The Atlantic Monthly Part 20

Vallandigham, who made the Chicago Platform, explicitly declares that that Platform and General McClellan's letter of acceptance do not agree; at the same time Mr. Wood, who is for peace to the knife, calmly tells us that General McClellan, as President, would do the work of the Democracy,--and we need no Daniel to interpret Mr. Wood's words. We mean no disrespect to General McClellan, on the contrary we treat him with perfect respect, when we say that we do not believe he has a higher sense of honor than Mr. Polk possessed; and as Mr. Polk became a tool in the hands of a faction,--being a Protectionist during the contest of '44, and an Anti-Protectionist after that contest had been decided in his favor,--so is it intended that General McClellan shall become a tool in the hands of another faction. Mr. Polk was employed to effect the destruction of a "black tariff": General McClellan is employed to destroy a nation that is supposed to be given up to "black republicanism." We do not believe that the soldier will be found so successful an instrument as the civilian proved to be.

An ounce of fact is supposed to be worth a ton of theory; and the facts of the last four or five years admit of our believing the worst that can be suspected of the purposes of the Democratic party. It is not uncharitable to say that the leaders and managers of that party contemplate, in the event of their triumph in November, the surrender of the country to the slaveholding oligarchy; in the event of their defeat by a small majority, the extension of the civil war over the North. Four years ago we could not be made to believe that Secession was a possible thing. We admitted that there were Secessionists at the South, but we could not be made to believe in the possibility of Secession. Even "South Carolina couldn't be kicked out of the Union," it was commonly said in the North. There were but few disunionists at the South, almost everybody said, and almost everybody believed what was said concerning the state of Southern opinion. In a few weeks we saw, not South Carolina kicked out of the Union, but South Carolina kicking the Union away from her. In a few months we saw eleven States take themselves out of the Union, form themselves into a Confederacy, and raise great armies to fight against the Union. Yet it is certain that in the month of November, 1860, there were not twenty thousand resolute disunionists in all the Slaveholding States, leaving South Carolina and Mississippi aside,--and not above fifty thousand in all the South, including Mississippi and South Carolina. How, then, came it to pa.s.s that nearly the whole of the population of the South became Rebels in so short a time? Because they were under the dominion of their leading men, who took them from the right road, and conducted them into the slough of rebellion. Because they were encouraged so to act by the Northern Democracy as made rebellion inevitable. The Northern Democratic press and Northern Democratic orators held such language respecting "Southern rights" as induced even loyal Southrons to suppose that Slavery was to be openly recognized by the Const.i.tution, and spread over the nation.

The President of the United States, a Northern Democrat, gravely declared that there existed no right in the Government to coerce a seceding State, which was all that the most determined Secessionist could ask. Instead of doing anything to strengthen the position of the federal Government, the President did all that he could to a.s.sist the Secessionists, and left the country naked to their attacks; and he parted on the best of terms with those Rebels who left his Cabinet, where they had long been busy in organizing resistance to Federal authority. The leaders of the Northern Democracy, far from exhibiting a loyal spirit, urged the slaveholders to make demands which were at war with the Const.i.tution and the laws, and which could not have been complied with, unless it had been meant to admit that there was no binding force in existing inst.i.tutions, the validity of which had not once been called in question for seventy-two years. The real Secessionists of the South, Rhett and Yancey and their followers, availed themselves of the existing state of affairs, and precipitated rebellion,--a step which they never would have taken, had they not been a.s.sured that no resistance would be made to their action so long as Mr.

Buchanan should remain in the Presidency, and that he would be supported by the leaders of the Northern Democracy, who would take their followers with them along the road that led to the Union's dissolution. South Carolina, rabid as she was, did not rebel until the last Democratic President of the United States had publicly a.s.sured her that he would do nothing to prevent her from reducing the Calhoun theory to practice; and had she not rebelled, not another State would have left the Union. The opportunity that she could not get under President Jackson she obtained under President Buchanan,--and she did not hesitate to make the most of that opportunity, all indeed that could be made of it, well knowing that it could not be expected again to occur.

