Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 32, June, 1860

V >> Various >> Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 32, June, 1860

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The principal fault which will be found with "The Mill on the Floss," and
probably the only one, is, that the action moves too slowly and tamely in
the first three or four books, and that the author shows an undue
inclination to reflection and metaphysical digression. This will, indeed,
be a great objection to the superficial reader, who will impatiently regret
that the tedious growth of a miller's boy and girl should usurp so many
pages which might better have been filled with exciting incidents. But this
very elaboration, tardy and idle though it may seem, was necessary to the
completion of the author's plan, and--in our eyes--instead of being a
blemish upon a fair story, is one of its principal charms. On this very
account, however, the book will be less popular, and fewer persons will
admire it wholly; but, as thoughtful readers draw near to the end of the
narrative, and anxiously hasten on past trial, temptation, and conflict, to
the dreaded and yet inevitable downfall, muse mournfully over the agony and
remorse that follow, and slowly close the volume upon tender forgiveness
and final joy, they will be thankful for the far-seeing genius which, by
this gradual process of education, enabled them to understand clearly the
fateful scroll at last unfolded to them, and which, if they have read in
the true spirit, has made them wiser and better.

_Nugamenta; a Book of Verses_, By GEORGE EDWARD RICE. Boston: J. E. Tilton
& Co. 1860. pp. 146.

The author of this little volume modestly waives all claim to the title of
poet, and thus disarms severer criticism. His book, nevertheless, has the
merit of being lively and agreeable, which is more than can be said of many
more pretentious volumes of verse. His pieces are mostly of the kind called
verses of society, a variety whose range is all the way up from Concanen to
Horace. It is enough, if they are only passable; but good specimens are
easy and sprightly,--their philosophy not worldly precisely, but
man-of-the-worldly,--their morality an elegant Poor-Richardism,--their
poetry whatever may be reached by the fancy and understanding. Sometimes,
if the author have been lucky enough, like Beranger, to have enjoyed low
company, his verses will gather a richer tone, his wit will broaden into
humor, his sentiment deepen to hearty good-nature, and his worldliness
ripen into a genuine humanity.

To embody primeval sentiments, to deal with transcendent passions, and to
idealize those fatal moods by which not individuals merely, but races, are
possessed, those tidal ebbs and flows which, for want of a better name, we
call the Spirit of the Age,--this is a gift whose return among us we do not
look for with as much certainty as that of shad and salmon, but meanwhile
we are not too nice to be pleased with verses that express average thoughts
and feelings gracefully and with a dash of sentiment. It is a vast deal
wiser and better to express neatly, in language that is not alien to the
concerns of every day, feelings we have really had, than to maunder about
what we think we ought to have felt in a diction that has no more to do
with our ordinary habits of thought and expression than Monmouth with
Macedon. The contrast of matter and manner in much of our current verse is
such as to remind one of the notes which are sometimes sent to their
sweethearts by schoolboys, who cut their fingers (not too deep) that they
may asseverate the eternal constancy of the three-weeks'-vacation in that
solemn fluid proper to contracts with the Evil One.

It is pleasant to meet with one who is able to say a natural thing in a
natural way, as Mr. Rice has shown that he can do. There is a very
agreeable mingling of feeling and fun in his lighter pieces, rising into
real grace and lyric fancy in some of them, such as "New Year's Eve" and
"The Revisit."

_A Voyage down the Amoor; with a Land Journey through Siberia, and
Incidental Notices of Manchooria, Kamschatka, and Japan._ By PERRY
McDONOUGH COLLINS, United States Commercial Agent at the Amoor River, New
York: D. Appleton & Co. 1860. pp. 390.

This is a very amusing book. The introductory part of it, in which the
author recounts his adventures in Siberia before setting out on his
expedition down the Amoor, is full of bad taste, bad rhetoric, and bad
grammar. If we had read no farther, we should have thought that a more
unfit personage than this gentleman with the monumental name could not have
been chosen for any public service.

Mr. Perry McDonough Collins gives us the bill of fare of gentlemen's tables
at which he dined, tells us how much and what kinds of wine were "drank,"
and sometimes winds up his account of the feast with a compliment to the
"amiable and interesting" family of his host. Mr. Egouminoff's dinner, he
tells us, "was excellent, with several kinds of wine, closing with
Champagne. We had _also_ the pleasure of the company of Mrs. E. and her
daughter, and several other guests, besides a handsome widow." There is
something charmingly _naif_ in thus throwing in the company as a
_succedaneum_ to the dinner, and carefully segregating the widow from the
rest of mankind as a distinct species.

