considerable intervals! Such is the melan- | But after all, we can understand how talk of choly fact. It must be urged in defence that that kind, in an expressive mouth, with bright these volumes are of the toughest reading; deep eyes, and the vivacity of social move calculated, as we said for Germany, rather than ment, of question and response, may have been for England or us. To be written with such delightful; and moreover that, for those to indisputable marks of ability, nay of genius, whom they vividly recall such talk, these letters of depth and sincerity, they are the heaviest may still be delightful. Hear Marquis de Cusbusiness we perhaps ever met with. The truth tine a little farther: is, they do not suit us at all. They are subjective letters, what the metaphysicians call subjective, not objective; the grand material of them is endless depicturing of moods, sensations, miseries, joys, and lyrical conditions of the writer; no definite picture drawn, or rarely any, of persons, transactions, or events which the writer stood amidst: a wrong material, as it seems to us. To what end? To what end? we always ask. Not by looking at itself, but by looking at things out of itself, and ascertaining and ruling these, shall the mind become known. "One thing above all other," says Goethe once, "I have never thought about think ing." What a thrift almost of itself equal to a fortune in these days: "habe nie ans Denken gedacht!" But how much wastefuller still it is to feel about Feeling! One is wearied of that; the healthy soul avoids that. Thou shalt look outward, not inward. Gazing inward on one's own self-why, this can drive one mad, like the monks of Athos, if at last too long. Unprofitable writing this subjective sort does seem; -at all events, to the present reviewer, no reading is so insupportable. Nay, we ask, might not the world be entirely deluged by it, unless prohibited! Every mortal is a microcosm; to himself a macrocosm, or universe large as nature; universal nature would barely hold what he could say about himself. Not a dyspeptic tailor on any shopboard of this city but could furnish all England, the year through, with reading about himself, about his emotions, and internal mysteries of wo and sensibility, if England would read him. It is a course which leads nowhither; a course which should be avoided. Add to all this, that such self-utterance on the part of Rahel, in these letters, is in the highest degree vapourous, vague. Her very mode of writing is complex, nay, is careless, incondite; with dashes and splashes, with notes of admiration, of interrogation, (nay, both together sometimes,) with involutions, abruptness, whirls, and tortuosities; so that even the grammatical meaning is altogether burdensome to seize. And then when seized, alas, it is as we say, of due likeness to the phraseology; a thing crude, not articulated into propositions, but flowing out as in bursts of interjection and exclamation. No wonder the reading faculty breaks down! And yet we do gather gold grains and precious thought here and there; though out of large wastes of sand and quicksand. In fine, it becomes clear, beyond doubting, both that this Rahel was a woman of rare gifts and worth, a woman of true genius; and also that her genius has passed away, and left no impress of itself there for us. These printed volumes produce the effect not of speech, but of multifarious, confused wind-music. It seems to require the aid of pantomime, to tell us what it means. "You could not speak with her a quarter of an hour without drawing from that fountain of light a shower of sparkles. The comic was at her command equally with the highest degree of the sublime. The proof that she was natural is, that she understood laughter as she did grief; she took it as a readier means of showing truth; all had us resonance in her, and her manner of receiving the impressions which you wished to communicate to her modified them in yourself: you loved her at first because she had admirable gifts; and then, what prevailed over every thing, because she was entertaining. She was nothing for you. or she was all; and she could be all to several at a time without exciting jealousy, so much did her noble nature participate in the source of all life, of all clearness. When one has lost in youth such friend," &c., &c. . . . "It seems to me you might define her in one word: she had the head of a sage and the heart of an apostle, and in spite of that, she was a child and a woman as much as any one can be. Her mind penetrated into the obscurest depths of nature; she was a thinker of as much and more clearness than our Theosophist Saint Martin, whom she comprehended and admired; and she felt like an artist. Her perceptions were always double; she attained the sublimest truths by two faculties which are incompatible in ordinary men, by feeling and by reflection. Her friends asked of themselves,-Whence ame these flashes of genius which she threw from her in conversation? Was it the effect of long studies? Was it the effect of sudden inspirations? It was the intuition granted as recompense by Heaven to souls that are true. These martyr souls wrestle for the truth, which they have a forecast of; they suffer for the God whom they love, and their whole life is the school of eternity."