The Press.
London, England, 1856-09-13 00:00:00

THE PRESS.

of logic not natural to a female pen. Thus of
Tom Gordon, the villain of the tale, we read
at page 32, " He was a much worse character
" for all the elements of good which he pos-
" sessed ;" and the same thought is repeated
at page 428,—" Tom Gordon was a worse
" slaveholder and master from the very fact
" of certain desirable qualities in his mental
" constitution ; for as good wine snakes the
" strongest vinegar, so fine natures perverted
" make the worse vice." In many parts of the
book we are struck with this union of ratio-
cinative perception and significant imagery.
Some masculine minds—as those of Francis
Bacon and Edmund Burke, for example—
combine poetic feeling with logical faculty
and lively imagination. The combination,
however, is rare ; and the latter alone within
our recollection united the philosophy and the
passion, the piercing judgment and the moral
rage, which are to be found in passages of this
remarkable work. We quoted last week some
sentences exhibiting intense appreciation of
the power of the Bible. The following are not
less remarkable. The reader will observe how
finely the image assists, and almost forms,
the thought :

It is remarkable that in all ages, communities and in-
dividuals who have suffered under oppression have always
fled for refuge to the Old Testament, and to the Book of
Revelations in the New. Even if not definitely under-
stood, these magnificent compositions have a wild and
inspiring power, like a wordless yet impassioned symphony,
played by a sublime orchest►a, in which deep and awful sub-
bass instruments mingle with those of ethereal softness, and
wild minors twine and interlace with marches of battles and
bursts of victorious harmony. They are mush mistaken
who say that nothing is efficient as a motive that is not
definitely understood. Who ever thought of understand-
ing the mingled wail and roar of the " Marseillaise ?" Just
this kind of indefinite stimulating power has the Bible to
the souls of the oppressed. There is also a disposition
which has manifested itself since the primitive times, by
which the human soul bowed down beneath the weight of
mighty oppressions, and despairing in its own weakness,
seizes with avidity the intimations of a coming judgment
in which the Son of Man,tappearing in His glory, and all
His holy angels with him, shall right earth's mighty
wrongs. _ _

To whatever pen we may refer passages like
these, no ono can doubt that they evince equal
mastery of thought and mastery of composi•
tion. Sometimes a penetrating thought is
flashed forth in a single line. The writer,
reflecting on the bitter and cruel animosities
which have so often desolated mankind, ob-
serves emphatically,—" The world has been
" thousands of years and not yet learned the
" first two words of the Lord's Prayer." The
reference is of course to the immense signifi-
cance contained in the phrase " OUR FATHER,"
as expressive of perfect community of kindred,
and of equality in the sight of God.
To return to the characters of the story,
many of them are described with great subtlety.
Of Mrs. Nesbit, the conventional religious old
lady of the book, it is shrewdly remarked :

Religion she looked upon in the light of a ticket which,
being once purchased and snugly laid away in a pocket-
book, is to be produced at the celestial gate, and thus
secure admission to heaven. . . . Like many other
apparently negative characters, she had a pertinacious
intensity of an extremely narrow and aimless self-will.
Her plans of life, small as they were, had a thousand
crimps and plaits, to every one of which she adhered with
invincible pertinacity. The poor lady little imagined,
when she sat with such punctilious satisfaction while the
Rev. Mr. Orthodoxy demonstrated that selfishness is the
essence of all moral evil, that the sentiment had the
slightest application to her, nor dreamed that the little
quiet muddy current of self-will which ran without noise
or indecorum under the whole structure of her being,
might be found, in a future day, to have undermined all
her hopes of heaven.
- - - - - - -

This train of thought is further developed in
a conversation between Clayton and Nina.
She asks :

"What do you suppose the reason is, that good people
are generally so stupid ?"
" A great deal," said Clayton," is called goodness which
is nothing but want of force. A person is said to have
self-government simply because he has nothing to govern.
They talk about self-denial, when their desires are so
weak that one course is about as easy to them as another.
Such people easily fall into a religious routine, get by
heart a set of phrases, and make, as you say, very stupid
good people.
The account of Clayton, commencing at
page 9, is in the more earnest style of the
book :

The upper part of the face gave the impression of
thoughtfulness and strength, with a shadowing of melan-
choly earnestness; and there was about the eye in con•
versat►on that occasional gleam of troubled wildness which
betrays the hypochondriac temperament. The mouth was
even feminine iu the beauty and delicacy of its lines, and

881

the smile which sometimes played around it had a peon-
liar fascination. It seemed to be a smile of but half the
man's nature; for it never rose as high as the eyes, or
seemed to disturb the dark stillness of their thoughtful-
ness.

