Читать книгу: «The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 11, No. 63, January, 1863», страница 17
In a recent battle fell a Secession colonel, the last remaining son of his mother, and she a widow. That mother had sold eleven children of an old slave-mother, her servant. That servant went to her and said,—"Missis, we even now. You sold all my children. God took all yourn. Not one to bury either of us. Now, I forgive you."
In another battle fell the only son of another widow. Young, beautiful, heroic, brought up by his mother in the sacred doctrines of human liberty, he gave his life an offering as to a holy cause. He died. No slave-woman came to tell his mother of God's justice, for many slaves have reason to call her blessed.
Now we ask you, Would you change places with that Southern mother? Would you not think it a great misfortune for a son or daughter to be brought into such a system?—a worse one to become so perverted as to defend it? Remember, then, that wishing success to this slavery-establishing effort is only wishing to the sons and daughters of the South all the curses that God has written against oppression. Mark our words! If we succeed, the children of these very men who are now fighting us will rise up to call us blessed. Just as surely as there is a God who governs in the world, so surely all the laws of national prosperity follow in the train of equity; and if we succeed, we shall have delivered the children's children of our misguided brethren from the wages of sin, which is always and everywhere death.
And now, Sisters of England, think it not strange, if we bring back the words of your letter, not in bitterness, but in deepest sadness, and lay them down at your door. We say to you,—Sisters, you have spoken well; we have heard you; we have heeded; we have striven in the cause, even unto death. We have sealed our devotion by desolate hearth and darkened homestead,—by the blood of sons, husbands, and brothers. In many of our dwellings the very light of our lives has gone out; and yet we accept the life-long darkness as our own part in this great and awful expiation, by which the bonds of wickedness shall be loosed, and abiding peace established on the foundation of righteousness. Sisters, what have you done, and what do you mean to do?
In view of the decline of the noble anti-slavery fire in England, in view of all the facts and admissions recited from your own papers, we beg leave in solemn sadness to return to you your own words:—
"A common origin, a common faith, and, we sincerely believe, a common cause, urge us, at the present moment, to address you on the subject" of that fearful encouragement and support which is being afforded by England to a slave-holding Confederacy.
"We will not dwell on the ordinary topics,—on the progress of civilization, on the advance of freedom everywhere, on the rights and requirements of the nineteenth century; but we appeal to you very seriously to reflect and to ask counsel of God how far such a state of things is in accordance with His Holy Word, the inalienable rights of immortal souls, and the pure and merciful spirit of the Christian religion.
"We appeal to you, as sisters, as wives, and as mothers, to raise your voices to your fellow-citizens, and your prayers to God for the removal of this affliction and disgrace from the Christian world."
In behalf of many thousands of American women,
HARRIET BEECHER STOWE.
WASHINGTON, November 27, 1862.
THE SOLDIERS' RALLY
Oh, rally round the banner, boys, now Freedom's chosen sign!
See where amid the clouds of war its new-born glories shine!
The despot's doom, the slave's dear hope, we bear it on the foe!
God's voice rings down the brightening path! Say, brothers, will ye go?
"My father fought at Donelson; he hailed at dawn of day
That flag full-blown upon the walls, and proudly passed away."
"My brother fell on Newbern's shore; he bared his radiant head,
And shouted, 'Oh! the day is won!' leaped forward, and was dead."
"My chosen friend of all the world hears not the bugle-call;
A bullet pierced his loyal heart by Richmond's fatal wall."
But seize the hallowed swords they dropped, with blood yet moist and red!
Fill up the thinned, immortal ranks, and follow where they led!
For right is might, and truth is God, and He upholds our cause,
The grand old cause our fathers loved,—Freedom and Equal Laws!
"My mother's hair is thin and white; she looked me in the face,
She clasped me to her heart, and said, 'Go, take thy brother's place!'"
"My sister kissed her sweet farewell; her maiden cheeks were wet;
Around my neck her arms she threw; I feel the pressure yet."
"My wife sits by the cradle's side and keeps our little home,
Or asks the baby on her knee, 'When will thy father come?'"
Oh, woman's faith and man's stout arm shall right the ancient wrong!
So farewell, mother, sister, wife! God keep you brave and strong!
