CRITICISM BY JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER CONTENTS: EVANGELINE MIRTH AND MEDICINE FAME AND GLORY FANATICISM THE POETRY OF THE NORTH CRITICISM EVANGELINE A review of Mr. Longfellow's poem. EUREKA! Here, then, we have it at last, --an American poem, with the lackof which British reviewers have so long reproached us. Selecting thesubject of all others best calculated for his purpose, --the expulsion ofthe French settlers of Acadie from their quiet and pleasant homes aroundthe Basin of Minas, one of the most sadly romantic passages in thehistory of the Colonies of the North, --the author has succeeded inpresenting a series of exquisite pictures of the striking and peculiarfeatures of life and nature in the New World. The range of thesedelineations extends from Nova Scotia on the northeast to the spurs ofthe Rocky Mountains on the west and the Gulf of Mexico on the south. Nothing can be added to his pictures of quiet farm-life in Acadie, theIndian summer of our northern latitudes, the scenery of the Ohio andMississippi Rivers, the bayous and cypress forests of the South, themocking-bird, the prairie, the Ozark hills, the Catholic missions, andthe wild Arabs of the West, roaming with the buffalo along the banks ofthe Nebraska. The hexameter measure he has chosen has the advantage of aprosaic freedom of expression, exceedingly well adapted to a descriptiveand narrative poem; yet we are constrained to think that the story ofEvangeline would have been quite as acceptable to the public taste had itbeen told in the poetic prose of the author's Hyperion. In reading it and admiring its strange melody we were not without fearsthat the success of Professor Longfellow in this novel experiment mightprove the occasion of calling out a host of awkward imitators, leading usover weary wastes of hexameters, enlivened neither by dew, rain, norfields of offering. Apart from its Americanism, the poem has merits of a higher and universalcharacter. It is not merely a work of art; the pulse of humanity throbswarmly through it. The portraits of Basil the blacksmith, the oldnotary, Benedict Bellefontaine, and good Father Felician, fairly glowwith life. The beautiful Evangeline, loving and faithful unto death, isa heroine worthy of any poet of the present century. The editor of the Boston Chronotype, in the course of an appreciativereview of this poem, urges with some force a single objection, which weare induced to notice, as it is one not unlikely to present itself to theminds of other readers:-- "We think Mr. Longfellow ought to have expressed a much deeperindignation at the base, knavish, and heartless conduct of the Englishand Colonial persecutors than he has done. He should have put far bolderand deeper tints in the picture of suffering. One great, if not thegreatest, end of poetry is rhadamanthine justice. The poet should meteout their deserts to all his heroes; honor to whom honor, and infamy towhom infamy, is due. "It is true that the wrong in this case is in a great degree fatheredupon our own Massachusetts; and it maybe said that it is afoul bird thatpollutes its own nest. We deny the applicability of the rather mustyproverb. All the worse. Of not a more contemptible vice is what iscalled American literature guilty than this of unmitigated self-laudation. If we persevere in it, the stock will become altogether toosmall for the business. It seems that no period of our history has beenexempt from materials for patriotic humiliation and national self-reproach; and surely the present epoch is laying in a large store of thatsort. Had our poets always told us the truth of ourselves, perhaps itwould now be otherwise. National self-flattery and concealment of faultsmust of course have their natural results. " We must confess that we read the first part of Evangeline with somethingof the feeling so forcibly expressed by Professor Wright. The naturaland honest indignation with which, many years ago, we read for the firsttime that dark page of our Colonial history--the expulsion of the Frenchneutrals--was reawakened by the simple pathos of the poem; and we longedto find an adequate expression of it in the burning language of the poet. We marvelled that he who could so touch the heart by his description ofthe sad suffering of the Acadian peasants should have permitted theauthors of that suffering to escape without censure. The outburst of thestout Basil, in the church of Grand Pre, was, we are fain to acknowledge, a great relief to us. But, before reaching the close of the volume, wewere quite reconciled to the author's forbearance. The design of thepoem is manifestly incompatible with stern "rhadamanthine justice" andindignant denunciation of wrong. It is a simple story of quiet pastoralhappiness, of great sorrow and painful bereavement, and of the enduranceof a love which, hoping and seeking always, wanders evermore up and downthe wilderness of the world, baffled at every turn, yet still retainingfaith in God and in the object of its lifelong quest. It was no part ofthe writer's object to investigate the merits of the question at issuebetween the poor Acadians and their Puritan neighbors. Looking at thematerials before him with the eye of an artist simply, he has arrangedthem to suit his idea of the beautiful and pathetic, leaving to somefuture historian the duty of sitting in judgment upon the actors in theatrocious outrage which furnished them. With this we are content. Thepoem now has unity and sweetness which might have been destroyed byattempting to avenge the wrongs it so vividly depicts. It is a psalm oflove and forgiveness: the gentleness and peace of Christian meekness andforbearance breathe through it. Not a word of censure is directlyapplied to the marauding workers of the mighty sorrow which it describesjust as it would a calamity from the elements, --a visitation of God. Thereader, however, cannot fail to award justice to the wrong-doers. Theunresisting acquiescence of the Acadians only deepens his detestation ofthe cupidity and religious bigotry of their spoilers. Even in thelanguage of the good Father Felician, beseeching his flock to submit tothe strong hand which had been laid upon them, we see and feel themagnitude of the crime to be forgiven:-- "Lo, where the crucified Christ from his cross is gazing upon you! See in those sorrowful eyes what meekness and holy compassion! Hark! how those lips still repeat the prayer, O Father, forgive them! Let us repeat that prayer in the