freedom and licentiousness, and like the under-bred | this effect is produced by distortion and exaggerapretender to gentility, mistake impudence and tion? Is not his object, and indeed the main purforwardness for gentlemanly ease. pose of writing, answered? I answer that it is not.

Of this class of innovators, Mr. Carlyle must In the first place, the extraordinary effect of these be considered as the leader. Possessed of unques-clap-traps for the reader-of these spurs to quicken tionable talent, he seems determined, by pushing the flagging intellect-of these flaps imported from the late licentious novelties of style, and such others as he can devise, to the farthest verge of extravagance, to be the founder of a new school; and this honor, some of his complacent admirers are already disposed to award him. Assuredly no writer has taken such freedoms with the English language-not even the wildest rant of our July orators, or the silliest twaddle of the Re

view-or, in thus "overdoing termagant," and out-heroding Herod, has so violated every rule of purity, elegance, rythm and propriety, for the sake of unduly pricking the lagging attention of the reader. In a word, his purpose is to give to what he writes all the piquancy he can, provided it can be understood, and even to risk making it unintelligible, if only he can make it pungent.

Laputa is but temporary. Whenever this caricature style of writing becomes familiar, as it soon must, it loses all that first recommended it both to its inventors and imitators. Besides, with the few whom an author would be most ambitious to please, and who are the final dispensers of literary fame, the difference between elegance and coarseness, between harmony, delicacy, polish and propriety on the one hand, and ruggedness, homeliness and rusticity on the other, can never be abolished; nor where the latter qualities are wanting, can any bold, new, odd devices of language supply their place. Whatever may be the stimulus of their novelty, real beauty, melody and grace will assert their sway over the human heart, as certainly as we find that the burlesque sketches of CruikMr. Carlyle's style of writing corresponds to shanks do not impair our relish for the beautiful the caricature style in painting, which aims to creations of Italian sculpture or painting, or that produce effect by as much distortion and exagger- a farce, however ingenious or comic, cannot superation as is consistent with resemblance. His object sede the higher merit of tragedy or genteel cois to rouse the attention and quicken the concep-medy. Nor can the slip-shod, uncombed, unwashtions of his reader; and not trusting solely to the originality, or force, or justness of the thought, to derive what aid he can from the quaintness and strangeness of the expression. He is, in this way, sure of the praise of boldness for his new, wild, out of the way phrases, if for nothing else, with the vulgar herd of readers, who are all the while kept in a sort of wonderment, very much as if they were listening to the mixture of rhap- The style that has been thus reprobated, has sody and burlesque of a clever man half drunk, or been, with some slight qualifications, warmly on the verge of insanity. If there be anything in commended by the London and Westminster Rethe thought that is truly just, and sensible, and view, in its notice of "The French Revolution," striking, as there often is, the author is likely to in the July number. The reviewer admits that obtain the more credit for it by reason of the odd "a style more peculiar than that of Mr. Carlyle, language in which it is conveyed. The awakened more unlike the jog-trot characterless uniformity attention into which the reader is surprised, is which distinguishes the English style of this age regarded by the admirers of this style, as evidence of periodicals, does not exist." He admits, too, of a livelier and clearer conception of the thought. that some of the peculiarities of this author are But in this they are often mistaken. A caricature mere mannerisms, "from some casual associations, may be, and not unfrequently is, obviously like and that some of his best thoughts are expressed the original; but the resemblance is commonly in a phraseology borrowed from the German metafar inferior to that of a regular portrait by a mas-physicians." But after these admissions, the reter. The pleasure it gives arises not so much from viewer adds: "These transcendentalisms and the the fidelity of the likeness or the skill of the artist, accidental mannerisms excepted, we pronounce as from surprise that there should be any resem-the style of this book to be not only good, but of blance where there is so much exaggeration. The surpassing excellence; excelled, in its kind, only grotesque may divert us by its oddity and incongruity, but it is only the beautiful that inspires us with admiration.

