"What if Sumter should open now?" I suggested.

"We should be here to help," answered the Georgian.

"We should be here to run away," amended my comrade from Brooklyn.

"Well, I suppose we should be of mighty little use, and might as well clear out," was the sober second-thought of the Georgian.

Having satisfied our curiosity, we thanked the Lieutenant and left Fort Moultrie. The story of our visit to it excited much surprise, when we recounted it in the city. Members of the Legislature and other men high in influence had desired the privilege, but had not applied for it, expecting a repulse.

A walk down a winding street, bordered by scattered cottages, inclosed by brown board-fences or railings, and tracked by a horse-railroad built for the Moultrie House, led us to the ferry-wharf, where we found our baggage piled together, and our fellow-passengers wandering about in a state of bored expectation. Sullivan's Island in winter is a good spot for an economical man, inasmuch as it presents no visible opportunities of spending money. There were houses of refreshment, as we could see by their signs; but if they did business, it was with closed doors and barred shutters. After we had paid a newsboy five cents for the "Mercury," and five more for the "Courier," we were at the end of our possibilities in the way of extravagance. At half-past one arrived the ferry-boat with a few passengers, mostly volunteers, and a deck-load of military stores, among which I noticed Boston biscuit and several dozen new knapsacks. Then, from the other side, came the "dam' nigger," that is to say, the drummer of the new shoes, beating his sheepskin at the head of about fifty men of the Washington Artillery, who were on their way back to town from Fort Moultrie. They were fine-looking young fellows, mostly above the middle size of Northerners, with spirited and often aristocratic faces, but somewhat more devil-may-care in expression than we are accustomed to see in New England. They poured down the gangway, trailed arms, ascended the promenade-deck, ordered arms, grounded arms, and broke line. The drill struck me as middling, which may be owing to the fact that the company has lately increased to about two hundred members, thus diluting the old organization with a large number of new recruits. Military service at the South is a patrician exercise, much favored by men of "good family," more especially at this time, when it signifies real danger and glory.

Our rajpoots having entered the boat, we of lower caste were permitted to follow. At two o'clock we were steaming over the yellow waters of the harbor. The volunteers, like everybody else in Charleston, discussed Secession and Fort Sumter, considering the former as an accomplished fact, and the latter as a fact of the kind called stubborn. They talked uniform, too, and equipments, and marksmanship, and drinks, and cigars, and other military matters. Now and then an awkwardly folded blanket was taken from the shoulders which it disgraced, refolded, packed carefully in its covering of India-rubber, and strapped once more in its place, two or three generally assisting in the operation. Presently a firing at marks from the upper deck commenced. The favorite target was a conical floating buoy, showing red on the sunlit surface of the harbor, some four hundred yards away. With a crack and a hoarse whiz the minie-balls flew towards it, splashing up the water where they first struck and then taking two or three tremendous skips before they sank. A militiaman from New York city, who was one of my fellow-passengers, told me that he "never saw such good shooting." It seemed to me that every sixth ball either hit the buoy full, or touched water but a few yards this side of it, while not more than one in a dozen went wild.

"It is good for a thousand yards," said a volunteer, slapping his bright, new piece, proudly.

A favorite subject of argument appeared to be whether Fort Sumter ought to be attacked immediately or not. A lieutenant standing near me talked long and earnestly regarding this matter with a civilian friend, breaking out at last in a loud tone,—

"Why, good Heaven, Jim! do you want that place to go peaceably into the hands of Lincoln?"

"No, Fred, I do not. But I tell you, Fred, when that fort is attacked, it will be the bloodiest day,—the bloodiest day!—the bloodiest——!!"

And here, unable to express himself in words, Jim flung his arms wildly about, ground his tobacco with excitement, spit on all sides, and walked away, shaking his head, I thought, in real grief of spirit.

We passed close to Fort Pinckney, our volunteers exchanging hurrahs with the garrison. It is a round, two-storied, yellow little fortification, standing at one end of a green marsh known as Shute's Folly Island. What it was put there for no one knows: it is too close to the city to protect it; too much out of the harbor to command that. Perhaps it might keep reinforcements for Anderson from coming down the Ashley, just as the guns on the Battery were supposed to be intended to deter them from descending the Cooper.

