The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 04, No. 23, September, 1859

Now we have no particular fault to find with such stories as these, when they are produced as characteristic specimens of the folk-lore of a people; as such, they have a value beside their intrinsic interest;—but when we are asked to receive them as part of the evidence that that people is an honest and manly race, and as an acceptable addition to our stock of household tales, we demur. The truth is, that the very worth of these tales is to be found not only in the fact that they form a part of the stock from which our own are derived, but in the other fact that they represent that stock as it existed at an earlier and ruder stage of humanitarian development. They were told by savage mothers to savage children; and although some of them teach the few virtues common to barbarism and civilization, they are filled with the glorification of savage vice and crime;—deceit, theft, violence, even ruthless vengeance upon a cruel parent, are constantly practised by the characters which they hold up to favor. Such humor as they have, too, is of the coarsest kind, and is expressed chiefly in rude practical jokes, or the bloody overreaching of the poor thick-headed Trolls, who are the butts of the stories and the victims of their heroes. There is good ethnological and mythological reason why the Trolls should be butts and victims, it is true; but that is not to the present purpose.

But although this judgment must be passed upon the collection, considered merely as tales to be told and read at this stage of the world's progress, there are several notable exceptions to it,—tales which are based upon healthy instincts, and which appeal to sympathies that are never entirely undeveloped in the breasts of human beings above the grade of Bushmen, or in which the fun does not depend upon the exhibition of unexpected modes of inflicting death, pain, or discomfort. It is not, however, in these that we are to look for the chief attraction and compensating value of the collection. Those are to be found, as we have already hinted, in the relative aspects of the tales, which the general reader might consider for a long time fruitlessly, save for the help of Mr. Dasent's Introductory Essay. This is at once an acute and learned commentary upon the tales themselves, and a thoroughly elaborated monograph upon mythology in its ethnological relations. We know no other essay upon this subject that is so comprehensive, so compact, so clear, and so well adapted to interest intelligent readers who have little previous knowledge on the subject, as Mr. Dasent's, although, of necessity, it presents us with results, not processes. A perusal of this Essay will give the intelligent and attentive reader so just a general notion of the last results of philological and ethnological investigation into the history of the origin and progress of the Indo-European races, that he can listen with understanding to the conversation of men who have made that subject their special study, and appreciate, in a measure at least, the value of the many references to it which he meets in the course of his miscellaneous reading. And should he be led by the contagion of Mr. Dasent's intelligent enthusiasm to desire a more intimate acquaintance with a topic which rarely fails to fascinate those whose tastes lead them to enter at all upon it, he may start from this Essay with hints as to the plan and purpose of his reading which will save him much otherwise blind and fruitless labor.

This, however, is not all. It is but right also to say that the readers whose religion is one of extreme orthodoxy, that is, who deem it their bounden duty to believe exactly and literally as somebody else believed before them,—such readers will find their orthodoxy often shocked by the tales which Mr. Dasent has translated, and yet oftener and more violently by conclusions which Mr. Dasent draws from a comparison of these stories with others that bear the same relation to other races which these do to the Norsemen. The man who believes that Hell is a particular part of the universe, filled with flames and melted brimstone, into which actual devils, with horns, hoofs, and tails, dip, or are to dip, wicked people, whom, for greater convenience, they have previously perforated with three-tined pitchforks,—such a man will be puzzled by the story, "Why the Sea is Salt," and horrified with this comment in Mr. Dasent's Essay:—

