our regular manufacturers of base coin, who make a trade of passing counterfeit good writing.

Indeed, we have so many such, and the general vice of carelessness in style so affects our hasty-writing age, that the very purity and neatness of the style of Monaldi will at first appear so striking as to seem strained and obtrusive. Yet if we turn suddenly from several weeks of the ordinary current of newspapers and other such writing of the hour, which every one reads, (except those whose necessities oblige them to write it,) to the pages of any of our prose classics, Addison or Goldsmith for example, the same effect will be perceived. The first impression of a pure style is therefore, under such circumstances, no sure test. We must go on at first with an effort, till we become lost in the author; and if we can become so lost, and at the same time still have the consciousness of a pure and graceful flow of expression ever present with us, harmonizing with, not obstructing, the growth of emotion, is not this a higher enjoyment than to lose all consciousness of style whatever? It of course must be; for it is bringing into play another faculty of our nature; pleasing, not lulling, the critical discernment, while the imagination pursues her lofty flight; it is directing our air voyage over a diversified champaign, rather than over a desolate sea, or a region of shapeless clouds.

But the style of Monaldi, though pure, is not rigid; it bends to the story, and this shows how naturally it must have been written. In the opening chapters, it is quiet and reflective, suited to the tone of the thoughtful character-drawing with which the piece commences; as it goes on, we have a vivid epigrammatic dialogue; then the most passionate scenes, all built upon the original reflective back-ground, which is ever coming in, like a prevailing harmony, to sustain the unity of the tone. Finally, nothing can be finer for harmony of style with the thought and with its previous level, than the conclusion. There, where there was so much temptation to be falsely eloquent, the author has so resolutely preserved the dominant tone, that the very melody of the sentences almost gives an effect that we are approaching a concluding harmony; the end begins to

be felt a long way off, and at last it dies away with the lofty grandeur of an old Handelian cadence. How far this effect is to be attributed to the pure style, as apart from thought, it is not necessary to ask ourselves, since if the style had not much to do with it, and did not much assist the other, the effect could not be so complete. This conclusion is certainly one of the finest instances of the power of natural reserve in the language.

How admirably suited is this simple, pure, and elevated style, to the tone and passion! We can fancy that a superficial reader of trash should take up the book, and after running over a page or two, throw it, with a flippant sneer at its "purism;" there is a great variety of readers among the educated as well as uneducated, who are not at all up to the appreciation of such writing and such thinking, not from any fault of theirs, but because the providence of Heaven did not furnish them with the requisite susceptibility. For all such, Monaldi will be too "slow" a book; they will want something more dashy and steaming; they will require stories where the passion overpowers the judgment, and sometimes runs riot with the intellect, in order to be stirred up thoroughly; they cannot conceive a mind so constituted that it shall take on, in the production of a work of art, a higher life through its whole substance-in its reason, its apprehension, its invention, its emotion, its consciousness.

But there is a smaller class who can relish all forms of art, from simple fairy stories, where the eye only is amused with pictures, to lofty tragedies, like Hamlet or Macbeth, where the whole soul is brought into activity, and made to experience, as Coleridge says, "a sense of its possible greatness."

These will not fail to be delighted with the beautiful consentaneousness of the style and thought, particularly in the opening chapters of Monaldi. The extracts we have given may be sufficient to make this excellence somewhat apparent; but in the entire book it is one of the most striking qualities, and shows how perfectly natural is the purity and restrained elegance of diction which the lovers of a showy rhetoric will be ready to cavil at. For, as the style is elevated, pure, and simple, so is

