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through death, his wife and his little ones! Let no one start back from this idea as unnatural-as only horror, without any trarie grandeur or pathos. We want no beter assurance of genius of a high order, than the manner in which this most momentous part of the tale is conceived and executed. In only an ordinary mind, such an event as is about to be related would assume a revolting form. The attempt is hazardous, but the author comes off with a full triumph. Wieland gives an account of this occurrence in a free, fearless, and enthusiastic manner, at the close of his trial for murder. We can give but a portion of the impressive and affecting scene; but the whole is an exhibition of the author's highest power.

While she was gone, I strode along the entry. The fellness of a gloomy hurricane but faintly resembled the discord that reigned in my mind. To omit this sacrifice must not be; yet my sinews had refused to perform it. No alternative was offered. To rebel against the mandate was impossible; but obedience would render me the executioner of my wife. My will was strong, but my limbs refused their office.

"She returned with a light; I led the way to the chamber; she looked round her; she lifted the curtain of the bed; she saw nothing. "At length, she fixed inquiring eyes upon e. The light now enabled her to discover in By visage what darkness had hitherto concealHer cares were now transferred from my ter to myself, and she said in a tremulous ice, Wieland! you are not well; what ails you? Can I do nothing for you?'

That accents and looks so winning should arm me of my resolution, was to be expected. My thoughts were thrown anew into anarchy. spread my hand before my eyes that I might ot see her, and answered only by groans. She ook my other hand between hers, and pressing to her heart, spoke with that voice which ad ever swayed my will, and wafted away sor

OW.

My friend! my soul's friend! tell me thy anse of grief. Do I not merit to partake with bee in thy cares? Am I not thy wife?'

"This was too much. I broke from her emrace, and retired to a corner of the room. In is pause, courage was once more infused into je. I resolved to execute my duty. She folwwed me, and renewed her passionate entreaes to know the cause of my distress.

"I raised my head and regarded her with teadfast looks. I muttered something about eath, and the injunctions of my duty. At these Fords she shrunk back, and looked at me with

a new expression of anguish. After a pause, she clasped her hands and exclaimed

"O Wieland! Wieland! God grant that I am mistaken; but surely something is wrong. I see it; it is too plain; thou art undone-lost to me and to thyself. At the same time she gazed on my features with intensest anxiety, in hope that different symptoms would take place. I replied to her with vehemence—

"Undone! No; my duty is known, and I thank my God that my cowardice is now vanquished, and I have power to fulfil it. Cathathee, but must not spare. Thy life is claimed rine! I pity the weakness of thy nature; I pity from my hands; thou must die!'

· What

"Fear was now added to her grief. mean you? Why talk you of death? Bethink yourself, Wieland; bethink yourself, and this fit will pass. O why came [hither! Why did you drag me hither?

"I brought thee hither to fulfil a divine command. I am appointed thy destroyer, and destroy thee I must. Saying this I seized her wrists. She shrieked aloud, and endeavored to free herself from my grasp; but her efforts were vain.

"Surely, surely, Wieland, thou dost not mean it. Am I not thy wife? and wouldst thou kill me? Thou wilt not; and yet--I see-thou art Wieland no longer! A fury resistless and horrible possesses thee--spare me-spare-help help

"Till her breath was stopped she shrieked for help-for mercy. When she could speak no longer, her gestures, her looks appealed to my compassion. My accursed hand was irresolute and tremulous. I meant thy death to be sudden, thy struggles to be brief. Alas! my heart was infirm; my resolves mutable. Thrice I slackened my grasp, and life kept its hold, though in the midst of pangs. Her eyeballs started from their sockets. Grimness and distortion took the place of all that used to bewitch me into transport, and subdue me into reverence.

"I was commissioned to kill thee, but not to torment thee with the foresight of thy death; not to multiply thy fears, and prolong thy agonies. Haggard, and pale, and lifeless, at length thou ceasedst to contend with thy destiny.

"This was a moment of triumph. Thus had I successfully subdued the stubbornness of human passions; the victim which had been demanded was given; the deed was done past recall.

"I lifted the corpse in my arms and laid it. on the bed. I gazed upon it with delight. Such was the elation of my thoughts, that I even broke into laughter. I clapped my hands and exclaimed, 'It is done! My sacred duty is fulfilled! To that I have sacrificed, O my God! thy last and best gift, my wife!'

"For a while I thus soared above frailty. I imagined I had set myself forever beyond the

reach of selfishness; but my imaginations were false. This rapture quickly subsided. I looked again at my wife. My joyous ebullitions vanished, and I asked myself who it was whom I saw? Methought it could not be Catharine. It could not be the woman who had lodged for years in my heart; who had slept, nightly, in my bosom; who had borne in her womb, who had fostered at her breast, the beings who called me father; whom I had watched with delight, and cherished with a fondness ever new and perpetually growing; it could not be the

same.

