Изображения страниц
PDF
EPUB

new form of city government with a prudence | for the type of a New Englander, is yet by his and vigor which reconciled the population maternal ancestors also of French and of Irish with the representative city government, in- descent. troduced by the Legislature, instead of the We dined at Mr. Prescott's. Everything primary meetings. In the Quincy Market, in his abode reminded me of his occupations. established through his energies, and through In the hall there is a portrait of Cortez; the direction he gave to the enterprise of the Spanish princes, queens and knights meet city, he has connected his memory with one our eyes on the walls, and a rich, historical of the most splendid improvements of Boston. library, containing the works on Spain and For a long series of years he had been the her possessions in the sixteenth century, with President of Harvard College, and is now hon- a large collection of manuscripts of that ored in Boston as the patriarch of the city. period, fill his study. Mr. Prescott was, by Several of our days were wholly occupied the natural weakness of his eyes, and perhaps by calls we received. Everybody seemed in-likewise by the amiable mildness of his teinterested in our cause and in our lot. Of the New England coldness and reserve, so often mentioned in the South, we found here no trace; yet in one respect society differs much from that of trans-Chesapeake States - the prejudice which regards duelling as a mode of reestablishing a questioned reputation, does not exist here. One of the greatest statesmen of Massachusetts, when a chivalrous Southerner, who deemed himself insulted by some expression on slavery, challenged him to fight a duel as a gentleman, is said to have replied coolly, that his adversary was mistaken in supposing him to be a gentleman; this title, coupled with the duty of duelling, belonged to monarchies, not to democratic republics.

Of our new acquaintances none proved more affectionate, and actively kind to us, than Mrs. Hillard. She met us not as strangers, but as friends, whose fortunes she had long watched with anxious sympathy. One of those thoroughly benevolent natures, void of all selfishness, who ever seem to please themselves only when they confer benefits on others; with the modest timidity of one who claims neither attentions nor thanks, she unites the energy which rarely fails to carry its ends. The deep affections of her disposition, not being concentrated by maternal cares (for she is childless), expand in sunny kindness on every one whom she can assist or oblige. She enjoys the happiness of her friends as warmly as she sympathizes with their sorrows; and every one is to her eminently a friend, who is oppressed, or who strives against injustice.

per, prevented from taking an active part in politics, or from becoming a regular business man. He devoted his time to literature; and parting from the Spanish conquest of Mexico and of Peru, his researches led him to the history of the splendid reigns of Ferdinand and Isabella. He is now occupied on that of Philip II. It is a gigantic task, for the history of Spain under that king is also a history of Protestantism in Germany, of independence in the Netherlands, of liberty in England, of the struggle between the power of the crown and the local institutions in France and in Spain; a drama of which we ourselves have not yet witnessed the last act. The author who will accomplish this task adequate to the grand subject, will really be "a prophet turned | backward," as A. W. Schlegel has termed the true historian.

A family relic in the dining-room of Mr. Prescott had a peculiar interest for me, as an evidence of the impartial way in which Bostonians look upon their revolution. Two swords, crossing one another on the wall, and those of the grandfather of Mr. Prescott and of the grandfather of his wife, both officers in the battle of Bunker Hill-the one in the American, the other in the English ranks. Here, as well as in the house of Mr. Winthrop, we saw that democratic institutions do not interfere with a just family pride, which prizes the merits of the ancestors and stimulates the descendants to emulation.

We admired at Mr. Ticknor's his most extensive Spanish library, which even in Spain has scarcely an equal for completeness. It is worth notice, that long before any party in the United States dreamt of an invasion of Mexico, two of the most eminent scholars of Boston had devoted their attention to the history and literature of that realm, turning the attention of their countrymen toward those parts which now seem destined to become their virtual inheritance.

We spent a pleasant morning at Mr. R. Winthrop's, the descendant of the celebrated first Governor of Massachusetts. He is one of the chief leaders and most important statesmen of the whig party in this State, and is more English in his manners and turn of mind than most of the Bostonians; in his house we almost forgot that we had crossed the ocean. We spoke about the claims of the different nationalities in the United States, and Mr. The largest private library in Boston is that Winthrop justly remarked that the Americans of Mr. Everett, in whose house the Scientific are eminently a mixed people, and that it is Society holds its regular meetings. The door ridiculous here to make national distinctions of the library is masked as in the Athenæum in regard to the white population. He him- of London, with titles of unwritten or lost self, for example, who surely must be taken | books, in a way which shows the feelings of

Mr. Everett. We see here, for instance, the Art of Government, by Louis Bonaparte, in five volumes- viz.: Artillery, Infantry, Cavalry, Police, and Clergy.

