Book: Atlantic Monthly Volume 6, No. 37, November, 1860

V >> Various >> Atlantic Monthly Volume 6, No. 37, November, 1860







REVIEWS AND LITERARY NOTICES.


_Reminiscences of the late Thomas Assheton Smith, Esq.; or, The Pursuits
of an English Country-Gentleman._ By Sir J.E. EARDLEY-WILMOT. London:
Murray. 1860.

We are somewhat doubtful whether Charles Lamb would have included this
handsome volume in a list of _books_. It is evidently the work of an
eager sportsman, one learned in all the minutiae of the chase. Much of
it is taken up with enthusiastic description of Mr. Smith's favorite
horses and hounds, of the astonishing qualities of Rory O'More, of the
splendid runs made by Fireship and Lightboat, of the notable improvement
made in the Suffolk pack by Mr. Smith's judicious system of crossing.
All this part of the book will doubtless interest any English gentleman
who delights in pink and buckskins, and will especially please those who
recollect the famous Tom Smith, as he was called, when,

"on a morning
Ruddy as health, he rode into the field
And then pursued the chase,"

over and through swamp, hedge, and ditch, with that dare-devil speed and
recklessness that won for him the reputation of being the best rider,
the hardest seat, and the first sportsman in all England.

And even to us, who never chased the fox nor ever crossed a
thoroughbred, this portion of the work is not without a certain
interest; for we take a species of pleasure in hearing or learning the
technical terms of any art, trade, or pursuit whatsoever, and not often
to American eyes comes the chance of becoming acquainted with the
huntsman, the whipper-in, the ride to cover, and the eager, toilsome,
dangerous chase.

Still we cannot help regarding the over-abundance of these things as not
only a blemish in the book as a work of art, which indeed it scarcely
pretends to be, but also as a hindrance to the attainment of its object,
which is the vindication of Mr. Smith's character from certain charges
made against it by the "Times" and other London newspapers, which spoke
but slightingly of him, pronouncing him to have been a mere fox-hunting
squire, and nothing more.

To contradict these and similar aspersions, his widow put all of Mr.
Smith's correspondence into the hands of his warm friend, Sir J.E.
Eardley-Wilmot, and left to him the task of defending the name and fame
of her husband. These memoirs are the result, and we are of opinion,
that, with the exception of the superabundant cricketing and hunting
technicalities before mentioned, the work has been exceedingly well
performed. The book is written in an unambitious, straightforward,
gentlemanly style, that carries conviction with it; and as we rise from
a perusal of it, with occasional stoppings, we feel that the "Times"
correspondent has now at least no excuse for harsh judgment of Mr.
Smith, and that, if he was a reckless rider and a mighty hunter, he was
also very much more and better.

Thomas Assheton Smith was born of sturdy and right English stock, as the
following anecdote makes patent. His father opposed the building of
the Menai Bridge, did not believe, in fact, that it could be built,
considered the ferry good enough, and declared, that, if it should be
finished, he for one would never set foot upon it. The possibility of
building a bridge having been demonstrated to Mr. Smith by the completed
structure, he, for the remainder of his life, when his occasions took
him across the strait, made use of a boat. Other such anecdotes are told
of him, setting forth his obstinacy and courage in a strong light, so
that we are not surprised when we are informed that his son had a
stern temper and was somewhat dictatorial in the field. We could have
accounted for Tom Smith's severe countenance, though we had never heard
of that two hours' battle at Eton, of which the school-traditions yet
speak, when he fought a drawn fight with Jack Musters, who, the Squire
always declared, spoiled his beauty for him. Neither do we wonder when
we hear that he fought a six-foot carter in the street and beat him, or
that, when nearly eighty years of age, he jumped off his horse and put
up his hands to a farm-laborer who had insulted him, or that, when he
ran as candidate for Parliament, for Nottingham, and was hissed and
groaned in that radical city, he stepped down from the hustings and
proposed a set-to with any voter in the crowd. This was good crowing,
but the old cock had taught him.

