Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 21, July, 1859 by Various

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If you, my reader, will please to skip backward, over this parenthesis,
you will come to our conversation,--which it has interrupted.

It a'n't the feed,--said the young man John,--it's the old woman's looks
when a fellah lays it in too strong. The feed's well enough. After geese
have got tough, 'n' turkeys have got strong, 'n' lamb's got old, 'n'
veal's pretty nigh beef, 'n' sparragrass's growin' tall 'n' slim 'n'
scattery about the head, 'n' green peas gettin' so big 'n' hard they'd
be dangerous if you fired 'em out of a revolver, we get hold of all them
delicacies of the season. But it's too much like feedin' on live folks
and devourin' widdah's substance, to lay yourself out in the eatin' way,
when a fellah's as hungry as the chap that said a turkey was too much
for one 'n' not enough for two. I can't help lookin' at the old woman.
Corned-beef-days she's tolerable calm. Roastin'-days she worries some,
'n' keeps a sharp eye on the chap that carves. But when there's anything
in the poultry line, it seems to hurt her feelin's so to see the knife
goin' into the breast and joints comin' to pieces, that there's no
comfort in eatin'. When I cut up an old fowl and help the boarders,
I always feel as if I ought to say, Won't you have a slice of
widdah?--instead of chicken.

The young man John fell into a train of reflections which ended in his
producing a Bologna sausage, a plate of "crackers," as we Boston folks
call certain biscuits, and the bottle of whiskey described as being A.1.

Under the influence of the crackers and sausage, he grew cordial and
communicative.

It was time, I thought, to sound him as to those of our boarders who had
excited my curiosity.

What do you think of our young Iris?--I began.

Fust-rate little filly;--he said.--Pootiest and nicest little chap
I've seen since the schoolma'am left. Schoolma'am was a brown-haired
one,--eyes coffee-color. This one has got wine-colored eyes,--'n'
that's the reason they turn a fellah's head, I suppose.

This is a splendid blonde,--I said,--the other was a brunette. Which
style do you like best?

Which do I like best, boiled mutton or roast mutton?--said the young man
John. Like 'em both,--it a'n't the color of 'em makes the goodness. I've
been kind of lonely since schoolma'am went away. Used to like to look at
her. I never said anything particular to her, that I remember, but--

I don't know whether it was the cracker and sausage, or that the young
fellow's feet were treading on the hot ashes of some longing that had
not had time to cool, but his eye glistened as he stopped.

I suppose she wouldn't have looked at a fellah like me,--he said,--but I
come pretty near tryin'. If she had said, Yes, though, I shouldn't have
known what to have done with her. Can't marry a woman now-a-days till
you're so deaf you have to cock your head like a parrot to hear what she
says, and so long-sighted you can't see what she looks like nearer than
arm's-length.

Here is another chance for you,--I said.--What do you want nicer than
such a young lady as Iris?

It's no use,--he answered.--I look at them girls and feel as the fellah
did when he missed catchin' the trout.--'To'od 'a' cost more butter to
cook him 'n' he's worth,--says the fellah.--Takes a whole piece o' goods
to cover a girl up now-a-days. I'd as lief undertake to keep a span of
elephants,--and take an ostrich to board, too,--as to marry one of 'em.
What's the use? Clerks and counter-jumpers a'n't anything. Sparragrass
and green peas a'n't for them,--not while they're young and tender.
Hossback-ridin' a'n't for them,--except once a year,--on Fast-day. And
marryin' a'n't for them. Sometimes a fellah feels lonely, and would
like to have a nice young woman, to tell her how lonely he feels. And
sometimes a fellah,--here the young man John looked very confidential,
and, perhaps, as if a little ashamed of his weakness,--sometimes a
fellah would like to have one o' them small young ones to trot on his
knee and push about in a little wagon,--a kind of a little Johnny, you
know;--it's odd enough, but, it seems to me, nobody can afford them
little articles, except the folks that are so rich they can buy
everything, and the folks that are so poor they don't want anything. It
makes nice boys of us young fellahs, no doubt! And it's pleasant to see
fine young girls sittin', like shopkeepers behind their goods, waitin',
and waitin', and waitin', 'n' no customers,--and the men lingerin' round
and lookin' at the goods, like folks that want to be customers, but
haven't got the money!

Do you think the deformed gentleman means to make love to Iris?--I said.