Here we take our leave of these spirited volumes. Our extracts show, that while they are too personal and gossipping to suit a scrupulous taste, they are marked by a charming naïveté and a genial spirit which will place them among the most readable

books of the season.

From the Evening Post.

We trust that American writers, who may hereafter be called upon to write for English Reviews, will not suffer their manuscripts or opinions to be emasculated by the editors. It is selling labor and liberty too cheap to allow the without such ingredients, be regarded a just infusion of so much poison into what would, criticism or a perfect work.

This is certainly a very narrow and absurd appeal to the national prejudices of our literay men, and one quite unworthy of the literary profession. The Westminster Review asks Mr. Whipple, or any one else, to write them an article about Mr. Webster, of a prescribed length, and for a prescribed price per page. Mr. Whipple accepts the offer, writes

AMERICAN WRITERS FOR ENGLISH RE- the article, and pockets the fee.

VIEWS.

THE last Westminster Review, just republished by Scott & Co., contains an article on Webster, from the pen of Mr. Whipple, of Boston, as is said. The editor, however, appears to have taken some liberties with the MS., as we judge from the following paragraph in the Express of this morning, which appears to have been written by authority.

Bostonian. It is an able review of the whole of

He is not in any way responsible for the article when it is published, or for any part of it; his connection with it can never be known, with the consent of the editors, and is never likely to be revealed except by himself. He has no longer any property in the article; no more than the grocer has in the pound of tea which he has sold, or the tailor in the coat which he meets in the streets on the backs of his customers.

On the other hand, the Review is responsiIn the last number of the Westminster Re-ble for the article; its critical judgment is at view, we are assured that the elaborate article stake; the consistency of its principles and on Daniel Webster is from an American, and a the authority of its opinions are to be mainthe public life and opinions of Daniel Webster; but tained; it asks no person to take any perthe article, we are told, is so interpolated with sonal responsibility for what he writes for its the views of the British editor, as in some meascolumns, and it pays a high price for the ure to destroy the intent and meaning of the exclusive privilege of using the labor of its contributors for its own advantage.

American writer.

Thus most all that was offensively said by Theodore Parker, in his sermon or address on Mr. Webster, is added to the main review of Mr. Webster's character and opinions. The British editor seemed to think that it was necessary to add something by way of drawback, to the good opinions of the gentleman selected by himself in Boston to write a proper review of Mr. character. Thus we are told in Mr. Parker's words, that

Everett's volumes on Daniel Webster's life and

"His learning was narrow in its range, and not very nice in its accuracy. His reach in history and literature was very small for a great man seventy years of age, always associating with able men. To science he seems to have paid scarce any attention at all. It is a short radius that measures the arc of his historic realm. A few Latin authors whom he loved to quote, made up his meagre classic store. He was not a scholar, and it is idle to claim great scholarship for

him."

Happily, scholars, like doctors, differ in opinion as to what is really the true understanding. We think that the published works of Mr. Webster answer the opinions of Mr. Parker, who can see nothing above, or below, or around his own dark spectacles, and who seems to think there is no heaven or earth, but that which comes within the orbit of his own narrow vision.

In the present instance the editors thought that Mr. Parker had presented some important phases of Mr. Webster's intellectual character which had been overlooked by Mr. Whipple, and they did what they had a perfect right to do what every editor feels at liberty to do with a paid contribution; they altered it in a way to make it more adequately reflect their own opinions. It is not worth while to talk of American writers "selling their labor and liberty too cheap," when they are paid for their labor all they ask, and are at liberty to write what they please. It would be a sacrifice of liberty indeed, against which the Express would be the first to protest, if it were compelled to publish the communications of its paid contributors without the editorial privilege of making them correspond with and reflect its own opinions.

The Doll and her Friends; or, Memoirs of the Lady Seraphina. By the Author of Letters from Madras, &c. With Illustrations. Ticknor, Reed & Fields.

Aunt Effie's Rhymes for Little Children, with twenty-four Illustrations. Ticknor, Reed & Fields.

From Poems by Elizabeth Barnett.
COWPER'S GRAVE.