From Eton young Smith was removed to Oxford, where we are told he often
rode out with the hounds and began his practice of keeping close up to
them at the risk of his own and his horse's neck. Clearly the subject of
these memoirs was not intended to shine in the schools and wisely did
not make the attempt. Leaving college, Mr. Smith for a few years devoted
himself to the improvement of his horses and hounds, and, as the author
says, to "creating a new country near Salisbury Plain." The thread
of his life is then followed down to the death of his father and his
entrance upon the manifold duties of a large landed proprietor, owner
of immense quarries, and landlord of some hundreds of tenants,--the
pursuits, in short, of an English country-gentleman. Here is the real
interest of the book. It is interesting to note the difference between
this country-squire and that typical country-squire with which the plays
and novels of the last hundred and fifty years have made us familiar.
We all know him. Purple with Port, beef-witted, tyrannical, intolerant,
ignorant, never happy unless when on horseback or drunk, nor looking
happy then.

But the "glorious gains" of the nineteenth century have come to
fox-hunters as well as to other men, and Squire Smith is a very much
ameliorated Squire Western, though we see plain enough evidence that
the original stock is the same in both. Both are good Tories, hate the
French, and would fight for the Church; but we are sure that Squire
Western considers a curate as but a poor creature, and we fear Squire
Smith has not any Puritanical reverence for the clergy,--for curates, at
least; for we are told, that, when the Reverend Mr. T. Dyson preached
his first sermon, the Squire walked up to him in the church-porch, and,
clapping him on the back, said to the young parson, "Well done, my boy!
you shall have a mount on Rory next Tuesday for this!" But we do not
think that Squire Western would have been liberal or politic enough
to have given land and money to several neighboring congregations of
Dissenters, or that he would have given away to his quarrymen several
thousand acres of good land together with building-materials. Nor have
we such faith in the ability of the Georgian Squire as to believe that
he, from his own observation and acute reasoning on facts which he had
noticed when a boy in school, would ever have given to the world the
famous wave-line bow to be a pattern on which all nations should model
their vessels. Yet this our Victorian Squire has done, and he loses no
credit by the fact that Mr. Scott Russell, the great naval architect,
had at nearly the same time, working from entirely different premises,
arrived at the same result.

Mr. Smith seems to us well worth knowing as the type of a great class of
Englishmen,--that class to which the author of "School-Days at Rugby"
gives the comprehensive patronymic of Brown,--a class bold, honest,
energetic, not too affectionate, not too intellectual, perhaps, but,
by virtue of their strength of hand, head, and will, and their inborn
honesty of soul, the masters in some important respects of all the men
that live.


_Essays and Reviews_. The Second Edition. London: 1860. 8vo. pp. 434.

The second English and the first American edition of the volume bearing
the modest title given above have followed quickly its original
publication. The title-page, indicating only the form of the matter in
the volume, compels a reference to the table of contents in order to
learn its substance. From this it appears that the Essays and Reviews
are seven in number, each by a different author, and that they treat
chiefly of topics connected with the study of Scripture,--the only one
not directly indicating its relation to this study by its title being
the first, on "The Education of the World," by the Reverend Frederick
Temple, Head Master of Rugby School. The names of several of the
authors, those, for instance, of the late Baden Powell, of Dr. Rowland
Williams, and of Mr. Jowett, Regius Professor of Greek in the University
of Oxford, are well known as among those of the most advanced and ablest
leaders of thought in the most liberal section of the English Church. It
is not strange that a volume to which such men have contributed should
have excited a general and deep interest among all who are interested in
the present position of scholarship in England and of thought in regard
to the most important subjects which can occupy the intellects of men.

Whatever expectations the announcement of the volume excited are well
supported by its contents. It is the most important contribution made
during the present generation in England to the establishment of a sound
religious philosophy, and to the advance of religious truth. Whatever
opposition some of the speculations contained in it may excite, whether
the main views of its authors be accepted or not, (and in this notice we
do not propose to consider whether they be true or not,) the
principles upon which their opinions and speculations are based are
so incontrovertible, and the learning and ability with which they are
supported are so great, that the work must inevitably produce a lasting
effect upon the tendency of thought in respect to the subjects it
embraces and must lead to the reconsideration of many prevalent
opinions. It is a book at once to start doubts in the minds of those
attached to established forms and bound by ancient creeds, and to quiet
doubts in those who have been perplexed in the bewilderments of modern
metaphysical philosophy or have found it difficult to reconcile the
truths established by science with their faith in the Christian
religion. It is a book which serves as a landmark of the most advanced
point to which religious thought has yet reached, and from which to take
a new observation and departure.