"Where was her bloom! These deadly and

blood-suffused orbs but ill resemble the azure and ecstatic tenderness of her eyes. The lucid | stream that meandered over that bosom, the glow of love that was wont to sit upon that cheek, are much unlike these livid stains and this hideous deformity. Alas! these were the traces of agony; the gripe of the assassin had been here!

"I will not dwell upon my lapse into desperate and outrageous sorrow. The breath of heaven that sustained me was withdrawn, and I sunk into mere man. I leaped from the floor; I dashed my head against the wall; I uttered screams of horror; I panted after torment and pain. Eternal fire and the bickerings of hell, compared with what I felt, were music and a

bed of roses.

"I thank my God that this degeneracy was transient; that he deigned once more to raise me aloft. I thought upon what I had done as a sacrifice to duty, and was calm. My wife was dead; but I reflected that, though this source of human consolation was closed, yet others were still open. If the transports of a husband were no more, the feelings of a father had still scope for exercise. When remembrance of their mother should excite too keen a pang, I would look upon them and be comforted.

"While I revolved these ideas, new warmth flowed in upon my heart-I was wrong. These feelings were the growth of selfishness. Of this I was not aware, and to dispel the mist that obscured my perceptions, a new effulgence and a new mandate were necessary.

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From these thoughts I was recalled by a ray that was shot into the room. A voice spake like that which I had before heard-Thou hast done well; but all is not done-the sacrifice is incomplete-thy children must be offered-they must perish with their mother!

The subsequent events may be easily imagined. Only two or three incidents need further be mentioned. Wieland, after his conviction for murder, is confined in prison as a victim of madness. Subsequently, a lucid interval reveals to him the ll enormity of all that he has done, and

he perishes by his own hand. Clara sinks. as it seems for a time, into an immovable despair. She afterwards recovered, in a measure, her serenity of mind; went to Europe with an uncle; was joined by Pleyel, to whom his severe charges had been shown to be entirely groundless: and was at last married to him she still heartily loved. Carwin confesses his fatal errors, and, so far as is in human power, is forgiven. An unworthy connection with the servant of Clara, as well as an unwarrantable curiosity respecting the affairs of the Wielands, had betrayed him into many difficulties, from which he could in no way extricate himself but by the aid of a singular faculty--which he had in former times carefully cultivated, but which he had long since determined never to use again-commonly named ventriloquism. This name, indeed, is inadequate to express the exact nature of the powers exerted by Carwin, yet we employ this word as the nearest approach to a description of the character of his agency that a single word can give. Of such a kind. then, was the voice first heard by Wieland. when approaching the temple. From such a source were the words heard by him and Pleyel, while talking in the same place Clara-and all the sounds that had an -the whispers heard in the closet o appearance of the supernatural. It wa an artfully imitated conversation betwee Carwin and Clara, that Pleyel had over heard, and from thence inferred the hypo risy and crime of the latter. dreamed not, bad as he really was, of wha results he was about to be the occasion and the knowledge of these events mad him truly miserable.

Carw

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Such is an outline of this tale-a mez gre synopsis of a work that must be reas the author has written it, in order: convey a just notion of its merits, or carry to the heart its real power. cannot forbear stating here our regre that a man of such celebrity and auther ty in the republic of letters as Mr. Pre cott has since become should have und taken the biography of one for whom i could claim no higher consideration, an in the increase of whose reputation could feel no more interest.

*

When w

*See Sparks's Am. Biography, vol. I. The ver

see the author of "Wieland" mentioned, in recent works of English criticism, in connection with the most popular names in the same department of literature, as a man of acknowledged originality and genius-in England, we say, where it seems manifest that a foreign novelist of only inferior abilities would very soon be forgot ten, if ever heard of at all; we do not, indeed, at once take it for granted that this author was one of the chief spirits of his age, but we do look upon him as deserving a respectful consideration; and we strongly feel, so soon as actual examination has prepared us to assent to all that has been said in his praise elsewhere, that his memory should be intrusted to hands that shall tenderly and sympathetically build up a permanent record of his life. The Life of Brown, which his intimate friend, Mr. William Dunlap, has given us, is undoubtedly much nearer in intent to what we could desire; yet sympathy and good intentions alone will not suffice to make a good biographer. The warm interest and the patient research of Mr. Dunlap should have been added to the talents of Mr. Prescott as a narrator, and his usually discriminating judgment in matters of taste. We do not complain, nevertheless, because both these authors have fallen short of perfection. We should have been content with considerably less than this. But in Mr. Prescott's biography there are one or two particulars in respect to which we must be permitted to express, with all due deference, some degree of dissatisfaction.

