man born to see, who insists upon speculating. The sum and substance of our faultfinding with Herman Melville is this. He has indulged himself in a trick of metaphysical and morbid meditations until he has almost perverted his fine mind from its healthy productive tendencies. A singularly truthful person -as all his sympathies show him to behe has succeeded in vitiating both his thought and his style into an appearance of the wildest affectation and untruth. His life, we should judge, has been excessively introverted. Much as he has seen of the world, and keen as his appreciation is of all that is true and suggestive in external life, he has turned away habitually, of late years, at least, to look in upon his own imaginations, and to cultivate his speculative faculties in a strange, loose way. We do not know a more curious and instructive spectacle than some of his books afford, of the conflict between resolute nature and stubborn cultivation. Nature says to Herman Melville, "You shall tell the world what you have seen and see, in a warm, quick, nervous style, and bring the realities of life and man before your readers in such a way that they shall know your mind without calling on you to speak it. You shall be as true as Teniers or Dofoe, without the coarseness of the Fleming or the bluntness of the Englishman." Obstinate cultivation rejoins: "No! you shall dissect and divide; you shall cauterize and confound; you shall amaze and electrify; you shall be as grotesquely terrible as Callot, as subtly profound as Balzac, as formidably satirical as Rabelais." Sometimes, nature, for a while, carries her point, and then what charming pages we have; what pictures, rather than pages, pregnant with truth and wise with beauty! Sometimes obstinate cultivation has it all her way, and then what a maze we get into; what a whirl of fantastic names-of unintelligible quotations-of alarming mysteries! Skeletons grin at us; waves wash over us; monsters glower at us, until, in our bewilderment and despair, we are ready to take the place of that Casabianca of the Pacific, Tashtego, who goes down in the story of "Moby Dick," nailing the red flag of Ahab to the mast of the sinking Pequod, and, with the flag, the wing of an unhappy falcon which swoops down at a fatal moment for itself upon the fluttering ensign. Take the novel of "Redburn," for instance, which, though one of the least known, is by no means one of the least clever of Mr. Melville's works. A more extraordinary mixture of sense and nonsense, of accuracy and extravagance, of exact portraiture, and of incredible caricature, than this novel presents, can hardly be found. Master Redburn, going to England, meets in that country (which one would say ought to be tolerably well known by this time to the world in general, and to writers of fiction in particular) with things untold before in song or story, book of travels or cyclopædia. encounters gentlemen of decayed families who go about from door to door of respectable houses with their faces blacked, and banjos in their hands, singing "at the service" of the amiable inmates in their handsome drawingrooms. He also sees, standing at the open window of a flashing carriage, and in a very interesting posture, an extremely elegant gentleman, with a small, glossy head, like a seal's, who "poses with the sole of one boot vertically exposed so as to show the stamp on it -a coronet !" He He also visits a wonderful place of entertainment, wherein good or bad wine and good or bad luck are dispensed by a "very handsome florid old man, with snow-white hair and whiskers, and in a snow-white jacket, who looked like an almond-tree in blossom." And he falls in with an individual, whose 66 aspect was damp and death-like; the blue hollows of his eyes being like vaults full of snakes." All this is sufficiently startling, unnatural, and lamentable; and, by the side of all this, we come suddenly upon the freshest and finest writing-upon stories of nautical adventure, told with a grace that Marryatt never approached, and a fire that Cooper never surpassed! As with the larger so is it with the smaller works of Mr. Melville. He balances the charm, and truth, and hazy golden atmosphere of "Las Encantadas" against the grotesque absurdity and incomprehensible verbiage of the "Lightning Rod Man." The two latest published books of our author differ considerably from their predecessors, in the degree in which they exhibit the characteristics of the classes of writing to which they respectively belong. Israel Potter" is a comparatively reasonable narrative, embodying a story of the national war of independence, which may almost be considered a national legend. In the main, it is a coherent story, and is told with considerable clearness and force, but it lacks the animation that pervades those writings of Mr. Melville which, in other respects, it resembles. Two characters of a somewhat fantastic strain figure in it, Benjamin Franklin being represented as one of the prosiest possible old maxim-mongers, though the epoch of his life selected for the story is just that time at which he was living brilliantly at Paris, and cracking rather irreverent jokes with the Abbé Morellet; and Paul Jones comes and goes through the story-a veritable hero of melo-drama-sullen, scornful, unappeasable, and impracticable. The "Confidence Man," on the contrary, belongs to the metaphysical and Rabelaistical class of Mr. Melville's works, and yet Mr. Melville, in this book, is more reasonable, and more respectful of probabilities, possibilities, and the weak perceptions of the ordinary miud than he usually is when he wraps his prophetic mantle about him. The "Confidence Man" is a thoroughly American story; and Mr. Melville evidently had some occult object in his mind, which he has not yet accomplished, when he began to paint the "Masquerades" of this remarkable personage. 