"But Jeff he hit upon a way o' helping on us forrard, By bein' unannermous -a trick you ain't quite up to Norrard. A baldin hain't no more 'f a chance with Than folks's oppersition views aginst the They'll take 'em out on him 'bout East, one canter on a rail Makes a man feel unannermous ez Jonah in the whale." Or this: "I've noticed thet each half-baked scheme's abettors Are in the habbit o' producin' letters, Writ by all sorts o' never-heerd-on fellers 'Bout es oridgenal es the wind in bellers; I've noticed tu, it's the quack mel'cines git, (An' needs) the grettest heap o' stiffykits.', The effect of all this Yankee dialect is to express in the most marvellous way, — a way that no provincial English dialect (Yorkshire, or Lincolnshire, or Dorsetshire, or what you please to take) in the least gives, the sense of familiarity, of the full right to take liberties, with language which the Yankee feels. He is quite familiar with the words he uses, is not out of his depth in the least in using them; "unanimous" and earth. Mr. Leland's, though perfectly original in conception, indeed, of his own sole invention, is yet in genius more or less borrowed from Heinrich Heine's wonderful mockeries. Again, Mr. Lowell's humour is all based on the deepest faith. In the grotesquest of his religious familiarities, you always see that it is not disbelief, but profound belief which makes him handle his subject so familiarly, like the belief which Father Newman says permits the Roman Catholics almost to joke about his saints and the Madonna. Mr. Leland's sarcasms are essentially of the mocking kind. He mocks at sentiment till he makes us feel as Heine makes us feel, as if all the emotions of human nature were weaknesses based upon superstition. He laughs at intellectual truth, at moral truth, at spiritual truth. German transcendentalism is one of his favourite themes of mockery; German fidelity another; German faith a third. As you laugh over Hans Breitmann, — and no one with any sense of humour can help laughing over him, you frequently feel that you are laughing, like Heine, at all that is worth living for, mocking at yourself for your best thoughts, even more than for your worst. We could hardly assert, perhaps, that the humour of the Breitmann ballads is as great as that of the Biglow papers, for the Biglow papers are almost certificates," and all such words, are just unapproachable in the overflow and richness of their humour. But undoubtedly, the Breitmann ballads come very near them in mere literary merit, while in all other respects they fall far short of the earlier work. They show none of the deep practical sagacity of the Biglow papers; none of their profound earnestness, none of their poetical tenderness. At the same time, they have perhaps even more buoyancy, more animal spirits, and more of universal application, being in reality satires on certain universal elements in human nature, while the Biglow papers are satires on the selfishness of a particular school of American politicians at a particular epoch. - But to come to a more detailed comparison. Both Mr. Lowell and Mr. Leland (like Artemus Ward, and we imagine all other American humourists), we have said, have shown the most delicate feeling for the humour of dialect, the new-made provincial idiom in which you see language in the act of being moulded fresh to the hand of a 'cute and careless generation. How free a use Mr. Lowell's heroes make, for instance, of the foreign words in the English language, and how happily they fit the 'cute Yankees who have recast them to their own purpose! Take this : LIVING AGE. VOL. XVII. 745 as familiar to him as any others, but he chooses to make them suit his mouth instead of suiting his mouth to them, and hence the easy, slovenly, undress fashion in which they come out; hence, too, the multitude of artificial nick-names, like "Ringtail Roarers" in the above extract, -like the multitude of political nick-names, such as Silver Grey Filmore Whigs,”—and so forth,-— and hence, too, the cool adaptation of old Roman and Greek names, Troy, and Corinth, and Athens, to the oddest little villages. In Mr. Lowell's dialect you see the Yankee coolly kneading the language to suit the most temporary exigencies of his mouth. With Hans Breitmann the reason for the choice of dialect, like the dialect itself, is quite different. That chosen is the Pennsylvanian-German, skilfully moulded into guttural greediness and shibboleths of sentiment. Take this, for instance: where the guttural in “ The type of extravagance and caricature in which both writers delight is much less different, has much more that is common in it. In the Biglow papers we have an ample supply of such illustrations, as the follow ing, for instance, comparing the tropical rains of the rainy season to "our Prudence's" unmanageable teapot: — "The clymit seems to me jest like a teapot made o' pewter Our Prudence hed, that wouldn't pour (all spout, she could du) to suit her; holl kit bust clean out, The kiver-hinge-pin bein' lost, tea leaves an' tea an' kiver 'Ould all come down kerswosh! ez though the dam broke in a river. Jest so 'tis here; holl months there