The Sun.
London, England, 1850-01-28 00:00:00

LITERATURE.

home. It was a higher and a holier thing, the soul's
admission to its native skier;, the spirit's ascent to its
kindred angels."
Elsewhere it is observed by our novelist (11. 15.), in
the noble language of con.olation, "the extinction of
our little lamp of life will Le as the first word of the
summons, the prelude to the appalling anthem that
shall hereafter be completed, when the archangel's
trumpet, shall resound on high, re-echoing over expiring
creation'' There is poetry in that reflection. . .
Among the few sentiments which we are disposed to
cavil against, as expressed by the author of "Silwood,"
we shall merely indicate one where it is observed some-
wh it too much in the scoffing vein of Rouchefou-
cauldt (I. 43.), "It is better to form too low than
too exalted an opinion of another; for in the first
place you have but to raise deserving merit
to its proper standard, while in the latter you have
made idols but to find them clay." Against this sen-
timent we would protest, because of is alluring
sophistry ; and against this sentiment alone—for
the work is otherwise almost wholly replete
with the exposition and enforcement of the noblest
principles and the purest morality. Generically the
work might be classed by the superficial among the
semi-religious romances ; but in the justice of such a
classification we cannot in any way coincide, those
fictions being embued invariably with polemics, and
bristling at all points with argument, irritating,
pragmatic, and controversial. No moral could be
F indicated by any fiction more lofty or more hu-
unanizieg than the one conveyed in " Silwood"—
the intention of the novelist being perpetually di-
rected beyond the mere earthly horizon to that
celestial region in the east, towards which the Arab
bends in homage in the desert, and where the Chris-
tian looks for the doomsday apparition of the Mes-
siah coming in the midst of the clouds of heaven
with great pomp and majesty, attended by innumer-
able legions of the beatified. To no sect individually,
to no creed exclusively, is the religious portion of the
narrative addresses), but to all those who believe in the
divinity of the Nazarene, to all those who read the
Book of Books with the reverence of faith and
the simplicity of children, the tendency of the story
must prove singularly clear and palatable. The nar-
rative in this particular, indeed, is conceived in that
admirable spirit which seems of late to be gradually
pervading a large portion of the light literature of
our generation—the spirit which evidenced itself con-
spicuously in Warren's " Now and Then," and yet
more recently in Bulwer Lytton's family picture of
the " Caxtons." .. . Referring yet once
more to the ingenious complication of the plot of
" Silwood," and especially to that portion of it which
we have already termed the equivoque of the passions,
we would here make a brief but suggestive quotation,
in which the embarrassments cf the six lovers are
happily enumerated. The passage occurs in the midst
of their causeless bewilderment:—
" Alas, poor Jessie, she was just learning by expe-
rience that sorrow without hope, in which no appeal to
the kindest friends can soothe or cheer; the course or
true love never did run smooth,' was fully exemplified
in all the characters concerned in this narrative. Whe-
ther we turn to Gordon in his wild anguish
.of untutored
grief; to Florence in her passionate despair; to Jessie
with her grief effaced by tears; to Julia with her calm
endurance veiling a broken heart; to Silwood in his
gloomy solitude, where many a vain struggle was made
to bury his affection in the mine of study; to Ross in his
sorrowful retirement, where every touch of his lyre,
woke the echoes of happier times, the glimpse of better
days—all, alike were miserable!"
How the miseries accruing to Jessie Gordon, Flo-
rence Howard, and Julia Maitland, to Gordon, to
Ross, and to Silwood, become in the end assuaged,
or whether those miseries are mitigated at all
in their poignancy, we shall not attempt
to intimate, solicitous as we are that the
work itself should be consulted for any desired expla-
nation. Before our present criticism is brought to a
conclusion we would redeem a promise given at its
commencement, by directing more particular atten-
tion than we have done hitherto to those more dis-
cursive and at the same time more reflective chapters
in " Silwood'' where the novelist apostrophizes the
master passions of his fellow-mortals. We cannot do
this more emphatically than by quotation. here,therefore is a passage in which our author gives
utterance to some of his cherished thoughts upon
LITERARY CELEBRITY.
" An author ! that magic word ! what thoughts are
therein contained, what dreams t.f daring and of hope I
what glimpses of genius and of glory I what dazzling
visions t f entrancing bliss ! what thrilling spells of ft-
tare ecstacy, the heavenly vista of a Godlike genies,
the immortal promise of a golden glory—a glory sym-
bolical of eternity, in its infinitude and duration—a
glory emblematical of Heaven in its altitude and de-
light. There is something ravishing in:the thought—there
is something ennobling in the ice,, that when rolling
ages shall have swept over our decaying dust, our works
shall still remain, instinct with the beauty of truth,
bright with the fire of genius. And who ti at ever
wrao but felt that thrilling thought? And who that
e'er composed but hailed that bright ides? The hope,
although without the faith, the ideal tl a' may never be
realized. Who the most calm—who the most cold, that
ever penned a line, but owns the magic sway, but bends
to the supreme delight of future Lime ? To be an au•
thor a ems to be something higher, nobler than the re:t
of all mankind, not better, not more beloved, for all are
equal in affection, and all share the same glorious ds C-
tiny as sons of God and heirs of Heaven; the future
must be equal, but for the present, children ef genius
hold a higher rank, for are they not entrusted with their
Maker's spirit in a more sublime degree? and are they
not depositaries of His prerogative in a more holy sense?
For think what gifts are theirs, out of whose shining
genius are emitted flames that inspire with vital sparks
inanimate creations, out cf whose burning eloquence
are given tongues to fancied forms and ' airy nothings,'
by whose era ative powers are peopled the realms of ima-
gination; by the easing of whose mystic wands thou-
sands move and breathe and have their being. Who has not
closed some volume with regret, as the thought has occured
the opinion suggested itsel, that all acquaintance with
its inhabitants hart ceased? We lave formed a sort of
friendship with them, that we fain would foster and cul-
tivate; but in vain, the spell is broken, the enchantment,
passed, the illusion vanished—all is over. Yet, do we
feel a sort of lingering fondness for the images, as mir-
rored in the glass of memory. Is it then nothing to be
able to create eut of nonentity the beau ideal that may have been lingering in the mind, and forming in the
fancy of an utter stranger? Is it then nothing to
breathe words that find an echo in creative minds, to
strike chords that vibrate sweetest pleasure in congenial
spirits, attuning with their thrilling melody all kindred
instinct,, all exalted sentiments, joining all souls in sym-
pathy, blending all hearts in unison, ennobling the im-
mortal, immortalizing the Noble, raising mortals to
heaven, calling angels to earth! And what though it
is sweet to think, that what he now is writing shall be
read by future sons and daughters et unborn,' who
shall inhabit kingdoms yet
to come, when centuries
shall have swept away; though it is thrilling, exquisite
delight to hail the enraptured vision, to contemplate the
seraphic
picture; who does not think that it is yet some
glory bright as incomprehensible, that it is yet some
greatness immaculate, as inconceivable, to be extolled
by beings now existing, to be enshrined in hearts now
beating with the pulse of life; no vulgar praise, no syco-
phantic serenade, synonymous with °shallow sophisms,'
no lofty pre ins sound his name, but myriad beings who
have read and understood him Le his laudatory, his best
acclaimers, his most pelf-et panegyrists. This is pure
fame, this is real honour, this is true renown, great in
its glory, glorious in its greatness. Seek ye for this, all
yo aspirants, for the laurels of the Nine gain it, and
rolling centuries and passing generations but complete
your triumph; tried in the furnace of truth, tested b.
l-
lions shall, in embryo tongues, declare its immortality.
y
the tombstone f time, lo! it survives till unborn
Here, again, is his impassioned panegyric upon

STLWOOD. A Novel in Two Volumes. 131,2ztle:y.
Always to us there is an inexpressible charm in
the peruse] e f a " first work," a fascination in oil,-
serving the earliest venture of a writer concealing a
meritorious timidity under the mask of the anon y-
mous. Our pleasure in the examination of the se
volumes has been of this agreeable character. For it
would be impossible not to recognise the ard,iur of
youth, and the eloquence of an unjeded ambitio a, ie a
narrative like "Silwood," a narrative which is, never-
theless, to a very remarkable degree, devoid of the
crudeness of unpractised or immature abilities, and of
the errors usually attendant upon literary i aexpe-
rience. Whatever may be thought of the facilities of
composition, there are two difficulties encountered at
the outset of the labours of authorship, one or other
of which almost invariably precludes the possibility of
complete success at the commencement. And these
obstacles to the preliminary triumphs of the litera-
telur principally manifest their influence in his style—
sometimes in the mode of thought, sometimes in the
mode of expression, in nine hundred and ninety-nine
cases,out of every thousand in both together. With every
young writer, generally speaking, his mode of expres-
sion is marked either by its poverty or its turgescence; it
runs on the one hand into the mazes of untutored
fluency, or on the other becomes cramped into a hard
and scholastic distortion. lli.s mode of thought, at
the same time, betrays a predilection either for exces-
sive particularity or excessive generalization ; it
leaves, on the one hand, nothing to the fancy of the
reader, or, on the other, abandons everything to the
scope of his imagination. In this manner the aspirant
for literary honours, in the vast majority of instances,
discovers only when such a discovery is altogether too
late, that his style has glided into the school-bred
meanness reprobated by Aristotle, or into the school-
bred grandiloquence condemned as emphatically by
the lips of L inginus. What is of equal importance,
moreover, he hazards, in so doing, an exclusive appeal
either to the esoteric or the exoteric sympathies of
the population. Having read " Silwood" as we read
every work appearing under similar auspices—the
first attempt of an invisible hand to cull some fruits
or blossoms in the garden of Literature—having pe-
rused it, namely, with a scrupulous attention to
these initiatory requirements, we can most cordially
felicitate the author on having entirely escaped
from the commission of faults almost in-
evitably incidental to the first adventure in
the craft of penmanship. Throughout, the chap-
ters are written in a tone of sustained earnestness,
the descriptive passages breathing the fervour of en-
thusiasm, and the reflective fancies being conveyed in
language singularly terse and sententious. Occa-
sionally, indeed, the novelist carries his brevity of
expression even to quaintness, as where, speaking ef
the evil influence of a first step in crime, he says (1.,
41.), " once is a precedent;" or as where, in another
place, he designates the contemporary time " the an -
tiquity of posterity." Elsewhere, borne along by the
energy of his inspirations, his voice rises into a pro-
longed strain of real and unaffected eloquence, in
apostrophies to fame, to love, to beauty, to death, and
to that heroic spirit which he regards as the desired
vitality of this age of utilitarianism. Of these pane-
gyrics on the master-passions of humanity, and on
the arch-destroyer of mankind, we shall have a more
fitting opportunity to speak, after having considered
the more immediate object of our criticism—we mean
the general merits or blemishes of the whole compo-
sition. Viewed as a mere narrative story, " Sil-
wood " possesses the excellence of exciting, al-
most from the opening pages, the interest of
the reader. The plot of the story must be
pronounced to be most admirably ingenious. It
realises in a .very vivid manner that beautiful
picture which emanated, if we recollect rightly, from
the graceful hand of Mr. Frank Stone, and the en-
graved representation of which has been long popu-
lar, entitled " Cross Purposes." In evidence of
this we may remark, without in any way damaging
the interest of the novel by an untimely eclaircissement,
and thereby materially injuring its principal attrac-
tion, that the heroes and heroines of " Sil wood" (no
less than six in number collectively) are entangled in
a web of misapprehension as to the love entertained
towards each other. It is from our sense of the adroit-
ness with which these equivokes of passion, as we
may term them perhaps not inappropriately, are con-
ceived and delineated, quite as much as from our
estimate of the author's force of thought and fluency
of expression, that we augur well for his subsequent
adventures along the pleasant and flowery paths of
Literature. In the complication of his plot,
in the entanglement of an already intricate
series of misunderstandings, and in the final
clearing up of all these numberless misappre-
hensions, towards the denouement our author betrays
a capacity such as must, if properly cultivated and
sedulously developed, bring forth worthier fruits than
the clever and ingenious narrative of " Silwooci."
We shall expect from his hands the fulfilment of our
prediction, and in its fulfilment we shall hail right
cordially the progress and enhancement of his reputa-
tion. Among the different characters introduced to
our notice in the present effusion we must especially
particularise those of Silwood himself, of his friends
Ross and Gordon, and of the three charming
heroines, the intellectual beauty, Florence, the
lively and lovely Jessie, and best beautiful of all
from the nobility of her self-sacrificing disposition,
the gentle, amiable, and right womanly Julia Mait-
land. The last mentioned, in truth, we conceive to
be by far the most successfully delineated. The
mere notion of a temperament like that of Julia
Maitland is one entitled to deep and delightful con-
templation ; but the power with which the ideal has
been sustained throughout, so as to render her every
word, thought, and action consistent with so much
exalted excellence, is to the brow of the novelist at
once his plume and his laurels. Silwood appears to
be a dreamy semblance of some illustrious lawyer, de-
scribed in his days of youthful vicissitude, and in the
earliest hours of his forensic celebrity. Ross we
cannot but imagine to be an indirect portraiture of
the gifted and versatile knight-representative of
the shire of Buckingham, kindred to him in his
showy abilities and volatile enthusiasm, and only
lacking resemblance where the former is spoken of as
a votary of the muses of poetry. Gordon, although
less artistically pencilled, is nevertheless a most
engaging and agreeable sketch, possessing many
noble qualities and blessed with a genial temperament.
Of the other fictitious personages little need be said,
seeing that we have no intention whatever of fore-
stalling the revelations of the narrative. Some, how-
ever, merit at our hands at least a passing allusion—
such, for example, as Harcourt, the voluptuary;
•• Farquhar, the unprincipled roué; Mr. Agendale, the
'" fine old country gentleman ;" ]tar. Maitland, the
father of Julia and guardian of Jessie ; Mr. Fentum,
the uncle of Gordon ; Mrs. Howard, the mother of
Florence ; and many others not here enumerated.
IVith the aid of these imaginary beings the writer
has penned a tale that may well engross the
attention of all who experience solace in for-
getting for a while real in fictitious sufferings,
and in enhancing actual, by forming acquaintance
with supposititious happiness. The current of the
into
the runs alternately, or rather intermittently,
tbe sorrowful and the joyous, changing according to
the mood of the novelist, from the hues of pathos to
those of hilarity Before the second volume has been
entirely conned the reader has not merely become
familiar with a world apart from, though similar to
his own, but can number up almost as many deaths
and marriages as come within the limits of his own
recollection. The frequent recurrence of the calamity
of dissolution in the record of the fortunes of Silwood
we take to be one of the most prominent features of
the effusion—investing it in several parts to our
thinking as with a sombre and lugubrious atmosphere.
Without reference to the successive chapters we could
readily number up twenty or thirty of the creatures
moving within the circle of the story who perish lee-
fore its conclusion, from old age, from consumption,
from accident, from the debility and disease conse-
quent upon an abandoned and licentious career,
or from the last and most tragic catas-
trophe of all, sweeping off many together in a
single tempest. Of all these descriptions
of death, the most solemn, the most touching, the
most eloquent, and the most beautiful is that of
the young and angelic sister of Ross, wasted away
prematurely under the terrible influence of decline.
We cannot resist giving the following admirable pero-
ration of that description, perhaps one of the most
felicitous passages in the two volumes :
" The hour came at last lit was a calm and: tranquil
evening, the balmy breath of summer floated in through
the open lattice, perfumed with the rich odours of a
thousand fragrant flowers, and filled the room with in-
cense. In the chamber was visible the united loveliness
of life and death, so finely blended, so nearly commin-
gled, that the beholder was precluded from distinguish-
ing the departure of the one, or the advent of the other.
There were no final parting, and no farewell look, no
as that twilight hour, as that summer eve.
dying adjuration, and no last prayer; all was calm, all
was holy,
She had been talking, as of old of peace,' an 1 while
the words yet echoed in the air, while the thrilling me-
lody cf her voice yet lingered in the ears of her list-
eners, her quit broke the lest faint shsckle of mor-
tality,
and ascended to the realms where peace reigns
fur over.
" Time passed as they gazed on that fair young crea-
ture, who had left the dominiors of time for ever. Sud-
denly Sil wood rose, and drew back the curtain that par-
tially concealed her, and the rich flood of golden light
poured in upon the scene, suffusing it with all the splen-
dour of the setting sun, and the last beams of day flung
a crowning halo over the dead, embalming her sanctified
loveliness. The change had taken place—what change?
What was it philosopher? the cad of this fitful scene,
the closing act in life's vain dre am. What nas it ma-
terialist? the dissolution of the human fabric; ' ashes to
ashes; earth to earth; dust to dust.' What was it sen-
timentalist? the finality of grief, the period of suffer-
ing, the catastrophe of trials. What was it Christian,
who speaks with the light of truth revealed, and the
palge of salvation unfolded? It was a brighter and a
better work, the trawler of the immortal to its Wier.-
outs heaven; the transit 9f the redeemed to its beatified

celred, so perverted, and, again, so ridiculed, there is
contained all this world's happiness or misery, all the
next world's hope t f glory? It is the spirit that in the
earlier ages of this earth occasioned its redemption; may
' we trust that it shall in these latter days complete is
regeneration? Carried to sublimity in heaven, it
ef-
fected man's salvation; raised to pesl3ction in his ht art,
it ensures his felicity. It is invested with the qualities
that seem peculiar to the legends of fairies, and the tales
of genii. Is there nothing supernatural in the faculty,
that brings back to silvery age the sunny prospec!s of a
golden youth; in the infidence that smooths the rugged
world of poverty, and adorns the flowery path of riches;
in the power that trenrf ,rms dust and ashes into life and
lustre, that turns the perishing worms of the earth into
the spirits of glory and the angels of God; calling from
the mouldering homes of corruption, beiegs instinct with
btatuty; creatures sparkling with light. This is what
Love can do:! Say not it is a lowly feeling and a paltry
sentiment. Is there a holier—a sublimer essence? It is
deified by the acts t f the Divinity; it is hallowed in being
the herald of the Most High; it is sactified in being
the spirit of salvation; it is glorified with the image and
the impress of the Redeemer; it is stamped with the
superscription and the sign-manual of Heaven ! Do
you ask its illustrious votaries, and grand apostles?
We give 3 ou the highest of all examples; the example
cf One, Who, although he was rich, yet for our sakes
became poor;' Who left the excess eithat happiness, no
mortal can understand, for the extent of that anguish,
no mortal can imagine.'
'""liere, in fine, is the opening of an eulogium (too
long for unmutilated transcription) upon that senti-
ment which is truly declared to be most wanting to
the present generation.

