Graham's Magazine, Vol. XLI, No. 5, November 1852

It must be a strangely constituted mind that will stoop, for the sake of gaining pseudo popularity in a foreign country averse to slavery, to slander and abuse a whole section of his countrymen, every one of whom, we mean the gentlemen of the south, after all we have heard, is better born, better bred, better informed, better educated, if not so pedantically drilled to a little Latin and less Greek, than their egotistical slanderer.

But what cannot be expected of a man, who, after a disgraceful brawl, almost in a ball-room, has passed away, and been almost forgotten, has no better taste or sense of decency than to renew it in one-sided print, provoking fresh violence; and cowardly attacking by the pen which he himself wields, with some fluency, if with little force, an enemy unskilled to defend himself with that weapon.

Verily Mr. Pynnshurst was not so far out of the way, when in his wanderings and ways of thinking he embodied this epigram.

“The plume, you know,” says the lady, “is greater than the sword. I read that now in all the journals; what do you think it means?”

“That the pen is more brutal than the sword, with less danger to its wielder.”

At least Mr. Charles Astor Bristed seems to have thought so. It is certainly safer to malign an enemy under the disguise of a false name, than to play at a game with him in which, it is proverbial, that two can play as well as one.

The fact seems to be, that an insane desire for notoriety has fallen upon this unfortunate young man, who has, since first he entered upon the stage of life, been constantly running mucks at all and sundry, in which he has as constantly achieved the renown of being thoroughly belabored. He has now attained his desired notoriety; but it is a notoriety, than which any one, save himself, would prefer the most profound obscurity.

It may be thought that we have dwelt too long upon such a galimatia of frippery, flippancy, and falsehood as this book; but as it is going the round, and selling with almost unequaled rapidity, and will probably continue to do so, owing to its piquancy and sneering levity, we think it right that people with the bane should have the antidote. The book is a bad one, holding up a bad set, false views of society, false notions of morality, a false tone of honor, not to be palliated, much less to be praised and admired, but to be condemned. Nothing about it seems to be true but the self-portraiture of the author.

The Heirs of Randolph Abbey. A Novel. Stringer & Townsend. New York.

This is a wonderfully powerful and striking romance, reprinted from the pages of the Dublin University Magazine, a paternity which is almost tantamount to saying that it is excellent; for the Dublin University contains probably less trash than any other magazine in existence, with the exception of Blackwood, and – of course – Graham.

“The Heirs of Randolph Abbey” was at first selected for republication in Stringer & Townsend’s “International,” and was, of course; discontinued when that excellent magazine was merged in Harper’s; so great, however, has been the demand for the conclusion of the tale that the publishers have now produced it in cheap book form.

It is a story of the darkest and most terrible interest, affecting the reader with a sort of grave and mystic awe, like that arising from the perusal of a supernatural story; yet there is nothing supernatural or mystical in the narrative, nothing in short beyond the conflicts of human passions, carried to excess, and unregulated either by human principle or Christian religion, against humility, benevolence, and the charity that thinks no harm.

The tale, as regards the fortunes of the two principal actors, the hapless Aletheia and the noble-minded Richard Sydney, is almost too painfully interesting to be pleasurable reading. The circumstances out of which this powerful romance is formed, probably never did exist, and therefore some readers might consider them unnatural. I am not, however, prepared so to regard them, since such circumstances might readily arise from the natural causes to which they are assigned, and, if arising, might and indeed probably would produce consequences not unlike those deduced by the genius of the author.

The terribly fierce passions of Sir Michael and the Lady Randolph are less easily reconciled, not to Nature – for Nature has exhibited far stronger and more terrible displays of fierce and morbid love distorted into fiercer and more monstrous hatred – but to the routine of daily probabilities, and to the tenor of social life in these days, when the formalities and decencies of society render the display of such feelings, in their extremity, wholly impossible.

Still, so skilfully are the sterner and darker portions of the tale contrasted and relieved by the soft graces and pure gentleness of other characters, such as the sweet Lilias and the high-minded Walter, that there is nothing morbid or repulsive in the pervading gloom which is the general characteristic of the novel, and that the impression left upon the mind at the conclusion is agreeable, rather than the reverse; while the reader feels, on reaching the last page, that he has not been merely entertained, but in some degree edified, by the perusal of a work, affecting nothing less than to preach, and pretending neither to the inculcation of a set moral, nor to the propagation of a creed.

