Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 2 August 1848

Two or three scientific gentlemen were first admitted to a view of the machine. They examined it; heard Redding explained the principle upon which it acted, and were shown the beautiful manner in which the reproduction of forces was obtained. Some shrugged their shoulders; some said they wouldn't believe their own eyes in regard to perpetual motion – that the thing was a physical impossibility; while others half doubted and half believed. With all these skeptics and half-skeptics Wiseacre was out of all patience. Seeing, he said, was believing; and he wouldn't give a fig for a man who couldn't rely upon the evidence of his own senses.

At length Redding's great achievement in mechanics was announced to the public, and his model opened for exhibition. Free tickets were sent to editors, and liberal advertisements inserted in their papers. The gentlemen of the press examined the machine, and pretty generally pronounced it a very singular affair certainly, and, as far as they could judge, all that it pretended to be. Gradually that portion of the public interested in such matters, awoke from the indifference felt on the first announcement of the discovery, and began to look at and enter into warm discussions about the machine. Some believed, but the majority either doubted or denied that it was perpetual motion. A few boldly affirmed that there was some trick, and that it would be discovered in the end.

Toward the lukewarm, the doubting, and the denying, Wiseacre was in direct antagonism. He had no sort of patience with them. At all times, and in all places, he boldly took the affirmative in regard to the discovery of perpetual motion, and showed no quarter to any one who was bold enough to doubt.

Among those who could not believe the evidence of his own senses, was an eminent natural philosopher, who visited the machine almost every day, and as often conversed with Redding about the new principle in mechanics which he had discovered and applied. The theory was specious, and yet opposed to it was the unalterable, ever-potent force of gravitation, which he saw must overcome all so called self-existant motion. The more he thought about it, and the oftener he looked at and examined Redding's machine, and talked with the inventor, the more confused did his mind become. At length, after obtaining the most accurate information in regard to the construction of the machine, he set to work and made one precisely like it; but it wouldn't go. Satisfied, now, that there was imposture, he resolved to ferret it out. There was some force beyond the machine he was convinced. Communicating his suspicions to a couple of friends, he was readily joined by them in a proposed effort to find out the true secret of the motion imparted to the machine. He had noticed that Redding had another room adjoining the one in which the model was exhibited, and that upon the door was written "No admittance." Into this he determined to penetrate – and he put this determination into practice, accompanied by two friends, on the first favorable opportunity. Fortunately, it happened that the door leading to this room was without the door of the one leading into the exhibition-room. While Redding was engaged in showing the machine to a pretty large company, including Wiseacre, who spent a good deal of time there, the explorers withdrew, and finding the key in the door, entered quietly the adjoining room, which they took care to fasten on the inside. The only suspicious object here was a large closet. This was locked; but as the intention had been to make a pretty thorough search, a short, strong, steel crow-bar was soon produced from beneath a cloak, and the door in due time made to yield. Wonderful discovery! There sat a man with a little table by his side, upon which was a dim lamp, a plate of bread and cheese, and a mug of beer. He was engaged in turning a wheel!

The machine stopped instantly and would not go on, much to the perplexity and alarm of the inventor. Wiseacre was deeply disturbed. In the midst of the murmur of surprise and disapprobation that followed, a man suddenly entered the room, and cried out in a low voice,

"It's all humbug! We've discovered the cause of the motion! Come and see!"

All rushed out after the man, and entered the room over the door of which was written so conspicuously "No admittance." No, not all – Redding passed on down stairs, and was never again heard of!

The scene that followed we need not describe. The poor laborer at the wheel, for a dollar a day, had like to have been broken on his wheel, but the crowd in mercy spared him. As for poor Wiseacre, who had never been humbugged in his life, he was so completely "used up" by this undreamed of result, that he could hardly look any body in the face for two or three months. But he got over it some time since, and is now a more thorough disbeliever in all new things than before.

"You don't humbug me!" is his stereotyped answer to all announcements of new discoveries. Even in regard to the magnetic telegraph he is still quite skeptical, and shrugs his shoulders, and elevates his eyebrows, as much as to say, "It'll blow up one of these times, mark my word for it." Nobody has yet been able to persuade him to go to the Exchange and look at the operation of the batteries there and see for himself. He doesn't really believe in the thing, and smiles inwardly, as the rough poles and naked wires stare him in the face while passing along the street. He looks confidently to see them converted into poles for scaffolding before twelve months pass away.

