H. W. PARKER.

one.

THIS book has come to us, wafted on a perfect gale of puffery. Did anybody ever see the like? People of the most opposite sentiments and characters-Calvinists, Unitarians, Evangelicals, Rationalists and Universalists, nurslings and veterans of literature, sage poets and shrewd critics-all agree in representing it as a very eclecticism of poetry, philosophy, morality and orthodoxy. Compared to the rest of contemporary literature," Festus," it seems, is an oasis in a desert-an Eden in a wilderness; and all that is profound, and original, and tender, and touching, and chaste, and voluptuous, is concentrated into it. "A most remarkable and magnificent production!" says "Contains poetry enough to set up fifty poets!" says another. The very inmost life of a sincere and energetic mind!" says a third. "A glory and perfection in the midst of comparative sterility!" says a fourth. Truly, the grand universal reconciliation has at last come about; as the Devil and the Deity have met together under our author's banner, of course there is to be no further strife between their followers. Had Shakspeare, during his lifetime, received half the praise which has already fallen to this man, he would probably have died-or done worse of too much glory. Since the publication of "Festus," the author is reported to have gone crazy. Our only wonder is, that anybody should have been so crazy as to think him sane. The

genius of humbug has obviously taken criticism by the nose, and can now give success to anything that comes along in book's clothing. Nothing can be offered so false, or foul, or flimsy, but some huge bellows stands ready to blow it into notoriety. Surely, at this rate, puffery must crack its cheeks pretty soon.

Doubtless, however, this is all as it should be; and we are by no means disposed to complain. It was but just, that Wordsworth's mild light should shine quietly in its place, until Robert Montgomery's will-o'-the-wisp had danced round the earth, and finally danced into it. So long as men need religious instruction, a theological quack or dandy, like Burchard or Maffit, will, of course, make pew-rents much higher than a modest, unambitious, Christian sage; were it otherwise, perhaps the pulpit might as well be dispensed with. The world would have no use for books of any kind, if it were already in a condition to distinguish and choose the good. There would be nothing for angels to do for us, could we recognize them when they come. Real worth suffices unto itself, as "virtue gives herself light through darkness for to wade." No man deserves popularity unless he be content to do without it; and we show a poor appreciation of merit, when we regret the liabilities which enter into the condition of its growth. He alone is fit to be a stay for others, who is

himself stayed upon truth; if a man be so stayed, popular censure will not shake him; if he be not, popular applause will rather blow him down than bolster him up. Assuredly, he who makes popularity the test of truth, knows not, and deserves not to know, what truth is.

Human society may be aptly enough compared to a pyramid; the number of individuals being greatest at the base, and constantly diminishing as we ascend. The higher the degree, the fewer there be that reach it; the noblest gifts cannot gain the summit without great labor, nor the greatest labor without noble gifts. Resting its broad base on the earth, the structure tapers up until it pierces the skies; so that whatever influences come from Heaven diffuse themselves from the apex downwards, ever widening as they descend, and reaching the bottom only by passing through all above. The eye is in the head, and it is only through the eye that the body can be filled with light. Thus, whatever enters at the summit comes in time to pervade the whole; but this order cannot well be reversed. With some such presentiment as this in their minds, authors were once foolish enough to write for the wise and good, that is, the fit and the few; they aimed to reach mankind by beginning at the apex and gradually working down to the base. But since every man has become just as good as his neighbor, and a great deal better, this foolish method has been abandoned; authors now begin at the base and work the other way. The reading democracy seem to have a sort of instinct that the natural course of wisdom is from the earth upwards, not from the heavens downwards; that truth passes through the base to the apex of the pyramid, not through the apex to the base. In the literary priesthood, therefore, as in the political, men must obviously be chosen and ordained from below, rather than from above; unless we suppose the pyramid inverted and poised on its apex, so that henceforth men are to begin at the top, and be promoted downwards. Of course it is those who need, not those who have had, most instruction, that are best qualified to select and commission instructors; for we must not so far sin against the wisdom of the age, as to presume there can be any better test and measure of truth than the voice of the majority.

