Harper's New Monthly Magazine, No. XXVI, July 1852, Vol. V

Again, this reverence for "the fathers" is the most healthfully conservative of all influences, because it presents the common sacred ground on which all political parties, all sectional divisions, and all religious denominations can heartily unite. Every such difference ought to give way, and, in general, does give way, in the presence of the healing spirit that comes to us from the remembrance of those old heroic times. The right thinking Episcopalian not only acquiesces, but rejoices cordially in the praises of the Pilgrim Fathers. He can glory even in their stern puritanism, without losing a particle of reverence or respect for his own cherished views. The Presbyterian glows with pride at the mention of the cavaliers of Virginia, and sees in their ancient loyalty the strength and consistency of their modern republicanism. The most rigid Churchman of either school – whether of Canterbury or Geneva – finds his soul refreshed by the thought of that more than martial heroism which distinguished the followers of Penn and the first colonists of Pennsylvania.

Our rapid editorial view has been suggested by the great festal period of the current month; but we can not close it without the expression of one thought which we deem of the highest importance. If the influences coming from this heroic age of our history are so very precious, we should be careful not to diminish their true conservative power, by associating them with every wretched imitation for which there may be claimed the same or a similar name. The memory of our revolution (to which we could show, if time permitted, there should be given a truer and a nobler epithet) is greatly lowered by being compared continually with every miserable Cuban expedition and Canadian invasion, or every European émeute, without any reference to the grounds on which they are attempted, or the characters and motives of those by whom they are commenced. We may indeed sympathize with every true effort to burst the hard bonds of irresponsible power; but we should carefully see to it that our own sacred deposit of glorious national reminiscences lose not all its reverence by being brought out for too common uses, or profaned by too frequent comparison with that which is really far below it, if not altogether of a different kind. When Washington and Greene and Franklin are thus placed side by side with Lopez, and Ledru-Rollin, and Louis Blanc, or a profane parallel is run between the Pilgrim colonists and modern Socialists and St. Simonians, there is only an inevitable degradation on the one side without any true corresponding elevation on the other. They are the enemies of our revolution, and of its true spirit, who are thus for making it subservient to all purposes that may be supposed to bear the least resemblance. Our fathers' struggle, be it ever remembered, was not for the subversion but the conservation of constitutional law, and, therefore, even its most turbulent and seemingly lawless acts acquire a dignity placing them above all vulgar reference, and all vulgar imitation. He is neither a patriot nor a philanthropist who would compare the destruction of the tea in the harbor of Boston with every abolition riot, or every resistance to our own solemnly enacted laws, or every lynching mob that chooses to caricature the forms of justice, or every French émeute, or revolutionary movement with its mock heroics – its burlesque travestie of institutions it can not comprehend, and of a liberty for which it so soon shows itself utterly unqualified. It is our mission to redeem and elevate mankind, by showing that the spirit of our heroic times lives constantly in the political institutions to which they gave birth, and that republican forms are perfectly consistent, not only with personal liberty, but with all those higher ideas that are connected with the conservation of law, of reverence, of loyalty, of rational submission to right authority – in a word, of true self-government, as the positive antithesis to that animal and counterfeit thing – the government of self. It is not the conservative who is staying the true progress of mankind. A licentious press, a corrupt and gambling spirit of faction in our political parties, and, above all, frequent exhibitions of vulgar demagoguism in our legislative bodies, may do more to strengthen and perpetuate the European monarchies, than all the ignorance of their subjects, and all the power of their armies.

Editor's Easy Chair

An Easy Chair for July, and specially for such hot July, as we doubt not is just now ripening over our readers' heads, should be a cool chair, with a lining of leather, rather than the soft plushes which beguile the winter of its iciness. Just so, we should be on the look-out in these hap-hazard pages, that close our monthly labors, for what may be cooling in the way of talk; and should make our periods wear such shadows as will be grateful to our sun-beaten readers.

