The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I, No. 1, Nov. 1857

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4. It is universally conceded, by all the writers on finance, that any
unusual production of currency occasions a rise of prices; the relative
value of money is less than it was before, while the relative value of
other articles is greater; a greater quantity of money is given for other
articles, and fewer of other articles are given for the same amount of
money. This rise has the double effect of provoking the importation
of foreign commodities, and of preventing the exportation of domestic
commodities; inasmuch as the same enhancement of rates, which opens a good
domestic market for the former, closes the foreign market to the latter;
and thus an unfavorable balance accumulates rapidly against the country
where the rise occurs, in respect to other countries where it has not
occurred. Now sooner or later this balance must be paid; and as products
cannot be profitably shipped abroad to furnish a fund whereupon to
draw bills of exchange, it must be paid in coin. The coin is therefore
abstracted from circulation; and if coin were the only currency, such an
abstraction would of itself induce a fall of prices, which would operate as
a check upon importations until the old relation of equilibrium should be
restored. But where the government, or where individuals, whether organized
or alone, have the power to replace the departed coin by issues of paper
money, prices are for a while maintained, and importations continued as
vigorously as ever. All this, however, is but a postponement of the day of
settlement. The balance to be extinguished is a substantial balance, which
can be discharged only by substantial means; a mere promise to pay, a mere
sign and representative of debt, will not extinguish it, any more than the
smell of a cook-shop will extinguish a ravenous appetite. The insatiable
creditor will have money; and the depositories of that essential become,
under his assaults, more and more meagre and tenuous. The managers of
them at last get alarmed, and begin to withhold their issues of paper;
which means that they begin to reduce their loans to the community. The
money-market grows "tight," as it is phrased; the money-world feels
generally as if it had taken an overdose of persimmons. Merchants and
dealers, shorn of their usual accommodations, are compelled to borrow at
ruinous usuries, or to fail to meet their payments. Their default involves
others; others fail, and others again. The bowels of the banks, with us
the great money-lenders, close with the snap and tenacity of steel-traps;
and then a general panic, or want of commercial confidence, brings on a
paralysis of the domestic exchanges, and wide-spread bankruptcy and ruin.
Importations are checked, of course; but they are checked in a sharp,
rapid, and violent way, accompanied by the most painful embarrassments and
convulsions.

This we believe to be an outline of the history of all our commercial
catastrophes, stripped of those local and incidental circumstances which
vary from time to time: over-issues of money,--speculative prosperity,--all
the world getting rich in the most agreeable manner,--fairy palaces rising
on all sides, without the sound of trowel or hammer; then,--the day of
adjustment,--the rapid contraction of the currency,--all the world getting
poor in the most drastic and disagreeable manner,--and those fairy palaces,
which rose under our very eyelids over-night, vanishing, like the palace
of Aladdin from the vision of the Grand-Seignior after he awoke in the
morning. But, alas! the revulsion does not stop with the overthrow of the
palaces which had been reared without labor; it is not satisfied with the
dissipation of mere fancies and dreams; but, being itself a most real
thing, it carries with it many a stately structure, which the toil, the
economy, the self-denial of years had hardly raised. Extraneous causes,--a
short crop,--a reduced tariff,--a peculiar mania of enterprise,--may hasten
or retard the various steps of the process which has been described; but
its cause and its course are almost always the same, and the discerning
eye may easily detect them, from the beginning to the end of our modern
commercial experience. In the existing difficulties, in this country, the
railroad speculations have had much to do with producing and aggravating
the effect; but the primary source of it, we think, is to be found in the
ease with which our currency is inflated, under a banking system which
varies from State to State, and which, outside of New England and New York,
where it is by no means perfect, is as bungling a contrivance, for the ends
to be answered, as was ever inflicted on the patience of mankind. Much
of the trouble is due also to the extravagance and reckless waste of our
people, which, though owing in some degree to our want of good manners and
good taste, are directly traceable to the stimulus given to expense by the
over-issue of artificial money. While the paper which passes for money is
plenty, and every man can easily get "accommodations" from the banks, we
squander without thought. No matter how costly the articles we buy; the
expansion of the currency is greater than the rise in market values; and it
is only when the contraction comes that we see how foolishly lavish we have
been.