The following passage, one of the finest descriptive passages in the book, will give you an admirable specimen of the forcible style, and thrilling interest, which is conspicuous in every line, and engrafted in every chapter of this singular work.

Lilias Randolph has been suddenly summoned from the humble home in which she has passed her childhood and the first spring time of her youth, under the care of an aged grandsire, among the green hills of Connaught, to visit the proud halls of Randolph Abbey, in order there to become acquainted with her uncle, Sir Michael. For in his old age, prescient of his approaching death, the wealthy baronet has collected his connections around him, that he may study, during the familiar intercourse afforded by a six months’ visit, the character of each; and so decide to which of the four – for so many they prove to be in number, all the orphan children of his brethren, and therefore cousins german – as the worthiest, he shall bequeath his broad domains and more than princely inheritance.

The four are Lilias, Walter, Gabriel, and last in place, but first in interest, Aletheia – a creation of real genius – who is thus introduced to the reader.

“‘This is not all,’ said Sir Michael, who had watched the scene; he turned to Lady Randolph – ‘Will she come?’

“His wife made no answer, but walked toward a small door which seemed to open into some inner apartment: she opened it, pronounced the name of ‘Aletheia,’ and returned to her place. There was a pause. Lilias had heard no sound of steps, but suddenly Walter and Gabriel moved aside, she looked up, and Sir Michael himself placing a hand within hers, said – ‘This is your cousin, Aletheia; her father, my third brother, died only last year.’ The hand she held sent a chill through Lilias’ whole frame, for it was cold as marble, and when she fixed her eyes on the face that bent over her, a feeling of awe and distress, for which she could not account, seemed to take possession of her.

“It was not a beautiful countenance, far from it, yet most remarkable; the features were fixed and still as a statue, rigid, with a calm so passionless, that one might have thought the very soul had fled from that form, the more so as the whole of the marble face was overspread with the most extraordinary paleness. There was not a tinge of color in the cheek, scarce even on the lips, and the dead white of the forehead contrasted quite unnaturally with the line of hair, which was of a soft brown, and gathered simply round the head; it was as though some intense and awful thought lay so heavy at her heart that it had curdled the very blood within it, and drawn it away from the veins that it might be traced distinctly under the pure skin. It was singular that the immovable stillness of that face whispered no thought of soothing rest, for it was a stillness as of death – a death to natural joys and feelings; and mournfully from under their heavy lids, the eyes looked out with a deep, earnest gaze, which seemed to ignore all existing sights and things, and to be fixed on vacancy alone. Aletheia wore a dress of some dark material, clasped round the throat, and falling in heavy folds from the braid which confined it at the waist; she stood motionless, holding the little warm hand that Sir Michael had placed in hers, without seeming almost to perceive the girlish form that stood before her. There could not have been a greater contrast than between that pale statue and the bright, glowing Lilias, the play of whose features, ever smiling or blushing, was fitful as waters sparkling beneath the sunbeam.

“‘Do you not welcome your cousin, Aletheia?’ said Sir Michael, with a frown. She started fearfully, as if she had been roused by a blow, from the state in which she was absorbed. She looked down at Lilias, who felt as if the deeply mournful eyes sent a chill to her very soul. Then the mouth relaxed to an expression of indescribable sweetness, which gave, for one second, a touching beauty to the rigid face; a few words, gentle, but without the slightest warmth, passed from her pale lips. Then they closed, as if in deep weariness. She let fall the hand of Lilias, and glided back to a seat within the shadow of the wall, where she remained, leaning her head on the cushions, as though in a death-like swoon. Lilias looked inquiringly at her aunt, almost fearing her new-found cousin might be ill. But Lady Randolph merely answered, ‘It is always so,’ and no further notice was taken of her.

