Зображення сторінки
PDF
ePub

upon by Turner in one way or other,"-many on both sides,
some with four, five, or six subjects on each side,
'some in chalk, which the touch of the finger would sweep
away, others in ink rotted into holes, others eaten away
by damp and mildew, and falling into dust at the edges in
cases and bags of fragile decay, others worm-eaten, some
mouse-eaten, many torn half-way through, numbers doubled
(quadrupled I should say) into four, being Turner's favourite
mode of packing for travelling; nearly all rudely flattened out
from the bundles in which Turner had finally rolled them up
and squeezed them into his drawers in Queen Anne-street."
In the edges of these flattened bundles lay the "dust of thirty
years' accumulation, black, dense, and sooty." With two
assistants, Mr. Ruskin was at work, all the autumn and winter
of 1857, "every day all day long, and often far into the night."
Then, by way of resting himself, Mr. Ruskin proceeded to hunt
down Turner subjects along the course of the Rhine on the north
of Switzerland. He crossed Lombardy afterwards, and found,
unexpectedly, some good Paul Veroneses at Turin. He had
been troubled by many questions respecting the "real motives
of Venetian work," which he had planned to work out in the
Louvre; but "seeing that Turin was a good place wherein to
keep out of people's way," he settled there instead. "With
much consternation, but more delight," he discovered that he
"had never got to the roots of the moral power of the Vene-
tians;" that for this a stern course of study was required of him.
The book was given up for the year, "The winter was spent
mainly in trying to get at the mind of Titian." The issue
necessitated his going in the spring to Berlin, "to see," as he
tells us, "Titian's portrait of Lavinia there, and to Dresden to
see the Tribute Money, the elder Lavinia, and girl in white
with the flag-fan. Another portrait at Dresden, of a lady in a
dress of rose and gold, by me unheard of before, and one of an
admiral at Munich, had like to have kept me in Germany all
the summer." How expositive is all this of the unstable
fashion of Mr. Ruskin's temper and writings.

Then came a

the fallacies of the Roman Catholic Church.
standing still; a paralysis of religion. The Evangelicals despised
the arts; effete and insincere Roman Catholicism had lost its
hold on men. The painters sunk into rationalism; they be-
came men of the world, "with no belief in spiritual existence,
no interests or affections beyond the grave." They painted
religious subjects, of course; these were duly supplied as per
order, especially martyrdom; they liked the vigorous cruelty
of them, and painted atrocities with gusto, deeming they were
illustrating religion; and they painted "virgins in blue," and
"St. Johns in red," as many as were wanted,-but all utterly
cold, and soulless, and irreverential. Happily, remarks Mr.
Ruskin, "there is just this difference between the men of this
modern period and the Florentines or Venetians, that whereas
the latter never exert themselves fully except on a sacred sub-
ject, the Flemish and Dutch masters are always languid unless
they are profane. Leonardo is only to be seen in the Cena ;
Titian only in the Assumption; but Rubens only in the Battle
of the Amazons; and Vandyck only at court;" and he adds,
his indignation mounting as he proceeds, "absolutely now at
last we find ourselves without sight of God in all the world."
In another place Mr. Ruskin's old enemy, Salvator, receives
more lenient treatment than of yore. True, he still regards
him as a lost spirit, rendering Michelet's, "Ce damné Salva-
tor" tenderly as "that condemned Salvator." But Mr. Rus-
kin now perceives in him the "last traces of spiritual life in the
art of Europe, the last man to whom the thought of a spiritual
existence presented itself as a conceivable reality. All succeed-
ing men however powerful,-Rembrandt, Rubens, Vandyck,
Reynolds, would have mocked at the idea of a spirit. They
were men of the world, they are never in earnest, and they are
never appalled. But Salvator was capable of pensiveness of
faith and of fear." "He would have acknowledged religion
had he seen any that was true, anything rather than that
baseness which he did see." "If there is no other religion
than this of popes and cardinals, let us to the robber's ambush
and the dragon's den." "A little early sympathy, a word of
true guidance, perhaps had saved him. What says he of him-
self? Despiser of wealth and of death.' Two grand scorns;
but, oh! condemned Salvator, the question is not for man what
he can scorn, but what he can love." Again further on,-" In
Salvator you have an awakened conscience and some spiritual
power contending with evil, but conquered by it and brought
into captivity to it." Generally there is in this volume a dis-
position to judge of his art merits, especially in relation to his
faculty of imitation, with greater kindness and respect than in
the earlier volumes.

It is not to be marvelled at that the term "Ruskinism " should be evolved from a system of opinions so impassioned and earnest, so thorough and deep-rooted, and, at the time at which they were first broached, so singular and courageous, as those of the author of Modern Painters. When Mr. Ruskin took up his pen, the "old masters" were the religion, and the creed, and the idols, of the connoisseurs. It was of landscape he was particularly writing, but his fiery condemnation in one sentence of such names as "Claude, Gaspar Poussin, Salvator Rosa, Cuyp, Berghem, Both, Ruysdael, Hobbima, Teniers (in his landscapes), Paul Potter, Canaletti, and the various Van-Somethings and Back-Somethings, more especially and malignantly those who had libelled the sea," carried dismay into the hearts of collectors, and he was denounced as guilty of an art-sacrilege scarcely more marvellous for its Opinions taken up in the first instance, possibly as much from impiety than its daring. His opinions, however, have passed through a burning fiery furnace of criticism, and have survived the ordeal. Earnestness is half success; and the truth that was the substratum of that earnestness has accomplished the rest. "Ruskinism," in its least invective and censorious form, has a host of followers and disciples. Take as its text the noble view of it contained in the following words descriptive of the present book:-"It declares the perfectness and eternal beauty of the works of God, and tests all works of man by concurrence with or subjection to that."

