Read Ebook: The Southern Literary Messenger Vol. II. No. 8 July 1836 by Various Poe Edgar Allan Editor

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Von Raumer presents a vivid picture of the miseries of Ireland.

Much of our traveller's time, while in Great Britain was passed in close intimacy with her statesmen. Of Russell, Spring Rice, Sir Robert Peel, and O'Connell, he speaks in terms of evident respect. From many passages in which he mentions the latter, we select the following.

Our traveller is in raptures with Windsor, and censures the tasteless folly of Buckingham house. Of the Italian opera in England he speaks briefly and contemptuously--nor does the national music find any degree of favor in his eyes. His criticisms on sculpture and painting are forcible and very beautiful. In some observations on the attic bas-reliefs, and the works from the Parthenon and Phigalia, to be found in the British Museum, he takes occasion to collate the higher efforts of Grecian art with the rudeness of Roman feeling, and the still more striking rudeness of the German and Italian schools of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. His remarks here are too forcible and too fresh to be omitted.

We had noted many other passages for comment and extract-- but we perceive that we are already infringing upon our limits. This book about England will and must be read, and will as certainly be relished, by a numerous class, although not by a majority, of our fellow-citizens. The author, we rejoice to hear, has engaged to translate into his own language the Washington Papers of Mr. Sparks. We will only add that Professor Von Raumer has the honor of being called by the English organ of the High Church and Ultra Tory Party, "a vagrant blackguard unfit for the company of a decent servants' hall."

MEMOIRS OF AN AMERICAN LADY.

This work has been already a favorite with many of our readers--but has long been out of print, and we are glad to see it republished. Mrs. Grant of Laghan is a name entitled to the respect and affection of all Americans. The book, moreover, is full of good things; and as a memorial of the epoch immediately preceding our Revolution, is invaluable. At the present moment too it will be well to compare the public sentiment in regard to slavery, Indian affairs, and some other matters, with the sentiments of our forefathers, as expressed in this volume. In Albany and New York it will possess a local interest of no common character. Every where it will be read with pleasure, as an authentic and well written record of a most exemplary life. The edition is well printed on fine paper, and altogether creditable to Mr. Dearborn.

Some remarks on slavery, at page 41, will apply with singular accuracy to the present state of things in Virginia.

In the society I am describing, even the dark aspect of slavery was softened into a smile. And I must, in justice to the best possible masters, say, that a great deal of that tranquillity and comfort, to call them by no higher names, which distinguish this society from all others, was owing to the relation between master and servant being better understood here than in any other place. Let me not be detested as an advocate for slavery, when I say that I think I have never seen people so happy in servitude as the domestics of the Albanians. One reason was, that each family had few of them, and that there were no field negroes. They would remind one of Abraham's servants, who were all born in the house, which was exactly their case. They were baptised too, and shared the same religious instruction with the children of the family; and, for the first years, there was little or no difference with regard to food or clothing between their children and those of their masters.

When a negro woman's child attained the age of three years, the first new-year's day after, it was solemnly presented to a son or daughter, or other young relative of the family, who was of the same sex with the child so presented. The child to whom the young negro was given, immediately presented it with some piece of money and a pair of shoes; and from that day the strongest attachment subsisted between the domestic and the destined owner. I have no where met with instances of friendship more tender and generous than that which here subsisted between the slaves and their masters and mistresses. Extraordinary proofs of them have been often given in the course of hunting or Indian trading, when a young man and his slave have gone to the trackless woods together, in the cases of fits of the ague, loss of a canoe and other casualties happening near hostile Indians. The slave has been known, at the imminent risk of his life, to carry his disabled master through trackless woods with labor and fidelity scarce credible; and the master has been equally tender on similar occasions of the humble friend who stuck closer than a brother; who was baptised with the same baptism, nurtured under the same roof, and often rocked in the same cradle with himself. These gifts of domestics to the younger members of the family were not irrevocable; yet they were very rarely withdrawn. If the kitchen family did not increase in proportion to that of the master, young children were purchased from some family where they abounded, to furnish those attached servants to the rising progeny. They were never sold without consulting their mother, who, if expert and sagacious, had a great deal to say in the family, and would not allow her child to go into any family with whose domestics she was not acquainted. These negro women piqued themselves on teaching their children to be excellent servants, well knowing servitude to be their lot for life, and that it could only be sweetened by making themselves particularly useful, and excelling in their department. If they did their work well, it is astonishing, when I recollect it, what liberty of speech was allowed to those active and prudent mothers. They would chide, reprove, and expostulate in a manner that we would not endure from our hired servants; and sometimes exert fully as much authority over the children of the family as the parents, conscious that they were entirely in their power. They did not crush freedom of speech and opinion in those by whom they knew they were beloved, and who watched with incessant care over their interest and comfort.