With these facts before them, the American people should be prepared for further rebellious action on the part of that faction whose creed it is that rebellion is right when directed against the ascendency of their political opponents. They have done their utmost to a.s.sist the Rebels all through the war, and the great riots in New York last year were the legitimate consequences of their doctrine, if not of their labors. We know that organizations hostile to the Union have been formed in the West, and that there was to have been a rising there, had any striking successes been achieved by the Confederate forces during the last six months. Nothing but the vigor and the victories of Grant and Sherman and Farragut saved the North from becoming the scene of civil war in 1864.

Nothing but the vigor and union of the people in their political capacity can keep civil war from the North hereafter. The followers of the Seymours and other ultra Democrats of the North are not more loyal than were nine-tenths of the Southern people in 1860. Few of them now think of becoming rebels, but they would as readily rebel as did the Southern men who have filled the armies of Lee and Beauregard, and who have poured out their blood so lavishly to destroy that nation which owes its existence to the labors of Southern men, to the exertions of Washington, Jefferson, Henry, and others, natives of the very States that have done most in the cause of destruction. The sentiment of nationality is no stronger among Northern Democrats than it was among Southern Democrats; and as the latter were converted into traitors at the bidding of a few leading politicians whose plans were favored by circ.u.mstances, so would the former become traitors at the first signal to any move that _their_ leaders should make. As to the two cla.s.ses of leaders, the Southern men are far superior in every manly quality to those Northern men who are doing their work. It is possible that the men of the South really did believe that their property was in danger, and it is beyond dispute that they were alarmed about their political power; but the men of the North who sympathize with them, and who are prepared to aid them at the first opportunity that shall offer to strike an effective blow, well knew that the victorious Republicans had neither the will nor the power to injure Southern property or to weaken the protection it enjoyed under the Const.i.tution. Their hostility to the Union is purely gratuitous, or springs from motives of the most sordid character.

There is but one way to meet the danger that threatens us,--a danger that really is greater than that with which we were threatened in 1860, and which we have the advantage of seeing, whereas we could see nothing in that year. We must strengthen the Government, make it literally irresistible, by clothing it with the whole of that power which proceeds from an emphatic and unmistakable expression of the popular will. Give Mr. Lincoln, in the approaching election, the strength that comes from a united people, and we shall have peace maintained throughout the North, and peace restored to the South. Reelect him by a small majority, and there will be civil war in the North, and a revival of warlike spirit in the South. Elect General McClellan, and we shall have to choose between constant warfare, as a consequence of having approved of Secession by approving of the Chicago Platform,--which is Secession formally democratized,--and despotism, the only thing that would save us from anarchy. Anarchy is the one thing that men will not, because they cannot, long endure. Order is indeed now and forever Heaven's first law, and order society must and will have. Order is just as compatible with const.i.tutional government as it is with despotic government; but to have it in connection with freedom, in other words, with the existence of a const.i.tutional polity, the people must do their whole duty. They must rise above the prejudices of party and of faction, and see nothing but their country and liberty. They must show that they are worthy of freedom, or they cannot long have it. Now is the time to prove that the American people know the difference between liberty and license, by their support of the party of order and const.i.tutional government, and by administering a thorough rebuke to those licentious men who are seeking to overwhelm the country and its Const.i.tution in a common ruin.

Of President Lincoln's reelection no doubt can be entertained, whether we judge of the issue by the condition of the country, or by the sentiments that should animate the great majority of the people, and by which, we are convinced, that majority is animated. The Union candidate, no matter what his name or antecedents, should be elected by a majority so great as to "coerce" the turbulent portion of the Democracy into submission to the laws of the land, and into respect for the popular will, the last thing for which Democrats have any respect. Had the Union National Convention seen fit to place a new man in nomination, it would have been the duty of the voters to support him with all the means honestly at their command; but we must say that there is a peculiar obligation upon Americans to reelect Mr. Lincoln, and to reelect him by a vote that should surprise even the most sanguine and hopeful of his friends. The war from which the nation, and the whole world, have been made to suffer so much, and from the effects of which mankind will be long in recovering, was made because of Mr. Lincoln's election to the Presidency. The North was to be punished for having had the audacity to elect him even when the Democracy were divided, and the success of the Republican candidate was a thing of course. He, a mere man of the people, should never become _President of the United States_! The most good-natured of men, it is known that his success made him an object of personal aversion to the Southern leaders. They did their worst to prevent his becoming President of the Republic, and in that way they wronged and insulted the people far more than they wronged and insulted the man whom the people had elected to the highest post in the land; and the people are bound, by way of vindicating their dignity and establishing their power, to make Mr. Lincoln President of the _United_ States, to compel the acknowledgment of his legal right to be the chief magistrate of the nation as unreservedly, from South Carolina as from Ma.s.sachusetts. His authority should be admitted as fully in Virginia as it is in New York, in Georgia and Alabama as in Pennsylvania and Ohio.

