ns. Studying Lessons. Studying Lessons. Studying Lessons. For Examination.
with
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on the
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and
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with
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BEHAVIOR
XI TEXT,
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on the
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as means of
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IMPROVEMENT.
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READINGS
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and
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III
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in
of
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of
IV
** CONVERSATIONS ON SPIRITUAL CULTURE on Friday Evening of each week, at the School Room No. 7, in the Temple ; commencing at 7 o'clock.
Teachers of Classes in Sunday Schools, parents, and others interested in Spiritual Culture, are respectfully invited to attend.
Children of both soxes, between the ages of four and fourteen, are admitted to the exercises of the School.


454
(April,
Canova.
conclusione dison of the cause
We cannot avoid the conclusion, that Boston withheld
her patronage from Mr. Alcott by reason of her failure to
inquire into the merits of the case, and not because she
had duly and fully investigated and calmly judged. None
but a willing eye can appreciate. A love-insight in the ob-
server is needful in order to understand the labors and
motives of a love-inspired man. Shakspere is to be judg-
ed by the Shakspere standard, not by Homer's works.
Milton must be studied in the Miltonic idea. This æsthet-
ic law applies to the criticism of actual works. Let spirit-
culture be viewed from the spirit-ground, and then the
spectator may freely speak. On that ground we affirm,
Boston should not have permitted such a son to have want-
ed her home-protection and support for one moment.
Should the opportunity again be afforded, we hope it will
be even in a broader and deeper manner, when the idea
being presented in great integrity will be better understood
and more favorably received.
C. L.
CANOVA.
Natura, onde legge ebbe ogni cosa,
Chi pietra, e moto in un congiunti vede,
Per un instante si riman pensosa !
Pindemonte on the Hebe of Canota.
I well remember when I first saw the work which called
forth this graceful flattery. We saw very little sculpture
here, and there was a longing for those serene creations,
which correspond, both from the material used and the
laws of the art, to the highest state of the mind. For the
arts are no luxury, no mere ornament and stimulus to a
civic and complicated existence, as the worldling and the
ascetic alike delight in representing them to be, but the
herbarium in which are preserved the fairest flowers of
man's existence, the magic mirror by whose aid all its
phases are interpreted, the circle into which the various
spirits of the elements may be invoked and made to reveal'
the secret they elsewhere manifest only in large revolutions
of time; and what philosophy, with careful steps and anx-


1843.)
455
Canova.
jous ear, has long sought in vain, is oftentimes revealed at
once by a flash from this torch.
With thoughts like these, not clearly understood, but
firmly rooted in the mind, was read an advertisement of
“ some of Canova's principal works, copied by his pupils.”
Canova! The name was famous. He was the pride of
modern Italy, the prince of modern art, and now we were
to see enough of the expressions of his thought to know
how God, nature, and man stood related in the mind of
this man. He had studied these in their eternal affinities,
and written the result on stone. How much we should
learn of the past, how stand assured in the present, how
feel the wings grow for the future!
With such feelings we entered the cold and dingy room,
far better prepared surely than the chosen people, when
they saw the prophet descend from the Mount of vision,
with the record of the moral law also inscribed on stone.
For they were led, but we were seekers. But, alas! alas !
what dread downfall from this height of expectation! The
Hebe, so extolled above, was the first object that met the
eye. Hebe! Was this the ever-blooming joy that graced
the golden tables ?
Then there were the Dancers, there the Magdalen, Gods
and Goddesses, Geniuses, with torches reversed, and other
bright ideals of our thought, all so graceful, so beautifully
draped and so-French it seemed to us, our own street
figures infinitely refined — can this be all ? Does not the
artist, even, read any secret in his time beyond the love of
approbation, the shades of sentiment, and the cultivation
of the physique, not for health, but to charm the eyes of
other men ? We did not wish to see the old Greek majesty;
what that says we knew. The coarsest plaster cast had
shown us what they knew of the fulness of strength, ful-
ness of repose, equipoise of faculties desirable for man.
But was there nothing for us? No high meaning to the
dark mysteries of our day, no form of peculiar beauty hid
beneath its beggarly disguises ?
Time has not changed this view of the works of Canova,
but, after the first chill of disappointment was over, when
we no longer expected to find a genius, a poet in the ar-
tist, we have learnt to value him as a man of taste, and to
understand why he filled such a niche in the history of his


456
[April,
Canova.
time. And what we partly knew before, has now been
made more clear by Missirini's life of him, which has only
of late fallen in our way, though published as early as 1824.
As the book has not, we believe, been translated, a no-
tice of leading facts in the life, and version of passages in
which Canova expressed his thoughts may be acceptable
to the few, who have time to spare from rooting up tares in
the field of polemics or politics, and can believe there is
use in looking at the flowers of this heavenly garden
through the fence which forbids Yankee hands their darl-
ing privilege to touch, at least, if they may not take.
Canova, as we have said, was not a genius, he did not
work from the centre, he saw not into his own time, cast
no light upon the future. As a man of taste, he refined
the methods of his art, reformed it from abuses, well under-
stood its more definite objects, and as far as talent and high
culture could, fulfilled them. If not himself a great artist,
he was, by his words and works, an able commentator on
great artists. And intermediate powers of this kind must
be held in honor, like ambassadors between nations, that
might otherwise remain insular and poor.
As a character, he was religious in modesty, reverence,
and fidelity. Liſe was truly to him a matter of growth,
and action only so far valuable as expressive of this
fact. It is therefore a pleasure to look on the chronicle of
marble, where the meaning of his days is engraved. A
monotony of conception, indeed, makes this a brief study,
though the names alone of his works fill eighteen pages of
Missirini's book. In labor, he was more indefatigable, prob-
ably, than if he had lived a deeper life; his was all one
scene of outward labor, and meditation of its means, from
childhood to advanced age; he never felt the needs com-
mon to higher natures, of leaving the mind at times fal-
low, that it may be prepared for a richer harvest; he never
waited in powerless submission, for the uprise of the tide
of soul. His works show this want of depth, and his
views of art no less; but both have great merits as far as
they go, - his works in their execution, his views as to ac-
curate perceptions of the range of art, and the use of
means.
It is intended to make farther use of the remarks of
Canová in another way. But it will not forestall but rather


1843.)
457
Canova.
prepare for the relation in which they will there be placed
to present them here. Not all are given but only that
portion most important in the eyes of the translator.
These sayings of Canova were written down from his
lips by his friend and biographer, Missirini, who seems an
Italian in sensibility, and an Englishman in quiet self-re-
spect. He has obviously given us, not only the thought
but the turn of expression; there is in the original a pen-
etrating gentleness, and artist-like grace which give a
charm to very slight intimations. This fineness of tone,
if not represented in its perfection by the English idiom,
will not, I hope, be quite lost, for it is more instructive
than the thoughts in detail. The same purity of manner,
which so well expresses the habit of intercourse with the
purest material and noblest of arts, gave dignity to Mr
Greenough's late memorial to Congress on the subject of
his Washington; and the need there displayed of stating
anew to this country rules of taste, which have passed into
maxims elsewhere, is reason enough why such remarks, as
these of Canova, should be offered to the careful attention
of persons, who wish to fit themselves for intelligent enjoy-
ment of the beautiful arts.
When Missirini, struck by the excellence of what
he wrote down from the familiar discourse of the mas-
ter, urged him to publish his thoughts in print, he al-
ways declined, saying, “opinions, precepts, rules are well
enough in their place, but example is far more valuable.
It is my profession to work as well as I can, not to lecture;
nor would I, for treasures, take upon myself the task of
arguing with irritable pedants."
He said also that he did not confide in his own judg-
ment as to the value of his observations; he knew only
that they were “ dictated by the intimate feeling of art,
by meditation bent constantly upon it, and, finally, the
mistress experience,” that he had no pretensions which
justified his imposing bis opinion on others, but could only
offer it for the private judgment of each hearer.
Let the reader then receive the following remarks as
they were made, as familiar talk of the artist with the
friends who loved him, and, if awake to such sympathies
or with a mind exercised on such topics, he will scarcely
fail to derive instruction and pleasure from the gentle flow
VOL. II. NO. Iv.
58


458
(April,
Canova.
of earnest thought, and the air of delicacy and retirement
in the mind of the thinker. We are with him in the still
cool air of the studio, blocks of marble lie around, grand
in their yet undisclosed secret, and the forms of nymphs
and heroes imform the walls with their almost perfected
beauty. The profound interpretations of a poetic soul,
weaving into new forms the symbols of nature, and reveal-
ing her secret by divine re-creation, will not there be felt;
the thoughts of this sculptor are only new readings of the
text, faithful glosses in the margin, but as such, in them-
selves refined, and for us, in a high degree, refining and
suggestive. Genius must congratulate herself on so faith-
ful a disciple, though he be not a son, but a minister only
of her royal house; and Art, having poured forth her gifts,
must be grateful to one who knew so well how to prize,
select, and dispose them.
OBSERVATIONS OF CANOVA, RECORDED BY MISSIRINI.
I.
Even because Canova had so at heart the interests of
the arts, it grieved him to see such a multitude of young
men devoting themselves to this service; for he said, they
cannot, for the most part, fail to be poor and unhappy.
Italy and the world are filled to satiety with works of art,
and what employment can all these disciples find ?-But the
worst is that they will foster brute mediocrity, for excel-
lence was never the portion of many, and through excel-
lence alone can any good be effected. The academies
should accept all to try the capacity of each, but when they
have ascertained that a pupil has no extraordinary pow-
ers for art, then dismiss him, that he may, as a citizen, ap-
ply himself to some useful calling; for I fear that this mul-
titude who are not fit for the upward path will drag down
with them those who are better, and where they have be-
gun to do ill, will run into every folly; for the arts, turned
into the downward direction, find no stay, but are soon
precipitated into total ruin.
II.
I do not call a work fine, merely because I find no faults
in it. The most sublime works are not faultless; they are so


1843.)
459
Canova.
great because, beside the beauty which satisfies the intel-
lect, they have the beauty of inspiration which assails the
senses and triumphs over the heart; they have within
themselves the affection, within themselves the life, and
make us weep, rejoice, or be troubled at their will; and this
is the true beauty.
III,
I am always studying the shortest and simplest way to
reach my object, as the blow which comes most direct
strikes with most force, whence I would not wish to be
delayed by vain ornaments and distractions.
IV.
Imitate nature alone, not any particular master. If you
go to the master, let it be that he may point out to you
how you may see and copy nature, as she was by him seen
and copied ; study nature through his eyes, and choose
rather the ancient, the Greek masters, for they more than
any others had a free field for seeing and copying nature
and knew better than any others how to do it.
But if you wish to imitate a master, especially in paint-
ing, do with him as with nature ; that is to say, as in nature
you choose the fairest features, so in the master choose
out his better parts, and leave those in which he has shown
his human imperfections. Too often the worst parts of a
famous master are imitated as much as any.
V.
Do you seek in nature some beautiful part, and fail to
find it, be not discouraged, continue long enough the
search, and you will see it in some form at last; for all is to
be found in nature, provided you know how to look for it.
But if you wish to be saved many and tedious researches,
and proceed straight forward, I will teach you this way.
Become first of all skilful in your art, that is, know draw-
ing, anatomy, and dignity, feel grace, understand and enjoy
beauty, be moved by your own conceptions, possess, in
short, all the requisites of art in an eminent degree, and
you will find yourself in the secure way I mean. And be-
ware that you take no other.-Then, if you find in nature


460
[April,
Canova.
some trait of admirable grace and beauty, it will suffice;
for you will know how to bring all other parts into har-
mony with this, and thus produce beautiful and perfect
wholes.
But this, you say, is difficult. Well do I know it is diffi-
cult, and therefore I admonish you to give yourself with all
your force to study; for when you are great in art, you
will know no more of difficulties.
VI.
In daily life, I have always seen graceful men gain the
advantage over severe men; for grace is an omnipotence,
conquering hearts. Be sure it is the same in art; acquire
grace, and you will be happy; but take heed that, as the
man who in society affects grace and has it not is dis-
graced, so the artist, who too sedulously seeks it, instead of
pleasing annoys us. Hold thyself in the just medium.
And this I say to you only in case you feel within yourself
the native capacity for this graceful being ; for, if you are
cold as to this amiable dominion, seek it not; your case is
desperate. Follow then art in its rigor, for severity has
also its honor.
And the same temperance as in grace I would advise
as to expression; that you be always self-poised and com-
posed, showing moderation and serenity of mind. All vio-
lence is deformity. This temperance gave the palm to
Raphael above all the imitators of beauty.
VII.
Sculpture is only one of various dialects, through which
the eloquence of art expresses nature. It is a heroic dia-
lect, like tragedy among the poetic dialects, and, as the
terrible is the first element of the tragic, so is the nude first
element in the dialect of sculpture. And, as the terrible
should in the tragic epopea be expressed with the ut-
most dignity, so the nude should in statuary be signified in
the fairest and noblest forms.
Here art and letters agree as to the treatment of their
subjects.
While invention and disposition keep close to nature
and reason in elocution and execution, it is permitted and


1843.]
461
Canova.
required to leave the vulgar ways of custom and seek an
expression, great, sublime, composed of what is best both
in nature and idea,
VIII.
Money is in no way more legitimately gained than
through the fine arts, because men can do without these
objects, and are never forced by necessity to buy them. They
are articles of luxury, and should leave no doubt of a free.
love in the buyer. Therefore, however great may be the ,
price set upon a work of art, it can never be extravagant.
Rules and measurements, he observed to an artist, when
just, are immutable for the artist who is not perfectly sure
of himself, but a master sometimes shows the height of his
intelligence by departing from them. For a great artist
enjoys the liberty accorded by Aristotle, who says that, in
some cases we should prefer a false vraisemblance to an
unpleasing truth.
The Niobe, for instance, is in wet drapery and so are
many other antique figures. This is not true; but if the
artist had adhered to truth, he would have been traitor to
his art by foolishly encumbering the forms; thus he pre-
ferred a falsity, which brought him a beautiful verisimili-
tude, since, through the wet and adhesive drapery, the
artist could show the forms in the full excellence of art.
Even so, to mark the strength of Hercules, the Greek
gave him a bull neck, to make the Apollo more light and
majestic, altered the natural proportions.
This boldness does not show ignorance which trans-
gresses rules, but science to discern the effect, and choose
the point of view, which is born of philosophy in the
judgment of the artist.
IX.
Observe how important it is that sculpture should be
eminently beautiful, as most generally it must triumph by
a single figure, convince and move by a single word; woe
to it if this figure, this word, be not excellent!
X.
You ought to know anatomy well, said he to some pu-
pils, but not to make others observe this, for, if it is true


462
(April,
Canova.
that art should imitate nature, let us follow nature in this ;
for she does not draw attention to the anatomy, but covers
it admirably, by a well-contrived veil of flesh and skin,
presenting to the eyes only a gentle surface, which mod-
- ulates and curves itself with ease over every projection.
XI.
Pity that nymph cannot speak, said an Englishman, or
that Hebe should not spring forward; could but the mir-
acle be worked here, as it was for Pygmalion, we should
be perfectly content. You deceive yourself, said he ; this
would not give you pleasure. I do not expect by my works
to deceive any one; it is obvious that they are marble, and
mute and motionless ; it suffices me if it be acknowledged
that if I have in part conquered the material by my art and
made an approach to truth. It is sufficient that being
seen to be of stone, the obstacles should excuse the de-
fects. I aspire to no illusion.
Few artists have known how to explain their thoughts in
writing. If they had, there would have been many more
feuds among them, and more time lost. Artists who
wrote were always mediocre. It is necessary to work not
write. Woe also to those literati who constitute them-
selves judges of art; their absurdities will avenge those
whom they misjudge.
XII.
They criticise the faults in my works, nor do I complain;
such are inseparable from the works of a human being; but
what does grieve me is, that they do not find there beau-
ties enough to make them forget the faults. Yet, should
fragments of my works be dug up and shown as antiques,
these same persons, perhaps, would declare them excellent.
Antiquity is privileged! Men are herein unjust, that they
see only the beauties of the ancient, only the faults of the
modern artist. But I recollect to have read the same
complaint in Tacitus!
XIII.
He was unwearied in retouching his works, saying, I
seek in my material a certain spiritual element, which may


1843.]
463
Canova.
serve it as a soul; imitation of forms is death to me. I
would aid myself with intellect, and ennoble those forms
by inspiration, that they might wear at least the semblance
of life, — but it may not be.
XIV.
As to the Greeks, let us study their works to learn their
methods. Let us seek the way they took, to be at the
same time so select and so true.
Speaking of what gives to works of the hand the beauty
of the soul, if you examine, said he, the works of the an-
cients, I see that these workmen strove to put soul and
spirit into looks and attitudes, rather than into vestments;
but, if you look at modern works, you will find the life
rather in the vestments than in the person. Thus with the
ancients the clothes serve and are silent, but, in modern
works, they become arrogant, and the figures remain im-
prisoned in the cold of the marble. This inverse way, I
think, has been a principal cause of the degradation of art.
XV.
I do not like to make portraits, but prefer exercising my
art in a larger way. When you have made a portrait with
the best wisdom of an artist, comes the lover of the person
and says, “You are far handsomer than that, I should not
know it was meant for you;" here the true artist is often-
times pulled to pieces, and one far beneath him com-
mended.
Neither do I wish patiently to copy all the minutiæ of
a countenance. Resemblance should be derived from the
large and important parts, from choice of the leading traits.
Now I believe excellence of this kind is to be attained by
seeing these parts in the bistoric method, and from the
best point of view, so that the image may be at once like
and grandiose, and may seem both true and beautiful,
though the subject in nature may not be beautiful. And
if it is true that the arts are the ministers to beauty, it is a
crucifixion to distort them to copy vulgar subjects.
XVI.
Seeing that certain young painters had attained the
style of the earliest masters, he said, it is well that these


464
[April,
Canova.
young men should begin in that simple and innocent style,
which was the path taken by the greatest artists. But I
hope they will know how to add to simplicity nobleness,
and reach at last a boldness controlled by reason, inspired
by genius, embellished by taste. For had art kept always
within these limits of infancy, we should have had no
Raphael, no Michel Angelo.
XVII,
Finding certain painters discouraged because art was
represented to them as somewhat superhuman, he cheered
them, saying; it makes young men too timid to persuade
them, as they say Mengs did his pupils, that art is a mys-
tery, and that none can be an artist, unless first he has
been raised into Paradise, and sublimated by the most
subtile ideas.
This celestial doctrine may be of use, perhaps, as to
statuary; but as to painting, the excellent Venetian artists
did wonders with a surprising naturalness, and with such
ease that they seemed in sport.
Subtilties produce sophists only. Our old painters re-
fined only in their works, contending only for the imitation
of the true, the beautiful, of nature and human affections,
and thus they produced classic works.
Good sense, an excellence which the Lord God has be-
stowed on but few, is all the metaphysics of our "art, as I
believe it may be of all things. This saying was ever in
his mouth.*
XVIII.
A respectable cavalier, seeing Canova's Venus, fancied
he must have had a divinely beautiful person for his model,
and begged that he would show him one of these celestial
forms. Accordingly, a day was appointed, the nobleman
came full of eagerness, but finding a person rather coarse
than beautiful, was greatly surprised. The sculptor, who
was intimate with him, said, smiling, perfect beauty would
* He does not seem to have clearly seen that the good sense of genius
is the equipoise of perfected faculties, and should be distinguished by the
thinker from the good sense of common men, which expresses only the
experience of past ages.