hour when the wicked assail us; Let us repeat it now, and say, O Father, forgive them!" How does this simple prayer of the Acadians contrast with the "deepdamnation of their taking off!" The true history of the Puritans of New England is yet to be written. Somewhere midway between the caricatures of the Church party and theself-laudations of their own writers the point may doubtless be foundfrom whence an impartial estimate of their character may be formed. Theyhad noble qualities: the firmness and energy which they displayed in thecolonization of New England must always command admiration. We would notrob them, were it in our power to do so, of one jot or tittle of theirrightful honor. But, with all the lights which we at present possess, wecannot allow their claim of saintship without some degree ofqualification. How they seemed to their Dutch neighbors at NewNetherlands, and their French ones at Nova Scotia, and to the poorIndians, hunted from their fisheries and game-grounds, we can very wellconjecture. It may be safely taken for granted that their gospel claimto the inheritance of the earth was not a little questionable to theCatholic fleeing for his life from their jurisdiction, to the banishedBaptist shaking off the dust of his feet against them, and to themartyred Quaker denouncing woe and judgment upon them from the steps ofthe gallows. Most of them were, beyond a doubt, pious and sincere; butwe are constrained to believe that among them were those who wore thelivery of heaven from purely selfish motives, in a community wherechurch-membership was an indispensable requisite, the only open sesamebefore which the doors of honor and distinction swung wide to needy orambitious aspirants. Mere adventurers, men of desperate fortunes, bankrupts in character and purse, contrived to make gain of godlinessunder the church and state government of New England, put on the austereexterior of sanctity, quoted Scripture, anathematized heretics, whippedQuakers, exterminated Indians, burned and spoiled the villages of theirCatholic neighbors, and hewed down their graven images and "houses ofRimmon. " It is curious to observe how a fierce religious zeal againstheathen and idolaters went hand in hand with the old Anglo-Saxon love ofland and plunder. Every crusade undertaken against the Papists of theFrench colonies had its Puritan Peter the Hermit to summon the saints tothe wars of the Lord. At the siege of Louisburg, ten years before theonslaught upon the Acadian settlers, one minister marched with theColonial troops, axe in hand, to hew down the images in the Frenchchurches; while another officiated in the double capacity of drummer andchaplain, --a "drum ecclesiastic, " as Hudibras has it. At the late celebration of the landing of the Pilgrims in New York, theorator of the day labored at great length to show that the charge ofintolerance, as urged against the colonists of New England, is unfoundedin fact. The banishment of the Catholics was very sagaciously passedover in silence, inasmuch as the Catholic Bishop of New York was one ofthe invited guests, and (hear it, shade of Cotton Mather!) one of theregular toasts was a compliment to the Pope. The expulsion of RogerWilliams was excused and partially justified; while the whipping, ear-cropping, tongue-boring, and hanging of the Quakers was defended, as theonly effectual method of dealing with such devil-driven heretics, asMather calls them. The orator, in the new-born zeal of his amateurPuritanism, stigmatizes the persecuted class as "fanatics and ranters, foaming forth their mad opinions;" compares them to the Mormons and thecrazy followers of Mathias; and cites an instance of a poor enthusiast, named Eccles, who, far gone in the "tailor's melancholy, " took it intohis head that he must enter into a steeple-house pulpit and stitchbreeches "in singing time, "--a circumstance, by the way, which took placein Old England, --as a justification of the atrocious laws of theMassachusetts Colony. We have not the slightest disposition to deny thefanaticism and folly of some few professed Quakers in that day; and hadthe Puritans treated them as the Pope did one of their number whom hefound crazily holding forth in the church of St. Peter, and consignedthem to the care of physicians as religious monomaniacs, no sane mancould have blamed them. Every sect, in its origin, and especially in itstime of persecution, has had its fanatics. The early Christians, if wemay credit the admissions of their own writers or attach the slightestcredence to the statements of pagan authors, were by no means exempt fromreproach and scandal in this respect. Were the Puritans themselves themen to cast stones at the Quakers and Baptists? Had they not, in theview at least of the Established Church, turned all England upside downwith their fanaticisms and extravagances of doctrine and conduct? Howlook they as depicted in the sermons of Dr. South, in the sarcastic pagesof Hudibras, and the coarse caricatures of the clerical wits of the timesof the second Charles? With their own backs scored and their earscropped for the crime of denying the divine authority of church and statein England, were they the men to whip Baptists and hang Quakers for doingthe same thing in Massachusetts? Of all that is noble and true in the Puritan character we are sincereadmirers. The generous and self-denying apostleship of Eliot is, ofitself, a beautiful page in their history. The physical daring andhardihood with which, amidst the times of savage warfare, they laid thefoundations of mighty states, and subdued the rugged soil, and made thewilderness blossom; their steadfast adherence to their religiousprinciples, even when the Restoration had made apostasy easy andprofitable; and the vigilance and firmness with which, under allcircumstances, they held fast their chartered liberties and extorted newrights and privileges from the reluctant home government, --justly entitlethem to the grateful remembrance of a generation now reaping the fruitsof their toils and sacrifices. But, in expressing our gratitude to thefounders of New England, we should not forget what is due to truth andjustice; nor, for the sake of vindicating them from the charge of thatreligious intolerance which, at the time, they shared with nearly allChristendom, undertake to defend, in the light of the nineteenth century, opinions and practices hostile to the benignant spirit of the gospel andsubversive of the inherent rights of man. MIRTH AND