The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. II, No. 8, June 1858
by
Various
Part 5 out of 5
of them belongs, inasmuch as the philosophy and method of the policy
of the one and the other are absolutely identical. We have space
only to glance at unquestionable facts, and to trace them to their
necessary motives. To maintain the supremacy of this usurpation, and
the Draconic laws made under it, Mr. Pierce poured in the squadrons
of the Republic, to dragoon the rebellious freemen into obedience to
what their souls abhorred, and what their reason told them was of no
more just binding force upon them than an edict of the Emperor of
China. When the actual inhabitants of the Territory had met in
Convention and framed a Constitution excluding Slavery, and had
adopted it, and the legislature authorized by it met, its members
were dispersed by national soldiers, detailed to compel submission
to the behests of the Slavemastery of the Government and of the
nation. These troops have been kept on foot ever since, to intimidate
the people, to assist as special police in the arrest and detention
of political prisoners charged with crimes against the Usurpation,
and to sustain the Federal governors and judges in carrying out
their instructions for the Subjugation of the majority by legal
chicane or by military violence.
Such was the genesis of the Lecompton Constitution, and such the
nursing it had received at the hands of the paternal government at
Washington. In due course of time it was presented to Congress as
the charter under which the people of Kansas asked to receive the
concession of their right of State government; and the scene of war
was forthwith transferred from those distant fields to the chambers
of national legislation, under the immediate eye of the chief of the
state. This high officer soon dispelled any delusive doubts which,
for the purpose of securing his election, he had permitted to be
ventilated during the late Presidential campaign, that he would at
least see fair play in the struggle between Slavery and Freedom in
Kansas. With indecent zeal and unscrupulous partisanship, he
concentrated all the energies of his administration, and employed
the whole force of the influence and the patronage of the nation, to
obtain the indorsement by Congress of the Lecompton Constitution, and
thus to compel the people of Kansas to pass under the yoke of their
Slaveholding invaders. The true origin and character of that vile
fabrication had been made plain to every eye that was willing to see,
and the abhorrence in which it was held by nearly the entire
population of the Territory put beyond question by more than one
trial vote. Yet it was embraced as the test measure of the
Administration to prove the unbroken fealty of the President to the
Power which is mightier than he. Victory was reckoned upon in advance,
as certain and easy. A servile, or rather a commanding majority in
the Senate,--nearly half of that body being of the class that rules
the rulers,--was ready to do whatever dirty and detestable work was
demanded of them. A majority of more than thirty in the House,
elected as supporters of the Administration, seemed to make success
there also an inevitable necessity. But by reason of the vastly
larger proportion of members from the Free States in that body, and
their greater nearness to their constituents, these reasonable
expectations were disappointed. Men who had taken service in the
Democratic ranks, and had been faithful unto that day, refused to
obey the word of command when it took this tone and was informed
with this purpose. And for a season the plague was stayed, and
sanguine hearts trusted that it was stayed forever.
We are willing to believe that the bulk of the Democrats in both
Houses of Congress, who had the virtue to defy the threats and
cajolements of their party-leaders, when this great public crime was
demanded at their hands, were sincere in the resistance they opposed
to this subversion of all the principles in which they had been bred,
and of which their party had always professed to be the special
defence and guard. But the mantle of our charity is not wide enough
to cover up the base treachery of those men who, acknowledging and
demonstrating the right, devised or consented to the villany which
was to crush or to cripple it. That the final shape which the
Lecompton juggle took was an invention of the enemy, cunningly
contrived to win by indirection what was too dangerous to be
attempted by open violence, is a conclusion from which no candid
mind can escape, after a full consideration of the case. The
defection of so large a body of Northern Democrats from the side of
the Slaveholding Directory was doubtless a significant and startling
fact, suggestive of dangerous insubordination on the part of allies
who had ever been found sure and steadfast in every jeopardy of
Slavery. And it made a resort to guile necessary to carry the point
which it was not prudent to press to the extremity of force. The
Slaveholders are not fastidious as to the means by which they reach
their end. Though they might have preferred to hew their way to their
design with a high hand, and to put down all opposition by bought or
bullied majorities, backed by the strong arm of the nation, yet they
never refuse to compromise and palter when the path to success lies
through stratagems or frauds. The skill in this instance, as in all
others, by which they propose to win everything under the show of
yielding somewhat, is worthy of Machiavel or of Lucifer, and is far
above the capacity of the paltry Northern tool who is permitted to
enjoy the infamy of the invention which he was employed to utter.
The Slaveholders, like other despots, do their dirty work by proxy,
and scorn the wretched instruments they use, and then fling from
them in disgust.
The Lecompton cheat having been defeated in the House after it had
received the indorsement of the Senate, the two coordinates were at
issue, and it seemed for a brief time to have met with the fate it
merited. But cunning and treachery combined to put it into the hands
of a Committee of Conference to be manipulated afresh, and, if
possible, moulded into a shape that might give Democratic recusants
an excuse for treason to the North and submission to the Power that
demanded it. And the invention was worthy of the diabolical sagacity
and ingenuity which have always marked the politics of Slavery. The
maxim, that every man has his price, was assumed to apply as well to
men when collected into bodies corporate as to individuals; and the
hook, with which the souls of the men of Kansas are to be fished for,
was baited with a bribe the most tempting to their hungry needs. And
to make their capture the more sure, an answering menace threatens
them on the other hand, to force them to swallow the barbed treachery.
They are offered no opportunity of expressing their assent or
dissent as to the Constitution held over their heads. Their enemies
know too well what its fate would be, if offered, pure and simple,
to their acceptance or refusal. They are only to say whether or not
they will accept five million acres of land that Congress
munificently offers them for the construction of their railways. If
they say, "Yes, thank you," to this simple question, the Chief
Conjurer of the nation, the great Medicine Man of our tribe, the
Head Magician of our Egypt, will only have to say, "Presto pass,"
and they will find themselves a Slave State in the glorious Union,
under a solemn contract, struck by this same act, to endure Slavery
for six years to come. If they say, "No, we won't," the door of the
Union is shut in their faces, and they are told to wait without in
all the bleakness of Territorial dependency, subject to the laws now
afflicting them, with a satrap sent down from Washington to rule over
them, and with Lecomptes and Catos to decree justice for them, until
swindling tools of the Administration shall be instructed to allow
the presence of a sufficient population to entitle a State to a
Representative.