If by a touch of the pen, we could, for instance, build up a grove of leaf-covered trees, with some pebble-bottomed brook fretting below – idly, carelessly, impetuously – even as our pen goes fretting over this Paris feuille; and if we could steep our type in that summer fragrance which lends itself to the country groves of July; and if we could superadd – like so many fragmentary sparkles of verse – the songs of July birds – what a claimant of your thanks we should become?

Much as a man may be street-ridden, after long city experience – even as the old and rheumatic become bed-ridden – yet the far-off shores of Hoboken, and the tree-whispers of St. John's and Grammercy Parks, do keep alive somewhat of the Eden longings, which are born into the world with us, and which can only die when our hearts are dead.

And hence it is that we find it a loving duty to linger much and often as we may in this sunny season of the year (alas, that it should be only in imagination!) around rural haunts – plucking flowers with broad-bonneted girls – studying shadows with artist eye – brushing the dews away with farmers' boys – lolling in pools with sleek-limbed cattle – dropping worms or minnow with artist anglers, and humming to ourselves, in the soft and genial spirit of the scene, such old-time pleasant verses as these:

The lofty woods, the forests wide and long,Adorned with leaves and branches fresh and green,In whose cool bowers the birds with many a songDo welcome with their quire the summer's queen;The meadows fair, where Flora's gifts amongAre intermixed with verdant grass between;The silver-scaled fish that softly swimWithin the sweet brook's crystal watery stream.All these and many more of His creationThat made the Heavens, the angler oft doth see;Taking therein no little delectation,To think how strange, how wonderful they be;Framing, thereof, an inward contemplation,To set his heart from other fancies free;And while he looks on these with joyful eye,His mind is rapt above the starry sky.

And since we are thus in the humor of old and rural-imaged verse – notwithstanding the puff and creak of the printing enginery is coming up from the caverns below us (a very Vulcan to the Venus of our thought) we shall ask your thanks for yet another triad of verses, which will (if you be not utterly barren) breed daisies on your vision.

The poet has spoken of such omnibus drives and Perrine pavements as offended good sense two or three hundred years ago:

Let them that list these pleasures then pursue,And on their foolish fancies feed their fill;So I the fields and meadows green may view,And by the rivers fresh may walk at will,Among the daizies and the violets blue,Red hyacinth, and yellow daffodil,Purple narcissus like the morning rayes,Pale ganderglas, and azure culverkayes.I count it better pleasure to beholdThe goodly compass of the loftie skie;And in the midst thereof, like burning gold,The flaming chariot of the world's great eye;The wat'ry clouds that in the ayre up rolledWith sundry kinds of painted colors flie;And faire Aurora lifting up her head,All blushing rise from old Tithonus' bed.The hills and mountains raised from the plains,The plains extended level with the ground,The ground divided into sundry vaines,The vaines enclosed with running rivers round,The rivers making way through Nature's chaines,With headlong course into the sea profound;The surging sea beneath the vallies low,The vallies sweet, and lakes that gently flow.

The reader may thank us for a seasonable bouquet – tied up with old ribbon indeed, and in the old free and easy way – but the perfume is richer than the artificial scents of your modern verse.

We do not know who first gave the epithet "leafy June;" but the goodness of the term was never so plain, as through that twelfthlet of the year which has just shadowed our paths. Whether it be the heavy rains of the early spring, or an over-luxurious outburst from the over-stiff chains of the last winter – certain it is, that the trees never bore up such heaviness of green, or the grass promised such height and "bottom." And we can not forbear the hope, that the exceeding beauty of the summer will stimulate the activity and benevolence of those guardians of our city joy, in whose hands lies the fate of the "Up-town Park."

And as we speak of parks, comes up a thought of that very elegant monument to the memory of Washington, which has risen out of the brains of imaginative and venturesome people, any time during the last fifty years. The affair seems to have a periodic and somewhat whimsical growth. We suffer a kind of intermittent Washingtonianism, which now and then shows a very fever of drawings, and of small subscriptions; and anon, the chill takes us, and shakes the whole fabric to the ground.

We can not but regard it as a very unfavorable symptom, that a corner-stone should have been laid some two or three years ago in a quarter called Hamilton Square, and that extraordinary energy should have pushed forward the monumental design to the height of a few feet.

Since that period a debility has prevailed. The Washington sentiment has languished painfully – proving to our mind most satisfactorily, that the true Washington enthusiasm is periodic in its growth; and that to secure healthful alternations of recruit and exuberance, it should – like asparagus – be cut off below ground.

Meantime, the strangers and office-seekers of our great capital, are doing somewhat toward redeeming the fame of the country. In connection with their design, a suggestion is just now bruited of calling upon clergymen, this coming Fourth of July (three days hence, bear in mind) to drop a hint to the memory of the hero who has made that day the Sunday of our political year, and furthermore, to drop such pennies, as his parishioners will bestow, into the Washington monumental fund.

We should be untrue to the chit-chat of the hour – as well as to our Washington fervor – if we did not give the suggestion a record, and the purpose a benison!

It is fortunate for all minor matters – such as Jenny Lind, Kossuth, green-peas, strawberries, and Lola Montez – that our President-making comes only by quartettes of years. It is painful to think of the monotone of talk which would overtake the world, if Baltimore Conventions were held monthly or even yearly.

We are writing now in the eye of the time; and can give no guess as to what candidates will emerge from the Baltimore ballot-boxes; but when this shall come under our reader's eye, two names only will form the foci of his political fears and hopes. Without any predilections whatever, we most ardently wish that our reader may not be disappointed – however his hopes may tend: and if any editor in the land can "trim" to his readers' humor, with greater sincerity, and larger latitude, we should like to know it.

Ole Bull has been delighting the musical world, in his way, for the month last gone, and has made more converts to the violin, by the fullness of his faith, and the fervor of his action, than many preachers can win over, by like qualities, to any labor of love.

The truth is, there lies in this Scandinavian a heartiness of impulse, and an exuberance of soul, which makes the better part of what men call genius. You have a conviction – as you listen – that you are dependent for your delight upon no nice conformity with rules – no precision of compliance – no formulary excellence, but only and solely upon the spirit of the man, creeping over him to the very finger-tips, and making music and melody of very necessity.

There is a freshness, a wildness, a fierté in the harmonies that Ole Bull creates, which appeal not alone to your nice students of flats and sharps, but to every ear that ever heard a river flowing, or the soughing of pine woods. It is a make-piece – not of Donizetti's arias – but of that unceasing and musical hum which is going up every summer's day in the way of bee-chants, and bird-anthems, and which the soul-wakened Scandinavian has caught, and wrought and strung upon five bits of thread!

The papers (they are accountable for whatever may not be true in our stories) have told us strange, sad things of the musical hero's life. First, that he has been a great patron of the arts – nor is it easy to believe that he could be otherwise. Next, they have told us, that he is an earnest lover of such liberty as makes men think, and read, and till their own lands – nor is this hard to believe. Again they tell us that he has sometimes rendered himself obnoxious to the powers that be – that his estates, once very large, have been confiscated, and that he has come hitherward only for the sake of repairing his altered fortunes.

If the truth lie indeed so hardly upon him, we wish him even more success than his merit will be sure to win.

Among the on dits of the time, we must not pass by the good and ill-natured comments upon the new-passed Liquor Laws of Massachusetts and of Rhode Island. When the reader remembers that Nahant and Newport are within the limits of these two States, and that summer visitors to the favorite watering places are not unapt to call for a wine-card, and to moisten their roast lamb and peas (especially after an exhilarating sea-bath) with a cup of Heidseck, or of Longworth's sparkling Catawba, they may readily imagine the consternation that has crept over certain portions of the visiting world. We (meaning we as Editors) are of course without any preferences either for watering places or – for that matter – liquoring places. Yet we are curious to see how far the new system will favor the fullness and the gayety of the old summer resorts.

Persistent Newport visitors, who have grown old with their sherry and their port, are arranging for the transportation of "small stores," as a portion of their luggage; and are negotiating with the landlords their rates of "corkage." Whether this side-tax on the matter will not render host and guest obnoxious to the new-started laws, is a matter we commend to the serious attention of the hopeful lawyers of Newport.