On the wharf of the ferry three drunken volunteers, the first that I had seen in that condition, brushed against me. The nearest one, a handsome young fellow of six feet two, half turned to stare back at me with a—

"How are ye, Cap'm? Gaw damn ye! Haw, haw, aw!"—and reeled onward, brimful of spirituous good-nature.

Four days more had I in Charleston, waiting from tide to tide for a chance to sail to New York, and listening from hour to hour for the guns of Fort Sumter. Sunday was a day of excitement, a report spreading that the Floridians had attacked Fort Pickens, and the Charlestonians feeling consequently bound in honor to fight their own dragon. Groups of earnest men talked all day and late into the evening under the portico and in the basement-rooms of the hotel, besides gathering at the corners and strolling about the Battery. "We must act." "We cannot delay." "We ought not to submit." Such were the phrases that fell upon the ear oftenest and loudest.

As I lounged, after tea, in the vestibule of the reading-room, an eccentric citizen of Arkansas varied the entertainment. A short, thin man, of the cracker type, swarthy, long-bearded, and untidy, he was dressed in well-worn civilian costume, with the exception of an old blue coat showing dim remnants of military garniture. Heeling up to a gentleman who sat near me, he glared stupidly at him from beneath a broad-brimmed hat, demanding a seat mutely, but with such eloquence of oscillation that no words were necessary. The respectable person thus addressed, not anxious to receive the stranger into his lap, rose and walked away, with that air of not, having seen anything so common to disconcerted people who wish to conceal their disturbance. Into the vacant place dropped the stranger, stretching out his feet, throwing his head back against the wall, and half closing his eyes with the drunkard's own leer of self-sufficiency. During a few moments of agonizing suspense the world waited. Then from those whiskey-scorched and tobacco-stained lips came a long, shrill "Yee-p!"

It was his exordium; it demanded the attention of the company; and though he had it not, he continued:—

"I'm an Arkansas man, I am. I'm a big su-gar planter, I am. All right! Go a'ead! I own fifty niggers, I do. Yee-p!"

He lifted both feet and slammed them on the floor energetically, pausing for a reply. He had addressed all men; no one responded, and he went on:—

"I'm for straightout, immedit shession, I am. I go for 'staining coursh of Sou' Car'lina, I do. I'm ready to fight for Sou' Car'lina. I'm a Na-po-le-on Bonaparte. All right! Go a'ead! Yee-p! Fellahs don't know me here. I'm an Arkansas man, I am. Sou' Car'lina won't kill an Arkansas man. I'm an immedit shessionist. Hurrah for Sou' Car'lina! All right! Yee-p!"

There was a lingering, caressing accent on his "I am," which told how dear to him was his individuality, drunk or sober. He looked at no one; his hat was drawn over his eyes; his hands were deep in his pockets; his feet did all needful gesturing. I stepped in front of him to get a fuller view of his face, and the action aroused his attention. He surveyed my gray Inverness wrapper and gave me a chuckling nod of approbation.

"How are ye, Bub? I like that blanket, I do."

In spite of this noble stranger's goodwill and prowess, we still found Fort Sumter a knotty question. In a country which for eighty years has not seen a shot fired in earnest, it is not wonderful that a good deal of ignorance should exist concerning military matters, and that second-class plans should be hatched for taking a first-class fortification. While I was in Charleston, the most popular proposition was to bombard continuously for two whole days and nights, thereby demoralizing the garrison by depriving it of sleep and causing it to surrender at the first attempt to escalade. Another plan, not in general favor, was to smoke Anderson out by means of a raft covered with burning mixtures of a chemical and bad-smelling nature. Still another, with perhaps yet fewer adherents, was to advance on all sides in such a vast number of row-boats that the fort could not sink them all, whereupon the survivors should land on the wharf and proceed to take such further measures as might be deemed expedient. The volunteers from the country always arrived full of faith and defiance. "We want to get a squint at that Fort Sumter," they would say to their city friends. "We are going to take it. If we don't plant the palmetto on it, it's because there's no such tree as the palmetto." Down the harbor they would go in the ferry-boats to Morris or Sullivan's Island. The spy-glass would be brought out, and one after another would peer through it at the object of their enmity. Some could not sight it at all, confounded the instrument, and fell back on their natural vision. Others, more lucky, or better versed in telescopic observations, got a view of the fortress, and perhaps burst out swearing at the evident massiveness of the walls and the size of the columbiads.

