The Continental Monthly, Vol. 2, No 3, September, 1862

V >> Various >> The Continental Monthly, Vol. 2, No 3, September, 1862

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'It is a heart-touching face,' said Caper, as one morning, while hauling
over his paintings, Rocjean brought the portrait to light which the
cunning Shodd had so longed to possess for cupidity's sake.

'I should feel as if I had thrown Psyche to the Gnomes to be torn to
pieces, if I had given such a face to Shodd. If I had sold it to him, I
should have been degraded; for the women loved by man should be kept
sacred in memory. She was a girl I knew in Prague, and, I think, with
six or eight exceptions, the loveliest one I ever met. Some night, at
sunset, I shall walk over the old bridge, and meet her as we parted;
_apropos_ of which meeting, I once wrote some words. Hand me that
portfolio, will you? Thank you. Oh! yes; here they are. Now, read them,
Caper; out with them!

ANEZKA OD PRAHA.

Years, weary years, since on the Moldau bridge,
By the five stars and cross of Nepomuk,
I kissed the scarlet sunset from her lips:
Anezka, fair Bohemian, thou wert there!

Dark waves beneath the bridge were running fast,
In haste to bathe the shining rocks, whence rose
Tier over tier, the gloaming domes and spires,
Turrets and minarets of the Holy City,
Its crown the Hradschin of Bohemia's kings.
O'er Wysscherad we saw the great stars shine;
We felt the night-wind on the rushing stream;
We drank the air as if 'twere Melnick wine,
And every draught whirled us still nearer Nebe:
Anezka, fair Bohemian, thou wert there!

Why ever gleam thy black eyes sadly on me?
Why ever rings thy sweet voice in my ear?
Why looks thy pale face from the drifting foam--
Dashed by the wild sea on this distant shore--
Or from the white clouds does it beckon me?

My own heart answers: On the Moldau bridge,
Anezka, we will meet to part no more.

ANTHONY TROLLOPE ON AMERICA.

Mr. Anthony Trollope's work entitled _North-America_ has been
republished in this country, and curiosity has at length been satisfied.
Great as has been this curiosity among his friends, it can not, however,
be said to have been wide-spread, inasmuch as up to the appearance of
this book of travels, comparatively few were aware of the presence of
Mr. Trollope in this country. When Charles Dickens visited America, our
people testified their admiration of his homely genius by going mad,
receiving him with frantic acclamations of delight, dining him, and
suppering him, and going through the 'pump-handle movement' with him.
Mr. Dickens was, in consequence, intensely bored by this attestation of
popular idolatry so peculiar to the United States, and looked upon us as
officious, absurd, and disgusting. Officious we were, and absurd enough,
surely, but far from being disgusting. He ought hardly to beget disgust
whose youth and inexperience leads him to extravagance in his kindly
demonstrations toward genius. However, Mr. Dickens went home rather more
impressed by our faults, which he had had every opportunity of
inspecting, than by our virtues, which possessed fewer salient features
to his humorous eye. Two books--_American Notes_ and _Martin
Chuzzlewit_--were the product of his tour through America. Thereupon,
the American people grew very indignant. Their Dickens-love, in
proportion to its intensity, turned to Dickens-hate, and ingratitude was
considered to be synonymous with the name of this novelist. We gave him
every chance to see our follies, and we snubbed his cherished and chief
object in visiting America, concerning a copyright. There is little
wonder, then, that Dickens, an Englishman and a caricaturist, should
have painted us in the colors that he did. There is scarcely less wonder
that Americans, at that time, all in the white-heat of enthusiasm,
should have waxed angry at Dickens' cold return to so much warmth. But,
reading these books in the light of 1862, there are few of us who do not
smile at the rage of our elders. We see an uproariously funny
extravaganza in _Martin Chuzzlewit_, which we can well afford to laugh
at, having grown thicker-skinned, and wonder what there is to be found
in the _Notes_ so very abominable to an American. Mr. Dickens was a
humorist, not a statesman or philosopher, therefore he wrote of us as a
disappointed humorist would have been tempted to write.