THE SISTERS

BY G. G. FOSTER[SEE ENGRAVING.]Nay, look not forth with those deep earnest eyesTo catch the gleaming of your lovers' plumes;A dearer, surer, trustier passion liesIn sisters' hearts than lovers' cheeks illumes.Man worships and forsakes; and as he fliesFrom flower to flower their beauty he consumes;Then leaves the wasted heart and faded flowerTo die forgotten in their sunless bower.But sisters' love, like angels' sympathies,Is as the breath of Heaven and cannot changeNo earthly shudder taints its sinless kiss.No sorrow can your loving hearts estrange;No selfish pride destroy the priceless blissOf loving and confiding. Oh exchangeNot love like this, so heavenly and so true.For all the vows that lovers' lips e'er knew

BRUTUS IN HIS TENT

BY WM. H. C. HOSMERHow ill this taper burns! – hah! who comes here? ShakspeareOn wall-girt Sardis weary day hath shedThe golden blaze of his expiring beam;And rings her paven walks beneath the treadOf guards that near the hour of battle deem —Whose brazen helmets in the starlight gleam;From tented lines no murmur loud descends,For martial thousands of the battle dreamOn which the fate of bleeding Rome dependsWhen blushing dawn awakes and night's dark curtain rends.Though hushed War's couchant tigers in their lairThe tranquil time to one brings not repose —A voice was whispering to his soul – "Despair!The gods will give the triumph to thy foes."Can sleep, with leaden hand, our eyelids closeWhen throng distempered fancies, and depart,And thought a shadow on the future throws?When shapes unearthly into being start,And, like a snake, Remorse uncoils within the heart?At midnight deep when bards avow that tombsAre by their cold inhabitants forsaken,The Roman chief his wasted lamp relumes,And calmly reads by mortal wo unshaken:His iron frame of rest had not partaken,And doubt – dark enemy of slumber – fillsA breast where fear no trembling chord could waken,And on his ear an awful voice yet thrillsThat rose, when Cæsar fell, from Rome's old Seven Hills.A sound – "that earth owns not" – he hears, and starts,And grasps the handle of his weapon tried;Then, while the rustling tent-cloth slowly parts,A figure enters and stands by his side:There was an air of majesty and prideIn the bold bearing of that spectre pale —The crimson on its robe was still undried,And dagger wounds, that tell a bloody taleBeyond the power of words, the opening folds unveil.With fearful meaning towers the phantom grim,On Brutus fixing its cold, beamless eye;The face, though that of Julius, seems to himFormed from the moonlight of a misty sky:The birds of night, affrighted, flutter by,And a wild sound upon the shuddering airCreeps as if earth were breathing out a sigh,And the fast-waning lamp, as if awareSome awful shade was nigh, emits a ghostly glare.Stern Brutus quails not, though his wo-worn cheeksBlanch with emotion, and in tone full loudThus to the ghastly apparition speaks —"Why stand before me in that gory shroud,Unwelcome guest! thy purpose unavowed;Art thou the shaping of my wildered brain?"The spectre answered, with a gesture proud,In hollow accents – "We will meet againWhen the best blood of Rome smokes on Philippi's plain."

TO VIOLET

BY JEROME A. MABYYears – eventful years have passedSweet sister! since I met thy smile;I'm thinking now what change they've castUpon your form and mine the while;Thy girlhood's days with them are flown —A calmer light must fill thine eye;Thy voice have now an added tone;Thy tresses fall more dark and free.Yet, in my dreams of thee and home,A slight, pale girl I ever see,Whose smiles to her mild lip do come,Like stars in heaven – tremblingly!For with thy young heart's lovingnessThere aye seemed blent a troubled fear,As if it knew all tendernessMust see its worship perish here!And oh, the prayers I poured to Heaven,That time prove not to thee how golden links are riven!And I – oh, sister! I am changed —You scarce would know the dreaming boy;For all too far his steps have rangedThrough wildering ways of Strife and JoyOh! falcon-eyed Ambition's schemes —The thrill that comes on mounting wings —Have left no love for quiet dreams,And learned contempt for tamer things!And Pleasure to my youthful cheekSo many a hot, wild flush has won,That to her foils I've grown too weak —Some nerve must still be passion-spun!And if 'mid scenes all bravery – glow —The night has found me proud and blest,Stern, mournful things – that make life's wo —Have struck sad music from my breast!And when at times Thought leaves me calm,And boyhood's memories float by,Then well I know how changed I am —And a strange weakness dims my eye!Oh! sister, on this heart of mineWeight – stain – have come, since last I met that smile of thine!

