Read Ebook: Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine Volume 57 No. 354 April 1845 by Various

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"Sum pius AEneas, fam? super aethere notus,"

What a difference between the thought in the two poets, and the interest which their words excite in the breast of the reader!

Modern partiality cannot claim for Tasso the merit of having conceived a band of heroes whose characters were as strongly marked, or boldly drawn, as those of the Grecian bard; yet may it justly claim for the Italian poet the second honours. Tasso did not draw his characters from nature, like Homer; he lived at a period when the manners of the heroic age had passed away, and the recollections of it were preserved only in the stanzas of poetry and the romances of the Troubadours; yet did the force of his genius, the elevation of his sentiments, the loftiness of his conceptions, in a great measure supply the defect, and produce a magnificent, and to this day unequalled, picture of the chivalry of modern Europe. Godfrey of Bouillon is the model of a Christian hero whose arm has been devoted to the sacred lance; antiquity did not, and could not, conceive any such character. Hector is the nearest approach to it; but the patriotism of the Trojan chief is mingled with his domestic affections; it is for his father, his wife, his child, his hearth, his country, that he fights. In Godfrey, all these affections, warm and ennobling as they are, appear to be obliterated by the perpetual sense of a sacred duty superior to them all--by the intensity of the pious fervour which had concentrated all earthly affections. He is the personification of the Church militant, combating for its Saviour's cause. The profound feelings, the self-negation, the martyr-like spirit which had been nursed for centuries amidst the solitude of the cloister, appears in him brought forth into action, and producing the most intense enthusiasm, yet regulated by the caution of Ulysses, combined with the foresight of Agamemnon, sustained by the constancy of Ajax.

Rinaldo, youthful, vehement, impassioned, is the ideal of a hero not yet weaned from the passions of the world. Vehement, capricious, and irascible, he disturbs, like Achilles, the council of the chiefs by his wrath, and is seduced by the beauty of Armida to abandon the cause of the cross; yet even in her enchanted gardens, and when surrounded by all that can fascinate the imagination and allure the senses, the sparks of a noble nature are not extinct in his breast; he is recalled to his duty by the sight of her warriors; he flies the arms of the syren; he penetrates with invincible courage the enchanted forest; and when he descends purified from the stains of the world from the lofty mountain, on whose summit at sunrise he had dedicated himself to God, he is the worthy and invincible champion of the cross. Not less bold than his youthful rival, not less enthusiastic in his affections, Tancredi is the victim of a romantic passion. But it is no enchantress for whom he pines; it is no seducing frail one who allures him from the path of duty. Clorinda appears in the Saracen ranks; her arms combat with heroic power for the cause of Mahomet; the glance which has fascinated the Christian knight came from beneath the plumed helmet. Lofty enthusiasm has unstrung his arm--devoted tenderness has subdued his heart--the passion of love in its purest form has fascinated his soul; yet even this high-toned sentiment can yield to the influences of religion; and when Tancredi, after the fatal nocturnal conflict in which his sword pierced the bosom of his beloved, is visited by her in his dreams, and assured that she awaits him in Paradise, the soul of the Crusader is aroused within him, and he sets forth with ardent zeal to seek danger and death in the breach of Jerusalem. It cannot be said that these characters are so natural as those of Homer, at least they are not so similar to what is elsewhere seen in the world; and therefore they will never make the general impression which the heroes of the Iliad have done. But they are more refined--they are more exalted; and if less like what men are, they are perhaps not the less like what they ought to be.

How is it, then, if Virgil is so inferior to Homer and Tasso in the unity of action, the concentration of interest, and the delineation of character, that he has acquired his prodigious reputation among men? How is it that generation after generation has ratified the opinion of Dante, who called him his "Divine Master"--of Petrarch, who spent his life in the study of his works? How is it that his verses are so engraven in our recollection that they have become, as it were, a second nature to every cultivated mind, and insensibly recur whenever the beauty of poetry is felt, or the charms of nature experienced? Rest assured the judgment of so many ages is right: successive generations and different nations never concur in praising any author, unless his works, in some respects at least, have approached perfection. If we cannot discern the beauties, the conclusion to be drawn is that our taste is defective, rather than that so many ages and generations have concurred in lavishing their admiration on an unworthy object. Nor is it difficult to see in what the excellence of Virgil consists; we cannot read a page of him without perceiving what has fascinated the world, without concurring in the fascination. It is the tenderness of his heart, his exquisite pathos, his eye for the beauty of nature, the unrivalled beauty of his language, which have given him immortality, and to the end of time render the study of his works the most perfect means of refining the taste and inspiring a genuine feeling of poetic beauty.

"Tityre, tu patulae, recubans sub tegmine fagi, Sylvestrem tenui musam meditaris avena; Nos patriae fines et dulcia linquimus arva. Nos patriam fugimus: tu, Tityre, lentus in umbra, Formosam resonare doces Amaryllida sylvas."

