table and "sina tea," for she says, in confessing how ill she had behaved, "It was the very same devil that tempted Job that tempted me I am sure but he resisted Satan though he had boils and many many other misfortunes which I have escaped. . . . I am now going to tell you the horible and wretched plaege that my multiplication gives me you can't conceive it, the most devilsh thing is 8 times 8 and 7 times 7 it is what nature itself can't endure." Marjorie probably held that Satan had interposed a preternatural intellectual difficulty in the 8 and the 7 lines of the multiplication-table for the special trial of children's tempers, and with perfectly correct intellectual instinct, as well as true humor, she did pitch on the most difficult efforts of memory which the decimal system requires of children. For ourselves, we always held 7 times 9 the peculiarly "devilish " point which "nature itself can't endure," though at Marjorie's age we could certainly never have expressed the feeling so eloquently. Indeed, the child had, no doubt, a keen sense of humor in attributing 7 times 7 to the agency of the same devil who invented boils. She thought the multiplication-table, as a whole, a sort of intellectual eruption of demoniacal origin, even though, like the boils, it might be turned to some good purpose to be revealed hereafter." But Marjorie's highest feat of humor is the epitaph on the three turkeys destroyed by rats, and the feelings of their bereaved parent. The tenderness and solicitude with which she first delineates the desolate parent's feelings, and then the extraordinary evidenco which she suddenly gives of the bird's patience and resignation, forms an exquisite combination of childish nonsense with social irony. Only a child who had a clear sense of the fun in supposing that oaths are a sign of profound grief could, even when solicited by a promising rhyme, have venture to praise the turkeyhen for not swearing at her loss:"Three turkeys fair their last have breathed, And now this world forever leaved, Their father and their mothers too, Will sigh and weep as well as you, Mourning for their offspring fair, Whom they did nurse with tender care, Indeed the rats their bones have cranch'd. Into eternity are they laanch'd; Their graceful forms and pretty eyes, Their fellow-fowls did not despise, A direful death indeed they had, That would put any parent mad, But she was more than usual calm She did not give a single dam!" This stroke of humor is peculiarly happy with regard to a turkey; for certainly no enraged bird does swear so dreadfully and inarticulately, till its throat is on fire with oaths, as the turkey-cock, and Marjorie had previ ously experienced its deficiencies of temper, for in another part of her journal, she had registered, with the same naïf humor, "A young turkie of two or three months old, would you believe it? the father broke its leg and he killed another! I think he ought to be transported or hanged." This is a delightful instance of the child's humor, which consists in applying gravely thoughts large enough for, and gathered from, the great human world to the little scale of her own childish interests, half knowing, and half unconscious of, the grotesqueness of effect produced. A turkey expiating its crimes on the scaffold, or transported for life for aggravated assault and turkey-slaughter, was an idea the drollcry of which was probably only half visible to her. All her moral sentiments are at once applied to the animal world. She is horrified at our summary method of keeping down the canine and feline populations. I think it is shocking to think that the dog and cat should bear them, and they are drowned after all. I would rather have a man-dog than a womandog, because they do not bear like womandogs; it is a hard case-it is shocking." But, after all, that which gives its charm to all this childish nonsense and humor and tenderness, and which fascinated Sir Walter Scott, is the wonderful ardor with which the child stretched her sympathies into states of mind she could only have half understood, and beautified them, even while she gave them a simplicity that was alien to them, by making them childlike. When she repeats the part of Constance, in "King John," till Scott cannot repress his sobs, and writes home such letters as the following, there is, to us, an inexpressible pathos involved in the mere effort of a little child to enter into the heart of such feelings as those of which she touches the chords: "My dear littlo Mama,-I was truly happy to hear that you were all well. I will write to you as often I can; but I am afraid not every week. I long for you with the longings of a child to embrace you to fold you in my arms. I respect you with all the respect due to a mother. You don't know how I love you. So 1 shall remain, your loving | wonder Sir Walter Scott's heart and intellect child-M. FLEMING." And