THE HEROIC SPIRIT.
"A new pole-star had startod up in the bright vista of
their future, glowing with the golden hues of glory, it
was the source from whence have flown the countless
streams of high promise, that have finally merged into
the oc, an of immortality; it was the stem from whence
have sprung the blossoms of varied beauty that have
subsequently ripened into fruits t f fame; in fine, it was
the heroic feeling, which reviled, persecuted, and op-
posed, has flourished and still flourishes amid every dis-
advantage. Change has not tarnished its glory, ages
have not effected its annihilation; that which illumined
the infancy of time shall survive till time itself shell be
no more; not even at the end of crtit'ion can we look for
its extinction, for that existence into which a divine es-
sence has been infused is essentially eternal, and indi-
genous to immortality. Its progress has been marked
by all that has raised the character of the world—by
nothing that has lowered it. Among its votaries are
classed the demi-gods

' Around its shrine
Are ranged for evermore the tuneful nine.'

"All most high in humaeity; all most excellent on
earth; all enrolled under its flaming banners.
" Iti annals are adorned by a glorious company of
apostles, by a goodly fello ship of prophets, by a noble
army of martyrs. It numbers in its lists of glory, it
counts in its ranks of fame, sages, poets, philosophers,
patriots, warriors, legislators; all—all who have been
imbued with its influence; all who have been inspired
with its zeal. The catalogue comprises centuries and
tens of centuries—the sphere of action, the extended
globe. Is there, who gainsays its puissance ? exists
there, who underrates its achievements? Survey its
empires, and behold its doings.
"It has been opposed as was never opposed, any other;
but yet it is immaculate and imperturbable. It has sur-
vived the most dangerous of all attacks, derision; un-
moved, unmoveable—unextinguished, unextinguishable
—unchanged, unchangeable. It has outlived its oppo-
nents; woe t all enemies, ineffable scorn is their meed,
and oblivion shadows their graves.' Would some de-
mand, what is this vaunted effigy, this far- famed pro-
digy; the representation of vivid lustre, the impersona-
tion of exalted majesty ? Read the records of the pen-
man, the lore of a, tiquity, the ruling destiny, the active
agent has been one glorious feeling—the heroic prin-
ciple. It is the spirit that has produced everything
that is great, everything that is noble, in all ages and
in all countries; since first the course of time began
since first the earth revolved in ether. It is the spirit
that has created all the immortal ones in history, in all
its divisions, ancient and modern, sacred and profane.
It is the spirit that piled the funeral pyre of Thermo-
pyle; the spirit that led Eustace from the walls of be-
sieged Calais; the spirit that illumined the last moments
of a More, and that glittered round the prison of a dying
Socrates."

But that our observations upon the merits of
" Silwood" have already extended to a length so
considerable, we should have descanted with par-
ticular emphasis upon perhaps the finest descrip-
tion and the most striking incident in the two
volumes, we mean the intellectual triumph achieved
by the hero as a forensic orator. Already, however,
we have sufficiently analyzed the fiction to render its
more prominent excellences conspicuous to our readers
even befire their perusal of the work itself; inso-
much so, that it scarcely needs our assertion that
the novel reveals ability capable of being developed
into—a reputation.

WHITE JACKET; or, THE WORLD in a
MAN-OF-WAR. By Hem= Melville. 2 Vols.
Herman Melville is indefatigable. Hardly have
we finished the perusal of one of his compositions be-
fore another is issued from the press. Unlike some
writers, however, his activity in non ise impairs the
interest of his " yarns" or the attraction of his style.
From the imaginative to the practical is to the author
of " Typee" but one step; he turns with facility from
the description of the marvellous regions
of Mardi, and the chronicle of the impos-
sible adventures of the voyage thither, to
detail with a minute fidelity the adventures (.f
a sailor-boy (vide " It!dburn"), or to exhibit the
peculiarities of the world of a man-of-war (vide
" White Jacket"). The chapters contained in these
volumes are the supposed revelations of a sailor in the
American navy, yclept White Jacket, on account of
his extraordinary outer-covering, of which we are
told—

"It was not a very white jacket, but white enough, in
all conscience, as tie sequel will show.
" The way I came by it was this.
" When our frigate lay in Callao, on the coaat of Porn
—her last harbour in the Pacific—l found my: elf with-
out a grey°, or sailor's surtout; and m, toward the end
of a three-years' cruise, no pea-jackets could be had
from the purser's steward; and being bound for Cape
Horn, some sort of a substitute was indispensable; I
employed myse:f, for several days, in manufacturing an
outlandish garment of my own devising, to shelter me
from the boisterous weather we were so soon to en-
counter.

It was nothing more than a white duck frock, or
rather shirt; w hich, spreading on deck, I fAded double
at tfe bosom, and by then making a col Cfluation of
the slit there, opened it lengthwisa—much as you would
cut a lett- in the last new novel. Tte gash being made,
a metamorphosis took place, tran,cending any relat
by Ovid. For, presto! the shirt was a coat !—a strange-
tooking coat, to be sure; of a Qiakerish amplitude
about the skirts; with an infirm, tumbledown collar;
and a clumsy filaess about the wristbands; and white,
yin, white as a abroad. And my shroud it of erwards
came very near proving, as he who reads farther will
find.

