From The Spectator. LONGFELLOW. A CONTEMPORARY, in writing its welcome to the New England poet, who has just been graced with a degree by the University of Cambridge, says very truly, but not without something of satire on the nation which receives him, that Mr. Longfellow is known and loved more by his "Psalm of Life," his received fresh illustrations. But the story! The time has come when "somebody " is has often been told briefly, and we need imperatively required to restore the health only say that the student may read it in our of the body politic. Is Hiram Ulysses author's pages with a fullness never pre- Grant the man? sented before. As specimens of most excellent military workmanship, the campaigns. of Vicksburg and Chattanooga will take a very high place in military history; but the record of Grant's career, at this moment, will be most carefully studied by those who desire to form some conception of the character of a man who may be President of the United States. They will find in it great prudence, tempered by a Dantonesque audacity; patience that never fails; a cool temper rarely ruffled; a habit of independent decision, and reliance on his own judg-" Excelsior," his " Red Planet Mars," and ment; not the slightest fear of responsibility; not a spark of vacillation; keen attention to minute details, and a capacity for broad sagacious insight, above all, the rare faculty, so conspicuous in Wellington, of forming a just estimate of the facts which furnish the conditions of the problem and the sole basis of fruitful action. How far these characteristics, which have been made manifest in a military career of unusual brilliancy, are likely to mark their possessor in civil and political life yet remains to be determined. When Grant emerged from a trader's shop and took his place in the army, he was clearly deficient in ordinary culture. Since then his mind has been developed and disciplined by varied experience and vast responsibilities. "My only point of doubt," wrote Sherman, in March, 1864, "was in your knowledge of grand strategy and of books of science and history; but, I confess, your common sense seems to have supplied all these." Will though we suspect that Mr. Longfellow that marvellous common sense continue to himself would revise the mode of expresssupply the place of a defective political ing that knowledge, if the poem were not training? Let us hear Sherman on this now far beyond his reach, and would depoint. At the end of December, 1863, cline to epitomize it in words that have such he wrote these remarkable words to his a conventionally holy, such a comrade in arms:sumptive seventeen ring about them. Everybody who knows Mr. Longfellow's name at all, and many who do not, have experienced in their youth the proud glow of realizing other youthful poems, of a description which "Knows how sublime a thing it is 66 sweet con "That our hearts, though stout and brave, Still, like muffled drums are beating Funeral marches to the grave." "Your reputation as a General is now far above that of any man living, and partizans will manœuvre for your influence; but, if you can escape them, as you have hitherto done, you will be more powerful for good than it is possible to measure. You said that you were surprised at my assertion on this point, but I repeat that, from what I have seen and heard And many of us, doubtless, have looked here, I am more and more convinced of the truth of what I told you. Do as you have here-woe-begone for days at a time, at the aptofore done; preserve a plain military charac-propriate age, as a result of the delightful ter, and let others manoeuvre as they will, you will beat them, not only in fame, but in doing good in the closing scenes of this war, when somebody must heal and mend up the breaches made by war." sensation that we could lay our hands upon our hearts (or wrists) and count the throbbing notes of that military dead-march, and glory in the gloomy pageant of our melancholy fate. Everybody, again, who read Longfellow when he was first popular in this country, has heard, we suppose, in imagination that magnificent tramp of ghostly poets, "From the bards sublime, Whose distant footsteps echo Through the corridors of Time," and has probably felt an increased respect for Time in consequence of thus attributing to it a manorial residence containing long corridors, as good as any nobleman's castle, wherein Homer and Eschylus are proudly pacing still. These were young things written in Mr. Longfellow's salad days, when he was green in judgment, and when, like many another young poet, he mistook the magniloquent for the grand. But it is scarcely to our credit that we as a nation should receive him with open arms on account of his poetic fame, and yet when we come to ask ourselves what we know of it, should be able only to recall scraps of well-rounded, heroic aspiration, or sentiment flushed with that pink but premature and rather unhealthy light which precedes living experience. If we welcome Mr. Longfellow for his "Excelsior," we are welcoming