This can follow only from his reelection; and it can follow only from his reelection by a decisive majority. That insolent spirit which led the South to become so easy a prey to the Secession faction, when not a tenth part of its people were Secessionists, should be thoroughly, emphatically rebuked, and its chief representatives severely punished, by extorting from the rebellious section a practical admission of the enormity of the crime of which it was guilty when it resisted the lawful authority of a President who was chosen in strict accordance with the requirements of the Const.i.tution, and who entertained no more intention of interfering with the const.i.tutional rights of the South than he thought of inst.i.tuting a crusade for the recovery of the Holy Sepulchre.

The majesty of the law should be a.s.serted and established, and that can best be done by placing President Lincoln a second time at the head of the Republic, the revolt of the slaveholders being directed against him personally as well as against that principle of which he was the legally elected representative. In him the spirit of order is incarnate; and his reelection by a great popular vote would be the establishment of the fact that under our system it is possible to maintain order, and to humiliate and subdue the children of anarchy.

President Lincoln should be reelected, if for no other reason, that there may go forth to the world a pointed approval of his conduct from his const.i.tuents. As we have said, we do not claim perfection for the policy and acts of the Administration; but we are of opinion that its mistakes have been no greater than in most instances would have been committed by any body of men that could have been selected from the entire population of the country. Take the policy that has been pursued with reference to Slavery. Many of us thought that the President issued his Emanc.i.p.ation Proclamation at least a year too late; but we must now see that the time selected for its promulgation was as skilfully chosen as its aim was laudable. Had it come out a year earlier, in 1861, the friends of the Rebels could have said, with much plausibility, that its appearance had rendered a restoration of the Union impossible, and that the slaveholders had no longer any hope of having their property-rights respected under the Federal Const.i.tution. But by allowing seventeen months to elapse before issuing it, the President compelled the Rebels to commit themselves absolutely to the cause of the Union's overthrow without reference to any attack that had been made on Slavery in a time of war. It has not, therefore, been in the power of their allies here to say that the issuing of the Proclamation placed an impa.s.sable gulf between the Union and the Confederacy; for the Confederates were as loud in their declarations that they never would return into the Union before the Proclamation appeared as they have been since its appearance. They were caught completely, and deprived of the only pretence that could have been invented for their benefit, by themselves or by their friends.

The adoption of an Emanc.i.p.ation policy did not cause us the loss of one friend in the South, while it gained friends for our cause in every country that felt an interest in our struggle. It prevented the acknowledgment of the Southern Confederacy by France, and by other nations, as French example would have found prompt imitation. Its appearance was the turning event of the war, and it was most happily timed for both foreign and domestic effect. It will be the n.o.blest fact in President Lincoln's history, that by the same action he announced freedom to four millions of bondmen, and secured his country against even the possibility of foreign mediation, foreign intervention, and foreign war.