Mr. Collins also reports for us carefully the orations he made on various
festive occasions,--a piece of very proper economy, since they were
delivered in English to an audience of Russians. He confesses that it is
not the custom to make after-dinner-speeches in Siberia, which proves that
the Russian Government has neglected at least one opportunity of adding to
the terrors of a Penal Colony. At one dinner he had the satisfaction of
making three of these terrible mistakes. He responds to the health of
General Mouravieff, Governor of the Province, to that of President
Buchanan, and to that of "our guests." We should like to have been present
at this display, provided we could have been speech-proofed, like the
Russians in their ignorance of English. It was certainly a proud day for
America, and the bird of our country will be glad that the eloquence has
been carefully saved by Mr, Collins for the good of his compatriots.

After this multiloquent festival, the Siberian merchants, naturally
exasperated, seized upon Mr. Collins, and an unhappy countryman of his who
was present, and tossed them after the fashion of Sancho Panza. "This
sport," adds our traveller, gravely, "is called in Russian _podkeedovate_,
or tossing-up, and is considered a mark of great respect. General
Mouravieff told me, after our return, that he had had _podkeedovate_
performed upon him in the same room." The General must be something of a
humorist.

Mr. Collins, however, has a more astounding incident to relate than even
the respectful tossing-up of a general in the army and governor of Siberia
by a party of provincial shopkeepers. In returning from an excursion,
Mr. Collins had the ill-luck to lose a horse.

"The death of that horse," he says, "was
a singular circumstance. We were galloping
rapidiy and were approaching the station,
when the animal dropped as if struck by
lightning. We were in such rapid motion
upon the smooth ice of the river, that, though
several yards from the stopping-point, the
other horses kept on, dragging the dead horse,
nor did the driver attempt to stop them, but
seemed determined to reach the station at
full speed. As soon as we had stopped, I got
out and examined the body. It was as stiff
as a poker and stirred not a muscle, the
eyes being cold and glassy. _The fact is, the
horse must have been dead before he fell, and
his muscular action was kept up some time after
life had departed._" (p. 89.)

We do not remember to have met with a more wonderful example of the force
of habit.

After Mr. Collins is fairly embarked, however, on his voyage of
exploration, his book becomes more interesting. He shows himself a
thoroughly good-humored, observant, and intelligent traveller. If, in the
earlier pages of his journal, he is indiscreetly communicative as to the
good cheer he enjoyed, in the later ones he does not waste time in
grumbling at discomforts and lenten fare. He observes minutely and
describes well all that he sees along the great river,--the people, the
productions, the scenery, and the vegetation. He gives us a lively
impression of the capabilities of the country, and of the results which are
to follow the introduction of steam-navigation on the Amoor. Like a true
American, he believes in the manifest destiny of Russia, and looks forward
to the not distant time when, with a kind of retributive justice, the
Muscovite is to swallow up the Manchew, as Charles Lamb used to call
him. Already American merchants have established themselves at the mouth of
the Amoor, and, unless Mr. Collins is oversanguine, a great trade is to
spring up between the Californians and their opposite neighbors on the
eastern coast of Asia.

On the whole, we take leave of Mr. Collins with a feeling of decided esteem
for his genuine good qualities, and can safely commend his book as both
lively and instructive.

_Revolutions in English History_. By ROBERT VAUGHAN,
D.D. Vol. I. _Revolutions of Race_. New York: D. Appleton & Co.
1860. pp. xvi., 663.

We do not think that Dr. Vaughan has been happy in his choice of a title
for his book. It is more properly an introduction to the study of English
history, than the limitation of the title would seem to import. The Saxon
occupation of England is, perhaps, the only event which may fitly be called
a revolution of race. The volume, however, is a solid and sensible one. Dr.
Vaughan is not a brilliant writer; but brilliancy is not always the best
quality in an historian, for it as often leaves readers dazzled as
taught. A decidedly matter-of-fact turn of mind prevents his being a
theorist, so that he does not formulate characters and events in accordance
with some fixed preconception. His learning seems sometimes limited by what
was accessible to him at the least expense of study,--as, for example, in
his account of the religion of the Teutonic races, where he depends almost
altogether on Mallet. His style is generally clear and unpretending, never
remarkable for any rhetorical merit, sometimes disfigured by inaccuracies,
which, had they occurred in an American book, would have been attributed by
English critics to the low grade of our culture and civilization. In one
instance he is guilty of the barbarous cockneyism of using the word _party_
as an equivalent for _person_. He speaks of the Roman Wall as having been
kept _perpetually_ guarded when he means _constantly_, of border land as
"separating between" two races, and of ornaments made "from jet."

