THE WEEKLY RECORD. FREDERICK DOUGLASS'S NEWSPAPER. with all their consequences. Let them have meaning, not only in your political position, but also in your general relations as freemen, equals, and brothers. For we pray not only for your success, but we work also for our own. The welfare of both countries is alike concerned in the extinction of pauperism, which is the great cause of immorality, of crime, and of misery, and which is not only a sword hanging over the banquet tables of the rich, but also a pitfall at the feet of every commercialist, whose one step may be unfortunate. How is this to be remedied? By practical effect being given to those glorious words which are now on the lips of every one. The organization of labour! pronounced by the patriots of France, it is your work to render them We wish it most ear-effective. By so doing only, you will complete and consolidate the glorious revolution which you have commenced. By so doing you will cause among the masses of every country the enthusiastic cry of Long live the Republic!" We regret to see by the North Star, Frederick Douglass's newspaper, that it is struggling with difficulties. If merit could surmount difficulties this paper ought; for we have rarely seen one conducted with more ability. When we recollect that it is edited by a man of colour for the enfranchisement of his sable brethren, we feel that every effort should be made by the friends of Negro freedom to support it. We hear that a bazaar is already proposed by the ladies, which is very warmly seconded both in Scotland and in Ireland. nestly every success. WILLIAM AINGER, Late Secretary of the Co-operative League, whom many of our friends will remember for his urbanity and kindly feeling, left for New York, in the "Margaret Evans," on Sunday, May 14th, on a mission of Human Brotherhood. He intends to go direct to the Excelsior Community, Cincinnatti, with the view to the arrangement of some plan that will enable the people of England to emigrate at once to locations prepared to receive them, under such rules and regulations, as shall initiate them into the communist life. It is his intention to visit most of the American Communities, and he will probably return to England, in about twelve months hence. ORGANIZATION OF LABOUR LEAGUE. A Congress of the friends of communism and co-operation, some of them deputed from distant parts of the country, held its sitting at Farringdon Hall during the first week in May. Expositions were given of the views of Charles Fourier, M. Cabet, the Redemption Society, Communist Church Co-operative League, etc. The Congress passed a resolution acknowledging "the justice of the demand made by a large proportion of the British population, for the extension of the suffrage," and declared "its sympathy with the great European movement for Electoral Reform, in connection with industrial organization." A new association was formed, entitled, the "Organization of Labour League." Its object is to create a national public opinion in favour of associative or co-operative arrangements, in which the interests of the people shall be made to harmonize, and the condition of the suffering masses elevated from ignorance, poverty, and crime, to one of intelligence, virtue, and happiness; and that with the view of impressing the legislature, with the necessity of an alteration in the industrial economy of the country, and in order to be prepared for any political change that may arise, one essential feature of the movement is, to call upon government on all suitable occasions to consider the question of the "Organization of Labour, and the duty incumbent on it to provide measures for the reproductive employment of the people." The Council of the new League are preparing for a series of public meetings, in order that they may lay their views upon the organization of work before the public. They have also issued the following address to the National Assembly of France:- Signed on behalf of the League, GEORGE VASEY, Chairman, ELIHU BURRITT AT PLYMOUTH. THE LEAGUE OF UNI- The progressists of Plymouth have at last had the pleasure of hearing the sublime doctrine of Peace, advocated by that eloquent apostle Elihu Burritt. He has been for some time in Paris making arrangements for holding a Peace Convention there, which should form and lay before the Governments plans for the decision of disputes by a supreme court, composed of representatives sent by every nation in a number proportionate to its population. He has remained a week here, though, from bis bad state of health, he has addressed but three meetings, enjoying a little of that relaxation which he appears to need so much. At the first and most important meeting, on April 24th, he was welcomed with much enthusiasm, and it was resolved that a branch of the League should be formed here, and that this town