ant pride on his achievements in rebuilding into one superb confederacy the broken system of Europe, and closing by an unexampled triumph an unexampled war, which menaced the dissolution of every tie of nations and of men.

It is a long tale of years since Dr. Croly won his first laurels in verse by his "Paris in 1815"* -a decided success, which he followed up by a variety of other poetical ventures,-for example,

FOR nearly forty years past, Dr. Croly has been distinguished in the paths of polite literature, by his contributions to the departments of poetry, history, biography, romance, and criticism. As a politician and a divine, he is one of the few surviving representatives of old-fashioned, consistent, leal-hearted conservatism in Church" The Angel of the World," an Arabian legend; and State. Not High Church, if that implies" Sebastian," a Spanish tale; a comedy, entitled sympathy with the opinions and practices of our " Pride shall have a Fall;""Catiline," a tragePuseys and Denisons; not Low Church, if a dy; "Gems from the Antique;" numerous lyrics penchant towards the technicals of the Clapham and occasional verses, "Scenes from Scripture," Sect, and the policy of the Evangelical Alliance, etc., etc. We cannot but assent to a lately deenters into that definition; not Broad Church, ceased critic-himself a poet, tender and trueaccording to the modern Latitudinarians, as de- who, while according to Dr. Croly, as a poct, picted in the Edinburgh Review; but one of those many great and shining qualities; a rich comstaunch, steadfast Church-of England Protestants. mand of language, an ear finely attuned to muwhom we are wont to regard as the model clergy sical expression, a fertile and lucid conceptive after the very mind and heart of good old George power, and an intellect at once subtle and masthe Third. Exception, however, must be al-culine; yet observes, even of the best of his polowed to his peculiar views on Prophecy, which ems, that they are rather effusions than compoare dissonant enough from the harmony of the sitions, and abound with passages of mere theological Georgium sidus. declamation however eloquent, and not unfreNowhere, probably, is Dr. Croly more em- quently, substitute rhetoric for inspiration. We phatically and satisfactorily himself, than in his are reminded of the buskined tread and the statepolitical memoir of Edmund Burke; a memoir ly regularity of the French theatre. We see the which, had it but comprised also some account poet don the "learned sock" of one of our great of the great statesman's home and private life, masters, but listen in vain for an echo of the would have secured a far more prominent, and "wood-notes wild," of another and a greater. maybe a permanent, place in the world of books. We mark the imposing flow of canorous rhythm, The Doctor's enthusiastic appreciation of Burke, the processional pomp of artful versification, the it does one good to follow; nor is his own style classical refinement of an uniformly elevated dic an unworthy vehicle of such eulogy-cast as it tion; but the touch of nature, the sudden thrill is in so similar a mould, and presenting so many of feeling, the simple response of the heart to features of high, and not merely mimic, relation-one that can sway it at will,-these we miss, and ship. The glow of affectionate reverence colors missing we deplore. Yet as we write, there ocwith hues warm and lustrous the pages of this curs to us, as an instance quotable per contra, the biography. The biographer's own eloquence touching song of the gentle Moorish minstrel in kindles high, when he revives for us the scene "Sebastian"-which may be given in as evidence of the arch-Orator's parliamentary battles :- against us:

From the New Monthly Magazine.
DR. CROLY.

While he forewarns, denounces, launches forth,
Against all systems built on abstract rights,
Keen ridicule; the majesty proclaims
Of Institutes and Laws, hallowed by time;
Declares the vital power of social ties
Endeared by Custom; and with high disdain
Exploding upstart Theory, insists
Upon the allegiance to which men are born-

"night

in times big with ominous change, which ":
by night, provoked keen struggles, and black
clouds of passion raised"-but when the flighti-
est and the fiercest of the Orator's foemen would
sit "rapt auditors," "dazzled beholders,"

When Wisdom, like the Goddess from Jove's brain,
Broke forth in armor of resplendent words,
Startling the Synod.

A companion work is the similarly executed eloge of William Pitt-in whose personal character Dr. Croly impressively records the "solid connection of private virtues with public fidelity" -while he insists on the "heaven-born minister's" success as commensurate with the lofty integrity of his principles, and dwells with exult

*Wordsworth: "Prelude," book vii.