The most striking external characteristic of these Essays is, that,
having been "written in entire independence of each other, and without
concert or comparison," they, without exception, present a close
similarity in spirit and in tone. All of them are distinguished by
a union of freedom with reverence, as rare as it is remarkable, in
treating of subjects peculiarly likely to suffer from being handled in a
conventional manner, and usually discussed with exaggerated freedom or
with superstitious reverence. In tone and temper they leave nothing to
be desired; they are neither hot with zeal nor rash with controversial
eagerness; but they are calm without coldness, earnest without
extravagance. The fairness and candor displayed in them, the freedom
from party-prejudice or bias, the clearness in the statement of
difficulties, the honesty in the recognition of the limits of present
knowledge, all indicate most clearly the growth of a worthy spirit in
the treatment of subjects which have too often heretofore been fields
for the exhibition of narrowness, intolerance, and bigotry. Such a book
is not only an honor to the men engaged in its production, but of happy
augury for the future progress of truth.

The topics which these Essays discuss are of as much interest in America
as in England, to those outside the English Church as to those within
it. But, at the same time, most of the Essays (and this consideration
is not a satisfactory one) are of a kind which it would seem could have
been produced only in England, and there only within the limits of the
Church. In America we have no body of men capable of work so different
in its parts, and, at the same time, exhibiting such soundness and
extent of scholarship, such liberality of opinion, such disciplined
habits of thought. Any single Essay in the volume might, perhaps,
without any extravagance of supposition, have been the work of some
American scholar; but the difficulty would be to find here seven writers
each capable of producing one of the Essays. The intellectual discipline
of English methods of study and of English institutions still produces
a greater number of men capable of the highest sort of work, than the
methods in vogue and the institutions established here. We have thinkers
who venture as pioneers into the uncleared wilderness. Their vigorous
blows bring down many an old tree moss-grown with errors, and their
ploughs for the first time turn the soil covered with the fallen leaves
of decayed beliefs; but we fail in our supply of those men who are to
follow the pioneers and do the higher and more lasting constructive work
of civilization. Now, as in past times, we must be content, so far as we
may, to have this work done for us by the thinkers and scholars of other
lands. But how long is this to last? Is the same sort of makeshift to be
allowed in the processes of American thought, which in the expanse of
our territory we have allowed in the processes of material labor?

The publication of these "Essays and Reviews" marks, as we believe,
an epoch in the history of thought in England. They will stand as the
monument of the reaction of the best minds against the "Tractarian"
movement on the one hand, and against the skeptical tendencies of much
of the science and philosophy of recent times on the other. For while,
at Oxford and elsewhere, a strong current has set back against the
unimpeded progress of truth, while the attempt has been made, and not
without a transient success, to rivet old fetters upon the hearts and
intellects of men, another school, borrowing their metaphysics from
Germany, and their notions of Christianity from the common creeds, have
set up science in opposition to faith, and have treated religion, with
more or less openness, as if it were a worn-out superstition. The
essential value of this book is, that its various Essays are virtually
an attempt--how far successful each reader must judge for himself--to
show that the Christian religion is no fixed and formalized set of
doctrines, but an expansive and fluent faith, adapting itself to the new
needs of every generation and of each individual; not opposed to the
teachings of science, but, when properly understood, entirely harmonious
with them, and drawing continually fresh support from them; having
nothing to fear from the progress of knowledge and the increase of
light, but everything to gain; welcoming truth, whencesoever it may
come, whatsoever it may be, whithersoever it may lead.

Beside the topics of thought treated of in this volume, it suggests
incidentally many others of peculiar interest. As an indication of the
present condition of English scholarship, it is full of encouragement
for the future. For more than a century there has been very little deep,
original, and productive study of the Scriptures in England. A new
impulse has now been given to it. What will be its effect, and the
effect of the liberalized and more tolerant spirit of which it is a
proof, upon the constitution of the English Church can be foreseen but
in part. It is certain that it must lead to great changes, and to a
virtual breaking-down of many of the most confining sectarian barriers.
No Articles and no Creeds can stand for many generations as the
authoritative expressions of belief, after the character of the
compulsion which they exercise is understood, after the history of
sectarian differences is fairly stated, after the interpretation of
Scripture is placed upon a sound basis, and the nature of Christianity
and the object of the teachings of Christ are thus brought home to the
intellects and the hearts of men.


