The Sun.
London, England, 1866-02-26 00:00:00

North and South America.

The New York Times says :—ln a country like
the United States, so vast in its extent, so diver-
sified in its soil and climate, and so rich and varied
in its capabilities, there must of necessity be a wide
divergence in the character and in the results of
the industry which is fostered in different por-
tions of the land. The welfare of each locality
and community is secured by the adaptation of
its enterprise to that which is most favoured
by actual causes and local conditions ; and al-
though these may be modified and partially coun-
teracted, they must be regarded, and cannot but
be greatly influential. With these varied circum-
stances, and with the advancement of the interests
which they suggest and promote, it is not strange
that a feeling should spring up here and there not
only of attachment to particular interests, but of
hostility to such as are or may be supposed to be
rival or antagonistic to them. Such a feeling is
the result of a disposition which too strongly exists
in all of us, to magnify the importance of our own
concerns, and to depreciate the affairs of others ;
and it may be, and probably is, greatly intensified by
leaders of public opinion, who, for any purpose, seek
to turn popular prejudices to their own account.
From one great internal strife the nation is only
now just beginning to recover. The North and
the South found themselves as sections arrayed
against each other, and nothing but war could se-
cure a settlement and restore amity. The question,
however, upon which they joined issue, was not one
of climate or of products, or of rivalry in trade.
Many would fain have made it appear to be so,
and they charged upon cotton on the one hand or
upon commerce and manufactures on the other, the
fatal division•which led to such bloody strife. The
cause of the struggle lay far below the surface ; it
was between two systems historically and eternally
opposed to each other ; between ideas in political
economy and in morals which could never become
reconciled, and between which no lasting truce
was possible. The principles which regulated la-
bour in the Slave States, and those which were ope-
rative in the Free States, could never co-exist on
terms of equality, or indeed tolerate the presence of
each other within one nation. That conflict has
been settled once for all, civilisation triumph-
ing over feudalism, the rights of the masses
over the claimed prerogatives of the few. Be-
tween this terrible dissension which threatened
schism, and the differences of opinion which are
now manifesting themselves in the East, the West,
and the South, upon questions of a purely indus-
trial and commercial nature, there is of course a
broad distinction. And yet the remembrance that
just such questions were made the pretext to a
very considerable extent for the attempted seces-
sion of the South, and that they were accepted by
many of the less enlightened as valid reasons for
secession, should warn every portion of the country
separately, and every patriotic citizen personally,
against the adoption of views in political economy,
which are circumscribed, selfish or exclusive, and
against bitterness of spirit in the maintenance of
the opinions which a particular experience, or a
given field of observation, may have tended to
form. But we ask for something more than toler-
ance in this regard. We insist that these several
and separate interests are much more in harmony
with each other than is generally supposed ; in fact,
that they are essential to each other. The health-
ful prosperity of all is not only not inconsistent
with the welfare of each, but it is dependent upon
this. Our national wealth, present and pro-
spective, demands that these varying resources
and conditions be fairly and duly watched over,
for it is in this variety that the peculiar promise of
our future wealth largely consists. The United
States certainly would not attain to the highest
point of material success if all the people should
become agriculturists, or all manufacturers, or all
merchants. If all were to devote themselves to
one branch of industry, what a ruinous surfeit
there would be of the article produced, and what
an equally ruinous dearth there would be of every-
thing else. The diversity of our industry, which
varies with every parallel of our latitude, multi-
plies our ability and our strength. The interior
cannot do without the seacoast ; the manufacturer
cannot do without the miller, the producer cannot
do without the consumer. They are all interde-
pendent upon each other ; they are all certain in
the long run to benefit each other ; they belong to
one vast industrial community ; all are but parts
of one stupendous whole.

BELGIUM AND MEXICO. Senor Romero in
October last addressed Secretary Seward a letter saying :
—" As a proof of the feelings of the Belgian people in re-
gard to the question now debating on Mexican soil, I have
the honour of transmitting to you for the information of
the Government of the United States a copy of a commu-
nication I received from the Liberal Union of tho Civic
Guard of Liege, dated the 11th of August last, together
with a copy of the resolutions passed the day before by
that association, protesting against the proposal of Lieu-
tenant-General Peetincex, commander of the Civil Guard
of Brussels, to erect a monument to the memory of the
Belgians who fell iu action at Tacumbaro, in the Mexican
Republic, on the 11th of April, 1865, because they lost
their lives in a cause opposed to liberty, and in contradic-
tion to the efforts the Belgians made in 1830 to gain their
independence. Secretary Seward, on the 24th of January,
addressed Senor Romero a note, asking him to accept his
thanks for the courtesy in communicating the interesting
paper to the Department. _ _ _

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SPIRIT OF THE PUBLIC JOURNALS.

•

" THE LONDON REVIEW" ON EPIC UREAN POETRY.
—ln one of those Round-about papers in which
Thackeray's humour went engagingly slippered, the
author of " Vanity Fair" said upon the whole he
rather liked his novels " hot." It is supposed he
meant a story with a movement in which the dry
sticks of incident are rubbed so briskly together
that a certain narrative caloric is evolved in the
process. There is, however, another sort of literary
heat which prevails in a modern school of poetry, and
which we have made free to set down under the
above heading. This is put hot in the mouth after
the fashidn rather of French than of English
writers. Most assuredly there is a licence for say-
ing things in verse against which people would close
their ears in prose, and critics seem to encourage
this upon the ground that poetry is the " Casta.
Diva ;" that what she unveils is veiled in innocence,
and clothed in purity ; that she can say no wrong
nor think it. Of course there are more intelligent
judges who explain their leniency upon sounder
principles, but in the main the indulgence.which on
this plea was claimed for the critics of " Don Juan,"
is permitted to versifiers of our time who dabble in
the same sort of wine and water. We should the
more guard against this, for despite the free draught
of opinion which keeps our moral atmosphere healthy
there are from time to time whiffs of another kind,
voluptuous gales and winds laden with the patter of
dancers' feet, and the voices of actresses degraded
by their own manager into " the handsomest women
in England," who can be seen for the money. It
behoves us at any price to keep art out of the gut-
ter, and to have its vestal flame and vestal votaries
as high examples, and a protest against the grosser
life. Sensuousness in poetry is deplorably fre-
quent. It is an excess, too, from which no
good can come. It is barren of thought and
fancy, and is both emasculating and effeminate.
Though not so bad as the tropes of Killigrew,
Rochester, or Davenant, it just inclines towards
them. We have had poems published in London
within the last few years in which women were
treated as poses plastiques. We must use plain
words on this subject, and the phrase which denotes
the most shameful spectacle of our day is the only
one to express our meaning here. Those produc-
tions were issued from houses of the first respecta-
bility, and of course the authors composed them in
that complete mail of modesty which so envelopes
the soul within that the body can walk nude and
unabashed without. Those who viewed too closely
the immaculate muse were Peeping Toms. They
frolicked in a guileless way those Cyprian poets,
and carried out their literary naturalism in the pure
spirit of intellectual White Quakers. We believe
this epicurean poetry to be originally the reaction
of della Cruscanism. In the latter the sex were
unsexed into abstractions, and every woman was
either a nymph or an angel, while a lover could
embrace nothing but a cloud. In the former we
have Romeo communicating his own fever to Juliet,
incoherent with passion, his lips trembling with
voluptuous epithets, and his language perpetually
playing wanton with desire. Shelley, Coleridge,
and Keats, in their eagerness to upset the poetry of
the full-bottomed wig period, cultivated this emo-
tive sensuality just as the Greeks might have done,
condensing even still more the feelings which the
Greeks had fixed in marble and legend into a per-
sonal and fervid enjoyment of existence and of the
poetry of earth which Keats in his daring paganism
pronounced immortal. Coleridge's " Christabel,"
which Leigh Hunt says the very letters are
descriptive, is exactly a case in point ; so is
Keat's " Eve of St. Agnes." We have then the
laureate taking up the running, his sympathies
however being too catholic to be trammelled ; he
could wake from the dream of fair women to enlist
us in the columns of the six hundred. Tenny-
son has tricks of thought which have now been
as closely imitated as Pope's metre. Some of them
have been cleverly adapted to the feeble spinets of
our poetlings, others have been stretched and mon-
strously enlarged by men of talent who can harp
with considerable power on. one string. These
latter are the principal writers of the epicurean
poetry. As we put no faith in moral salamander-
ism, we cannot hold that such works are innocuous.
They are evil, not from what they say, but for what
they suggest. Coarseness may be guarded against,
and the bane is its own antidote to most well-bred
people ; but this elegant impurity is infinitely more
dangerous. It extends our experience into very
hazardous quarters. It is not improbable that
there is a class for whom it would be hard to write
too high—a class who desire stimulants, and books
with enough of cynicism to stir a tired palate, and
enough of impropriety to give the dish a wild game
flavour ; but for the great middle class and gentry
of this country, a craving for such literature would
indicate a social evil very difficult to eradicate. It
is not pleasant to see a Menken sort of Godiva
hoisted upon every Pegasus with poets to urge the
steed into his paces as they do the horses on the
Roman racecourse. There is a radical looseness in
criticism which is unquestionably responsible for
the appearance of this at all. We wonder ladies
can tolerate the impertinences of those writers who
allude to them with such an immodest freedom. It
can scarcely be possible they like it, and yet they
never complain of it, although they give us their
opinions through the press on other subjects libe-
rally enough. They surely are most aggrieved. We
have seen verses extracted from those boudoir favou-
rites, and set in the infamous collections which
emanate from the literary stews of Holywell-street.
We have kept this fact for the last, and commend it
to the careful attention of the writers and readers of
epicurean poetry.