If they consent to be erected into a Slave State by accepting the
bribe, they will come into the Union by a puff of Presidential breath,
though having only forty thousand inhabitants, with two Senators and
a Representative, and all the advantages incident to Federal
connection and patronage. Should they reject it, they will be left,
it may be, to years of Territorial annoyance, and the annoyance of a
Slave Territory, too, till Government officials shall discover their
numbers to amount to near a hundred thousand, and possibly to much
more, after the next census has newly apportioned the House. With
Slavery, they have proffered to them broad lands to help cover their
wide expanse with an iron reticulation of railways, developing their
resources and multiplying their material prosperity, at the slight
cost of their consistency and their honor. Without it, they may have
to stand shivering at the gate of the Union, blasted by the
"cold shade" of our American aristocracy, and far removed from the
genial sunshine of national favor and bounty. Truly did Senator
Wilson say that Congress approached Kansas at once with a bribe and
a threat. Never was the devilish cunning of Slaveholding politics
more strikingly illustrated than by the insidious vileness of this
proposition. It had been bad enough, surely, had we been called upon
to rejoice, as over a great triumph of the right, at the concession
to Kansas of the sovereignty of settling her own institutions in her
own way, had such been granted. Nothing could be more simple and
natural, in a case of conflicting assertions and opposite beliefs as
to the state of opinion there, than to remit the decision of the
doubt to a fresh vote. Had any other interest than that in human
beings been involved, such a disposition of the whole matter would
have excited neither remark nor opposition. Nothing, perhaps, could
exemplify the control Slavery has obtained over the affairs of the
country more strongly than the power it has had to hinder this
simple remedy of an alleged wrong or error,-and this, by procuring
the defection of sordid Northern Representatives from what they
confessed to be the right, to this corrupt evasion,-an evasion
designed to fit the people of Kansas for servitude by tempting them
to sacrifice their self-respect and their honor. Let these
miscreants make haste to seize the price of their perfidy before
popular contempt and loathing shall sweep them forever out of sight
into the abyss of infamy and forgetfulness which is appointed for
the traitors to Liberty. If the question of the real will of the
people of Kansas had been referred back to them for settlement, it
would have been humiliating enough to have had to exult over it as a
victory of Freedom. With what depth of shame, then, should we
contemplate the compassing of their end by the Slavocrats, through
the venal surrender of the rights so long and so manfully asserted,
for so paltry a temptation!
But we do not apprehend a consummation so devoutly to be deprecated.
We believe that the people of Kansas will spurn the bribe and refuse
to eat the dirt that is set before them for a banquet. They will
reject the insulting proffer with contempt, and fall back upon their
reserved right of resistance, passive or active, as their
circumstances may advise. They will not be so base as to desert the
post of honor they have sought in the great fight for freedom and
maintained so long and so well, disappointing and throwing into
confusion the distant allies who have stood behind them in their most
evil hours, for all the lands that President and Congress have to
give. It is, indeed, a momentous crisis for them, and we have faith
to believe that they will not be wanting to its demands. The eyes of
the lovers of liberty everywhere are earnestly watching to see how
they will come out from the ordeal by fire and by gold to which they
are subjected. What Boston was in 1775, and Paris in 1789, is Kansas
now,--the field on which a great battle for the right is to be fought.
Honor or infamy attends the issue of her action in the dilemma in
which the crafty malice of her enemies has placed her. If she agree
to take the dirty acres which are proffered to her as the price of
her integrity, she consents to take the yoke of Slavery upon her
neck and not even to attempt to shake herself free from it for six
years to come. We know that shuffling Democrats, and even
temporizing Republicans, represent that the people, after accepting
the Lecompton Constitution, can forthwith summon a Convention and
substitute another scheme of government in its stead. But this could
be initiated only by a breach of the promise they would have just
pledged, and could be carried through only by a revolution. Such a
course would be a direct violation of the philosophy of
Constitutional Government, which assumes as its fundamental axiom,
that Constitutions can be altered only in the way and according to
the conditions prescribed in themselves. Such a proceeding would be
a _coup d'etat_, not as flagitious certainly as that of Bonaparte,
but to the full as revolutionary and illegal. And we may be sure
that the arm of the United States Government would not be shortened
so that it should not interpose and hinder such a defiance of itself
and the Power whose instrument it is. With servile and corrupt
judges at its beck and a majority in Congress within its purchase,
the occasion and means of such an interference would be readily
devised and supplied.
We believe that this line of policy would lead to an armed collision
with the General Government. It is for the oppressed inhabitants of
any country to say when their wrongs have reached the height which
justifies the drawing of the civil sword. We have neither the right
nor the disposition to advise the people of Kansas in a matter so
emphatically their own. But there is another way of coming to this
arbitrament,--inevitable, if they deviate a hair's-breadth from the
strict line of law,--should they deem there is no other remedy for
their wrongs. The admirable Constitution just framed at Leavenworth,
one well worthy of a free people that has been tried as with fire,
will be adopted before these lines are before the public eye. Let
them reject the Buchanan-English swindle, put their heel on the
Lecompton fraud, set up the Leavenworth Constitution, and erect a
State government under it in defiance of the Territorial Usurpation,
and they will soon find themselves face to face with the tyranny at
Washington. But is there not reason to hope that firmness and
patience may yet win the battle for freedom without resorting to so
serious an alternative? Is it indeed inevitable that Kansas must
remain out of the pale of the Union, under the oppression of the
Territorial laws, until the hirelings of the Government shall have
determined that slaves enough have been poured in to decide the
complexion of the new State, and shall authorize her to ask for
admission? We are told that the joy at Washington and elsewhere over
this "settlement" of the Kansas difficulty was because it was taken
out of Congress, and "Agitation" at an end. But what is to hinder
its being brought into Congress again?-and whose fault will it be,
if Agitation do not survive and grow mightier unto the victory? If
the present Congress can shut its doors against this intruder, its
power dies with itself, and it greatly lies with the people of Kansas
to make the next Congress one that shall rehabilitate them in their
rights. Their conduct at this pregnant moment may settle the
proximate destiny of the Republic, and decide whether the Slave
Power is to rule us by its underlings for four years more, or
whether its pride is to have a fall and its insolence a rebuke in
1860.
We all remember how often the Agitation of the Slavery question has
been done to death in Congress, and how sure it was to appear again
to startle its murderers from their propriety. Like "the
blood-boltered Banquo," it would confront again the eyes that had
hoped to look upon it no more. It would come back:
"With twenty mortal murders on its head.
_To push them from their stools_!"