The volume abounds in quaint anecdote, pathos, and matter of a graver nature, which will be treasured up for future use by the historian. At page 321 is a description of the breaking up of the ice on the Hudson. The passage is written with great power; and, as Southey has called it, "quite Homeric," we will be pardoned for copying it entire.

Soon after this I witnessed, for the last time, the sublime spectacle of the ice breaking up on the river; an object that fills and elevates the mind with ideas of power, and grandeur, and indeed, magnificence; before which all the triumphs of human art sink into insignificance. This noble object of animated greatness, for such it seemed, I witnessed; its approach being announced, like a loud and long peal of thunder, the whole population of Albany were down at the river side in a moment; and if it happened, as was often the case, in the morning, there could not be a more grotesque assemblage. No one who had a nightcap on waited to put it off; as for waiting for one's cloak or gloves, it was a thing out of the question; you caught the thing next you that could wrap round you, and run. In the way you saw every door left open, and pails, baskets, &c. without number set down in the street. It was a perfect saturnalia. People never dreamt of being obeyed by their slaves till the ice was past. The houses were left quite empty: the meanest slave, the youngest child, all were to be found on the shore. Such as could walk, ran; and they that could not, were carried by those whose duty would have been to stay and attend them. When arrived at the show place, unlike the audience collected to witness any spectacle of human invention, the multitude, with their eyes all bent one way, stood immoveable, and silent as death, till the tumult ceased, and the mighty commotion was passed by; then every one tried to give vent to the vast conceptions with which his mind had been distended. Every child, and every negro was sure to say, 'Is not this like the day of judgment?' and what they said every one else thought. Now to describe this is impossible; but I mean to account in some degree for it. The ice, which had been all winter very thick, instead of diminishing, as might be expected in spring, still increased, as the sunshine came and the days lengthened. Much snow fell in February, which, melted by the heat of the sun, was stagnant for a day on the surface of the ice; and then by the night frosts, which were still severe, was added as a new accession to the thickness of it, above the former surface. This was so often repeated, that in some years the ice gained two feet in thickness, after the heat of the sun became such as one would have expected should have entirely dissolved it. So conscious were the natives of the safety this accumulation of ice afforded, that the sledges continued to drive on the ice, when the trees were budding, and everything looked like spring; nay, when there was so much melted on the surface that the horses were knee deep in water while travelling on it; and portentous cracks, on every side, announced the approaching rupture. This could scarce have been produced by the mere influence of the sun, till midsummer. It was the swelling of the waters under the ice, increased by rivulets, enlarged by melted snows, that produced this catastrophe; for such the awful concussion made it appear. The prelude to the general bursting of this mighty mass was a fracture lengthwise, in the middle of the stream, produced by the effort of the imprisoned waters, now increased too much to be contained within their wonted bounds. Conceive a solid mass, from six to eight feet thick, bursting for many miles in one continued rupture, produced by a force inconceivably great, and, in a manner, inexpressibly sudden. Thunder is no adequate image of this awful explosion, which roused all the sleepers within reach of the sound, as completely as the final convulsion of nature, and the solemn peal of the awakening trumpet might be supposed to do. The stream in summer was confined by a pebbly strand, overhung with high and steep banks, crowned with lofty trees, which were considered as a sacred barrier against the encroachments of this annual visitation. Never dryads dwelt in more security than those of the vine-clad elms, that extended their ample branches over this mighty stream. Their tangled nets laid bare by the impetuous torrents, formed caverns ever fresh and fragrant, where the most delicate plants flourished, unvisited by scorching suns or nipping blasts; and nothing could be more singular than the variety of plants and birds that were sheltered in these intricate and safe recesses. But when the bursting of the crystal surface set loose the many waters that had rushed down, swollen with the annual tribute of dissolving snow, the islands and low lands were all flooded in an instant; and the lofty banks, from which you were wont to overlook the stream, were now entirely filled by an impetuous torrent, bearing down, with incredible and tumultuous rage, immense shoals of ice; which, breaking every instant by the concussion of others, jammed together in some places, in others erecting themselves in gigantic heights for an instant in the air, and seeming to combat with their fellow-giants crowding on in all directions, and falling together with an inconceivable crash, formed a terrible moving picture, animated and various beyond conception; for it was not only the cerulean ice, whose broken edges combatting with the stream, refracted light into a thousand rainbows, that charmed your attention; lofty pines, large pieces of the bank torn off by the ice with all their early green and tender foliage, were driven on like travelling islands, amid the battle of breakers, for such it seemed. I am absurdly attempting to paint a scene, under which the powers of language sink. Suffice it, that this year its solemnity was increased by an unusual quantity of snow, which the last hard winter had accumulated, and the dissolution of which now threatened an inundation.

