LITTELL'S LIVING AGE.-No. 612.-16 FEBRUARY, 1856. From The Examiner. The Journal kept during the Russian War: moment's suspense, they are off-three noble horses, all well ridden. Mr. Wilkins' horse takes the wall easily, and rushes on; Captain Shiffner's horse strikes it with his chest, and, after one effort, rolls over headlong, falling on his rider; Captain Thomas' horse clears the wall, but lands on the man and horse already down. "At first, neither was supposed to have survived; but at last Captain Thomas moved, and was not dead; but the doctors pronounced him presently they found that poor Captain Shiffner so much injured internally as to leave no hope of his surviving the night. They were both carried from the ground. About an hour after we rode to inquire for Captain Thomas, who was lying in a hut close by, and found that he was conscious. His first words were, Who won the race?' Of poor Captain Shiffner we hear there is no hope. I think this has rather made me lose my liking for steeple-chasing. 66 Sunday, 8th. I heard this morning that poor Captain Shiffner died during the night. What little comfort for the mourners at home to reflect that his life was lost in such a way! the bitterness of death. - with neither glory nor honor to assuage Such an accident, WHAT Mr. Gulliver says towards the close of his last voyage, Mrs. Duberly might have said if she pleased in the peroration of this book of her experience. "I write for the noblest end, to inform and instruct mankind; over whom I may, without breach of modesty, pretend to some superiority from the advantages I received by conversing so long among the most accomplished Houyhnhnms. I write without any view to profit or praise." The real hero of this Journal of the great siege of Sebastopol, which includes the whole eventful year of struggle, is Mrs. Duberly's horse, "Bob." Two other personages, of whom the reader feels when he shuts up the book that they have been brought with great prominence before his mind, and indeed may coming in the midst of strong excitement, seems rank next to Bob, are the Great Gray and to make a pause, a stillness in one's own life. the White Spanish Charger. We are de- I am so shocked, so nervous by what I have cidedly of opinion, after reading Mrs. Duber-seen, that I am fit for nothing; and yet, if he ly's book, that the country has been alto- had been shot in the trenches, he would have had, most probably, no other requiem than, gether insufficiently informed hitherto con'Poor Shiffner was killed last night.' cerning the true heroes of the war; for Mrs. me! was he? Poor fellow!' instead of Duberly rode to the front of battle, and at- forming the subject for thought and convertended also all the camp races and steeple-sation to all.” chases, and we gather from her journal that The steeple-chaser's "requiem" is only less the racing has been far too much thrust out to be desired however than one other thing, of sight by British yahoos, who, concerned for what they selfishly took to be a greater contest, paid no heed whatever to the movements of the Houyhnhnms. Listen to Mrs. Duberly. Happy the man who dies in ateeple-chasing; neck first over the hurdle is the true leap into fame! 'Dear namely, to die magnificently with a stupendous explosion. At page 159, Mrs. Duberly writes that on the occasion of a fire among the powder vessels in the harbor of Balaklava, "A strange exultation possessed my heart in contemplating so magnificent a death - to die with hundreds in so stupendous an explosion, which would not only have destroyed every vessel in harbor, and the very town itself, but would have altered the whole shape of the bay, and the echoes of which would have rung through the world!” "Saturday, 7th.- Light Division races. The day was perfect; the races well attended; and, had it not been for an accident, the sight of which seemed to stun me, and stop every pulse in my body, we should have had an enjoyable day. In the steeple-chase course they had built a wall, over This it is to be a woman of high spirit, four foot, and as firm as it could be built, turfed and to have a vaulting ambition. If ever over at the top, and as solid as an alderman's the journal of this lady be dramatized at wit. Capt. Thomas, R. H. A., and Capt. Shiffner, two of our best riders, were in the race. The crowd Astley's, let us hope that its incidents will so collected round the wall to see the jump, and I be modified as to admit of a general exploshoved my horse in as close as I could. After a sion in the last scene, from the midst of which 25 DCXII. LIVING AGE. VOL. XII. may the heroine dart upwards upon her favorite horse, Bob. "A most refreshing river runs near our camp, but we have no trees, no shelter. Captain Tomkinson made me a bed of his cloak and sheepskin; and drawing my hat over my eyes, I "Monday, February 5th. Dined with lay down under a bush, close to Bob, and Major Peel. slept till far towards evening." 