THE EARTH IS FULL OF THY RICHES. BY WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT. ALMIGHTY, hear us, while we raise That when this orb of sea and land Then towered the hills, and broad and green And stately groves beneath thy smile And fruits came forth and blossoms glowed, Thy hand outspread the billowy plains Lord, teach us, while the unsated gaze, -New York Evening Post. LONGINGS. WHEN shall I be at rest? My trembling heart Grows weary of its burden, sickening still With hope deferred. Oh, that it were Thy will To loose my bonds, and take me where Thou art? When shall I be at rest? My eyes grow dim With straining through the gloom; I scarce can see The way-marks that my Saviour left for me; Would it were morn, and I were safe with him! When shall I be at rest? Hand over hand Come thronging o'er me, lest I fail at last. No, Lord, for when I am indeed at rest, One taste of that deep bliss will quite efface The sternest memories of my earthly race Save but to swell the sense of being blest. Then lay on me whatever cross I need To bring me there. I know thou canst not be Unkind, unfaithful, or untrue to me! Shall I not toil for Thee, when Thou for me didst bleed? -Church of England S. S. Quarterly. LEFT ON THE BATTLE-FIELD. WHAT, was it a dream? am I all alone In the dreary night and the drizzling rain? Hist!-ah, it was only the river's moan; They have left me behind, with the mangled slain. Yes, now I remember it all too well! We met, from the battling ranks apart; Together our weapons flashed and fell, And mine was sheathed in his quivering heart. In the cypress gloom, where the deed was done, The words he said for the cannon's roar; My brother! would I had died for thee- And begged him to show me, by word or sign. That he knew and forgave me he could not speak, But he nestled his poor cold face to mine. And then, in my dream, we stood alone On a forest path where the shadows fell; And I heard again the tremulous tone, And the tender words of his last farewell. But that parting was years, long years ago, He wandered away to a foreign land; And our dear old mother will never know That he died to-night by his brother's hand. The soldiers who buried the dead away, Disturbed not the clasp of that last embrace, But why these murmurs? Thou didst never But laid them to sleep till the Judgment-day, shrink From any toil or weariness for me, Not even from that last deep agony; Shall I beneath my little trials sink? Heart folded to heart, and face to face. SARAH T. BOLTON. POETRY.-The Border Lands, 434. The Country Postman, 434. Violets, 434. Not Goo Hwome To-night, 480. Early Playmeate, 480. Epigrams, 480. SHORT ARTICLES.-Gypsy Emigration to America, 463. Growth of Bogs, 466. The Peterhoff's Mail-Bags, 479. The Russian Government's Reply to the Three Powers, 479. The Polish Revolt, 479. PUBLISHED EVERY SATURDAY BY LITTELL, SON & CO., CO., BOSTON. For Six Dollars a year, in advance, remitted directly to the Publishers, the LIVING AGE will be punctually forwarded free of postage. Complete sets of the First Series, in thirty-six volumes, and of the Second Series, in twenty volumes, handsomely bound, packed in neat boxes, and delivered in all the principal cities, free of expense of freight, are for sale at two dollars a volume. ANY VOLUME may be had separately, at two dollars, bound, or a dollar and a half in numbers. ANY NUMBER may be had for 13 cents; and it is well worth while for subscribers or purchasers to complete any broken volumes they may have, and thus greatly enhance their value. 9. Wait and Hope. By John Edmund Reade. 3 vols. 1859. 10. The Old Roman Well. 2 vols. 1861. 11. Miriam May. Third edition. 1860. 12. Crispin Ken. By the Author of "Miriam May." 2 vols. Third edition. 1861. 13. Philip Paternoster. By an Ex-Puseyite. 2 vols. 1858. 14. The Weird of the Wentworths. By Johannes Scotus. 2 vols. 1862. 15. Passages in the Life of a Fast Young Lady. By Mrs. Grey. 3 vols. 1862. 16. Only a Woman. By Captain Lascelles Wraxall. 3 vols. 1860. 17. Harold Overdon. By Chartley Castle. 1862. 20. The Daily Governess. By Mrs. Gordon Smythies. 3 vols. 1861. 1862. 21. The Woman of Spirit. 2 vols. 22. Clinton Maynyard, a Tale of the World, the Flesh, and the Devil. 1862. 23. Spurs and Skirts. By Allet. 1862. 24. Ashcombe Churchyard. By Evelyn Benson. 2 vols. 1862. "I DON'T like preaching to the nerves instead of the judgment," was the remark of a shrewd observer of human nature, in relation to a certain class of popular sermons. The remark need not be limited to sermons alone. A class of literature has grown up around us, usurping in many respects, intentionally or unintentionally, a portion of the preacher's office, playing no inconsiderable part in moulding the minds and forming the habits and tastes of its generation; and doing so principally, we had almost said exclusively, by "preaching to the nerves." It would almost seem as if the paradox of Cabanis, les nerfs, voilà tout l'homme, had been banished from the realm of philosophy only to claim a wider empire in the domain of fiction-at least if we may judge by the very large class of writers who seem to acknowledge no other element in human nature to which they can appeal. Excitement, and excitement alone, seems to be the great end at which they aim an end which must be accomplished at any cost by some means or other, "si possis, recte; si non, quocunque modo." And as excitement, even when harmless in kind, cannot be continually produced without becoming morbid in degree, works of this class manifest themselves as belonging, some more, some less, but all to some extent, to the morbid phenomena of literature-indications of a wide-spread corruption, of which they are in part both the effect and the cause; called into existence to supply the cravings of a diseased appetite, and contributing themselves to foster the disease, and to stimulate the want which they supply. The sensation novel is the counterpart of the spasmodic poem. They represent "the selfsame interest with a different