should be the centre of the district, embracing Devon and Cornwall. Mr. Burritt in his specch showed very beautifully the advantages the organized branches of the League would present, in the agitation for any reform. In alluding to the international friendly addresses, he said they had produced feelings which would outlive the present generation. He stated also, that the League had now about 15,000 members in England, and as many in America, and that about 200 little branches had already sprung up in this kingdom. In showing the ruinous results of the gigantic war debts under which so many nations struggle, he made some astounding revelations respecting the sums paid by the working classes of Christendom in the last thirty-two years of boasted peace. The sum would, at 5 per cent., yield an annual income of £384,000,000 sterling. This employed in the way of education would pay 3,840,000 teachers a yearly salary of £100 each. Allowing each 60 pupils, they could impart instruction to 230,000,000 children, or to the whole population of the globe between the ages of 4 and 18. It would support 2,560,000 ministers, with yearly salaries of £150, who with each a congregation of 800, could give religious instruction to more than twice the present population of the globe. And so he went on in a plain unadorned manner, creating great enthusiasm among his auditory. From this and from the gene The Council of the Organization of Labour League to the Na-ral interest his visit has excited, we shall probably have a floutional Assembly of France. "CITIZEN REPRESENTATIVES. "An Infant Society in a country which has been the direst foe of your nation, but which now is your firmest friend, raises its voice to address you. "Long acquainted with the miseries of the class the most numerous, and the most poor, long cognizant of the preventative which class legislation is to social progress, we have hailed your Republic as a political form in which the tendencies of societary destiny might more freely develope themselves. rishing branch, notwithstanding the strong war feeling fostered CONTENTS. A Swedish Lowell. By FREDRIKA BREMER-Facts from the Fields. The Meldrum Family. By WILLIAM HOWITT. (Concluded.)-A Character which should have been in Thomson's Castle of Indolence. By WILLIAM HOWITT-A Sportsman's Ad "We have not been deceived. We rejoice in the prospect before you. We too rejoice, because France will thus set an ex-ventures in America-Cant. A Poem. By WILLIAM ALLINGample to England, which she needs. "We also have those, to whom the right to work and the chance to live is virtually denied. "We likewise have those who say to the earth-Be barren! and to the people-die! "To you then we look. The destiny of England, of Europe, of the world, is largely in your hands. You stand at the political portal which leads to the palace-garden of social amelioration. Hesitate not to enter. The sacred words Liberty, Equality, and Fraternity, which are inscribed upon its walls, should never be circumscribed in your hearts. Accept them frankly PRICE 140. HAM-The World's Reward, from the German-LITERARY NO- itt's Journal-RECORD. PRINTED for the proprietor by WILLIAM LOVETT, of 16, South STAMPED, 24d. FROM A PAINTING BY W. HUNT, IN THE EXHIBITION OF THE SOCIETY OF No. 76-VOL. III. JUNE 10, 1848. canism. POETS OF THE PEOPLE. VICTOR HUGO. BY DR. SMILES. was his lament for the death of the young Duc de Berri, whom his assassin had marked for the last of the Bour bon race. Jules Janin has said of this poem, that it is "one of the finest things he has written--at once a truly national song, and a truly touching elegy. The fact of its publication at that time was a noble and generous one on the part of Victor Hugo-an unknown poet, who had the courage to weep aloud for the murdered prince. "Whence comes this young singer?" was the general question-" this stranger, who starts forth at once, with a courage equal to that of Chateaubriand, the old Royalist, himself?" And Hugo's courage and fineheartedness, in this matter, were the greater that he proceeded in direct opposition to the popular temper, wholly devoted to the enemies of the house of Bourbon. Another fine ode in the same collection is that VICTOR HUGO is the most able and brilliant representative of the poetry of Young France. He is one of the many ardent spirits that have been thrown hot and fiery from the seething caldron of Revolution. Yet, strange to say, he began his poetic life a Conservative and only gradually effected the middle passage, reaching at length the, to him, firm ground of complete republiHe is the son of a general of some distinction in the" On the Birth of the Duc de Bourdeaux," since exFrench service, and was born in Spain, during the French occupation of that country, in the year 1802. He passed several years of his youth in that beautiful land, and the