1843.)
465
Canova.
never be seen by the bodily eye, if unaided by the eyes of
the soul, sharpened by the fair precepts of art, in which
case we do not see the model as it is, but as it ought to be,
and it will suffice to gain from the model an intimation of
what is good. The study of the antique helps to sharpen
and steady these eyes of the intellect, as do the study of
select forms in nature, in the same way as the ancients,
reasoning, culture of the tastes, and the heart.
When you shall thus have directed the visual virtue of
the mind, set yourself to work, you will then overcome all
difficulties, and produce beautiful works upon subjects
which are not beautiful. This is what I would wish to do,
and it pains me the more not to reach the goal, as I know
well where it stands, but the eyes of the mind have not
with me force enough to conquer matter, and thus I
remain mortal as I am.
XIX.
About those masters who urge their pupils to adopt some
particular style, graceful or terrible, rigid or fleshy ; princi-
ples, he said, are the same for all, because they are the
fruit of common sense, but the peculiar disposition allots
to each one in execution his distinctive character, and
here the pupil should be left quite free. Just that temper
of mind which mother nature has placed in the bosom
ought to influence the work ; nature should not be forced,
neither must we fail to do her behests, since that is like
prolonging or shortening the limbs for the bed of the fa-
mous tyrant. And if you urge nature into a path against
her will, she will be sure to drive you back against your
will.
XX.
As to execution, majestic lineaments alone are not suffi-
cient for the grand style, since they may have a dryness in
their majesty.
The majestic parts, happily concorded with the me-
dium and the little to a broad and sublime whole, con-
stitute the grand style.
VOL. III. — NO IV.
59


466
(April,
Canova.
XXI.
As to the old dispute, whether a preference is to be given
to painting or sculpture, he showed pity and disdain for
the idlers who lost in such contention the precious time
that they might have given to work, and added, all this
heat springs from the true point at issue never having been
defined ; that is to say, if we are thinking of invention,
perhaps painting is more difficult, because more compli-
cated than sculpture; even as music and perspective are
more difficult as to invention than sculpture. Yet once
ascertain the rules of music and perspective, and they be-
come easy of execution, because they depend on fixed
rules; which having once learned, the performer may pro-
ceed in safety without fatigue, and without any great intel-
lect. Thus we see mere youths learn music by rule, and
very ordinary artists perfectly acquainted with perspective,
so as to produce striking effect; yet none will allow the
best scene painter as high rank as a very weak historical
painter. The merit rests with the invention of the rules.
Find then first the rules and regular disciplines of the pain-
ter, then compare his work with that of the sculptor, and
see which is the most difficult.
'Tis certain that, all the rules of painting being known,
the art has been made much easier. I know not that we
can say as much for sculpture: we, indeed, see children
amuse themselves with plaster, and making little figures,
but they stand still at these beginnings.
XXII.
In one respect he thought painting had the advantage
over sculpture, and this is in the folds of drapery. It is
true, he said, that folks must always accommodate themselves
to the motions of the person painted, especially to the form
of the muscles, and the reason why they are so free and
graceful in the works of Raphael, and of the ancient mas-
ters, is because they show distinctly the forms beneath
them. This consideration is of equal importance to the
painter and sculptor. But while the painter needs only to
adapt his draperies to certain parts in his picture, because
they are to be looked at only from a single point of view,
and if they look well in front, it is no matter how they fall


1843.
467
Canova.
behind, the sculptor is obliged to arrange them with equal
judgment behind and on every side. See how much the
sculptor has to do, since he not only must adjust them
with elegance to the movements of the person, but must
show clearly where they begin, how they are extended,
and where they ought to finish.
Let no one fancy that folds should all be of the same
character. As the design of the human form varies with
the character of each person, so ought the folds to vary
according to the various characters of stuffs and of persons.
The treatment of folds presents difficulties even to the
greatest sculptors, because it is not with them as with the
nude, where the data and principles are fixed in nature,
and a careful study of these ensures success. But folds,
oftentimes, depend on the occasion, or some accidental
circumstance, and always on the taste, which differs with.
each man.
This study has no fixed rules ; often the finest arrange-
ment of folds comes from a happy combination seen on
some person where it was the effect of accident. The
best rule is to observe the momentary changes in the vest-
ments of all persons whom we meet. Thus the life of the
artist is a continued study; since he will often draw the
highest benefit from observations made, while walking in
the streets for his amusement.
XXIII.
Talking one day about following out the rules with ex-
actness, he said it was well to do so, since this prevented
arbitrary and capricious proceedings ; keeping the artist
awake to his duty, but that nevertheless if he followed
these rules in a servile spirit, the desired effect is not ob-
tained, and, without effect, there cannot be the illusion so
essential to art. A principal study among the ancients was
how to obtain this effect, and to this they would sacrifice
rules; this was no oversight, but highest wisdom; since if,
by an exact observation of what has been prescribed, the
desired effect is not obtained, the artist misses his aim, and
blasphemes the rules.
I do not intend this counsel for the young, for they
should not desire to emancipate themselves from the disci-
pline of art, and with them the attempt to do so would be


468
(April,
Canova.
a fatal error ; but I speak thus to the great masters with
whom such infractions display the best knowledge of art, of
experience, of philosophy.
The Colossi of Monte Cavallo, seen near at hand, have
eyes exaggerated, and somewhat distorted, and the mouth
does not follow exactly the line of the eye, and it is this
very thing which in the distance gives them so much ex-
pression. The Sibyls of Buonarrotti which are of supreme
excellence in painting, seen near, have frightful masses of
shadow; the upper lip of a different impasto from the rest ;
yet, seen from the proper point of view, they are divine
works. This it is to profess the skill of a master, but
which is not to be attained, except by vast studies, and the
practice given by great works.
XXIV.
Speaking of a young sculptor who had great disposition
for art, but was hindered by a love of amusement, I pity,
said he, those young men who think to make pleasures of
all sorts harmonize with art. Art alone must reign in all
the thoughts of the sculptor; for this alone must he live,
to this alone devote his every care. Otherwise the intel-
lect is dissipated, the body exhausted, and the sculptor has
more need of his physical forces than any other artist.
How can he who is wearied out with late hours, with mu-
sic and dancing, with suppers, come early in the morning
to work in the studio, with that ardor which is needed ?
They grow indolent, and, with slothfulness, come indiffer-
ence to glory and content with mediocrity.
xxv.
Enthusiasm is as much needed for the artist as the po-
et; yet, to restrain the fire of those who delight overmuch
in fanciful and luxurious inventions, he would add, he who
abandons himself to this alone, will produce nothing wor-
thy. Enthusiasm must be united to two other grand qual-
ities, else it differs little from delirium ; only when regu-
lated by reason, and adapted to execution is it triumphant.
Three powers are to be satisfied in the spectator; the
imagination, the reason, and the heart. Enthusiasm alone
can, at best, only excite the imagination, which is the


1843.]
469
Canova.
least noble, since madmen have it in great fulness. The
reason can be satisfied only with what is conformable to
reason, and the heart, with the expressive execution which
convinces the senses.
XXVI.
Let the sculptor fix his attention on the head; fine heads
great museum of the Vatican, and you will observe a pov-
erty as to this eminent part of the person.
In working, he finished the head first, saying, to work
less ill I want to find pleasure in it, and what pleasure
could I have in working on a person, whose physiognomy
did not stir my blood; how endure to converse with it three
or four months. I should do all against my heart; the
first requisite is that I should be pleased, nay, charmed
with my subject; then I shall work on it with loving care,
for we are naturally inclined to show courtesy to the beau-
tiful rather than the ugly. Beauty awakens a spontaneous,
impetuous affection, though ugliness may be borne with
through education, through reflection. But see two boys
crying, one beautiful, the other ugly; it is the beautiful
one you will find yourself impelled to console. I seek first
an invention as good as may be, so that this may inspire
and give me courage for the rest, and, seeing it beautiful,
or beautiful to my mind, for I dare not speak positively as
to its being so, I say within myself, the beautiful counte-
nance ought to have all the other parts correspond with it,
it ought to be in an attitude, dressed in robes worthy of its
beauty; thus that first ray lights me to the rest. And
this appears to me the true philosophy, founded on the
human heart.
one yountion as good for the rest are no
XXVII.
Hearing exaggerated praise of certain artists, who have
sought out violent motions for their subjects; I do not love,
said he, these vehement motions, which are contrary to the
sober and composed medium in which abides the beauty
of all the imitative arts; to me also they seem easy, though
the vulgar suppose them difficult, and I should rather ex-
hibit that ease which artists know to be difficult.


470
[April,
Canova.
Sculpture is only marble, until it has motion and life;
now let us set ourselves to work, and see if it is not more
difficult to impart soul to a part gently moved, and in
quiet, than to one moved for an act that aids it to the
semblance of life.
XXVIII.
He was at work one day on the foot of a dancing nymph,
and showed indefatigable patience in retouching it. Why
do you give so much labor to these minutiæ ? said a friend
to him. Already this statue is a divine image. Do you
expect those who are enchanted with its beauty to pause
and examine these trifles ? Diligence, he replied, is what
gives honor to our work. I labor here upon the nails.
Among the things which are ordinarily neglected in art are
the human nails, and yet the ancients took great pains to
express them well; in the Venus de Medici they are admi-
rably well done. Not without deep wisdom is that prover-
bial expression of the ancients, “perfect even to the nails,"
to signify a complete work.
The ears too are often merely indicated, not finished out
in detail ; yet the shape of the ear has great influence on
the human countenance, and we see them carefully ex-
ecuted in the best sculptures.
XXIX.
How is it that you can be so calmi beneath bitter cen-
sure? The Artist replied, I ought to be more grateful to
my critics, than to those who praise me, even though the
critics are sarcastic and unjust. It is easy to be lulled to
sleep in art; praise conduces to this drowsiness, while cen-
sure keeps the artist awake, and fills him with a holy fear,
so that he dares not abandon himself to license, to man-
nerism ; it makes him eager to produce always better
works. Plutarch says the unkind observation of enemies
keeps us on our guard against errors, Antisthenes, that
to plough a strait furrow, it needs to have true friends or
violent enemies; since the enemy sees much which is con-
cealed by affection from the friend.


1843.)
Canova.
471
Xxx.
Take a great illustrious revenge on your calumniators, by
seeking to do better, constrain them to silence by your ex-
cellence; this is the true road to triumph. If you take the
other, if you plead your cause, justify yourself, or make
reprisals, you open for yourself a store of woes, and you
lose the tranquillity which you require for your works, and
the time, in disputing, which should have been consecrated
to labor.
XXXI.
As I have shown in these memoirs, the virtue of Canova
as a man was not unworthy his excellence as an artist.
Artists, he said, are called Virtuosi ; how then can they
dare contradict by their actions the noble meaning of their
art? The arts in themselves are divine ; they are an em-
'anation from the Supreme Beauty; they are one of the
supports of Religion. If the artist has once fixed his
mind on such great objects, I do not know how he can by
his life disgrace this magnificent trust.
Beside, purity of heart, virginity of mind, have great
influence on the artist, both as to dignity of conception,
and means of execution. Artists paint themselves in their
works. The courtesy, grace, benignity, disinterestedness,
the enlarged and noble soul of Raphael, shine out mar-
vellously in his works.
A portrait, said to be that of Correggio, was brought to
Canova, when he wished to make his bust, but, as he saw
there a coarse mind, with coarse features, he said, it can-
not be that the painter of the graces could have worn such
a semblance. And he was right; it was not the true por-
trait of Correggio. Seeing afterwards the true portrait,
lo! said he, here is the one who could paint beautiful
things.
XXXII.
To one of the young men of his studio, who took of-
fence at all nudity, who was scandalized at being set
to work on the forms of men, if they were beautiful,
and of women would not touch even the arms; he, dis-
gusted by this absurd scrupulousness, I too abhor immodest


472
[April,
Canova.
works as I do sin, for an artist must in no way stain his ·
honor; nor can vice ever be beautiful. Yet, since the nude
is the language of art, it ought to be represented, but in a
pure spirit. If you know not how to do this, if you have
so base a mind as to bring the perversities of your own
corruption into the discipline of the gentle arts, take some
other path. Nudity is divine; bodies are the works of God
himself; if he had not wished that any part should be as
it is, he would not have made it so; all was at his will, of
his omnipotence: we need not be ashamed to copy what
he has made, but always in purity and with that veil of
modesty, which indeed nature did not need in the inno-
cence of first creation ; but does so now in her perverted
estate.
Licentiousness is not shown in the nudity of a form, but
in the expression which a vicious artist knows how to
throw into it; I think rather that the unveiled form, shown
in purity, adorned with exquisite beauty, takes from us all
mortal perturbations, and transports us to the primal state
of blessed innocence; and still more that it comes to us as
a thing spiritual, intellectual; exalting the mind to the
contemplation of divine things, which, as they cannot be
manifested to the senses in their spiritual being, only
through the excellence of forms can be indicated, and kin-
dle us by their eternal beauty, and draw us from the per-
ishable things of earth.
Where is the being so depraved who seeing forms of ad-
mirable beauty in Greek art, would feel corrupt desires, and
not rather find himself ennobled and refined by the sight,
and abashed in its presence at his own imperfection? This
is why a perfect beauty is named ideal, because it is
wholly a thing of the soul and not of the sense.
Corrupt inclinations alone can lead to impure wishes at
sight of a naked statue of exquisite beauty and of chaste
expression; nor ought it to be believed, that the ancients,
who revered virtue as a divinity, would so degrade the dig-
nity of the mind as to indulge brutal desires, while they
adored unveiled beauty,
XXXIII.
There is no heart so hard that it can resist grace, tem-
pered by dignity.


1843.)
473
Canova.
XXXIV.
In reference to an artist of great aspiration but small
success, because for many years he had pounded as in a
mortar at art, without coming to any happy issue, he said,
steadfast perseverance must bring some improvement: but,
if nature has not herself launched us in the way we choose,
perseverance alone will not avail.
If a young man does not dart forward with admirable
progress, in the first three or four years, always provided
he has the right principles, little, generally speaking, can
be hoped from him afterwards. With time, he may, in-
deed, acquire more freedom in treatment, more knowledge
of material, more learning, but not more originality, nor
more development of genius.
The figure of Clemency, in the Ganganelli Mausoleum,
was one of my earliest works, and I know not that, in the
thirty years that intervene, I have learned to do better. I
grieve to see my powers so circumscribed, and would wish
to raise myself to a higher mark, but I do not succeed.
XXXV.
He entertained so modest an opinion of himself that he
repeated often, such an one praises me, but am I certain
that I deserve it? I do not accept this praise, lest I per-
haps usurp what does not belong to me ; beside, I am al-
ways expecting that some boy will come forward, who shall
put me quite in the shade.
XXXVI.
Speaking of the artist's obligation to express the affec-
tions of the mind, he said, our great ancient artists were
admirable in what relates to the affections; with the pro-
gress of years reason has gained, but the heart has lost ;
this is perhaps the cause of the prevalent indifference to
works of art; they address themselves so much to the rea-
son, that the senses are not moved, the heart remains cold,
nor is excited to emotion, even by the most commended
works.
XXXVII.
The artist, said he, laboring on the form, ought to fill it
with modulations, which shall all be contained within the
VOL. III. —NO. iv. 60


474
[April,
Canova.
just limits of the outline of the whole; to this rule he added
another drawn from observation of natural beauty, and of
numerical proportions ; that is, to work on all parts, regu-
lating them constantly by the ternary correspondence. I
mean, that each part, however small, must be composed of
three parts; a greater, a lesser, and a least, so that they
should coincide variously and insensibly to form that one
part. This rule, he said, had led him to the resemblance
of flesh, and to a truth in every part. This applies also to
the arrangement of hair, the divisions of drapery; we must
be guided in the execution of all by the scale of an invisi-
ble geometry.
XXXVIII.
Canova had applied a profound study to the comment
made by Metastasio on the Poetics of Aristotle, and said
he had learned more from this, than from all the masters
of art.
As poetic diction should be pure, lucid, elegant,
dignified, even so the statuary should not make use
of a coarse and porous stone, but of the finest and hardest
marble. The poet ought to have a rich, elevated, and en-
chanting style, and the sculptor the same, if they would
not fail of the highest truth.
Those are the rabble and the dregs amid painters, who,
thinking the better to imitate nature, introduce into pic-
tures on illustrious subjects the style of the taverns, and
renounce the dignity of art, that is to say, its divine part,
the ideal.
The sculptor must dispense entirely with ignoble, brutal
forms, with him satyrs, Sileni, old people, and servants, if
used, must each be ennobled by the beauty possible to its
kind.
XXXIX.
Aristotle gives the degrees of imitation as three ; better,
worse, and like, I mean imitations of objects which are bet-
ter or worse than or like ourselves. He thought this might
well be applied to art, for being minister of virtue, of beau-
ty, and the ideal it should always elevate its subject; those
are scarcely endurable who represent it just as it is ; those


1843.]
475
Canova.
abominable who deform and degrade it, that is to say,
make it worse.
XL.
From another opinion of Aristotle, that works of imita-
tion please from the intimate feeling of complacence, which
all have in their clear sightedness when they separate the
true from the false even in imitation ; he inferred that those
artists are unwise who wish rather to make manifest all
parts of their subject, than cause them to be divined.
Those sculptors work against themselves, who, as it were,
publish the anatomy, doing thus an injury to the self-love
of the observer, who wishes to please himself with divining
things, rather than see them inevitably.
.
LI,
ave not ce, without please
XLI.
Aristotle says all men have an irresistible desire for
imitation.
Canova judged this maxim to be founded in human na-
ture, and justified by experience ; hence he inferred, that
there neither is nor can be a people without art; they may
have it in an imperfect shape, but they will have it ; thus
artists have the great advantage. of working on a foun-
dation innate in 'nature, and are always sure to please,
which is not the case with men of science, with philologists,
to whose disciplines men have not so great a general
tendency.
XLII.
Reading in the same that the poet is not obliged to ob-
serve historical fidelity, for the object of the historian is not
to imitate, but only faithfully to recount events as they
happened, and that of the poet to relate them as they might
with verisimilitude have happened ; he said, this is the law
which, above every other, explains the beauty which is
called ideal in art; since representing subjects not as they
are, but as they ought to be, perfecting them and impart-
ing to them that degree of nobleness, grace, excellence, of
which they are capable, is to discern all their finest rela-
tions, and, by harmonizing these, form a type in our mind
from the materials afforded by nature, and afterward verify
it by the expression in art. Thus if the object of the im-


476
(April,
Canova.
itation be, as is implied in the foregoing statement, to create
a perfect type, those, who are satisfied with a common or
vulgar model, fail of their object and their art, and should
rather be called the disgrace of art, than artists. But those
who are worthy its sublime disciplines, the true artists, are
above the followers of other callings, however arduous,
since others have permanent rules, independent of compo-
sition, which demands not only judgment, as all things do,
but taste, inspiration, memory, and even creative energy.
XLIII.
As Cicero teaches that to produce emotion is the triumph
of the orator, so, he said, is the introduction of passion into
his works the triumph of the artist, and in this regard he
was pleased with the other admonition that the inventor,
while ordering his scene, ought to imagine himself in the
event and passions he wishes to represent, even so far as
to act them out by gesture; it being very true that he who
would move others must first be moved himself.
So when he was modelling, you might have seen that
he was invested with the passions of his subject by the
changes of his countenance, by tears, joyousness, and agi-
tation all over his body.
XLIV.
As execution is to works of art what elocution is to
poetry, he said, even as the latter should be clear and no-
ble, and in style the best and best arranged which be used,
so art should choose the finest faces, the noblest forms, the
most graceful drapery; the manner at once most easy and
most dignified, most distinguished and most natural.
. XLV.
He availed himself of criticisms from the multitude, for,
said he, a work should please not only the learned, but the
vulgar; that is to say, all men according to their capacity
should find there what may move, delight, and instruct
them, as with the immortal poem of Tasso, which attracts
the gondolier no less than the philosopher.
Thus he thought it well to exhibit his compositions be-
fore they were entirely finished ; because, though the peo-


1843.]
477
Canova.
ple cannot judge as to mastery in art, it can feel grace,
approve truth, be penetrated by the effect, enchanted by
beauty. The people is, ordinarily, less corrupt than any
other judge; it is not biassed by rivalry in genius, nor
bigotry of schools, nor confusion of useless, false, ill under-
stood, and ill applied precepts; it does not wish to display
erudition, nor malice against the moderns, masked by idol-
atry for the ancients, nor any other of the baneful affec-
tions of the human heart, such as are fomented, oftentimes
produced by learning, which is not ruled and purified by
wisdom. Apropos to this he told the story from Lucian,
that when Phidias was making his Jupiter for the Eleans,
happening to be behind the door, he heard the people
talking about it ; some found fault with this, some with
that; when they were gone, Phidias retouched the parts
in question, according to the opinion of the majority, for
he did not hold lightly the opinion of so many people;
thinking the many must see farther than one alone, even if
that one be a Phidias.
XLVI.
Finally, said Canova, above all theory and attempt of
human subtilty at division and metaphysics in matters of
art, I esteem that remark in the same comment on Aris-
totle, that good judgment is the best rule, without which
the best precepts are useless, or even pernicious.
Of all which opinions of Canova, I am the earnest cham-
pion; for with him I have read a hundred times those com-
ments on Aristotle, and have felt for myself the applica-
tion, which he made of them to art, and have registered
them in my memory, to write them afterwards in leaves,
which, perhaps, will not perish.
Thus far Missirini, affectionate and faithful, if not bold
and strong as the old Vasari! Such should be the friend
of genius, manly to esteem, womanly to sympathize in, its
life.
Reserving for another occasion the notice of various
traits, which illustrate the position of Canova as an artist,
we must hasten to an outline of his life, which is beautiful


478
[April,
Canova.
through its simplicity and steadfastness of aim, amid many
conflicting interests, at an epoch of great agitation and
temptation.
He was born at Possagno, a little town in the Venetian
territory, 1757 and died at Venice, 1822. It illustrates the
generosity of the world-spirit in our age, that, not content
with giving us Bonaparte and Byron, Beethoven and
Goethe, it should finish out and raise to conspicuous station
a representative of a class so wholly different, and, at first
glance, it might seem, so unlikely to be contemporary with
the three former. The Goethean constellation, indeed,
disallowed no life, and with all its aversion to “halfness"
was propitious to limited natures like Canova, and no way
so ardent for the artist, as not to appreciate the artisan. -
For Canova, though in good measure the artist, was in
highest perfection the artisan.
Though his life had no connexion with the great tenden-
cies of his time, yet it has on that very account a certain
grace and sweetness. Chosen as the sculptor of the Im-
perial Court, and highly favored by the Pope, he knew
how to take his own path, and answer, in his own way, to
all requisitions. His life was that of a gentleman and stu-
dent ; still and retired in the midst of convulsion, full and
sweet in the midst of dread and anguish, it comes with a
gentle and refreshing dignity to our thoughts. From
princes and potentates he wished nothing but employment,
and the honors they added bad no importance in his eyes,
though they were received with that courtesy and delicate
propriety which marked all his acts, whether towards the
high or low in the ranks of this world. To write in mar-
ble the best thoughts of his mind ; to remain a faithful son
and intelligent lover of his native country, to keep days de-
voted to the worship of beauty, unspotted as the material in
which he expressed it, to lavish on his kindred by birth or
spirit all the outward rewards of his labor, choosing for
himself frugality of body, plenteousness of soul,—such was
the plan of Canova's life ; one from which he could not be
turned aside, by any lure of ambition, or the sophistry of
others about his duties. He never could be induced to
assume responsibilities, for which he did not feel himself
inwardly prepared; though, when duly called to face a