* This enthusiastic testimony of the clever sen. timental marquis is not at all incredible to us, in its way: yet from these letters we have nothing whatever to produce that were adequate to make it good. As was said already, it is not to be made good by excerpts and written documents; its proof rests in the memory of living witnesses. Meanwhile, from these same wastes of sand, and even of quicksand dangerous to linger in, we will try to gather a few grains the most like gold, that it may be guessed, by the charitable, whether or not a Pactolus once flowed there : "If there be miracles, they are those that are in our breast; what we do not know, we call by that name. How astonished, almost how ashamed are we, when the inspired mo ment comes, and we get to know them!" "One is late in learning to lie and late in learning to speak the truth."-"I cannot, be "Revue de Paris," Novembre, 1837 cause I cannot lie. Fancy not that I take credit for it: I cannot, just as one cannot play upon the flute." "In the meanest hut is a romance, if you knew the hearts there." "So long as we do not take even the injustice which is done us, and which forces the burning tears from us; so long as we do not ake even this for just and right, we are in the thickest darkness, without dawn." "Manure with despair,-but let it be genuine; and you will have a noble harvest." "True misery is ashamed of itself: hides itself, and does not complain. You may know it by that." "What a commonplace man! If he did not live in the same time with us, no mortal would mention him." "Have you remarked that Homer, when ever he speaks of the water, is always great; as Goethe is, when he speaks of the stars." "If one were to say, 'You think it easy to be original: but no, it is difficult; it costs a whole life of labour and exertion,'-you would think him mad, and ask no more questions of him. And yet his opinion would be altogether true, and plain enough withal. Original, I grant, every man might be, and must be, if men did not almost always admit mere undigested hearsays into their head, and fling them out again undigested. Whoever honestly questions himself, and faithfully answers, is busied continually with all that presents itself in life; and is incessantly inventing, had the thing been invented never so long before. Honesty belongs as a first condition to good thinking; and there are almost as few absolute dunces as geniuses. Genuine dunces would always be original; but there are none of them genuine : they have almost always understanding enough to be dishonest." "He (the blockhead) tumbled out on me his definition of genius; the trivial old distinctions of intellect and heart; as if there ever was, or could be, a great intellect with a mean heart!" "Goethe? When I think of him, tears come into my eyes: all other men I love with my own strength; he teaches me to love with his. My Poet!" "Slave-trade, war, marriage, working-classes-and they are astonished, and keep clouting and remending?" "The whole world is, properly speaking, a tragic embarras." rentheses in life, which belong neither to us nor to others: beautiful I name them, because they give us a freedom we could not get by sound sense. Who would volunteer to have a nervous fever? And yet it may save one's life. I love rage; I use it, and patronize it."-" Be not alarmed; I am commonly calmer. But when I write to a friend's heart, it comes to pass that the sultry laden horizon of my soul breaks out in lightning. Heavenly men love lightning." "To Varnhagen. . . One thing I must write to thee; what I thought of last night in bed, and for the first time in my life. That I, as a relative and pupil of Shakspeare, have, from my childhood upwards, occupied myself much with death, thou mayest believe. But never did my own death affect me; nay, I did not even think of this fact, that I was affected by it. Now, last night there was something I had to write; I said Varnhagen must know this thing, if he is to think of me after I am dead. And it seemed to me as if I must die; as if my heart were flitting away over this earth, and I must follow it; and my death gave me pity: for never before, as I now saw, had I thought that it would give anybody pity: of thee I knew it would do so, and yet it was the first time in my life I had seen this, or known that I had never seen it. In such solitude have I lived: comprehend it! I thought, when I am dead, then first will Varnhagen know what sufferings I had; and all his lamenting will be in vain; the figure of me meets him again through all eternity no more; swept away am I then, as our poor Prince Louis is. And no one can be kind to me then; with the strongest will, with the exertion of despair, no one: and this thought of thee about me was what at last af fected me. I must write of this, though it af flict thee never so.' "To Rose, a younger sister, on her marriage in Amsterdam.