"Thus he spoke; my soul was crushed within me; I sat weeping on the sand; nor had I the heart to wish to live, and behold the light of the sun." Here is the pathos of nature: "Rachel weeping for her children, and would not be comforted, because they are not."

"Hinc ad Tarpeiam sedem et Capitolia ducit, Aurea nunc, olim sylvestribus horrida dumis. Jam tum religio pavidos terrebat agrestes Dira loci; jam tum sylvam saxumque tremebant. 'Hoc nemus, hunc,' inquit, 'frondoso vertice collem, Quis deus incertum est, habitat deus: Arcades ipsum Credunt se vidisse Jovem, cum saepe nigrantem AEgida concuteret dextr? nimbosque cieret.'

What Homer was to Virgil, and Ariosto to Tasso, that Michael Angelo was to RAPHAEL. Though both these illustrious men lived in the same age, yet the former was born nine years before the latter, and he had attained to eminence while his younger rival was yet toiling in the obscurity of humble life. It was the sight of the magnificent frescoes of Michael Angelo that first emancipated Raphael from the stiff and formal, though beautiful style of his master, Pietro Perugino, and showed him of what his noble art was susceptible. So great was the genius, so ardent the effort, of the young aspirant, so rapid the progress of art in those days, when the genius of modern Europe, locked up during the long frost of the middle ages, burst forth with the vigour and beauty of a Canadian spring, that he had brought painting, which he had taken up in a state of infancy in the studio of Pietro Perugino, to absolute perfection when he died, at the age of thirty-seven. Seventeen years, in Raphael's hands, sufficed to bring an art as great and difficult as poetry to absolute perfection! Subsequent ages, vainly as yet attempting to imitate, can never hope to surpass him. How vast must have been the genius, how capacious the thought, how intense the labour, of the man who could thus master and bring to perfection this difficult art, in a period so short as, to men even of superior parts and unwearied application, barely to gain the command of the pencil!

In modern painting, as it appeared in the hands of Raphael and Michael Angelo, a wider range was attempted: more spiritual and touching objects had come to engross the human mind. The mere contemplation of abstract character--its delineation by the graphic representation of the human form, had ceased to be the principal object of genius. The temple of the unknown God was no longer to be filled with idols made under image of man. The gospel had been preached to the poor; the words of mercy and peace had been heard on the earth. Painting had come to be the auxiliary of religion; it was in the churches of a spiritual and suffering faith that its impression was to be produced. Calvary was to be presented to the eye; the feeling of the centurion. "Truly this man was the Son of God," engraven on the heart. It was to the faithful who were penetrated with the glad words of salvation, that the altar-pieces were addressed; it was the feeling of the song of Simeon that had gone forth on the earth. It was those divine feelings which painting, as it arose in modern Europe, was called to embody in the human form; it was to this heavenly mission that the genius of Italy was called. And if ever there was a mind fitted to answer such a call--if ever the spirit of the gospel was breathed into the human breast, that mind and that breast were those of Raphael.

Superficial writers will ask, what has Raphael to do with Virgil? mere artists will enquire, how they are to be benefited by the study of Tasso? Those, again, who have reflected on the means by which the higher stages in any art are attained, will acknowledge that, at a certain elevation, their principles are the same.

To move the heart, whether by painting, poetry, or eloquence, requires the same mind. The means by which the effect is to be produced are not different. The one works, indeed, with the pencil, the other with the pen; the one composes in verse, the other in prose--but what then? These are the means to the end, they are not the end itself. There are many avenues to the human heart, but the inner doors in them all are to be opened only by one key, and that key is never denied to the suit of genius.

Whoever will study those inimitable productions, even when standing to gaze at the engravings from them in a print-shop window, will have no difficulty in feeling the justice of Cicero's remark, that all the arts which relate to humanity have a certain common bond, a species of consanguinity between them. The emotion produced by the highest excellence in them all is the same. So intense is this emotion, so burning the delight which it occasions, that it cannot be borne for any length of time: the mind's eye is averted from it as the eyeball is from the line of "insufferable brightness," as Gray calls it, which often precedes the setting of the sun. It is difficult to say in which this burning charm consists. Like genius or beauty, its presence is felt by all, but can be described by none. It would seem to be an emanation of Heaven--a chink, as it were, opened, which lets us feel for a few seconds the ethereal joys of a superior state of existence. But it is needless to seek to define what, all who have felt it must acknowledge, passes all understanding.