1843.]
479
Canova.
adroitin e Emperor, is very nober
crisis, he showed self-possession, independence, and firm-
ness.
It was by his intercourse with Napoleon, that his char-
acter was most tried, and here his attitude is very noble
and attractive. He never defies the Emperor, but is equal-
ly sincere, energetic, and adroit in defending the rights he
had at heart. It is pleasant to see the influence on Bon-
aparte, who, always imperious and sarcastic when braved
in a vain or meddlesome temper, does full justice to that
of Canova. Though he could not induce the sculptor to
enter his service, either by marks of favor or glittering
hopes, he was not angry, but on the contrary, attended to
his recommendation by redressing the wrongs of Venice,
and lending generous aid to the cause of art at Rome.
In this, as in other instances, Napoleon showed that where
he met a man of calm and high strain, he knew how to re-
spect bim; that if men were usually to him either tools or
foes, it was not his fault only.—The Dialogues between
Napoleon and Canova are well worth translation, but would
occupy too much space here. They show, like other rec-
ords of the time, the want of strict human affinity between
the conquering mind and those it met. Even when they
can stand their ground, he seems to see them, seize their
leading traits, but never make a concord with them. He
never answers to Canova's thought, and it is impossible to
judge whether the oft repeated argument, that the works
of art, which had been taken from Italy, could never be
seen to the same purpose elsewhere, because no longer
connected with the objects and influences that taught how
to look at them, made any impression on his mind. If it
had, he might with advantage have followed up the thought
in its universal significance.
But wherever be turned his life, it was like the fire to
burn, and not like the light to illustrate and bless.
This was one fine era in Canova's existence. One no
less so was when, after the abdication of Bonaparte, the
Allied Powers took possession of Paris. Then when par.
tial restitution might be expected of the spoils which had
been torn from the nations, by the now vanquished Lion,
Rome redemanded the treasures of art, whose loss she had
bemoaned in the very dust, the Niobe of nations, doubly
bereft, since not only the temple of Jupiter Stator was over-


480
(April,
Canova.
thrown, and his golden Victories dispersed among king-
doms, once her provinces, but the Apollo, emblem of the
creative genius which had replaced the heroism of her
youth, had been ravished from her. And she sent him,
who of her children she deemed most favored by the God,
to redemand him and his associate splendors.
The French would not do themselves the honor of a free
acquiescence in this most just demand; the other powers
were unwilling to interfere, with the exception of England,
who, moved scarce less by respect for the envoy, than
sense of the justice of the demand, interposed with such
decision, that the Prince of Art was permitted to resume
his inheritance. The Duke of Wellington, with a martial
frankness and high sense of right, which nobly became him,
declared his opinion, afterward published in the Journal des
Debats, " that the allied powers should not yield to the wishes
of the French King in this matter. That so to do would
be impolitic, since they would thus lose the opportunity of
giving France a great moral lesson."
Such views of policy might, indeed, convince that the
victory of Waterloo came by ministry of Heaven. Had
but the Holy Allies kept this thought holy!
England not only assisted Canova with an armed force
to take away the objects he desired, but supplied a large
sum to restore them to their native soil, and replace them
on their former pedestals.
There is something in the conduct of this affair more
like the splendid courtesy of chivalrous times, than the
filching and pinching common both in court and city at this
present time. The generosity of England, the delicacy of
Canova, who took upon himself to leave with the French
monarch many masterpieces, mindful rather of his feel-
ings, and respect for his position, than of his injustice,
(though this injustice was especially unpardonable, since
having been long despoiled himself of all he called his own,
readiness to restore their dues to others might have been
expected at this crisis, even from a Bourbon,) the letters of
the Pope and Cardinal Gonsalvi, overflowing no less with
gratitude than affection, the Pope thanking Canova for
having not only fulfilled his intentions but “understood his
heart," (in the delicacy shown towards France,) the recog-
nition on all sides of the honors due to the artist, the splen-


1843.]
481
Canoυα.
did rewards bestowed by the Papal court, which Canova
employed wholly for the aid and encouragement of poor
or young artists, all this reminds us rather of Fairy Queens,
with boundless bounty for the worthy, boundless honor for
the honorable, and self-denial alike admirable in rich and
poor, rather than modern snuff-box times of St. James or
the Tuilleries.
The third and last fair fact in Canova's life was the
erection of the temple at Possagno, of which an account is
given in the following extract, from the journal of a trav-
eller :-
“At sunset, I found myself on the summit of a ridge of
rocks; it was the last of the Alps. Before my feet stretched
out the Venetian territory. Between the plain and the peak
from which I contemplated it was a beautiful oval valley, lean-
ing on one side against the Alps, on the other elevated like a
terrace above the plain, and protected against the sea breeze by
a rampart of fertile hills. Directly below me lay a village
scattered over the declivity in picturesque disorder. This poor
hamlet is crowned with a vast and beautiful temple of marble,
perfectly new, shining in virgin whiteness, and seated proudly,
on the mountain ridge. It had to me an air of personal
existence. It seemed to contemplate Italy, unrolled before it
like a map, and to command it.
“A man, who was cutting marble on the mountain side, told
me that this church of pagan form was the work of Canova,
and that the village below was Possagno, his birth place. Ca-
nova, added the mountaineer, was the son of a stone-cutter, a
poor workman like me.
“ The valley of Possagno has the form of a cradle, and is in
the proportion of the stature of the man who went out from it.
It is worthy to have produced more than one genius; it is con-
ceivable that the height of intellect should be easily developed
in a country so beautiful and beneath so pure a heaven. The
transparency of the waters, the richness of the soil, the force of
vegetation, the beauty of the race in that part of the Alps, and
the magnificence of the distant views which the valley com-
mands on all sides, seem made to nourish the highest faculties
of the soul, and to excite to the noblest ambition. This kind
of terrestrial paradise, where intellectual youth can expand into
the fulness of spring; this immense horizon, which seems o in-
vite the steps and the thoughts of the future, are they not two
principal conditions necessary to unfold a fair destiny?
VOL. III. — NO. IV.
61


482
(April,
Canova.
“The life of Canova was fertile and generous as his native soil.
Sincere and simple as a true mountaineer, he loved always with
a tender predilection the village and poor dwelling where he
was born. He had it embellished very modestly, and came
there in autumn to rest from the labors of the year. He took
pleasure at these times in drawing the Herculean forms of the
men, and the truly Grecian heads of the young girls. The
inhabitants of Possagno say with pride, that the principal models
of the rich collection of Canova's works came from their valley.
In fact you need only pass through it, to meet at each step
the type of that cold beauty which characterizes the statuary of
the empire. The principal charm of these peasant women is
precisely one which marble could not reproduce, the freshness
of coloring and transparence of the skin. "To them might with-
out exaggeration be applied the eternal metaphor of lilies and
roses. Their liquid eyes have an uncertain tint, at once green
and blue, like the stone called Aqua-marine. Canova delighted
in the morbidezza of their heavy and abundant locks of fair hair.
He used to comb them himself, before copying them, and to
arrange their tresses, after the various styles of the Greek
marbles.
“ These girls generally possess that expression of sweetness
and naïveté which, reproduced in fairer lineaments and more
delicate forms, inspired Canova with his delightful bead of
Psyche. The men have a colossal head, prominent forehead,
thick fair hair, eyes large, animated, and bold, and short square
face. Without anything profound or delicate in their phys-
iognomy, there is an expression of frankness and courage which
reminds us of an ancient hunter.
“The temple of Canova is an exact copy of the Pantheon at
Rome. The material is a beautiful marble, of a white ground,
streaked with red,—but rather soft, and already marked by the
frost.
“ Canova caused the erection of this church with the benev-
olent object of presenting an attraction to strangers to visit
Possagno, and thus giving a little commerce and prosperity to
the poor inhabitants of the Mountain. It was his intention to
make it a sort of museum for his works. Here were to be de-
posited the sacred subjects from his hand, and the upper gal-
leries would have contained some of the profane subjects. He
died, leaving his plan unfinished, and bequeathed a considerable
sum for this object. But although his own brother, the Bishop
of Canova, had it in charge to oversee the works, a sordid econ-
omy or signal bad faith presided over the execution of the
last will of the Sculptor. With the exception of the marble
vaisseau, which it was too late to speculate about, the necessary
furnishings are all of the meanest kind. Instead of the twelve


1843.]
483
Canova.
colossal marble statues, which were to have occupied the twelve
niches of the cupola, you see twelve grotesque giants, executed
by a painter, who, they say, knew well enough how to do better,
but travestied his work to avenge himself for the sordid shifts of
his employers. But few specimens of Canova's work adorn the
interior of the monument; a few bas-reliefs of small size, but
of pure and elegant design, are incrusted in the walls of the
chapels.—There are copies also in the Academy of the Fine
Arts at Venice, with one of which I was particularly struck.
In the same place is the group of Christ at the Tomb, which is
certainly the coldest invention of Canova—the bronze cast of
this group is in the temple at Possagno, as well as the tomb
which encloses the remains of the Sculptor. It is a Grecian
Sarcophagus,-very simple and beautiful, executed after his
designs.
“Another group, of Christ at the threshold, painted in oil,
decorates the chief altar. Canova, the most modest of Sculp-
tors, had the ambition to be a painter also. — He retouched this
picture from time to time during several years, — happily the
only offspring of his old age, which affection for his virtues
and regard for his fame ought to induce his heirs to keep con-
cealed from every eye.”
To this purpose he devoted the riches he had earned by
his works. That he should, even with his celebrity and at
the end of so laborious a life, possess a fortune adequate to
so vast an enterprise was, and is, a matter of wonder, and
only to be explained by the severe simplicity of his habits.
With deep regret we learn that he died too soon to ensure
the fulfilment of his plan. A wish so pure deserved that
he should find a worthy executor.
To sum up decisively, if not fully, Canova shines before
us in an unblemished purity of morals, tenderness and
fidelity toward friends, generosity to rivals, gentleness to
all men, a wise and modest estimate of himself, an unfail-
ing adequacy to the occasion, adorned by fineness of breed-
ing in all his acts and words.--He is no life-renewing
fountain, but we will think of him with a well assured
pleasure, as a green island of pure waters, and graceful
trees in the midst of a dark and turbulent stream.


484
(April,
Anacreon.
ANACREON.
" Nor has he ceased his charming song, but still that lyre,
Though he is dead, sleeps not in Hades."
Simonides' Epigram on Anacreon.
We lately met with an old volume from a London book-
shop, containing the Greek Minor Poets, and it was a pleasure
to read once more only the words,— Orpheus, - Linus, -
Musæus — those faint poetic sounds and echoes of a name,
dying away on the ears of us modern men ; and those
hardly more substantial sounds, Mimnermus — Ibycus —
Alcæus — Stesichorus — Menander. They lived not in
vain. We can converse with these bodiless fames, with-
out reserve or personality.
We know of no studies so composing as those of the
classical scholar. When we have sat down to them, life
seems as still and serene as if it were very far off, and we
believe it is not habitually seen from any common plat-
form so truly and unexaggerated as in the light of literature.
In serene hours we contemplate the tour of the Greek and
Latin authors with more pleasure than the traveller does
the fairest scenery of Greece or Italy. Where shall we
find a more refined society? That highway down from
Homer and Hesiod to Horace and Juvenal is more attrac-
tive than the Appian. Reading the classics, or conversing
with those old Greeks and Latins in their surviving works,
is like walking amid the stars and constellations, a high
and by-way serene to travel. Indeed, the true scholar will
be not a little of an astronomer in his habits. Distracting
cares will not be allowed to obstruct the field of his vision,
for the higher regions of literature, like astronomy, are
above storm and darkness.
But passing by these rumors of bards, we have chosen to
pause for a moment at Anacreon, the Teian poet, and
present some specimens of him to our readers.*
* The following, with the odes to the Cicada and to Spring, in the
ninth number of the Dial, pp. 23, 24, are, in the opinion of the translator,
the best that have come down to us.


1843.]
485
Anacreontics.
They pos, 3 zeny of the minou havene sid
There is something strangely modern about him. He
is very easily turned into English. Is it that our lyric
poets have resounded only that lyre, which would sound
only light subjects, and which Simonides tells us does not
sleep in Hades ? His odes are like gems of pure ivory.
They possess an etherial and evanescent beauty like summer
evenings, ó xevi os vosiv róov ärgal, which you must understand
with the flower of the mind, — and show how slight a beauty
could be expressed. You have to consider them, as the
stars of lesser magnitude, with the side of the eye, and look
aside from them to behold them. They charm us by their
serenity and freedom from exaggeration and passion, and
by a certain flower-like beauty, which does not propose
itself, but must be approached and studied like a natural
object. But, perhaps, their chief merit consists in the
lightness and yet security of their tread;
« The young and tender stalk
Ne'er bends when they do walk."
True, our nerves are never strung by them; - it is too
constantly the sound of the lyre, and never the note of the
trumpet; but they are not gross, as has been presumed,
but always elevated above the sensual.
ON HIS LYRE.
I wish to sing the Atridæ,
And Cadmus I wish to sing;
But my lyre sounds
Only love with its chords.
Lately I changed the strings
And all the lyre;
And I began to sing the labors
Of Hercules; but my lyre
Resounded loves.
Farewell, henceforth, for me,
Heroes ! for my lyre
Sings only loves.


486
(April
Anacreontics.
TO A SWALLOW.
Thou indeed, dear swallow,
Yearly going and coming,
In summer weavest thy nest,
And in winter go'st disappearing
Either to Nile or to Memphis.
But Love always weaveth
His nest in my heart.
ON A SILVER CUP.
Turning the silver,
Vulcan, make for me,
Not indeed a panoply,
For what are battles to me?
But a hollow cup,
As deep as thou canst.
And make for me in it
Neither stars, nor wagons,
Nor sad Orion ;
What are the Pleiades to me ?
What the shining Bootes?
Make vines for me,
And clusters of grapes in it,
And of gold Love and Bathyllus
Treading the grapes
With the fair Lyæus
ON HIMSELF.
Thou sing'st the affairs of Thebes,
And he the battles of Troy,
But I of my own defeats.
No horse have wasted me,
Nor foot, nor ships;
But a new and different host,
From eyes smiting me.


1843.]
487
Anacreontics.
TO A DOVE.
Lovely Dove,
Whence, whence dost thou fly?
Whence, running on air,
Dost thou waft and diffuse
So many sweet ointments ?
Who art? What thy errand ?
Anacreon sent me
To a boy, to Bathyllus,
Who lately is ruler and tyrant of all.
Cythere has sold me
For one little song,
And I'm doing this service
For Anacreon.
And now, as you see,
I bear letters from him.
And he says that directly
He'll make me free,
But though he release me,
His slave I will tarry with him.
For why should I fly
Over mountains and fields,
And perch upon trees,
Eating some wild thing?
Now indeed I eat bread,
Plucking it from the hands
Of Anacreon himself;
And he gives me to drink
The wine which he tastes,
And drinking, I dance,
And shadow my master's
Face with my wings;
And, going to rest,
On the lyre itself do I sleep.
That is all; get thee gone.
Thou hast made me more talkative,
Man, than a crow.


488
Anacreontics.
(April,
ON LOVE.
Love walking swiftly
With hyacinthine staff,
Bade me to take a run with him ;
And hastening through swift torrents,
And woody places, and over precipices,
A water-snake stung me.
And my heart leaped up to
My mouth, and I should have fainted;
But Love fanning my brows
With his soft wings, said,
Surely, thou art not able to love.
ON WOMEN.
Nature has given horns
To bulls, and hoofs to horses,
Swiftness to hares,
To lions yawning teeth,
To fishes swimming,
To birds flight,
To men wisdom.
For woman she had nothing beside ;
What then does she give? Beauty, -
Instead of all shields,
Instead of all spears ;
And she conquers even iron
And fire, who is beautiful.
ON LOVERS.
Horses have the mark
Of fire on their sides,
And some have distinguished
The Parthian men by their crests;
So I, seeing lovers,
Know them at once,
For they have a certain slight
Brand on their hearts.


1843.)
489
Anacreontics.
TO A SWALLOW.
What dost thou wish me to do to thee -
What, thou loquacious swallow?
Dost thou wish me taking thee
Thy light pinions to clip?
Or rather to pluck out
Thy tongue from within,
As that Tereus did?
Why with thy notes in the dawn
Hast thou plundered Bathyllus
From my beautiful dreams?
TO A COLT.
Thracian colt, why at me
Looking aslant with thy eyes,
Dost thou cruelly flee,
And think that I know nothing wise?
Know I could well
Put the bridle on thee,
And holding the reins, turn
Round the bounds of the course.
But now thou browsest the meads,
And gambolling lightly dost play,
For thou hast no skilful horseman
Mounted upon thy back.
CUPID WOUNDED.
Love once among roses
Saw not
A sleeping bee, but was stung;
And being wounded in the finger
Of his hand cried for pain.
VOL. III. — NO Iv. 62


490
(April,
What is Beauty ?
Running as well as flying
To the beautiful Venus,
I am killed, mother, said he,
I am killed, and I die.
A little serpent has stung me,
A bee — the husbandmen.
And she said, If the sting
Of a bee afflicts you,
How, think you, are they afflicted,
Lore, whom you smite ? !
H. D. r.
WHAT IS BEAUTY ?
BY L. M. CHILD.
“Then had I all sorts of strange thoughts, which would hardly have
agreed with sense. It was as if the secret of Creation lay on my tongue ;
how God, by the power of his voice, had called every thing forth, and
how music repeats in each breast this eternal will of Love and Wisdom."
- Bettine.
The two creative principles of the universe are Love
and Wisdom. Their union, and perfect proportion, con-
stitutes Beauty.
enough, applied to mere forms of Love and Truth, in
which the perfect proportion is at once felt, rather than
seen, and we instinctively name it harmony. But I am
now striving to define the abstract and universal Idea ; and
this I believe to be a harmonious proportion of the two
great Creative Principles.
From a healthy union of Affection and Thought flows
Energy. When we love to do that which we perceive it
right to do, we cannot otherwise than embody it in earnest
action. This is moral beauty.
When truth is perceived through the transparent me-
dium of affection for it, it embodies itself in intellectual


1843.)
491
What is Beauty ?
beauty; and the productions of such states are spontane-
ously and universally acknowledged as beautiful. Hence,
genius ever works with unconsciousness, and is a mystery
to itself.' The harmony is so complete, that thought does
not attempt to analyze affection, or affection to question
thought. Being one, they are unconscious of each other's
presence. The spiritual life then flows in freely, and men
call it divine mania, inspiration, intuition, genius.
Beauty of recitation is the adaptation of the tone to the
word spoken. The word is obviously an embodiment of
thought, and tone, of affection. There is the same subtle
union, and mysterious significance, in the expression and
the proportions of a statue.
Musicians say there are three primal notes, without which
music cannot be ; and there are three primal colors, with-
out a due proportion of which painting wants harmony.
Pictures by the old masters show a knowledge of this; or
rather an intuition, that transcends knowledge.
An artist once suggested to me that the triple elements
of form were the Circle, Straight-line and the Undu-
lating. I at once saw that it must be so; because they
represent the spiritual tri-une, of Love, and Wisdom, and
Beauty. Space evidently relates to Love, and time to
Truth; for love is infinite, and truth is eternal. The
circle represents infinity, and the straight line eternity ; the
combination of both is a succession of curves — the line of
beauty. This undulating line is, as it were, a map of the
spiral; the spiral represented on a horizontal plane. None
but the Omniscient can comprehend the full significance
of the spiral; for it contains the universe — from the
smallest pebble, to the throne of Jehovah. The ancients
had glimpses of this, and therefore that line is so often
found among the most sacred symbols in their temples.
Forever revolving and ascending, it combines the circle,
the straight line, and the curve. Are not these, like the
three primal notes and colors, forms of Love, Wisdom, and
Beauty, or Affection, Thought, and Energy? This
eternal trinity creates and re-produces all things in its own
image.
The perfect and constant harmony of Love and Truth
constitutes the Divine Mind. The separation between
them, with the power of occasional union, and glancing


492
(April,
What is Beauty ?
revelations, from within and without, of a final, perfect,
and eternal marriage, constitutes human nature, with all
its marvellous spiritual phenomena. Its hopes and its ás-
pirations are but a recognition of the Divine Union by
which it was created, and a prophecy of the Divine Har-
mony toward which it tends.
Wherever the soul catches a glimpse, in any form, of a
perfect union of Love and Truth, it rejoices in the ra-
diant marriage-vesture, and names it Beauty. In all these
forms, the soul sees the face of its Parent. It is reminded
of its home, and drawn thither. Hence, next to the word
.“ harmony," "a joyous perception of the infinite" is the
most common definition of Beauty.
Beauty is felt, not seen by the understanding. Mere
analysis never attains so high. It can dissect, but it cannot
create beauty, or perceive it; because it is thought stand-
ing alone, and therefore in self-consciousness. A primal
note is wanting, and its tune is ever defective. A primal
color is gone, and its painting is deficient.
All evil is perverted good, and all falsehood is reversed
truth. Therefore, the tri-une mystery, that pervades the
universe, is embodied in shapes of evil, as well as of good.
Hatred, Falsehood, and Force take an infinite variety
of forms, as do Love, Truth, and Energy. If the pro-
portion between falsified truth and perverted affection be
harmonious, the product has power to charm. It has been
truly said, “ There is a sort of beauty in a wicked action,
provided it be well done.” Much of Byron's intellectual
power has this origin. Milton's Devil wears it like a robe
of fascination. The saine law shows itself in ultimates, in
the material world; hence the beauty of the tiger, the
leopard, and other destructive animals.