We are surprised at the contempt with which this biographer speaks of the agency given to ventriloquism in "Wieland." *

appearance of haste and indifference which per vades this work-however it may excuse literary defects-ought certainly to have afforded a serious objection to its insertion in so popular and permanent a series of biographies.

We are not ignorant of the many low and degrading associations connected with the word, (a word, indeed, that is nowhere found in Brown's own pages,) nor how easy a matter it is by a little misrepresentation of the author's use of this instrumentality, in the development of his plot, to throw ridicule upon the whole story. Whatever was the design of the biographer, he has certainly brought about this last result in the most perfect manner. He has committed the error of representing the novelist as keeping up, all the way through his work, a constant excitement of mystery and wonder-of machinery seemingly supernatural, or, at all events, of the highest order of the unaccountable -a continual belief of some great agency altogether beyond the reach of ordinary experience-all of which proves in the end to be only the low tricks of a miserable juggler. How many will be caught reading a book of which they have received such intimations?

Viewed in its true light, the case is quite different-unless we greatly misapprehend. The whole destiny of the Wielands is made to rest upon the character of Wieland himself. All the calamities that follow, unspeakable as they are, the author very plainly attempted to attach entirely to the uneducated and ungoverned religious passion of the main actor in these events; and he has, beyond question, succeeded. The mistake of supposing the chief agency to be devolved on Carwin, could hardly be made, we think, by one who had given these volumes a thorough, continuous reading. Especial pains seem to have been taken to show how insignificant and how purposeless are the instrumentality of Carwin, and his tricks: nay, the very necessities of the fiction required this agency to be as mean and contemptible as possible. It was absolutely necessary that "confirmations strong as holy writ" should be formed out of "trifles light as air." When it was the main purpose to make out a religious frenzy more powerful than the strongest promptings of reason and the tenderest ties of affection, ought the impulse which sets that frenzy in motion to be sublime, and, to all ordi

"The key to the whole of this mysterious agency which controls the circumstances of the story is-ventriloquism! ventriloquism exerted for the very purpose by a human fiend, from no motives of revenge or hatred, but pure diabolical malice, or as he would make us believe, and the author seems willing to adopt this absurd version of it, as a mere practical joke! The reader who has been gorged with this feast of horrors, is tempted to throw away the book in disgust, at finding himself the dupe of such paltry jugglery, which, whatever sense be given to the term ventriloquism, is alto-nary minds at least, irresistible? or ought gether incompetent to the various phenomena of it to be altogether too weak and insufficient sight and sound with which the story is so plenti

fully seasoned."-Life of C. B. Brown, pp. 141, 142.

to have any influence over a man in his

right mind? What is the issue? It matters very little to assert that the alleged means by which Carwin produces, indirectly, such tremendous effects, "is altogether incompetent to the various phenomena of sight and sound" which are narrated, when it is known, in the first place, that some of the most wonderful and important of these phenomena are left (precisely according to Mr. Prescott's wish) without an attempt at explanation; and secondly, that as to all the occurrences which are accounted for by ventriloquism, the main efficacy of that power, as well as the appearances to which it gives rise, are all derived chiefly from the mind acted on rather than from the more ostensible agent and agency. Pleyel, indeed, hears a feigned conversation, in which the voice of Clara is so nearly imitated as to produce a perfect illusion. Here there is nothing that wears the least tinge of a supernatural character. Here all the responsibility rests on the ventriloquist and his art. The illusion depended not at all, for its efficacy, on the mind of Pleyel. He credits the evidence of one of his senses, just as he would do in any other case-and is duped, without himself conspiring with his enemies. But the case of Wieland, we shall attempt to show, was considerably differ

ent.

Coleridge asserts, in his oracular way, that Othello was not impelled to the murder of his wife by the passion of jealousy; but that the proofs of the guilt of Desdemona, so far as he was able to judge of them, amounted to a certainty; and that the conduct of a husband, acting under the certainty of the falsehood of his wife, must be referred to some other impulse than jealousy. Now, there is a striking similarity in certain particulars, though there is abundant diversity in othersbetween the catastrophe of Othello and that of "Wieland," as well as in the means by which, in each case, the catastrophe is brought about. There is, indeed, nothing that looks in the least like imitation: it is evident that the resemblance in question is purely accidental. Both the dramatist and the novelist drew from the same common fountain-Nature. Othello, as we understand the drama, goaded on into a persuasion which only a mind susceptible of the deepest and most bitter jealousy