What, then, is the remedy? "Why, away with paper currency altogether!" says
one. Yes,--tear up your Croton-water-pipes, because the breaking of a main
sometimes submerges your dwellings; destroy your railroads, because the
trains sometimes run off the track; arrest your steamships, because an
"Arctic" and a "Central America" go disastrously down into the deep,
deep sea! That were not wise, surely; that were very unwise, even were
it possible, which it is not.--"Give us a high protective tariff," says
another. Most certainly, friend, if we are to be perpetually flooded with
paper, a high tariff is needed;--your theory is at least consistent,
however it may have worked in practice. But a high protective tariff is
an impossibility, because it can be attained only by favor of the Federal
legislature; and, as we all know, at the door of that legislature stands
the inexorable shape of the Slave Power, which consults no interest but
its own in the management of government, and which will never make a
concession to the manufacturers or the merchants of the North, unless it be
to purchase some new act of baseness, or bind them in some new chains of
servility.--But have you inquired whether that flood of paper is necessary?
We frankly tell you that we do not believe it is; we believe that a better
system is possible,--to be brought about, not by greater restrictions
on banking, but by greater freedom; and we only regret that we have not
now space to discuss that faith with you in all its reasons and results.
We hope to be permitted to do so at some other time. Meanwhile, let us
rejoice that the whole subject is in a position to be frankly discussed. A
few years ago, when the question of the currency was a question of party
politics, there was no aspect in which it could be presented, which did
not arouse all the restless jealousies of party prejudice. If you talked
of hard-money, you were denounced as a Benton bullionist; if you talked
of credit, you were called a Whig banker, plotting to devour the poor;
and the calmest phrases of science were turned into the shibboleths of an
internecine warfare. A better hour has come, and let us improve it to our
mutual edification.

SONNET.

The Maple puts her corals on in May,
While loitering frosts about the lowlands cling,
To be in tune with what the robins sing,
Plastering new log-huts 'mid her branches gray;
But when the Autumn southward turns away,
Then in her veins burns most the blood of Spring,
And every leaf, intensely blossoming,
Makes the year's sunset pale the set of day.
O Youth unprescient, were it only so
With trees you plant, and in whose shade reclined,
Thinking their drifting blooms Fate's coldest snow,
You carve dear names upon the faithful rind,
Nor in that vernal stem the cross foreknow
That Age may bear, silent, yet unresigned!

THE ROUND TABLE.

It was said long ago, that poets, like canaries, must be starved in order
to keep them in good voice, and, in the palmy days of Grub Street, an
editor's table was nothing grander than his own knee, on which, in his airy
garret, he unrolled his paper-parcel of dinner, happy if its wrapping were
a sheet from Brown's last poem, and not his own. Now an editorial table
seems to mean a board of green cloth at which literary broken-victuals are
served out with no carving but that of the editorial scissors.

_La Maga_ has her table, too, and at fitting times invites to it her
various Eminent Hands. It is a round table,--that is, rounded by the
principle of rotation,--for how could she settle points of precedence with
the august heads of her various Departments without danger of the dinner's
growing cold? Substantial dinners are eaten thereat with Homeric appetite,
nor, though _impletus venter non vult studere libenter_, are the visits of
the Muse unknown. At these feasts no tyranny of speech-making is allowed,
but the _bonbons_ are all wrapped in original copies of verses by various
contributors, which, having served their festive turn, become the property
of the guests. Reporters are not admitted, for the eating is not done
for inspection, like that of the hapless inmates of a menagerie; but
_La Maga_ herself sometimes brings away in her pocket a stanza or so which
she esteems worthy of a more general communication. Last month she thus
sequestered the following Farewell addressed by Holmes to the historian of
William the Silent.

Yes, we knew we must lose him,--though friendship may claim
To blend her green leaves with the laurels of fame;
Though fondly, at parting, we call him our own,
'Tis the whisper of love when the bugle has blown.

As the rider that rests with the spur on his heel,--
As the guardsman that sleeps in his corselet of steel,--
As the archer that stands with his shaft on the string,
He stoops from his toil to the garland we bring.

What pictures yet slumber unborn in his loom
Till their warriors shall breathe and their beauties shall bloom,
While the tapestry lengthens the life-glowing dyes
That caught from our sunsets the stain of their skies!

In the alcoves of death, in the charnels of time,
Where flit the gaunt spectres of passion and crime,
There are triumphs untold, there are martyrs unsung,
There are heroes yet silent to speak with his tongue!

Let us hear the proud story that time has bequeathed
From lips that are warm with the freedom they breathed!
Let him summon its tyrants, and tell us their doom,
Though he sweep the black past like Van Tromp with his broom!