1843.
493
Ethnical Scriptures.
ETHNICAL SCRIPTURES.
SAYINGS OF CONFUCIUS.
Chee says, if in the morning I hear about the right
way, and in the evening die, I can be happy.
A man's life is properly connected with virtue. The
life of the evil man is preserved by mere good fortune.
Coarse rice for food, water to drink, and the bended
arm for a pillow — happiness may be enjoyed even in these.
Without virtue, riches and honor seem to me like a passing
cloud.
A wise and good man was Hooi. A piece of bamboo
was his dish, a cocoa-nut his cup, his dwelling a miserable
shed. Men could not sustain the sight of his wretched-
ness; but Hooi did not change the serenity of his mind.
A wise and good man was Hooi.
Chee-koong said, Were they discontented ? The sage
replies, They sought and attained complete virtue ; — how
then could they be discontented ?
Chee says, Yaou is the man who, in torn clothes or
common apparel, sits with those dressed in furred robes
without feeling shame.
To worship at a temple not your own is mere flattery.
Chee says, grieve not that men know not you; grieve
that you are ignorant of men.
How can a man remain concealed! How can a man
remain concealed !
Have no friend unlike yourself.
Chee-Yaou enquired respecting filial piety. Chee
says, the filial piety of the present day is esteemed merely
ability to nourish a parent. This care is extended to a
dog or a horse. Every domestic animal can obtain food.
Beside veneration, what is the difference ?
Chee entered the great temple, frequently enquiring
Chee entention, what is thestic animal is extende merely


494
[April,
Ethnical Scriptures.
about things. One said, who says that the son of the Chou
man understands propriety? In the great temple he is
constantly asking questions. Chee heard and replied-
" This is propriety.”
Choy-ee slept in the afternoon. Chee says, rotten
wood' is unfit for carving: a dirty wall cannot receive a
beautiful color. To Ee what advice can I give ?
A man's transgression partakes of the nature of his
company.
Having knowledge, to apply it; not having knowledge,
to confess your ignorance; this is real knowledge.
Chee says, to sit in silence and recal past ideas, to
study and feel no anxiety, to instruct men without wea-
riness ; — have I this ability within me?
In forming a mountain, were I to stop when one basket
of earth is lacking, I actually stop; and in the same manner
were I to add to the level ground though but one basket
of earth daily, I really go forward.
A soldier of the kingdom of Ci lost his buckler ; and
having sought after it a long time in vain ; he comforted
himself with this reflection ; A soldier has lost his buck-
ler, but a soldier of our camp will find it; he will use it.'
The wise man never hastens, neither in his studies nor
his words; he is sometimes, as it were, mute; but when
it concerns him to act and practise virtue, he, as I may say,
precipitates all.
The truly wise man speaks little ; he is little eloquent.
I see not that eloquence can be of very great use to him.
Silence is absolutely necessary to the wise man. Great
speeches, elaborate discourses, pieces of eloquence, ought
to be a language unknown to him ; his actions ought to be
his language. As for me, I would never speak more.
Heaven speaks ; but what language does it use to preach
to men, that there is a sovereign principle from which all
things depend; a sovereign principle which makes them to
act and move ? Its motion is its language; it reduces the
seasons to their time; it agitates nature; it makes it pro-
duce. This silence is eloquent.


1843.
495
George Keats.
GEORGE KEATS.
TO THE EDITOR OF THE DIAL.
tribute shall hay came into
Dear Sir,—When last at your house I mentioned to you
that I had in my possession a copy of some interesting re-
marks upon Milton, hitherto unpublished, by John Keats
the poet. According to your wish I have copied them for
your periodical. But I wish, with your permission, to say
here how they came into my possession; and in doing
this I shall have an opportunity of giving the imperfect
tribute of a few words of remembrance to a noble-minded
man and a dear friend, now no more an inhabitant of this
earth.
Several years ago I went to Louisville, Ky., to take charge
of the Unitarian church in that city. I was told that
among those who attended the church was a brother of the
poet Keats, an English gentleman, who had resided for
many years in Louisville as a merchant. His appearance,
and the shape of his head arrested attention. The heavy
bar of observation over his eyes indicated the strong per-
ceptive faculties of a business man, while the striking height
of the head, in the region assigned by phrenology to vene-
ration, was a sign of nobility of sentiment, and the full
development behind marked firmness and practical energy.
All these traits were equally prominent in his character.
He was one of the most intellectual men I ever knew. I
never saw him when his mind was inactive. I never knew
him to acquiesce in the thought of another. It was a
necessity of his nature to have his own thought on every
subject; and when he assented to your opinion, it was not
acquiescence but agreement. Joined with this energy of
intellect was a profound intellectual modesty. He per-
ceived his deficiency in the higher reflective faculties, es-
pecially that of a philosophical method. But his keen in-
sight enabled him fully to appreciate what he did not him-
self possess. Though the tendency of his intellect was
wholly critical, it was without dogmatisin and full of rever-
ence for the creative faculties. He was thoroughly versed
in English literature, especially that of the Elizabethan pe-
riod a taste for which he had probably imbibed from his
brother and his friends Leigh Hunt and others. This taste


196
[April,
George Keats.
he preserved for years in a region, where scarcely another
could be found who had so much as heard the names of his
favorite authors. The society of such a man was invalua-
ble, if only as intellectual stimulus. It was strange to find,
on the banks of the Ohio, one who had successfully devoted
himself to active pursuits, and who yet retained so fine a
sensibility for the rarest and most evanescent beauties of
ancient song.
The intellectual man was that which you first saw in
George Keats. It needed a longer acquaintance before
you could perceive, beneath the veil of a high-bred English
reserve, that profound sentiment of manly honor, that rey-
erence for all Truth, Loftiness, and Purity, that ineffaceable
desire for inward spiritual sympathy, which are the birth-
right of all in whose veins flows the blood of a true poet.
George Keats was the most manly and self-possessed of
men — yet full of inward aspiration and conscious of spir-
itual needs. There was no hardness in his strong heart,
no dogmatism in his energetic intellect, no pride in his
self-reliance. Thus he was essentially a religious man.
He shrunk from pietism, but revered piety.
The incidents of his life bore the mark of his character.
His mind, stronger than circumstances, gave them its own
stamp, instead of receiving theirs. George Keats, with his
two younger brothers, Thomas and John, were left orphans
at an early age. They were placed by their guardian at a
private boarding school, where the impetuosity of the young
poet frequently brought him into difficulties, where he
needed the brotherly aid of George. John was very apt
to get into a fight with boys much bigger than himself, and
George, who seldom fought on his own account, very often
got into a battle to protect his brother. These early ad-
ventures helped to bind their hearts in a very close and
lasting affection.
After leaving school, George was taken into his guar-
dian's counting room, where he stayed a little while, but
left it, because he did not choose to submit to the domi-
neering behavior of the younger partner. Yet he preferred
to bear the accusation of being unreasonable, rather than to
explain the cause which might have made difficulty. He
lived at home, keeping house with his two brothers, and
doing nothing for some time, waiting till he should be of
age, and should receive his small inheritance. Many said


1843.]
497
George Keats.
he was an idle fellow, who would never come to any good;
but he felt within himself a conviction that he could make
his way successfully through the world. His guardian, a
wise old London merchant, shared this opinion, and always
predicted that George would turn out well.
His Girst act on coming of age did not seem, to the
worldly wise, to favor this view. He married a young la-
dy, the daughter of a British Colonel, but without fortune,
and came with her to America. They did not, however,
act without reflection. George had only four or five thou-
sand dollars, and knew that if he remained in London, he
could not be married for years. Nor would he be able to
support his wife in any of the Atlantic cities, in the society
to which they had been accustomed. But by going at once
to the West, they might live, without much society, to be
sure, but yet with comfort, and the prospect of improving
their condition. Therefore see this boy and girl, he twenty-
one and she sixteen, leaving home and friends, and going
to be happy in each other's love, in the wild regions be-
yond the Alleghanies. Happy is he whose first great step
in life is the result not of outward influences, but of his
own well considered purpose. Such a step seems to make
him free for the rest of his days.
Journeys were not made in those days as they are now.
Mr. Keats bought a carriage and horses in Philadelphia,
with which he travelled to Pittsburgh, and then they de-
scended the Obio in a keel-boat, sending their horses on
by land to Cincinnati. This voyage of six hundred miles
down the river was full of romance to these young people.
No steam-boat then disturbed, with its hoarse pantings, the
sleep of those beautiful shores. Day after day, they floated
tranquilly on, as through a succession of fairy lakes,
sometimes in the shadow of the lofty and wooded bluff,
sometimes by the side of wide-spread meadows, or beneath
the graceful overhanging branches of the cotton-wood and
sycamore. Sometimes, while the boat floated lazily along,
the young people would go ashore and walk through the
woods across a point, around which the river made a bend.
All uncertain as their prospects were, they could easily,
amid the luxuriance of nature, abandon themselves to the
enjoyment of the hour.
Mr. Keats made a visit of some months to Henderson,
VOL. III. — NO. IV.
63


498
[April,
George Keats.
Ky., where he resided in the same house with Mr. Audubon,
the naturalist. He was still undetermined what to do.
One day, he was trying to chop a log, and Audubon, who
had watched him for some time, at last said, — “I am sure
you will do well in this country, Keats. A man who will
persist, as you have been doing, in chopping that log,
though it has taken you an hour to do what I could do in
ten minutes, will certainly get along here.” Mr Keats said
that he accepted the omen, and felt encouraged by it.
After investing the greatest part of his money in a boat,
and losing the whole of it, he took charge of a flour mill,
and worked night and day with such untiring energy, that
he soon found himself making progress. After a while he
left this business and engaged in the lumber trade, by
which in the course of some years he accumulated a hand-
some fortune. In the course of this business he was
obliged to make visits to the lumberers, which often led
him into wild scenes and adventures. Once, when he was
taking a journey on horseback, to visit some friends on the
British Prairie, he approached the Wabash in the afternoon,
at a time when the river had overflowed its banks. Fol-
lowing the horse path, for there was no carriage road, he
came to a succession of little lakes, which he was obliged
to ford. But when he reached the other side it was im-
possible to find the path again, and equally difficult to re-
gain it by recrossing. The path here went through a cane-
brake, and the cane grew so close together that the track
could only be distinguished when you were actually upon
it. What was to be done? There was no human being
for miles around, and no one might pass that way for
weeks. To stop or to go on seemed equally dangerous.
But at last Mr. Keats discovered the following expedient,
the only one perhaps, that could have saved him. The
direction of the path he had been travelling was east and
west. He turned and rode toward the south, until he was
sure that he was to the South of the track. He then re-
turned slowly to the North, carefully examining the ground
as he passed along, until at last he found himself crossing
the path, which he took, and reached the river in safety.
George Keats not only loved his brother John, but rev-
erenced his genius, and enjoyed his poetry, believing him
to belong to the front rank of English bards. Modern


1843.]
499
George Keats.
criticism seems disposed to concur with this judgment. A
genuine and discriminating appreciation of his brother's po-
etry always gave him great pleasure. He preserved and
highly prized John's letters, and unpublished verses, the
copy of Spenser filled with his works, which he had read
when a boy, and which had been to him a very valuable
source of poetic inspiration, and a Milton in which were
preserved in a like manner John's marks and comments.
From a fly-leaf of this book. I was permitted to copy the
passages I now send you. I know not whether you will
agree with me in their being among the most striking criti-
cisms we possess upon this great author. That the love of
the brothers was mutual, appears from the following lines
from one of John's poems, inscribed “ To my brother
George."
“ As to my sonnets, though none else should heed them,
I feel delighted, still, that you should read them.
Of late too, I have had much calm enjoyment,
Stretched on the grass at my best loved employment,
Of scribbling lines to you — ".
Less than two years ago, in the prime of life and the
midst of usefulness, George Keats passed into the spiritual
world. The city of Louisville lost in him one of its most
public-spirited and conscientious citizens. The Unitarian
Society of that place lost one, who, though he had been
confirmed by the Archbishop of Canterbury, was too
honest not to leave the popular and fashionable church for
an unpopular faith, which was more of a home to his
mind. For myself, I have ever felt that it was quite worth
my while to go and live in Louisville, if I had gained
thereby nothing but the knowledge and friendship of such
a man. I did not see him in his last days. I was already
living in a distant region. But when he died, I felt that I
had indeed lost a friend. We cannot hope to find many
such in this world. We are fortunate if we find any.
Yet I could not but believe that he had gone to find his
brother again among
“The spirits and intelligences fair,
And angels waiting on the Almighty's chair.”
The love for his brother, which continued through his life
to be among the deepest affections of his soul, was a pledge
of their reunion again in the spirit-land.


500
(April,
Remarks on Milton, by John Keats.
Perhaps I have spoken too much of one who was neces-
sarily a stranger to most of your readers. But I could
not bear that he should pass away and nothing be said to
tell the world how much went with him. And the Dial,
which he always read, and in whose aims he felt a deep
interest, though not always approving its methods, seems
not an improper place, nor this a wholly unsuitable occasion,
for thus much to be said concerning GEORGE Keats.
With much regard yours,
J. F. C.
Roston, March 13, 1843.
REMARKS ON JOHN MILTON, BY JOHN KEATS, WRITTEN IN THE FLY.
LEAF OF PARADISE LOST.
The genius of Milton, more particularly in respect to
its span in immensity, calculated him by a sort of birth-
right for such an argument as the Paradise Lost. He had
an exquisite passion for what is properly, in the sense of
ease and pleasure, poetical luxury; and with that it ap-
pears to me he would fain have been content, if he could,
so doing, preserve his self-respect and feel of duty per-
formed; but there was working in him, as it were, that same
sort of thing which operates in the great world to the end
of a prophecy's being accomplished. Therefore he devoted
himself rather to the ardors than the pleasures of song,
solacing himself at intervals with cups of old wine ; and
those are, with some exceptions, the finest parts of the
poem. With some exceptions; for the spirit of mounting
and adventure can never be unfruitful nor unrewarded.
Had he not broken through the clouds which envelope so
deliciously the Elysian fields of verse, and committed him-
self to the Extreme, we should never have seen Satan as
described,
“But his face
Deep scars of thunder had entrenched.” &c.
There is a greatness which the Paradise Lost possesses
over every other Poem, the magnitude of contrast, and
that is softened by the contrast being ungrotesque to a


1843.
501
Remarks on Milton, by John Keats.
degree. Heaven moves on like music throughout. Hell
is also peopled with angels; it also moves on like music,
not grating and harsh, but like a grand accompaniment in
the bass to Heaven.
There is always a great charm in the openings of great
Poems, particularly where the action begins, as that of
, Dante's Hell. Of Hamlet, the first step must be heroic and
full of power; and nothing can be more impressive and
shaded than the commencement of the action here.
“Round he throws his baleful eyes
That witnessed huge affliction and dismay,
Mixed with obdurate pride and stedfast hate;
At once, as far as angels ken, he views
The dismal situation, waste and wild ;
A dungeon horrible, on all sides round
As one great furnace, flamed; yet from those flames
No light; but rather darkness visible
Served only to discover sights of woe,
Regions of sorrow, doleful shades, where peace
And rest can never dwell; hope never comes
That comes to all ; but torture without end
Still urges, and a fiery deluge, fed
With ever burning sulphur unconsumed ;
Such place eternal justice had prepared
For those rebellious, here their prison ordained
In utter darkness, and their portion set
As far removed from God, and light of heaven,
As from the centre thrice to the utmost pole.
O how unlike the place from whence they fell !
There the companions of his fall, o'erwhelmed
With floods and whirlwinds of tempestuous fire,
He soon discerns; and weltering by his side
One next himself in power and next in crime,
Long after known in Palestine, and named
Beëlzebub."
Par. Lost, Book I. 11. 56-81.
“To slumber here, as in the vales of Heaven.”
Book I. 1. 321.
There is a cool pleasure in the very sound of vale.
The English word is of the happiest chance. Milton
has put vales in Heaven and Hell with the very utter
affection and yearning of a great Poet. It is a sort of


502
[April,
Remarks on Milton, by John Keats.
Delphic abstraction, a beautiful thing made more beautiful
by being reflected and put in a mist. The next mention
of vale is one of the most pathetic in the whole range of
poetry.
“ Others more mild
Retreated in a silent valley, sing,
With notes angelical to many a harp
Their own heroic deeds and hopeless fall
By doom of battle! and complain that fate
Free virtue should inthrall to force or chance.
Their song was partial; but the harmony
(What could it less when spirits immortal sing?)
Suspended hell, and took with ravishment
The thronging audience."
Book 11. 1. 547.
How much of the charm is in the word valley.
The light and shade, the sort of black brightness, the ebon
diamonding, the ethiop immortality, the sorrow, the pain,
the sad sweet melody, the Phalanges of spirits so depressed
as to be " uplifted beyond hope," the short mitigation of
misery, the thousand melancholies and magnificencies of
the following lines leave no room for anything to be said
thereon but “ so it is.”
“That proud honor claimed
Azazel as his right, a Cherub tall,
Who forthwith from the glittering staff unfurled
The imperial ensign, which, full high advanced,
Shone like a meteor streaming to the wind,
With gems and golden lustre rich emblazed,
Seraphic arms and trophies; all the while
Sonorous metal blowing martial sounds;
At which the universal host upsent
A shout, that tore Hell's concave, and beyond
Frighted the reign of Chaos and old Night.
All in a moment through the gloom were seen
Ten thousand banners rise into the air
With orient colors waving; with them rose
A forest huge of spears; and thronging helms
Appeared, and serried shields in thick array,
Of depth immeasurable; anon they move
In perfect phalanx, to the Dorian mood
Of Autes, and soft recorders; such as raised
To height of noblest temper heroes old
Arming to battle; and instead of rage


1843.)
503
Remarks on Milton, by John Keats.
Deliberate valor breathed, firm and unmoved
With dread of death to flight or foul retreat ;
Nor wanting power to mitigate and suage
With solemn touches troubled thoughts, and chase
Anguish, and doubt, and fear, and sorrow, and pain
From mortal or immortal minds. Thus they
Breathing united force, with fixed thought
Moved on in silence to soft pipes, that charmed
Their painful steps o'er the burnt soil; and now
Advanced in view, they stand, a horrid front
Of dreadful length and dazzling arms, in guise
Of warriors old with ordered spear and shield,
Awaiting what command their mighty chief
Had to impose.”
Book 1. ll. 534 - 567.
How noble and collected an indignation against Kings,
line 595, Book 1st. His very wishing should have had
power to pluck that feeble animal Charles from his bloody
throne. The evil days had come to him; he hit the new
system of things a mighty mental blow; the exertion must
have had, or is yet to have some sequences.
The management of this poem is Apollonian. Satan
first “ throws round his baleful eyes," then awakes his
legions, he consults, he sets forward on his voyage, and
just as he is getting to the end of it we see the Great God
and our first Parent, and that same Satan all brought in
one vision ; we have the invocation to light before we
mount to heaven, we breathe more freely, we feel the great
author's consolations coming thick upon him at a time
when he complains most, we are getting ripe for diversity,
the immediate topic of the Poem opens with a grand Per-
spective of all concerned.
Book IV. A friend of mine says this book has the
finest opening of any; the point of time is gigantically
critical, the wax is melted, the seal about to be applied,
and Milton breaks out,
“O for that warning voice,” &c.
There is, moreover, an opportunity for a grandeur of
Tenderness. The opportunity is not lost. Nothing can be
higher, nothing so more than Delphic.


504
[April,
Remarks on Milton, by John Keats.
There are two specimens of a very extraordinary beauty
in the Paradise Lost; they are of a nature, so far as I
have read, unexampled elsewhere; they are entirely dis-
tinct froin the brief pathos of Dante, and they are not to
great prerogative of Poetry, better described in themselves
than by a volume. The one is in line 266, Book IV.
“Not that fair field
Of Enna where Proserpine gathering flowers,
Herself a fairer flower, by gloomy Dis
Was gathered, which cost Ceres all that pain
To seek her through the world.”
The other is that ending "nor could the Muse defend
her son."
“ But drive far off the barbarous dissonance
Of Bacchus and his revellers, the race
Of that wild rout that tore the Thracian bard,
In Rhodope, where woods and rocks had ears
To rapture, till the savage clamor drowned
Both harp and voice; nor could the Muse defend
Her Son."
These appear exclusively Miltonic, without the shadow of
another mind ancient or modern.
Book VI. I. 58. Reluctant with its original and modern
meaning combined and woven together, with all its shades
of signification has a powerful effect.
Milton in many instances pursues his imagination to the
utmost, he is “sagacious of his Quarry," he sees beauty
on the wing, pounces upon it, and gorges it to the pro-
ducing his essential verse. “So from the root springs
lighter the green stalk."
But in no instance is this sort of perseverance more
exemplified, than in what may be called his stationing or
statuary.' He is not content with simple description, he
must station ; thus here we not only see how the birds
" With clang despised the ground," but we see them
“ Under a cloud in prospect." So we see Adam - Fair
indeed and tall," " under a plantain," and so we see
Satan “ Disfigured” on the Assyrian Mount."


