his visage and unpacks his heart; another, | ing aside the actual, and living two lives, under similar troubles, takes advantage of develops itself, whether in poetry, lyric the knowledge they have given him, and or dramatic, painting, music, novel writing, goes on as before, keeping himself to him- it will always be found to be quite indeself and working the harder-too proud to pendent of the individual. For it is in show a single tear. We do not inquire its essence simply the power of being unwhich of the twain makes the most judi- individual, and wherever the individual is cious manifestation of himself, but which mixed up with it, the observer does not ought to take precedence as exhibiting a fail to distinguish them by an intuitive pertrue healthy imaginative power? ception. No man could, or should rather, plead for his life in the same way that he might make an ideal hero in a tragedy plead for his. The language of art is not that of real life. No living being ever conversed in Shakspearian dialogue. Yet no dialogue represents witty conversation better than the scenes with Falstaff. Though it affects the reader with the fidelity of an actual report, yet when it is analyzed, it is seen at once to be quite another thing; and besides, it is actually present.. We might glance over all of the arts and select similar instances, but it is not necessary for our purpose. Undoubtedly, though the first may exhibit the most vehemence of passion, the other is the greater artist. For the one who keeps to himself and uses his noblest faculties for his service, sending them out to delight the world with their free flights, his soul dwells apart, like a star, in a serene heaven of contemplation. He weeps, if ever, in secret places, taken unawares by the bitterness of sorrow, but soon recovers his serenity and labors to make the world more cheerful. Whereas the one who turns world-hater lives in the pity of other men; he sighs for sympathy, that always comes too late; he cannot use his powers except to relieve himself. He is like those passionate men who, when they suffer grief, play the tragedy hero to their friends-indeed, he is weaker than they; for it is the duty of one's friends to support him through his trials, and all of us have our failing points, but no one has a right to intrude his woes upon strangers. If we could look into the inner lives of the greatest artists, using that title in its largest sense, as comprehending all who ddress the world through its sensibility to peauty-poets, painters, musicians, sculpors, novelists-it would then perchance e found that the guises under which they ppeared through their works, have been a most cases the farthest possible from heir real life—unless, indeed, as of many t might be truly affirmed, we consider beir ideal life as more actual to them than heir real, inasmuch as it occupies the most f their attention. Outwardly, they may affer sickness, poverty, yea, starvation; | ithin, the rapt spirit holds high converse ith the great ones of old, the living fancy ourgeons and plumes its wings, the active tellect toils like an iron engine. It is ith such as if, while the body trailed n the dull earth, the soul expatiated in e golden regions above the sunset. In whatever fashion this power of throw VOL. I. NO. V. NEW SERIES. 36 There is a delightful class of artists, whose imagination, through accident or habit, continually personates a single character. This is a development so much resembling that of the misanthropist, that it requires some care to distinguish them. The misanthropist personates to the world an extremely ill-used person; the humorist places himself in the shoes of some very agreeable one, as Isaac Bickerstaff, Robinson Crusoe, or Elia, Where this development is very peculiar and sustained till its originator almost takes on his imagined form of being, the world is very apt to charge him with being a self-worshipper. But it does not necessarily follow, because an artist manifests himself in that way, that he was an egotist. That is a matter to be decided on other grounds, by what his friends say of him, and by the course of his life. Supposing, which requires some confidence, the reader to be able to collect and unify these discursive remarks, we will recur to the previous question, as to what rank ought to be assigned to such works as Wuthering Heights. We have said, what all who have read it know, that it was original. Douglass Jerrold, in the newspaper advertisement, that, by one of those singular coincidences which make the same idea to be expressed twice at a single instant, happened, as we wrote the last word, to stare us in the face, says, "We can promise our readers that they never read anything like it before,"-which is adding the opinion of one unsafe man to that of a good many honest people. A certain personal phase, not a pleasant one, is assumed and carried through it with great power. But this phase must have been conscious to the writer. He must have been designedly original. He must have set to his work with some such feeling towards