From The Independent.
SNOW POWER.

which the engineers and labors of the whole earth could not do in years!

But let the wind arise (itself but the Is there anything in the world so devoid movement of soft invisible particles of air), of all power as snow-flakes? It has no life. and how is this peaceful seeming of snowIt is not organized. It is not even a positive flakes changed! In an instant the air raves. thing, but is formed negatively, by the with- There is fury and spite in the atmosphere. drawal of heat from moisture. It forms in It pelts you, and searches you out in every silence and in the obscurity of the radiant fold and seam of your garments. It comes ether far up above eye-sight or hand-reach. without search-warrant through crack and It starts earthward so thin, so filmy and un- crevice of your house. It pours over the substantial, that gravitation itself seems at a hills, and lurks down in valleys, or roads, or loss to know how to get a hold upon it. cuts, until in a night it has entrenched itself Therefore it comes down with a wavering formidably against the most expert human motion, half attracted and half let alone. strength. For, now, lying in drifts huge and We have sat and watched the fall of snow wide, it bids defiance to engine and engineer. until our head grew dizzy, for it is a bewitch- All these thoughts and a great many ing sight to persons speculatively inclined. others, we had leisure to spin, last night, There is an aimless way of riding down, a while we lay within two miles of Morristown, simple, careless, thoughtless motion, that N. J., beating away at a half-mile inclined leads you to think that nothing can be more plane heaped with snow. We look upon the nonchalant than snow. And then it rests engine as the symbol of human skill and upon a leaf or alights upon the ground with power. In its summer rush along a dry such a dainty step, so softly, so quietly, that track it would seem literally invincible. It you almost pity its virgin helplessness. If comes roaring up towards you, it sweeps you reach out your hand to help it, your gigantically past you, with the wild scream very touch destroys it. It dies in your palm, of its whistle, waving the bushes and rustling and departs as a tear. Thus, the ancients the grass and flowers on either side, and feigned that let me see, what was it that filling the air with clouds of smoke and dust, they feigned? Lot's spouse went into salt. and you look upon its roaring course gradThat was not it. Niobe to stone, several ually dying out of sight and hearing, as if into vegetables, some into deer; but was some supernatural development of Might had nobody changed to a fountain? Ah yes, it passed by you in a vision. But now this was Arethusa. But now that we have hit wonderful thing is as tame as a wounded the thing that dimly floated in our memory, bird; all its spirit is gone. No blow is it is not a case to the point, so we will let Are-struck. The snow puts forth no power. It thusa flow (slide), and return to our snow.

simply lies still. That is enough. The laboring engine groans and pushes; backs out and plunges in again; retreats and rushes again.

If any one should ask what is the most harmless and innocent thing on earth, he might be answered, a snow-flake. And yet, in its own way of exerting itself it stands It becomes entangled. The snow is every among the foremost powers on earth. When where. It is before it and behind it. It it fills the air the sun cannot shine, the eye penetrates the whole engine, is sucked up in becomes powerless; neither hunter nor pilot, the draft, whirls in sheets into the engineguide nor watchman, are any better than room; torments the cumbered wheels, clogs blind men. The eagle and the mole are on the joints, and, packing down under the a level of vision. All the kings of the earth drivers, it fairly lifts the ponderous engine could not send forth an edict to mankind, off from its feet, and strands it across the saying, "Let labor cease. But this white-track! Well done, snow! That was a plumed light infantry clears out the fields, notable victory! Thou mayest well consent drives men home from the highway, and puts now to yield to scraper and snow-plough! half a continent under ban. It is a despis- However, it was not our engine that got er of old landmarks and very quietly unites off the track, but another beyond' Morrisall properties, covering up fences, hiding town. Ours could not get off nor get along. paths and roads, and doing in one day a work It could only push and stop. The pushing

ten.

was a failure, the stopping was very effectual. | and let forth the spirit imprisoned in them. It kept us till nine o'clock before we reached Descending quickly into the earth, the drops the lecture-room. But the audience had shall search the roots and give their breasts waited with wonderful patience till we got to their myriad mouths. The bud shall open there, and then, with a patience even more its eye. The leaf shall lift up its head. The exemplary, till we got through—at half-past grass shall wave its spear, and the forests hang out their banners! How significant is this silent, gradual, but irresistible power of rain and snow, of moral truth in this world! "For as the rain cometh down, and the snow from heaven, and returneth not thither but watereth the earth, and maketh it bring forth and bud, that it may give seed to the sower and bread to the eater; so shall my word be that goeth forth out of my mouth: it shall not return unto me void, but it shall accomplish that which I please, and it shall prosper in the thing whereto I sent it.”

In the morning, returning, we gloried over the last night's struggle; and shot down the inclined plane with a comfortable velocity, up which we had vainly toiled in the darkness and snow but so few hours before.

In a few weeks another silent force will come forth. And a noiseless battle will ensue, in which this now victorious army of flakes shall be itself vanquished. A raindrop is stronger than a snow-flake. One by one the armed drops will dissolve the crystals

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crasy of the Americans he does not touch on; and here is the weak part of his work—du reste, one of the most interesting that has for a long time made its appearance in Paris. Critic.