ain't a day o' rainy weather, An' jest ez the officers 'ould be alayin' heads together Ez t'how they'd mix their drinks at sech a milingtary deepot, "Her heafenly voice, it drill me so De renpow rises when she sings, De angels crow and flop deir vings expressed in the Biglow papers and the As to the intellectual drift of the thoughts Breitmann ballads respectively, they are as different as possible. The Biglow papers from beginning to end are meant to exalt justice, simplicity, integrity, mercy, as the very soul of politics, and take the true fishness, cruelty which call themselves by measure of the braggadocio, cunning, selthem was a spirited protest against the Mexhigh-sounding names. The first of all of ican war, which the Slave party had pressed element in the Union.- and this note runs on in the hope of increasing the Slave-State through the whole series : - "Wal, go 'long to help 'em stealin' Help the men thet call you people 'Twould pour ez though the lid wuz off the invective, and sometimes,- in Birdofredum This drift sometimes takes the form of direct everlasting teapot.' That bold conception, of "the everlasting teapot" is most characteristic of the American humour, which delights in magnifying the humblest and homeliest things with the view of humiliating, as it were, the grander and more ideal phenomena to which it compares them. Now, Hans Breitmann's extravagance and caricature are different in tone, but not in rationale. He affects to use the most familiar and ludicrous expressions as if they were full of sentiment : "Vere is die leettle leettle shtar -or thus, in praising his lady-love: Sawin's letters,- of bitter sarcasm; but it diversification of it is the genuine love of nais always ethically the same, and the only real ture which bursts out from time to time in 66 noble descriptions like the following of the "Then all comes crowdin' in; afore you think The cat-bird in the laylock bush is loud, All down the loose-walled lanes in archin' bowers The barb'ry droops its strings o' golden flow ers, overlying the mockery, but not underlying it. Like Heine, he hardly likes to express it without a harsh laugh at himself for his pains. Mr. Leland, with a humour which falls short indeed, but not very much leave a disagreeable taste behind the laughshort, of Mr. Lowell's always contrives to ter which he provokes,- Mr. Lowell always a sense of the wisdom beneath the fancy, and the truth behind the smile. From The Spectator. MEMOIR OF BERGENROTH.* In passages of this kind, no less than in the whole moral tone which pervades the Biglow papers, you see what really feeds the genius of the writer, and that a genuine faith in Divine government and a genuine love of the spirit which creates the beauty of the universe, is the master-key to all the grotesque sarcasm of the ballads. In the Breitmann ballads it is very different. THIS biography reminds us of the stirring Mockery is the real master-spirit. The and unsettled lives which scholars not unhunger for sausages and sentiment, for commonly led during the two centuries that lager-beer and love, for widows and wassail, followed the revival of learning. The for battle and booty, has nothing behind or fession of letters was then a European combeneath it except real contempt for the hu-monwealth, and its followers, in the changes man nature which thus manifests itself. Breitmann and his party breaking into a church and getting drunk half on whiskey and half on maudlin sentiment, is typical of the whole ballads : Scoffs like this, full of humour, but of hu- All nature seemed seeking to lofe him - In this, as in others of Mr. Leland's satirical ballads, there is real feeling for Nature pro of service which so often took them from one end of it to the other, found an element of adventure which strongly contrasts with the settled existence of their successors. Most of the men of letters of to-day know no vicissitudes beyond the failures and successes of school, of the University, and of the little world of literature; Gustave Bergenroth was successively a Prussian official, a revolutionary leader, a Californian adventurer, and a London littérateur; he began the great work of his life at an age when most men have long settled down to theirs, and he was cut off just when he was beginning to reap, in fame at least, the fruit of his labours, in an obscure Spanish town. Bergenroth was born in 1813, a native of Eastern Prussia, the son of an official whose rank would correspond to that of a stipendiary magistrate or county-court judge in England. The father was an ardent Liberal in those days when Liberalism was, to say the least, no passport to fortune, and the son inherited his sentiments. At Königsberg, the university to which he proceeded at the age of twenty, he was not less distinguished as a leader of the wild frolics of the Burschen and a duellist than as a politician. Leaving the university in 1833, he passed law courts, till the commotions of 1848 through various official posts in Prussian found him Assessor in Berlin. Mr. Cart wright says: "Whether he took part in the actual fighting is not clear. He certainly mixed with the insurgents, visiting the barricades in the course of the night, Gustave Bergenroth: a Memorial Sketch. By W. C. Cartwright, M.P., Author of "The Constituand Douglas. 