_A Journey in the Back-Country_. By FREDERICK LAW OLMSTED. Author of "A
Journey in the Seaboard Slave-States," "A Journey in Texas," "Walks and
Talks of an American Farmer in England," etc. New York: Mason Brothers.
1860. pp. xvi., 492.

Mr. Olmsted is no ordinary traveller for amusement or adventure. He
leaves home to instruct himself through his own eyes and ears concerning
matters of general interest about which no trustworthy information was
to be found in books. Looking at Slavery merely as an economist, with no
political or moral prepossessions to mislead his judgment, he went to
study for himself its workings and results as a form of labor, we might
almost say, so cool-headed is he, as an application of forces, rather
than as a social or political phenomenon. Self-possessed and wary,
almost provokingly unsympathetic in his report of what he saw,
pronouncing no judgment on isolated facts, and drawing no undue
inferences from them, he has now generalized his results in a most
interesting and valuable book. No more important contributions to
contemporary American history have been made than in this volume and the
two that preceded it. We know of no book that offers a parallel to them,
except Arthur Young's "Travels in France." To discuss the question of
Slavery without passion or even sentiment seemed an impossibility; yet
Mr. Olmsted has shown that it can be done, and, having no theory to
bolster, has contrived to tell us what he saw, and not what he went to
see,--the rarest achievement among travellers. Without the charm of
style, he has the truthfulness of Herodotus.

We do not forget that there was wisdom as well as wit in Dr. Johnson's
sarcastic classification of facts with donkeys. The great majority of
so-called facts, and especially those detailed by travellers, are of no
consequence whatever to man or beast. What is it to us that Mr. A. has
been condescending enough to look at the Venus of Milo, or that Mr. B.,
with more time than he knows what to do with already on his hands, must
steal a couple of good working hours from Carlyle, worth probably five
guineas apiece? That Hannibal crossed the Alps was something; that
Goethe did was and is also of some consequence; but the transit of Mr.
Anarithmon Smith need cause no excitement in the observatories. That a
man has found out, by laborious counting, which is the middle word
in the New Testament, is pretty sure to get into the newspapers as a
remarkable fact; that he had discovered its central thought, and made
it the keystone to knit together his else incomplete outward and inward
lives, would hardly be esteemed of so much consequence. Facts are such
different things, especially to different persons! The truth is, that
we should distinguish between real facts and the mere images of facts,
though the newspapers teach us to confound them, putting side by side,
as they do, Garibaldi's entry into Naples and Dennis McQuigley's into
the lock-up.

The man who gives us a really new fact deserves to be classed with
him who makes two blades of grass grow where one grew before, for it
contains the germinal principle of knowledge. We owe a large debt in
this kind to Mr. Olmsted. He tells us much of what he saw, little of
what he thought. He has good eyes, and that something behind them that
makes a good observer. As respects the South, he has the advantage of
being at once native and foreigner, so that what is merely American does
not divide his attention with what is local and peculiar. Making entries
in his diary before impressions have had time to cool, he has preserved
even the dialect of those with whom he talked, and thus given a lively
reality to his narrative.

Nearly one-half of Mr. Olmsted's present volume is devoted to a
discussion of the conclusions to be drawn from the mass of observations
he has thus far collected. His views are entitled to the more
consideration that the tone of his mind is so dispassionate. He finds
himself compelled to give his verdict against Slavery, whether it be
considered morally, politically, or economically. We cannot but think
that the reading of his book will do great good in opening the minds of
many to a perception that the agitation of the Slavery question is not
a mere clash of unthinking prejudices between North and South, that
Slavery itself is not a matter of purely local concern, but that
it interests all parts of the Republic equally. It is certainly of
paramount importance that we should understand the practical workings
of a system which is converting what by natural increase will soon
constitute a majority of the population in the fairest portion of our
territory into a vast planting, hoeing, and cotton-picking machine.

