The Sun.
London, England, 1863-10-12 00:00:00

AMERICAN IDEA OF ENGLISH PUGNACITY 1

All English people, I imagine, are influenced in a far
greater degree than ourselves by this simple and honest
tendency, in cases of disagreement, to batter one another'
person; and whoever has seen a crowd of English ladies
(for instance, at the door of the Sistine Chapel, in Holy
Week), will be satisfied that their belligerent propensities
are kept in abeyance only by a merciless rigour on the part
of society. It requires a vast deal of refinement to spiri-
tualize their large physical endowments.
_ _

The English ladies appear to be more particularly
the objects of this American gentleman's ungallant
scorn. His picture of an English matron of fifty
is simply a grotesque caricature. Nevertheless, he
admits that "an English maiden in her teens, though
verY seldona 80 pretty a 8 our own damsels, possesses, to
say the truth, a certain charm of half-blossom, and
delicately folded leaves, and tender womanhood
shielded by maidenly reserves, with which, some-
how or other, our American girls often fail to adorn
themselves during an appreciable moment." And
this same writer, immediately after pronouncing
this graceful panegyric upon the charms of refine-
ment, goes on to express his farther sentiments on
subject of corporeal growth in a style so coarse
aths
e
to be
positively revolting. We make these re-
marks "more in sorrow than in anger," for we have
been ever ready to recognise Mr. Hawthorne's real
is of which the volumes before us give ample
evidence.
a specimen of his style, here is a
humorous but sarcastic sketch of
eavbiiliet

THE DENIZENS OF THE THAMES TUNNEL.

There seem to be people who spend their lives hare, and
who probably blink like owls, when, once or twice a year,
they happen to climb into the sunshine. All
perhaps,eluugthe corridor, which I believe to be a mile in extent,
we see stalls or shops in little alcoves, kept principally by
women they were of a ripe age, I was glad to observe, and
certainly robbed England of none of its very moderate sup-
ply of feminine loveliness (I) by their deeper than tomb-like
ermeatAs you approach (and they are so accustomed
to the dusky gaslight that they lead all your characteristics
int .
afar off), they assail you with hungry entreaties to buy
Some of their merchandise, holding forth views of the
Tunnel put up in cases of Derbyshire spar, with a
magnifying-glass at one end to make the vista more
effective. They offer you, besides, cheap jewellery, sunny
topazes
s big as and resplendent en:wrens for sixpence, and diamonds
a
the Koh-i-noor at a not much heavier cost, to-
gether
with a multifarious trumpery which has died out of
the
y
world to reappear in this Tartarean bazaar. That
you
fancy yourself still in the realms of the living,
they
urge you to partake of cakes, candy, ginger-beer,
and such upper
small refreshment, more suitable, however, for
the shadowy appetite of ghosts than for the sturdy stomachs
of Englishmen. The most capacious of the shops contains
aclo'
a
dioramie, exhibition of cities and scenes in the daylight
world, with a dreary glimmer of gas among them all; so
that they serve well enough to represent the dim, unsatis-
factoryfrom their past lives, mixing them up with the
ghastliness of their unsubstantial state. I dwell the more
t o remembrances that dead people might be supposed
retain
upon these trifles, and do my best to give them a mockery
of importance, because, if these are nothing, then all
this elaborate contrivance and mighty piece of work
hes been wrought in vain. The Englishman has burrowed
under the bed of his great river, and set ships of two or
three thousand tons a-rolling over his head, only to pro-
vide new sites for a few old women to sell cakes and ginger-
beer I Yet the conception was a grand one.
exaggeration)theother hand, full of pathos (although also of
are the glimpses of the crowded alleys
and back slums of London. These pictures are in-
with the blackest pencil. Here is a
however, somewhat more to our liking than
sdkeeetdend,rawh
those we have given above
WOMAN IX
Yet motherhood, in these dark abodes, is strangely iden-
tical
with what we have all known it to be in the happiest
homes. Nothing, as I remember, smote me with more
grief
Poignant because perplexingly
entangled with an inclination to smile) than to hear a gaunt
andragged mother priding herself on the pretty ways of
and
an d
p t
y (all the more
her ragged and !Skinny infant, just as a young matron might
when she invites her lady friends to admire her
in the nursery. Indeed,
ao plum
womanly
m
seemed to have altogether
y
t3r idarlings t i o
ani
perished out of these poor souls. It was the
very same creature whose tender torments make the rapture
of our young daYsl whom we love, cherish, and protect,
and rely upon in life and death, and whom we delight to
I see beautify her beauty with rich robes and. set it off with
jewels, though now fantastically masquerading iu a garb of
tatters, wholly unfit for her to handle. I recognized her,
over and over again, in the groups round a door-step or in
the descent of a cellar, chatting with prodigious earnest-
ness about intangible trifles, laughing for a little jest,
sympathizing at almost the same instant with one neigh-
bour's sunshine and another's shadow, wise, simple, MY,
and patient, yet easily perturbed, and breaking into small
feminine ebullitions of spite, wrath, and jealousy, tornadoes
of a moment, such as vary the social atmosphere of her
silken-skirted sisters, though smothered into propriety by
dint of a well-bred habit. Not that there was an absolute
deficiency of good breeding even here. It often surprised
ine to witness a courtesy and deference among these ragged
folks, which, having seen it, I did not thoroughly believe
in, wondering whence it should have come. lam per-
suaded, however, that there were laws of intercourse
which they never violated—a code of the cellar, the garret,
the common staircase, the door-step, and the pavement,
which perhaps has as a deep foundation in natural fitness
as the code of the drawing-room.
We might quote numerous descriptive passages, all
indicating the vigorous hand and thoughtful brain,
but also the oblique vision and bad taste of their
author. Even the name he has chosen for his work,
with its crowd of tender memories and touch-
ing associations—" Our Old Home !" —has been
.
powerless to appeal to his sensibilities. Nathaniel
Hawthorne, claiming " hereditary sympathy" with
England, has visited his old home in no filial or
fraternal spirit. This " chief' has been "aa at ed
asings
us" taking notes in the unfriendly spirit of C
—" All our faults observed (aye, and exaggr
tenfold !), set in a note-book, learned and conned by
rote to cast into our teeth," But,
as
in
all such in
stances of unfair criticism or unfounded attack, less
injury is done to the recipient than to the donor,
Nathanial Hawthorne will reap anything but saris.
faction from his uncandid censorship, while the
" Old Home" he despises will be unharmed by his
assault and indifferent to his opinion.

