Obrazy na stronie
PDF
ePub

sheds upon history, that the pride of ancestry is founded. "Where be all the bad people buried?" asks every man, with Charles Lamb, as he strolls among the rank graveyard grass, and brushes it aside to read of the faithful husband, and the loving wife, and the dutiful child. It is because the human heart is kind: because it yearns with wistful tenderness after all its brethren who have passed into the cloud, and will only speak well of the departed. No offence is longer an offence when the grass is green over the offender. Even faults then seem characteristic and individual. Even Justice is appeased

when the drop falls. How the old stories and plays teem with the incident of the duel in which one gentleman falls, and, in dying, forgives and is forgiven. We turn the page with a tear. How much better had there been no offence, but how well that Death wipes it out.

Republican rage against this feeling of ancestry is natural; because, while we have been considering what the secret of this fact really is that constantly appears in history-where it is enough to admit Sir Bludgeon to honorable notice in every circle, that he is son of Sir Gudgeon-it is the abuse of the feeling that is most generally presented to observation. No derived or implied excellence can stand for a moment against original power. If Sole the cobbler meets young Gudgeon Bludgeon, and discovers that the youth is inferior to him in size, strength, sense, and ability to grapple with the sharp points of life; that he is in fact only a welldressed, small-footed, delicate - featured man, somewhat cultivated, and with the refined air of elegant social habits, Sole is to Gudgeon Bludgeon as a lion to a roe. Now if the young man, with all his fineness, evinces force of any kind; if he can give Sole genuine information, or assist him in any way, then Sole respects the man, and likes him the more for his elegance, which seems to him a mysterious grace, charming from its mystery. But if Gudgeon Bludgeon is only a betterdressed and softer-mannered man than the cobbler, then Sole despises him the more for his elegance, which seems puerile weakness. Of course in countries where society is organized upon a recognition of rank, and high descent is a positive social advantage, there is a subservience to mere position, and a profound study of "The Peerage," which is repulsive and disgusting. A Howard or a Russell is honored, not on account of his ancestor's virtues, but for his own patronage. What do Check and Corduroy, the eminent tailors, know of the real characters of the Duke of Dice, or the Very Reverend the Ace

of Trumps, for whom they make kneebreeches and body-coats, or of their ancestors? They know simply that the families of those gentlemen have been, and are, great and influential in the state. The homage of the tailors is not an acknowledgment of any thing but position. It is place they delight to honor, and not persons. But the place must possess or imply power. And as the mass of men are not very thoughtful. it is natural that the good Corduroy and his partner should transfer to each individual of a class, that which is true of the class in general. Sir Bludgeon is a Field Marshal, and has whole Californias at command. Sir Gudgeon is a swell and has not a penny. But they are both Sirs, and how is Check, busily cutting out trowsers, to reason further?

In America an illustrious ancestry secures no privilege from the state, but, except that, and really, it is worth to the individual all that it is in England. The Atlantic and the Revolution do not alienate blood. The son of Algernon Sidney, in the last American remove, is heir to the honors of his ancestry. The sentiment of ancestral pride is an integral part of human nature. Its organization in institutions is the real object of enmity to all sensible men, because it is a direct preference of derived to original power, implying a doubt that the world at every period is able to take care of itself. Oliver Cromwell is a good governor; but rather than submit to Richard Cromwell, who is a bad one, it is much better to find Oliver again, by appealing to the average sense of the world. Because, it is clear that if Richard falls so far short of Oliver, his son may fall quite below endurance; and then, when affairs were much more complicated, we should be compelled, at great disadvantage, to try to find Oliver once more, or a talent which would fill his place.

It is not observed in history that families improve with time. It is rather discovered that the whole matter is like a comet, of which the brightest part is the head, and the tail, although long and luminous, is gradually shaded into obscurity. Yet, by a singular compensation, the pride of ancestry increases in the ratio of distance. Adam was valiant, and did so well at Poictiers that he was knighted,-a hearty, homely country gentleman, who lived humbly to the end. But young Lord Lucifer, his representative in the twentieth remove, has a tinder-like conceit because old Sir Adam was so brave and humble. Sir Adam's sword is hung up at home, and Lord Lucifer has a box at the opera, in which he receives no one whose ancestor

is not known to have flourished with Sir Adam. On a thin finger he has a ring, cut with a match fizzling, the crest of the Lucifers, and he is an amiable, gentlemanly, superficial youth, well known and welcomed in our best society. Lucifer abuses the pride of ancestry.

