bler reward of discharging a useful duty to their country in the most useful way, by staying behind to dignify with their presence the scene of their birth and their labors. Thus, while Victor Hugo, Scribe, and Sue, must of necessity engross all eyes in Paris, such men as Bodin and Mahé are content to publish the fruits of their learned researches in the midst of the regions to which they refer. Indeed, so completely is this principle acted upon, that if you want to procure a particular history or an account of the antiquities of any particular place, your best chance is to inquire for it in the place itself. It frequently happens that such works never find their way into Paris through the ordinary channels of trade. form a social union with their guests; but the constitutional frigidity of the English forbids the bans. In this respect the English, when they shape themselves into a community, keep up all their old notions. to the letter, even towards each other. There seems to be no exception to this rule; they are the same in all places. There is not a solitary instance of an English settlement in which, as far as possible, the entire habits, root and branch, of the mother country have not been transplanted bodily, without the slightest reference to the interests or prejudices of the surrounding population. The English are the only people in the world who do this-the only people who could do it. The Germans, who The gradual effect of an English settle- resemble the English more than any other ment in a French town is to spoil it. In nation in every thing else, differ from them course of time, it becomes a French town widely in this. Wherever they go, they anglicized, neither French nor English, but adapt themselves to the country, and are a bad mixture of both, like a bifteck Anglais uniformly distinguished by the simplicity with a heavy sweat of garlic in it. The and economy of their style, their noiselessEnglish mode of settling is something in ness and bonhommie. In America they are its nature utterly averse to the whole the- beloved for these qualities, and for keeping ory of French life. The English are for clear of wounding the self-respect and nasettling in the most literal sense-for col- tional pride of the people. The English lecting round them all the conveniences glory in running counter to the prejudices and fixtures and comforts of home-for sit- of the world, and throwing out the angular ting down with a strict view to the future-points of their character with the irritability for shutting out the weather and the eyes of the hedgehog. of their neighbors-for keeping themselves. In the midst of all this purse-proud dissnug and reserved and select, (select above play, there is a real meanness, a small huckall things!)-for quiet dinners and tea in stering spirit that constantly betrays itself. the evening for in-door as diametrically In these very cheap places they are always opposed to out-of-door enjoyments, carpets, complaining of the great expense of living, blinds, screens, and pokers-and for nursing and the frauds that are practised on them. themselves up in habits contradictory to It is a common accusation to bring against the spirit of the people, the climate, the tra- the French, that they have two chargesdi tions, the usages of the country. The an English charge and a French charge; but French are exactly the antipodes of all this. the evil must be set down, along with other They hate staying in one spot-they are petty antagonisms, to the responsibility of all flutter, open doors, open windows, and those who make the market. When the open mouths-they cannot keep in the English shall have learned to live like the house-they abhor quiet dinners-and fix-French, they may hope to be let in under the tures, conveniences, cupboards, and com- French tariff. It is not surprising, all circumforts, are so many agonies in detail to them.stances considered, that the French should They are in a perpetual whirl, sleep about five hours out of the four and twenty, and shoot out of bed, like quicksilver, the moment they awaken, ready for the same round again. Repose is essential to an Englishman it is physically and mentally impossible to a Frenchman. The latter makes the most of the present moment: the former is always laying up for his children. In fact, the Frenchman lives for to-day-the Englishman for posterity. The French, to do them justice, would be willing enough, from an habitual preference for the lesser horn of a dilemma, to regard our Cheapside countrymen with a little distrust and no very great good will. One cogent reason for it is, that they know, sure as the swallow brings summer, the English bring high prices. Wherever they cluster together, they raise the markets; partly by increased demand, and partly by that mammon swagger, which is one of the vices of the national character. Formerly an inhabitant of a small town in a cheap district, might live comfortably on 1200 francs per annum and keep his servant; but the English no sooner set up a hive there, than he is obliged to dispense with his do mestic, and forego a variety of enjoyments in which he used to indulge. He formerly led a life of insouciance; now he leads what may be called a hard life. He is borne down by the market prices, which, although cheap to the English, are ruinously dear to him. How could it be expected that he should like the people who have brought all this upon him, and who boast all the time of the benefits they are conferring on the country by spending their money in it? The situation of a handful of English settlers is not less curious in reference to their relations with each other. The struggling pride, personal