MEDICINE A review of Poems by Oliver Wendell Holmes. IF any of our readers (and at times we fear it is the case with all) needamusement and the wholesome alterative of a hearty laugh, we commendthem, not to Dr. Holmes the physician, but to Dr. Holmes the scholar, thewit, and the humorist; not to the scientific medical professor'sbarbarous Latin, but to his poetical prescriptions, given in choice oldSaxon. We have tried them, and are ready to give the Doctor certificatesof their efficacy. Looking at the matter from the point of theory only, we should say that aphysician could not be otherwise than melancholy. A merry doctor! Why, one might as well talk of a laughing death's-head, --the cachinnation of amonk's _memento mori_. This life of ours is sorrowful enough at its bestestate; the brightest phase of it is "sicklied o'er with the pale cast"of the future or the past. But it is the special vocation of the doctorto look only upon the shadow; to turn away from the house of feasting andgo down to that of mourning; to breathe day after day the atmosphere ofwretchedness; to grow familiar with suffering; to look upon humanitydisrobed of its pride and glory, robbed of all its fictitious ornaments, --weak, helpless, naked, --and undergoing the last fearful metempsychosisfrom its erect and godlike image, the living temple of an enshrineddivinity, to the loathsome clod and the inanimate dust. Of what ghastlysecrets of moral and physical disease is he the depositary! There is woebefore him and behind him; he is hand and glove with misery byprescription, --the ex officio gauger of the ills that flesh is heir to. He has no home, unless it be at the bedside of the querulous, thesplenetic, the sick, and the dying. He sits down to carve his turkey, and is summoned off to a post-mortem examination of another sort. Allthe diseases which Milton's imagination embodied in the lazar-house doghis footsteps and pluck at his doorbell. Hurrying from one place toanother at their beck, he knows nothing of the quiet comfort of the"sleek-headed men who sleep o' nights. " His wife, if he has one, has anundoubted right to advertise him as a deserter of "bed and board. " Hisideas of beauty, the imaginations of his brain, and the affections of hisheart are regulated and modified by the irrepressible associations of hisluckless profession. Woman as well as man is to him of the earth, earthy. He sees incipient disease where the uninitiated see onlydelicacy. A smile reminds him of his dental operations; a blushing cheekof his hectic patients; pensive melancholy is dyspepsia; sentimentalism, nervousness. Tell him of lovelorn hearts, of the "worm I' the bud, " ofthe mental impalement upon Cupid's arrow, like that of a giaour upon thespear of a janizary, and he can only think of lack of exercise, oftightlacing, and slippers in winter. Sheridan seems to have understoodall this, if we may judge from the lament of his Doctor, in St. Patrick's Day, over his deceased helpmate. "Poor dear Dolly, " says he. "I shall never see her like again; such an arm for a bandage! veins thatseemed to invite the lancet! Then her skin, --smooth and white as agallipot; her mouth as round and not larger than that of a penny vial;and her teeth, --none of your sturdy fixtures, --ache as they would, it wasonly a small pull, and out they came. I believe I have drawn half ascore of her dear pearls. [Weeps. ] But what avails her beauty? She hasgone, and left no little babe to hang like a label on papa's neck!" So much for speculation and theory. In practice it is not so bad afterall. The grave-digger in Hamlet has his jokes and grim jests. We haveknown many a jovial sexton; and we have heard clergymen laugh heartily atsmall provocation close on the heel of a cool calculation that the greatmajority of their fellow-creatures were certain of going straight toperdition. Why, then, should not even the doctor have his fun? Nay, isit not his duty to be merry, by main force if necessary? Solomon, who, from his great knowledge of herbs, must have been no mean practitionerfor his day, tells us that "a merry heart doeth good like a medicine;"and universal experience has confirmed the truth of his maxim. Hence itis, doubtless, that we have so many anecdotes of facetious doctors, distributing their pills and jokes together, shaking at the same time thecontents of their vials and the sides of their patients. It is merelyprofessional, a trick of the practice, unquestionably, in most cases; butsometimes it is a "natural gift, " like that of the "bonesetters, " and"scrofula strokers, " and "cancer curers, " who carry on a sort of guerillawar with human maladies. Such we know to be the case with Dr. Holmes. He was born for the "laughter cure, " as certainly as Priessnitz was forthe "water cure, " and has been quite as successful in his way, while hisprescriptions are infinitely more agreeable. The volume now before us gives, in addition to the poems and lyricscontained in the two previous editions, some hundred or more pages of thelater productions of the author, in the sprightly vein, and marked by thebrilliant fancy and felicitous diction for which the former werenoteworthy. His longest and most elaborate poem, _Urania_, is perhapsthe best specimen of his powers. Its general tone is playful andhumorous; but there are passages of great tenderness and pathos. Witnessthe following, from a description of the city churchgoers. The wholecompass of our literature has few passages to equal its melody andbeauty. "Down the chill street, which winds in gloomiest shade, What marks betray yon solitary maid? The cheek's red rose, that speaks of balmier air, The Celtic blackness of her braided hair; The gilded missal in her kerchief tied; Poor Nora, exile from Killarney's side! Sister in toil, though born of colder skies, That left their azure in her downcast eyes, See pallid Margaret, Labor's patient child, Scarce weaned from home, a nursling of the wild, Where white Katahdin o'er the horizon shines, And broad Penobscot dashes through the pines; Still, as she hastes, her careful fingers hold The unfailing hymn-book in its cambric fold: Six days at Drudgery's heavy wheel she stands, The seventh sweet morning folds her weary hands. Yes, child of suffering, thou mayst well be sure He who ordained the Sabbath loved the poor. " This is but one of many passages, showing that the author is capable ofmoving the heart as well as of tickling the fancy. There is no strainingfor effect; simple, natural