Page images
PDF
EPUB

worthy, judged only by the promise he showed, to take his place by their side, yet he does not surpass them: he may be their equal, but he is not their superior. Even limiting his specialty to what Sainte-Beuve in another Essay restricts it,— "to the sentiment, not so much of details, as of the sacred ensemble and universality of nature; a sentiment of the origin of things and the sovereign principle of life," - yet no one would say, that, even compared with sole reference to this capacity, he surpasses Wordsworth or Keats; and, if you prefer to find his power, as most readers will, in the minute descriptions of the external world, there are pages of Cowper, both in prose and in poetry, equal to what Guérin has written. And, even looking away from the great models of poetry, and confining our comparisons to our own land, there are touches in Hawthorne's writings which equally proclaim the master, and which equally show a mind open to whatever aspect nature may put on. The extracts from his Diary, lately published in the "Atlantic Monthly," are the writings which, in this respect, most nearly resemble Guérin's; and the relative powers of the two artists, as exhibited in lines equally private and equally unintended for publication, admit of curious comparison. Making all the allowance that maturity and immaturity of powers may demand, it will be seen that both the writers are artists, and that both enjoyed gifts differing very little in quality.

The second point to which we would direct attention is the state of Guérin's moral constitution during the time noted by the Journal, or at least until the period when Guérin left M. de La Mennais' care, and had hanging over him the necessity of moving out of his seclusion, and solving the problem of the sphere of his faculties, and the course to be taken for their development. For somewhat more than the first year which this Journal records, and hence for the whole of Guérin's previous life, one stage of which we see end and another begin in these pages, he was like those sea-weeds which he somewhere describes, sending down their tendrils into the water that supports them, and from which they draw their sustenance, while yet they have no fixed root, and are driven along at the mercy

of the waves. Moral power-will, the faculty of separating one's self from disturbing accidents and living in a world of calm, holding one's self well poised and collected - was unknown to him, and without ground in his experience. He was conscious of this defect; and he displays, in the analysis of those of his feelings which relate to it, all that keenness and accuracy of observation which we perceive in his descriptions of outward nature. And hence, when you read his Journal and find his inner self there portrayed, you see that you have before you a being without moral energy, and yet of so full sympathy with the life of birds and beasts and the fashions of the earth and sky, that he appears to be but a part of nature, and you can almost understand what he means, when he talks of "that mysterious breath that pervades all intelligences." And when you analyze, with what power you can, your own disposition, you feel that you, too, have something in you that connects you with lower forms of life. You almost doubt whether your superiority to the brute is so absolute as you have imagined. You are led to reason from one case to all, and to suspect that the moral nature in man is not fixed and perfect through all periods of his life, but that it grows with his growth; and that, coming forth from the sensuous and unreflecting life of childhood or brutehood, it increases with more or less success, and in different individuals with dif ferent degrees of development. Thus Guérin leads you to think, that, if to many men there were given as great a power of self-examination as he possessed, there might be discovered many of the now missing links between the brute and the human creation; that thus the moral nature might be exhibited in its growth, and a more perfect harmony and development be manifested in the different orders of living beings. And Guérin, by his want of will and his subjection to that emotional and sensitive part of his nature, which for so many years held authority over him, seems himself to be one of those links binding us to lower forms of life by our feelings and our passions, but uniting us to higher forms by our possibilities of progress. And it is not long, in fact, before you see the germs of a will and of a moral energy starting up in him, and mani

festing themselves by cries of regret, by longings and stern resolutions. But this Journal, so short a way does it take us, does not exhibit him as travelled so far towards perfection, that the moral powers can be recognized in him in their fulHis subsequent letters, and the accounts of his friends, show him in a state where he has made a nearer approach to calmness, and obtained some mastery over his impulses and his feelings. But yet there were reasons imbedded in his physical constitution, that forbade his attaining perfection in this part of his nature; and the progress that he did make, was, it is to be feared, not without hurt to his freshness and simplicity.

