The Press. — London, England, 1858-08-14 00:00:00

778 effect of despotism was precisely contrary to this. At the time when, if a despotism existed, it ex isted under a disguise, when pains were taken to allow the subject as much liberty as was consistent with the security of the sovereign, and when the government of the despot was perhaps felt by the world at large to be easy and tolerant compared with that of the aristocracy he had superseded, poets were narrow, correct, and austere. When that despotism tightened its reins and used the whip more freely, when liberty became an ill understood tradition, when flattery grew more abject and shameless than it has perhaps ever been in the world before or since, appears the ir regular, energetic genius, the speculative, fertile, and daring spirit of Lucan. The slave of Nero moves freely and speaks with little reserve : the revered friend of Augustus writes with constraint; his mind seems to move in a narrower circle; his enthusiasm is more chastened, his genius tamer. The fact is that the wildness and the variety of Lucan, which may be pleasing to a modern, was in a Roman unnatural, and a mark of feverish excitement. Steadfast adherence to two or three principles was the Roman characteristic. They were slow, punctual, practical, and had much greater satisfaction in practising one old maxim than in inventing a score of new ones. They had no love for novelties—little inquisitiveness or love of knowledge for its own sake. Their mythology was meagre, but they had more faith in Jupiter and Minerva than the Greeks had in Athene or in Zeus. They were rustics, born to cultivate all the simple and strenuous virtues. Virgil's poetry reflects this character. He utters few fine sentiments about the gods, but he seems to have a practical belief in them. He believes in them as simply as if they had been men, and never feels tempted to resolve them into symbols or personifications of the moral virtues. Although the subject of his poem is the imperial greatness of Rome, and the valour by which it was to bring all nations into subjection, and though he was himself a scholar, yet his spirit is that of an Italian farmer, and he appears to know little and care little about the manners and the religions of the nations of whose subjection to his own countrymen he was so proud. It is a proof of the change which was gradually taking place in the Roman character that in Lucan all this is reversed. In his time, Syrians, Gauls, Egyptians, Greeks, had lived for half a century side by side with their conquerors, in common subjection to an autocrat. A vast process of fusion was going forward ; fusion of all things—of religions, of manners, of populations. Lucan's poetry reflects this fusion. He delights in pouring out miscel laneous information about foreign nations, their institutions, the countries in which they live. He delights in descriptions of foreign religious rites. An unappeasable curiosity has taken the place of the old Roman indifference. And further, scepticism has superseded the old Roman faith. Faith there is none in Lucan, but an in tellectual belief in a Supreme Necessity, alter nating with a suspicion that the true sovereign of the world is chance. Lucan was no philo sopher, but, after the fashion of the day, a smat terer in all the learning of the age. Hence he does not consistently support the Stoical doc trines which he would wish to be considered his creed; and every now and then some descrip tion of the mysteries of magic, written with all the disgusting vividness of which an imagination fed on blood and carnage would alone be capable, reveals the cringing superstition of scepticism, from which Stoicism in such dangerous times was powerless to deliver him. But with this absence of a creed both moral and religious is combined in Lucan a capacity quite unknown to Virgil of saying the finest pos sible things upon every moral and religious question. Ile could have drawn up a system of doctrine much more amiable, much more worthy of belief than the rude creed which Virgil had inherited. The difference between the two lay in this, that Virgil believed in his creed, such as it was, and that Lucan did not believe in his. The fancy creed of a sceptic is generally a more admirable thing than the creed for which a be liever will perish at the stake. For the believer takes his creed as he finds it, with all the super stitions which in the lapse of time may have gathered round it; he takes the bad with the good, for he does not commonly venture to ques tion either. The sceptic knows how to discrimi nate that which is worthy of belief from that. iiiibk THE PRESS, AUGUST 14, 1858. which is not, and often knows how to admire doctrines which he cannot bring himself to be lieve. The theosophy of the philosophers which was in vogue in the age of Lucan was far more true and more noble than any of the old national creeds had been ; but we cannot discover that it did much good, while we may certainly conclude that much of the greatness which earlier ages had exhibited sprang from the truths mingled in those grotesque theological systems which had been embraced in those times with such childlike confidence and reverence. Among the changes which ensued upon the fusion of races in the Roman Empire was the obscuration, through the perplexing variety of models introduced, of the idea of art. We can understand this from what we witness in our own time. At the present day our poets com plain that they wander in a maze in which there are so many turnings that it seems impossible to discover among them the true path to the temple of taste. There are so many rival schools, so many dissimilar models, that few have the wis dom to make a right choice among them. It is in an age when ideas are few and faith strong and simple that poets find the way most securely to their goal. No poet in any age seems to have been more penetrated with the true notion of art than Virgil. This must have been owing in a great measure to his rare singleness of intellec tual eyesight and sense of what is proper and becoming; for, though we have commended the simplicity of the Augustan age, as compared with that of Nero, yet it was not intrinsically remark able either for simplicity or strong faith. It was an age of corrupt manners and of hypocrisy in religion. But there seems to have been on Virgil the stamp of the olden time, of the primi tive Italian rusticity—a love of nature rare among the poets of antiquity—a genuine reverence for the gods of his country which is surprising in an enlightened scholar, especially as he adhered to the maxim of Euripides much more strictly than its author : wid;). cropq ' 6I , AITOCS CIL Su iti.ocrt. Trecrpiov; wapaboxeitc, 8 * OtAtixixes; x piviu xix.7111.4.19', otA