him for what does his heart great, but his head exceedingly little, credit. The very ill-advised youth who went up the Alps armed, like a Band of Hope in a Sunday School,—only with a banner, and went on purpose apparently either to try a pass from which the native guides dissuaded him, or to exhibit a tear in his "bright blue eye" when a rather forward young woman invited him "to rest his weary head upon her breast," or to give the good old monks of St. Bernard and their dog needless trouble in digging him and his banner out of the snow, was about as unsuitable a metaphor for the steadfastness of an unwavering upward purpose, as any one, if going upwards at all, could have been. Christian in the Pilgrim's Progress, climbing the Hill of Difficulty, going to sleep in the arbour on the way, and starting out of sleep with bitter reproaches to himself, in the flutter of which he drops the scroll given to lighten his path, is as much nobler an image of poor human nature striving upwards, than Mr. Longfellow's ornamental young man with sad brow and "faulchion "-like eyes, and "clarion "-like voice, as actual goodness is nobler than the hectic exaltation of romance. And we do not doubt for a moment that Mr. Longfellow himself is thoroughly impressed with the rather flushed and morbid sentiment of his youthful poems, and would be far from pleased if he should discover that the writer in the Daily News is right in ascribing to the English people an admiration for his poetry based almost entirely on what is least admirable and far the least original in his writings. That there is a gentle and liquid sweetness about Mr. Longfellow's early as about his latest style we do not deny. No genuine poet can help impressing a certain beauty of form on even the worst and poorest thoughts which he versifies. But the poems by which it is said,-not, we fear, quite untruly,- that Mr. Longfellow is chiefly known in England, are full of stock-metaphors that mark unripeness of character rather than of intellect, metaphors whose whole drift is exhausted in the first superficial glance, and which grow falser and falser to the mind ever afterwards. If Mr. Longfellow had written only these things, he would indeed have been distinguished by taste, and culture, and true refinement of feeling from the most popular of our English moralists in verse, but it could scarcely be said that he had exhibited more true genius of a kind entitling him to be cherished and remembered in English and American literature. 66 As, however, Mr. Longfellow really deserves far more discriminating and genuine admiration than he is at all likely to receive in England, we can only hope that his visit here and the cordiality of our welcome may have the wholesome effect of turning the attention of Englishmen from the conventional sentimentalism of Mr. Longfellow's earlier verses to the sweet and limpid purity, the shy and graceful humour, the cool and perfectly natural colours and forms, and the thoroughly original conception and treatment, of his later poems, especially that which will doubtless live as long as the English language, Hiawatha." For playful and tender interpretation of the way in which child-like tribes, living in the midst of nature's mightiest life and marvels, allegorize the transformations they see, and measure themselves against the powers and the creatures by which they are surrounded, there is not, nor, as far as we know, has there even been, anything like it in any language. Indeed, it was only possible to a man of fine modern culture like Mr. Longfellow, coming into personal contact with the old American-Indian traditions without either the religious prejudices, or the bigotry, of imagination and sensation, if we may so speak, which would prevent him from fully entering into them. It needed a singularly innocent, and simple, and child-like, as well as a singularly true and crystal fancy, to follow these Indian legends with so much faithfulness and spirit. A mind occupied with transcendental raptures like Wordsworth's would have been as surely That is a forest scene such as we know no steeled and fortified against these visions of American McCallum to do justice to. It primeval man in the primeval forest, as a would need one who had made a special mind occupied with a wealth of subtle dra- study, not only of the Indian tribes, to matic distinctions like Browning's, or a draw the boy-prophet in his first hunter's wealth of picturesque meditation and meta- joy of independence, but of the wild creatphysic musings like Tennyson's. ures of the forest, the squirrel and the rabThere is in "Hiawatha" a perfectly won-bit and the deer half fascinated by Hiawatha derful delicacy in catching at once the awe, and all but acknowledging him as one of and the dignity, and the superficial pictur- themselves, and yet shy, too, of his human esqueness, and the graceful pliancy of hu- skill and knowledge. How admirable, too, mour, and the light, impulsive joyousness, in their bright and simple outlines are the and the dark but airy superstition, and