much surprised to see me, as I was to see it, I was willing to give in to any ghostly theory and believe in dreams. There was no bustle at the wharf. It was absurdly easy to get a carriage. There was no outlay of oaths—not even an expletive was necessary. There was no frenzied darting up the plank, pulling an appalled woman after you, and dashing through crowds of vociferous hackmenno insane telegraphing men whose appearance you could not recall a moment afterward, and who answered by scores, "yes" to your inquiry, "are you my man?" -there was no hot pursuit of erring umbrellas, and self-willed trunks, during which you dropped bags and crushed babies; none of the prodigious excitement of a Summer arrival; but the event was as eventless as the sunrise of a cloudy day. I stepped into the street, without fear of a belated coach from the "Ocean" thundering around the corners, and betook myself to visions of the snowy fields and icy cliffs, I anticipated in winter-bound Newport. I passed the ruin, the old mill, among whose arches the sunset was fading. The "Atlantic" stood opposite, wrecked upon the winter. There were no window blinds, and many panes were broken, slats were torn from the railings, fences half overthrown-windows and doors sternly closed, and a gloomy dreariness reigned over all. The paint was dirty, the glass and the grounds were the same. I looked at the lofty columns and whispered to myself for comfort, "Greece." The lofty columns answered, "Foul, ugly, old, humbugging wooden shanty." whispered, "Summer palace of pleasure," and a bitter gust rattled the loose casements and died away. I sighed, "Ah! gay beat of happy feet, high holiday of youth, and love, and beauty!" and in the windless sunset of the winter day, I heard the muffled moan of the ocean. I The last time I had stood upon that piazza there was a ball within. The great white pile was bursting with light and music. Every window and door was open. There were incessant flights of ladies across the hall. Carriages drove to the door, and dainty dames stepped out, rolled cloud-like up the broad steps, and disappeared in the house. Couples stepped through the windows upon the piazza. Dancers too tired to dance, and ladies whose mourning inhibited their feet, and not their eyes from pleasure, sat in large arm-chairs, and looked in upon the merry-making; knots of elderly men, arrived by the evening boat from Boston, stood talking idly of State street, and stocks-wasting precious time in such aimless dreaming. Enormous dowagers lined the great entry, a wonderful living tapestry, and before them fluttered the brilliant groups, idly chatting, idly listening, idly drifting down the summer. Even as poor Yorick's skull in the hand of Hamlet, was that huge, blank, hopeless pile in my eye, as we passed it. But winter had torn aside other tapestries than those wonderful living ones of the entry. The leaves were stripped from the trees. You remember that dense grove opposite the "Atlantic," fenced off from the main road. You have often speculated whether there were a house there, and if a house, whether any one lived in it, and if any one lived in it, why then Any summer morning you have murmured as you sauntered by; "But who hath seen her wave her hand? Winter has solved the mystery. Now that there is no one to look, every thing can be seen. Between the trees standing close to each other, the pilgrim out of season can distinguish the outline of a spacious house. The windows are closed, the dead leaves drift along the piazza-the family has left Newport. The Proceeding down the road, which, in summer, is so crowded at this time of day, with countless carriages and equestrians, nothing disputes the way. rows of low wooden shops are silent and deserted. The merchants of a day have packed up the red flannel bathing-dresses, the fancy canes, the cravats, gloves and thin coats, and have flown away with the swallows. The "Daguerreian artist" had he remained, would have been obliged to content himself with catching the features of the landscape. Shutters are up at all the windows. But presently, I see that the doors and windows of one of the shops are open. I hurry across to scan the contents, to deplore, with the shopman, the total stagnation of business. I reach the door, and look in. The stock in trade is a broken counter, and a few empty drawers irregularly open. There is a painful neatness in the aspect of the spot. No scrap of wrapping-paper, no comfortable coil of cheese-paring, no broken crockery, not