THE REFUGEE; or the Narrative of Fugitive Slaves in Canada, related by Themselves. By Benjamin Drew.

THIS American volume contains a sort of au

PROMENADES IN AMERICA.-M. Ampère, of the Académie Française, who is as celebrated as most of his learned colleagues for his irregular grammar, h as pulished an interesting brace of volumes-Promenades en Amerique. Equally removed from enthusiasm and prejudice, M. Ampère has arrived nearer the truth touching Cousin Jonathan than either Mrs. Trollope or M. de Tocqueville. Possessing a sufficient degree of scepticism not to fall in love at first sight with everything he met with, M. Ampère, nevertheless, appreciates at their full value the advanta- tobiographical account of many fugitive slaves ges of that favored country, which Europe treats who have taken refuge in Canada, collected by with perhaps inconsiderate levity, and which verbal changes and those read over to them. Mr. Drew from their own statement, with only may, at an earlier period than is generally sup- The stories of sufferings in bondage and the haz posed, become the central point of human activity. M. Ampère did not go to New York with ards of escape are numerous; a few are full, the belief that the "empire city" was a modern the generality brief to curtness. The story of Athens, and is, therefore, not surprised to find the escapes is generally more interesting from there men both serious and intelligent, and far life. This last is somewhat monotonous, but its action and suspense than the account of slave more literary, scientific, and artistical in their real. It confirms the assertion generally made, tastes than the old world suppose. The kind of that the physical treatment of the slaves is not hauteur with which Europeans look down upon often tyrannical, but almost universally of a Los Yankees is supremely ridiculous. Their

Осса

ZAPHNATH-PAANEAH; or, the History of Joseph.
By the Rev. Thornley Smith.

eagerness for lucre is not greater than ours, but gross, grinding, degrading character. they are better men of business. The number sionally, it would seem that the slave is pretty of their religious sects is better than the atheism much his own master, if not the master of his of the old continent. Their love for art and their master. Spectator. appreciation of it lead them to part with their hardly-earned dollars with a munificence which may, perhaps, find a parallel in England, but which assuredly finds none in France. There is one part of M. Ampère's book which is not conclusive. The natives of the United States have been compared more than once to human highpressure locomotives; and from personal observation I have no doubt of the truth of the comparison. M. Ampère sketches them off under a political point of view, but the social idiosyn

AN attempt to illustrate the life of Joseph in connection with the manners and customs of his times, and by the aid of Egyptian antiquities. It is not successful; the story of Joseph is expanded by conjecture, and overlaid by extraneous matter; the style a good deal too much in the sermonizing way. - Spectator.

LITTELL'S LIVING AGE.-No. 614.-1 MARCH, 1856.

From The Westminster Review. GERMAN WIT: HEINRICH HEINE.

1. Heinrich Heine's Sämmtliche Werke. Philadelphia: John Weik. 1855.

2. Vermischte Schriften von Heinrich Heine. Hamburg: Hoffman and Campe. 1854.

66

of in sober moments to enter as an element into their Art, and differing as much from the laughter of a Chamfort or a Sheridan as the gastronomic enjoyment of an ancient Briton, whose dinner had no other 99 removes than from acorns to beech-mast and back again to "NOTHING," says Goethe, "is more sig- acorns, differed from the subtle pleasures of nificant of men's character than what they the palate experienced by his turtle-eating find laughable." The truth of this observa- descendant. In fact they had to live seriously tion would perhaps have been more apparent through the stages which to subsequent races if he had said culture instead of character. were to become comedy, as those amiableThe last thing in which the cultivated man looking pre-Adamite amphibia which Profescan have community with the vulgar is their sor Owen has restored for us in effigy at jocularity; and we can hardly exhibit more Sydenham, took perfectly au sérieux the strikingly the wide gulf which separates him grotesque physiognomies of their kindred. from them, than by comparing the object Heavy experience in their case as in every which shakes the diaphragm of a coal-heaver other was the base from which the salt of with the highly complex pleasure derived from future wit was to be made. a real witticism. That any high order of wit Humor is of earlier growth than Wit, and is exceedingly complex, and demands a ripe it is in accordance with this earlier growth and strong mental developement, has one ev- that it has more affinity with the poetic tenidence in the fact that we do not find it in dencies, while Wit is more nearly allied to the boys at all in proportion to their manifestation ratiocinative intellect. Humor draws its maof other powers. Clever boys generally as- terials from situations and characteristics; pire to the heroic and poetic rather than the Wit seizes on unexpected and complex relacomic, and the crudest of all their efforts are tions. Humor is chiefly representative and their jokes. Many a witty man will remem-descriptive; it is diffuse, and flows along ber how in his school days a practical joke, without any other law than its own fantastic more or less Rabelaisian, was for him the newill; or it flits about like a will-o'-the-wisp, plus ultra of the ludicrous. It seems to have amazing us by its whimsical transitions. Wit been the same with the boyhood of the human is brief and sudden, and sharply defined as a The history and literature of the an crystal; it does not make pictures, it is not cient Hebrews gives the idea of a people who fantastic; but it detects an unsuspected analwent about their business and their pleasure ogy or suggests a startling or confounding inas gravely as a society of beavers; the smile ference. Every one who has had the opporand the laugh are often mentioned metaphor- tunity of making the comparison will remember ically, but the smile is one of complacency, that the effect produced on him by some witthe laugh is one of scorn. Nor can we im- ticisms is closely akin to the effect produced on agine that the facetious element was very him by subtle reasoning which lays open a falstrong in the Egyptians; no laughter lurks lacy or absurdity, and there are persons whose in the wondering eyes and the broad calm delight in such reasoning always manifests lips of their statues. Still less can the As-itself in laughter. This affinity of Wit with syrians have had any genius for the comic: ratiocination is the more obvious in proportion the round eyes and simpering satisfaction of as the species of wit is higher and deals less their ideal faces belong to a type which is not with words and superficialities than with the witty, but the cause of wit in others. The essential qualities of things. Some of Johnfun of these early races was, we fancy, of the son's most admirable witticisms consist in the after-dinner kind-loud-throated laughter suggestion of an analogy which immediately over the wine-cup, taken too little account exposes the absurdity of an action or proposiDCXIV. LIVING AGE. VOL. XII. 33