CAMPERDOWN.

ERATO.

Remorse had furrowed his ample brow-- His cheeks were sallow and thin-- His limbs were shrivelled--his body was lank-- He had reaped the wages of sin; And though his eyes constantly glanced about, As if looking or watching for something without, His mind's eye glanced within! Wildly his eyes still glared about, But the eye that glared within Was the one that saw the images That frightened this man of sin.

From the same.

We were together: we had tarried So oft by some enchanting spot To her familiar, and which carried Her thoughts away--where mine were not-- That, ere she knew, the bright, chaste moon --Not as of old, She roamed the woods, in sandal-shoon, With bow in hand and quiver strung-- But 'mong the stars, and broad and round The moon of man's degenerate race, Its way had through an opening found, And shone full in her face! She started then, and, looking up, Turned on me her delicious eyes; And I, poor fool! I dared to hope, And met that look with sighs!

Now shrank with fear each gallant heart-- Bended was many a knee-- And the last prayer was offered up, God of the Deep, to thee! Muttered the angry Heavens still And murmured still the sea-- And old and sternest hearts bowed down God of the Deep, to Thee!

They told me not to love him! They said he was not true; And bade me have a care, lest I Should do what I might rue: At first I scorn'd their warnings--for I could not think that he Conceal'd beneath so fair a brow, A heart of perfidy.

Dust on thy mantle! dust, Bright Summer, on thy livery of green! A tarnish, as of rust, Dimmeth thy brilliant sheen: And thy young glories--leaf, and bud, and flower-- Change cometh over them with every hour.

Thee hath the August sun Looked on with hot, and fierce, and brassy face: And still and lazily run, Scarce whispering in their pace, The half-dried rivulets, that lately sent A shout of gladness up, as on they went.

Flame-like, the long mid-day-- With not so much of sweet air as hath stirr'd The down upon the spray, Where rests the panting bird, Dozing away the hot and tedious noon, With fitful twitter, sadly out of tune.

Seeds in the sultry air, And gossamer web-work on the sleeping trees! E'en the tall pines, that rear Their plumes to catch the breeze, The slightest breeze from the unfruitful West, Partake the general languor, and deep rest.

LIFE ON THE LAKES.

As our adventures are thus brought, for the day, to a premature close, suppose I give you an Indian story. If any body asks you who told it me, say you do not know.

RUSSIA AND THE RUSSIANS.

But the streets are wide, and the walls painted white or light yellow; and from one street opens another, and another, and another--all wide, and white, and light yellow. And then, here and there, there are columned fa?ades, and churches, and domes, and tapering spires--all white too, that are not gilded, or painted a sparkling green. And canals sweep away to the right and left almost at every turning, not straight and Dutch-like, but bending gracefully, and losing themselves among the houses. And there is one vast and glorious river, as wide as the Thames at London, and a hundred times more beautiful, which rolls through the whole; and, beyond it, from which ever side you look, you see a kindred mass of houses and palaces, white and yellow, and columned fa?ades, and churches, and domes, and spires, gilded and green.

Such were my first impressions--thus thrown down at random, without waiting to look for words, and hardly caring about ideas,--the first sudden impressions flashed upon my mind by the physical aspect of St. Petersburg.

I have said in a former volume of this work, that I have the custom--like other idlers, I suppose--of wandering about during the first day of my visit to a foreign city, without apparent aim or purpose; without knowing, or desiring to know, the geography of the place; and without asking a single question. Now this is precisely the sort of view which should be taken of the new city of the Tsars, by one who prefers the poetry of life to its dull and hackneyed prose. St. Petersburg is a picture rather than a reality--grand, beautiful, and noble, at a little distance, but nothing more than a surface of paint and varnish when you look closer. Or, rather, to amend the comparison, it is like the scene of a theatre, which you must not by any means look behind, if you would not destroy the illusion.