66 Here is Bob: "O! what terrible work it is to ride over The lady, of course upon her horse Bob, these wretched roads! You flounder along in the most helpless manner; and, coming back in went to the front at the battle of Balaklava. the dark, I put the reins on the old horse's neck, She had been feeling very far from well, and and exhorted him in this wise: Remember, it was supposed that the sight of a battle Bob, that any fool of a horse can tumble down would brighten her up a bit, and restore her here, so pray recollect what a much cleverer horse you are than any other of your species.' good spirits. I conclude the admonition had the desired effect; at any rate, we got safely home. "Tuesday, 6th. A beautiful morning, but blowing very heavily. We started about twelve for the naval camp, and ten minutes after down came the rain! We persevered, and arriving at last like drowned rats, were most hospitably entertained. Captain Lushington appeared sufficiently amused at my determined indifference to the rain. The weather cleared about four; and we had a delightful ride home along the high land, and then down to Kadekoi, by the brook in the valley, and over the dykes. I hardly know whose heart laughed the most, the brave old horse's or mine, as he laid his slender ears back, and, bearing on the bit, flung himself along, as though the starvation and the cruel suffering were all a myth, and he was once more in the merry hunting-field at home.' We see the lady elsewhere (p. 16) completely upset by the sight of Bob, and fairly laying her hand on Bob's neck and crying, while a good Greek Yahoo whispereth "Povero Bobo," to console her. In another passage (p. 7) she is in much anxiety about Bob, whereupon "Henry," or in other words the lady's husband, Captain Duberly, goes on deck, "and soon after returning, put his arms round me, and I knew that my darling" (not Duberly, but) "horse was out of pain!" Elsewhere (p. 31) the lady is to be found sleeping by Bob's side: but we must quote this passage if only to show how well Mrs. Duberly bore the hardships of camp life: "Wednesday, 25th. - Feeling very far from well, I decided on remaining quietly on board ship to-day; but on looking through my stern cabin windows, at eight o'clock, I saw my horse saddled and waiting on the beach, in charge of our soldier-servant on the pony. A note was put into my hands from Henry, a moment after. It ran thus: The battle of Balaklava has begun, and promises to be a hot one. I send you the horse. Lose no time, but come up as quickly as you can: do not wait for breakfast.' Words full of meaning! I dressed in all haste, went ashore without delay, and, mounting my horse Bob,' started as fast as the narrow and crowded streets would permit. I was hardly clear of the town, before I met a commissariat officer, who told me that the Turks had abandoned all their batteries, and were running towards the town. He begged me to keep as much to the left as possible, and, of all things, to lose no time in getting amongst our own men, as the Russian force was pouring on us; adding, For God's sake, ride fast, or you may not reach the camp alive.' Captain Howard, whom met a moment after, assured me that I might proceed; but added, Lose no time." I 6 "Turning off into a short cut of grass, and stretching into his stride, the old horse laid himself out to his work, and soon reaching the main road, we clattered on towards the camp." But is there nothing but horses in Mrs. Duberly's journal? Well, very little-so little that we doubt whether twenty lines could be quoted in succession which would not contain some reference to either a horse or a pony. The lady's treat upon her birthday in camp was to ride whatever horse she Here is a sketch of Omer Pacha: "Monday, June 5th.- Was awoke by the re-chose. veillée at half-past two; rose, packed our bedding and tent, got a stale egg and a mouthful of brandy, and was in my saddle by half-past five. "In ten minutes the cavalry were mounted, and Henry and I started upon Bob and the "I never shall forget that march! It occupied Great Gray, to see the man whom war had made nearly eight hours. The heat intense, the fa- so famous. His appearance struck me as military tigue overwhelming; but the country — anything and dignified. He complimented all our troops, more beautiful I never saw!