What the reformatory legal enactments may do with the wine-growers of Ohio, and with the distillers of Pennsylvania and Indiana, we are curious to see. As for the latter, we can not say (speaking now in our individual capacity) that we should greatly regret the downfall of those huge distillery pig-yards, which spend their odors over the Ohio river; but as for the Cincinnati wines and vineyards, we must confess that we have a lurking fondness that way – first, because the grape culture is Scriptural, beautiful, healthful; and next, because it is clothing the hill-sides of our West with a purple and bountiful product, that develops nobly the agricultural resources of the country, and throws the gauntlet in the very face of Burgundy. Still again, we have a fancy – perhaps a wrong one – that pure wines, well made, and cheapened to the wants of the humblest laborer, will outgrow and overshadow that feverish passion for stronger drink which vitiates so sadly our whole working population: and yet once again, we have charity for western vineyards, for a very love of their products; and have felt ourselves, after a wee bit of the quiet hock which Zimmermann presses out of the ripe Catawba – a better feeling toward our fellows, and a richer relish for such labor of the office as now hampers our pen.

Under story of pleasure-seeking for the summer, some Journalists record the intent of a southern party to broach – in the August that now lies thirty days into the sunshine – the passage of the Rocky Mountains, skirting by the way the miniature valley of the Missouri – wearing weapons of defense and offense – carrying parlors upon wheels, and kitchens in their carts – shooting rabbits and Indians as the seasons vary, and dining upon buffalo and corn bread à volanté.

We wish them much pleasure of the trip – meaning good roads, few Indians, and musquito bars.

Seriously, however, when shall we see the valley of the Missouri form a pleasant tangent to summer travel, and the sportsman who now camps it by Long Lake, or shoots coot by Moniment Point – oiling his rifle for a range at the stalking varmint by St. Joseph's, and along the thousand forked branches of the Missouri waters?

At Minnessota, they say (the doubtful newspapers again,) people have discovered a gem of a lake, – so still, that the bordering trees seem growing root upward, and the islands are all Siamesed where they float; and so clear that you count your fish before you throw them the bait, and make such selections among the eager patrons of your hook, as you would do at the City market on the corner of Spring-street.

When Professor Page's Galvanic Railroad will take us there in a day, we will wash the ink from our fingers in the lake of Minnessota; and if the fates favor us, will stew a trout in Longworth's Catawba; meantime, we wait hopefully feeding upon Devoe's, moderately fatted mutton, and great plenty of imaginative diet.

Among the rest, old Markham's "Summer Contentments" has furnished us with rare meals, and inveigled us into trying with inapt hands the metier of the rod and angle. We flatter ourselves that we have won upon the character of the angler, however little we may win upon his fish.

"He must," says pleasant old Markham, "neither be amazed with storms, nor frighted with thunder; and if he is not temperate, but has a gnawing stomach, that will not endure much fasting, and must observe hours, it troubleth the mind and body, and loseth that delight which only maketh pastime pleasing.

"He must be of a well-settled and constant belief, to enjoy the benefit of his expectation; for than to despair, it were better never to be put in practice: and he must ever think, when the waters are pleasant, and any thing likely, that there the Creator of all good things, hath stored up much of plenty; and though your satisfaction be not as ready as your wishes, yet you must hope still, that with perseverance you shall reap the fullness of your harvest with contentment. Then he must be full of love both to his pleasure, and his neighbor – to his pleasure, which will otherwise be irksome and tedious – and to his neighbor, that he never give offense in any particular, nor be guilty of any general destruction; then he must be exceeding patient, and neither vex nor excruciate himself with any losses or mischances, as in losing the prey when it is almost in hand, or by breaking his tools by ignorance or negligence; but with pleased sufferance amend errors, and think mischances instructions to better carefulness."

We commend all this to the trout fishers among the musquitos, and black flies of Hamilton County – for even into that dim, and barbarian region, our monthly budget finds its way.

Among other things of the hour, we must spare a note for those pleasant statistics of author-and-bookdom, which the international discussion of Copyright has called into print.