thoughts are expressed in simple andperfectly transparent language. _Terpsichore_, read at an annual dinner of the Phi Beta Kappa Society atCambridge, sparkles throughout with keen wit, quaint conceits, and satireso good-natured that the subjects of it can enjoy it as heartily as theirneighbors. Witness this thrust at our German-English writers:-- "Essays so dark, Champollion might despair To guess what mummy of a thought was there, Where our poor English, striped with foreign phrase, Looks like a zebra in a parson's chaise. " Or this at our transcendental friends:-- "Deluded infants! will they never know Some doubts must darken o'er the world below Though all the Platos of the nursery trail Their clouds of glory at the go-cart's tail?" The lines _On Lending a Punch-Bowl_ are highly characteristic. Nobodybut Holmes could have conjured up so many rare fancies in connection withsuch a matter. Hear him:-- "This ancient silver bowl of mine, it tells of good old times, Of joyous days, and jolly nights, and merry Christmas chimes;They were a free and jovial race, but honest, brave, and true, That dipped their ladle in the punch when this old bowl was new. "A Spanish galleon brought the bar; so runs the ancient tale;'T was hammered by an Antwerp smith, whose arm was like a flail;And now and then between the strokes, for fear his strength should fail, He wiped his brow, and quaffed a cup of good old Flemish ale. "'T was purchased by an English squire to please his loving dame, Who saw the cherubs, and conceived a longing for the same;And oft as on the ancient stock another twig was found, 'T was filled with candle spiced and hot and handed smoking round. "But, changing hands, it reached at length a Puritan divine, Who used to follow Timothy, and take a little wine, But hated punch and prelacy; and so it was, perhaps, He went to Leyden, where he found conventicles and schnaps. "And then, of course, you know what's next, --it left the Dutchman's shoreWith those that in the Mayflower came, --a hundred souls and more, --Along with all the furniture, to fill their new abodes, --To judge by what is still on hand, at least a hundred loads. "'T was on a dreary winter's eve, the night was closing dim, When brave Miles Standish took the bowl, and filled it to the brim;The little Captain stood and stirred the posset with his sword, And all his sturdy men-at-arms were ranged about the board. "He poured the fiery Hollands in, --the man that never feared, --He took a long and solemn draught, and wiped his yellow beard;And one by one the musketeers--the men that fought and prayed--All drank as 't were their mother's milk, and not a man afraid. "That night, affrighted from his nest, the screaming eagle flew, He heard the Pequot's ringing whoop, the soldier's wild halloo;And there the sachem learned the rule he taught to kith and kin, 'Run from the white man when you find he smells of Hollands gin!'" In his _Nux Postcoenatica_ he gives us his reflections on being invitedto a dinner-party, where he was expected to "set the table in a roar" byreading funny verses. He submits it to the judgment and common sense ofthe importunate bearer of the invitation, that this dinner-going, ballad-making, mirth-provoking habit is not likely to benefit his reputation asa medical professor. "Besides, my prospects. Don't you know that people won't employA man that wrongs his manliness by laughing like a boy, And suspect the azure blossom that unfolds upon a shoot, As if Wisdom's oldpotato could not flourish at its root? "It's a very fine reflection, when you're etching out a smileOn a copperplate of faces that would stretch into a mile. That, what with sneers from enemies and cheapening shrugs from friends, It will cost you all the earnings that a month of labor lends. " There are, as might be expected, some commonplace pieces in the volume, --a few failures in the line of humor. The _Spectre Pig_, the _DorchesterGiant_, the _Height of the Ridiculous_, and one or two others might beomitted in the next edition without detriment. They would do well enoughfor an amateur humorist, but are scarcely worthy of one who stands at thehead of the profession. It was said of James Smith, of the Rejected Addresses, that "if he hadnot been a witty man, he would have been a great man. " Hood's humor anddrollery kept in the background the pathos and beauty of his soberproductions; and Dr. Holmes, we suspect, might have ranked higher among alarge class of readers than he now does had he never written his _Balladof the Oysterman_, his _Comet_, and his _September Gale_. Such lyrics as_La Grisette_, the _Puritan's Vision_, and that unique compound of humorand pathos, _The Last Leaf_; show that he possesses the power of touchingthe deeper chords of the heart and of calling forth tears as well assmiles. Who does not feel the power of this simple picture of the oldman in the last-mentioned poem? "But now he walks the streets, And he looks at all he meets Sad and wan, And he shakes his feeble head, That it seems as if he said, 'They are gone. ' "The mossy marbles rest On the lips that he has prest In their bloom, And the names he loved to hear Have been carved for many a year On the tomb. " Dr. Holmes has been likened to Thomas Hood; but there is little in commonbetween them save the power of combining fancy and sentiment withgrotesque drollery and humor. Hood, under all his whims and oddities, conceals the vehement intensity of a reformer. The iron of the world'swrongs had entered into his soul; there is an undertone of sorrow in hislyrics; his sarcasm, directed against oppression and bigotry, at timesbetrays the earnestness of one whose own withers have been wrung. Holmeswrites simply for the amusement of himself and his readers; he deals onlywith the vanity, the foibles, and the minor faults of mankind, goodnaturedly and almost sympathizingly suggesting excuses for the follywhich he tosses about on the horns of his ridicule. In this respect hediffers widely from his fellow-townsman, Russell Lowell, whose keen witand scathing sarcasm, in the famous Biglow Papers, and the notes ofParson Wilbur, strike at the great evils of society and deal with therank offences of church and state. Hosea Biglow, in his way, is asearnest a preacher as Habakkuk Mucklewrath or Obadiah Bind-their-kings-in-chains-and-their-nobles-in-fetters-of-iron. His verse smacks of theold Puritan flavor. Holmes has a gentler mission. His careless, genialhumor reminds us of James Smith in his _Rejected Addresses_ and of Horacein _London_. Long may he live to make broader the face of our care-ridden generation, and to realize for himself the truth of the wise man'sdeclaration that a "merry heart is a continual feast. " FAME AND GLORY. Notice of an Address before the Literary Society of Amherst College, byCharles Sumner. THE learned and eloquent author of the pamphlet lying before us with theabove title belongs to a class, happily on the increase in our country, who venture to do homage to unpopular truths in defiance of the socialand political tyranny of opinion which has made so many of our statesmen, orators, and divines the mere playthings and shuttlecocks of popularimpulses for evil far oftener than for good. His first production, the_True Grandeur of Nations_, written for the anniversary of AmericanIndependence, was not more remarkable for its evidences of a highlycultivated taste and wide historical research than for its inculcation ofa high morality, --the demand for practical Christianity in nations aswell as individuals. It burned no incense under the nostrils of analready inflated and vain people. It gratified them by no rhetoricalfalsehoods about "the land of the free and the home of the brave. " Itdid not apostrophize military heroes, nor strut "red wat shod" over theplains of battle, nor call up, like another Ezekiel, from the valley ofvision the dry bones thereof. It uttered none of the precious scoundrelcant, so much in vogue after the annexation of Texas was determined upon, about the destiny of the United States to enter in and possess the landsof all whose destiny it is to live next us, and to plant everywhere the"peculiar institutions" of a peculiarly Christian and chosen people, thelandstealing propensity of whose progressive republicanism is declared tobe in accordance with the will and by the grace of God, and who, like theScotch freebooter, -- "Pattering an Ave Mary When he rode on a border forray, "-- while trampling on the rights of a sister republic, and re-creatingslavery where that republic had abolished it, talk piously of "thedesigns of Providence" and the Anglo-Saxon instrumentalities thereof in"extending the area of freedom. " On the contrary, the author portrayedthe evils of war and proved its incompatibility with Christianity, --contrasting with its ghastly triumphs the mild victories of peace andlove. Our true mission, he taught, was not to act over in the New Worldthe barbarous game which has desolated the Old; but to offer to thenations of the earth, warring and discordant, oppressed and oppressing, the beautiful example of a free and happy people studying the thingswhich make for peace, --Democracy and Christianity walking hand in hand, blessing and being blessed. His next public effort, an Address before the Literary Society of hisAlma Mater, was in the same vein. He improved the occasion of the recentdeath of four distinguished members of that fraternity to delineate hisbeautiful ideal of the jurist, the scholar, the artist, and thephilanthropist, aided by the models furnished by the lives of such men asPickering, Story, Allston, and Channing. Here, also, he makes greatnessto consist of goodness: war and slavery and all their offspring of evilare surveyed in the light of the morality of the New Testament. He lookshopefully forward to the coming of that day when the sword shall devourno longer, when labor shall grind no longer in the prison-house, and thepeace and freedom of a realized and acted-out Christianity shalloverspread the earth, and the golden age predicted by the seers and poetsalike of Paganism and Christianity shall become a reality. The Address now before us, with the same general object in view, is moredirect and practical. We can scarcely conceive of a discourse betteradapted to prepare the young American, just issuing from his collegiateretirement, for the duties and responsibilities of citizenship. Ittreats the desire of fame and honor as one native to the human heart, felt to a certain extent by all as a part of our common being, --a motive, although by no means the most exalted, of human conduct; and the lessonit would inculcate is, that no true and permanent fame can be foundedexcept in labors which promote the happiness of mankind. To use thelanguage of Dr. South, "God is the fountain of honor; the conduit bywhich He conveys it to the sons of men are virtuous and generouspractices. " The author presents the beautiful examples of St. Pierre, Milton, Howard, and Clarkson, --men whose fame rests on the firmfoundation of goodness, --for the study and imitation of the youngcandidate for that true glory which belongs to those who live, not forthemselves, but for their race. "Neither present fame, nor war, norpower, nor wealth, nor knowledge alone shall secure an entrance to thetrue and noble Valhalla. There shall be gathered only those who havetoiled each in his vocation for the welfare of others. " "Justice andbenevolence are higher than knowledge and power It is by His goodnessthat God is most truly known; so also is the great man. When Moses saidto the Lord, Show me Thy glory, the Lord said, I will make all mygoodness pass before thee. " We copy the closing paragraph of the Address, the inspiring sentiment ofwhich will find a response in all generous and hopeful hearts:-- "Let us reverse the very poles of the worship of past ages. Men havethus far bowed down before stocks, stones, insects, crocodiles, goldencalves, --graven images, often of cunning workmanship, wrought withPhidian skill, of ivory, of ebony, of marble, but all false gods. Letthem worship in future the true God, our Father, as He is in heaven andin the beneficent labors of His children on earth. Then farewell to thesiren song of a worldly ambition! Farewell to the vain desire of mereliterary success or oratorical display! Farewell to the distemperedlongings for office! Farewell to the dismal, blood-red phantom ofmartial renown! Fame and glory may then continue, as in times past, thereflection of public opinion; but of an opinion sure and steadfast, without change or fickleness, enlightened by those two sons of Christiantruth, --love to God and love to man. From the serene illumination ofthese duties all the forms of selfishness shall retreat like evil spiritsat the dawn of day. Then shall the happiness of the poor and lowly andthe education of the ignorant have uncounted friends. The cause of thosewho are in prison shall find fresh voices; the majesty of peace