網頁圖片
PDF
ePub 版

ship with one whose name is no longer a private name--Horace Binney Wallaceand sketches, true as tender, of those whose memories are sacredly private. Robert Browning and his wife are saluted with reproachful music, as not recognizing one who claimed the recognition of earnest effort and not the praise of success. Florence Nightingale, another personal friend of the author, is the theme of some of the best poems in the volume-the last of which we quote, as a fair illustration of that proud tenderness of a woman which illuminates

every page of the book. The previous poem ends thus:

"Then count not the heroic heart alone

In those whom action and result make
great,

Since the sublime of nature's excellence
Lies in enduring, as achieving fate."

And then follows the poem "Further-
more," in which the poet speaks to men in
the name of women:

"We, that are held of you in narrow chains, Sought for our beauty-through our folly raised

One moment to a barren eminence,

To drop in dreary nothingness amazed.
"We, dwarfed to suit the measure of your
pride,

Thwarted in all our pleasures and our
powers,

Have yet a sad, majestic recompense,

The dignity of suffering-that is ours.
"The proudest of you lives not, but he wrung
A woman's unresisting form with pain,
While the long nurture of your helpless
years

Brought back the bitter child-birth throes
again.

"We wait upon your fancies-watch your
will-

Study your pleasure, oft with trembling
heart-

Of the success and glory of your lives

Ye think it grace to yield the meanest part. "E'en Nature. partial mother, reasons thus:

'To these the duty, and to those the right;' Our faithful service earns us sufferance, But we shall love you in your own despite.

"To you the thrilling meed of praise belongs;
To us, the painfuller desert may fall:
We touch the brim, where ye exhaust the
bowl,

But, where ye pay your due, we yield our
all.

"Honor all women-weigh, with reverend hand,

The worth of those unproved, or overtried, And when ye praise the perfect work of one, Say not ye are shamed in her, but glorified."

This is no "woman's poetry," but the

thought and the music of a poet; and the whole book is no less sad and sincere. Why should we hesitate to give to Mrs. Howe the position which she takes by her Passion-flowers and Words for the Hour, and confess that despite the serious faults of art, the difficulty, and obscurity, and imperfect melody-despite the want of an entire fusing of the thought in music, her name must be mentioned among the poets? But she has much to do before her claim will be widely recognized. Without a resolute emancipation from the purely private cast of her song, there will not be that calm clearness and melody which are essential to a permanent acceptation. The poet is not a poet until he has mastered in his verse the emotion which mastered him in life. He sits "pensive and alone, above the hundred-hand play of his imagination."

-Studies in the Field and Forest, by WILSON FLAGG (Little, Brown & Co.), is a quiet and delightful book of a sympathetic observation of nature. Birds and plants, and the glories of sky and landscape, are the themes of Mr. Flagg, and what he sees with a comprehensive eye, he tells in such a modest and manly way that the reader is sure to be charmed, and if he be a country reader, and a real lover of nature, he will put Mr. Flagg's book by the side of Cotton's upon his table. A natural love of nature-so to say-always inspires a style of racy simplicity; for the range of observation lies outside the sphere of passion.

-Lake Ngami; or, Explorations and Discoveries during four years' Wanderings in the Wilds of Southwestern Africa; by CHARLES JOHN ANDERSSON-has been republished in a beautiful library form by Dix, Edwards & Co.; and its value is greatly enhanced by a prefatory letter from Col. FREMONT. With the dignity and modesty that are characteristic of his whole career, he writes, at the request of the publishers, a simple letter, expressing his general interest in geographical research, and pays a most cordial compliment to Dr. Kane and Bayard Taylor, Americans who have made their names illustrious in the literature of travel. It is a valuable and interesting book, to which the recent return of Dr. Livingstone from the same regions gives additional attraction.

[blocks in formation]

