The Project Gutenberg EBook of Harper's New Monthly Magazine, No. V, October, 1850, Volume I. This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at http://www.gutenberg.org/license Title: Harper's New Monthly Magazine, No. V, October, 1850, Volume I. Release Date: August 17, 2010 [Ebook 33452] Language: English ***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK HARPER'S NEW MONTHLY MAGAZINE, NO. V, OCTOBER, 1850, VOLUME I.*** Harper's New Monthly Magazine No. V.—October, 1850.—Vol. I. Contents Wordsworth—His Character And Genius. .2 Sidney Smith. By George Gilfillan. 19 Thomas Carlyle. By George Gilfillan. 25 The Gentleman Beggar. An Attorney's Story. (From Dickens's Household Words.) . 31 Singular Proceedings Of The Sand Wasp. (From Howitt's Country Year-Book.) . 43 What Horses Think Of Men. From The Raven In The Happy Family. (From Dickens's Household Words.) . 46 The Quakers During The American War. (From Howitt's Country Year-Book.) . 53 A Shilling's Worth Of Science. (From Dickens's House- hold Words.) . 57 A Tuscan Vintage. 66 How To Make Home Unhealthy. By Harriet Martineau. 68 Sorrows And Joys. (From Dickens's Household Words.) . 124 Maurice Tiernay, The Soldier Of Fortune. (From the Dublin University Magazine) . 125 The Enchanted Rock. (From Chambers's Edinburgh Journal.)160 The Force Of Fear. (From Chambers's Edinburgh Journal.) 163 Lady Alice Daventry; Or, The Night Of Crime. (From the Dublin University Magazine.) . 169 Mirabeau. An Anecdote Of His Private Life. (From Chambers's Edinburgh Journal.) . 187 Terrestrial Magnetism. (From Chambers's Edinburgh Jour- nal.) . 197 Early History Of The Use Of Coal. (From Chambers's Edinburgh Journal.) . 211 Jenny Lind. By Fredrika Bremer. 214 ivHarper's New Monthly Magazine, No. V, October, 1850, Volume I. My Novel; Or, Varieties In English Life. By Pisistratus Caxton. (From Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine.) . 219 The Two Guides Of The Child. (From Dickens's House- hold Words.) . 256 The Laboratory In The Chest. (From Dickens's Household Words.) . 259 The Steel Pen. An Illustration Of Cheapness. (From Dickens's Household Words.) . 272 Snakes And Serpent Charmers. (From Bentley's Miscellany.)279 The Magic Maze. (From Colburn's Monthly Magazine.) . 291 The Sun. (From Chambers's Edinburgh Journal.) . 308 The Household Jewels. (From Dickens's Household Words.)315 The Tea-Plant. (From Hogg's Instructor.) . 319 Anecdotes Of Dr. Chalmers. 329 The Pleasures Of Illness. (From the People's Journal.) . 332 Obstructions To The Use Of The Telescope. 337 Monthly Record Of Current Events. 338 Literary Notices. 377 Autumn Fashions. 395 Footnotes . 399 [577] Wordsworth—His Character And Genius. In a late article on Southey, we alluded to the solitary position of Wordsworth in that lake country where he once shone the brightest star in a large galaxy. Since then, the star of Jove, so beautiful and large, has gone out in darkness—the greatest laureate of England has expired—the intensest, most unique, and most pure-minded of our poets, with the single exceptions of Milton and Cowper, is departed. And it were lesemajesty against his mighty shade not to pay it our tribute while yet his memory, and the grass of his grave, are green. It is singular, that only a few months have elapsed since the great antagonist of his literary fame—Lord Jeffrey (who, we understand, persisted to the last in his ungenerous and unjust estimate), left the bench of human, to appear at the bar of Divine justice. Seldom has the death of a celebrated man produced a Wordsworth—His Character And Genius. 3 more powerful impression in his own city and circle, and a less powerful impression on the wide horizon of the world. In truth, he had outlived himself. It had been very different had he passed away thirty years ago, when the “Edinburgh Review” was in the plenitude of its influence. As it was, he disappeared like a star at midnight, whose descent is almost unnoticed while the whole heavens are white with glory, not like a sun going down, that night may come over the earth. One of the acutest, most accomplished, most warm-hearted, and generous of men, Jeffrey wanted that stamp of universality, that highest order of genius, [578] that depth of insight, and that simple directness of purpose, not to speak of that moral and religious consecration, which “give the world assurance of a man.” He was the idol of Edinburgh, and the pride of Scotland, because he condensed in himself those qualities which the modern Athens has long been accustomed to covet and admire—taste and talent rather than genius—subtlety of appreciation rather than power of origination—the logical