it is not only in personal relations that there is this touching, but perfectly unaffected, sympathy with thoughts and feelings stretching away far out of her reach. When she says, "the birds are singing sweetly,-the calf doth frisk and nature shows her glorious faco," ,"and again, "I came here, as I thought, to enjoy nature's delightful breath, it is sweeter than a fial of rose-oil, but alas! were alike fascinated by such a union of all the characteristic beauty of the bud with half the fragrance and harmony of the flower. She was not such a mere child of nature as Wordsworth loved to delineate : : Myself will to my darling be Both law and impulse; and with me In earth and heaven, in glade and bower, To kindle or restrain." my hopes are disappointed, it is always spit-She had as much in her of love for man as of t'ring, but I often get a blink, and then I am happy; "or, The balmy breeze comes down from heaven, love for nature; she had the simple pleasure in admiration, a wealth of generous love and sympathy which is rare even among women, all the tender mischief and simple trust of a or again, "I love to walk in lonely solitude little child, and yet combined these with a and leave the bustel of the noisy town behind genuine passion for musing on the beauty of me, and while I look on nothing but what the earth and sky. It is a marvellous lesson strike the eye with sights of bliss, I think on that nearness of God to children,-aud to myself transported far beyond the reach of real, happy, mischievous children, not saintly the wicked sons of men,"-there is an effort apologies for children,-which is usually so in the fiery little soul to share the "lonely common and so empty a phrase on our lips," rapture of lonely minds," and a real forecast because we try to interpret it as denying huof meditative joy, which blends the white man foibles to children, instead of as attribloveliness of childhood with the sweetness uting to them fresh and searching glimpses and passion and faith of maturer years. No into a world far beyond and above themselves. Compte-rendu de la Conference internationale | an army in the field. The association, consisting reunie a Geneve les 26, 27, 28 et 29 Octobre, of delegates from the principal states of Europe, 1863, pour etudier les Moyens de pourvoir a met at Geneva in the month of October last; and 'Insuffisance du Service sanitaire dans les the volume before us contains an account of the Armees en Campagne. (Genève.) debates, together with the resolutions finally ABOUT a year ago a book was published at adopted. These resolutions are embodied in ten Geneva under the title of "Un Souvenir de Sol-articles, the substance of which is, that in every ferino." Its author was a Swiss gentleman, M. Henry Dunant, who had been present at the battle of Solferino, and had been terribly struck with the utterly insufficient means for the relief of the wounded. He himself had done as much as one individual could do, watching beside the men's sick-beds, providing them with such little luxuries as he could obtain, and, in short, putting his shoulder manfully to the wheel. But, of course, before such a mass of human misery one man's efforts are like a drop in the ocean; and M. Dunant determined to see if something could not be done to prevent the recurrence of the scenes he had witnessed. His book was able and eloquent, and produced, as it deserved to produce, some sensation. The "Société gencvoise d'Utilité publique" took the matter up, and convened a meeting of representatives from the various countries of Europe to examine into the feasibility of organizing some system for the better treatment of the sick and wounded of country a committee should be established for the purpose of seeing to the sanitary condition of the army. In time of war this committee should enlist and support volunteer nurses and hospital attendants, and endeavor by all means in its power to alleviate the sufferings of the wounded. This is scarcely the place to examine the practicability of the suggestions made at the various meetings. One or two of the members themselves expressed doubts on the subject. We can only refer those of our readers who take an interest in this most important matter to the report, and at the same time express a hope that I. Dunant's labors and those of the association will not have proved fruitless. *The representatives of England were Dr. Rutherford, Deputy Inspector-General of Hospitals, deputed by Lord do Grey, and Ripan, the Secretary of State for War, and Mr. Mackensie, the British Consul at Geneva. From The Saturday Review. MISS INGELOW'S POEMS.