-MR. MILBURN, the blind preacher, has, in a late work of his, ventured to condemn some of the prevalent customs of society-one of them being the fashion of living in boarding-houses. He shows how the idleness, gossiping, and rivalry, belonging to such a way of life, must have the worst and most demoralizing effect upon the minds of the women who adopt it. Having nothing to do, they come together and talk of all the world and his wife, and then separate to dress elegantly for the streets; then for dinner-and the gentle men. This the reverend gentleman considers, and, indeed, proves to be, one of the most terrible dangers of the society in which we live. He also puts forward some other appalling facts; the tendency of young men to shun marriage (on account of the fashion of extravagance and high living which it implies now-a-days), and the degrading habits resulting from such a state of things. Divines and moralists may well denounce the heartless and restless modes of our civilization, so barren in everything that makes life worth living for. But philosophy looks coldly to the root of these things, and shows that they can hardly be otherwise. The influences of the age, everywhere, tend to an uniformity and equality of conditions in society. It is so, even in monarchies; much more so in this great republic of ours. Industry and commerce produce the result in the former. In this country, both these principles, working with democracy, give that result more fully. The sentiment of equality is fatal to our republican simplicity-a notable fact. Not one of us really admits any social superiority in others. Being all ambitious, and desirous of going ahead, we press into the society of those more wealthy than ourselves. Trade and science help us give us the best clothing at a wonderfully cheap rate, and furnish us, on the same terms, with board in the finestlooking hotels. There is scarcely a clerk in the city who may not have some of the best fare and best society in it. And why should he not? We are all "bound to go ahead"-to mix with people, get the knowledge of men and things. and seize advantages. The man who will not do so, falls behind and is disparaged. A young couple find it a much more dignified thing to

board where they sit at table with Wall. street brokers, financiers, and so forth, than go to a small house in a cheap row, with a black steward's family at one side, and, on the other, an Irish drayman, whose wife takes in washing. They are almost out of the world in the latter case, and their respectability suffers, of course. If they wear a plain style of dress, they sink lower still, and may as well, with a good grace, admit the advances of the honest washerwoman. Such being the law of things in this energetic and rapid community, where all the sinews of progress are strained to their tightest tension, it is hard to see how people could live otherwise than they do. We are educated to all these habits and fashions. In order to reform them, we must educate the children differently. Let the moralists establish the proper kind of teaching, in the school -some teaching that will make us truly republican, and save us from going the way of all those other empires, debilitated and ruined by their inborn vices and rottenness.

-There is a custom in France, and also in the barbarous empire of the Czar, which we would do well to adopt in this more favored land of ours more extensively than we have yet done. This custom is the establishment of baby-houses—a system of child's play-so to speak-which would highly become the gravest people in the world. The meaning of it is, that poor women, who are obliged to leave home to work, day by day, for the support of their children, may leave the youngest and most helpless of them in charge of women and nurses, who will take care of them, feed them in the absence of their mothers, and deliver them up in the evening, safe and healthy, when they are called for. Our large cities have also their poor families, the women of which are obliged to go out every day to char, wash, or peddle, to the fatal detriment of their infants; and their miserable condition, in this respect, calls as loudly for relief as that of the French or the Russian poor. In Paris, the system works very well. There are several houses established where sucking children, and, we believe, those under the age of five, are received in the morning by the nurses and properly treat

ed. A crowd of little creatures is thus gathered together, the older ones set to play and amuse themselves, and the younger kept quiet in their cribs. Nurses are provided, who duly give the infants nourishment at the breast, or some wholesome substitute from the cowmothers also coming to their charges at mid-day, if possible. For this excellent aid and privilege, the mothers are required to pay about two cents a day-while, in some cases, the poorer infants are received for nothing. This system is carried out much in the same way at St. Petersburg. There is no need to eulogize such a scheme of practical humanity. The objects of it give it an interest, appealing at once to the kindly sympathies of every one in society. It is not hard for any one to imagine the injuries inflicted in the midst of us, on the children of the poor and improvident, during their infancy. And as matters stand at present, they cannot be helped. Poor women must work and leave their children to Providence. As yet, there is but one such establishment in this country that we are aware of "the Nurscry," at the corner of 15th street and the 6th avenue, in this city. Will none of our strong-minded women come forward and extend this blessed revolution in the matter of cradles and pap? Is it nothing to become the second mothers--the better mothers, of the ten thousands of the rising generation? Let our lovely revolutionists come and raise the cry of "Cradles!" Let them sing most appropriately—“ Allons, enfans de la patrie!" That will be the grand woman's Marseillaise and movement, that shall have the adhesion of all good men. When the ladies enter into it in earnest, all the editors will rise up and call them blessed-in the most corpulent type, to say nothing of the poor hard-working mothers, and their heart-felt gratitude. -People in England are still bent on looking for Sir John Franklin-discovering, if not himself, at least, his fate. At a meeting of the Geographical Society, in London, Lieutenant Pim, R. N., read a paper recommending a further search. He argued, that nothing in the relics found by Dr. Rae showed that any of the men belonging to the Franklin expedition had perished-none of their bones, or any other evidence to that effect. He believes it very possible that some of them, at all