The political state of the country, as indicated by the result of recent elections, is not without interest, in connection with the Presidential contest. Since the nomination of General McClellan, elections have been held in several States for local officers and Members of Congress, and the results are highly favorable to the Union cause. The first election was held in Vermont, and the Union party reelected their candidate for Governor, and all their candidates for Members of Congress, by a majority of more than twenty thousand. They have also a great majority in the Legislature, the Democrats not choosing so much as one Senator, and but few Members of the House of Representatives. The election in Maine took place but six days after that of Vermont, and with similar results. The Union candidate for Governor was reelected, by a majority that is stated at sixteen thousand. Every Congressional District was carried by the Union men. In one district a Democrat was elected in 1862, at the time when the Administration was very unpopular because of the military failures that were so common in the summer of that dark and eventful year. His majority was one hundred and twenty-seven. At the late election his const.i.tuents refused to reelect him, and his place was bestowed on a friend of the Administration, whose majority is said to be about two thousand. The majorities of the other candidates were much larger, in two instances exceeding four thousand each. The State Legislature elected on the same day is of Administration politics in the proportion of five to one. These two States may be said to represent both of the old parties that existed in New England during the thirty years that followed the Presidential election of 1824. Vermont was of National-Republican or Whig politics down to 1854, and always voted against Democratic candidates for the Presidency. Maine was almost as strongly Democratic in her opinions and action as Vermont was Anti-Democratic, voting but once, in 1840, against a Democratic candidate for the Presidency, in twenty-four years. Her electoral votes were given for General Jackson in 1832, for Mr. Van Buren in 1836, for Mr. Polk in 1844, for General Ca.s.s in 1848, and for General Pierce in 1852. Yet she has acted politically with Vermont for more than ten years, both States supporting Colonel Fremont in 1856, and Mr. Lincoln in 1860,--a striking proof of the levelling effect of that pro-slavery policy and action which have characterized the Democratic party ever since the inauguration of President Pierce, in 1853. Had the Democratic party not gone over to the support of the slaveholding interest, Maine would have been a Democratic State at this day.

There were important elections held on the 11th of October in the great and influential States of Pennsylvania, Ohio, and Indiana, and the verdicts which should be p.r.o.nounced by these States were expected with an interest which it was impossible to increase, as it was felt that they would go far toward deciding the event of the Presidential contest.

Vermont's action might be attributed to her determined and long-continued opposition to the Democratic party, which no change in others could operate to lessen; and the course of Maine could be attributed to her "Yankee" character and position: but Pennsylvania has generally been Democratic in her decisions, and she has nothing of the Yankee about her, while Ohio and Indiana are thoroughly Western in all respects. Down to a few days before the time for voting, the common opinion was, that Pennsylvania would give a respectable majority for the Union candidates, that Ohio would p.r.o.nounce the same way by a great majority, and that Indiana would be found with the Democrats; but early in October doubts began to prevail with respect to the action of Pennsylvania, though no one could say why they came to exist. What happened showed that the change in feeling did not unfaithfully foreshadow the change that had taken place in the second State of the Union. Ohio's decision was not different from what had been expected, her Union majority being not less than fifty thousand, including the soldiers' vote. Indiana's action astonished every one. Instead of furnishing evidence that General McClellan's nomination had been beneficial to his party, the event in the Hoosier State led to the opposite conclusion. The Democratic majority in that State in 1862 was ten thousand, and that it could be overcome, or materially reduced, was not thought possible. Yet the voting done there on the 11th of October terminated most disastrously for the Democrats, the popular majority against them being not less than twenty thousand, while they lost several Members of Congress, among them Mr. Voorhees, who is to Indiana what Mr. Vallandigham is to Ohio, only that he has a little more prudence than the Ohioan. Indiana was the only one of the States in which a Governor was chosen, which made the returns easy of attainment.

Governor Morton, who is reelected, "stumped" the State; and to his exertions, no doubt, much of the Union success is due. In Pennsylvania, at the time we write, it is not settled which party has the majority on the home vote; but, as the soldiers vote in the proportion of about eleven to two for the Republican candidates, the majority of the latter will be good,--and it will be increased at the November election.

The States that voted on the 11th of October give sixty electoral votes, or two more than half the number necessary for a choice of President.