"Good Lord, what a gun!" exclaimed one man. "D'ye see that gun? What an almighty thing! I'll be ——, if I ever put my head in front of it!"

The difficulties of assault were admitted to be very great, considering the bad footing, the height of the ramparts, and the abundant store of muskets and grenades in the garrison. As to breaches, nobody seemed to know whether they could be made or not. The besieging batteries were neither heavy nor near, nor could they be advanced as is usual in regular sieges, nor had they any advantage over the defence except in the number of gunners, while in regard to position and calibre they were inferior. To knock down a wall nearly forty feet high and fourteen feet thick at a distance of more than half a mile seemed a tough undertaking, even when unresisted. It was discovered also that the side of the fortification towards Fort Johnstone, its only weak point, had been strengthened so as to make it bomb-proof by means of interior masonry constructed from the stones of the landing-place. Then nobody wanted to knock Fort Sumter down, inasmuch as that involved either the labor of building it up again, or the necessity of going without it as a harbor-defence. Finally, suppose it should be attacked and not taken? Really, we unlearned people in the art of war were vastly puzzled as we thought tins whole matter over, and we sometimes doubted whether our superiors were not almost equally bothered with ourselves.

This fighting was a sober, sad subject; and yet at times it took a turn toward the ludicrous. A gentleman told me that he was present when the steamer Marion was seized with the intention of using her in pursuing the Star of the West. A vehement dispute arose as to the fitness of the vessel for military service.

"Fill her with men, and put two or three eighteen-pounders in her," said the advocates of the measure.

"Where will you put your eighteen-pounders?" demanded the opposition.

"On the promenade-deck, to be sure."

"Yes, and the moment you fire one, you'll see it go through the bottom of the ship, and then you'll have to go after it."

During the two days previous to my second and successful attempt to quit Charleston, the city was in full expectation that the fort would shortly be attacked. News had arrived that Federal troops were on their way with reinforcements. An armed steamer had been seen off the harbor, both by night and day, making signals to Anderson. The Governor went down to Sullivan's Island to inspect the troops and Fort Moultrie. The volunteers, aided by negroes and even negro women, worked all night on the batteries. Notwithstanding we were close upon race-week, when the city is usually crowded, the streets had a deserted air, and nearly every acquaintance I met told me he had been down to the islands to see the preparations. Yet the whole excitement, like others which had preceded, ended even short of smoke. News came that reinforcements had not been sent to Anderson; and the destruction of that most inconvenient person was once more postponed. People fell back on the old hope that the Government would be brought to listen to reason,—that it would give up to South Carolina what it could not keep from her with justice, —that it would grant, in short, the incontrovertible right of peaceable secession. For, in the midst of all these labors and terrors, this expense and annoyance, no one talked of returning into the Union, and all agreed in deprecating compromise.

Once more, this time in the James Adger, I set sail from Charleston. The boat lost one tide, and consequently one day, because at the last moment the captain found himself obliged to take out a South Carolina clearance. As I passed down the harbor, I counted fourteen square-rigged vessels at the wharves, and one lying at anchor, while three others had just passed the bar, outward-bound, and two were approaching from the open sea. Deterred from the Ship Channel by the sunken schooners, and from Maffitt's Channel by the fate of the Columbia, we tried the Middle Channel, and glided over the bar without accident.

"Sailing to Charleston is very much like going foreign," I said to a middle-aged sea-captain whom we numbered among our passengers. "What with heaving the lead, and doing without beacons, and lying off the coast o' nights, it makes one think of trading to new countries."

I had, it seems, unintentionally pulled the string which jerked him. Springing up, he paced about excitedly for a few moments, and then broke out with his story.

"Yes,—I know it,—I know as much about it as anybody, I reckon. I lay off there nine days in a nor'easter and lost my anchors; and here I am going on to New York to buy some more; and all for those cursed Black Republicans!"

In South Carolina they see but one side of the shield,—which is quite different, as we know, from the custom of the rest of mankind.



REVIEWS AND LITERARY NOTICES.