And this dreaded spectre, though a beneficent angel with healing on
his wings in truth, will push yet many traitorous or cowardly
sycophants from the stools they disgrace, and substitute in their
stead men who will quiet Agitation by Justice. Let the men of Kansas
remember that a yet greater trust than that of providing for their
own interests and rights is in their hands. The battle they are to
fight in this quarrel is for the whole North, for the whole country,
for the world. Let them address themselves unto it with calmness,
with prudence, with watchfulness, with courage. They are beset on
every side by crafty and desperate enemies. Greedy land-jobbers, in
haste to be rich, will try to persuade them that not to be innocent
is to be wise. Timid timeservers will urge a submission which
promises peace, though it be but a solitude that is called so.
Rampant Pro-slavery will exalt its horn against Righteousness and
try again the virtue of ruffianism to prevail against civilization.
The barbarians will hang anew upon the borders, ready to complete
the conquest they began so well. And above all, a majority of the men
who are to pass upon the votes are the creatures of the
Administration, who know, by the example of their predecessors, that
the suspicion of honesty will be fatal to all their hopes of
preferment, and that they can purchase reward only by procuring,
_quocunque modo_, the acceptance of the proposition of Congress.
But still the power is in the hands of the Free-State men, if they
choose to put it forth. Let them organize such a scrutiny everywhere,
that fraud and violence cannot escape detection and exposure. Let
them observe most rigidly all the technical rules imposed upon the
electors, that no vote may be lost. Let them come to the polls by
thousands, and trample under their feet the shabby bribe for which
they are asked to trade away their independence and their virtue.
Let them be thus faithful, and never be weary of maintaining the
Agitation, which is proved, by the very dread their enemies have of
it, to be the way to their victory. Thus they will be sure to triumph,
conquering their right to create their own government, and erect a
free commonwealth on the ruins of the tyranny they have overthrown.
And Kansas, at no distant period, will be welcomed by her Free
Sisters to her place among them, with no stain of bribes in her hands,
and with no soil of meanness upon her garments. And then the
"peace" and "prosperity," which President Buchanan saw in vision on
the eve of May-day, will indeed prevail and be established, while
the blackness of infamy will brood forever over the memory of the
magistrate who used the highest office of the Republic to perpetuate
the wrongs of the Slave by the sacrifice of the rights of the Citizen.
LITERARY NOTICES.
_Library of Old Authors.--Works of John Webster_. London: Jolin
Russell Smith. 1856-57.
We turn now to Mr. Hazlitt's edition of Webster. We wish he had
chosen Chapman; for Mr. Dyce's Webster is hardly out of print, and,
we believe, has just gone through a second and revised edition,
Webster was a far more considerable man than Marston, and infinitely
above him in genius. Without the poetic nature of Marlowe, or
Chapman's somewhat unwieldy vigor of thought, he had that
inflammability of mind which, untempered by a solid understanding,
made his plays a strange mixture of vivid expression, incoherent
declamation, dramatic intensity, and extravagant conception of
character, he was not, in the highest sense of the word, a great
dramatist. Shakspeare is the only one of that age. Marlowe had a
rare imagination, a delicacy of sense that made him the teacher of
Shakspeare and Milton in versification, and was, perhaps, as purely
a poet as any that England has produced; but his mind had no
balance-wheel. Chapman abounds in splendid enthusiasms of diction,
and now and then dilates our imaginations with suggestions of
profound poetic depth. Ben Jonson was a conscientious and intelligent
workman, whose plays glow, here and there, with the golden pollen of
that poetic feeling with which his age impregnated all thought and
expression; but his leading characteristic, like that of his great
namesake, Samuel, was a hearty common sense, which fitted him rather
to be a great critic than a great poet. He had a keen and ready
sense of the comic in situation, but no humor. Fletcher was as much a
poet as fancy and sentiment can make any man. Only Shakspeare wrote
comedy and tragedy with truly ideal elevation and breadth. Only
Shakspeare had that true sense of humor which, like the universal
solvent sought by the alchemists, so fuses together all the elements
of a character, (as in _Falstaff_,) that any question of good or evil,
of dignified or ridiculous, is silenced by the apprehension of its
thorough humanity. Rabelais shows gleams of it in _Panurge_; but, in
our opinion, no man ever possessed it in an equal degree with
Shakspeare, except Cervantes; no man has since shown anything like
an approach to it, (for Moliere's quality was comic power rather
than humor,) except Sterne, Fielding, and Richter. Only Shakspeare
was endowed with that healthy equilibrium of nature whose point of
rest was midway between the imagination and the understanding,--
that perfectly unruffled brain which reflected all objects with
almost inhuman impartiality,--that outlook whose range was ecliptical,
dominating all zones of human thought and action,--that power of
verisimilar conception which could take away _Richard III_ from
History, and _Ulysses_ from Homer,--and that creative faculty whose
equal touch is alike vivifying in _Shallow_ and in _Lear_. He alone
never seeks in abnormal and monstrous characters to evade the risks
and responsibilities of absolute truthfulness, nor to stimulate a
jaded imagination by Caligulan horrors of plot. He is never, like
many of his fellow-dramatists, confronted with unnatural
Frankensteins of his own making, whom he must get off his hands as
best he may. Given a human foible, he can incarnate it in the
nothingness of Slender, or make it loom gigantic through the tragic
twilight of _Hamlet_. We are tired of the vagueness which classes
all the Elizabethan playwrights together as "great dramatists,"--as
if Shakspeare did not differ from them in kind as well as in degree.
Fine poets some of them were; but though imagination and the power of
poetic expression are, singly, not uncommon gifts, and even in
combination not without secular examples, yet it is the rarest of
earthly phenomena, to find them joined with those faculties of
perception, arrangement, and plastic instinct in the loving union
which alone makes a great dramatic poet possible. We suspect that
Shakspeare will long continue the only specimen of the genus. His
contemporaries, in their comedies, either force what they call
"a humor" till it becomes fantastical, or hunt for jokes, like
rat-catchers, in the sewers of human nature and of language. In
their tragedies they become heavy without grandeur, like Jonson, or
mistake the stilts for the cothurnus, as Chapman and Webster too
often do. Every new edition of an Elizabethan dramatist is but the
putting of another witness into the box to prove the inaccessibility
of Shakspeare's stand-point as poet and artist.