They are all certain to be given for Mr. Lincoln, as also are the votes of the six New England States, and those of New York, Illinois, Michigan, Minnesota, Wisconsin, Iowa, Kansas, West Virginia, and California, making 189 in all, the States mentioned being ent.i.tled to the following votes:--Ma.s.sachusetts 12, Maine 7, New Hampshire 5, Vermont 5, Rhode Island 4, Connecticut 6, New York 33, Pennsylvania 26, Ohio 21, Indiana 13, Illinois 16, Michigan 8, Minnesota 4, Wisconsin 8, Iowa 8, Kansas 3, West Virginia 5, and California 5. And so ABRAHAM LINCOLN and ANDREW JOHNSON will be President and Vice-President of the United States for the four years that shall begin on the 4th of March, 1865.

REVIEWS AND LITERARY NOTICES.

_An American Dictionary of the English Language._ By NOAH WEBSTER, LL.D. Thoroughly revised, and greatly enlarged and improved, by CHAUNCEY A. GOODRICH, LL.D., etc., and NOAH PORTER, D.D., etc. Springfield, Ma.s.s.: G. & C. Merriam. Royal 4to. pp. lxxii., 1768.

Beyond cavil, this portly and handsome volume makes good the claim which is set forth on the t.i.tle-page. The revision which the old edition has undergone is manifestly a most thorough one, extending to every department of the work, and to its minutest details. The enlargement it has received is very considerable, the size of the page having been increased, and more than eighty pages added to the number contained in the previous or "Pictorial" edition. The improvements are not only really such, but they are so many and so great that they amount to a complete remodelling of the work; and hence the objections heretofore brought against it--many of them very justly--have, for the most part, no longer any validity or pertinency. It may be questioned, however, whether the Dictionary, in view of the manifold and extensive changes which have been made in its matter and plan, should not be said to have been _based_ on that of Dr. Webster rather than to be _by_ him. St.

Anthony's shirt cannot be patched and patched forever and still remain St. Anthony's shirt. But there is doubtless much virtue in a name, and, so long as the publishers have given us a truly excellent work, it matters little by what t.i.tle they choose to call it.

We are amazed at the vastness of the vocabulary, which embraces upwards of one hundred and fourteen thousand words, being some ten thousand more, it is claimed, than any other word-book of the language. Such unexampled fulness would be apt to excite a suspicion that a deliberately adopted system of crimping had been carried on within the tempting domains of the natural sciences, to furnish recruits for this enormous army of vocables. But we do not find, upon a pretty careful examination, that many terms of this sort have been admitted which are not fairly ent.i.tled to a place in a popular lexicon.

In the matter of definition, we can unqualifiedly commend the principles by which the editor and his coadjutors appear to have been guided, notwithstanding an occasional failure to carry out these principles with entire consistency. The crying fault of mistaking different applications of a meaning of a word for essentially different significations--the head and front of Dr. Webster's offending as a definer, and not of Dr.

Webster only, but of almost all other lexicographers--has generally been avoided in this edition. The philosophical a.n.a.lysis, the orderly arrangement of meanings, the simplicity, comprehensiveness, and precision of statement, the freedom from prejudice, crotchets, and dogmatism, the good taste and good sense, which characterize this portion of the work, are deserving of the fullest recognition and the highest praise.

In the department of etymology, the revision has been thorough indeed, and, as all the world knows, the Dictionary stood sadly enough in need of it. But we were not prepared for so entire and fearless an overhauling of Dr. Webster's "Old Curiosity Shop," or for a contribution to philological science so valuable and original. It is not too much to say that no other English dictionary, and no special treatise on English etymology, that has yet appeared, can compare with it. As a fitting introduction to the subject, a "Brief History of the English Language,"

by Professor James Hadley, is prefixed to the vocabulary, and will well repay careful study.