"THINK NOT THAT I LOVE THEE."

A BALLAD

MUSIC COMPOSED AND ARRANGED FOR THE PIANO FORTE BYJ. L. MILNER,AND RESPECTFULLY DEDICATED TO HIS FRIEND, J. G. OSBOURN, ESQSECOND VERSEThink not that I love thee,Alluring coquette,The vows you have brokenI too can forget;The love that I gave thee,Thou ne'er could'st repay,So affection for theeHas passed away.

REVIEW OF NEW BOOKS

The Life of Oliver Cromwell. By J. T. Headley. New York: Baker & Scribner. 1 vol. 12mo.

This volume is elegantly printed, and contains the most characteristic portrait of Cromwell we have seen. In regard to thought and composition it is Mr. Headley's best book. Without being deficient in the energy and pictorial power which have given such popularity to his other productions, it indicates an advance in respect to artistic arrangement of matter and correctness of composition. It is needless to say that the author has not elaborated it into a finished work, or done full justice to his talents in its general treatment. We do not agree with Mr. Headley in his notion of Cromwell, and think that his marked prepossession for his hero has unconsciously led him to alter the natural relations of the facts and principles with which he deals; but still we feel bound to give him credit for an extensive study of his subject, and for bringing together numerous interesting details which can be found in no other single biography of Cromwell. Among his authorities and guides we are sorry to see that he has not included Hallam. The portion of the latter's Constitutional History of England devoted to the reign of Charles I., the Commonwealth and the Protectorate, deserves, at least, the respectful attention of every writer on those subjects. Indeed we think Hallam so much an authority that a deviation from him on a question of fact or principle should be accompanied by arguments contesting his statements. Of all the historians of the period we conceive him to be almost the only one who loses the partisan in the judge. The questions mooted in the controversy between Charles and his Parliament are still hotly contested, and are so calculated to inflame the passions, that almost every historian of the time turns advocate. Mr. Headley's passionate sensibility should have been a little cooled by "fraternizing" with Mr. Hallam's judicial understanding.

The leading merit of Mr. Headley's volume is his description of Cromwell's battles; Marston Moor, Preston, Naseby, Dunbar and Worcester, are not mere names, suggesting certain mechanical military movements to the reader of the present book. The smoke and dust and blood and carnage of war – the passions it excites, and the heroism it prompts, are all brought right before the eye. Many historians have attempted to convey in general terms a notion of the kind of men that Cromwell brought into battle, but it is in Mr. Headley's volume that we really obtain a distinct conception of the renowned Ironsides. He has just enough sympathy with the soldier and the Puritan to reproduce in imagination the religious passions which animated that band of "braves." As a considerable portion of Cromwell's life relates to his military character, Mr. Headley has a wide field for the exercise of his singular power of painting battle-pieces.

As the present biography, of all the lives of Cromwell with which we are acquainted, is calculated to be the most popular, we regret that the author has not taken a Juster view of Cromwell's character and actions. It is important in a republican country, that the popular mind should have just notions of constitutional liberty, and every attempt to convert such despots as Napoleon and Cromwell into champions of freedom, will, in proportion to its success, prepare the way for a brood of such men in our own country. In regard to Mr. Headley, we think that his sympathy with Cromwell's great powers as a warrior and ruler has vitiated his view of many transactions vitally connected with the principles of freedom. Compared with Carlyle, however, he may be almost considered impartial. He is frank and fearless in presenting his opinions, and does not confuse the mind by mixing up statements of fact with any of the trancendental Scotchman's sentimentality.