It will be said, that such is the case with all cities, with all objects that derive their existence from the puny sons of men: but this is one of those misnamed truisms which are considered worthy of all acceptation for no other reason than that they come from the tongue, or through a neighboring organ, with the twang of religion or morality.

It would be difficult, even for the talented artist whose productions grace these sketches, to convey an adequate idea of the scale on which this city is laid out; and yet, without doing so, we do nothing. This is the grand distinctive feature of the place. Economy of room was the principal necessity in the construction of the other great European cities; for, above all things, they were to be protected from the enemy by stone walls. But, before St. Petersburg was built, a change had taken place in the art and customs of war, and permanent armies had become in some measure a substitute for permanent fortifications. Another cause of prodigality was the little value of the land; but, above all these, should be mentioned, the far-seeing, and far-thinking ambition of the builders. Conquest was the ruling passion of the Tsars from the beginning; and in founding a new capital, they appear to have destined it to be the capital of half the world.

It is needless to exaggerate the magnitude of the city; as, for instance, some writers have done, by stating that the Nevski Prospekt is half as wide again as Oxford Street in London. Every thing is here on a gigantic scale. The quays, to which vessels requiring nine feet of water cannot ascend, except when the river is unusually high, might serve for all the navies of Europe. The public offices, or at least many of them, would hardly be too small, even if the hundred millions were added to the population of the country, which its soil is supposed to be capable of supporting.

Perhaps it may be as well to introduce here, for the sake of illustration, although a little prematurely as regards the description, a view of the grand square of the Admiralty. This is an immense oblong space in the very heart of the city. The spectator stands near the man?ge, the building which projects at the left-hand corner. Beyond this is the Admiralty, with its gilded spire, which is visible from almost all parts of the metropolis. Farther on is the Winter Palace, distinguished by a flag, in front of which, near the bottom of the vista, is the column raised to the memory of Alexander. Opposite this, on the right hand, is the palace of the Etat Major, and returning towards the foreground, the War Office. The group in front are employed in dragging stones for the new Isaak's church, which stands in the left hand corner, although the view is not wide enough to admit it. This is to be the richest and most splendid building in the world; but it has been so long in progress, and is now so little advanced, that a notice of it must fall to the lot of some future traveller. Saint Isaak, I believe, is not particularly connected with Russia, except by his day falling upon the birth-day of Peter the Great.

Such is the scale on which St. Petersburg is built; for although this may be considered the heart of the city, the other members correspond. The very vastness of the vacant spaces, however, it should be observed, seems to make the houses on either side look less lofty; while on the other hand, no doubt the real want of loftiness in the houses exaggerates the breadth of the area between. But on the present occasion, any thing like fancy in the latter respect would have been quite supererogatory. The streets were hardly passable. Here and there a pond or a morass gave pause to the pedestrian; while the droski driver was only indebted to his daily renewed experience of the daily-changing aspect of the ground, for the comparative confidence and safety with which he pursued his way. The streets, in fact, were in the same predicament as the roads by which I had reached them; they had thawed from their winter consistence, and their stones, torn up, and dismantled by the severities of the frost, had not yet been put into summer quarters.

The greater part of the streets are what may be termed pebble-roads, a name which describes exactly what they are. At this moment, in the whole city, there are upwards of seven hundred and seventy-two thousand square sagenes of these roads, while of stone pavement there are only nine thousand four hundred and fifty, and of wood six thousand four hundred.

The wooden pavement, I believe, is peculiar to St. Petersburg, and merits a description. It consists of small hexagons sawed from a piece of resinous wood, and laid into a bed formed of crushed stones and sand. These are fastened laterally into each other with wooden pegs, and when the whole forms a plain surface, the interstices are filled with fine sand, and then boiling pitch is poured over all. This pitch from the porous nature of the wood is speedily absorbed, and on a quantity of sand being strewed above it, the operation is complete, and a pavement constructed which is found to be extremely durable, and which seems to me to suffer much less injury from the frost than the stone causeway. The honor of the invention is due to M. Gourief; and I have no doubt he will ultimately see it adopted in most of the great towns towards the north.

SUPPLEMENT.

"And now, too, we began"--says Spain Revisited--"to see horsemen jantily dressed in slouched hat, embroidered jacket, and worked spatterdashes, reining fiery Andalusian coursers, each having the Moorish carbine hung at hand beside him."

