in the midst of a generation of official theologians; keen publicists, who contented themselves with political speculation, but never had ambition for affairs; scholars, who accumulated, but never published.

What has been the case in New England in such limited sense as a provincial civilization affords is emphatically illustrated in England. The story still lingers of that unhappy heir to an earldom, who, vainly struggling in the meshes of fortune which forbade him to be anything but an earl, finally broke away altogether, took another name, shipped before the mast, and sought independence by absolute suppression of his inherited self. That was an exceptional case in its outward rebellion, but it was typical of a class easily recognizable by any one familiar with English social life. In a less ungovernable form, the temper finds expression in the eccentricity which appears frequently in the English man of wealth and social position, but more significantly, though less noticeably, in the lives of men and women who are not in rebellion, but simply are, so to speak, non-resistants; who oppose to the demands of society an effective inertia, and are not only content to live far from the madding crowd, and forbidden by their lot to read their history in a nation's eyes, but positively shape their lives after ideals which magnify their simple occupations and seem to set their being in a large place.

Some such figure one may discover in James Smetham, whose name is known incidentally to students of William Blake literature by a thoughtful article which he contributed to an English periodical as a review of Gilchrist's Life of Blake, and which Mrs. Gilchrist reprinted in the second volume of the new edition of that Life. In referring to this article, Mr. D. G. Rossetti, in this new edition, wrote as fol

1 Letters of James Smetham. With an Introductory Memoir. Edited by SARAH SMETHAM

lows: "Some personal mention, however slight, should here exist as due to its author, a painter and designer of our own day, who is in many signal respects very closely akin to Blake; more so, probably, than any other living artist could be said to be. James Smetham's work, generally of small or moderate size, ranges from Gospel subjects, of the subtlest imaginative and mental insight, and sometimes of the grandest coloring, through Old Testament compositions and through poetic and pastoral themes of every kind, to a special imaginative form of landscape. In all these he partakes greatly of Blake's immediate spirit, being also often nearly allied by landscape intensity to Samuel Palmer, in youth the noble disciple of Blake. Mr. Smetham's works are very numerous, and, as other exclusive things have come to be, will some day be known in a wide circle. Space is altogether wanting to make more than this passing mention here of them and of their producer, who shares in a remarkable manner Blake's mental beauties and his formative shortcomings, and possesses besides an individual invention which often claims equality with the great exceptional master himself."

1

This was written presumably in 1880, or thereabout, when Smetham had passed into that mental eclipse which is so delicately referred to in the volume of Letters which constitutes the fullest record thus far published of his career. We quote it because, brief as it is, it sets Smetham forth upon his artistic side somewhat more sharply than the book itself, which is more fully occupied with a presentation of Smetham's intel lectual and religious nature. The brief introductory memoir by Mr. Davieshimself, we suspect, to be classed under the head of private geniuses may be read profitably after as well as before the reader has become directly acquainted with Smetham through the letters. and WILLIAM DAVIES. London and New York: Macmillan & Co. 1891.

These letters, extending over a score of years, and addressed mainly to the writer's intimate companions, though a few were written also to men like Ruskin and Rossetti, who valued him for his gifts in art, but scarcely belonged in the inner circle of his friends, impress the reader by their exceeding delicacy of form, and slowly reveal a nature very rare in its fineness of spirit. Evidently they are drawn from a much larger mass, and they must be taken also as differing only in outward form from a considerable body of notes upon life, literature, art, and religion, accumulated by Smetham in the course of a patiently laborious and loving life led on simple lines. To the world looking on casually he was a not over-successful painter, a teacher of drawing, an occasional contributor to periodicals. To the world brought more closely into contact with him he was a devout man, a class-leader in the Methodist connection. To his immediate friends he must have been a grave but not austere man, tremulously susceptible to the faintest suggestion of beauty, whether in life, in nature, or in art; giving expression in conversation and in writing to searching, suggestive thought, and putting into his pictures a depth of meaning which cost him a travail of spirit.

Indeed, without knowing his pictures save by description, we cannot avoid the conclusion that, though the simple domestic subjects, conscientiously painted, brought a genuine pleasure to the painter, the more serious pictures made such demands upon his sensibility that he chose, almost from necessity, to throw his thought and feeling rather into his writing, and that thus his writing became, through long practice, more firm and expressive. One seems to discover, as the years lengthen, a deeper tone to his writing, and yet a more confident touch, as though the pen came to be his preferred implement. Yet with all this there appears to have been little craving

for publicity, and his letters and memoranda continued to be for himself and his dearest friends.

