and he who travels about the world hawking a proposition, with high and sacred names, for which he cannot find a market, is guilty either of Quixotic foolishness or of a still more degrading hypocrisy. Perhaps it would have been as well if so experienced a diplomatist as Lord Aberdeen had given to Mr. Cobden more directly the benefit of his better knowledge, and so, instead of appearing disposed under the circumstances. For a country in ing to any "parties" propositions which we the actual position of France, three hundred know them to be incapable, by their circumthousand men may not be too much. But stances or their education, of entertaining; while a sovereign maintains three hundred thousand men in arms, and owes little responsibility to anybody in his own country, his neighbors ought to be prepared for any possible turn of royal caprice or necessity. If he might honestly declare that he did not intend to attack us now, some new turn in affairs might justify him in his own mind six months hence. Nor could we expect Louis Napoleon to" to promote the object," had at once declared reduce his army in the face of powers which that there is not the slightest prospect of doing have so recently hesitated to recognize him. anything with it in Europe at the present If we would enable him to effect the reduction, time. we must pass from him to the powers that lie The abstract reasoning of a proposition does more remote from our own frontier, and, as we not suffice to make it reasonable between all do so, probably we shall find the difficulty of parties." If a burglar were breaking into procuring a consent greater. If we were to his window, Mr. Cobden might bring him the ask Austria to reduce her armies, she might, most incontestable proofs as to the injudiciouswith her position and her views, very reason-ness of his course, even on the principles of ably answer, that it is only by her armies, self-interest. He might prove to demonstradrawn from her several provinces, and then tion that no amount of plunder could in the used against those provinces reciprocally, that long run be profitable; that honest industry she can hold her empire together. Mr. Cob- is not only the more profitable, but it is the den deprecates the large warlike preparations more healthy and happy course. He might "in time of peace;" but in the Austrian prove that the burglar inevitably comes to a domains there is no peace. There is a revolu- bad end; that thieves do not get on in life; tion kept down by armed force; and if power and that even the "fence," the capitalist of is to be measured by the resistance which that tribe, is liable to the fate of Ikey Solomaintains it in a state of equilibrium, then we can appreciate the civil war tacitly and silently going on in Austria by the terrors and tyrannies that alone preserve the status quo. mons. He might make good these propositions, without any kind of comment at all, by his own favorite plan, the exhibition of bluebook statistics. Yet we doubt very much whether the most cogent argument would induce the visitor to relinquish either his "jemmy" or his "barkers." Austria cannot reduce her armies, excepting under these alternative conditions the abandonment of her provinces; or the We incline to believe, that however much abandonment of her principles on the subject the householders of the country at large might of government, in favor of those that Mr. Cob- be in favor of mutual disarmament as between den might offer, ready-made, of English man- citizens and thieves, they would not at all ufacture. But even if, by some miracle of rely upon such friendly negotiations for any conquest over revolution or over herself, she practical purpose. Nay, we suspect that the were quit of internal enemies, how could Aus-worldly wisdom of a gentleman who proposed tria reduce her armaments in the face of her to meet foreign invaders of the household in ally, Russia, who already views with a keen that fashion would not be estimated at a very appetite the Sclavonian provinces? Before high rate. A man who should go down to Austria can reduce, Russia must reduce; Cambridge armed with a Colt's revolver, as wherefore, let Mr. Cobden, Mr. Milner Gibson, the instrument for winning the honors of and other members of the deputation, convey Senior Wrangler, would fairly lay himself themselves to St. Petersburg, and lay their open to Mr. Cobden's censures; but if Mr. Cobproposition before the Emperor Nicholas. He den thinks that the weapons of the Anti-Corn will tell them, very politely perhaps, that his law would prove triumphant among the Don army is his empire. Lord Aberdeen, indeed, might safely promise to carry out the mission for whose object he avows so much sympathy, when Mr. Cobden shall have succeeded in converting the Emperor Nicholas to the tenets of the Peace Association. Cossacks or the Croat, he is under a serious mistake; which he might discover before he had gone half-way to the Banat-or rather, which somebody else might discover; for Mr. Cobden's power of reception seems to exist only for one species of knowledge. We are On the first blush there is a show of reason only surprised to see Lord Aberdeen half inin this proposition for a reciprocal disarma-clined to accept the post of missionary under ment; but there is nothing rational in convey- Mr Cobden's Anti-War League. LITTELL'S LIVING AGE.-No. 469.-14 MAY, 1853. 5. Discoveries in the Ruins of Nineveh and Babylon, 6. Mankind, from a Bar-maid's Point of View, 7. Human Hair, 8. Tennyson's Ode on Wellington - revised, 9. Hävernick's Old Testament; Hengstenberg on the Lord's Day; Connelly's Coming Struggle with Rome, 10. The Liberian Blacksmith, Chambers' Journal, 445 SHORT ARTICLES: Selling Chickens to the Legislature - Railways Improving, 400; New Antiquities, 402; Venomous Fly-Herb Doctor, 418; Picture of the Condemnation of Marie Antoinette, 422; Mechanical Philosophy Applied, 428; Working Man's Way in the World, 444; Wonderful Bone - Great Exhibition, 448. On the smooth green where the fresh leaf is springing, Calmly the first-born of glory have met ; Hark! the death-volley around them is ringing! Look! with their life-blood the young grass is wet! Faint is the feeble breath, Murmuring low in death, Long have they gathered and loud shall they fall; Voiceless the trumpet horn, Low on the turf shall rest, Rocks where the weary floods murmur and wail, Far as the tempest thrills “Tell to our sons how their fathers have died;" Girded for battle, from mountain to main. Nerveless the iron hand, Raised for its native land, Lies by the weapon that gleams at its side. Green be the graves where her martyrs are lying! Where wind-flower and violet, amber and white, By south-sloping brook-sides should smile in the light, O'er the cold winter beds of their late waking roots, The frosty flake eddies, the ice-crystal shoots; And, longing for light under wind-driven heaps, Round the holes of the pine wood the ground laurel creeps Unkissed of the sunshine, unbaptized of showers, With buds scarcely swelled, which should burst into flowers! We wait for thy coming, sweet wind of the South! The touch of thy light wings, the kiss of thy mouth; For the yearly Evangel thou bearest from God, All the way from the land of the wild Esquimau. Oh, soul of the spring-time! its balm and its breath, O, light of its darkness, and light of its death! Why wait we thy coming? Why linger so long The warmth of thy breathing, the voice of thy song? Renew the great miracle! Let us behold The stone from the mouth of the sepulchre rolled, And Nature, like Lazarus, rise as of old! Let our faith, which in darkness and coldness has lain, Awake with the warmth and the brightness again, And in blooming of flower, and budding of tree, From the Atlas. EVERY one, at some period of life, has felt the utter futility of deciding that any place, no matter how much present happiness arises from its proximity, will be always attractive. Some domestic calamity renders an apartment, once redolent of joy and youthful pleasure, the darkest spot in the whole mansion, and we turn away from the door with a shudder, where, in other days, we entered with a light heart and a song on our lips. A trifle will sometimes strip a scene of great natural beauty of all its glories, and hang dark clouds where only sunshine has lingered. The following poem is descriptive of an incident in the experience of some friends of the writer-an experience, or one of a similar nature, quite common to all. THE LITTLE HAND. Our hut was near the ocean marge, The watery western skies afar, The ebb and flow of ocean's tide. Shall be our life-long summer home." Of thunder crash, and tempest din, In glee we sang our ocean songs, As on we moved across the sand- The gathering surf we brushed away, Looked once upon the storm-scared eyes, Then scooped a grave where waters moan, And oft the wailing sea-bird flies. The charm had fled the hut, the cliff, We went and we returned no more! From the Westminster Review. 1. The Paris Sketch Book. By MICHAEL AN- 2. Comic Tales and Sketches. By M. A. TITMARSH. 2 vols. 1841. 3. The Irish Sketch Book. By M. A. TITMARSH. 2 vols. 1843. 4. Vanity Fair. 2 vols. 5. Pendennis. 2 vols. 6. The Book of Snobs. edition of 46 66 1848. 1850. 1848. Enough, and more than enough, has been said and written upon these points; but among a large section of his readers it has long been felt, that it may not have been without a purpose that Mr. Thackeray has never endowed his characters with ostentatious heroic virtues, or dwelt much on the brighter aspects of humanity; that his most unsparing ridicule, and his most pungent delineations of human folly or vice, are not tinged by the sour humors of the cynic or misanthrope, but that, through his harshest tones, there may be heard the sweet undernotes of a nature kindly and loving, and a heart warm and unspoiled, full of sympathy for goodness and all simple worth, and of reverence for all unaffected greatness. 