“They went to dinner shortly after, and Lilias thought there could not be a more complete picture of comfort and happiness than the luxurious room, with its blazing fire, and warm crimson hangings, and the large family party met round the table, where every imaginable luxury was collected. Little did her guilelessness conceive of the deep drama working beneath that fair outward show. Her very ignorance of the world and its ways, prevented her feeling any embarrassment amongst those who, she concluded must be her friends, because they were her relations, and she talked gayly and happily with Walter, who was seated next to her, and who seemed to think he had found in her a more congenial spirit than any other within the walls of Randolph Abbey. All the rest of the party, excepting one, joined in the conversation. Lady Randolph, with a few coldly sarcastic remarks, stripped every subject she touched upon of all poetry or softness of coloring; she seemed to be one whom life had handled so roughly that it could no longer wear any disguise for her, and at once, in all things, she ever grasped the bitterness of truth, and wished to hold its unpalatable draught to the shrinking lips of others. Sir Michael listened with interest to every word that Lilias uttered, and encouraged her to talk of her Irish life; whilst Gabriel, with the sweetest of voices, displayed so much talent and brilliancy in every word he said, that he might well have excited the envy of his competitors, but for the extraordinary humility which he manifested in every look and gesture. There was one only who did not speak, and to that one Lilias’ attention was irresistibly drawn. She could not refrain from gazing, almost in awe, on Aletheia, with her deadly pale face, and her fixed, mournful eyes, who had not uttered a word, nor appeared conscious of any thing that was passing around her; and her appearance, as she sat amongst them, was as though she was forever hearing a voice they could not hear, and seeing a face they could not see. Lilias had yet to learn that “things are not what they seem” in this strange world, and that mostly we may expect to find the hidden matter below the surface directly opposite to that which appears above. She therefore concluded that this deep insensibility resulted from coldness of heart and deadness of feeling, and gradually the conviction deepened in her mind, that Aletheia Randolph was the name which had trembled on the lips of her unknown friend, when he warned her to beware of some of her new relatives. It seemed to her most likely that one so dead and cold should be wholly indifferent to the feelings of others, and disposed only to work out her own ends as best she might; and thus, by a few unfortunate words, the seeds of mistrust were sown in that innocent heart against one most unoffending, and a deep gulf was fixed between those two, who might have found in each other’s friendship’s staff and support whereon to lean, when for either of them the winds blew too roughly from the storms of life.

“Once only that evening did Lilian hear the sound of Aletheia’s voice, and then the words she uttered seemed so unnatural, so incomprehensible, to that light heart in its passionless ignorance, that they did but tend to increase the germ of dislike, and even fear, that was, as we have said, already planted there against this singular person. It was after they had returned to the drawing-room that some mention was made of the storm of the preceding evening, to which Lilian had been exposed. Walter was questioning her as to its details, with all the ardor of a bold nature, to whom danger is intoxicating. ‘But, I suppose,’ he continued, smiling, ‘you were like all women, too much terrified to think of any thing but your own safety?’

“‘No,’ said Lilian, lifting up her large eyes to his with a peculiar look of brightness, which reminded him of the dawning of morning, ‘the appearance of the tempest was so glorious that its beauty filled the mind, and left no room for fear. I wish you could have seen it. It was as though some fierce spirit were imprisoned behind the deep black veil that hung over the western heavens, to whom freedom and power were granted for a little season; for suddenly one vivid, tremendous flash of lightning seemed to cleave asunder that dark wall, and then the wild, liberated storm came thundering forth, shrieking and raging through the sky, and tearing up the breast of the sea with its cruel footsteps. It was the grandest sight I ever saw.’

“‘I think there must have been another yet more interesting displayed on board the vessel itself,’ said the sweet, low voice of Gabriel. ‘I should have loved rather to watch the storms and struggles of the human soul in such an hour of peril as you describe.’

“‘Ah! that was very fearful,’ said Lilian, shuddering. ‘I cannot bear to think of it. That danger showed me such things in the nature of man as I never dreamt of. I think if the whirlwind had utterly laid bare the depths of the sea, as it seemed striving to do, it could not have displayed more monstrous and hideous sights than when its powers stripped those souls around me of all disguise.’

“‘Pray give us some details,’ said Gabriel, earnestly. He seemed to long for an anatomy of human nature in agony, as an epicure would for a feast.

