Read Ebook: International Weekly Miscellany of Literature Art and Science — Volume 1 No. 2 July 8 1850 by Various

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INTERNATIONAL WEEKLY MISCELLANY

Of Literature, Art, and Science.

"It would be very idle to pretend, my dear Fritz, that in printing my letters, I had not some hope of doing the public a trifling service. There are errors which need only to be mentioned, to be frowned upon; and there are virtues, which an approving word, even of a stranger, will encourage. Both of these objects belong to my plan; yet my strictures shall not be personal, or invidious. It will be easy, surely, to carry with me the sympathies of all sensible people, in a little harmless ridicule of the foibles of the day, without citing personal instance; and it will be vastly easier, in such Babylon as ours, to designate a virtue, without naming its possessor! Still, you know me too well, to believe that I shall be frightened out of free, or even caustic remark, by any critique of the papers, or by any dignified frown of the literary coteries of the city.... This LORGNETTE of mine will range very much as my whim directs. In morals, it will aim to be correct; in religion, to be respectful; in literature, modest; in the arts, attentive; in fashion, observing; in society, free; in narrative, to be honest; in advice, to be sound; in satire, to be hearty; and in general character, whatever may be the critical opinions of the small litt?rateurs, or the hints of fashionable patrons, to be only--itself."

TENNYSON'S NEW POEM.

"'IN MEMORIAM.'

"Although only these words appear on the title-page of this volume of poetry, it is well known to be from the pen of Alfred Tennyson. It is also known that the inscription

refers to Mr. Arthur Hallam, a son of the historian. It may be gleaned from the book, that the deceased was betrothed to a sister of Tennyson, while the friendship on the poet's part has 'passed the love of women.' Feeling, especially in one whose vocation it is to express sentiments, is not, indeed, always to be measured by composition; since the earnest artist turns everything to account, and when his theme is mournful it is his cue to make it as mournful as he can: but when a thought continually mingles with casual observation, or incident of daily life, or larger event that strikes attention, as though the memory of the past were ever coloring the present, and that over a period of seventeen years, it must be regarded as a singular instance of enduring friendship, as it has shown itself in a very singular literary form. There is nothing like it that we remember, except the sonnets of Petrarch; for books of sportive and ludicrous conceits are not to be received into the same category.

Ring out, wild bells, to the wild sky, The flying cloud, the frosty light: The year is dying in the night; Ring out, wild bells, and let him die.

Ring out the old, ring in the new, Ring, happy bells, across the snow: The year is going, let him go; Ring out the false, ring in the true.

Ring out the grief that saps the mind, For those that here we see no more; Ring out the feud of rich and poor, Ring in redress to all mankind.

Ring out a slowly dying cause, And ancient forms of party strife; Ring in the nobler modes of life, With sweeter manners, purer laws.

Ring out the want, the care, the sin, The faithless coldness of the times; Ring out, ring out my mournful rhymes, But ring the fuller minstrel in.

Ring out false pride in place and blood, The civic slander and the spite; Ring in the love of truth and right, Ring in the common love of good.

Ring out old shapes of foul disease, Ring out the narrowing lust of gold; Ring out the thousand wars of old, Ring in the thousand years of peace.

Ring in the valiant man and free, The larger heart, the kindlier hand; Ring out the darkness of the land, Ring in the Christ that is to be.

"The following is of more direct bearing on the theme, and is moreover one of those charming pieces of domestic painting in which Tennyson excels.

Witch-elms that counterchange the floor Of this flat lawn with dusk and bright; And thou, with all thy breadth and height Of foliage, towering sycamore;

How often, hither wandering down, My Arthur found your shadows fair. And shook to all the liberal air The dust and din and steam of town:

He brought an eye for all he saw; He mixt in all our simple sports; They pleased him, fresh from brawling courts And dusky purlieus of the law.

O joy to him in this retreat, Immantled in ambrosial dark, To drink the cooler air, and mark The landscape winking through the heat:

O sound to rout the brood of cares, The sweep of scythe in morning dew, The gust that round the garden flew, And tumbled half the mellowing pears!

O bliss, when all in circle drawn About him, heart and ear were fed To hear him, as he lay and read The Tuscan poets on the lawn:

Or in the all-golden afternoon A guest, or happy sister, sung, Or here she brought the harp and flung A ballad to the brightening moon:

Nor less it pleased in livelier moods, Beyond the bounding hill to stray. And break the livelong summer day With banquet in the distant woods;

Whereat we glanced from theme to theme, Discuss'd the books to love or hate, Or touch'd the changes of the state, Or threaded some Socratic dream;

But if I praised the busy town, He loved to rail against it still, For 'ground' in yonder social mill We rub each other's angles down.

'And merge,' he said, 'in form and loss The picturesque of man and man.' We talk'd: the stream beneath us ran, The wine-flask lying couch'd in moss,

Or cool'd within the glooming wave; And last, returning from afar, Before the crimson-circled star Had fallen into her father's grave.

And brushing ankle-deep in flowers, We heard behind the woodbine vail The milk that bubbled in the pail, And buzzings of the honeyed hours.

LEIGH HUNT.