a single apple past its prime, remains as memorials of the busy summer days. All shows the melancholy precision of acknowledged death, and I find myself involuntarily whistling the Dead March in Saul. At the corner where new books were sold, I could not find a single old one, but barred doors and blank shutters made it dismal. I turned across the Newport in Winter. street to the corner opposite for consola- tarts now? your cheese-cakes? your But mark one figure, one solitary figure The old gentleman walked slowly up and down, and glanced at me vaguely as I passed. I returned his gaze with reverence, for I could not suppose him walking there for his private pleasure, but as a kind of official mourner for the pleasant and beautiful things passed away. Nature had furnished him for that place and moment, as London undertakers furnish mutes for state funerals. He wore that coat and those trowsers and boots-yes, and-possibly-that hat, ex officio. I was struck anew by the wisdom of nature, which is it Paley or Father Prout who says it?-always puts the right thing in the right place. Yet I was surprised as I walked away, for I thought Old Grimes was dead. There were the bowling-alleys that thundered all summer long, now as still as Rip Van Winkle's. Two or three boys played listlessly about the doors. There was no report from the pistol-galleries. The piping times of peace had come, and in the field under the Ocean Hall a few children were pulling turnips. The Ocean Hall! There's your text for Newport in winter; "whose lights are fled, whose garlands dead," &c. There was Edwards' Archery Ground, where one happy day of midsummer, we VOL. I.-11 153 shot dull care straight through the heart, and savagely assaulted ennui,-poor Edwards' archery ground! Farther down, upon Narraganset avenue, we met wagon-loads of laborers returning from the houses, which were rising rapidly upon the cliffs. The wagons were crowded and rolled rapidly by us, while the men sang, and their dinner-kettles rattled. Except these, there were only occasional solitary wayfarers. Some Newport, and even in the height of the few families remain through the winter in pleasure their snowy seclusion from the summer solstice they anticipate with world. They may well do so, for summer does not leave them with the swarms of visitors it brings, but abides in those homes throughout the year. I had come to Newport for its wintry grandeurs. The air was very sharp, the sky was clear, it was December,—all the material of winter was apparently ready. But I awoke to a fresh May morning. Never have I seen Newport more beautiful than on that day. The neighboring sea softens the air. Snow rarely lingers long. The land which, with us, seems always to recoil in horror as it approaches the sea, finds, upon touching it as in Newport, that the shock is not so dreadful after all, and that the seaside is more kindly than the inland. The little frost upon my window pane trickled away before I was fairly up,-and my large expectations of unspeakable wintry desolation melted likewise, and ran off, at the touch of the same sun. My hostess. was already out in her grounds,-Meddowes arrived from the South, as if the season had come round again, and Magnus stepped over to ask us to a stroll. We sauntered about upon the rocks, heedless of "the inverted year." The ground was oozy and plashy under our feet as in. spring. Cows strolled idly by, snatching contemplative mouthfuls from the grassy sides of the road. The factories in the town shot their white columns of vapor high into the blue air. A distant bell rang over the fields between us and the town, and choice glimpses of the sea, each framed in picturesque rocks,-a cabinet picture-pleased the eye, that swept the whole horizon. White sails illuminated the harbor, and flashed in the sunshine far out at sea. Was this my dream of Newport in winter? I looked earnestly up the road to descry Mot's old hat, that brave old hat which had clearly been out in all storms that ever blew, and had returned limp with chronic palsy and yellow with hopeless jaundice. What an abominable hat it was! How it flapped like the ragged, dusky ears of an elephant, or the helpless leaf of a diseased tropical plant! How it seemed to belong to no age nor nation, but would have been as surprising at Timbuctoo as Nova Zembla! I have no idea what it was made of, nor where. I suppose nobody knows. Mot preserves with reverence a tradition of having bought it somewhere, at some time. But there is a wandering in