“Lilian was of too complying a disposition to refuse, though she evidently disliked the task. ‘One instance may be a sufficient example of what I mean,’ she said. ‘There was a man and his wife, whom, previous to the storm, I had observed as seeming so entirely devoted to one another; he guarded her so carefully from the cold winds of evening, and appeared to live only in her answering affection. Now, when the moment of greatest peril came – when the ship was reeling over, till the great mountains of waves threatened to sweep every living soul from the deck, and the only safety was in being bound with ropes to the mast – I saw this man, who had fixed himself to one with a cord which was not very strong, and who held his wife clasped in his arms, that the waters might not carry her away. At last there came one gigantic billow, whose power it seemed impossible to withstand: then I saw this man withdraw the support of his arm from the poor creature, who seemed anxious only to die with him, and use both his hands to clasp the pole which sustained him. She gave a piteous cry, more for his cruelty, I feel sure, than her own great peril; but with the impulse of self-preservation, she suddenly grasped the frail cord which bound him. Then he, uttering an impious curse, lifted up his hand – I can scarcely bear to tell it.’ And Lilian shivered and grew pale.

“‘Go on,’ said Walter, breathlessly.

“‘He lifted up his hand and struck her with a hard, fierce blow, which sent her reeling away to death in the boiling sea; for death it would have been, had not a sailor caught her dress and upheld her till the wave was passed.’

“‘How horrible!’ exclaimed Walter.

“‘Oh, miserable to be thus rescued! Happy – thrice happy had she died!’ said a deep-toned, mournful voice behind her.

“Lilian started uncontrollably, and looked round. The words had been spoken very low, and as if unconsciously, like a soul holding converse with some other soul, rather than a human being communicating with those of her own kind; yet she felt that they came from Aletheia, who had been sitting for the last hour like an immovable statue, in a high-backed oaken chair, where the shadow of the heavy curtain fell upon her. She had remained there pale and still as marble, her head laid back in the attitude that seemed habitual to her; the white cheek seeming yet whiter contrasted with the crimson velvet against which it lay; and the hand folded as in dumb, passive resignation on her breast. But now, as she uttered these strange words, a sudden glow passed over her face, like the setting sun beaming out upon snow; the eyes, so seldom raised, filled with a liquid light, the chest heaved, the lips grew tremulous.

“‘What! Aletheia,’ exclaimed Walter, ‘happy, did you say; happy to die by that cruel blow?’

“‘Most happy – oh! most blessed to die by a blow so sweet from the hand she loved.’

“Her voice died into a broken whisper; a few large tears trembled in her mournful eyes, but they did not fall; the unwonted color faded from her face, and in another moment she was as statue-like as ever, and with the same impenetrable look, which made Lilian feel as if she never should have either the wish or the courage to address her. Her astonishment and utter horror at Aletheia’s strange remark were, however, speedily forgotten in the stronger emotion caused her by an incident which occurred immediately after.”

This specimen of the author’s style will prove a better recommendation than any thing we can say in favor of the book; yet we do recommend it earnestly. It is a work of real genius.

Up-Country Letters. New York: D. Appleton & Co. 1 vol. 12mo.

This is a brilliant and thoughtful volume, giving fine views of country life in spring, summer, autumn and winter, with here and there a capital daguerreotype of character and manners.

Anglo-American Literature and Manners. From the French of Philarète Chasles, Professor in the College of France. New York: Charles Scribner. 1 vol. 12mo.

This brilliant and vigorous volume should be read for its happy flashes of original thought, and occasional keenness of observation, rather than for its consistent truth. It swarms with errors, but the errors are so sparklingly expressed that they are valuable as epigrams when worthless as opinions. Every thing is sacrificed to point, and even the truths the volume contains are lit up in such a glare of witty impertinence, that they are truths suggested rather than truths expressed. French dogmatism is pertness, and our lively Frenchman’s pertness almost amounts to genius. But he is still a scholar and a critic, and some of the principles he announces are really deep and valuable; it is in their application that he fails. He lacks all sobriety of mind in observing character, manners and men, being chiefly solicitous to find in them pegs to hang his epigrams on, so that the object seen will not be America, Franklin, Irving or Bryant, but Philarète Chasles. And then he is so perfectly content with himself – he chuckles and chirrups so blithely over his own brilliant little self – he has such a sweet unconsciousness that the limits of his conceptions are not the limits of the human mind – that his quick, sharp, knowing, and gleeful spirit becomes, after the first shocks of opposition are over, quite delightful to the reader’s reason and risibles. He seems continually to say of himself, with little Isaac, in Sheridan’s Duenna – “roguish, perhaps, but keen, devilish keen.” We envy the students of the College of France such a Professor of Belles Lettres, who must hear himself talk as gladly as others hear him, and whose very seriousness seems got up for effect. He has a philosophy regarding the “fitness of things;” but to him this fitness consists in the predetermined ease with which nature and man yield occasions for point and antithesis to such a charming fellow as Philarète Chasles.