No excellences, however, we apprehend, in definition or etymology will reconcile scholars to those peculiarities of spelling which are commonly known as Websterianisms, and which, with a few exceptions, are retained in the edition before us. The pages of this magazine are evidence that we ourselves regard them with no favor. But we are bound, in common honesty, to state, that, in every case in which Dr. Webster's orthography is given, it is accompanied by the common spelling, and thus the user of the book is left at liberty to take his choice of modes. We are also bound, in common fairness, to admit that many, if not all, of the quite limited number of changes put forward in the later editions of the Dictionary are, in themselves considered, unquestionable improvements, and that, if adopted by the whole English-writing public on both sides of the water, or even in this country alone, would redeem our common language from some of the gross anomalies and grievous confusion which now make it a monster among the graphic systems of the world, and a stumbling-block and stone of offence to all who undertake to learn it. Furthermore, it must be conceded that almost all our lexicographers have been nearly or quite as ready as Dr. Webster to attempt improvements in orthography, though they may have shown more discretion than he. It is not generally known, we suspect, but it is none the less a fact, that Johnson, Todd, Perry, Smart, Worcester, and various other eminent orthographers, have all deviated more or less from actual usage, in order to carry out some "principle" or "a.n.a.logy" of the language, or to give sanction and authority to some individual fancy of their own. So much may be said in defence of Dr. Webster against the ignorant vituperation with which he has often been a.s.sailed. But, on the other hand, he is fairly open to the charge of having violated his own canons in repeated instances. To take a single case, why should he not have spelt _until_ with two _l_s, instead of one,--as he does "distill,"

"fulfill," etc.,--when it was so desirable to complete an a.n.a.logy, and when he had for it the warrant of a very common, if not the most reputable, usage? Again, it seems to us, that, if our orthography is to be reformed at all, it should be reformed not indifferently, but altogether; for it is, beyond controversy, atrociously bad, poorly fulfilling, as Professor Hadley justly remarks, (p. xxviii.,) its original and proper office of indicating p.r.o.nunciation, while it no better fufils the improper office, which some would a.s.sert for it, of a guide to etymology. Emendations on the here-a-little-there-a-little plan, while they do no harm, do little good. They are but topical remedies, which cannot restore the pristine vigor of a ruined const.i.tution. What we need is a reform as thorough-going as that which has been effected in the Spanish language. Shall we ever have it? or will the irrational conservatism of the educated cla.s.ses, in all time to come, prevent a consummation so desirable, and so desiderated by the philologist? Max Muller thinks that perhaps our posterity, some three hundred years hence, may write as they speak,--in other words, that our orthography will by that time have become a phonetic one. It is not safe to prophesy; but, whether such a result comes soon or late, the credit of having accomplished it will not be due to those "half-learned and parcel-learned" persons who consider the present written form of the language as a thing "taboo," and look with such horror upon all attempts to better its condition.

As regards p.r.o.nunciation, we think this will be generally considered one of the strong points of the new Dictionary. The introductory treatise on the "Principles of p.r.o.nunciation" is a comprehensive, instructive, and eminently practical, though not very philosophically constructed, exposition of the subject of English orthoepy. It contains an a.n.a.lysis and description of the elementary sounds of the language, a discussion of certain questions about which orthoepists are at variance, and a useful collection of facts, rules, and directions respecting a variety of other matters falling within its scope. As a sort of pendant to this, we have a "Synopsis of Words differently p.r.o.nounced by Different Orthoepists," which those who regulate their p.r.o.nunciation by written authorities or opinions may find it useful to consult. The p.r.o.nunciations given in the body of the work appear to be conformed to the usage of the best speakers. We notice with gratification that such vulgarisms as ab'do-men, pus'sl (for pust'ule!), s_w_ord (for sord), etc., no longer continue to deface the book.

A large number of wood-cuts, mostly selected with good judgment and skilfully engraved, adorn the pages, and throw light upon the definitions. Besides being inserted in the vocabulary in connection with the words they ill.u.s.trate, they are brought together, in a cla.s.sified form, at the end of the volume. This is claimed as an "obvious advantage."

We have left ourselves but little s.p.a.ce to notice the very rich and attractive Appendix, the first fifty pages of which are taken up with an "Explanatory and p.r.o.nouncing Vocabulary of the Names of Noted Fict.i.tious Persons and Places," etc., by William A. Wheeler. The conception of such a work was singularly happy, as well as original, and, on the whole, the task has been executed with commendable fidelity and discretion. That occasional omissions and mistakes should be discovered will probably surprise no one less than the author. Attention has elsewhere been publicly called, in particular, to the fact that Owen Meredith is given as the pseudonyme of Sir Bulwer Lytton instead of his son, E. R. Bulwer: this would seem to be a bad blunder, but we understand that it was a mere error of oversight, and that it was corrected before the Dictionary was fairly in the market. If other mistakes should be brought to light,--and what work of such multiplicity was ever free from them?--Mr. Wheeler will doubtless call to mind, and his readers must not forget, the eloquent excuse which Dr.