It is a common saying, even among persons of cultivated taste, that it is hopeless to attempt to advance any thing new on the beauties of ancient authors; that every thing that can be said on the subject has already been exhausted, and that it is in the more recent fields of modern literature that it is alone possible to avoid repetition. We are decidedly of opinion that this idea is erroneous, and that its diffusion has done more than any thing else to degrade criticism to the low station which, with some honourable exceptions, it has so long held in the world of letters. But when ancient excellence is contemplated with a generous eye, even when the mind that sees is but slenderly gifted, who will say that nothing new will occur? When it meets kindred genius, when it is elevated by a congenial spirit, what a noble art does criticism become? What has it proved in the hands of Dryden and Pope, of Wilson and Macaulay? It is in the contemplation of ancient greatness, and its comparison with the parallel efforts of modern genius, that the highest flights of these gifted spirits have been attained, and the native generosity of real intellectual power most strikingly evinced. Criticism of words will soon come to an end; the notes of scholiasts and annotators are easily made, as apothecaries make drugs by pouring from one phial into another. But criticism of things, of ideas, of characters, of conceptions, can never come to an end; for every successive age is bringing forth fresh comparisons to make, and fresh combinations to exhibit. It is the outpouring of a heart overburdened with admiration which must be delivered, and will ever discover a new mode of deliverance.

How many subjects of critical comparison in this view, hitherto nearly untouched upon, has the literature of Europe, and even of this age, afforded! AEschylus, Shakspeare, and Schiller--Euripides, Alfieri, and Corneille--Sophocles, Metastasio, and Racine--Pindar, Horace, and Gray--Ovid, Ariosto, and Wieland--Lucretius, Darwin, and Campbell--Demosthenes, Cicero, and Burke--Thucydides, Tacitus, and Gibbon--Thomson, Cowper, and Claude Lorraine: such are a few which suggest themselves at first sight to every one who reflects on the rich retrospect of departed genius. It is like looking back to the Alps through the long and rich vista of Italian landscape; the scene continually varies, the features are ever new, the impression is constantly fresh, from the variety of intervening objects, though the glittering pinnacles of the inaccessible mountains ever shine from afar on the azure vault of heaven. Human genius is ever furnishing new proofs of departed excellence. Human magnanimity is ever exhibiting fresh examples of the fidelity of former descriptions, or the grandeur of former conception. What said Hector, drawing his sword, when, betrayed by Minerva in his last conflict with Achilles, he found himself without his lance in presence of his fully-armed and heaven-shielded antagonist? "Not at least inglorious shall I perish, but after doing some great thing that men may be spoken of in ages to come."

PING-KEE'S VIEW OF THE STAGE.