Farewell, my gentle harp, farewell,
Thy task shall soon be done,
And she who loved thy lonely spell
Shall, like its tones, be gone;

*Perhaps the most vigorous and characteristic
portion, as certainly the best known, of this poem,
is that descriptive of the French retreat from Russia
in 1812, beginning with the stanzas-
"Magnificence of ruin! what has time
In all it ever gazed upon of war,

Of the wild rage of storm, or deadly clime,
Seen, with that battle's vengeance to compare?
How glorious shone the invader's pomp afar!
Like pampered lions from the spoil they came;
The land before them silence and despair,
The land behind them massacre and flame;
Blood will have tenfold blood. What are they
now? A name.

"Homeward by hundred thousands, column-deep,
Broad square, loose squadron, rolling like the flood
When mighty torrents from their channels leap,
Rushed through the land the haughty multitude,
Billow on endless billow; on through wood,
O'er rugged hill, down sunless marshy vale.
The death-devoted moved, to clangor rude
Of drum and horn, and dissonant clash of mail,
Glancing disastrous light before that sunbeam
pale."

It were libellous to say there are no other such examples of the simply pathetic and tenderly natural in the author's volumes of verse, but there are not many such, so far as our judgment and memory will serve.

16

From his doings in minstrelsy, turn we to his doings in prose fiction. Most people have heard of "Salathiel," but not many have read it. The reputation which it ensured its author was wide, and emphatic, but it was of a hearsay kind. Men pronounced the story of the Jew a work of genius, and Dr. Croly a distinguished writer; but they wisely confined their admiration to the safe platitudes of general terms, and abstained from asking one another, Have you read "Salathiel?" To have solicited their special opinion on the character of Sabat the Ishmaelite, or the description of Rome in flames, and the Christians to the lions!" would speedily and sadly have reduced them to a nonplus. How often does the same principle hold good in the circles of the fashionable reading world! Even the popularity of the most popular, were it carefully analyzed. might show such an absence of the elements of intelligence and actual sympathy as would considerably disgust the object of it. The voice of the multitude is not the most trustworthy of guarantees for immortality-too frequently it illustrates the scornful lines of old Horace in the French tragedy:—

the dread sentence, "Tarry thou till I come!" In fact, we should peruse the tale with greater interest were Salathiel not the Wandering Jewsince the supernatural destiny affixed to that traditional being goes far to remove him from the ordinary pale of human sympathies, and transplants him into the shadowy region of creatures unreal and allegorical. Dr. Croly, indeed claims for him a share of the common repugnances, hopes, and fears of human nature and makes him shun pain and disease as instinctively and intensely as if he held his life on the frailest tenure. But there is something incongruous and unsatisfactory in all this. Allan Cunningham observes, that we feel with Salathiel for eighty years and odd; and at the close of the usual term of human life, shut our hearts, and commence wondering. The observation almost implies, however, that "honest Allan" either had never read, or else had forgotten all about Salathiel; for Croly confines his three volumes to fewer than eighty years and odd," concluding them with the destruction of Jerusalem by the Romans under Titus.

66

If ever the veritable Wandering Jew turns up, and gives the world his autobiography, or some one graphic section thereof, it will not be much in the vein of Salathiel." Dr. Croly is too rhethorical by half. His excited orientals in their wildest vagaries are cool enough to sacrifice passion for a period, and not unfrequently prefer pomp to pathos. They have one and all been taught to declaim, and to speak their speeches trippingly on the tongue. If they have something akin to Isaiah and Ezekiel, to Paul and John, they also betray their obligations to Edmund Burke and modern oratory. Another valid objection to "Salathiel," is want of unity. It is almost a thing of shreds and patches-a portfolio of ill-connected sketches. It is a rolling picture of eastern scenery, a cyclorama of moving accidents by flood and field. Many of the details are given with the hand of a master. The reader of Salathiel' cannot but be struck by descriptions like that of the demoniac by the Dead Sea, the burning of Rome under Nero, the fight of Constantius with the lion, the surprise of the citadel of Massada, the orgies in the pirates' cave, and, above all, the solitary passage of Salathiel in the burning galley, when, plunging and tossing like a living creature in its last agony, the trireme he had boarded burst away

19

"

