Pictures of the Olden Time, as shown in the Fortunes of a Family of the Pilgrims. By Edmund H. Sears Crosby, Nichols & Co., Boston. The object of the author of this volume is to illustrate the character of several epochs of history, by recording the adventures of certain distinguished families, intimately connected with the political progress of the eras, the events of which are commemorated. The writer becoming possessed with a passion for antiquarian and genealogical researches, gathered, unexpectedly, a mass of material, tending to illustrate family history and genealogy, through a period of three hundred years. It was deemed," he says, "by others, of some importance that these materials should be arranged and presented in a permanent form. But a book of mere genealogies seemed the most unedifying of all performances. The question soon occurred-why not put flesh upon these bones? Why not make these skeletons live? These names, in a genealogical table, would stand for nobody, and, yet the men who bore them, acted and suffered through the most interesting periods of history, and there are abundant facts to show what sort of connection they had with their contemporaries. I have attempted, therefore to connect the current of family, with that of public history, and to show how events affected not only public men, but the homes and firesides of the people." The attempt, we think, has been successful. Mr. Sears is a picturesque and graceful writer. Many of his sketches are exceedingly spirited, and, moreover, they cannot but be of considerable value to the student of history, who desires to look beneath the bare facts of a period to the spirit, (often subtle and hard to grasp,) which underlies and developes them. Not only as a specimen of our author's style, but as a deeply interesting description in itself, we quote what follows upon the trial of Sir Thomas More." "The 1st of July has, at length, come. A special commission is appointed for the trial at Westminster Hall. They lead him out, and parade him through the streets of the city, on his way to trial, intending thereby to strike terror into the public mind. They have clothed him in a coarse sack, as a mark of disgrace. They have starved him so Kong in prison that he walks with difficulty. They dread his learning and eloquence, and they mean so to crush him beforehand that he cannot use his masterly powers. The vast space of Westminster Hall is crowded with spectators, and presents a sea of anxious faces. "Will he make out a defence that will stand with one of Audley's juries?" is a question on which dread alternatives are poised and trembling. The river has been alive all the morning with the barges of noblemen rowing towards Westminster, and crowds of poor people, to whom More, when Chancellor, had dispensed justice, tempered with mercy, have packed the galleries, and are 'ooking down with agonized features. Within the bar sits lawyer Leach, with his glistering head and cucumber coolness, and not far off, stands his client, watching the prisoner with as deep emotion as if his own life were hanging on the issue, as, indeed, he thinks it is. On the bench -that same bench where More had administered justice so impartially-sits the base, the venal, the cringing Audley, a man who has grown fat on confiscations of which he was the tool, and who is ready, like a hound, either to follow the scent of blood, or to fawn upon and lick the hand of his master. But his person and appearance are commanding, and we see nothing, at first, to indicate his baseness, except the cat-like softness of his manners. Close by his side sits the Chief Justice of the King's Bench, Sir John Fitzjames, early distinguished for his buffoonery, and his ignorance of law, and promoted for his pliancy in the dirty work which tyrants have to be done. There stands, at the bar, Sir Christopher Hale, the Attorney General, who has some dignity of character, and maintains a show of candor. Associated with him is Mr. Solicitor, the low-browed Rich, with his large, animal mouth, and his eye bloodshot with "dagger-ale"-the school boy companion of More, who early separated from him because baseness and virtue are repellant forces. There sit the jury, packed and overawed, giving small hope that they are the stuff that a bulwark can be made of to stop the sanguinary flood that is already on the flow. The case opens and the indictment is read. It is long, but the gist of it is that More has, first, refused to acknowledge the King's supremacy, and, secondly, that he has denied it. After the indictment is read, Audley bends towards the prisoner, with a feline courtesy. "You see how grievously you have offended his Majesty. Yet he is so merciful, that, if you will lay away your obstinacy, and change your opinion, we hope you may obtain pardon." Most