"Ah! thou lovely mischief-maker". She had fainted away. "Ah! well, keep out of the way, if you please, papa," said Dr. Mossy, as Madame presently reopened her eyes; "no wonder you fainted; you have finished some hard work-see; here; so; Clarisse, dear, take this." Father and son stood side by side, tenderly regarding her as she revived. “Now, papa, you may kiss her; she is quite herself again, already.” "My daughter!" said the stately General; "this-is my son's ransom; and, with this,-I withdraw the Villavicencio ticket." "You shall not," exclaimed the laughing lady, throwing her arms about his neck. "But, yes!" he insisted; "my faith! you will at least allow me to remove my dead from the field." "But, certainly," said the son; "see, Clarisse, here is Madame, your aunt, asking us all into the house. Let us go." The group passed out into the Rue Royale, Dr. Mossy shutting the door behind them. The sky was blue, the air was soft and balmy, and on the sweet south breeze, to which the old General bared his grateful brow, floated a ravishing odor of "Ah! what is it?" the veteran asked of the younger pair, seeing the iittle aunt glance at them with a playful smile. Madame Délicieuse, for almost the first time in her life, and Dr. Mossy for the thousandth-blushed. I cannot see to keep the narrow way, And so I blindly wander here and there, Groping amidst the tombs, or helpless stray Through pathless, tangled deserts, bleak and bare; Weeping I seek the way I cannot find— Open my eyes, dear Lord, for I am blind. And oft I laugh with some light, thoughtless jest, On blotted scrolls of human pain and fear; I do not see the pain my light words give; The quivering, shrinking heart I cannot see; Jesus, have mercy on me-I am blind. My useless eyes are reservoirs of tears, Doomed for their blind mistakes to overflow; To weep for thoughtless ways of wandering years, These sightless eyes-than angriest glance less kind- Theodore Whitefield Hunt. BORN in Metuchen, N. J., 1844. ARNOLD AND HIS STYLE. [Matthew Arnold as an English Writer.-The New Princeton Review. 1888.] TUDENTS of Mr. Arnold's poetry must be well aware of this under his verse. Herein is one of those limitations of his poetic genius, whereby the spontaneity of his style is impaired, and the head waits not upon the heart. We cannot, therefore, expect to find in his poems free flexibility of movement, blitheness and buoyancy of spirit, and the impulse of deep emotion, in that the nature from which such poetic fruits are "furnished forth" is wanting. So is it in his prose. Seriousness is too often seen to give place to sadness, and to a sadness which is nothing less than Byronic and oppressive. Of the presence and the pressure of this weight upon him, Mr. Arnold himself is not always aware. There is a something in the sentence and the line-he scarcely knows what-that binds it to the earth and prevents its free excursion heavenward. In this profitless effort to lift the world from its lower tendencies by culture only; in this pursuit of perfection through imperfect agencies; in this almost cruel restriction of the spirit within the circle of the humanities; in this well-meant but unwise attempt to eliminate the supernatural from the problem of life,-in this, indeed, we have the fact of sadness and its sufficient explanation. The "sick fatigue and languid doubt," which the author himself deplores, will never give place to that "sweet calm" of mind that he so craves, until the established relation of things is accepted, and Christianity takes rank above culture. This feature apart, the prose is marked by a solid and impressive earnestness which never tolerates the trifling, and is an order of prose especially timely in an age inclined so strongly as this to the frivolous in authorship. In this respect, if not so in others, Mr. Arnold's style is Baconian and Miltonic, never descending to the plane of the charlatan for the sake of effect, but ever keeping aloft on the high table-land of thought and motive, among the sober-minded contributors to the cause of good letters. If asked, as we close, what is the most useful service that Mr. Arnold has rendered, in his style, to modern England and America, we answer: the wide diffusion of the literary spirit, the emphasis of literature as a most important department of education and an essential factor in all national progress. This result he has accomplished, in part, by his unwearied exaltation. of the mental above the merely material, and, in part, by his earnest endeavor to stimulate the people to the attainment of that culture which to him is the crowning principle of all literature and life. Nothing is more needed among the English-speaking peoples of to-day than the free circulation of this literary life. Despite such high literary antecedents and traditions, and the goodly number of English authors steadily at work along the old literary lines, so strong is the "stream of tendency" in the direction of commercialism, that special effort is needed to prevent its influx even into the centres of intellectual culture. This tendency is even more marked in what Mr. Emerson has called "this great, intelligent, sensual, and avaricious America." If we inquire further into the extent and probable permanence of Mr. Arnold's influence as a prose-writer, we must answer, first of all, that he cannot be consistently called a popular English essayist. There is not enough of the common or colloquial element in the style to give it currency among the great body of what he terms the middle class. That extreme æstheticism to which we have referred, as also his dogmatic independence and indifference of manner, would serve to narrow the circle of appreciative readers, while, even among the higher classes themselves, our author is read by many who read only to dissent. If we compare his essays, in this respect, with those of Lamb and Macaulay, the difference is marked in favor of the latter, and the difference is one between restricted and general circulation. Mr. Arnold cannot be said to have formed a school, either in prose or verse. Whatever his constituency may be, they do not