JOHN BRIGHT ON AMERICA. comfort than if they had remained here as if [Close of a Speech at Birmingham, 18 Dec.] as one of America's own poets has said,THERE are ministers in our Cabinet as re- "For her free latchstring never was drawn in solved against any treason to freedom on Against the poorest child of Adam's kin." this question as I am, and there are numbers In America there are no six millions of of the English aristocracy of the very high-grown men excluded by the Constitution est rank who hold the same opinion as I do; from political rights; there is a free Church, but we have had every effort made that a free school, a free hand, a free vote, a free money and malice could devise to stimulate career for the child of the humblest. No! in Lancashire, among the suffering popula- countrymen who work for your living, retion, an opinion in favor of the Slave States. member that there will be one wild shriek of They have not been able to get it, and I freedom, to startle all mankind if that Rehonor that population for their fidelity to public is overthrown. Slavery has been the their principles and to freedom, and I say the huge foul blot upon its fame; it is a hideous conduct they have pursued ought to atone in outrage against human right and divine the minds of the people in the United States law; the pride and passion of man will not for miles of leading articles written by the permit its peaceable extinction; the slaveLondon press by men who would barter owners of our colonies, if they had been every human right to serve the party with strong enough, would have revolted too. I which they are associated. How, I ask, believe there was no mode short of a miracomes it that on the Continent of Europe cle more stupendous than any recorded in there is not a liberal newspaper nor a liberal the Holy Writ which would, in our time or politician that durst say, or ever thought of in a century, have brought the abolition of saying, one word in favor of that portentous slavery in America but the suicide which the and momentous shape which now asks to be South has committed and the war they are received into the family of nations? The late now raging. It is a measureless calamity; Count Cavour had no difficulty in deciding I said the Russian war was a measureles on this point. Ask Garibaldi (cheers)-ask calamity; did not many of your leaders tell Kossuth, whether slavery has nothing to do you that that was a just war to maintain the with this strife. Ask Victor Hugo, the poet integrity of Turkey, some thousands of miles of freedom and exponent of the yearnings of away? Why, surely the integrity of your all mankind for the better time-ask any own country at your own doors must be man in Europe who opens his lips or indites worth as much as the integrity of Turkey. a sentence for freedom, on which side your Is not this law the penalty which an inexorsympathies should lie. (Hear.) Why, in able justice exacts from America, North and all parts of the world except this island, South, for the enormous guilt of cherishing famed for its freedom, you do not find one this frightful iniquity for the last eighty man speaking in favor of the South; and years? I do not blame any man who takes why is that done here? I'll tell you the the restoration of the Union to be hopeless ; reason. Our London press is mainly in the you have the authority of the Chancellor of hands of certain ruling West-end classes. the Exchequer on that point; he is, as a It acts in favor of those classes. One of speaker, unsurpassed by any man in Engthe most eminent statesmen in this country, land; but, unfortunately, he made use of although not an official statesman, said to expressions in the north of England nearly me, "I had not an idea how much influence three months ago, and seems ever since then the example of the Republic was having up-to have been engaged in trying to make on opinion here until I discovered the uni- people understand what he meant. (A versal congratulations on the prospect of that laugh.) He is, however, quite welcome to Republic breaking up; " but I maintain, after all, that the people do not err. Free States are the home of the working man. In fifteen years 2,500,000 of our countrymen and countrywomen have left us for the United States, every one of whom, speaking generally, is in a much better position in point of

think the struggle hopeless for the North. I don't hold that opinion. The leaders of this revolt propose by their Constitution this simple thing: that over a territory some forty times as large as England the blight and bondage of slavery shall be forever perpetuated. I cannot myself believe in such a

fate befalling that fair land, stricken though every wish for the material success of so libit now be by the ravages of war; I cannot eral an enterprise, we must watch its results believe that civilization in its journey with with an interest of a wider and more genthe sun will sink into endless night to grat-eral kind, bound up as it is with a problem ify the ambition of the leaders of this revolt, of real and intrinsic moment in the history who seek "to wade through slaughter to a throne, and shut the gates of mercy on mankind." (Cheers.) I have another and far brighter vision before my gaze. It may be but a vision, but I will still cherish it. I see one vast Confederation stretching from the frozen North in one unbroken line to the glowing South, and from the wild billows of the Atlantic to the calmer waters of the Pacific main, and I see one people and one law and one language and one faith, and over all that wide continent the home of freedom and a refuge for the oppressed of every race.

of literature. That problem, which the popular voice alone must ultimately resolve, relates to the rank which the author of Waverley is entitled to hold, and the influence which he is destined to exercise in permanence among the classic writers of our language. Is Walter Scott a great writer? In what proportion do his works retain, or may they be expected to retain, that magical ascendency which, at their first publication, followed each successive wave of the living enchanter's wand? In attractive and enlightening force, is their grade to be finally with those supreme and primary luminaries which sway and irradiate the intellectual firmament, or those transient meteors which do but dazzle us as they flash for a second or two across the sky? Three or four observations of a comet's path enable us to approximate closely enough to the law of its orbit. And after thirty years' experience we surely are in a position to work out a sufficiently practical equation to the future path

of the most brilliant modern star in the zodiac of literature.

