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International Miscellany of Literature, Art and Science, Vol. 1, by Various

V >> Various >> International Miscellany of Literature, Art and Science, Vol. 1,




But after all, you are right at bottom, only you do not know how to
express it. It is perfectly true that there are mysteries, nudities,
parts of the soul not shameful but sensitive, depths, personalities, last
foldings of thought and feeling, which would cost horribly to uncover,
and which an honorable and natural scruple would never permit us to lay
bare, without the remorse of violated modesty. There is, I agree with
you, such a thing as indiscretion of heart. I felt this cruelly myself,
the first time when, having written certain poetic dreams of my soul
certain too real utterances of my sentiments, I read them to my most
intimate friends. My face was covered with blushes, and I could not
finish. I said to them: "No, I cannot go farther; you shall read it."
"And how is it," answered my friends, "that you cannot read to us what
you are about to give to all Europe to read?" "No," I said, "I cannot
tell why, but I feel no shame in letting the public read it, though I
experience an invincible repugnance to reading it myself, face to face to
only two or three of my friends."

They did not understand me--I did not understand myself. We together
exclaimed at the inconsistency of the human heart. Since then I have felt
the same instinctive repugnance at reading to a single person what cost
me not a single effort of violated modesty to give to the public: and
after having long reflected on it, I find that this apparent
inconsistency is at bottom only the perfect logic of our nature.

And why is this? The reason is, that a friend is somebody and the public
nobody; a friend has a face, the public has not; a friend is a being,
present, hearing, looking, a real being--the public is an invisible
being, a being of the reason, an abstraction; a friend has a name, and
the public is anonymous; a friend is a confidant, and the public is a
fiction. I blush before the one, because he is a man; I do not blush
before the other, because it is an idea. When I write or speak before the
public, I feel myself as free, as exempt from the susceptibilities of one
man to another, as if I were speaking or writing before God and in the
desert; the crowd is a solitude; you see it, you know that it exists, but
you know it only as a mass. As an individual it does not exist. Now this
modesty of which you speak, being the respect of one's self before some
other person, when there is no person distinct on account of the
multitude, becomes without a motive. Psyche blushed under a lamp because
the hand of a single god passed over her, but when the sun gazed at her
with his thousand rays from the height of Olympus, that personification
of the modest soul did not blush before the whole heaven. Here is the
exact image of the modesty of a writer before a single auditor, and of
the freedom of his utterance before all the world. Do you accuse me of
violating mysteries before you? You have not the right: I do not know
you, I have confided nothing to you personally. You are guilty of
impropriety in reading what is not addressed to you. You are _somebody_,
you are not the public. What do you want with me? I have not spoken to
you: you have nothing to say to me, and I nothing to reply.

So thought St. Augustine, Plato, Socrates, Cicero, Caesar, Bernardin de
St. Pierre, Montaigne, Alfieri, Chateaubriand, and all other men who have
confided to the world the genuine palpitations of their own hearts. True
gladiators they are in the human Colosseum, not playing miserable
comedies of sentiment and style to distract an academy, but struggling
and dying in earnest on the stage of the world, and writing on the sand,
with the blood of their own veins, the heroism, the failings, or the
agonies of the human heart.

Having said this, I resume these notes where I left them, blushing for
one thing only before these critics, that is, for not having either the
soul of St. Augustine or the genius of Jean Jacques Rousseau, in order to
merit, by indiscretions as sacred and touching, the pardon of tender
hearts and the condemnation of narrow minds, that take every movement of
the soul for an obscenity, and hide their faces whenever they are shown a
heart.

* * * * *


BALZAC.


We have news from Paris of the death of Honore De Balzac, one of the most
eminent French writers of the nineteenth century. "Eighteen months ago,"
says a Paris letter, "already attacked by dropsy, he quitted France to
contract a marriage with a Russian lady, to whom he was devotedly
attached. To her he had dedicated 'Seraphitus,' and he had accumulated in
his hotel of the Beaujoin quarters all the luxuries which could
contribute to her pleasure. He returned to France three months ago, in a
state of extreme danger. Last week he underwent an operation for abscess
in his legs: mortification ensued. On the morning of the 18th he became
speechless, and at midnight he expired. His sister, Madame de Surville,
visited his deathbed, and the pressure of her hand was the last sign he
gave of intelligence." We must defer for another occasion what we have
to say of the great novelist-the idol of women, even at seventy-the
Voltaire of our age, as he was accustomed to style himself in
private--the historian of society--French society--as it is. The author
of _Le Peau de Chagrin, Le Physiologie du Marriage, Le Dernier Chauan,
Eugene Grandet_, and the _Scenes de la Vie Parisienne_, and _Scenes de la
Vie de Province_, was one of the marks of the era, and being dead, we
will speculate upon him. At present we can only translate for the
_International_ the following funeral oration by Victor Hugo, pronounced
at his grave:

"GENTLEMEN--The man who has just descended into this tomb is one of those
whom the public sorrow follows to the last abode. In the times where we
are all fictions have disappeared. Henceforth our eyes are fixed not on
the heads that reign but on the heads that think, and the whole country
is affected when one of them disappears. At this day, the people put on
mourning for the man of talent, the nation for the man of genius.

"Gentlemen, the name of Balzac will be mingled in the luminous trace that
our epoch will leave in the future.

"M. de Balzac belonged to that potent generation of writers of the
nineteenth century who came after Napoleon, just as the illustrious
pleiades of the seventeenth century came after Richelieu, and in the
development of civilization a law caused the domination of thought to
succeed the domination of the sword.

"M. de Balzac was one of the first among the greatest, one of the highest
among the best. This is not the place to say all or that splendid and
sovereign intelligence. All his books form only one hook, living,
luminous, profound, in which we see moving all our contemporaneous
civilization, mingled with I know not what of strange and terrible; a
marvelous book, that the poet has entitled comedy, and which he might
have called history; which assumes all forms and all styles: which goes
beyond Tacitus and reaches Suetonius, which crosses Beaumarchais and
reaches Rabelais; a book which is observation itself, and imagination
itself; which is prodigal of the true, the passionate, the common, the
trivial, the material, and which at moments throws athwart realities,
suddenly and broadly torn open, the gleam of the most somber and tragic
ideal.

"Without knowing it, whether he will or not, whether he consents or not,
the author of this strange and immense work is of the mighty race of
revolutionary writers. Balzac goes directly to his object. He assails
modern society face to face. From all he forces something: from some
illusions, from others hope, from these a cry of pain, from those a mask.
He unvails vice and dissects passion. He penetrates and sounds the heart,
the soul, the sentiments, the brain, the abyss that each man has within
him. And by a gift of his free and vigorous nature, by a privilege of the
intelligences of our times,--who, having seen revolutions nearly and with
their own eyes, perceive better the end of humanity and comprehend better
the course of Providence,--Balzac came forth serene and smiling from
those redoubtable studies which produced melancholy in Moliere and
misanthropy in Rousseau.

"This is what he has accomplished among us. Such is the work he has left
us, lofty and solid, a pile of granite, a monumental edifice, from whose
summit his renown will henceforth shine. Great men make their own
pedestals: the future charges itself with their statues.

"His death has struck Paris with stupor. But a few months since he
returned to France. Feeling that he was about to die, he desired to see
his country, like one who on the eve of a long voyage comes to embrace
his mother.

"His life was brief, but crowded; fuller of labors than of days.

"Alas, the powerful and indefatigable laborer, the philosopher, the
thinker, the poet, the man of genius, lived among us the life of storms,
of struggles, of quarrels, of combats, common in all times to all great
men. Today, behold him here at peace. He leaves collisions and
hostilities. The same day he enters on glory and the tomb. Henceforth
he will shine above all the clouds over our heads, among the stars of our
country.

"And you all who are here, are you not tempted to envy him?

"Gentlemen, whatever be our sorrow in the presence of such a loss, let us
resign ourselves to these catastrophes. Let us accept them in their
poignancy and severity. It is good perhaps, and necessary, in an epoch
like ours, that from time to time a great death should communicate a
religious book to minds devoured by doubt and skepticism. Providence
knows what it does when it thus puts a whole people face to face with the
supreme mystery, and gives it Death to meditate upon, which is at once
the great equality and the great liberty.

"Providence knows what it does, for here is the highest of instructions.
There can be in all hearts only austere and serious thoughts when a
sublime spirit majestically makes its entrance upon the other life; when
one of those beings whom the visible wings of genius have long sustained
above the crowd, suddenly puts forth those other wings that we cannot
see, and disappears in the unknown!