Webster's most famous works are "The Duchess of Malfy" and "Vittoria
Corombona," but we are strongly inclined to call "The Devil's
Law-Case" his best play. The two former are in a great measure
answerable for the "spasmodic" school of poets, since the
extravagances of a man of genius are as sure of imitation as the
equable self-possession of his higher moments is incapable of it.
Webster had, no doubt, the primal requisite of a poet, imagination,
but in him it was truly untamed, and Aristotle's admirable
distinction between the _Horrible_ and the _Terrible_ in tragedy was
never better illustrated and confirmed than in the "Duchess" and
"Vittoria." His nature had something of the sleuth-hound quality in
it, and a plot, to beep his mind eager on the trail, must be
sprinkled with fresh blood at every turn. We do not forget all the
fine things that Lamb has said of Webster, but, when Lamb wrote, the
Elizabethan drama was an El Dorado, whose micacious sand, even, was
treasured as auriferous,--and no wonder, in a generation which
admired the "Botanic Garden." Webster is the Gherardo della Notte of
his day, and himself calls his "Vittoria Corombona" a "night-piece."
Though he had no conception of Nature in its large sense, as
something pervading a whole character and making it consistent with
itself, nor of Art, as that which dominates an entire tragedy and
makes all the characters foils to each other and tributaries to the
catastrophe, yet there are flashes of Nature in his plays, struck
out by the collisions of passion, and dramatic intensities of phrase
for which it would be hard to find the match. The "prithee, undo
this button" of _Lear_, by which Shakspeare makes us feel the
swelling of the old king's heart, and that the bodily results of
mental anguish have gone so far as to deaden for the moment all
intellectual consciousness and forbid all expression of grief, is
hardly finer than the broken verse which Webster puts into the mouth
of _Ferdinand_ when he sees the body of his sister, murdered by
his own procurement,--
"Cover her face: mine eyes dazzle: she died young."
He has not the condensing power of Shakspeare, who squeezed meaning
into a phrase with an hydraulic press, but he could carve a
cherry-stone with any of the _concellisti_, and abounds in
imaginative quaintnesses that are worthy of Donne, and epigrammatic
tersenesses that remind us of Fuller. Nor is he wanting in poetic
phrases of the purest crystallization. Here are a few examples:--
"Oh, if there be another world i' th' moon,
As some fantastics dream, I could wish all _men_,
The whole race of them, for their inconstancy,
Sent thither to people that!"
(Old Chaucer was yet slier. After saying that Lamech was the first
faithless lover, he adds,--
"And he invented _tents_, unless men lie,"--
implying that he was the prototype of nomadic men.)
"Virtue is ever sowing of her seeds:
In the trenches, for the soldier; in the wakeful study,
For the scholar; in the furrows of the sea,
For men of our profession [merchants]; all of which
Arise and spring up honor."
("Of all which," Mr. Hazlitt prints it.)
"Poor Jolenta! should she hear of this,
She would not after the report keep fresh
So long as flowers on graves."
"For sin and shame are ever tied together
With Gordian knots of such a strong thread spun,
They cannot without violence be undone."
"One whose mind
Appears more like a ceremonious chapel
Full of sweet music, than a thronging presence."
"Gentry? 'tis nought else
But a superstitious relic of time past;
And, sifted to the true worth, it is nothing
But ancient riches."
"What is death?
The safest trench i' th' world to keep man free
From Fortune's gunshot."
"It has ever been my opinion
That there are none love perfectly indeed,
But those that hang or drown themselves for love,"
says _Julio_, anticipating Butler's
"But he that drowns, or blows out's brains,
The Devil's in him, if he feigns."
He also anticipated La Rochefoucauld and Byron in their apophthegm
concerning woman's last love. In "The Devil's Law-Case," _Leonora_
says:
"For, as we love our youngest children best,
So the last fruit of our affection,
Wherever we bestow it, is most strong,
Most violent, most unresistible;
Since 'tis, indeed, our latest harvest-home,
Last merriment 'fore winter."
In editing Webster, Mr. Hazlitt had the advantage (except in a
single doubtful play) of a predecessor in the Rev. Alexander Dyce,
beyond all question the best living scholar of the literature of the
times of Elizabeth and James I. If he give no proof of remarkable
fitness for his task, he seems, at least, to have been diligent and
painstaking. His notes are short and to the point, and-which we
consider a great merit-at the foot of the page. If he had added
a glossarial index, we should have been still better pleased.
Mr. Hazlitt seems to have read over the text with some care, and he
has had the good sense to modernize the orthography, or, as he says,
has "observed the existing standard of spelling throughout." Yet--for
what reason we cannot imagine-he prints "I" for "ay," taking the pains
to explain it every time in a note, and retains "banquerout" and
"coram" apparently for the sake of telling us that they mean
"bankrupt" and "quorum." He does not seem to have a quick ear for
scansion, which would sometimes have assisted him to the true reading.
We give an example or two:
"The obligation wherein we all stood bound
Cannot be concealed [_cancelled_] without great
reproach."
"The realm, not they,
Must he regarded. Be [we] strong and bold,
We are the people's factors."
"Shall not be o'erburdened [_overburdened_] in
our reign."
"A merry heart
And a good stomach to [a] feast are all."
"Have her meat serv'd up by bawds and
ruffians." [_dele_ "up."]
"Brother or father
In [a] dishonest suit, shall be to me."
"What's she in Rome your greatness cannot awe,
Or your rich purse purchase
Promises and threats." [_dele_ the second "your."]
"Through clouds of envy and disast [rous] change."
"The Devil drives; 'tis [it is] full time to go."
He has overlooked some strange blunders. What is the meaning of
"Laugh at your misery, as foredeeming you
An idle meteor, which drawn forth, the earth
Would soon be lost i' the air"?
We hardly need say that it should be
"An idle meteor, which, drawn forth the earth, would," &c.
"_For_wardness" for "_fro_wardness," (Vol. II. p. 87,) "tennis-balls
struck and ban_ded_" for "ban_died_," (Ib. p. 275,) may be errors of
the press; but:
"Come, I'll love you wisely:
That's jealousy,"
has crept in by editorial oversight for "wisely, that's jealously."
So have:
"Ay, the great emperor of [_or_] the mighty Cham";
and:
"This wit [_with_] taking long journeys";
and:
"Virginius, thou dost but supply my place,
I thine: Fortune hath lift me [_thee_] to my chair,
And thrown me headlong to thy pleading bar";
and:
"I'll pour my soul into my daughter's belly, [_body_,]
And with my soldier's tears embalm her wounds."
