Изображения страниц
PDF
EPUB

Monte Video, was set up again by Brazilian | are one source of wealth to the Republic, arms and British money, borrowed in Eng- have been shipped off to Brazil. The priland by the Imperial Government. Paraguay vate property of the President was not even thereupon proclaimed war, feeling that her respected. There was literally nothing left own turn might come next for similar dic- in this grand old city which invading rapactation. She had no wish to come into col-ity could make away with. Asuncion was lision with her sister States, but events not given up to the soldiery; it was a pellforced her to do so. The Argentine Gov-mell raid upon property. It was organized ernment was jealous of Uraguay, and the plunder, by authority of the victor; and the city of Buenos Ayres notoriously so of Brazilians, in keeping with the whole proMonte Video; they hence became abettors cedure during the war, excluded their alof the wrong perpetrated by Brazil upon lies from any chance of partaking of the the Oriental people. There happened to spoil. be a slip of territory on the Argentine bor- General Mitre, brother to the late Presders of Paraguay which was of doubtful ident of the Confederation, was stationed ownership, and the Paraguayans marched with his Argentine troops five miles from across it, in hostile demonstration, towards the city; and this magnanimous officer prothe Brazilian confines. This gave the Ar- tested against the seizure of private propgentine President the occasion he desired, erty by the Brazilians. To do the people and he declared war against the alleged of Buenos Ayres justice, they have sustained trespassers. Flores, grateful for the sup- the protest of their general, and declared port of the Empire and of the Argentine the triple treaty violated, which provided Confederation, also joined the alliance. The against the seizure or injury of the private people of both the Republics were opposed property of Paraguayan citizens. They to the junction of their forces with those of have also conferred upon General Mitre a Brazil against Paraguay; from the belief gold medal in token of their admiration of pervading those populations, that Brazil is his honesty, humanity, justice, and generdesirous, in the interests of her slavehold- ous conduct towards a defeated foe. ers, of extending her rule throughout the countries around her.

Such was the origin of the triple alliance, and one of the fiercest wars on record. It is necessary to refer to it thus far, because the delusion exists here that the alliance was formed to put down a tyrant, who interfered with the free navigation of the rivers which erroneously pass in England under the name of "The Plate." This misapprehension of the nature and cause of the contest is kept up by the agents of Brazil and Buenos Ayres, but it ought to be dispelled. The allied armies have so far triumphed, that over the capital of Paraguay floats the green banner of Brazil. The city has been ruthlessly plundered, contrary to all international honour and the usages of civilized war. It has been attempted by the agents of Brazil in this country to extenuate this heinous public wrong; they do not dare to deny it, the evidence of the fact being incontestable. Never did an army in occupation of a city behave more scandalously, at least in our time. Asuncion was not taken by storm. An infuriated soldiery, maddened by a sanguinary strife, did not break the bounds of discipline as they have so often done in other wars. The city was deserted. There was no living thing to oppose the entrance of the Brazilians, except the dogs which remained in the houses and Estanzios. A deliberate "sack" was made. Chairs, tables, pianos, mirrors, sideboards, and other furniture, made from the beautiful woods which

The only attempt at justification set up by the conquerors is the allegation that when the Paraguayans surprised the camp of Tuyuti, Lopez gave orders to allow the soldiers to sack tents and stores after the fight! Can any plea for the rape of an undefended city be more worthless or absurd?

Lopez conquered a defended military camp, and did as any other general would do, captured its military stores, rations, horses, guns, transports, carriages, &c. But Caxias did what no general of a civilized army would do; he entered an undefended city, and not only seized the stores of the government, which were lawful prize, but sacked the houses of private citizens, which as a soldier, a man of honour, and the representative of an Imperial master he was bound to protect.