The whizzing shell may burst in fire, the shrieking bullet fly,
The heavens and earth may mingle grief, the gallant soldier die;
But while a haughty Rebel stands, no peace! for peace is war.
The land that is not worth our death is not worth living for! Then rally round the banner, boys! Its triumph draweth nigh!
See where above the clouds of war its seamless glories fly!
Peace, hovering o'er the bristling van, waves palm and laurel fair,
And Victory binds the rescued stars in Freedom's golden hair!
* * * * *
OVERTURES FROM RICHMOND
A NEW LILLIBURLERO
"Well, Uncle Sam," says Jefferson D.,
Lilliburlero, old Uncle Sam,
"You'll have to join my Confed'racy,"
Lilliburlero, old Uncle Sam.
"Lero, lero, that don't appear O, that don't appear," says old Uncle Sam,
"Lero, lero, filibustero, that don't appear," says old Uncle Sam.
"So, Uncle Sam, just lay down your arms,"
Lilliburlero, etc.,
"Then you shall hear my reas'nable terms,"
Lilliburlero, etc.
"Lero, lero, I'd like to hear O, I'd like to hear," says old Uncle Sam,
"Lero, lero, filibustero, I'd like to hear," says old Uncle Sam.
"First, you must own I've beat you in fight,"
Lilliburlero, etc.,
"Then, that I always have been in the right,"
Lilliburlero, etc.
"Lero, lero, rather severe O, rather severe," says old Uncle Sam,
"Lero, lero, filibustero, rather severe," says old Uncle Sam.
"Then, you must pay my national debts,"
Lilliburlero, etc.,
"No questions asked about my assets,"
Lilliburlero, etc.
"Lero, lero, that's very dear O, that's very dear," says old Uncle Sam,
"Lero, lero, filibustero, that's very dear," says old Uncle Sam.
"Also, some few I.O.U.s and bets,"
Lilliburlero, etc.,
"Mine, and Bob Toombs', and Slidell's, and Rhett's,"
Lilliburlero, etc.
"Lero, lero, that leaves me zero, that leaves me zero," says Uncle Sam,
"Lero, lero, filibustero, that leaves me zero," says Uncle Sam.
"And, by the way, one little thing more,"
Lilliburlero, etc.,
"You're to refund the costs of the war,"
Lilliburlero, etc.
"Lero, lero, just what I fear O, just what I fear," says old Uncle Sam,
"Lero, lero, filibustero, just what I fear," says old Uncle Sam.
"Next, you must own our Cavalier blood!"
Lilliburlero, etc.,
"And that your Puritans sprang from the mud!"
Lilliburlero, etc.
"Lero, lero, that mud is clear O, that mud is clear," says old Uncle Sam,
"Lero, lero, filibustero, that mud is clear," says old Uncle Sam.
"Slavery's, of course, the chief corner-stone,"
Lilliburlero, etc.,
"Of our NEW CIV-IL-I-ZA-TI-ON!"
Lilliburlero, etc.
"Lero, lero, that's quite sincere O, that's quite sincere," says old
Uncle Sam,
"Lero, lero, filibustero, that's quite sincere," says old Uncle Sam.
"You'll understand, my recreant tool,"
Lilliburlero, etc.,
"You're to submit, and we are to rule,"
Lilliburlero, etc.
"Lero, lore, aren't you a hero! aren't you a hero!" says Uncle Sam,
"Lero, lero, filibustero, aren't you a hero!" says Uncle Sam.
"If to these terms you fully consent,"
Lilliburlero, etc.,
"I'll be Perpetual King-President,"
Lilliburlero, etc.
"Lero, lero, take your sombrero, off to your swamps!" says old Uncle Sam,
"Lero, lero, filibustero, cut, double-quick!" says old Uncle Sam.
* * * * *
REVIEWS AND LITERARY NOTICES
Titan: A Romance. From the German of Jean Paul Friedrich Richter. Translated by CHARLES T. BROOKS. In Two Volumes. Boston: Ticknor and Fields.
Jean Paul first became one of the notabilities of German literature after he had published "Hesperus," a novel which contains the originals of the characters that reappear under different names in "Titan." His previous popularity did not penetrate far within the circle of scholars and thinkers, and never knocked at the charmed threshold of the Weimar set, whose taste was controlled by Goethe and Schiller. But "Hesperus" made a great noise, and these warders of the German Valhalla were obliged to open the door just a crack, in order to reconnoitre the pretentious arrival. Goethe first called the attention of Schiller to the book, sending him a copy while he was at Jena, in 1795. Schiller recognized at once its power and geniality, but was disposed to regard it as a literary oddity, whose grotesque build and want of finish rather depreciated the rich cargo,—at least, did not bring it handsomely into port. The first book of "Wilhelm Meister" had appeared the year before, and that was more acceptable to Schiller, who had cooled off after writing his "Robbers," and was looking out for the true theory of poetry and art. He and Goethe concluded that "Hesperus" was worth liking, though it was a great pity the author had not better taste; he ought to come up and live with them, in an aesthetic atmosphere, where he could find and admire his superiors, and have his great crude gems ground down to brilliant facets. Schiller said it was the book of a lonely and isolated man. It was, indeed.
But it was a book which represented, far more profoundly and healthily than Schiller's "Robbers," that revolt of men of genius against every species of finical prescription, in literature and society, which ushered in the new age of Germany. And it expresses with uncalculating sincerity all the natural emotions which a century of pedantry and Gallic affectation had been crowding out of books and men. It was a charge at the point of the pen upon the dapper flunkeys who were keeping the door of the German future; the brawny breast, breathing deep with the struggle, and pouring out great volumes of feeling, burst through the restraints of the time. He cleared a place, and called all men to stand close to his beating heart, and almost furiously pressed them there, that they might feel what a thing friendship was and the ideal life of the soul. And as he held them, his face grew broad and deep with humor; men looked into it and saw themselves, all the real good and the absurdly conventional which they had, and there was a great jubilation at the genial sight. And it was as if a lot of porters followed him, overloaded with quaint and curious knowledge gathered from books of travel, of medicine, of history, metaphysics, and biography, which they dumped without much concert, but just as it happened, in the very middle of a fine emotion, and all through his jovial speech. What an irruption it was!—as if by a tilt of the planet the climate had changed suddenly, and palm-trees, oranges, the sugarcane, the grotesque dragon-tree, and all the woods of rich and curious grain, stood in the temperate and meagre soil.
Schiller met Jean Paul in the spring of 1796. In writing to Goethe about their interviews, he says,—"I have told you nothing yet about Hesperus. I found him on the whole such as I expected, just as odd as if he had fallen from the moon, full of good-will, and very eager to see things that are outside of him, but he lacks the organ by which one sees"; and in a letter of a later date he doubts whether Richter will ever sympathize with their way of handling the great subjects of Man and Nature.
The reader can find the first interviews which Richter had with Goethe and Schiller in Lewes's "Life of Goethe," Vol. II. p. 269. Of Goethe, Richter said, "By heaven! we shall love each other!" and of Schiller, "He is full of acumen, but without love." The German public, which loves Richter, has reversed his first impression. And indeed Richter himself, though he could not get along with Schiller, learned that Goethe's loving capacity, which he thought he saw break out with fire while Goethe read a poem to him, was only the passion of an artistic nature which impregnates its own products.
Richter's love was very different. It was a sympathy with men and women of all conditions, fed secretly the while that his shaggy genius was struggling with poverty and apparently unfavorable circumstances. He was always a child, yearning to feel the arms of some affection around him, very susceptible to the moods of other people, yet testing them by a humorous sincerity. All the books which he devoured in his desultory rage for knowledge turned into nourishment for an imagination that was destined chiefly to interpret a very lofty moral sense and a very democratic feeling. And whenever his humor caught an edge in the easterly moments of his mind, it was never sharpened against humanity, and made nothing tender bleed. Now and then we know he has a caustic thing or two to say about women; but it is lunar-caustic for a wart.
Goethe did not like this indiscriminate and democratic temper. The sly remarks of Richter upon the Transparencies and Well-born and Excellencies of his time, with their faded taste and dreary mandarin-life varied by loose morals and contempt for the invisible, could not have suited the man whose best friend was a real Duke, as it happened, one of Nature's noblemen, one whose wife, the Duchess Sophia, afterwards held Bonaparte so tranquilly at bay upon her palace-steps. Goethe had, too, a bureaucratic vein in him; he spoke well of dignities, and carefully stepped through the cumbrous minuet of court-life without impinging upon a single Serene or Well-born bunyon. Mirabeau himself would have elbowed his way through furbelows and court-rapiers more forbearingly than Richter. It was not possible to make this genius plastic, in the aesthetic sense which legislated at Weimar. Besides, Goethe could not look at Nature as Richter did. To such a grand observer Richter must have appeared like a sunset-smitten girl.