From The Saturday Review. THE WAVERLEY NOVELS.* THE Waverley novels are at length fairly committed to the chances of competition with the latest and cheapest literature of the day, in a form which must put the question of their permanent popularity to the last and most crucial test. The copyrights of the earlier portions of the series have already expired, and year by year will gradually break down that hedge of immunity which The popularity of Scott has, from the first, kept these volumes exempt from the rivalry been somewhat of a select sort, rather than of trade, and lent them a kind of aristocratic a popularity of the populace. He never prestige in the community of fiction. The wrote for the multitude, and was not of the enterprising firm which has invested largely number of those who subsist by the sympain the purchase of the surviving privileges thies of the masses. Aristocratic in his tastes of the extinct house of Cadell has resolved, and feudal in his notions of society, his sphere we are glad to see, upon a policy which is of thought was one to which a certain style likely to retain to it, in a manner not only of pomp and sumptuousness was indispensathe most legitimate, but in the long run the ble. To enjoy and love him thoroughly, one most likely to prove remunerative, that mo- must be raised either by birth or by force of nopoly the legal sands of which are rapidly cultivation above the vulgar and the comrunning out. Competition is practically dis- monplace. Below the isothermal lines of tanced when, one by one, each story of the heraldic insignia and gentle culture his greatseries is in succession presented to the pub-ness will hardly vegetate. Yet it has been lic in the handy and popular form of a shil- the fashion to remark, on the other hand, ling novel-in paper, typography, and how much better Scott describes beggars, eral style of getting up, assimilated to the gypsies, smugglers, clowns, and the hangersmyriad ephemera, which flaunt their gaudy on of kings and queens, even kings and backs at every railway bookstall. The pres-queens themselves, the very highest and the ent impression is, in fact, a cheaper re-issue | very meanest of mankind, than the half-way of the stereotype edition put forth eight class to which he himself belonged. How years ago, at eighteen pence a volume. With superior, we are told, is Effie Deans to Lady Staunton, or even Jeanie Deans to Rose Waverley. Shilling Series. Edinburgh: A. & Bradwardine! How much more do Mary of

C. Black.

1862.

gen

Scotland and Elizabeth of England resemble playwright labored, just to fill the Globe thereal queens than Julia Mannering or Die atre. Each was doubtless equally spontaneVernon represent real young ladies! Now ous, equally unencumbered by any ulterior we believe the reverse of this complaint to aim. But they differed immeasurably in be at least as near the truth. The reader's depth. It is in the undesigned, unfelt emaffinity with his author has been the source anations of the mind that the highest genius of the fallacy. It is not that these ladies distances all lower grades. In the sparkles and gentlemen are less natural in themselves of light which it throws off without an effort, than those princes, beggars, or rustics. But without the sense of doing anything vast or the reader, it must be remembered, is, in the notable, there is a radiance and a heat which former case, among his own set, whom he is, the world recognizes, and rejoices in the from familiar observation, competent to criti-glow. Scarce a page of Shakspeare can be cise. He is judging a work of art as an expert, not as a critic. No jockey or trainer would be satisfied with the horses even of Phidias. To an old salt, the seamanship of the Pirate would perchance smack of the landsman; and a live " gaberlunzie" would stare at his double in the garb and with the diction of Edie Ochiltree.

When the romancer of the artificially bred middle class draws for his patrons a serf or a crusader, a cow-feeder or a queen, he is tolerably safe from jealous judgment, and may dash in his colors with a free hand. His characters are got up for company, and must be clothed, not in the most appropriate, but the most picturesque habiliments. Such art is indeed that of the stage, not that of nature; but Scott could not help being dramatic even in his most naturalistic efforts. He could fascinate his own order by his skill in presenting to it his views of the world beneath itself, through its own conventional medium. Between himself and the lower masses he was fixing at the same time an artificial gulf. He would patronize them as artistic models, not take them to his bosom as of the same living and breathing kin.

turned at random which does not kindle or enlighten us with its latent aphoristic force. No writer, it has been felt on the contrary, has written so many volumes as Sir Walter Scott with so few sentences that can bear to be quoted. His power, as Mr. Carlyle well defined it, lay in extenso, not in intenso. His situations are effective-his delineations of action are graphic, and stir us as they would stir an actual spectator. They form, in truth, a series of masterly tableaux, and, with the force of a stereoscope, set before us artistic groups in all the simulated relief of reality. Their still life is admirable. There is somewhat, of course, beyond the power of the mere photographer-there is much lively motion and many a brilliant shift of scene. But the soul is somehow equally wanting. His men and women seem more or less lay figures, costumed and posed for effect. They say nothing that we particularly care to hear. Scott had no gospel to deliver, and, sooth to say, never professed to have any.