Perhaps the two points of this Autobiography which will most attract the attention of the reader are the author's imprisonment for a libel on the Prince Regent, and his visit to Italy. In that imprisonment of two years, he was visited by Byron, Moore, Brougham, Bentham, and several other eminent men. In the journey to Italy, which was undertaken in order to co?perate with Byron and Shelley in bringing out of the "Liberal," Hunt had the misfortune to be deprived of Shelley's friendship, by death, immediately on his arrival; and of the friendship of Byron, through incompatibilities of taste, and the jealous officiousness of Byron's friends, amongst whom Moore bore a prominent part. Mr. Hunt published a volume on the subject soon after his return to England, which occasioned him a great deal of ill-will. To this publication he now refers with expressions of much regret, and with the calmness which has been produced by time. But it cannot be denied that he endured most mortifying and irritating provocations, which never could have taken place had Shelley lived. We are glad that he has had an opportunity of leaving a generous and forgiving record of this remarkable portion of his life; and certainly nothing can be more delightful than his present account of it:--

"My daily walk was to Fiesole, through a path skirted with wild myrtle and cyclamen; and I stopped at the door of the Doccia, and sate on the pretty melancholy platform behind it, reading, or looking down to Florence."

This is all very charming, yet hear what the author says further:--

As a whole these volumes are full of interest and variety. They introduce us to numerous famous people, and leave us with a most agreeable impression of their author.

THE MORMONS.

THOMAS L. KANE, of Philadelphia, distinguished himself very honorably a year or two ago by the vindication of the Mormons against calumnies to which they had been subjected in the Western States, and by appeals for their relief from the sufferings induced by unlooked-for exposure in their exodus to California. We are indebted to him for an interesting discourse upon the subject, delivered before the Historical Society of Pennsylvania. He concludes this performance with the following observations, which we believe to be altogether just. Mr. KANE is a man of sagacity and integrity, and his opportunities for the formation of a wise opinion upon this subject were such as very few have possessed:

"I have gone over the work I assigned myself when I accepted your Committee's invitation, as fully as I could do without trespassing too largely upon your courteous patience. But I should do wrong to conclude my lecture without declaring in succinct and definite terms, the opinions I have formed and entertain of the Mormon people. The libels, of which they have been made the subject, make this a simple act of justice. Perhaps, too, my opinion, even with those who know me as you do, will better answer its end following after the narrative I have given.

"I have spoken to you of a people; whose industry had made them rich, and gathered around them all the comforts, and not a few of the luxuries of refined life; expelled by lawless force into the wilderness; seeking an untried home far away from the scenes which their previous life had endeared to them; moving onward, destitute, hunger-sickened, and sinking with disease; bearing along with them their wives and children, the aged, and the poor, and the decrepid; renewing daily on their march, the offices of devotion, the ties of family, and friendship, and charity; sharing necessities, and braving dangers together, cheerful in the midst of want and trial, and persevering until they triumphed. I have told, or tried to tell you, of men, who when menaced by famine, and in the midst of pestilence, with every energy taxed by the urgency of the hour, were building roads and bridges, laying out villages, and planting cornfields, for the stranger who might come after them, their kinsman only by a common humanity, and peradventure a common suffering,--of men, who have renewed their prosperity in the homes they have founded in the desert,--and who, in their new built city, walled round by mountains like a fortress, are extending pious hospitalities to the destitute emigrants from our frontier lines,--of men who, far removed from the restraints of law, obeyed it from choice, or found in the recesses of their religion, something not inconsistent with human laws, but far more controlling; and who are now soliciting from the government of the United States, not indemnity,--for the appeal would be hopeless, and they know it--not protection, for they now have no need of it,--but that identity of political institutions and that community of laws with the rest of us, which was confessedly their birthright when they were driven beyond our borders.

"I said I would give you the opinion I formed of the Mormons: you may deduce it for yourselves from these facts. But I will add that I have not yet heard the single charge against them as a community, against their habitual purity of life, their integrity of dealing, their toleration of religious differences in opinion, their regard for the laws, or their devotion to the constitutional government under which we live, that I do not from my own observation, or the testimony of others, know to be unfounded."

ORIGINAL POETRY.

THE BRIDE'S REVERIE.

BY MRS. M.E. HEWITT.

Lonely to-night, oh, loved one! is our dwelling, And lone and wearily hath gone the day; For thou, whose presence like a flood is swelling With joy my life-tide--thou art far away.

And wearily for me will go the morrow, While for thy voice, thy smile, I vainly yearn; Oh, from fond thought some comfort I will borrow, To wile away the hours till thou return!

I will remember that first, sweet revealing Wherewith thy love o'er my tranced being stole; I, like the Pythoness enraptured, feeling The god divine pervading all my soul.

I will remember each fond aspiration In secret milled with thy cherished name, Till from thy lips, in wildering modulation, Those words of ecstasy "I love thee!" came.

And I will think of all our blest communing, And all thy low-breathed words of tenderness; Thy voice to me its melody attuning Till every tone seemed fraught with a caress.

And feel thee near me, while in thought repeating The treasured memories thou alone dost share Hark! with hushed breath and pulses wildly beating I hear thy footstep bounding o'er the stair!

And I no longer to my heart am telling The weary weight of loneliness it bore; For thou, whose love makes heaven within our dwelling, Thou art returned, and all is joy once more.

Oh how I loved thee! how I blessed the hour, When first thy lips, wak'ning my trusting heart, Like some soft southern gale upon a flower, Into a blooming hope, murmured "we ne'er will part."

Never to part! alas! the lingering sound Thro' the sad echoes of pale Memory's cave, Startles once more the hope my young soul found, Into bright hues, but, only for the grave ...

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