the world, as he would probably think well expressed by the words, "There! take thut, and see how you like it!" No truly great artist ever desired to place himself before the world in that attitude. The pride of genuine nobleness is more humble. It does not condescend to don the motley and please the general with fantastic tricks. In a word, that originality which is conscious to the writer, is not genuine, and it is soon found out and disliked. Herein we fear that the author of Wuthering Heights has some unsound timbers in him; the critical underwriters, to use a mercantile figure, cannot insure him as A. No. 1. He may make fortunate voyages hereafter, but the chances are against him. All that is really great and good in this book, might have been given in a better style, without its revolting pictures. Indeed, the writer might have been personal and peculiar, and melancholy even, if he had so pleased, provided his greatest solicitude had been to please the reader. As it is, admirable as is his power, he must be ranked not among the first writers of fiction. His book has the air rather of an exposé of his life-suffering, to use a Germanism, than a purely ideal composition. The world will not long be pleased with one who treats it with so much intentional rudeness; it is an extremely sensitive creature, and there are none it cuts the acquaintance of sooner than those who take pains to be in favor with it, by letting out that they despise it. It seems when we have got through all that can be said of a writer's style, thought, power, and all qualities appertaining to literary work, that in the end, the great test by which writers must be tried, is not their excellence in particulars, but the esti mate which they allow us to make of their whole characters. A work of fiction is but the manifestation of its author's self. In books, as well as in life, character is the great criterion. And we have a right, certainly in the case of an anonymous author, to express freely opinions resulting from a fair application of it. With all one's disposition to fortify himself with reasons, in judging of a work of fiction, we inevitably come back to the first question, "How does this affect us?" All our candid examination of its merits only serves to analyze the impression with which we laid it down. For it is that alone, the color of the soul that shines through it, which really operates upon the reader. He may be interested in the story, may see its faults and excellencies of style, may yield to its power, and still at the end he may feel a relief. There may have been qualities of the author's character, as shown through his pages, to which he does not take. He may be uneasily impressed by him:-just as when, in travelling, you sit down to the tavern dinner, and there comes a man with a thin mean nose, and plants himself at your side; you speak of the day and the route; all is very well, except the je ne sais quoi, which makes you glad when he takes himself away; nothing was said beyond a few common sentences, and yet the man disgusts you. You have no particular dislike of him, yet you do not desire him to be by; you feel that you could say to him with Dogberry, "I wish your worship well; God restore you to health; and if a merry meeting may be wished, God prohibit it." Just so the reader may be impressed after finishing a novel. We believe that the world requires of an author some evidence of moral health, as well as mental power. It must feel the gentleman in a writer; the kind heart, the upright meaning, the high-mindedness, from which a deep religious feeling is almost inseparable. It does not exact "the ponderous gravity of a didactic purpose:" it is sufficient if it can be secure that it is in the society of a man of decent manners, and honest and benevolent intentions. If we are legitimately impressed by Wuthering Heights, it will not in this respect answer so universally the require ments of the public as any of the novels c Scott-because it does not bring us into contact with so agreeable a character. We instance Scott, here and above, for the reason that every reader ought to know and love him; many other names among our best novelists would equally suffice for the comparison. With Scott we feel in the society of a gentleman, a man of courage and uprightness, a pleasant travelling companion; it is, in fact, a certain remedy for nervous depression to run through one of his familiar stories-improving to bodily health as well as conducive to mental serenity. The effect of his letters is yet more invigorating. He seems to have lived, with all his troubles, in a region of perpetual sunrise, and, as we read him, there breathes upon us the air of morning. The author of Wuthering Heights is not so happily compounded. He has a peculiar obtrusive conceit about him which makes one nervous lest he commit some new gaucherie. So many of his fine passages are marred by affectation that there is an uncomfortable struggle in the mind whether to yield a too easy confidence, or be altogether disgusted. Yet the strength