An American ought to value Richter's books for the causes which made them repulsive to all social and literary cliques. The exquisite art, and the wise, clear mind of Goethe need not come into contrast, to disable us from giving Richter the reception which alone he would value or command. Nor is it necessary to deny that the frequent intercalations and suspensions of his narrative, racy and suggestive as they are, and overflowing with feeling, will fret a modern reader who is always "on time," like an express-man, and is quite as regardless of what may be expressed.
"Titan" is not a novel in the way that Charles Reade's, or Eugene Sue's, or Victor Hugo's books are novels. The nearest English model, in the matter of style and quaint presuming on the reader's patience, is Sterne. But if one wishes to see how Richter is not sentimental, in spite of his incessant and un-American emotion, let him read Sterne, and hasten then to be embraced by Richter's unsophisticated feeling, which is none the less refreshing because it is so exuberant and has such a habit of pursuing all his characters. And where else, in any language, is Nature so worshipped, and so rapturously chased with glowing words, as some young Daphne by some fiery boy?
Neither are there any characters in this novel, in the sense of marked idiosyncrasies, or of the subtile development of an individual. Sometimes Richter's men and women are only the lay-figures upon which he piles and adjusts his gorgeous cloth-of-gold and figured damask. But Siebenkäs and his wife, in "Flower-, Fruit-, and Thorn-Pieces," are characters, quite as much as any of Balzac's nice genre men and women, and on a higher plane. Richter uses his persons of both sexes principally to express the conditions of his feeling; they are cockles, alternately dry and sparkling, underneath his mighty ebb and flow.
On one point we doubt if the American mind will understand Richter. He believed in a love that one man might have for another man, which as little corresponds to the average idea of friendship as the anti-slavery sentiment of the "People's party" corresponds to Mr. Garrison's. In this respect Richter creates an ideal and interfuses it with all his natural ardor, which a German can understand better than the men of any other nation, for in him is the tendency that Richter seeks to set forth by his passionate imagination. Orestes and Pylades, David and Jonathan, and the other famous loves of men, are suspected by the calculating breeds of people. Brother Jonathan seldom finds his David, and he doubtless thinks the Canon ought to have transferred that Scriptural friendship into the Apocrypha. We shall sniff at the highly colored intercourse of Richter's men, for it is often more than we can do to really love a woman. We shall pronounce the relation affected, and the expression of it turgid, even nauseous. But there is a genuine noble pulse in the German heart, which beats to the rhythm of two men's heroic attachment, and can expand till all the blood that flows through Richter's style is welcomed and propelled by it. Still, we think that the unexpressed friendship may also stand justified before the ideal.
The reader must be content to meet this stout and fervent man as he is, not expecting that his genius will consult our tastes or prejudices, or that his head will stoop at all for the sake of our company. Then beneath his dense paragraphs and through his rambling pages his humility will greet us, and fraternal regards draw us irresistibly to him. He is a man for a people's reading, notwithstanding all the involutions of style and thought which might suggest a different judgment. He certainly does not write like Cobbett or Franklin, nor has he the thin, clear polish of the popular historian. Yet his shrewdness and tenderness will touch all simple-minded men; and twenty Cobbetts, or people's writers, sharply rubbed together, could never light the flame of his imperial imagination, for it is a kind of sunshine, sometimes hot enough, but broad, impartial, and quickening, wherever there is something that waits to grow.
And scarcely one man in a century appears so highly gifted with that wonderful quality for which we have no better name than Humor. His humor is the conciliation that takes place between love and knowledge. The two tendencies create the bold and graceful orbit on which his well-balanced books revolve. With one alone, his impetuosity would hasten to quench itself in the molten centre; and with the other alone, he would fly cynically beyond the reach of heat. This reconciling humor sometimes shakes his book with Olympic laughter; as if the postprandial nectar circulated in pools of cups, into which all incompatibilities fall and are drowned. You drink this recasting of the planet's joys and sorrows, contempt and contradictions, while it is yet fluent and bubbling to the lip. There are all the selfish men, and petulant, intriguing women in it, all their weaknesses, and the ill-humor of their times. But the draught lights up the brain with an anticipation of some future solution of these discords, or perhaps we may say, intoxicates us with the serene tolerance which the Creative Mind must have for all His little ones. Is not humor a finite mood of that Impartiality whose sun rises upon the evil and the good, whose smile becomes the laughter of these denser skies?
