Imagens das páginas
PDF
ePub

in groups, the tired soldiers were engaged in inquiring for their friends or telling their tales of the battle. The pickets were set for the night, and the more weary had forgotten their toils in sleep, when the bugle sounded "a retreat." Without the tap of a drum the lines were formed and the retreat commenced; the chill of the evening had somewhat recruited the exhausted energies of the men, and they moved away from Centreville in comparative order. The rain, which was now falling, rendered indistinct the slow and heavy tramping. We were the last to leave, for in the council after the battle our brigadier had declared that he would never leave that hill alive, asserting that the position was tenable even with such exhausted forces, that the enemy was too much exhausted to press his advantage, and that the capital was safe; but he had been overruled, and the retreat being sounded, was commenced, and finding himself left alone, he was compelled to follow, bringing up the rear. At 3 o'clock in the morning we reached Fairfax Court-House, where, turning into an open field, we bivouacked in the rain. The men had scarcely stretched themselves on the damp ground when again the bugle sounded; the cavalry were said to be in close pursuit. Many had to be forced to rise from that sweet couch in the despair of their weariness, declaring that they would rather fall into the hands of the enemy than continue that terrible retreat; the work of that last twenty-four hours had produced its effect; the army was demoralized; fatigue had effected what the wild cavalry and concealed batteries of the enemy had in vain attempted, and hurriedly and in confusion they moved on towards the capital. Guns, coats, and shoes became but a burden, and were heedlessly flung away, in spite of the remonstrances of the officers. The officers gave up their horses to the wounded, and bore the hardships with their men. "On to Richmond!" had changed. On to Washington was now the inspiring hope. Faster and faster poured the rain, and slower and slower staggered on that reeling band, never halting, never pursued. At evening we had again reached Clermont and an old encampment, which we again occupied, still holding the most advanced position of the Union army towards Manassas.

TWO NEW NOVELS.

"Too comic for the solemn things they are,
Too solemn for the comic touches in them."

TENNYSON.

WHEN two books like the last works of Mrs. Stowe appear together, books wholly independent of each other, and each to be read at one's leisure, without regard to the other, one can hardly help, after finishing the second of the volumes, whichever that may be, comparing the two, coupling and parcelling off the resemblances, and contrasting the differences between them. There is, perhaps, a peculiarly strong temptation to this comparison after the reader has finished the two novels we have referred to, "Agnes of Sorrento " and "The Pearl of Orr's Island." A mental parallel is almost unavoidable with an interested reader. The likenesses come trooping on in pairs before his mind, in as quick and natural succession as when the long procession of old separated into couples, and passed in review before Noah into the Ark; and we are as keen and quick to detect a difference between the two as the patriarch would probably have been to discover any false pairing in his great family. Let us notice a few of the most prominent points in such a parallel, remembering, all the while, that the two books are, as it were, situated in the same plane, written, that is, almost, if not quite simultaneously, chapter for chapter, and even, perhaps, page for page.

In the first place, the two novels are both to be included in that class which Masson, in his little volume on "British Novelists," has styled "art and culture" novels, meaning by the phrase, those in which the purpose is to exhibit the growth and education of an individual character of the more thoughtful order. Their aim is to show how, by influences which differ of course with different novels, doubts have been gradually solved by the hero or heroine, follies and indiscretions acknowledged and repented of, weaknesses and false notions exchanged for strength and a just appreciation of the worth of men and things. A novel of this class and character sketches, as it were, another Odyssey, showing the course of its hero's wanderings in his effort to answer the old question, "What is Truth?" And the wanderings generally end, as in the first Odyssey, in the arms and love of some waiting Penelope, in either completely gaining or recovering

the love, which in the end brings the hero out free from whatever form of selfishness or error originally beset him. It is as if

"Love took up the harp of Life, and smote on all the chords with might, Smote on the chord of Self, that, trembling, passed in music out of sight."

Every reader can at once discover novels of this character in his list. There can hardly, however, be a better or more familiar instance than will be suggested to all by Thackeray's Pendennis. Pen is continually wandering and straying, whether at home or in London, whether at the academy or at the club-house, whether led away by the Fotheringay or Blanche; but it is his love for Laura which pilots him quietly and safely to the end, and at last leaves him there, the steady citizen and home-loving head of a family, which we find him in "Philip," the latest chapter in his history. Now these two novels of Mrs. Stowe must both be included in the class we have been thus defining and exemplifying, because they both endeavor to describe a gradual educating process which is continually going on under the supervision and influence of the earnest love which at the same time gives the story its zest. In "Agnes of Sorrento," as will be at once remembered, it is the little convent-worshipper, absorbed and wholly occupied with the glory of her faith and her religion, who has won the love of the noble, now excommunicated and an outlaw; and, from Sorrento to Rome, from Rome to Milan, the influence of this love follows, gradually inducing him to exchange his hopeless, despairing views of religion for what was at the time the most spiritual faith in Italy, that of Savonarola. This is the main line of the story, on each side of which the other characters and incidents range themselves, ready to help or hinder, according as the progress of the novel requires their help or hindering. "The Pearl of Orr's Island," while belonging to the same class as this Italian story, seems to me to describe a process of the same sort, but more expressively, and with a greater completeness. For, while exhibiting the quaint, original side of its New England characters, with the irresistible quiet humor which we have learnt to expect from Mrs. Stowe, its aim is again to show how effective is the ministry of love,

