Continental Monthly Volume 1 Issue 3 by Various

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Rocjean now gave the Venerable a _paul_, requesting him to dwell at
length upon these scenes, as he was a Frenchman in search of a little of
geography.

'Excellencies, I will do my en-dea-vors. The gran-diose ship as lies in
the Lavar (Delaware) riv-aire is fool of em-i-gr-rants. The signora
de-scen-din' the side of the ship is in a dreadful sit-u-a-tion tru-ly.
[Per-haps the artist was in a boat and de-scri-bed the scene as he saw
it.] The elephant you see de-scen-din' the street is a nay-tive of this
tropi-cal re-gion, and the cock-a-toos infest the sur-round-in' air. The
Moors you see along the wharves are the spon-ta-ne-ous born of the soil.
Those are kay-kers (Quakers?) on mules with broad-brimmed hats onto
their heads; the sticks in their hands are to beat the Moors who live on
their su-gar plan-tay-tions.... Music? did you ask, Madame? We have none
in this establish-ment. Kone.

'Excellencies, the next hole. 'Tis the be-yu-ti-fool city of
Bal-ti-mory. You behold in the be-fore ground a gr-rand feast day of
Amer-i-cain peas-ants; they are be-hold-ing their noble Count
re-pair-ring to the chase with a serf on a white hoarse-bag
(horse-back?). The little joke of the cattle is a play-fool fan-cy of
the jocose artiste as did the panorama. I am un-ac-count-able for
veg-garies such as them. The riv-aire in the bag-ground is the
Signora-pippi'....

'The what?' asked Caper, shaking with laughter.

'A gen-till-man the other day told me that only the peasants in Americay
say Missus or Mis-triss, and that the riv-aire con-se-kwen-tilly was not
Missus-pippi, but, as I have had the honor of saying, the Signora-pippi
rivaire. The next hole, Excel-len-cies!--'Tis the be-yu-ti-fool city of
Vaskmenton (Washington), also on the Signora-pippi riv-aire. The white
balls on the trees is cot-ton. Those are not white balls on the ground,
those are ship;--ships as have woolen growin' onto their sides (sheep?).
'Tis not a white bar-racks: 'tis the Palazzo di Vaskmenton, a nobil
gen-e-ral woo lives there, and was for-mer-ly king of the A-mer-i-cain
nations. What does that Moor, with the white lady in his arms? it is a
negro peas-sant taking his mis-triss out to air,--'tis the customs in
those land.... That negress or fe-mail Moor with some childs is also
airring, and, the white 'ooman tyin' up her stockings is a sportive of
the artiste. He is much for the hum-or-ous.

'Excellencies, the last hole A-mer-i-cain. 'Tis the stoo-pen-doss
Signora-pippi rivaire in all its mag-gnif-fi-cent booty. What is that
cockatoo doing there? He is taking a fly. _You do not see the fly_? I
mean a flight. _What is that bust to flin-ders_? That is a stim-boat was
carryin' on too much stim, and the stim, which is made of coal, goes,
off like gun-pow-dair if you put lights onto it. This is a fir-ful and
awe-fool sight. The other stim-boat is not bustin', it is sailin'. What
is that man behind the whil-house with the cards while another signer
kicks into him on his coat-tails, I do not know. It is steel the
sportifs of the artiste.'

'Excel-len-cies, the last hole. 'Tis the be-yu-ti-fool bustin'--no, not
bustin', but ex-plo-sion of Vee-soov-yus. You can see the sublime sight,
un-terrupt-ted be me ex-play-nations. I thank you for your attentions
auri-cu-lar and pe-coo-niar-ry. _Adio_, until I have the play-shure of
seein' you oncet more.'

'I tell you what, Rocjean,' said Caper, as he came out from the
panorama, 'America has but a POOR SHOW in the Papal dominions.'

* * * * *

JOHN LOTHROP MOTLEY.

Grand with all that the young earth had of vigorous and queenly to adorn
her, rich with the spoils of victories not all bought with battle-axe
and sword, stately with a pride that had won its just and inalienable
majesty from elastic centuries of progress and culture, History, the
muse to whom fewest songs were sung, yet whose march was music's
sublimest voice, trembled upon the brink of the Dark Ages, and leaped,
in her armor, into the abyss of ignorance before her. A poetry the
purest, an art the noblest, a religion deeply symbolical, a freedom bold
and magnificent, had given to the world-histories of those early days a
melody varied and faultless, a form flowing yet well-defined, an
earnestness that was sacred, a truth that was divine. A philosophy rich
and largely suggestive had made the great men of Greece and Rome alert,
vigilant, penetrating, before luxury and oppression had dragged them
down to ruin and ignorance; and at last Ambition, splendid but
destructive, becoming the world's artist, blended the midnight tints of
decline and suffering with the carnation of triumph and liberty, and
cast over the pictures of History the Rembrandt-like shadows, heavy and
wavering, that add a fearful intensity to their charms.