The English Revolution of 1640 began in a defense of legal privileges and ended in a military despotism. It commenced in withstanding attacks on civil and religious rights and ended in the dominion of a sect. The point, therefore, where the lover of freedom should cease to sympathize with it is plain. It is useless for the republican to say that every revolution of the kind must necessarily take a similar course, for that is not an argument for Cromwell's usurpation, but an argument against the expediency of opposing attacks by a king, on the rights and privileges of the people. The truth is that the English Revolution was at first a popular movement, having a clear majority of the property, intelligence and numbers of the people on its side. The king, in breaking the fundamental laws of the kingdom, made war on the community, and was to be resisted just as much as if he were king of France or Spain, and had invaded the country. It is easy to trace the progress of this resistance, until by the action of religious bigotry and other inflaming passions, the powers of the opposition became concentrated in the hands of a body of military fanatics, commanded by an imperious soldier, and representing a small minority even of the Puritans. The king, a weak and vacillating man, made an attempt at arbitrary power, was resisted, and after years of civil war, ended his days on the scaffold; Cromwell, without any of those palliations which charity might urge in extenuation of the king, on the ground of the prejudices of his station, took advantage of the weakness of the country, after it had been torn by civil war, usurped supreme power, and became the most arbitrary monarch England had seen since William the Conqueror. No one doubts his genius, and it seems strange that any one should doubt his despotic character.

The truth is that Cromwell's natural character, even on the hypothesis of his sincerity, was arbitrary, and the very opposite of what we look for in the character of a champion of freedom. It seems to us supremely ridiculous to talk of such a man as being capable of having his conduct determined by a parliament or a council. He pretended to look to God, not to human laws or fallible men, for the direction of his actions. In the name of the Deity he charged at the head of his Ironsides. In the name of the Deity he massacred the Irish garrisons. In the name of the Deity he sent dragoons to overturn parliaments. He believed neither in the sovereignty of the people, nor the sovereignty of the laws, and it made little difference whether his opponent was Charles I. or Sir Harry Vane, provided he were an opponent. In regard to the inmost essence of tyranny, that of exalting the individual will over every thing else, and of meeting opposition and obstacles by pure force, Charles I. was a weakling in comparison with Cromwell. Now if, in respect to human governments, democracy and republicanism consist in allowing any great and strong man to assume the supreme power, on his simple assertion that he has a commission from Heaven so to do; if constitutional liberty is a government of will instead of a government of laws, then the partisans of Cromwell are justified in their eulogies. It appears to us that the only ground on which the Protector's tyranny is more endurable than the king's, consists in the fact that from its nature it could not be permanent, and could not establish itself into the dignity of a precedent. It was a power depending neither on the assent of the people, nor on laws and institutions, but simply on the character of one man. As far as it went, it did no good in any way to the cause of freedom, for to Cromwell's government, and to the fanaticism which preceded it, we owe the reaction of Charles the Second's reign, when licentiousness in manners, and servility in politics succeeded in making virtue and freedom synonymous with hypocrisy and cant.

In regard to Cromwell's massacres in Ireland, which even Mr. Headley denounces as uncivilized, a great deal of nonsense has been written by Carlyle. The fact is that Cromwell, in these matters, acted as Cortez did in Mexico, and Pizarro in Peru, and deserves no more charity. If he performed them from policy, as Carlyle intimates, he must be considered a disciple of Machiavelli and the Devil; if he performed them from religious bigotry, he may rank with St. Dominic and Charles the Ninth. We are sick of hearing brutality and wickedness, either in Puritan or Catholic, extenuated on the ground of bigotry. This bigotry which prompts inhuman deeds, is not an excuse for sin, but the greatest of spiritual sins. It indicates a condition of mind in which the individual deifies his malignant passions.

We are sorry that Mr. Headley has written his biography with such a marked leaning to Cromwell. We believe that a large majority of readers will obtain their notions of the Protector from his pages, and that they will be no better republicans thereby. The very brilliancy and ability of his work will only make it more influential upon the popular mind.

A Supplement to the Plays of William Shakspeare. Comprising Seven Dramas which have been ascribed to his Pen but are not included with his Writings in Modern Editions. Edited, with Notes, and an Introduction to each Play, by William Gilmore Simms. New York: Geo. F. Cooledge & Brother. 1 vol. 8vo.