The reader will be reminded of an acute
observation in " Coningsby," we think, that
nothing is so fascinating as the smile of a,
naturally grave face.
It is the combination of passages like the
above with very commonplace chit-chat that
makes the book so puzzling. Nina is, for the
most part, plainly a feminine creation of a
somewhat vulgar order. She is represented as
a gauzy, fluttering kind of being, made up of
fly-away ribbons, shaking ringlets, and airy
lace, with a stock of " notions " fresh from a
New York boarding-school; yet early in the
book we find her expressing one of those
yearnings which every earnest human heart
must have often experienced :—" I wish we
" knew more about heaven, so that it would
" seem natural and home-like to us as this world
" does." This chapter the eleventh, as well as
the previous one, evince a combination of
some of the best yet most different qualities
which are combined in the work. Who that
has ever wandered by the banks of a stream
will not fail to recognise the truth of this
description of its windings :

This stream went meandering among the pines like a
spangled ribbon, sometimes tying itself into loops, leaving
open spots, almost islands of green, graced by its waters.

On the next page the impression of the
tranquillity of death is beautifully con-
veyed :
The expression of exhaustion, fatigue, and anxiety
which the face had latterly worn, had given place to one of
tender rest, shaded by a sort of mysterious awe, u if the
closed eyes were looking on unutterable things. The soul,
though sunk below the horizon of existence, hod thrown
back a twilight upon theface, radiant as that of the evening
heavens.

And a few pages further on we meet with an
admirable defence of romance against the
censures passed upon it that it raises false ex-
pectations, dissipates the mind, leads people
to pursue phantoms, and so forth :

" And yet," said Clayton, " all these objections would lie
against perfectly true history, and the more so just In pro-
portion to its truth. If the history of Napoleon Bonaparte
were graphically and minutely given, it would be open to
the very same objections. It would produce the same
cravings for something out of the common course of life.
There would be the same dazzling mixture of good and
bad qualities in the hero, and the same lassitude and ex-
haustion after the story was finished. And common
history does not do this—simply because it is not true—
does not produce a vivid impression of the reality as it
happened."
In these chapters, also, the character of Mr.
Carson, one of the most thriving respects.-
bilities of New York, is most amusingly de-
lineated.

Were we about, which we are not, to assign
parts of the book to different authors, we
should feel extremely perplexed how to ap-
portion the negro characters. The real hero
of the story is poor Tiff; his simplicity is as
laughable as his affection is pathetic. He is
an old greyheaded stooping negro, who wears
spectacles, thinking they give him a look of
importance, quite ignorant that the sights are
only common window glass. He has followed
the daughter of his master's house—a great
old Virginia family—through all the misfor-
tunes caused by her marrying a careless
selfish fellow ; and when she dies Tiff takes
charge of her young family, and prides himself
infinitely on being their "nigger." When he
takes them all to the camp-meeting, he is care-
ful to give them instructions on their deport-
ment towards himself :

" Tell ye what, chil'en," said Tiff, " we'll live like
princes! And you mind, order me round, lull. Let folks
har ye; 'cause what's de use of having a nigger, and
nobody knowing it ?"
It is one of the merits of the book that the
slaves are not shown as universally discon-
tented with their lot. On the contrary, they
are generally represented as having great en-
joyment in their servitude, and as priding
themselves ou the position of their owners.
Thus, when poor Tiff goes to the mansion of
Nina Gordon to see what relief he can obtain.
for them, he has an angry discussion with
Old Hundred, the Gordon coachman, on the
respective dignity of their families. There id
a passage in chapter xxi. so amusing and so
characteristic that we must make room for it.
Rose, the cook, is the wifo of Old Hundred,

and Tiff, mindful of her power as head of the
kitchen, had taken care to propitiate her good
will, to Old Hundred's great annoyance :-
011 Hundred, like many other persona, felt that general
attention lavished on any other celebrity was so much
taken from his own merits, and, therefore, on the present
occasion, sat regarding Tiff** evident popularity with a
synical eye. At last, coming up like a wicked fellow as he
was, he launched his javelin at old Tiff, by observing to his
wife, " I's 'stonished at you, Rose ! You cook to de
Gordons, and making yourself so cheap—so familiar with
de poor white folk's niggers!"
Had the slant fallen upon 14u self, personally, old Tiff
would probably have given a jolly crow, and laughed as
heartily as he generally did if he happened to be caught
out in a rain-storm ; but the reflection on his family con-
nection fired him up like a torch, and his eyes flashed
hrough his big spectacles like firelight through windows.
" You go 'long, talking 'bout what you don't know
nothing 'bout ! 1 like to know what you knows 'bout de
old Virginny families ? Dein's de real old stock ! You
Car'lina folks come from dem, stick and stock, every blest
one of you! De Gordona is a nice family—an't nothing
to say agin de Gordona—but whar was you rantod, dat ye
didn't hear 'bout de Peytons ? Why, old Gen'ral Peyton
didn't he nee to ride with six black horses afore him, as if
he'd been a king? Dere want one of dem horses dat
hadn't a tail as long as my arm. You never see no such
critters in your life !"

