INTELLECTUAL ATHENS. THE SONG OF THE SHIRT. [THOMAS HOOD, poet and humorist. Born 1798, died 1844. It has been remarked that "the predominant characteristics of Hood's genius are humorous fancies grafted upon melancholy impressions." While the perception of the ludicrous seemed to dominate, there was .ndeed a strong undercurrent of seriousness, and a deep appreciation of human suffering. No better evidence of this is required than his "Song of the Shirt." As & genuine and finished poet he takes a high rank.] With fingers weary and worn, A woman sat, in unwomanly rags, In poverty, hunger, and dirt; And still, with a voice of dolorous pitch, 21 FROM HISTORICAL SKETCHES. [CARDINAL JOHN HENRY NEWMAN, the eminent controversialist and man of letters, is a native of London, son of a banker, and was born in the year 1801. He graduated at Trinity College, Oxford, in 1820, was afterwards elected a Fellow of Oriel, and in 1825 became Vice-prin 22 INTELLECTUAL ATHENS. elpal of St. Alban's Hall. He was some time tutor of his college, and incumbent of St. Mary's Oxford, and was associated, in the publication of Tracts for the Times. More consistent than some associates, Dr. Newman collected works form twenty-two volumes, exclusive of various contributions to periodicals. From 1837 to the present time his pen has rarely been idle, and the variety of his learning, the originality and grace of his style, his sincerity and earnestness, have placed him high among living authors. The following is a list of his works as collected and classified by himself: "Pa rochial and Plain Sermons," eight volumes; "Sermons on Subjects of the Day;" "University Sermons;" "Catholic Sermons," two volumes; "Present Position of Catholics in England;" "Essay on Assent;" "Two Essays on Miracles; "“Essays, Critical and Historical," two volumes; “Discussions and Arguments on Various Subjects;""Historical Sketches;" "History of the Arians;” “History of My Religious Opinions (Apologia)," Dr. Newman has also published a volume of "Verses on Various Occasions," 1868. He received the Cardinal's Hat in 1879. He died in 1890.] shade of the landscape over which it was spread, and would have illuminated the face even of a more bare and rugged country. A confined triangle, perhaps fifty miles its greatest length and thirty its greatest breadth; two elevated rocky barriers, meet seceded from the Established Church and joined the Church of Rome. Since then he has been priest of the Oratory of St. Philip Neri, rector of a Catholic university in Dublin, and head of the Oratory near Birming-ing at an angle; three prominent mounham. Dr. Newman has been a voluminous writer. His tains, commanding the plain-Parnes, Pentelicus and Hymettus; an unsatisfactory soil; some streams, not always full-such is about the report which the agent of a London company would have made of Attica. He would report that the climate was mild; the hills were limestone; there was plenty of good marble; more pasture land than at first survey might have been expected, sufficient certainly for sheep and goats; fisheries productive; silver mines once but long since worked out; figs fair; oil firstrate; olives in profusion. But what he would not think of noting down, was, that the olive tree was so choice in nature and so noble in shape, that it excited a religious veneration; and that it took so kindly to the light soil, as to expand into the woods upon the open plain, and to climb up and fringe the hills. He would not think of writing word to his employer, how that clear air, of which I have spoken, brought out, yet blended and subdued the colors on the marble, till they had a softness and harmony, for all their richness, which, in a picture, looks exaggerated, yet is, after all, within the truth. He would not tell how that same delicate and brilliant atmosphere freshened up pale olive, till the olive forgot its monotony, and its cheek glowed like the arbutus or beech of the Umbrian hills. He would say nothing of the thyme and thousand fra grant herbs which carpeted Hymettus; he would hear nothing of the hum of its bees; nor take much account of the rare flavor of its honey, since Gozo and Minorca were sufficient for the English demand. He would look over the Egean from the height he had ascended; he would follow with his eye the chain of islands, which, starting from the Sunian headland, seemed to offer the fabled divinities of Attica, when they would visit their Ionian cousins, a sort of a viaduct across the sea; but that fancy would not occur to him, nor any admiration of the dark violet billows with their white edges down below; nor of those faithful, fanlike jets of silver upon the rocks, which slow. ly rise aloft like water spirits from the deep, then shiver, and break, and spread, and shroud themselves, and disappear in a soft The political power of Athens waned and disappeared; kingdoms rose and fell; centuries rolled away-they did but bring fresh triumphs to the city of the poet and the sage. There at