of his will prevails; though we would, we cannot shake him off. He is like a friend who continually annoys you with a want of tact, which is so obvious you are never sure it is not pure affectation. If you accompany this friend, for example, down Broadway, he will be suddenly smitten with the beauty of some child, and will stop and enter into conversation with it, utterly regardless of the natural astonishment of its mamma; thus forcing you to blush for him and drag him away. If you walk with him in the fields, on Staten Island, or elsewhere, he will find some huge terrapin, or boaconstrictor, and insist on bringing it home on his arm, leaving you exposed to the jeers of the populace, while he marches on sublimely insensible. He does not remember the prices of the commonest articles of purchase. But most of all he makes himself disagreeable in a book-store; he appears to consider the clerks who officiate there to be so many Admirable Crichtons, and opens his recondite reading to them, while they stare at you grinningly, as who should say, "Art thou also green as he is?" Moreover, this friend to whom the author of Wuthering Heights must be likened is continually "embroiling himself with women." He dissects to you their characters and finds out motives for them which they never dreamed of. He fancies he understands them perfectly, all the while you are quite sure he is mistaken. In his intercourse with them he sets out with a firm belief in his own infallibility, and makes all after developments conform to that hypothesis. The consequence is, he has met with some rebuffs that have soured his temper and thrown a shadow over him; yet he has lost none of his original faith in himself. Why he should have been so unsuccessful is a mystery, for his figure was well enough, and his conversation, though by no means that of one accustomed to the best society, was yet fresh and fascinating. But he looks upon women as a refined sort of men, they therefore are unable to give him their confidence. and ATHENIAN BANQUETS. BANQUET THIRD.* EARLY in the evening of the appointed day, her auditors were assembled, when Diotima entered the banquet room, followed by Euripides the tragic poet, and Meton the parasite. Meton placed himself opposite to Cymon on the left; Socrates and Euripides on the right and left, in the middle places; and Lysis below Euripides, on the left. Thus it happened, that Socrates and Cymon were together on the right of Diotima, as on the former occa sions. When the guests had fully answered the first call of hunger and the wine was brought in, which they drank not raw, but diluted, and in moderate cups, the entertainer, when a silence was made, continued her story, as follows: "The city of Babylon lies on both sides the Euphrates. The river, bending like a serpent, creeps under the mountainous wall on the northern side, and escapes through it at the south. Within the inclosures of the walls,-which are banks of sun-baked clay, piled to the height of the Acropolis, and inclosing the region of Babylon like a belt of barren hills,-gardens watered by canals, orchards bearing apples of Persia, whose seed is like a stone, fields rich with the third harvest of the year, and a population, frugal, peaceable and full of ingenious industry, are at once presented to your eyes; as if the scattered villages of a well-governed kingdom had been swept together in a mass. "Our caravan entered the city through a defile or breach in the wall, defended by gates of brass thirty cubits in height. From the place of entrance to our caravanserai near the southern wall was a day's journey; and had it not been for the regularity of the roads, the splendor and frequency of the mansions of Persian nobles, and the crowds of horsemen, foot passengers and chariots, moving in all the ways, we should have fancied ourselves traversing an open region, and not within the walls of a city. For here the houses were not crowded together as in Athens, but stood each apart, in the midst of a park; and about them the huts of weavers and handicraftsmen were scattered numerously everywhere among the gardens. "While we passed slowly over the roads and spaces of the city, wondering at the multitude of the people,-for if we had counted them it must have been by thousands at once,-I gathered many particulars from my master touching the history of the city and of the builders of its walls. Some say, and these are the Magi, that the first Babylonians came from Bactria, and began to build the great tower of Belus which rises like a ruinous hill in the southwest angle of the city. They wished to raise it in honor of the Sun and of their ancestors. This was at a period in remote antiquity, when the stars held not the places they now hold, and the race of men were long-lived and of gigantic stature. When the first Babylonians came to the Euphrates, they found the land without inhabitants; but when they began to dig canals and plant gardens, and grew wealthy, and their numbers increased, the barbarians of the north came down upon them, and robbed and spoiled