his eye when he tells you so, that but feebly images the wandering of his mind after any precise hat-statistics. That hat put the Newport ruin to shame. After Mot appeared with at upon his head, the old mill was hushed up, and sold off at auction. He kept it in a huge solitary white house upon the cliff, as powder and other dangerous matters are preserved in lonely places. But he was perfectly generous in showing it. Mot wasn't proud of it, but wore it in the most open manner upon the public highways, and sometimes took it in to receive private audiences from beautiful ladies! If you ask me its shape, I must refer you to clouds. If you demand the material, I must refer you to substances of every kind and color. It was an eclectic hat, catholic, cosmopolitan. It was surrounded with what was familiarly called a ribbon. I should have said rainbow, had I not detected many more than the seven primal colors. It might have been a large straw village in Lilliput, in Brobdignag it could have been Glumdalclitch's bonnet. I knew it had been removed from Newport. I knew that I might as well look to see June coming over the fields; but I would rather have seen that amorphous old hat flapping along the road, than a bird of Paradise. But I did see the chaise ! Do you ask whether among the multitude of fine equipages that ornament the Newport you know, there can be any one specified as "the chaise," as Wellington among scores of Dukes was "the Duke ?" Yes. You know how fiercely the fever of land-speculation rages in Newport: how fathers dreaded to be drawn thither by their families lest they should be forced to buy a place,-how bleak rocks suddenly became precious stones-how every body had a secret about the land he was going to buy, and a romance about that every body else had bought. You know what engineering there was, what staking, what surveying, what loads of bricks, and stone, and lumber passing in endless procession. Well, among all this, suddenly appeared a chaise. It was not peculiar in any way. It had none of the fascinating inscrutability of Mot's hat. It was a simple chaise, driven by Jones. Once your eye fell upon it, you never saw any other carriage. In all the by-ways upon the island, at all times of day,-at the point by the Spouting Horn beachover toward the fort-in Narraganset avenue in Bellevue-st.- toward the beaches upon every possible spot of land above water was the chaise seen. It was of highly polished leather, with open framework at the sides, and green curtains, altogether an attractive carriage. Its two wheels turned very nimbly around corners. It was perpetually driving in at gates, and through bars, and mysterious Jones always carried a roll, like a field-marshal's baton in his hand. Perhaps, thought I, Wellington's honors have fallen upon Jones. He wore a short cloak pendent from his shoulders to his waist. The face of F. M. Mr. Jones was cheerful; it had a steady composure, as of a man uninterruptedly satisfied. People bowed to him gravely. He had evidently an extensive acquaintance. General Ricetierce, from Georgia, and the Hon. Pyne Knott, from Maine, knew him equally well. "Some diplomat," I said, "whom they knew at Washington." I observed one remarkable fact. F. M. Mr. Jones was never alone in the chaise. I observed another fact. The face of his companion, whoever he might be, had not his own uninterruptedly satisfied expression. Conversation took a very serious turn in respect of this carriage. Later in the season, I heard men defy that chaise. I even heard one exasperated man swear at the F. M. and his chaise. The next day I saw him in it, cutting round corners, driving in at gates, returned punctually to dinner by his companion, who flourished, at intervals, his official baton. I began to suspect it to be a magic wand. Every morning that chaise drew up before the Bellevue. F. M. calmly scanned the groups upon the piazza, and singled out his man. Vainly General Ricetierce pretended not to see, and puffed his cigar more industriously, or more obstreperously laughed. He felt that eye upon him, as a snowflake a sunbeam, and he melted into most docile obedience. "Ah! Jones, is that you; glad to see you; I'm quite ready," said the poor victim, with great rapidity. "I shall be gone only a short time," said the General to his companions, as he left them. They smiled mournfully, and looked wistfully after him. Jones stepped out of the chaise, handed Ricetierce in and closely followed him. They started. "By the bye!" cried the General, in a