rich soil and hot sun of Spain, seem to have imparted something of their fertility and warmth to the blood of the young poet, which he still retains. One can scarcely help feeling that a Moorish and Gothic tint pervades his poetry, and even his prose pictures, -those who have read his "Notre-Dame de Paris," perhaps the greatest of his fictions, will at once apprehend what we mean. pelled from France, with all his kindred. Such, then, were the early and generous Royalist sentiments of the young poet-uttered under the inspiration of that prophecy which he himself uttered to himself when he first became a writer-"The history of men presents no poetry save as it is viewed through the medium of monarchical ideas and religious faith." Victor Hugo, in the course of the numerous poetical and other works he has since published, gradually abandoned the Royalist ground, and rested not, till he had reached the opposite extreme. Hence the various Victor Hugo had a noble mother, who ardently loved and often contradictory views-apparently fitful and him, and whose love he returned with passion. She capricious-which pervade his works. He went from watched his infancy with care, and the growth of his Legitimacy to Napoleonism, and from thence to Reactive and enquiring mind with anxious solicitude. He publicanism. In his purely poetical pieces, this blemish passed from under her hands to the care of a master, is not apparent; for genuine poetry is of no party, and and from thence to the schools and colleges. He was rises high above the war of politics and the raging of no book-worm, and not much of a student. The resto- factions. In the "Orientals," he gives an exquisite disration of the ancient learning, Greek, Latin, and French, play of lyrical powers-rising often to the height of the was all the vogue at the Paris University while young grand, the sublime, and pathetic. His "Autumn Leaves," Hugo was there. Planche and others had made valuable also contain some beautiful pieces, especially his "Prayer contributions to the study of Greek, and many young for All,"-worthy of being placed alongside of Pope's minds were fired by a thirst for the antique literature." Universal Prayer." His "Lights and Shadows," also Hugo brooded in poetic dreams over a system and a learning of his own. A fire burned in him which no classical lore, of Greek or Latin authors, was likely to feed. He was to be his own light-his own beacongenius was struggling within him for an utterance. College learning, in short, became altogether distasteful to him, and he left the university, pronouncing it a bore. Doubtless, however, his mind had in no small degree been affected by the attention which he gave to the old learning. His mind was disciplined and enriched; his ideas elevated, and his soul expanded, by the study of Plato, Socrates, and the old Greek writers. At a very early age he became an author and ventured before the public. We find, from his first Book of Odes and Ballads, that his fine ode on "The Girls of Verdun," was composed in 1818, when he was only sixteen years of age. This, his first volume of poems, was not, however, published until the year 1822. During the same year in which he wrote the ode we have referred to, namely, in the year 1818, he composed his first prose story, called "Bug Jargal," a novel written in the convulsive style then so popular in France, indicating, however, great force and energy in the author, and a wonderful command of his materials, such as they were. The story was of the Negro rebellion in St. Domingo, and many of the incidents are related with great skill and power. This novel was not published until the year 1826; in the short preface which accompanied it, he states, that he had written the story at sixteen, at the rate of a volume in fifteen days! The "Odes and Ballads," which appeared in 1822, in which year he also married, at once placed him in the foremost rank as a poet. He was not the less warmly praised that he therein strongly avowed his Royalist sentiments. Perhaps the finest piece in the collection contain some of his very finest pieces. This, we believe, is his last published book of poems. Hugo has also written numerous dramas, some of them powerful productions, displaying great occasional beauties; but on the whole, not considered nearly so great as his poems,-which for the most part, display a simple beauty and grace, and a poetic fervour, such as he has never excelled in any of his other works. Many of his poems are of a religious tone; but the religion seems more like that of the Greeks, than of this period he is pantheistic, seizing the god and imprisoning him in the symbol, like some old classical pagan. His poetry must be confessed to be wanting in the grand element of faith. He says, in one of his later pieces Let us forget, forget! When Youth is dead No rest for Man: his works' a problem vast- Nor do his hopes of the future of man, seem anything more cheering. It is a nebulous haze, a dreary void. He exclaims, Man's soul! oh, whither flies it? Whither man? In his dramas, as well as his prose stories, Victor Hugo delighted to set himself directly at variance with the literary public, and to violate all the laws which they had set up. While others were aiming at the Beautiful, he took under his special care the Deformed and the Ugly. He made heroes of them-and concentrated in them, all the interest of his story. In proof of this, look at his Triboulet in the drama of "Le Roi s'amuse,"-his Lucrece Borgia, an eminent specimen of moral uglinesshis Marie Delorme-his Marie Tudor-his Thisbe-Angelo, and many characters in his plays that might be named. The public often mercilessly hissed these productions, and they were driven from the stage; and critics lashed them furiously; but Hugo cared not. In his fierce self-reliance and pride, he would not yield; the very opposition which he met with, drove him into still greater extremes than before. And yet these productions, pervaded as they were by blemishes of the worst kind, sparkle with beauties of thought, sense and expression, which gleam as twinkling lights in a dark and perturbed atmosphere. tionist of 1830, may be detailed by the author at some future day; when, perhaps his modest history of the internal revolutions of an honest political thinker, may form a not altogether useless appendix to the grand history of the general revolutions of our times. Wherefore do we not oftener bring face to face the revolutions of the individual with the revolutions of society? Small experiences often illustrate great events." The two journals referred to, are of the most curious kind. In eleven years, we find the same man an altogether different individual-his hopes, aspirations, opinions are all changed. But perhaps there are few men who do not present equally extraordinary transformations-especially among those who have allowed their minds to be freely acted upon by facts and events. How much surprised should we all feel were we suddenly placed face to face with ourselves as we were, even but ten short years ago! The Scriptures relate, that there was once a certain king who lived a wild beast in the woods for seven years, and then re-assumed the human form. It sometimes happens that such is the lot of the people. For seven years they are the ferocious beast, and then they become the man. The metamorphosis is called a revolution. From the latter journal of Victor Hugo, we select a The prose writings of Victor Hugo have achieved a few of the more striking thoughts, which may be conwider reputation, and exercised a more extensive in-sidered as applicable in 1848 as they were in 1830: fluence, than either his poems or his tragedies; and to them we turn with pleasure. The first of his works of this class which excited extraordinary interest, was the "Last Days of a Condemned," written in 1828. This production was aimed against capital punishment; and most powerfully pleaded its abolition. It is a most agonizing work-descriptive of the feelings of a man condemned to death, traced hour by hour and pulse by pulse. The author does not look at the crime committed, but at the punishment-death. He does not attack the law-but the monstrous expiation which it dooms. You have before you a human being, watching in slow agony the lapse of the minutes that intervene between him and the guillotine's edge - truly a frightful subject of contemplation. That work, however, may be said to have abolished the punishment of death in France. One of the first decrees of the Provisional Government announced the abolition of capital punishment. Several translations of this work have appeared in England-one of the best was given to the public by Sir Hesketh Fleetwood, Bart.-with an excellent preface, in which he advocated the abolition of hanging as an expedient for the cure or prevention of crime. But the most extraordinary prose work of Victor Hugo is unquestionably his "Notre Dame de Paris;" it is his masterpiece. In this work, he brings to light again the old life, the old superstitions, the old history of Paris in the middle ages. It is a resurrection-a cre ation from the dead. There he brings his rich stores of learning to bear, with wonderful effect, on the grim old towers of Notre Dame, the old quarters of the city, and the human beings struggling for life amidst their mazes. You would almost think that he invests that frowning, gloomy old cathedral, with the attributes of life-it looms before you like some vast and hideous demonsomething you have encountered in a nightmare. Wonderful too is the power which he displays in the delineation of passion-even in the breast of the deformed Quasimodo another of his heroes of the ugly. This work has