them. Then their prince made a decree, that a wall should be built about the whole region, and that every man should contribute to the work: and in a few years they finished the inner wall. But, as it happened in Egypt, the custom of building for their kings and princes once established in the memory of the Babylonians, care was taken that it should not fall into desuetude. The outer wall, a work of four years of man's life, the hanging gardens of Semiramis, * For the second Banquet, see number of this journal for November, 1846;-and for the first, see the number for February, of the present year. and the great temples, beside a multitude | he is neither a story-teller, a moralizer, nor of palaces, comparable only with those of an epigrammatist; a sophist nor a maker Egypt, for extent and magnificence, were of pathetic pictures. Much less is he a thus gradually builded in the course of dramatist, like Euripides, or a master of many centuries; but the true periods of social opinions, like Diotima. He may their beginning and completion, are known smack of all these, but the business of a only to the Magi who keep the records of historian, I think, is with events, and the the tower of Belus. When the Chaldeans, acts of cities, as they are moved by their a people of the north, descended upon common desires, fears and aspirations." Mesopotamia and took Babylon, they caused the outer wall to be restored and heightened; but since the Persians have the empire, the princes oppress the people, and neglect their walls. "Imagine a nation of weavers and handicraftsmen employed in every species of manufacture, living under a tyranny which forbids the possibility of honest riches, and you have pictured to yourselves the population of Babylon. Their manufactures are taken down the Euphrates and carried by Phoenician mariners to all parts of the world. By caravans the stuffs and products of Babylon are distributed over Asia, Bactria, and the north. By these means a perpetual stream of every kind of riches is poured back by commerce into the city, enriching the masters who govern it, but not the multitude who are their slaves. In Babylon, as in Egypt, the people are slaves." When Diotima came to this point in her story, Euripides, who leaned upon his left side with his eyes declined, and listening attentively, looked up at the narrator with a smile, and made a movement to speak. Diotima perceiving it, paused instantly, and waited for what he would say. "I think," said he, "you would write a good history if you chose to undertake it." "I think so too," echoed Lysis: "Diotima's narrative is very agreeable." "I will venture to contradict you both," said Socrates. "I do not think it lies in Diotima's power to make a good history." Euripides, a polite man, and ambitious withal, who would rather flatter than offend, though he knew Socrates well, could not conceal his surprise at the seeming rudeness of his remark. "Your reason, friend," said he; "your profound reason,' "She gives us pictures, descriptions, conversations, and no history; your historian, to my understanding, is he who bears you strongly along on a stream of events; You are over nice with distinctions, Socrates," replied the other; "and here seems to be one made without a difference : nor did I ever hear you so positive about a trifle. If I describe a city, why not as well the acts of the city: if the deeds of one man, why not the deeds of many men ?" When you," replied Socrates, "excite our pity with the griefs of Alcestis, consigning herself to death for love's sake, you move us with a private sorrow, and we are mingled in sympathy with the affection of a wife and husband; beyond this you look for no effect. Homer also shows us Achilles in his tent, mourning for Patroclus, or pictures the tender parting of Hector with his wife and child; but these are only the ornaments of the work, the foliage of the column. The individuals are swept along in the torrent of destiny; one by one they rise, triumph for an instant, and are lost forever; but still the action moves on and the war is never at an end. But when Orestes enters upon the stage, it is Orestes and not a nation, or a history, that interests us. Therefore, I argue, Diotima is not a historian by nature; her descriptions are of individuals, of passions, of entertainments, and always of the quiet and the easily representable; but to me Homer seems to be the inventor of history, because he first subordinated the persons to the action. To describe the virtue of a hero, or of an entire city contending and bearing up against a common calamity, be it of war, of the inroads of the ocean, or of pestilence, or violence from abroad, or of vice and injury in the city,--in short, of all those sorrows which the gods inflict upon nations and races of men,-this seems to me history; and if it be done as Homer does it, from the heart, tempering all with love, with heroic courage, the interest of the event, and the hope of fame, it is epical, as I think, and needs to be written in verse. For, as the whispers of lovers |