While, then, we are not prepared to say that from her anchors, the wind was off the shore "Salathiel" deserved more popularity, we think that it deserved more readers. What a magnifi-struck her, and on the back of a huge refluent -a gust, strong as the blow of a battering ram, cent theme, even though a trite and faded one, wave, she shot out to sea, a flying pyramid of that of the Wandering Jew! What scope for a soaring imagination, what background for a fire. The book contains, also, several portraits glowing fancy, in the story of the mortal immor touched off with considerable talent: Sabat the tal, the "everlasting" stranger upon earth, the Ishmaelite, first seen as the crazy beggar, the son unresting, undying one! And here meets us a fault in Dr. Croly's romance. Beyond a page or two at the beginning and the end of his fiction, there is positively no connection between Sala: thiel and the Wandering Jew. The interest does not attach to the latter as such. The plot does not gather around him as such. He is almost uninfluenced, his career is almost unaffected by

herald of evil, so vigorously described by Jose-
of El Hakim, and afterwards as that terrible
phus, who, in Jerusalem's hour and power of
darkness, wandered up and down her streets,
crying "Woe ! woe! woe!"-Jubal, the impetu-
the infamous Roman procurator,
ous and ill-fated Jewish warrior-Gessius Florus,
"a little bloat-
observer' was the model of gross good-nature, a
ed figure, with a countenance that to the casual
twinkling eye, and a lip on the perpetual laugh',

*Corneille Horace, Acte v. Scene iii.

Sa voix tumultueuse assez souvent fait bruit
Mais un moment l'eleve, un moment le detruit;
Et ce qu'il contribue a notre renommee
Toujours en moins de riens se dissipe en fumee.*

-the Emperor Nero, "a pale, under-sized, light-] opinion as to the success of his electicism in this haired young man, sitting before a table with a respect. And now, having growled ad libitum, lyre on it, a few copies of verses and drawings, let us own, in conclusion, that "Salathiel" is not and a parrot's cage, to whose inmate he was lacking in features of power and grandeur, in teaching Greek with great assiduity"- Titus, qualities of lofty conception and elaborate fulprincely, engaging, with features "handsome filment, such as would do honor to any writer of and strongly-marked Italian, and form, though the age. tending to breadth, and rather under the usual stature, yet eminently dignified." The character of the troublous times to which this fiction belongs, supplies the author with ample opportunities for getting his hero into strange passes. But the interest is mightily abated when we know how sure he is to get out of them, and the very variety of Salathiel's difficulties becomes at last monotonous and wearisome. He is perpetually being taken prisoner, and perpetually setting himself, or being set at liberty. The way to catch him, is, to Roman and Jew, easy enough; but the way to keep him is undreamed of in their penal philosophy. Nero despatches him to execution, and a masked figure hurries him instead to liberty. Near the Lake of Tiberias he is captured by a body of Roman troopers, and gives them the slip by a ruse of Arab horsemanship. After a two years' durance in an unlighted dungeon, he gropes his subterranean way into a brilliantly illuminated cavern of Cypriote pirates. Onias imprisons him in the upper ward of a stupendous tower, and a boy lets him out of the window in an empty wine-basket. Titus has him fast under trusty lock and key, and a young girl, Naomi, guides him to freedom. Again Onias consigns him to captivity in the Tower of Antonia, in a dungeon undermined and fired by the enemy; and the very means used for his inevitable destruction are those which saved his charmed life, for though the walls collapse, and he is plunged down a chasm, and continues rolling for some moments in a whirl of stones, dust, earth, and smoke, yet, when it subsides, he finds himself lying on the greensward, in noonday, at the bottom of a valley, with the Tower of Antonia covered with the legionaries, five hundred feet above him, and, as might be expected, he is up and doing again in no time at all.