66 The Confidence Man" comes into the book, a mute, on board of a Mississippi steam-boat. He is "a man in cream-colors, whose cheek was fair, whose chin downy, and whose hair flaxen, and whose hat was of white fur with a long, fleecy nap." But for the fact that this singular being is presented to us as quite dumb, one might suppose that Mr. Melville meant to give us the portrait of a distinguished metropolitan editor, and, in this way, to suggest some clue to his purpose in the story. But this theory, of course, cannot be advanced for a moment, and the cream-colored man in the white hat goes off again into space at the end of this part (for the volume already published only begins the work) just as much masked as when he came. In the interval, he does a great many very odd and rather reprehensible things. He comes and goes very mysteriously, and assumes new shapes, though he always betrays himself by a certain uniformity in the style of his thoughts and his machinations, which also communicates itself to the conduct and the conversation of the parties whom he meets. From the barber on the Mississippi boat to the Methodist minister, who believes in the sword of the Lord, there is not a character in the book who does not talk very much like all the others. Save for its greater reasonableness and moderation, the "Confidence Man" ought to be ranked with "Moby Dick" and "Mardi," as one of those books which everybody will buy, many persons read, and very few understand. Ought Mr. Melville to write such books? Will he continue to write such books always? We do not hesitate to return an emphatic "No!" to both these questions. Mr. Melville has rare gifts; he has a sound heart, a warm and lively, though not now healthy, imagination, a vigorous intellect-somewhat given to crooked courses-and a brilliant reputation, which is also a gift, as enabling a man to work his best work to the best advantage. We expect much from him. To use the emphatic words of a Winnebago chief, who dissented from the missionary doctrine of the goodness of Providence, on the ground that the Winnebagoes invariably had more rain in their country than they wanted, while the Sacs and Foxes had more cattle. than they could eat, we expect, from Mr. Melville, more beef and less thunder." We desire him to give up metaphysics and take to nature and the study of mankind. We rejoice, therefore, to know that he is, at this moment, traveling in the Old World, where, we hope, he will enjoy himself heartily. look about him wisely, and come home ready to give us pictures of life and reality. It cannot be possible, that a man of Mr. Melville's genius is to go on forever producing books which shall deserve such praise as was bestowed upon "Mardi" by a bewildered French critic in the Revue des Deux Mondesbooks which resemble "the dream of a badly-educated midshipman, drunk on hasheesh, and swinging asleep at tho mast-head of a ship in a warm, tropical night!" 66 The thing is absurd; and Maga, who loves her step-son Melville, as if ho were wholly her own, knows perfectly well that he is destined to do her and his country much honor and much good. Honor and good, too, Maga expects from Mr. Melville's younger brother in letters, Mr. George William Curtis. For he, too, has an individuality of his own, and has won for himself a distinct place in our young literature. If the five volumes, which bear his name, and lie before us now, cannot be taken as the measure of their author's capacity, they do, at least, indicate very fairly the qualities of his mind. Α stronger contrast than they afford to the works of Mr. Melville it would bo hard to find. Both writers are, evidently, men who wish to be thought and felt to be in earnest; but Mr. Melville takes as much pains to protest his earnestness as Mr. Curtis takes to conceal his. Mr. Melville is always as grave in his gayeties as Mr. Curtis is gay in his gravities. Mr. Melville has so much fancy and so little taste that he goes about accompanied by a grotesque troop of notions, whose preposterous attire more provokes the laugh than their numbers excite the respect of the world. Mr. Curtis has not so much fancy, but a great deal of fine instinctive grace, and the ideas which he introduces always do him credit by their style and accoutrements. Neither of these writers is natural enough, and enough at his case to do himself full justice; for, while Mr. Melville throws himself off his balance by an over-eagerness to be prophetic and impressive, Mr. Curtis loses his through an over-anxiety to be moderate, judicious, and experienced. The same kind of mischief which has been done to Mr. Melville, by his study of Rabelais, has been done to Mr. Curtis by his admiration of Thackeray. In the one case, as in the other, we cannot but commend the fanaticism whose effects we deplore and try to point out; for a good, hearty, unreasonable love of anything or anybody is an excellent thing for body and soul, and we shall never quarrel with it. But, in the one case as in the other, we wish to see the admirers shake themselves free of their admiration so far as to find out that it is leading them astray. If Mr. Melville is as