race.

tion; and it is only their ingenuity, conden- no power over them if it jar on their moral sation, and instantaneousness which lift them taste. Hence, too, it is, that while wit is from reasoning into Wit- they are reasoning perennial, humor is liable to become superraised to a higher power. On the other hand, annuated. Humor, in its higher forms, and in proportion as it associates itself with the sympathic emotions, continually passes into poetry: nearly all great modern humorists may be called prose poets.

were not so sparkling and antithetic, so pregnant with suggestion and satire, that we are obliged to call them witty. We rarely find wit untempered by humor, or humor without a spice of wit; and sometimes we find them both united in the highest degree in the same mind, as in Shakspeare and Molière. A happy conjunction this, for wit is apt to be cold, and thin-lipped, and Mephistophelean in men who have no relish for humor, whose lunge do never crow like Chanticleer at fun and

As is usual with definitions and classifications, however, this distinction between Wit and Humor does not exactly represent the actual fact. Like all other species, Wit and Homor over-lap and blend with each other. Some confusion as to the nature of Humor There are bon mots, like many of Charles has been created by the fact, that those who Lamb's, which are a sort of facetious hybrids, have written most eloquently on it have we hardly know whether to call them witty dwelt almost exclusively on its higher forms, or humorous; there are rather lengthy de and have defined humor in general as the scriptions or narratives, which, like Voltaire's sympathetic presentation of incongruous ele-"Micromégas," would be humorous if they ments in human nature and life; a definition which only applies to its later development. A great deal of humor may co-exist with a great deal of barbarism, as we see in the Middle Ages; but the strongest flavor of the humor in such cases will come, not from sympathy, but more probably from triumphant egoism or intolerance; at best it will be the love of the ludicrous exhibiting itself in illustrations of successful cunning and of the ler talionis, as in Reineke Fuchs, or shaking off in a holiday mood the yoke of a too drollery; and broad-faced, rollicking humor exacting faith, as in the old Mysteries. needs the refining influence of wit. Indeed, Again, it is impossible to deny a high it may be said that there is no really fine degree of humor to many practical jokes, writing in which wit has not an implicit but no sympathetic nature can enjoy them. if not an explicit action. The wit may never Strange as the genealogy may seem, the rise to the surface, it may never flame out original parentage of that wonderful and into a witticism; but it helps to give brightdelicious mixture of fun, fancy, philosophy, ness and transparency, it warns off from and feeling which constitutes modern humor, flights and exaggerations which verge on the was probably the cruel mockery of a savage ridiculous-in every genre of writing it at the writhings of a suffering enemy-such preserves a man from sinking into the genre is the tendency of things towards the good and beautiful on this earth! Probably the reason why high culture demands more complete harmony with its moral sympathies in humor than in wit, is that humor is in its nature more prolix — that it has not the direct and irresistible force of wit. Wit is an electric shock, which takes us by violence, quite independently of our predominant men- Perhaps the nearest approach Nature has tal disposition; but humor approaches us given us to a complete analysis, in which wit more deliberately and leaves us masters of is as thoroughly exhausted of humor as pos ourselves. Hence it is, that while coarse sible, and humor as bare as possible of wit, and cruel humor has almost disappeared from is in the typical Frenchman and the typical contemporary literature, coarse and cruel wit German. Voltaire, the intensest example of abounds: even refined men cannot help pure wit, fails in most of his fictions from laughing at a coarse bon mot or a lacerating his lack of humor. Micromégas is a perfect personality, if the "shock" of the witticism tale, because, as it deals chiefly with philois a powerful one; while mere fun will have sophic ideas and does not touch the marrow

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ennuyeur. And it is eminently needed for this office in humorous writing; for as humor has no limits imposed on it by its material, no law but its own exuberance, it is apt to become preposterous and wearisome unless checked by wit, which is the enemy of all monotony, of all lengthiness, of all exag geration.