- vast plains; ver- and insisted on heading the Light Cavalry dant hills, covered with shrubs and flowers; a charge, which made me laugh, for he was on a noble lake; and a road, which was merely a small Turkish horse, and had to scramble, with cart track, winding through a luxuriant wood-the spurs well in, to get out of the way of our land country, across plains and through deep bosquets of brushwood. long-striding English horses. He was loudly cheered; appeared highly gratified; made me a bow and paid me a compliment, and proceeded to his carriage to continue his journey.' Here the reader perceives that, after all, the "small Turkish horse" is as conspicuous a figure as the great general in the observer's eyes. 66 Mrs. Duberly, we must add, is not destitute of sentiment and fancy. Some bottles of beer appear on page 30, one of which I drank," she tells us, "like a thristy horse," and then having informed us how "Henry went into Varna, and bought a very fine gray cob pony," naming the price of it, she mentions an invitation to dinner, and writes, "Am I not hungry!" Yet it is also only fair to say that upon moons, stars, flowers, music, and all other matters of sentiment, above all things a solo on the cornet-à-piston, by the maestro of the Sardinian band, she can be as rapturous as heart could wish. There are almost as many ahs and ohs in her diary as horses and cobs- and that is saying a great deal. But here is a touch of war, and a sad thought, suggested by the lady's presence to a fine old soldier. The Mamelon vert is about to be taken by the French, and Mrs. Duberly rides up to the French quarter to raise her spirits by seeing the storming party told off for the desperate assault. Sebastopol taken at last, we will part from the fair horsewoman among its ruined streets. "Actually in Sebastopol! No longer looking at it through a glass, or even going down to it, but riding amongst its ruins and through its streets. We had fancied the town was almost uninjured - so calm, and white, and fair did it look from a distance; but the ruined walls, the riddled roofs, the green cupola of the church, split and splintered to ribands, told a very different tale. Here were wide streets leading past one or two large handsome detatched houses built of stone; a little further on, standing in a handsome open space, are the barracks, with large windows, a fine stone façade of great length, several of the lower windows having carronades run out of them, pointing their grim muzzles towards our batteries. Whilst I am gazing at these, a sudden exclamation from Henry, and a violent shy from the pony, nearly start me from my saddle. It is two dead Russians lying, almost in a state of decomposition, at an angle of the building; while in the corner and eyes open, looking at us. a man is sitting up, with his hands in his lap We turn to see if he is only wounded, so lifelike are his attitude and face; no, he has been dead for days." To permit the publication of this journal, though, as our last extracts show, it is not without some points of interest, and we are undoubtedly a horse-loving people, surely was an error on the lady's part, or that of her friends. It tempts the world to judge her by "As we approached the French lines of Gen- her diary; and, of lady writers not accuseral Bosquet's division we saw the storming tomed to express the depths of their own party forming up-five-and-twenty thousand French. They stood a dense and silent mass, nature in writing, how few there are who looking, in their dark-blue coats, grim and would not have reason to feel aggrieved at sombre enough. Presently we heard the clatter the intrusion of any stranger's eyes upon of horses behind us, and General Bosquet and their "journal." We cannot suppose that staff galloped up. General Bosquet addressed them in companies; and as he finished each Mrs. Duberly desired to play before the speech, he was responded to by cheers, shouts, world the part of a comic Lady Sale, or that and bursts of song. The men had more the air she designedly burlesqued the well-known. and animation of a party invited to a marriage, entry. "Earthquakes as usual," by recording than of a party going to fight for life or death. in her diary "Guns as usual." We do not To me how sad a sight it seemed! The divisions begin to move and to file down the narrow rav- believe, in short, that she is half so ine, past the French battery, opposite the Mame- womanly as she is made to appear in her lon. General Bosquet turus to me, his eyes full book. In spite of