This is not, O Cho-Ling-Kyang! a barbarian land, as in our foolish childhood we were taught; but, contrariwise, great is the wisdom of the English, and great their skill. Yea, I will not conceal the fact, that in some things they are worthy to be imitated by the best and most learned in the flowery land. Three moons have I resided in London, and devoted myself, with all the powers of my mind and body, to fulfil the task which you and the ever-venerated Chang-Feu have laid upon me. Convey to his benignant ear the words of my respect, and tell him that my brow is ever on the outer edge of his footstool. As I understand my office--having pondered over the same ever since the ship left the shore of my beloved country--it is, to give you a report of the manners and customs of the inhabitants of this extraordinary land, and smooth the way for the sending forth of an ambassador from the immaculate emperor to the governor of this nation. I have completely executed your commission, O excellent Cho-Ling-Kyang! and this was the manner of the doing thereof. When I embarked on board of the large ship with the three masts, which had for name the Walter Scott--after a great general who conquered a province called Scotland, and was presented with a blue button as a reward for his magnanimity--I was entirely ignorant of the language spoken by the mariners, with the exception of the short form of prayer which they constantly use when speaking of each others' eyes, and a few phrases not easily translatable into our refined tongue; and I accordingly experienced great difficulty in making myself understood. Notwithstanding, I soon got friendly with the captain, and also with the men--who pulled my back hair whenever I passed them, in the most warm and affectionate manner possible. I took greatly to study when I had overcome the sea-sickness; and although I could not master the pronunciation of their words, I soon arrived at a degree of skill, which enabled me to read their printed books. There was a large library on board of the ship, and all day long--with the aid of Morrison's wonderful dictionary--I toiled in the delightful task of making myself acquainted with the masterpieces of English literature. And this I considered the best preparation for the duty set before me; for without books, how could I furnish my mind with a knowledge of the past?--and without mastering the language, how could I understand the characters and modes of thought of the men who now are? I therefore studied history; but their historians write so much, and differ so greatly from each other, that it was perplexing to know if what they told was true--and I was utterly confused. But, fortunately, there was in the ship a young person, who had been sent out by his friends to a merchant's office in Canton; but had discovered that he was a great poet, and very clever man, and was going back to tell his father he would not hide his talents any more, but be a wonder to all men for his genius and abilities; and this young person was very kind to me. He advised me what to read--which was principally his own writings; and on my telling him I wished to study history, he said nobody cared for it now, and that all the history he knew was in Shakspeare's plays. This Shakspeare was a great writer long ago, who turned all the histories of his country into dramatic scenes; and they are acted on grand occasions before the Queen and her court at this very day. When I enquired of the young person how his countrymen preserved the memory of events which had happened since the death of the great Shakspeare, he said there were other people as clever perhaps as Shakspeare, who embalmed important incidents in immortal verse, but whom a brutal public did not sufficiently appreciate; and he offered to read to me a poem of his own called the Napoleonad, giving an account of a great war that happened some time ago--and which had been published, he said, week after week, in the Bath and Bristol Literary Purveyor. He read it to me, and it was very fine; but I did not gain much information. I read various parts of English history in Shakspeare; but from the specimens he gives of the kings that reigned long ago in England, I fear they were a very cruel and barbarous race of men. One of the name of Lear gave up the kingdom to his three daughters, and two of them treated him very cruelly, turned him out of doors on a stormy night, put out his followers' eyes, and behaved very ill indeed. Another was called John--a bad man. Three Henries--the first two great fighters, and one of them a common highway robber in conjunction with a fat old gentleman who was a great coward, but boasted he killed the chief warrior of the enemy--and the other Henry, a weak old man, who was murdered by another very bad king called Richard. There was another Henry who sent away his wife--a fat, bloated, villanous kind of man; and after that no mention is made of any of the English kings in Shakspeare's history. And when I asked the young person if there had been any kings since, he said he had never heard of any except George the Third, grandfather of the present Queen. I demanded of him if all the plays in England were forced to be histories? and he said, no. And when I further enquired what they represented, and of what use they were, he said they were to hold a mirror up to nature, and to be the abstract and brief chronicle of the time; by which he afterwards explained to me he meant this--that although tragedies and the loftier portions of the drama treated generally of great events, yet that, in England, there were many men of extraordinary talent, who taught great moral lessons by means of the stage, and, above all things, never overstepped the modesty of nature, but in every scene gave a vivid and true imitation of the actual events of life. In short, that the best way of seeing English character was to study the English stage; for all classes of men were more fully, truly, and fairly represented there, than even in the House of Commons itself. The young person, to prove the truth of this, read me a comedy, which he was going to have acted at Covent-Garden Theatre; and it was very amusing, for he laughed excessively at every speech. You will easily believe, O Cho-Ling-Kyang! that I rejoiced greatly at hearing this account of the stage; and unbounded was my satisfaction in finding among the books in the library a large collection of English plays, which I studied deeply and took notes from, for my future guidance in mingling with society. What a blessing it is for a nation to be in possession of so useful an institution, where the actual manners of the time are brought exactly forward, and the people can see the different classes of society with all their different feelings and peculiarities--their modes of thought--their faults and weaknesses--their wishes and vices--as vividly produced as if the performers were in reality the very beings they represent! How it must instruct the boorish in the gracefulness of polished life--how it must reprove the bad by the contemplation of honest simplicity--and what an insight must it give to the foreigners, into all the secrets of the domestic existence of this great and extraordinary people! O Cho-Ling-Kyang! when the young person told me this, I said to my heart--"Be still--beat no more with the pulses of uncertainty--I shall only buy a perpetual ticket to the pit of the theatre, and write home a minute account of all I see and hear." On my arrival in London I took down the names of the theatres, and for three months I have studied character every night. Yet, though I devoted my nights to the stage, I pored all the morning over the many volumes I have collected of the printed dramas; and as they all agree in their descriptions, I think I cannot be deceived, and that you may safely present the subjoined result of my enquiries to the very sparkling eyes of the ever-venerated Chang-Feu. There are many ranks of men in this land, and he of the highest rank is called a lord. When young, a lord is always rich and gay, and a great admirer of the ladies; and it is also the case that many ladies are devotedly attached to him, and make no scruple to confess it to their chambermaids, before they have been acquainted with him half an hour. When the lord is old, he is a stiff stupid man, who generally talks politics, and boasts how eloquent he is in the great national assembly. He is also always very harsh to his children, till they marry against his will, and then he forgives them, and prays for their happiness. The title bestowed on the wife, and sometimes on the daughter of a lord, is lady or ladyship; but this dignity is also possessed by the wives of a class of men very numerous in this country, who are called sirs.

The "ladies," almost without exception, are very disagreeable people, and highly immoral, as they are always in love with some one else besides their husbands,--and are great gamblers at cards, and very malicious in their observations on their friends. The "sirs" are divided into two classes--sometimes they are fat rich old men who have made large fortunes by trade, and have handsome girls either of their own, or left to their charge by deceased relations,--and sometimes they are gay fascinating young men, running away with rich people's daughters, or stupid people's wives; but luckily they always take names that give fair warning of their character, so that they are generally foiled in their infamous attempts. And this is a fine illustration of the openness of the English disposition. A man here seldom conceals his propensities, but assumes a name which reveals all his character at once. Sir Brilliant Fashion, and Sir Bashful Constant, and Sir Harry Lovewit, show at once their respective peculiarities--as do Colonel Tornado, Tempest, Hurricane, Absolute, Rapid, and a thousand others that I have met with in my reading. But the thing which astonished me most of all was, that in this great mercantile nation, a merchant is very little appreciated unless he is in debt or a cheat; but the hero of most of the histories, if he is of a mercantile family, is over head and ears in the books of Jew usurers, and has left the respectable circle of his equals in rank, and spends his time and constitution in the gaieties of the lords and ladies. And that this has long been the case, is proved by old plays and new ones. There is a play in the oldest-looking of the volumes I possess, called, "How to grow Rich," which shows the style of manners in this respect forty or fifty years ago; and I will translate the beginning of it, that you may see a real picture of English society with your own eyes.