But, as some may say, if the mass of readers are pleased, and if they are made to attend to those facts and propositions which the author wished to impress on their minds, what does it signify that

ed muse of Don Juan, with all the genius, wit and caustic satire she displays, ever throw Childe Harold, or Pope's Rape of the Lock, or his Moral Essays into the shade. No one knew this better than Byron, who, if he had not written other and better poems than Don Juan, would never have indulged his perverse humor in such a vagary.

by the great masters of epic poetry; and a most suitable and glorious vesture for a work which is itself, as we have said, an epic poem." I cannot resist the temptation of citing one or two specimens of this style of "surpassing excellence," and which the reviewer intimates is to be the model of all future historians. They must be considered

as fair specimens, as they are among those selected hope reached; down even to us? Hunger and hardship are not to be eternal! The bread we extorted from by the eulogising reviewer himself. the rugged glebe, and with the toil of our sinews, The fourth book thus opens in one of the au- reaped and ground, and kneaded into loaves, was not thor's soberest moods:

"The universal prayer, therefore, is to be fulfilled! Always in days of national perplexity, when wrong abounded, and help was not, this remedy of States General was called for, by a Malesherbes, nay by a Fenelon: even parliaments calling for it were 'escorted with blessings. And now behold it is vouchsafed us; States General shall verily be!

"To say, let States General be, was easy; to say in what manner they shall be, is not so easy. Since the year 1614, there have no States General met in France; all trace of them has vanished from the living habits of men. Their structure, powers, methods of procedure, which were never in any measure fixed, have now become wholly a vague possibility. Clay, which the potter may shape this way or that:-say rather, the twenty five millions of potters: for so many have now, more or less, a vote in it! How to shape the States General! There is a problem. Each body-corporate, each privileged, each organized class, has secret hopes of its own in that matter; and also secret misgivings of its own,-for, behold, this monstrous twenty-million class, hitherto the dumb sheep which these others had to agree about the manner of shearing, is now also arising with hopes! It has ceased, or is ceasing to be dumb; it speaks through pamphlets, or at least brays and growls behind them-in unison,-increasing wonderfully their

volume of sound."

wholly for another, then; but we also shall eat of it, and be filled? Glorious news (answer the prudent elders,) but all too unlikely!-Thus, at any rate, may the lower people, who pay no money taxes, and have no right to vote, assiduously crowd around those that do; and most halls of assembly, within doors and without, seem animated enough."

On the preceding passage the puffer of a brother reviewer remarks," Has the reader often seen the state of an agitated nation made thus present, thus palpable? How the thing paints itself in all its greatness-the men in all their littleness! and this is not done by reasoning about them, but by showing them." Letting this pass, I will cite one more passage, in which the author thus opens a chapter with a notice of the rescue of the Hotelde-Ville from the flames:

"In flames, truly-were it not that Usher Maillard, swift of foot, shifty of head, has returned.

"Maillard, of his own motion, for Gouvion or the rest would not sanction him-snatches a drum; descends the porch-stairs, ran-tan, beating sharp, with loud rolls, his rogue's-march; to Versailles! allons; à Versailles! as men beat on kettle or warming-pan, when angry shebees, or say, flying desperate wasps, are to be hived;

The next chapter thus notices the election of and the desperate insects hear it, and cluster round it,deputies to the States General:

"Up then, and be doing! The royal signal-word flies through France as through vast forests the rushing of a mighty wind. At parish churches, in townhalls, and every house of convocation; by bailliages, by senechalsies, in whatsoever form men convene; there, with confusion enough, are primary assemblies forming. To elect your electors; such is the form prescribed: then to draw up your writ of plaints and grievances, of which latter there is no lack.

simply as round a guidance, where there was none; so now these menads round shifty Maillard, riding-usher of the Châtolet. The axe pauses uplifted; Abbé Lefevre is left half-hanged; from the belfry downwards all vomits itself. What rub-a-dub is that? Stanislas Maillard, Bastile-hero, will lead us to Versailles. Joy to thee, Maillard; blessed art thou above riding ushers! Away then, away!