To these eras, once splendid and promising, succeeded a night, long,
hopeless, disastrous. Its hours were counted by contentions, its
darkness was deepened by crime. The sun had set upon a mighty empire,
regnant upon her seven hills, glorious with conquest, drunken with
power: when the day dawned upon the thousandth year of the Christian
era, its crumbled arches and moss-grown walls alone testified to the
truth of History that had survived the universal destruction.

And now came the age of knight and paladin, of crusades and talismans.
The rough, vigorous life that had been developing at the North,
exuberant with a strength not yet so mature that it could be employed in
the wise and practical pursuits of civilized life, burst forth into an
enthusiasm half military, half religious, that pervaded all ranks, but
was 'mightiest in the mighty.' The Saxons, fair-haired, with wild blue
eyes, whence looked an inflexible perseverance, the dark-browed Normans,
and the men of fair Bretagne, swooped down falcon-like from their nests
among the rocks and by the seas of Northern Europe upon the impetuous
Saracens, and fought brave poems that were written on sacred soil with
their blood. From the strife of years the heroes returned, their flowing
locks whitened by years and suffering, the fair Saxon faces browned by
the fervent suns of the distant East. From hardship and imprisonment
they marched with gay songs amid acclamations and welcome to their homes
upon the Northern shores. Their once shining armor was dimmed and
rusted with their own blood; but they bore upon their 'spears the light'
of a culture more refined, a knowledge more subtle, than those high
latitudes had ever before known.

From this marriage of the barbaric vigor of the North with the delicate
and infinitely pliable sensuousness of the South, the classic union of
Strength and Desire, Chivalry was born. Leaping forth to light and
power, a majestic creation, glittering in the knightly panoply, noble by
its knightly vows, it stood resplendent against the dark background of
the past ages, the inevitable and legitimate offspring of the times and
circumstances that gave it birth. The courtly baptism was eagerly
sought, its requirements rigidly obeyed. The lands bristled with the
lances of their valiant sons, and Quixotic expeditions were the order of
the age. But not alone with sword and spear were gallant contests
decided; the gauntlet thrown at the feet of a proud foe was not always
of iron. _El gai saber_, the _gaye science_, held its august courts,
where princesses entered the lists and vanquished gallant troubadours
with the concord of their sweet measures. Slowly, yet with resistless
strength, a new social world was rising upon the splendid ruins of the
old. Its principles were just, if their garb was fantastical. It began
with that almost superstitious reverence for woman, which had borrowed
its religion from the Teuton, its romance from the Minnesinger and the
Trouveur: it will end in the honesty and freedom of a world mature for
its enjoyment.

Thus, while the kingdoms of Europe were rising to a height where to
oppress, to torture, to fight, were to seem their sole aim and purpose,
in a hitherto obscure corner of the great theatre of modern life an
unknown element was developing itself, which was in time to shake the
greatest nations with its power, to inflame all Europe with jealousy and
cupidity, and to dictate to empires the very terms of their existence.
And this element was LABOR. The rich lowlands of the 'double-armed'
Rhine teemed with a busy life, that, king-like, demanded a tribute of
the sea, and wrenched from the greedy waves a treasure that its industry
made priceless. Each man became a prince in his own divine right, and
every occupation had its lords and its lore, its 'mysteries,' and its
social rights. The seamen, merchants, and artisans of the Netherlands
had made their country the richest in Europe. They ranged the seas and
learned the value of the land; and while they fed the great despot of
the Middle Ages, the light of intelligence, born of energy and nurtured
by activity, cast its benignant gleams from the central island of the
Rhine, and drove from their mountain nooks the owls and bats of tyranny
and superstition. They fought first, these lords of the soil, among
themselves, for local privileges, advancing in their continuous
struggles upon the very threshold of the church. By strong alliances
they kept at bay their feudal lords, and fettered the ecclesiastical
power with the yoke of a justice, meagre, indeed, and sadly unfruitful,
but still ominous of a better day. Within the alabaster vase of
despotism, frail, yet old as ambition, the lamp of freedom had long
burned dimly: now its flames were licking, with serpent-like tongues,
the enclosure so long deemed sacred, and threatened, as they dyed the
air with their amber flood of light, to shiver their temple to
fragments. The theory of the divine right of kings was but another 'Luck
of Edenhall.' Its slender stem trembled now within the rough grasp of
the sacrilegious and burly Netherlanders, who hesitated not long ere
they dashed it with the old superstition to the ground, shaking the
civilized world to its centre by the shock. But out of the ruins a
statelier edifice was to rise, whose windows, like those of the old
legend, were stained by the lifeblood of its architect.