Be this as it may, the reader comes to be indifferent to Smetham's fame, and even to his artistic production, and takes an extraordinary satisfaction in intercourse with this privacy of genius. With him he is willing to leave the outer world, and take his pleasure in the cool shades of a reflective life. The sincere humility which characterizes Smetham's connection with the plain people to whom he was a religious teacher and leader does not seem another or incongruous element in a nature which was keenly susceptible to beauty. Rather, one is disposed to regard it as only another phase of that reverential attitude which Smetham took toward art. The penetrating, often very subtle observations which he makes to his friends on religious themes could scarcely, we may think, have formed the staple of his instruction to his humble disciples, yet there is an utter absence of anything like condescension in his habit of speech regarding these disciples. The rare blending of lofty thought, acute criticism, and gentle, affectionate interest in common things and common men so marks the entire nature of this delicately organized man that superficial incongruities disappear, and the unworldliness which confronts us is integral, not conventional. We make no quotations from these letters, though it would be easy to do so, but we advise all who have not lost their taste for elevated thought, shy pleasure, gentle humor, and pure sentiment, touched throughout with an unaffected, simple, but deep piety, to linger for themselves over the pages of this unusual book.

During the last twenty years the South has been fruitful in writers of novels and short stories. Cable, Harris, Page, and Miss Murfree, for instance, have done work which, in their own lines, has not been surpassed. It has been much less fruitful in writers of a more

serious kind; and hence we welcome with especial pleasure a book so excellent alike from the literary and the historical standpoints as Professor Trent's biography of the almost forgotten South Carolina novelist, Simms.1 Mr. Trent is evidently not only a man of wide reading and a close student of literature, but also, what is much more important, a man of originality and of historic insight, capable of seeing the facts as they are, and fearless enough to state his conclusions as he sees them. His book is a credit to the scholarship of the South, and is a real addition to the list of American works which deal with both our literary and our political history; and this means, of course, that it is a real addition to English literature, using the words in their larger and proper

sense.

Simms was much the most considerable of the Southern school of writers in the years before the war, for Poe belongs to no school and no section, and he was the most prolific novelist, essayist, and (Heaven save the mark!) poet this country has ever produced. Yet he is now almost completely forgotten. It is probable that most people, even among those who are fairly well read, do not so much as know the name of an author some of whose books, at least, are well worth a permanent place on our bookshelves. It is a pleasure to record the fact that a faithful few have always remembered him, and that in the Atlantic Monthly itself there appeared, a couple of years ago, an appreciative review of his novels.

Mr. Trent has prepared himself for his task very carefully and faithfully. He has searched out all the available material, printed or in manuscript, dealing either with Simms's life or his writings. He possessed two great advantages at the outset, a thorough acquaintance

1 William Gilmore Simms. By WILLIAM P. TRENT. [American Men of Letters.] Boston and New York: Houghton, Mifflin & Co. 1892.

with American literature, and an intimate knowledge of old-time life in the Southern States. Finally, to a very real and affectionate sympathy with and regard for Simms, a sympathy and regard which his readers are sure in the end to share, he has added a noteworthy clearsightedness and impartiality of judgment which give his criticisms of men and events a permanent value. He has thus been able to produce a book which stands high even in so excellent a series as that

in which it appears, a series which, in Lounsbury's Cooper, has given birth to the best piece of literary biography that has been produced anywhere of recent years.

Simms was born in Charleston, South Carolina, in 1806, and died in 1870. All his literary work which was worth doing was done between 1834 and 1856. Throughout his life his home was in South Carolina, but he made repeated trips to the North and to the Southwest. He traveled and sojourned for months at a time among the Creeks and the Cherokees, and he lived much with the hardy white borderers; he was therefore familiar with Indians and frontiersmen as they really were, knowing both their faults and their virtues. Moreover, he knew well "the wealth of beauty and charm hidden away in the chronicles and traditions of his native State." He had the good sense to see the rich and virgin fields which lay open to him, and he made these fields his own. Of his poems, polemics, and historical and literary essays nothing need be said here. He made his mark in the two series of border and of historical romances. In the former he is not at his best, though in them he gives some valuable sketches of backwoods life, and draws some striking pictures of typical backwoods charac

ters.

His really excellent historical romances, such as The Yemassee and The Partisan, are the works upon which his title to lasting fame must rest. To begin with, these romances possess the

merit of being eminently readable, — no slight virtue, though some modern bookmakers apparently look upon it rather in the light of a defect. In the next place, though of course a disciple in the school of Scott and Cooper, he did original work in a line which no one else had taken, and which was well worth taking. His romances dealt with certain picturesque phases of Carolinian history which had fired his imagination. His mind was saturated with the legendary and historical lore of the Carolinas, while he had been born and brought up in the very localities about which he wrote. He was therefore "following out the universal principle of literary art which requires that a man shall write spontaneously and simply about those things he is fullest of and best understands." He tried to charm his readers with a true picture of the deeds and the times by which he had himself been charmed; and he succeeded. He was equally successful in describing the warfare waged by the early colonists against the Indians, and the bitter, harassing struggle between Tarleton's red dragoons and the weather-worn troopers of Marion.