1. Descriptive Ethnology. By R.G. LATHAM. 2 vols. London. 1859.

2. Anthropologie der Naturvoelker. Von Dr. T. WAIZ. 2 Baender. Leipzig. 1860.

Some writers have the remarkable faculty of making the subject which they may happen to treat forever more distasteful and wearisome to their readers. Whether the cause be in the style, or the point of view, or the method of treatment, or in all together, they seem able to force the student away in disgust from the whole field on which they labor, with vows never again to cross it.

Such an author, it seems to us, is pre-eminently R.G. Latham, in his treatment of Ethnology. Happy the man who has any such philosophic interest in Human Races, that he can ever care to hear again of the subject, after perusing Mr. Latham's various volumes on "Descriptive Ethnology." We wonder that the whole English reading public; has not consigned the science to the shelf of Encyclopedias of Useful Knowledge, or of Year-Books of Fact, or any other equally philosophic and connected works, after the treatment which this modern master of Ethnology has given to the subject.

Such disconnected masses of facts are heaped together in these works, such incredible dulness is shown in presenting them, such careful avoidance of any generalization or of any interesting particular, such a bald and conceited style, and such a cockneyish and self-opinionated view of human history, as our soul wearies even to think of. Mr. Latham disdains any link of philosophy, or any classification, among his "ten thousand facts," as being a fault of the "German School" (whatever that may be) of Ethnology. It seems to him soundly "British" to disbelieve all the best conclusions of modern scholarship, and to urge his own fanciful or shallow theories. He treats all human superstitions and mythologies as if he were standing in the Strand and judging them by the ideas of modern London. His is a Cockney's view of antiquity. He cannot imagine that a barbarous and infant people, groping in the mysteries of the moral universe, might entertain some earnest and poetic views which were not precisely in the line of thought of the Londoners of the nineteenth century, and yet which might be worth investigating. To his mind, there is no grand march of humanity, slow, but certain, towards higher ideals, through the various lines of race,—but rather innumerable ripples on the surface of history, which come and pass away without connection and without purpose.

The reader wades slowly through his books, and leaves them with a feeling of intense disgust. Such a vast gathering of facts merely to produce this melancholy confusion of details! You feel that his eminence in the science must be from the circumstance that no one else is dull enough and patient enough to gather such a museum of facts in regard to human beings. The mind is utterly confused as to divisions of human races, and is ready to conclude that there must be almost as many varieties of man as there are tribes or dialects, and that Ethnology has not yet reached the position of a science.

The reader must pardon the bitterness of our feelings; but we are just smarting from a prolonged perusal of all Mr. Latham's works, especially the two volumes whose title is given above; and that we may have sympathy, if only in a faint degree, from our friends, we quote a few passages, taken at random, though we cannot possibly thus convey an adequate conception of the infinite dulness of the work.

The following is his elegant introduction:—

"I follow the Horatian rule, and plunge, at once, in medias res. I am on the Indus, but not on the Indian portion of it. I am on the Himalayas, but not on their southern side. I am on the northwestern ranges, with Tartary on the north, Bokhara on the west, and Hindostan on the south. I am in a neighborhood where three great religions meet: Mahometanism, Buddhism. Brahminism. I must begin somewhere; and here is my beginning."— Vol. i. p. 1.

The following is his analysis of the beautiful Finnish Kalevala:—

"Wainamoinen is much of a smith, and more of a harper. Illmarinen is most of a smith. Lemminkainen is much of a harper, and little of a smith. The hand of the daughter of the mistress of Pohjola is what, each and all, the three sons of Kalevala strive to win,—a hand which the mother of the owner will give to any one who can make for her and for Pohjola Sampo, Wainamoinen will not; but he knows of one who will,—Illmarinen. Illmarinen makes it, and gains the mother's consent thereby. But the daughter requires another service. He must hunt down the elk of Tunela. We now see the way in which the actions of the heroes are, at one and the same time, separate and connected. Wainamoinen tries; Illmarinen tries (and eventually wins); Lemminkainen tries. There are alternations of friendship and enmity. Sampo is made and presented. It is then wanted back again.

"'Give us,' says Wainamoinen, 'if not the whole, half.'

"'Sampo,' says Louki, the mistress of Pohjola,' cannot be divided.'

"'Then let us steal it,' says one of the three.

"'Agreed,' say the other two.