What! Little Boston ask that girl to marry him! Well, now, that's comin'
of it a little too strong. Yes, I guess she will marry him and carry
him round in a basket, like a lame bantam! Look here!--he said,
mysteriously;--one of the boarders swears there's a woman comes to see
him, and that he has heard her singin' and screechin'. I should like
to know what he's about in that den of his. He lays low 'n' keeps
dark,--and, I tell you, there's a good many of the boarders would like
to get into his chamber, but he don't seem to want 'em. Biddy could
tell somethin' about what she's seen when she's been to put his room
to rights. She's a Paddy 'n' a fool, but she knows enough to keep her
tongue still. All I know is, I saw her crossin' herself one day when she
came out of that room. She looked pale enough, 'n' I heard her mutterin'
somethin' or other about the Blessed Virgin. If it hadn't been for the
double doors to that chamber of his, I'd have had a squint inside before
this; but, somehow or other, it never seems to happen that they're both
open at once.

What do you think he employs himself about?--said I.

The young man John winked.

I waited patiently for the thought, of which this wink was the blossom,
to come to fruit in words.

I don't believe in witches,--said the young man John.

Nor I.

We were both silent for a few minutes.

--Did you ever see the young girl's drawing-books,--I said, presently.

All but one,--he answered;--she keeps a lock on that, and won't show it.
Ma'am Allen, (the young rogue sticks to that name, in speaking of the
gentleman with the _diamond_,) Ma'am Allen tried to peek into it one day
when she left it on the sideboard. "If you please," says she,--'n'
took it from him, 'n' gave him a look that made him curl up like a
caterpillar on a hot shovel. I only wished he hadn't, and had jest given
her a little saas, for I've been takin' boxin'-lessons, 'n' I've got a
new way of counterin' I want to try on to somebody.

--The end of all this was, that I came away from the young fellow's
room, feeling that there were two principal things that I had to live
for, for the next six weeks or six months, if it should take so long.
These were, to get a sight of the young girl's drawing-book, which I
suspected had her heart shut up in it, and to get a look into the little
gentleman's room.

I don't doubt you think it rather absurd that I should trouble myself
about these matters. You tell me, with some show of reason, that all I
shall find in the young girl's book will be some outlines of angels with
immense eyes, traceries of flowers, rural sketches, and caricatures,
among which I shall probably have the pleasure of seeing my own features
figuring. Very likely. But I'll tell you what _I_ think I shall find. If
this child has idealized the strange little bit of humanity over which
she seems to have spread her wings like a brooding dove,--if, in one of
those wild vagaries that passionate natures are so liable to, she has
fairly sprung upon him with her clasping nature, as the sea-flowers fold
about the first stray shell-fish that brushes their outspread tentacles,
depend upon it, I shall find the marks of it in this drawing-book of
hers,--if I can ever get a look at it,--fairly, of course, for I would
not play tricks to satisfy my curiosity.

Then, if I can get into this little gentleman's room under any fair
pretext, I shall, no doubt, satisfy myself in five minutes that he is
just like other people, and that there is no particular mystery about
him.

The night after my visit to the young man John, I made all these and
many more reflections. It was about two o'clock in the morning,--bright
starlight,--so light that I could make out the time on my
alarm-clock,--when I woke up trembling and very moist. It was the heavy,
dragging sound, as I had often heard it before, that waked me. Presently
a window was softly closed. I had just begun to get over the agitation
with which we always awake from nightmare dreams, when I heard the sound
which seemed to me as of a woman's voice,--the clearest, purest soprano
which one could well conceive of. It was not loud, and I could not
distinguish a word, if it was a woman's voice; but there were recurring
phrases of sound and snatches of rhythm that reached me, which suggested
the idea of complaint, and sometimes, I thought, of passionate grief and
despair. It died away at last,--and then I heard the opening of a door,
followed by a low, monotonous sound, as of one talking,--and then
the closing of a door,--and presently the light on the opposite wall
disappeared and all was still for the night.

By George! this gets interesting,--I said, as I got out of bed for a
change of night-clothes.

I had this in my pocket the other day, but thought I wouldn't read it.
So I read it to the boarders instead, and print it to finish off this
record with.

ROBINSON OF LEYDEN.

He sleeps not here; in hope and prayer
His wandering flock had gone before,
But he, the shepherd, might not share
Their sorrows on the wintry shore.

Before the Speedwell's anchor swung,
Ere yet the Mayflower's sail was spread,
While round his feet the Pilgrims clung,
The pastor spake, and thus he said:--

"Men, brethren, sisters, children dear!
God calls you hence from over sea;
Ye may not build by Haerlem Meer,
Nor yet along the Zuyder-Zee.