"The North had its own notion on this point. Its mythology was not without its own dark powers; but though they, too, were ejected and dispossessed, they, according to that mythology, had rights of their own. To them belonged all the universe that had not been seized and reclaimed by the younger race of Odin and Æsir; and though this upstart dynasty, as the Frost-Giants in Æschylean phrase would have called it, well knew that Hel, one of this giant progeny, was fated to do them all mischief, and to outlive them, they took her and made her queen of Niflheim, and mistress over nine worlds. There, in a bitterly cold place, she received the souls of all who died of sickness or old age; care was her bed, hunger her dish, starvation her knife. Her walls were high and strong, and her bolts and bars huge. 'Half blue was her skin, and half the color of human flesh. A goddess easy to know, and in all things very stern and grim.' But though severe, she was not an evil spirit. She only received those who died as no Norseman wished to die. For those who fell on the gory battle-field, or sank beneath the waves, Valhalla was prepared, and endless mirth and bliss with Odin. Those went to Hel who were rather unfortunate than wicked, who died before they could be killed. But when Christianity came in and ejected Odin and his crew of false divinities, declaring them to be lying gods and demons, then Hel fell with the rest,—but, fulfilling her fate, outlived them. From a person she became a place; and all the Northern nations, from the Goth to the Norseman, agreed in believing Hell to be the abode of the Devil and his wicked spirits, the place prepared from the beginning for the everlasting torments of the damned. One curious fact connected with this explanation of Hell's origin will not escape the reader's attention. The Christian notion of Hell is that of a place of heat; for in the East, whence Christianity came, heat is often an intolerable torment,—and cold, on the other hand, everything that is pleasant and delightful. But to the dweller in the North heat brings with it sensations of joy and comfort, and life without fire has a dreary outlook; so their Hel ruled in a cold region, over those who were cowards by implication, while the mead-cup went round, and huge logs blazed and crackled, for the brave and beautiful who had dared to die on the field of battle. But under Christianity the extremes of heat and cold have met, and Hel, the cold, uncomfortable goddess, is now our Hell, where flames and fires abound, and where the devils abide in everlasting flame."

Still more will orthodoxy be shocked by Mr. Dasent's neglect to except Christianity from the conclusion, (no new one, it need hardly be said, to those who know anything of the subject,) that the mythologies or personal histories of all religions have been evolved the one from the other, or grafted the one upon the other,—and by his intimation, that Christianity, keeping pure in its spirit and undiverted from its purpose, has yet not hesitated to adapt its outward forms to the tough popular traditions which it found deeply rooted in the soil where it sought to grow, thus making itself "all things to all men, that it might by all means save some."

It will be seen that this book is not milk for babes, but meat for strong men. Among the tales are some—and those, perhaps, the most interesting—which Mr. Dasent justly characterizes as "intensely heathen," and yet in which the Saviour of the world or his apostles appear as interlocutors or actors, which alone unfits the volume for the book-table of the household room. We are led to insist upon this trait of the collection the more, because the translator's choice of language often seems to be the result of a desire to adapt himself to very youthful readers,—though why should even they be led to believe that such phrases as the following are correct by seeing them in print?—"Tore it up like nothing"; "ran away like anything"; "it was no good" [i.e. of no use]; "in all my born days"; "after a bit" [i.e. a little while]; "she had to let him in, and when he was, he lay," etc.; "the Giant got up cruelly early." These, and others like them, are profusely scattered through the tales, apparently from the mistaken notion that they have some idiomatic force. They jar upon the ear of the reader who comes to them from Mr. Dasent's admirably written Introductory Essay.

The book is one which we can heartily recommend to all who are interested in popular traditions for their own sake, or in their ethnological relations.

Love, From the French of M.J. Michelet. Translated from the Fourth Paris Edition, by J.W. Palmer, M.D., Author of "The New and The Old," "Up and Down the Irawaddi," etc.

M. Michelet perhaps longs, like Anacreon, to tell the story of the Atrides and of Cadmus, but here we find him singing only of Love. It is a surprise to us that the historian should have chosen this subject;—the book itself is another surprise. It starts from a few facts which it borrows from science, and out of them it builds a poem,—a drama in five acts called Books, to disguise them. Two characters figure chiefly on the stage,—a husband and a wife. The unity of time is not very strictly kept, for the pair are traced from youth to age, and even beyond their mortal years. Moral reflections and occasional rhapsodies are wreathed about this physiological and psychological love-drama.