We suggest that the change of an _a_ to an _r_ would make sense of
the following:--
"Come, my little punk, with thy two compositors,
to this unlawful painting-house,"
[printing-house,] which Mr. Hazlitt awkwardly endeavors to explain by
this note on the word _compositors_:--"i.e. (conjecturally),
making up the composition of the picture"! Our readers can decide for
themselves;--the passage occurs Vol. I. p. 214.
We think Mr. Hazlitt's notes are, in the main, good; but we should
like to know his authority for saying that _pench_ means "the hole
in a bench by which it was taken up,"--that "descant" means
"look askant on,"--and that "I wis" is equivalent to "I surmise,
imagine," which it surely is not in the passage to which his note is
appended. On page 9, Vol. I., we read in the text,
"To whom, my lord, bends thus your awe,"
and in the note, "i.e. submission." The original has _aue_, which,
if it mean _ave_, is unmeaning here. Did Mr. Hazlitt never see a
picture of the Annunciation with _ave_ written on the scroll
proceeding from the bending angel's mouth? We find the same word in
Vol. III. p. 217,--
"Whose station's built on avees and applause."
Vol. III. pp. 47-48:--
"And then rest, gentle bones; yet pray
That when by the precise you are view'd,
A supersedeas be not sued
To remove you to a place more airy,
That in your stead they may keep chary
Stockfish or seacoal, for the abuses
Of sacrilege have turned graves to viler uses."
To the last verse Mr. Hazlitt appends this note, "Than that of
burning men's bones for fuel." There is no allusion here to burning
men's bones, but simply to the desecration of graveyards by building
warehouses upon them, in digging the foundations for which the bones
would be thrown out. The allusion is, perhaps, to the "Churchyard of
the Holy Trinity";--see Stow's _Survey_, ed. 1603, p. 126. Elsewhere
in the same play, Webster alludes bitterly to "begging church-land."
Vol. I. p. 73, "And if he walk through the street, he ducks at the
penthouses, like an ancient that dares not nourish at the oathtaking
of the praetor for fear of the signposts." Mr. Hazlitt's note is,
"_Ancient_ was a standard or flag; also an _ensign_, of which
Skinner says it is a corruption. What the meaning of the simile is
the present editor cannot suggest." We confess we find no difficulty.
The meaning plainly is, that he ducks for fear of hitting the
penthouses, as an ensign on the Lord Mayor's day dares not flourish
his standard for fear of hitting the signposts. We suggest the query,
whether _ancient_, in this sense, be not a corruption of the Italian
word _anziano_.
Want of space compels us to leave many other passages, which we had
marked for comment, unnoticed. We are surprised that Mr. Hazlitt,
(see his Introduction to "Vittoria Coromboma,") in undertaking to
give us some information concerning the Dukedom and Castle of
Bracciano, should uniformly spell it _Brachiano_. Shakspeare's
_Petruchio_ might hare put him on his guard. We should be glad
also to know in what part of Italy he places _Malfi_.
Mr. Hazlitt's General Introduction supplies us with no new
information, but this was hardly to be expected where Mr. Dyce had
already gone over the field. We wish that he had been able to give
us better means of distinguishing the three almost contemporary John
Websters one from the other, for we think the internal evidence is
enough to show that all the plays attributed to the author of the
"Duchess" and "Vittoria" could not have been written by the same
author. On the whole, he has given us a very respectable, and
certainly a very pretty, edition of an eminent poet.
In leaving the subject, we cannot but express our satisfaction in
comparing with these examples of English editorship the four volumes
of Ballads recently published by Mr. Child. They are an honor to
American scholarship and fidelity. Taste, learning, and modesty, the
three graces of editorship, seem to have presided over the whole work.
We hope soon, also, to be able to chronicle another creditable
achievement in Mr. White's Shakspeare, which we look for with great
interest.
_History of the Inductive Sciences, from the Earliest to
the Present Time_. By WILLIAM WHEWELL, D.D.,
Master of Trinity College, Cambridge. Third Edition,
with Additions. New York: D. Appleton & Co. 1858.
2 vols. 8vo. pp. 566, 648.
We are heartily glad to welcome this reprint of the "History of the
Inductive Sciences," from an improved edition. From an intimate
acquaintance with the first edition, we should cordially recommend
these volumes to those who wish to take a general survey of this
department of human learning. The various subjects are, for the most
part, treated in a manner intelligible and agreeable to the
unlearned reader. As an authority, Whewell is generally trustworthy,
and as a critic usually fair. But in a work going over so much
ground it would be unreasonable to expect perfect accuracy, and
uniformly just estimates of the labors of all scientific men.
Dr. Whewell's scientific philosophy naturally affects his ability as
an historian and critic. In his Bridgewater Treatise, he indulged in
a fling at mathematics, for which we have never wholly forgiven him;
and in the present volume we see repeated evidence of his
underestimate of the value of the sciences of Space and Time. He says,
Vol. I. p. 600, that it was an "erroneous assumption" in Plato to
hold mathematical truths as "Realities more real than the Phenomena."
But to us it seems impossible to understand any work of Nature aright,
except by taking this view of Plato. The study of natural science is
deserving of the contempt which Samuel Johnson bestowed upon it, if
it be not a study of the thoughts of the Divine Mind. And as
phenomena are subject to laws of space and time as their essential
condition, they are primarily a revelation of the mathematical
thoughts of the Creator. Those mathematical ideas are, in Erigena's
phrase, the created creators of all that can appear.
This false view of the mathematics lies at the foundation of
Whewell's view of a type in organized nature. He conceives a genus
to consist of those species which resemble the typical species of
the genus more than they resemble the typical species of any other
genus. It follows from this view that a species might be created
that would not belong to any genus, but resemble equally the types of
two or three genera. Thus, our little rue-leaved anemone might
belong to the meadow rues or to the wind-flowers, at the pleasure of
the botanist. We believe that classification is vastly more real than
this, real as geometry itself. Another instance of a similar want of
idealism in Dr. Whewell may be found in Vol. II. p. 643:--"Nothing
is added to the evidence of design by the perception of a unity of
plan which in no way tends to promote the design." Now to one who
believes, with us, that a thought is as real as the execution of the
thought, the perception of a unity of plan is the highest evidence
of design. No more convincing evidence of the existence of an
Intelligent Designer is to be found than in the unity of plan,--and
his design, thus proved, is the completion of the plan. For what
purpose he would complete it, is a secondary question.