vanities, and class prejudices of the old country, are here to be seen as efflorescent upon the decayed offshoot as upon the original stock. Five hundred a year performs the role of aristocracy. They are in the last degree suspicious of each other. No one knows why his neighbor, just arrived, has set up his tent in this cheap district; but malice is fertile in suggestions. There are other reasons besides small means for going abroad, and it sometimes happens that a visit to the continent is merely a liberal extension of the rules of the Bench. Of course, if there be mystery in the case, people are not overcharitable in their constructions. Religion often forms a subject of contention for lack of something better to do. Unbeneficed clergymen occasionally speculate on these little communities, and the small profit to be gained by administering spiritual respectability to them is every now and then scrambled for like a beadleship. A conflict of this kind took place recently at Avranches, where the rival candidates carried their hostilities so far that they almost went to fisticuffs in the church! ON THE DEATH OF MY INFANT CHILD. From the Metropolitan. A MOTHER'S kiss, O beauteous clay! Upon that alabaster cheek, (As fair, as firm, as cold !) Upon that little icy hand Receive another kiss! Angel!... thou'st join'd the white-rob'd band, THE FRENCH AT TAHITI-We have been furnished, says the Plymouth Times, with an extract from a letter written by an officer of her Majesty's ship Vindictive, under date of the 12th of March last, containing very important intelligence respecting the further proceedings of the French at the island of Tahiti, and the consequent departure thence of an English naval officer with despatches for our government at home. The following is the extract alluded to:-" Her Majesty's ship Vindictive, Tahiti, March 12, 1843. Since I last wrote on the 28th ult., the state of affairs here has much changed, and the intelligence is of such moment that Captain Nicholas is about to send off ActingLieutenant Williams in a schooner with despatches for our government. Lieutenant Little and Lieutenant Hill will go home in the schooner. They will go to Panama, then overland to meet the English packet in the West Indies, and I think will reach England in ten weeks. The French have been at their old system of lying They have sent home a proclamation, stated to have been sent to the Tahitians, complaining of the manner in which the French have been treated by them, charging them with several violent and unjust acts, and demanding of them 10,000 dollars, or possession of the island, for security for their good behavior. Now this proclamation contained nothing but lies When we commenced this article, it was immediately refuted the contents. -was never made to the people, who would have It is made up our intention to have pursued the inquiry only for the purpose of blinding the eyes of Euthrough a variety of details, with an esperopean Powers. We have a French frigate here cial view to the recorded opinions of EngThe French have a provisional lish travellers; but we have already occu- government, and hoist the Tahitian flag with the tricolored French in the upper corner. This flag is pied all the space that can be spared from still flying in a small island in the middle of the demands of a more pressing nature. Per- harbor, as well as at the government house on shore. haps we may return to the subject, for we We have, however, made a high flag-staff for our are confident that a searching examination flag, and hoisted it opposite the palace. The queen dined on board the Vindictive a few days ago, tointo the prejudices by which it has been gether with several chiefs and their wives. The hitherto tabooed will not be unproductive of table was spread on the after part of the quarter some utility. She was received with a captain's guard, and saluted with 21 guns, both when she came and when she went away. The yards were manned, the officers were in full dress, and at night the ship was illuminated. We know not how long we shall continue here. I hope our ministry will not be enThe officer with the trapped by the French.' royal mail steamer Teviot, on the 4th of August, despatches alluded to arrived at Falmouth, by the and immediately proceeded to London.-Colonial Magazine. But it may be asked why we undertake to expose these national weaknesses ? We answer, because we would rather do it ourselves than leave it to be done by others, and because we are not unwilling to show the world that our integrity and courage are superior to our vanity. and a corvette. deck. PLEASURES, OBJECTS, AND ADVANTAGES |from the meaner gifts of nature. The rents OF LITERATURE INDICATED From Fraser's Magazine. This article will be read with great interest. -ED. and the ungracefulness of the common garment of humanity are covered, in some degree at least, by the beautiful girdle of literature. III. Bishop Burnet, among the hints which he specifies towards the formation of an idea of God, reckons the perception which we have of a desire to make other persons wiser or better.