Johnson offers, in the preface to his Dictionary, for his own shortcomings:--"That sudden fits of inadvertency will surprise vigilance, slight avocations will seduce attention, and casual eclipses of the mind will darken learning; and that the writer shall often in vain trace his memory at the moment of need for that which yesterday he knew with intuitive readiness, and which will come uncalled into his thoughts to-morrow." The "p.r.o.nouncing Vocabularies of Modern Geographical and Biographical Names, by J. Thomas, M. D.," are evidently the product of laborious and conscientious research; and, while we differ widely from Dr. Thomas on various points, general and particular, we must allow that his vocabularies are as yet the only ones of the kind which approximate with any nearness to the character of an authoritative standard. The other Vocabularies or "Tables" of the Appendix seem also to have been prepared with sound judgment and much painstaking, but we cannot dwell upon them.

To sum up, in all the essential points of a good dictionary,--in the amplitude and selectness of its vocabulary, in the fulness and perspicacity of its definitions, in its orthoepy and (_c.u.m grano salis_) its orthography, in its new and trustworthy etymologies, in the elaborate, but not too learned treatises of its Introduction, in its carefully prepared and valuable appendices,--briefly, in its general accuracy, completeness, and practical utility,--the work is one which none who read or write can henceforward afford to dispense with.

Mindful of the old adage, we have inst.i.tuted no comparison between Webster and Worcester. If the latter, excellent as it is, should now be found in some respects inferior to the former, it is to be remembered that the present edition of Webster has the great advantage of being four or five years later in point of time, and that it has been enriched by the use of materials which were not accessible to Worcester. We are glad to see a handsome tribute to the learning and industry of Dr.

Worcester, and an honest acknowledgment of indebtedness to his labors, in Professor Porter's Preface. This is as it should be; and we hope that the publishers, on both sides, acting in the same spirit, will forego all unfriendly controversy. Let there be no new War of the Dictionaries.

The world is wide enough for both, and both are monuments of industry, judgment, and erudition, in the highest degree creditable to American scholarship, and unequalled by anything that has yet been done by English philologists of the present century.

_Dramatis Personae._ By ROBERT BROWNING. Boston: Ticknor and Fields.

The t.i.tle of this new volume of poems expresses the peculiarity which we find in everything that Mr. Browning composes. Notwithstanding the remoteness of his moods, and the curious subtilty with which he follows the trace of exceptional feelings, he impersonates dramatically: there may be few such people as these choice acquaintances of his genius, but they are persons, and not mere figures labelled with a thought. Pippa, Guendolen, Luria, the d.u.c.h.ess, Bishop Blougram, Fra Lippo Lippi, are persons, however much they may be given to episodes and reverie. You find a great deal that is irrelevant to the thorough working-out of a character, much that is not simply individual: Mr. Browning gets sometimes in the way, so that you lose sight of his companion, but it is not as Punch's master overzealously pulls the wires of his puppets.

You would not say that a man can find many such companions, but you cannot deny that they are vividly described. Perhaps they appear in only one or two moods, but these have individual life. They are discovered in rare exalted or peculiar moments, but these are in costume and bathed in color. Shutting and opening many doors, balked at one vestibule and traversing another, suddenly you surprise the lord or mistress of the mansion, or from some threshold you silently observe their secret pa.s.sion, which is unconscious of the daylight, and is caught in all its frankness. You come upon people, and not upon pictures in a house.

But the pictures, too, in all Mr. Browning's interiors, seem to have grown out of the life of the persons. He has not merely come in and hung them up, as poor artist or upholsterer, to make a sumptuous house for fine people to move into. The character in any one of his poems seems to have devised the furnishing: it is distinct, exterior, not always helping or expressing the character's thought, sometimes to be referred to that only with an effort, but still no other character could have so furnished his house. You can find the individuality everywhere, if you care to take the trouble. But if you are in haste, or do not particularly sympathize with the person whose drama you surprise, you and he will be together like vagrants in a gallery, who long for a catalogue, dislocate their necks, and anathematize the whole collection.