loud voice, and leaning forward to his friends upon the piazza. It was too late. The chaise was cutting round the corner. Ör it was Pyne Knott, who was in indifferent health, and would as soon buy a lot in Newfoundland as Newport-who wondered at the wild prices men paid for land, and especially how they could consent to pay an immense percentage to an agent. It was Pyne Knott who pshawed and pished, and wished people wouldn't make fools of themselves. The next day I saw him whisking along in the chaise, while F. M. waved his baton over him, in sign of subjugation. You could as easily resist a fog as that chaise. It would surely encompass you. If you staid at the Bellevue, you were no better than a miserable prisoner of the Conciergerie, before whose door, with fatal regularity, the charette daily appeared, and the headsman cried, "the next batch." The chaise was like the guillotine. Men tremblingly ate their breakfasts, momently expecting the summons; and after breakfast, it was always waitingthat horrible mockery of polished leather and green curtains! Presently the mystery was explained. No one was ever let out of the chaise until he had bought land! F. M. Mr. Jones was an J. A. He was a land agent, and his baton was a map of the island. Mot sickened at the thought. He was sure that his name was written against some lot, in which case, Chaise, Jones, and map, would be brought to bear upon him, until he succumbed and purchased. "Blast the chaise !" cried Mot, energetically. Within a week I saw Jones putting him into it, hat and all. He waved his hand at me, feebly. The old hat had evidently suffered from a fresh jaundice, and hung heavily, like weepers, around his head. They drove rapidly away. Sad stories were told of Mot, that day. 155 He had been seen eating sponge-cake an hour before dinner-he had been posing to the "Daguerrean artist," half-nude, as the Dying Gladiator-he had professed willingness to buy a new hat! "It's very strange," said I. "Not at all," said J.; "he's had an attack of the chaise." When, therefore, I saw the chaise, all the summer came driving back to me in it. Why spin out my story? I went to prised May lingering upon the island. Newport to find the winter, and sur The afternoon I left, I wandered along the cliffs, and met an old fisherman, a friend of the past summer, sitting solitary upon the bass-rocks, and looking idly over the sea. After a surprised greeting upon his part, I told him that he was looking as if he expected to see the opposite shore of the ocean. "No," said the old fisher; "I was only thinking of a story I read long ago—for I, too, have read books, though I've given it up for many years-of an island lying far to the north, and inhabited only by seals and white bears. Once every year, said the tradition, swarms of peacocks, buzzards, and birds of Paradise, find their way thither, and monopolize the island, so that for a month no seal nor bear is visible-nothing but a great fluttering and buzzing of these winged strangers. Suddenly they fly as mysteriously as they came, and totally disappear, leaving the quiet island to the contemplative bears and seals, who inhabit it throughout the year, who are adapted to its life by their organization, and whose history is the history of the island. "It is a very remarkable fact in natural peacocks, buzzards, and birds of Paradise, history, concludes the tradition, that the conceive that their fluttering month gives the chief interest to the island." "It is very singular," said I, to the old fisher. "It is very true," said the old fisher to me, as I walked away. OUR YOUNG AUTHORS-MELVILLE HEN Typee first appeared, great was the enthusiasm. The oddity of the name set critics a wondering. Reviewers who were in the habit of writing an elaborate review of a work, from merely glancing over the heads of the chapters, and thinking a little over the title-page, book, and look over the chapters, they were not much wiser. Barbarous congregations of syllables, such as Kory-Kory, Nukuheva, Moa Artua, met their eyes. The end of it was, that the whole tribe of London and American critics had to sit down and read it all, before they dared speak of a book filled with such mysterious syllables. From reading they began to like it. There was a great deal of rich, rough talent about it. The scenes were fresh, and highly colored; the habits and manners described had the charm of novelty; and the style, though not the purest or most elegant, had a fine narrative facility about it, that rendered it