been well translated into English, and has met with much favour-though its description of the old architecture of Paris can scarcely be expected to have the same interest to the English as to the Parisian reader. Another curious, and, at the present time, highly interesting work of Victor Hugo, is that published by him in 1834, "Literature and Philosophy mingled," consisting of two parts-the one being a record of the ideas, opinions, and studies of the author as a young Royalist, of 1819, and the other of the ideas and opinions of a Revolutionist of 1830. "How, and by what series of successive experiences (he says) the Jacobite of 1819 has become the Revolu A revolution is the larva of a civilization. Revolutions are begun by men who make the circumstances, and concluded by men who make the events. All the individual liberty of France has accumulated drop upon drop, man upon man, in the Bastille, for many ages. The Bastille levelled, liberty spread itself in wars throughout France and throughout Europe. Empires have their crises like mountains in winter. A word loud-spoken produces an avalanche. Heaven preserve us from the Reformers, who read the laws of Minos because they have a constitution to prepare by Tuesday next! Great men are the co-efficients of their age. A great man is like the sun-never more beautiful than when he touches the earth, at his rising and at his setting. Glory, ambition, armies, fleets, thrones, crowns: the Punch-and-Judies of big babies. You have there a beautiful tribune of marble, with fine bas reliefs by Lemot; and you secure possession of it only for yourselves-very well! One fine morning, the new generation will turn a cask bottom upwards, and there they will have a tribune in immediate contact with the pavement which has crushed a monarchy of eight centuries. Think of it! A general war will some day burst out in Europe, the war of kingdoms against countries. Charles X. (Louis Philippe?) believed that the revolution which has overthrown him, was a conspiracy, dug, mined, and fired, after long premeditation. Egregious error! It was simply a kick given by the people. We are at this moment in the midst of panic fears. A club, for example, terrifies, and yet it is only a simple affair: it is a word which the mass translate by a cipher'93. And to the lower classes '93 means want; to the monied classes, the worst; to the higher classes, the idea in France, written in the fine round hand of ALguillotine. The republic, as some people think, means the war of those who have not a sou, not an idea, not a virtue, against those who have one of these three things. PHONSE DE LAMARTINE. As Mirabeau, Robespierre, Danton, Napoleon and his generals, were the exponents and products of the first French Revolution,-so Lamartine, De Lammenais, Arago, Victor Hugo, Augustin Thierry, Michelet, Beranger, and a host of other distinguished men, may be taken as the exponents of the most recent phasis of public opi The republic, according to my view, means society sovereign in society,--self-protected, by national guard; self-judging, by jury; self-administering, by municipal-nion in France. Then was the time of destruction and ity; self-governing, by electoral constituency. Societies can be only well governed in fact and in right when these two forces, intelligence and power, are placed in their due relative position. If intelligence be placed as a head on the summit of the social body, then let this head reign: theocracies have their meaning and their beauty. So soon as the many enjoy light, let the many govern; the aristocracy are then legitimate. But when the darkness has everywhere disappeared, when all heads are enveloped in light, then let all reign, the people are ripe for the republic; let it have the republic. of pulling to pieces, the period of vehement speech and of fiery action; and now at length has arrived, we trust, the time of building up the new fabric of society out of its former ruins. It gives us hope to perceive that the leading minds of France are engaged in this work,-men whose lives have been devoted to peaceful and ennobling pursuits-great teachers, writers of books, poets, artists, philosophers, editors of newspapers-the great movers of the minds of men in modern times. 