Mr Warford, the nephew of Mr Smalltrade, a banker, is in conversation with Mr Plainly, the head clerk:--

In the next page we are shown the mode in which banking was carried on in country towns by persons who had the daughters of lords visiting them--who have gone abroad for their health, and left then such uncountable heaps of sycee silver.

Vegetable and animal life, we ought here to mention, are considered by our author as both derived from the same elementary germ which branches out into the two great kingdoms of nature; so that it is of equal importance to him to find a case of spontaneous generation amongst the plants as amongst the animals. We must, therefore, extend the observation we made on a certain class of cases amongst animals, to an analagous class of supposed cases of spontaneous generation amongst vegetables. If that downy mould, for instance, which the good housewife finds upon her pots of jam, be considered as a vegetable, and be supposed to have grown without seed, it would be somewhat analagous to the entozoa amongst animals; it would be a vegetation produced by the decay of a previous vegetation.

But, proved or not, our author has still the most difficult part of his task to accomplish. From his animated globule he has to develop the whole creation of vegetable and animal life. We shall be contented with watching its development through one branch, that of the animal kingdom.

The idea of the development of the animal creation from certain primary rudiments or simple forms of life, is due, we believe, to Lamarck; and although his peculiar theory has met, and deservedly, with ridicule, we do not hesitate to say that it is far more plausible, and substantially far more rational, than that which our author has substituted. Geology reveals to us a gradual extinction of species, accompanied by a successive appearance of new species; it reveals to us also that the surface of the earth has undergone great mutations; that land and sea have frequently changed places; and that the climate of the several regions of the world, owing to many causes, has greatly varied. Natural history is replete with striking accounts of the modifications produced in a race of animals by the change of climate, diet, and the enforcement of new habits; and linking all these facts together, it does not appear a very violent supposition, nor one that departs from the frequent analogies of nature, to say, that the causes which have brought about the extinction of certain species may have also operated to the development of new species. The manifest error of Lamarck was an egregious exaggeration of certain well-known truths. Because external circumstances may do much in directing the inherent power of development possessed by a given organization, he resolved that it should do every thing. The camelopard was to get his long neck by stretching for his food; and the duck her web-foot by paddling in the water. But the author before us breaks loose entirely from the region of facts; or rather he announces to us, on his own responsibility, an entirely new fact--that it is the law of animal life that each species should, from time to time, produce a brood of the species next in order of perfection or complexity of organization. With him, this development is the result merely of a law of generation which he himself has devised to meet the emergency.

Amongst the laws of life, the most conspicuous and undoubted is this--that each species reproduces itself, that like begets like. This law our author cannot of course gainsay; but he appends to it another overruling law, that from time to time, at long intervals, the like does not beget the like, but the different and superior form of organization. In other words, the old law changes from time to time. Of this novel description of law he borrows the following illustration of Mr Babbage:--

"Let the figures thus seen, be the series 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, &c. &c., of natural numbers, each of which exceeds its immediate antecedent by unity.

The illustration is carried through a page or two more, but we have quoted all that is essential.

And take, also, the following short passage from the preface of the same work, where the author has been speaking of the latest discoveries of physiologists on the development of the embryo.

But our readers have perhaps heard sufficient of an hypothesis which is built only on a series of conjectures, and we ourselves are wearied with a too easy victory. There are many other topics in the book which would far better reward discussion than the one we have chosen--as, for instance, the geological views here put forward, the claims of phrenology, and the difference between instinct and intelligence; but if disposed to treat these subjects, we could have found other and more suitable opportunities; we thought it fit to select that which forms the peculiarity of the present work.

But absurd as the matter is, we must complete the account which the author gives of the development of that race in which we are chiefly interested--man. We have seen, that according to his law of progressive generation, and as an instance of what he denominates "a modest and simple phenomenon," man was one day born of the monkey or the ape. But this discovered law has not only thus happily introduced the human being upon the earth, it also throws light upon the diversities which exist in the family of man.

"The causes of the various external peculiarities of mankind, now require some attention. Why, it is asked, are the Africans black, and generally marked by ungainly forms? Why the flat features of the Chinese, and the comparatively well-formed figures of the Caucasians? Why the Mongolians generally yellow, the Americans red, and the Canadians white? These questions were complete puzzles to all early writers; but physiology has lately thrown a great light upon them. It is now shown that the brain, after completing the series of animal transformations, passes through the characters in which it appears in the Negro, Malay American, and Mongolian nations, and finally becomes Caucasian. The face partakes of these alterations. The leading characters, in short, of the various races of mankind, are simply representations of particular states in the development of the highest or Caucasian type. The Negro exhibits permanently the imperfect brain, projecting lower jaw, and slender bent limbs of a Caucasian child some considerable time before the period of its birth. The aboriginal American represents the same child nearer birth. The Mongolian is an arrested infant newly born. And so forth."