Here, then, is a book with the most taking word in the language for its title, and one of the most distinguished personages in contemporary literature for its author. It has been extensively read in France, and is attracting general notice in this country. Opinions are divided among us concerning it; it is extravagantly praised, and hastily condemned.

On the whole, the book is destined, we believe, to do much more good than harm. Admit all its high-flown sentimentalism to be half-unconscious affectation, such as we pardon in writers of the Great Nation,—admit that the author is wild and fanciful in many of his statements, that he talks of a state of society of which it has been said that the law is that a man shall hate his neighbor and love his neighbor's wife,—admit all this and what lesser faults may be added to them, its great lessons are on the side of humanity, and especially of justice to woman, founded on a study of her organic and spiritual limitations.

Woman is an invalid. This is the first axiom, out of which flow the precepts of care, bodily and mental, of tenderness, of consideration, with which the book abounds. To show this, M. Michelet has recourse to the investigations of the physiologists who during the present century have studied the special conditions which according to the old axiom make woman what she is. As nothing short of this can by any possibility enable us to understand the feminine nature, we must not find fault with some details not commonly thought adapted to the general reader. They are given delicately, but they are given, and suggest a certain reserve in introducing the book to the reading classes. Not only is woman an invalid, but the rhythmic character of her life, "as if scanned by Nature," is an element not to be neglected without total failure to read her in health and in disease. There is a great deal relating to this matter, some of it seeming fanciful and overwrought, but not more so than the natures of many women. For woman herself is an hyperbole, and the plainest statement of her condition is a figure of speech. Some of those chapters that are written, as we might say, in hysteric paragraphs, only more fitly express the extravagances which belong to the nervous movements of the woman's nature.

The husband must create the wife. Much of the book is taken up with the precepts by which this new birth of the woman is to be brought about, M. Michelet's "entire affection" hateth those "nicer hands" winch would refuse any, even the humblest offices. The husband should be at once nurse and physician. He should regulate the food of the body, and measure out the doses of mental nourishment. All this is kind and good and affectionate; but there is just a suspicion excited that Madame might become slightly ennuyée, if she were subjected to this minute surveillance over her physical and spiritual hygiene. Everything must depend on individual tendencies and aptitudes; we have known husbands that were born for nurses,—and others, not less affectionate, that worried more than they helped in that capacity.

We cannot follow M. Michelet through his study of the reaction of the characters of the husband and wife upon each other, of the influence of maternity on conjugal relations, of the languishing of love and its rejuvenescence. Still less can we do more than remotely allude to those chapters in which his model woman is represented as ready on the slightest occasion to prove the name of her sex synonymous with frailty. We really do not know what to make of such things. The cool calculations of temptation as certain, and failure as probable,—the serious advice not to strike a wife under any circumstances,—such words have literally no meaning to most of our own American readers. Our women are educated to self-reliance,—and our men are, at least, too busy for the trade of tempters.

In a word, this book was written for French people, and is adjusted to the meridian of Paris. We must remember this always in reading it, and also remember that a Frenchman does not think English any more than he talks it. We sometimes flatter ourselves with the idea that we as a people are original in our tendency to extravagance of thought and language. It is a conceit of ours. Remember Sterne's perruquier.

"'You may immerge it,' replied he, 'into the ocean, and it will stand.'

"'What a great scale is everything upon, in this city!' thought I. 'The utmost stretch of an English periwig-maker's ideas could have gone no farther than to have dipped it into a pail of water.'"

How much such experiences as the following amount to we must leave to the ecclesiastical bodies to settle.

"The Church is openly against her, [woman,] owing her a grudge for the sin of Eve."

"It is very easy for us, educated in the religion of the indulgent God of Nature, to look our common destiny in the face. But she, impressed with the dogma of eternal punishment, though she may have received other ideas from you, still, in her suffering and debility, has painful foreshadowings of the future state."