"Ye go to bear the saving word
To tribes unnamed and shores untrod:
Heed well the lessons ye have heard
From those old teachers taught of God.

"Yet think not unto them was lent
All light for all the coming days,
And Heaven's eternal wisdom spent
In making straight the ancient ways.

"The living fountain overflows
For every flock, for every lamb,
Nor heeds, though angry creeds oppose
With Luther's dike or Calvin's dam."

He spake; with lingering, long embrace,
With tears of love and partings fond,
They floated down the creeping Maas,
Along the isle of Ysselmond.

They passed the frowning towers of Briel,
The "Hook of Holland's" shelf of sand,
And grated soon with lifting keel
The sullen shores of Fatherland.

No home for these!--too well they knew
The mitred king behind the throne;--
The sails were set, the pennons flew,
And westward ho! for worlds unknown.

--And these were they who gave us birth,
The Pilgrims of the sunset wave,
Who won for us this virgin earth,
And freedom with the soil they gave.

The pastor slumbers by the Rhine,--
In alien earth the exiles lie,--
Their nameless graves our holiest shrine,
His words our noblest battle-cry!

Still cry them, and the world shall hear,
Ye dwellers by the storm-swept sea!
Ye _have_ not built by Haerlem Meer,
Nor on the land-locked Zuyder-Zee!

* * * * *

ART.

THE HEART OF THE ANDES.

We Americans, amidst the confusion and stir of material interests, are
not inattentive to the progress of those claims whose growth is as
silent as that of the leaves around us, and whose values find no echo in
Wall Street.

With the spring there has bloomed in New York a flower of no common
beauty. All the fashion and influence there have been to hail this
growth of our soil at its cloistered home in Tenth Street. There is but
one opinion of the beauty and novelty of the stranger. It is of the
"Heart of the Andes," by Mr. Frederick E. Church, we speak. This artist,
now known for some years as he who has with most daring tracked to its
depths the witchery and wonder of our summer skies, and the results of
whose two visits to South America have ere this shown how sensitive and
sure the photograph of his memory is, gives us from the _trop-plein_ of
his souvenirs this last and crowning page.

We hold the merit and charm of Mr. Church's works to be, that they are
so American in feeling and treatment. What chiefly distinguishes America
from Europe, as the object of landscape, is, that Europe is the region
of "bits," of picturesque compositions, of sunflecked lanes, of nestling
villages, and castle-crowned steeps,--while with us everything is less
condensed, on a wider scale, and with vaster spaces.

Mr. Church has the eagle eye to measure this vastness. He loves a
wide expanse, a boundless horizon. He does not, gypsy-like, hide with
Gainsborough beneath a hedge, but his glance sweeps across a continent,
and no detail escapes him. This is what makes the "Andes" a really
marvellous picture. In intellectual grasp, clear and vivid apprehension
of what he wants and where to put it, we think Mr. Church without an
equal. Quite a characteristic of his is a love of detail and finish
without injury to breadth and general effect. You look into his picture
with an opera-glass as you would into the next field from an open
window. His power is not so much one of suggestion, an appeal to the
beauty and grandeur in yourself, as the ability to become a colorless
medium to beauty and grandeur from without; hence the impression is at
first hand, and such as Nature herself produces.

The world abounds in pictures where loving human faculty has lifted
ordinary motives into our sympathy; but where the subject is the
grandest landscape affluence of the world, effect, in the ordinary
sense, ceases to be of value. We need the thing, and no human ennobling
of it. In this picture we have it; no spectral cloud-pile, but a real
Chimborazo, with the hoar of eternity upon its scalp, looks down upon
the happy New-Yorker in his first May perspiration. And as the wind sets
east, no yellow hint at something warming, but whole dales and plains
still in the real sunshine, take the chill from off his heart. No wonder
he, his wife, and his quietly enthusiastic girls throng and sit there.
They are proud in their hearts of the handsome young painter. And well
they may be! Never has the New World sent so native a flavor to the Old.
Unlike so many others of our good artists, there is no saturation from
the past in Mr. Church. No souvenir of what once was warm and new in the
heart of Claude or Poussin ages the fresh work. It has a relish of our
soil; its almost Yankee knowingness, its placid, clear, intellectual
power, with its delicate sentiment and strong self-reliance, are ours;
we delightfully feel that it belongs to us, and that we are of it.

Such is the last great work of the New York school of landscape,--a
living school, and destined to long triumphs,--already appreciated and
nobly encouraged. Its members are men as individual and various in their
gifts, as they are harmonious and manly in their mutual recognition and
fellowship.