The historian who would worthily depict such an age, such a people, such
principles, must be an artist, but one in whom the creative faculty does
not blind the moral obligations. He must bring to the work a republican
sympathy, must be governed by a republican justice, and wear a character
as noble as the struggle that he paints. And such an artist, such a
historian, such a man, we have in JOHN LOTHROP MOTLEY.

The honors of Harvard, early and nobly earned, had given to the boy at
seventeen the privileges and dignity of manhood. He was destined to
become a scholar, eminent, even among the rarely and richly cultured
minds of his own New England, for his universal knowledge, clearness of
intellect, prompt energy, and indomitable perseverance. Inspired by
these gifts and attainments, it was only natural, almost inevitable,
that his first appearance upon the literary stage should have been in
the _role_ of a novelist. The active young intellect was pliant and
strong, but had not yet learned its power. Before him lay the broad
fields of romance, fascinating with their royal _fleurs de lis_, rich
with the contributions of every age, some quaint and laughter-moving,
some pompous and exaggerated, some soul-stirring and grand. Impelled,
perhaps, less by a thirst for fame than a desire to satisfy the
resistless impulses of an energetic nature, and lay those fair ghosts of
enterprises dimly recognized that beckoned him onward, he followed the
first path that lay before him, and became a romance writer. His first
work, _Morton's Hope, or the Memoirs of a Provincial_, was published in
1839, and subsequently appeared _Merry Mount, a Romance of
Massachusetts_. It is curious to trace in these first flights of a
genius that has since learned its legitimate field, a tendency to the
breadth of Motley's later efforts, an instinctive and evidently
unconscious passion for the descriptive, an admirably curbed yet still
powerful impatience of the light fetters, the toy regulations of the
realm of Fiction, and an earnestness that has since bloomed in the world
of Fact and History. The very imperfections of the novelist have become
the charms of the historian. His student-life in Germany, his after-plot
in the stirring Revolutionary times, strongly as they are drawn,
animated as they are with dashes of that vivid power that stamps every
page of the histories of their author, yet lack the proof of that
unquestioned yet unobtrusive consciousness of genius that harden the
telling sentences of the _Rise of the Dutch Republic_ and the _United
Netherlands_ into blocks of adamant, polished by friction with each
other to a diamond brightness, and reflecting only the noblest
sentiments, the most profound principles. The dice had been thrown a
second time, and Motley had not won a victory. The applause of the press
was insufficient to the man, who felt that he had not yet struck the
key-note of his destiny. To be counted the follower of Cooper was not
the meet guerdon of an intellect to which the shapely monuments of
ancient literature yielded the clue to their hieroglyphic labyrinths of
knowledge, and that pierced with lightning swiftness the shell of
events, and possessed the latent principles of life in their warm
hearts. He returned, therefore, to Europe, leaving behind him a
reputation which at no distant day was destined to spring from a new and
more noble foundation into a lasting and more stately pile.

To a mind like Motley's, the department of history presented the most
attractive features. There could honestly be no dabbling with the
specious and seductive alchemy of Fiction. Truth had molded every period
of the world's life. Truth defied had tripped up nations in their
headlong race after dominion and unrighteous power. Truth victorious had
smiled upon their steady growth to greatness and honor. To write history
was to write poetry, art, philosophy, religion, life. The pen that
sketched the rise, the progress, and the fate of nations, was in fact
the chisel of a sculptor, whose theme was humanity.

And what work so fitting for the American author as the record of a
nation struggling away from the oppression of feudal institutions, which
stifled all growth either towards knowledge or civil greatness,
throwing off the trammels of religious intolerance, defying the most
powerful nation of Christendom, which had breathed an air of bigotry in
its long contest with the Moors, and waging an exhaustive war of nearly
a century's duration against fearful odds, only to win an independent
existence? We had treasured as rare heirlooms the Mechlin laces of our
grandmothers, had our favorite sets of Tournay porcelain, awaited with
curious and enthusiastic patience our shares in the floral exportations
of Harlem, trodden daily the carpetings of Brussels, and esteemed
ourselves rich with a fragment of its tapestry, or a rifle of Namur; we
had honored the vast manufacturing interest of the Netherlands, their
commercial prosperity and noble enterprise; but here all thought of them
had ended. Schiller had not taught us that the ancestors of the miners
of Mons, the artisans of Brussels, the seamen of Antwerp, the professors
of Leyden, were heroes, worthy to stand beside Leonidas and Bozzaris;
Strada had failed to rouse us to enthusiasm at the thought of their
long, noble battle for life. Grotius had indeed painted for us with a
very Flemish nicety of detail their manners and customs, but had
forgotten to round his skeleton of a nation with the passions that
animated every stage of its development. It remained for Motley, with
all the quick sympathies of an American heart, to rouse our affections
and to command our reverence for a people so unfortunate and so brave.
It was reserved for him to teach us that William of Orange was not less
a martyr to the truth than Huss or Latimer.