66 Ah!" we think we hear some one say-" these are not practical men-they are only poets and dreamersmere literati, and nothing more! only give them time, and-you shall see what you shall see!" The sneerers would have us believe, that men are altogether unfit to The last argument of kings, the bullet; the last ar- lead and to inspire confidence in others, unless they have gument of peoples, the barricade. been schooled in the " 'practical" business of moneymaking. For this, the smallest possible modicum of All social doctrines which seek to destroy the family brains, as every one knows, is sufficient. "Ah! but to are bad, and what is more, impracticable. Society is govern?" Well! To govern,-and to guide-What does dissoluble, the family not. The natural laws bind toge- this require? Knowledge of men-knowledge of human ther the family; whereas society is distracted by every nature-knowledge of history-wisdom and tact,—and admixture of factitious, artificial, transient, expedient, above all, purity and nobility of character. These are contingent, and accidental laws, which are mixed up the qualities which enable men to govern wisely, and with its constitution. It may often be useful, necessary, which are requisite to inspire confidence on the part of beneficial, to dissolve a society when it is bad, or too the governed. Are the men who have taken the lead in old, or badly arranged. It is never useful, never neces-this great social movement of the French people of this sary, never beneficial, to break up the family. When character? Look at them, and try to discover. They you dissolve a society, that which you find as the last are not born legislators-they have not been destined residue is not the individual, it is the family. The fa- from the cradle to be the wearers of coronets and the mily is the chrystal of society. leviers of taxes-no seats in Parliament have been kept warm for them till they have got out of their teens and entered on the hereditary business of making laws and imposing taxes on a people: they have made their own positions-been for the most part the founders of their own honourable fortunes-are all industrious, many of them hard-working men-not owing their reputations to their great grandfathers, or to old Normans crumbled into dust long ago, but to themselves and themselves only. Is it not the best qualification to govern men, that man should have governed himself well, and thus shown his fitness to govern and guide others? We must never cease urging this point-to enlighten the people in order to let the people enjoy freedom. It is the sacred duty of governments to hasten the spread of light amongst the darkened masses of mankind. Every honest guardian hastens the emancipation of his pupil. Multiply then all the ways which lead to knowledge, to science, to facilities in learning. The Parliament, I had almost said the throne, ought to be the last step of a ladder whose first step is a school. And then, to instruct the people, is to ameliorate their condition; to enlighten the people is to moralize them; to give letters to the people, is to humanize them. Every brutality will give way before the genial warmth of daily lectures. Humaniores literæ humane letters! We must make the people perform their humanities. Ask not rights for the people until the people demand heads. In his powerful essay on Mirabeau, published in 1834, Victor Hugo casts his eye into the future of France, and gives utterance to thoughts of prophetic import. He there remarks:-that "the French Revolution has laid open for all social theories an immense book, a kind of grand testament. Mirabeau has written his word therein, Robespierre his, Napoleon his, Louis XVIII. has made a scratch. Charles X. has torn the page. The Chamber of the 7th of August has pasted it together a little; but that is all. The book is there, the pen is there; who shall next dare to write therein ?" The wonderful political improvisation (for such is the French Revolution) of the last two months,-has shown that there are hands willing enough to take up the pen; and already we have seen inscribed in this great book the most recent development of the social "But most of them are mere writers!" And are not our writers the men who lead the intelligence and direct the wisdom of the world? Are not these the heralds and pioneers of civilization-the watchers on the tower-the creators of opinion-the guides and true governors of men? What were England, what were France, but for their writers their Shakespere, Racine, Johnson, Fenelon, Milton, Saint Pierre, Gibbon, Cuvier, Newton, La Place, Bacon, Moliere, Scott, Châteaubriand? Were these men, of high and o'erarching intellect, less fitted to enact laws than lords of the red hand, whose pursuit was rapine and riot? Surely, the days of mere brute force are now passing away, and the age which recognizes in all things the power of intellect, will not longer refuse to recognize it in the enactment of laws for the guidance, the well-being, and happiness of all? We have been governed by warrior-legislation too long 'twere time that the more Christian doctrines of peace, love, benevolence, and intelligence, which the thinkers of the world have now spread abroad far and wide, were allowed greater room and opportunity for action! How much better for the peace and advancement of the human race would it be, for instance, if the noble sentiments of Lamartine could be carried into effect, as ex |