"No, it is not the unknown! No, I have already said it on another mournful
occasion, and I shall not weary in repeating it, it is not darkness, it
is light! It is not the end, it is the beginning! It is not nothing, it
is eternity! Is not this true, I ask all that hear me? Such graves as
this are proofs of immortality. In the presence of the illustrious dead
we feel more distinctly the divine destinies of this intelligence called
man, which traverses the earth to suffer and to be purified; and we know
that those who have shone with genius during life, must be living souls
after death."

* * * * *


DR. GUTZLAFF, THE MISSIONARY.

CHARLES GUTZLAFF the famous missionary in China is described in the
_Grenzboten_ by a writer who lately heard him preach at Vienna, as a
short, stout man, with a deep red face, a large mouth, sleepy eyes,
pointed inward and downward like those of a China man, vehement
gesticulations, and a voice more loud than melodious. He has acquired
in his features and expression something like the expression of the
people among whom he lives. His whole manners also, as well as his
face, indicate the genuine son of Jao and Chun, so that the Chinese when
they encounter him in the street salute him as their countryman. We
translate for _The International_ the following sketch of his life and
labors:

Charles Gutzlaff was born in 1803, at Pyritz, a village of Pomerania. His
zeal as an apostle was first manifested some fifteen years ago. He
married an English woman, who was animated with the same aspiration as
himself and who accompanied him on his voyages as a missionary. His
extensive acquaintance with the Chinese and kindred languages even then
made deep impression on Robert Morrison, the founder of the Evangelical
Mission in China, whom he joined in 1831 at Macao, and caused his
Acquaintance to be much sought by the merchants. In 1832 and 1833 he was
employed as an interpreter on board ships engaged in smuggling opium, but
turned this occupation, which in itself was not of a very saintly
character, to his religious ends, by the dissemination of tracts and
Bibles. A missionary journey to Japan which he undertook in 1837 was
without any result. After Morrison's death Gutzlaff was appointed
Chinese Secretary to the British Consulate at Canton, and in 1840 founded
a Christian Union of Chinese for the propagation of the Gospel among
their countrymen. His present journey through Europe has a similar
purpose, the foundation of Missionary Societies for the spread of
Christianity in China.

His literary labors have had an almost incredible extent and variety. He
Himself gives the following enumeration of his writings: "In Dutch I have
written: a History of our Mission and of distinguished Missionaries, and
an appeal for support of the Missionary Work; in German: Sketches of the
Minor Prophets; in Latin: The Life of our Savior; in English: Sketches of
Chinese History; China Opened; Life of Kanghe, together with a great
number of articles on the Religion, History, Philosophy, Literature and
Laws of the Chinese; in Siamese: a Translation of the New Testament, with
the Psalms, and an English-Siamese Dictionary, English-Cambodian
Dictionary and English-Laos Dictionary. These works I left to my
successors to finish, but with the exception of the Siamese Dictionary
they have added nothing to them. In Cochin-Chinese: a Complete Dictionary
Cochin-Chinese-English and English-Cochin-Chinese; this work is not yet
printed. In Chinese: Forty Tracts, along with three editions of the Life
of our Savior; a Translation of the New Testament, the third edition of
which I have carried through the press. Of the Translations of the Old
Testament the Prophets and the two first books of Moses are completed. In
this language I have also written The Chinese Scientific Monthly Review,
a History of England, a History of the Jews, a Universal History and
Geography, on Commerce, a short Account of the British Empire and its
Inhabitants, as well as a number of smaller articles. In Japanese: a
Translation of the New Testament, and of the first book of Moses, two
tracts, and several scientific pamphlets. The only paper to which I now
send communications is the Hong Kong Gazette, the whole Chinese
department of which I have undertaken. Till the year 1842 I wrote for
the Chinese Archives."