1843.)
505
To a Stray Fowl. — Orphics.
TO A STRAY FOWL.
Poor bird! destined to lead thy life
Far in the adventurous west,
And here to be debarred to-night
From thy accustomed nest;
Must thou fall back upon old instinct now-
Well nigh extinct under man's fickle care?
Did heaven bestow its quenchless inner light
So long ago, for thy small want to-night?
Why stand'st upon thy toes to crow so late?
The moon is deaf to thy low feathered fate;
Or dost thou think so to possess the night,
And people the drear dark with thy brave sprite ?
And now with anxious eye thou look'st about,
While the relentless shade draws on its veil,
For some sure shelter from approaching dews,
And the insidious steps of nightly foes.
I fear imprisonment has dulled thy wit,
Or ingrained servitude extinguished it.
But no - dim memory of the days of yore,
By Brahmapootra and the Jumna's shore,
Where thy proud race flew swiftly o'er the heath,
And sought its food the jungle's shade beneath,
Has taught thy wings to seek yon friendly trees,
As erst by Indus' banks and far Ganges.
· ORPHICS.
SMOKE.
Light-winged smoke, Icarian bird,
Melting thy pinions in thy upward flight,
Lark without song, and messenger of dawn,
Circling above the hamlets as thy nest;
Or else, departing dream, and shadowy form
VOL. II. NO. IV.
64


506
(April,
Sonnets.
Of midnight vision, gathering up thy skirts ;
By night star-veiling, and by day
Darkening the light and blotting out the sun;
Go thou my incense upward from this hearth,
And ask the Gods to pardon this clear flame.
·
II.
HAZE.
Woof of the sun, etherial gauze,
Woven of nature's richest stuffs,
Visible heat, air-water, and dry sea,
Last conquest of the eye ;
Toil of the day displayed, sun-dust,
Aerial surf upon the shores of earth,
Etherial estuary, frith of light,
Breakers of air, billows of heat,
Fine summer spray on inland seas;
Bird of the sun, transparent-winged,
Owlet of noon, soft-pinioned,
From heath or stubble rising without song;
Establish thy serenity o'er the fields.
SONNETS.
Sweet Love, I cannot show thee in this guise
Of earthly words, how dear to me thou art,
Nor once compare thy image in my eyes
With thy dear self reposed within my heart.
The love I bear to thee I truly prize
Above all joys that offer in the mart
Of the wide world, our wishes to suffice, —
And yet I seek thy love; for no desert
That I can boast, but that my new love cries
For love that to its own excess is meet,
And searching widely through this dark world's space,


1843.)
507
To
*
*
*
Hath found a love which hath its holy seat
Within thy bosom’s blissfulest embrace,
And to awake this love is at thy feet,
Whence will it not arise till thou accord this grace.
II.
Let not my love implore of thee in vain,
For in its loneliness it dooms to wo,
From whose deep depths I cannot rise again ;
Let not thy love conspire to kill me so
With my love, which will only share its reign
With thine its sister ; rather may both go
To that high altar, where no longer twain,
In sweetest concord both together grow,
Thence to ascend to the Eternal Love,
And be absorbed and spread through all the life
That breathes in purest holiest bliss above,
Or that incites all mortals to the strife
Of kindness, in this scene of mixed delight
And griefs - of brightest day and darkest night.
TO
*
*
*
We are centred deeper far
Than the eye of any star ;
Nor can rays of long sunlight
Thread a pace of our delight.
In thy form, I see the day
Burning of a kingdom higher;
In thy silver network play
Thoughts that to the Gods aspire ;
In thy cheek I see the flame
Of the studious taper burn;
And thy Grecian eye might tame


508
[April,
To
Natures ashed in antique urn.
Yet with this lofty element,
Flows a stream of gentle kindness,
And thou to life thy strength hast lent,
And borne profoundest tenderness
In thy Promethean sinewy arm,
With mercy's love that would all angels charm.
So trembling meek, so proudly strong,
Thou dost to higher worlds belong
Than where I sing this empty song..
Yet I, a thing of mortal kind,
Can kneel before thy pathless mind,
And see in thee what my mates say
Sank o'er Judea's hills one crimson day.
Yet flames on high the keen Greek fire,
And later ages rarefies,
And even on my tuneless lyre .
A faint wan beam of radiance dies.
And might I say what I have thought
Of thee and those I love to-day,
Then had the world an echo caught
Of that intense impassioned lay
Which sung in those thy being sings,
And from the deepest ages rings.
TO -
Planets bear thee in their hands,
Azure skies have folded o'er thee.
Thou art sung by angel bands,
And the deep, cold, throbbing sea,
Whispered in each sighing tree,
In each meadow's melody,


1843.1
509
The Friends.
Where the sprites outwatch the moon,
And the ghostly night-breeze swells,
And the brook prolongs a tune,
Through the slumbering meadowed dells, -
There thou weavest unknown spells
To the ringing fairy bells.
In thy folded trance there hide
Ceaseless measures of content,
And thou art of form the bride -
Shapely picture's element.
THE FRIENDS.
Our village grave-yard, — would I could relate
To you all that I think of it, its trees,
Its trailing grass, the hanging stones that say,
This watch o'er human bones fatigues not us.
My boyhood's fear unsatisfied, for then
I thought a wandering wind some ghostly father,
While the sweet rustle of the locust leaves
Shot a thin crystal web of icy dread
O’er the swift current of my wild heart's blood.
One night the pastor's form among the tombs
Chased the big drops across my unseamed brow;-
You smile, - believe me, lesser things than these
Can win a boy's emotions.
These graves — I see you mean, -
Their history who knows better than I ?
For in the busy street strikes on my ear
Each sound, even inaudible voices
Lengthen the long tale my memory tells.
Now mark how reads th' inscription, “ Here lie
Two, who in life were parted, now together."
I should remember this brief record well,
In faith, I penned it, for I have strange notes,


510
(April,
The Friends.
I love to pin in noticeable places,
And write what others only dare to think.
And yet these two, their lives were much the same
With all who crowd this narrow bridge of life;
I see but little difference truly;
The greatest yet is he who still lives on.
Alas! the day seemed big with mighty pains
That laid the first of these within this tomb.
There was within the air a murmuring sound,
For all the summer's life was fluttering o'er,
While the clear autumn conquered and was glad.
I bore a part of the coffin ; — my feet
Scattered the shrouds of the green foliage ; –
Yellow the flowers nature spread o'er the bier.
You read no names upon this monument,
I could not have them graved here, why should we
Name so patiently our friends; we know them.
Esther her name, and who so gay as she.
Twelve years had gently smoothed the sunny hair
That showered its golden mists adown her neck,
Twelve years — twelve little years laughed in those eyes
Where, when her mother spoke, the bright drops stood;
So glistened in the spring-depths of her love
That parent's image. Her face was joyous,
Yet below its joy, a larger import;
I can see her smile now, deep within deep,
And never thoughtless. What spirited grace
Danced in each bold emotion of her heart,
Unshadowed by a fear.
And who the next ? - .
She came to this still tomb, one summer's day;
New flowers were bursting from their unsunned bells,
Spring's choristers now fully grown sang loud,
Sweet was the wind, the heaven as blue
As that pure woman's eye we buried then. -
Some thirty years had she the footway trod,
Yet frail and delicate she wandered on,
A violet amid the rude world's briars,


1843.)
511
Europe and European Books.
Till dropped an icicle within the flower,
That tenderness could not essay to melt.
Her namne, — and it was Esther; this likeness
You will trace between the two. The mother
Of the young yet sleeping fawn was gathered
To her side.
My hairs are gray -
Yet those we buried then stood near to me,
Their forms enchant these lonelier elder years,
And add due sacredness to human life.
That I was father to so fair a child,
And that her mother smiled on me so long,
I think of now as passing God's estate;
I am enraptured that such lot was mine,
That mine is others'. — Sleep on, unspotted ones,
Ye are immortal now; your mirthsome hours
Beat in my shrunken pulse, and in mine ears
Sounds the rich music of your heavenly songs.
EUROPE AND EUROPEAN BOOKS.
The American Academy, the Historical Society, and
Harvard University, would do well to make the Cunard
steamers the subject of examination in regard to their lite-
rary and ethical influence. These rapid sailers must be
arraigned as the conspicuous agents in the immense and
increasing intercourse between the old and the new con-
tinents. We go to school to Europe. We imbibe an
European taste. Our education, so called, — our drilling
at college, and our reading since, — has been European,
and we write on the English culture and to an English
public, in America and in Europe. This powerful star, it
is thought, will soon culminate and descend, and the im-
pending reduction of the transatlantic excess of influence
on the American education is already a matter of easy and
frequent computation. Our eyes will be turned westward,


512
(April,
Europe and European Books.
and a new and stronger tone in literature will be the result.
The Kentucky stump-oratory, the exploits of Boon and
David Crockett, the journals of western pioneers, agricul-
turalists, and socialists, and the letters of Jack Downing, are
genuine growths, which are sought with avidity in Europe,
where our European-like books are of no value. It is easy
to see that soon the centre of population and property of
the English race, which long ago began its travels, and
which is still on the eastern shore, will shortly hover mid-
way over the Atlantic main, and then as certainly fall
within the American coast, so that the writers of the En-
glish tongue shall write to the American and not to the
island public, and then will the great Yankee be born.
But at present we have our culture from Europe and
Europeans. Let us be content and thankful for these good
gifts for a while yet. The collections of art, at Dresden,
Paris, Rome, and the British Museum and libraries offer
their splendid hospitalities to the American. And beyond
this, amid the dense population of that continent, lifts
itself ever and anon some eminent head, a prophet to
his own people, and their interpreter to the people of other
countries. The attraction of these individuals is not to be
resisted by theoretic statements. It is true there is al-
ways something deceptive, self-deceptive, in our travel.
We go to France, to Germany, to see men, and find but
what we carry. A man is a man, one as good as another,
many doors to one open court, and that open court as
entirely accessible from our private door, or through John
or Peter, as through Humboldt and Laplace. But we
cannot speak to ourselves. We brood on our riches but
remain dumb; that makes us unhappy; and we take ship
and go man-hunting in order by putting ourselves en rapport,
according to laws of personal magnetism, to acquire speech
or expression. Seeing Herschel or Schelling, or Swede or
Dane, satisfies the conditions, and we can express ourselves
happily.
But Europe has lost weight lately. Our young men go
thither in every ship, but not as in the golden days, when
the same tour would show the traveller the noble heads of
Scott, of Mackintosh, Coleridge, Wordsworth, Goethe,
Cuvier, and Humboldt. We remember when arriving in
Paris, we crossed the river on a brilliant morning, and at


1843.]
513
Europe and European Books.'
the bookshop of Papinot, in the Rue de Sorbonne, at the
gates of the University, purchased for two sous a Pro-
gramme, which announced that every Monday we might
attend the lecture of Dumas on Chemistry at noon; at a
half hour later either Villemain or Ampère on French lit-
erature; at other hours, Guizot on Modern History; Cousin
on the Philosophy of Ancient History ; Fauriel on Foreign
Literature; Prevost on Geology ; Lacroix on the Differential
Calculus; Jouffroy on the History of Modern Philosophy ;
Lacretelle on Ancient History; Desfontaines or Mirbel on
Botany.
Hard by, at the Place du Panthéon, Dégérando, Royer
Collard, and their colleagues were giving courses on Law,
on the law of nations, the Pandects and commercial equity.
For two magical sous more, we bought the Programme of
the College Royal de France, on which we still read with
admiring memory, that every Monday, Silvestre de Sacy
lectures on the Persian language; at other hours, Lacroix
on the Integral Mathematics; Jouffroy on Greek Philoso-
phy; Biot on Physics; Lerminier on the History of Legis.
lation ; Elie de Beaumont on Natural History ; Magendie
on Medicine ; Thénard on Chemistry; Binet on Astron-
omy; and so on, to the end of the week. On the same
wonderful ticket, as if royal munificence had not yet suf-
ficed, we learned that at the Museum of Natural History,
at the Garden of Plants, three days in the week, Brongniart
would teach Vegetable Physiology, and Gay-Lussac Chem-
istry, and Flourent Anatomy. With joy we read these
splendid news in the Café Procope, and straightway joined
the troop of students of all nations, kindreds, and tongues,
whom this great institution drew together to listen to the
first savans of the world without fee or reward. The
professors are changed, but the liberal doors still stand open
at this hour. This royal liberality, which seems to atone
for so many possible abuses of power, could not exist with-
out important consequences to the student on his return
home.
The University of Gottingen has sunk from its high
place by the loss of its brightest stars. The last was Heeren,
whose learning was really useful, and who has made inge.
nious attempts at the solution of ancient historical prob-
lems. Ethiopia, Assyria, Carthage, and the Theban Desart
VOL. III. — NO. iv.
65


514
[April,
Europe and European Books.
are still revealing secrets, latent for three millenniums, un-
der the powerful night glass of the Teutonic scholars, who
make astronomy, geology, chemistry, trade, statistics, med-
als, tributary to their inquisitions. In the last year also
died Sismondi, who by his History of the Italian Republics
reminded mankind of the prodigious wealth of life and
event, which Time, devouring his children as fast as they are
born, is giving to oblivion in Italy, the piazza and forum of
History, and for a time made Italian subjects of the middle
age popular for poets, and romancers, and by his kindling
chronicles of Milan and Lombardy perhaps awoke the
great genius of Manzoni. That history is full of events,
yet, as Ottilia writes in Goethe's novel, that she never can
bring away from history anything but a few anecdotes, so
the “ Italian Republics” lies in the memory like a confused
melée, a confused noise of slaughter, and rapine, and gar-
ments rolled in blood. The method, if method there be, is
so slight and artificial, that it is quite overlaid and lost in
the unvaried details of treachery and violence. Hallam's
sketches of the same history were greatly more luminous
and memorable, partly from the advantage of his design,
which compelled him to draw outlines, and not bury the
grand lines of destiny in municipal details. Italy furnished
in that age no man of genius to its political arena, though
many of talent, and this want degrades the history. We
still remember with great pleasure, Mr. Hallam's fine sketch
of the external history of the rise and establishment of the
Papacy, which Mr. Ranke's voluminous researches, though
they have great value for their individual portraits, have not
superseded.
It was a brighter day than we have often known in our
literary calendar, when within the twelvemonth a single
London advertisement announced a new volume of poems
by Wordsworth, poems by Tennyson, and a play by
Henry Taylor.. Wordsworth's nature or character has had
all the time it needed, in order to make its mark, and sup-
ply the want of talent. We have learned how to read him.
We have ceased to expect that which he cannot give. He
has the merit of just moral perception, but not that of
deſt poetic execution. How would Milton curl his lip at
such slipshod newspaper style! Many of his poems, as, for
example, the Rylstone Doe, might be all improvised. Noth-


1843.]
515
Europe and European Books.
ing of Milton, nothing of Marvell, of Herbert, of Dryden,
could be. These are such verses as in a just state of culture
should be vers de Société, such as every gentleman could
write, but none would think of printing or of claiming the
poet's laurel on their merit. The Pindar, the Shakspeare, the
Dante, whilst they have the just and open soul, have also the
eye to see the dimmest star that glimmers in the Milky Way,
the serratures of every leaf, the test objects of the micro-
scope, and then the tongue to utter the same things in words
that engrave them on all the ears of mankind. The poet
demands all gifts and not one or two only.
The poet, like the electric rod, must reach from a point
nearer to the sky than all surrounding objects down to the
earth, and into the dark wet soil, or neither is of use.
The poet must not only converse with pure thought,
but he must demonstrate it almost to the senses. His
words must be pictures, his verses must be spheres and
cubes, to be seen and smelled and handled. His fable
must be a good story, and its meaning must hold as pure
truth. In the debates on the Copyright Bill, in the En-
glish Parliament, Mr. Sergeant Wakley, the coroner, quoted
Wordsworth's poetry in derision, and asked the roaring
House of Commons, what that meant, and whether a man
should have a public reward for writing such stuff. Homer
Horace, Milton, and Chaucer would defy the coroner.
Whilst they have wisdom to the wise, he would see, that to
the external, they have external meaning. Coleridge excel-
lently said of poetry, that poetry must first be good sense,
as a palace might well be magnificent, but first it must be a
house.
Wordsworth is open to ridicule of this kind. And yet
Wordsworth, though satisfied if he can suggest to a sym-
pathetic mind his own mood, and though setting a private
and exaggerated value on his compositions, though con-
founding his accidental with the universal consciousness,
and taking the public to task for not admiring his poetry, —
is really a superior master of the English language, and his
poems evince a power of diction that is no more rivalled
by his contemporaries, than is his poetic insight. But the
capital merit of Wordsworth is, that he has done more for
the sanity of this generation than any other writer. Early
in life, at a crisis, it is said, in his private affairs, he made


516
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his election between assuming and defending some legal
rights with the chances of wealth and a position in the
world and the inward promptings of his heavenly genius;
he took his part ; he accepted the call to be a poet, and
sat down, far from cities, with coarse clothing and plain
fare to obey the heavenly vision. The choice he had made
in his will, manifested itself in every line to be real. We
have poets who write the poetry of society, of the patrician
and conventional Europe, as Scott and Moore, and others
who, like Byron or Bulwer, write the poetry of vice and
disease. But Wordsworth threw himself into his place,
made no reserves or stipulations; man and writer were not
to be divided. He sat at the foot of Helvellyn and on the
margin of Winandermere, and took their lustrous morn-
ings and their sublime midnights for his theme, and not
Marlow, nor Massinger, not Horace, nor Milton, nor Dante.
He once for all forsook the styles, and standards, and
modes of thinking of London and Paris, and the books read
there, and the aims pursued, and wrote Helvellyn and Wi-
nandermere and the dim spirits which these haunts har-
bored. There was not the least attempt to reconcile these
with the spirit of fashion and selfishness, nor to show with
great deference to the superior judgment of dukes and earls,
that although London was the home for men of great parts,
yet Westmoreland had these consolations for such as fate
had condemned to the country life ; but with a complete
satisfaction, he pitied and rebuked their false lives, and cel-
ebrated his own with the religion of a true priest. Hence
the antagonism which was immediately felt between his
poetry and the spirit of the age, that here not only criti-
cism but conscience and will were parties; the spirit of
literature, and the modes of living, and the conventional
theories of the conduct of life were called in question on
wholly new grounds, not from Platonism, nor from Chris-
tianity, but from the lessons which the country muse taught
a stout pedestrian climbing a mountain, and in following a
river from its parent rill down to the sea. The Cannings
and Jeffreys of the capital, the Court Journals and Literary
Gazettes were not well pleased, and voted the poet a bore.
But that which rose in him so high as to the lips, rose in
many others as high as to the heart. What he said, they
were prepared to hear and confirm. The influence was in


1843.]
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the air, and was wafted up and down into lone and into
populous places, resisting the popular taste, modifying opin-
ions which it did not change, and soon came to be felt in
poetry, in criticism, in plans of life, and at last in legisla-
tion. In this country, it very early found a strong hold,
and its effect may be traced on all the poetry both of En-
gland and America.
But notwithstanding all Wordsworth's grand merits, it
was a great pleasure to know that Alfred Tennyson's two
volumes were coming out in the same ship; it was a great
pleasure to receive them. The elegance, the wit, and sub-
tlety of this writer, his rich fancy, his power of language,
bis metrical skill, his independence on any living masters,
his peculiar topics, his taste for the costly and gorgeous,
discriminate the musky poet of gardens and conservatories
of parks and palaces. Perhaps we felt the popular objec-
tion that he wants rude truth, he is too fine. In these
boudoirs of damask and alabaster, one is farther off from
stern nature and human life than in Lalla Rookh and “the
Loves of the Angels." Amid swinging censers and per-
fumed lamps, amidst velvet and glory we long for rain and
frost. Otto of roses is good, but wild air is better. A
critical friend of ours affirms that the vice, which bereaved
modern painters of their power, is the ambition to begin
where their fathers ended ; to equal the masters in their ex-
quisite finish, instead of in their religious purpose. The
painters are not willing to paint ill enough: they will not
paint for their times, agitated by the spirit which agitates
their country; so should their picture picture us and draw
all men after them ; but they copy the technics of their
predecessors, and paint for their predecessors' public. It
seems as if the same vice had worked in poetry. Tenny-
son's compositions are not so much poems as studies in
poetry, or sketches after the styles of sundry old masters.
He is not the husband who builds the homestead after his
own necessity, from foundation stone to chimney-top and
turret, but a tasteful bachelor who collects quaint stair
cases and groined ceilings. We have no right to such
superfineness. We must not make our bread of pure
sugar. These delicacies and splendors are then legiti-
mate when they are the excess of substantial and neces-
sary expenditure. The best songs in English poetry
are by that heavy, hard, pedantic poet, Ben Jonson.


