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The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, March 1844
There is a sort of pathetic humor in the following parody by Punch upon the prize exhibitions of cattle in England. A more forcible exposition of the different condition of the human and brute animal in that country could not well be conceived. It must be premised that a large hall is fitted up with pens on either side, and over the head of the occupant paste-board tickets are appended by the Poor Law Commissioners, detailing their names, weights, ages, the regimen to which they have been subjected, and other particulars; as thus: ‘Peter Small. Aged forty. Weight at period of admission twelve stone. Confined three months. Present weight nine stone. Fed principally on water-gruel. Has been separated from his wife and children in the work-house, and occasionally placed in solitary confinement for complaining of hunger. Employment, breaking stones.’ ‘Jane Wells. Aged seventy. Weight five stone; lost two stone since her admission, one month ago. Gruel diet; tea without sugar; potatoes and salt. Has been set to picking opium.’ ‘John Tompkins. Aged eighty-five. Has seen better days. On admission, weighed eleven stone, which has been reduced to eight and three-quarters. Diet, weak soup, with turnips and carrots; dry bread and cheese-parings; a few ounces of meat occasionally, when faint. Came to the work-house with his wife, who is five years younger than himself. Has not been allowed to see her for a month; during which period has lost in weight two ounces on an average per day. Employed in carrying coals.’ Faithful portraits, no doubt, of thousands who crowd the thick-clustering pauper-houses of England, who have
‘No blessed leisure for love nor hope,But only time for grief!’Our umqwhile New-Haven friend, who commented upon our ‘light gossip’ a few months since, will pardon us for quoting, in corroboration of the exculpatory ‘position’ which we assumed in alluding to his animadversions, the following remarks by the author of the ‘Charcoal Sketches,’ Joseph C. Neal, Esq.: ‘Gossip, goodly gossip, though sometimes sneered at, is after all the best of our entertainments. We must fall back upon the light web of conversation, upon chit-chat, as our main-stay, our chief reliance; as that corps de reserve on which our scattered and wearied forces are to rally. What is there which will bear comparison as a recreating means, with the free and unstudied interchange of thought, of knowledge, of impression about men and things, and all that varied medley of fact, criticism and conclusion so continually fermenting in the active brain? Be fearful of those who love it not, and banish such as would imbibe its delights yet bring no contribution to the common stock. There are men who seek the reputation of wisdom by dint of never affording a glimpse of their capabilities, and impose upon the world by silent gravity; negative philosophers, who never commit themselves beyond the utterance of a self-evident proposition, or hazard their position by a feat of greater boldness than is to be found in the avowal of the safe truth which has been granted for a thousand years. There is a deception here, which should never be submitted to. Sagacity may be manifest in the nod of Burleigh’s head; but it does not follow that all who nod are Burleighs. He who habitually says nothing, must be content if he be regarded as having nothing to say, and it is only a lack of grace on his part which precludes the confession. In this broad ‘Vienna’ of human effort, the mere ‘looker-on’ cannot be tolerated. It is part of our duty to be nonsensical and ridiculous at times, for the entertainment of the rest of the world. If we are never to open our mouths until the unsealing of the aperture is to give evidence of a present Solomon, and to add something to the Book of Proverbs, we must for the most part, stand like the statue of Harpocrates, with ‘Still your finger on your lips, I pray.’ If we do speak, under such restrictions, it cannot well be, as the world is constituted, more than once or twice in the course of an existence, the rest of the sojourn upon earth being devoted to a sublimation of our thought. But always wise, sensible, sagacious, rational; always in wig and spectacles; always algebraic and mathematical; doctrinal and didactic; ever to sit like Franklin’s portrait, with the index fixed upon ‘causality;’ one might as well be a petrified ‘professor,’ or a William Penn bronzed upon a pedestal. There is nothing so good, either in itself or in its effects, as good nonsense.’ Upon reading the foregoing, we laid Mr. Yellowplush’s ‘flattering function’ to our soul, that after all, we need not greatly distrust the reception of our monthly salmagundi, since one good producer and critic may be held as in some sort an epitome of the public; and especially, since any one subsection of our hurried Gossip, should it chance to be dull, or void of interest, may be soon exhausted, or easily skipped. ••• We observed lately, in the pages of a monthly contemporary, an elaborate notice of the poems of Alfred Tennyson, who has written many somewhat affected and several very heartful and exquisite verses; and were not a little surprised to find no reference to two of the most beautiful poems in his collection; namely, the ‘New-Year’s Eve,’ and its ‘Conclusion.’ The first embodies the reflections of a young maiden, sinking gradually under that fell destroyer, Consumption. It is new-year’s eve, and she implores her mother to ‘call her early,’ that she may see the sun rise upon the glad new year, the last that she shall ever see. How touchingly the associations of nature are depicted in these stanzas:
To-night I saw the sun set: he set and left behindThe good old year, the dear old time, and all my peace of mind;And the New-year’s coming up, mother, but I shall never seeThe blossom on the black thorn, the leaf upon the tree.There’s not a flower on all the hills: the frost is on the pane:I only wish to live till the snow-drops come again:I wish the snow would melt, and the sun come out on high;I long to see a flower so before the day I die.The building rook will caw from the windy tall elm-tree,And the tufted plover pipe along the fallow lea,And the swallow will come back again with summer o’er the wave.But I shall lie alone, mother, within the mouldering grave.Upon the chancel-casement, and upon that grave of mine,In the early, early morning the summer sun will shine;Before the red cock crows from the farm upon the hill,When you are warm asleep, mother, and all the world is still.When the flowers shall come again, mother, beneath the waning light,You’ll never see me more in the long gray fields at night:When from the dry dark wold the summer airs blow cool,On the oat-grass and the sword-grass, and the bulrush in the pool.You’ll bury me, my mother, just beneath the hawthorn shade,And you’ll come sometimes and see me, where I am lowly laid.I shall not forget you, mother, I shall hear you when you pass,With your feet above my head in the long and pleasant grass.I have been wild and wayward, but you’ll forgive me now;You’ll kiss me, my own mother, upon my cheek and brow;Nay, nay, you must not weep, nor let your grief be wild,You should not fret for me, mother, you have another child.If I can I’ll come again, mother, from out my resting-place;Though you’ll not see me, mother, I shall look upon your face;Though I cannot speak a word, I shall hearken what you say,And be often, often with you, when you think I’m far away.Good-night, good-night! when I have said good-night for evermore,And you see me carried out from the threshold of the door,Don’t let Effie come to see me till my grave be growing green:She’ll be a better child to you than ever I have been.She’ll find my garden-tools upon the granary floor:Let her take ’em: they are hers: I shall never garden more:But tell her, when I’m gone, to train the rose-bush that I setAbout the parlour-window and the box of mignonette.The poor girl’s prayer to ‘live to see the snow-drop,’ in the spring-time, is answered. The violets have come forth, and in the fields around she hears the bleating of the young lambs. She is now ready to die, and knows that the time of her departure is at hand, for she has had a ‘warning from heaven.’ The reader should have sat by the bed-side of one slowly fading away by consumption, and have heard the wild March wind wail amidst the boughs of leafless trees without, rightly to appreciate the faithfulness of these lines:
‘I did not hear the dog howl, mother, nor hear the death-watch beat,There came a sweeter token when the night and morning meet:But sit beside my bed, mother, and put your hand in mine,And Effie on the other side, and I will tell the sign.All in the wild March-morning I heard the angels call;It was when the moon was setting, and the dark was over all;The trees began to whisper, and the wind began to roll,And in the wild March-morning I heard them call my soul.For lying broad awake I thought of you and Effie dear;I saw you sitting in the house, and I no longer here;With all my strength I pray’d for both, and so I felt resign’d,And up the valley came a swell of music on the wind.I thought that it was fancy, and I listen’d in my bed,And then did something speak to me—I know not what was said;For great delight and shuddering took hold of all my mind,And up the valley came again the music on the wind.But you were sleeping; and I said, ‘It’s not for them: it’s mine.’And if it comes three times, I thought, I take it for a sign.And once again it came, and close beside the window-bars,Then seem’d to go right up to Heaven and die among the stars.’‘This blessed music,’ she says, ‘went that way my soul will have to go.’ She is reconciled to her inevitable fate; yet still she casts a ‘longing, lingering look behind,’ to the beautiful world she is leaving forever. Her reflections are imbued with a deep pathos; the second line of the first stanza, especially, ‘teems with sensation:’