understanding rather than the inventive insight—and because his name had sounded out to the ends of the earth. But nature and man, not Edinburgh Castle, or the Grampian Hills merely, might be summoned to mourn in Wordsworth's departure the loss of one of their truest high-priests, who had gazed into some of the deepest secrets of the one, and echoed some of the loftiest aspirations of the other. To soften such grief, however, there comes in the reflection, that the task of this great poet had been nobly discharged. He had given the world assurance, full, and heaped, and running over, of what he meant, and of what was meant by him. While the premature departure of a Schiller, a Byron, or a Keats, gives us emotions similar to those wherewith we would behold the crescent moon, snatched away as by some “insatiate archer,” up into the Infinite, ere it grew into its full glory—Wordsworth, like Scott, Goethe, and Southey, was permitted to fill his full and broad sphere. 4Harper's New Monthly Magazine, No. V, October, 1850, Volume I. What Wordsworth's mission was, may be, perhaps, understood through some previous remarks upon his great mistress—Nature, as a poetical personage. There are three methods of contemplating nature. These are the material, the shadowy, and the mediatorial. The materialist looks upon it as the great and only reality. It is a vast solid fact, for ever burning and rolling around, below and above him. The idealist, on the contrary, regards it as a shadow—a mode of mind—the infinite projection of his own thought. The man who stands between the two extremes, looks on nature as a great, but not ultimate or everlasting scheme of mediation, or compromise, between pure and absolute spirit and humanity—adumbrating God to man, and bringing man near to God. To the materialist, there is an altar, star-lighted heaven-high, but no God. To the idealist, there is a God, but no altar. He who holds the theory of mediation, has the Great Spirit as his God, and the universe as the altar on which he presents the gift of his poetical (we do not speak at present so much of his theological) adoration. It must be obvious, at once, which of those three views of nature is the most poetical. It is surely that which keeps the two principles of spirit and matter distinct and unconfounded—preserves in their proper relations—the soul and the body of things—God within, and without the garment by which, in Goethe's grand thought, “we see him by.” While one party deify, and another destroy matter, the third impregnate, without identifying it with the Divine presence. The notions suggested by this view, which is that of Scripture, are exceedingly comprehensive and magnificent. Nature becomes to the poet's eye “a great sheet let down from God out of heaven,” and in which there is no object “common or unclean.” The purpose and the Being above cast such a grandeur over the pettiest or barest objects, as did the fiery pillar upon the sand, or the shrubs of the howling desert of its march. Every thing becomes valuable when looked upon as a communication Wordsworth—His Character And Genius. 5 from God, imperfect only from the nature of the material used. What otherwise might have been concluded discords, now appear only stammerings or whisperings in the Divine voice; thorns and thistles spring above the primeval curse, the “meanest flower that blows” gives “Thoughts that do often lie too deep for tears.” The creation is neither unduly exalted nor contemptuously trampled under-foot, but maintains its dignified position, as an embassador from the Divine King. The glory of something far beyond association—that of a divine and perpetual presence—is shed over the landscape, and its golden-drops are spilled upon the stars. Objects the most diverse—the cradle of the child, the wet hole of the centipede, the bed of the corpse, and the lair of the earthquake, the nest of the lark, and the crag on which sits, half asleep, the dark vulture, digesting blood—are all clothed in a light the same in kind, though varying in degree— “A light which never was on sea or shore.” In the poetry of the Hebrews, accordingly, the locusts are God's “great army;”—the winds are his messengers, the thunder his voice, the lightning a “fiery stream going before him,” the moon his witness in the heavens, the sun a strong man rejoicing to run his race—all creation is roused and startled into life through him—its every beautiful, or dire, or strange shape in the earth or the sky, is God's movable tent; the place where, for a season, his honor, his beauty, his strength, and his justice dwell—the tenant not degraded, and inconceivable dignity being added to the abode.