518
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Jonson is rude, and only on rare occasions gay. Ten-
nyson is always fine; but Jonson's beauty is more grate-
ful than Tennyson's. It is a natural manly grace of a
robust workman. Ben's flowers are not in pots, at a city
florist's, ranged on a flower-stand, but he is a countryman
at a harvest-home, attending his ox-cart from the fields,
loaded with potatoes and apples, with grapes and plums,
with nuts and berries, and stuck with boughs of hemlock
and sweet briar, with ferns and pond lilies which the chil-
dren have gathered. But let us not quarrel with our ben-
efactors. Perhaps Tennyson is too quaint and elegant.
What then? It is long since we have as good a lyrist ; it
will be long before we have his superior. “Godiva " is a
noble poem that will tell the legend a thousand years. The
poem of all the poetry of the present age, for which we pre-
dict the longest term, is “ Abou ben Adhem” of Leigh Hunt.
Fortune will still have her part in every victory, and it is
strange that one of the best poems should be written by a
man who has hardly written any other. And “Godiva” is
a parable which belongs to the same gospel. “ Locksley
Hall” and “the Two Voices" are meditative poems, which
were slowly written to be slowly read. “The Talking
Oak,” though a little hurt by its wit and ingenuity, is
beautiful, and the most poetic of the volume. «Ulysses"
belongs to a high class of poetry, destined to be the high-
est, and to be more cultivated in the next generation.
• Enone” was a sketch of the same kind. One of the
best specimens we have of the class is Wordsworth's
“ Laodamia," of which no special merit it can possess
equals the total merit of having selected such a subject in
such a spirit.
Next to the poetry the novels, which come to us in ev-
ery ship from England, have an importance increased by
the immense extension of their circulation through the new
cheap press, which sends them to so many willing thou-
sands. So much novel reading ought not to leave the rea-
ders quite unaffected, and undoubtedly gives some tinge of
romance to the daily life of young merchants and maidens.
We have heard it alleged, with some evidence, that the
prominence given to intellectual power in Bulwer's roman-
ces had proved a main stimulus tó mental culture in thou-
sands of young men in England and America. The effect


1843.]
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on manners cannot be less sensible, and we can easily be-
lieve that the behavior of the ball room, and of the hotel
has not failed to draw some addition of dignity and grace
from the fair ideals, with which the imagination of a nov-
elist has filled the heads of the most imitative class.
We are not very well versed in these books, yet we have
read Mr. Bulwer enough to see that the story is rapid and
interesting; he has really seen London society, and does
not draw ignorant caricatures. He is not a genius, but his
novels are marked with great energy, and with a courage
of experiment which in each instance had its degree of
success. The story of Zanoni was one of those world-fa-
bles which is so agreeable to the human imagination, that
it is found in some form in the language of every country,
and is always reappearing in literature. Many of the de-
tails of this novel preserve a poetic truth. We read Zanoni
with pleasure, because magic is natural. It is implied in all
superior culture that a complete man would need no auxil-
iaries to his personal presence. The eye and the word are
certainly far subtler and stronger weapons than either money
or knives. Whoever looked on the hero, would consent to
his will, being certified that his aims were universal, not
selfish; and he would be obeyed as naturally as the rain
and the sunshine are. For this reason, children delight in -
fairy tales. Nature is described in them as the servant of
man, which they feel ought to be true. But Zanoni pains
us, and the author loses our respect, because he speedily
betrays that he does not see the true limitations of the
charm ; because the power with which his hero is armed, is
a toy, inasmuch as the power does not flow from its legit-
imate fountains in the mind; is a power for London ; a di-
vine power converted into a burglar’s false key or a high-
wayman's pistol to rob and kill with.
But Mr. Bulwer's recent stories have given us, who do
not read novels, occasion to think of this department of lit-
erature, supposed to be the natural fruit and expression of
the age. We conceive that the obvious division of modern
romance is into two kinds; first, the novels of costume or
of circumstance, which is the old style, and vastly the most
numerous. In this class, the hero, without any particular
character, is in a very particular circumstance; he is greatly
in want of a fortune or of a wife, and usually of both, and


520
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the business of the piece is to provide him suitably. This
is the problem to be solved in thousands of English ro-
mances, including the Porter novels and the more splendid
examples of the Edgeworth and Scott romances.
It is curious how sleepy and foolish we are, that these
tales will so take us. Again and again we have been
caught in that old foolish trap; — then, as before, to feel
indignant to have been duped and dragged after a foolish
boy and girl, to see them at last married and portioned, and
the reader instantly turned out of doors, like a beggar that
has followed a gay procession into a castle. Had one
noble thought opening the chambers of the intellect, one
sentiment from the heart of God been spoken by them, the
reader had been made a participator of their triumph ; he
too had been an invited and eternal guest; but this reward
granted them is property, all-excluding property, a little
cake baked for them to eat and for none other, nay, a pre-
ference and cosseting which is rude and insulting to all
but the minion.
Excepting in the stories of Edgeworth and Scott, whose
talent knew how to give to the book a thousand adventi-
titious graces, the novels of costume are all one, and there
is but one standard English novel, like the one orthodox
sermon, which with slight variation is repeated every Sun-
day from so many pulpits. .
But the other novel, of which Wilhelm Meister is the best
specimen, the novel of character, treats the reader with
more respect; a castle and a wife are not the indispensa-
ble conclusion, but the development of character being the
problem, the reader is made a partaker of the whole pros-
perity. Every thing good in such a story remains with
the reader, when the book is closed.
A noble book was Wilhelm Meister. It gave the hint of
a cultivated society which we found nowhere else. It was
founded on power to do what was necessary, each person
finding it an indispensable qualification of membership, that
he could do something useful, as in mechanics or agricul-
ture or other indispensable art; then a probity, a justice,
was to be its element, symbolized by the insisting that each
property should be cleared of privilege, and should pay its
full tax to the State. Then, a perception of beauty was the
equally indispensable element of the association, by which


1843.]
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Europe and European Books.
each was so dignified and all were so dignified; then each
was to obey his genius to the length of abandonment.
They watched each candidate vigilantly, without his know-
ing that he was observed, and when he had given proof
that he was a faithful man, then all doors, all houses, all
relations were open to him ; high behavior fraternized
with high behavior, without question of heraldry and the
only power recognised is the force of character.
The novels of Fashion of D’Israeli, Mrs. Gore, Mr.
Ward, belong to the class of novels of costuine, because
the aim is a purely external success.
Of the tales of fashionable life, by far the most agree-
able and the most efficient, was Vivian Grey. Young
men were and still are the readers and victims. By-
ron ruled for a time, but Vivian, with no tithe of Byron's
genius, rules longer. One can distinguish at sight the
Vivians in all companies. They would quiz their father,
and mother, and lover, and friend. They discuss sun and
planets, liberty and fate, love and death, over the soup.
They never sleep, go nowhere, stay nowhere, eat nothing,
and know nobody, but are up to anything, though it were
the Genesis of nature, or the last Cataclasm, — Festus-
rainy morning, if fame were not such a bore. Men, wo-
men, though the greatest and fairest, are stupid things; but
a rifle, and a mild pleasant gunpowder, a spaniel, and a
cheroot, are themes for Olympus. I fear it was in part the
influence of such pictures on living society, which made
the style of manners, of which we have so many pictures, as,
for example, in the following account of the English fashion-
ist. “His highest triumph is to appear with the most woock
en manners, as little polished as will suffice to avoid castiga-.
tion, nay, to contrive even his civilities, so that they may
appear as near as may be to affronts; instead of a noble
high-bred ease, to liave the courage to offend against every
restraint of decorum, to invert the relation in which our
sex stand to women, so that they appear the attacking, and
he the passive or defensive party.”
We must here check our gossip in mid volley, and ad-
journ the rest of our critical chapter to a more convenient
season.
VOL. IV. — NO. III.
66


522
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A LEAF FROM “A VOYAGE TO PORTO RICO."
Monday, Dec. 8, Latitude 39° 30', Longitude 630 30'.
Ave, old Ocean! heave, heave on! restless like meaner
things, journeying from shore to shore ; ever commercing
with the skies ; spreading thy lap to receive the storms which
thine own exhalations bred in heaven; type of thy great
Author, who takes but what he gave ; — heave, heave on!
Though strange to me and to my fellow travellers, the hens,
who turn their little red-rimmed eyes inquiringly upon the
green field not their own, “nunc alieni imperii," yet, I
doubt not, thou hast thy kind side. The winds, the wind-
borne birds, and ships the winged bird-like messengers of
man, sweep familiarly across thy bosom. For me, I trust
thee not, — not yet. Pardon, good sea, but “ confidence
is a plant of slow growth.”
Jan. 23. A short voyage, whose very monotony was to
me a variety, brought me on the evening of the 22d De-
cember to anchor, in the beautiful bay which makes the
harbor of St. Johns, Porto Rico. The Moro or Castle
shoots its white perpendicular rock a hundred feet or more
up from the Ocean, and we pass so close under its walls, as
to be able to measure their height pretty nearly, by seeing
the royal heads of the ship about on a level with the bat-
tlements. On rounding this majestic fortress, you come in
full view of the town, which slopes upward from the water.
The city looked gloomy and tomb-like from the deck, the
houses low, chiefly of dead wall, stained with dirty yellow
white. On entering the gate, however, the city smelt like
an orange, and I was astonished at the lively face put upon
the whole, by the sight of the motley population all astir
in their business or sport. Here stood a whiskered soldado
on guard, and close by, his comrades stretched in a lazy
group on the ground; a muleteer driving his patient ani-
mal with panniers laden with charcoal or grass ; here sat
negro women at their stalls, laden with plantains, eggplants,
taiotas, and what not; everybody in the street, and everybody
chattering. There are no wheeled carriages in St. Johns,
and the horses are little meek creatures, about half the size
of ours, so that the public streets, under this mild sky, are
used for the same purposes as our parlors and kitchens.


1843.]
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Voyage to Porto Rico.
Almost all social intercourse and many domestic operations,
which we should be shocked at exposing to the public gaze,
are here carried on in the street, and with a freedom that
seems to say, You are welcome to look and listen. Multitudes
of naked children are playing in the dirt, or crawling about
the doors. Observe too that the rain is the only scavenger
in St. Johns, — yet the air is usually sweet and cordial.
When my new friend, Mr. M., led me into his house, had
I not known it to be the mansion of a wealthy merchant,
and seen it to be like those near it, I might have taken it
for the county jail, so strange to me were the heavy gate-
ways, the long passages, and spacious brick-floored, rough-
timbered chambers, which are so well suited to the climate,
and which soon please the taste. This house, and gener-
ally those of the rich, are extensive buildings, running from
one street to another, cut into square, lofty, rough-finished
rooms and long passages, and enclosing a court yard, whilst
servants seem to have lodges here and there in different
quarters. The extent and details of the mansion have
throughout an air of baronial state. All the floors and
stairs are of brick or stone. The style of building is
adapted to the warmth of the climate, and to security from
vermin. For this reason, they use no carpets, nor any fur-
niture which cannot be often moved; so that the interior
of the houses, even of the wealthy, never wears the look of
fixedness and comfort, which belong to northern homes.
But from their balconies the gentry look out upon a coun-
try which looks to me like nothing but Allston's landscapes,
so warm and softly shadowed, smooth waters, and dark-
browed hills.
The climate puts every body into good humor, and the
courtesy of the citizens, black, white, and dark-mixed,
whether it lies in the Spanish they speak, which is the most
complimentary of all tongues, or in their own breeding, is
a sort of welcome for which you feel grateful. I am par-
tial to the negroes. They do not look poor and blasted
as in our cold region, but strut about the streets liko
kings and queens of the land. They carry bundles on their
heads large enough to load a small truck withal, yet they
bear themselves so loftily under their baggage, that I mean
to have this kind of truckage introduced into our semina-
ries for young ladics, when I come home, as a callisthenic


524
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exercise, to teach what so few ever learn, the accomplish-
ment of a handsome walk. Then they talk with so lively an
air, so much gesticulation and clatter, that a sober northerner
finds his faculties somewhat taxed to meet the excitement
of the conversation.
In the city there is no peace. We are kept awake half
the night by a negro ball, with its endless ya, ya, wbilst
those evenings which lack this diversion are supplied with
lesser melodies of guitar, or songs of children, begging
guirlandas. We have just been throwing coppers to little
girls, who sung at our door, in pretty Spanish, a dirty whose
burden was something like .
May you go to Heaven,
May you go to Heaven,
And, after, enjoy your kingdom there.
Of the beauty of the climate and country, I fear I can-
not give a New England man a conception. Here have I
been now a full month, and have not seen a stormy por an
unpleasant day. Except two or three, all have been de-
lightful, with a steady sun and refreshing breezes. I go to
bed with the same certainty of my fine morning, as of my
waking or breakfast, and no plan of business or sport ever
refers at all to the weather, and no mention of such a thing
is made when friends meet, so that I soon left off my Yan-
kee salutation, “A charming day, Sir.” It is strange how
the vegetation finds moisture enough to keep it good. It
is all green and fresh, yet there has been no rainy day for
two months, and the showers that have now and then drop-
ped would be swallowed as nothing by our thirsty farms.
The dews are very heavy, but they are dried in an hour or
two. Nature in these latitudes seems to have a better
constitution than with us: she does more and craves less.
Every morning I am up, like Bunker-hill monument, “ to
meet the sun in his coming." I bestride my poney, and we
brush with hasty step the dews away. I ride to the tops of
hills that overlook the country, and there feast my eyes
with the carpet landscape rolled out beneath my feet. You
see below you thousands of acres of cane-fields,
“And vast savannahs where the wandering eye,
Unfixed, is in a verdant ocean lost,"


1843.]
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Voyage to Porto Rico.
interrupted by no roads or fences. The prospect is enliv-
ened at intervals by the small clusters of buildings which
stand in the center of each plantation. The view reminds
the New Englander of the meadows of the Connecticut,
as seen from Mount Holyoke, at the close of summer. It
is chiefly cocoas and palms, towering here and there on the
plain like stately columns, that mark the scenery as tropi-
cal. The palm is the only tree I would steal for our own
scenery. Much of the beauty and almost the whole of the
peculiar character of the landscape comes from that single
magnificent vegetable. There is a lustre in the atmosphere
and a vigor in the vegetation beyond what nature attains
in our latitudes. But there is also a drowsiness over all the
landscape: there are no bright contrasts of colors; few in-
sects are on the wing; the birds have no song, and we
miss the brilliant variety and the high spirits of a northern
summer. Many flowers cultivated in our gardens and
greenhouses are among the most common weeds. Sensi-
tive plants and prickly pear overrun the ground, and the
ipecacuanha grows wild in profusion.
In the city I felt homesick, after the novelty was a little
worn off. I tired of square houses open to the air in the
middle; of oranges and sweetmeats; of negroes and ne-
gresses; of Dons and Senoras; and felt like a prisoner
within those massive walls, forever under the eye of a senti-
nel. So I came to Santa Barbara, a plantation of Mr.
M.'s, and have, for the time being, a whole house to my-
self. The house looks like one of our northern barns, which
somebody from whim had furnished with sideboard, tables,
and chairs. But my barn is like Cinderella's pumpkin,
which at a word was changed into a chariot and six. For
I have only to open shutters and let down the sides of the
building, which turn on hinges, and the beauty of the fields
and the glory of the skies and mountains pour in, and my
shed becomes a palace. Make Nature your friend and she
will not fail you at your need, but wherever you go, the in-
timacy, like the masonic tie, will be acknowledged, and
you will find in it comfort and support. The air, the fresh
green, the flowers, the fruits, the goodly prospect, the si-
lence, and again the sounds of rustic life, soothe and enter-
tain me. I ride morning and evening, and these little
pacing ponies are very good things : they scale hills and


526
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Voyage to Porto Rico.
pierce thickets, where it would not be easy to manage one
of our stately beasts.
In a fine afternoon, in the midst of clouds and showers,
I went to see an old negro who brings vegetables here for
sale, and who lives by himself on the top of a hill in the
corner of his master's plantation, being, as it were, an
Emeritus, and no longer called on for work. We crepe
along a tunnel rather than an open road, through woods and
bushes, with now and then a window on our side, from
which we could see far off palmy plains, like painted pic-
tures, until we gained the summit of the hill, and found the
little peaked hut of the old man, as lone and romantic a
hermitage as ever I fancied. It was such a place and person
as Wordsworth loves to paint. One feels a strong interest
that is almost pathetic, in a solitary being, white-haired,
living so independent of everything but the pension great
Nature allows him. Old Tita, so they call my new ac-
quaintance, built his own house, roofed it with the jagua of
the palm, and it sits perched upon the hill-top, like the nest
of a bird. The woods are left uncut upon one side at a
little distance from his door, while the other side is cleared
and planted. Here he raises plantains, yams, potatoes,
beans, ochre, and other vegetables in request on the plan-
tations. He has a cross erected just outside his door,
66 so that when thunder roll, he no knock 'ee.” No persua-
sion, I suppose, could induce him to exchange his cross for
a lightning rod. His only companions, his dog and kitten,
he seems to make much of. What struck me, standing on
the threshold of his cot, was the contrast between his low-
ly condition and dwelling, and the grandeur of the spot,
which some fine instinct led him to choose for his abode,
looking down over all the neighboring hills, and over the
intervening valleys and fields, to the distant mountains and
the blue ocean. It was a prospect which made the gazer
involuntarily feel high and stately.
tntervening valle er all the neigin to cho


1843.]
527
Dark Ages.
DARK AGES.
We should read history as little critically as we consider
the landscape, and be more interested by the atmospheric
tints, and various lights and shades which the intervening
spaces create, than by its groundwork and composition. It
is the morning now turned evening and seen in the west, —
the same sun, but a new light and atmosphere. Its beauty
is like the sunset; not a fresco painting on a wall, flat and
bounded, but atmospheric and roving or free. In reality
history fluctuates as the face of the landscape from morning
to evening. What is of moment is its hue and color.
Time hides no treasures; we want not its then but its
now. We do not complain that the mountains in the ho-
rizon are blue and indistinct; they are the more like the
heavens.
Of what moment are facts that can be lost, — which
need to be commemorated ? The monument of death
will outlast the memory of the dead. The pyramids do
not tell the tale that was confided to them; the living
fact commemorates itself. Why look in the dark for light?
Strictly speaking, the historical societies have not recovered
one fact from oblivion, but are themselves instead of the
fact that is lost. The reseacher is more memorable than
the researched. The crowd stood admiring the mist, and
the dim outlines of the trees seen through it, when one of
their number advanced to explore the phenomenon, and
with fresh admiration, all eyes were turned on his dimly
retreating figure. It is astonishing with how little coöpe-
ration of the societies, the past is remembered. Its story
has indeed had a different muse than has been assigned it.
There is a good instance of the manner in which all his-
tory began, in Alwakidi's Arabian Chronicle. “I was
informed by Ahmed Almatin Aljorhami, who had it
from Rephâa Ebn Kais Alamiri, who had it from
Saiph Ebn Fabalah Alchâtquarmi, who had it from
Thabet Ebn Alkamah, who said he was present at the
action.” These fathers of history were not anxious to pre-
serve, but to learn the fact; and hence it was not for-
gotten. Critical acumen is exerted in vain to uncover the
past; the past cannot be presented ; we cannot know
what we are not. But one veil hangs over past, present,


528
[April,
Dark Ages.
and future, and it is the province of the historian to find
out not what was, but what is. Where a battle has been
fought, you will find nothing but the bones of men and
beasts; where a battle is being fought there are hearts beat-
ing. We will sit on a mound and muse, and not try to
make these skeletons stand on their legs again. Does na-
ture remember, think you, that they were men, or not
rather that they are bones ?
Ancient history has an air of antiquity; it should be more
modern. It is written as if the spectator should be think-
ing of the backside of the picture on the wall, or as if the
author expected the dead would be his readers, and wished
to detail to them their own experience. Men seem anxious
to accomplish an orderly retreat through the centuries,
earnestly rebuilding the works behind, as they are battered
down by the encroachments of time ; but while they loiter,
they and their works both fall a prey to the arch enemy.
It has neither the venerableness of antiquity, nor the fresh-
ness of the modern. It does as if it would go to the be-
ginning of things, which natural history might with reason
assume to do; but consider the Universal History, and then
tell us — when did burdock and plantain sprout first? It
has been so written for the most part, that the times it de-
scribes are with remarkable propriety called dark ages.
They are dark, as one has observed, because we are so in
the dark about them. The sun rarely shines in history,
what with the dust and confusion; and when we meet
with any cheering fact which implies the presence of this
luminary, we excerpt and modernize it. As when we read
in the history of the Saxons, that Edwin of Northumbria
66 caused stakes to be fixed in the highways where he had
seen a clear spring,” and “ brazen dishes were chained to
them, to refresh the weary sojourner, whose fatigues Edwin
had himself experienced.” This is worth all Arthur's.
twelve battles.
But it is fit the past should be dark ; though the dark-
ness is not so much a quality of the past, as of tradition.
It is not a distance of time but a distance of relation, which
makes thus dusky its memorials. What is near to the heart
of this generation is fair and bright still. Greece lies out-
spread fair and sunshiny in floods of light, for there is the
sun and day-light in her literature and art, Homer does not


1843.)
529
Friendship.
allow us to forget that the sun shone — nor Phidias, nor the
Parthenon. Yet no era has been wholly dark, nor will we
too hastily submit to the bistorian, and congratulate
ourselves on a blaze of light. If we could pierce the ob-
scurity of those remote years we should find it light enough ;
only there is not our day. – Some creatures are made to
see in the dark. - There has always been the same amount
of light in the world. The new and missing stars, the
comets and eclipses do not affect the general illumination,
for only our glasses appreciate them. The eyes of the
oldest fossil remains, they tell us, indicate that the same
laws of light prevailed then as now. Always the laws of
light are the same, but the modes and degrees of seeing
vary. The gods are partial to no era, but steadily shines
their light in the heavens, while the eye of the beholder is
turned to stone. There was but the eye and the sun from
the first. The ages have not added a new ray to the one,
nor altered a fibre of the other.
FRIENDSHIP.
FROM CHAUCER's “ ROMAUNT OF THE ROSE."
Love of friendship also there is
Which maketh no man done amis,
Of will knitté betwixt two,
That woll not breake for wele ne wo,
Which long is likely to contune,
Whan will and goods been in commune.
Grounded by God's ordinaunce,
Hoolé without discordaunce,
With hem holding commauncé
Of all her good in charité,
That there be none exceptioun,
Through chaunging of ententioun,
That each help other at her nede,
NO. IV.
VOL. III.
67


530
[April,
Friendship.
And wisely hele both word and dede,
True of meaning, devoid of slouth,
For wit is nought without trouth:
So that the tone dare all his thought
Saine to his friend, and spare nought,
As to himselfe without dreding
To be discovered by wreiying,
For glad is that conjunction
Whan there is non suspection,
Whom they wold prove
That true and perfite weren in love :
For no man may be amiable,
But if he be so firme and stable
That fortune change him not ne blinde,
But that his friend alway him finde
Both poore and riché in o state :
For if his friend through any gate
Woll complaine of his poverté,
He should not bide so long, till he
Of his helping him require,
For good deed done through praiere
Is sold and bought too deare iwis
To herte that of great valour is.
For herte fulfilled of gentlenesse
Can evill demeane his distresse,
And man that worthy is of name
To asken often hath great shame.
A good man brenneth in his thought
For shame when he asketh ought,
He hath great thought, and dredeth aie
For his disease when he shall praie
His friend, least that he warned be
Till that he preve his stabilitie:
But when that he hath founden one
That trustie is and true as stone,
And assayed him at all,
And found him stedfast as a wall,
And of his friendship be certaine,


1843.]
531
Friendship.
He shall him shew both joy and paine,
And all that he dare thinke or say,
Without shame, as he well may,
For how should he ashamed be
Of such one as I told thee?
For whan he wote his secret thought,
The third shall know thereof right nought,
For twey in number is bet than three,
In everie counsaile and secree:
Repreve he dredeth never a dele,
Who that beset his wordes wele,
For everie wise man, out of drede,
Can keepe his tongue till he see nede.
And fooles cannot hold hir tongue,
A fooles bell is soone ronge ;
Yet shall a true friend doe more
To helpe his fellow of his sore,
And succour him whan he hath need,
In all that he may done indeed,
And gladder that he him pleaseth
Than his felowe that he easeth,
And if he doe not his request,
He shall as muche him molest
As his felowe, for that he
Maie not fulfill his volunté
Fully, as he hath required;
If both the hertes love hath fired
Joye and woe they shall depart,
And take evenly each his part,
Halfe his annoy he shall have aie
And comforte what that he may,
And of this blisse part shall he,
If love woll departed be.