In this respect, at all events, he rises ineffably above those charlatans who are forever prating of their mission to amend, rebuke, and elevate society, and who never If we turn from the quality of Scott's gen- treat us to their sugary confections without ius to its quantity, and try to guage or meas-pounding up in them some one or other of ure his mental stature, we are somewhat at their pet nostrums for the moral diseases of a loss for a standard of comparison. There is a supreme and august rank in the empire of intellect, from which Scott's greatness will forever fall short. He had no particular message to deliver to the world-no special idea or notion of truth to impart to it—no new scheme or system of thought to elaborate. Neither was his the living, spreading, consuming fire of Shakspeare, Dante, or Goethe. There was not merely the same unconsciousness of any special mission, that unconsciousness which seems the first attribute of genius, with which the Stratford

mankind. Scott would be neither the physician nor the pedagogue of society. He came not to call the sickly, but the hale and joyous, and bade them enjoy life as he enjoyed it. Rejoicing in the power to amuse, and finding abundant amusement to himself in the process of so doing, he gave little heed to what lessons he might read to posterity, or with what cut-and-dried theories he ought to prime his soul. To amass good stories, to work up rare and romantic material into fresh and picturesque combinations, was with him too genuine an impulse to need

saic laws? Novel-reading had till then been a forbidden, though coveted pleasure. Scott made a nation of novel-readers. He was the founder of the historical novel. By the modicum of fact which he dug up from the buried past, he was able to bribe the conscience which sneered at fiction as a waste of time, as well as the prudery which blushed at it as sinful. And never was literary invention so well rewarded. As, faster and faster, poured forth the magic sheets, the profits of the manufactory rose to £15,000 a-year. Novel-making has from that date been one of the most gainful of trades, and the circulating library must revere him as its demi-god.

the justifying plea of any moralistic cant. | daring, and even the weird and the superIf he never rose to be a prophet, he could natural still bade defiance to nature's pronever sink into a Pharisee. Health and buoyancy of mind seemed in him the natural reflex of his robust and hardy corporeal frame. In the heartiness and verve which he threw into his pages, lay, even more than in his purity and kindly warmth, the secret of that hold which he obtained upon his age. Anything mean, sordid, or cynical, flew off from contact with his soul, as a perfectly healthy physique is said to throw off all bodily impurities. Adhesive in his social instincts, running over with humor and humanity, beaming with constitutional liveliness, his was just the presence to which the blasé and hypochondriac run, to catch the restorative virus. The effect was electrical when he thus burst upon a languid and jaded generation, cloyed with artificial food, incapable of faith, while shuddering at scepticism. Faith Scott undoubtedly possessedthe faith of all massive hearty natures-faith in himself, faith in the order of things and the lessons of history. The advent of such a man was like an invigorating bath to an age grown maudlin over Byronism and Werterism, or coddled over the nursery fire and possets of the Minerva Press. All other remedies for ennui were flung aside the moment the Great Unknown began his spells, to which the mystery of their authorship gave an extra piquancy and charm. Kotzebue and the thrilling school were annihilated. Ghosts were sent back to limbo. The chains clanked harmlessly in the Castle of Otranto, and Mrs. Radcliffe no more kept boys and girls tremblingly awake with hor

rors.

The reader was carried back to rough, real, hardy times, when modern nerves were unknown, when life was active, blithesome, vigorous. For old and young, the jaded and the imaginative, there was an inexhaustible store of wonderment in those scenes of martial feats, jousts and tournays, border forays, royal progresses, gorgeous ritual. Who did not sigh to have had their lot cast in those free, bold, unsophisticated days; when gallant knights caracoled on giant horses of whirlwind speed-ladies of peerless beauty ambled in quaint guise through the merry greenwood, or slipped their hawks over meadow and lea-when sleek churchmen rustled in mediæval bravery-when romance was a reality, when adventure waited upon