The public are under obligations to Mr. Simms, not only for reprinting a series of dramas which are objects of curiosity from their connection with the name of Shakspeare, but for the elegant and ingenious introductions he has furnished from his own pen. With regard to the question whether Shakspeare did or did not write these plays, our opinion has ever inclined to the negative, and a careful perusal of Mr. Simms's views has rather confirmed than shaken our impression. The internal evidence, with the exception of passages in the Two Noble Kinsmen, is strongly against the hypothesis of Shakspeare's authorship, and the external evidence appears to us unsatisfactory. Mr. Simms's idea is that they were the productions of Shakspeare's youth and apprenticeship, and on this supposition he accounts for their obvious inferiority to the acknowledged plays. Now it seems to us that the juvenile efforts of the world's master-mind would give some evidence of his powers, however imperfect might be the form of their expression; and especially that they would not resemble the matured products of contemporary mediocrity. Of the plays in the present volume, the only one which has the character of youthful genius is the tragedy of Lecrine, and this is the youth of Marlowe rather than of Shakspeare. The London Prodigal and the Puritan, Lord Cromwell and Sir John Oldcastle, have no trace of youthful fire or even rant. They are the offspring of sober, contented, irreclaimable, unimprovable mediocrity, with a decided tendency to the stupid rather than the sublime. They were probably the journey-work of some of the legion playwrights connected with the London theatres, and cannot be compared with the dramas of Jonson, Deckar, Middleton, Fletcher, Marston, Tourneur, Massinger and Ford. They lack the vitality, the vim, which burns and blazes even in the works of the second class dramatists of the time. The Yorkshire Tragedy bears the stamp of Middleton rather than Shakspeare. With regard to the Two Noble Kinsmen, perhaps the greatest play included in the collection of Beaumont and Fletcher, we think that the Shaksperian passages might have been imitations of Shakspeare's manner, and we have a sufficiently high opinion of Fletcher's genius to suppose that this imitation was not beyond his powers. The general character of the play shows that Shakspeare, at any rate, merely contributed to it. It is conceived and developed in the hot and hectic style of Fletcher, and abounds in his strained heroics and gratuitous obscenities. The Jailor's Daughter, a coarse caricature of Ophelia, is one of the greatest crimes against the sacredness of misery which a poet ever perpetrated.

Schlegel said of Thomas Lord Cromwell, Sir John Oldcastle, and A Yorkshire Tragedy, that they were not only Shakspeare's, but in his opinion deserved to be classed among his best and maturest works. This is the most ridiculous judgment which a great critic ever made, and coming as it does, after the author's profound view of Shakspeare's genius, is as singular as it is ridiculous.

Pilgrimage to the Holy Land. By Alphonse de Lamartine. New York: D. Appleton & Co. 2 vols. 12mo.

Lamartine is a man of fine genius and great courage, but both as an author and politician is a sentimentalist. His characteristic mental quality, that of seeing all external objects through a luminous mist exhaling from his heart and imagination, is as prominent in the present volume of travels as in his political speeches and state papers. He sees nothing in clear, white light; every thing through a personal medium. To use a distinction of an ingenious analyst, he tells you rather of the beauty and truth of his feelings than the beauty and truth he feels; and accordingly his sentimentality is closely allied to vanity. This absence of clear perception is not the result of his being a poet, but of his being a poet of the second class. Homer, Dante, Shakspeare, even Milton, would not fail in politics from a similar lack of seeing things as they are. We believe that Homer and Shakspeare might have made better statesmen than Pericles and Bacon. The great poet fails in practical life not from seeing things through a distorting medium, but from viewing them in relation to an ideal standard. This was the case with Milton. Now Lamartine is in the habit of Lamartinizing the whole world in his writings. The mirror he holds up to life and nature simply reflects himself. He cannot pass beyond his own individuality – he has no objective insight.

We will guarantee that every reader of the present volumes will rise from their perusal with a knowledge of the author rather than the subject. He will obtain no information of men, scenery, or remarkable places, such as he might receive from a common tourist, deficient equally in sentiment and imagination; neither will he carry away such clear pictures and representations as Scott or Goethe might stamp upon his memory. He will simply be informed of the thoughts, fancies, opinions, and varying moods of Lamartine, as awakened by the objects which met his eye. These objects, which a great poet would consider of the first importance, are with the Frenchman only secondary to the exhibition of himself. If this mingled egotism and vanity were affected, it would disgust the reader, but as it is the natural action of the author's mind, and is accompanied with much eloquence and beauty of composition, it is more likely to fascinate than to offend. At the present moment, when the author is with the public a more important object than Athens or Jerusalem, the present volumes will probably be the more eagerly read on account of their leading defect.