Ir is a place where poets crowned
May feel the heart's decaying —
It is a place where happy saints

May weep amid their praying-
Yet let the grief and humbleness,

As low as silence, languish ;
Earth surely now may give her calm
To whom she gave her anguish.
O poets! from a maniac's tongue

Was poured the deathless singing!
O Christians! at your cross of hope
A hopeless hand was clinging!
O men this man in brotherhood,
Your weary paths beguiling,
Groaned inly while he taught you peace,
And died while ye were smiling!
And now, what time ye all may read
Through dimming tears his story-
How discord on the music fell,

And darkness on the glory

And how, when one by one, sweet sounds
And wandering lights departed,
He wore no less a loving face,

Because so broken-hearted

He shall be strong to sanctify
The poet's high vocation,

And bowed the meekest Christian down
In meeker adoration :

Nor ever shall he be in praise,
By wise or good forsaken;
Named softly, as the household name
Of one whom God hath taken !
With sadness that is calm, not gloom,
I learn to think upon him;
With meekness that is gratefulness,

On God whose heaven hath won him -
Who suffered once the madness-cloud,
Toward His love to blind him;
But gently led the blind along

Where breath and bird could find him;
And wrought within his shattered brain,
Such quick poetic senses,

As hills have language for, and stars,
Harmonious influences!

The pulse of dew upon the grass,
His own did calmly number;
And silent shadow from the trees
Fell o'er him like a slumber.

The very world, by God's constraint,
From falsehood's chill removing,

Its women and its men became

Beside him, true and loving!.

And timid hares were drawn from woods
To share his home caresses,
Uplooking to his human eyes
With sylvan tendernesses.
But while, in blindness he remained
Unconscious of the guiding,
And things provided came without
The sweet sense of providing,
He testified this solemn truth,
Though frenzy desolated
Nor man, nor nature satisfy,
When only God created!

Like a sick child that knoweth not
His mother while she blesses,
And droppeth on his burning brow
The coolness of her kisses;
That turns his fevered eyes around-
66 My mother! where 's my mother?"
And if such tender words and looks

Could come from any other!
The fever gone, with leaps of heart
He sees her bending o'er him;
Her face all pale from watchful love,
The unweary love she bore him '
Thus, woke the poet from the dream
His life's long fever gave him,
Beneath these deep pathetic eyes

Which closed in death, to save him!
Thus! oh, not thus! no type of earth
Could image that awaking,
Wherein he scarcely heard the chant
Of seraphs, round him breaking -
Or felt the new immortal throb
Of soul from body parted,

But felt those eyes alone, and knew
"My Saviour! not deserted!"
Deserted! who hath dreamt that when
The cross in darkness rested,
Upon the Victim's hidden face

No love was manifested?

What frantic hands outstretched have e'er

The atoning drops averted

What tears have washed them from the soulThat one should be deserted?

Deserted! God could separate

From his own essence rather:

And Adam's sins have swept between
The righteous Son and Father
Yea! once, Immanuel's orphaned cry,
His universe hath shaken
It went up single, echoless,
"My God, I am forsaken!"
It went up from the Holy's lips
Amid his lost creation,

That of the lost, no son should use

Those words of desolation;

That earth's worst frenzies, marring hope,
Should mar not hope's fruition;
And I, on Cowper's grave, should see
His rapture, in a vision !

SONNET.

BY W. M. ANDERSON.

Он, could we rest a little !

On the cope

Of present Time we stand but for a breath,
While the dark backward fadeth far beneath.
We summon up the Past:-ere we can hope
To think old thoughts, we change; and idly grope
Among dim memories, stirring dust of death.
-I see wild visions; now, a withered heath
Where a strange plover cries; and now, a slope,
And a wan moon that silvers the dank reeds,
And white sails like white faces on the sea,
And a dull ebbing tide that waves the weeds;
While music of dead voices, dear to me,

I hear forever ringing in mine ears:
Dear God let me but weep,- for I am sick
with tears.

From Eliza Cook's Journal.
APSLEY HOUSE.

APSLEY HOUSE was built about 1785-6, by Henry Bathurst Baron Apsley, Earl Bathurst, and lord high chancellor, the son of Pope's friend : —

some advantage. The far-famed Correggio Christ on the Mount of Olives - is visible, but that is all. Such a gem should be seen close and with a good light. At present it is protected by a glass, placed at a distance by a barrier, and all but hidden by a bad light.

The visitor enters by one barricaded ento the great staircase; then through the whole trance in Piccadilly, passes through the whole of the rooms till he emerges from the late duke's modest bedroom (on the ground floor) into the little garden at the back of the house, and so once more into the courtyard in Piccadilly.