With us, happily, there is no organization of this natural pride. Those among us who bear illustrious names, do not sit any more softly for that fact. They must descend into the street, and jostle and push with the rest of us. If they stand apart, and announce that they are sons of thunder, they are hustled until they prove it. If they take airs in the omnibus, and will not allow the driver to go on, pleading that their ancestor fell at Yorktown, the terrible nineteenth century roars to them through the roof from the mouth of the driver, that if their ancestor fell in Eden, he would not stop. It is only under certain artificial conditions of society that "family" has any weight with us Americans. Fortunately we cannot emancipate ourselves from the sweet pride, and we love our honorable ancestors, as parents the children that do them honor. But it is equally fortunate that it is confined to sentiment, and that in a country whose existence, as well as welfare, constantly depends upon the action of the best genius, no precedence is allowed to any thing but power. The most striking modern homage to the democratic theory is to be found, after our success, in the permanence of the British aristocracy. In no other country does the nobility maintain its place by real worth and capacity. And why is it so in England, but because the traditions of nobility are deserted, and the higher class is constantly recruited in vigor and genius by intermarriage with the middle class? The grandsons of commoners sit in the peers. It is the part of wisdom, for history shows that exclusive aristocracies fall at last from internal decay. Napoleon laid his firm finger upon the effete aristocracy of Venice, and it crumbled like a mummy in a modern hand. With us, the grandson of a President has no finer start in life, from that fact, than the grandson of the President's baker. A man will not sooner succeed to the collectorship of a large port because his great uncle was Governor, than because his uncle was never heard of.

There is, as we have said, a certain purely social consideration with us based upon family. It is easy to trace its reason. It is because the great name has been a stimulus leading to good results in the descendants, for which men are always honored; or because of the instinct which seeks to honor a father by honoring

the son; or because of the ease and elegance and general social amenity produced by the training which hereditary wealth secures. For, it is to be noticed, that our social respect for family depends much upon this fact, that wealth has enabled it to maintain a certain education and process of refinement. The theory of good descent is fine blood. It is true of other animals, why not of man? The condition of fine blood is, however, the posession of every means of refinement. If they fail and there is no original power in the individual, he ceases to be honored for the social grace and cultivation which he has achieved, but simply for the genius of the founder of the family. Minim Sculpin belongs to "a good old family." But if Minim is a bad young man, he not only shames himself, but that illustrious line of ancestors whose names are known. Jones has no pedigree, and therefore stands and falls to himself. When he reels from the ball-room to the gambling-house, we do not suffer the sorrow of any fair Lady Dorothy in such a descendant, but we pity him for himself alone. But genius and power are so imperial and universal that when Minim Sculpin falls, we are grieved, not only for him, but for that eternal truth and beauty which appeared in the valor of Sir Sharp and the loveliness of Lady Dorothy. Now Jones's grandfathers in every remove may have been quite as valorous and virtuous as Sculpin's, but we know of the one, and we do not know of the other. So with the furious democrat, who asserts that the race of Smiths has been quite as good as that of the Percys, we have no quarrel. Certainly it may be so. Certainly, the Laureate of Timbuctoo may surpass him of England, but, except by that poetic fervor which asserts that melodies unheard are sweeter, we should say of Tennyson, that he is a noble poet, and be unable, from sheer ignorance, to say a word of the bard of Timbuctoo. Let no Smith, therefore, feel injured because we gaze so long and earnestly upon the fair Lady Sculpin, and, lost in dreams, mingle in a society, which distance and poetry immortalize. Nor should he flout us because we are conscious that, could we feel our kindred to that lady, our lives would gain by it, through the touch of imagination.

The Colonnas are credentials for every new born Roman bearing that name. By his family fame the child is peculiarly related to the Past, and therefore peculiarly pledged to the Future.

It is a dangerous doctrine, however, nor much to be pressed. The Family Portraits have a poetic significance, and he is a brave child of the family who

dares to show them. Let him not do it until he has looked in the glass of his own thought and scanned his own proportions. Like a woman's diamonds, they may flash finely enough before the world,

but she herself trembles lest their lustre eclipse her eyes. And difficult to resist is the tendency to depend upon those portraits, and to enjoy vicariously through them a high consideration. What girl is complimented when you curiously regard her because her mother was beautiful? What attenuated consumptive, in whom self-respect is yet unconsumed, delights in your respect for him, founded in honor for his stalwart ancestor ? No true man rejoices in any homage which his own effort and character have not deserved. You intrinsically insult him when you make him the scapegoat of your admiration for his ancestor. When his ancestor is his accessory, then your homage would flatter Jupiter. All that Minim Sculpin does by his own talent is the more radiantly set and ornamented by the family fame. The imagination is pleased

when Lord John Russell is Premier of England and a whig, because the great Lord William Russell, his ancestor, died in England for liberty. In the same way Minim's sister Sara adds to her own grace the loveliness of the Lady Dorothy.