So that we Caucasians are, at least, the only full grown children: all others are more or less abortions. Indeed we might be described, in the language of this theory, as the only animals on the face of the earth who pass through the full period of gestation. And yet even this honour may be disputed; perhaps we ourselves are but imperfect developments of that germ of life which is the progenitor of us all. The author darkly intimates that we may be supplanted from our high place in this world, that another and more powerful and sagacious race may be born of us, who may treat us no better than we have treated the monkeys and other species of the brute creation. This is the severest blow of all. After having humbled our pride according to this philosopher's bidding, and taught ourselves to look upon the ape with due feelings of filial respect--after having acknowledged some sturdy baboon for our only Adam, and some malicious monkey for our sweet mother Eve--after having brought ourselves to see in the lower animals the same mental and moral faculties which we boast of, and to confess that the same psychology applies to both, with a slight modification in our theory of the origin of ideas--after having practised all this condescension, to be threatened with complete dethronement from our high place in the world!--to be told that we, too, shall have to obey a master who may govern us as man governs the horse! What a millennium to look forward to!

On the authorship of this production we have no communication or conjecture to make. The writer has been successful, as far as we know, in preserving his incognito; and as the rumours that have reached our ear have all been again contradicted, we think it wisest to abstain from circulating any of then. We heard it pleasantly said that the author had been followed down as far as Lancashire, and that then all further trace of him had been lost. We think he might be traced further north than Lancashire. The style in one or two places bears symptoms of a Scottish origin. Occupied with the wild theory it promulgates, we have not said much of the literary merits of the work. Nor is there much to say. It is written in a clear, unpretending style, but somewhat careless and inexact. The exposition in the first portions of the work, the astronomical and geological, appeared to us particularly good. The author's knowledge of science is such as is gleaned by that sort of student who is denominated, in prefaces, the general reader; he is not, we should apprehend, a labourer in any one of its departments, but thankfully receives whatever is brought to his door of the results of science. With this chance-gathered stock he has ventured to frame, or rather to defend, his speculations. The sudden success of the work is not, we think, what any one could have prognosticated. It is a success which its singularity has gained for it, and which its superficiality will soon again forfeit.

We may mention that this notice was written after a perusal of the first edition. In the third edition, we observe that some passages have been slightly modified or omitted; but the hypothesis put forward is substantially the same.

MARSTON; OR, THE MEMOIRS OF A STATESMAN.

"Have I not in my time heard lions roar? Have I not heard the sea, puft up with wind, Rage like an angry boar chafed with sweat? Have I not heard great ordnance in the field, And Heaven's artillery thunder in the skies? Have I not in the pitched battle heard Loud 'larums, neighing steeds, and trumpets clang?"

SHAKSPEARE.

The insurrection had broken out; there could now be no scepticism on the subject. Some hundreds of armed men were already crowding the grounds in front of the mansion; and from the shouts which rose in every quarter, and still more from the fires which blazed on every hill round the horizon, the numbers of the insurgents must have amounted to thousands. It was evident that we were in a pitfall, and that resistance was only the protraction of a fate which was now inevitable. The shrieks of the females and the despondency of the men, who naturally thought that their last hour was come, were enough to dishearten all resolution. For a few minutes, the only orders which I could give were to bar the doors and close the windows. The multitude, new to hostile enterprises, had till now kept at some distance, warned by their losses in the skirmish with the yeomanry, and probably expecting the arrival of troops. But the sight of our precautions, few and feeble as they were, gave them new courage; and discharges of musketry began to drop their bullets into the midst of our startled assemblage. It is only justice to the national intrepidity to say, that every measure which I proposed for defence was unhesitatingly adopted; and that one of my chief difficulties was to prevent rash sallies, which must have only terminated in loss of life. The short interval now allowed to us was employed in barricading the mansion, which was built almost with the strength of a fortress, and posting every man who could handle a musket or pistol, at the windows. Still I knew that this species of defence could not last long; and my only hope for our lives was, that the firing might bring some of the troops who patrolled the country to our assistance. But the discharges became closer and heavier, and still no sound of succour was to be heard. My situation became more anxious every moment; all looked up to me for their guidance; and though my garrison were brave and obedient, as became the high-spirited sons of Ireland, there seemed the strongest probability that the night would end in a general massacre. Yet there was no faint-heartedness under the roof; our fire was stoutly kept up whenever the assailants came within range; and as I hurried from chamber to chamber to ascertain the condition of our defence and give directions, I found all firm. Still the terrors of the females--the sight of the first women of the province flying for refuge to every corner where they might escape the balls, which now poured into every window; the actual wounds of some, visible by the blood streaming down their splendid dresses; the horror-stricken looks of the groups clinging to each other for hopeless protection; and the actual semblance of death in others fainting on the sofas and floors, and all this under an incessant roar of musketry--made me often wish that I could give way to the gallant impatience of my friends within the mansion, and take the desperate hazard of plunging into the midst of the multitude.