7. The History of Henry Esmond, Esq. Written by Himself. 3 vols. 1852. FIVE years ago, in dedicating the second Jane Eyre" to the author of Vanity Fair," Currer Bell spoke of him thus: "Why have I alluded to this man? Not many years ago, when reputations I have alluded to him, reader, because I which are now effete were at their zenith, a think I see in him an intellect profounder pen was busy in our periodical literature, in and more unique than his contemporaries which the presence of a power was felt by have yet recognized; because I regard him those who watched that literature, which as the first social regenerator of the day as seemed only to want happier circumstances the very master of that working corps who to develop into forms worthy of a permanent would restore to rectitude the warped system place among English classics. Under many of things; because I think no commentator patronymics, its graphic sketches and original on his writings has yet found the comparison views were ushered into the world. The imthat suits him, the terms which rightly char- mortal Yellowplush, the James de-la-Pluche acterize his talent. They say he is like Field- of a later date, the vivacious George Fitzing; they talk of his wit, humor, comic boodle, the versatile Michael Angelo Titpowers. He resembles Fielding as an eagle marsh, were names well-known and prized does a vulture; Fielding could stoop on within a limited circle. In Mr. Thackeray's carrion, but Thackeray never does. His wit lucubrations under all these pseudonyms, is bright, his humor attractive, but both bear there was a freshness and force, a truthfulthe same relation to his serious genius that ness of touch, a shrewdness of perception, and the mere lambent sheet-lightning, playing a freedom from conventionalism, wdether in under the edge of the summer-cloud, does to thought or expression, which argued in their the electric death-spark hid in its womb." originator something more akin to genius than When this was written, Mr. Thackeray was to mere talent. Here was a man who looked not the popular favorite he has since become. below the surface of things, taking nothing He counts readers now by hundreds, where for granted, and shrinking from no scrutiny then he only counted tens. In those days, of human motives, however painful; who Currer Bell's panegyric was pronounced ex- saw clearly and felt deeply, and who spoke travagant by many who now, if they do not out his thought manfully and well. In an. echo, will at least scarcely venture to dispute age of pretence, he had the courage to be it; but it may be doubted whether, up to simple. To strip sentimentalism of its fripthe present time, full justice has been done pery, pretension of its tinsel, vanity of its by any of Mr. Thackeray's critics to the pe- masks, and humbug literary and social of its culiar genius of the man, or to the purpose disguises, appeared to be the vocation of this with which his later books have been written. graphic satirist. The time gave him work It is not, indeed, to the Press that he owes to do in abundance, and manifestly neither the appreciation which it is probable he values skill nor will were wanting in him for the most. Its praise has generally been coup- task. Best of all, he did not look down upon led with censure for what has occupied his his fellow-men from those heights of contempt most deliberate thought, and been conceived and scorn, which make satirists commonly the with the most earnest purpose. While it most hateful as well as the most profitless of has extolled his wit, his keen eye, his graphic writers. The hand that was mailed to smite style, his trenchant sarcasm, his power of had an inward side soft to caress. He claimed exposing cant and Pharisaism in all its no superiority, arrogated for himself no pecuphases, it has, at the same time, been loud liar exemption from the vices and follies he in its outcry against the writer's cynicism satirized; he had his own mind to clear of cant and want of faith, the absence of heroism as well as his neighbors', and professed to and elevation in his characters the foibles know their weak side only through a conof all his women, the vices of all his men.sciousness of his own. Just as he proclaimed himself as Mr. Snob, par excellence, when writing of the universal snobbishness of society at a later date, so in the "Confessions of Fitzboodle," or "The Yellowplush Papers, he made no parade of being one whit wiser, purer, or more disinterested than other people. Relentless of foppery, falsehood, and rascality, however ingeniously smoothed over or concealed, he was not prone to sneer at frailty, where it laid no claim to strength, or folly where it made no pretence of wisdom. The vices of our modern social life were the standing marks for the shafts of his ridicule, but here and there, across his pages, there shot gleams of a more pleasing