When she glides a sunbeam through that quiet house, and in winter makes summer by her presence; when she sits at the piano singing in the twilight, or stands leaning against the Venus in the corner of the room, herself more graceful,-then in glancing from her to the portrait of the gentle Dorothy, you feel that the long years between them have been lighted by the same sparkling grace, and shadowed by the same pensive smile. You own that Noblesse oblige, in a sense sweeter than you knew, and-explain it how you will-despite all English snobbery and dust-licking before titles, and of all the coarse American contempt for what it associates with an exploded society, you will yet own a secret pleasure when Sculpin invites you to see the Family Portraits. And this you may do, although you remember the original Adam, before starting, and although upon the way you may chant Tennyson's poem to yourself. For, however fair are the Family Portraits, the truth of the poem is the aboriginal and eternal truth.

"Trust me, Clara Vere de Vere,

From yon blue heavens above us bent,
The gardener Adam and his wife
Smile at the claims of long descent.
Howe'er it be, it seems to me,

'Tis only noble to be good,"

Kind hearts are more than coronets,
And simple faith than Norman blood."

NECKLACES.*

That was a fair one, which a Queen
Pulled the great pearl from in her spleen,
And drank its rich corroded sheen;

And flashing bright was that which met,
And clasped its fatal diamond net,
About Maria Antoinette;

And cool and fresh the dewy band,

Which poor Undine, with trembling hand
Snatch'd from the wave, for Hildebrand;

But better mine, a little thread

Of jasmine blossoms, tip't with red

As if in breaking they had bled.

It was all sweetness, and to one
Whose life on shore had just begun,
The very best beneath the sun.

MALTA, August 23d, 1851.

The boys in the streets of Malta string the Jasamine blossoms, and give or sell them to the passers-by.

EDITORIAL NOTES.

INTERNATIONAL COPYRIGHT.-We are happy to learn there is a probability that before the present number will reach its remote readers, the terms of a Convention between the United States and Great Britain, relating to International Copyright, will be made known. One of the last, we may add also, one of the best,acts of Mr. Webster's political life, was the opening of a negotiation with Mr. Crampton, the British Minister, to protect the literary interests of their respective countries. He was, unfortunately, cut off too soon for the completion of his purpose, but Mr. Everett, his worthy successor, in the Department of State, has hastened to pursue the noble example of Webster, and the prospect now is, that something will at last be achieved. The precise nature of the projected agreement has not yet transpired, but the disclosures are, that the recognition of the rights of authors, on both sides of the Atlantic, will be as full and definite as they need desire. We confess, that in the approach of so glorious a consummation, we feel disposed to elect ourselves the representatives of universal authordom, and throw up our hats, with a three times three, that will make the Alleghanics and the Rocky Mountains vocal with echoes! As any treaty on the subject, however, will have to pass the ordeal of the Senate, we shall wait to see whether our enthusiasm will be obliged to explode in vehement plaudits or not.

Although we shall be grateful for any kind of an international copyright which will procure to the foreign author any kind of control over his literary property on this side of the Atlantic, yet, we must confess, that we have precious little expectation that any law will be passed by treaty, or otherwise, which will give that full measure of justice, that the highest interests of our nation loudly demand. We hear a good deal of talk about the rights of our own people in this matter, but we should like to know what right our own people have to other people's property.

Our rights can never be the wrongs of others. If the works of British authors are necessary for our enlightenment, let us, in God's name, pay for them, or let them alone. If we are incapable of producing such books as our necessities call for, let us have the small honesty to pay those who can produce them for us.

This question of international copyright is not one that involves alone the interests of book manufacturers, authors, or students; it involves the national character

too, and while we refuse to allow compensation to the foreign author for his books, on the plea that we cannot afford to pay for them, and are unable to produce similar ones ourselves, we acknowledge ourselves paupers and vassals to foreign intellect, and give the lie to all our boastings of equality with England. We believe that nothing more is necessary than to give the English author an unqualified right of property in his literary productions, and to subject books to the same tariff that we impose upon similar kinds of manufactured merchandise, to make an entire revolution in the literary relations of this country, and to make us the literary creditor instead of the debtor. It has unfortunately happened that whenever the subject of International Copyright has been introduced into Congress, there has been some other topic of more immediate interest to engross the at tention of the members, and therefore it has never been broadly or freely discussed, either in the House or the Senate. But we trust that, if the treaty in question shall not be consummated, that some action will be had in reference to it, which will give the representatives of the people an opportunity to discuss it freely, and on broad national grounds. Those who claim that the rights of the people demand the continuance of our system of literary plunder and piracy, should commence their argument by denying the validity of the eighth commandment, and by proving that, in national affairs, the old proverb does not hold good, that "honesty is the best policy." For our own part, we will never believe that the majority of our countrymen are so lacking in the first principles of morality, as to wish to thrive by plundering another people of their property, even though they were so defective in their reasoning powers, as to imagine that any permanent good could result from a dishonest practice. In brief, our observations have led us to believe that, if the question of international copyright were submitted to the vote of the people of this country, they would decide in favor of the measure by a vote of two to one.