After all, Paraguayan independence has not perished. Lopez is still at the head of a formidable force of resolute and patriotic men. The allied army is reduced to 20000 men, by wounds, fatigue, and cholera. Sickness threatens still further to reduce their strength, and Lopez will hang upon their skirts with deadly pertinacity. A private correspondent says, "We are far from having conquered the Paraguayans; for every man of them killed, ten of us will fall, and for every prisoner taken, twenty Brazilians are put hors de combat, by sickness or the sword." If this be anything like a fair description of the actual condition of things, it is important that all Englishmen, credit

ors of Brazil and of the Confederation, | tion. Yet we need not forget that to the should weigh well the facts and the prob- cunning eye God is as visible in the rude abilities.

From The Leader.

FACE-FANCIES.

root as in the rose. Nay, He symbolizes His workmanship by what is false as well as fair. The scowl of the murderer, the greeting of lovers' eyes, are the productions of the same Art, each exquisitely perfect in its kind. There are faces that haunt the THE enigmas with which life surrounds us memory; where met, when encountered are worth guessing at; for sometimes we may may not be recalled. They stand out from hit the mark, and though we know it not, the darkness of night, and fade and faint yet there steals from it the sense of light along the dreams of sleep. You have seen that always steals from truth, and suffuses them in the street, but did not pause to conour being with a milder ray. It is like sun-sider them at the time. There was nothing light on the face of a sleeper; it shapes indeed, so it seemed, about them to startle into light the phantoms of his dreams, you into attention. It is only when they though with no actual manifestation of its reappear that they surprise, or alarm, or presence. All things are enigmatical. horrify; nay, such faces that seem to give Problems deep as eternity are propounded their spirit to the mind of the passer-by to us by the flowers, and the trees, and the have been known to drive him mad. There songs of birds, and the music of running are faces to be encountered all dispassionate, waters. But Nature utters no such riddles save in the eyes which burn with the pasas she delivers to us from the streets. sions that deny their intelligence to the There she confronts us with the presence of an aggregate life, and her sayings are like dreams filled with confused meanings and undeterminable shapes. Poets talk of the stars and the mystery of the stars. But what is this mystery compared to the mystery of human faces ?

There are faces which we meet in the streets into which has passed a subtler mystery than the mind can think on. They belong to that highest type of face of which the standard is thought. They are of the order of face that provokes speculation whilst it repels it. We would give something to know whence comes that subtle thing which has so marvellously incorporated itself with the physical lineaments. It may be born of trouble- a trouble that has fastened upon the face, and teased it into beauty as the wind makes beautiful the snow-flake. Trouble there surely has been; for there is no mystery without sadness: and the sad mystery of these faces must have been wrought by the vexing of years. There are faces that seem wanting in depth, albeit they are full-fraught. Such faces are falsehoods. Yet they are so involuntarily. They cannot speak the mind; the lineaments are of the hardest marble; Nature's chisel has worked dexterously enough its part; but life has failed to penetrate the granite front. It has avenged its incapacity by certain deep seams; but all delicacy is wanting. We miss the luminous effect the shining of the soul behind. Such faces come upon us rudely; but not with the disappointment of immaturity. The full fruition of a divine art is there; only its coarseness blunts our sympathetic percep

face. When the wearers of such fleshly masks die, their souls escape through their eyes. They would find them the only outlet. With other men the spirit might depart as the perfume departs from the flower. The soul seems to chafe at being pent up within such narrow limits as the eyes. You can see it dilating and contracting upon the keen retina, as one who approaches a window to find egress and retires, and returns again and again. There are faces which all men meet, which all men know, which all men love. When they reappear unto the eye they do not haunt, they soothe. They are ministering faces; faces which seem crowned, like Jesus, with a halo of light of whose subtle irradiation the heart is alone sensible. In such faces are to be found no personification of the darker emotions of life. The lips and the eyes are genial with a tenderness to which wisdom has imparted the exquisite refinement of a faint sadness. Such faces cannot offend, neither in their rejections, nor in their beseechings; neither in their gladness when confronting despair, nor in their peacefulness when opposing anger, nor in their love when facing hate. Upon them humanity has stamped its fairest impress. They are not more describable than faces which are weird, or cunning, or intellectual, or haughty, or depraved. But they embody the idealism all thinkers on the Madonna, all painters of Charity, all dreamers of some sweetest achievement of God strive to realize. Nor let them be held impossible because of this faultlessness of expression; or non-existent because they are rare.

[merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][ocr errors][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][ocr errors][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][ocr errors][merged small][merged small][ocr errors][merged small][merged small][ocr errors][merged small][merged small][ocr errors][merged small][merged small][ocr errors][merged small][merged small][merged small][ocr errors][ocr errors][merged small][merged small][ocr errors][merged small][merged small][ocr errors][merged small][merged small][merged small][ocr errors][merged small][merged small][ocr errors][merged small][merged small]

JUST PUBLISHED AT THIS OFFICE:

A HOUSE OF CARDS, by Mrs. Cashel Hoey. Price 75 cents.

NEW BOOKS:

MASSACHUSETTS AND ITS EARLY HISTORY. Introductory Lectures before The Historical Society. By ROBERT C. WINTHROP. GEORGE P. ROWELL AND CO.'S AMERICAN NEWSPAPER DIRECTORY; containing accurate lists of all the Newspapers and Periodicals published in the United States and Territories, and the Dominion of Canada, and British Colonies of North America, together with a description of the Towns and Cities in which they are published. Price $5. Published by Geo. P. Rowell and Co., Publishers and Newspaper Advertising agents. New York. ELOCUTION AND ORATORY: giving a thorough treatise on the Art of Reading and Speaking. Containing numerous and choice selections. By CHARLES A. WILEY, Teacher of Elocution. New York: Clark & Maynard. Chicago: S. C. Griggs & Co.

PUBLISHED EVERY SATURDAY BY

LITTELL & GAY, BOSTON.

[blocks in formation]

FOR EIGHT DOLLARS, remitted directly to the Publishers, the LIVING AGE will be punctually forwarded for a year, free of postage. But we do not prepay postage on less than a year, nor where we have to pay commission for forwarding the money.

Price of the First Series, in Cloth, 36 volumes, 90 dollars.

Second

64 Third

The Complete Work,

[ocr errors][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small]

Any Volume Bound, 3 dollars; Unbound, 2 dollars. The sets, or volumes, will be sent at the expense of the publishers.

PREMIUMS FOR CLUBS.

For 5 new subscribers ($40.), a sixth copy; or a set of HORNE'S INTRODUCTION TO THE BIBLE, unabridged, in 4 large volumes, cloth, price $10; or any 5 of the back volumes of the LIVING AGE, in numbers, price $10.

THE LAKE.
[FROM LAMARTINE]

MUST we for ever seek some newer clime,
Return' we cannot, may we not delay,
Or anchor on the shoreless sea of time
Ev'n for a day?

Last year she sate beside me on this stone,

And whisper'd we would look again on thee; See me, sweet Lake, but ask not why, alone, Nor where is she!

Such was thy murmur 'neath yon rocky caves,
The sullen cliff so didst thou idly beat,
While the light foam that rippled off thy waves
Fell on her feet.

One eve, dost thou remember? silence bore

Lov'd lake, mute rocks, grottos, and waving groves,

You whom time spares, or wastes but to re

[blocks in formation]

Threat'ning thy beauty; in the light warm gale

That wreathes thee into smiles, in ev'ry sound
That Echo wafts o'er thee while moonbeams pale
Hallow all round.

Let the soft-sighing rose, the murm'ring win
Breathing her name, the bird that flits above,
Record our Love!
Spectator.

Such absolute sway that sound had ceased to All, all that through the senses wakes the mind,

be,

But for the measured cadence of an oar

Plashing on thee.

Sudden a sound, more sweet than mortal, broke
The sleep of Echo in her lonely cell;
Ah! how I treasured as the Siren spoke
Each word that fell!

"Time, stay your speed, a little stay,
To let us taste the joys you bring;
Do not each moment brush away
Some pleasure with your wing.

"Where sorrow pines, or labour delves,
Oh, there in mercy linger not,
But leave the happy to themselves,
Forgetting and forgot.