532
(April,
Record of the Months.
RECORD OF THE MONTHS.
The Neighbors : a Story of Every Day Life. By FREDERIKA
BREMER. Translated by Mary Howitt.
No work of fiction that has appeared of late has met with so
kindly a reception, on all hands, as this. In part this may be
ascribed to our pleasure at getting a peep into the domestic life
of a country hitherto little known to us, except in the broader,
colder outline of history, but far more to the intrinsic merit of
the work, its lively nature, wisdom, and gentle affectionate mo-
rality. The representation of character, if not deeply "motived"
is faithful, and, though best in the range of such persons as
Bear and his charming little wife, yet the bolder attempts in
the sketches of Ma chère mère, Bruno, and Serena do not fail,
if they do not entirely succeed. These persons are painted,
not indeed as by one of their own rank, but as they may be seen
from Fanny's point of view. The playfulness of the book sel-
dom rises to wit, but is very light and pretty ; the dew is on the
grass, the insect on the wing, round the happy country home.
The common sense is truly “the wisdom of nations," not the
cold prudence of skepticism, but the net result of observations
taken by healthy hearts and heads, educated in that golden
mean which most harmoniously, if not most rapidly, unfolds the
affections, the intellect, and the energies for active life.
The Last of the Barons. By Sir E. L. Bulwer.
In a very different temper from the Swedish novel is this new
volume from Bulwer, even more melodramatic than his last.
It has his usual merits of lively conception, and flexibility of
talent; there is no better scene painter than Bulwer; no writer
weaves his plot more skilfully. The incidents do not indeed grow
necessarily out of the characters; only in the works of highest
genius, only in Shakspeare, Cervantes, Goethe, do we find this
merit; but they fit the characters very well, they allow free
play to its gestures. We are sure to read the book through
once, as sure never to touch it again. - It is sad to see this
man, with such desire for a deeper, simpler life, and not without
glimpses at its nature, yet never taking a path that could lead
him one step nearer to it. Always he is beating the bushes for
game that has fled, always is on the outskirts of truth. He be-
gan at the wrong end, and has never, with all his defiance of
cant, clearly seen that “the misery of our age is that we must
get rid of the false, to arrive at the true.” The apprenticeship
of Zanoni, the “large, fatherly heart” of Warwick are seen


1843.]
533
Record of the Months.
with an eye to the bystander, never simply for his own sake.
How tedious the man of talent becomes when he would philos-
ophize, would moralize, when he would enforce by a thousand
repetitions what he supposes some great leading thought about
“humanity,': “ democracy,” the “ Man of the Age.” O fash-
ionable writer, burn your books, burn off the ambitious crust
from your life; be still and lonely in yourself a little while, be
a child, then, perhaps you may grow to be a man, and know how
to write about “humanity.” But you will never pierce that
secret, from without, as you hope. At present, all your talents,
your industry, your quick perceptions, and your pains, for these,
it must be confessed, are real, only serve to make you a more
striking illustration of the falsities of your time.
Music Explained. By FRANCIS JAMES Fetis.
This little book brings just what is wanted by many among
us, an account of the technical terms of the art, the scope
and capabilities of the different instruments, and different kinds
of composition. For it is not music explained, for that were an
impossibility, but the modes of expression in music, defined and
discriminated one from the other. It will be of use to the many
who, with a pleasure in hearing music that they cannot let go,
are continually disappointed and puzzled, because ignorance,
as to the means and resources of the art, has occasioned their
forming expectations which cannot be realized, and prevents
their appreciating the degree in which expression is attained.
Music has been, in a sense, popular here, during the winter;
that is to say, musical entertainments have drawn large audi.
ences, but the frequent rudeness of talking during the finest
performance, has shown that no small part of the andience were
regardless of the divine expressions of thought they thus in-
sulted, no less than of the feelings of those who might have en-
joyed them, but for the neighborhood of these intruders. It
ought to be understood that half a dollar buys a seat, and the
privilege of hearing, but not that of making the same useless
to all around. Strange, strange, that it should be necessary to
say such things! Das versteht sich : that is understood of it-
self, say the Germans.
The Academy concerts have not satisfied the expectations
excited by the ability with which they were conducted the pre-
vious winter. They have indeed repeated several times the
fifth symphony of Beethoven, which is always heard with re-
newed delight, and the second symphony, but the Pastoral, not
at all, and have given us no new piece from this master. The
Jupiter was given only once; we cannot guess why; hearing it


534
April,
Record of the Months.
once, and coldly performed, as it seemed to be, it made no im-
pression; but the course the academy has heretofore pursued,
was to study and repeat fine compositions, till they were under-
stood, both by the performers and hearers. This winter they
have preferred to amuse the public with showy overtures, well
enough in their way, but not adapted to raise or purify the taste
of those who are so immediately pleased with them, or to gratify
those who have any deep feeling of music. One concert was
made up of overtures, which reminded us of Timon's feast, only
substituting bottles of cider (we can't say Champagne) for the
warm water which he had prepared to balk his hungry guests.
The Handel and Haydn society have given the Messiah,
Mendelsohn's St. Paul, and Rossini's Stabat Mater, as well as is
possible with such a lack of good solo singers. — The Stabat is
a splendid and flowing composition, unworthy the theme, and
unworthy the echoes that have answered to the sublime choruses
of the Messiah, but full of life, of winged melody, and such ex-
cellencies as may be expected from Rossini. As Scott to
Shakspeare is Rossini to Handel, so wide the gulf of difference,
both as to depth of insight, and poetic power of representation ;
- but then again, wide as the distance between Bulwer and
Scott is that between the imitators of Rossini and himself, the
great green tree, blossoming full of vigor and joy, the fountain
overflowing with enchanting, though superficial melody. It is
Italy, it is Naples in its high coloring and profuse growths.
The younger Rakemann, who came to this country last au-
tumn, has added a new and important page to our musical ex-
periences. He has enjoyed the benefits of intercourse with the
most wonderful pianists in this day of wonderful execution, and
adds, to the great command of the instrument attainable by ear-
ly and ardent study of their methods, a depth of feeling, range
range, doing justice to delicate, to magnificent, or simple and
solemn compositions. If it be possible that his genius be wor-
thily developed in a country where is, as yet, no musical atmos-
phere, we hope he will remain to educate us for the enjoyment
of his performance, and of the thoughts of his masters.
The Bible in Spain, or the Journeys, Adventures, and Imprison-
ments of an Englishman in an attempt to circulate the Scrip-
tures in the Peninsula. By George BORROW. Author of
“ The Gipsies in Spain.”
This is a charming book, full of free breezes, and mountain
torrents, and pictures of romantic interest. Mr. Borrow is a self-
sufficing man of free nature, his mind is always in the fresh air ;


1843.) :
535
Record of the Months.
he is not unworthy to climb the sierras and rest beneath the cork
trees where we have so oſten enjoyed the company of Don
Quixote. And he has the merit, almost miraculous to-day, of
leaving us almost always to draw our own inferences from
what he gives us. We can wander on in peace, secure against
being forced back upon ourselves, or forced sideways to himself.
It is as good to read through this book of pictures, as to stay in
a house hung with Gobelin tapestry. The Gipsies are intro-
duced here with even more spirit than in his other book. He
sketches men and nature with the same bold and clear, though
careless touch. Cape Finisterre and the entrance into Gallicia
are as good parts as any to look at.
Paracelsus.
Mr. Browning was known to us before, by a little book
called “Pippa Passes,” full of bold openings, motley with
talent like this, and rich in touches of personal experience. A
version of the thought of the day so much less penetrating than
Faust and Festus cannot detain us long; yet we are pleased to
see each man in his kind bearing witness, that neither sight nor
thought will enable to attain that golden crown which is the re-
ward of life, of profound experiences and gradual processes, the
golden crown of wisdom. The artist nature is painted with
great vigor in Aprile. The author has come nearer that, than
to the philosophic nature. There is music in the love of Festus
for his friend, especially in the last scene, the thought of his
taking sides with him against the divine judgment is true as
poesy.
The Sleep Waker.
A Tale. Translated from the German of
HEINRICH ZsCHOKKE.
We would call attention to this little tale, which is remarka-
bly well translated. It is, in itself, very pleasing, and the nat-
ural affinities of character, as developed by means of the trance
of animal magnetism, are treated with fineness of observation
and sympathy. Nothing can be more graceful than the little
scene in which the Rose is given, and the way in which it is
made to bear on the conduct of the story. The sweet and sus-
tained tone of the magnetized, the aloofness with which the soul
regards the blemishes of its personal, temporal existence, are
what may be divined by those who have ever seen so much as
the smile which accompanies this sleep in the body, awaking
into the spirit.


536
[April,
Record of the Months.
The Life and Times of Girolamo Savonarola ; illustrating the
progress of the Reformation in Italy, during the Fifteenth
1843. 12mo. pp. 420.
Historical records, as ordinarily presented, may raise in us
the idea, that great ininds are only permitted occasionally to
appear, and but now and then, at long distant periods, one
starts forth suddenly as a solitary, fitting meteor, leaving the
welkin dark again. But were it possible, which we may safely
affirm it is not, for the historian correctly to report the facts as
they occurred, so that the reader shall be as well instructed as
if he had been present, the course of humanity would give evi-
dence of a very different law. God's spiritual dominion on
earth is as continuously occupied by stars, as the material firma-
ment. There is an unintermitted stream of inspiration and
progress; and it is because it is observed only in part, and re-
ported disjointedly, that we are insensible of the fact. Behind
Shakspeare may be discovered a nebula of dramatic authors,
whose success built up his, and whose genius aided the fame
which eclipses their own. Milton is but the crowning stone
until a happier poet shall carry the apex of sacred song one
course higher.
Thus of Savonarola. Luther's eminence overshadows his
fame; and the public mind having done justice to the idea of
church reform, few readers, and fewer worshippers, are inter-
ested in apportioning shares of merit to the several persons who
promoted it. Historic justice is, however, as beautiful in lite-
rature as pecuniary payment is needful in commerce. We,
therefore, accept with gladness this effort to rescue the com-
paratively unknown Savonarola from undue obscurity. He was
one link in that chain of intense minds which binds age to age,
and man to man, which gives fresh evidence of the universal
brotherhood of humanity, and which fails not to instruct us of
that inmost and ruling Love, whose common paternity generates
that brotherhood. Successively student, lover, monk, poet,
reformer, priest, politician, prophet, enthusiast, contemplator,
legislator, victim, martyr, he was undeviatingly the friend of
man, the affectionate expounder of truth, the persevering writer,
and the faithful servant of the most high, as far as conscious-
ness was granted to him.
Born in times (1452) when the corruptions of the Church
were quite or nearly at their height, such an ardent and true
being must needs enter on a career ultimately involving his
fate. The forms of virtue, always most rigidly maintained by
man as he forgets the spirit in them, are yet sufficiently vivid to
develop in such a soul the divine feelings of which they were
originally the result.


1843.)
537
Record of the Months.
Passing, in his studies, through the subtleties of Aristotle,
and the sublimities of Plato, to the divine intuitions in the New
Testament Scriptures at a period when a sincere and faithful
appeal to them was very rare, he became elevated to the posi-
tion of the Italian Luther, antecedent in time to the German
reformer, and as distinguished above him by more gentleness
and nobler poetic tone. In practical tendency of being, the
martyred Italian monk was no less eminent than the sturdy
German student. The two qualities of divine love and moral
action were united in him, without the intervention of a calcu-
lating rationality which not unfrequently deadens the holiest
emotions. Hence his preference for the Dominican order. For
the zeal he brought to that brotherhood could well employ the
controversial learning they could teach him; and without an
- activity in “ doing good” his soul could not be satisfied.
At the age of twenty-three years he abruptly quitted his pa-
ternal home at Ferrara, and entered the Dominican monastery
at Bologna, as lay brother, where his talents and fervor were
too justly appreciated to allow him the humble occupations he
would have selected, and he was appointed to the highest offi-
ces for which nature and learning qualified him. His tempera-
ment, described as the “sanguine-choleric," rendered him
equally susceptible of “hope and anger;" and such a nature,
in connexion with an undefiled conscience and pure piety,
aroused in him the highest indignation and energy, when he
discovered that the brotherhood were as far estranged from holy
principles and practices as the world he had quitted.
He hesitated long before he could accept the priestly office
from hands so ill qualified to give it validity. Notwithstanding
his poetic feelings, he was not a little opposed to the scientific
music introduced into the Church, as he said, “ by the devil to
prevent mental devotion, and to delight the senses without pro-
ducing spiritual fruits.” He found no gospel commanding ihat
we should keep in the church crosses of gold or silver, or other
precious things, but he had found in the gospel, “I was an
hungered and ye gave me no meat; I was thirsty and ye gave
me no drink!" His tendencies were all favorable to a purely
personal, rather than a ceremonial religion. And his then un-
precedented study of the divine written oracle did not close
his soul against the immediate presence of the same divine
authority, - a fact doctrinally countenanced by every formal
church only so long as its priesthood retains the exclusive
power of interpreting the Spirit's voice. So far as Savonarola
claimed the right of interpretation for himself, he may be con-
sidered as essentially a Protestant, and his memory has not re-
mained unassailed on this ground. Contemplating all words
VOL. III. —NO. IV.
68


538
[April,
Record of the Months.
and outward things from inward life, the defections of priests
and people were alike manifest to him. His writings generally
partake strongly of this mystic character. Spread over nearly
thirty years, they are numerous and varied, chiefly, however,
consisting of poems, epistles, sermons, and scripture paraphrases
in Italian and Latin, a complete catalogue of which Mr. He-
raud has now furnished.
Seven years were passed by Savonarola in his lay noviciate,
travelling from place to place by the direction of his order, and
teaching from cloister to cloister; thus carrying out the reform-
ing idea with which he was so strongly impressed. He remain-
ed unspoiled even in the priestly office; the degradation in the
Church having the effect rather of exciting him to firmer speech,
than of quelling the truth within him. “Would you have your
son a wicked man,” he was wont to say, “make him a priest ;
O, how much poison will he swallow!” On the subject of
prayer, he writes, “Those who will always use vocal and not
mental prayer, act as if they chose to take medicine perpetually,
and never to be cured. If it happen, by the grace of God, that
the soul unites itself with him in such love and contemplation,
that vocal prayer cannot longer be continued without hindering
this contemplation, the suppliant should omit the remainder of
his vocal, and continue his mental orisons, the great object of
prayer being attained by such converse with God.” — p. 82.
Savonarola continued his literary instructions subsequent to
his ordination, his talents rendering him popular, and his lec-
tures successful. In private remonstrance he was no less
happy, and instances of conversion by his means are recorded.
The monastery having removed to Florence during a war, he
was selected to preach; and, although at the outset he entirely
failed in the new capacity, he became, by diligent study and
deeper inward communion, no less renowned in the pulpit than
at the lecture-table. He exposed vices in the highest persons,
assailed the wickedness of the most powerful, even in the pulpit
of the church itself denouncing the crimes of its rulers with so
much sincerity, truth, and eloquence, that the people hailed
him as a prophet. This popular attribution, the means by
which his fame and influence were spread abroad, he did not
so distinctly explain or deny, but that it could be ultimately
used, as it was used, for his accusation and death. He seems,
indeed, rather to have confirmed the notion; and one of his
contemporaries reports, “ began to enumerate some mysteries
about an impending destruction, although he concealed them
under cover of sacred scripture, that impure men might be pre-
vented from perceiving them, fearing lest the holy thing should
be given to the dogs. The sword of the Lord,” he repeatedly
exclaimed, “ will soon and suddenly come upon the earth.”


1843.1
539
Record of the Months.
So long as no great or immediate danger threatened the
authorities from such preaching, the talents and solemnity of the
preacher ensured him respect and even promotion. He was
chosen Prior of the Dominican monastery of San Marco at
Florence, erected by Cosmo di Medici at great expense, and
favored by a rich library. The great Lorenzo di Medici in
vain endeavored to seduce him by acts of courtesy and munifi-
cence. He remained faithful to conscience, and even proceed-
ed so far as to put himself in opposition to him, on account of
the social evils resulting from aristocratic privileges which no
benevolence can gloss.
" In person he was of middling stature, rather small than large, but
erect and easy ; fair, almost florid in complexion, with a high, bold
forehead remarkably furrowed; his eyes were brilliant, and of such a
blue as the ancients called glauci, shadowed by long, reddish, eye-
lashes ; his nose was prominent and aquiline, which added much to his
beauty; his face was rather plump than thin ; his cheeks somewhat
rounded, and a full underlip gave sweetness to his countenance; the
face was well placed, and every other part of his person proportioned
and firmly knit, exhibiting in all his gestures and movements an air of
gentleness and gracefulness. His hands were bony, and so little cov.
ered with flesh, that when held against the light they seemed almost
transparent; his long spreading fingers ended in very pointed nails.
His carriage was upright; his inanners grave, equal, resolute, tempered
by humble courtesy, polished and agreeable in every action." - p. 141.
On the death of Lorenzo, political events succeeded, in which
Savonarola bore an important part, and was enabled to carry
some of his reformatory ideas into practice, at least as respected
monasteries. Practical measures roused up enemies at Rome;
accusations were brought against him, and after various vicissi-
tudes he was cited to Rome for having predicted future events.
Sickness and some apology to the Pope purchased his excuse,
and on recovery he again entered the pulpit. The Pope, like
Lorenzo, tried, without success, to attract him from his duty,
by offer of a cardinalate, but he would have “ no other red hat
than that of martyrdom covered with his own blood." In every
successive serinon his principles were developed in opposition
to the vices of authority. His preaching was suspended, he
was again cited to Rome, and put upon his defence. He vin-
dicated himself, — was again ordered to preach. Proceeding in
his reforming career, he proposed a council of the Church,
and brought himself into such antagonism with the papal au-
thority, that he was excommunicated. Again he was permitted
to preach, and penned warm remonstrances to the Pope. He
attacked more unsparingly than ever the depravity of the clergy.
He declares,
“The scandal begins at Rome, and goes through the whole; they are
worse than Turks and Moors. Begin only with Rome, and you will
find that they have won all their spiritual benefices by simony. Many
seek them for their children and brothers, who enter them with inso.


540
(April,
Record of the Months.
lence and a thousand sing. Their covetousness is monstrous; they will
do any thing for money. Their bells sound avarice, - call to nothing
else but money and ease." - p. 322.
Conduct like this necessarily brought affairs to a crisis. He
was committed to the merciless inquisition, and underwent the
most cruel tortures, constantly refusing, in his restored mo-
ments, to sanction any doubtful expression like recantation,
which might have escaped in the extremity of physical anguish,
peculiarly painful in his case from mental sensibility and san-
guine temperament.
Failing to obtain a genuine recantation, his persecutors fab-
ricated one. His condemnation being determined on, sentence
was pronounced, and with two of the fraternity, he was burnt
to death in Florence, on the 22d of May, 1498.
These are the main incidents in a life which Scould not fail,
under any circumstances, of being deeply influential, but whose
fame has not until now acquired a place in English literature,
although within the last six years no fewer than three elaborate
biographies have appeared in Germany from the pens of Rudel-
bach, Maier, and Rapp. In the design of introducing to a
further portion of the reading public a character so distinguish-
ed, we are indebted to Mr. Heraud for this work, the general
reception of which, we hope, will induce further efforts in
bringing out the spirit-chosen minds. The present volume,
though in its pains-taking erudition it grows occasionally dis-
cursive, and in needless efforts to prove that the Roman Catho-
lic Church is really the protestant establishment, becomes
somewhat controversial, is yet a valuable addition to our stan-
dard literature. In his summary Mr. Heraud observes that,
" Religion with Savonarola was love, - commenced, contiued, ended
in love. He was of the seraphic, rather than cherubic, nature. He was
ever kindled and consumed with the zeal and energy of the affections ;
be unavoidably exhibits the soaring and glowing fire of an erotic spirit.
He began life with an affair of the heart, in which he was disappointed,
and commenced poet by composing amorous lyrics, which perished with
the destruction of his hopes, and their elevation to celestial attachment,
- then, too, his muse became devout, but still the lyre was attuned to
lays of love. Virtue, truthfully severe, and benevolently active, was
then the beauty he turned to woo; and he pursued it, under all circum-
stances, even to suffering and death. Hence it was, that his precepts
and example became so attractive and generative. Multitudes caught the
magnetic influence, the fame spread from heart to heart, - enthusi-
asm was communicated from soul to soul.” — p. 337.
“ In his last perplexity, Savonarola conducted himself nobly, - not
retracting, as is pretended, though still distinguishing, - willing to sub-
mit to constituted right; yet protesting against misconstituted wrong, -
obedient to authority, but resisting its abuse. Savonarola, though weak
in body, strong in spirit, manifested a dignity which compels us to con-
fess, that his imitation of Jesus of Nazareth was so perfect, as scarcely to
want any of the attributes which accredit the messengers of divine truth,
except that of miraculous power." - p. 338.