the thought; we refer to the abstract, dry light, the naked offspring of the intellect. There is not a page that is not laden with observations which seem to be the last fruit of experience. Observe the introduction of the two characters in the opening chapter: there is more genuine truth evolved in those few paragraphs, than would furnish forth a whole swarm of our modern waterflies, "spacious in the possession of dirt" our transcendental literary Osrics, who only "get the tune of the time, and the outward habit of encounter; a kind of yesty collection, which carries them through the most fanned and winnowed opinions; and do but blow them to their trial, the bubbles are out." Yet there is no affectation of profundity in Monaldi; not a thought which does not strike the mind as so simple and obvious, it seems wonderful that it should not have been so expressed before. We read with a constant assent, ever unconsciously murmuring, "How true!" When we bring the crude and formless metaphysics of such writers as George Sand and Bulwer upon the retina of the fancy, at the same moment with this true philosophy, their impression is so faint and evanescent, it does not in the least affect its previous image; they do not obstruct the radiance of such thinking any more than the substance of a comet hides the light of the For here we see that the purpose is not display, but an earnest impulse to know the truth and hold it fast. This quality of character, joined to a sensitive organization, leads its possessor, through observation and reflection, to great ultimate truths, which are real discoveries. And these discoveries, when they are original, are expressed in such a way as they never can be when they are acquired; the writer speaks with a guardedness of phraseology and a positive assurance of tone which shows that he has thought the matter over and over, held it in his mind, carefully considered it, applied it in practice, and watched its operation; in short, that it is a part of himself and not a mere excursion of his thinking faculty, or a flow of conventional ideas. This is the individualization of thinking. This is original thought. This is the fruit of life treasured and given to the world.

sun.

And the result of all such thinking is,

that we come back to old, common, and universal views of human nature, with refreshed and clearer insight. Hence all the great artists and thinkers dwell forever among great solemn truths, the same that were known ages ago, but which they, each one, discern afresh, with a vision so keen that they cause others to fancy they see them also, and thus hold them forever in the world's eye. The superficial artists and thinkers fly off into unclassified species and singularities, and cannot dilate themselves to a comprehension of what is grand and eternal-their little optics will not contain so wide a field of vision.

Hence there are many well-disposed persons and very fair judges of every-day books, who will not be able to discover the excellence of the thought in Monaldi. Just as the style will seem to some too still and careful, so to these, the reflections will appear too obvious and not sufficiently fine. They will stumble upon ideas that never entered their minds before, but which come in so naturally that they will fancy them to be familiar visitors; others which they may see are new, will yet appear so easy that they will not deem them worthy of respect; in a word, they will not be able to appreciate the thinking they will meet with here, because they will not be able to lift themselves up to it. party of grasping and cajoling speculators, comes in a gentleman of refinement and reserve, they fancy he is afraid of them— and even the women often thus despise one who could devour forty thousand of their husbands and brothers while waiting for his breakfast-so when the thoughts of such an one are spread on paper, there are coarse, vain, weak heads enough to smile and say to themselves, "This is harmless stuff!"

As when among a

The truth is, there is a great majority of minds in the world who never can understand anything but hard knocks; that is the reason we are obliged to take so much pains with our laws, and our constitutions, to keep them in order. All these cannot appreciate any kind of art, let them try ever so much; they can only know what is told them they have not the art sense. How many such can any artist call before his mind's eye! The conceited newspaper critic, who treats you as an inferior all the while you are making a butt

We have often fancied that if the whole range of thought were gone over, of which the mind is capable, and all thoughts considered with reference to their origin-that then we might arrive at some simple originals, fewer in number than the material elements, which should contain the germs and roots of them all. Thus the plain view of human character and motive set forth in the Holy Scriptures might be seen to be not only true, but the most profound that can be taken; and those torsos of ancient ballads, which abound in all literatures, might be seen to have survived the wrack of time, not by the result of accident, but from their originating in greatness and being thence adapted to the highest as well as lowest conditions of being. For it is as much as the most honest and earnest seeker after truth can do, to conquer the downward inclination to profundity, and when we consider how many there are who have no scruples, but are ever anxiously endeavoring to astonish their fellows in this wise, what wonder is it that generation after generation should be kept wandering in dark mazes and crooked ways, when, if they would but look upward, they might walk in the direct beams of the eternal sun! If one could experience all, could go through all the joys, sorrows, love, hope, grief-all that ever was, or can be suffered, and come out of it with a still unblenched resolution, what ideas, what forms of thought and expression, may we suppose such an one would use in addressing his race-supposing his memory perfect and his mind capable of grasping and rending asunder the veil of his spirit? What could he say more than, "I have lived; I have lain down and gat me up day by day; I have eaten and drank; I have loved and

venge; hope deserted me, then came resolution; stung by the world's injustice, I turned at bay, and made me a name among men; now I have found no rest, and I am willing to give up my life, for I believe in the mercy of Heaven." But each particular of his experience he would communicate in a large, simple, comprehensive way, that would include all varieties of its kind, and hence would be intelligible to every living being. This would certainly be as great thinking as can be conceived. And still if such an individual were to arise and address the world in that manner, we cannot suppose that he would be understood and reverenced as a teacher. No--not for years. The crowd would still move on, amusing itself with metaphysical bubbles, while the prophet would only have credit for attempting to teach it what it knew already.

