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-hold the gorgeous West in fee.

ticed that the nurse stooped with her weight. I past of Europe they have in common with The little imp shut her eyes and did ingenue us. But their own records, brief as they as if she had been bred to the stage, and as are, are already splendid; and of these a baby in arms she was successfully carried they have exclusive possession. They into Paris, the seminarist leading the way through the wicket, book in hand and eyes on the floor. The women that played that trick, nevertheless, watched over that child as none but the best English servants would have done, would have thought nothing of losing their own dinners to gratify any whims she might express at table.

European writers will never do full justice to the America of the past. It requires, indeed, a mind very well informed and free from prejudice to do justice to the America of the present.

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Records of New England life form the Does travelling benefit young children? We cannot say, for we have never watched nals. The use of these for purposes of Art most picturesque portion of American anEnglish children under the ordeal; but we has been abundantly proved by Hawthorne suspect not. They are injuriously fed, and other writers. That stern, cold Calkeep late hours, and enjoy far too much ex-vinism which the Puritan carried with him citement for their mental health. The con- over sea had such opportunity for developstant change of scene is a strain upon the ment as had not elsewhere been afforded mind for which they obtain little or no com- it. After a terrible childbed " and a youth pensation, and which accounts for the weary, soured and hardened by persecution, the half blasé look they wear on their return. Puritan found himself the possessor of auThey become querulous as the journey ad- thority. He could visit upon others the vances, the waiters' habit of non-resistance sufferings he had long endured; and nothtempts them to new demands, and they ending in the religion he professed restrained not infrequently by making themselves nui-him from so natural, if so illogical, a retalsances to all around. The new faces be-iation. Hence the persecution of the wilder them, the new scenes overfill their witches and that of the Quakers, of which minds, and the new diet gives them a per- Cotton Mather has left us so strange and manent dyspepsia. Change is as good for full a record, were unexampled. children as for grown-up people, but it should neither be rapid nor frequent, and for any English girl or boy under twelve we should deprecate Continental travel, and above all, Continental life in hotels.

From The Athenæum.

The New England Tragedies. By Henry
Wadsworth Longfellow. (Routledge &
Sons.)

In his original works Mr. Longfellow shows a growing disposition to forsake the history of Europe for that of his own country. Mediævalism was his first love, and her influence is still felt; but American history is the choice of his manhood. For a long time the poet seemed to waver in his affection, giving us, on the one hand, The Spanish Student' and 'The Golden Legend,' and, on the other, Evangeline,' The Courtship of Miles Standish,' and 'Hiawatha.' At last, however, his choice seems declared, and we may now regard all homage to the former mistress as an infidelity to the present.

·

The time when Puritan government was at its height in New England has been chosen by Mr. Longfellow for illustration. Of the two dramas to which he has given the title of The New England Tragedies,' one is occupied with the persecution of the Quakers, the other with that of witches. In both the scene is laid in Boston. Both dramas are to a certain extent experiments in metre. They are written in blank verse, smooth and flexible in structure; and no prose is employed. The most comic, or realistic, utterances are all in verse, and One is alvery realistic some of them are. most dismayed at being asked to accept as poetry such phrases as

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KEMPTHORN. Ralph, I am under bonds for a hundred pound.

GOLDSMITH. Hard lines. What for?

The gradually increasing taste of Transatlantic writers, those especially of highest mark, for subjects taken from American history is satisfactory to contemplate. The In passages of serious interest, however,

Mr. Longfellow's blank verse is very happy; | cott, the son of the Governor, is moved to full of melody and strength.

'Endicott,' the first of the two dramas, is ushered in by a prologue in verse. This is partly explanatory and partly apologetic, as may be seen from the following ex

tract:

Nor let the Historian blame the Poet here,
If he perchance misdate the day or year,
And group events together, by his art,
That in the chronicles lie far apart;
For as the double-stars, though sundered far,
Seem to the naked eye a single star,
So facts of history, at a distance seen,
Into one common point of light convene.
"Why touch upon such themes?" perhaps some
friend

May ask, incredulous; "and to what good end?
Why drag again into the light of day
The errors of an age long passed away?"
I answer: "For the lesson that they teach;
The tolerance of opinion and of speech.
Hope, Faith, and Charity remain,-these three;
And greatest of them all is Charity."