"But, bless me, my friend, what sort of a sammer
jacket is this, in which to weather Cape Horn? A very
tasty, and beautiful white linen garment it may have
seemed; but then, people almost universally sport their
linen next to their skin.
" Very true; and that thought very early occurred to
me; for no idea had I of scudding round Cape Horn in
my shirt; for ttat would have been almost scudding
under bare poles indeed.
"So, with many odds:and ends of patches—old ocks,
old trowser-legs, and the like—l bedarr ed and bequilted
the inside of my jacket, till it'became, all over, stiff and
padded, as King James's cotton-stuffed and dagger-proof
doublet; and no buckram or steel hauberk stood up more
stoutly.
" So far, very good; but pray, tell me, Whitc-Jacket,
how do you propose keeping out the rain and the wet
in this quilted grego of yours? You don't call this wad
of old patches a Mackintosh, do you?—You don't pre-
tend to say that worsted is water-proof?
"No, my dear friend; and that was the deuce of it.
Water-proof it was not, no more than a sponge. In-
deed, with such recklessness had I bequilted my jacket,
that in a rain-storm I became a universal absorber;
swabbing bone-dry the very bulwarks I leaned against.
Of a damp day, my heartless shipmates even used to
stand up against me, so powerful was the capillary at-
traction between this luckless jacket of mine and all
drops of moisture. I dripped like a turkey a' roasting;
and long after the rain-storms were over, and the sun
showed his face, I still stalked a Scotch mist; and when
it was fair weather with others, alas! it was foul weather
with me."
Without giving any. continuous history, White
Jacket skilfully contrives, by describing the cha-
racters of many of the officers and men on board the
Neversink, and, by relating many incidents which
occurred on board that vessel, to give (Mich is the
avowed object of the work) an idea of the world of a
man• of-war appertaining to Uncle Sllll. ".In the
year 1843," says the preface, " the author shipped
as a common sailor on board of a United States
frigate, then lying in a harbour of the Pacific Oeean.
After serving on board of this frigate for more than a
year, he was discharged with the rest of the crew
upon the vessel's arrival home. His man-of-war
experiences and observations have been incorporated
into the present volumes. But these volumes are not
presented as a journal of the cruiz -." White Jacket
commenc:s his history with the frigate's weighing
anchor at the last harbour in the Pacific, for the home-
ward-bound passage, by the way Of Cape Horn.
First he gives us a full, true, and particular account
of the white jacket which we have spoken of
above ; then he proceeds to initiate us into
the various divisions of a man-pf-war's
crew, sheet - anchormen, after-guard, waisters,
&c. &c. Poor White Jacket laments, and with good
reason, on the perplexing variety of numbers which a
sailor has to bear in mind. First he is given the
number of his mess; then his ship's number, or the
number to which he must answer when the watch-
roll is called ; then the number of his hammock, then
the number of the gun to which he is assigned, be-
sides a variety of other numbers. Then follow some
life-like sketches of various incidents on board,—the
Commodore who stalked the deck in solemn silence :
"I have serious doubts," says White Jacket, " whether
for the most part he was not dumb. And not only did
he seem dumb himself, but his presence possessed the
strange power of making other people dumb fur the

" The mister LOVE.
passion of the human heart now exer-
Fised his agrney; the ruling spirit of the human race
infused his !impulse; the greet sovereign of man's ac-
tions now seized the added unit to his myriad subjects.
What wag the passion? Which tho spirit? Who the
sovereign? Love I Love ! word of wonder, hope and
joy who shall define thy mystic spell? who shall ex-
plain thy potent influence? it is an object too vast for
world;human intellect to comprehend, a subject too sublime
for human imagination to descry; and yet upon its per-
fect comprehension there depends the welfrre of the
within its imagery of glory is comprise] the
happiness ( f all its denizen?. Who then shall deter-
mine the offspring cf that spirit, the source of all our
sorrow, the seeing
of all our joys? who shall expand its
hidden workings, who reveal its covert acts? It is con-
cealed, but it is by a veil of glory; it is enveloped, but it
is by a cloud of rolling splendour. It is shrouded by
sanctity, enrolled in eternity, a secret of the Most high,
a divine mystery. We are permitted here to f-el its
sorrow, that hereafter we may deserve to know its bliss;
we sre to endure the anguish of its fading below, that we
may be perfected to rejoice in itsimmortality above.
e
Whatsoever things are pare, whatsoever things are
lovely, are liable to be abused, reviled, and misinter-
preted; oven so with Love; sublime and holy spirit, im•
mutable 'sod burning essence, to what debasing influences
would they lower thee, with what defiling images pollute
thee!

" Alas, for human nature, ever prone to call good evil,
evil good; that this antepast of heaven; this antetype of
God; this emanation of eternal mercy; this day-spring
of immortal glory, should be confounded with the
meanest of all worldly passions, and classed with the
lowest r f all grovelling instincts I Much shall have you
to answer for; assumere if ignorant; sacrilegiouq if in-
formed; who dare to sully its fair fame—who 'deem to
judge its innate purity. It is not any sentiment, how-
ever bright and beaming with vitality, however great
and glorious with light, that we would designate by this
most sacred of denominations, this most sublime of
images. It is the feeling of filth; hope in its highest,
holiest state; charity
in its perfected essence; the majesty
of heaven; te humility of earth; a blending power; a
concentrating spirit; tending to better, aspiring to nobler.
Tbis is Love! Love, as we would have it called; Love,
as we would here invoke it. What are its doings? What
its'attributes? What its essentials? Its doings are ma-
nifest in every mind at peace; in every heart that beats
with joy. See you some beings holier, happier than the
rest, more favoured than the common herd; Love is
their informing spirit; Love is their abiding instinct;
Love their tutelary
divinity; Love their guardian angel;
its attributes are peace on earth, good-will towards men;
its essentials arc, entire sympathy, complete devotion,
perfmt trust.
-" Who would believe, 010 in this spirit, 50'03600n.