In this third edition many valuable additions have been made; and no
tales of Oriental fancy could be more wonderful than some of these
records of the discoveries in exact science made by our
contemporaries. What more magical than the miracles performed every
day in our telegraphic offices?--unless it be the transmission of
human speech in that manner under the waves of the Mediterranean
from Africa to Europe. What more like the dreams of alchemy than
taking metallic casts, in cold metal, with infinitely more delicacy
and accuracy than by melted metals,--taking them, too, from the most
fragile and perishable moulds? What sounds more purely fanciful than
to assert a connection between variations in the direction of the
compass-needle and spots on the surface of the sun! or what is more
improbable than that the period of solar spots should be ten years?
What would seem to be more completely beyond the reach of human
measurement than the relative velocities of light in air and in water,
since the velocity in each is probably not less than a hundred
thousand miles a second? Yet two different experimenters arrived,
according to Whewell, in the same year, 1850, at the same result,--
that the motion is slower in water; thus supplying the last link of
experimental proof to establish the undulatory theory of light.
While the records of science are strewn on every page with accounts
of such triumphs of human skill and intellect, we see no need of
resorting to fiction or to necromancy for the gratification of a
natural taste for the marvellous.
It is true, Dr. Whewell does not give these discoveries, in the
spirit of an alchemist, as marvels,--but in the spirit of a
philosopher, as intellectual triumphs. Few men of our times have
shown a more active and powerful mind, a more earnest love of truth
for truth's sake, than the author of this History,-and few men have
had a wider or more thorough knowledge of the achievements of other
scientific men. Yet we are surprised, in reading this improved
edition, written scarce a twelvemonth ago, to find how ignorant
Dr. Whewell appears to have been of the existence or value of the
contributions to knowledge made on this side the Atlantic. The
chapter on Electro-Magnetism does not allude to the discoveries of
Joseph Henry, in regard to induced currents, and the adaptation of
varying batteries to varying circuits,-discoveries second in
importance only to those of Faraday,-and which were among the direct
means of leading Morse to the invention of the telegraph. The
chapters on Geology do not mention Professor Hall, and only allude in
a patronizing way to the labors of American geologists, and to the
ease of "reducing their classification to its synonymes and
equivalents in the Old World," as though the historian were not
aware that Hall's nomenclature is adopted on the continent of Europe
by the most eminent men in that department of science. In Geological
Dynamics Dr. Whewell speaks slightingly of glacial action, and
approves of Forbes's semifluid theory, in utter ignorance, it would
seem, of the labors of the Swiss geologists who now honor America
with their presence. The chapters on Zoology, and on Classifications
of Animals, make no allusion to Agassiz's introduction of Embryology
as an element in classification, which was published several years
before the "close of 1856." The history of Neptune gives no hint of
the fact, that its orbit was first determined through the labors of
American astronomers, with all the accuracy that fifty years of
observation might otherwise have been required to secure. Nor does
Dr. Whewell allude to the fact, that Peirce alone has demonstrated
the accuracy of Le Verrier's and Adams's computations, and shown
that a planet in the place which they erroneously assigned to
Neptune would produce the same perturbations of Uranus as those
which Neptune produced. Much less does he allude to that wonderful
demonstration by Peirce of the younger Bond's hypothesis, that the
rings of Saturn are fluid; or to Peirce's remark, that the belt of
the asteroids lies in the region in which the sun could most nearly
sustain a ring. Yet all these points are more important than many of
those which he introduces, and more to the purpose of his chapters.
Notwithstanding these deficiencies in Whewell's scholarship and in
his philosophy, his History is a valuable addition to our modern
literature, and gives a better sketch of the whole ground than can be
found in any other single work. It is particularly valuable to those
whose ordinary pursuits lead them into other fields than those of
science, and we have known such to acknowledge their great
obligations to these clearly written and most suggestive volumes.
_The Life of George Stephenson, Railway Engineer_.
By SAMUEL SMILES. From the
Fourth London Edition. Boston: Ticknor
& Fields.
There is something sublime about railway engineers. But what shall
we say of the pioneer of this almost superhuman profession? The
world would give much to know what Vulcan, Hercules, Theseus, and
other celebrities of that sort, really did in their mortal lives to
win the places they now occupy in our classical dictionaries, and
what sort of people they really were. But whatever they did,
manifestly somebody, within a generation or two, has done something
quite as memorable. Whether the world is quite awake to the fact or
not, it has lately entered on a new order of ages. Formerly it
hovered about shores, and built its Tyres, Venices, Amsterdams, and
London only near navigable waters, because it was easier to traverse
a thousand miles of fluid than a hundred miles of solid surface. Now
the case is nearly reversed. The iron rail is making the continent
all coast, anywhere near neighbor to everywhere, and central cities
as populous as seaports. Not only is all the fertility of the earth
made available, but fertility itself can be made by our new power of
transportation.
Who more than other man or men has done this? Is there any chance
for a new mythology? Can we make a Saturn of Solomon de Caus, who
caught a prophetic glimpse of the locomotive two hundred years ago,
and went to a mad-house, without going mad, because a cardinal had
the instinct to see that the hierarchy would get into hot water by
allowing the French monarch to encourage steam? Can we make a
Jupiter of Mr. Hudson, one bull having been plainly sacrificed to him?
and shall Robert Schuyler serve us for Pluto? Shall we find Neptune,
with his sleeves rolled up, on the North River, commanding the first
practical steamboat, under the name of Robert Fulton? However this
may be, we think Mr. Smiles has made out a quite available demigod
in his well-sketched Railway Engineer. George Stephenson did not
invent the railway or the locomotive, but he did first put the
breath of its life into the latter. He built the first locomotive
that could work more economically than a horse, and by so doing
became the actual father of the railroad system. In 1814, he found
out and applied the steam-blast, whereby the waste steam from the
cylinders is used to increase the combustion, so that the harder the
machine works, the greater is its power to work. From that moment he
foresaw what has since happened, and fought like a Titan against the
world-the men of land, the men of science, and the men of law-to
bring it about.
But before we go farther, who was this George Stephenson? A
collier-boy,-his father fireman to an old pumping-engine which
drained a Northumbrian coal-mine,-his highest ambition of boyhood to
be "taken on" to have something to do about the mine. And he was
taken on to pick over the coal, and finally to groom the engine,
which he did with the utmost care and veneration, learning how to
keep it well and doctor it when ill. He took wonderfully to
steam-engines, and finally, for their sake, to his letters, at the
age of seventeen! He became steam-engineer to large mines. Of his
own genius and humanity, he studied the nature of fire-damp
explosions, and, what is not more wonderful than well proven,
invented a miner's safety-lamp, on the same principle as Sir
Humphrey Davy's, and tested it at the risk of his life, a month or
two before Sir Humphrey invented his, or published a syllable about
it to the world! He engineered the Stockton and Darlington Railway.