stand related to him as an organic body to an acknowledged leader, accepting his literary dicta without question, and devoting their energies to the dissemination of his teachings. Young men, especially, who, at first, are attracted to his style and committed to it as an unerring guide, come, at length, in their maturer judgment, to question where they have blindly accepted, and somewhat modify their allegiance. Mr. Arnold, in his "American Addresses," refused to rank Mr. Emerson, as he also did Mr. Carlyle, among "the great writers" or "the great men of letters." He used the word great as it is applicable to such his toric authors as Plato and Cicero, Pascal and Voltaire and Bacon-writers "whose prose, by a kind of native necessity, is true and sound," who have "a genius and an instinct for style." From such a "charmed circle" as this, Mr. Arnold himself must be excluded. A representative writer of English prose, he is not so in the largest sense, as Cicero in Latin letters or De Quincey in English. Whatever the merits of his style may be, as we have discussed them, he has not that "vision and faculty divine" which belong to the eminently great prose-writer as to the eminently great poet. He does not see deep enough and far enough to pen oracular words for those who are waiting for them. Culture, as he conceived it, can never rise to the height of power. Criticism, as he applied it, can never be more than an elegant art; while style itself, as he illustrated it, can never be that inspiring procedure which we find it to be in the writings of the masters-in the poetry of Shakespeare or in the prose of Pascal. A cultured, an acute, and a dignified style is one thing, and marks the good writer. A profound, philosophic, comprehensive, and soul-stirring style is another and a grander thing, and marks the "great writer." We have a style before us that pleases our taste, impresses our minds, corrects, in many instances, our erroneous judgments, and rebukes our natural tendencies to the lighter and baser forms of literature; and this is all. When the profoundest depths of our being are to be reached and roused; when we are to be uplifted to that sublime spiritual outlook of which Milton and Longinus speak; when we are to be so addressed and moved that the thoughts of the author take possession of us, and make us efficient factors in the world's intellectual and moral advancement, then must we look elsewhere than here-to those supremely-gifted authors who are great of a truth, and who make us great as well, to the degree in which we hold reverential converse with them. That style is great, and that only, which is instinct throughout with the very spirit of power; which, while obedient to the laws of literary art, is immeasurably above all art, and, with all its marks of human origin and limitation about it, is seen to have, in its character and method, something that is supernal. T Marietta Holley. BORN in Ellisburg, Jefferson Co., N. Y., 1844. THE CLINGING VINE THEORY. [My Opinions and Betsey Bobbet's. By Josiah Allen's Wife. 1872.] HE next week Saturday after the poetry come out, Tirzah took it into her head that she wanted to go to Elder Morton's a visitin'; Maggie Snow was a goin' to meet her there, and I told her to go-I'd get along with the work somehow. I had to work pretty hard, but then I got it all out of the way early, and my head combed and my dress changed, and I was jest pinnin' my linen coller over my clean gingham dress (broun and black plaid) to the lookin' glass, when lookin' up, who should I see but Betsey Bobbet comin' through the gate. She stopped a minute to Tirzah Ann's posy bed, and then she come along kinder gradually, and stopped and looked at my new tufted bedspread that I have got out a whitenin' on the grass, and then she come up the steps and come in. Somehow I was kinder glad to see her that day. I had had first rate luck with all my bakin', everything had turned out well, and I felt real reconciled to havin' a visit from her. But I see she looket ruther gloomy, and after she sot down and took out her tattin' and begun to tat, she spoke up and says she: "Josiah Allen's wife, I feel awful deprested to-day." "What is the matter?" says I in a cheerful tone. "I feel lonely," says she, "more lonely than I have felt for yeahs." Again says I, kindly but firmly : "What is the matter, Betsey?" "I had a dream last night, Josiah Allen's wife.” "What was it?" says I in a sympathizin' accent, for she did look meloncholly and sad indeed. "I dreamed I was married, Josiah Allen's wife," says she in a heart-broken tone, and she laid her hand on my arm in her deep emotion. "I tell you it was hard, after dreamin' that, to wake up again to the cold realities and cares of this life; it was hard," she repeated, and a tear gently flowed down her Roman nose and dropped off onto her overskirt. She knew salt water would spot otter color awfully, and so she drew her handkerchief out of her pocket, and spread it in her lap (it was white trimmed with narrow edgein') and continued: "Life seemed so hard and lonesome to me, that I sot up in the end of the bed and wept. I tried to get to sleep again, hopin' I would dream it ovah, but I could not." And again two salt tears fell in about the middle of the handkerchief. I see she needed consolation, and my gratitude made me feel soft to her, and so says I, in a reasurin' tone: 66 "To be sure husbands are handy on 4th of July's, and funeral prosessions; it looks kinder lonesome to see a woman streamin' along alone, but they are contrary creeters, Betsey, when they are a mind to be.' And then to turn the conversation and get her mind offen her trouble, says I: "How did you like my bedspread, Betsey?" "It is beautiful," says she sorrowfully. 66 Yes," says I, "it looks well enough now it's done, but it most wore my fingers out a tuftin' it-it's a sight of work." But I saw how hard it was to draw her mind off from broodin' over her troubles, for she spoke in a mournful tone. "How sweet it must be to weah the fingers out for a deah companion. I would be willing to weah mine clear down to the bone. I made a vow some |