We have quoted largely from those parts of Monaldi which contain criticism of painting, not only because anything on that subject from its author must be read with interest, but more for their evident intrinsic merit. The criticism is of that sort which sinks into the mind and is never forgotten. There is hardly a technical word in it, but yet it goes at once to the very root of the matter. It deserves to be treasured along with Mozart's humorous oracular decisions in music.* Still there is nothing in it hard to be understood, and any reader who does not comprehend its main purport at a glance, may rest assured he never will; he may feel its truth in a higher and wider sense as he lives on and grows in experience, but the essence of the distinctions is as manifest in a moment as they ever can be. For they are great simple truths, as obvious as the pres

*For example :-"Your symphony is too much

crowded, and to hear it partially or piecemeal, would be, by your permission, like beholding an ant hill. I mean to say as if Eppes, the devil, were in it: Some compose fairly enough with other people's ideas, not possessing any themselves; others, who have ideas of their own, do not understand how to treat and master them. The last is your case; only do not be angry, pray! But your song has a beautiful cantabile and your dear Fraenzl like as much to see as to hear. The coda of the ought to sing it very often to you, which I should minuet may well clatter or tinkle, but it will never produce music; sapienti sat. I am not very expert

at writing on such subjects; I rather show at once how it ought to be done." Letter to the Baron V—.

ence of matter, and at the same time as little considered. Superficial thinkers who read them will say to themselves, "It needed no ghost to tell us that!" but the truly discerning will value them as the exponents of the artist's character and purposes. Those who have hearts themselves will need no panegyrist to point to the greatness or the value to art, of those few sentences about the divine Rafaelle; but there are a sort who will prefer to fancy themselves wiser by reading long pages of technicalities, that never come to the purpose. Mr. Jenkinson, in the Vicar of Wakefield, instructs George how to make a figure among connoisseurs of this calibre: "You will do very well if you observe two rules always remark that the picture would have been better if the artist had

taken more pains, and secondly, always praise the works of Pietro Perugino."

Had only the principles which might be deduced from the few passages respecting painting, in the opening chapters of this story, (we have not quoted half of them,) been brought out, illustrated, invested, with the care a person would have used toward them to whom they were his whole stock in trade, we should have had volumes instead of paragraphs. But the author of Monaldi was too rich in ideas of his art, and its works, to care to husband his thoughts; neither could he be profuse or ostentatious in the display of them. He simply introduces them because they are essential to the development of his ideal character, whom he, naturally enough, made a painter. And the result is, that they are in reality far more effective than they could have been in the garb of formal

criticism.

For they come to us under the modifying influences of the author's imaginative power. That is to say, the tone and keeping of the tale, the expression which seems to clothe the face of him who is all through talking with us, his character as here written down, gives a force and meaning to his words which otherwise they could not have. We know better how Rafaelle must have appeared to him, from the manifestation he has given of himself. We learn to see with his eyes. Hence this tale is fuller of instruction for artists than a cold, ill-natured, or low-minded book could possibly be, though it were stuffed

with acuteness and technical learning. The lustre of the painter's radiant soul shines over it; the silent power of his imagination bears us along with him through a more noble and refined life, than we could venture to image to ourselves in this dusty road of ordinary existence. We rise from reading him with a feeling that the old boyish notion of a gentleman was not so wholly absurd as the bad world would make us believe. We feel our confidence refreshed, the manly pride invigorated, the resolution established. Come not near us now, thou dark phantom of Care, nor you, ye bitter mockeries of the Past! For here is a charm, that is proof against your most deadly influences the impierceable armor of the spirit of youth. We feel as we read, that the glory and the dream shall not pass away; and that, though we have fallen, yet will we not be utterly cast down, for underneath this gloomy, actual day, there is a greener earth and a serener heaven, where souls who have tasted the fern seed of high conceits, may walk invisible, apart from their muddy vesture of decay!

