SELECTIONS FROM AMERICAN LITERATURE.

DR. HORACE BUSHNELL.

Dr. Bushnell’s mind was one of the rarest. What it was in his books, that it was in private, with certain very piquant and unforgettable flavors added.—Dr. Burton.

I think he had no capacity, with all his eminent powers, for enmity. Goodness and wisdom were the powers that amounted to genius in him by being so great.—Rev. C. A. Bartol.

Wrong Resisted.—As it is said that ferocious animals are disarmed by the eye of man, and will dare no violence if he but steadily look at them, so it is when right looks upon wrong. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you; offer him a bold front, and he runs away. He goes, it may be, uttering threats of rage; but yet he goes.

Great Men.—The great and successful men of history, are, commonly, made such by the great occasions they fill. They are the men who had faith to meet such occasions; and therefore the occasions marked them, called them to come and be what the successes of their faith would make them. The boy is but a shepherd, but he hears from his panic-stricken countrymen of the giant champion of their enemies. A fire seizes him, and he goes down to the army, with nothing but his sling, and his heart of faith, to lay that champion in the dust. Next he is a great military leader, then the king of his country. As with David, so with Nehemiah; as with him, so with Paul, and Luther. A Socrates, a Tully, a Cromwell, a Washington—all the great master-spirits—the founders and law-givers of empires, and defenders of the rights of men, are made by the same law. These did not shrink despairingly within the compass of their poor abilities, but in their heart of faith embraced each one his cause, and went forth under the inspiring force of their call to apprehend that for which they were apprehended.

Family Religion—Why a Failure.—The father prays, in the morning, that his children may grow up in the Lord, and calls it the principal good of their life, that they are to be Christians, living to God and for the world to come. Then he goes out into the field, or shop, or house of trade, and, delving there all day in his gains, keeps praying from morning to night, without knowing it, that his family may be rich. His plans and works, faithfully seconded by an affectionate wife, pull exactly contrary to the pull of his prayers, and to all their common teaching in religion. Their tempers are worldly, and make a worldly atmosphere in the home. Pride, the ambition of show, and social standing, envy to what is above, and jealousy of what is below, follies of dress and fashion, and the more foolish elation, when a son is praised, or a daughter admired in the matter of personal appearance, or, what is no better, a manifest preparing and foretasting of this folly, when the son or daughter is so young as to be more certainly poisoned by the infection of it. Oh, these unspoken, damning prayers! how many they are, and how they fill up all the days! The mornings open with a reverent, fervent-sounding prayer of words; and then the days come after piling up petitions of ends, aims, tempers, passions and works, that ask for anything and everything but what accords with genuine religion. The prayer of the morning is that the son, the daughter—all the sons and daughters—may be Christians; and then the prayers that follow are for anything but that—in fact, for things most contrary to that. Is it any wonder, when we consider this common disagreement between the prayers of the family, and all other concerns, ends, and enjoyments of the common life beside, that so many fine shows of family piety are yet followed by so much of godless, and even reprobate, character in the children?

DR. NOAH PORTER.

How to Read History.

Whately pertinently observes, in his annotations upon Lord Bacon’s “Essay on Studies:” “In reference to the study of history I have elsewhere remarked upon the importance, among the intellectual qualifications for such a study, of a vivid imagination. The practical importance of such an exercise of imagination to a full and clear, and consequently, profitable view of the transactions related in history can hardly be over-estimated.”

To stimulate and aid the imagination in its efforts to reproduce the past, historical plays and poems, and, more recently, historical novels have been abundantly employed. Their usefulness has been the subject of frequent discussion, and of various opinions. It has been forcibly, and perhaps not untruly said, that the majority of the present generation of English readers have learned more of English history from Shakspere and Walter Scott than from the entire library of professed historians. Of course no man would contend that either Shakspere or Scott could be substituted for the usual historical authorities, but only that they may supplement them in certain important particulars. Many other historical plays and novels are invaluable as enabling the reader to enter more fully into the spirit of past times. They are of especial service in helping him to appreciate the feelings and motives of prominent personages, and vividly to reproduce the manners and institutions of another age. It is not often that an historical writer is endowed with the painstaking zeal of the antiquarian, and the creative power of the poet. If we can not have the two gifts in a single writer, we must seek for them apart in the historian and the novelist.