othervindicators; the sufferings of the slave new and gushing floods ofsympathy. Then, at last, shall the brotherhood of man stand confessed;ever filling the souls of all with a more generous life; ever promptingto deeds of beneficence; conquering the heathen prejudices of country, color, and race; guiding the judgment of the historian; animating theverse of the poet and the eloquence of the orator; ennobling humanthought and conduct; and inspiring those good works by which alone we mayattain to the heights of true glory. Good works! Such even now is theheavenly ladder on which angels are ascending and descending, while wearyhumanity, on pillows of storfe, slumbers heavily at its feet. " We know how easy it is to sneer at such anticipations of a better futureas baseless and visionary. The shrewd but narrow-eyed man of the worldlaughs at the suggestion that there car: be any stronger motive thanselfishness, any higher morality than that of the broker's board. Theman who relies for salvation from the consequences of an evil and selfishlife upon the verbal orthodoxy of a creed presents the depravity andweakness of human nature as insuperable obstacles in the way of thegeneral amelioration of the condition of a world lying in wickedness. Hecounts it heretical and dangerous to act upon the supposition that thesame human nature which, in his own case and that of his associates, canconfront all perils, overcome all obstacles, and outstrip the whirlwindin the pursuit of gain, --which makes the strong elements its servants, taming and subjugating the very lightnings of heaven to work out its ownpurposes of self-aggrandizement, --must necessarily, and by an ordinationof Providence, become weak as water, when engaged in works of love andgoodwill, looking for the coming of a better day for humanity, with faithin the promises of the Gospel, and relying upon Him, who, in calling manto the great task-field of duty, has not mocked him with the mournfulnecessity of laboring in vain. We have been pained more than words canexpress to see young, generous hearts, yearning with strong desires toconsecrate themselves to the cause of their fellow-men, checked andchilled by the ridicule of worldly-wise conservatism, and the solemnrebukes of practical infidelity in the guise of a piety which professesto love the unseen Father, while disregarding the claims of His visiblechildren. Visionary! Were not the good St. Pierre, and Fenelon, andHoward, and Clarkson visionaries also? What was John Woolman, to the wise and prudent of his day, but an amiableenthusiast? What, to those of our own, is such an angel of mercy asDorothea Dix? Who will not, in view of the labors of suchphilanthropists, adopt the language of Jonathan Edwards: "If these thingsbe enthusiasms and the fruits of a distempered brain, let my brain beevermore possessed with this happy distemper"? It must, however, be confessed that there is a cant of philanthropy toogeneral and abstract for any practical purpose, --a morbidsentimentalism, --which contents itself with whining over real orimaginary present evil, and predicting a better state somewhere in thefuture, but really doing nothing to remove the one or hasten the comingof the other. To its view the present condition of things is all wrong;no green hillock or twig rises over the waste deluge; the heaven above isutterly dark and starless: yet, somehow, out of this darkness which maybe felt, the light is to burst forth miraculously; wrong, sin, pain, andsorrow are to be banished from the renovated world, and earth become avast epicurean garden or Mahometan heaven. "The land, unploughed, shall yield her crop; Pure honey from the oak shall drop; The fountain shall run milk; The thistle shall the lily bear; And every bramble roses wear, And every worm make silk. " [Ben Jenson's Golden Age Restored. ] There are, in short, perfectionist reformers as well as religionists, whowait to see the salvation which it is the task of humanity itself to workout, and who look down from a region of ineffable self-complacence ontheir dusty and toiling brethren who are resolutely doing whatsoevertheir hands find to do for the removal of the evils around them. The emblem of practical Christianity is the Samaritan stooping over thewounded Jew. No fastidious hand can lift from the dust fallen humanityand bind up its unsightly gashes. Sentimental lamentation over evil andsuffering may be indulged in until it becomes a sort of melancholyluxury, like the "weeping for Thammuz" by the apostate daughters ofJerusalem. Our faith in a better day for the race is strong; but we feelquite sure it will come in spite of such abstract reformers, and not byreason of them. The evils which possess humanity are of a kind which gonot out by their delicate appliances. The author of the Address under consideration is not of this class. Hehas boldly, and at no small cost, grappled with the great social andpolitical wrong of our country, --chattel slavery. Looking, as we haveseen, hopefully to the future, he is nevertheless one of those who canrespond to the words of a true poet and true man:-- "He is a coward who would borrow A charm against the present sorrow From the vague future's promise of delight As life's alarums nearer roll, The ancestral buckler calls, Self-clanging, from the walls In the high temple of the soul!" [James Russell Lowell. ] FANATICISM. THERE are occasionally deeds committed almost too horrible and revoltingfor publication. The tongue falters in giving them utterance; the pentrembles that records them. Such is the ghastly horror of a late tragedyin Edgecomb, in the State of Maine. A respectable and thriving citizenand his wife had been for some years very unprofitably engaged inbrooding over the mysteries of the Apocalypse, and in speculations uponthe personal coming of Christ and the temporal reign of the saints onearth, --a sort of Mahometan paradise, which has as little warrant inScripture as in reason. Their minds of necessity became unsettled; theymeditated self-destruction; and, as it appears by a paper left behind inthe handwriting of both, came to an agreement that the husband shouldfirst kill his wife and their four children, and then put an end to hisown existence. This was literally executed, --the miserable man strikingoff the heads of his wife and children with his axe, and then cutting hisown throat. Alas for man when he turns from the light of reason and from the simpleand clearly defined duties of the present