Let us remember, if these words be true,
That unto all men Charity is due;
Give what we ask; and pity, while we blame,
Lest we become copartners in the shame.
Lest we condemn, and yet ourselves partake,
And persecute the dead for conscience sake.

Therefore it is the author seeks and strives
To represent the dead as in their lives,
And lets at times his characters unfold

compassion by the sight of Edith's suffer-
ings, there is no interchange whatever of
love-talk, no breathing of passion. The
drama opens in the meeting-house wherein
Norton is preaching. Edith, barefooted
and clad in sackcloth, enters, and is rebuked
by the minister for her presence and speech.
She is expelled from the building, and Nor-
ton seizes the occasion to urge Endicott to
stronger measures against the heretics.
Awhile the Governor wavers :-

Four already have been slain;
And others banished upon pain of death.
But they come back again to meet their doom,
Bringing the linen for their winding-sheets.
We must not go too far. In truth I shrink
From shedding of more blood.

murmur

At our severity.

The people

He is soon stimulated, however, to such cruelty as brings about the catastrophe. Edith, and subsequently Christison, are brought before the Council. Edith is sentenced to be whipped in public in three towns; Christison is condemned to death. The execution of the former sentence is completed, and Edith, after undergoing it, is thrust forth into the wilderness, whither she is followed by John Endicott. Christison's life is saved by the arrival from Eng

Their thoughts in their own language, strong land of a royal despatch, depriving the

and bold:

He only asks of you to do the like;

To hear him first, and, if you will, then strike.

Governor of power further to molest or punish the Quakers. The play ends with the death of all those who had taken part in the persecution. Their speedy death, and, to a certain extent, its manner, had been foretold by Christison.

course, altogether unsuited for representation. In one or two scenes a measure of dramatic force is given to the dialogue. In the trial scene of Christison the old man's responses to his judges are very fine and spirited. The characterization is generally good. Scarcely one of the dramatis person but stands before us visible and recognizable, yet all are painted with few touches. Governor Endicott is the most elaborately-painted portrait. He is by no means the most successful.

The drama follows the fate of Wenlock Christison and his daughter Edith. Penal enactments were in the year of the play, There is very little that is dramatic in 1665, in force against the Quakers. Chris-Endicott' besides the form. It is, of tison had already been banished from the city under penalty of death. Moved, however, by irresistible impulse, he returns at the moment when the fanatic zeal of Norton, a preacher, has inflamed to violence the weak governor Endicott. All who are concerned with government, whether of Church or State, participate in persecutions of the Quakers, and the people, though they mutter discontent, are not ready for action in their behalf. Very simple is the plot of the drama, its entire interest being concentrated in the sufferings meekly borne 'Giles Corey of the Salem Farms' is a by Edith and the portentous warnings ut- stronger and far more tragical story than tered by her father. Scarcely any common-Endicott.' It tells how, upon the testiplace or sentimental interest is attempted. mony of the "afflicted children," those of Mr. Longfellow has seen that love passages highest position incurred charges of witchwould scarcely blend with the horrors he craft. Some art is shown in the manner has to chronicle. In one of his dramas, whereby the reader's mind is prepared accordingly, there is no suggestion of love; for the catastrophe of the play. Cotton and in that before us, though John Endi- Mather, the historian of the persecutions,

is one of the dramatis personæ, acting in | dren," form together a scene of great power part as Chorus. As yet, the persecutions and pathos. have touched those only whose age and helpless condition render them peculiarly liable to the charge of witchcraft. But emboldened by success, the "afflicted children" assail others higher in condition. Goodwife Bishop is first tried, and her condemnation is the doleful precursor to that of Goodwife Corey. Corey himself is a prosperous man, and a firm believer in witchcraft. When first discovered he is soliloquizing, while he nails a horseshoe over his door:

The Lord hath prospered me. The rising sun
Shines on my Hundred Acres and my woods
As if he loved them. On a morn like this
I can forgive mine enemies, and thank God
For all his goodness unto me and mine.
My orchard groans with russets and pearmains;
My ripening corn shines golden in the sun;
My barns are crammed with hay, my cattle
thrive;

The birds sing blithely on the trees around me,
And blither than the birds my heart within me!
But Satan still goes up and down the earth;
And to protect this house from his assaults,
And keep the powers of darkness from my door,
The horseshoe will I nail upon the threshold.

[Nails down the horseshoe.

There, ye night-hags and witches that torment
The neighbourhood, ye shall not enter here!
What is the matter in the field? -John Gloyd!

The cattle are all running to the woods!—
John Gloyd! Where is the man!

This flight of the cattle is the commencement of his misfortunes. His wife is arrested and tried for witchcraft. So given to brooding upon the subject are men's minds, that their conversation, serious and frivolous, is full of allusions to the terrible theme. When Corey is in the witness-box, speaking the truth as a conscientious, Godfearing man, he finds words harmlessly spoken wrested till they receive most harmful and dolorous significance. His wife is found guilty of witchcraft, his own evidence being largely conducive to her conviction. He is himself tried for the same offence. Conscious how his words may be misinterpreted, he refuses to speak. For his contumacy he is sentenced to be pressed to death. With the carrying out of this sentence, and the utterance of some vaticinations by Cotton Mather, the play ends. It more dramatic than its predecessor. The scene in which Martha Corey is tried is strong and well wrought. Corey's protestations, Martha's denunciations of the system by which she is to suffer, and the ravings of Mary, one of the "afflicted chil

is

These dramas are worthy of Mr. Longfellow's reputation, to which, however, they can hardly add much. The excellence of the poet's art detracts, to a certain extent, from their interest. Puritanical forms of speech are not altogether suited to the purposes of the drama. Gospel phrases in the mouths of Quakers are less effective than Old-Testament illustrations in the mouth of a Jew. Hence the dramas want colour. Nor do they gain any advantage from the lyrical gift of Mr. Longfellow, which, without being of the highest order, is yet great. We would give many pages of blank verse such as is here employed for one stanza out of The Golden Legend' like the following:

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Come back! ye friendships long departed!
That like o'erflowing streamlets started,
And now are dwindled, one by one,
To stony channels in the sun.

We cannot but fancy that the long study of Dante which preceded Mr. Longfellow's translation has influenced his style and his thoughts. We seem to trace this influence, not only in his individual images or ideas, but in the style of illustration he employs. Compare, for instance, the six following lines, and the image they contain, with the illustration of the lark, " Qual allodetta, che in aere si spazia," in the twentieth canto of the Paradiso':

And as the flowing of the ocean fills
Each creek and branch thereof, and then retires,
Leaving behind a sweet and wholesome savor;
So doth the virtue and the life of God
Whom he hath made partakers of his nature.

Flow evermore into the hearts of those

The lines in the Paradiso' are thus translated by Mr. Longfellow :

Like as a lark that in the air expatiates,

First singing, and then silent with content Of the last sweetness that doth satisfy her, Such seemed to me the image of the imprint Of the eternal pleasure, by whose will

Doth everything become the thing it is. We do not know whether this passage is enough to justify us, in the reader's opinion, in attributing an influence upon Mr. Longfellow's style to his study of Dante. We could point in this work to many other instances of slight, but not insignificant, resemblance to the method of the great poet he has translated.

From Belgravia.

PLAYING AT PLEASURE.