length the swarthy Moor and Spaniard were seen to meet the blueeyed Gaul; and the Cappadocian, late subject of Mithridates, gazed_without alarm at the haughty conquering Roman. Revolution after revolution passed over the face of Europe, as well as of Greece, but still she was there-Athens, the city of mind- -as radiant, as splendid, as delicate, as young as ever she had been. Many a more fruitful coast or isle is washed by the blue Egean, many a spot is there more beautiful or sublime to see, many a territory more ample; but there was one charm in Attica, which in the same perfection was no where else. The deep pastures of Arcadia, the plain of Argos, the Thessalian vale, these had not the gift; Boeotia, which lay to its immediate north, was notorious for its very want of it. The heavy atmosphere of that Boeotia might be good for vegetation, but it was associated in popular belief with the dullness of the Boeotian intellect; on the contrary, the special purity, elasticity, clearness, and salubrity of the air of Attica, fit concomitant and emblem of its genius, did that for it which earth did not; it brought out every bright hue and tender the FRUITS OF EXPERIENCE OF HUMAN CHARACTER. mist of foam; nor of the gentle, incessant heaving and panting of the whole liquid plain; nor of the long waves keeping steady time, like a line of soldiery, as they resound upon the hollow shore-he would not deign to notice that restless living element at all, except to bless his stars that he was not upon it. Nor the distinct detail, nor the refined coloring, nor the graceful outline and roseate golden hue of the jutting crags, nor the bold shadows cast from Otum or Laurium by the declining sun; our agent of a mercantile firm would not value these matters even at a low figure. Rather we must turn for the sympathy we seek to yon pilgrim student, come from a semi-barbarous land to that small corner of the earth, as to a shrine, where he might take his fill of gazing on those emblems and coruscations of invisible, unoriginate perfection. It was the stranger from a remote province, from Britain or from Mauritania, who, in a scene so different from that of his chilly, woody swamps, or of his fiery, choking sands, learned at once what a real university must be, by coming to understand the sort of country which was its suitable home. BAXTER'S JUDGMENT OF HIS WRITINGS. [Rev. Richard Baxter, an eminent non-conformist divine, born in Shropshire, England, November 12, 1615; died December 8, 1691. He had great pulpit power, and was an able controversialist, and a voluminous writer. Speaking of Dr. Johnson, Boswell says: "I asked him what works of Richard Baxter I should read? He said, "Read any of them, they are all good." "The Saint's Everlasting Rest," and " A Call to the Unconverted," have had an immense circulation and they are still widely read.] Concerning almost all my writings, I must confess that my own judgment is, that fewer, well studied and polished, had been better; but the reader who can safely censure the books, is not fit to censure the author, unless he had been upon the place, and acquainted with all the occasions and circumstances. Indeed, for the Saints' Rest, I had four months' vacancy to write it, but in the midst of continual languishing and medicine; but, for the rest, I wrote them in the crowd of all my other employments, which would allow me no great Leisure for polishing and exactness, or any 223 ornament; so that I scarce ever wrote one sheet twice over, nor stayed to make any blots or interlinings, but was fain to let it go as it was first conceived; and when my own desire was rather to stay upon one thing long than run over many, some sudden occasions or other extorted almost all my writings from me; and the apprehensions of present usefulness or necessity prevailed against all other motives; so that the divines which were at hand with me still put me on, and approved of what I did, because they were moved by present necessities aswell as I; but those that were far off, and felt not those nearer motives, did rather wish that I had taken the other way, and published a few elaborate writings; and I am ready myself to be of their mind, when I forget the case that I then stood in, and have lost the sense of former motives. FRUITS OF EXPERIENCE OF HUMAN CHARACTER. I now see more good and more evil in all men than heretofore I did. I see that good men are not so good as I once thought they were, but have more imperfections; and that nearer approach and fuller trial doth make the best appear more weak and faulty than their admirers at a distance think. And I find that few are so bad as either malicious enemies or censorious separating professors do imagine. In some, indeed, I find that human nature is corrupted into a greater likeness to devils than I once thought any on earth had been. But even in the wicked, usually there is more for grace to make advantage of, and more to testify for God and holiness, than I once believed there had been. I less admire gifts of utterance, and bare profession of religion, than I once did; and have much more charity for many who, by the want of gifts, do make an obscurer profession than they. I once thought that almost all that could pray movingly and fluently, and talk well of religion, had been saints. But experience hath opened to me what odious crimes may consist with high profession; and I have met with divers obscure persons, not noted for any extraordinary profession, or forwardness in religion, but only to live a quiet blameless life, whom I have after found to have long 24 PERSONAL TRAITS OF GEORGE II. AND QUEEN CAROLINE. pray, where is the luck? I have lost a good horse, and I have got a booby of a groom still to keep."