very pleasurable reading, after the maudlin journeys in Greece-travels in the Holy Land, full of Biblical raptures, and yachttours in the Mediterranean, where monotonous sea-dinners and vulgar shore-pleasures were faithfully chronicled, with such like trash that had been inundating the literary market for years previous. Typee was successful. It could scarcely be otherwise. Prosy to the last degree, in some portions, there yet were scenes in it full of exquisite description, and novel characters, who, like Fayaway, were in themselves so graceful, that we could not help loving them. Mr. Melville found that he had opened a fertile field, which he was not slow to work. Sea novels had, as it were, been run into the ground by Marryatt, Chamier, and Cooper. People were growing weary of shipwrecks and fires at sea. Every possible incident that could occur, on board men-of-war, privateers, and prizes, had been described over and over again, with an ability that left nothing to be desired. The whole of a sailor's life was laid bare to us. We knew exactly what they ate, what they drank, and at what hours they ate and drank it. Their language, their loves, their grievances, and their mutinies, were as familiar as the death of Cock Robin. Even staid, sober, land-lubbering people, who got sea-sick crossing in a Brooklyn ferry-boat, began to know the names of ropes and spars, and imagined no longer that a scupper was one of the sails. Mr. Melville came forward with his books, to relieve this state of well informed dulness. By a happy mixture of fresh land scenery, with some clever ship-life, he produced a brilliant amalgam, that was loudly welcomed by the public. Who does not relish Dr. Long-ghost all the better, for leaving the Julia, albeit prisoner-wise, and going ashore to that funny Calabooza Beretanee where he has epileptic fits, in order to get a good dinner, and makes a fan out of a paddle, to keep off the mosquitoes. Does not the wild voluptuous dance of the "back-slid ing girls," in the Valley of Martair, contrast magnificently with that terrible night off Papeetee, when the Mowree tried to run "Little Jule" ashore upon the coral breakers. In this contrast, which abounds in Mr. Melville's books, lies one of his greatest charms. Sea and shore mingling harmoniously together, like music-chords. Now floating on the wide blue southern seas-the sport of calms and hurricanes-the companion of the sullen Bent, the Doctor and Captain Guy. Anon clasping to our bosoms those jaunty, impassioned creatures, yclept Day-born, Night-born, and the Wakeful; or watching Fayaway laving her perfect, shining form in the cool lake, by whose green bank the cocoa sheds its fruit, and the bread-fruit tree towers. All this is delicious, to those who have been playing vulgar midshipman's tricks with Chamier and Marryatt, and comes to us pleasantly even after Cooper's powerful and tender sea-tales. It is no easy matter to pronounce which of Mr. Melville's books is the best. All of them (and he has published a goodly number, for so young an author) have had their own share of success, and their own peculiar merits, always saving and excepting Pierre-wild, inflated, repulsive that it is. For us there is something very charming about Mardi, all the time fully aware of its sad defects in taste and style. Of course, we give Mr. Melville every credit for his deliberate plagiarisms of old Sir Thomas Browne's gorgeous and metaphorical manner. Affectation upon affectation is scattered recklessly through its pages. Wild similes, cloudy philosophy, all things turned topsy-turvy, until we seem to feel all earth melting away from beneath our feet, and nothing but Mardi remaining. Reading this wild book, we can imagine ourselves mounted upon some Tartar steed, golden caparisons clank around our person, ostrich plumes of driven whiteness hang over our brow, and cloud our vision with dancing snow. Lance in hand, from which the horse-tail quivers in the wind, we stand beneath the shadow of our desert-tent, dreaming of golden caravans. Suddenly a thirst for motion fills us with uncontrollable desire. Our steed paws the sand, and our lance trembles to its very steel point, in grasp of nervous eagerness. Away, away, along the sandy plain! Clouds of sand, that shine in the sun like gold, are flung up around us. The swift ostrich stares to see us pass it in our headlong flight. Pilgrims, wending Mecca-ward, tremble when they behold the advancing pillar of dust in which we and our steed are shrouded, and fall |