It is not likely that Mr. Trollope's advent in this country would have
given rise to any remark or excitement, his novels, clever though they
be, not having taken hold of the people's heart as did those of Dickens.
He came among us quietly; the newspapers gave him no flourish of
trumpets; he traveled about unknown; hence it was, that few knew a new
book was to be written upon America by one bearing a name not
over-popular thirty years ago. Curiosity was confined to the friends and
acquaintances of Mr. Trollope, who were naturally not a little anxious
that he should conscientiously write such a book as would remove the
existing prejudice to the name of Trollope, and render him personally as
popular as his novels. For there are, we believe, few intelligent
Americans (and Mr. Trollope is good enough to say that we of the North
are all intelligent) who are not ready to '_faire l'aimable_' to the
kindly, genial author of _North-America_. It is not being rash to state
that Mr. Trollope, in his last book, has not disappointed his warmest
personal friends in this country, and this is saying much, when it is
considered that many of them are radically opposed to him in many of
his opinions, and most of them hold very different views from him in
regard to the present war. They are not disappointed, because Mr.
Trollope has _labored_ to be impartial in his criticisms. He has, at
least, _endeavored_ to lay aside his English prejudices and judge us in
a spirit of truth and good-fellowship. Mr. Trollope inaugurated a new
era in British book-making upon America, when he wrote: 'If I could in
any small degree add to the good feeling which should exist between two
nations which ought to love each other so well, and which do hang upon
each other so constantly, I should think that I had cause to be proud of
my work.' In saying this much, Mr. Trollope has said what others of his
ilk--Bulwer, Thackeray, and Dickens--would _not_ have said, and he may
well be proud, or, at least, he can afford _not_ to be proud, of a
superior honesty and frankness. He has won for himself kind thoughts on
this side of the Atlantic, and were Americans convinced that the body
English were imbued with the spirit of Mr. Trollope, there would be
little left of the resuscitated 'soreness.'

In his introduction, Mr. Trollope frankly acknowledges that 'it is very
hard to write about any country a book that does not represent the
country described in a more or less ridiculous point of view.' He
confesses that he is not a philosophico-political or
politico-statistical or a statistico-scientific writer, and hence,
'ridicule and censure run glibly from the pen, and form themselves into
sharp paragraphs, which are pleasant to the reader. Whereas, eulogy is
commonly dull, and too frequently sounds as though it were false.' We
agree with him, that 'there is much difficulty in expressing a verdict
which is intended to be favorable, but which, though favorable, shall
not be falsely eulogistic, and though true, not offensive.' Mr. Trollope
has not been offensive either in his praise or dispraise; and when we
look upon him in the light in which he paints himself--that of an
English novelist--he has, at least, done his best by us. We could not
expect from him such a book as Emerson wrote on _English Traits_, or
such an one as Thomas Buckle would have written had death not staid his
great work of _Civilization_. Nor could we look to him for that which
John Stuart Mill--the English De Tocqueville--alone can give. For much
that we expected we have received, for that which is wanting we shall
now find fault, but good-naturedly, we hope.

Our first ground of complaint against Mr. Trollope's _North-America_, is
its extreme verbosity. Had it been condensed to one half, or at least
one third of its present size, the spirit of the book had been less
weakened, and the taste of the public better satisfied. The question
naturally arises in an inquiring mind, if the author could make so much
out of a six months' tour through the Northern States, what would the
consequences have been had he remained a year, and visited Dixie's land
as well? The conclusions logically arrived at are, to say the least,
very unfavorable to weak-eyed persons who are condemned to read the
cheap American edition. Life is too short, and books are too numerous,
to allow of repetition; and at no time is Mr. Trollope so guilty in this
respect as when he dilates upon those worthies, Mason and Slidell, in
connection with the Trent affair. It was very natural, especially as
England has come off first-best in this matter, that Mr. Trollope should
have made a feature of the Trent in reporting the state of the American
pulse thereon. One reference to the controversy was desirable, two
endurable, but the third return to the charge is likely to meet with
impatient exclamations from the reader, who heartily sympathizes with
the author when he says: 'And now, I trust, I may finish my book without
again naming Messrs. Slidell and Mason.'

It certainly was rash to rave as we did on this subject, but it was
quite natural, when our jurists, (even the Hon. Caleb Cushing) who were
supposed to know their business, assured us that we had right on our
side. It was extremely ridiculous to put Captain Wilkes upon a pedestal
a little lower than Bunker-Hill monument, and present him with a hero's
sword for doing what was then considered _only_ his duty. But it must be
remembered that at that time the mere performance of duty by a public
officer was so extraordinary a phenomenon that loyal people were brought
to believe it merited especial recognition. Our Government, and not the
people, were to blame. Had the speech of Charles Sumner, delivered on
his 'field-day,' been the verdict of the Washington Cabinet _previous_
to the reception of England's expostulations, the position taken by
America on this subject would have been highly dignified and honorable.
As it is, we stand with feathers ruffled and torn. But if, as we
suppose, the Trent imbroglio leads to a purification of maritime law,
not only America, but the entire commercial world will be greatly
indebted to the super-patriotism of Captain Wilkes.