"In vain, in vain! Time seems in scorn
More rapidly to urge his flight;
Sweet night, endure! And lo! the morn
Already chaseth night.

"Oh, let us, then, in mere despair

Of holding him, with him press on,
And love the more intensely, ere
The hour for love be gone."

Too jealous Pow'r, must that enchanting cup
From which the draughts of love and pleasure
flow

Fail, ah! so soon, and wilt thou ne'er dry up
The urn of woe?

Is there no charm to fix one happy hour;
"Twas here but now,
and will it be no more?
Doth Time, scarce granting e'er he takes the
dower,

Never restore?

Thou past Eternity, thou dark abyss,

The years by thee engulphed, oh, where are
they?

Give back, give back the youth, the bounding
bliss

Borne far away!

"ALL THINGS FOR GOOD."

W. D.

[blocks in formation]
[blocks in formation]
[blocks in formation]

suppose,

[ocr errors]

Christian faith to most men, naturally form a part-too large a part, I would venture to say of the language of hymns. They are hence apt to be cold, or, as I said just now, conventional. But beneath this formal similarity in style lie hid, as we also know, all those singular fluctuations in the mode of regarding religion which have marked every century of Christianity, and are more clearly and decisively traceable in the nineteenth than in the thirteenth. So impossible is it to have life without change! So ineradicable the human passion for free

HYMNS, although they form but a small portion in the great field of poetry, are yet a portion of it which comes home to most of us in a living way; we all, I either care for them more or less ourselves, or know those who do. I hope, therefore, that a very short sketch of the changes through which English hymns have passed since that epoch when the Reformation and the modern form of our language began to-dom and variety of thought! So idle, again, gether may not be without value.

We may divide the whole subject into three periods. I. That of the early Reformation, before the distinct formation of nonconforming Protestant congregations. II. That of the eighteenth century, from Addison and Watts to Cowper, which, as an intelligible name, I may call the Evangelical period. III. The hymns of the last sixty years, during which hymn writing, as a distinct form of poetry, has been cultivated with considerable success by writers representing the many religious schools which have flourished, or, at least, have come into being during our own age.

I.

All poetry, it has been often remarked, reflects faithfully the feelings, especially the highest and deepest feelings, of the time which produces it. It is obvious that this law will be especially true of religious poetry. Men may feign, for the sake of fashion or of fancy, in their other styles of verse; nor, of course, has such feigning (which we should then call by the darker name of hypocrisy) been at any time absent from their religious profession. But it is certain that hymns not written in a genuine frame of mind will have little chance of succeeding. There is, indeed, in this form of poetry one great source of "conventional” treatment, which may occur to some of your minds, and which undoubtedly renders hymns, in one way, less accurate representatives of the age when they have been written than some other forms of poetry- the drama, for example. This conventional element comes in thus. The long series of words and of thoughts which have become symbols of the

is the boast of those who maintain that their

faith (whatever form it may assume) is infallible! So essentially childish the regret of those who sigh for a hopeless and neverrealized unity! Yet the practical necessity under which the hymn lies of conforming always to the general code of Christian expression, and, further, of restraining itself within the obvious limits of a vocal act of prayer or praise, or, at most, of a brief series of reflections and descriptions, has undoubtedly been a serious impediment to success in hymn writing, and one which it has required real poetic genius, or the strongest religious impulse, to conquer. Upon the portion which poetry as an art should hold in the hymn, I shall say a few words further on. Meanwhile, the first period is naturally coloured at the outset with the gravity of an age when men, to whichever communion they might belong, had not only to live for their faith, but to die for it. The hymns written during the reigns of Edward VI. and Mary are marked by a solemn tone by a prevalence of stern, didactic feeling; they are the work of men to whom life was an earnest, painful thing; they want the happier flow of less troubled ages — the golden cadences which occur spontaneously to "hearts at leisure." I take one specimen from the "Paradise of Dainty Devices," a collection which, though published in 1576, represents the earlier period of which I have been speaking.

[blocks in formation]
« ПредыдущаяПродолжить »