"The seized cannon are yoked with seized carthorses: brown-locked Demoiselle Théroigne, with pike and helmet, sits there as gunneress, with haughty eye and serene fair countenance;' comparable some think to "With such virtue works this Royal January edict; the Maid of Orleans, or even recalling 'the idea of Pallas as it rolls rapidly in its leathern mails, along the frost- Athene.' Maillard (for his drum still rolls) is, by heavenbound highways, towards all the four winds. Like rending acclamation, admitted General. Maillard hastsome fiat or magic spell-word;-which such things do ens the languid march. Maillard, beating rhythmic, resemble! For always, as it sounds out, 'at the market-with sharp ran-tan, all along the quais, leads forward Cross,' accompanied with trumpet-blast; presided by with difficulty, his menadic host. Such a host, marched bailli, seneschal, or other minor functionary, with beef- not in silence. The bargeman pauses in the river; all eaters; or, in country churches, is droned forth after wagoners and coach-drivers fly; men peer from winsermon, 'au prône des messes paroissales;' and is regis-dows,-not women, lest they be pressed. Sight of tered, posted, and let fly over all the world,-you behold sights: Bacchantes, in these ultimate formalized ages! how this multitudinous French people, so long simmer-Brown Henri looks from his Pont-Neuf; the monarchic ing and buzzing in eager expectancy, begins heaping Louvre, medicean Tuileries see a day not theretofore and shaping itself into organic groups, which organic seen." groups, again, hold smaller organic grouplets; the inarticulate buzzing becomes articulate speaking and acting. By primary assembly, and therefore secondary; by 'successive elections,' and infinite elaboration and scrutiny, according to prescribed process,-shall the genuine 'plaints and grievances' be at length got to paper; shall the fit national representative be at length

laid hold of

Such is the work which the reviewer pronounces "not so much a history as an epic poem," whose extravagancies of diction, often is tasteless as they are affected, he would place in the same category with the inspirations and exquisite art of "How the whole people shakes itself, as if it had Shakspeare and Milton, of Homer and Virgil, of one life; and, in thousand-voiced rumor, announces Tasso and Ariosto, of Byron and Scott. It is the that it is awake, suddenly out of long death-sleep, picturesque and graphic character of Mr. Carand will thenceforth sleep no more! The long-looked-lyle's book, on which the reviewer founds so outfor has come at last; wondrous news, of victory, deliverance, enfranchisement, sounds magical through rageous a panegyric. These are sufficient in his every heart. To the proud strong man it has come; eyes, not only to redeem it for the faults he has whose strong hands shall no more be gyved; to whom noticed, but also to exalt it into poetry. But he boundless unconquered continents lie disclosed. The weary day-drudge has heard of it; the beggar with his evidently confounds the separate provinces and crust moistened with tears. What! To us also has excellencies of poetry and of prose. The purpose

Sweet is the breath of morn, her rising sweet,
With charm of earliest birds; pleasant the sun."
And when she goes on to describe the most
striking beauties of nature, the most poetical part
of the passage is when she adds,

"But neither breath of morn,
-without thee is sweet."

&c.

Paradise Lost, IV, 639.

of poetry, at least of the higher species, is to address itself to our sense of the beautiful and the grand, and by means of the artifices of language, to enkindle, through the medium of the imagination, the same rapture and enthusiasm which produced it. But how circumscribed is this purpose, compared with that of prose, which seeks to transmit every shade of thought as well as feeling, that can arise in the human mind? Its most frequent and its worthier object being to inform and instruct, its immediate aim is often not so much to excite feeling as to allay it or prevent it. It indeed also endeavors to please by the decorations of its language and imagery, but pleasure is its means, not its end. The graces of diction and the embellishments of fancy are useful auxiliaries to keep up the reader's attention, and to illustrate a subject by presenting a new object of resemblance. These are the legitimate purposes of ornament in prose, and when carried further, it is used as some use their finery, not so much for setting off their per-use is to enhance the reader's pleasure, so that sons, as for making a display of their wealth.

But if we were to disregard the well-settled distinction between poetry and prose, it would be a very mistaken and insufficient theory of the former to consider its graphic power as its only, or even its highest excellence. Whatever ideas are conveyed to our minds through the eye, whatever visual objects assist in exciting emotion, as to these, the more vividly the poet can exhibit them the better. But he has much to transmit that is independent of form or color-much that has no sensible properties whatever. How many noble sentiments, tender feelings, deep seated emotions are best transmitted by the most shadowy abstractions, and can be transmitted in no other way! Of this character are many of the finest stanzas in Childe Harold, as for example:

"Oh! ever loving, lovely and beloved!

How selfish sorrow ponders on the past,
And clings to thoughts now better far remov'd!
But Time shall tear thy shadow from me last."
Canto II, 96th Stanza.