But the practical result of this new order is, that the worst and weakest

books poll the most votes; the filthier or emptier a book is, the greater the number that can appreciate it; the lower it flies, the better its chance of getting whirled or sucked into the current of popular applause. The very ground of an author's success is, that he does not overshoot the reading democracy, and that, instead of aiming to make them wiser and better, he tries to persuade them they are already wise and good enough; for quackery always proceeds by appealing to the reason of its audience against the authority that challenges this faith. None are so easy to be duped as those who require their judgment to be convinced, and assume to see for themselves before they trust; that is, whose trust is altogether in themselves. But this is not all. Not only is the lowest book sure to hit the greatest number of readers, but it takes the greatest number of books to satisfy the lowest reader. Thus we have a double incentive to the making of bad books; reward is in a sort of geometrical ratio to worthlessness. Truth, plain and unattractive at first, always improves on acquaintance; the more one sees her, the more one wishes to see her; ever growing beautiful in proportion as she grows familiar, she of course rather precludes than provokes the desire of novelty and change; makes us prefer returning where we know she may be found, to venturing into untried regions in quest of her. But folly and falsehood always exhaust their attractions at a single interview, and the more they tickle the sooner they tire; one never wishes to see them twice in the same form, but is evermore chasing after the new forms in which they are evermore presenting themselves. Thus, the worse books a man reads, the more of them he wants; as it takes many objects to satisfy a man's lust, but only one to satisfy his love. Accordingly, the present age surpasses all others, both in the demand for new books, and in the supply of printed shams. From occasional showers, literature has become a continual freshet, which is so far from furthering vegetation, that it is even threatening to wash away the soil.

But our design is, not so much to censure the existing state of things, as to account for it. That such a book as "Festus" should jump into a reputation which Paradise Lost has even yet hardly grown into, is truly a most significant phenomenon; one which we shall be apt to regard as ominous or auspicious, ac

cording to our faith in human progress. Doubtless it results, in part, from the democratic principle of reversing the old order, and putting the base, or broadest layer, of society uppermost; that is, of submitting the gravest matters to the judgment of those who are least capable of understanding them; and who, if they were competent to decide who or what is best adapted to instruct them, obviously would not need to be instructed at all. How far publishers are concerned in originating and maintaining the present order, is not for us to say. One can hardly help seeing that their interest lies most in mediating between such as want nothing but puffs for their labor, and such as want nothing but shams for their money; and they probably would not be publishers, if they were ambitious of martyrdom in any cause but that of selfinterest. Besides, when readers turn democrats, it is to be expected that writers will turn demagogues; and publishers are in duty bound to furnish both parties with every practicable facility for the process of mutual gulling. Far be it from us, therefore, to blame publishers for the course they take. Doubtless, they are as worthy a class of cormorants as any other; and are perfectly right in humbugging those who will consent to patronize them on no other conditions. If, then, acting as mediators between vanity and gullibility, they do give the shadows to both sides, and take the substance to themselves; if they dispense notoriety to authors and nothing to readers, and pocket the results of the process, surely no one ought to blame them; 'tis their vocation. But enough of prologue. "Festus" is certainly a most marvelous book; nearly as marvelous as General Tom Thumb, or the Kentucky giant; and perhaps all had better read it, just to see what strange things a great genius can produce, and an enlightened public can appreciate. Like other monsters, the book is altogether original; nothing else like it ever was, or, we trust, ever will be produced. In this we must be understood to speak of the book as a whole; for where the whole is so excruciatingly original, of course many of the parts can afford to be borrowed. The author obviously undertook to give a dramatic development of a certain theory. We think he has succeeded to admiration. As is the soul of the work, so is the body; we know not whether to admire it more for the principle or for the

details. The whole work, in spirit and in form, is "rickety, disjointed, crazy" enough to suit the most fastidious epicure of lawlessness and deformity. To all those who take darkness for depth, and rudeness for strength; whose brains have got enriched with transcendental fury, and whose minds are big with vagueness and vacuity, it cannot be otherwise than a most delectable repast; in its meaningless jargon they will often find most admirable expressions of their own thoughts.

Like most philosophical poems, as they are called, "Festus" is neither good science nor good poetry, but an indescribable medley, which, so far as we know, has never been appropriately named. The book contains neither prose nor verseneither fact nor imagination; is made up neither of persons nor of propositions; instead of life-like characters and passions, we have a long, tedious masquerade of abstract ideas; and, generally, the only hint vouchsafed of a change of speakers, is in the names prefixed to the speeches. Lucifer, it is true, preaches some very strange doctrine; but not stranger than the hero, Festus. They seem, indeed, but duplicates of the same idea-twin apostles, giving a biform development of the same theory; and, for aught we can see, the discourses of both might as well have come from the same person. On the whole, they are a little the oddest man and devil we have ever encountered; and it is somewhat doubtful which shows more wit-the devil in attacking such a man, or the man in yielding to such a devil. Doubtless, however, both are right and true in their kind; for they are altogether unlike anything else the human mind ever found or fancied. Lucifer, to be sure, is somewhat given to pouting against both God and man; nevertheless he is, at bottom, a real friend of both; and is, indeed, the only true days-man betwixt them.