" THE SATURDAY REVIEW" ON THE WEAK
GOVERNMENT.—There was a time in our Parliamen-
tary history when the Ministers of the Crown gave
their votes, or proposed measures of public policy,
in either house, as independent members of Parlia-
ment rather than as members of a united Govern-
ment. The period bf Charles 11. and of William
111. abounds in instances of Ministers acting, not
only independent of each of other, but even in oppo-
sition to each other, and with the least possible re-
gard for the interest of the country, though fre-
quently with a strong regard for the interests of the
Crown or the wishes of the monarch. Such a state
of things was probably natural in the early days of
youthful institutions, impatient to develope an im-
mature vigour. But whatever strength might be
indicated by this practice, or whatever independence
it might seem to argue on the part of individual
Ministers, it was certainly incompatible with the
harmony and stability of Government. However
necessary freedom of speech may be, and however
desirable fulness of speech may be, in an assembly
which derives its title from its speaking qualities,
the world soon found out that, like everything else,
this attribute was good only at certain times
and under certain limitations. It might be as
amusing as a play or as instructive as a
schoolman's thesis -to hear a Lord President
inveigh against a Lord Treasurer, or a Secretary
for one department launch his indignation against
the secretary for another ; but the system which
permitted such diversions wasted power which, hus-
banded and concentrated, would be invaluable for
the maintenance of national greatness and the asser-
tion of national honour. It has been only rarely
since the accession of the Hanoverian dynasty that
the unity of a Cabinet has been disjointed and its
strength impaired by the personal vanity, jealousy,
or intrigue of its members, and their disregard of
that discipline which welds them into oue organic
whole. The same principle which exacts joint ac-
tion exacts also initiatory action. A very little
experience sufficed to demonstrate that an Admi-
nistration which owed its existence to Parliament
was better qualified to direct legislation than the
ablest or most zealous unofficial members acting with
fragmentary and desultory concert. No private
members of Parliament can have the influence or
the following that a Government can command ;
and, speaking generally, no measure which does not
emanate from the Government is likely to have half
the support which is given to one that is stamped
with the authority of Government. If there is one
truism more familiar than another, it is the truism
that the Queen's Government is expected to initiate
the most important measures of national legisla-
tion. It is a truism, however, which her
Majesty's present Ministers seem either to
have forgotten or never to have known. At
the present moment we seem to be drifting back to
some palzeozoic period of Parliamentary history,
when Cabinets illustrated the beauties of internal
dissension, and legislation exemplified by turns the
purpose of half a Ministry or the fitful vigour of an
Opposition. Two great subjects are occupying the
public mind. One has forced itself on our attention
by its magnitude and its terrors. The other has
been dangled before our eyes for months by the
Ministry. On both of these it was only charitable
to suppose that the Administration had some fixed
idea and some concerted plan. Yet on both of them
it seems as uncertain and irresolute as if it were not
the responsible Government of the Queen, but a
fortuitous concourse of irresponsible private mem-
bers. From the day of the Queen's Speech
the conduct of Ministers has been one continu-
ous course of uncertainty, want of purpose, and
want of will. For four or five months they have
seen a murrain of appalling destructiveness grow in
strength and extent until half the country is scared
with the prospect of actual famine ; yet, when Par-
liament met, they had no bill ready to meet the
urgent calamity. After Parliament met, and mem-
bers in both Houses had demanded the intervention
of the Government, a bill was brought forward
stamped with the parental features of indecision
and perplexity. It soon became apparent that
all its main principles were to be dictated by
the Opposition, or by independent members.