The writer in the _Grenzboten_ goes on to say that "so vast a surface as
these writings cover, requires a surprising facility of mind and an
indefatigable perseverance. When you see the man engaged in his
missionary toils you understand the whole at once. He arrives in a city
and hastens to the church which is prepared for his reception. After
preaching for an hour with the greatest energy he takes up his
collection and is gone. He speaks with such rapidity that it is hardly
possible to follow him. Such rapidity is not favorable to excellence
in the work. Of all his writings, only one work is known to me, that
published in Munich, in 1847, under the title of 'Gutzlaffs History of
the Chinese Empire from the earnest times to the Peace of Nankin'. In our
imperfect acquaintance with Chinese history this compendium is not
without value, but it displays no critical power, and is a mere external
compilation and poorly written. From it we learn as good as nothing of
the peculiar customs and state of mental culture of the country. The
whole resembles a Christian History of the World written in the
eighteenth century, Beginning with Adam and Eve, and leaving the Greeks
and Romans out altogether because they were without a divine revelation."

Mr. Gutzlaff's family were recently for several months in the United
States, and the proceedings of the great missionary--second in eminence
only to our own Judson--have always been regarded with much interest by
the American churches.


AUTHORS AND BOOKS

The Asiatic Society at Paris has just held its twenty-eighth yearly
session. According to the report of its Secretary and Financial
Committee, this society has suffered little from the disastrous times
which have fallen on literature generally. In 1848, being uncertain as to
the future, it stopped receiving subscriptions to works with a view to
their publication, and arrested the printing of those which were already
commenced, with the single exception of the Asiatic Journal, which the
members determined not to alter in any case. The series of this journal
is of great value, containing already fifty-five volumes, to which two
new ones are added every year. For many years it has contained only
original articles, though formerly it admitted translations from other
European languages. Of course, in so voluminous a periodical work, the
contents vary in character, but the whole is of the greatest importance
to History, Belles Lettres, and Philology, and should not be wanting in
any public library. The society has now resumed the suspended
publications, beginning with the "Chronicles of Cashmir", by the Austrian
Orientalist Captain Troyer, two volumes of which were issued some time
since. Troyer is a remarkable man. As an Austrian artillery and staff
officer he served in all the wars, from the breaking out of the French
Revolution to the Peace of Paris. While in Italy, he passed some time at
the head-quarters of Lord William Bentinck, as an Austrian Commissioner,
and so gained his esteem and confidence that he was invited to go with
Lord William to Madras as his military secretary. When Lord William
resigned the government of Madras, Troyer remained for some time as
Director of the East India Company's School for Artillery and Engineers,
till finally he resigned and came to Paris. In 1829, Lord William went
again to India as Governor-General, and persuaded Troyer to go with him.
While in India at this time, among other offices Troyer filled that of
Secretary of the Hindoo College. In 1834, when Bentinck again left India,
Troyer once more resigned his functions, and has since been in Paris,
devoting an active and honorable old age to constant labors upon Persian
and Indian literature.

* * * * *

The FRENCH ACADEMY held its annual public session on the 8th of August,
in the presence of a large audience, including almost all the literary
celebrities of the metropolis, both masculine and feminine. The prizes of
victory were given to Napoleon Hurney, who had saved the lives of
fourteen persons, and to Marguerite Briand, for having supported and
taken care for forty-five years of her mistress, who had fallen from
wealth into the extremest poverty. M. de Salvandy, who bestowed these
prizes, delivered the usual eulogy on virtue in general, winding up with
praise of Louis Philippe and his reign, a thing more creditable perhaps
to the fidelity and consistency of the speaker, who has never renounced
his allegiance to the Orleans family, than proper to the occasion.

The literary prizes were distributed by M. Villemain. The grand prize of
ten thousand francs for the best work on the history of France, was given
to Augustin Thierry. Emile Angier received a prize of seven thousand
francs for his comedy of "Gabrielle," and M. Antran one of three thousand
for his "Daughter of AEsehylus." Three ladies got prizes worth two
thousand francs each for works of a popular nature on moral subjects; M.
A. Garnier got one of one thousand for his _Morale Sociale_; M. Martin
the same for his _Philosophie Spiritualiste de la Nature_, and M. Kastus
the same for his _Psycologie d'Aristote_. The crown for the best
specimen of eloquence was awarded to M. Baudrillast for his Eulogy on
Madame de Stael, in which the literary history and character of the
subject were served up in the most florid style. The same writer once
before won the same prize by a eulogy on Turgot. His productions are more
elaborate and showy than substantial and permanent in their character.

It must be said that this Academy is rather a respectable and slow-moving
institutution. The most illustrious names of France are not always
included in the list of its members. Neither Beranger nor Lamenais belong
to it. A writer in the Paris _National_ says that after three hours at
its meeting everybody he met in the street seemed to belong to the time
of Louis XI.