Time, that has given and changed the plan, has also been at work with certain of the judgments of the book. The author of a book long in hand becomes himself the president of a court of appeal, in which his own earlier sentences are to be reversed or confirmed. It is one of the results of the heat and passion of first opinions that they seem to be harshly and cruelly framed when the time comes to tone down and qualify them; and the question arises, was it indispensable to be so savage, was it absolutely necessary that what seemed to be the sword of justice should be wielded so angrily and without the slightest tempering of mercy? Still is there truth in the author's apology," that the oscillations of temper and progressions of discovery ought not to diminish the reader's confidence in the book;" ""that unless important changes are occurring in his opinions continually all his life long, not one of those opinions can be on any questionable subject true; all true opinions are living, and show their life by being capable of nourishment, therefore of change. But their change is that of a tree, not of a cloud."

So, then, come repentance and recantation. Mr. Ruskin's boy veneration for Rubens' physical art power," and the "strong expression of admiration for him, which to his great regret occur in the first volume," are now solemnly withdrawn. Rubens is now only a "healthy, worthy, kind-hearted, courtly phrased animal." But the fault lies as much at the door of the time, as at that of the man. The Reformation had come and gone. The reformers had cast out the errors, and rent in twain

[ocr errors]

This tendency to greater calmness and generosity of view in the case of Salvator (not to recite evidences of similar nature in other cases) is a sign of healthful mental progression. impulse as conviction, grown from floating speculations into tangible realities, require to be defended less strenuously than in the early doubtful phase of their being, and still less need for their support virulent onslaughts upon antagonistic views. It is no longer necessary to degrade some painters utterly for the proper exaltation of some others; or it may be better to say, to deify one by the damnification of the whole balance of the fraternity. There have been victims enough on the shrine of Turner, and his manes are now appeased and his wrongs avenged. What need of further holocausts? So Mr. Ruskin loosens his grip and half sheaths his knife, and becomes more merciful and pitiful, though yet unable to do full justice to those who oppose him, for it is one of his marked peculiarities that he is unable to shift his point of view. He judges always by his own modern ex post facto standard; he cannot see with Salvator's eyes, or with the eyes of his contemporaries, and determine how fully he met the requirements of his age and time, how honestly he won the applause of the men about him. Mr. Ruskin asks two questions only-" Are these works accurate renderings of nature, as I by education and study now know nature to be ?" and next, "Are these high art in its purest, and most ideal, and most godly form ?" By such Procrustean measurements he adjusts his decisions, and so misses the swarthy romance, the dramatic coarse fire of Salvator, and fails to appreciate the vigorous, affluent, gorgeous majesty of Rubens, before whose luxurious pageant canvas it always seems that of right pompous coronation music should be played, and multitudes huzza and banners wave. Perhaps some such feelings as these Mr. Ruskin himself at one time experienced, until, shocked by what he deemed the excessive mundaneness, the intense unspirituality of the great Fleming, herevolted to the thoughtful, attenuated poetry of Angelico and the early Italian painters, to be in time again driven by the too intense asceticism and archaic debility of this school, to the robust excellence and the more real and material, though pure and refined, beauty of the Venetian school. There he has now found his golden mean.

AUG. 1860.

[ocr errors]

REGISTER.

[ocr errors]