noble Lord," replies the prisoner, "I bescech Almighty God that I may continue in the mind I am in through his grace unto death." The case proceeds, the witnesses are brought on; the lawyers and judges together think the case is made out, and Audley, with a smirking glance, asks his prisoner if he has anything to say. More now stands up, and leans upon his staff; his features are pale and prisonworn, but there is still the twinkling drollery in the curves about his eyes, as if he were looking through and laughing to scorn the web-work of sophistry which the lawyers have put together. As he rises, all murmurs cease in the crowd, and Westminster Hall, in its remotest corner, is silent as death. As soon as he opens his lips, his learning and genius blaze forth in their mild and beautiful splendor. Seeing how weak and pale he is, they offer him a chair, and permit him to sit while making his detence. And there he sits, and quietly riddles in pieces, their fabric of accusation and testimony, sometimes with a sparkle of wit, but in a light so broad and luminous that the judges themselves are ashamed of the case. He quietly reminds them that no evidence has been introduced to show a denial of the King's supremacy. Here Rich interrupts him with a coarse violence in his manner. "We have your silence, which is an evident sign of a malicious mind." point that Leach had before made, and bringing it out with a clearness that tells evidently on the court and jury. More has closed his defence, and the judges look aghast at each other. The absurdity of convicting a man of high treason because he has said nothing, is so monstrous that they dare not do it even in the eye of the rawest student of the New Inn, who may be looking on at Westminster Hall. More has been wiser than Fisher was. When the mousers purred around him to tempt the treason out of him, he saw through them and guarded his lips, and now all that they can prove is-silence. His defence is complete, and he has carried the whole audience—the servile court, packed jury, and all. There is a buzz all over the house, every man looking into his neighbors' face and breathing easy, lawyer Leach and his client looking wise at each other. The court and the crown lawyers fall to a consultation; Audley's head is bent close up to the empty head of Fitzjames. Hale is in as close a conference with Rich as well he can be without taking too much the fumes of the last debauch. But the buzz stops. Rich has taken the witness stand. Blood must be had at some rate, and Mr. Solicitor volunteers to perjure himself. He swears that he actually heard the prisoner deny the King's spiritual supremacy, when on a visit to him in the Tower. More turns upon the miscreant his pale, honest face, and bends upon him the clear gaze of his eye, and administers to him a rebuke which must have rung through his conscience, if he had one, and which, at any rate, has set him up in the piliory of infamy for all time. The prisoner's form and features dilated into a moral dignity that looked down upon the cringing court, and made everybody forget his squalid apparel in the outbeaming majesty of the man. "If I were a man, my Lords, that did not regard an oath, I needed not at this time, and in this place, as is well known to every one, to stand an accused person. And if this oath, Mr. Rich, which you have taken, be true, then I pray that I never see God in the face, which I would not say, were it otherwise, to gain the whole world." The prisoner goes on and narrates the conversation that did take place in the Tower, and then, turning round to the false swearer, who dares not meet his eye-" in good faith, Mr. Rich, I am sorry for your perjury more than for mine own peril. We know, sir, that neither I nor any man else ever took you to be a man of such credit as to communicate to you any matter of importance. You well know that I have been acquainted with your manner of life and conversation a long space, even from my youth up; for we dwelt long in one parish, where, as you can tell yourself, you were esteemed a dicer and a gamester, and light of tongue. And your fame is not very commendable in the Temple or the Inn where you belonged." Then turning to the court-" Does it seem likely to your honorable Lordships, that I would trust to this man, reputed of so little truth and honesty, the secrets of my conscience? I refer it to your judgments, my Lords, whether the thing is credible." The address produces a profound impression on the by-standers, and on the packed jury. Rich quails, fidgets, ex amines new witnesses, but can get no one to confirm his lie. Audley hurries on the case, as if ashamed of his business, charges the jury to convict the prisoner, and sends them out. They obey. In about a quarter of an hour they come in with 46 'Guilty," and