LITERATURE.

AMERICAN.-A dearth of books generally follows the holidays, as Lent follows the Čarnival. Our publishers, for a month after, repose upon the profits of the Holiday Week; or rather, they are getting ready in silence for the bold demonstrations of the spring. But "travels" have no season, and the month brings us in that line

The Footpath and Highway, the title of a volume of sketches in England and Ireland, written with some vivacity, but scarcely novel enough to produce much of a sensation. The author should try his hand on a less hackneyed subject.

-Anderson's American Villa Architecture, No. 1. Since Downing's first work on villa architecture appeared, there have been several successful works published on the same subject, the last, and most pretending of them being the one before us, the first number of which has but just been issued by Putnam & Co. The completed work will contain plans and elevations of eighteen villas, and three country churches, with descriptions, and "an Essay on Architecture." The descriptions are certainly very necessary, but the essay strikes us as a superfluity in such an undertaking. It will be published in seven numbers, with a supplement containing specifications, working drawings, &c. In a country like ours, where building houses, churches, and manufactories, is the great business of the people, and where, with all their industry, they are unable to multiply their dwellings to keep pace with the increase of population, works on practical architecture must, of course, be always welcome. We therefore greet this new comer among our architectural books with great satisfaction. Mr. Anderson is an enthusiast in his art, and, if he is not a Palladio, or a Wren, it is not from indifference to his business. He informs "the reader" that he has spent thirty years in the study of architecture, and in examining all the styles of every enlightened nation, and has come to the sensible conclusion that "every nation patronizes some peculiar style that will best suit its climate and habits." He must, to be truthful, except the nation of the United States, which patronizes all the styles that have ever been known to mankind, in all ages of the world, and all parts of the earth. Egyptian, Greek, Roman, Saracenic, Cyclopeian, Chinese, Norman, Lombard, and all the varieties of Gothic may be found domesticated among us. The American style of architecture has yet to be created. But Mr. Anderson says: "I have let no opportunity pass of acquiring such information as enables me to produce a style of architecture altogether new, and suited, not only to this climate's wants, but to the customs and habits of the age."

This may be all true, but we have some doubts of it, and certainly the three designs given in the first number of Mr. Anderson's work, do not verify his claims. The villas are pretty, picturesque, and comfortable-looking houses enough, but there is nothing new in them, nor anything

about them peculiarly American. We are not sure, however, that we have seen anything better of the same class, and should be disposed to trust Mr. Anderson, if we were about to erect a villa, to furnish the design. It is greatly to his credit that he rejects the high roofs which are only required in high northern latitudes, and adopts an elevation exactly suited to our meridian. But style, in architecture, is a thing that is more likely to spring from the instincts of the people, who build better than they know, than from a study of other styles, and we think that more valuable ideas and hints may be obtained by an examination of our indigenous country houses than by inspecting the architecture of France, England, Germany and Italy. In all three of the designs furnished in this first number of the "American Villa Architecture," there is a mingling of arched and flat-headed windows that produces an unpleasantly incongruous effect. This is particularly incongruous and unseemly in design No. 3, where on one side the windows are single with flat heads, surmounted by pediments, which do not appear to be needed, and, on the other are triple-arched, while the upper windows, which are directly under the wide projecting roof, are needlessly deformed by umbrages, which look like a parasol carried beneath an umbrella. Neither the "climate's wants," nor the 'customs and habits of the age," exacting and luxurious as they may be, could call for such an useless expenditure of materials. The work is extremely well printed, and the lithographed designs make very pretty pictures, and, if they will not bear the test of rigid criticism, they are entitled to the praise of being as good, if not better, than any other villa designs that we have seen from an American Architect.

[ocr errors]

-A snarling, ill-natured, caustic book about England and Englishmen, written by an American, may be excused on the ground of retaliation. We have been so often roundly abused by our cousins of the other side, that when one of us is provoked into a little wholesale denunciation of them, we can easily account for his spleen. More than that, we confess to a little gratified malice when we see John Bull pummelled in his own sturdy way, on the same principle that everybody likes to see a bully flogged, without regard to the justice of the particular occasion. Mr. MATT. WARD'S book, therefore, which he calls English Items, and in which he lays about him unmercifully, castigating the islanders for their brutality, their flunkeyism, their atrocious love of beer and beef, and their more atro

« PoprzedniaDalej »