* * * * *

REVIEWS AND LITERARY NOTICES.

_Love Me Little, Love Me Long._ By CHARLES READE, Author of "It is Never
too Late to Mend," "White Lies," etc. New York: Harper & Brothers. 1859.

This is the last, and in many respects the best, of Mr. Charles Reade's
literary achievements. Its popularity, we are informed, exceeds that of
any of his former works, excepting the first two published by him, "Peg
Woffington," and "Christie Johnstone," which a few years ago startled
the novel-reading world by their eccentricity of style, their
ingenious novelty of construction, and also by their freshness of
sentiment,--comet-books, pursuing one another in erratic orbits of
thought, now close upon the central light of Truth, now distantly remote
from it, but always brilliant, and generally leaving a sparkling train
of recollection behind. The author's subsequent productions, until the
present, have been less successful; some by reason of their positive
inferiority; some because of their extraordinary affectations of
expression, repelling the multitude, who do not choose to risk their
brains through unlimited pages of labyrinthine rhetoric; some, perhaps,
because of their doubtful paternity, evidences of French origin being
in many places discernible. Here, however, there appears a manifest
improvement. This story is exquisitely simple in conception, and the
narration is mostly full of ease and grace, although the unfolding of
the plot is less direct than might have been expected from an author who
professes so deep a regard for the dramatic order of development. There
is, for instance, an episodical chapter of upwards of thirty pages,
describing commercial England in a state of panic, which is very nearly
as appropriate as a disquisition on the Primary Rocks, or an inquiry
into the origin of the Cabala would be, but which is so palpably
introduced for the purpose of displaying the author's financial
erudition, that he feels himself called upon to apologize in a brief
preface for its intrusion. In the concluding chapters, too, the various
threads of interest are gathered together with very little artistic
compactness. The reader is disappointed at the tameness of the
culmination, compared with the vigor of the approach thereto. But
otherwise there is much to be charmed with, and not a little to admire.

Mr. Reade has renounced a good number of the odd fancies which at one
time pervaded him. We find no traces of the [Greek: stigmatophobia]
with which he was formerly afflicted. Nouns are wedded to obedient
adjectives, adverbs to their willing verbs, by the lawful mediation
of the recognized authorities of punctuation, the illegitimate and
licentious disregard of which, as recklessly manifested in "It is Never
too Late to Mend," indicated a disposition to entirely subvert
the established morals of the language. It is pleasant to see how
unreservedly Mr. Reade has abandoned his functions as apostle of
grammatical free-love. Of tricks of typography there are also fewer,
although these yet remain in an excess which good taste can hardly
sanction. We often find whole platoons of admiration-points stretching
out in line, to give extraordinary emphasis to sentences already
sufficiently forcible. We sometimes encounter extravagant varieties of
type, humorously intended, but the use of which seems a game hardly
worth Mr. Reade's candle, which certainly possesses enough illuminating
power of its own, without seeking additional refulgence by such
commonplace expedients.

In one of his pet peculiarities, the selection of a name for his work,
the author has surpassed himself. It is a good thing to have an imposing
name. In literature, as in society, a sounding title makes its way with
delicious freedom. But it is also well to see to it, that, in the matter
of title, some connection with the book to which it is applied shall be
maintained. We are accustomed to approach a title somewhat as we do a
finger-post,--not hoping that it will reveal the nature of the road we
are to follow, the character of the scenery we are to gaze upon, or the
general disposition of the impending population, but anticipating that
it will at least enable us to start in the right direction. Now every
reader of "Love me Little, Love me Long" is apt to consider himself or
herself justified in entertaining acrimonious sentiments towards Mr.
Reade for the non-fulfilment of his titular hint. If, in the process of
binding, the leaves of this story had accidentally found their way into
covers bearing other and various appellations, we imagine that very
little injury would have been done to the author's meaning or the
purchaser's understanding. It is, indeed, interesting to look forward
to the progress of Mr. Reade's ideas on the subject of titles. We have
already enjoyed a couple of pleasing nursery platitudes; perhaps it
would not be altogether out of order to expect in future a series
something like the following:--

"Oh, Dear, What Can the Matter Be!!??!?!"
"One, Two, Buckle My Shoe!"
"Sing a Song of Sixpence, a Bag Full of Rye!"
"Hiccory, Diccory, Dock!!!"
etc., etc.