Unfortunately, his faults were many and grave. His natural talents were great, but his education was very defective, and he lived in a society totally devoid of a creative literary atmosphere. He had no idea of such qualities as thoroughness, finish, and self-restraint. His style is hurried and slipshod; many of his passages are wooden or bombastic; and his petulant impatience of criticism forbade his gaining any profit by experience. At one time he was foolish enough to make ventures in the field of European romance, only to meet deserved and dismal failure. Yet, in spite of all these failures and shortcomings, Mr. Trent is right in stating that Simms has fairly won his place among American men of letters.

Of Simms the man Mr. Trent writes

most interestingly. He shows us a brave, dogmatic, generous -hearted man, who went wrong politically, as all his associates did, but who was incapable of a mean or cowardly action; a man of genuine even if misguided patriotism; an indefatigable literary worker; and in the days of sore trial after the war a pathetically courageous spirit, toiling unceasingly, in the teeth of overwhelming disaster, for the welfare of his children and friends; in short, a man who commands our heartiest respect. Mr. Trent realizes that no biography is complete unless not only the man, but his surroundings, are clearly outlined; and he describes very appreciatively, and sometimes humorously, the now utterly vanished life of the old South. He grasps the essential features with remarkable clearness; and his sketch abounds in many interesting details, the letters to and from Beverley Tucker offering a case in point. There are one or two small and unimportant slips for instance, in one place he seems to confound two of the Bonhams, and occasionally his English is too colloquial; it is difficult to defend the use of such a word as "vim." But these are merely trivial errors.

The most valuable portion of the book is that portraying Simms's relation to the political movements which culminated in the civil war. Mr. Trent strikes his true theme when he writes as a historian; and if he fulfills the promise of this book he will eventually stand in the first rank of our politico-historical writers. He possesses the rare quality of "seeing veracity," as Carlyle phrased it; he knows things as they really are, and recognizes their true significance. He understands that men may believe in a cause with a touching earnestness and sincerity of conviction, and may battle for it with a valor so heroic as to make all their right-thinking opponents doubly proud that they can still call them fellowcountrymen; and that nevertheless this same cause may be historically indefen

sible. He goes straight to the root of matters, and, in fixing on what really brought about the civil war, he brushes aside with good-humored contempt the cobwebs of childish sophistry which some well-meaning but not over clear-headed writers still persist in trying to spin around the subject. He has far too much common sense, he possesses a mind too well trained in the consideration of historic problems, and he has studied too deeply, to waste his time in seriously discussing such propositions, for instance, as that a battle for human slavery can really be a battle for civil liberty; and he has too keen a sense of humor to pay heed to the re-thrashing of constitutional theories which are now of as little interest as the theses over which the mediaval schoolmen wrangled, or as the seventeenth-century dogmas concerning the divine right of kings.

In sum, Mr. Trent has produced a work of excellent performance, which contains the promise of still better things to follow.

The power which the mind of a great man may impart to the mind of a young man may some day be the subject of investigation in scientific hypnotism. Certain it is that there have been great instructors in the world who seem to have given to their pupils impulses, or ideas, or qualifications, or ambitions, by which the latter have risen into prominence. Certain it is that two of our American colleges, small, obscure, and exceedingly poor in material equipment, have produced beyond their due proportion men possessed of the faculty of becoming prominent, and that these successful men have ascribed their success, with wonderful unanimity, to two great teachers. That is to say, two microscopic specks upon the chart of population, hardly discernible by the unassisted eye, have suddenly thrown off judges, generals, governors, legislators, members of the cabinet, and even Presidents, - not perhaps abstract thinkers or scholars, but

men who have become eminent in contact with other men. It is also noticeable that the greater minds seem to be those which are most deeply impressed by the great teacher. At the beginning of the civil war, Mr. Seward was, we will not say the greatest or wisest of Americans, but certainly the American statesman most prominent in both Europe and America. The boyish exclamation of the Prince of Wales in 1859, "Mr. Seward, I have heard so much of you in England that I am very glad to see you before I leave this country," evidenced the position he had obtained under the most adverse conditions, and in the most trying political period of our history. The graduate of Williams who is best known to his countrymen, and indeed to the world, is, of course, President Garfield; and the lives of these two Americans seem wonderful instances of self-construction. Yet each attributed his success in life to his college president, held him in the greatest reverence, deferred to him, sought his counsel, and warmly declared him to be the greatest, wisest, and best of men.

It is manifest that one who could so profoundly affect the minds and lives of some of the greatest men of our time cannot have the story of his long life fully told in this small volume1 of the Religious Leaders series. In strictest terms, Dr. Hopkins was not a leader of religious thought. We should reckon as such, Luther, Calvin, Loyola, Knox, the Wesleys, Edwards, Channing, Pusey, Newmen who, right or wrong, led, and led upon new religious lines. We might indeed turn back a century in the same family, and properly take Dr. Samuel Hopkins as a leader of religious thought. But the late president of Williams was possessed of a great and contented mind. The fifth chapter of Matthew formulated his theology; and

man,

1 Mark Hopkins. By FRANKLIN CARTER. [American Religious Leaders.] Boston and New York: Houghton, Mifflin & Co. 1892.