* * * * *

EDWARD EVERETT has been many years engaged in the collection and
arrangement of materials for a systematic Treatise on the Modern Law of
Nations; more especially in reference to those questions which nave been
discussed between the governments of the United States and Europe since
the Peace of 1783. This will be Mr. Everett's "life poem." Hitherto he
has written nothing very long except the "Defense of the Christian
Religion," published when he was about twenty-one years of age. We have
just received from Little & Brown their edition of the "Orations and
Speeches" of Mr. Everett, in two very large and richly-printed volumes,
which we shall hereafter notice more largely. These are to be followed,
at the author's leisure, by his Political Reports and Speeches and
Official Papers, in two large volumes, and his contributions to the
_North American Review_, which, if all included, we think will make four
others: so that his works, beside the new treatise above mentioned, will
be completed in not less than eight volumes. We are gratified at the
prospect of such a collection of these masterpieces of rhetoric, so full
of learning and wisdom, and infused by so genial a spirit. We wish some
publisher would give us in the same style all the writings of Alexander
Everett.

CHARLES MACKAY has lately published in London, a work upon which he had
long been engaged, under the title of "Progress of the Intellect." We
suspect, from the reviewals of it which appear in the journals, that it
is of the German free thinking class of philosophical histories. It
embraces dissertations on Intellectual Religion, Ancient Cosmogony, the
Metaphysical Idea of God, the Moral Notion of God, the Theory of
Mediation, Hebrew Theory of Retribution and Immortality, the Messianic
Theory prevailing in the days of Jesus, Christian Forms and Reforms, and
Speculative Christianity. And these dissertations are written with an
eloquence and power unexampled in a work of so much learning.

* * * * *

M. AND MAD. DE LAMARTINE having returned from the East, are at present
Staying at the Villa du Prado, a branch of the Hotel des Empereurs, a
pleasant house on the banks of the Huveaune, in the midst of the most
beautiful landscape. It was in a country box, upon the Avenue du Prado,
that Lamartine wrote, in 1847, his "Histoire des Girondins." Lamartine is
pleased with his Smyrna estate; he was received there by his vassals _en
grand seigneur_, but he found that he would be obliged to expend a good
deal of money before the estate would be profitable.

* * * * *

THEODORE PARKER'S "Massachusetts Quarterly Review," is dead, and--God be
Praised that New England refused to support it any longer. Mr. Parker
says in the farewell to his readers, that the work "has never become what
its projector designed that it should be;" and expresses a hope that
"some new journal will presently be started, in a more popular form,
which will promote the great ideas of our times, by giving them an
expression in literature, and so help them to a permanent organization in
the life of mankind."

* * * * *

CAPT. SIR EDWARD BELCHER, R.N., known in the literary and scientific
world by his extensive voyages of survey and discovery, is now on a visit
to New York, whence he will shortly proceed to Texas. Sir Edward Belcher
is a gentleman of remarkable energy of character, and of eminent
abilities.

* * * * *

A LETTER from M. Guizot, assigning the motives of his refusal to appear
as a candidate of the Institute for a seat in the Superior Council of
Public Instruction, is published by the _Esperance_ of Nancy. The
Principles avowed by M. Guizot lead directly to a separation of Church
and State.

* * * * *

JOHN G. SAXE will soon publish a new poem which he delivered recently at
the commencement of Middlebury College, with the applause which crowns
all his efforts in this way.

* * * * *

A RE-ISSUE of the Complete Works of Eliza Cook will be shortly commenced
in her Journal, and continued weekly until completed.

* * * * *

THE INSTITUTE OF GOETHE has just been founded by the government of Saxe
Weimar. It consists simply of a prize of twenty thousand francs offered
to the competition of the literary and artistic world. The first year it
will be given to the best among the poems, romances, and dramatic works
submitted; the second year to the best picture; the third year to the
best piece of statuary; the fourth year to the best piece of music,
whether sacred or profane, opera or oratorio. This circle having been
completed, the prize will next be given as at the first year; and so on
in regular succession. The successful competitor is to remain proprietor
of his work, as are all the others. The prize will he allotted by two
committees, one at Weimar the other at Berlin. The establishment of the
fund was celebrated at Weimar on the 23d of August.

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