1870. tion of Papal Conclaves." Edinburgh: Edmonstone the archives of the Spanish monarchy were preserved. It was for his work there, unfinished though it was, abruptly terminated when the harvest was barely begun, that his name will be remembered. and on the following morning he was in the mob at the moment of the famous charge by the Dragoon Guards in front of the palace, when he escaped being cut down by a trooper through the lucky accident of the latter's charger falling at the very moment of The archives of Simancas cover a period his bringing his sabre on Bergenroth's head. of something less than three centuries, from Scientific investigations were now quickly 1350 to 1625. They are peculiarly rich thrown aside for the more stirring life of a from the beginning of the reign of Ferdinand political agitator. Bergenroth was one of and Isabella to the end of this period. The the founders of the Democratic Club, where, total number of the records it is impossible as well as at open-air meetings, he often to estimate. There are, Bergenroth tells spoke; and besides this, he wrote in the us, more than 100,000 Legajos, or bundles, Radical papers." Finally, he was elected a each bundle containing from ten to more member of the Chamber by a Pomeranian than a hundred documents. To the work constituency; but the triumph of the Re- of examining this mass of papers Bergenroth action was at hand, and he never took his set himself as a private student, almost withseat. On the whole, it is clear that he was out resources. The Athenæum journal may treated by the authorities with unusual claim the credit of having assisted him in his leniency. He had before made himself work by publishing in the shape of letters conspicuous for his radical opinions, and some of the first results of his labours. In had once given his superiors an advantage 1861 the Master of the Rolls was looking by absenting himself beyond his term of for a scholar who would undertake a Calenleave. It was not a severe punishment for dar of Simancas State Papers relating to all his offences against the dominant system English history, and on Mr. Brewer's rethat in 1849, after he had absented himself commendation he gave the appointment to from his duties for a year, he was transferred Bergenroth. It was not, we are sure, the from Berlin to the provincial court at Witt- fault of Lord Romilly, that for labours so stock. To this banishment Bergenroth was vast, and involving, as the end too plainly not disposed to submit. After having fur- showed, so much personal risk, one of the ther ingratiated himself with the authorities most ingenious scholars of the day received by assisting in the escape of Dr. Kinkel, he no more, both for allowances and pay, than resolved to seek his fortunes in the New £400 per annum. With untiring patience World. He landed at San Francisco in and perseverance he set himself to overcome September, 1850, nearly dead of yellow the indifference and obstructiveness of the fever. From San Francisco he went to the Spanish authorities, to find the needful diggings. Tired of digging he turned to assistance among a people where the qualihunting, and finally betook himself to occu- fications of even the most ordinary knowlpations which it would not be easy to define, edge and industry were equally rare, and which his own account published in House- finally to make himself master of the almost hold Words does not explain. 'He con- infinite materials which he had to bring into gregated round him," we are told, "a group shape. For the details of this labour the of nondescript fellows, outlaws and adven- reader must go to Mr. Cartwright's "Meturers of all nations, whom he contrived to moir," or rather to Bergenroth, who has fashion into a sort of community," making been very properly permitted to speak for himself their captain. It would probably himself. Few men have shown more indusbe a not unfavourable account of his position try, none, it may be safely affirmed, more at this time of his life to say that he was the ingenuity. To catch in the very hasty exchief of a body of volunteer police. In amination which time allowed the meaning California, however, Bergenroth stayed little more than six months. He returned to Europe, and, for the next six years, supported himself by teaching. In 1857 he came to England, and set himself seriously to the great work of his life, the examination of the original sources of history. A part of the results of the labour of two years in the Record Office appeared in an article on Wat Tyler, published in Sybel's Historical Periodical. But the resources of our English depositaries did not satisfy him, and he turned his eyes to Spain, to Simancas, where 66 of a document written in a foreign language, in a form of that language more or less archaic, and in the varying hands of three centuries, was no trifling task, but the crowning triumph of Bergenroth's skill was the discovery of the ciphers which had been used in many of the documents. To