But a new danger awaited us; a succession of shrieks from one of the upper apartments caught my ear, and on rushing to the spot, and forcing my way through a crowd of women half frantic with alarm, I saw some of the outbuildings, immediately connected with the mansion, wrapped in a sheet of fire. The insurgents had at last found out the true way to subdue our resistance; and we obviously had no alternative but to throw ourselves on their mercy, or die with arms in our hands. Yet, to surrender was perhaps only to suffer a more protracted death, degraded by shame; and when I looked round me on the helplessness of the noble and beautiful women around me, and thought of the agony which must be felt by us on seeing them thrown into the power of the assassins who were now roaring with triumph and vengeance, I dismissed all thoughts of submission at once, and determined to take the chances of resistance while any man among us had the power to draw a trigger. In rushing through the mansion, to make its defenders in the front aware of the new misfortune which threatened us, I happened to pass through the ball-room, where the corpse of its noble and brave master was. One figure was standing there, with his back to me, and evidently gazing on the body. All else was solitary. Of all the friends, guests, and domestics, not one had remained. Loud as were the shouts outside, and constant as was the crashing of the musketry, I could hear a groan, which seemed to come from the very heart of that lonely bystander. I sprang towards him; he turned at the sound of my step, and, to my surprise, I saw the face of the man whose share in the insurrection I had so singularly ascertained. I had a loaded musket in my hand, and my first impulse, in the indignation of the moment, was to discharge its contents through his heart. But he looked at me with a countenance of such utter dejection, that I dropped its muzzle to the ground, and demanded "What had brought him there at such a time?" "This!" he exclaimed, pointing to the pallid form on the sofa. "To that man I owed every thing. To his protection, to his generosity, to his nobleness of heart, I owed my education, my hopes, all my prospects in life. I should have died a thousand deaths rather than see a hair of his head touched--and now, there he lies." He sank upon his knees, took the hand of the dead, and wept over it in agony.

But I had no leisure to wait upon his remorse; the volleys were pouring in, and the glare of the burning buildings showed me that the flames were making fearful progress. "This," said I, "is your work. This murder is but the first-fruits of your treason; probably every life in this house is destined to butchery within the hour." He sprang on his feet. "No, no," he cried, "we are not murderers. This is the frenzy of the populace. Regeneration must not begin by massacre."

The thought suddenly struck me that I might make his fears, or his compunctions, at the moment available.

The aide-de-camp's despatches were sufficiently alarming. The lord-lieutenant had received from England details of the intended insurrection. The privy council had been summoned, and the usual commands issued to keep the troops throughout the country on the alert; but the information was still so imperfect, the skill of the conspirators was so adroitly exerted in keeping their secret, and the outcry of the powerful parliamentary Opposition was so indignant and contemptuous at the remotest hint of popular disaffection, that the Government was virtually paralysed.

But the question was now decided; the scene which I had just witnessed unhappily left no room for doubt, and I determined to set off for the metropolis without delay. I had no sooner expressed my intention, than I was assailed on all hands with advice, and even with entreaties, to postpone my journey until the flight of the rebels was fully ascertained, or at least till daylight gave me a better chance of personal safety. But every moment now seemed to me more precious than the last; and, breaking through a circle of the noble and the fair, I threw myself on my horse, and with the aide-de-camp and a couple of dragoons for my escort, soon left the whole scene of entreaty and terror, sorrow and triumph, behind.

We rode hard through the night, observing frequent signs of the extended insurrection, in fires on the mountains, and the gatherings of peasantry on the roads--sometimes compelled to turn out of our way, by the evidence of their being armed and in military organization; and at others dashing through the groups, and taking them by surprise. A few shots fired at random, or the rage and roar of the crowd as we scattered them right and left in our gallop, were all that belonged to personal adventure; and when the dawn showed us from one of the hills round the capital the quiet city glittering in the first sunshine, all looked so lovely and so tranquil, that it required the desperate recollections of the night to believe in the existence of a vast and powerful combination, prepared to cover the land with burning and blood.

Within a few hours after my arrival, the privy council assembled; my intelligence was received as it deserved; it decided the wavering, and gave increased determination to the bold. Still, our sitting was long and anxious. The peril was now undeniable, but the extent, the object, and the remedy, were alike obscure. It is not, of course, within my purpose to reveal the secrets of councils, in which all is transacted under the deepest bond of confidence; but it may be fairly told, that our deliberations often completely reversed the proverb, that "In the multitude of councillors there is safety," if by safety is meant either promptitude or penetration.