a

The author is evidently a philanthropist, and belongs to that class of reformers who are going to do anything that ought to be done, and prevent everything that ought to be prevented, by love. Love, with him, has obviously settled into " fixed idea;" it is the only idea he has ; and he has not more than half of thatif, indeed, he had the whole, it would not be his only idea. Like others of his class, he seems to regard God as a mere philanthropist; religions as mere humanity; and the idea of retribution, divine or human, as too absurd to need refutation. Man,

he would argue, is too noble a being to be punished, and God is too philanthropic a being to punish him, here or hereafter. The viler and wickeder he becomes, the better opportunity he presents for the exhibition of the Divine philanthropy; and it is for this purpose that the devil has been commissioned to seduce and deprave him. Our author would recognize nothing as true, or beautiful, or good, for which love is not the best expression; power, wisdom, justice, honor, righteousness, holiness-all these he would degrade into empty synonyms of love. Man, whatever he may be or do, is but the object of love; is to be taught, governed, disciplined, developed, by love; and the fierce wars which we read of between Michael and Satan, were but lovers' quarrels after all, destined to end in a most loving match and lasting honeymoon. All just authority on earth and in heaven resolves itself into love, and enforces itself through love. Love, indeed, is the only absolute thing in the universe; whatever does not finally run up into this, and cannot be realized in and through this, had better not be, and, on the whole, is not. He knows no law nor gospel but love; will sanction no feeling towards God, or man, or devil, but love; will seek no heaven, and worship no divinity, but love. He finds nothing in nature but symbols of love the wind, the rain, and the sunshine, plague, pestilence, and famine, the lightning, the tempest, and the earthquake-all, all are but expressions of love. He will allow no attribute to God but love, no engine to government but love, no arm to authority but love. All crimes against heaven and humanity are but occasions of love; all chastisements and corrections are but exhibitions of love; life, light and divinity are to be loved into us; death, darkness and deviltry are to be loved out of us. That the book teaches, or rather, does nothing but teach, this shallow, conceited, despicable moralitya morality which could only spring up from the ashes of all manly thought and passion, and which goes to desiccate the soul of every just and noble and generous sentiment; that the book teaches this arrogant and impudent morality-the offspring of weak heads and foul hearts-is, doubtless, enough of itself to account for most of the applause it has received.

Now, we profess to have some regard for "the law of love;" but when love is thus degraded into mere philanthropy pushed to the exclusion of the more truly

religious sentiments, such as fear, awe, reverence; in short, when, for the God of love is substituted a mere deification of love, we must be excused from it altogether. True, we are told," God is love;" but then we are also told, "God is a consuming fire;" that is, to imperfect beings. He is an object of fear as well as loveand, we may add, of fear in proportion as they are imperfect. On this point, therefore, we will venture to suggest there is such a thing as an union of love and fear-a thing which our author, in common with many others who have grown wise beyond what is written, probably cannot understand. To love without fear, or to fear without love, is, indeed, comparatively easy; but then either of these, and especially the former, is considerably worse than nothing. For when one gets to loving without fear, he is apt to presume he has the perfect love which casteth out fear; forgetting that, according to this, there must be some fear for love to cast out, and that none but a perfect love has a right to cast it out; so that his love becomes proud, conceited, irreverent-is, indeed, no love at all, but only a sort of appetite. Thus do all such supercelestial aspirations generally end in rather subterranean attainments. Scorning so base a sentiment as fear, and reaching at once to the nobler sentiment of love, we only miss them both. The truth is, we have to begin with the humbler virtues before we can reach, and in order to reach, the higher. Our feelings cannot leap from earth to heaven at one bound; they have to climb up over many steps before they get there, and in order to get there; and it is to be feared they will hardly get there at all, if they scorn the degrees by which it is appointed for them to ascend. If, therefore, we can rise to so high a feeling as fear, we may account it a special gift of grace; and when we find ourselves free from fear, we may be assured we are below it. But is not love the fulfilling of the law? Yes; and so is the flower the perfecting of the plant; but, as nature now is, and will probably continue to be, we have to accept of several things before we can get the flower, and even cultivate them in order to get it; and what kind of floriculture is that which prizes the flower so much as to dispense with the root, the stalk and the leaves ? In like manner, assuredly, all love that is worth the name, begins with fear, and grows out of it; is, in some sort, conceived and born of fear, and ripens up