In truth, our author is a French Hazlitt. We will give some of his sprightly decisions on our American writers, in illustration of his manner. He is a joking, but a hanging judge, vivacious as a coxcomb but ruthless as a Jeffries. In speaking of Washington Irving, he overlooks Irving’s subtle sentiment, purely native to his character, and calls him a mere graceful imitator of old English literature. All that he writes “is a somewhat timid copy, on silk paper, of Addison, Steele and Swift,” and “it glows with the gentle, agreeable lustre of watered silk.” He praises Cooper, it is true, and praises him intelligently; but then he calls Joel Barlow’s Columbiad “a poem which has both eloquence and vigor.” Afterward, forgetting this praise, he lumps the “Columbiad,” Dwight’s “Conquest of Canaan,” and Colton’s “Tecumseh,” together, as “epics, colossi of cotton and papier maché, forming a mass of about ten thousand verses, which, however, yield the palm in absurdity to the epic called ”Washington,“ printed in Boston, in 1843.” It is needless to say that the first three of these epics few Americans have ever read, and the last, which is made the butt of our author’s satire, no American ever heard of. We have made particular inquiries of “the man who read Cooper’s Monnikens,” – who, we are happy to inform the public, is gradually recovering from the effects of his gigantic feat – and even that remarkable individual had not yet got on the trail of “Washington, an Epic.” It seems, if we may believe Philarète Chasles, that the poet in question had read in one Dr. Channing’s writings that America had no national literature. Struck with this astounding fact, which had never occurred to him before, he naively says, that he resolved at once to present his country with an epic. Our French critic deposes that the present has been made, but as the country, which ought to know, is ignorant of the matter, it will take more than a foreigner’s assertion to make us believe it. The coming man, with his coming epic, should therefore be awaited in breathless wonder; “Expectation sits i’ th’ air;” let all our astronomers of letters be on the watch, with telescopes sweeping the whole field of observation, for this new and “mighty orb of song” which is to “swim into our ken.”

Our friend Griswold’s collection of American poetry, the invariable target of all that “gentle dullness which ever loves a joke,” is, of course, made the especial mark of our Frenchman’s malicious raillery. “The distinctive sign of all the specimens,” he says, “is commonplace; they are all made with a shoemaker’s punch. Take off your hats, salute these images, they are from the Gradus ad Parnassum. The worn-out forms of Europe make fortunes in the States, as bonnets of past fashions do in the Colonies. The figures are stereotyped; the lake is ever blue, the forest ever trembling, the eagle invariably sublime. The bad Spanish poets did not write more rapidly stantes pede in uno, their wretched rhymes, than the modern American verse-makers, bankers, settlers, merchants, clerks, and tavern-keepers, their epics and their odes. In the way of counterfeiting they are quite at ease. One re-does the Giour, another the Dunciad. Mr. Charles Fenno Hoffman repeats the songs of Thomas Moore; Mr. Sprague models after Pope and Collins. One takes the Byronic stanza, another appropriates the cadence and images of Wordsworth. Mrs. Hemans, Tennyson, Milnes, all find imitators. Once the consecration of the British public given, the American counterfeit soon appears.” Is not this in the very spirit of little Isaac – “roguish, perhaps, but keen, devilish keen!” Still, it is really too bad that a Frenchman should presume to attack our poetry on the ground of imitation and diffuseness. What has been the larger part of French poetry for five centuries? Has it not been cold imitation of classical models or red-republican spasm? The French poets have been five centuries at work, and yet where is French poetry? graceful, vigorous, vital, national poetry? Why, is it not notorious that it was fast dwindling from frigid imitation into hopeless imbecility when it was roused by the convulsive school – which is but feebleness gone stark mad and raving? The French never had any poetry, growing naturally out of the national mind, like the poetry of Greece, or Italy, or Spain, or England. Ah! Philarète Chasles, smirking so conceitedly in your national glass-house, beware how you throw stones! You Frenchmen, who imitate even in your revolutions – you, whose republican heroes are but caricatures “done into” French from Plutarch, and about as much like the original as Ovid “Englished” by a Grub-Street hack of Charles’s day – you talk of imitation!