little like the curé of Meudon in his character as in the circumstances of his life, Mr. Curtis resembles Thackeray neither in the constitution of his mind nor in the position from which he contemplates the world. Thackeray is a man of strongly sensual nature, whose originally genial instincts have been damaged by the habits of his life, and by the action of domestic sorrows, trials, and wretchedness, as well as by his continual contact with the most diseased classes of European society. He is a British Bohemian, a man really capable of excesses and of coarseness, a man really familiar with the sins and the degradations, the acute sufferings and the morbid ill-health of the modern world. The satire of Thackeray is poignant and bitter, because he has drank of the bitterest cups which can be held to the lips of man, and he dwells on all the littlenesses, disappointments, short-comings, and affectations of life as if he were trying to persuade himself that there was, after all, nothing to be looked for, in life, but littlenesses, disappointments, short-comings, and affectations. You cannot read Mr. Thackeray's books without learning to pity the writer of them, for you see that he is a terribly disappointed man, and that he knows himself why he is a disappointed man, and would be only too glad if he could talk hopefully. He is constantly compared to Fielding-but life left to Fielding a thousand things which it has taken from Thackeray, and the tone of "Tom Jones" no more resembles the tone of "Pendennis" than the tone of King David resembles the tone of the author of Ecclesiastes. But, if Thackeray does not much resemble Fielding, still less does Mr. Curtis resemble Thackeray. We do not say that Mr. Curtis's experience of life has been spiritual and sunny, but it certainly has not been sombre and sinful. The melancholy, natural to his mind, is milder, less morbid, and, therefore, we think, wiser and more genial than the sadness of Thackeray. It is a melancholy which does not bring with it much positive pain. On the contrary, if we were to cast about for an exact description of the leading characteristics of Mr. Curtis's temper, as it appears in his writings, we should be inclined to quote those charming verses in which La Fontaine says of himself— "J'aime les livres, la musique, La ville et la campagne; enfin tout; il n'est rien Qui ne me soit souverain bien, Jusqu'au sombre plaisir d'un cœur mélan colique." The dispositions of Mr. Curtis's humor tend, we should say, toward enjoyment, hopefulness, and generous faith. His satire is not satire, but a kind of graceful caricature which amuses more than it moves. In a series of papers, which have done more for his reputation than any of his other writings, Mr. Curtis undertook to sketch the vices and the follies, the odious and facetious aspects of American society. These sketches were modeled upon the same general plan which Mr. Thackeray had adopted in his "Yellow Plush Papers," and his "Letters to a Young Man about Town." But to pass from the Deuce-aces and the Browns to the Potiphars and Miss Tattle, is like going from the Gymnase to the Variétés. In reading the essays of Thackeray, you shudder at the faithful anatomization of a corrupted social order-in reading the papers of Mr. Curtis, you are amused at the exaggeration of a few exceptional types, when you are not made indignant by hasty and sweeping generalizations. You do not need any extrinsic testimony to convince you that whilo Thackeray is giving you only a very partial view, even of his own experience, he is, nevertheless, giving you the realities of his own experience so far as he gives you anything. And you need as little any extrinsic testimony to satisfy you that Mr. Curtis is mingling his notions with his observations. The one writer is obviously in his vocation-the other as obviously out of his. The success of the "Potiphar Papers" might have ruined a less-gifted and right-minded author; for it was a factitious success founded partly upon real qualities. The grace and vigor of the style were comparatively new in American magazine-writing, while the misrepresentations and extravagances of the delineation delighted a people given to caricature, and not very amiably disposed towards the classes which Mr. Curtis was supposed to have satirized. How completely Mr. Curtis can emancipate himself from the mistaken direction which he took in the "Potiphar Papers," was sufficiently proved by the character of his discourse delivered, during the last summer, before the students of a New England university. Mr. Curtis's career, as a speaker in behalf of the Republican party, is at once the sharpest criticism upon his satirical efforts, and the most hopeful indication of the future that lies before him, to which we can point. The experience of that career should throw him back resolutely upon himself. In the best of the "Prue Papers," in the "Nile Notes," and, above all, in that most charming of his works, the "Howadji in Syria,' he may study the positive qualities of his own mind, and learn afresh how clear and fine a field there is for him to till. We do not measure him, nor should he measure himself, by his achievements; we hope for him and he should hope for himself, in his instincts. He has fine sensibilities, a just and generous temper, a very genuine sense of humor, and a large command of our noble English tongue. If he will put less faith in essays, and more in endeavor, if he will devote himself with a sterner resolution to seeing with his