* "I felt," says Burns, "some strivings of ambition, but they were the blind gropings of Homer's would not rejoice to pour the sunshine I. HUET complained, that while all the world had heard of the misfortunes of men of genius, no book had appeared to record their happiness. If Huet were now living, he would not, perhaps, think it necessary to recall his complaint. It is perfectly fit that, in the journey of the pilgrim of litera-Cyclop round the walls of his cell." Who ture, the lights should be marked as well as the shades; and that, if we recollect that the Glossary of Spelman was impeded by unsold copies, we should also remember the hours of absorbing delight which its compilation afforded to him. Leland mentions a Gothic library in an old castle of the Percys which was called Paradise; and the inscription over the great Egyp tian library described it as the hospital for sick souls. Books are both flowers and medicines; and it becomes every person It is pleasing to contemplate the effect of to cultivate, with anxious patience and the first ray of light upon the understandcare, those habits of literary occupation ing; to watch the leaps and lifet of thought and rational curiosity, which are so bene- with which the scholar welcomes it, and ficently adapted to sweeten the vicissitudes the glowing face of wonder, gratitude, of fortune, to impart dignity to active toil, and affection, which he turns to every oband cheerfulness to sequestered leisure;ject:this occupation and this curiosity being always kept subordinate to the great object and end of human life; i. e. moral and religious cultivation and purification. Thus associated and endeared to each other, LITERATURE will be seen under the wings of the Angel of Religion; and while the first engages the buoyant energies of our health or gilds the gloom of our sickness, the second will teach us to extract a sweeter honey from every flower, and will bring all the splendor and peace of a future life, to illuminate and trauquillize all the blackness and anarchy of the present. II. Human life is one prolonged series of compensations. "Great offices will have Literature is one of the channels by which these compensations are supplied. In Homer, it is Minerva who conceals the wrinkles of Ulysses; so, among men, we observe wisdom covering the defects of the body, and education imparting a charm to the intellect, which turns the eye aside * Huetiana, p. 163. 1770. + Task, b. iv. "By degrees, the mind Feels her young nerves dilate; the plastic powers Labor for action." Every fresh gleam of knowledge awakens an intenser sensation of pleasure. Petrarch, who was ignorant of Greek, received a copy of Homer from the Byzantine ambassador; he placed it by the side of Plato, and contemplated them both with admiration and enthusiasm.§ Aristotle distinguished the learned and the unlearned as the living and the dead; and the man, whom he supposed to be conducted into the world for the first time, from some subterranean cavern, when the sky was spangled with stars and the earth illuminated by their lustre,-could not have been surprised into livelier feelings of awe and admiration than are felt by him who, led up from the dark recesses of ignorance into the pure air of civilized life, beholds all the luminaries of genius shining in the remote world of literature. That blows from divers points, and shifts its name, It shines for all; it illuminates all. What a contrast to an earlier age! The villageschool of the nineteenth might confound The frost-work of modern renown does, the court of the fifteenth century. The indeed, melt away before the glare of a famous Montmorency, so prominent in the brighter name; but the poets and hishistory of Henry IV., could neither read torians of older times built upon firmer pil. nor write; and even in the golden day of lars. The works of Greek and Latin genius French literature, when Moliere wrote and exemplify the assertion. The Gothic night Bossuet preached, Louis XIV. could not subcame down upon Europe. During the long scribe his own name until he had sketched dark ages, Homer, Virgil, Cicero, Demosan outline of it. His signature was com- thenes, Livy, Plato, were forgotten or unposed of a series of industrious combina-known; but still these temples of thought tions.t V. The characteristic of all human en-shadows unbroken, their gates unopened. shone in their solitary splendor, their vast joyments is fragility-decay; the vacant Without were gloom and barbarism, and the chair chills the gaiety of the domestic storm of anarchy: within were light, and hearth; the colors of the painter fade; the fragrance, and song. So through the darkness and tempest of centuries, the ritual of genius continued to be solemnized. The Eneid flourished when the empire of Augustus was in ruins. structures of the architect moulder into ruin. Two sources of delight alone remain, which defy the continually recurring wave of years-Religion and Literature. Of Religion-heavenly, incorruptible, immortal VI. We speak of the perpetuity of Liter-as it admits of no comparison, so it perature; but it is only in the works of sinmits no panegyric. Of Literature something cere genius, that this seed of earthly immay be spoken. Fame shuts the gates of mortality is wrapped up; it is the precious her Temple upon Time. The armor of fragance of a good name that embalms an Paris glows with the same lustre that daz-author for succeeding generations. Literzled the eyes of Hector; the dew still ature loves and teaches peace and goodglistens upon the Sabine Farm; no feather will; the disputers, the wranglers, the has dropped from the wing of Lesbia's mockers, obtain no protection form her sparrow; no tint has departed from the purple robe of Dido. The arrow, that pierced the Persian breast-plate at Marathon, has mouldered in the earth; but the arrow, which Pindar hurled from the Bow of Song, retains its life throughout successive ages; like the discus thrown by Hippomedon, it sweeps onward arm, no shadow from her wing. The coarse invective of Salmasius, and the rugged irony of Milton, their grips and their challenges, the vanquisher and the vanquished, are equally and alike forgotten and the struggles, that once agitated the breasts of a nation of spectators, have left no more enduring