1866. Hope springs with you: I dread no more That gives such perfect fullness. The life that floods the happy fields IF DEATH BE FINAL. [Ariel and Caliban, with other Poems. 1887.] IF death be final, what is life, with all Its lavish promises, its thwarted aims, Its lost ideals, its dishonored claims, An epitaph recording but our names; A puppet-stage where joys and griefs and shames A plan without a purpose or a form; A roofless temple; an unfinished tale. And men like madrepores through calm and storm Toil, die to build a branch of fossil frail, And add from all their dreams, thoughts, acts, belief, Henry Theodore Tuckerman. BORN in Boston, Mass., 1813. DIED in New York, N. Y., 1871. CHA THE FIRST AMERICAN NOVELIST. [Essays, Biographical and Critical. 1857.] HARLES BROCKDEN BROWN was the first American who manifested a decided literary genius in a form which has survived with anything like vital interest. His native fondness and capacity for literature is not only shown by his voluntary adoption of its pursuit at a time and in a country offering no inducement to such a career, but they are still more evident from the unpropitious social circumstances and local influences amid which he was born and bred. He was the son of a member of the Society of Friends in Philadelphia-a class distinguished, indeed, for moral worth, but equally remarkable for the absence of a sense of the beautiful, and a repudiation of the graces of life and the inspiration of sentiment, except that of a strictly religious kind. . Like most gifted men, he won and retained affections with ease; he was the idol of the domestic circle, and loyal as well as magnanimous in friendship; he stood manfully by his comrades during the fearful ravages of the yellow fever; and his letters, while they aim to elicit the inmost experience and outward fortunes of those he loves, are remarkably selfforgetful. He lived wholly in his mind and affections; from a child devoted to books and maps, and, as a man, congratulating himself upon that fragility of body that destined him to meditative pursuits. Reading, clubs, pedestrianism, journalizing, and earnest reflection, were the means of his culture and development. Like the author of the "Seasons," he was silent in mixed companies, but alert and expressive under genial mental excitement. An Utopian, he indulged in the most sanguine visions of the amelioration of society: a deep reasoner, he argued a question of law or government with subtlety and force; a devotee of truth, he ardently sought and carefully recorded facts; a wild dreamer, he gave the utmost scope to his fancy and the most intense exercise to his imagination; careless as to his appearance, unmethodical in affairs, intent upon the contemplative rather than the observant use of his faculties, he yet could summon all his powers at the call of love, duty, or taste, and bring them into efficient action. He describes his sensations at the first sight of the sea with the enthusiasm of Alfieri, and sums up an imaginary case, as president of a law society, with the grave reasoning of a Blackstone. The remarkable feature in his intellectual character was this union of analytical with imaginative power. So contented was he when his literary and domestic tastes were entirely gratified, as was the case during the last few years of his life, that he writes to one of his friends that the only thing which mars his felicity is the idea of its possible interruption. He fell into a gradual decline; and his wife declares that "he surrendered up not one faculty of his soul but with his last breath." A prolific English novelist expressed his surprise at the discovery of what he called a tendency to supernaturalism in our people, having always regarded the American character as exclusively practical and matter-of-fact. It seems, however, that both individuals and communities are apt to develop in extremes; and that there is some occult affinity between the achieving faculty and the sense of wonder. Shakespeare has inwrought his grand superstitious creation amid vital energies of purpose and action, and thus brought into striking contrast the practical VOL. VII.-15 efficiency and spiritual dependence of our nature. The coincidence is equally remarkable, whether it be considered as artistic ingenuity or natural fact; and probably, as in other instances, the great dramatist was true to both motives. The more strictly utilitarian the life, the more keen, it would appear, is a zest for the marvellous; from that principle of reaction which causes a neglected element of the soul to assert itself with peculiar emphasis. No class of people are kept in more stern and continuous alliance with reality than sailors and the poor Irish; and yet among them fanciful superstition is proverbially rife. There is, therefore, no absolute incongruity between the most literal sagacity in affairs and outward experience, and a thorough recognition of the mysterious. The theological acumen and hardy intelligence of the New England colonists did not suffice against witchcraft and its horrible results; seers flourished among the shrewd Scotch, and gypsy fortune-telling in the rural districts of England. The faculty or sentiment to which these and other delusions appeal, in our more cultivated era, finds scope and gratification in the revelations of science, and so nearly connected are the natural and supernatural, the seen and the unseen, the mysterious and the familiar, that a truly reverent and enlightened mind is often compelled to acknowledge that a sceptical and obstinate rationalism is as much opposed to truth as a visionary and credulous spirit. There is an intuitive as well as a reasoning faith; and presentiments, dreams, vivid reminiscences, and sympathetic phenomena, of which introspective natures are conscious, indicate to the calmest reflection that we are linked to the domain of moral experience and of destiny by more than tangible relations. Hence the receptive attitude of the highest order of minds in regard to spiritual theories, the consolation found in the doctrines of Swedenborg, and the obvious tendency that now prevails to interpret art, literature, and events, according to an ideal or philosophical view. It is a curious fact, in the history of American letters, that the genius of our literary pioneer was of this introspective order. If we examine the writings of Brown, it is evident that they only rise to high individuality in the analysis of emotion and the description of states of mind. In other respects, though industrious, wise, and able, he is not impressively original; but in following out a metaphysical vein, in making the reader absolutely cognizant of the revery, fears, hopes, imaginings, that "puzzle the will," or concentrate its energies, he obeyed a singular idiosyncrasy of his nature, a Shakespearian tendency, and one, at that period, almost new as a chief element of fiction. NEWSPAPER READING-ITS USE AND ABUSE. [The Criterion. 