* * * * *

The stream flashes by, for the west-winds awake
On pampas, on prairie, o'er mountain and lake,
To bathe the swift bark, like a sea-girdled shrine,
With incense they stole from the rose and the pine.

So fill a bright cup with the sunlight that gushed
When the dead summer's jewels were trampled and crushed:
THE TRUE KNIGHT OF LEARNING,--the world holds him dear,--
Love bless him, Joy crown him, God speed his career!

_Aug. 8, 1857._

LITERARY NOTICES.

_The Greyson Letters_, Selections from the Correspondence of R.E.H.
GREYSON, ESQ. Edited by HENRY ROGERS, Author of "The Eclipse of Faith," &c.
Boston: Gould & Lincoln. 1 vol. 12mo.

We are assured in the American preface to this volume, that while it
exhibits Henry Rogers as the peer of Butler as a reasoner, it also shows
him not inferior to Lamb as a humorist. Much as we are inclined to echo
the critical decisions of prefaces, we regret being unable to indorse this
confident statement. In amplitude, vigor, and fertility of thought we must
think the author of the "Analogy" holds some slight advantages over the
author of "The Eclipse of Faith"; and we seriously doubt if the lovers of
Charles Lamb will be likely to rush into mirthful ecstasies over the humor
of "The Greyson Letters." But we suppose that Henry Rogers himself would
make no pretensions to the rank of a writer, or reasoner, or humorist of
the first class. Far from being a great man, he occasionally slips into
the prejudices of quite a little one, and he never wholly puts off the
pedagogue and puts on the philosopher. Without much original force of
nature, and never unmistakably stamping his own image and superscription
either on his arguments or his language, he is still a well-trained
theological scholar, a skilful logician, and one of that class of
elegant writers who neither offend the taste nor kindle the soul. As a
controversialist on themes which are now engaging popular attention, he
grasps the questions he discusses at one or two removes from their centre
and heart, where they pass out of the sphere of ideas and pass into the
region of opinions; and in this region he is candid to the extent of his
perceptions, quick to detect the weak points in the formal statements
of his opponents, and, without touching the vitalities of the matter in
controversy, is always hailed as victor by those who agree with him, but
rarely convinces the doubters and deniers he aims to convert. "The Greyson
Letters" are evidently the work of an amiable, learned, accomplished, and
able man, interested in a wide variety of themes which especially attract
the attention of thinkers, but in his treatment of them indicating a lack
of deep and wide experience, and of that close, searching thought which
pierces to the core of a subject, and broods patiently over its living
elements and relations, before it assumes to take them as materials for
argumentation. This broad grasp of premises, which implies a penetrating
and interpretative as well as dialectic mind, is the distinguishing
difference between a great reasoner and an able logician. In regard to the
form of the work, we can see no reason why its essays should be thrown
into the shape of letters. The epistolary spirit vanishes almost as soon
as "Dear Sir" and "Dear Madam" create its expectation. The author's mind
is grave by nature and culture, and is sprightly, as it seems to us, by
compulsion and laborious levity. His nature has none of the richness and
juiciness, none of the instinctive soul of humor, which must have vent in
the ludicrous. Occasionally an adversary or adverse dogma is demolished
with excellent logic, and then comes a dismal grin or chuckle at the feat,
which hardly reminds us of the sly, shy smile of Addison, or the frolic
intelligence which laughs in the victorious eyes of Pascal. Still, with all
abatements, "The Greyson Letters" make a book well worthy of being read,
contain much admirable matter and suggestive thought, and might be allowed
to pass muster among good books of the second class, did they not come
before us with professions that seemed to invite the tests applicable to
the first.

* * * * *

_Essays in Biography and Criticism_. By PETER BAYNE, M.A., Author of "The
Christian Life, Social and Individual," &c. First Series. Boston: Gould &
Lincoln. 1 vol. 12mo.