a half-smothered groan goes round the galleries of Westminster Hall. All is lost. The barrier of "twelve good men and true," is as unsubstantial as last night's dream, and the tide of blood must roll on and roll Lords, the indictment in my conscience is sufficient." Audley "Lo! my Lords, lo! you hear what my Lord Chief Justice saith. Reus est mortis." He then pronounces the terrible sentence upon the prisoner, concluding with ordering his four quarters to be set over four gates of the city, and his head upon London Bridge. "Have you anything more to say?" says the velvet-faced Audley, bending forward. "This further only have I to say, my Lords: that like as the blessed Paul was present and consenting to the death of the promartyr Stephen, keeping their clothes that stoned him to death, and yet they be now twain holy saints in heaven, so I heartily pray, that, though your Honors have been, on earth, my judges to condemnation, we may, hereafter, meet merrily in heaven together. God preserve you all, especially my Sovereign Lord, the King, and send him faithful counsellors." As only the first two parts of this Novel have been published, we cannot, of course, pass a a final judgment upon it. The opening chapters, however, which we have read, with care, are of a kind to disappoint Mr. Reade's admirers. the author, we were prepared for many From our previous acquaintance with eccentricities of style, but what does he mean by so overcrowding his book with Gallicisms, that every sentence reads like a literal translation from the French! Strike the name of Charles Reade from the cover, and, we are very sure, that nine out of ten competent critics would pronounce the work to be a trans lation. This is not creditable to Mr. Reade's taste. That one able to write so vigorously, who is master, in fact, of terse, idiomatic English, should fall into the affectation (for an affectation it must be,) of moulding his style upon French models, is much to be regretted. It is true that the scene is laid in France, and certain of the prominent female characters are French women, but why should Mr. Reade sacrifice nature to conventionality? His personages talk not like the living personages one meets in Paris, or the provinces, but like the people in French melo-dramas and tales of the ultra-senti mental cast. We repeat, however, that we are speaking of a publication which is incomplete. We may have happened upon the worst passages, and the work may, after all, turn out a capital Novel. Nous verrons! Life.-Its Relations, Animal and Mental. Those who take up this pamphlet with the expectation of encountering the undigested matter, the immature style which, it must be acknowledged, usually distinguish such inaugural treatises, will find themselves most agreeably disappointed. Half a dozen pages are quite enough to make us oblivious of the fact that the author is a young man but recently graduated in his profession, for the style is full of strength and clearness, the thought mature, the illustrative information equally various and apposite, and the grasp of the argument wonderfully sinewy throughout. A subject more difficult of treatment could hardly have been selected. To discuss it with even tolerable accuracy and acumen would require much subtlety of mind and considerable reading; but, to approximate the general excellence of the essay before us, would, we frankly believe, demonstrate the possession of very uncommon powers, natural and acquired. Of the absolute scientific value of the dissertation," we do not pretend to judge, but, in many points, it may be regarded as a literary performance, and as such we must express the deep gratification it has afforded us. And here, we would note as especially interesting, the vigorous passages which speak of the systems of psychology, ancient and modern, of the unity of vital force, of the Bosjesman as contrasted with the highest of the brute creation, and, lastly, of the whole of the wellwritten and eloquent conclusion. Of the importance of physiology in determining, or, at least, in some degree elucidating the problem of Life and its relations, the author says: "But though the gigantic intellect of Bacon perceived and exposed the prime source of error, in all the antecedent efforts of the human mind, viz: in the mode of procedure adopted, and assured to us a logical form, at least, in the inductive method, though Descartes, with the force of an acute perception, and 95 vigorous and well trained understanding, applied it with masterly ingenuity to the great problem of human consciousness; though the critical investigations of Kant established, with a certainty yet unshaken, the possibility and extent of human knowledge; though the sensationalism of Locke was an attempt, well if not by the prescribed method all mental altogether