the various companions of the Indian prophet's passionate love of fitful excitement, in the life, the old boaster Iagoo, for instance, old Indian legends. Hiawatha has, to our who is always fancying that the people long minds, familiarized us more perfectly with to hear "his immeasurable falsehoods; the old inhabitants of the American forests, and again, Pau-Puk-Keewis, the mischiethan all the volumes of tradition and legend which ever preceded it. Mr. Longfellow's genius was just the genius to interpret between it and us, to paint it to us as we are best capable of seeing it, and as it is most likely to take a permanent hold upon us. How bright and playful is the picture of the familiarity of the lower animals with the little Indian prophet, when he goes forth in his childhood with his first bow and arrows on his first hunting expedition: “Up the oak-tree, close beside him, And the rabbit from his pathway "Hidden in the alder-bushes, Like a wasp it buzzed and stung him!" vous dancer, the "storm-fool," who teaches the people to love physical and mental excitement, who introduces the gambling game of "bowls and counters" amongst Hiawatha's people, because he is tired alike of Hiawatha's wisdom and of Iagoo's falsehoods. But it is not only in the details, it is in the whole spirit of the poem,— the fanciful joy and beauty, the equally fanciful weirdness and gloom,- that we enjoy the touch of a master hand. When Hiawatha is to lose his wife, and by way of warning, ghostly shadows come from "the land of the Hereafter," who cower for weeks in the corner of his hut, and seize on all her food before she can taste it, the poet curdles our blood without in any way putting the full strain of pain and horror on the feelings of his readers. The light and pliant treatment is preserved, and though the legend is gruesome, it is gruesome with a sort of childlike simplicity. How simple and striking àre the first chords which the Poet strikes! "Never stoops the soaring vulture So disasters come not singly; And then the scene where the two women, them," when these other and more material | task; and so perfectly has it been performed shadows from " the land of the Hereafter" that it has added not,only a new subject, "Then the curtain of the doorway From without was slowly lifted; Brighter glowed the fire a moment, And a moment swerved the smoke-wreath, As two women entered softly, Passed the doorway uninvited, From their aspect and their garments These are corpses clad in garments, "When the evening meal was ready, Whispered, saying, 'They are famished, It seems to us that the poem, of which we but a wholly new group of conceptions, to the stores of our literature. We wish that England could be as grateful to Mr. Longfellow for this as we think that she ought to be. Then he would be far better satisfied with his welcome, than he can be if he believes, as many believe with more or less justice, that the heartiness of that welcome is due to our admiration for the boyish and thin enthusiasm of verses whose best function it would be to warn manly and pure sentiment against the habit of effeminate expression. If we admire a real poet for that which is not real poetry, he must necessarily feel that it is but an accident that we have happened to admire in him a real poet at all." From The Spectator, 13 June. THE FALL OF SAMARCAND. THE Occupation of Samarcand by the Russians will prove, we fear, a very grave event. No details have yet reached England, the report of the Emir's death is not confirmed, and Russian officers in Central Asia systematically overrate the number of their opponents, not, we believe, to deceive their own Government, but to excite interest in the Russian people. Nevertheless, it seems certain that a battle was fought early in May, that the Emir of Bokhara was defeated, and that Samarcand either surrendered or was taken by storm; and those incidents, if true, involve the subjugation of Bokhara. These Asiatic States never rally, the people are hardly interested enough to organize guerilla war, and the "moral" power of the Czars is almost irresistible. Even in India, the natives, who do know something of English strength and weakness, usually submit after one defeat; and up there, in those regions behind the world, the Czar seems greater, less human, more like a supernatural agent, than ever the Company seemed in Hindostan. Bokhara may henceforward be considered a Russian dependency, and the difficulties already so thick round the Indian Viceroy will, we fear, almost overwhelm him. The great Club which governs India, and has so often proved itself stronger than the Viceroys, already irritated by the policy of inaction, will be half frenzied with humiliation and fear, and may compel Sir John Lawrence, with or without sanction from home, to intervene in the struggle. The pressure from Afghanistan itself will be tremendous, every chief declaring that unless he receives support from Calcutta he will seek it in Samar- and great expenditure, by disciplining cand. The anti-Russian section