Let us not forget, in laughing at the author's weaknesses, to
acknowledge his strength. He shows in this work an inventive fancy equal
to that of any writer of light fiction in the English language, and
hardly surpassed by those of the French,--from which latter, it is
fair to suppose, much of his inspiration is drawn, since his style is
undisguisedly that of modern French romancers, though often made the
vehicle of thoughts far nobler than any they are wont to convey. His
portraits of character are capital, especially those of feminine
character, which are peculiarly vivid and _spirituels_. He represents
infantile imagination with Pre-Raphaelitic accuracy. And his
descriptions are frequently of enormous power. A story of a sailor's
perils on a whaling voyage is told in a manner almost as forcible
as that of the "frigate fight," by Walt. Whitman, and in a manner
strikingly similar, too. A night adventure in the English channel--a
pleasure excursion diverted by a storm from its original intention into
a life-and-death struggle--is related with unsurpassed effect. The whole
work is as sprightly and agreeable a love-story as any English writer
has produced,--always amusing, often flashing with genuine wit,
sometimes inspiring in its eloquent energy. And this ought to be
sufficient to secure the abundant success of any book of its class, and
to cause its successor to be awaited with interest.

_The Choral Harmony_. By B.F. BAKER and W.O. PERKINS. Boston: Phillips,
Sampson, & Co. pp. 378.

The great number of music-books published, and the immense editions
annually sold, are the best proof of the demand for variety on the part
of choirs and singing-societies. Nearly all the popular collections will
be found to have about the same proportions of the permanent and the
transient elements,--on the one hand, the old chorals and hymn-tunes
consecrated by centuries of solemn worship,--on the other, the
compositions and "arrangements" of the editors. Here and there a modern
tune strikes the public taste or sinks deeper to the heart, and it takes
its place thenceforward with the "Old Hundredth," with "Martyrs," and
"Mear"; but the greater number of these compositions are as ephemeral as
newspaper stories. Every conductor of a choir knows, however, that, to
maintain an interest among singers, it is necessary to give them new
music for practice, especially new pieces for the opening of public
worship,--that they will not improve while singing familiar tunes, any
more than children will read with proper expression lessons which have
become wearisome by repetition. Masses and oratorios are beyond the
capacity of all but the most cultivated singers; and we suppose that
the very prevalence of these collections which aim to please an average
order of taste may, after all, furnish to large numbers a pleasure which
the rigid classicists would deny them, without in any way filling the
void.

This collection has a goodly number of the favorite old tunes, and they
are given with the harmonies to which the people are accustomed. The
new tunes are of various degrees of excellence, but most of them are
constructed with a due regard to form, and those which we take to be Mr.
Baker's are exceedingly well harmonized. There is an unusual number of
anthems, motets, etc.,--many of them at once solid and attractive. The
elementary portion contains a full and intelligible exposition of the
science. To those choirs who wish to increase their stock of music, and
to singing-societies who desire the opportunity of practising new and
brilliant anthems and sentences, the "Choral Harmony" may be commended,
as equal, at least, to any work of the kind now before the public.

_Seacliff: or the Mystery of the Westervelts_. By J.W. DE FOREST, Author
of "Oriental Acquaintance," "European Acquaintance," etc., etc. Boston:
Phillips, Sampson, & Co. pp. 466. 12mo.

This is a very readable novel, artful in plot, effective in
characterization, and brilliant in style. "The Mystery of the
Westervelts" is a mystery which excites the reader's curiosity at the
outset, and holds his pleased attention to the end. The incidents are so
contrived that the secret is not anticipated until it is unveiled, and
then the explanation is itself a surprise. The characters are generally
strongly conceived, skilfully discriminated, and happily combined. The
delineation of Mr. Westervelt, the father of the heroine, is especially
excellent. Irresolute in thought, impotent in will, and only
occasionally fretted by circumstances into a feeble activity, he is an
almost painfully accurate representation of a class of men who drift
through life without any power of self-direction. Mrs. Westervelt has
equal moral feebleness with less brain, and her character is a study in
practical psychology. Somerville, the villain of the piece, who unites
the disposition of Domitian to the manners of Chesterfield, is the
pitiless master of this female slave. The coquettish Mrs. Van Leer is
a prominent personage of the story; and her shallow malice and pretty
deviltries are most effectively represented. She is not only a flirt in
outward actions, but a flirt in soul, and her perfection in impertinence
almost rises to genius. All these characters betray patient meditation,
and the author's hold on them is rarely relaxed. A novel evincing so
much intellectual labor, written in a style of such careful elaboration,
and exhibiting so much skill in the development of the story, can
scarcely fail of a success commensurate with its merits.

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