'The charming women of Boston' are inclined to quarrel with their friend
Mr. Trollope, for ridiculing their powers of argumentation _apropos_ to
Captain Wilkes, for Mr. Trollope must confess they knew quite as much
about what they were talking as the lawyers by whom they were
instructed. They have had more than their proper share of revenge,
however, meted out for them by the reviewer of the London _Critic_, who
writes as follows:

'Mr. Trollope was in Boston when the first news about the Trent
arrived. Of course, every body was full of the subject at once--Mr.
Trollope, we presume, not excluded--albeit he is rather sarcastic
upon the young ladies who began immediately to chatter about it.
'Wheaton is quite clear about it,' said one young girl to me. It
was the first I had heard of Wheaton, and so far was obliged to
knock under.' Yet Mr. Trollope, knowing very little more of Wheaton
than he did before, and obviously nothing of the great authorities
on maritime law, inflicts upon his readers page after page of
argument upon the Trent affair, not half so delightful as the
pretty babble of the ball-room belle. With all due respect to Mr.
Trollope, and his attractions, we are quite sure that we would much
sooner get our international law from the lips of the fair
Bostonian than from _his_.'

After such a champion as this, could the fair Bostonians have the heart
to assail Mr. Trollope?

Mr. Trollope treats of our civil war at great length; in fact, the
reverberations of himself on this matter are quite as objectionable as
those in the Trent affair. But it is his treatment of this subject that
must ever be a source of regret to the earnest thinkers who are
gradually becoming the masters of our Government's policy, who
constitute the bone and muscle of the land, the rank and file of the
army, and who are changing the original character of the war into that
of a holy crusade. It is to be deplored, because Mr. Trollope's book
will no doubt influence English opinion, to a certain extent, and
therefore militate against us, and we already know how his mistaken
opinions have been seized upon by pro-slavery journals in this country
as a _bonne bouche_ which they rarely obtain from so respectable a
source; the more palatable to them, coming from that nationality which
we have always been taught to believe was more abolition in its creed
than William Lloyd Garrison himself, and from whose people we have
received most of our lectures on the sin of slavery. It is sad that so
fine a nature as that of Mr. Trollope should not feel
conscience-stricken in believing that 'to mix up the question of general
abolition with this war must be the work of a man too ignorant to
understand the real subject of the war, or too false to his country to
regard it.' Yet it is strange that these 'too ignorant' or 'too false'
men are the very ones that Mr. Trollope holds up to admiration, and
declares that any nation might be proud to claim their genius.
Longfellow and Lowell, Emerson and Motley, to whom we could add almost
all the well-known thinkers of the country, men after his own heart in
most things, belong to this 'ignorant' or 'false' sect. Is it their one
madness? That is a strange madness which besets our _greatest_ men and
women; a marvelous anomaly surely. Yet there must be something
sympathetic in abolitionism to Mr. Trollope, for he prefers Boston, the
centre of this ignorance, to all other American cities, and finds his
friends for the most part among these false ones, by which we are to
conclude that Mr. Trollope is by nature an abolitionist, but that
circumstances have been unfavorable to his proper development. And these
circumstances we ascribe to a hasty and superficial visit to the British
West-India colonies.

It is well known that in his entertaining book on travels in the
West-Indies and Spanish Main, Mr. Trollope undertakes to prove that
emancipation has both ruined the commercial prosperity of the British
islands and degraded the free blacks to a level with the idle brute. Mr.
Trollope is still firm in this opinion, notwithstanding the statistics
of the Blue Book, which prove that these colonies never were in so
flourishing a condition as at present. We, in America, have also had the
same fact demonstrated by figures, in that very plainly written book
called the _Ordeal of Free Labor_. Mr. Trollope, no doubt, saw some very
lazy negroes, wallowing in dirt, and living only for the day, but later
developments have proved that his investigations could have been simply
those of a dilettante. It is highly probable that the planters who have
been shorn of their riches by the edict of Emancipation, should paint
the present condition of the blacks in any thing but rose-colors, and
we, of course, believe that Mr. Trollope _believes_ what he has written.
He is none the less mistaken, if we are to pin our faith to the Blue
Book, which we are told never lies. And yet, believing that emancipation
has made a greater brute than ever of the negro, Mr. Trollope rejoices
in the course which has been pursued by the home government. If both
white man and black man are worse off than they were before, what good
could have been derived from the reform, and by what right ought he to
rejoice? Mr. Trollope claims to be an anti-slavery man, but we must
confess that to our way of arguing, the ground he stands upon in this
matter is any thing but _terra firma_. Mr. Trollope was probably
thinking of those dirty West-India negroes when he made the following
comments upon a lecture delivered by Wendell Phillips:

'I have sometimes thought that there is no being so venomous, so
bloodthirsty, as a professed philanthropist; and that when the
philanthropist's ardor lies negro-ward, it then assumes the deepest
die of venom and bloodthirstiness. There are four millions of
slaves in the Southern States, none of whom have any capacity for
self-maintenance or self-control. Four millions of slaves, with the
necessities of children, with the passions of men, and the
ignorance of savages! And Mr. Phillips would emancipate these at a
blow; would, were it possible for him to do so, set them loose upon
the soil to tear their masters, destroy each other, and make such a
hell upon earth as has never even yet come from the uncontrolled
passions and unsatisfied wants of men.'

Mr. Trollope should have thought twice before he wrote thus of the
American negro. Were he a competent authority on this subject, his
opinion might be worth something; but as he never traveled in the South,
and as his knowledge of the negro is limited to a surface acquaintance
with the West-Indies, we maintain that Mr. Trollope has not only been
unjust, but ungenerous. Four millions of slaves, none of whom have any
capacity for self-maintenance or self-control! Whom are we to believe?
Mr. Trollope, who has never been on a Southern plantation, or Frederick
Law Olmsted? Mr. Pierce, who has been superintendent of the contrabands
at Fortress Monroe and at Hilton Head, officers attached to Burnside's
Division, and last and best, General David Hunter, an officer of the
regular army, who went to South-Carolina with anti-abolition
antecedents? All honor to General Hunter, who, unlike many others, has
not shut his eyes upon facts, and, like a rational being, has yielded to
the logic of events. It is strange that these authorities, all of whom
possess the confidence of the Government, should disagree with Mr.
Trollope. _None_ self-maintaining? Robert Small is a pure negro. Is he
not more than self-maintaining? Has he not done more for the Federal
Government than any white man of the Gulf States? Tillman is a negro;
the best pilots of the South are negroes: are _they_ not
self-maintaining? Kansas has welcomed thousands of fugitive slaves to
her hospitable doors, not as paupers, but as laborers, who have taken
the place of those white men who have gone to fight the battles which
they also should be allowed to take part in. The women have been gladly
accepted as house-servants. Does not this look like self-maintenance?
Would negroes be employed in the army if they were as Mr. Trollope
pictures them? He confesses that without these four millions of slaves
the South would be a wilderness, therefore they _do_ work as slaves to
the music of the slave-drivers' whip. How very odd, that the moment men
and women (for Mr. Trollope does acknowledge them to be such) _own
themselves_, and are paid for the sweat of their brow, they should
forget the trades by which they have enriched the South, and become
incapable of maintaining themselves--they who have maintained three
hundred and fifty thousand insolent slave-owners! Given whip-lashes and
the incubus of a white family, the slave _will_ work; given freedom and
wages, the negro _won't_ work. Was there ever stated a more palpable
fallacy? Is it necessary to declare further that the Hilton Head
experiment is a success, although the negroes, wanting in slave-drivers
and in their musical instruments, began their planting very late in the
season? Is it necessary to give Mr. Trollope one of many figures, and
prove that in the British West-India colonies free labor has exported
two hundred and sixty-five millions pounds of sugar annually, whereas
slave labor only exported one hundred and eighty-seven millions three
hundred thousand? And this in a climate where, unlike even the Southern
States of North-America, there is every inducement to indolence.