impression upon the surface of literature, than the feet of Spartan wrestlers upon the sand of the arena. VII. "Books are not seldom talismans and spells." So Cowper sang. The works of genius are always full of magic; rings upon which the genii always wait. The scholar adopts, in the widest sense, the advice of the epigrammatist σεαυτοῦ φρένα, περπε. Every book is to him a landscape of beauty. The history of Æneas rises before his eyes with all the distinctness and circumstance of a panorama. He sees him, by the light of burning Troy, avenging the ruin of his country; then carrying his father upon his back, and leading by the hand the little Iulus, who follows with unequal steps; Creusa holds out the child to his arms; he follows the wanderer to the hall of Dido, and beholds the enveloping mist melt away; he hears the trees roar in the sud den storm that drove the lovers into the cave, and resembles the minstrel of Beattie, when "Sweet delirium o'er his bosom stole, When the great shepherd of the Mantuan plains Sappho, the tears of Simonides,-these are only a few notes from its many-sounding strings. Here the Graces guide the finger of Sophocles upon the harp; there Philosophy holds her lamp over the page of Plato. On this side, Truth whispers her subtle oracles in the ear of Aristotle; on that side history weighs the actions of heroes in her golden seales, before the earnest borate harmony seems to animate the harp eyes of Thucydides. The soul of this elathe eloquence, the philosophy, and the fanof Homer, whose poetry was the source of cy of Greece. To him belongs peculiarly the panegyric of Browne, This magic, indeed, dwells especially in the writers of Greece and Rome, for their the writers of Greece and Rome, for their life is, in a manner, continued in ours.* They become to us a peculiar people; death, which deprived us of them, has made them dear. Perhaps some of the interest with which we regard them may be traced to the period of life when they were put into our hands. The garden of life is then a garden of romance. The eyes of youth, full "For there is hidden in the poet's name A spell that can command the wings of Fame." of hope and expectation, communicate their own lustre to the commonest ob- Criticism always kindles into admiration jects, a lustre which sometimes sheds a before his shrine. "Such a sovereignty of rich coloring over the colder atmosphere genius reigns all over his works, that the of maturer years. The charm of associa- ancients esteemed him as the great hightion increases the power of the spell. The priest of nature, who was admitted into book is endeared to our heart by the friends her inmost choir, and acquainted with her and thoughts which it recalls to the mem- most solemn mysteries.' The modern ory; friends and thoughts that belong to taste, which is original only in its heresies, the morning of our day, when the sun of has been anticipated even in its illustrated hope was only beginning to climb the hori- poets; Rome possessed its pictorial Homer. zon. This feeling often dims the eye of The Camden professor, at Oxford, deciage, when it wanders again over the story phered upon a coin of the Gens Mamilia a of Robinson Crusoe, and often stirs the figure of Ulysses returning to his home,heart of the scholar, grown gray with the a fact that not only establishes the early vigils of years, when he meets with a worn- celebrity of the Homeric poems in the Laout school-book; each leaf brings back to tin metropolis, but shows, also, the delinehim the hands that are cold and the voices ations of the most interesting incidents that are silent. Perhaps his affection some- upon the escutcheons of private families. times blinds his eyes to the defects in the Every page might furnish a subject for the objects of his admiration. Descartes con- artist. Raphael sent designers into Greece fessed, that through his life he had enter- to supply him with drawings of antique retained a particular regard for persons who mains; to such diligence the world owes squinted, having in early life been attached the "Transfiguration !" to a girl whose eyes were affected in that manner. VIII. The language of Greece is alone a source of insatiable pleasure. It was to the poet, the philosopher, or the orator, what the clay was to the sculptor, flowing with equal facility, into every attitude of beauty, horror, supplication, or triumph. Paris binding on his sandals, Hector urging forward his army, Penelope bending over her embroidery, or Ulysses recognized by his dog, each representation is equally natural, equally admirable. Homer found in words a softer instrument than the clay of Praxiteles. Who can sound the depths of that inimitable language? The boisterous mirth of Aristophanes, the pleasing elegance of Philemon, the mild irony of Menander, the majesty of Pindar, the fire of * Dr Arnold IX. In contemplating the pictures of Homer, and of all the ancient writers, we discover a peculiar charm and sweetness, which they derive from that softening twilight of years into which they have been withdrawn. Delille briefly indicated the essential defect of the Henriade, by saying, that it was too near the eye and too near the age; and Campbell suggests, that Milton might, with greater liveliness of effect, have thrown back his angelic warfare into more remote perspective. Every reader perceives that the scenes of the camp and the battle-field strike his eyes less vividly when contemplated in the clear sunshine of modern history, than when gradually glimnering out through the cloudy horizon of time. The mind is more feebly affected by Napoleon storming the bridge of Lodi, or * Blackwall. Introduction to the Classics, p. 14. |