Thackeray’s “Henry Esmond” is an admirable example of a good historical novel, when carefully and conscientiously written by a man of rare gifts and of a rarer honesty. No reader of this tale of the times of Queen Anne could fail to derive from it such impressions of the state of manners and of morals in the higher circles, as well as of the political jealousies and the religious feuds which divided men of all classes, as no formal history could possibly convey—such as even the most abundant and painstaking research into the less accessible resources of historical knowledge would fail to impart to a man of feeble capacity to picture and recombine. The service is not a slight one which is rendered to the world when such a painstaking explorer of historical truth as Thackeray gathers his materials with faithful and laborious research, and weaves them together into so fascinating and instructive a story. But this tale, marvelous as it is for its elaborated truthfulness and picturesque effects, strikingly illustrates the possible dangers and disadvantages to which the historical novel may be abused. Thackeray was not without his prejudices. These, with his desire for producing striking effects, are manifest in the occasional overdrawing of this generally well-balanced representation of one of the most interesting periods of English history. It is notorious that Walter Scott gave very serious offense to multitudes of his admiring readers by some of his portraitures of the representative characters of the great historical parties of Scotland and England. With all the good sense and candor which he had at command, his sympathies were too intense and his prejudices too tenacious to allow him to write otherwise than he did, though he know he should excite the indignation of thousands of his fervid countrymen. Mrs. H. B. Stowe says in the preface to her recent historical romance, “Oldtown Folks:” “I have tried to make my mind as still as a looking-glass or a mountain lake, and thus to give you merely the images reflected therein.” But a fervid and sympathetic nature like hers can no more free itself from a theological or personal bias in representing the New England of the past, over which she has laughed, and wept, and speculated, and struggled all her life, than the “mountain lake” can hold itself in glassy smoothness against the gusts and breezes that sweep upon it from the heights above.

The fact deserves notice that of late professed historians have indulged somewhat freely in romancing, and so in a sense turned their histories into quasi-historical novels, especially when they attempt to give elaborate and eloquent portraitures of the leading personages, in which the most lavish use is made of effective epithets and pointed antitheses. Macaulay, among recent historians, has set the fashion very decidedly in this direction. In his efforts to make history minute, vivid, and effective, he has often described like an impassioned advocate, and painted, like a retained attorney, with the most unsparing expenditure of contrasts and epithets. Carlyle gives sketches, alternately in chalk and charcoal, that exhibit his saints and demons, now in ghastliest white, and then in the most appalling blackness. But though he draws caricatures he draws them with the hand of an artist. Froude, by research, eloquence and audacity combined, attempts to reverse the settled historic judgments of all mankind in respect to characters that had been “damned to everlasting fame.” Bancroft and Motley abound in examples of this tendency to paint historical characters so much to the life that the impression is made that the result is only a painting to which there never was reality.

WASHINGTON IRVING.

… Washington Irving, one of the best and pleasantest acquaintances I have made this many a day.—Sir Walter Scott.

The Style of Mr. Irving is always pleasing.—Macaulay.

Throughout his polished pages no thought shocks by its extravagance, no word offends by vulgarity or affectation.—Edinburgh Review.

A Rainy Sunday in an Inn.

It was a rainy Sunday in the gloomy month of November. I had been detained in the course of a journey by a slight indisposition, from which I was recovering; but I was still feverish, and was obliged to keep within doors all day, in an inn of the small town of Derby. A wet Sunday in a country inn; whoever has had the luck to experience one, can alone judge of my situation. The rain pattered against the casements, the bells tolled for church with a melancholy sound. I went to the windows in quest of something to amuse the eye, but it seemed as if I had been placed completely out of the reach of all amusement. The windows of my bed-room looked out among tiled roofs and stacks of chimneys, while those of my sitting-room commanded a full view of the stable-yard. I know of nothing more calculated to make a man sick of this world than a stable-yard on a rainy day. The place was littered with wet straw that had been kicked about by travelers and stable-boys. In one corner was a stagnant pool of water surrounding an island of muck; there were several half-drowned fowls crowded together under a cart, among which was a miserable crest-fallen cock, drenched out of all life and spirit, his drooping tail matted, as it were, into a single feather, along which the water trickled from his back; near the cart was a half-dozing cow, chewing the cud, and standing patiently to be rained on, with wreaths of vapor rising from her reeking hide; a wall-eyed horse, tired of the loneliness of the stable, was poking his spectral head out of a window, with the rain dripping on it from the eaves; an unhappy cur, chained to a dog-house hard by, uttered something every now and then between a bark and a yelp; a drab of a kitchen wench tramped backward and forward through the yards in pattens, looking as sulky as the weather itself; everything, in short, was comfortless and forlorn, excepting a crew of hard-drinking ducks, assembled like boon companions round a puddle, and making a riotous noise over their liquor.

I sauntered to the window, and stood gazing at the people picking their way to church, with petticoats hoisted mid-leg high, and dripping umbrellas. The bells ceased to toll, and the streets became silent. I then amused myself with watching the daughters of a tradesman opposite, who, being confined to the house for fear of wetting their Sunday finery, played off their charms at the front windows, to fascinate the chance tenants of the inn. They at length were summoned away by a vigilant vinegar-faced mother, and I had nothing further without to amuse me.