SUN, LONDON', 71'a' MONDAY EVENING, JANUARY 28, 1850

time ;" Captain Claret, the lieutenants, two young
lieutenants nick-named Selvagee and Mad Jack, the
former a counterpart ff. " Sporus," the latter a
thorough sailor, who, in a moment of danger, did not
hesitate to contradict the captain himself.
These are among the officers celebrated by
White Jacket. The " men," or the "people," as he
calls them, present a yet more interesting varsity ;
foremost of these is Jack Chase. lore is his picture :
"First and foremost was Jack Chase, our noble First
Captain of the Top. He was a Briton, and a true-blue;
tall and well-knit, with a clear open eye, a fine broad
brow, and an abounding nut-brown beard. No man
ever had a bettor heart or a bolder. He was loved by
the seamen, and admired by the officers; and even when
the Cal tain spoke to him, it was with a slight air a re-
sp Let. Jack was a frail and charming mar.
"No one could be better company in a forecastle or
saloon; no man told such stories, sang such songs, or
with gr, ater alacrity sprang to his duty. Indeed, there
was only ono thing wanting about him, and that was a
finger of his left hand, which finger he had lost at the
great battle of Navarino.
" He had a high conceit of his profession as a sf aman;
and being deeply versed in all things pertaining tA a
man-of-war, was universally regarded as an oracle. The
main-top, user which he presided, was a sort of Delphi,
to which many pilgrims wended, to have their per-
plexities or differences settled.
" There was such an abounding air of good sense and
good f,eling about the man, that he who could not love
him, would thereby pronounce himself a knave. I
thanked my sweet stars that kind fortune had placed me
near him, though under hin,, in the frigate; and from
the outs, t Jack and I were fast friends.
" Wherever you may be now rolling over the blue
billows, dear Jack! take my best love along with you;
and God bless you, wherever you go!
" Jack was a gentleman. What though his hand was
hard, so was not his heart, too often the case with soft
palms. His manners were easy and free; none of the
boisterousness, so common to tars; and he had a polite,
courteous way of saluting you, if it were only to borrow
your knife."

On the subject of flogging White Jacket becomes
eloquent with indignation—and no wonder ! Be it
remembered that the writer of these volumes has been
himself a common sailor, and, as such, liable to suffer
from the lash—as such, his remarks are entitled to
especial sympathy. A few passages will show the
spirit of the whole, with which, it is unnecessary to
say, we heartily and entirely agree :
"According to the present laws and usages of the
Navy, a seaman, for the most trivial alleged offences, of
which ho may be entirely innocent, must, without
a trial, undergo a penalty the traces whereof he carries
to the gave; for to a man-of-war's-man's experienced
eye the marks of a naval scourging with the " cat" are
through life discernible. And with these marks on his
back, this image of his Creator must rise at the Last
Day. Yet so untouchable is true dignity, that there are
cases wherein to be flogged at the gangway is no dig-
honour; though, to abase and hurl down the last pride
of some sailor who has piqued him, be sometimes the
secret motive, with some malicious officer, in procuring.
him to be condemned to the lash. But this feeling of
the innate dignity remaining untouched, though out-
wardly the body be scarred for the whole term of the
natural life, is one if the hushed things, buried among
the holiest privacies of the soul ; a thing between
a man's God and himself; and for ever undiscernible by
our fellow-men, who account that a degradation which
seems so to the corporal eye. But what torments must
that seaman undergo, who, while his bask bleeds at the
gangway, bleeds agonized drops of shame from his soul!
Are we net justified in immeasurably denouncing this
thing? Join hands with me, then; and in the name of
that Being, in whose image the flogged sailor is made,
let us demand of Legislators, by what right they dare
profane what God himself accounts sacred.
" Is it lawful for you to scourge a man that is a Ro-
man? asks the intrepid Apostle, well knowing, as a
Roman citizen, that it was not. And now, eighteen
hundred years after, is it lawful for you, my countrymen,
to scourge a man that is an American—to scourge him
round the world in your frigates?
" It is to no purpose that you apologetically appeal to
the general depravity of the man-of-war's-man. Depra-
vity in the oppressed is no apology for the oppressor;
but rather an additional stigma to hire, as Leing, in a
large degree, the effict, and not the cause and justifica-
tion of oppression.