These are the reflections which have occurred to us upon reading Guérin's remains, and the Essays of Sainte-Beuve and Arnold that introduce them. In making them, we have not wished to injure the reputation which the name of Guérin has obtained with those- we fear too few-who know the rare and amiable qualities of the brother and sister; nor have we wished to exalt any thing English or American at the expense of any thing French, but rather, while emphasizing the true claims of the brother to admiration, to throw the true light upon his character, and bring him into relation with other names which we have learned to venerate.

We are glad that his Journal is now put into an English dress, and that thus the circle of his readers may be widened. Mr. Fisher has made his version with an accuracy that leaves little room for question; but there is a want of harmony between different parts of the work, and for which not Mr. Fisher but the French editor is responsible. We do not know how it has happened, but Sainte-Beuve seems to have had access to more abundant sources than M. Trebutien. Page 43, compared with page 100, shows Sainte-Beuve's quotations to be fuller than the text, a strange reversal of custom; and the sentence omitted from the text adds something to the description. Page 44, again, has two paragraphs more than page 101. But the difference between Sainte-Beuve's quotations and the Journal is shown still more strikingly in that form of his preface which he has published in the fifteenth volume of his

"Causeries." The discrepancy relates to the records for Dec. 8 and 20, 1833, a part of the present publication which, as those familiar with the book know, is perhaps of greatest interest; and yet Sainte-Beuve's new preface has a number of striking passages or little turns of expression that are wholly ignored by M. Trebutien, and, of course, by his American translator. Sainte-Beuve quotes a paragraph or two, and apparently omits more, that are found neither in his original preface nor in the published Journal. We pass over these; but we wish to call attention to two or three additional details that he has given to the description which Guérin has written of his life at M. de La Morvonnais'. They seem to us curious and of interest. To what is said on page 104," the subsequent walk, a sort of greeting and adoration that we offer to nature," Sainte-Beuve quotes, in addition, "for it seems good to me, after having worshipped God directly in the morning prayer, to bend the knee to that mysterious power that he has given for the adoration of a few," a mystical sentence, but perhaps of importance in deciding Guérin's theological position. Again, to "dinner announced... by a gentle voice," the new preface adds, "that calls us from below," a little detail; but the whole passage is taken up with the menus détails of Morvonnais' housekeeping. So the Journal speaks of "the crackling fire of dry brush around which we draw our chairs just afterwards;" but, instead of "just afterwards," Sainte-Beuve adds, "after that sign of the cross which bears to heaven our rendering of thanks." Neither Sainte-Beuve nor M. Trebutien speak of "various readings" to Guérin's Journal; and these discrepancies are somewhat strange. Some of them, however, may perhaps be accounted for by the remark of the French critic, that "the present edition bears, on many a page, the marks of the religious scruples of Guérin's friends."

[ocr errors]

ART. V.-SOCIAL EMULATION, AS A FEATURE OF AMERICAN LIFE.

New America. By WILLIAM HEPWORTH DIXON. Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott & Co.

MR. DIXON'S vivacious and entertaining story deals as we have remarked elsewhere- mainly with a few phenomena, mostly abnormal, in the social and religious life of this country, which are doing their part to shape out a "new America," differing, in many most important features, from what is familiar and old. We shall not attempt, at this time, to discuss the general character of that revolution whose germs and elements he seeks in the chaos of new opinions and strange experiments; but rather to trace the influence of a single motive, perhaps more potent than any other single one in effecting those more superficial changes which strike every traveller's eye, and perhaps equally important with any other in affecting the tone and quality of our people's moral life. We mean the motive of social emulation, to which the strength and the weakness, the safety and the danger, of our American life are largely due, a motive never before so active and wide-spreading in its operation as now and here.

Nowhere but in a young, prosperous country, uncrowded, with undeveloped and unlimited resources, could this principle have the sway it possesses among ourselves. In older nations, emulations are confined within narrow bounds. A certain spirit of contentment, born of circumstances that promise but doubtful prizes to ambition or rewards to effort, captivates the heart weary with observing the restlessness and forward-pushing desires of our own people. But, where this moderation or contentment prevails, we find feeble and dispirited energies, unawakened or drowsy powers, and a fixed mediocrity of affairs. Old abuses go uncured. Permanent inequalities prevail. Along with unknown and unused resources, there is needless poverty, stereotyped dulness and thinness of life.

« PreviousContinue »