"So the rape of Sampo takes place. It is taken from Pohjola, whilst the owners are sung to sleep by the harp of Lemminkainen; sung to sleep, but not for so long a time as to allow the robbers to escape. They are sailing Kalevalaward, when Louki comes after them on the wings of the wind, and raises a storm. Sampo is broken, and thrown into the sea. Bad days now come. There is no sun, no moon. Illmarinen makes them of silver and gold. He had previously made his second wife (for he lost his first) out of the same metals. However, Sampo is washed up, and made whole. Good days come. The sun and moon shine as before, and the sons of Kalevala possess Sampo."—Vol. i., pp. 433, 434.

This, again, is Mr. Latham's profound and interesting view of Buddhism:—

"Buddhism is one thing. Practices out of which Buddhism may be developed are another. It has been already suggested that the ideas conveyed by the terms Sramanoe and Gymnosophistoe are just as Brahminic as Buddhist, and, vice versa, just as Buddhist as Brahminic.

"The earliest dates of specific Buddhism are of the same age as the earliest dates of specific Brahminism.

"Clemens of Alexandria mentions Buddhist pyramids, the Buddhist habit of depositing certain bones in them, the Buddhist practice of foretelling events, the Buddhist practice of continence, the Buddhist Semnai or holy virgins. This, however, may he but so much asceticism. He mentions this and more. He supplies the name Bouta; Bouta being honored as a god.

"From Cyril of Jerusalem we learn that Samnaism was, more or less, Manichaean,—Manichaeanism being, more or less, Samanist. Terebinthus, the preceptor of Manes, took the name Baudas. In Epiphanius, Terebinthus is the pupil of Scythianus.

"Suidas makes Terebinthus a pupil of Baudda, who pretended to be the son of a virgin. And here we may stop to remark, that the Mongol Tshingiz-Khan is said to be virgin-born; that, word for word, Scythianus is Sak; that Sakya Muni (compare it with Manes) is a name of Buddha.

"Be this as it may, there was, before A.D. 300,—

"1. Action and reaction between Buddhism and Christianity.

"2. Buddhist buildings.

"3. The same cultus in both Bactria and India.

"Whether this constitute Buddhism is another question."—Vol. ii. p. 317.

And more of an equally attractive and comprehensible character.

We assure the reader that these extracts are but feeble exponents of the peculiar power of Mr. Latham's works,—a power of unmitigated dulness. What his views are on the great questions of the science—the origin of races, the migrations, the crossings of varieties, and the like—no mortal can remember, who has penetrated the labyrinth of his researches.

An author of a very different kind is Professor Waiz, whose work on Anthropology has just reached this country: a writer as philosophic as Mr. Latham is disconnected; as pleasing and natural in style as the other is affected; as simply open to the true and good in all customs or superstitions of barbarous peoples as the Englishman is contemptuous of everything not modern and European. Waiz seems to us the most careful and truly scientific author in the field of Ethnology whom we have had since Prichard, and with the wider scope which belongs to the intellectual German.

The bane of this science, as every one knows, has been its theorizing, and its want of careful inductive reasoning from facts. The classifications in it have been endless, varying almost with the fancies of each new student; while every prominent follower of it has had some pet hypothesis, to which he desired to suit his facts. Whether the a priori theory were of modern miraculous origin or of gradual development, of unity or of diversity of parentage, of permanent and absolute divisions of races or of a community of blood, it has equally forced the author to twist his facts.

Perhaps the basest of all uses to which theory has been put in this science was in a well-known American work, where facts and fancies in Ethnology were industriously woven together to form another withe about the limbs of the wretched African slave.

Waiz has reasoned slowly and carefully from facts, considering in his view all possible hypotheses,—even, for instance, the development-theory of Darwin,—and has formed his own conclusion on scientific data, or has wisely avowed that no conclusion is possible.

The classification to which he is forced is that which all profound investigators are approaching,—that of language interpreted by history. He is compelled to believe that no physiological evidences of race can be considered as at all equal to the evidences from language. At the same time, he is ready to admit that even this classification is imperfect, as from the nature of the case it must be; for the source of the confusion lies in the very unity of mankind. He rejects in toto Professor Agassiz's "realm-theory," as inconsistent with facts. The hybrid-question, as put by Messrs. Gliddon and Nott, meets with a searching and careful investigation, with the conclusion that nothing in facts yet ascertained proves any want of vitality or power of propagation in mulattoes or in crosses of any human races.