But here are physiological statements which we take the liberty to question on our own responsibility.

"A French girl of fifteen is as mature as an English one of eighteen." What will Mr. Roberton of Manchester, who has exploded so many of our fancies about the women of the East, say to this?

"A wound, for which the German woman would require surgical aid, in the French woman cures itself." We must say of such an unproved assertion as the French General said of the charge at Balaklava,—"C'est magnifique, mais ce n'est pas la"—médecine.

"Generally, she [woman] is sick from love,—man, from indigestion." What a pity Nature never makes such pretty epigrams with her facts as wits do with their words!

We have enough, too, of that self-assertion which Carlyle and Ruskin and some of our clerical neighbors have made us familiar with, and which gives flavor to a work of genius. "I was worth more than my writings, more than my discourses. I brought to this teaching of philosophy and history a soul as yet entire,—a great freshness of mind, under forms often subtle,—a true simplicity of heart," etc.

M. Michelet does not undervalue the importance of his work. He thinks he has ruined the dancing-gardens by the startling revelations respecting woman contained in his book. He announces a still greater triumph:—"I believe I have effectually suppressed old women. They will no longer be met with." M. Michelet has not seen the columns of some of our weekly newspapers.

These are scales from the husk of his book, which, with all its fantasies, is a generous plea for woman. Wise persons may safely read it, though they be not Parisians.

The translation is, and is generally considered, excellent. We notice two errors,—Jerres, instead of Serres,—and would, for should, after the Scotch and Southern provincial fashion;—with some questionable words, as reliable, for which we have Sir Robert Peel's authority, which cannot make it as honest a word as trustworthy,—masculize, which is at least intelligible,—and fast, used as college-boys use it in their loose talk, but not with the meaning which sober scholars are wont to give it. With these slight exceptions, the translation appears to us singularly felicitous, notwithstanding the task must have been very difficult, which Dr. Palmer has performed with such rare success.

Farm-Drainage. The Principles, Processes, and Effects of Draining Land, with Wood, Stones, Ploughs, and Open Ditches, and especially with Tiles; including Tables of Rainfall, Evaporation, Filtration, Excavation, Capacity of Pipes; Cost, and Number to the Acre, of Tiles, etc., etc.; and more than One Hundred Illustrations. By Henry E. French. New York: A.O. Moore & Co. 1859. 8vo. pp. 384.

We remember standing, thirty years ago, upon the cupola of a court-house in New Jersey, and, while enjoying the whole panorama, being particularly impressed with the superior fertility and luxuriance of one farm on the outskirts of the town. We recollect further, that, on inquiry, we found this farm to belong to a Judge of the Court of Common Pleas, who also exercised the trade of a potter, and underdrained his land with tile-drains. His neighbors attributed the improvement in his farm to manure and tillage, and thought his attempts to introduce tile-drains into use arose chiefly from his desire to make a market for his tiles. Thirty years have made a great change; and a New Hampshire Judge of the Court of Common Pleas gives us a book on Farm-Drainage which tells us that in England twenty millions of dollars have been loaned by the government to be used in underdraining with tile!

We believe that Judge French has given the first practical guide in draining to the American farmer,—indeed, the first book professing to be a complete practical guide to the farmers of any country. His right to speak is derived from successful experiments of his own, from a visit to European agriculturists, and from a personal correspondence with the best drainage-engineers of England and America, as well as from the study of all available magazines and journals. No one could handle the subject in a more pleasant and lucid style; flashes of wit, and even of humor, are sparkling through every chapter, but they never divert the mind of the reader from the main purpose of elucidating the subject of deep drainage. The title-page does not promise so much as the book performs; and we feel confident that its reputation will increase, as our farmers begin to understand the true effects of deep drainage on upland, and seek for a guide in the improvement of their farms.