The mere fact of its publication in the pages of Blackwood ensured to Dr. Croly's other novel, " Marston," the advantage of a large, if not an eager, public. It failed to excite the interest which some of its "forbears" and successors, as serial fictions in Old Ebony, have so signally aroused-such as the sea-stories of Michael Scott, the exaggerated but often forcible inventions of Dr. Samuel Warren, and the crowning triumphs of Sir Bulwer Lytton. But "Marston" has high merits of its kind-and to those who relish the introduction of political and historical portraits, mingling on the stage of the action, after the manner of Scott in "Peveril," or of the lastnamed maestro in "Devereux "-these "Memoirs of a Statesman," walking and talking with statesmen French and English, during the agitating years of the French Revolution, are replete with attraction. The principles in politics, the elucida tion of which had occupied Dr. Croly's mind while engaged on the biographies of Burke and Pitt, he had now an opportunity of illustrating in the form, and with the vivid aids, and the appliances and means to boot, of fictitious narrative-philosophy teaching by example—and this opportu nity he turned to account with skill, and with fair success. It involved the peril of indulgence in disquisition, and of postponing story to argumentative discourse (which the subscribers to Hookham's, Ebers', Mudie's, etc., profanely style "prosing"), and of making plot and passion yield the pas to dissertation and description; but the writer was too experienced in his craft, and too lively in his ideas, ever to become absolutely dry; too animated in his perceptions, and too graphic in the expression of them, ever to be voted unconditionally "slow,"-unless, peradventure, by some of those very "fast" fellows, who are themselves superlatively slow in their upper-works-in the mechanics (it were absurd, in their case, to say the dynamics) of vous.

Of Dr. Croly's minor tales, one of the most remarkable is that entitled "Colonna the Painter," a tale of Italy and the Arts, with la Vendetta for its stirring, thrilling, all-absorbing theme. The conduct of the narrative is admirable; and the diction, like that of its imaginary manuscript, lofty and impassioned-occasionally rising into a sustained harmony, a rhythmical beauty and balance, consonant with the locale and the acces sories of the story. There is masterly art in the narrator's prefiguration of the catastrophe by the picture in Colonna's Saloon, and his gradual development of the events of which it was the dark culmination. The whole is highly wrought, but without any of the strain and startling dis tortion of the French school. The "Tales of

The management of historical fiction is at all times a matter of nicety and difficulty. We do not think "Salathiel" a triumph of art in this respect. There is either too much or too little history in it. It is neither one thing nor the other. There is something paradoxical in its very starting-point. Why is Salathiel so infinitely affected by the words "Tarry thou till I come," proceeding as they do from the mouth of One in whose divine mission he is not a believer? And then in the evolution of the great drama of Jerusalem's destruction, we have just sufficient adherence to history to make us expect the narration of notorious episodes, inseparably related to the catastrophe, and the introduction of notorious characters, almost essential to the working of the tragedy-in which expectation, however, we find ourselves in error. As a writer of fiction, Dr. Croly was at liberty to use as much and the Great St. Bernard," some of which made a as little of fact as he pleased, always with a due sensation when they appeared, we can do no deference to the exigencies of art; and as read-more than name. And to the same nominative ers of fiction, we too are at liberty to express our case, in the plural number, must be referred the

diligent author's edition of Pope, his Reign of staring, at the Theologian Croly's Revelations George the Fourth, and other miscellaneous of the Revelations of St. John the Theologian works. -both poets, both seers-the one saw visions, and the other dreams dreams; but John was no Tory, and Croly is no conjuror. Therefore, though his views extend to the last conflagration, he is not, in my humble judgment, likely to bear

Theology falls not within our province; yet, omitting mention of the Rector of St. Stephen's (Walbrook) general performances in this department, we are tempted to bestow a parting word on that particular book of his, which, from the a part in it by setting the Thames on fire. The nature of its subject, of all others, it might seem divine, Croly, sets John the Divine's trumpets our chiefest duty to leave undisturbed-his Com- and vials side by side. Methinks trumpets and mentary, namely, on the Apocalypse of St. John viols would make the better accompanimentthe Divine. This exposition it is almost diffi- the more so as there is a particular kind of fiddle, cult to reconcile with our previous impressions though not strung with cat-gut, for which Mr. of the writer, as a man of highly cultivated in- Croly's book would make an appropriate bow. tellectual power, and gifted with much practical Verily, verily, my dear friend! I feel it impossisagacity-indeed, one of his critics defines his ble to think of this shallow, fiddle-faddle trumintellectual distinction to be strong, nervous, and pery, and how it has been trumpeted and patromanly sense. But he is also of an imaginative nized by our bishops and dignitaries, and not and ardent temperament, and to this he seems enact either Heraclitus or Democritus. I laugh to have yielded the direction of his exegetical that I may not weep. You know me too well to pen, when transporting himself in spirit to the suppose me capable of treating even an error of isle called Patmos, and interpreting the mysteries faith with levity. But these are not errors of of the seven-sealed scrolls. His ebullient Pro- faith; but blunders from the utter want of faith, testantism and his rampant anti-Gallicism got a vertigo from spiritual inanition, from the lack the better of him, and fired him to explain the of all internal strength; even as a man giddyvastest, sublimest, most inscrutable of apocalyp-drunk throws his arms about, and clasps hold of tic symbols by their "things of the day." He a barber's block for support, and mistakes seeing could descry in the spelling of Apollyon a dread- double for additional evidences.""* The most ful identity with that of Napoleon. His eager sage and sensible of men appear, somehow, liable snatches at allusions and analogies may remind to monomaniac tendencies on the one subject of us of Wordsworth's smile prophecy: even Newton was crotchety here; and Dr. Croly but adds another name to the list of those celebrated by his satirical fellow-countryman, such as