"But I have liv'd, and have not liv'd in vain :

My mind may lose its force, my blood its fire;
And my frame perish, even in conquering pain;
But there is that within me which shall tire
Torture and Time, and breathe when I expire;
Something unearthly which they deem not of,
Like the remember'd tone of a mute lyre,
Shall on their softened spirits sink, and move
In hearts all rocky now the late remorse of love."
Canto IV, 137th Stanza.

"There is a pleasure in the pathless woods,
There is a rapture on the lonely shore,
There is society where none intrudes
By the deep sea, and music in its roar:
I love not man the less, but nature more."
Canto IV, 178th Stanza.

So when Eve says to Adam,

"With thee conversing I forget all time;

All seasons and their change, all please alike.

The reviewer has therefore overrated the powers of the graphic and picturesque, even in poetry, whose loftiest flights and most rapturous bursts touch our hearts by means that are beyond the reach of painting. But in history, which aims to make us acquainted with the progress of society, and of the causes and effects of its changes, and where it is of more importance to know the state of the general mind, as to intelligence, opinion, and moral feeling, the graphic style of writing can perform a much more limited part. Its chief

what he reads is more attended to and better remembered. But the historian would forego his highest duties, who should aim at nothing more than to present us with a series of lively portraits or groups of individuals, with all their attendant localities and personalities. The following paragraph from Hume's notice of the restoration of Charles the 2d contains more sound philosophy and conveys more solid instruction than a chapter of such sketchy stuff as we have cited from Mr. Carlyle.

"Agreeable to the present prosperity of public affairs, was the universal joy and festivity diffused throughout the nation. The melancholy austerity of the fanatics fell into discredit, together with their principles. The royalists, who had ever affected a contrary disposition, found in their recent success new motives for mirth and gaiety; and it now belonged to them to give repute and fashion to their manners. From past experience it had sufficiently appeared, that gravity was very distinct from wisdom, formality from virtue, and hypocrisy from religion. The king himself, who bore a strong propen. sity to pleasure, served, by his powerful and engaging example, to banish those sour and malignant humors, which had hitherto engendered such confusion. Aad though the just bounds were undoubtedly passed, when men returned from their former extreme; yet was the public happy in exchanging vices, pernicious to society, for disorders, hurtful chiefly to the individuals themselves who were guilty of them."

But the reviewer asks, "Does any reader feel, after having read Hume's history, that he can now picture to himself what human life was among the Anglo-Saxons? how an Anglo-Saxon would have acted in any supposable case? what were his joys, his sorrows, his hopes and fears, his ideas and opinions on any of the great and small matters of human interest? Would not the sight, if it could be had, of a single table or pair of

shoes, made by an Anglo-Saxon, tell us, directly and by inference, more of his whole way of life, more of how men thought and acted among the Anglo-Saxons, than Hume, with all his narrative skill, has contrived to tell us from all his materials?" To this interrogatory I would give a decided negative. Such a sight might gratify an antiquary, might even give a vague idea of the state of some of the mechanical arts, but would afford us no insight into the moral qualities of the Anglo-Saxons, their opinions, laws, habits or civil institutions. We indulge an allowable, or if you please, a liberal curiosity in inquiring into the persons, dress, manners and domestic habits of the great dramatis persona of history, but who is the wiser for a knowledge of these particulars? What reader ever had a juster conception of the important points of Julius Cæsar's character from the fact mentioned by Suetonius, that by way of concealing his baldness he was in the habit of bringing down his hair from the top of his head, (capillum revocare à vertice) and that of all his public honors there was no one that he so highly valued as the privilege conferred on him by the senate of always wearing a laurel crown.

HICKORY CORNHILL.

A LETTER FROM HICKORY CORNHILL, ESQ. TO HIS
FRIEND IN THE COUNTRY.*

will try, my dear friend, to inform you in rhyme :

Since you beg me to write how I pass off my time,
And first, every morn, the debates I attend
Of the folks who the laws come to make or to mend ;
Where I hear, now and then, mighty fine declamation
But last night my amusement was somewhat more new,
Being ask'd to a party of ladies at loo.
Each dame who was there was array'd like a queen.
Ah! then, my dear neighbor, what splendor was seen!
The camel, the ostrich, the tortoise, the bear,
And the kid might have found each his spoils on the fair.
Though their dresses were made of the finest of stuff,
It must be confess'd they were scanty enough.
Yet that nothing thus sav'd should their husbands avail,
What they take from the body they put in the tail.
When they sit they so tighten their clothes that you can
Then stretch'd on the floor are their trains all so nice,
They brought to my mind Esop's council of mice.