Though we do not find in Dr. Vaughan the fascinating qualities which we
have been spoiled into expecting by some recent English and French examples
of historical composition, we can give him the praise of being fair-minded,
sensible, and clear. If he anywhere shows prejudice, it is in his somewhat
depreciatory estimate of the Normans, whom he rather gratuitously supposes
to have acquired civilization and the love of art from the Saxons,--a
supposition at war with probability as well as fact. If anything
distinguished the Norman from the Saxon, it was his aptitude for
appreciating beauty as distinguished from use,--an aptitude on which French
influence could not have been lost before the Conquest of England. The
Normans in Sicily certainly had not had the advantage of Saxon training in
aesthetics, and the poetry and architecture of the Normans in England were
no reproduction of Saxon models.

But whatever deductions are to be made on the score of want of
picturesqueness in style, of generalizing power, and of that imagination
which sets before us dramatically the mutual interaction of men and events,
Dr. Vaughan's history will be found a useful and enlightened compendium of
the facts with which it deals.

_Fresh Hearts that failed Three Thousand Years Ago; with Other Things_. By
the Author of "The New Priest in Conception Bay." Boston: Ticknor & Fields.
1860. pp. 121.

In noticing the "New Priest," in a former number of the "ATLANTIC," we had
occasion to speak of the author's remarkable beauty and vigor of style, his
keen sense of the picturesque and imaginative aspects of outward Nature,
his comic power, and his original conception of character. At the same time
we could not but feel that a certain tendency to multiplicity of detail,
and a neglect of form or insensibility to it, hindered the book of that
direct and vigorous effect which its power and variety of resource would
otherwise have produced. Something of the same impression is made by the
present volume. There are glimpses in it of real genius, but it shows
itself generally here and there only, as the natural outcrop, seldom in the
bars and ingots which give proof of patient mining and smelting at
furnace-heat, still more seldom in the beautiful shapes of artistic
elaboration. Here, again, we find the same unborrowed feeling for outward
Nature and familiarity with her moods, the same poetic beauty of
expression, and in many of the pieces the same overcrowdedness, as if the
author would fain say all he could, instead of saying only what he could
not help.

There are some of the poems that do more justice to the abilities of the
author. In "The Year is Gone" there is great tenderness of sentiment and
grace of expression; "Love Disposed of" is a pretty fancy embodied with
true lyric feeling; but the poem which over crests all the others like a
decuman wave is "The Brave Old Ship, the Orient." It is a truly masculine
poem, full of vigor and imagination, and giving evidence of true original
power in the author. There is scarce a weak verse in it, and the measure
has a swing, at once easy and stately, like that of the sea itself. We know
not if we are right in conjecturing some hint of deeper meaning in the name
"Orient," but, taking it merely as a descriptive poem, it is one of the
finest of its kind. The writer's heart seems more in the work here than in
the devotional verses. We quote a single passage from it, which seems to us
particularly fine:--

"We scanned her well, as we drifted by:
A strange old ship, with her poop built high,
And with quarter-galleries wide,
And a huge beaked prow, as no ships are builded now,
And carvings all strange, beside:
A Byzantine bark, and a ship of name and mark
Long years and generations ago;
Ere any mast or yard of ours was growing hard
With the seasoning of long Norwegian snow.
* * * * *
"Down her old black side poured the water in a tide,
As they toiled to get the better of a leak.
We had got a signal set in the shrouds,
And our men through the storm looked on in crowds:
But for wind, we were near enough to speak.
It seemed her sea and sky were in times long, long gone by,
That we read in winter-evens about;
As if to other stars
She had reared her old-world spars,
And her hull had kept an old-time ocean out."

_Hester, the Bride of the Islands_. A Poem. By SYLVESTER
B. BECKETT. Portland: Bailey & Noyes.