-Paris, 1801. . . Since thy last letter I am sore downcast. Gone art thou! No Rose comes stepping in to me with true foot and heart, who knows me altogether, knows all my sorrows altogether. When I am sick of body or soul, alone, alone thou comest not to me any more; thy room empty, quite empty, for ever empty. Thou art away, to try thy for tune. O Heaven! and to me not even trying is permitted. Am not I in luck! The garden in the Lindenstrasse where we used to be with Hanne and Feu-was it not beautiful? I will call it Rose now; with Hanne and Hanse will I go often thither, and none shall know of it. .. I here, Rahel the Jewess, feel Dost thou recollect that night when I was to set that I am as unique as the greatest appearance out with Fink the time before last? How in this earth. The greatest artist, philosopher thou hadst to sleep up stairs, and then to stay or poet, is not above me. We are of the same with me? O my sister, I might be as ill again element; in the same rank, and stand together.-though not for that cause: and thou too, Whichever would exclude the other, excludes only himself. But to me it was appointed not to write, or act, but to live: I lay in embryo till iny century; and then was, in outward respects, so flung away. It is for this reason that I tell you. But pain, as I know it, is a life too: and I think with myself, I am one of those figures which Humanity was fated to evolve, and then never to use more, never to have more: Me no one can comfort."-66 Why not be beside oneself, dear friend? There are beautiful pa what may not lie before thee! But, no, thy name is Rose; thou hast blue eyes, and a far other life than I with my stars and black ones. Salute mamma a million times; tell her I congratulate her from the heart; the more so as I can never give her such a pleasure! God willed it not. But I, in her place, would have great pity for a child so circumstanced. Yet let her not lament for me. I know all her goodness, and thank her with my soul. Tell her I have the fate of nations and of the greatest men before my eyes here: they go tumbling even so on the great sea of Exis.nce, mounting, sinking, swallowed up. From of old all men have seemed to me like spring blossoms, which the wind blows off and whirls; none knows where they fall, and the fewest come to fruit." Poor Rahel! The Frenchman said above she was an artist and apostle, yet had not ceased to be a child and woman. But we must stop short. One other little scene, a scene from her death-bed by Varnhagen, must end the tragedy: ". . . . She said to me one morning, after a dreadful night, with the penetrating tone of that lovely voice of hers: 'O, I am still happy; I am God's creature still; He knows of me; I shall come to see how it was good and needful for me to suffer: of a surety I had something to learn by it. And am I not already happy in this trust, and in all the love that I feel and meet with?' felt herself easier than for long before, and expressed an irresistible desire to be new dressed. As she could not be persuaded from it, this was done, though with the utmost precau tion. She herself was busily helpful in it, and signified great contentment that she had got it accomplished. She felt so well she expected to sleep. She wished me good-night, and bade me also go and sleep. Even the maid, Dora, was to go and sleep; however, she did not. "It might be about midnight, and I was stil) awake, when Dora called me: I was to come, she was much worse.' Instead of sleep, Rahel had found only suffering, one distress added to another; and now all had combined into decided spasm of the breast. I found her in a state little short of that she had passed six days ago. The medicines left for such an occurrence (regarded as possible, not probable) were tried; but this time with little effect. The frightful struggle continued; and the beloved sufferer, writhing in Dora's arms, cried, several times, This pressure against her breast was not to be borne, was pushing her heart out?' the breathing, too, was painfully difficult. She complained that it was