At gravest heads, by enmity to France
Distempered, till they found, in every blast
Forced from the street-disturbing newsman's horn,
For her great cause record or prophecy
Of utter ruin.

Coleridge, whose liaison with Edward Irving must have imparted to him a special extrinsic interest in the theme of this Commentary, was even vehement in the tone of his strictures upon it. We find him writing as follows, in a letter to Dante Cary:-"I have been just looking, rectius

Whiston, who learnedly took Prince Eu
gene

For the man who must bring the Millennium
about;
And Faber, whose pious productions have been
All belied, ere his book's first edition was out.

*Memoirs of the Rev. H. F. Cary.

From Household Words.

· THE RUINED POTTER.

home to the churchyard, and they themselves with feeble bodies and accumulated debts, which had run on wildly during sickness. First, James was put into jail for the doctor's bill, and then the landlord distrained for rent, and turned them on the world; and so they were ruined.

JAMES FIELDING was the son of a potter, and bred up to his father's trade. He married young -long before he could keep a wife-and with both his parents' consent, or rather with their forgiveness, as they could not help themselves. For, as they said, it war very nat'ral, an' he might ha' done worse: 'twar, to be sure, the first time, an' belike he would'nt do it agen. And so they cordially shook hands with him, and pledged the pretty bride in a flagon of old Burton, and were both present at the first child's christening. But the cholera came soon afterwards, and took off the old man, and his wife. This was the mind and given to the appetites; nevertheless, opening-scene of James Fielding's sufferings-he was a fond father, for he shortly became one want-pestilence-and death. His wife and him- again, and a loving husband to a wife who doatself were soon afterwards seized with the disor-ed on him. But a thoroughly fallen man seldom der, and, though they recovered slowly, it was rights himself, and bankruptcy is a break-up for only to find their father and mother, and first- life in the constitution of successful industry. born child, removed from their once comfortable James Fielding labored, but his toil was thriftLIVING AGE. VOL. VI. 21

To be in prison, never serves a man; he gets a habit of shifting and shuffling, and leaning, and talking, and idling; he has the short hand-in-thepocket walk, and the hang-down look of a jail companion; he is never a man again. James Fielding came out of Stafford jail, a changed character: more clever and less capable of work -daintier, but not so refined-prouder, but not more honorable; the edge was taken from the

DXXXIV.

less; he found friends, but, one way or other, he let in everybody who had anything to do with him. By degrees, he got, as was natural, a very bad character, and, as is generally the case under such circumstances, without altogether deserving it. He was an unfortunate, but not an evil man; and we all know how falling bodies quicken in their descent.

"Mayhap; but Susan Jackson can't be sorry for what she never had; and poor folk didn't ought to be fanciful. 'Tis me, sir, partin' wi' my husband, that should fret."

Still, he was a man born to suffer, and to earn his bread by the sweat of his brow. Men of all countries, stations, and fortunes, labor-from the serf to the lord-and Fielding's destiny was only that of his sex. But, the gentle, pretty girl, whom he had taken from her father's home to comfort and cherish, to keep his fireside clean, and to nurse his little ones around him,-her lot was not cast by God for labor, for toil and moil, and anguish; yet who can tell what_arrows of grief pierced that woman's heart during her twelve years apprenticeship to wifedom!. Who shall describe the unwomanly miseries, alas, too common in England! of her daily shifts and struggles, her pigmy gaunt looks, her threadbare clothes insufficient to protect her from the winter weather, her hard day-labor, her sharp endurance of her children's hunger, and forgetfulness of her own her long sad catalogue of distresses, compared with which the pains of childbirth and even the death of the child at the breast, are nothing, being feminine sufferings.