Ruskin, always posing himself as addressing a suspicious and To turn more particularly to the present volume. The first half is divided into considerations of "Leaf" and jealous audience, who would rise against him and turn him off "Cloud Beauty," respectively: "The leaf between earth and the judgment-seat, by fair means or foul, if they dared, or could. man, as the cloud is between man and heaven." Many fanciful The student was set to work last spring, the subject being a headings are given to the chapters on these subjects. In the lilac branch of its real size as it grew before it budded. It will "Earth Veil" Mr. Ruskin discourses in very delicate poetry tell a little how long this rather simple lesson occupied, that of trees and flowers, which form on the surface of the earth" before he could get it quite right, the buds came out and ina veil of vegetation; "of strange intermediate being; which terrupted him." Yet Mr. Ruskin makes strong objection to breathes, but has no voice; moves, but cannot leave its appointed the word "niggling." "I should be glad if it were entirely place; passes through life without consciousness; to death banished from service and record. The only essential question without bitterness; wears the beauty of youth without its about drawing is whether it be right or wrong, that it be passion, and declines to the weakness of age without its small or large, swift or slow, is a matter of convenience only." A single dusty roll of Turner's brush regret." Passing on, then, to the "orders of the leaf," he He reserves to himself, however, the right to apply the "ugly arranges plants in two classes,-the TENTED PLANTS, which word" to Hobbima. live on the ground, as lilies, or crawl on the rocks, as lichen is more truly expressive of the infinitude of foliage than the "No man before (Turner) and mosses, leading ever an Arab life, and so passing away niggling of Hobbima could have rendered his canvas if he and perishing; and the BUILDING PLANTS, which soar above had worked on it till doomsday.' the earth in the "architectural edifices we call trees." And painted a distant tree rightly, or a full-leaved branch rightly." Chapters on the "branch," the "stem," the "leaf monuthe builders are again curiously subdivided. There are the "builders with the shield," with their leaves, shield-shaped, ments," the "leaf shadows," and "leaves motionless," conclude raised above and sheltering their buds as they rise. Gentle the first division of the book. They are all in elaboration of and pleasant and conciliatory builders are these, living in his "leaf-beauty" theory, and are rich in exquisite fancy and pleasant places, and providing food and shelter for man. admirable writing, but it cannot be that they should be And there are also the "builders with the sword," with detailed or examined here. As a specimen of feeling and sharp-pointed leaves stuck fearlessly out sword fashion, the poetry, here are a few lines from many on the lichen :-"As in bud growing amid the points, dwelling in savage places, and one sense the humblest, in another they are the most honoured, of little aid to man, none in the way of food. (They are of the earth children: unfading as motionless, the worm frets called "pines' we may explain, vernacularly.) Mr. Ruskin them not, and the autumn wastes not. Strong in lowliness, then goes on to the "Bud," and is at some pains to explain they neither blanch in heat nor pine in frost. To them, slowits gradual development and the scheme of its growth. fingered, constant-hearted, is entrusted the weaving of the "Leaves" he explains to be "broadly divisible into mainsails dark eternal tapestries of the hills; to them slow, irisand studding-sails." Many diagrams are given explanatory eyed, the tender framing of their endless imagery. Sharing of the leaf system, its form and manner and charm, and the the stillness of the unimpassioned rock, they share also its "laws of deflection, of succession, of resilience," all fanciful endurance; and while the winds of departing spring scatter theories arising from the subject are in turn laid down. In the white hawthorn blossom like drifted snow, and summer our progress to "tree-structure," we come to "leaf aspects." dims on the parched meadow the drooping of its cowslip gold, Then perhaps the object of this elaborate teaching transpires, far above among the mountains, the silver lichen-spots rest and Mr. Ruskin speaks of the "Pre-Raphaelites who, some star-like on the stone, and the gathering orange stain upon years back, began to lead our wondering artists back into the the edge of yonder western peak reflects the sunsets of a eternal paths of all great art, and showed that whatever men thousand years." drew at all ought to be drawn accurately and knowingly, not blunderingly nor by guess (leaves of trees among other things)," proceeding to the following curious dictum,-"If you can paint one leaf you can paint the world." The Pre-Raphaelite laws "lay stern on the strength of Apelles and Zeuxis, put Titian to thoughtful trouble, are unrelaxed yet, and unrelaxable for ever. Paint a leaf indeed!-the above-named Titian has done it. Corregio, moreover, and Georgione and Leonardo, very nearly, trying hard. Holbein three or four times, in precious pieces, highest wrought. Raphael, it may be, in one or two crowns of Muse or Sibyl. If any one else in later times, we have to consider." There is no endeavour to show how or why accurate drawing of the leaf leads to general accuracy in drawing; no analogy is attempted, for instance, between the human and vegetable anatomies. Perhaps this is as well; only it will strike even the most casual and unprofessional reader that a student may be able by practice to become a very apt draughtsman of the leaf skeleton, and yet be a feeble renderer of the human. Mr. Ruskin argues, unsoundly enough, from effects; the great Italian designers of the figure all drew leaves thoroughly well. Among the Dutch painters the leaf painting degenerates in proportion to the diminishing power in the figure; therefore, who can draw the leaf can draw the figure. Next comes sharp criticism of the Dutch leaf-treatment generally, and elaborate demonstration, by the aid of many plates, of the infinite superiority of Turner, closing with what sounds a strange admission after such teachings and such arguments:-" Remember always that Turner's greatness and rightness in all these points successively depend on no scientific knowledge. He was entirely ignorant of all the laws we have been developing. He had merely accustomed himself to see impartially, intensely, and fearlessly."

The fact is, that Mr. Ruskin is disposed to lay far too heavy a stress on the mere mechanical accuracy of the draughtsman, He has to think too much of his hand, too little of his head. been surrounded by a number of supple admirers and unquestioning students, who, placing their whole time and labour at his disposal, have rather pampered, by such ultra-allegiance, his inclination to be dogmatic on these points. "Study this "look here for a for half an hour," he says of one illustration; or, better still, get pen and good five minutes," of another; " paper and draw it yourself: take care you make it as nearly as you can quite right," and so on. There is something almost ludicrous, only Mr. Ruskin has no perception of the humorous, about the strained care, the exaggeration of painstakings, bestowed on some of the drawings. Instance plate 53, drawn by one of his pupils at the Working Man's College joiner by trade), an unprejudiced person," states Mr.

In treating of the second portion of the first half of the book, "Cloud Beauty," briefness is now indispensable. And first of" Cloud Balancings."

Why is the soft, level, floating, white mist so heavy? Why so light "the colossal pyramids, huge and grim, with outlines as of rocks, and strength to bear the beating of the high sun full on their fiery flanks ?" What are clouds? Water in some fine form or other? But water is heavier than air,— cannot float on it. May, then, clouds be formed of minute, hollow globules of water swimming in the air, balloon-like ? These and a hundred other questions; and what is the use of asking them? "I enjoy them," says our author; "perhaps the reader may,-I think he ought, and not love less the clouds of morning or the summer rain because they come to him with hard questions, with only a syllable or two of answer illumidogmatic" on the nated here and there on the heavenly scroll." And Mr. Ruskin takes credit to himself for not being Then of "Cloud Flocks,"-upper clouds, detached, bird-like, subject of clouds. with flame-like curves, tender, various, pointing, inquiring. And why do they assume these forms? Not driven by eddies And so of of wind, they move along unhurried, compressed in a phalanx, fifty thousand separate groups in half of a morning sky, all "Cloud Perspective,"-cleverly set forth and illustrated, but obedient to one rule of harmonious progress. appealing perhaps too exclusively to the art-student for transfer here; and of "Cloud Colours." Is it well to watch them like Turner? or to neglect them with Claude, Salvator, Ruysdael, Wovermans, never to look nor portray? Then of the" Cloud Chariot," or cumulus,-not to be drawn, not to be explained; even Turner attempted not that. Mountainlike, electric, brilliant beyond power of colour, endless in variety of form, transitory as a dream; and estimates of weight and movement, and of a chariot cloud which soared 20,000 feet from behind Berne cathedral. Next of the "Angel of the Sea," the author's epithet for rain. "Is English wet weather one of the things which we would desire to see art See the give perpetuity to ?" Assuredly, answers Mr. Ruskin; and under five heads he ranges the climates into which the globe is divided with respect to their fitness for art. result:

Wood lands
Sand lands
Vine lands

Field lands

Moss lands

Shrewd intellect
High intellect
Highest intellect
High intellect
Shrewd intellect

[ocr errors]

No art.
Religious art.
Perfect art.
Material art.
No art.

The second half of the volume treats of " Ideas of Relation The table is worthy of study, and will bear examinative tests.

It deals with art in its relations to God and man, and with its work in the help of human beings and the service of their Creator, and inquires into "the various powers, conditions, and aims of mind involved in the conception or creation of pictures, in the choice of subject, and the mode and order of its history; the choice of forms, and the modes of their arrangement.' Very forcible and remarkable are the reflections upon invention, the "greatest and rarest of all the qualities of art;" and Composition." If one part be taken away, all the rest are helpless and valueless; yet true composition is inexplicable, to be felt, not reasoned upon. A poet or creator is, therefore, a person who puts things together; not as a watchmaker, steel; or a shoemaker, leather: but who puts life into them."

[ocr errors]

66

glow, like molten metal, and yet so profoundly sad,--it seems
like something wonderful that there should be in it any fibre of
strength, or any gleam of beauty. This song, we had almost
said, is coupled with the name of Hood, as the "Grave"
with the name of Blair; but the comparison is below the
level of Hood's genius. The " 'Song of the Shirt" is rather
his epic, and his name must ever live with it, as Homer's
Of
with the Iliad, or Milton's with the Paradise Lost.
course we do not mean that the absolute amount and depth of
genius is the same in the case of all these three poems, but
simply that each one of them is the representative embodi-
ment of the poet and the man. To open these volumes, wo
say, is sufficient to suggest these thoughts; for we perceive
at a glance that Hood himself dwelt in the memory of that
achievement of his genius, and treasured the earnestness
and love expressed in it in his own loving heart to the last
hour of his life. We read the proof of this in the speaking
vignette of the title-page; and if we turn to the close of the
second volume we see it again, in a sketch for his tomb,
The inscription
drawn by the poet during his last illness.
which it bears embodies his title at once to some small
share of the gratitude of the age that is, and to the memory
of the ages that are to come," He sang the Song of the
Shirt."

In the chapter etitled the "Task of the Least," the author argues, adroitly enough, "that the minutest portion of a great composition is helpful to the whole," and examples from Turner's compositions furnish good evidence in this respect. Under the titles of the "Lance of Pallas," and the "Wings of the Lion," the Greek and Venetian art inspirations are descanted upon. These are chapters of great interest to the student. Mr. Ruskiu finds the Venetian mind perfect in its belief, its width, and its judgment. Yet it passed away. Not desiring the religion, but the delight only of its art, in proportion to When Hood's witticisms are fossilized like Theodore the greatness of the power of the Venetians was the shame of their fall. Chapters follow on representative painters, Hook's, this song will still be remembered to his honour, and Durer and Salvator, Claude and Poussin; with comments on the memorials before us, recently edited by his children, the "faithless" and "degraded" system of classical landscape, treasured for the clear light they cast upon his walk through We may state at once that the Rubens and Cuyp. The next discourse is on "Vulgarity." life and his social affections. A striking exemplification of it Mr. Ruskin finds in the expres- title of the work was purposely chosen to indicate its cha sion of the butcher's dog in Landseer's Low Life, and Cruik-racter, Mr. Hood and Mrs. Broderip disclaiming any merit as shnak's Noah Claypole in the plates to Oliver Twist. He counts biographers. We find, however, more of strictly biographical "among the reckless losses of the right service of intellectual matter in these volumes than exists elsewhere relative to power with which the century must be charged, the employ- Hood, and the fullest use is made of his correspondence, and ing to no higher purpose than the illustration of Jack Shep- of the recollections of his sayings and doings by the members pard and the Irish Rebellion, the great, grave (using the of his own family. The assurance they justly felt of a symwords deliberately and with large meaning), and singular pathetic feeling on the part of the public enabled the editors genius of Cruikshank," though the works selected are hardly to deal freely with their materials, and to write for the public fair specimens of the artist's general illustrative labours, and at large as for a circle of friends, assembled to talk of the the Irish Rebellion is surely worthy of art-record and render- man they had all loved. There is, accordingly, more sociality ing. The most fatal form of vulgarity is described as dulness than art in the contents of these two volumes, and they will of heart and dulness of bodily sense, general stupidity being be read with the greatest delight by those whose imagina tions and desires have a social turn, or a liking for the merriits material manifestation. "One of the forms of death,' answers Mr. Ruskin's "keen-minded friend," Mr. Brett, the ment of the fireside, and the sorrows, no less than the joys, painter-a vague enough definition-"one of the forms of of home. life," or of apoplexy," is about as lucid and happy, but it The son of Hood, speaking for himself and his sister in pleases Mr. Ruskin, though he amends it, and settles at last the preface, vindicates his father from the application of what on the term "earthful selfishness," as embracing all the most he calls a "popular misconception," that "men of letters, as fatal and essential forms of mental vulgarity. Hastening to a rule, are freethinkers." He says:-"My father's religions an end, it can only now be simply stated that chapters on faith was deep and sincere; but it was little known to a Wouvermans and Angelico succeed. Then the "two boy-world ever too apt to decide by hearing professions rather hoods," -an interesting and highly-wrought comparison of than by scrutinizing actions. Those to whom his domestic the early lives of Turner and Giorgione, and of the different life was every day revealed felt how he lived after the divine circumstances under which their art-minds severally dawned requirements; for he 'did justice,' sacrificing comfort, health, and developed. The remainder of the book is almost wholly and fortune, in the endeavour; he loved mercy' with a love devoted in glowing strains, like the pompous glory of the that was whispering into his ear, even as he was dying, new crowning movement of a Beethoven symphony, to loving yet labours for his unhappy fellows; and he walked humbly deferential homage to Turner. His works and life are traced with his God,' in a faith too rare to be made a common specout and lingered over, not biographically; to another hand this tacle. As regarded others' opinions he was most indulgent." duty is left, as Mr. Ruskin for the first time announces,-In these days of "special services" and religious efforts on the other hand being that of Mr. Walter Thornbury,-but behalf of the working classes, we may well remember it was with some effort to make them explicable of the character of Hood that wrote-the great painter. "Much of his mind and heart I do not know perhaps never shall know; but this much I do, and if there is anything in the previous course of this work to warrant trust in me of any kind, let me be trusted when I tell you that Turner had a heart as intensely kind and as nobly true as ever God gave to one of his creatures." And in a tone replete with the most solemn and impassioned poetry and feeling, the author brings his great work to an end. Eniphatically a great work,- --a noble jewel in the crown of artliterature, resplendent enough to have its flaws dwelt upon, and some imperfections and shortcoming in its setting pointed out, and yet to lose little in estimation after the worst has been said and done in these respects.

MEMORIALS OF THOMAS HOOD.* ONLY to open these interesting volumes is to be reminded of the fact, by far more generally felt than expressed, that the perennial fame of Thomas Hood is the growth of one vigorous root, consummated in leaves and blossoms of beauty, which find no rivals among all the other growths of his singular, wild, sad nature. The Song of the Shirt" contains the whole heart and intellect of the man, poured forth in a fervid

Memorials of Thomas Heod. Collected, Arranged, and Edited by his PABERTER. With a Preface and Notes by his Sox. 2 vols. Post Svo.

"Oh, simply open wide the temple door,
And let the solemn, swelling organ greet,
With voluntaries meet,

The willing advent of the rich and poor!
And while to God the loud hosannas soar,-
With rich vibrations, from the vocal throug,
From quiet shades that to the woods belong,
And brooks with music of their own,
Voices may come to swell the choral song
With notes of praise they learned in mornings lone."
We need not recal in detail the events of Hood's career. It
is well known that he was never able to raise himself above
the necessity of toiling for his livelihood, and that he bravely
laboured for his wife and children even on his deathbed.
The writer feels a sad pleasure in recalling to mind the test-
mony of an eye-witness, that Hood's wife also aided him in
this toil, and held the pen for her anxious husband, while he
sat propped up in bed, the lamp of life fitfully burning, and
the mind kept to its work by strong coffee taken through the
still hours of midnight. And under these circumstances, food
was provided for the public merriment and the children's
table! Well may the editor of the Memorials say :—

"My mother was a fitting companion for such a husband. She shared his struggles and soothed his sorrow, and was so much s part of his very existence that, latterly, he could hardly bear her out of his eight, or write when she was not by him. We have been frequently obliged to omit large portions of his letters to he

AUG. 1860.

REGISTER.

-it would have been sacrilege to alter them, and we did not feel it right to publish what was intended for her eyes alone: the tender epistles and the love talk; so fond, and yet so true. Throughout his long illnesses, she was his constant nurse and unwearying companjon, nor did she long survive him,"

Instead of quoting from the anecdotes and witticisms of these Memorials, we pass on to the closing scene of the poet's life, for the sake of the sad harmony it makes with the pre-round him. ceding. Mr. Hood says:

"My dear father was, at times during his illness, delirious with pain; his mind was ordinarily quiet and tranquil, and these times seemed, like transient mists, though hiding for a time, to clear off effectually at last. We shall never forget one night, when his mind was wandering in this way, his repeating Burns' lovely

words

"I'm fading awa', Jean,*

Like snow wreaths in thaw, Jean!

I'm fading awa'

To the land o' the leal!

"But weep na, my ain Jean,

The world's care's in vain, Jean,
We'll meet and aye be fain

In the land of the leal!'

"No one could listen to this without tears, coming from the frail feeble form that was fading so fast, and uttered with a touching tone, to which the temporary wandering of that strong mind gave additional pathos.

"These occasional obscurings, however, took place but seldom, and towards the last his mind was as clear and collected as in his best days. 'May was an eventful month to him. He was born on the 23rd of May, 1799; married on the 5th of May, 1821; on the 1st of May, 1845-May-day-he was last conscious; on the 3rd, he died; and on the 10th he was buried. On the Thursday evening, May 1st, he seemed worse; and knowing himself to be dying, he called us round him-my mother, my little brother, just ten years old, and myself. He gave us his last blessing, tenderly and fondly; and then quietly clasping my mother's hand, he said, Remember, Jane, I forgive all, all as I hope to be forgiven!' He lay for some time calmly and peacefully, but breathing slowly and with dif ficulty. My mother bending over him heard him say faintly, Lord! say, "Arise, take up thy cross, and follow me!" His last words were, Dying, dying!' as if glad to realize the rest implied in them. He then sank into what seemed a deep slumber. This torpor lasted all Friday; and on Saturday at noon he breathed his last, without a struggle or a sigh."

We have said enough to characterize these volumes, and the life they celebrate, with fairness. We ought to add that the last volume contains some poems by Hood not hitherto pub. lished. All lovers of truthful biography, and all who have any affection for the memory of the man or the humourist, will make themselves acquainted with the Memorials collected and arranged by the filial piety of his children.

[ocr errors]

A NEW REVELATION.†

ever, by which he is now called, I will not disclose to you in these
nation of Emanuel the forty-ninth. He shuns being recognised
pages; being content with designating him under the uenomi-
know him. They will not be at a loss, even as to his proper name.
by his contemporaries; but it is necessary that posterity should
"An army of Angels is continually following him wherever he
goes; but they are invisible, and are commanded to let, for a time,
So while a profound observer might detect a host of
ordinary chances have, or at least appear to have, their course
extraordinary circumstances connected with all his doings and
sayings, the listless looker-on sees nothing in him out of the ordi-
nary course of things. Why did he not come surrounded by a
visible halo of glory and power? For the same reason that He
cruel death on the cross, the original sin, that is to say the sum
chose to live in Palestine in the capacity of a poor carpenter's
of our failings in a previous world, were so far cancelled as to
son: namely, because he wanted to suffer in our behalf. By his
make us again admissible to the blissful vision of God: but
5862 years have passed since the birth of Adam, and human
wickedness, all the while, has been filling a new measure of
wrath. A small part of our new sum of guilt has been expiated
by our own sufferings during these fifty-nine centuries; for the
greater part Christ has been and is again suffering. Therefore
does he keep himself unknown to his contemporaries. He walks
unnoticed through your fields and along your crowded thorough-
fares. Oftentimes docs he weep over the manifold examples
which he beholds of your wickedness and of your follies, or over
to lament his own personal trials and difficulties. But he has
your physical and moral sufferings. At times he is also compelled
purposely chosen to be placed in such a painful condition.
personal sufferings would be at an end, because no mortal man
Should he evidently and solemnly reveal to all what He is, his
would dare oppose him. Even the selfish and wicked would vie
"But his present career will not end without luminous proofs
with the pious and virtuous to serve him and to do him honour.
being brought forth, and displayed even in the starry heaven,
visible to all eyes, that He is the Christ."

Such assertions as these are not often put forth, and when
they are it is most usual, as it is perhaps most charitable, to
regard them as the offspring of insanity. It may be, how-
ever, that there is a method even in madness, and that the
preternatural excitement of a madman's brain may assist us
to additional insight into that strange compound, human
nature. It is this consideration which induces us to register
has given to the world.
a few of the remarkable ideas which the author of Miranda

The fundamental ideas upon which his book is based are those of the transmigration of souls and of metempsychosis,in other words, of the successive habitation by one soul of different bodies, and of the passage of human souls from one world or one star to another. These are old doctrines, but and teaches with them many new ones, equally startling. he carries them further than they were ever carried before, Thus, while agreeing with the astronomers in regarding every nebula seen in the distant heavens as constituting a worldsystem, like that wondrous assemblage of stars of which "MIRANCA is a production which sets all the ordinary rules our sun is one, and which, stretching out in the direction of of logic at defiance. Unlike the Book of Mormon, and other the milky-way, with all its suns, planets, and satellites, forms pseudo-Bibles, it betrays nothing of the ignoramus or the in its totality one cosmos, he declares that the resemblance knave. The author is clearly a man of great talent and ex-between one cosmos and another, and between one star and "Among all things that we see," he says, "there tensive learning. His studies have evidently been deep and another, is sometimes closer than the astronomers have ever earnest, and his acquirements, in almost every department of dreamed. human knowledge, are very great. That such a man should are not any two exactly alike, or equal, in a geometric sense: ences, can practically be regarded as equal. Of all the stars write such a book as Miranda would have been deemed an yet are there many which, in spite of slight secondary differimpossibility, had it not actually been done. that you see in the heavens, there is none attended with a planet on which all things happen in the same manner and with the same order as on this our earth. Nevertheless, far, far away from us, at such a distance that to express it with ordinary arithmetical figures the writing would occupy a line twenty miles long, there is a star whose diameter is not a finger's breadth larger than our Sun; and that sun has The Earth of that distant system planets and comets extremely resembling those of this system, both as to their relative positions and to the appearance of has a surface divided into five parts, called Europe, Asia, their respective surfaces. Africa, America, and Oceania, like here. There is also a Rome, a London, a Paris, a New York, a Pekin; all the cities, towns, ad villages inhabited by us here below. The very houses ar made after the same architectural pattern and of the same size as ours: so are the animals, the trees, the stones." passage:

The author conceals his name, but claims a most extraordinary character and genealogy. He declares, not only that the Son of God had been born into this world many times before His wondrous incarnation as Jesus Christ, but also that He has undergone many subsequent incarnations, and, after being born in many countries, and manifesting Himself successively as a poet, hero, philosopher, patriot, and philanthropist, and dying last in General Washington, is now once more incarnate in the person of the author of Miranda! The passage in which this announcement is first made runs as follows:

"I tell you that Christ has been incarnate many times upon this earth; the full number of his incarnations amounting to fortynine. The reasons of this repeated assumption of the human form are, on his part, mainly two: first, to suffer more in our behalf, in order to lessen in a greater proportion the punishment due to human guilt; and, secondly, to recruit the strength of his love for us. Woe to you, if his love for mankind should flag!

And then he adds the following extraordinary

"Reader, in that remote world, there is a man of thy name, of "I will now bring to you explicitly the great and glad tidings: The other men there resemble also on all the Son of God is upon earth, not only in spirit, as He has always been, but clothed with the form of humanity, as he was in Judæa, thy age, with thy moral and intellectual character, with thy own und in forty-seven more lives. Both in the second part of this physical features. Book called Numbers, and in the third, called Stars, I shall point points thy fellow-men here below. There is indeed some exceedout to you the wonderful testimonials of his forty-nine incar-ingly small difference between them and us, which the All-seeing reflected image in the looking-glass resembles our face. And nations, and more especially of his present one. The name, how- Deity can perceive; but they resemble us more perfectly than the although our reflected image is a vain appearance, they are a living reality. At the very moment that thou art reading this same book, published there by another mysterious Man like me, volume, thy namesake, too, is reading these very words in the even by my very Self existing there under the same form. Thy

"It will be observed that my mother's name was Jane.-T. H." Miranda, a book divided into three parts, entitled Souls, Numbers, Stars, on the Neo-Christian Religion, with Confirmations on the Old and New Doctrines of Christ Wonders hitherto unheeded in the Words and Divisions of the Bible: in the Facts and Dates of History: and in the Position and Motions of the Celestial Bodies. London: James Morgan. 1860.

living portrait there, is now thinking of thee with the same stupid levity, or with the same awful impression, in the same manner, whatever it is, as thou art thinking of him."

Semiramis, until he was born of the Virgin Mary, and suffered under Pontius Pilate. This, however, was not his last avatar, for he has since been manifest in Caesar, Marcus Aurelius, Constantine, Mahomet, Charlemagne, Dante, Galileo, Newton, and Washington, and is now nifest again in the author of Miranda, to whom all his past ves have been fully revealed. Such is the strange, if not impious, parentage which the author lays claim to.

Not only the inhabitants of the infinite number of worlds constituting the material universe, but also the worlds themselves, are in a state of constant progression. Every world and every cosmos, or vast assemblage of worlds, is periodically reduced, at enormously long intervals, into masses of chaos, and is then created anew. After each passage through As the public always takes an interest in all its great men this state of chaos each world and cosmos is in every respect and women, it may be interesting to recount a few of the much more perfect than it was before, but is also greatly migrations through which some of our ruling spirits have diminished in size, in order that a greater number of worlds passed before they became known to us in this generation. and cosmi may go into a given space, and room thus be made According to our author, all souls on leaving the body go to the in the universe for the entirely new world-systems which the bright side of the moon, and remain there until they are Creator is constantly calling into being. The greater number either sent back again into this world, to undergo another of those who have once lived in any given world are sent to transmigration, or else, if they are worthy, are sent to some inhabit it again after each of its re-creations; they, too, higher sphere. The good who are not perfect return to having in the meantime become more perfect. The propor-earth noble men and women; the unfaithful take a low or bad tion, however, between the size of a world and that of the nature; the bad are condemned to inhabit the bodies of bodies of its human inhabitants never varies, so that each brutes; while the utterly vile are deprived of all conscioustime it returns to a world in which it has dwelt before, each ness, and are cast out into chaos, to remain there until soul that so returns has to occupy a much smaller body than another world shall be created, when they also will have it occupied during its last preceding sojourn in that world. another chance of salvation. The present quality of any par We are not told how many times our own earth has been re-ticular soul, therefore, may be known by the number and created and reduced in size, but we are told that we, its present grade of the migrations through which it has passed. This inhabitants, during one former residence here, were as tall as must be borne in mind in glancing over the list of the lives our present trees, and that during a still earlier residence on which any one person may have passed through. this planet we were bigger than our present mountains! For our comfort it is added:-"Little, however, as is our actual worth, we are now better, on the average, than we were at that time. There existed, indeed, very good fellows even amongst those big creatures of old; only their worst men were still more ferocious and violent than the most wicked of our present contemporaries." Our ancient bigness, however, is not nearly so startling as the littleness we have yet to come to. After a number of years, so great that to write it would require a line of figures two hundred miles long," the place of this world will be occupied by "billions and trillions" of smaller worlds; and how little we, who are then to inhabit one of these miniature earths, shall then be, may be gathered from the following passage:"Yet each of those future small Cosmi will be composed like this, of millions of stars with their planets: and the astronomers of those planets will reckon their distances from their own respective suns by millions of miles, and the mutual distances of their stars by billions of miles. I mean millions and billions of their miles: each of their miles being equal in length to about one thousand times their own stature, and yet a whole billion of such miles not being equal to the breadth of one of our actual hairs. The large men, however, of this actual world have such a share of humour and risibility that the Lord will surely forgive you and me for laughing at the very idea of those enormously little creatures. And I tell you that the future men of those little worlds will, in many respects, be greater than you; for, they will be wiser, better, and happier; or, in other and more consolatory terms, you will then be happier, better, and wiser, and therefore morally greater, though with a much smaller body,