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being pleased. Croquet may be taken as a representative thing in this respect. Everybody can't like the game, yet everybody "Do these people enjoy this?" The must play at it or affect an interest in it. question startled me, coming as it did like And what is true of this is true of much an echo of the thought in my own mind. more important matters. Let us take muPerhaps also because it was out of tone or sic, for example. Now, what an enormous keeping with the scene; for we were on the proportion of the lives of people in society croquet-lawn, at sunset, the young and is taken up in listening to music! They pretty players looking younger and still might be born for nothing else. There are more charming in the rosy light, and those the operas which, of course, must be attendwatching the game strolling about in groups ed. It would be Baotian indeed not to or resting on the rustic seats, chatting and know how Kellogg gave the " 'Ciascum lo laughing pleasantly. The calmness and se- disce" in the Figlia on Tuesday, or to be renity of the summer evening conduced to ignorant of the fact that Mario was hardly pleasurable emotions, and we were pleased. so crisp as usual on Thursday week. BeWe persuaded ourselves of that. We told sides, there is always a débutante, or a newone another so, for fear there should be any ly-discovered tenor, if not some fresh feamistake about it; and yet well, the least ture in the répertoire, to be sat in judgment little yawn was now and then perceptible in upon. So the opera is inevitable. Then a fair face, and a furtive glance at a watch there are the great concerts at the houses of from time to time was suggestive that the the nobility, which, as being invariably hot, sound of the dinner-bell would not be crowded, and uncomfortable, are naturally wholly unwelcome. So I had already begun the most distingué things out. Of the Muto speculate whether young girls are born sical Union, Philharmonic, and other society to croquet as the sparks fly upward; whether concerts there is literally no end. As to one and all find it a source of unalloyed the Crystal Palace, it is simply a reservoir gratification; whether beatitude is necces- of music always on full flow throughout the sarily realised by the looker-on; and so season, and it must be visited again and forth, when the pertinent question set down again. These are a few, and only a few, above was whispered in my ear. of the forms in which music assails us. Happily, an answer was impossible. At Now, a genuine love for music is by no that very moment the bell, so long anticipated, rang, and at the very first sound my querist rose and left me. His example was contagious. The players threw down their mallets; the game was left in any state. One blushing girl alone lingered, detained by a youth of ardent eyes, and cheek as girlish as her own, to settle some technicality having reference to "spooning." All the rest went, and in five minutes the ground was almost deserted. This latter fact hadi ts significance, I decided, when I came to think over the matter after dinner. A game so hastily abandoned could hardly have had any strong hold on the players or those who saw it played. Certainly it appeared to amuse; but did it? It seemed to afford pleasure; but was that so? After all, isn't croquet, as a rule, one of those make-believe devices by which society tries to cheat itself out of sheer inanity and intolerable ennui? In a word, isn't the pursuit of it half the time simply and honestly a mere playing at pleasure?

means universal, especially among the English. It must result from a natural taste or gift comparatively rare, developed by assiduous culture. Knowledge must precede taste, and taste enjoyment. I grant that most people like to hear a pretty melody; but pretty melodies are not music. A taste for them doesn't qualify one to understand and enjoy Schubert or to enter with enthusiasm into Wagner's designs on the musical future. So it happens that half the music people are compelled to sit out must be unintelligible "sound and fury" to two-thirds of them. It can inspire no intelligible appreciation, and afford no real enjoyment. The select few who have studied music as a science, and whose talk is of "progressions," resolutions," consecutive fifths," and the rest of it, no doubt feel the raptures they express. People of fair musical gifts and decent education may derive a certain degree of satisfaction in listening to a classical composition, the work of a great master, even in that rarefied atThis idea once started soon carried one mosphere where music impinges on mathebeyond the limits of the croquet-lawn. It matics; but for the rest, the mass of those was impossible not to reflect on the inflic- who frequent the opera-house and the contions those in society go through, and the cert-room, what gratification can they exfatigue they sustain, in keeping up a fiction perience? Simply none. They are there of enjoyment, and a ghastly semblance of because it is a right thing to be there. They

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listen because others listen. They affect to joyment proper tc this form of playing at be critical, or to seem satisfied, just as it pleasure. may happen. But they have really no heart in the matter. They are simply playing at pleasure.