" I haul, howl I ? " said Old Hundred, now in his tam
touched in a vital point. " Bless me, if I haul seen de
Oordons riding out with der eight horses, any time o' day !"
" Come, come, now, dere wasn't so many," said Bose,
who had her own reasons for staying on Titf's side.
" Nobody never rode with eight horses l '
" Did too ! Yon say much more, I'll make sixteen on 'em.
Fore my blessed Master, how dese yer old niggers will lie !
Dey's always zaggerating der families. Makes de very her
rise on my head, to hear dese yer old niggers talk; dey lie
so ! " said Old Hundred.

"You tink folks dat take to lying is using up your
business, don't ye? " said Tiff. " But, I tell you, any
one dat says a word Agin de Peytons got me to set iii

" Laws, dam ohll'en an't Peytons," said Old Hundred;
" day's Crippses; and I like to know who ever beam of de
Crippses ? Go way ! don't tell me nothing about dem
Cripeses! De 's poor white folks ! A body may see dat
sticking out all over 'em."
"Yon shut up !'' said Tiff. " I don't b'lieve you was
bora on de Gordon place, 'cause you an't got no manners.
I 'spects you some old, second-hand nigger Colonel
Gordon must a took for debt, some time. from some of
doss yer mean Tennessee families, dat don know how to
keep der money when dey gets it. Dese niggers is alleys
de meanest kind. Cause all de real Gordon niggers is
ladies and genlemen—every one of 'em," said old
Tiff. like a true orator, bent on carrying his audience with
bias.

A general shout chorused this compliment; and Tiff,
under cover of the applause, shook up his reins, and rode
off in triumph.
"Dar, now, you aggravating old nigger," said Rose,
turning to her bosom lord, " I hope yer got it now ! De
old nigger dat ever I see I And you, Tom, go
eantrand clean your knives, if yer don't mean to be
cracked over."
Tiff has such a multitude of avocations, and is
so hardly driven to find food for his family,
that he cannot prevent himself from getting
continually more ragged. His care of his
clothes is curiously mingled with his pious
reflections :

He usually wore, in compliment to his nursing duties,
an apron in front ; but as his various avocations pressed
hard upon his time, and as his own personal outfit was
ever the last to be attended to, Tire nether garments had
shown traces of that frailty whieh is incident to all human

things.
" Bross me," be said to himself, that morning, as he with
difficulty engineered his way into them, " holes here, and
boles dar! Don't want but two holes in my breeches, and
I's got two dozen ! Got my foot through de wrong place
Poor old Tiff ! Laws a massy ! Wish I could get hold of
some of dem dar clothes day were telling 'bout at de camp-
meeting, dey wore forty years in de wilderness! 'Mazing
handy dem ar times was! Well, anyhow, I'll tie an apron
behind, and another in front. Bress de Lord, I's got
aprons anyhow ! I must makeup a par of breeches, some
of these yer days, when the baby's teeth is all through, and
Teddy's slothes don't want no mending, and de washing is
done, and dose yer weeds stops a growing in de garden.
Brass if I know what de Lord want so many weeds.
'Pears, like dey comes just to plague us ; but den we
doesn't know. May be dere's some good in 'em. We
doesn't know but a leetle, no way."
The oddity and simplicity of this character can
-only be appreciated when it is studied. It is
impossible to conceive a nature more loveable
yet more ludicrous. Withal, the character
conveys an impression of the most perfect
truth. Tiff's notions of religion are rather
obscure. He can never rightly make out
where Canaan is, and heaven is always con-
nected in his mind with "de great families."
All nature iu Tiff's eye worships God :

I was out in din yer garden at four o'clock dis morning,
and 'waxed like dese yer trees was waving like a psalm, so
sort o' still you know! Kind o' spreading out der hands
like dey'd have prayers, and doe was a mighty handsome
star a looking down. I ?peels da: ar star is one of de
eery oldest families up der.