of the India nomad warriors and by never forgiving an House will point triumphantly to this con- act of disobedience, they do contrive to firmation of their fears, and from St. Peters- maintain some effective government through burg, Constantinople, and Teheran grave these vast regions; but they bitterly information will begin to flow in on the need revenue, and revenue grows farther Foreign Office. The Anglo-Indians will be South. It is impossible for a Russian statesalmost ready to conquer Afghanistan by man to read a report from Central Asia, to subscription, and though they are, as we glance at a map, to sanction an expedition deem, utterly in the wrong, it is folly to ig- without longing to possess some one of the nore the arguments they adduce. The regions to the South, where the population Times does good service in resisting their is as thick as the jungle, where the earth pressure; but nothing is gained by assert- yields a hundred and seventy fold, where a ing that the independence of Bokhara does pitiless yet scientific government could tax not matter, and that Russia has no interest à miséricorde. Statesmen may reject altoin the conquest of India. The indepen-gether imaginative nonsense about a plan dence of Bokhara does matter, for three for the conquest of the world, and yet bevery important reasons. First and least, lieve that the Russian Treasury thirsts for its conquest will enable the Russians to a slice either of India or China, that the plant themselves on the Oxus, in a position Foreign Office of St. Petersburg sees well from which they can open a road to Herat, how terrible a diversion a Russo-Persian can avail themselves of their influence in force might create in the next struggle for Teheran, and can spread through Afghan- Stamboul. istan and Northern India the idea that "they are coming." Secondly, the victory will show them to the tribes of the North as the heirs of Jenghiz, the possessors of his capital, the owner of the green stone to which all Tartar roads converge. Thirdly, they have arrived within the charmed circle covered by the Hindoo imagination, within the world of which Punjabees have heard, within the region from which all conquerors of India have descended into the plains. Henceforward, for years to come, a restless expectation of a white Jenghiz will be visible through Northern India, a vague impression that "a cycle is past" very dangerous to all habitudes of quiet submission. Bokhara is far from Herat, Herat far from Peshawur; but Calcutta is twice as far as the farthest, and yet a rumor in a Calcutta bazaar can make Peshawur bubble with excitement. The Russians are not in the citadel, are not near it; but they have emerged from the Northern shadow into the brighter light, and are visible to its garrisons. They have, moreover, we repeat, one direct, immediate, and most pressing interest in the conquest of India. They are, to speak figuratively, lords of the mountain, while it is in the plain that wealth must be sought. They are masters of Northern Asia from the Pole to the Oxus, from the Caucasus to the Sea of Okhotsk, that is, of a world lying in shadow almost impenetrable to European eyes, of cities of which we know nothing, of plains scarcely traversed by white men, but in which the human race might encamp, of ranges as vast though not as high as the Andes, of rivers as long though not as navigable as the Mississippi. By incessant exertion We do not wonder in the least at the Anglo-Indian excitement, or even at the form it usually assumes. It was not by sitting still that India was conquered, and those who conquered it naturally believe that the audacity which has succeeded for a century will succeed for ever. Difficulties have no meaning for men who see 70,000 Europeans ruling a continent and a fifth of the human race. What is Candahar, that a man who invaded Scinde should hesitate to enter it? or Afghanistan compared with Abyssinia? or Bokhara, when one has helped to plunder the Summer Palace of the Emperors of China? It is all natural enough, and in its way creditable besides -there being virtues as useful as humilitybut still it is the duty of the English Press to warn the Anglo-Indians that they must wait for the signal, and that it will not be given yet, or given in the way they demand. Even admitting their data, that Russia does intend one day to conquer India, and that her encampment on the Oxus brings her within the range of the grand Southern Viceroyalty, the way to meet her is not to occupy up to Herat. Down to the Suleiman, or, if that is too much to ask, down at least to Herat, the conquests of Russia are beneficial to the world. She is civilizing and organizing races who could neither be civilized nor organized without conquest, is bringing lands as separate as if they were in another world within the influence of Europe. The process is a good one even if its motive be mere selfishness, and it is accomplished, as we believe, without any extravagant amount of human suffering. If it were not, the minute white force employed |