could have adopted on such trivial grounds, strangles his wife, out of revenge. Wieland, led on by a series of occurrences, most unimportant in themselves, and respecting which he takes no pains to ascertain any other cause than the supernatural one which his impassioned mind first suggests-nay, without even suspending his judgment until something more than his first vague impression should be furnished, as a ground of decision becomes so fully confirmed in his religious frenzy, that he sacrificed his wife out of obedience to a sense of duty. Now Coleridge regards the few trivial circumstances and chances, that work such a madness in the brain of Othello, as very sufficient reasons for inducing that fatal persuasion, and vents all his wrath, of course, upon Iago. But Mr. Prescott has none of that reverential feeling for his subject, which led the critic of Shakspeare to adopt any conclusion, however absurd, rather than admit his fallibility. He regards the means by which the fatal frenzy of Wieland is wrought up to its highest pitch, as inadequate, unimportant, contemptible; and stops not to look a little further for the justification of his author in the character of Wieland himself, but permits all his indignation to rest on the novelist, who has served up such a "feast of horrors," without the least palliating circumstance to be offered in his defence. Coleridge is certainly wrong-yet he is consistent with himself. We think Mr. Prescott was equally wrong, yet not with just the same consistency. A novelist who had made such a woful mistake as he attributes to Brown, could not, by any possibility, deserve from his pen a biography of even two hundred duodecimo pages. But for the weight which will always attach to an opinion coming from so distinguished a source, we should have taken much less pains to point out an error so evident, that few could have ever adopted it, if recommended by any name less influential than that of the author of the three most popular histories of modern times.

The author of "Wieland” had, evidently, a deep and (for one of his years) uncommon knowledge of man. This knowledge is the basis on which all real genius must rest. Brown seems, to be sure, to have had comparatively little acquaintance

with individuals and classes of men. His intercourse with society was, undoubtedly, mainly confined within the limits of a particular circle, in his native city. In his last years, however, he saw more of men in different regions, and became more familiar with their various customs and peculiarities. But a profound knowledge of man by no means requires a great latitude of observation-certainly does not depend on it alone. We find in the novels of our author but few practical remarks on men and manners; yet when such do occur, they are usually just and felicitous. His chief power lay in tracing out from the deep, hidden springs of the human soul-from the region of motives, and impulses, and purposes-a connected and consistent series of actions and events moving on to momentous issues.

The circumstances in which a mind like Wieland's is made to spring up and come to maturity, are as adequate as we are able to conceive. In the first place, it is evident that from no quarter of the world could such a mind originate so naturally as from Germany. And then to trace his origin to a family of high and noble blood, and to an individual of ardent poetical temperament, whose love had wrought his temporal ruin, was equally suitable and appropriate. But above all, the morose and solitary habits of his father, his deep fanaticism, and his mysterious and terrible end, have a fit relation to the singular being, who was to bring such overwhelming calamities on those who were embosomed in tranquillity, and plenty, and social happiness. The mother of Wieland ought of necessity to be a disciple of Count Zanzendorf. Clara inherited the qualities of the maternal side, with only the better traits of the Wielands. Her brother gathered up in his nature all the leading characteristics of his paternal ancestors, with only a modifying tinge from the religion of his mother. So far, all is perfectly natural, and the conception truly just.

The gradual progress of Wieland's mind into that extraordinary state, which constitutes the most impressive feature of the whole story, is admirably portrayed, and the means by which it is effected are, in our opinion, every way unexceptionable. The mysterious and dreadful death of the

father could not but have a large place in the memory and imagination of one who was just old enough, at the time of its occurrence, to understand all its realities, and yet just enough a child to mingle with his knowledge of the facts every wild and wonderful conception. That violent end is, to the last, a mystery unexplained. It should be so. The novelist had a right to make this demand upon our credulity, and the necessities of his story compelled him to do it. Any attempt at an explanation of this occurrence would have appeared feeble at the close of such exciting scenes as those which follow, and to have preceded them would entirely defeat the purpose for which it was introduced. Yet this was an event equally known to Clara-one which she had equally witnessed at an age susceptible of all the strange emotions which it would be likely to excite in the mind of her brother. It was an incident well known to all the other characters of the tale. That strange calamity was, indeed, an adequate cause for marvel and even for awe; and this was the full extent to which it influenced the mind of any but Wieland.

The voices subsequently heard, too, were accounted for by all the rest, in any other way than as being supernatural. To Wieland, unimportant as in reality they were, they afforded sufficient food for the nurturing and maturing of his frenzy. Once completely involved in these toils, every movement, however trivial, and every attempt at extrication, only binds and entangles him the more. Pleyel is brought under the same external influences-he wonders, and knows not how to satisfy his judgment. He credits a mysterious announcement of what he was already confident must be true, yet he wisely suspends his judgment of the character of that announcement, until some further grounds of decision are afforded. Wieland makes up his mind at once, while everything is vague and uncertain, according to the promptings of a judg ment already disturbed with passion. Clara hears mysterious voices in her closet-and she is frightened. Wieland hears, or fancies that he hears, (for the author leaves us to infer that this is mere fancy, and that the mind of the bewildered man has now arrived at that state in which internal and external impulses are easily confounded,) a

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