It was no common scholar who so worthily finished this task. It was not
enough that the intellectual integrity of oar historian was
unquestioned, his judgment mature, his knowledge vast and comprehensive.
During the years of preparation he had become thoroughly cosmopolite;
all the _petty_ prejudices of country and blood had been swept away
before the advancing dignity of a reason that became daily more truly
and completely the master of itself. All the thousand minute refinements
of an extensive and intimate association with the commanding and courtly
minds of the age fitted him to cope more successfully with the spirit of
subtle intrigue, the fox-like sagacity, the wolfish rapacity, the cruel
lack of diplomatic honor, and the illimitable and terrible intolerance
that distinguished in so wonderful a degree the historical era of
Motley's choice. He came with all the zeal of a true lover of liberty,
himself republican, as earth's most cultured sons have been in every
age, in thought, habit, and sentiment, to trace for the future and for
us the records of a people who were willing to suffer a master, but who
revolted from a tyrant; who, with a rare but unappreciated and too nice
honor, strove to keep to the yoke that their forefathers had worn, only
asking from their ruler the respect and consideration due the faithful
servants of his crown, who were no longer the abject slaves of a
monarchy, and yet, through an inveterate habit of servitude, were
scarcely prepared for the independence of a republic. How nobly he has
fulfilled his mission, the hearty applause of two nations sufficiently
testifies.

To the wide, comprehensive vision of Motley, history appears in its true
light as a science, demanding the assistance of other sciences to the
due and harmonious development of all its parts. It relies not more upon
the correctness of the recorder's authorities and the profoundness of
his researches in the mere region of the events and mutual relation of
nations, than upon his universal acquaintance with general literature
and the sister arts of politics and philosophy. It was for the
treacherous and elegant Bolingbroke to reduce the noble art of
Thucydides from the height of sublimity and grandeur to the parlor level
of the conversations of the Hotel de Rambouillet, to introduce into the
most serious political disquisitions, concerning perhaps the welfare of
society, an imperceptible yet carefully elaborated and most effective
tone of levity that speedily proved disastrous to their object. It was
be who forced the vapid but imposing ceremonial of the _bon ton_ into
the records of church and state; who clothed his empty but pompous
periods with the ermine of royalty, to ensure them the reverence of a
deluded multitude; who stripped Virtue of her ancient prerogatives, and
fed her with the crumbs from his table. His polished diction, undeniable
talent and fine acquisitions served most unhappily to disguise his real
poverty of sentiment, and for a time, at least, diverted the current of
popular feeling from the true, beautiful, and reliable in early
literature and art, no less than in history. With what success his
faulty and imperfect theories were engrafted upon the literature of his
nation, the learned and sagacious Schlosser conclusively proves in his
_History of the Eighteenth Century_. Says this ripe scholar and deep
thinker, 'All that Bolingbroke ridicules as tedious and without talent,
all that he laughs at as useless and without taste, all that which,
urged by his labors and those of his like-minded associates, had for
eighty years disappeared from ancient history, is again brought back in
our day. So short is the triumph of falsehood.' Well may we pervert the
verses of Horace,--

'Nullae placere diu, nec vivere _historiae_ possunt
Quae scribuntur aquae potoribus.'

That was an ungenerous fountain whence Bolingbroke drank even his
chilling draughts of inspiration. Splendid, in sooth, as the great
_Brunnen_ of the luckless Abderites of Wieland, with its sea-god of
marble surrounded by a stately train of nymphs, tritons, and dolphins,
from whose jets the water only dripped like tears, because, says the
writer, with grave naivete, 'there was scarcely enough to moisten the
lips of a single nymph.' Truly the purple wine of inspiration is as
necessary to the historian as to the poet; and if the laughing Bacchus
that holds the beaker to the student's eager lips be not clothed in the
classic robes of the senate-chamber or the flowing garments of the
professor, he wears at least the fawn's dappled hide, and in his hand

'His thyrsus holds--an ivy-crowned spear.'

