The Press. — London, England, 1854-11-18 00:00:00

1098 And humbly, though they had few peers, Kept their own laws, which seem'd to be The fair sum of sac thousand years' Traditions of civility. It is some marvel that our poet escaped so long without a mate, for he candidly says : We who are married, let us own A bachelor's chief thought in life Is, or the fool's not worth a groan, To wiu a woman for his wife. And he confesses that his heart had been often touched : And, in the records of my breast, Red•letter'd, eminently fair, Stood sixteen, who, beyond the rest, Up to that time had been my care: At Berlin three, one at St. Cloud, At Chatteris, near Cambridge, one, At Ely four, in London twa, Two at Bowness, in Paris none, And, last and best, i❑ Sarum three : But dearest of the whole fair troop, In judgment of the moment, she - Whose daisy eyes had learrid to droop. For a space he knows not which of the three sisters is dearest to him, but a morning walk with Honor fixes his heart. This walk, with a little incident descriptive of his state and for tune, are as purely natural as any page in the "Vicar of Wakefield" : A voice, the sweeter for the grace Of suddenness, while thus I dream'd, " Good-morning ! " said or sang. Her face The mirror of the morning seem'd. Her sisters in the garden walk'd, And would 1 come? Across the hall She took me ; and we laugh'd and talk'd About the flower-show and the tall. Their pinks had won a spade for prize : But that was gallantly withdrawn For " Jones on Wiltshire Butterflies : " How rude ! And so we paced the lawn, Close-cut, and, with geranium-plots, A rival glow of green and red ; Then counted sixty apricots On one small tree. The sweet hour sped; And 1 rode slow 'tward home, my breast A load of joy and tender care : And this delight, which life oppress'd, To flx'd aims grew, that ask'd for prayer : Awl I reaclt'd home, where, whip in hand And soil'd benk•uotes all ready, stood The farmer who farm'd all my land, Except the little park and wood. And, with the accustom'd compliment Of talk, and beef, and frothing beer, I, my own steward, took my rent, Three hundred pounds fur half the year : Our witnesses the maid and groom, We signed the lease for seven years more, And bade good-day. Then to my room I went, and closed and lock'd the door, And cast myself down on my bed, And there, with many a blissful tear, I vow'd to love and pray'd to wed The maiden who had grown so dear. The dean's consent to the lover's suit is related in language quite as plain. It is after dinner, of course, while the poet sits user his "tasteless wine," that the subject is broached : Towards my mark the dean's talk set : He praised my " Notes on Abury," Read when the association met At Sarum; he was glad to see I had not stopp'd, as some men had, At wrangler and prize poet ; last, He hoped the business was not bad I came about: then the wine pass'd. A full glass prefaced my reply : I loved his daughter Honor : lie knew My estate and prospects : might I try To win her ? In his eyes tears grew. He thought 'twas that. I might : lie gave His true consent, if I could get Her love. A dear, good girl ! she'd have Only three thousand pounds as yet : More byand•bye. Yes, his goodwill Should go with me. For a wonder, the course of true love does run perfectly smooth ; and there are to be related only such little incidents as this, when Honor parts from her Felix at the door of a railway carriage : She had forgot to bring a book : I lent one ; blamed the print for old ; And did not tell her that she took A Tasso worth its weight in gold. I hoped she'd lose it ; for my love Was grown so dainty, high, and nice, It prized no luxury above The sense of fruitless sacrifice. The confession was delayed till there scarcely needed words to tell it ; but it came at last Twice rose, twice died my trembling word: The faint end frail cathedral chimes Spake time in music, and we heard The chafers rastling in the limes, THE PRESS. Her dress, that touch'd me where I stood; The warmth of her confided arm ; Her bosom's gentle neighbourhood; Her pleasure in her power to charm ; Her look, her love, her form, her touch, The least seem'd most by blissful turn, Blissful but that it pleased too much, And taught the wayward soul to yearn. It was as it' a harp with wires Was traversed by the breath I drew ; And, oh, sweet meeting of desires, She, answering, own'd that she loved too. Here the " Betrothal" ends, and as in a prologue the poet relates the design of his poem, so in an epilogue he tells how, as their next wedding-day came round, he presented this first book of his poem to his wife, and, still discoursing on his theme, curiously considered what difference there could be between the love of man and of woman : Then, pondering what the difference was, He ask'd her thrice if she'd be plaased To help his muse ; but she grew crass, And begg'd that she might not be teased. . " Well, till you tell me freely why You love me, you shall have no kiss ; And so, till dinner-time, good-bye! " Said he, sure to prevail by this. She : " Dearest, you will not leave me so !" He " Give the reasons, one and all." She, laughing : "Love, I do not know, Unless it is that you're so tall." On tiptoe, then, she stood to touch His lips with her's, but three times miss'd, And pouted. " Nay, then, tell how much ?" " How can I, it' you'll not be kiss'd? " Baffled, he thought the difference o'er ; Soon smiled, and said ho knew it well : But, good world, love shows poets more Than you deserve that they should tell. The reader who has patiently followed us thus far will be ready to admit, we believe, that this verse, though often eccentric enough, and sometimes a little uneven, is yet distinguished by the best marks of genuine poetry—by original thought, exube rant fancy, delicate perception of the heart's pulses, elevation of sentiment, warmth of feel ing—with facile rhyme, and a style replete with graces of expression. The verse belongs to the school of Tennyson, or rather to the school of Wordsworth, who founded it. It has been making way for the last half century, and still continues to attract, as we see, the most promising poetical spirits of our generation. Pantheism inadequately expresses the princi ple of its latest development, for its temple is not the mountain-top but the human heart; it draws its inspiration from social influences, and verges to faultiness and extravagance in its tendency to deify humanity. We are curious to know who it is that has suddenly sprung up among us and at a single bound has reached a foremost place among living poets. Is there reality in his verse ? Does it well up from a full heart nourished by daily experience, or