The rain-tables, furnished by Dr. E. Hobbs, of Waltham, afford some very interesting statistics, by which our climate may be definitely compared with that of our mother country. In England, they have about 156 rainy days per annum, and we but 56. In England, one inch in 24 hours is considered a great rain; but in New England six inches and seven-eighths (6.88) has been known to fall in 24 hours. In England, the annual fall is about 21,—in New England, 42 inches. The experiments on the retention of water by the soil are also interesting; showing that ordinary arable soil is capable of holding nearly six inches of water in every foot of soil.

Not the least valuable portion of the book is a brief discussion of some of the legal questions connected with drainage; the rights of land-owners in running waters, and in reference to the water in the soil; the rights of mill-owners and water-power companies; and the subject of flowage, by which so many thousand acres of valuable arable land are ruined to support unprofitable manufacturing companies. The rights of agriculturists, and the interests of agriculture, demand the care of our governments, and the hearty aid of our scientific men; and we are glad to find a judge who, at least when off the bench, speaks sound words in their behalf.

Agriculture in the Atlantic States is beginning to attract the attention which its great importance demands. Thorough draining is, as yet, little used among us, but a beginning has been made; and Judge French's book will, doubtless, be of value in extension of the practice. If any reader has not yet heard what thorough draining is, we would say, in brief, that it consists in laying tile-pipes, from one and a half to three inches in diameter, four feet under ground, at from twenty to sixty feet apart, so inclined as to drain out of your ground all the water that may be within three feet of the surface. This costs from $30 to $60 per acre, and is in almost all kinds of arable land an excellent investment of capital,—making the spring earlier, the land warmer, rain less injurious, drought less severe, the crops better in quality and greater in quantity. In short, thorough draining is, as our author says, following Cromwell's advice, "trusting in Providence, but keeping the powder dry."

The Novels of James Fenimore Cooper. Illustrated with Steel Engravings from Drawings by Darley. New York: W.A. Townsend & Co.

The British Museum, it is said, has accumulated over twenty-seven thousand novels written since the publication of "Waverley." With the general diffusion of education the ambition of authorship has had a corresponding increase; and people who were not inspired to make rhymes, nor learned enough to undertake history, philosophy, or science, as well as those who despaired of success in essays, travels, or sermons, have all thought themselves capable of representing human life in the form of fiction. Very few of the twenty-seven thousand, probably, are wholly destitute of merit. Each author has drawn what he saw, or knew, or did, or imagined; and so has preserved something worthy, for those who live upon his plane and see the world with his eyes. The difficulty is, that the vision of most men is limited; they observe human nature only in a few of its many aspects; they cannot so far lift themselves above the trivial affairs around them as to take in the whole of humanity at a glance. Even when rare types of character are presented to view, it is only a genius who can for the time assimilate himself to them, and so make their portraits life-like upon his canvas. In every old-fashioned town there are models for new Dogberrys and Edie Ochiltrees; our seaports have plenty of Bunsbys; every great city has its Becky Sharpe and Major Pendennis. One has only to listen to a group of Irish laborers in their unrestrained talk to find that the delicious non sequitur, which is the charm of the grave-diggers' conversation in "Hamlet," is by no means obsolete. But who can write such a colloquy? It would be easier, we fancy, for a clever man to give a sketch of Lord Bacon, with all his rapid and profound generalization, than to follow the slow and tortuous mental processes of a clodhopper.

To secure the attention of his readers, the novelist must construct a plot and create the characters whose movements shall produce the designed catastrophe, and, by the incidents and dialogue, exhibit the passions, the virtues, the aspirations, the weaknesses, and the villany of human nature. It is needless to say that most characters in fiction are as shadowy as Ossian's ghosts; the proof is, that, when the incidents of the story have passed out of memory, the persons are likewise forgotten. Of all the popular novelists, not more than half a dozen have ever created characters that survive,—characters that are felt to be "representative men." After Shakspeare and Scott, Dickens comes first, unquestionably; although, in analysis, philosophy, force, and purity of style, he is far inferior to Thackeray. Parson Adams will not be forgotten, nor that gentle monogamist, the good Vicar of Wakefield. But as for Bulwer, notwithstanding his wonderful art in construction and the brilliancy of his style, who remembers a character out of his novels, unless it be Doctor Riccabocca?