The day continued lowering and gloomy; the slovenly, ragged, spongy clouds drifted heavily along; there was no variety even in the rain; it was one dull, continued, monotonous patter, patter, patter, excepting that now and then I was enlivened by the idea of a brisk shower, from the rattling of the drops upon a passing umbrella. It was quite refreshing (if I may be allowed a hackneyed phrase of the day) when in the course of the morning a horn blew, and a stage-coach whirled through the street with outside passengers stuck all over it, cowering under cotton umbrellas, and seethed together, and reeking with the steams of wet box-coats and upper benjamins. The sound brought out from their lurking-places a crew of vagabond boys and vagabond dogs, and the carroty-headed hostler, and that nondescript animal yclept Boots, and all the other vagabond race that infest the purlieus of an inn; but the bustle was transient: the coach again whirled on its way; and boy and dog, and hostler and Boots, all slunk back again to their holes; the street again became silent, and the rain continued to rain on.

The evening gradually wore away. The travelers read the papers two or three times over. Some drew round the fire and told long stories about their horses, about their adventures, their overturns and breakings-down. They discussed the credits of different merchants and different inns, and the two wags told several choice anecdotes of pretty chambermaids and kind landladies. All this passed as they were quietly taking what they called their nightcaps; that is to say, strong glasses of brandy and water or sugar, or some other mixture of the kind; after which they one after another rang for Boots and the chambermaid, and walked off to bed in old shoes cut down into marvelously uncomfortable slippers. There was only one man left,—a short-legged, long-bodied plethoric fellow, with a very large sandy head. He sat by himself with a glass of port wine negus and a spoon, sipping and stirring, and meditating and sipping, until nothing was left but the spoon. He gradually fell asleep bolt upright in his chair, with the empty glass standing before him; and the candle seemed to fall asleep too, for the wick grew long and black, and cabbaged at the end, and dimmed the little light that remained in the chamber. The gloom that now prevailed was contagious. Around hung the shapeless and almost spectral box-coats of departed travelers, long since buried in deep sleep. I only heard the ticking of the clock, with the deep-drawn breathings of the sleeping toper, and the drippings of the rain—drop, drop, drop—from the eaves of the house.

Irving’s Last Interview with Scott.

It was at Sunnyside, on a glorious afternoon in June, 1855, that surrounded by scenery which Irving has best described, he narrated to me (S. Austin Allibone) the following account of his last interview with Scott:

“I was in London when Scott arrived after his attack of paralysis, on his way to the continent in search of health. I received a note from Lockhart, begging me to come and take dinner with Scott and himself the next day. When I entered the room Scott grasped my hand, and looked me steadfastly in the face. ‘Time has dealt gently with you, my friend, since we parted,’ he exclaimed:—he referred to the difference in himself since we had met. At dinner, I could see that Scott’s mind was failing. He was painfully conscious of it himself. He would talk with much animation, and we would listen with the most respectful attention; but there was an effort and an embarrassment in his manner; he knew all was not right. It was very distressing, and we (Irving, Lockhart, and Anne Scott) tried to keep up the conversation between ourselves, that Sir Walter might talk as little as possible. After dinner he took my arm to walk up-stairs, which he did with difficulty. He turned and looked in my face, and said, ‘They need not tell a man his mind is not affected when his body is as much impaired as mine.’ This was my last interview with Scott. I heard afterward that he was better; but I never saw him again.”

Two years later (in 1857), in narrating the same event, Irving told me that as Scott passed up the stairs with him after dinner, he remarked, “Times are sadly changed since we walked up the Eildon hills together.”

JAMES KIRKE PAULDING.

There is no better literary manner than the manner of Mr. Paulding. Certainly no American, and possibly no living writer of England has more of those numerous peculiarities which go to the formation of a happy style.—Edgar A. Poe.

His works are exclusively and eminently natural, and his descriptions of natural scenery are often eminently beautiful.—London Athenæum.

Time a Destroyer.—I saw a temple, reared by the hands of man, standing with its high pinnacle in the distant plain. The streams beat about it; the God of nature hurled his thunderbolts against it; yet it stood firm as adamant. Revelry was in the halls; the gay, the young, the beautiful were there. I returned, and lo! the temple was no more. Its high walls lay scattered in ruin; moss and grass grew rankly there; and, at the midnight hour, the owl’s long cry added to the solitude. The young, the gay, who had reveled there, had passed away. I saw a child rejoicing in his youth, the idol of his mother, and the pride of his father. I returned and the child had become old. Trembling with the weight of years, he stood the last of his generation, a stranger amidst all the desolation around him. I saw an old oak standing in all its pride upon the mountain; the birds were caroling in its boughs. I returned and saw the oak was leafless and sapless; the winds were playing at their pastime through the branches. “Who is the destroyer?” said I to my guardian angel. “It is Time,” said he. When the morning stars sang together for joy over the new-made world, he commenced his course, and when he has destroyed all that is beautiful on the earth, plucked the sun from his sphere, veiled the moon in blood; yea, when he shall have rolled the heavens and the earth away as a scroll, then shall an angel from the throne of God come forth, and, with one foot upon the land, lift up his hand toward heaven, and swear by heaven’s eternal, “time was, but time shall be no more.”

[End of Required Reading for December.]