1843.]
541
Literary Intelligence.
LITERARY INTELLIGENCE.
HEIDELBERG, Jan. 5, 1843.
SCHELLING.
I do not learn that Schelling is to give a course of lectures in Berlin
this winter. Pamphlets and articles upon the points of difference between
him and Hegel continue to make their appearance, and to find readers ;
among others, one by J. H. Fichte “ Ueber die Christliche und Anti-
christliche Speculation der Gegenwart.” A pamphlet entitled "Shel-
Jing's Vorlesungen in Berlin, Darstellung und Kritik der Hauptpunkte
derselben, mit besonderer Beziehung auf das Verhältniss zwischen
Christenthum und Philosophie, von Dr. J. Frauenstädt.” This last will
give you as good an idea as any of the world-famous philosopher, as he
is actually talked about, and his first course of lectures in Berlin. On
the 10th of August last, he concluded his lectures on the Philosophy of
Mythology, in words like the following; “I conclude these lectures with
satisfaction and inmost content. I have found in you, my hearers, dur-
ing the last half year, no casual or unknown throng. In the great ma-
jority of you, gentlemen, I could see friends whom I had won by my
previous lectures, the confidants of my real thoughts, as well as of my
peculiar methods of unfolding philosophical subjects. Thus much I
could gather from the particular attention and uninterrupted interest
with which you have attended these lectures; to which I have been so
fortunate as to attract gentlemen of superior attainments in science,
and whom I prize in the highest degree. And now, at their conclusion,
I present you all with my heartiest thanks for such interest; and you
will allow me to add an expression of the wish which I cannot help
cherishing, that I may further enjoy so beautiful a relation. Farewell."
The first article of the second volume of the “ Jahrbuch der Deutschen
Universitaten” contains a vindication of Schelling against all and sun-
dry by G. Heine, from which I translate the following paragraphs.
« What Schelling taught in 1800, he still teaches. Man is the end
and aim of creation, the spirit which moves in all, that to which all tends.
But Schelling, who takes the history in its particulars, and does not at-
tempt a solution by generalization, acknowledges, at the same time,
that at the end of the Creation, the rest, which should be the result of
this motion, did not by any means obtain ; on the contrary, he sees a
new process start up, and to understand this, is his next task. It would
be more convenient indeed to deny the fact of this unrest; for it appears
so absurd 'that the world should topple together like a cardhouse, by
the capricious blow of man's folly. Yet such a fall has taken place,
and therefore nothing but ignorance of History and Revelation, or ca-
price, can elude it. A conscientious inquirer will seek to explain it.
It was in relation to His Son that God permitted this fall. Man had
by his own fault fallen under the power of that principle which he
ought to keep at rest and in subjection within him. But in this es-
trangement from God he is followed by the second of the three poten-


542
(April,
Literary Intelligence.
ces, as the unity of which God is God; and thereby is a struggle
possible against that principle, whence results a new process. With-
out and before this struggle, there is no history; with it, comes the
commencement of languages, nations, and religions. This new pro-
cess does not take place in God, but in the consciousness of man; and
it is a theogonic process in so far as by it God is replaced in the God-
estranged. The historical fact of this process presents itself in Pagan-
ism; in which, accordingly, we find a real relation to real powers, an
opposition, namely, for which the mediating or third potence is by its
nature calculated. But the combatted principle must be abolished, not
only in its operation, but in its ground and essence; and thereto this
merely natural potence does not suffice. This can only effect the natu-
ral side of the principle. In order to affect its divine side, a divine po-
tence is : requisite. The end of this natural process is attained, when
the intermediate potence has made itself master of the consciousness;
as appears historically in the mysteries, which accordingly are the end
of Mythology. There first where the same potence which at the end of
creation was God in and with the Father, consequenly vios Tou O2001,
but which was afterwards let down from this divinity through men, and
so becanje víos Tou úr0pórov, — there first when this potence has be-
come Lord besides God, is the reduction of this hostile principle, in its
ground and essence possible. For when it resigns this dominion (which
it holds not as a úpraypov, but as its rightful possession), this extradi-
vine Divinity, this uogorv 0 koù, and ignoring all the thought of self, be-
comes obedient, obedient even to death, — then that excluding princi-
ple finds nothing which it can exclude, and can no more exist as the
excluding and contrary, and of course is as to its essence abolished.
" It is Christ who has overcome this principle, while he was obedient
even to death, and thereby proved himself a divine personality ; that
is, he actually became God; — no longer encompassed by the Father and
restrained, but in free obedience and one with him, - as the doctrines
of Christianity represent him. Christ has conquered the úoxús, and
placed the human consciousness in freedom over against them. Ac-
cordingly, while the mythological religion is blind, slavish, and merely
natural, the Christian religion, on the contrary, is the free religion of
the spirit. But in order to abolish that blind relation, revelation must
further, in the first place, operate as a real thing, as authoritative force
externally repressing error. This necessity called for the Church. This
realism is the rock on which it is built. But the foundation is not the
edifice itself; and so this Petrine or Catholic church must be followed
by the Pauline, — the separation from blind recognition, freedom there-
fore from every recognition. But no halt can be made at this negative
point ; the positive presses unceasingly forwards, and so the Pauline
Church must give way to the Church of John, to all-embracing love.
The living and true God, whom Luther by faith laid hold of as of
a strong tower, and proceeding from which set minds free, must be
brought into the consciousness, after it is extricated from blind recog-
nition, and by this means carried beyond its present limits. The true
living God must be brought into the freed consciousness, and not a false
idol, be its name ever so splendid, - be it called Reason or whatever
else. Then only is the Reforination consumnated, concluded. I think
I do not hazard too much in saying that I find in what Schelling has
brought us, and of which I here give a quite inadequate abstract, a con-


1843.]
543
Literary Intelligence.
firmation of the prophecy which Goethe uttered so early as 1811: 'I !
cannot entirely subscribe to his opinions,' said he with respect to Schel-
ling, but it is clear to me that he is destined to introduce a new spirit-
ual epoch in history. Joyfully then do I greet in him the Consummator
of the Reformation, the Prophet of the New Epoch."
HEGEL.
The Hegelians have heretofore been divided into numerous cliques, -
Hegelians of the right, of the centre, of the left; of the extremne left
and of the mountain, it may be, and I know not how many others; - but
recently those of the right, the centre, and the left, have agreed to disa-
gree peaceably on minor points, and work together for the assertion and
defence of their cominon doctrines. In the negotiation of this treaty,
Göschel represented the right, Marheineke and Gabler the centre, and
Vatke and Michelet the left. The result is to be the establishment of
a philosophical society of sixteen of the most eminent- and the publi-
cation of a Hegelian Journal under their superintendence. Meanwhile
the young Hegelians, who have heretofore appeared as anxious as the
others to quote chapter and verse in Hegel for their positions, have
come boldly out, and declared that they shall not only feel bound to cite
him in future, but shall occupy positions against which he made hostile
demonstrations in his lectures. The most conspicuous of these are
Ruge, the former Editor of the “ Deutsche Jahrbucher," Strauss, Bruno
Bauer, and Feuerbach.
GOETHE.
The publication of Goethe's Works has been completed by the addi-
tion of five new volumes. Volume 56th containing ; Vermischte Ge-
dichte; An Personen; Invectiven; Zahme Xenien; Nachträge zum
Divan ; Maximen und Reflexionen; Verschiedenes Einzelne; Reise
der Söhne Megaprazons; Brief des Pastors au seinen Amtbruder;
Zweiwichtige biblische Fragen. Vol. 57th ; Das Lustspiel, Die Wette;
Iphigenia in Prosa ; Erwin und Elmire, und Claudine von Villa Bella in
der frühesten Gestalt; Die ungleichen Hausgenossen; Zwei ältere
Scenen aus dem Jahrmarktsfest zu Plundersweilern : Hanswurst's Hoch-
zeit; Paralipomena zu Faust; Fragmente einer Tragödie, die Natur-
liche Tochter (schema der Fortsetzung); Pandora (desgleichen); Nau-
sikaa. Vol. 58th; Die Metamorphose der Pflanzen ; Beiträge zur
Optik. Vol. 59th ; Der Polemische Theil der Farbenlehre. Vol. 60th;
Nachträge zur Farbenlehre, zur Mineralogie, und Geologie; Biog-
raphische Einzelnheiten ; Chronologie der Entstehung Goethe'scher
Schriften. This is published by Cotta, and is the authorized and pro-
tected edition. It is accompanied by an engraving of a picture of
Goethe, in his 27th year. Many of the pieces contained in this edition
were published in a double-columned octavo edition about five years
ago — 80 that the first two volumes may not be new to your readers.
A third volume of Eckermann's Conversations with Goethe is soon
to appear, fragments of which have already got into the Journals.
Theodor Mundt put forth last year a new edition of Frederick Schle.
gel's History of Literature, to which he has added a second volume,
bringing it down to the present time. The readers of Aristotle will


544
(April,
Literary Intelligence.
be interested to learn that Professor Spengel of Heidelberg proposes
now to publish his researches in that direction, which, if as worthy of at-
tention as the specimen he has given, will be a trensure to classical
scholars. Drs. Liebig, Poggendorf, Wohler, and others are putting out
a “ Handwörtbuch der reinen und angewandten Chemie." --Seatsfield,
the author of several works illustrative of American life, has lately re-
issued the same under the title of " Lebensbilder aus der westlichen
Hemisphäre.” He has quite a reputation here, and according to his
German admirers, deserves to be spoken of in the same breath with
Irving and Cooper. — Dana's “ Two Years before the Mast” has been
translated into German by a sailor, and published at Bremen. The
notices of it are quite commendatory. Longfellow's Preface to his
translation of the “Children of the Lord's Supper," and Extracts from
recent articles in the North American Review, have been translated in
the Berlin “ Magazin für die Literature des Auslandes." - Finally
Schlosser has written a favorable notice of Bancroft's third volume, in
the “ Heidelberger Jahrbucher."
The papers report that Tieck will never entirely recover from the
apoplectic stroke of last summer. He lives at Potsdam, and is occa-
sionally visited by the king, his health not allowing him to go out.
Among the inany good things for which the world is indebted to the
present king of Prussia, not the least important is the mission of Dr.
Lepsius to Egypt. The death of Champollion before he had published
the results of his investigations, and the imperfect accounts of them by
his friend and companion, Rosellini, have rendered another mission ne
cessary. Dr. Lepsius is the author of a work entitled, “ Ueber die
Tyrrhenischen Pelasger in Etrurien, und ueber die Verbreitung des
Italienischen Münzsystems von Etrurien aus," and though he is still a
young man, is already distinguished as one of the first scholars in Ger.
many in these departments. He is attended by a corps of artists to
assist him in copying and sketching. It is proposed to give particular
attention to the Temple of Vulcan and the Plain of the Pyramids at
Memphis. Other objects will be the Holy City of Abydos; This in the
Thebais; the Koseir road to the Red Sea ; the whole Delta; the Laby-
rinth near Lake Moeris, and the curiosities in its vicinity, especially a
remarkable obelisk there; a certain valley in the Lybian Mountains be-
hind Thebes ; Some Egyptian monuments in Arabia Petræa, in the
Oases, and in Nubia. He will afterward visit Athens, the Old Pelasgic
Argos, the Pyramid sites at Cenchræa, Anabathmoi, where Danaus
landed, and Constantinople; where he will copy the as yet undecipher-
ed obelisk of Thuthmosis III. As inscriptions and sculptures probably
commemorative of the conquests of Sesostris-Ramses are to be seen
near Cape Babelmandel, near Beyront in Syria, in Ionia near Smyrna, and
in Thrace, we suppose these will not be neglected. The expedition ar-
rived in Egypt about the middle of September last, having gone by way
of England and Malta; at which last place they found something to
copy. They were well received by the Pasha, to whom they brought
letters and presents from the king of Prussia, and were promised every
furtherance in the power of the vice regal government to bestow. The
least estimate of the time to be spent in the enterprise is three years;
and for the expenses of the first year the king has given 11,000 thalers.


1843.]
545
Catalogue of Books.
CATALOGUE OF BOOKS.
MR. Alcott and MR. LANE have recently brought from England a small
but valuable library, amounting to about a thousand volumes, containing un-
doubtedly a richer collection of mystical writers than any other library in this
country. To the select Library of the late J. P. Greaves, " held by Mr. Lane
in trust for universal ends," they have added many works of a like character by
purchase, or received as gifts. In their Catalogue, from which the following
list is extracted, they say, "the titles of these books are now submitted, in the
expectation that the Library is the commencement of an institution for the
nurture of men in universal freedom of action, thought, and being.” We print
this list, not only because our respect is engaged to views so liberal, but because
the arrival of this cabinet of mystic and theosophic lore is a remarkable fact in
our literary history.
Hexapla ; the Greek Text of the New Testament with the Six English Ver-
sions in parallel columns. 4to. London. 1840.
Confucii Sinarum Philosophus. fol. 1787.
The Laws of Menu. Translated by Sir William Jones.
The Desatir; Sacred Writings of the Ancient Persian Prophets. Persian and
English. Bombay. 1818..
The Divine Pymander of Hermes Trismegistus. London. 1650.
Juliana's Revelations of Divine Love. 1670.
St. Bridget's Revelations. Nuremberg. 1500.
Behmen's Works. Theosophia Revelata, das ist alle Gottliche Schriften des
Jacob Behmens. With Life, &c., edited by J. G. Gechtels. 1 vol. folio.
4,500 pages. 1715.
- The Rev. William Law's edition, containing the Aurora
or Morning Red ; the Three Principles; Man's Threefold Life ; Answer to the
Forty Questions concerning the Soul; Signatura Rerum ; the Four Complex-
ions; the Mysterium Magnum, &c. &c. 4 vols. 4to. London. 1764.
Signatura Rerum ; Supersensual Life, &c. 4to. London.
1781.
Way to Christ. London. 1775.
Teutonic Philosophy. London. 1770.
Life, by Francis Okély. Northampton. 1780.
Theosophick Philosophy Unfolded, by Edward Taylor.
London. 1691.
- Epistles and Apologies, by John Sparrow. London. 1662.
Graber und Gichtel, Kurze Eroffnnug und Unweisung der dreyen Pincipien
und Welten in Menschen. Berlin. 1779.
H. Janson. A Spiritual Journey. 410. London. 1659.
Lamy, La Vie de St. Bernard. 4to. Paris. 1648.
Henrico Khurrath, Amphitheatrum Sapientiæ Æternæ. fol. Magdeburg.
1602.
Molinos' Spiritual Guide. Dublin. 1798.
S. Pordage. Mundorum Explicatio. London. 1663.
J. Pordage. Theologia Mystica. London, 1683.
De Sales Introduction to a Devout Life. London. 1686.
Matthew Weyer's Narrow Path of Divine Truth. London. 1683.
Important Truths relating to Spiritual and Practical Christianity. London,
1769.
Unpremeditated Thoughts of God.
H. Hugonis Pia Desideria. London. 1677.
Theologiæ Pacificæ itemque Mysticæ. Amstelodami. 1622.
Immanuel, by S. S. London. 1669.
A. Bourignon. Light in Darkness. London. 1703.
- Solid Virtue. London. 1699.
Lite and Sentiments, London. 1699.
Light of the World. London. 1696.
Madame Guion. Poesies et Cantiques Spirituels. Cologne. 1722.
VOL. III. — NO. IV.
69


546
[April,
Catalogue of Books.
Madame Guion. Life, by Brooke. Bristol. 1806.
- Lettres Chretiennes, &c. 5 vols. London. 1767.
- Les Opuscules Spirituels. 2 vols. Paris. 1790.
Life. *3 vols. Paris. 1791.
Polemics. London. 1841.
- Selections in German. Manheim. 1787.
Fenelon's Dissertation on Pure Love, London. 1750.
Account of Madame Guion. London. 1759.
Justifications de Madame Guion. Paris. 1790.
Maxims of the Saints. London. 1698.
Dialogues of the Dead. 2 vols. Berwick. 1770.
Lives and Maxims of Ancient Philosophers. London. 1726.
Thomas a Kempis. Imitation of Christ ; by Dr. Stanhope. London, 1759.
William Law's Way to Divine Knowledge.
- Spirit of Prayer.
Spirit of Love.
Christian Perfection.
Serious Call.
Letters.
Appeal.
Answer to Dr. Trapp.
Case of Reason.
Remarks on the Fable of the Bees. 1 vol.
Tracts.
Christian's Manual (extracts).
Reply to the Bishop of Bangor on the Sacrament. 1719.
Spiritual Fragments (extracts).
Jordani Brunonis Opera. Paris. 1654.
Swedenborg: Arcana Cælestia.
- Heavenly Doctrine. Cambridge. 1820.
- Heaven and Hell. London. 1823.
Coleridge : Biographia Literaria. 2 vols. N. York. 1817.
- Aids to Reflection. Burlington. 1829.
Friend. Burlington. 1831.
Greaves's Manuscripts. 12 vols. 4to. 1828 to 1842.
- Maxims. London. 1826.
Novalis Schriften. Berlin. 1836.
Lane's Third Dispensation. London. 1941.
Alcott's Conversations with Children on the Gospels. 2 vols. Boston. 1836.
- Record of a School. Boston. 1835.
Krummacher's Parabeln. 2 vols. Essen. 1840.
Spinoza's Works and Epistles. 4to. 1777.
Malebranche's Search after Truth. 2 vols. London. 1695.
- Christian Conferences. London. 1695.
Wilmott's Lives of the Sacred Poets. London. 1834.
G. Herbert's Poems. London. 1835.
R. Crashaw's Steps to the Temple. London. 1670.
Thomas Fletcher's Purple Island. London. 1783.
Giles Fletcher's Christ's Victory. London. 1783.
Quarles' Emblems and Hieroglyphics. London. 1680.
- Divine Fancies. London. 1680.
Huarte's Wits Commonwealth, or Politeuphuia. London. 1598.
Southcott's Tracts.
Dr. A. Bury's Naked Gospel. 4to. London. 1691.
Bromley's Sabbath of Rest, &c. London. 1761.
Robert Barclay's Apology. London. 1765.
N. Robinson's Christian Philosopher. London. 1753.
Poiret on the Restoration of Man. Lond. 1713.
- Divine Economy. London. 1713.
Virgin in Eden. London. 1741.
Rev. R. Clarke's Gospel of the Daily Service. London. 1767.
- Jesus the Nazarene. London. 1770.
- Spiritual Voice. London. 1700.
Tracts, by Jane Lead.
Bæhms' History of Pietism. London. 1707.
Franck: Pietas Hallensis. London. 1705.
Pascal's Thoughts on Religion. London. 1806.


1813,]
547
Catalogue of Books.
P. Buchius on the Divine Being. London. 1693.
Bellarmine's Soul's Ascension to God. London. 1703.
R. Wilkinson's Saint's Travel to Canaan. London. 1650.
Man before Adam. London. 1656.
T. Hartley's Paradise Restored. London. 1764.
J. Serjeant's Transnatural Philosophy. London. 1700.
Henry More : Yuyudra Platonica. Camb. 1642.
-- Works. folio. London. 1642.
Universal Restitution. London. 1761.
Peter Sterry on the Freedome of the Will. fol. London. 1675.
Pathomachia, or the Battell of Affections shadowed by a faigned siedge of the
Citie Pathopolis. 4to. London. 1631.
L. Howell's Desiderius, or the Original Pilgrim. London. 1716.
Bernard's Isle of Man. London. 1803.
Olbia or the New Island. 4to. London. 1600.
Ramsay's Philosophical Principles of Natural and Revealed Religion. Glas-
gow, 2 vols. 4to. 1748.
Justus Lipsius on Constancy. London. 1654.
General Delusion of Christians. London. 1714.
Norris on Love. London. 1723.
- Amoris Effigies, of Waring. London. 1744.
on Matrimony. 2 vols. London. 1739.
Ideal World. 2 vols. London. 1701.
Wither's Britain's Remembrancer. London. 1628.
Dr. Byrom's Miscellaneous Poems. 2 vols. Manchester. 1773.
Du Bartas' “ Divine Weekes and Workes," by Josiah Sylvester. 670 pages.
fol. London. 1641.
Verstegan's Restitution of Decayed Intelligence. 4to. London.
Rei Rusticæ Auctores Latini Veteres, M. Cato, L. Columella, M. Varro.
Palladius. 1595.
Tusser's Husbandry. London. 1744.
Evelyn: Kalendarium Hortense. London. 1699.
Porphyry on Abstinence from Animal Food, by T. Taylor. London. 1823.
Tryon : Averræana, or Letters from Averroes. London. 1687.
- Way to Health. London. 1697.
Knowledge of a Man's Self, London. 1703.
– Letters, Philosophical, Theological, and Moral. London. 1700.
Self-Knowledge. London. 1703.
on Dreams. London. 1691.
Newton's Return to Nature. London. 1811.
Sir J. Floyer's Puyolovoia. London. 1732.
R. T. Claridge's Hydropathy. London. 1842.
J. H. Cohausen : Hermippus Redivivus. London. 1771.
Thomas Stanley's History of Philosophy. 750 pages. fol. London. 1700.
Jamblichus on the Mysteries. Translated by T. Taylor.
---- Life of Pythagoras, by T. Taylor.
Dacier's Lives of Pythagoras and Hierocles. London. 1707.
Plato's Works, containing with the fifty-five Dialogues and twelve Epistles
the substance of nearly all the existing Greek MSS. Commentaries and scholia,
on Plato. By Thomas Taylor. 5 vols. 4to. London. 1804.
Plotinus' Select Works, by T. Taylor. London. 1817.
on Suicide, by T. Taylor. London. 1834.
Proclus' Commentaries on Euclid, by T. Taylor. 2 vols. 4to. London. 1788.
- Six Books on Plato's Theology, by T. Taylor. 2 vols. 4to. Lon-
don. 1816.
Commentaries on the Timæus of Plato, by T. Taylor. 2 vols. 4to.
London. 1820.
- Fragments by T. Taylor. London. 1825.
- Ten Doubts, &c. London. 1833.
Stanhope's Epictetus. London. 1721.
Xenophon's Banquet, by Dr. Welwood. London. 1710.
Dr. J. Welwood's Essay on Socrates. London. 1710.
Xenophon's Memoirs of Socrates, by Sarah Fielding. London. 1788.
Plutarch's Morals. 5 vols. London. 1694.
- Lives, by Langhorn. 8 vols. London. 1821.
Seneca's Morals. London. 1688.
Marcus Antoninus. London. 1534.


548
(April, 1843.
Catalogue of Books.
66
Julii Pacii a Berega in Porphyrii Isagogen et Aristotelis Organum. 4to.
Geneva. 1605.
Aristotle's Metaphysics, by T. Taylor. 4to. London. 1801.
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