" Or will you say that a navy officer is a man, but that
an American-born citizen, whose grandsire may hare
ennobled him by pouring out his blood at Bunk or-hill—
will you say that, by entering the service of his coun-
try as a common seaman, and standing ready to fight
her foes, he thereby loses his manhood at the very time
he most asserts it? Will you say that, by so doing,
he degrades himself to the liability of the scourge, but
if he tarries ashore in the time of danger, he is safe
from that indignity? All our linked states, all four
cortinents of mankind, unite in denouncing such a
thought.
" We plant the question, then, on the topmost argu-
ment of all. Irrespective of incidental considerations,
we assert that flogging in the navy is opposed to the es-
sential dignity of man, which no legislator has a right to
violate; that it is oppressive, and glaringly unequal in
its operations; that it is utterly repugnant to tte spirit
of our democratic institutions; indeed, that it involves
Hoge ring trait ( f the worst times of a barbarous feudal
ari>t ,cracy; in a word, we denounce it as religiously,
morally, and immutably wrong.
" No matter, then, what may be the eonsequelees of
its abolition; no matter if we have to dismantle our
fleets, and our unprttected commerce should fsll a prey
to the spoiler, the aw ftil admonitions cf justice and hu-
manity demand that abolition without procrastination;
in a voice that is not to be mistaken, demand that abo-
lition to-day. It is not a dollar-and-seat question of
ex' ediency; it is a matter ( f right and wrong. And if
any man can lay his hind on his heart, and solemnly
•ay that this scourging is right, let that man but once
feel the lash on his own back, and in his agony you will
hear the apostate call the seventh heavens to witness that
it is wrony. And, in the name c f immortal manhood,
would to God that every man who upholds this thing
were scourged at the gangway till he recanted!"
After remarking that Lord Nelson was, in point of
policy, averse to flogging, and that Collingwood, pro-
verbial for his maintenance of discipline, rarely, if
ever, had recourse to it, Herman Melville calls upon
his countrymen no longer to follow the example (:f
England in the following magnificent exordium, some
passages of which are eminently truthful, and some
are inflated with a little Yankee vanity :
" In things of this kind England should be nothing to
us, except an example to he shunned. Nor should wise
legislators wholly govern themselves by precedents, and
conclude that, since scourging has so long prevailed,
some vie tue must reside in it. Not se. The world ha,
arrived at a period which renders it the part of Wisdom
to ray homage to the prospective precedents of the Fu-
ture, in preference to those of the Past. The Past is
de ad, and has no resurrection; but the Future is endowed
with such a life, that it lives to us even in anticipation.
The Past is, in many things, the fie of mankind; the
Future is, in all things, our friend. In the Past is no
hope; the Future is both hope and fruition. The Past
is the text-book of tyrants; tee Futere the Bible of the
Free. Those who are solely governed by V e Part
stand like Lot's wife, crystalhz d in the act cf looking
backwards, and for ever incapable of looking before.
Let us 1• am the l'ast, then, to dictate laws to im-
movable China; let us abandon it to the Chinese Legiti-
mists of Eurape. But for us, we will have another cap-
tto ru'e over us—that captain who ever marches
at the Lead of his troop, and beckons them forward, not
lingering in the re ae, and impeding their march with
lumbering baggage waggons of old precedents. 77. is is
the Past.
" But in many things we Americans aro driven to a
rejection ( f the maxims of the Pa t, seeing that, ere
long, the van of the nations must, of right, belong to
ourselves. Ti ore are occasions when it is far America
to make precedent-, and net to obey them. We should,
if possible, prove a teacher to posterity, instead of be-
ing the pupil of by-gone generations. More shall come
after us than have gone Lofore; the world is net yet
middle -aged.
" Escaped from the house c f bondage, Israel ( f old did
not follow after the ways of the Egyptians. To her was
given an express dispensation; to her were given new
things under the sun. And wo Americans are the pe-
culiar, chosen people—the Israel of our time; we bear
the ark of the liberties of the world. seventy years ago
we escaped from thrall; and, besides our first bit thright
—embracing one coLtinet.t cf e arth—God has given to
us, for a future inheritance, the broad domains of the
political paeans, that shall yet come and lie down under
the shade cf our ark, without bloody hands being lifted.
God has predestinated, mankind expects, great things
from our race; and great things we feel in our souls.
We are the pioneers of the world; the advance guard,
sent on through the wilderness of untried things, to break
a new path in the New World that is ours. In our
youth is our strength; in our inexperience our wisdom.
At a period when other nations have but lisped, our
deep voice is heard a'ar. Long enough have we been
sceptics with regard to ourselves, and doubt-d whether,
indeed, the political Messiah had come. But he bas
come in us, it we would but give utterance to his prompt-
ings. And let us always remember, that with our-
selves—almost for the first time in the hi tory of earth
—rational selfishness is unbounded philanthropy; for
we cannot do a good to America, but we give alms to the
world."
An enumeration of the heads of some of the chap-
ters will give a fair idea of the miscellaneous naturets
of White-Jacket's revelations. Among the contents
of the second volume are chapters thus
aliseteeere(in a
"Purser, Purser's Steward, and_adr
Postmaster
'ho w they
Man-of-War Rumours of
.a W
were received by the population of the Neversinle.—
Midshipmen enter-
ing The people' aro
the navy sa,i)..givAen shore- emperor un board a
men of-war.—A quarter-deck officer before the wart.
—A man-of- war button
divides two brothers.—A
man•of-war's man shot et.—A man-of-war race.—
Fever in a man-of- war.—Wltitc-Jarek, et arraigned at
the mast.—The maintop at night.-6e last stitch
How they bury a man-of-wars man at sea.—The
great massacre of the beards.—The rebels brought to
the mast," &c., &c. Varied as are the pictures which
Herman Melville here presents to us, the same natural
delineation of a master-hand is visible in them all ;
and few who have followed its momentous career
will arrive without regret at the chapter which re-
cords " the end of the Jacket."

COUNTRY QUARTERS. By the Countess of
of Blessington. 3 Vas.
Prefixed to this novel is a biography of its gifted
and lamented authoress, from the pen of her niece,
is Power, 'Xhis PArnitive of Diessington'o