The old saw which Fletcher of Saltoun drew from an unarmed "wise person," that he "cared not who made a nation's laws, so he might make its ballads," has lost its point. Our nation has long left off singing ballads, if, indeed, it was ever given to singing them. The novel has taken the place of the ballad. It were strange, accordingly, if the man who had the making of novels for an entire generation had not some effects of his handiwork to show. Sir Walter's influ ence upon the thought and taste of our age may be traced in two important directions. His talent, as we have implied, rested upon two powerful instincts-bis love of antiquity and his love of nature. From the fountainhead of his genius welled forth both the stream of mediæval revival, and that which has lately taken to itself the technical title of "muscularity." The generation whose youth was nursed upon his tales and songs of chivalry grew up with eye and heart turned wistfully back towards the past. In art, politics, theology, and social life, Young England dreamed of an ideal three or four hundred years bygone. The nineteenth century must be taught to build, to think, to believe, to worship, in forms of medieval sanctity. The Oxford movement was only possible among minds over which the glamor of those potent fictions had passed. The Tracts for the Times were, in some sense, the logical progeny of Ivanhoe and the Monastery; and the Palace of Westminster is but the architectural development of Abbotsford. Scott's theology, it is true, cost him little thought. It came to him, among the stock in trade of

nations. It must strike every traveller from the South how much this infusion has percolated even to the lower strata of northern society. Scarce a cottar or drover but has at his fingers' ends the lore which links his home with the genius of the novelist. Provincialism may not, indeed, be favorable to world-wide homage. The taste for what is simply local or grotesque may at any moment pass away among other shifts of fashion. A reaction may, in like manner, ere long set in against the prevalent Gothic mania. But herein, as we have seen, lay but one element of Scott's mental ascendency. There remains, as the basis of all the rest, his intense and instinctive love of

his most proper craft, simply as a legacy | Every spot which the novelist described befrom the past. His religious instincts pointed came forthwith classic to the civilized of all more to objective order and ceremonial than to self-analysis or abstract grounds of belief. His ideas of art, even in his own province of antiquarianism, were of a very superficial order, and much of the collections and heirlooms which made Abbotsford the pride of his soul might now be voted by Wardour Street itself very sorry bric-a-brac. History itself was ransacked by him, not for its truth, but for its materials of amusement, and it would be waste of time to pull to pieces his hasty and fanciful creations under the strong light of modern historical criticism. It would be not less unfair, at the same time, to withhold from him the credit of a first impulse which had yet to receive its severer form and stricter organization at other hands. To have helped to drive out the cold and vapid classicalism in architecture, and the sickly sentimentality in fiction, which made the era of the regency of England's darkest period, was a service to his age not the less merito- | rious because Scott had never set himself coolly and scientifically to work it out.

nature.

Scott's reputation is in no danger of total or Riding at these two anchors, the ark of immediate shipwreck. Medievalism and muscularity may not be very profound ideas, but few will deny to such ideas their salutary influence in spiritualizing and bracing the mind. All that Scott had to impart of solid gain has by these two channels passed into the He has no more to teach us. age. But Scarcely less striking or salutary in its he can still make us feel. He will be read effects upon the national character has been for no didactic purpose, but for what is far Scott's grasp of nature and keen zest of more the proper end of fiction-the innocent physical enjoyment. The breezy mountain and healthy play of the emotions. Men of and the brae, the hardy sports of the moor mature years will miss, as they peruse once and the loch, the genial humor and racy dia- more the tales which fascinated their youth, lect of Highland clansmen, were painted by first acquaintance. And the young will wonthe vivid and exquisite enjoyment of that him with a freshness and a force entirely his der at the rapt, almost the religious, belief own. New types of life and character were with which their sires still speak of the Wathrown upon the canvas. To the Southern verley novels as the type of all that is perreaders of his day the manners and speech fect in fiction. It is the sign of what the age of the Scottish peasantry were previously all has gained in mental depth and breadth. but as strange and outlandish as those of But enthusiasm will not be followed in this Japan or Central Africa are to ourselves. A case by contempt. We have already had real union of interest and feeling began to writers of deeper insight and higher aim, but none of warmer sympathy or more genuine spring up between the two countries. The human heart. And by virtue of these qualivery fee simple of all Scotland has been ties Scott still remains the favorite novelist raised by Scott's pen fully ten per cent. of his country.

WHY is the Welsh language like the strom ?-Because it is not easily sounded.

Mael-out," as Sir John Ross said when he couldn't find his way to the North Pole.

"I'm a rising young man, and a capital prospect before me '-as Sinbad the sailor said when he was lifted into the air by the eagle.

"MESSAGES carefully delivered," as the eartrumpet said to the old maid.

"PLEASE TO REMEMBER THE NAME AND ADDRESS."A disappointed playwright has

"I BLUSH for you," as the rouge-pot said to had the malice to write over the door of the

the old dowager.

DRAMATIC AUTHOR'S SOCIETY: "Ici on parle

"I SHALL never be able to make this passage Francais.