II; ran - ci xfszetigrait X6yoc, o:;S ' 71 a,' iix i wy TO crqA, By this singleness and simplicity of character Virgil appears to have escaped the greatest error which an artist can commit, the error of thinking more of himself than of his subject. Certainly no poet was ever more possessed by his subject than Virgil—no poet has less sunk into the rhe torician. When we consider how excessively the Romans prized and practised rhetoric, and how it is the besetting sin of their poetry, it seems little less than wonderful that Virgil should have been able to steer so clear of this vice, and to preserve throughout a style which, always aus terely dignified, is never exaggerated or falsely emphatic. It seems still more surprising when we contrast Virgil with Lucan. As Mr. Meri vale says, Lucan is a rhetorician, if a splendid rhetorician, throughout. He cannot tell a plain story, which Virgil can do to admiration, and delights to do. Lucan is systematically a fine writer; on every occasion his ambition is to pro duce the most highly-wrought and emphatic passage of which the subject admits. As was said on a more serious occasion, all his works are done to be seen of men. There is no seriousness in his devotion to his art—he sacrifices nothing to it; on the contrary, he sacrifices his art to himself. He could not say with truth, as his predecessor says with an emphasis unusual to him— Me vero primnm dukes ante omnia Muse Quarum sacra fero, ingenti percussus amore Accipiant. An English Girl's Account of a Moravian Settlement in the Black Forest. Edited by the Author of " Mary Powell." London : Hall and Virtue. " HAPPY is the country," it has been said, "which " has no history ! " And happy, we may say, is the sect which continues from age to age, with no schism to engage the attention of the eccle siastical writer, and suffering no persecution which can excite the pity of the tolerant Christian. The Moravian communities are probably the most blameless on the face of the earth; it is, perhaps, unjust to call them a sect, for they are older than the Reformation, are in communion with Protestant Churches, and their creed and practice contains nothing which Luther thought it necessary to alter. Not that they have by a nv means escaped persecution ; b u t i n this respt. they have fared much better than m os t re l igious bodies. Except their expulsion from Bohemia in 1547 and their dispersion during the Thirty Years' War, they have suffered none of th e ev il s that strong belief and conscientious p ract i ce generally entail upon their professors. in 17 22 they were settled by Count Zinzendorf on a n estate of his in Upper Lusatia, where they built a village, which has since become famous under the name of Herrnhut ; and, after the Saxon Government had refused to allow the inunigr a . tion of any more settlers, other places were found in which the disciples might establish themselves. They are now domiciled in Silesia, Switzerland, Russia, Prussia, Baden, the Netherlands, Hol- stein, America, and England. " They have " several public schools for girls as well as boys, " and young French and English ladies are " sometimes included among the pupils, owing to " the excellent education and kind treatment " they receive." The young lady whose diary is now before us, having been formerly a pupil at the Moravian school at Neuwied, on the Rhine, came to Kiinigsfeld, in the Grand Duchy of Baden, on the 16th July, 1856, and remained there till the 24th November, 1857 ; and appears during these six teen months to have led as peaceful and happy a life as it is often the lot even of an " English girl" to experience. The spot was situated in one of the most charming districts of the Black Forest. Embosomed in fir-woods, which at a distance blacken the landscape, but lose their gloomy aspect on a nearer approach, and with their gurgling brooks and mossy paths invite the traveller to explore their fragrant recesses, lies the quiet village, its white walls and red tiled roofs brightly contrasted with its dark green setting ;—a Paraclete without its austerity, an oasis of virtue and civilization among its wood land solitudes, where Eloisa, before she met Abelard, might have dwelt in maiden meditation, fancy-free:— No weeping orphsn saw his father's stores Those shrines irradiate or emblaze the floors: But such plain roofs as piety could raise, And only vocal with the Maker's praise. • • • • • How happy is the blameless vestal's lot! The world forgetting, by the world forgot: Desires composed, affections ever even, Tears that delight, and sighs that watt to heaven. Grace shines around her with serenest beams, And whispering angels prompt her golden dreams. The darksome pines that o'er yon rocks reclined Wave high, and murmur to the hollow wind, The wandering streams that shine between fee hills, The grots that echo to the tinkling rills, Still more these scenes her meditation aid And lull to rest the visionary maid. Really these lines of Pope—barring the twinge of asceticism—would form no bad description of such a colony as is here described. Konigsfeld was a Moravian settlement pur sang, containing no persons of any other persuasion. Moravians do not trouble themselves much with speculative theology, and keep up as great a community of creed as possible with other Churches. Their difference from them lies not in their doctrine, but in their discipline, which seems to realize in a degree what Platonic philosophers have dreamed of some perfect city, with its orderly distribution of employments, its classification of duties, its cultivation of sacred music and useful labour, and even an approach to a supervision of marriages by the governing body. There are no private dwellings in a settlement except those belon ging to fam il ies; bachelors, spinsters, and widows occupy three houses respectively appropriated to them, and the other public buildings usually com prise school-houses for boys and girls, a chapel, and an inn. The authoress of course lived in the sisters' house, a large building like a college or hospital, with corridors, dormitories, workrooms , public rooms, and the like. The routine of the establishment is perfectly regular, being . under the superintendence of an inspector and inspee treas. There is nothing peculiar about the dress of the pupils but the little white cap, which dis tinguishes by the colour of its ribbons the condi tion of the wearer—pink for children and yo!ing people, and blue' for married women. Little domestic duties are performed, as in many Eng:, fish households, by the girls taking each "N eck in succession. The following is the routine of the day as regards studies:— At bsltpast five the teachers walk through the long .doi• initory, where forty girls are stint) napping in their httls