Mr. Beckett is evidently an admirer of Walter Scott; and it is not the
least remarkable fact in connection with "Hester," that an author with the
good sense to propose to himself such a model, disregarding the more
elaborate poets of a later date, should have proved himself so utterly
unable to follow that model, except in a few phrases, which were quite
appropriate as Scott used them, but are ludicrously out of place in his own
verse. In adopting the brief lines and irregularly recurring rhymes of
Scott, he has taken a hazardous step. The curt lines are excellent with Sir
Walter's liveliness and dash; but when dull commonplaces are to be written,
their feebleness would be more decorously concealed by a longer and more
conventional dress. The cutty sark, so appropriate when displaying the
free, vigorous stops of Maggie Lauder, is not to be worn by every
lackadaisical lady's-maid of a muse. In the moral reflections, with which
"Hester" abounds, there is a most comical imitation of Scott,--as if the
poem were written as a parody of "The Lady of the Lake," by
Mrs. Southworth, or Sylvanus Cobb, Junior.

Mr. Beckett closes some very singular stanzas, entitled an Introduction,
with the following lines:--

"Give it praise, or blame,
Or pass it without comment, as may seem
To you most meet; with me 'tis all the same.
I hymn because I must, and not for greed of fame."

These lines incline us at first to let Mr. Beckett "pass without comment,"
considering, that, as he says, he cannot help writing; but we are finally
decided to observe him more closely, inasmuch as he says it makes no
difference to him, thus relieving us of the dreadful fear of wantonly
crushing some delicate John Keats (always supposing we had him) by our
severe censure.

Instead of entering into a philosophical examination of "Hester," we shall
present some specimen pearls, making our first extract from the 21st
page:--

"The very desert would have smiled
In such a presence! yet despite
Her dimpled cheek, her soft blue eye,
Her voice so fraught with music's thrill,
The shrewd observer might espy
The traces therein of a will
That scorned restraint, the soul of fire
That slumbered in her tacit sire."

"The traces therein." Wherein? Not in the cheek, eye, or voice, clearly;
for it was "despite" all these that he would make the discovery,--they are
obstacles, entirely outside of the success. It is necessarily, then, in the
"presence," in which the unthinking desert would have smiled unsuspecting,
but in which "the shrewd observer might espy" a good deal that was ominous
of trouble. Now it is obvious that the writer intended to refer "therein"
to the cheek, eye, and voice, a reference from which he barred himself by
the word "despite." As it happens, luckily for him, there is a word to
refer to, so that his grammatical salvation is secured; but the result is
sad nonsense.

Page 23,--

"Indeed, it was their chief delight,
When combed the far seas feather-white,
To steer out on the roughening bay
With leaning prow and flying spray,
_And gunnel ready to submerge
Itself beneath the flaming surge_!"

Page 28,--

"nor gave
He heed to aught on land or wave;
As if some kyanized regret
Were in his heart," etc., etc.

"Kyanized regret" is good, as Polonius would say; but we would humbly
suggest that Mr. Beckett substitute, in his next edition, "Burnettized," as
even better, if that be possible.

Page 72,--

"in hope, perchance
(Like arrant knight of old romance),
That _some complacent circumstance
Would end her curiosity_."

Page 94,--

"Thereafter, she but knew the charm
Of resting on her lover's arm,
And listening to his voice elate,
As he betimes _went on to state
The phases in his own strange fate,
Since last they met_."

Page 100.--Speaking of "those of
thoughtful mood," he says,--

"With whom I oft have whiled away
The dusky hour upon the deep,
Which most men wisely give to sleep."

There is in this last line a dark, grim, sardonic appreciation of the
advantages which common minds have over those that, like the poet's own,
have to endure the splendid miseries of genius,--a dark moodiness, like
that of a tame Byron remorsefully recalling a wild debauch upon green
tea,--that is deliciously funny.

Page 230.--The heroine, who is less
poetical by far than her rough servitor,
says,--

"Carl! not for all the golden sand
Of famed Pactolus, would I hurt
Thy feelings; _'tis my wont to blurt_
My humour thus."

Page 298.--The hero, who is hardly
more romantic than the heroine, has married
his own sister:--

"Lord Hubart gazed with steady eye
And arms still folded, on old Carl--
'Here is, i' faith, a pretty snarl
To be unwound'--but his reply
Was cut short," etc., etc.

In fact, the great objection to Lord Hubart, as may be inferred from the
above-quoted passage, is, that he is hopelessly vulgar. We are loath to say
so, because of our respect for English aristocracy; but English
aristocracy, truth compels us to observe, cuts no great figure on our
American stage or in our American literature.