getting into her head now, that she felt like a cloud there;' she leaned back with that. A deceptive hope of some alleviation gleamed on us for a moment, and then went out for ever; the eyes were dimmed, the mouth distorted, the limbs lamed! In this state the doctors found her; their remedies were all bootless. An unconscious hour and half, during which the breast still occasionally struggled in spasmodic efforts-and this noble life breathed out its last. The look I got then, kneeling almost lifeless at her bed, stamped itself, glowing, for ever into my heart." "In this manner she spoke, one day, among other things, with joyful heartiness, of a dream which always from childhood she had remembered and taken comfort from. ‘In my seventh year,' said she, 'I dreamt that I saw God quite near me; he stood expanded above me, and his mantle was the whole sky; on a corner of this mantle I had leave to rest, and lay there in peaceable felicity till I awoke. Ever since, through my whole life, this dream has returned on me, and in the worst times was present also in my waking moments, and a heavenly comfort to me. I had leave to throw myself at God's feet, on a corner of his mantle, and he screened me from all sorrow there: He permitted it.' The following words, which I felt called to write down exactly as she So died Rahel Varnhagen von Ense, born spoke them on the 2d of March, are also re- Levin, a singular biographic phenomenon of markable: What a history!' cried she with this century; a woman of genius, of true deep emotion: A fugitive from Egypt and depth and worth, whose secluded life, as one Palestine am I here; and find help, love, and cannot but see, had in it a greatness far bekind care among you. To thee, dear August, yond what has many times fixed the public adwas I sent by this guiding of God, and thou to miration of the whole world; a woman equal me; from afar, from the old times of Jacob to the highest thoughts of her century; in and the Patriarchs! With a sacred joy I think whom it was not arrogance, we do believe, but of this my origin, of all this wide web of pre-a just self-consciousness, to feel that "the arrangement. How the oldest remembrances highest philosopher, or poet, or artist was not of mankind are united with the newest reality above her, but of a like element and rank of things, and the most distant times and places with her." That such a woman should have are brought together. What for so long a pe-lived unknown and, as it were, silent to the riod of my life I considered as the worst igno- world, is peculiar in this time. miny, the sorest sorrow and misfortune, that I was born a Jewess, this I would not part with now for any price. Will it not be even so with these pains of sickness? Shall I not one day mount joyfully aloft on them, too; feel that I could not want them for any price? O August, this is just, this is true; we will try to go on thus! Thereupon she said, with many tears, Dear August, my heart is refreshed to its inmost; I have thought of Jesus, and wept over his sorrows; I have felt, for the first time felt, that he is my Brother. And Mary, what must she have suffered! She saw her beloved Son in agony, and did not sink; she stood at the Cross. That I could not have done; I am not strong enough for that. Forgive me, God, I confess how weak I am.' "At nightfall, on the 6th of March, Rahel We say not that she was equal to De Staël, nor the contrary; neither that she might have written De Staël's books, nor even that she might not have written far better books. She has ideas unequalled in De Staël; a sincerity, a pure tenderness and genuineness which that celebrated person had not, or had lost. But what then? The subjunctive, the optative are vague moods: there is no tense one can found on but the preterite of the indicative. Enough for us, Rahel did not write. She sat imprisoned, or it might be sheltered and fosteringly embowered, in those circumstances of hers; she "was not appointed to write or to act, but only to live." Call her not unhappy on that account, call her not useless; nay, perhaps, call her happier and usefuller. Blessed are the humble, are they that are not known. It is written. "Seek est thou great things, seek them not;" live where thou art, only live wisely, live diligently. Rahel's life was not an idle one for herself or for others: how many souls may "the sparkles showering from that light-fountain" have kindled and illuminated; whose new virtue goes on propagating itself, increasing itself, under incalculable combinations, and will be found in far places, after many days! She left no stamp of herself on paper; but in other ways, doubt it not, the virtue of her working in this world will survive all paper. For the working of the good