It is plain from what we have said that the task of translating this novel must be full of difficulties. There are strange words, allusions drawn from foreign books that are now a hundred years old or more and never seen in libraries; the figurative style makes half the sentences in a page seem strange at first, they invite consideration, and do not feebly surrender to a smooth consecutive English. Just as you think you are at the bottom of a paragraph and are on the point of stepping on the floor, he stops you with another stair, or lets you through: in other words, you are never safe from a whimsical allusion or a twist in the thought. The narrative extends no thread which you may take in one hand as you poke along: it frequently disappears altogether, and it seems as if you had another book with its vocabulary and style.
It is not too high praise to say that Mr. Brooks has overcome all these difficulties without the sacrifice of a single characteristic of Richter's genius. We have the sense and passion unmutilated. The translation is accurate, and also bold. By the comparison of a few test-passages with the original, Mr. Brooks's adroit and patient labor appears clearly. We desire to pay him the meed of our respect and gratitude. Few readers of "Titan" will appreciate the toil which has secured them this new sensation of becoming intimate with "Jean Paul the Only." It is new, because, notwithstanding several books of Jean Paul have been already translated, "Titan" is the most vigorous and exhaustive book he wrote. He poured his whole fiery and romantic soul into it. It may be said that all the fine and humane elements of the revolutionary period in which he lived appear in this book,—the religious feeling, the horror of sensuality, the hatred of every kind of cant, the struggle for definite knowledge out of a confusing whirl of man's generous sentiments all broken loose, the tendency to worship duty and justice, and the Titanic extravagance of a "lustihood," both of youth and emotion, which threatens, in Alexander's temper, to appropriate the world. All this is admirably expressed in the Promethean title of the book. We do not think that it can be profitably read, or with an intelligent respect for its great author, unless we recall the period, the state of politics, religion, domestic life, the new German age of thought which was rising, with ferment, amid uncouth gambolling shapes of jovial horn-blowing fellows, from the waves. He is the divinity who owns a whole herd of them. As we sit to read, let the same light fall on the page in which it was composed, and there will appear upon it the genius which is confined to no age or clime, and addresses every heart.
The Works of Rufus Choate, with a Memoir of his Life. By SAMUEL GILMAN BROWN, Professor in Dartmouth College. In Two Volumes. Boston: Little, Brown, & Co.
In estimating the claims of any biographical work we must bear in mind the difficulties of the subject, the advantages which the writer enjoys, and the disadvantages under which he labors. The life, genius, and character of Mr. Choate present a stimulating, but not an easy task to him who essays to delineate them. We have read of a man who had taught his dog to bite out of a piece of bread a profile likeness of Voltaire; it was not more difficult to draw a caricature of Mr. Choate, but to paint him as he was requires a nice pencil and a discriminating touch. The salient traits were easily recognized by all. The general public saw in him a man who flung himself into his cases with the fervor and passion of a mountain-torrent, whose eloquence was exuberant and sometimes extravagant, who said quaint and brilliant things with a very grave countenance, and whose handwriting was picturesquely illegible. We verily believe that Mr. Choate's peculiar handwriting was as well known to his townsmen and neighbors, was as frequent a topic of observation and comment, as any of the traits of his mind and character. We need hardly add that this popular image which was called Mr. Choate resembled the real man about as much as a sign-post daub of General Washington resembles the head by Stuart. The skill of the true artist is shown in catching and transferring to the canvas the delicate distinctions which make a difference between faces which have a general similarity. No man had more need of this fine discrimination in order to have justice done him than Mr. Choate; for there was no man who would have been more imperfectly known, had he been known only by those prominent and obvious characteristics which all the world could see. He was a great and successful lawyer, but his original taste was for literature rather than law. Few men were more before the public than he, and yet he loved privacy more than publicity. He had acquaintances numberless, and facile and gracious manners, but his heart was open to very few. His eloquence was luxuriant and efflorescent, but he was also a close and compact reasoner. He had a vein of playful exaggeration in his common speech, but his temperament was earnest, impassioned, almost melancholy. The more nearly one knew Mr. Choate, the more cause had he to correct superficial impressions.