‘O look! the sun begins to rise, the heavens are in a glow;He shines upon a hundred fields, and all of them I know:And there I move no longer now, and there his light may shine,Wild flowers are in the valley for other hands than mine!O sweet and strange it seems to me, that ere this day is doneThe voice, that now is speaking, may be beyond the sun;For ever and for ever with those just souls and true:And what is life, that we should moan? why make we such ado?For ever and for ever, all in a blessed home,And there to wait a little while till you and Effie come;To lie within the light of God, as I lie upon your breast,Where the wicked cease from troubling, and the weary are at rest.We are indebted to a friend and correspondent at the Phillippine Islands, for two very instructive and amusing volumes, of which we intend the reader shall know more hereafter. The first is entitled ‘Portfolio Chinensis,’ or a collection of authentic Chinese State Papers, in the native language, illustrative of the history of the late important events in China, with a translation by J. Lewis Shuck; the second, a ‘Narrative of the late Proceedings and Events in China,’ by John Slade, editor of the ‘Canton Register.’ In looking over these publications, we are struck with the vigor and pertinacity with which, when once their minds were made up, the Chinese authorities pursued their object of abolishing opium forever from the celestial empire. Edicts against the ‘red-bristled foreigners’ from England, and the people of the American or ‘flower-flag nation,’ who should hoard up the smoking earth or vaporous drug, were enforced by others addressed to the natives, intended to lessen or annihilate the demand. The remonstrances with the opium-smokers themselves are exceedingly pungent. The ‘Great Emperor, quaking with wrath,’ having examined the whole matter, and ‘united the circumstances,’ saturates the High Commissioner Lin with his own bright ‘effulgence of reason,’ who thereupon promulges: ‘Although the opium exists among the outside barbarians, there is not a man of them who is willing to smoke it himself; but the natives of the flowery land are on the contrary with willing hearts led astray by them; and they exhaust their property and brave the prohibitions, by purchasing a commodity which inflicts injury upon their own vitals. Is not this supremely ridiculous! And that you part with your money to poison your own selves, is it not deeply lamentable! How is it that you allow men to befool you? Thus the fish covets the bait and forgets the hook; the miller-fly covets the candle-light, but forgets the fire. Ye bring misfortunes upon yourselves! Habits which are thus disastrous are unchangeable, being like the successive rolling of the waves of the sea. Is not your conduct egregiously strange? We the governor and Fooyuen have three times and five times again and again remonstrated with and exhorted you, giving you lucid warning. Surely, you are indeed dreaming, and snoring in your dreams!’ These multiplied edicts, and the offers of rewards, to ‘encourage repentant and fear-stricken hearts,’ seem to have led to a little trickery on the part of certain cunning mandarins, if we interpret aright this clause in an ensuing ‘lucid warning:’ ‘The opium-pipes which are delivered up must be distinguished clearly as to whether they are real or false. Those having on the outside of them the marks of use, and within the oily residue of the smoke, are the genuine ones; and those which are made of new bamboo, and merely moistened with the smoky oil, are the false ones.’ A ‘spec.’ had evidently been made by means of false ‘smoking-implements.’ But the most amusing portions of these volumes are the vermillion edicts against the ‘outside barbarians,’ who had irritated the sacred wrath to the cutting off of their trade. The estimates of the Fooyuen, it will be seen, are of that vague kind usually designated among us as ‘upward of considerable.’ Alluding to the ‘blithesome profits’ which had accrued from an intercourse with China, he says: ‘I find that during the last several tens of years the money out of which you have duped our people, by means of your destructive drug, amounts I know not to how many tens of thousands of myriads. Your ships, which in former years amounted annually to no more than several tens, now exceed a hundred and several tens, which arrive here every year. I would like to ask you if in the wide earth under heaven you can find such another profit-yielding market as this is? Our great Chinese Emperor views all mankind with equal benevolence, and therefore it is that he has thus graciously permitted you to trade, and become as it were steeped to the lips in gain. If this port of Canton, however, were to be shut against you, how could you scheme to reap profit more? Moreover, our tea and rhubarb are articles which ye foreigners from afar cannot preserve your lives without; yet year by year we allow you to export both beyond seas, without the slightest feeling of grudge on our part. Never was imperial goodness greater than this! Formerly, the prohibitions of our empire might still be considered indulgent, and therefore it was that from all our ports the sycee leaked out as the opium rushed in: now, however, the Great Emperor, on hearing of it, actually quivers with indignation, and before he will stay his hand the evil must be completely and entirely done away with.’ But these denunciations are not unmingled with incitements to fear in another direction: ‘You are separated from your homes by several tens of thousands of miles, and a ship which comes and goes is exposed to the perils of the great and boundless ocean, arising from curling waves, contrary tides, thunders and lightnings, and the howling tempest, as well as the jeopardy of crocodiles and whales! Heaven’s chastisements should be regarded with awe. The majesty and virtue of our Great Emperor is the same with that of heaven itself! Our celestial dynasty soothes and tranquillizes the central and foreign lands, and our favor flows most wide. Our central empire is exuberant in all kinds of productions, and needs not in the slightest degree whatever the goods of the outer seas.’ As matters are about proceeding to an open rupture with the ‘red-bristled foreigners,’ and preparations are making to ‘fire upon them with immense guns,’ there ensues a bit of Chinese diplomacy, which is especially rich. After a long interview by a committee with the Chefoo, during which all sorts of arguments are urged upon Snow, the American Consul, and Van Basel, the Netherlands Consul, to induce them to sign a ‘duly-prepared bond,’ that none of their countrymen shall thenceforth bring opium to China, the audience is suddenly closed with: ‘To-morrow the Chefoo will be at the Consoo-house, and wait from nine till night to receive the bonds. Now go home and go to bed!’ But enough for the nonce of John Chinaman. ••• In alluding to Mr. Cole’s graphic account of the Ascent of Mount Ætna, in our last issue, we spoke of its late eruption. While reading the proof of that portion of our ‘Gossip,’ a friend handed us a letter lately received from an American missionary lady at the Sandwich Islands, from which we extract the subjoined vivid description of the great volcano at Hawaii: ‘You know,’ says the writer, ‘something, I suppose, of the geological character of this island. It seems as though a vast crater had boiled over and poured its fiery liquid in every direction. This lava, having cooled and hardened, forms the basis of the island. The district of Kau is a rich, luxuriant spot, surrounded by desolate fields of scoriæ, which renders it difficult of access. We are situated six miles from the sea, sufficiently elevated to give us a commanding view of its vast expanse of waters. We can occasionally spy a sail floating like a speck on its surface. From the shore, the country gradually rises into a range of verdant mountains, whose summits appear to touch the clouds. Proceeding northward toward Hilo, there is a gradual rise, until you reach the Great Volcano, about six miles distant. In making the tour to Hilo, we camped here the second night, on the brink of the burning gulf. Suppose a vast area of earth, as large as the bay of New-York, to have fallen in to the depth of several thousand feet. At the bottom of this great cauldron, you behold the liquid fire boiling and bubbling up, partly covered with a thick black scum. There are two or three inner craters, which have been formed by the lava cooling on its sides while the liquid sunk below. The gentlemen mostly descended into this crater, but I was fully satisfied with a look from above. The earth is cracked all around at the top, and portions of it are continually falling in. Steam issues from open places in all the region. This volcano has been in action from time immemorial, as the natives all assert, and has been with them an object of idolatrous worship. The range of mountains continues for some thirty miles beyond this, and terminates in the snow-capped summit of Mounadoa. This mountain is in full sight at Hilo, and about thirty miles distant. Since we have been here it has been the scene of the most wonderful volcanic eruptions ever yet seen on this island. Mr. P–, in company with Mr. C–, visited it a week or two since, and ascended the mountain to the old crater, from whence the flood of lava proceeded. Fire has not been seen in it within the remembrance of the oldest natives. An immense river of burning lava is at this time running down the side of the mountain, in a subterraneous channel, from three to four miles wide. They had a good view of it through air-holes in the lava, over which they were walking, which was like a sea of glass; frequently sinking in different places in consequence of the intense heat below. It will probably yet find its way to the surface somewhere, and, laying prostrate every thing that opposes it, pursue its devastating course to the sea. Truly we live in a world of wonders!’ ••• By the by, speaking of volcanos: it will be remembered that in 1831 an island was thrown up by volcanic eruption in the Mediterranean sea, off the south coast of Sicily. It presented the form of a round hill, about one hundred and twenty feet above the sea’s level, with thick clouds of white smoke issuing from it. As may well be imagined, it excited great wonder and curiosity, and was visited by vast numbers of people. An Austrian, a French and a British vessel met there at the same time. A dispute arose as to what power the island should belong, what it should be named, etc.; when a British sailor leaped on shore, and planted on the topmost peak the union-jack. Nine cheers proclaimed Britannia victorious. On returning shortly after, to take another look at their newly-acquired possession, they found to their dismay that, like Aladdin’s palace, the island had disappeared, leaving the Mediterranean as smooth as if the magic wonder had never reared its head! This circumstance suggested the following lines by a correspondent:
Father Neptune, one day, as he traversed the seas,Much wanted a spot to recline at his ease:For long tossed and tired by the billow’s commotion,‘’Tis a shame,’ cried the god, ‘I’m confined to the ocean.I’ll have an island!’ To Vulcan he flew,Saying, ‘Help me this time, and in turn I’ll help you.To make a new island’s an excellent scheme;And I think, my dear Vulcan, we’ll raise it by steam.’‘Agreed!’ cried the god.Straight to work they repair,And throw an abundance of smoke in the air.This mariners saw, and it did them affright;They straightway concluded all could not be right.‘We’ll to Sicily repair, and appeal to powers civil,For certainly this is the work of the devil!’The Austrians and French came the wonder to view:Said Britain, in anger, ‘That isle’s not for you!For us, us alone, did Britannia design it,And, d’ ye see, we’ll be d–d if we ever resign it!On that island we’ll land! there our standard we’ll raise!We will there plant our jack, if the island should blaze!’The gods, in great wrath, heard all this contention:‘Dear Neptune,’ said Vul., ‘this has spoiled our invention.’‘It has,’ said the god, ‘but, I swear by my trident,The proud sons of Britain shall never abide on ’t!It was raised for a god, and no vile worthless mortalOn that island shall dwell, to eat oysters and turtle.Down! down with it, Vul., that will best end the quarrel,And I’ll be content with my old bed of coral.’‘Milk for Babes,’ an elaborately-concocted satire upon a certain class of ‘learned and pious hand-books for urchins of both sexes,’ is not without humor, and ridicules what indeed in some respects deserves animadversion. We affect as little as our correspondent what has been rightly termed ‘a clumsy fumbling for the half-formed intellect, a merciless hunting down of the tender and unfledged thought,’ through the means of ‘instructive’ little books, wherein an insipid tale goes feebly wriggling through an unmerciful load of moral, religious and scientific preaching; or an apparently simple dialogue involves subjects of the highest difficulty, which are chattered over between two juvenile prodigies, or delivered to them in mouthfuls, curiously adapted to their powers of swallowing. ‘The minor manners and duties,’ says our correspondent, ‘are quite overlooked by misguided parents now-a-days;’ and this he illustrates by an anecdote: ‘Thomas, my son,’ said a father to a lad in my hearing, the other day, ‘won’t you show the gentleman your last composition?’ ‘I don’t want to,’ said he. ‘I wish you would,’ responded the father. ‘I wont!’ was the reply; ‘I’ll be goy-blamed if I do!’ A sickly, half-approving smile passed over the face of the father, as he said, in extenuation of his son’s brusquerie: ‘Tom don’t lack manners generally; but the fact is, he’s got such a cold, he is almost a fool!’ Kind parent! happy boy! ••• We would counsel such of our readers as can command it, to secure the perusal of ‘Hugh Adamson’s Reply to John Campbell,’ in the matter of international copy-right. Mr. Campbell, being a paper dealer, and greatly benefitted in his business by the increased sale of stock consequent upon the influx of cheap republications, is naturally very anxious to prevent the passage of an international copy-right law. As might be anticipated of such an advocate, his real reasons are all based upon the argumentum ad crumenam, the argument to the purse. Mr. Adamson, in a few satirical, well-reasoned, sententious paragraphs, has fairly demolished the superstructure which Selfishness had reared, and exposed the misrepresentations upon which alone the unsubstantial fabric could have rested. It is quiet and good-natured, but cutting; and will act as an antidote to the elaborate sophistry of Mr. Campbell’s ambitious brochure. ••• We think we shall publish ‘L. D. Q.’s ‘Parody;’ but should like him to change the third stanza, which is ‘like a mildewed ear, blasting its wholesome brothers.’ The other verses are capital. One of the cleverest modern parodies which we remember, was written in a Philadelphia journal, and touched upon some exciting city event, before the Court of Sessions. It was in the measure of ‘The Cork Leg,’ and ran somewhat as follows:
