Part 21

[Footnote 1: We quote from an extract in an able article in the _Edinburgh Review_ for April, 1859, entitled, _The West Indies as they were and are_.]

They are sent to no estate, till a government officer shall have reported that there are houses for them to occupy. There must be a hospital for them on the estate, and a regular doctor, with a sufficient salary. The rate of their wages is stipulated, and their hours of work. Though the contract is for five years, they can leave the estate at the end of the first three, transferring their services to any other master, and at the end of the five years they are entitled to a free passage home." "The women are coming now, as well as the men; and they have learned to husband their means, and put money together."

We pass over the other British "West Indies," though Mr. Trollope's animated sketches tempt us to linger. The main conclusion to which this part of his book leads is, that this question of labor is the one upon which the results of emancipation hinge. Unless moved by necessity, the negro is disinclined to work. Slavery has rendered labor offensive to him, and his own nature inclines him to idleness, The pressure of population, as in Barbadoes, may compel him, for his own good, to labor; or he may, as in Demerara, be superseded by other workmen. If left to himself, his tendency seems to be to sink into sensuality, rather than to rise in civilization by his own efforts. The condition of the mass of the negroes is undoubtedly a happier one than in the days of slavery; but it may be fairly doubted whether emancipation has led to any moral improvement in the race.

How far a forced system of labor for wages might answer for the blacks,--how far a regular and organized plan of education might elevate them,--how far the danger of their relapse into barbarism might be obviated by preliminary precautions,--are questions which that country which next undertakes emancipation must solve for itself, and which the example of the British West Indies will give some of the means for solving in a satisfactory manner. Mr, Trollope's book is well worth reading by those who would prepare themselves by knowledge and by reflection for a proper appreciation of the advantages and the evils of giving unlimited freedom to a race that has been long enslaved.

There is less interest in his account of Central America than in the other parts of his volume. The ground is more familiar to American readers, and some of our own travellers have given descriptions of the country far more thorough and not less entertaining.

Of Cuba, which he trusts may, for the benefit of humanity, be some day transferred to American keeping, he says but little; and after Mr. Dana's late excellent, though hasty, sketches of the island, that author must have more than common ability who can, with hope of success, venture over the same ground.

_The Public Life of Captain John Brown_. By JAMES REDPATH. With an Autobiography of his Childhood and Youth. Boston. 1860. l2mo. pp. 408.

It would have been well, had this book never been written. Mr. Redpath has understood neither the opportunities opened to him, nor the responsibilities laid upon him, in being permitted to write the "authorized" life of John Brown. His book, in whatever light it is viewed,--whether as the biography of a remarkable man, as an historic narrative of a series of extraordinary and important events, or simply as a mere piece of literary jobwork,--is equally unsatisfactory. He has shown himself incompetent to appreciate the character of the man whom he admires, and he has, consequently, done great wrong to his memory.

There never was more need for a good life of any man than there was for one of John Brown. The whole country was curious to learn about him, and to be told his story. Those who thought the best of him, and those who thought the worst, were alike desirous to know more of him than the newspapers had furnished, and to become acquainted with the course of his life, and the training which had prepared him for Kansas and brought him to Harper's Ferry. Whatever view be taken of his character, he was a man so remarkable as to be well worthy of study. In the bitter and excited state of public feeling in regard to him, there was but one way in which his life could be properly told,--and that way was, to allow him, as far as possible, to tell it in his own words. For that part of his life which there were no letters of his to illustrate, his biographer should have been content to state facts in the simplest and most careful manner, entering into no controversy, and keeping himself entirely out of sight. Thus only could John Brown's character produce its due effect. His letters from prison had shown that he was a master of the homeliest and strongest English. His words said what they meant, and they were understood by everybody; he had found them in the Bible, and had been familiar with them all his life. Whatever he was, he could have told us better than any other man; and he was the only man who would have been listened to with much confidence concerning himself. Mr. Redpath has, very unfortunately, thought differently. He has not taken pains to collect even all the letters of John Brown which had been previously published; he has written in the worst temper and spirit of

## partisanship, so that with every cautious reader doubts attend many

statements which rest only on his authority; he has thrust himself continually forward; and he has exercised no proper care in arranging his materials.

The truth is, that a life of Brown was not now needed for those who already admired the stalwart nature of the man, even though they might deplore his course,--for those who had had their hearts touched and stirred by his manliness, his truth, his courage, and his unwavering fidelity to conscience and faith in God; but it was greatly needed for that much larger class,--the mass of the Northern community,-whose timidity had been startled at his rash attempt, whose sympathy had been more or less awakened by his bearing and his death, but who were and are in a painful state of perplexity, in the endeavor to reconcile their abhorrence, or at least their disapproval, of his attack on Virginia, with their sense of the admirable nature of the qualities he displayed. It was needed also for the very large class who received from the newspapers but a confused and imperfect account of the events which took place in Virginia from October to December, and who, according to their political predilections, condemn or applaud the course of Captain Brown. And, above all, it was needed for the men who have disgraced themselves by denying to Brown the possession of any virtues, and who have outstripped his Southern enemies in applying to him the most opprobrious and the falsest epithets. Now, none of these classes will Mr. Redpath's book reach with effect. Its tone is such, it is so violent, so extravagant, that it will offend all right-thinking men. Even those who have known how to hold a steady and clear opinion, in the midst of the confusion of the popular mind,--who have not applauded Brown's acts of violence, and have condemned his judgment, but who have, nevertheless, honored what was noble in him, and sympathized with him in his strong love of liberty,--who, while acknowledging him guilty under the law, mourned that the law should not be tempered with mercy,--and who have recognized in him at once the excellences and the errors of an enthusiast,--those who have most faithfully endeavored to find the truth concerning him, though they will obtain some interesting information from Mr. Redpath's book, will be the most dissatisfied with it.

It has always been among the offences of the out-and-out Abolitionists, to abuse the force of words, and to make exclusive pretensions to virtue and the love of liberty. This book is written in the spirit and style of an Abolition tract. In representing John Brown as little more than a mere hero of the Abolitionists, the author has done essential disservice to the cause of freedom, and to the memory of a man who was as free from party-ties as he was from personal ambitions.

Although John Brown's character was a simple one, a long time must pass before it will be generally understood, and justice be done to it. The passion and the prejudice which the later acts of his life have excited cannot die away for years. Mr. Redpath has done his best to perpetuate them. In seasons of excitement, and amid the struggles of political contention, the men who use the most extravagant and the most violent words have, for a time, the advantage; but, in the long run, they damage whatever cause they may adopt; and the truth, which their declamations have obscured or their falsehoods have violated, finally asserts itself. In our country, the worth and the strength of temperance and moderation of speech seem to be peculiarly forgotten. Words, which should stand for things, are too commonly used with no respect to their essential meaning. Political debates are embittered, personal feeling wounded, the tone of manners lowered, and national character degraded, by this disregard of words as the symbol and expression of truth. Moderation is brought into disrepute, and justice, fairness, and honesty of opinion tendered as rare as they are difficult of attainment. The manner in which John Brown has been spoken of affords the plainest illustration of these facts. Extravagance in condemnation has been answered by extravagance in praise of his life and deeds.

The most interesting and the most novel part of Mr. Redpath's book is the letter written by John Brown in 1857, giving some account of his early life. It is, in all respects, a remarkable composition. It exhibits the main influences by which his character was formed; it affords a key to the history of his life; it illustrates the nature of the social institutions under which such a man could grow up; and it shows his natural traits, before they had become hardened and trained under the discipline of later experience and circumstance. Nothing has been more marked in the various exhibitions of his character, as they have come successively to view, than their complete consistency. This letter, this account of his youth, squares perfectly with what we know of his manhood. The whole of it should be read by all who would understand the man, with his native faculty of command, with his mingled sternness and tenderness, with his large heart, his steadfast will. The base of his soul was truth; and the motive power of his life, faith in the justice of God.

He was a man of a rare type,--so rare in our times as to seem like a man of another age. He belonged to the same class with the Scottish Covenanters and the English Regicides. He belonged to the great company of those who have followed the footsteps of Gideon, and forgot that the armory of the Lord contained other weapons than the sword. He belonged to those who from time to time have adopted some cause,--the good old cause,--and have shrunk from no sacrifice which it required at their hands. "I have now been confined over a month," wrote John Brown to his children, in one of that most affecting series of letters from his prison, "with a good opportunity to look the whole thing as fair in the face as I am capable of doing, and I now feel most grateful that I am counted in the least possible degree worthy to suffer for the truth." "Suffering is a gift not given to every one," wrote one of the Covenanters, who was hanged in the Grassmarket in Edinburgh, in 1684,--"and I desire to bless God's name with my whole heart and soul, that He has counted such a poor thing as I am worthy of the gift of suffering."

That John Brown was wrong in his attempt to break up slavery by violence, few will deny. But it was a wrong committed by a good man,--by one who dreaded the vengeance of the Almighty and forgot His long-suffering. His errors were the result of want of patience and want of imagination, and he paid the penalty for them. He had faith in the Divine ordering of the affairs of this world; but he forgot that the processes by which evils like that of slavery are done away are thousand-year-long,--that, to be effectual, they must be slow,--that wrong is no remedy for wrong. He was an anachronism, and met the fate of all anachronisms that strive to stem and divert the present current by modes which the world has outgrown. But now that he and those dearest to him have so bitterly expiated his faults, both charity and justice demand that his virtues should be honored, and he himself mourned. It will be a gloomy indication of the poor, low spirit of our days, if fear and falsehood, if passion or indifference, should cause the lesson of John Brown's life to be neglected, or should check a natural sympathy with the noble heart of the old man. That lesson is not for any one part of the country more than another; that sympathy may be given by the South as well as by the North. It is not sympathy for his acts, but for the spirit of his life and the heroism of his death. The lesson of manliness, uprightness, and courage, which his life teaches, is to be learned by us, not merely as lovers of liberty, not as opponents of slavery, but as men who need more manliness, more uprightness, more courage and simplicity in our common lives.

All that is possible of apology for John Brown is to be found in his letters and in his speech to the court before his sentence. It is, perhaps, too soon to hope that these letters and this speech will be read with candor and a feeling of human brotherhood by those who now look with abhorrence or with indifference on his memory. But the time will come when they will be held at their true worth by all, as the expressions of a large, tender soul,--when they will be read with sympathetic pity, even by those who still find it difficult to forgive their author for his offence against society. These letters appeal to the better nature of every man and woman in America; and it will be a sad thing, if their appeal be disregarded.

We trust, that, before long, a fairer and fuller biography than that by Mr. Redpath will remove the obstacle which this book now presents to the general appreciation of the character and life of John Brown.

_Poems_. By SYDNEY DOBELL. Boston: Ticknor & Fields. 1860.

Many of Mr. Dobell's poems have passages which are musical, vigorous, and peculiar, and hardly in any part can he be justly charged with prolonging an echo. He is not one of the many mocking-birds that infest the groves at the foot of Parnassus. Though portions of his songs be wild, fitful, and incoherent, they gush with the force and feeling of a heart loyal to its intuitions, and thus many strains captivate and keep the tuneful ear. Yet such charming lines make conspicuous the want of that high appreciation of form and proportion without which any felicity of touch in the treatment of details will only cause the consummate master to grieve over glorious forms that have no effective grouping, and turn away from colors, however exquisite, that are strewn, as it were, on a palette, rather than wrought into picture and harmonized to the tone of life. The truth is, that the grandly designing hand is nowhere completely visible in the poetry of Young England. Many of her more youthful poets show a mass of rich materials, but they appear to have been upheaved by convulsions, half-blinding us with their splendor, while, like lava pouring from a volcano's crater, they take no prescribed channel, they flow into no immortal mould. It is this fiery gleam on the surface of matter hot from chaos, which the multitude honor as the highest manifestation of genius. But this is to desecrate a word which implies constructive power of the first order. Form is its highest expression. Without the shaping faculty, which artistically rounds to perfection, no glitter of decoration, nor even force and fire of expression, can keep the work from falling into ruins. If the beautiful, as Goethe said, includes in it the good, then perfect beauty alone is everlasting. This is a rigorous rule for anything which man has made, but it does not try "Othello" so severely as "Balder"; and "Balder" is not utterly crushed by it. There are scenes in this drama, and also in "The Roman," which will not soon lose their significance, or easily melt out of the memory.

_A Good Fight, and other Tales_. By CHARLES KEADE. New York: Harper & Brothers. 1859.

About the middle of the fifteenth century, a youth named Gerard, a native of Tergou, in Holland, loved Margaret, the daughter of Peter, a learned man of the neighboring village of Zevenbergen. Expecting immediate marriage, their intimacy was restrained by no limits. The interference of Gerard's relations, however, separated them for a time, during which the young man visited Rome, and gained some distinction as a transcriber of ancient manuscripts. Learning, after a while, that he was about to return, his kindred caused a false report of Margaret's death to be conveyed to him, and, by thus crushing all the hopes of his young life, had the final satisfaction of seeing him take priestly orders, which threw his patrimony into their hands. Having broken two hearts, and brought a world of shame upon an innocent girl to get it, it is only fair to suppose they enjoyed it with tranquillity.

Margaret, left alone, gave birth to a child, the greatness of whose manhood might have softened the remembrance of her earlier sorrows, had she lived to witness it. But she died when he was thirteen years old. Gerard, her true husband, who had never rejoined her while living, also died within a brief space. The son they left was the famous Erasmus.

Mr. Reade has taken this little record, which would never have become historical but for the accidental consequence of the loves of Gerard and Margaret, and wrought it into a story of exquisite grace and delicacy. A dead and half-forgotten fact, he has warmed it into fresh life, and given it all the beauties with which his brilliant imagination could endow it. Though shorter and simpler than most, it is certainly inferior to none of his other works. Perhaps its simplicity is its first merit. The extravagant peculiarities of style which overlaid his two longest books have almost entirely disappeared in this. Here the narration is for the most part as unostentatious as the events are natural. But its power is remarkable. Although the regularity with which the incidents follow one another is such that they may all be anticipated, yet the interest in them never fades. There is nothing startlingly new in the entire story. On the contrary, it follows pretty closely the old formula of troubled true-love until the closing chapter, when triumphant virtue sets in. But this takes nothing from the effect. All is so clear and vivid in description, so glittering with gleams of wit, relieved by soft shadows of purest pathos, so full of the spirit of tender humanity, that the reader finds no reason to complain, except that the end is so speedily reached.

The author has sacrificed history, in his conclusion, to satisfy a natural feeling. No one will object because the "Good Fight" terminates victoriously in the right direction. The parents of Erasmus suffered; but it would be a pity, if readers, after the lapse of four hundred years, must mourn their woes to the extent that would inevitably be necessary, if Mr. Reade had not arranged it otherwise. And his object, which was to prove--if proof were needed--that all human lives, however obscure, have their own share of romance, is not disturbed by this variation from the severity of the chronicle.

_The Undergraduate_. Conducted by an Association of Collegiate and Professional Students in the United States and Europe. [Greek:_'Ekasto onmachoi pantos_]; January, 1860. Printed for the Association. New Haven, Conn.

We are not unused to the sight of College Periodicals. They have commonly greeted us in the form of monthly numbers, each containing two or three essays which sounded as if they might have done duty as themes, a critical article or two, some copies of verses, and winding up with a few pages in fine print, purporting to be editorial, jaunty and jocular for the most part, and opulent in local allusions. It would he unnatural, if these juvenile productions did not often reflect the opinions of favorite instructors and the style of popular authors. A freshman's first essay is like the short gallop of a colt on trial; its promise is what we care for, more than its performance. If it had not something of crudeness and imitation, we should suspect the youth, and be disposed to examine him as the British turfmen have been examining the American colt Umpire, first favorite for the next Derby. But three or four years' study and practice teach the young man his paces, so that many Bachelors of Arts have formed the style already by which they will hereafter be known in the world of letters. We are always pleased, therefore, to look over a College Periodical, even of the humblest pretensions. The possibilities of its young writers give an interest and dignity to the least among them which make its slender presence welcome.

But here we have offered us a more formidable candidate for public favor than our old friends, the attenuated Monthlies. "The Undergraduate" has almost the dimensions of the "North American Review," and, like that, promises to visit us quarterly. It is the first fruit of a spirited and apparently well-matured plan set on foot by students in Yale College, and heartily entered into by those of several other institutions. Its objects are clearly stilted in the well-written Prospectus and Introduction. They are briefly these:--"To record the history, promote the intellectual improvement, elevate the moral aims, liberalize the views, and unite the sympathies of Academical, Collegiate, and Professional Students, and their Institutions."