1866.] THERE is a very large class whose reading is confined to newspapers, and they manifest the wisdom of Pope's maxim about the danger of a little learning. Adopting the cant and slang phrases of the hour, and satisfied with the hasty conjectures and partial glimpses of truth that diurnal journals usually contain, they are at once superficial and dogmatic, full of fragmentary ideas and oracular commonplace. If such is the natural effect upon an undisciplined mind of exclusive newspaper reading, even the scholar, the thinker, and the man of refined taste is exposed to mental dissipation from the same cause. A celebrated French philosopher, recently deceased, remarkable for severe and efficient mental labor, told an American friend that he had not read a newspaper for four years. It is incalculable what productiveness of mind and freshness of conception is lost to the cultivated intellect by the habit of beginning the day with newspapers. The brain, refreshed by sleep, is prepared to act genially in the morning hours; and a statistical table, prepared by an able physiologist, shows that those authors who give this period to labor most frequently attain longevity. Scott is a memorable example of the healthfulness and efficiency attending the practice. If, therefore, the student, the man of science, or the author dissipates his mental vigor, and the nervous energy induced by a night's repose, in skimming over the countless topics of a newspaper, he is too much in relation with things in general to concentrate easily his thoughts; his mind has been diverted, and his sympathies too variously excited, to readily gather around a special theme. Those intent upon self-culture, or intellectual results, should, therefore, make this kind of reading a pastime, and resort to it in the intervals of more consecutive thought. There is no element of civilization that debauches the mind of our age more than the indiscriminate and exclusive perusal of newspapers. Only by consulting history, by disciplining the reasoning powers in the study of philosophy, and cherishing a true sense of the beautiful by communion with the poets,—in a word, only by habitual reference to standard literature, can we justly estimate the record of the hour. There must be great examples in the mind, great principles of judgment and taste, or the immediate appeal to these qualities is ignorantly answered; whereas, the thoughtful, intelligent comments of an educated reader of journals upon the questions they discuss, the precedents he brings in view, and the facts of the past to which he refers, place the immediate in relation with the universal, and enable us to seize upon essential truth. To depend for mental recreation upon newspapers is a desperate resource; not to consult them is to linger behind the age. De Tocqueville has shown that devotion to the immediate is characteristic of republics; and this tendency is manifest in the prevalence of newspapers in the United States. They, in a great measure, supersede the demand for a more permanent native literature; they foster a taste for ephemeral topics and modes of thought, and lamentably absorb, in casual efforts, gifts and graces of mind which, under a different order of things, would have attained not only a higher, but a lasting development. The comparative importance of newspapers among us, as materials of history, is evidenced by the fact that the constant reference to their files has induced the historical societies to propose an elaborate index to facilitate the labors of inquirers, which has been felicitously called a diving-bell for the sea of print. A list of the various journals now in existence would be found to include not only every political party and religious sect in the country, but every theory of life, every science, profession, and taste, from phrenology to dietetics, and from medicine, war, and odd-fellowship, to literature, catholicism, and sporting. Tribunals and punsters, not less than fashion and chess-players, have their printed organ. What was a subordinate element, has become an exclusive feature. It is evident that more excitement than truth, more food for curiosity than aid to reflection, more vague knowledge than actual wisdom, is thus promulgated and preserved. The harvest of the immediate is comparatively barren; and life only proves the truth of Dr. Johnson's association of intellectual dignity with the past and future. The individual, to be true to himself, must take a firm stand against the encroachments of this restless, temporary, and absorbing life of the moment represented by the newspaper; he must cleave to Memory and Hope; he must look before and after, or his mind will be superficial in its activity, and fruitless in its growth. Joel Tyler Headley. BORN in Walton, Delaware Co., N. Y., 1813. CHENEY'S ADVENTURES. [The Adirondack, or Life in the Woods. 1849.-Revised Edition. 1875.] HER ERE in the heart of the Empire State is a man whose fame is known far and wide as the "mighty hunter," and if desperate adventures and hair-breadth escapes give one a claim to the sobriquet, it certainly belongs to him. Some ten or fifteen years ago, Cheney, then a young |