He was thereupon appointed engineer of the Liverpool and Manchester
Railway. Though the means of transportation between those cities,
some thirty miles, were so inadequate that it took longer to get
cotton conveyed from Liverpool to Manchester than from New York to
Liverpool, yet it was with the utmost difficulty that a grant of the
right to build a railway could be obtained from Parliament. There
was little faith in such roads, and still less in steam-traction.
The land-owners were opposed to its passage through their domains,
and obliged Mr. Stephenson to survey by stealth or at the risk of a
broken head. So great was this opposition, that the projectors were
fain to lay out their road for four miles across a remarkable Slough
of Despond, called Chat Moss, where a scientific civil-engineer
testified before Parliament that he did not think it practicable to
make a railway, or, if practicable, at not less cost than L270,000
for cutting and embankment. George Stephenson, after being almost
hooted out of the witness-box for testifying that it could be done,
and that locomotives could draw trains over it and elsewhere at the
rate of twelve miles an hour,--for which last extravagance his own
friends rebuked him,--carried the road over Chat Moss for L28,000,
and his friends over that at the rate of thirty miles an hour. Thus
he broke the back of the war, and lived to fill England with
railroads as the fruits of his victory; all which, and a great deal
more of the same sort, the reader will find admirably told by
Mr. Smiles,-albeit we cannot but smile too, that, when addressing the
universal English people, he expects them to understand such
provincialisms as _wage_ for wages, _leading coals_ for carrying coal,
and the like. But, nevertheless, his freedom from literary pretence
is really refreshing, and his thoroughness in matters of fact is
worthy of almost unlimited commendation. On the important question,
Who invented the locomotive steam-blast? had Mr. Smiles made in his
book as good use of his materials as he has since elsewhere, he
would have saved some engineers and one or two mechanical editors
from putting their feet into unpleasant places. Our Railroad Manuals,
that have adopted the error of attributing this great invention to
"Timothy Hackworth, in 1827," should be made to read, "George
Stephenson, in 1814." Their authors, and all others, should read
Samuel Smiles, the uppermost, by a whole sky, of all railway
biographers.
_A Volume of Vocabularies, illustrating the Condition and Manners
of our Forefathers, as well as the History of the Forms of
Elementary Education and of the Languages spoken in this Island,
from the Tenth Century to the Fifteenth_. Edited, from MSS. in
Public and Private Collections, by THOMAS WRIGHT, ESQ., etc.
Privately printed. [London.] 1857. 8vo. pp. 291.
Mr. Wright, in editing this handsome volume, has done another
service to the lovers and students of English glossology. Their
thanks are also due to Mr. Joseph Mayer, who generously bore the
expense of printing the book.
A great deal that is interesting to the student of general history
lies imbedded in language, and Mr. Wright, in a very agreeable
Introduction, has summarized the chief matters of value in the
collection before us, which comprises the printed copies of sixteen
ancient MSS. of various dates. As far as we have had time to examine
it, the book seems to have been edited with care and discretion, and
Mr. Wright has added much to its value by timely and judicious notes.
Most of the vocabularies here printed (many of them for the first
time) were intended for the use of schoolmasters, and throw great
light on the means and methods of teaching during the periods at
which they were compiled. Mr. Wright tells us that there exist very
few MSS. of educational treatises of the fourteenth century, (during
which teaching would accordingly seem to have been neglected,) in
comparison with the thirteenth and fifteenth, when such works were
abundant. To all who would trace the history of education in England
and follow up our common-school system to its source, the editor's
Introduction will afford valuable hints.
The following extracts from Mr. Wright's Introduction will give some
notion of the archaeological and philological value of the volume.
"It is this circumstance of grouping the
words under different heads which gives these
vocabularies their value as illustrations of the
conditions and manners of society. It is evident
that the compiler gave, in each case, the
names of all such things as habitually presented
themselves to his view, or, in other
words, that he presents us with an exact list
and description of all the objects which were
in use at the time he wrote, and no more.
We have, therefore, in each a sort of measure
of the fashions and comforts and utilities of
contemporary life, as well as, in some cases, of
its sentiments. Thus, to begin with a man's
habitation, his house,--the words which describe
the parts of the Anglo-Saxon house are
few in number, a _heal_ or hall, a _bur_ or bedroom,
and in some cases a _cicen_ or kitchen,
and the materials are chiefly beams of wood,
laths, and plaster. But when we come to
the vocabularies of the Anglo-Norman period,
we soon find traces of that ostentation in domestic
buildings which William of Malmsbury
assures us that the Normans introduced
into this island; the house becomes more
massive, and the rooms more numerous, and
more diversified in their purposes. When we
look at the furniture of the house, the difference
is still more apparent. The description
given by Alexander Neckam of the hall, the
chambers, the kitchen, and the other departments
of the ordinary domestic establishment,
in the twelfth century, and the furniture
of each, almost brings them before our
eyes, and nothing could be more curious than
the account which the same writer gives us
of the process of building and storing a castle."
p. xv.
"The philologist will appreciate the tracts printed in the following
pages as a continuous series of very valuable monuments of the
languages spoken in our island during the Middle Ages. It is these
vocabularies alone which have preserved from oblivion a very
considerable and interesting portion of the Anglo-Saxon tongue, and
without their assistance our Anglo-Saxon dictionaries would be far
more imperfect than they are. I have endeavored to collect together
in the present volume all the Anglo-Saxon vocabularies that are
known to exist, not only on account of their diversity, but because
I believe that their individual utility will be increased by thus
presenting them in a collective form. They represent the Anglo-Saxon
language as it existed in the tenth and eleventh centuries; and, as
written no doubt in different places, they may possibly present some
traces of the local dialects of that period. The curious semi-Saxon
vocabulary is chiefly interesting as representing the Anglo-Saxon in
its period of transition, when it was in a state of rapid decadence.