events, are still alive in the wandering buts of the Eskimos. The missing ships probably reached King William's Land, and to that locality he would direct the renewed search. He proposed, that two small screw-vessels should be employedone proceeding through the Sound, and the other making its way, eastward, from Behring's Straits, while, at the same time, an overland party would travel north, along the Great Fish river-all bound for a stated rendezvous. Lieutenant Pim recommends small vessels and small parties, and, especially, the employment of dogs. Large parties exhaust provisions, and dogs guard best against the delays and losses resulting from sickness among the men. If the camel is the ship of one desert. the dog may be called the tug of the other-both indispensable by the human wayfarers. No doubt, those Arctic explorings are not at an end. Lady Franklin is still bent on the search, and very probably shares the belief of the lieutenant that some of the missing navi. gators are still in the land of the living. The belief is a reasonable one; and, in such a day of enterprise as this, when people go round the world, and up and down in it, for far less interesting purposes, no coldness of feeling or dullness of curiosity can prevail against the impulses of friendship and personal affection. No doubt, the secret of Sir John's fate exists among some of the Eskimo tribes, and an effective mode of inquiry would oblige them to reveal it.

-The Malays are a terrible sort of men, by all accounts. Having drunk bangfrom an insane hempen root that takes the reason prisoner-the root of all evil, in fact, in their country-they pull out a kris and tear away through the streets, thrusting and stabbing right and left, and victimizing every one that comes in their way. This is quite a customary thing, and is called a-mok-running a-mok. One time, a man, under the influence of bang, the mocker, ran about and did the most dreadful kind of execution in the highways, putting the whole community into a state of great alarm and amazement. But he was overpowered, manacled, and taken before the judge. He was not without friends, however; and an advocate was got, to plead for him and bring him clear out of the business. The plea was

a curious one. "The prisoner," said the pleader, "did run a-mok-he did stab right, centre, and left-did pitch horribly into the unsuspecting wayfarers." He then went on to tell the story of the mad fellow's life-told it with unction, showing how he was running a-mok from the beginning bitting, stabbing, and cutting down whenever he got an opportunity. Yes, that was the fact. People knew it all. The kris-wielder followed the custom, as if it did him good-as if he could not help it. As for the present case-be had done all that was charged-he had done more. He had cut down far more women and children than the people knew anything about. He, the advocate, could not tell how many-the man had massacred at such a rate. Nay, he had said that, if let go, he would go on, killing the people in the same way! Then the pleader called the man's father to show that the culprit, even from his cradle, was a bad, wicked fellow; which the father did, declaring that his son's bump of destruction was deplorably large. Medical men also came forward and declared that, having destroyed so many, he should not be held accountable for his actions. There it was, then, for the judge! This Malay had a mania for stabbing-was always a mokalways ravaging and striking-the like never was seen; and, therefore, the friends of the prisoner hoped the terrible, unaccountable fellow would be let off without punishment-and there an end of a crazy business!

Reader!-you are right; it was not a Malay at all! No; the thing never took place in Java. The maddest of Malays could never hope for such a defense in a court of justice. Mutato nomine, the story belongs to our own Knickerbocker peninsula. The real Malay was a Wall street broker, and the matter was a nine-days' wonder, last month. Some people still remember it.

-In Europe, the electric telegraph is extending its Briarean arms with great rapidity, and almost every capital on that continent is the centre of several lines, extending more or less on all sides. The sca is no barrier to the ramification; already a couple of wires run from London across St. George's Channel, connecting England and Ireland; another is laid from the same place through Dover, to Calais