and brave, seen or unseen, endures literally for ever, and cannot die. Is a thing nothing because the morning papers have not mentioned it? Or can a nothing be made something, by ever so much babbling of it there? Far better, probably, that no morning or evening paper mentioned it; that the right hand knew not what the left was doing! Rahel might have written books, celebrated books. And yet, what of books? Hast thou not already a bible to write, and publish in print, that is eternal; namely, a Life to lead? Silence, too, is great; there should be great silent ones, too. under ground, secretly making the ground green; it flows and flows, it joins itself with other veins and veinlets; one day it will start forth as a visible perennial well. Ten dumb centuries had made the speaking Dante; a well he of many veinlets. William Burnes, or Burns, was a poor peasant; could not prosper in his "seven acres of nursery-ground," nor any enterprise of trade and toil; had to "thel a factor's snash," and read attorney letters, in his poor hut," which threw us all into tears;" a man of no money-capital at all, of no account at all; yet a brave man, a wise and just, in evil fortune faithful, unconquerable to the death. And there wept withal among the others a boy named Robert, with a heart of melting pity, of greatness and fiery wrath; and his voice, fashioned here by this poor father, does it not already reach, like a great elegy, like a stern prophecy, to the ends of the world! "Let me make the songs, and you shall make the laws!" What chancellor, king, senator, begirt with never such sumptuosity, dyed velvet, blaring, and celebrity, could you have named in England that was so momentous as that William Burns? Courage! We take leave of Varnhagen with true goodwill, and heartily thank him for the pleasure and instruction he has given us. PETITION ON THE COPY-RIGHT BILL. [THE (LONDON) EXAMINER, 1839.] To the Honourable the Commons of England in Parliament assembled, the Petition of Thomas Carlyle, a Writer of Books, Humbly showeth, That your petitioner has written certain books, being incited thereto by various innocent or laudable considerations, chiefly by the thought that said books might in the end be found to be worth something. That your petitioner had not the happiness to receive from Mr. Thomas Tegg, or any Publisher, Republisher, Printer, Bookseller, Bookbuyer, or other the like man or body of men, any encouragement or countenance in writing of said books, or to discern any chance of receiving such; but wrote them by effort of his own and the favour of Heaven. That all useful labour is worthy of recompense; that all honest labour is worthy of the chance of recompense; that the giving and assuring to each man what recompense his labour has actually merited, may be said to be the business of all Legislation, Polity, Government, and Social Arrangement whatsoever among men;-a business indispensable to attempt, impossible to accomplish accurately, difficult to accomplish without inaccuracies that become enormous, unsupportable, and the parent of Social Confusions which never altogether end. That your petitioner does not undertake to say what recompense in money this labour of his may deserve; whether it deserve any recompense in money, or whether money in any quantity could hire him to do the like. That this his labour has found hitherto, in money or money's worth, small recompense or none; that he is by no means sure of its ever finding recompense, but thinks, that, if so, it will be at a distant time, when he, the laborer, will probably no longer be in need of money, and those dear to him will still be in need of it. That the law does at least protect all persons in selling the production of their labour at what they can get for it, in all market places, to all lengths of time. Much more than this the law does to many, but so much it does to all, and less than this to none. That your petitioner cannot discover himself to have done unlawfully in this his said labour of writing books, or to have become criminal, or have forfeited the law's protection thereby. Contrariwise your petitioner believes firmly that he is innocent in said labour; that if he be found in the long run to have written a genuine enduring book, his merit therein, and desert towards England and English and other men, will be considerable, not easily esti mable in money; that on the other hand, if his book prove false and ephemeral, he and it will be abolished and forgotten, and no harm done. That, in this manner, your petitioner plays no unfair game against the world; his stake being life itself, so to speak, (for the penalty is death by starvation,) and the world's stake nothing till once it see the dice thrown; so that in any case the world cannot lose. That in the happy and long-doubtful event of the game's going in his favour, your petitioner submits that the small winnings thereof do belong to him or his, and that no other mortal has justly either part or lot in them at all, now, henceforth, or for ever. May it therefore please your Honourable And your petitioner will ever pray. DR. FRANCIA.