The unity of origin and the vast antiquity of mankind are the two important conclusions drawn.

His second volume is entirely devoted to the negro races, and is the most valuable treatise yet written on that topic.

The whole work is mainly directed towards Naturvoelker, or "Peoples in a State of Nature," and therefore cannot be recommended for translation, as a general text-book on the science of Ethnology,—a book which is now exceedingly needed in all our higher schools and colleges; but as a general treatise, with many new and important facts, scientifically treated, it can be most highly commended to the general scholar.

Il Politecnico. Repertorio Mensile di Studi applicati alia Prosperita e Coltura Sociale. Milano, 1860. New York: Charles B. Norton, Agent for Libraries, 596, Broadway.

Among the best first-fruits of Italian liberty are the free publication and circulation of books; and it is a striking indication of the new order of things in Lombardy, that the publishers at Milan of the monthly journal, "Il Politecnico," should at once have established an American agency in New York, and that in successive numbers of their periodical during the present year they should have furnished lists of some of the principal American publications which they are prepared to obtain for Italian readers. It will be a fortunate circumstance for the people of both countries, should a ready means be established for the interchange of their contemporaneous works in literature and science.

The "Politecnico" is not altogether a new journal. Seven volumes of it bad been published, and had acquired for it a high reputation and a considerable circulation, when political events put a stop to its issue. The Austrian system of government after 1849 repressed alt free expression of thought in Lombardy; and no encouragement was afforded for the publication of any work not under the control of the administration. With the beginning of the present year the "Politecnico" was reestablished, mainly through the influence and under the direction of Dr. Carlo Cattaneo, who had been the chief promoter of the preceding original series. The numbers of the new series give evidence of talent and independence in its conductors and contributors, and contain articles of intrinsic value, beside that which they possess as indications of the present intellectual condition and tendencies of Italy. The journal is wholly devoted to serious studies, its object being the cultivation of the moral and physical sciences with the arts depending on them, and their practical application to promote the national prosperity. That it will carry out its design with ability is guarantied by the character of Cattaneo.

Carlo Cattaneo is a man of unquestioned power of intellect, of strong character, and resolute energy. Already distinguished, not only as a political economist, but as a forcible reasoner in applied politics, he took a leading part in the struggle of 1848 in Milan, and, inspired by ill-will towards Charles Albert and the Piedmontese, was one of the promoters of the disastrous Lombard policy which defeated the hopes of the opponents of Austria at that day. Though an Italian liberal, and unquestionably honest in his patriotic intentions, he was virtually an ally of Radetzky. When the Austrians retook Milan, he was compelled to fly, and took refuge in Lugano, where he compiled three large volumes on the affairs of Italy, from the accession of Pius IX. to the fall of Venice, in which he exhibited his political views, endeavoring to show that the misfortunes of Lombardy were due to the ambitious and false policy of the unhappy Charles Albert. His distrust of the Piedmontese has not diminished with the recent changes in the affairs of Italy; and although Lombardy is now united to Piedmont, and the hope of freedom seems to lie in a hearty and generous union of men of all parties in support of the new government, Cattaneo, when in March last he was elected a member of the National Parliament, refused to take his seat, that he might not be obliged to swear allegiance to the King and the Constitution. His political desire seems to be to see Italy not brought under one rule, but composed of a union of states, each preserving its special autonomy. He is a federalist, and does not share in the unitarian view which prevails with almost all the other prominent Italian statesmen, and which at this moment appears to be the only system that can create a strong, united, independent Italy. It was to him, perhaps, more than to any other single man, that the difficulties which lately arose in the settling of the mode of annexation of Sicily and Naples to the Sardinian kingdom were due; and the small party in Parliament which recently refused to join in the vote of confidence in the ministry of Cavour was led by Ferrari, the disciple of the Milanese Doctor.

But however impracticable Cattaneo may be, and however mistaken and extravagant his political views, he is a man of such vigor of mind, that a journal conducted by him becomes, from the fact of his connection with it, one of the important organs of Italian thought. We trust that the "Politecnico" will find subscribers among those in our country who desire to keep up their knowledge of Italian affairs at a time of such extraordinary interest as the present.

Elsie Venner. A Romance of Destiny. By OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES. 2 vols. Boston: Ticknor & Fields. 1861.