and the continent, and one more through Orforduess to the Hague. Sweden is connected with the rest of Europe by wires running through the Belts and the Sound. France communicates with Algeria under the Mediterranean, and, in a short time, Western Europe will communicate with Malta, Constantinople, Alexandria, and, finally, with the Indus and the far East. But these shrink into insignificance compared with that enormous lightning-ligament of two hemispheres-the Atlantic Ocean cable, now about to be laid along the plateaux and valleys of Neptune's territory. One of the old Roman ways-the Appian, we believe-was called Regina Viarum, on account of its magnificence. We think that style, in modern times, mofe fitly belongs to that amazing tunnel of intelligence, as thick as the periphery of a sixpence, on which the thoughts of those hemispheres shall run to and fro with such celerity. There is no further doubt that the electric power will clear the vast leap, and the practical folk of England recognize the feasibility of a scheme which first found favor in our more ardent American imaginations. The English Government will help the project with a donation of £14,000 per annum, and also send vessels to assist our own in laying down the thin cable. It is stated that the operating steamers, British and American, will meet in the middle of the Atlantic, join their respective halves of the line, and, bidding cach other adieu, pay it out. as they steam away, one to Newfoundland and the other to a point on the western coast of Ireland. In about a year we shall be in the daily, unwondering habit of hearing the news of the day before, from London, Paris, Vienna, Hamburg, and Stockholm. We shall, also, by a novel, practical teaching, come to have a clearer general idea of astronomy, or, rather, the use of the globe, so to speak. We shall find ourselves nominally five or six hours earlier than the English, at any moment. When it will be ten o'clock in the morning here, the English clocks will say it is just four. We shall then recollect that, as the earth spins itself round on its axle, from this point-that is, the Westtowards the East, the British islanders will, of course, have rolled out of the dark into sunlight so many hours before ourselves. They see the sun first, and have toppled over, a good way down to the dark again,

when we are getting breakfast. We are behind them so much, in fact, in the history of the day. But, then, we "steal a few hours from their night, my dear," and so get our proper share of the twenty-four, in spite of them. Talking of a curious matter, we may mention a curious fact that both western and behind are expressed by the same word, Ier, in the oldest, half-dead language of the Celtic race. That seems rather an awkward omon for us, somehow. But, then, Bishop Berkeley explains it satisfactorily, where he says-"Time's noblest offspring is the last." Sursum corda! -A remark made by a writer in our little comrade periodical, the Schoolfellow, to the effect that girls should learn to skate as well as boys, is one which should not be lightly passed over. It is a matter which should be impressed on the minds of parents and teachers. We do not believe there is any better mode of feminine exercise in the world than that of skating. In the first place, it is eminently healthful; and, in the next, we know nothing more strikingly graceful than the attitudes of young women, in that bracing and bloodreddening pastime. The dance is nothing to it; not half so animating, or so bewitching, if we may use the strong language of the very young people. When we recommend anything to the ladies, it is very fit we should always keep in view those ideas of grace which must necessarily have such a great influence over them. A young lady, in a neat, succinct dress, balancing herself on a delicate pair of skates, and gliding along, beside a father or a brother, or in the midst of a merry group, would show a thousand times more attractively than another tripping down Broadway in all the glory of a balloon petticoat, and the evasive little bonnet of the empress's pattern. There is no indelicacy in such an ice amusement, where ladies are properly attended and know the movement. Female skating is no novelty; for, in one of the lands of our forefathers (Holland), the milk-maidens, with their pails on their heads, are described as gliding over the ice with rare speed and security. Others, of a higher order, make skating their amusement. In this country, where women become so pale, thin, and unhealthy, for want of the exercise which the sex accus

tom themselves to in other parts of the world, the custom of teaching the girls to skate as well as the boys, is one greatly to be desired. American ladies are highspirited; they, also, like a little innovation in the rough direction of the stronger sex. Well, here is what will exactly suit their ideas of change. Something which, as we said before, will help to make active children grow into healthful women, and, at the same time, give them the color and developments-the grace and the symmetry which, we hope, will always be the characteristics of the gentler sex.

-It is pleasant to notice that the same twelvemonth which saw Mr. Crampton going home, saw also the merchants of England and America uniting in annihilating the distance of the sea by the ocean telegraph, and heard the Queen of England saying, "Thank you, sir," to Captain Hartstein, upon the deck of the Arctic ship Resolute. The return of that waif upon the polar seas was a wonder; but, that America should send it as a gift to Eugland, is a strain of that poetry which is but rarely heard in history. The hearti ness of the English recognition of Ameri can courtesy, the special honors paid by the queen and her ministers to the captain and company of the returned ship, and the universal good-will of the English press upon the occasion are much the pleasantest incidents of the recent intercourse of the two nations. It is grave beyond pity, that there should ever be a serious misunderstanding between such chivalric powers. What was the Field of the Cloth of Gold, upon which kings met, to this meeting of nations, to clasp each other's hands as friends. The world is wide; the extremities of human peril have always united individuals; let us hail this omen of two great peoples, united by a common interest in a problem whose solution would be only a triumph of human heroism, not an increased facility of human intercourse, and who have helped each other in that Arctic peril as only friends can. When the Resolute's officers arrive in New York, escorted by English sailors, we hope that America's “welcome" to the queen's "thank you, sir" will be as audible in history as her ma jesty's.

« 上一頁繼續 »