These examples are sufficient to illustrate my position; they might be multiplied to any extent. What the old French chronicler said of our ancestors, "These English amuse themselves sadly," is strikingly true of the present day. Sadly enough do thousands of us drag through the weary rounds society has marked out for us, nursing the delusion that we are amused, refreshed, gratified, or receive compensation in some form or other. The compensation may only be prospective, as in the case of a friend of mine whom I found playing at whist when he should have been dancing. "What, you like cards!" I remarked. "Like them!" he ejaculated with a sneer, no, my boy; but one must cultivate a resource for one's old age." He was provident, for his years numbered only twenty-five!

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Much the same thing happens in respect to picture-galleries. Since the fashion came up, fostered by the late Prince Consort, everybody must affect a taste for art. It is at least indispensable that one should see the Academy Exhibition, and do something in the way of private views, to say nothing of maundering about in Suffolk-street and elsewhere. Very nice, pleasant, even improving to those who really care for this kind of thing, and bring any knowledge, technical or otherwise, to bear upon it. But how many do care or know anything about art? The majority see pictures as a child sees them, and with about as much appreciation of their real claims to excellence. They lack the innate faculty of apprehension, and educa- On the general question of the follow-mytion has done little or nothing to supply the leader nature of our amusements, it is satisdeficiency. An artist can hardly credit that factory to be able to add that England does a good picture can be looked at without an not stand alone in this respect. That the instinctive sense of its beauty. No? But French enjoy themselves more than the he has to learn that it is so. He is doomed English there can be little question. They to experience again and again that heart- are more sprightly, vivacious, light-hearted, sickness which comes over the poet when and more easily really pleased. Yet they his verse falls on dead ears; when his rhyth- go through a good deal of wearisome makemic cadences charm not, his studied felici- believe enjoyment for all that. A French ties are unmarked, and his most delicate salon is not always a little heaven below," conceits kindle no sympathetic glow of ap- as the novelists insist on representing it. preciation. The poet has only one advan- As to the Americans, they run us very tage. Harsh and rugged stolidity will some- close in these hollow mockeries. They, like times admit that it has no taste for the music ourselves, are bound to enjoy that which it of Apollo's lute; but every lout believes is the proper thing to enjoy. I was speakhimself a born art-critic. The truth is, ing to an eminent tragedian the other day that the power of finding real enjoyment in on his experience of the States, particularly poetry, in music, and in artistic productions in respect to high-class drama. Ristori's is literally a "gift." There is no other word name was mentioned. "Has she a public that expresses it. The coarsest natures are in America?" I asked. "Certainly: draws sometimes thus gifted; the most delicate crowded houses." "Of the best people, of lack the indescribable something which they course?" "The very best. The fashionfind others possessing. How far education ables throng to hear the great Italian." may sometimes supply the deficiencies of "And they sit out the performances ? " Nature is a point on which I will not enter. "Yes." They enjoy them, then?" 'I Certain it is that it often fails to do so; and don't know: they sit." Just our English what is the result? Pictures surfeit. Good experience in respect to Ristori, repeated and bad are looked at without discrimina- of late in the smaller matter of the French tion. The familiar has that feeble hold on plays at the St. James's. In single handthe mind which consist in vraisemblance. to-hand encounters with ennui, in the name Colour tells as colour in the draper's window of pleasure, the Americans are rather happy. tells. The vacuous stare results in the Their national habit of whittling is an examwearied brain. Kaleidoscopic effect culmi-ple in point. There can be no real pleasure nates in vertigo. So tired, so jaded, so inexpressibly bored, the unsympathetic visitor drags through the purgatory of art; but ever with the set smile of approval, the simper of gratification, the rigid muscular expression of extreme critical appreciativeness and en

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in reducing a stick to chips, but the whittler sets an object before himself, and trifling as that object is, the realisation of it yields him enjoyment. This is the secret of the success of a new American game which is to be all the rage this winter, though a more

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