to show us how, under its continual and perhaps unconscious influence, the trivial ambitions and wayward, selfish desires of Moses Pennel became, after Mara's death, a full appreciation of what his true interests were, and a desire for the one needful thing that her life and death had so strongly recommended to him. You cannot

[ocr errors]

mistake the aim and tendency of the two stories, though you may at times be diverted from it for a moment, and even amused, by the scenes and by-play which are so constantly presented to you, just as you close the "Old Curiosity Shop," entirely satisfied in the end that little Nell is the real heroine, and that the book tells the story of her influence for good, although your attention and interest may have been transferred many a time from her to Quilp or Swiveller.

.

We have seen, then, that these two novels are readily included in the same class. They have the same general aims, and in each the course of the story has a similar tendency. But besides this general resemblance, of which the reader of both must be perpetually conscious, there are other, and perhaps even more noticeable similarities, constantly occurring, and at once indicating that the two books came at the same moment from the same author. It may seem forced to affect to find continual resemblances between two novels, one of which lays its scene in Saxon New England, and the other in Italy. It may seem as if in such a case either one or the other, or both, must be unnatural. Perhaps so, but still it is not necessarily so. The resemblances between the two are prominent and plain enough for any reader to notice, but still, at the same time, even what we recognize at once as similarities have, I think, something of the character and effect of a translation about them; that is, you will perhaps find in "Agnes of Sorrento" a circumstance or scene which is the Italian rendering of something with which you met in the New England story; and again, something in the latter which is the exact Saxon equivalent for an incident or idea, which you remember to have seen described in Italian terms and with Italian coloring in the other. For instance, Mrs. Stowe even connects the two climates, by representing that we have that season in our rugged New England year which has even an Italian beauty in it. The opening of an early chapter in "The Pearl of Orr's Island" gives us an example: "It was one of those hazy, calm, dissolving days of Indian summer, when everything is so quiet that the faintest kiss of the wave on the beach can be heard, and white clouds seem to faint into the blue of the sky, and soft swathing bands of violet vapor make all earth look dreamy, and give to the sharp, clear-cut outlines of the northern landscape all those mysteries of light and shade which impart such tenderness to Italian scenery." She finds it, then, no hard matter to change the scene. Even in our own climate, whose chills we ourselves freely acknowledge, she discovers traits which connect it with

Italy's, and at the same time we cannot deny that the scenery which she describes in Maine and Orr's Island seem as natural as her scenes in Italy and Sorrento.

And what is thus true of climate and scenery is equally so in other details. You will constantly find characters, tableaux, and incidents, which wear in one book an Italian shading, reproduced with almost faithful exactness in the other, with the shading only deepened a little, so as to give them an expression rather more stern and Puritan-like. Costumes are to be a little changed and remodelled; the colors must be made perhaps a little stronger and warmer in the one than in the other; but, with these necessary alterations, mutatis mutandis, the characters and traits of the two novels are strikingly similar. The outlawed company of brigands with whom the hero in "Agnes" casts in his lot, is softened, when the novelist comes to speak of New England, into the band of smugglers who carry on their unlawful traffic on the woody coasts of the island, and at whose meetings Moses Pennel is represented as being present. There must, of course, be a change of creed, even before the tolerant critics of our tolerant age. Hawthorne must not let the same creed run through both "The Scarlet Letter" and "The Marble Faun." He must do in Rome as the most zealous Romanists do, but in Salem he must profess himself a sincere Puritan. Mrs. Stowe has, of course, made a like change, yet still you almost lose sight of the change, or, at most, consider it only a part of this necessary difference of shading, when you notice in how parallel a way the two different creeds are used in the two novels, each among its own supporters. In the priest Antonio and the parish clergyman we recognize the same character, hardly disguised at all. Each is sincerely watchful of the spiritual and earthly interests which are so tenderly intrusted to him, and each does his best to contribute to the welfare and prosperity of those dependent upon him. Again, the medieval monkish hymns of the friar are made to break up and diversify the pages of "Agnes of Sorrento," precisely as the old, familiar psalms meet us scattered through "The Pearl of Orr's Island." They both serve not only the same purpose of breaking up the story, somewhat as Tennyson's songs in the pauses of "The Princess," but are also sung each with the same earnestness by the singers, and each with a like influence upon the hearers. But the similarities between the two books which we notice most readily are those which connect the prominent characters of each, attributing to them in each almost the same traits, and allotting them the same

« AnteriorContinuar »