that this and kindred natures
should perceive in Christianity the sacred mystery from which is to be
drawn, in the world to come, the full fruition of the tenderest and
most vital impulse of the human heart, and therefore to be most fitly
meditated and vividly anticipated in cloistered seclusion. Throughout
their revelations there is a yearning for Infinite Love; and ardent
receptivity is regarded as the true condition for the conception and
enjoyment of religion. It is clear that they have a passion, sublimated
and glorified indeed, but still a passion, for Christ. This is the
mightiest impulse to that exaltation of His person against which the
calm and consummate reasoner contends in vain. Truly we are fearfully
and wonderfully made! The soul is touched with the strong necessity of
loving; and its power becomes intense and inappeasable in proportion to
the capacity of the heart; and yet some of the greatest of those have
reposed so supremely in the innate and ineffable Ideal that to the
uninitiated they have seemed in their serenity as pulseless as pearls.
Through this sublime influence lovely women have become nuns, and
have lived and died saints, that they might continually indulge and
constantly cherish the blissful hope of being, in some spiritual form,
the brides of Jesus. A long line of these, coeval with the Crucifixion,
have passed on in maiden meditation, and so were fancy-free from all of
mortal mould. This ecstatic dreaming is so charming, and so insatiable
withal, that it seems to those who entertain it a divine vision. It is
an enchantment so complete that Reason cannot penetrate its circle, and
Logic has never approached it. Doubtless this fond aspiration finds
freest and fairest expression in the Roman Church,--a communion that not
only encourages, but enjoins, the adoration of the Virgin, in order that
certain enthusiasts among men may also aspire to the skies on the wings
of pure, yet passionate love.
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