English literature numbers among its more or less distinguished authors a goodly number of physicians. Sir Thomas Browne was, perhaps, the last of the great writers of English prose whose mind and style were impregnated with imagination. He wrote poetry without meaning it, as many of his brother doctors have meant to write poetry without doing it, in the classic style of

"Inoculation, heavenly maid, descend!"

Garth's "Dispensary" was long ago as fairly buried as any of his patients; and Armstrong's "Health" enjoys the dreary immortality of being preserved in the collections, like one of those queer things they show you in a glass jar at the anatomical museums. Arbuthnot, a truly genial humorist, has hardly had justice done him. People laugh over his fun in the "Memoirs of Scriblerus," and are commonly satisfied to think it Pope's. Smollett insured his literary life in "Humphrey Clinker"; and we suppose his Continuation of Hume is still one of the pills which ingenuous youth is expected to gulp before it is strong enough to resist. Goldsmith's fame has steadily gained; and so has that of Keats, whom we may also fairly reckon in our list, though he remained harmless, having never taken a degree. On the whole, the proportion of doctors who have positively succeeded in our literature is a large one, and we have now another very marked and beautiful case in Dr. Holmes. Since Arbuthnot, the profession has produced no such wit; since Goldsmith, no author so successful.

Five years ago it would have been only Dr. Holmes's intimate friends that would have considered the remarkable success he has achieved not only possible, but probable. They knew, that, if the fitting opportunity should only come, he would soon show how much stuff he had in him,—sterner stuff, too, than the world had supposed,—stuff not merely to show off the iris of a brilliant reputation, but to block out into the foundations of an enduring fame. It seems an odd thing to say that Dr. Holmes had suffered by having given proof of too much wit; but it is undoubtedly true. People in general have a great respect for those who scare them or make them cry, but are apt to weigh lightly one who amuses them. They like to be tickled, but they would hardly take the advice of their tickler on any question they thought serious. We have our doubts whether the majority of those who make up what is called "the world" are fond of wit. It rather puts them out, as Nature did Fuseli: They look on its crinkling play as men do at lightning; and while they grant it is very fine, are teased with an uncomfortable wonder as to where it is going to strike next. They would rather, on the whole, it were farther off. They like well-established jokes, the fine old smoked-herring sort, such as the clown offers them in the circus, warranted never to spoil, if only kept dry enough. Your fresh wit demands a little thought, perhaps, or at least a kind of negative wit, in the recipient. It is an active, meddlesome—quality, forever putting things in unexpected and somewhat startling relations to each other; and such new relations are as unwelcome to the ordinary mind as poor relations to a nouveau riche. Who wants to be all the time painfully conceiving of the antipodes walking like flies on the ceiling? Yet wit is related to some of the profoundest qualities of the intellect. It is the reasoning faculty acting per saltum, the sense of analogy brought to a focus; it is generalization in a flash, logic by the electric telegraph, the sense of likeness in unlikeness, that lies at the root of all discoveries; it is the prose imagination, common-sense at fourth proof. All this is no reason why the world should like it, however; and we fancy that the Question, Ridentem dicere verum quid vetat? was plaintively put in the primitive tongue by one of the world's gray fathers to another without producing the slightest conviction. Of course, there must be some reason for this suspicion of wit, as there is for most of the world's deep-rooted prejudices. There is a kind of surface-wit that is commonly the sign of a light and shallow nature. It becomes habitual persiflage, incapable of taking a deliberate and serious view of anything, or of conceiving the solemnities that environ life. This has made men distrustful of all laughers; and they are apt to confound in one sweeping condemnation with this that humor whose base is seriousness, and which is generally the rebound of the mind from over-sad contemplation. They do not see that the same qualities that make Shakspeare the greatest of tragic poets make him also the deepest of humorists.

Dr. Holmes was already an author of more than a quarter of a century's standing, and was looked on by most people as an amusing writer merely. He protested playfully and pointedly against this, once or twice; but, as he could not help being witty, whether he would or no, his audience laughed and took the protest as part of the joke. He felt that he was worth a great deal more than he was vulgarly rated at, and perhaps chafed a little; but his opportunity had not come. With the first number of the "Atlantic" it came at last, and wonderfully he profited by it. The public were first delighted, and then astonished. So much wit, wisdom, pathos, and universal Catharine-wheeling of fun and fancy was unexampled. "Why, good gracious," cried Madam Grundy, "we've got a genius among us fit last! I always knew what it would come to!" "Got a fiddlestick!" says Mr. G.; "it's only rockets." And there was no little watching and waiting for the sticks to come down. We are afraid that many a respectable skeptic has a crick in his neck by this time; for we are of opinion that these are a new kind of rocket, that go without sticks, and stay up against all laws of gravity.