... The queen, by long studying and long experience of his temper, knew how to instil her own sentimentswhilst she affected to receive his majesty's; she could appear convinced whilst she was controverting, and obedient whilst she was ruling; and by this means her dexterity and address made it impossible for anybody to persuade him what was truly his case-that PERSONAL TRAITS OF GEORGE II. whilst she was seemingly on every occasion AND QUEEN CAROLINE. [Lord JOHN HERVEY, political and memoir writer. Born 1696; died 1743. He is the "Sporus " satirized by Pope, with whom he had a long and bitter controversy. Our extract is from his Memoirs of the Reign of George II., from his Accession to the Death of Queen Caroline."] Many ingredients concurred to form this reluctance in his majesty to bestowing. One was that, taking all his notions from a German measure, he thought every man who served him in England overpaid; another was, that while employments were vacant he saved the salary; but the most prevalent of all was his never having the least inclination to oblige. I do not believe there ever lived a man to whose temper benevolence was so absolute a stranger. It was a sensation that, I dare say, never accompanied any one act of his power; so that whatever good he did was either extorted from him, or was the adventitious effect of some self interested act of policy: consequently, if any seeming favour he conferred ever obliged the receiver, it must have been because the man on whom it fell was ignorant of the motives from which the giver bestowed. I remember Sir Robert Walpole saying once, in speaking to me of the king, that to talk with him of compassion, consideration of past services, charity, and bounty, was making use of words that with him had no meaning. . . . I once heard him say he would much sooner forgive anybody that had murdered a man, than anybody that had cut down one of his oaks; because an oak was so much longer growing to a useful size than a man, and consequently, one loss would be sooner supplied than the other: and one evening, after a horse had run away, and killed himself against an iron spike, poor Lady Suffolk saying it was very lucky the man who was upon him had received no hurt, his majesty snapped her very short, and said: "Yes, I am very lucky, truly: giving up her opinion and her will to his, she was always in reality turning his opinion and bending his will to hers. She managed this deified image as the heathen priests used to do the oracles of old, when, kneeling and prostrate before the altars of a pageant god, they received with the greatest devotion and reverence those directions in public which they had before instilled and regulated in private. And as these idols consequently were only propitious to the favourites of the augurers, so nobody who had not tampered with our chief priestess ever received a favourable answer from our god: storms and thunder greeted every votary that entered the temple without her protection - calms and sunshine those who obtained it. The king himself was so little sensible of this being his case, that one day, enumerating the people who had governed this country in other reigns, he said Charles I. was governed by his wife, Charles II. by his mistresses, King James by his priests, King William by his men, and Queen Anne by her women- -favourites. His father, he added, had been governed by anybody that could get at him. And at the end of this compendious history of our great and wise monarchs, with a significant, satisfied, triumphant air, he turned about, smiling, to one of his auditors, and asked him: And who do they say governs now?' Whether this is a true or a false story of the king, I know not, but it was currently reported and generally believed. . . . She was at least seven or eight hours têt-à-tête with the king every day, during which time she was generally saying what she did not think, assenting to what she did not believe, and praising what she did not approve; for they were seldom of the same opinion, and he too fond of his own for her ever at first to dare to controvert it (Consilii quamvis egregii quod ipse non afferret inimicus'—' An enemy to any counsel, however excellent, which he himself had not suggested.'-Tacitus). ... |