Professor Brown has many qualifications for the task which was devolved upon him. He knew, loved, and admired Mr. Choate. A graduate and professor of Dartmouth College, the son of a former president, he caught a larger portion of the light thrown, back upon the college by the genius and fame of her brilliant son. A good scholar himself, he is competent to appreciate the ripe scholarship of Mr. Choate, and his love of letters. His style is clear, simple, and manly. He has, too, the moral qualities needed in a man who undertakes to write the biography of an eminent man recently deceased, who has left children, relatives, friends, acquaintances, and rivals,—the tact, the instinct, the judgment which teaches what to say and what to leave unsaid, and refuses to admit the public into those inner chambers of the mind and heart where the public has no right to go. But he has one disqualification: he is not a lawyer, and no one but a lawyer can take the full gauge and dimensions of what Mr. Choate was and did. For Mr. Choate, various as were his intellectual tastes, wide as was the range of his intellectual curiosity, made all things else secondary and subservient to legal studies and professional aspirations. To the law he gave his mind and life, and all that he did outside of the law was done in those breathing-spaces and intermissions of professional labor in which most lawyers in large practice are content to do nothing.
But Professor Brown's biography is satisfactory in all respects, even in the delineations of the professional character of Mr. Choate, where, if anywhere, we should have looked for imperfect comprehension. The members of the bar may rest assured that justice has been done to the legal claims and merits of one of whom they were so justly proud; and the public may be assured that the traits of Mr. Choate's character, the qualities of his mind,—his great and conspicuous powers, as well as his lighter graces and finer gifts,—have been set down with taste, feeling, judgment, and discrimination. This seems but measured language, and yet we mean it for generous praise; bearing always in mind the difficulties of the subject, and, as Professor Brown has happily said in his preface, that "the traits of Mr. Choate's character were so peculiar, its lights and shades so delicate, various, and evanescent." We confess that we sat down to read the biography not without a little uneasiness, not without a flutter of apprehension. But all feeling of this kind was soon dissipated as we went on, and there came in its place a grateful sense of the grace, skill, and taste which Professor Brown had shown in his delineation, and the faithful portrait he had produced. And one secret of this success is to be found in the fact that he had no other object or purpose than to do justice to his subject. He is entirely free from self-reference. There is not in the remotest corner of his mind a wish to magnify his office and draw attention from the theme of the biography to the biographer himself. He permits himself no digressions, he obtrudes no needless reflections, enters into no profitless discussions: he is content to unfold the panorama of Mr. Choate's life, and do little more than point out the scenes and passages as they pass before the spectator's eye.
It was not an eventful life; it was, indeed, the reverse. It was a life passed in the constant and assiduous practice of the law. We do not forget his brief term of service in the House of Representatives, and his longer period in the Senate; but these were but episodes. They were trusts reluctantly assumed and gladly laid aside; for he was one of those exceptional Americans who have no love of political distinction or public office. A lawyer's life leaves little to be recorded; the triumphs of the bar are proverbially ephemeral, and lawyers themselves are willing to forget the cases they have tried and the verdicts they have won. Had Mr. Choate been merely and exclusively a lawyer, the story of his life could have been told in half a dozen pages; but though he was a great lawyer and advocate, he was something more: he was an orator, a scholar, and a patriot. He had no taste for public life, as we have just said; but he had the deepest interest in public subjects, loved his country with a fervid love, had read much and thought much upon questions of politics and government Busy as he always was in his profession, his mind, discursive, sleepless, always thirsting for knowledge, was never content to walk along the beaten highway of the law, but was ever wandering into the flowery fields of poetry and philosophy on the right hand and the left. These volumes show how untiring was his industry, how various were his attainments, how accurate was his knowledge, how healthy and catholic were his intellectual tastes. The only thing for which he had no taste was repose; the only thing which he could not do was to rest. When we see what his manner of life was, how for so many years the nightly vigil succeeded the daily toil, how the bow was always strung, how much he studied and wrote outside of his profession, even while bearing the burden and anxiety of an immense practice, we can only wonder that he lived so long.