is it the product of vivid fancy and vague desire ? Are Felix and Honor the beings they appear to be here, or are they mere creations of fantasy ? These are ques tions which all who have any real taste for song will soon be asking. But we confess we can give no information on this point. The book has come to us a stranger, and we give it a stranger's welcome—such welcome as a brilliant novelty deserves that moves our won der, admiration, and delight. Types of Mankind , or, Ethnological Researches. By J. C. Nott, M.D., and G. R. Gliddon. London : Triibner and Co. [ Second Notice.] THE conclusion of our notice of this book has been long delayed, but the portion following does not suffer by separation from the pre ceding criticism. Phi!osophy should be humane and placid, but these authors, when the unhappy red-men are mentioned, can find no terms too strong for the expression of their hatred. Referring to the murder of a gentle man designated as Dick Kern, it is said that " not all the cinnamon-coloured vermin west " of the Mississippi are worth one drop of that " noble heart's blood," and that " his restora " tion would be cheaply purchased back if it " cost the extermination of every miserable " Pah-Utah under heaven." Scattered throughout the volume are some amusing passages, in which truth and false hood struggle for mastery : Robespierre gave, in palliation of his cruelties, that you could not reason with a Gallia opposition the oitl i v wq SATURDAY, to silence it being through the guillotine. It would be —a curiousinvestigation to inquire what was the type of those turbulent spirits ? I have little doubt that each despot of the hour would be found to have been one of those dark skinned, black haired, black eyed fellows, depicted so well (aupri by Bodichon ; and if the imperial government were simply to chop off the head of every demagogue who was not a blond white man, they might " get al..ing " in France as tranquilly as in England, Germany, and the United States. Dark-skinned races, history attests, are only fit for military governments. It is the unique rule genial to their physical nature : they are unhappy without it, even now, at Paris. None but the fair-skinned types of mankind have been able hitherto to realise in peaceful practice the . old Germanic system described by Tacitus— " be minoribus rebus, principes consultant; de majoribus, omnes —manes, be it understood, signifying exclusively white men of their own type. If these remarks be true in basis, it is evident, theoretically, that the superior races ought to be kept tree from all adulterations, otherwise the world will retrograde, instead of advancing, in civilisation. It may be a ques tion whether there is not already too much adulteration in Europe. Spain and Italy, where the darker races are in the majority, continue still behind in the march. France, although teeming with gigantic intellects , has been struggling in vain for sixty years to found a stable govern ment—her population is tainted with had elements ; and wherever Portuguese or Spanish colonies attempt to com pete with Anglo-Saxons they are left astern when not " annexed." It is the strictly white races that are bearing onward the flambeau of civilisation, as displayed in the Germanic families alone. Observe the looseness of the foregoing re marks in a work perpetually referring to " logical criticism." 1. What an authority Robespierre was for an ethnologist to cite 2. Did no white-skinned races ever groan under " despots of the hour " ? 3. " Military government" is disparaged as servile, just as if the ancient Romans were not essen tially their own masters for a vast period of time. 4. The tract of Tacitus is accepted as an historical authority, without the slightest critical consideration as to whether it was not coloured with a reflex meaning, like some of M. Guizot's recent pamphlets, under the guise of historical dissertation. 5. How are the superior races to be kept free from adultera tions? Are alien laws to be made still more exclusive ; and is the intermixture of mankind to be prohibited in order to approximate to primordial types? 6. Is it, forsooth, merely to " rac e " that we can attribute the retrograde position of Italy and Spain? Aro moral causes to be completely excluded from a phi losopher's observation ; and are not there several white-skinned races that have not as yet left such brilliant annals to the world as those contemned countries ? 7. Had France no " stable government " in the days of Richelieu and Mazarin ? Were the ancestors of our French neighbours a white-skinned race in the time of Louis Quatorze, or was there no stable authority in his reign ? Or, e contra, where was the "stable government" in Eng land during the wars of the Roses, or from the commencement of the Puritans to the fall of the Jacobites? 8. The incendiary metaphor of " the flambeau of civilisation " BiIVOUES too strongly of the rhetoric of the dark-skinned races. So Paris and the Parisians are to be ignored by the ethnologists ! We can ima gine the anger of our Gallic contemporaries at a trio of Yankee ethnologists telling them that France was to have no part in waving the " flambeau of civilisation.' They would probably reply by quoting the rival extrava gance of Lainartine :—" When Providence " wishes to diffuse an idea through the world, " it puts it into the head of &Frenchman." But enough of these crude conclusions on a science still in its infancy, and where the first lesson of "logical criticism" should be—caution. Here and there in this huge volume we meet with singular facts, as recorded from the compiler's own observation. T his is highly interesting : The plain on which the city of New Orleans . is built rises only nine feet above the sea; arid excavations are often made far below the level of the Gulf of Mexico.. In these sections several successive g rowths of cypress umber have been brought to light. In digging the foundations for the gasworks, the Irish spadesmeu, finding they had to cut through timber instead of soil, gave up the work, and were replaced by a corps of Kentucky axemen, who hewed their way downwards through fou r successive growths of timber, the lowest so old that it cut like cheese. Abra sions of the r i ve r-banks show similar growths of sunken t imber; while stately live oaks , flou r i s hing on the bank dire ctl y above them, are living witnesses that the soil has not changed its level for ages. Messrs. Dickeson and Brown have traced no less than ten distinct cypress forests at different levels below the prese nt surface in part of Louisiana where the range between high and low water is_ much greater than it is at Ne w Orleans. Th ese groups of