* verse is not only strong but healthy. It is certainly not morbid. There is, indeed, a THE most cynical readers of this volume Charybdis of outrageous cheerfulness into tion so habitual will allow that Miss Ingelow is a very clever which modern poetesses are capable of being young lady, with a great talent for writing swept if they steer clear of the Scylla of mor verses. More enthusiastic critics may perhaps bidity; but Miss Ingelow is not too unmitibe found who will go so far as to assert that gatedly content. She does not put herself Miss Ingelow is the coming woman" of forward either as a weeping or a laughing the realms of rhyme. Without venturing philosopher; and it is some indication of upon so definite a prophecy as to the future, quiet poetical strength that she puts forward we are prepared to say that the poems before her own personality very little. She has us are of very great promise indeed. The touches of great sweetness and pathos, and writer has, among other requisites for poeti- her pictures show at once an accurate obsercal composition, the gift of clear, strong, and vation of nature, a vivid and true imaginasimple language; and she has one great gift tion, and a strong sympathy with the comfor a poetess, in that she has something to mon interests of human life; but they do not say. Most of the separate pieces in the vol- force or court any immediate observation or ume show a very defined purpose closely kept curiosity as to the character or history of in view. In one instance, a not unpardona- the painter. They are drawn from a good ble personal enthusiasm has carried Miss In- many and very various points of view, upon gelow's judgment off its balance, and betrayed which Miss Ingelow can never have stood exher into printing a wedding song in honor of cept in fancy; and it is satisfactory to find the Princess of Wales which cannot be said a rising authoress who can choose and mato be worthy of publication, either for sense nipulate subjects from without, instead of deor sound. This is the only case of absolutely voting herself to the art of minute introspecbad taste to be found in the collection; and among clever young women; when we have said that some few of the poems The use of an antique dialect or spelling might have been improved by shortening, and is always questionable. But the poem in that here and there some obscurity of lan- which Miss Ingelow has adopted this fashion guage or arrangement requires clearing up in a slight degree, for the sake of local color for the full comprehension of the thought, we ("The High Tide on the Coast of Lincolnhave said all that can fairly be said in detrac- shire, 1571"), is full of imaginative power tion of Miss Ingelow's merits as an accom- energy. The story is told by an old wo plished verse writer. The mechanism of the man whose daughter-in-law and grandchil verses is, as might be expected, moulded un- dren had been drowned in the sudden flood mistakably upon the fornis supplied by the of the Boston Level, caused by the rising of greatest masters of the present day; and the a high tide, bore, or cygre, of such force as trains of thought are inevitably tinged with to heap up the rivers and break the dams. It the colors of the minds which have served was the custom for the bells of Boston tower the authoress as her poctical guides. Had to be rung in a particular well-known peal, Wordsworth, Tennyson, and the Brownings called "The Brides of Enderby," whenever never written, Miss Ingelow's poetry, like any danger menaced the coast. They rang that of many others, would have taken a dif- out in the midst of a fine summer sunset, ferent form, and might have sounded in a dif- when all the dairywomen were out in the ferent key. Yet it is by no means devoid of level pastures milking the cows, and before originality, both in substance and shape. they could know what it meant, the flood was The great test of the strength of that origi- upon them :— nality is to come. Will the power of Miss Ingelow's verse ever be reflected in the attempts of successive aspirants to poetical honors? The question is easier to ask than We are tempted to say that Miss Ingelow's "Poems." By Jean Ingelow. Longman and Co. and "So farre, so fast the eygre drave, The heart had hardly time to beat, Sobbed in the grasses at oure feet; And didst thou visit him no more? Thou didst, thou didst, my daughter deare ; The waters laid thee at his doore, Ere yet the early dawn was clear. Thy pretty bairns in fast embrace, "That flow strewed wrecks about the grass, To manye more than myne and me; But each will mourn his own (she saith), Mr. Tennyson has many followers in the "When sparrows build, and the leaves break forth, My old sorrow wakes and cries, For I know there is dawn in the far, far north, Like a scarlet fleece the snow-field spreads, "O my lost love, and my own, own love, Is there never a chink in the world above Where they listen for words from below? And now thou wilt hear me no more-no more "Thou didst set thy foot on the ship, and sail Thou wert sad, for thy love did naught avail, And the end I could not know. How could I know I should love thee away When I did not love thee