himself with a second-hand bowie-knife, Not now would armies vast thy orders own, with the exhibition of which to calm Colonel Pryor's resentment. Of that burly rebel, his Reverence General Polk, the Richmond poet has, we are glad to say, a far higher opinion. He He seems to have some feeling against General Toombs, whose recent address to the people of Georgia, advising them to gather kindling-wood and make ready to burn down their towns, suits him no better than it did the Georgians. Of Toombs he writes: "Amphion's lyre, they say, could raise a town, But this great liar's worse-he burns it down." Yet it seems that he does not so much object to arson as to the spirit in which Toombs and Cobb urged that crime upon their fellow-citizens, for a little farther on (page 7) he bursts out into ardent praises of Governors Brown and Pickens : ored names, Whose godlike bosoms burn with patriot flames; To serve his country at her utmost need Behold by this a burning town decreed; While that devotes, with true chivalric zeal, Another's cotton to the public weal." And so on. He is evidently a strong partisan of Davis, and mourns that this great rebel has fallen upon days so degenerate, alluding, probably, to the incessant abuse lavished upon him by the Richmond Enquirer, Memphis Appeal, and other papers. He speaks of degenerate scribblers, and the good old times when but few could read and fewer write, and adds: "Oh, had the gods but kindly willed it so, That thou hadst lived two hundred years ago, No foolish editors had libelled then No fearful rogues had spoiled thy greatest plan!" But he banishes regret: "But hence, fond thought, nor be by passion hurried, Hadst thou then lived, thou now wert dead and buried, Not now on shinplasters thy face be shown." The allusion to "fearful rogues," above, we at first took to be intended for Floyd: but it must mean some one else,—perhaps Pillow or Letcher,-for at page 10 occurs a passage in which Floyd-in disgrace for his retreat in Western Virginia-appeals to Davis thus, and we trust not in vain :"You slight me, Davis, and but little heed What talents I have shown, what merits plead; How in your time of need I muskets stole, And with what genius played the traitor's role; Ten thousand small arins plead my cause with you, And prove me worthiest of your patriot crew." In Beauregard this writer has great confidence. He speaks of him several times, praising his genius as the foremost military engineer of the age. In fact, like most of the rebels, this gallant poet likes best the man who can put the most solid stone wall between him and the Union troops. page 14 he personifies Beauregard as the great god of fortification, and speaks of him as rushing through the country to the defence of the people :— At With culverines, whole and demi, and gabines, With trench, with counterscarp, with esplanade, With curtain, moat, and rhombo and chamade, With polygon, epaulment, hedge and bank, With salient angle and with angle flank." And so on for half a dozen lines more. We can only say that if poor Beauregard really goes about with such an array of defences, he is worthy of all the reward he will get from the Southern Confederacy, and all the fame conferred on him by the poet Boggs. But we must hint that the above lines were probably suggested to the poet by the famous couplet which was sent from the South after the capture of Fort Sumter :— "With cannon, mortar and petard, We send to you our Beauregard." Here we reluctantly close our quotations from this Southern Iliad, venturing on only one more short extract, in which the good Boggs not only adorns a tale, but points a moral: "Ah, think what danger on debauch attends! Let Letcher drunk preach temp'rance to his friends, See how he stumbled to the Speaker's chair, POETRY.-The Cumberland, 354. A School Exercise of Lord Burleigh's, 354. A soldier's Poetry, 380. To McClellan, 380. Mary at the Sepulchre, 380. The Return, 380. The Dell, 391. SHORT ARTICLES.-Chinese Dictionary, 371. Alliteration, 371. Etching on Glass, 383. Number of Words in English, 383. Vital Statistics of 1861, 386. New Hymn Book, 386. Statue of Wilson, the Ornithologist, 396. Wasted, 400. Ald Age, 400. Sister Anna's Probation is too soon concluded. We shall regularly bring it out in The Living Age-and then it will be published separately. NEW BOOKS. Part XVI. of The Rebellion Record contains Portraits of Commodore Wilkes and Lieut. John T. Greble. New York: George P. Putnam. PUBLISHED EVERY SATURDAY BY LITTELL, SON, & CO., BOSTON. For Six Dollars a year, in advance, remitted directly to the Publishers, the LIVING AGE will be punctually forwarded free of postage. Complete sets of the First Series, in thirty-six volumes, and of the Second Series, in twenty volumes, handsomely bound, packed in neat boxes, and delivered in all the principal cities, free of expense of freight, are for sale at two dollars a volume. ANY VOLUME may be had separately, at two dollars, bound, or a dollar and a half in numbers. ANY NUMBER may be had for 13 cents; and it is well worth while for subscribers or purchasers to complete any broken volumes they may have, and thus greatly enhance their value. Ask how the Aztec bared his swarthy breast With fearless heart; and giving blow for blow, Met the fierce Spaniard, sheathed in glittering steel, Safe in his armor, smiling on his foe. Ask if the breaker, gathering as it rolls, And swings, with ponderous crash, a whelming blow, Shall harm the gray cliff, frowning o'er the tide, And heedless of the roaring seas below. With headlong force