This poor woe-begone mother stood before good curate Godfrey, one of a noiseless wayfaring body of Christian men who make little stir beyond their own parish, but are there constantly felt and heard of; the true disciples of the Father of the poor, the world's first teacher of quiet charity.

"He be goin' fast, indeed he be," said Mary Fielding, speaking of the potter, who had been down some weeks in a low fever. ""Tis hard to lose the father of one's child'en. I could ha' borne any stroke but thisn. Everywhere is a churchyard now-the life is dug out o' me."

"Oh, no no, sir! 'Tis only my way, what you see in my face; I war alway' palish likeleastways this many a day."

I

Martha, who had promptly obeyed her master, returned in a few minutes with a basin. "There, take that gently, Mary; it will warm

"Do not murmur, but think of the past. remember christening some of those children, when he and you were full of health and joy. In this journey of life, Mary, there is no hill without its hollow. Your neighbor Susan Jack-you." son will not have to mourn the loss of a hushand, for she has never known the love and protection of one; and when she goes, she will not leave orphans to grieve for her. But, for all that, Susan is very lonely and destitute, and says nobody cares for her."

"But you should remember, Mary, that when James and you were married, it was on the condition you were to part one day. We must not forget the ninety-nine favors because the hundredth is not granted. The Lord gave, and the Lord taketh away."

"I can't say much for 'em, sir,-they be but poorly."

"Oh, sir, 'tis beautiful to hear ye talk; you alway say suminut so comfortin', feelin', an' sensible like. One is ashamed to grumble afore you, 'tis so selfish and ill-natured."

"But how are the little ones, Mary?"

"They have had some food, to-day, I hope?" ""Tis early yet, sir." It was past midday. "But indeed they hante well."

"Did they eat anything last night before lying down?"

"Baby had a sup o' gruel out o' James's cup, but Billy an' Jacky, an' the t'other ent had nothing."

"And you?"

"Oh, sir, God be praised, I am used to it. Ten years is a long 'prentisage. 'Tis surprisin' how the famine feeds itself. An' then, the childern's cries, an' him a dyin', drives the thought away from me. I ent got the hard stomach o' hunger, sir; 'tis unfeelin' in a mother."

No wonder she did not feel the gnawings of want; she had passed her being into other existences; she had lost her identity in the wife and the mother.

66

Well, well, we must do something for the children, Mary."

66

Oh, sir, I did na come for that. What I wants is work. You ha' comed atween us an' death, many's a time. But, indeed, what I am here for, is, afore Jeames goes I wish he could see you, sir, an' talk wi' you a bit. His mind be strange an' uncomfortable like, about religion." "I thought him a believer, Mary."

66

Mayhap he be; but men tell their wives what, if they could, they would hide from God, an' I ha' heerd him say awful things; he war always so courageous like. Howsomdever, his hour be come, an' he ha' losed his darin', an' believes jist like a child. I thought, if he could only see you, sir."

Mr. Godfrey rang the bell. An aged but notable servant woman came.

"Martha, bring Mrs. Fielding a little warm bread and milk."

"Will you forgive me, sir? Indeed I cannot. It 'ud choke me. The child'en-the poor hungry child'en, sir!"

66

They shall be thought of." Mr. Godfrey left the room, returning shortly after with his long surtout buttoned closely up, and a small parcel in his hand.

"This contains a loaf, Mary-and something else-you know what to do with it. Let me have the ticket when I call, which will be in the course of the evening. Leave me now."

The comforted mother looked on Heaven's minister and then up to heaven, and passed noiselessly through the small door, with faith, hope, and maternal love-the three strongest pulses of the heart- to support her. She had had the only full and perfect lesson of religioncharity. But she did not know, until she got to the pawnshop, that the poor curate had taken his only waistcoat from his back to feed her children. Then, indeed, the tide of religion came