than you are in the present world."

The grand cause of this constant progress of humanity is the incarnation in every age of Emanuel; and the history of the world, if properly read, would only be a history of His forty-eight lives and forty-eight deaths. His first avatar was in what the author calls Emanuel Adam, the father of all mankind. He invented speech, and laid the basis of all language, getting well laughed at by Eve for uttering a number of strange sounds which she did not understand. The invention of language, however, and making a few pots, pans, and wooden bowls, was all that he achieved during his first incarnation. Only four years after his death as Adam, he was incarnate again under the name of Orion, when he became a blacksmith, discovered the use of iron, and made great progress in the useful arts. In addition to this, he slew a huge army of wild beasts, who were headed by the Devil, and for this reason is still reckoned amongst the celestial constellations as Orion the Hunter.

saws,

In his third incarnation, Emanuel was a king of Ethiopia, named Cepheus. He was now a carpenter, and having discovered the use of steel, he made knives, hammers, nails, and all the various implements used in the carpenter's craft. He also made a cart, but had not yet discovered the use of the wheel, that being reserved for a later incarnation. As Pan, in his next avatar, he became an artist and musician, and discovered the method of making bread, tanning leather, weaving, and many other arts. In his fifth incarnation he invented weights, measures, and hieroglyphs. In another avatar, navigation and shipbuilding; in subsequent incarnations, all the rest of the useful and the fine arts. He was sometimes a king, at others simply a lawgiver, like Moses, generally a man, but occasionally a woman, as in the case of

According to Miranda, this is only the fourth migration of our beloved Queen. She was first Andromache, the wife of Hector; then Zarefita, the widow who fed Elijah; next, Desiderata, the wife of Charlemagne; and now Victoria, Queen of Great Britain. Her genealogy, therefore, is by no means up to the mark of that of the Empress of the French, who was in the first instance the wife of Abel; was afterwards one of the wives of Lamech; was next Pandora, wife of Prometheus; then Sarah, wife of Abraham; and then successively Evenda, the loving widow of Capaneus; Dijanira, wife of Hercules; Helen, the fatal cause of the Trojan war; Bathsheba, wife of Uriah, whose beauty cost her husband his life; the wife of David; the nurse of Romulus; Artemisia, who erected the Mausoleum; Judith, who killed Holophernes; Julia, daughter of Augustus; and Mary Magdalen. After this, she became successively St. Agatha; Ayesha, wife of Mahomet; Pope Joan; Mary, Queen of Scots; Lady Mary Wortley Montague; and Josephine, wife of Napoleon the Great, so that she is now for the second time the wife of a French Emperor. If a copy of the REGISTER should find its way to the Tuileries, her Majesty will no doubt be very grateful for the pains we have taken to supply her future biographer with this important information.

The following collateral scraps of information, relating to her first, and also to her last husbands, will doubtless be equally acceptable to her Imperial Highness. Abel, after being murdered by Cain, became Atlas, and then in other migrations, which we have no time to trace, but amongst which we may mention Solomon, St. John, King Alfred, William Tell, and John Locke, was, when last here, Danton, the French patriot. But as a lady may be presumed to take greater interest in her present husband than in a former one who has been dead to her for some thousands of years, she will be glad to know that, in the original of things, she was very nearly related to Napoleon III., he having been in his first birth no other than her own brother Seth. In his next migration he was Danaus, king of Argos; then successively Cadmus, the inventor of the Greek alphabet; Joseph, the son of Jacob; Agamemnon, Lycurgus, Remus, Tarquin, Publicola, Appius, Aristotle, Augustus, and St. Paul. Afterwards, his Majesty turned heathen again, and was Odin, a Scandinavian chief; then he became Diocletian, the persecutor of that Christianity which he had formerly laboured so hard to establish; next, Justinian, who collected the Roman laws; then our old friend Aroun-al-Raschid, of the Arabian Night's Entertainments; subsequently, Frederick Barbaros, Roger Bacon, Boccaccio, Mahomet II., Charles V., Descartes, and William III.; then Robespierre; and now Napoleon III., Emperor of the French. If all this be true, his Majesty may well be the enigma of our age.

But we must not bestow all our attention on the crowned great ones of the earth, and forget those whose moral and intellectual greatness command the esteem of mankind. According to Miranda, noble souls who are waiting on the bright side of the moon are so eager to come back again into the flesh, that they are often born into spheres of life very different from those to which they had belonged in previous incarnations, while not unfrequently the sex is changed for one or two migrations, and then again resumed. Thus no man can be certain that he shall not one day be an old woman, and afterwards live to be a young one; while the man of to-day

« НазадПродовжити »