the book, and also for the of tears my own I cannot restrain, as he sake of some true-hearted thoughts in it, we says, 'Madame, à Paris on a toujours l'expo un sition, les bals, les fetes; et dans une heure believe in the lady quite sufficiently to regret et demie la moitié de ces braves seront morts!'" her literary indiscretion. From The Athenæum. THE MEASURE OF "HIAWATHA.” THE Controversy on this subject has not yet been settled. Perhaps a few more observations (not written at random, but with the distinct desire of bringing the contest to a close) may not be thought amiss. The case, briefly recapitulated, stands thus at present: Mr. Howitt correctly refers the measure of Mr. Longfellow's new poem to the Finns; Mr. M'Carthy, on the other hand, attributes it to the Spaniards; "W. S." stands certainly not on Mr. Howitt's side, but his attempts to shake that gentleman's authority as to Finnish matters in general have led him into mythological regions, where the point at issue appears but of secondary consideration; Mr. Brockie, at last, would fain decide in favor of the claims of Finland, - but he hesitates he does not feel certain. And yet he might be certain; for there is not the least doubt but that Mr. Howitt, in his assertions about the measure of Hiawatha," is perfectly right, though, perhaps, he was led to them more by his poetical judgment and metrical tact, than by a precise consciousness of a fact which, once acknowledged, cannot but place the question beyond the range of further dispute. Essentially, Mr. Howitt has alluded to this fact when he speaks" of those repetitions of epithets, phrases, and lines which abound in the Finlandic poetry; " but he seems not to be aware that these "repetitions" not only "abound" in the runes, that they are by no means merely accidental and arbitrary, but that they form altogether a characteristic and distinguishing feature of this poetry, that they are a rule and a law of it. This law, to name it at once, is parallelism, viz., the repetition of the same thought, differently expressed, in two, sometimes even in three or four succeeding lines. Parallelism, together with a twofold sort of alliteration, is the peculiar attribute of Finlandic poetry, and a most remarkable one, I must add, indicating, it would seem, an Oriental origin of these Northern songs. That this attribute should have escaped the notice of so profound a Finnish scholar as "W. S.," is greatly to be wondered He might have found it even in the fifteen lines of Goethe's "Finnische Lied" mentioned by him: at. "Gern entbehrt' ich gute Bissen, Priesters Tafelfleisch vergäss' ich. Eher als dem Freund entsagen." To sum up: Mr. Longfellow has certainlyand most wisely-not adopted the artificial form of alliteration, strange and antiquated as it would sound to our modern ears, when consistently carried through a poem of more than 5,000 lines. In this particular it must be conceded that the measure of "Hiawatha " does not closely follow its Finlandic prototype. Neither has Mr. Longfellow made use of the assonance, the distinguishing feature of the trochaic metre of the Spaniards (not to be found, of course, in Mr. M'Carthy's translation of "Calderon "), so that, for this reason, we may also dismiss the idea of a Sapnish derivation. But what Mr. Longfellow has adopted, and used with a skill and success remarkable in every page of "Hiawatha," is the parallelism of the Finnish runes, a rhetorical figure, as I have stated, altogether peculiar to this group of national poetry. This, I believe, settles the question. I will not say that "Hiawatha" is written "in the old national metre of Finland;" but there can be no doubt that it is written in a modified Finnish metre, modified by the exquisite feeling of the American poet, according the genius of the English language, and to the wants of modern taste. I feel perfectly convinced that, when Mr. Longfellow wrote "Hiawatha," the sweet monotony of the trochees of Finland, and not the mellow and melodious fall of those of Spain, vibrated in his soul. Apart from all internal evidence, which is of itself sufficient to put the matter beyond all question, I may mention that, in the summer of 1842, when Mr. Longfellow was on the Rhine, we often amused ourselves with the attractive metre and the quaint and uncouth subjects of the songs of Finland. We read at that time Dr. von Schröter's "Finnische Runen. Finnisch und Deutsch." (Stuttgart und Tübingen, 1834), a most instructive little book, which first made my countrymen acquainted with the folklore and national poetry of Finland, eighteen years before Herr