own eyes, and will more studiously distrust his own graceful facility, we shall not say just what we anticipate that he will achieve, but something we are sure he will do more worth the doing than anything he yet has done. While young men dream dreams, Mr. Curtis will never lack guests in the chambers of his magic Chateaux;" while old men see visions, many an eye will grow dim with a tender mistiness in gazing through "Titbottom's Spectacles;" the banks of the Nile shall rememember the Western Howadji long after the last "Golden-sleeved Commander" shall have vanished, with Cambyses and the Pharaohs, Tamerlane and Napoleon, from the sight of the eternal Sphinx; and poetic young tourists will muse with him over their sandwiches among the ruins of Kamak, and smoke with him in silence beside the rivers of Damascus. for many a year to como What he has done will suffice to keep Mr. Curtis's name from subsiding wholly into some quiet corner of the cyclopædias; but it will not make his memory as a star in the firmament, nor soothe himself with a sense of true and passionate enterprise. Still less will it content him with a consciousness of true and enduring achievement. As it is, we count him among the very few men of our country and time from whom we have a right to expect yeoman's service in the noble strife of high ambitions and just purposes. It rests with him to win the golden spurs which, when won, no man will wear more worthily than he. WITCHING TIMES. A NOVEL IN THIRTY CHAPTERS. CHAPTER XVI. A FEVER, hot as a desert sand-whirl, swathed More's consciousness for a while, and allowed him to see but very dimly the true forms and tendencies of external events. The blow on the head, the fierce excitement of the scuffle, the tremors of rage which occasionally swept through his mind, forced him to the verge of delirium, and held him swaying there during twenty-four hours. Taken in one sense, the pistol butt of Herrick fell as a blessing rather than an injury, inasmuch as the first shock of imprisonment and mortal peril could scarcely be very harshly perceptible to a man who was hovering on the borders of lunacy. He lay in a kind of stupor most of the time, sleeping a great deal, and sullenly refusing to answer the visitors, whether elders or magistrates, who addressed him. 46 By noon of the second day, the crisis was past, and he felt quite vigorous and wakeful again. The door opened, and the jailor entered, bringing him a wooden platter of roast meat and boiled turnips. Good," said More. "Set it close up to me. I believe I didn't eat anything yesterday. But how comes it that I am solus? Where are the other prisoners? I thought Giles Cory was here." "They changed your room last night. Don't you know? They put you in the addition. Cory was here; there you're right; but they took him out this morning to examine him. He refuses to plead. Don't you know? They'll fetch him back pooty soon." "Refuses to plead ?" said More. "Good. What should he plead for, when the judges will take nothing but confessions?" Further remarks were interrupted by a rustling of feet and a clanking of chains in the entry, followed by a knock on the door. Daunton opened it, and Giles Cory entered, thrust in by Herrick, whose sombre face looked venomous with anger, as, keeping his hand clutched in the prisoner's neckcloth, he pushed him savagely across the room, and almost flung him headlong upon a heap of straw opposite More. "You dumb devil, we'll force you to speak," said he. "We'll fetch it out by-and-by in screams and, roars." 66 Sheriff, if I speak, it won't be in this life," said Cory. "I shan't never plead before your court, no matter what torture you put to me." "We'll press you, man," said Herrick. "We'll press it out of you. You'll talk fast enough when you feel the breath squeezed out of your body." "I stump you to it," was the reply. "I can stand pain like an Injun; and a good deal better than Injun John," he added, with a knowing look at the sheriff. He took his dinner from Daunton, and fell to eating with a very hearty appetite. The jailor fastened his chain to a ring in the floor, and left the cell, followed by the malignant Herrick. Cory looked up as he heard the key grind in the lock, and, meeting his companion's eyes, nodded with a smile of brave, though rather sad, sympathy "How are you now, Master More ?" said he. You was a leetle dreamy when I spoke to you last." "Strong and hearty now," replied the hunter, though his bloodshot face and eyeballs somewhat belied the cheerful assertion. "Is there no chance of getting our heads out of this trap, Cory? Pecking a hole through the wall, or something of that sort?" If we was in for a year it might be," said the other. "I could gnaw through in that time. But our chore will be done up afore a month is over. And then them cussed elders keep a coming in, every few hours, to pray at us and ask us to confess; or there's an examination afore somebody; or some old woman is fetched here to confront us, and fall down at us; and all the while, two of the trainband outside with their pieces primed. Oh, it's no use, I reckon, to think of getting out by main force. We've got to stand our trials, and most probable go up the ladders as we best can, which is very hard, perhaps, but has been done by more nor a dozen already-and not one of 'em flinchingnot even old Jacobs. But it's tough, awful tough, for a fellow to think of his wife in this same situation. There's Margaret in the woman's room, jest as I'm here. Elder Parris has excommu |