In short, this is a very silly book. It abounds in trite moralizing, for
instances of which we will merely refer the reader to pp. 65, 131, and
299. The author remarks exultingly, in his Introduction, that his is
comparatively an uncultivated mind, We can only say, we should think so!
Ignorance is plentiful everywhere, but it really seems as if it were
reserved for some of our American writers to display in its finest
specimens ignorance vaunting its own deficiencies. There is a great deal of
nonsense talked about "uncultivated minds": some men are eminent in spite
of being uncultivated; but no man was ever eminent because he was
uncultivated. Some instances of a lamentable misuse of language in "Hester"
we give below.

Page 16,--

"They would have won implicit sway."

Page 53,--
"By the nonce!"

Evidently thinking of the phrase, "for the nonce,"--meaning, for the
occasion. In the text, "by the nonce" is an oath!

Page 71,--

"And he some squire of low behest."

Page 221,--

"and when is won
At last the longed-for rubicon."

Page 256,--the use of the word "denizens."

Page 262,--

"None may their evil doing shirk!
That wrong, in any shape, will bring,
Or soon or late, its _meted sting_."

Page 313,--

"as gnats, which sometimes sting
Their life away when rankled."

Another fault is the senseless use of certain words and phrases, which a
good writer uses only when he must, Mr. Beckett always when he can. We give
without comment a mere list of these:--maugre, 'sdeath, eke, erst, deft,
romaunt, pleasaunce, certes, whilom, distraught, quotha, good lack,
well-a-day, vermeil, perchance, hight, wight, lea, wist, list, sheen, anon,
gliff, astrolt, what boots it? malfortunes, ween, God wot, I trow, emprise,
duress, donjon, puissant, sooth, rock, bruit, ken, eld, o'ersprent, etc. Of
course, such a word as "lady" is made to do good service, and "ye" asserts
its well-known superiority to "you." All this the author evidently
considers highly meritorious, although the words are entirely unsuitable.
His notion seems to be, that these are poetical words, and the way to write
poetry is to take all the exclusively poetical words you can find. The
occasional attempt to make his verses familiar and natural by the use of
such abbreviations as "I've" or "can't" is as much a failure as the effort
of an awkward man in a ball-room to make everybody think him at his ease by
forcing an unhappy smile and a look of preternatural buoyancy.

From the beginning to the end of "Hester," there is one unerring indication
of an uncultivated mind and an unpractised pen. This is the writer's
fondness for well-worn phrases, which authors of a severer taste have long
discarded as suited only to the newspapers, but which Mr. Beckett has
picked up with eager delight, and, having distributed them liberally
throughout the poem, contemplates with a complacency to be matched only by
his satisfaction with the success of his expedients for filling out his
rhymes, some of which are certainly ingenious and startling,

The plot is a jumble of improbabilities, to which we would gladly attend,
for it passes even the liberal bounds of poetic license, but we have
already spent all the time we can upon the New Poem, and we must decline
(in Mr. Beckett's own impressive language) any further "to distend the
title."

* * * * *

NOTE

TO THE ARTICLE ON "MODEL LODGING-HOUSES IN BOSTON."

Although the proposed act establishing a Sanitary Commission for the City
of New York was defeated in the last State Legislature, some of its
provisions were engrafted on a bill passed on the nineteenth of April,
amending a previous "Act to establish a Metropolitan Police District, and
to provide for the Government thereof."

By article 51 of this new act it is made the duty of the Board of
Metropolitan Police to set apart a Sanitary Police Company, which by
article 52 is empowered "to take all necessary legal measures for promoting
the security of life or health," upon or in boats, manufactories, houses,
and edifices. Article 53 gives power to the board to cause any
tenement-house to be cleansed at any time after three days' notice, and
provides means for meeting the expense of this and other similar
operations.

These powers may, perhaps, if wisely exercised, secure a great improvement
in the health of the city. We trust that the duties imposed by them will be
thoroughly and efficiently performed, and we are gratified to see that a
good beginning has already been made; but our regret is not diminished that
the more complete proposed Sanitary Act failed to pass.

The annual report on "The Sanitary Condition of the City of London" has
just been published. By this report it appears, that, during the year
ending on the 31st of March, 1860, the rate of mortality in London was 22.4
per thousand of the population, or 1 in 44; in all England, the average
rate is 22.3; in country districts it is only 20; in the large towns,
26. "Ten years ago," says Dr. Letheby, the author of the report from which
we quote, "the annual mortality of the city was rarely less than 25 in the
thousand.....Our present condition is 19 per cent. better than that, and we
owe it to the sanitary labors of the last ten years." In another part of
the report he says,--"7233 inspections of houses have been made in the
course of the year, of which 803 were of the common lodging-houses, and 935
orders have been issued for sanitary improvement in various particulars."

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