Schiefner's translation of the "Kalevala" made that acquaintance still more intimate. Only Goethe's "Finnisches Lied" and Platen's translation of "Wäinaimöinen's Harfe" from the Swedish version had preceded it. These considerations will, I hope, leave but little doubt as to that region of poetry which has suggested to Mr. Longfellow the metre which has given rise to so much controversy. FERDINAND FREILIGRATH. - From The Athenæum, Dec. 22. THE patriarch of English poets, wits, and patrons of Art, died early on Tuesday morning, at his house in St. James' Place, aged, we believe, ninety-three years. Few lives so long protracted as his have afforded less incident, - few may yield so much anecdote to a future biographer of the "Poets of England." It was a life of easy fortunes, spent during a memorable century, among memorable people, a life of taste acquired in foreign travel, before foreign travel had ceased to be a luxury, -a life of poetical creations, few, far between, and finished so highly, that the best thoughts and lines in them will not readily perish from among the pleasures of memory. of Memory," and a notice or two in the "I learned that Mr. Rogers, author of The Pleasures of Memory,' that most sweet poem, had ridden round the lanes about our domain to view it, and stood or made his horse stand at our gate a considerable time, to examine our Camilla Cottage, -a name I am sorry to find Charles, or some one, had spread to him; and he honored all with his good word." This humor for pilgrimage, however warped or influenced, lived in Mr. Rogers to the last years of his life. His mind (under conditions) was to the last open to admire and appreciate, and this, perhaps, was one main secret of his poetical success. To complete our notice of his career as a Poet, it may be told that the "Pleasures of 99 was followed at an interval of 66 The father of Samuel Rogers was a London banker, "renowned," we read, "in the annals of Parliamentary elections, for a severe contest with Col. Holroyd, subsequently Lord Sheffield, in dividing the suffrages of the city of Coventry, when the obstinacy of the combat excited much attention." His son's education was begun, we believe, at the Memory school of the Rev. Mr. Pickbourne, of New-twenty years by his "Columbus." To this ington Green. There Rogers contracted one succeeded Jacqueline," which originally or two friendships which lasted almost as appeared together with Lord Byron's "Lara" long as his own life. When a young man, (a union soon followed by a separation), after the fashion of the Grays and Beckfords," Human Life," and lastly "Italy." The he began to study the world of Art and man- illustration of the last-named poem was the ners in foreign cities, picture galleries, embas- last task for the public undertaken by the sies, and courts. We have, within the last author: a task, it may be added, beyond dozen years, heard Mr. Rogers describe how the compass of any one less easy in fortunes, he had seen Marie-Antoinette dance, and since the production of that volume is said illustrate the same by himself walking a to have cost £10,000, and the days had not minuet. There is, also, an anecdote of his then set in when cheap literature on the one having left an early poem at Dr. Johnson's hand had been balanced by a luxury in typdoor only a day or two before the Doctor's ography and engraving undreamed of by our death. But this event happened in 1784, fathers. There can be no question that the and the date of the publication of the "Ode taste, no less than the cost, brought to bear to Superstition" is 1786. We notice these things somewhat doubtfully, since long before Mr. Rogers retired from society he had outlived the time at which a man shrinks from being thought old, —and had reached the stage when "to be very old" is pleasant rather than otherwise. Should the Diary or Memoirs, which it has been said he kept from a very early age, be given to the world, we may know more exactly what company he kept in Paris and in London before the French Revolution. In the year 1792 appeared "The Pleasures on this volume, in which some of the most exquisite designs of Turner alternate with those of Stothard, mark a period in the history of English book illustration. To this day Rogers' "Italy" remains without a peer. 66 Setting accessories aside for the moment, a word may be said in regard to the place of Mr. Rogers among modern English poets. His poetry is select rather than brilliant. He produced very sparingly, he polished every line with a fastidiousness fatal to vigor, - and seemed so little equal to the labor and |