anear? "We shall walk no more through the sodden plain again When the sea gives up her dead.” The little grandchild is lulled to sleep by the singing, and the miller and his wife and mother draw their chairs round the table for supper, before the old lady finishes her journey from market to her own farm. The whole poem is a very clear and true little picture. The poem called "Reflections," where a young woodman falls in love with a maiden with a milking-pail whose face he sees reflected in the meadow-pool, is as strong a reminder of the manner of Wordsworth as the two idyls are of Tennyson. The "Scholar man, and Carpenter," again, fuses the speculative time for him to seek a new and a larger field style of Tennyson, as exemplified in his " Two of fame, in the choice and treatment of a great Voices," with the narrative simplicity of heroic subject? The truer our reverence for Wordsworth's ballads. Readers of the vol- the greatest English poet of the time, the ume will easily discover for themselves other more are we justified in earnestly pressing instances where the study of the various au- upon him the moral which his transatlantic thors we have specified above as Miss Inge- rival and young ladies who sing suppose to low's favorite poets has modelled the form in lic embedded in the chronic repetition of tho which her thoughts have flowed into verse. word Excelsior. But the thoughts are so genuinely her own, A few words of kindly advice may not be and they are the thoughts of so vigorous a fe- ill bestowed upon an authoress of so much male mind, that the reflection of her poetical promise. One is, that neither the "Wedding studies indicates rather a competently wide Song " we have already spoken of, nor "A education in the music of language than any Sea Song" on the occasion of "Old Albion's " defect of originality. The authoress probably refusal of the Greek crown for her sailor-boy does not require to be told how like the run Prince Alfred, indicates any special aptitude of her lincs is to the verse of the writers we for shining as a courtly or political poetess. have named. If she were an elderly gentle- A second is, that the Homeric consecration publishing at this time of day a poem of particular descriptive epithets to particular upon Greece written in good sounding blank natural phenomena is a dangerous habit for verse not unlike Rogers's "Italy," and a modern poets. The sea, for instance, "seethes" lyric upon Titania where the dreamy sound rather too frequently under a wide variety of sometimes ran away with the sense, with an circumstances through Miss Ingelow's volume. assurance that they were composed by him Another dangerous affectation is the fondness before Rogers wrote and before Shelley's for strengthening the point of a line by doubQueen Mab" was thought of, the question ling the salient phrase. Undoubtedly there of originality would arise in a different shape. are cases in which a great deal is gained by The question which in the present case does knocking the nail twice upon the head, but arise appears to us rather one for Mr. Tenny- the method of thus emphasizing is so easy son than for Miss Ingelow, or any other gifted that it should be very sparingly used. Its young poet or poetess who may study and use should never be so notably frequent as to convert to his or her own use the delicate provoke observation. Such tricks of compomechanism of Mr. Tennyson's idyllic poetry.sition will probably vanish with a maturer If the truth and purity of the form he has consciousness of the power which the writer applied to common topics has stamped itself of this volume undoubtedly possesses; and 80 clearly upon the impressible genius of his we shall look forward with hope and pleasure best scholars that they can write idyls only to the publication in due time of other poems a degree less perfect than his own, is it not by Jean Ingelow. The Destruction of the American Carrying | far towards sweeping the commerce of the United Trade. A Letter to Earl Russell, K.G. By States from the occan and transferring it into Frederick Milnes Edge. Ridgway. Pp. 27. MR. EDGE tells us in this pamphlet what most men of any mercantile knowledge have all along anticipated, that, in consequence of the depredations of Confederate privateers, Federal commerce is suffering very much, "merchant vessels being either laid up in Northern harbors or sold to foreign shipowners." The existence of these privateers, which will in a few more years go 66 foreign bottoms," he attributes solely to England; and, to prevent a worse thing coming upon us, he proposes compensation for the loss of all Federal property captured or destroyed-for the interest of the capital invested in the vessels and their cargocs-and, may be, a fair compensation, in addition, for all and any injury accruing to their business interests from the depredations. upon their shipping."-Reader. |