Who plants like Bathurst, or who builds like Boyle? It was for some time the residence of the duke's elder brother, the late Marquis Wellesley, and was purchased by the great Duke in the year 1820. The house, originally of red brick, as Mr. Cunningham tells us in his Handbook, was faced with Bath stone in 1828, The house is left very much as we rememwhen the Piccadilly portico and the gallery ber to have seen it in the duke's lifetime. to the west or Hyde Park side were added by We recollect, however, a very large and inthe Messrs. Wyatt. Much of the house is, pressive collection of marble busts on the however, of Bathurst's building, and exhibits waiting-room table, grouped together withthroughout tokens of want of skill and taste out much order, but striking and tasteful in the original builder, and the more modern notwithstanding, very few of which are now tokens of alterations that have not very skil- to be seen. There were two of the "Duke,” fully supplied or concealed the original de- one of "Pitt," and busts of "George III.," fects. The portico is a portico to let-fit the "Duke of York," the "Emperor Alexonly for London sparrows. The site, how-ander," and "Sir Walter Scott"-the Scott ever, is the finest in London-commanding by Chantrey. Now the busts are fewer in the great west-end entrance into London, and number, and differently arranged. On one the gates of the best known parks. A foreigner called it, happily enough, No. 1, London; and when the duke was alive and in Apsley House, many have been heard to regard him not only as constable of the Tower, but as constable of London, with his castle actually seated at its double gates. The house, indeed, stood at one time a kind of siege; and the iron blinds-bullet proof, it is said were put up by the duke during the ferment of the Reform Bill, when his windows were broken by a London mob. What the great man saw- and what he lived to see! How far less universal would the feeling have been about him in 1832, had he died then instead of in 1852.

Within we

[ocr errors]

side of the door leading from this room to the principal staircase is Steele's bust of "the Duke," and on the other Chantrey's Castlereagh." In a corner is Nollekens' characteristic bust of " Pitt," and in a place of honor is a reduced copy of Rauch's noble statue of "Blucher." Above, are views of Lisbon and other places in Portugal and in Spain, too high to be seen to advantage.

From the hall the visitor passes to the principal staircase, a circular one, lighted, as we have said, from above, and through yellow glass. Here, bathed in saffron color, stands Canova's colossal statue in marble of " Napoleon," holding a bronze figure of Victory in his right hand. This to our thinking are speaking architectur- is Canova's greatest work, for it is manly and ally. -the house has little to recommend antique-looking, not meretricious and modit. The staircase, lighted by a dome filled ern-was presented to the duke by the allied with yellow glass, is unnecessarily dark. sovereigns. It was executed, however, if we The light in the Piccadilly drawing-rooms is mistake not, for Napoleon himself. The seriously lessened by the useless portico to staircase opens on the " Piccadilly Drawingwhich we have already referred. The great room :" a small, well-proportioned room, congallery, in which the annual Waterloo Ban- taining a few fine and interesting pictures quet took place-though a fine room occu- ancient and modern. Among the former is a pying the whole length of the Hyde Park fine Caravaggio-The Card Players; halfside of the house, and the best room in the lengths, fine in expression, and marvellous in house is lighted at present only from the point of color, and light and shade. Beneath top; the windows towards the park-its it, but not too well seen on account of the only side lights-being filled within by mir- barrier, is a small good Brouwer- - A Smokrors and without by iron blinds. Our previ- ing Party. Over the fireplace is a small fullous impression of this room was materially length-perhaps by Vandermeulen - of the lowered by our late visit. The present duke great Duke of Marlborough, on Horseback. would, we think, do well to remove the tem- The modern pictures are, Wilkie's Chelsea porary mirrors in the windows for he Pensioner – a commission to Wilkie from the would then restore the light, and enable his duke; Burnet's Greenwich Pensioners, bought visitors to see the pictures in the gallery to by the duke from the artist; and Lanseer's

[ocr errors]

Van Amburgh in the Den with Lions and Ti- |lence after the single Correggio are the exgers- -a subject suggested to the painter by the duke himself.