light, which showed how eagerly the lynx-eyed observer hailed the presence of goodness and candor, and generosity, whenever they crossed his path. That he may, in those days, have thought them rarer than his subsequent experience has proved, is more than probable; and, indeed, this circumstance gave to many of his earlier sketches a depth of shade, which leaves an impression on the mind all the more painful, from the terrible force with which the tints are dashed in. No man ever sketched the varieties of scoundrelism or folly with more force than Yellowplush or Fitzboodle, but we cannot move long among fools and scoundrels without disgust. In these sketches, the shadows of life are too little relieved for them to be either altogether true to nature, or tolerable as works of art. We use them as studies of character, but, this purpose served, are fain to put them aside forever after. Hence, no doubt, it was that these vigorous sketches, at the time they appeared, missed the popularity which was being won by far inferior works; and hence, too, they will never become popular even among those whom Mr. Thackeray's subsequent writings have made his warmest admirers. Bring them to the touchstone whose test all delineations of life must bear, to be worthy of lasting repute the approval of a woman's mind and taste and they are at once found to fail. Men will read them, and smile or ponder as they read, and, it may be, reap lessons useful for after needs; but a woman lays down the book, feeling that it deals with characters and situations, real perhaps, but which she can gain nothing by contemplating. No word, image, or suggestion, indeed, is there to offend her modesty for, in this respect, Mr. Thackeray in all his writings has shown that reverence for womanhood and youth, which satirists have not often maintained; but just as there are many things in life which it is best not to know, so in these pictures of tainted humanity there is much to startle the faith, and to disquiet the fancy, without being atoned for by any commensurate advantage. With what admirable force, for example, are all the characters etched in Yellow plush's "Amours of Mr. Deuceace!" The Hon. Algernon Percy Deuceace himself his amiable father, the Earl of Crabs, Mr. Blewitt — where in literature shall we find such a trio of scoundrels, so distinct in their outlines, so unmistakably true in all their tints? How perfect too, as portraits, are Dawkins, the pigeon, of whom Deuceace and Blewitt, well-trained hawks, make so summary a meal, and Lady Griffin, the young widow of Sir George Griffin, K.C.B., and her ugly step-daughter Matilda! No one can question the probability of all the incidents of the story. Such things are happening every day. Young fools like Dawkins fall among thieves like Deuceace and Blewitt, and the same game of matrimonial speculation is being played daily, which is played with such notable results by Deuceace and Miss Matilda Griffin. The accomplished swindler is ever and anon caught like him, the fond silly woman as constantly awakened like her, out of an insane dream, to find herself the slave of cowardice and brutality. Villany so cold, so polished, so armed at all points, as that of the Earl of Crabs, is more rare; but men learn by bitter experience, that there are in society rascals equally agreeable and equally unredeemed. There is no vulgar daubing in the portraiture of all these worthies; the lines are all true as life itself, and bitten into the page as it were with vitriol. Every touch bears the trace of a master's hand, and yet what man ever cared to return to the book, what woman ever got through it without a sensation of humiliation and disgust? Both would wish to believe the writer untrue to nature, if they could; both would willingly forego the exhibition of what, under the aspect in which it is here shown, is truly that hideous sight, a naked human heart." Of all Mr. Thackeray's books this is, perhaps, the most open to the charge of sneering cynicism, and yet even here glimpses of that stern but deep pathos are to be found, of which Mr. Thackeray has since proved himself so great a master. We can even now remember the mingled sensation of shuddering pity and horror, with which the conclusion of this story years ago impressed us. Deuceace, expecting an immense fortune with Miss Matilda Griffin, who, on her part, believes him to be in possession of a fine income, marries her; the marriage having been managed by his father, the Earl of Crabs, in order that he may secure Lady Griffin for himself, with all Miss Griffin's fortune, which falls to her ladyship, in the event of Matilda marrying without her consent. Lady Griffin has previously revenged herself for the Honorable Algernon's slight of her own attachment to him, by involving him in a duel with a Frenchman, in which he loses his right hand. The marriage once concluded, Deuceace and his wife find their mutual mistake, and the penni |