find without failure the key to system after system which had been contrived at a time when the art was carried to its perfection is a feat of ingenuity that has never been surpassed. He triumphed over the difficulties of elaborating contrived signs, and the still sawdust. The executioner stands near it with greater difficulties of hieroglyphics that sig- | Another remarkable discovery is the report nified nothing, with which dangerous com- by an eye-witness of the trial and execution munications were plentifully interspersed, of Don Carlos, son of Philip II. We quote just as powder now-a-days is mixed for safe the concluding passage, a description of storage with some non-explosive substance. which the ghastly simplicity exceeds all that Sometimes he actually decyphered what rhetoric could do: the original recipients of the letter, with the keys by them, had, as shown by their marginal notes, pronounced to be unintelligible. Early in 1867, Bergenroth returned from visiting England and Germany to his residence in Spain. The next two years were spent in his familiar labours. Towards the close of 1868 he was seized with typhus fever, and after an illness of about two months in all, died at Madrid, whither he had removed in the vain hope of bettering his health, on February 13 in last year. His last letter was addressed to Lord Romilly, and was written from dictation on the 9th of that month. How much knowledge passed away with him it is impossible even to conjecture. The principal monument of Bergenroth's labour is the Calendar of Simancas State papers referring to the Tudor period, the first part of which was published with an introduction in 1863, and the second in the same way in the summer of 1866. This was his official work; the magnum opus on which his own thoughts were bent was a life of Charles V. He judged the interest of English politics to be subordinate, and the Spanish Court to be the centre of European politics. Putting aside the essays on Wat Tyler's rebellion, a singularly instructive contribution to English history, of which we would gladly speak at length, most of the fragments of Bergenroth's discoveries which Mr. Cartwright gives us in this volume refer to this subject. Anything more sinister and terrible it would be difficult to conceive. Not the house of Thyestes in the realms of legend, not that of the Julian Cæsars in history, shows so full of horrors as does the family of Ferdinand and Isabella. One of the most curious revelations, one put, it would seem by the evidence beyond all doubt, is, one of which we have already spoken (Spectator, September 11, 1869), the true story of the mad Queen Juana. Son the sawdust. They enter a room where a large arm-chair is placed, surrounded by a great quantity of his knife. The Prince is not frightened by that sight. He is seated on the chair. The executioner begs his pardon, and the Prince in a gracious manner gives him his hand to kiss. The executioner ties his legs and arms with autas' of Cologne to the legs and arms of the chair; ties a bandage of black silk round his eyes, and places himself, with the knife in his hand, behind the Prince. The Prince says to the confessor [the author of the document], Pray for my soul.' The confessor says the Credo, and the Prince responds in a clear and firm voice. When he pronounced the words 'unico fijo' — only the executioner puts his knife to his throat, and a stream of blood rushes down on knife, being very sharp, had cut well. The The Prince struggles little; the executioner takes the bandage from the eyes, which are closed. The face is pale, like that of a corpse, but has preserved its natural expression. The executioner unties the corpse, wraps it in a black baize cloth, and puts it in a corner of the room. That done, Antonio Perez flies all at once at the executioner, accusing him of having stolen the diamonds of the Prince. The executioner denies, is searched, and Perez finds, in one of the folds of his dress, the diamonds. The executioner grows pale, and declares that that is witchery. Escovedo is sent to the King, and soon returns with two arquebusiers. The King, die on the spot for the heinous crime of having he says, has ordered that the executioner is to robbed the corpse of a Prince of the blood-royal. The executioner confesses, protests his innocence, is led out by the soldiers into the courtyard, and two detonations of arquebuses are heard." Since this was written, we have learnt that the authenticity of this document has been questioned by critics in Germany. It is only right to say that Mr. Cartwright points out that Bergenroth expressed no opinion on this point, but gave the contents of the paper as he found it. THE Bulletin de la Societe d'Acclimatation | THE herbarium of Von Martius, the Bavarian contains an article on the use of the skins of the botanist, containing considerably over 300,000 Kangaroo for glove-making, which seems to specimens, is waiting for some university to buy promise a successful result in this respect, and it. His library is to be sold by auction this as furnishing a new source of animal food, as month. these animals thrive well in Europe. |