The interlinear gloss to Alexander Neckam, and the commentary on
John de Garlande, are most important monuments of the language
which for a while usurped among our forefathers the place of the
Anglo-Saxon, and which we know by the name of the Anglo-Norman. In
the partial vocabulary of the names of plants, which follows them, we
have the two languages in juxtaposition, the Anglo-Saxon having then
emerged from that state which has been termed semi-Saxon, and become
early English. We are again introduced to the English language more
generally by Walter de Biblesworth, the interlinear gloss to whose
treatise represents, no doubt, the English of the beginning of the
fourteenth century. All the subsequent vocabularies given here belong,
as far as the language is concerned, to the fifteenth century. As
written in different parts of the country, they bear evident marks
of dialect; one of them--the vocabulary in Latin verse--is a very
curious relic of the dialect of the West of England at a period of
which such remains are extremely rare."--p. xix.
_Sermons, preached at Trinity Chapel, Brighton_. By the late REV.
FREDERICK W. ROBERTSON, M. A., the Incumbent. Second Series. From
the Fourth London Edition. Boston: Ticknor & Fields. 12mo.
The biography of Robertson, prefixed to this volume, will gratify
the curiosity which every sympathetic reader of the first series of
his sermons must have felt regarding the incidents of his career. It
was evident to a close observer that the peculiar charm and power of
the preacher came from peculiarities of character and individual
experience, as well as from peculiarities of mind. There was
something so close and searching in his pathos, so natural in his
statements of doctrine, so winning in his appeals,--his simplest
words of consolation or rebuke touched with such subtile certainty
the feelings they addressed,--and his faith in heavenly things was
so clear, deep, intense, and calm,--that the reader could hardly
fail to feel that the earnestness of the preacher had its source in
the experience of the man, and that his belief in the facts of the
spiritual world came from insight, and not from hearsay. His
biography confirms this impression. We now learn that he was tried
in many ways, and built up a noble character through intense inward
struggle with suffering and calamity,--a character sensitive, tender,
magnanimous, brave, and self-sacrificing, though not thoroughly
cheerful. The heroism evinced in his life and in his sermons is a
sad heroism, a heroism that has on it the trace of tears. Always at
work, and dying in harness, the spur of duty made him insensible to
the decay of strength and the need of repose. He had no time to be
happy.
The most striking mental characteristic of his sermons is the
originality of his perceptions of religious truth. He takes up the
themes and doctrines of the Church, the discussion of which has
filled libraries with books of divinity which stand as an almost
impregnable wall around the simple facts and teachings of the
Scriptures, protecting them from attack by shutting them from sight,
and in a few brief and direct statements cuts into the substance and
heart of the subjects. This felicity comes partly from his being a
man gifted with spiritual discernment as well as spiritual feeling,
and partly from the instinct of his nature to look at doctrines in
their connection with life. He excels equally in interpreting the
truth which may be hidden in a dogma, and in overturning dogmas in
which no truth is to be found. In a single sermon, he often tells us
more of the essentials of a subject, and exhibits more clearly the
religious significance of a doctrine, than other writers have done in
labored volumes of exposition and controversy. This power of
simplifying spiritual truth without parting with any of its depth
accounts for the interest with which his sermons are read by persons
of all degrees of age and culture. His method of arrangement is also
admirable; his thoughts are not only separately excellent, but are
all in their right places, so that each is an efficient agent in
deepening the general impression left by the whole. The singular
refinement and beauty of his mind lend a peculiar charm to its
boldness; we have the soul of courage without the rough outside
which so often accompanies it; and his diction, being on a level
with his themes, never offends that fine detecting spiritual taste
which instinctively takes offence when spiritual things are viewed
through unspiritual moods and clothed in words which smack of the
senses. Combine all his characteristics, his intrepidity of
disposition and intellect, his deep experience of religious truth,
the sad earnestness of his faith, his penetration of thought, his
direct, executive expression, and the beauty which pervades and
harmonizes all,--and it is hazarding little to say, that his volumes
will take the rank of classics in the department of theology to
which they belong.
_The Church and the Congregation_. A Plea
for their Unity. By C. A. BARTOL.
Boston: Ticknor & Fields. 16mo.
As church-membership is in some respects the aristocracy of
Congregationalism, and as it is considered by many minds to be as
necessary for the safety of theology as the old distinction of
_esoteric_ and _exoteric_ was for the safety of philosophy, the
publication by a clergyman of such a volume as this, with its purpose
clearly indicated by its title, will excite some surprise, and
certainly should excite discussion. Mr. Bartol contends for open
communion, as most consonant with Scripture, with the spirit of
Christianity, with the practice of the early Church, with the
meaning and purpose of the rite. He denies that the ordinance of the
Lord's Supper has any sacredness above prayer, or any of the other
ordinances of religion; and while he appreciates and perhaps
exaggerates its importance, he thinks that its most beneficent
effects will be seen when it is the symbol of unity, and not of
division. The usual distinction between Church and Congregation he
considers invidious and mischievous, as not indicating a
corresponding distinction in religious character, and as separating
the body of Christian worshippers into two parts by a mechanical
rather than spiritual process. Though he meets objections with
abundant controversial ability, the strength of his position is due
not so much to his negative arguments as to his affirmative
statements; for his statements have in them the peculiar vitality of
that mood of meditation in which spiritual things are directly
beheld rather than logically inferred, and, being thus the
expression of spiritual perceptions, they feel their way at once to
the spiritual perceptions of the reader, to be judged by the common
sense of the soul instead of the common sense of the understanding.
This is the highest quality of the book, and indicates not only that
the author has religion, but religious genius; but there is also
much homely sagacity evinced in viewing what may be called the
practical aspects of the subject, and answering from experience the
objections which experience may raise. The writer is so deeply in
earnest, has meditated so intensely on the subject, and is so free
from the repellent qualities which are apt to embitter theological
controversies, that even when his ideas come into conflict with the
most obstinate prejudices and rooted convictions, there is nothing
in his mode of stating or enforcing them to give offence. The book
will win its way by the natural force of what truth there is in it,
and the most that an opponent can say is, that the author is in error;
it cannot be said that he is arrogant, contemptuous, self-asserting,
or that he needlessly shocks the opinions he aims to change.
Mr. Bartol's style is bold, fervid, and figurative, exhibiting a
wide command of language and illustration, and at times rising into
passages of singular beauty and eloquence. The fertility of his mind
in analogies enables him to strengthen his leading conception with a
large number of related thoughts, and the whole subject of vital
Christianity is thus continually in view, and connected with the
special theme he discusses. This characteristic will make his volume
interesting and attractive to many readers who are either opposed to
his views of the Lord's Supper, or are unable to agree with him in
regard to the importance of the change he proposes.
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