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But that was gallantly withdrawn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 oitliv 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. This 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 growths 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 four successive
growths of
timber, the lowest so old that it cut like cheese. Abrasions
of the river-banks show similar growths of sunken timber;
while stately live oaks, flourishing on the bank directly
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 present surface in part of
Louisiana where the range between high and low water is_
much greater than it is at New Orleans. These groups of

NovEmttn 18, 1854.

trees (the live oaks on the banks, and the successive
cypress beds beneath) are arranged vertically above each
other, and are seen to great advantage in many places in
the vicinity of New Orleans.
Dr. Bennett howler has made an ingenious calculation
of the last emergence of the site of that city, in which
these cypress forests play an important part. He divides
the history of this event into three eras The era of
colossal grasses, trembling prairies, &c., as seen in the
lagoons, lakes, and seacoast. 2. The era of the cypress
basins. 3. The era of the present live•oak platform.
Existing types, from the Balize to the highlands, show
that these belts were successively developed from the
water in the order we have named : the grass preceding
the cypress, and the cypress being succeeded by the live-
oak. Supposing an elevation of five inches in a century
( which is about the rate recorded for the accumulation of
detrital deposits in the valley of the Nile during seventeen
centuries by the nilometer mentioned by &ratio), we shall
have 1,500 years for the era of aquatic plants until the
appearance of the first cypress forest ; or, m other words,
for the elevation of the grass zone to the condition of a
cypress basin.
On the evil of continual intermarriages nu-
merous and familiar cases are cited at
great length. But the following is a remark-
able instance :
- -

In early life I witnessed a most striking example in the
upper part of South Carolina, where any father owned a
country seat. Almost the entire population of the neigh-
bourhood was made up of Irish Covenanters, who had
moved to that country before the Revolutionary war. They
had intermarried for many generations, until the same
blood coursed through the veins of the whole of them; and
there are many persons now living in South Carolina who
will bear me out when I state that the proportion of idiots
and deformed was unprecedented in that district, of
the majority in its population was stupid and debased
in the extreme. I could mention several other striking
examples, beheld in higher life, but it would be painful to
particularise.
In the following passage the writer shows
the great influence produced by amalgama-
tion, and, if his statements can be accepted as
• .rities, they are remarkable
The infusion of even a minute proportion of the blood of
one race into another produces a must decided modifica-
tion of moral and physical character. A small trace of
white blood in the negro improves him in intelligence and
morality; and an equally small trace of negro blood, as in
the quadroon, will protect such individual against the
deadly influence of climates which the pure white man
cannot endure. For example, if the population of New
England, Germany, France, England, or other northern
climates come to Mobile, or to New Orleans, a large pro-
portion dies of yellow fever ; and of one hundred such
individuals landed in the latter city at the commencement
of an epidemic of yellow fever probably half would fall
victims to it. On the contrary, negroes, under all circum-
stances, enjoy an almost perfect exemption from this
disease, even though brought in from our Northern States ;
and, what is still more remarkable, the mulattoes ( under
which term we include all mixed grades) are almost
equally exempt. The writer (J. C. Nott) has witnessed
many hundred deaths from yellow fever, but never more
than three or four cases of mulattoes, although hundreds
are exposed to this epidemic in Mobile. The fact is
certain, and shows how difficult is the problem of these
amalgamations.
That negroes die out and would become extinct in New
England, if cut off from immigration, is clearly shown by
published statistics.
It may even be a question whether the strictly white
races of Europe are perfectly adapted to any one climate
in America. We do not generally find in the United
States a population constitutionally equal to that of Great
Britain or Germany ; and we recollect once hearing this
remark strongly endorsed by Henry Clay, although
dwelling in Kentucky, amid the best agricultural popula-
ton in the country.
Here again " logical criticism" would be
required to weigh the premises carefully. It
seems admitted that the climate of America is
not favourable to our pure Anglo-Saxon race.
The haggard faces, sallow cheeks, and decayed
teeth of the Americana point to conclusions
about which there can he little doubt We
have heard an eminent physician say that no
branch of the medical profession flourishes in
America so well as that of the dentist, and
beauty soon withers in the United States. If
"types of mankind " are to be classified by
climates, what would become of the assump
tion of " superior" races carried to the exces-
sive length that disparages as " inferior " the
race that produced the painters, architects,
poets, historians of Italy?
We cannot recommend this work for popu-
,.ar circulation ; but as it is full of interesting
typographical illustrations, and has also a
prodigious number of excerpts from Writers on
ethnology, not easily procured, it may be
added to the library of those who collect trea
ises on the more recondite springs of social
action and national character.

The Old English Gentleman. By John Miles, Esq.

London : Ward and Lock.
" NEXT to a love of ones country, comes a love of the
Country; says Mr. Miles in his modest preface, and