Does not the gentle Euripides show us the god, 'his horned head with
dragon wreath entwined?' And those two sacred horns point back to the
dread mysteries of the Ogdoad sublime,

'The great Cabiri of earth's dawning prime.'

They trace with lines that never swerve from truth the history of the
primeval world, the early days of Noah and his ark. They recall to us
the old story of life and suffering, of deluge and salvation; on their
crescent points hangs the eternal principle of the efficacy of
sacrifice. They float with the moon-ark of Astarte Mylitta on
hyacinthine seas of night-clouds, and their high import, dimmed and lost
in the great stream of Time, rises again in the ages, uncrowned with the
early luxuriance of symbol and mystery. The mystic horns appear over the
brow of the queenly Sappho of Grillparzer, upon whose hair

'Rested the diadem, _like the pale moon_
Upon the brow of night, a silver crest;'

and the white-robed Madonna, with child-like face upraised, and deep,
tender eyes uplifted, yet rests her slender, sandaled foot upon the
horned moon, floating below her in misty clouds.

A hiatus for which we crave indulgence; a dream, and yet not all a
dream, for each of these old types encloses a living truth, and unfolds
into a history, tangled, perhaps, and imperfect, but suggestive and
reliable, of races and religions that had else passed away into
oblivion. And the earnest student of the present, or the historian of
the past, can never disregard these dim old treasures, but must draw
from them a fresher faith in his own humanity and in the eternal laws of
God, that are unchangeable as he is immortal.

The art of history advances with the art of poetry; both, and indeed all
literature, correspond aesthetically with the manners, customs,
theology, and politics of the nation of their birth. The severe
grandeur of Thucydides, the invariable sweetness of Xenophon, and the
cheerful elegance of Herodotus, recall, with their just conceptions of
harmony, their noble and sustained flow of thought, and their freedom
from the adventitious ornaments of an exaggerated rhetoric or a
sentimental morality, the golden age of Greece. We seem to stand within
the Parthenon, to gaze upon the Venus of Cnidus, to be jostled by the
gay crowd at the Olympic games. It was indeed a golden age, when all
that was beautiful in nature was reverently and assiduously nurtured,
and all that was noble and natural in art was magnificently encouraged;
an age in which refinement and nobility were not accidents, but
necessities; when politics had reached the high grade of an art, and
oratory attained a beauty and power beyond which no Pitt, Canning, or
Brougham has ever yet aspired; an age when the gifted Aspasia held her
splendid court, and Alcibiades and Socrates were proud to sit at the
Milesian's feet; when Pericles, who 'well deserved the lofty title of
Olympian,' lived and ruled: the golden age when Socrates thought and
taught, bearing in its bosom the guilty day when Socrates died.

Not less faithful portraitures of the influences that formed them are
the histories of Livy, of Sallust, and of Tacitus. They wrote in a
language that had been sublimated into electric clouds by the warm and
splendid diffuseness of Cicero, and reduced to a granite-like strength
by the cold and exquisite simplicity of Terence. The amiable fustian,
the Falstaffian bombast of Lucan and Ovid's brilliant imagination, all
stamp their indelible seal upon the vivid coloring of Livy, the somewhat
affected severity of Sallust, and the elegant morality of Tacitus. The
banner of the monarchy flaunts across every page of these writers. They
even bear the impress of an architecture whose splendor and strength did
not atone for its disregard of the old Hellenic lines and rules. They
bear the same relation to Thucydides and Herodotus that a pillar of the
Roman Ionic order, with its angularly turned volutes and arbitrary
perpendicularity of outline, does to its graceful Greek mother, with her
primitive and expressive scrolls, and the slightly convex profile of her
shaft. In more modern times, a black-letter, quaint sentence of
Froissart or Monstrelet is like a knight in full armor, bristling with
quaint, beautiful devices, golden dragons inlaid on Milan cuirasses,
golden vines on broad Venetian blades, apes on the hilts of
grooved-bladed, firm stilettoes, or the illuminated margins of old
metrical romances. The pages of Strada are darkened by the stormy
passions of a battling age, crossed with the lurid light of Moorish
tragedies; an _ay de mi Alhama_ moans under his pride and bigotry.
Torquemadas grind each sentence into dullness and inquisitorial
harmlessness, yet now and then sweeps by a trace of Lope de Vega, a word
that reminds us of Calderon, while still oftener the euphuism of Gongora
pervades the writer's mind and flows in platitudes from his guarded pen.

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