This volume contains essays on De Quincey, Tennyson and his Teachers, Mrs.
Barrett Browning, Glimpses of Recent British Art, John Ruskin, Hugh Miller,
The Modern Novel, and Currer Bell. Though of various degrees of merit,
they all evince careful study and patient thought, and are written with
considerable brilliancy and eloquence. As a critic, Mr. Bayne is generally
candid, conscientious, and intelligent, with occasional remarks evincing
delicacy and depth of thought; but his perceptions are not always
trustworthy, and his judgments are frequently of doubtful soundness. Thus
when we are told that Wordsworth owed his fame to his moral elevation
rather than to his "intellectual or aesthetic capacities," and that there
is hardly an instance of the highest creative imagination in the whole
range of his poetry,--when we are informed that since Shakspeare no one
"has laid bare the burning heart of passion" so perfectly as Byron,--and
when the question is triumphantly asked, "Where, out of Shakspeare, can we
find such a series of female portraits as those" in Bulwer's "Rienzi,"--we
feel inclined, in this association of Byron and Bulwer with Shakspeare, and
this oversight of Wordsworth's claim to represent the highest original
elements in the English poetry of the present century, to dispute Mr.
Bayne's right to assume the chair of interpretative criticism. But still
there are so many examples in his book of fine and true perception, and so
evident a sympathy with intellectual excellence and moral beauty, that we
do not feel disposed to quarrel with him on account of the apparent
erroneousness of some of his separate opinions. Besides, his work is
written in a style which will recommend it to a class of readers who are
not especially interested in the subjects of which it treats, and it
cannot fail to stimulate in them a desire to know more of the great
writers of the century.

* * * * *

_White Lies. A Novel_. By Charles Reade. Boston: Ticknor & Fields. 1 vol.
12mo.

The early chapters of this novel lack the brisk movement, the sparkling
compactness, the stinging surprises of Mr. Reade's usual style, but he
kindles and condenses as he proceeds. As a whole, the work compares
favorably with his most brilliant compositions. He is a writer difficult to
criticize, because his defects are pleasing defects. Dogmatism is commonly
offensive, and Mr. Reade's dogmatism is of the most uncompromising, not to
say insulting character; yet it is exhibited in connection with insight
so sure and vivid, that we pardon the positiveness of the assertion for
the truth of what is asserted. Then he has a way of forcing Nature, much
against her wish, to be epigrammatic,--of producing startling effects by
artifices almost theatrical; and though his devices are obvious, they are
more than forgiven for the genuine power and real naturalness behind the
rhetorical masquerade. Other men's freaks and eccentricities lead to the
distortion of truth and the confusion of relations, but Mr. Reade has
freaks of wisdom and eccentricities of practical sagacity. Occasionally
he has a stroke of observation that comes like a flash of lightning,
blasting and shattering in an instant a prejudice or hypocrisy which was
strong enough to resist all the arguments of reason and all the appeals
of humanity. "White Lies" is full of examples of his power, and of the
peculiarities of his power. Blunt and bold and arrogant as his earnestness
often appears, it is capable of the most winning gentleness, the most
delicate grace, and the most searching pathos. The delineation of the
female characters in this novel is especially admirable. Josephine
and Laure are exquisite creations, and the Baroness and Jacintha,
though different, are almost as perfect, considered as examples of
characterization. In the invention and management of incidents, the
author exhibits a sure knowledge of the means and contrivances by which
expectation is stimulated, and the interest of the story kept from
flagging. We hope to read many more novels from the same pen as delightful
as "White Lies."

* * * * *

_Brazil and the Brazilians_. Portrayed in Historical and Descriptive
Sketches. By Rev. D.P. Kidder, D.D., and Rev. J.C. Fletcher. Illustrated by
one hundred and fifty Engravings. Philadelphia: Childs & Peterson. 1 vol.
8vo.

Brazil is a country but little known to the majority of readers, and the
little that is known is so fragmentary that it is as likely to convey a
false idea as an incomplete one. The writers of this volume combine two
qualifications for the work of dissipating this ignorance. They have a
direct personal knowledge of Brazil, gained during a long residence in
the country, and they have carefully studied every valuable book on its
history and resources. The manners, customs, laws, government, productions,
literature, art, and religion of the people have all been carefully
observed under circumstances favorable for accurate investigation. The
result is a valuable, interesting, and attractive volume, well worthy of
being extensively read. The elegance of its mechanical execution, and the
profusion of engravings illustrating the text, will add to its popularity,
if not to its value.

* * * * *

_The Poetical Works of Leigh Hunt_. Now first entirely collected. Revised
by himself, and edited, with an Introduction, by S. ADAMS LEE. Boston:
Ticknor & Fields. 2 vols. 18mo.