the monster strikes the ship; The crashing timbers sound the seamen's knell; Yet still the spangled flag above them floats, Yet still defiance thunders in her fires, now! The whirling eddies suck them down to death. As when in camp the wounded soldier dies, He bids good-night, then yields his spirit brave, His sorrowing comrades lay him down to rest, And fire their volleys o'er the new-made grave. Swift to avenge, the "Monitor" appears And pays the funeral honors to the dead: Their dirge, the awful thunder of her guns, Her battle volleys o'er their watery bed. O! gallant sailors! shall we weep for them? For aged grandsires breathless crowds shall tell No! rather let our bosoms swell with pride! How fought the Cumberland-show where they died. Their names resplendent on the roll of fame, Their monument, each flag that floats on high; Why should we weep? no! no! they are not dead; A grateful country will not let them die. A SCHOOL EXERCISE OF LORD BURLEIGH'S. IN the correspondence of Lord Burleigh in the Record Office, there is a fragment of a letter without a signature, containing some curious verses introduced with these few words : "I found an epigram of your old doing at school, which I translated, and send you also the Latin of your own hand." The "Latin of Cecil's own hand" is not to be discovered. The translation is as follows:In valiantness the force is ruled by wit, Words are for women, deeds for men be fit: 'Tis cowards' weakness for to threaten aught; Wisdom dissembles, valiance sayeth nought, But when he seeth his time, then dareth do That 'longs a wise and valiant man unto. First keep therefore that justly any wight Be not thy foe; but if unrightfully Thou harmed be, revenge thee then with right, Dissemble close the dolor of thine heart, If that thou may; if not, then be thou sly, Lest mightless ire procure thee further smart. Folly is with words to kindle more on fire A mighty foe, and get thee greater harm; A wise man waits his time and calms his ire, And often will give place, and sweetly charm His enemy's wrath with dulce words, till he get His foe betrapped and meshed in the net. And when thou hast him so, A reconciled foe. I. A. F. From The Westminster Review. The Life of J. M. W. Turner, R.A. Founded Hurst and Blackett. 1862. book a prominent place in our pages. It is so bad as to be almost beneath censure. The author has had every possible facility for making it an extremely good one. From the friends and acquaintances of Turner he has received the most ample information they could afford; they have put their manCOULD we ever regard the notion on which uscript notes at his disposal, and he has had Goethe founded his novel of "Elective Af-access to the works and papers of the illusfinities" as anything better than a fascinat- trious painter. Notwithstanding, he has ing hypothesis, it would be after reflecting produced a book which is nothing better than on the lives and writings of James Boswell a confused jumble of quotations and reflecand John Ruskin. Both of them were des- tions, and containing several chapters of tined by nature to become the enthusiastic dissertation wholly foreign to the subject in admirers and fanatical defenders of what- hand. Almost every other page contains ever was said or done by their respective some piece of needless repetition, some abheroes, Johnson and Turner. In their ser- surd and meaningless epithets and ungramvice they labored with an unequalled devo-matical sentences, while the two volumes tion, manifested for them a love far exceed- are written in a style of which the bad taste ing that ever exhibited by men towards their is only exceeded by the vulgarity of the lankind, and even surpassing that which men guage and puerility of the sentiments. He can feel for women. This constancy and tells us in the preface that he has worked affection have, in the case of Boswell, been steadily and quietly" at his task during amply rewarded with the immortality he has nearly four years, having determined not acquired through linking his name with the to complete his book till he had collected renowned lexicographer's. The book which for it all that " 'patience and enthusiasm he wrote has not only perpetuated the memory of Johnson, but is read when Johnson's own works repose in dusty and undisturbed state on the book-shelves. If ever a man had a mission, and fulfilled it, that man was Boswell. Mr. Ruskin, on the other hand, has laid himself open to the imputation of having wilfully frustrated the chief end for which he was created. The principal object of his idolatry throughout life has been Turner, and Turner's biography he was expected to have written. When publicly disclaiming any intention to discharge that duty, he reserved the right of coming forward either in vindication of his fame, should it be sullied by him who had determined to write his life, or else with testimony in confirmation of whatever might be claimed on behalf of the man who in his eyes is the first of landscapepainters, and one of the most remarkable of Englishmen. What he will elect to do is unknown to us; but we shall be greatly astonished if he refrain from pouring forth against Mr. Thornbury a torrent of his matchless sarcasm and most merciless invective. For our own parts, it is with considerable reluctance that we accord to this * Modern Painters, v. 344. could glean, cull, or heap together." Moreover, he did "not wish to write a eulogy, a fulsome funeral oration, a poem, a riddle, a rhapsody, or a mere saleable time-serving apology." What he has done is to "heap together "a quantity of materials in such a way as to prove beyond all question that, if not the most careless, he is the most incompetent of biographers. We are too deeply interested in the subject of which these volumes treat, to be capable of wasting time in elaborately exposing and adequately denouncing the sins of their author. Instead of doing that, we shall proceed to give a sketch of Turner's life and career, in the course of which we shall quote some passages for the purpose of enabling our readers to form an estimate of Mr. Thornbury's merits. Unless we greatly mistake, they will unanimously agree in considering what we have written in condemnation of him to be very far short of what he deserves, and that, if we have erred at all, it is in treating him with excessive gentleness and blameworthy leniency. On the 23d of April, 1775, Joseph Mallord William Turner was born, in 26 Maiden-Lane, Covent Garden. This was the year in which David, the celebrated French painter, who Moreover, we are told that a "flamingolegged” footman opened the door, at whose "blazing legs" the son stared with awe. What is more to the purpose is that the boy saw a lion in a coat-of-arms, and on the evening of the same day astonished his parents by producing a rude copy of it. This, and other similar examples, seem to have made his parents resolve to educate him to be a painter; a decision which was adhered to more rigorously than is usual in the cases of youths of the same age. Shortly after this, we are informed that sketches in imitation of Paul Sandby, the fashionable drawing-master of the day, were exposed for sale in the barber's shop, at prices ranging from one to three shillings. A drawing of Margate Church, made when he was nine years old, is still extant. was then studying at Rome, succeeded in | chested Flemish brewers' horses and prints winning the first prize for painting, after in windows; and on that tearful cloud, too, having vainly competed for it no less than that now laughs out into sunshine.”—(Vol. four times. He was so mortified at his fail- i. p. 14.) ure the preceding year, that he determined to starve himself to death, a fate which was only averted by the forcible intervention of a friend. It was Turner's habit to boast of having been born in the same year as Napoleon and Wellington, as well as of being a native of Devonshire, and he even managed to impose these fictions on several of his friends. He never attempted, however, to conceal the lowness of his origin, nor had he the bad taste to appear ashamed of being the son of a barber and hairdresser. His father was a Devonshire man, who had come to London in early life, married a Miss Marshall, industriously pursued his calling, and was not less active in earning his pence than careful in hoarding them. It is said of Turner's mother that she was a woman of violent temper, and that she "led her husband a sad life." Eventually she went mad, and was put in confinement. Nothing is known of the tastes of either father or mother, but, notwithstanding this, Mr. Thornbury thinks fit to remark: "Perhaps the lady-mother drew, or had looked in youth with care and thought on portraits by Reynolds, and saintly figures brought from Italy." That Turner's birth-place was in the vicinity of Covent Garden market is neither important in itself, nor a matter calling for apology or lament. His biographer, however, being of a different opinion, makes it the subject of this ludicrous rhapsody: "But let us not think Heaven unkind in placing her genius in a Covent Garden kennel. Brave souls have broken from meaner homes than that; kind Nature, too, has so many compensations At ten years of age he was sent to school at Brentford. Such is the commonplace way of describing an everyday occurrence, and it is only fair to give as a contrast the eloquent language of this writer, who informs us that "Turner was snatched from the delight of playing among the vegetable baskets in Covent Garden, from marbles with stray apprentices and recusant errandboys, from London's Cimmerian gloom and crimsoning fogs, to be sent to school at Brentford, near the river's side." (Vol. i. p. 19.) As a schoolboy, Turner was very indolent and untractable. He did not care to learn what his master desired, and he persevered in studies of which his master could not see the use or value. It was his chief delight to make drawings of the trees and animals which he beheld from the schoolroom window, and his comrades were goodnatured enough to allow him to indulge this taste by doing his tasks for him. At the end of a year he was removed from this school and sent to Soho Academy, where flowerdrawing was taught by a Mr. Pallice. After When the boy was five years old, his fa- a short stay there, he was despatched to a ther having to go and dress a Mr. Tompkin- school at Margate kept by Mr. Colman. Mr. son's hair, took his son along with him. In Thornbury says, that he went thither " probaddition to this bare fact, which is all his ably in the hoy immortalized by C. Lamb," biographer can know, it is stated that on the and adds, without any qualification, that it way thither, "The father is in a hurry and was "a dreary, blundering, miserable jouris bustling-the boy snatches looks at tawny-ney of a flock of huddled-together sea-sick In my Father's house there are many mansions,' and on joy's gamut there are many notes between alto and bass." (Vol. i. p. 9.) Had Mr. Thornbury been in orders, he might have been liable to prosecution for something worse than bad taste on account of the foregoing passage. |