66

[ocr errors]

amples of Velasquez-chiefly portraits, but how fine! something between Vandyke and Rembrandt. The best specimen, however, which the duke possessed of this great Spanish master is not a portrait, but a common subject, The Water Seller, treated uncommonly and yet properly. The duke, unlike Marshal Soult, had no Murillos. After the specimens of Velasquez we would place a fine half-length of a female holding a wreath, by Titian. Two small examples of Claude at the Piccadilly end seemed promising, but we were not able to get near enough to speak decisively of their merits. Specimens of Teniers and Jan Steen are both numerous and good in this room; and there is a small Adrian Ostade, which would ornament a better collection than the duke pretended to possess. The duke, it should be remembered, did not profess dilettanteism or seek to be thought a collector. The pictures at Apsley House are either chance acquisitions abroad, commissions to artists, or portraits of Napoleon, of his own officers, his own family and friends. In this room, at the north end, is a marble bust of Pauline Bonaparte, by Canova a present to the duke from the artist, as appears by the inscription on its back.

From the "Piccadilly Drawing-room," the visitor passes to the " Drawing-room," a large apartment, deriving its chief light from Piccadilly. Here the eye is at first arrested ohiefly by four large copies by Bonnemaison, after Raphael; copies of more than average merit, but not of sufficient importance to detain the eye already in expectation of seeing an original Correggio. The ladies are detained here by two Sevres vases presented to the duke by Louis XVIII.; country gentlemen by The Melton Hunt, by Mr. Grant, the Royal Academician; and historical students by a small full-length of Napoleon studying the map of Europe - by Hoppner's fine three-quarter portrait of Mr. Pitt (bought at Christie's some eighteen months ago by the duke)- by a clever, head of Marshal Soult and by a characteristic likeness of the duke's old favorite friend, the late Mr. Arbuthnot. The great hero, it will be seen, was somewhat universal in his love for art, and a little whimsical in the way in which he hangs La Madonna del Pesce by Grant's Melton Hunt and Landseer's Highland Whiskey Still. From the Drawing-room" the visitor enters "the Picture-gallery,' -the principal apartment in the house. In this room the From the gallery, the visitor now enters the annual banquet on the 18th of June was back of the building, with its windows lookheld--the duke occupying the centre of the ing northward, past the statue of Achilles, room, with his back to the park, and his face and up Park Lane. Here are two roomsto the fireplace, - over which is hung a large the "Small Drawing-room" and the " Striped and fair contemporary copy of the Wind- Drawing-room" both filled with portraits sor Charles I. on horseback. Here are seen of all sizes. Here is Wilkie's full length of the king of Sweden's present of two fine William IV. (his much finer full-length of vases of Swedish porphyry, standing mod- George IV. in his Highland dress is not estly at the side; while in the centre are two shown); four full lengths by Lawrence, of noble candelabras of Russian porphyry - a the Marquis Wellesley, Marquis of Anglepresent from the Emperor Nicholas. The walls sea, Lord Beresford, and Lord Lynedoch; (before we speak of the pictures, for we must Beechey's three-quarter portrait of Nelson, write for upholsterers and milliners now and inferior to the portraits of the same hero by then) are hung with yellow-the ceiling is Abbott and Hoppner; two good portraits, richly ornamented and gilt-and the furni- head-size, by Hoppner, of the late Lord Cowture throughout is yellow. The picturesley and Lady Charlotte Greville; and a threethe true decorations of the room-are not quarter portrait of the duke's sister as a seen, as we have said, to advantage, though gypsy, with a child on her back, by, if wo hung with judgment as far as size and gen- remember rightly, either Owen or Hoppner. eral harmony are concerned. In this room is We were too far off on this occasion to prothe "Jew's-eye" of the collection, the little nounce with greater precision on the subject. Correggio, Christ on the Mount of Olives - The other attractions of these two back rooms the most celebrated specimen of the master are, Gambardella's hard-painted portrait of in this country. It is on panel; and a copy, the present "Duchess of Wellington," and a thought to be the original till the duke's pic-large picture, by Sir William Allan, of the ture appeared, is now in the National Gal- Battle of Waterloo, with Napoleon in the lery. This exquisite work of art, in which foreground, bought from the painter by the the light, as in the Notte, proceeds from the duke himself, with this remark, that it was Saviour, was captured in Spain, in the car- good, very good-not too much smoke." riage of Joseph Bonaparte-restored by the A full-length portrait of "Napoleon" in the captor to Ferdinand II. — but, with others," Small Drawing-room" would, if we rememunder like circumstances, again presented to ber rightly, well repay a closer inspection. the duke by that sovereign. Next in excel- From the "Striped Drawing-room" the

66

« ПредыдущаяПродолжить »