Heretofore, the man of books has been reckoned as a liver, for the most part, upon such manna as rained down from time to time, from a very imaginative heaven; he has lived, by a certain charitable courtesy of the world, (which is coy of ferreting out its injustices) beyond the tongue of talk, and his pride and poverty have suffered an amiable reprieve.

The time, it seems, is now gone by; and we find Prescott and Irving submitted to the same fiscal measurement, as are the brokers upon 'Change. We wish the whole author fraternity might come as bravely out of it as the two we have named: and should it ever come to pass, that the fraternity were altogether rich, we hope they will not neglect the foundation of some quiet hospital for the poor fellows (like ourselves) who record their progress, and chronicle their honors.

In old times a fancy held men's minds, that the payment for poetry came only from Heaven: and that so soon as the Divine fingers which caught the minstrelsy of the angel world, touched upon gold, they palsied, and lost their power. Under the present flattering condition of the author world (of which, alas, we only read!) it may be well to revive the caution: the poor may, at the least, console themselves thereby; and as for the rich – they need no consolation.

Time and time again, we believe, spicy authors have threatened to take the publisher's business off his hands; and in lieu of half the profits, to measure them all with themselves. But, unfortunately for the credit of the calling, authors are, in the general way, blessed with very moderate financial capacity; and from Scott to Lamartine, they have in such venture, to the best of our observation, worked very hard – for very little pay.

Speaking of Lamartine, reminds us of a little episode of French life, which has latterly crept into the French papers, and which would have made (as the publishers say) a "companion volume" to Lamartine's Raphael – always provided it were as well written out. The episode is dismissed in two or three lines of the journals, and is headed in very attracting way – "Died of Love."

Such a kind of death being mostly unheard of – especially in New York – it will be necessary to justify the title by a somewhat fuller résumé of the story, than the journalist favors us with.

Marie of Montauban was as pretty a girl as the traveler might see in going through all of southern France; and a pretty girl of southern France, is more than pretty in any other quarter of France.

Her father had been a small propriétaire, and had married a descendant of an old family, under circumstances of that vague and wild romance which grew up a little after the old Revolution. Both the parents, however, died early in life: she inherited from the mother exceeding delicacy, and a refinement, which agreed very poorly with the poverty to which her father's improvidence had left her an heir.

Admired and beloved, and sometimes courted by those about her, she resolutely determined to secure her own support. She commenced in a romantic way – by quitting secretly her home, and throwing herself upon a very broad and a very wicked world. Fortune guided her to the home of a worthy baker; she here learned the smaller mysteries of his craft, and made such show in the front shop of her new-found patron, as bewitched the provincial gailliards, and made its tale upon the heart of the baker's son.

In short, the son wooed in earnest; the baker protested: and whether it was the protest (which is sure to kindle higher flame) or the honest heart of the wooer himself, Marie forgot the earnest longings, which her mother's nature had planted in her, and became the runaway wife of the runaway baker's son.

All French runaways (except from Government) go to Paris: therefore it was, that in a year's time, you might have seen the humble sign of the baker's son upon a modest shop of the Boulevard Beaumarchais. Beauty is always found out in Paris, and it is generally admired. Therefore it was, that the baker's son prospered, and the Café de Paris heard mention of the beautiful baker's wife of the Beaumarchais.

But, with the sight of the Louvre, the Tuileries, and all the elegancies of metropolitan life, the old longings of the motherly nature came back to the humiliated Marie. She stole hours for reading and for music, and quieted her riotous ambition with the ambition of knowledge.

Still, however, her admirers besieged her; but thanks to her birth, besieged in vain. From month to month she attended her shop; and from month to month beguiled her mission with reading of old stories, and with the music of her guitar.

Now, it happened that in this time, a certain Jacques Arago (well known to fame) chanced upon a day to visit the baker's shop of the Boulevard Beaumarchais; and it further happened, that as the customer was a traveler and a savant, that he fell into talk with the beautiful Marie, who even then held in her fingers some work of the visitor himself.