Mr. Olmsted's qualifications as a traveller are so remarkable that we
cannot help wishing that he would make a journey through New England and
make us as thoroughly acquainted with its internal condition as we ought
to be. We believe there is no book of the kind since that of President
Dwight, and that gives us little of the sort of information we desire.
It is an insight into the manners, modes of life, and ways of thinking
that is of value; and Mr. Olmsted, who goes about, like Chaucer's
Somner,

"Ever inquiring upon everything,"

is just the person to supply a great want in our literature. We know
less of the domestic habits of a large part of our population than of
those of the Saxons in the time of Alfred. But for a few glimpses
which we get from Dunton, Madam Knight, the Rev. Jacob Bailey, and the
Proceedings of Synods, we should be little better acquainted with the
New Englanders of the century following the Restoration than with the
primitive Aryans. Bailey's account of his voyage to England is the best
contemporary testimony to the truth of Smollett's pictures of sea-life
that we ever met with, and we cannot sufficiently regret that the whole
of his journal during his college-life was not published. Mr. Olmsted
would be sure of a grateful recognition from posterity, if he would
do for New England what he has done for the South. We might not be
flattered by his report, but we could not fail to be benefited by it.
It would, perhaps, lead to the establishment of home missions among the
Bad-Bread and Foul-Air tribes, who make more wretched captives for life
and kill more children than the French and Indians together ever dreamed
of.


_Sketches of Parisian Life. The Greatness and Decline of Cesar
Birotteau_. From the French of HONORE DE BALZAC. Translated by O.W.
WIGHT and F.B. GOODRICH. New York: Rudd & Carleton, 130 Grand Street.
1860. pp. 387.

We are very glad to see this beginning of a translation of Balzac, or
de Balzac, as he chose to christen himself. Without intending an
exact parallel, he might be called the Fielding of French
Literature,--intensely masculine, an artist who works outward from an
informing idea, a satirist whose humor will not let him despise human
nature even while he exposes its weaknesses. The story of Caesar
Birotteau is well-chosen as an usher to the rest, for it is eminently
characteristic, though it does not show the higher imaginative qualities
of the author. It is one of the severest tests of genius to draw an
ordinary character so humanly that we learn to love and respect it in
spite of a thorough familiarity with its faults and absurdities. In this
respect Balzac's "Birotteau" is a masterpiece. The translation, as far
as we have had time to look into it, seems a very easy, spirited, and
knowing one. The translators have overcome the difficulties of _slang_
with great skill, rendering by equivalent vulgarisms which give the
spirit where the letter would be unintelligible. We object, however, to
a phrase like "vest-pocket," where we find it in the narrative, and not
in the mouth of one of the personages. It is tailor's English, which is
as bad as peddler's French. But this is a trifle where there is so much
to commend in essentials, and we hope the translators will be encouraged
to go on in a work so excellently begun.


_Home Ballads and Poems_. By JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER. Boston: Ticknor &
Fields. 1800. pp. 206.

The natural product of a creed which ignores the aesthetical part of man
and reduces Nature to a uniform drab would seem to have been Bernard
Barton. _His_ verse certainly infringed none of the superstitions of the
sect; for from title-page to colophon, there was no sin either in the
way of music or color. There was, indeed, a frugal and housewifely Muse,
that brewed a cup, neither cheering unduly nor inebriating, out of the
emptyings of Wordsworth's teapot. How that little busy B. improved each
shining hour, how neatly he laid his wax, it gives us a cold shiver to
think of,--_ancora ci raccappriccia!_ Against a copy of verses signed
"B.B.," as we remember them in the hardy Annuals that went to seed
so many years ago, we should warn our incautious offspring as an
experienced duck might her brood against a charge of B.B. shot. It
behooves men to be careful; for one may chance to suffer lifelong from
these intrusions of cold lead in early life, as duellists sometimes
carry about all their days a bullet from which no surgery can relieve
them. Memory avenges our abuses of her, and, as an awful example, we
mention the fact that we have never been able to forget certain stanzas
of another B.B., who, under the title of Boston Bard, whilom obtained
from newspaper-columns that concession which gods and men would
unanimously have denied him.

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