* [FOREIGN QUARTERLY REVIEW.] THE confused South American revolution, | his fame. Melancholy lithographs represent and set of revolutions, like the South American to us a long-faced, square-browed man; of continent itself, is doubtless a great confused stern, considerate, consciously considerate aspect, phenomenon; worthy of better knowledge than mildly aquiline form of nose; with terrible men yet have of it. Several books, of which angularity of jaw; and dark deep eyes, somewe here name a few known to us, have been what too close together, (for which latter cirwritten on the subject; but bad books mostly, cumstance we earnestly hope the lithograph and productive of almost no effect. The heroes alone is to blame :) this is Liberator Bolivar :of South America have not yet succeeded in a man of much hard fighting, hard riding, of picturing any image of themselves, much less manifold achievements, distresses, heroisms any true image of themselves, in the Cis-Atlan- and histrionisms in this world; a many-countic mind or memory. selled, much-enduring man; now dead and gone-of whom, except that melancholy lithograph, the cultivated European public knows as good as nothing. Yet did he not fly hither and thither, often in the most desperate manner, with wild cavalry clad in blankets, with War of Liberation, "to the death?" Clad in blankets, ponchos the South Americans call them: it is a square blanket, with a short slit in the centre, which you draw over your head, and so leave hanging: many a liberative cavalier has ridden, in those hot climates, without further dress at all; and fought handsomely too, wrapping the blanket round his arm, when it came to the charge. Iturbide," the Napoleon of Mexico," a great man in that narrow country, who was he? He made the thrice-celebrated" Plan of Iguala:" a constitution of no continuance. He became Emperor of Mexico, most serene "Augustin I. :" was deposed, banished to Leghorn, to London; decided on returning;-landed on the shore at Tampico, and was there met, and shot: this, in a vague sort, is what the world knows of the Napoleon of Mexico, most serene Augustin the First, most unfortunate Augustin the Last. He did himself publish memoirs or memorials, but few can read them. Oblivion, and the deserts of Panama, have swallowed this brave Don Augustin: vate caruit sacro. And Bolivar, "the Washington of Columbia," Liberator Bolivar, he too is gone without With such cavalry, and artillery and infantry to match, Bolivar has ridden, fighting all the way, through torrid deserts, hot mud swamps, through ice-chasms beyond the curve of per 1. Funeral Discourse delivered on occasion of celebrat-petual frost,-more miles than Ulysses ever ing the obsequies of his late Excellency the Perpetual Dictator of the Republic of Paraguay, the Citizen Dr. José Gaspar Francia, by Citizen the Rev. Manuel Antonia Perez, of the Church of the Incarnation, on the 20th of October, 1840. In the "British Packet and Argentine News," No. 813. Buenos Ayres: March 19, 1812. 2. Essai Historique sur la Révolution de Paraguay, et le Gouvernement Dictatorial du Docteur Francia. Par MM. Rengger et Longchamp. 2de édition. Paris, 1827. 3. Letters on Paraguay. By J. P. and W. P. Robertson. 2 vols. Second edition. London, 1839. Lon 4. Francia's Reign of Terror. By the same. don, 1829. 5. Letters on South America. By the same. 3 vols. London. 1843. 6. Travels in Chile and La Plata. By John Miers. 2 vols. London, 1826. 7. Memoirs of General Miller, in the Service of the Republic of Peru. 2 vols. 2d edition. London, 1829. A Statement of some of the principal Events in the Public Life of Augustin de Iturbide: written by Himself London, 1843. sailed: let the coming Homers take note of it. He has marched over the Andes more than once; a feat analogous to Hannibal's; and seemed to think little of it. Often beaten, banished from the firm land, he always returned again, truculently fought again. He gained in the Cumana regions the "immortal victory" of Carababo and several others; under him was gained the finishing "immortal victory" of Ayacucho in Peru, where Old Spain, for the last time, burnt powder in those latitudes, and then fled without return. He was Dictator, Liberator, almost emperor, if he had lived. Some three times over did he, in solemn Columbian parliament, lay down his Dictator ship with Wasnington eioquence; and as often, |