leaning." The one leans outward, the other leans inward; the one aims at convulsing the soul of the reader, the other professes to owe its birth to convulsive throes in the soul of the writer. But with this agreement there is also a difference. There is not a poet or poetaster of the spasmodic school but is fully persuaded of his own inspiration and the immortality of his work. He writes to satisfy the unconquerable yearnings of his soul; and if some prosaic friend were to hint at such earthly considerations as readers and purchasers, he would be ready to exclaim, with a forgotten brother of the craft (alas, that we should have to say forgotten after such a hiatus !) :— Go, dotard, go, and if it suits thy mind, Range yonder rocks and reason with the wind, Or if its motions own another's will, Walk to the beach and bid the sea be still; In newer orbits let the planets run, Or throw a cloud of darkness o'er the sun; A measured movement bid the comets keep, Or lull the music of the spheres to sleep: These may obey thee; but the fiery soul Of Genius owns not, brooks not thy control." Not so the sensation novelist. No divine influence can be imagined as presiding over the birth of his work, beyond the market-law of demand and supply; no more immortality is dreamed of for it than for the fashions of the current season. A commercial atmosphere activity is much of the same kind as it was floats around works of this class, redolent of described in the pages of this review more the manufactory and the shop. The public than fifty years ago.* The manner of its want novels, and novels must be made-so action is indeed inseparable from the nature many yards of printed stuff, sensation-pat- of the institution, varying only in the protern, to be ready by the beginning of the duction of larger quantities to meet the deseason. And if the demands of the novel-mand of a more reading generation. From reading public were to increase to the antount the days of the "Minerva Press " (that synof a thousand per season, no difficulty would be found in producing a thousand works of the average merit. They rank with the verses of which "Lord Fanny spins a thousand such a day; " and spinning-machines of the Lord Fanny kind may be multiplied without limit. Then numbered with the puppies in the mud." Subscription, as compared with purchase, produces no doubt a great increase in the quantity of books procurable, but with a corresponding deterioration in the quality. The buyer of books is generally careful to select what for his own purposes is worth buying; the subscriber is often content to take the good the gods provide him, glancing lazily down the library catalogue, and picking out some title which promises amusement or excitement. The catalogue of a circulating library is the legitimate modern successor to that portion of Curll's stock in trade which consisted of "several title-pages, that only wanted treatises to be wrote to them." onym for the dullest specimens of the light reading of our grandmothers) to those of the thousand and one tales of the current season, the circulating library has been the chief hotbed for forcing a crop of writers without talent and readers without discrimination. It is to literature what a magasin de modes is to Various causes have been at work to pro- dress, giving us the latest fashion, and a little duce this phenomenon of our literature. more. Its staple commodities are "books of Three principal ones may be named as hav- the present season," many of them destined ing had a large share in it-periodicals, cir- to run their round for the season only,— culating libraries, and railway bookstalls."Sons of a day, just buoyant on the flood, A periodical, from its very nature, must contain many articles of an ephemeral interest, and of the character of goods made to order. The material part of it is a fixed quantity, determined by rigid boundaries of space and time; and on this Procrustean bed the spiritual part must needs be stretched to fit. A given number of sheets of print, containing so many lines per sheet, must be produced weekly or monthly, and the diviner element must accommodate itself to these conditions. A periodical, moreover, belongs to the class of works which most men borrow and do not buy, and in which, therefore, they take only a transitory interest. Few men will burden their shelves with a series of volumes which have no coherence in their parts, and no The railway stall, like the circulating lilimit in their number, whose articles of per-brary, consists partly of books written exsonal interest may be as one halfpennyworth of bread to an intolerable quantity of sack, and which have no other termination to their issue than the point at which they cease to be profitable. Under these circumstances, no small stimulus is given to the production of tales of the marketable stamp, which, after appearing piecemeal in weekly or monthly instalments generally enter upon a second stage of their insect-life in the form of a handsome reprint under the auspices of the circulating library. This last-named institution is the oldest offender of the three; but age has neither diminished the energy nor subdued the faults of its youth. It is more active now than at any former period of its existence, and its pressly for its use, partly of reprints in a new phase of their existence-a phase internally that of the grub, with small print and cheap paper, externally that of the buttterfly, with a tawdry cover, ornamented with a highly colored picture, hung out like a signboard, to give promise of the entertainment to be had within. The picture, like the book, is generally of the sensation kind, announcing some exciting scene to follow. A pale young lady in a white dress, with a dagger in her hand, evidently prepared for some desperate deed; or a couple of ruffians engaged in a deadly struggle; or a Red Indian in his war-paint; or, if the plot turns on smooth instead of violent villany, a priest * "Quarterly Review," vol. iii., pp. 340, 341. |