And what is most excellent in the imagined phase in which this work is conceived and wrought, is that it is not a condition put on, or with difficulty assumed, and widely differing from the writer's actual state, but it seems a part of his real life. He must have passed his days in the habit of thinking and feeling he here exhibits as author. For so, and not otherwise, could he have attained this peculiar, marked, simple elegance of style, thought, and tone, upon which we have been commenting. His daily walk and conversation could not have been far below the level of this volume-lofty and pure as it is. Had it been so, we should have had a greater impetuosity and less certainty; we should not have had more of a tendency to fine bursts and relapses, and less perfection in every part. The fire of genius, instead of burning with a steady glow, would have now flamed up, now died away into a fitful glimmer.

But there are many observers who cannot see any fire except that which is wrathfully blazing. They judge of genius by the immediate difficulties it overcomes, and think that alone powerful which bears up its possessors for short periods with

violent throes. Now we should remember that it is not the birds who fly highest that make the most flapping. The bird of our country, whom our poets and artists ought to imitate, measures whole territories without stirring a pinion. His home is in the upper region, and frequently he sails supreme so near the sun that our dull eyes can no more behold him.

Is not this rather the most powerful genius, that can bear up its possessor so that his ideal shall pervade his whole being, and he thus shall come to be the actual embodiment of his own high fancies, and shall address us with the simple humility of one who has unconsciously taken on refinement till it has become a part of his very self? Milton evidently thought so, when he says that for one to write a great epic, his life ought also to be a true poem. And that this is so with all great poets and artists, the meagre accounts we get of them out of their works very plainly show. They are men translated, and speak to us out of the heaven to which their high imagination has raised them. The smaller ones, with whom the vulgar have more sympathy, inasmuch as they think they could easily imitate them, do but flutter up a little to hear the cackling beneath them, and soon cease to be remembered as phenomena.

The same mental constitution, or genius, which guided the author in his taste, and gave him the power of combining so great a carefulness in style and thought, and raised his whole being into a life so fraught with delicacy, tenderness and elegance, as well as abounding in strength, impelled him also in his choice of characters, and in the manner of their development. Never were ideal personages more vividly set before us; and yet their qualities are brought out in such a way that it is a philosophical study to examine the drawings. The author is so constantly pointing out the secret springs of their actions, that we are made acquainted, not with the surface merely, their obvious purposes and doings, but with the motives which lie concealed from their own consciousness, so that we read them inside and out; and as a nice observer may see a little of the Hamlet in all of Shakspeare's high characters, in Prospero, Richard the Third, Macbeth, Henry the Fifth, etc., so

here we may see that the principal persons all bear the reflective tinge-enough to place them far above melodrama, and give them no mean position among the best productions of the highest and most rarely successful style of character-painting.

The same characteristics of the artist appear also in the characters themselves, considered as living beings. Love and gentleness shed a benign influence over all of them. Even the wretch Fialto shows pangs of remorse enough to make us pity him, (as Burns pities the "deil;") Maldura repents-indeed, he is in many respects so large-minded and noble, that, bad as he is, we never quite lose a respect for him; Landi is a kind father; Monaldi, though overflowing with impulse, and sensitive to the very motion of the air, bears up for a long while against proofs to which a small soul would have yielded at once, and commands our sympathy longer than Othello does in reading the play, or seeing it with the part of Desdemona a little brought forward, in the hands of a good actress. But what shall be said of Rosalia? Truly, she is "blest above women,"-in fiction at least for never was there brought before the vision a more perfect picture of a loving wife; never were the girl and the matron so harmoniously combined; never was there created in all the pages of novels and poems, a more charming lady. And yet she is not like any other in the glorious sisterhood. She is an individual, as much as though she had actual being. In brief, she is so truly present to the fancy, and inspires such a feeling, that (all epithets being too poor) it seems most decorous to "let expressive silence muse her praise." She was a most dear lady, but now she is a saint in heaven!

We suspect it was originally intended by the author that her husband should kill her, but that when he came to that place he had not the heart to let him do it, though, perhaps, it had been happier for her, in the end, had they done so. He tries in vain to bring them together after the murderous attempt; but with such natures, could Monaldi's reason have been spared, a re-union could hardly have been happy; there would always be the terrible recollection, and of two such hearts, each would always be borrowing sorrow on ac