life, and undertakes to pryinto the mysteries of the future, bewildering himself with uncertain andvague prophecies, Oriental imagery, and obscure Hebrew texts! Simple, cheerful faith in God as our great and good Father, and love of Hischildren as our brethren, acted out in all relations and duties, iscertainly best for this world, and we believe also the best preparationfor that to come. Once possessed by the falsity that God's design isthat man should be wretched and gloomy here in order to obtain rest andhappiness hereafter; that the mental agonies and bodily tortures of Hiscreatures are pleasant to Him; that, after bestowing upon us reason forour guidance, He makes it of no avail by interposing contradictoryrevelations and arbitrary commands, --there is nothing to prevent one of amelancholic and excitable temperament from excesses so horrible as almostto justify the old belief in demoniac obsession. Charles Brockden Brown, a writer whose merits have not yet beensufficiently acknowledged, has given a powerful and philosophicalanalysis of this morbid state of mind--this diseased conscientiousness, obeying the mad suggestions of a disordered brain as the injunctions ofDivinity--in his remarkable story of Wieland. The hero of this strangeand solemn romance, inheriting a melancholy and superstitious mentalconstitution, becomes in middle age the victim of a deep, and tranquilbecause deep, fanaticism. A demon in human form, perceiving his state ofmind, wantonly experiments upon it, deepening and intensifying it by afearful series of illusions of sight and sound. Tricks of jugglery andventriloquism seem to his feverish fancies miracles and omens--the eyeand the voice of the Almighty piercing the atmosphere of supernaturalmystery in which he has long dwelt. He believes that he is called uponto sacrifice the beloved wife of his bosom as a testimony of the entiresubjugation of his carnal reason and earthly affections to the Divinewill. In the entire range of English literature there is no morethrilling passage than that which describes the execution of this balefulsuggestion. The coloring of the picture is an intermingling of thelights of heaven and hell, --soft shades of tenderest pity and warm tintsof unextinguishable love contrasting with the terrible outlines of aninsane and cruel purpose, traced with the blood of murder. The mastersof the old Greek tragedy have scarcely exceeded the sublime horror ofthis scene from the American novelist. The murderer confronted with hisgentle and loving victim in her chamber; her anxious solicitude for hishealth and quiet; her affectionate caress of welcome; his own relentingsand natural shrinking from his dreadful purpose; and the terriblestrength which he supposes is lent him of Heaven, by which he puts downthe promptings and yearnings of his human heart, and is enabled toexecute the mandate of an inexorable Being, --are described with anintensity which almost stops the heart of the reader. When the deed isdone a frightful conflict of passions takes place, which can only be toldin the words of the author:-- "I lifted the corpse in my arms and laid it on the bed. I gazed upon itwith delight. Such was my elation that I even broke out into laughter. I clapped my hands, and exclaimed, 'It is done! My sacred duty isfulfilled! To that I have sacrificed, O God, Thy last and best gift, mywife!' "For a while I thus soared above frailty. I imagined I had set myselfforever beyond the reach of selfishness. But my imaginations were false. This rapture quickly subsided. I looked again at my wife. My joyousebullitions vanished. I asked myself who it was whom I saw. Methoughtit could not be my Catharine; it could not be the woman who had lodgedfor years in my heart; who had slept nightly in my bosom; who had bornein her womb and fostered at her breast the beings who called me father;whom I had watched over with delight and cherished with a fondness evernew and perpetually growing. It could not be the same! "The breath of heaven that sustained me was withdrawn, and I sunk intomere man. I leaped from the floor; I dashed my head against the wall; Iuttered screams of horror; I panted after torment and pain. Eternal fireand the bickerings of hell, compared with what I felt, were music and abed of roses. "I thank my God that this was transient; that He designed once more toraise me aloft. I thought upon what I had done as a sacrifice to duty, and was calm. My wife was dead; but I reflected that, although thissource of human consolation was closed, others were still open. If thetransports of the husband were no more, the feelings ofthe father had still scope for exercise. When remembrance of theirmother should excite too keen a pang, I would look upon my children andbe comforted. "While I revolved these things new warmth flowed in upon my heart. I waswrong. These feelings were the growth of selfishness. Of this I was notaware; and, to dispel the mist that obscured my perceptions, a new lightand a new mandate were necessary. "From these thoughts I was recalled by a ray which was shot into theroom. A voice spoke like that I had before heard: 'Thou hast done well;but all is not done--the sacrifice is incomplete--thy children must beoffered--they must perish with their mother!'" The misguided man obeys the voice; his children are destroyed in theirbloom and innocent beauty. He is arrested, tried for murder, andacquitted as insane. The light breaks in upon him at last; he discoversthe imposture which has controlled him; and, made desperate by the fullconsciousness of his folly and crime, ends the terrible drama by suicide. Wieland is not a pleasant book. In one respect it resembles the moderntale of Wuthering Heights: it has great strength and power, but nobeauty. Unlike that, however, it has an important and salutary moral. Itis a warning to all who tamper with the mind and rashly experiment uponits religious element. As such, its perusal by the sectarian zealots ofall classes would perhaps be quite as profitable as much of their presentstudies. THE POETRY OF THE NORTH. THE Democratic Review not long since contained a singularly wild andspirited poem, entitled the Norseman's Ride, in which the writer appearsto have very happily blended the boldness and sublimity of the heathensaga with the grace and artistic skill of the literature of civilization. The poetry of the Northmen, like their lives, was bold, defiant, and fullof a rude, untamed energy. It was inspired by exhibitions of powerrather