But do not then say that you have gauged and criticized the life that streams from Mr. Browning's pen.

How vivid and personal is, for instance, "Pictor Ignotus," one of the earlier poems! The painter is no longer unknown, for his mood betrays and describes him. It is not merely his speaking in the first person which saves him from melting into an abstraction, but it is that the "I"

takes flesh and lives; the poet dramatizes or _shows_ him.

Of this cla.s.s of poems is the one ent.i.tled "Abt Vogler" in the present volume. The Abbot was a famous musician and organist, the teacher of Meyerbeer. Concerning the new kind of organ which he invented, and which he called an "Orchestricon," we know nothing, save that its effects were merely amplifications of those belonging to an organ. The poem describes the awe and rapture which fill the soul of a great organist when the instrument shudders, soars, rejoices in his inspiration. It is not the description of a musical mood, but the showing of a man who has the mood. It is the exultation and religious feeling of a man in the very act. The n.o.ble lines are not fine things attempting to set forth the metaphysics of musical expression and enjoyment, but they represent a man at the very climax of his musical pa.s.sion. Is the effect any the less dramatic because the man is not committing a murder, or conspiring, or seducing, or overreaching, or infecting an honest ear with jealousy?

It is not so theatrical, because the emotion itself is not so broad and popular, but its inmost genius is dramatic.

"A Death in the Desert" is another poem that attempts to restore a fleeting moment, full of profound thought and feeling, by giving it individuals, and showing them living in it, instead of meditating about it with fine after-thoughts. Pamphylax describes the death of St. John in a desert cave. At first the individuals are clearly seen; but the poem soon lapses into philosophizing, and winds up with theology. Still, here is the power of reproducing the tone and sentiments of a long-buried and forgotten epoch, as if the matters involved had immediate interest and were vigorously mauled in all the newspapers. St.

John might have died last week, or we might be Syrian converts of the second century, dissolved in tenderness at the thought that the Beloved Disciple at last had gone to lay his head again upon the Master's bosom.

The poem talks as if it were trying to satisfy this mixture of memory and curiosity.

Some of the best lines ever written by Mr. Browning are here. Take these, for instance. Pamphylax, reporting John's last words, as the h.o.a.ry life flickered and clung, gives this:--

"A stick, once fire from end to end; Now ashes, save the tip that holds a spark!

Yet, blow the spark, it runs back, spreads itself A little where the fire was: thus I urge The soul that served me, till it task once more What ashes of my brain have kept their shape, And these make effort on the last o' the flesh, Trying to taste again the truth of things."

And after recalling the inspirations of Patmos:--

"But at the last, why, I seemed left alive Like a sea-jelly weak on Patmos strand, To tell dry sea-beach gazers how I fared When there was mid-sea, and the mighty things.

Yet now I wake in such decrepitude As I had slidden down and fallen afar, Past even the presence of my former self, Grasping the while for stay at facts which snap, Till I am found away from my own world, Feeling for foothold through a blank profound."

The poem ent.i.tled "Caliban upon Setebos; or, Natural Theology in the Island," has for a motto, "Thou thoughtest that I was altogether such an one as thyself." Caliban talks to himself about "that other, whom his dam called G.o.d." Setebos is the great First Cause as conceived and dreaded in the heart of a Caliban. The poem is by no means a caricature of the natural theology which springs from selfishness and fear. All the phenomena of the world are neither

"right nor wrong in Him, Nor kind nor cruel: He is strong and Lord.

'Am strong myself, compared to yonder crabs That march now from the mountain to the sea; Let twenty pa.s.s, and stone the twenty-first, Loving not, hating not, just choosing so."

The materialist who believes in Forces is brother to the Calvinist who preaches Sovereignty and the Divine Decrees. The preacher lets loose upon the imagination of mankind a Setebos, who after death will plague his enemies and feast his friends. The materialist believes, with Caliban, that