successfully, made to analyze phenomena, to determine the true source and the manner in which they severally of our perceptions, ideas and judgments, and arise; though Scotch metaphysicians, French eclectics, have thought and arGerman transcendentalists, and gued, and written, we doubt if, from any or all of these sources, psychology has gained much that would strengthen the claims she very properly advances to be ence. considered a positive and reliable scimoulds perfected and polished, but it lay an The form, indeed, came from those unconscious, though beautiful statue, until physiology breathed into its nostrils the breath of life, and it stood up a living soul !'' expression; we like the fervent and stirThe following is no less admirable in ring force of the style. The allusion is to the Hottentot. 46 his prey, when pressed by the imperi'The moon gives him light to pursue ous necessities of hunger, and the stars direct his course when, worn with the toils of the chase, he seeks, belated, his wretched habitation; but their mild beauty gladdens not his heart, he lifts no thought beyond the immediate purpose they subserve, hears not the celestial harmony as they wheel on through the deep spaces in their triumphal march; he recognizes not the hand of Divinity in the wonderful panorama of the heavin the whisperings of the breeze; conens; bows not to His invisible presence fesses not His august might in the rushing of the wild tornado; trembles not mutterings of the thunder. at the terrors of His voice in the angry the wild flower blooms in vain; its fraFor him grance is wasted on his unheeding senses. landscape makes him pause and wonder. No beauty attracts him, no pleasing Nor sparkling stream, nor glassy river, nor verdure-clad hill, nor mountain grove stay his steps in love or awe. gorge, nor solemn wood, nor waving is dead alike to nature, to himself and to his God, a hideous scar, marring the fair face of creation, and the man and his anthropid brother might shake hands cordially over their close relationship, and neither feel a glow of shame at the mutual acknowledgement of kindred He tastes and appetites. Yet between the two there is stretched a wide, an impassable gulf! Not in the individuals, however, but in the potentiality of development, immanent in their respective germs, lies the immense distinction. The pitiable condition of the Hottentot is the result of the circumstances by which he has, from all time, been surrounded. No fostering hand has ever cultivated the seeds which lie dormant in that miserable and abject shell. But, imperfect as his cerebral organization yet is, he is possessed of a capacity for a higher condition of existence, which, though it may never be reached by the individual, is still possible to his race. The ape has in himself attained the limits of that originally inherent power, and can make little further advance, save in a few imitative acts; for the man, on the contrary, there is a progressional capacity, transmissible from generation to generation, whose depth, and breadth and height have never yet been measured." We wish that we had the space to give such an analysis of the treatise as so elaborate and able a production deserves. But this is beyond our power. We can only say to the reader, who is also a thinker, that he will find much in "Life and its Relations" to repay not merely a superficial perusal, but a close and earnest study. Songs and Ballads of the American Revolution; with Notes and Illustrations By Frank Moore. D. Appleton & Co New York. This volume impresses us with a profound respect for the patriotic fervor of our ancestors-not at all diminished by the quality of their verses, which, to say the truth, are "curiously bad." "At the time of the war (says the compiler), nearly every company had its smart one,' or poet, who beguiled the weariness of the march, or the encampment, by his minstrelsy, grave, or gay, and the imperfect fragments which survive, provoke our regret that so few of them have been preserved." As the present work contains ninety-three ballads, and covers 386 pages duodecimo, we hardly sympathise with the regret of the indefatigable editor. The book is beau can tifully printed, and the labor of collec tion must have been immense. It was necessary, of course, to consult every old journal and magazine in the country, to disturb the dust of half a century in libraries, public and private, and to brush away tenderly the cobwebs in superannuated brains, before the materiel of such a work could have been procur ed. Whether it was worth all this trouble, we do not undertake to say, but beg leave to present the reader with a few favorable specimens of the poetry thus happily rescued from oblivion. The following lines are from a ballad on Taxation, by Peter St. John, of Norwalk, Conn. |