About judges and bridges, and banks and the nation.

See a lady has legs just the same as a man:

'Ere tea was serv'd up, they were prim as you please, But when cards were produc'd, all was freedom and ease. Mrs. Winloo, our hostess, each lady entreated

To set the example. "I pray, ma'am, be seated."

"After you, Mrs. Clutch." "Nay, then, if you insist

Tom Shuffle, sit down, you prefer loo to whist."
"Pm clear for the ladies. Come, Jack, take a touch.

But it is time to bring this disquisition to a close. You'll stump Mrs. Craven, and I Mrs. Clutch." It was prompted by a wish to put our young writers on their guard against imitating a style of writing which has been so bepraised as Mr. Carlyle's by partial friends, or perhaps interested associates,* and which, with some merits, appears to me to have still greater defects. The caution will scarcely appear unnecessary to one who will look into the January number of the Democratic Review, where he will see, in the article on the federal judiciary, a palpable imitation of Mr. Carlyle's peculiarities. The writer evidently posses-sures of conversation, than to some of the most amiable traits in ses talent, was well informed on the subject of which he treated, and if he had been content to say what he knew or thought in his own way, he might have given to the public a pleasing as well as instructive essay, but by laboring at sudden transitions, at new turns of expression, and at wild bursts of extravagance on subjects essentially sober in their character, he has disfigured the suggestions of a shrewd and reflecting mind, and given a further offence to good taste by becoming the copyist of so faulty an original. Affectation is bad enough any way, but at second hand it is intolerable. Let me then hope that if our writers will content themselves to rank with the servum pecus, we shall select better models than the poetry-prose of Mr. Carlyle, whose recent writings, if they obtain more than an ephemeral notoriety, will in time be regarded as showing us what we ought rather to avoid than to imitate.

*Some thirty years since, the ladies of Richmond, influenced by the example of the other sex, were greatly addicted

to cards. At first they merely sought to beguile the occasional dulness and formality of small evening parties, and played very chiefly by the hope of winning, since, not content with the inlow, commonly at loo,--but after a while, they were prompted terest excited by the game itself, they also staked their money freely in by-bets, so that it was not unusual for a lady to win or lose fifty or sixty dollars of an evening. While the fair votaries of fashion were thus eagerly indulging in what appeared to them no doubt an allowable recreation, many saw with concern the

prevalence of a practice that was no less unfriendly to the plea

the female character; and especially to those which had been

thought to characterise the matrons of Virginia. When the practice was at its greatest height, the above piece of humorous satire made its appearance in one of the city papers. It was moral part for its purpose, and by the other portions for its truth cordially welcomed by the community generally--by the more of resemblance, and a certain spice of espièglerie, which they thought they perceived in it. They even undertook to assign its always denied by the author, except so far as he had, in delineimaginary characters to particular individuals, though this was ating from fancy, unconsciously copied some personal peculi. arities of manner or language. The piece thus met with a been heard the subject of mirth and quotation from the boys in popularity beyond its real merits, and for a week it might have the streets to the belles in the drawing-room.

The practice of loo-playing was then seen to decline, and was finally laid aside. The public was inclined to attribute the change to the well-timed ridicule of Hickory Cornhill; but it is highly probable that this rage for play, like other acute diseases, would, after having reached its crisis, have gradually disapbelief that it will revive interesting recollections with some of peared. The Editor is now induced to republish it, from the the readers of the Messenger, and, as a piece of topographical history, be not unacceptable to the present generation. To such of them as have not been initiated in the mysteries of loo, many of the terms here introduced may be unintelligible. Indeed, these occupy perhaps too large a portion of Mr. Cornhill's epistle, if it had not been probably part of the author's purpose to throw ridicule on this very slang which is so offensive to good Mr. Carlyle is himself a regular contributor to the London taste, and to all friends to female delicacy and refinement.—[Ed. and Westminster Review.

March 28, 1928.

QUILIBET.

Mess.

Of the four books attributed to Confucius, viz. Ta-pondence, Addresses, Messages, and other Papers, official and Kio, Chung-Young, Lungya, and the book of Conversations, only the first chapter of the first, i. e. of the Ta-Kio, is the work of Confucius.