But there was one man among them, who would have distinguished himself in any council upon earth. He was a lawyer, and holding the highest office of his profession. But his ambition was still higher than his office, and his ability was equal to his ambition. Bold by nature, and rendered bolder by the constant success of his career, he would have been a matchless minister in a despotic government. Living under the old r?gime of France, the laurels of a Richelieu or a Mazarin might have found a formidable competitor in this man of daring and decision. He wanted but their scale of action, to have exhibited all their virtues, and perhaps all their vices.

In the House of Lords, as chancellor, he instantly became the virtual viceroy. It is true, that a succession of opulent and accomplished noblemen, every two or three years, were transmitted from Whitehall to the Castle, to pillow themselves upon a splendid sinecure, rehearse an annual King's speech, exhibit the acknowledged elegance of noble English life, and, having given the destined number of balls and suppers, await the warrant of a secretary's letter to terminate their political existence. But the chancellor was made of "sterner stuff." His material was not soluble by a blast of ministerial breath. Not even the giant grasp of Pitt would have dared to pluck the sceptre from his hand. If struck, he might have answered the blow as the flint answers, by fire. But the premier had higher reasons for leaving him in the possession of power; he was pure. In all the uproar of public calumny, no voice was ever heard impeaching his integrity; with the ten thousand arrows of party flying round him from every quarter, none ever found a chink in his ministerial mail. He loved power, as all men do who are worthy of it. He disdained wealth, as all men do who are fitted to use it. He scorned the popularity of the day, as all men do who know the essential baseness of its purchase; and aspiring after a name in the annals of his country, like all men to whom it is due--like them, he proudly left the debt to be discharged by posterity.

The chancellor was not without his faults. His scorn was too palpable. He despised too many, and the many too much. His haughtiness converted the perishable and purchasable malice of party, into the "study of revenge, immortal hate." When he struck down an opponent in the fair strife of Parliament, his scorn was like poison in the wound, and the blow was never forgotten but in the grave. But as a statesman, his chief and unconquerable misfortune was the narrowness of his scene of action. He was but the ruler of a province, while his faculties were fitted for the administration of an empire. His errors were the offspring of his position. He was the strong man within four walls; by the very length of his stride striking against them at every step, and bruised by the very energy of his impulse against his hopeless boundaries.

At length a time of desperate trial arose. The Rebellion of 1798 burst out. He had foreseen it. But the men of the Castle, lolling on their couches, would not believe in its possibility. The men of the populace, stirring up the rabble with the point of the dagger, derided him as a libeller of the people; and even the Government of England--too anxiously engaged in watching the movements of the French legions from the heights of Dover, to have time for a glance at disturbers behind the Irish Channel--for a time left him to his fate. But he was equal to the emergency. He had been scoffingly called "the Cassandra of the aristocracy;" but he had neither the fortunes nor the failures of a Cassandra; he had not forfeited his virtues for his gift, and his prophecy was too soon and too terribly realized to be disbelieved. Of such times it is painful to speak, but of the men by whom such times are met, it is dishonourable not to speak with homage. Almost abandoned by authority, assailed almost by a nation, with the ground shaking under his feet, and the whole frame of Government quivering at every roar of the multitude in arms, he stood the shock, and finally restored the country. Language like this has not been the first tribute to the memory of this ardent, vigorous, and unshrinking statesman. But its chief use, and the noblest use of all tributes to the tomb of civil heroism, is, to tell others by what strength of principle, and by what perseverance of purpose, the rescue of nations is alone to be achieved. In the midst of alarm excited by the extent of the revolt, of ignorance from the novelty of the crisis, and of indecision from the dread of responsibility, he stood firm. The original intrepidity of his nature was even strengthened by the perils of the time; and with the whole storm of unpopularity roaring round him, he sternly pursued his course, and combated the surge, until it sank, and the state vessel neared, if it did not yet enter, the harbour.

It is the natural fate of such men, in such times, to be misunderstood, and to be maligned. The libel which cast every stone within its reach at his living name, long continued to heap them on his grave. But all this has passed away, and the manlier portion of his countrymen now appeal to the administration of the "Great Chancellor," in proof of the national capacity for the highest trusts of empire.

Why has not the history of this man, and of his day, been written? Why has not some generous spirit, impelled alike by a sense of justice and a sense of patriotism, adopted this argument for the intellectual opulence and moral energy which may still exist in the Irish mind? Is there no descendant to claim the performance of a duty, which would reflect a lustre on himself from the light which his filial piety planted on the sepulchre? Or why are the recollections of rebels to be taken down from the gibbet, and embalmed in history, while the name of him who smote the rebellion is suffered to moulder away?

I am not writing a panegyric. He had his infirmities; his temper was too excitable, and his measures were too prompt for prudence. But his heart was sound, and his spirit was made for the guidance of a state in the hour of its danger. If a feebler mind had then presided in the public councils, Ireland, within a twelvemonth, would have been a republic; and in every hour since, would have been agonizing under the daggers of rival factions, or paying the fearful price of her frenzy in indissoluble chains.

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