With all deference to the Messenger, we would ask, if it never entered into the critick's mind that "slouched hat," "and embroidered jacket" are here used as generick terms? Lieutenant Slidell evidently intended that they should be so received: but that he entertained the same intention respecting "horsemen," the whole context disproves. Had the reviewer placed a comma after the word "horsemen," in the first line of the paragraph which he dissects, considered as parenthetical and illustrative all that follows between that comma and the one which comes after "spatterdashes," supplied the personal relative and the proper verb, which are plainly understood before the participle "reining," we presume that this sentence, ill-constructed as it undoubtedly is, would have escaped the knife, from a conviction that there are many as bad in the Messenger itself. The only critical notice which we have had leisure to read since the reception of the number, is the one which we have named. We may resume the subject in connexion with the June number.

From the Augusta Chronicle.

From the Courier and Enquirer.

From the National Intelligencer.

On the subject of the right of instruction, we find in the June number of the Richmond Literary Messenger, a very able paper, which, as soon as we can free our columns from the mass of Congressional matter on our hands, we will spread entire before our readers. The article comes to us in the shape of a letter to a gentleman in Virginia, and is understood to be from the pen of that distinguished jurist, Judge Hopkinson, of Philadelphia. It was elicited by a recent article in the Richmond Enquirer in defence of the right of mandatory instruction, and furnishes a luminous and complete refutation of that, amongst the most mischievous of the fallacies which obtain occasional popularity in particular States. Hearing of this letter, the publisher of the Messenger had the good sense and good fortune to obtain a copy of it, and the manliness to publish it in his valuable journal. In so doing he has rendered a service to the public, and enriched his pages with an article which is, itself, worth five years' subscription to the Messenger.

From the Richmond Compiler.

The present number, we do not think equal as a whole to the March number, and still less to that for February--which latter may be safely placed in comparison with any single number of any Journal in existence for the great vigor, profundity, and originality of its articles. Yet we do not mean to say that the number now before us is not an admirable one, and fully equal to any of our Northern magazines in its communications, while it far surpasses the best of them in its Editorial department.

The Editorial Department is full, bold, vigorous and original. The first paper is "Lynch's Law," and gives the history and origin, together with a copy of the law. Then follow Critical Notices. New works are reviewed--of Slidell's, of Professor Anthon's, of Mrs. Trollope's, of Paulding's, of Walsh's, of Cooper's, and of Mellen's. Praise and blame are distributed with the soundest discrimination, and with an impartiality, which it is impossible not to admire; or to impeach.

The Poetical Department is quite limited. Two pieces by Mr. Poe are very beautiful, the one entitled "Irene," in especial, is full of his rich and well-disciplined imagination. The lines on "Camilla" by Lambert A. Wilmer, are a perfect gem; full of antique strength and classic sorrow.

From the Baltimore Gazette.

This question, so often, and in this instance so ably, examined, was settled in Baltimore several years ago, by the actual discovery of a man emerging from the top of the chest or box, on which Mr. Maelzel's figure moved the chess men, the lid, which moved on a pivot like some card table covers, being turned on one side. This was seen by two youths of respectable character, through a window, accidentally open, in the rear of the room in which Mr. Maelzel's Chess Player was exhibited. Of the truth of this discovery we are entirely satisfied.

The Lecture "On the Providence of God in the Government of the World," from the original manuscript of Benjamin Franklin, and which has not hitherto been published in any edition of his works, is properly entitled to the first place in the columns of the Messenger. The argument of the Providence of God contained in this lecture, is admirable for its brevity and conclusiveness. Franklin reasoned well, and wrote as well as he reasoned. Forming his style after the model of the most chaste and classic writer of the English language, and drawing from the resources of a capacious and well stored mind, he never failed both to please and to instruct his readers. His aim was to benefit his countrymen; and he wrote for them in a way in which they could understand, appreciate, and profit by every thing that came from his pen. The epistles published more than a century ago in his Pennsylvania Weekly Gazette, contain many valuable hints respecting domestic economy, some of which might be treasured up with advantage at the present day; for, generally speaking, economy is not an American virtue. Two of those epistles, one from Anthony Afterwit, and the other from Celia Single, have made their appearance in this number of the Messenger. Neither of them, it seems, has been inserted in any of the editions of the Doctor's works.

The article on "Woman," by Paulina, is sensible and well written--far more just and philosophical than a vast deal that has been said on this fair subject. Commend us to the ladies in general, and to Paulina in particular, for just views of the gentler sex. It is to be hoped the fair writer may perceive that the subject is not exhausted in a single essay.

"Leaves from my Scrap Book," includes much that is excellent within a limited space. The writer has improved his naturally correct taste by close communion with the ancient and modern classics.

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