Four millions of slaves, _none_ of whom are capable of self-control, who
possess the necessities of children, the passions of men, and the
ignorance of savages! We really have thought that the many thousands of
these four millions who have come under the Federal jurisdiction,
exercised considerable self-control, when it is remembered that in some
localities they have been left entire masters of themselves, have in
other instances labored months for the Government under promise of pay,
and have had that pay prove a delusion. Certainly it is fair to judge of
a whole by a part. Given a bone, Professor Agassiz can draw the animal
of which the bone forms a part. Given many thousands of negroes, we
should be able to judge somewhat of four millions. Had Mr. Trollope seen
the thousands of octoroons and quadroons enslaved in the South by their
_own fathers_, it would have been more just in him to have attributed a
want of _self-control_ to the _masters_ of these four millions. We do
not know what Mr. Trollope means by 'the necessities of children.
Children need to be sheltered, fed, and clothed, and so do the negroes,
but here the resemblance ends; for whereas children can not take care of
themselves, the negro _can_, provided there is any opportunity to work.
It is scarcely to be doubted that temporary distress must arise among
fugitives in localities where labor is not plenty; but does this
establish the black man's incapacity? Revolutions, especially those
which are internal, generally bring in their train distress to laborers.
Then we are told that the slaves are endowed with the passions of men;
and very glad are we to know this, for, as a love of liberty and a
willingness to sacrifice all things for freedom, is one of the loftiest
passions in men, were he devoid of this passion, we should look with
much less confidence to assistance from the negro in this war of freedom
_versus_ slavery, than we do at present. In stating that the slaves are
as ignorant as savages, Mr. Trollope pays an exceedingly poor compliment
to the Southern whites, as it would naturally be supposed that constant
contact with a superior race would have civilized the negro to a
_certain_ extent, especially as he is known to be wonderfully imitative.
And such is the case; at least the writer of these lines, who has been
born and bred in a slave State, thinks so. As a whole, they compare very
favorably with the 'poor white trash,' and individually they are vastly
superior to this 'trash.' It is true, that they can not read or write,
not from want of aptitude or desire, as the teachers among the
contrabands write that their desire to read amounts to a passion, in
many cases, even among the hoary-headed, but because the teaching of a
slave to read or write was, in the good old times before the war,
regarded and punished as a criminal offense. What a pity it is that we
can not go back to the Union _as it was!_ In this ignorance of the
rudiments of learning, the negroes are not unlike a large percentage of
the populations of Great Britain and Ireland.

'And Mr. Phillips would let these ignorant savages loose upon the soil
to tear their masters, destroy each other, and make such a hell upon
earth as has never even yet come from the uncontrolled passions and
unsatisfied wants of men!' If Mr. Trollope were read in the history of
emancipation, he would know that there has not been an instance of 'such
a hell upon earth' as he describes. The American negro is a singularly
docile, affectionate, and good-natured creature, not at all given to
destroying his kind or tearing his master, and the least inclined to do
these things at a time when there is no necessity for them. A slave is
likely to kill his master to gain his freedom, but he is not fond enough
of murder to kill him when no object is to be gained except a halter.
The record so far proves that the masters have shot down their slaves
rather than have them fall into the hands of the Union troops. Even
granting Mr. Trollope's theory of the negro disposition, no edict of
emancipation could produce such an effect as he predicts, to the
_masters_, at least. They, in revenge, might shoot down their slaves,
but, unfortunately, the victims would be unable to defend themselves,
from the fact that all arms are sedulously kept from them. The slaves
would run away in greater numbers than they do at present, would give us
valuable information of the enemy, and would swell our ranks as
soldiers, if permitted, and kill their rebel masters in the legal and
honorable way of war. It is likely that Mr. Trollope, holding the black
man in so little estimation, would doubt his abilities in this capacity.
Fortunately for us, we can quote as evidence in our favor from General
Hunter's late letter to Congress, which, for sagacity and elegant
sarcasm, is unrivaled among American state papers. General Hunter, after
stating that the 'loyal slaves, unlike their fugitive masters, welcome
him, aid him, and supply him with food, labor, and information, working
with remarkable industry,' concludes by stating that 'the experiment of
arming the blacks, so far as I have made it, has been a complete and
even marvelous success. They are sober, docile, attentive, and
enthusiastic, _displaying great natural capacity for acquiring the
duties of the soldier_. They are eager beyond all things to take the
field and be led into action, and it is the _unanimous opinion_ of the
officers who have had charge of them, that in the peculiarities of this
climate and country, they will prove invaluable auxiliaries, fully equal
to the similar regiments so long and successfully used by the British
authorities in the West-India Islands. In conclusion, I would say that
it is my hope, there appearing no possibility of other reinforcements,
owing to the exigencies of the campaign on the peninsula, to have
organized by the end of next fall, and to be able to present to the
Government, from forty-eight to fifty thousand of these hardy and
devoted soldiers.'

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