Poems. By Francis Charles Weedon. One vol.
pp. 239. Longman and Co.

" At the request of friends," is, of all apologies
for the publication of any literary production
whatever, about the sorriest. It is beyond a doubt
of it the sorriest that could by possibility be pre-
fixed to any collection of poetical or quasi poetical
performances. Yet, as in the instance before us, it
greets us at the very opening of the little volume
now under notice, in accents for once singularly
persuasive in their tone, it wins at once our most
generous sympathy in regard to the metrical pro-
ductions, to which, in a very exceptional manner,
the trite old phrase above quoted here forms the aptest
introduction. Nearly two years have elapsed since

the writer of the Poems, now thus collected together
for the first time and issued from the press as a
posthumous work of very moderate pretensions,
breathed his last, to the great grief of those who
knew him best—ending his career so prematurely,
according to the estimation at least of his admiring
friends, that what proved by the event to be the goal
they had been regarding up to the moment of his
demise to be merely the starting point. Dying at
the very commencement of 1861, in the thirtieth
year of his age, Francis Charles Weedon, like
Kirke White and not a few others of lesser note,
was the victim of his own literary ambition—his
assiduous application to study sowing, in a consti-
tution naturally far from robust, the germs of that
deadliest disease for youth in this climate, eon_
sumption. Utterly unknown to us previously in
any way, the name of this dead student here claims
our attention for the very first time, and also, of
course, for the very last, as the writer of
these few and brief Poems, poems for the
most part of a very unpretending character.
Before turning over the two hundred and odd pages
containing them, we give an attentive hearing to
the anonymous friend who has contributed to
the book, by way of introduction, a gracefully writ-
ten and, as might be expected, under the circum-
stances, from what has here been already remarked
in regard to Francis Weedon, a most eulogistic
"Memoir of the Author." From this biographical
notice we learn that a critic as illustrious as Lord
Macaulay, wrote to this young poet, in a letter dated
from the Albany on the 19th of November, 1849,
" You can have no difficulty in finding a magazine
in which such verses as those you have sent
me will be inserted with joy and gratitude."
The verses thus emphatically commended by
Macaulay, make part of this posthumous collection
of Poems by Francis Weedon. They appear here
at page 13 under the modest title of " A Sketch of
the Peleponnesian War." When written and sent
to the great critic for his opinion and advice, the
author of them, a total stranger to Macaulay, was
bat a stripling of eighteen. And it was to this
obscure youth of eighteen that that generous and
rarely gifted critic, earnestly wrote the assurance
that verses like those could find no difficulty
in winning their way to publicity through the
medium of some periodical in which they would be
inserted with " joy and gratitude !" No won-
der the ambition of the youth should have been
kindled by those burning words of praise, no
wonder the highest hopes of his frienda and rela-
tives should have been awakened eagerly in his
behalf. Now, however, that, as his genial biogra-
pher says of him here in memoriam,--
"His path is blocked up by a narrow tomb"—