Leigh Hunt has outlived all the enmities and enemies provoked either by his
merits or his demerits, and is especially interesting as the sole survivor
of the illustrious company of poets with whom the mind instinctively
associates him. Some burnt out; some died out; some dried up; but he
remains the same cosey, chirping, fine-natured, and self-pleased singer,
who won the love of Shelley and Keats, and roused the wrath of Gifford and
Wilson. We are glad to welcome his collected poems in their appropriate
attire of "blue and gold," and trust they will have a wide circulation
in the United States, as the genial poet is himself to be a participant
in the profits of the publication. We wish that a word of ours could
be influential in assisting this veteran of letters to reap from the
publication something more substantial than fame, yet in some degree the
expression of it,--something which shall give him assurance that his
volumes are on thousands of parlor tables, because the proofs of it are
palpable in the increased comforts afforded to his old age. And certainly
the poet deserves a wide circle of readers. Though he does not succeed in
the delineation of the great and grand passions of our nature, he is very
successful in the sphere of its humane and tender sentiments; and though
open to criticism for the jaunty audacity with which he coins dainty
sweetnesses of expression rejected by all dictionaries, and for an
occasional pertness in asserting opinions of doubtful truth, he is so
lovable a creature that we pardon his literary foibles as we would pardon
the personal foibles of a charming companion and friend. He has a genuine
love for all cheerful and cheering things, and power enough to infuse his
cheer into other minds. Disliking all internal and external foes to human
comfort, he is equally the enemy of evil, and of the morbid discontent
which springs from the bitter contemplation of evil. His nature is
essentially sprightly and sensuous, with here a bit of Suckling and there a
bit of Fletcher, carrying us back to an elder period of British poetry by
the careless grace and freedom of his movement, and proving his connection
with the present by the openness of his mind to all liberal thought and
philanthropic feeling. Good-humor and benevolence are so dominant in his
nature, that they prevent him from having any deep perceptions of evil and
calamity. He is personally affronted when he sees the thunder-cloud push
away the sunshine from life; and God, to him, is not only absolute Good,
but absolute Good Nature.

It would be easy to quote passages from these volumes illustrative of his
acute observation, his largeness of sympathy, his delicacy and daintiness
of touch, his sweetness, humor, pathos, and fancy. As a specimen of the
playful and beautiful ingenuity of his mind, we extract a portion of his
little poem on "Love-Letters made of Flowers."

"An exquisite invention this,
Worthy of Love's most honeyed kiss,
This art of writing _billets-doux_
In buds and odors and bright hues!
In saying all one feels and thinks
In clever daffodils and pinks;
In puns of tulips; and in phrases,
Charming for their truth, of daisies;
Uttering, as well as silence may,
The sweetest words the sweetest way.
How fit, too, for the lady's bosom!
The place where _billets-doux_ repose 'em.

"What delight, in some sweet spot
Combining _love_ with _garden_ plot,
At once to cultivate one's flowers
And one's epistolary powers!
Growing one's own choice words and fancies
In orange tubs and beds of pansies;
One's sighs and passionate declarations
In odorous rhetoric of carnations;
Seeing how far one's stocks will reach;
Taking due care one's flowers of speech
To guard from blight as well as bathos,
And watering every day one's pathos!"

From the exquisite little poem entitled "Songs of the Flowers" we should
like to cut a few stanzas; but our limits forbid.

MUSIC.

What will the Muses do in these hard times? Must they cease to hold court
in opera-house and concert-room, because stocks fall, factories and banks
stop, credit is paralyzed, and princely fortunes vanish away like bubbles
on the swollen tide of speculation? Must Art, too, bear the merchant's
penalties? or shall not rather this ideal, feminine element of life, shall
not Art, like woman, warm and inspire a sweeter, richer, more ideal, though
it be a humbler home for us, with all the tenderer love and finer genius,
now that man's enterprise is wrecked abroad? Shall we have no Music? Has
the universal "panic" griped the singers' throats, that they can no longer
vibrate with the passionate and perfect freedom indispensable to melody?
It must not be. The soul is too rich in resources to let all its interests
fail because one fails. If business and material speculation have been
overdone, if we are checked and flung down in these mad endeavors to
accumulate vast means of living, we shall have time to pick ourselves up,
compose ourselves to some tranquillity and some humility, and actually,
with what small means we have, begin to _live_. Panic strangles life, and
the money-making fever always tends to panic. Panic is the great evil
now, and panic needs a panacea. What better one can we invent than music?
It were the very madness of economy to cut off that. Some margin every
life must have, around this everlasting sameness of the dull page of
necessity,--some opening into the free infinite of joy and careless
ideality, or the very life-springs dry up.

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