We expected a great deal from Dr. Holmes; we thought he had in him the makings of the best magazinist in the country; but we honestly confess we were astonished. We remembered the proverb, "'Tis the pace that kills," and could scarce believe that such a two-forty gait could be kept up through a twelvemonth. Such wind and bottom were unprecedented. But this was Eclipse himself; and he came in as fresh as a May morning, ready at a month's end for another year's run. And it was not merely the perennial vivacity, the fun shading down to seriousness, and the seriousness up to fun, in perpetual and charming vicissitude;—here was the man of culture, of scientific training, the man who had thought as well as felt, and who had fixed purposes and sacred convictions. No, the Eclipse-comparison is too trifling. This was a stout ship under press of canvas; and however the phosphorescent star-foam of wit and fancy, crowding up under her bows or gliding away in subdued flashes of sentiment in her wake, may draw the eye, yet she has an errand of duty; she carries a precious freight, she steers by the stars, and all her seemingly wanton zigzags bring her nearer to port.

When children have made up their minds to like some friend of the family, they commonly besiege him for a story. The same demand is made by the public of authors, and accordingly it was made of Dr. Holmes. The odds were heavy against him; but here again he triumphed. Like a good Bostonian, he took for his heroine a schoolma'am, the Puritan Pallas Athene of the American Athens, and made her so lovely that everybody was looking about for a schoolmistress to despair after. Generally, the best work in imaginative literature is done before forty; but Dr. Holmes should seem not to have found out what a Mariposa grant Nature had made him till after fifty.

There is no need of our analyzing "Elsie Venner," for all our readers know it as well as we do. But we cannot help saying that Dr. Holmes has struck a new vein of New-England romance. The story is really a romance, and the character of the heroine has in it an element of mystery; yet the materials are gathered from every-day New-England life, and that weird borderland between science and speculation where psychology and physiology exercise mixed jurisdiction, and which rims New England as it does all other lands. The character of Elsie is exceptional, but not purely ideal, like Cristabel and Lamia. In Doctor Kittredge and his "hired man," and in the Principal of the "Apollinean Institoot," Dr. Holmes has shown his ability to draw those typical characters that represent the higher and lower grades of average human nature; and in calling his work a Romance he quietly justifies himself for mingling other elements in the composition of Elsie and her cousin. Apart from the merit of the book as a story, it is full of wit, and of sound thought sometimes hiding behind a mask of humor. Admirably conceived are the two clergymen, gradually changing sides almost without knowing it, and having that persuasion of consistency which men always feel, because they must always bring their creed into some sort of agreement with their dispositions.

There is something melancholy in the fact, that, the moment Dr. Holmes showed that he felt a deep interest in the great questions which concern this world and the next, and proved not only that he believed in something, but thought his belief worth standing up for, the cry of Infidel should have been raised against him by people who believe in nothing but an authorized version of Truth, they themselves being the censors. For our own part, we do not like the smell of Smithfield, whether it be Catholic or Protestant that is burning there; though, fortunately, one can afford to smile at the Inquisition, so long as its Acts of Faith are confined to the corners of sectarian newspapers. But Dr. Holmes can well afford to possess his soul in patience. The Unitarian John Milton has won and kept quite a respectable place in literature, though he was once forced to say, bitterly, that "new Presbyter was only old Priest writ large." One can say nowadays, E pur si muove, with more comfort than Galileo could; the world does move forward, and we see no great chance for any ingenious fellow-citizen to make his fortune by a "Yankee Heretic-Baker," as there might have been two centuries ago.

Dr. Holmes has proved his title to be a wit in the earlier and higher sense of the word, when it meant a man of genius, a player upon thoughts rather than words. The variety, freshness, and strength which he has lent to our pages during the last three years seem to demand of us that we should add our expression of admiration to that which his countrymen have been so eager and unanimous in rendering.



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