we have but to cone the pages he had already
written before his demise. It is worse than idle to
dream for one instant of what he might have become
in later years if spared. What he had done before
he breathed his last, is all that we, on our part, have
in any way to do with. It lies before us in this
small volume of poems, poems mostly graceful and
contemplative of their kind, but a few of them
towards the close of the work, of a faintly, almost
feebly humorous, character. So very faintly or
feebly humorous are these last, that we cannot bat
think the editor of the collection would have done
wisely to have left them out altogether. Besides
their being in themselves suck very small jokes in-
deed, they appear here, we cannot but think, in
these posthumous pages, and after the mournful ,
memorial prefixed to them in the way of a graceful
deprecatory introduction, they appear here almost
as an anti-climax:, certainly quite incongruously.
As a specimen of our author's quality, however,
we will give the concluding stanzas of his poem on
" A Spring Morning"—
Bursts the brooklet from its fountain, leaps the wild goat
on the mountain ;
In the plains, the palm and cedar lift their branches to the

sun ;
From the thicket comes a ringing ; all the woods break forth
in singing;
Through a thousand secret channels little streams begin to
run.

Soft and low the wind is sweeping, o'er the waters silent
sleeping;
Sweeping through the broad-leaved lilies, sweeping through
the tangled reeds;
Then across the meadows speeding, in the distance dim
receding,
Sowing hill and dale with beauty from a myriad winged
seeds.

And the honey-bees are humming, for the fair-haired
Spring is coming,
Coming with the April showers, and the May's unclouded
skies ;
At the magic of her presence, every grove is filled with
pleasauneep
And the warmth of Summer lightens in the promise of
her eyes.
There is something striking, too, in the following
(what though with a suspicion of bathos in the
closing words)—
LINES SUGGESTED BY READING, IN BULWER'S " LAST
DAYS OF POMPEII," " THE THREATENED EXPOSURE
OF OLINTHUS THE CHRISTIAN, PREVIOUS TO THE
ERUPTION."
They lead him forth, th' arena's shout is heard
Rising into the calm and gentle air,
Which shrinks to be unholily thus stirred,
And hushes (as some pitying angel were
In sorrow murmuring a reproving word,)
That hoarse wild roar, which surely seemed to bear
A cry for vengeance—not so deemed by those
Above whom justice now her sword's bright radiance throws.
For lo I the sky with an increasing glare
Grows furnace-red, save where Vesuvius dark
Rears his fire-blasted brow—sullenly there
A boding cloud hangs silent. Dost thou mark
Tho heaviness, the stupor of despair?
Nature is dumb with awe. yet still ono lark
Poureth its free song I mercy's last appeal
Has ceased—no more °those notes on the ear gently steal.
But, in their stead, one sound. destroying crash.
Deafens the ear; from the grim mount upsprings
The spirit of desolation; downward dash
The lava-torrents, coped within the rings
Of solid rock • their snaky volumes clash
In fiery-crested waves, till each
Its ponderous load in headlong fury uo.
wn,
Grappling it like an enemy—
Pretty hurls it on. the town.
Pretty themes like "Late Snowdrops," two or three
melodious serenades, and a charming little
allegory, ‘4A. Bee and a Cowslip"—will serve
to indicate more clearly than any number of words
by way of comment upon the manner of their treat-
ment, how delicate is the form, how tender and
radiant are the hues of the poetic butterfly (Owl)
that has here alit for a while upon the rack of
criticism—not certainly, by us, to be broken upon
it simply to be admired so long as it rests there,
for such as it is.