After this rather long preamble, let us hasten to say, that Cooper, in spite of many and the most obvious faults, has succeeded in portraying a few characters which stand out in bold relief,—and that his works, after years of criticism and competition, still hold their place, on both continents, among the most delightful novels in the language. Other writers have appeared, with more culture, with more imagination, with more spiritual insight, with more attractiveness of style; but Leatherstocking, in the virgin forest, with the crafty, painted savage retreating before him, and the far-distant hum of civilization following his trail, is a creation which no reader ever can or would forget,—a creation for which the merely accomplished writer would gladly exchange all the fine sentences and word-pictures that he had ever put on paper. It is also due to Cooper to say, that "The Pilot" was the first, and still is the best, of nautical novels; we say this in fell recollection of its trace of stupid heroines. The very air of the book is salt. As you read, you hear the wind in the rigging,—a sound that one never forgets. The form and motion of waves, the passing of distant ships, the outlines of spars and cordage against the sky, the blue above and the blue below, all the scenery of the sea, here for the first time found an appreciative artist.

We have not space to mention these novels separately. We are glad to see an edition which is worthy of the author's genius,—each volume graced with the designs of Darley. The style in which the work has been issued is creditable to the publishers, and cannot fail to be remunerative.

Ettore Fieramosca; or, the Challenge of Barletta. The Struggles of an Italian against Foreign Invaders and Foreign Protectors. By Massimo D' Azeglio. Boston: Phillips, Sampson, & Co. 16mo.

The recent war led to the publication of a great number of books upon the state of Italy and the relative positions of the contending powers; now that the wave has receded, all these are left high and dry. This novel, however, does not depend upon any transient interest in the affairs of Italy for its success. As the production of an eminent author, who is also one of the first of Italian statesmen, it demands a respectful consideration. The condition of the country in the sixteenth century presents a striking counterpart to that of the present year: two foreign monarchs were at war in the Peninsula; and then, as now, it was a question whether unhappy Italy had not as much to fear from her allies as from her invaders.

The scene of the story is laid in the little town of Barletta, on the Adriatic coast, in the present kingdom of Naples. The action turns upon the fortunes of the day in a contest à l'outrance, wherein a dozen French knights, the flower of the invading army, were met and vanquished by an equal number of Italians, of whom the hero, Ettore Fieramosca, was the chief. The English reader will not expect to find in this book any of the traits with which he is familiar in the novels of our own authors. There is little scenery-painting, few wayside reflections, and no attempt at portraying the comic side of human nature, or even the ordinary gayety of domestic life. The times did not suggest such topics; and if they did, we suspect that the Italian novelists would turn from such commonplace affairs to the more stirring events with which History has been heretofore concerned. But the story before us has no lack of incident. When the persons of the drama are fairly brought upon the stage, the action begins at once; surprise follows surprise, plot is matched by plot, until the fortunes of the actors are entwined inextricably. The portraits of the famous Colonna and of the infamous Cæsar Borgia (the latter being the arch "villain" of the story) are drawn in sharp and decisive lines. The tournament which forms the scene of the catastrophe is a brilliant picture, though not a pleasing one for a Friend or a member of the Peace Society.

Of course the element of Love is not wanting; two golden threads run through the crimsoned web; but whether they meet before Atropos comes with the fatal shears, it is not best to say. When the modern novel-reader can answer the momentous question, "Did they marry?" the charm of the most exciting story, for him, is gone.

Aside from the interest which one feels in the changing fortunes of the hero, the book is especially valuable for the light it throws upon that period of Italian history, and upon the subtilties of Italian character.