than of beauty. Its heroes were beastly revellers or cruel andferocious plunderers; its heroines unsexed hoidens, playing the ugliesttricks with their lovers, and repaying slights with bloody revenge, --verydangerous and unsatisfactory companions for any other than the fire-eating Vikings and redhanded, unwashed Berserkers. Significant of areligion which reverenced the strong rather than the good, and whichregarded as meritorious the unrestrained indulgence of the passions, itdelighted to sing the praises of some coarse debauch or pitilessslaughter. The voice of its scalds was often but the scream of thecarrion-bird, or the howl of the wolf, scenting human blood:-- "Unlike to human sounds it came; Unmixed, unmelodized with breath; But grinding through some scrannel frame, Creaked from the bony lungs of Death. " Its gods were brutal giant forces, patrons of war, robbery, and drunkenrevelry; its heaven a vast cloud-built ale-house, where ghostly warriorsdrank from the skulls of their victims; its hell a frozen horror ofdesolation and darkness, --all that the gloomy Northern imagination couldsuperadd to the repulsive and frightful features of arctic scenery:volcanoes spouting fire through craters rimmed with perpetual frost, boiling caldrons flinging their fierce jets high into the air, and hugejokuls, or ice-mountains, loosened and upheaved by volcanic agencies, crawling slowly seaward, like misshapen monsters endowed with life, --aregion of misery unutterable, to be avoided only by diligence in robberyand courage in murder. What a work had Christianity to perform upon such a people as theIcelanders, for instance, of the tenth century!--to substitute in rude, savage minds the idea of its benign and gentle Founder for that of theThor and Woden of Norse mythology; the forgiveness, charity, and humilityof the Gospel for the revenge, hatred, and pride inculcated by the Eddas. And is it not one of the strongest proofs of the divine life and power ofthat Gospel, that, under its influence, the hard and cruel Norse hearthas been so softened and humanized that at this moment one of the bestillustrations of the peaceful and gentle virtues which it inculcates isafforded by the descendants of the sea-kings and robbers of the middlecenturies? No one can read the accounts which such travellers as SirGeorge Mackenzie and Dr. Henderson have given us of the peacefuldisposition, social equality, hospitality, industry, intellectualcultivation, morality, and habitual piety of the Icelanders, without agrateful sense of the adaptation of Christianity to the wants of ourrace, and of its ability to purify, elevate, and transform the worstelements of human character. In Iceland Christianity has performed itswork of civilization, unobstructed by that commercial cupidity which hascaused nations more favored in respect to soil and climate to lapse intoan idolatry scarcely less debasing and cruel than that which preceded theintroduction of the Gospel. Trial by combat was abolished in 1001, andthe penalty of the imaginary crime of witchcraft was blotted from thestatutes of the island nearly half a century before it ceased to disgracethose of Great Britain. So entire has been the change wrought in thesanguinary and cruel Norse character that at the present day no Icelandercan be found who, for any reward, will undertake the office ofexecutioner. The scalds, who went forth to battle, cleaving the skullsof their enemies with the same skilful hands which struck the harp at thefeast, have given place to Christian bards and teachers, who, likeThorlakson, whom Dr. Henderson found toiling cheerfully with his belovedparishioners in the hay-harvest of the brief arctic summer, combine withthe vigorous diction and robust thought of their predecessors the warmand genial humanity of a religion of love and the graces and amenities ofa high civilization. But we have wandered somewhat aside from our purpose, which was simply tointroduce the following poem, which, in the boldness of its tone andvigor of language, reminds us of the Sword Chant, the Wooing Song, andother rhymed sagas of Motherwell. THE NORSEMAN'S RIDE. BY BAYARD TAYLOR. The frosty fires of northern starlight Gleamed on the glittering snow, And through the forest's frozen branches The shrieking winds did blow; A floor of blue and icy marble Kept Ocean's pulses still, When, in the depths of dreary midnight, Opened the burial hill. Then, while the low and creeping shudder Thrilled upward through the ground, The Norseman came, as armed for battle, In silence from his mound, -- He who was mourned in solemn sorrow By many a swordsman bold, And harps that wailed along the ocean, Struck by the scalds of old. Sudden a swift and silver shadow Came up from out the gloom, -- A charger that, with hoof impatient, Stamped noiseless by the tomb. "Ha! Surtur, !* let me hear thy tramping, My fiery Northern steed, That, sounding through the stormy forest, Bade the bold Viking heed!" He mounted; like a northlight streaking The sky with flaming bars, They, on the winds so wildly shrieking, Shot up before the stars. "Is this thy mane, my fearless Surtur, That streams against my breast? [*The name of the Scandinavian god of fire. ] Is this thy neck, that curve of moonlight Which Helva's hand caressed? "No misty breathing strains thy nostril; Thine eye shines blue and cold; Yet mounting up our airy pathway I see thy hoofs of gold. Not lighter o'er the springing rainbow Walhalla's gods repair Than we in sweeping journey over The bending bridge of air. "Far, far around star-gleams are sparkling Amid the twilight space; And Earth, that lay so cold and darkling, Has veiled her dusky face. Are those the Normes that beckon onward As if to Odin's board, Where by the hands of warriors nightly The sparkling mead is poured? "'T is Skuld:* I her star-eye speaks the glory That wraps the mighty soul, When on its hinge of music opens The gateway of the pole; When Odin's warder leads the hero To banquets never o'er, And Freya's** glances fill the bosom With sweetness evermore. "On! on! the northern lights are streaming In brightness like the morn, And pealing far amid the vastness I hear the gyallarhorn *** The heart of starry space is throbbing With songs of minstrels old; And now on high Walhalla's portal Gleam Surtur's hoofs of gold. " * The Norne of the future. ** Freya, the Northern goddess of love. *** The horn blown by the watchers on the rainbow, the bridge over whichthe gods pass in Northern mythology.