war.

ourselves but the public of both countries, and English guards at Fontenoy mutually inalso to be wholly destitute of informa-sisted on receiving the first fire, how will the appear on this head; and the vulgar, if no others, at- muse of Spanish History exult in future times tach importance to results, especially in in a hero who gives carte blanche to his antaThis point ascertained, we shall the gonists for a whole campaign till the last day. more readily subscribe to the propriety of They on their part receive the courtesy with such details in the midst of a political essay. gratitude, and the owls of Estremadura may In their present state they are intended, cordially echo their brethren in the Eastern doubtless, for the special edification of the tale and cry, long Life to General Espartero ! Spanish cadets. General Cordova, indeed, for while the din of arms rocks his slumber, has been peculiarly successful in that part of Spain can never want for ruined villages. his argument where he proves that an armed We must distinctly state our intention force cannot vanquish an enemy in the field, of entering shortly upon a more detailed conunless it is duly provided with money and sideration of the position of Spain, and of shoes. So clearly does the gallant leader es- the causes that have reduced her fortune and tablish this fact by reasoning, that he deems character to so low an ebb since the comit needless to recur to his own practical illus-mencement of the present struggle for the tration of its truth in actual warfare; and so Crown. The long series of negligence, satisfactory are both argument and illustra- presumption and mismanagement that suftion on this point, that we are surprised that fered a power so little formidable in the first the Carlists, when wholly unincumbered with instance to rise so high as to divide the opi. either of the requisites aforesaid, should ever nions of Europe on the ultimate result, inhave succeeded in gaining a battle against volves a serious charge against those entrustall the rules of the Spanish toilette, and ined with the conduct of affairs in that unhapunceremonious disregard, not only of the py country, and requires some knowledge Brothers Baring, but even of Hoby. But and explanation of the personal characters then these Biscayans are mere warriors, igno- and motives of the principal actors, upon rant of etiquette, and deserve nothing better which we have no room for animadversion than victory, by way of penance for their here. poverty and hardihood, in fighting without any shoes at all. Our gallant general knows better than to win a batile against rules; and if any one can be so churlish as to deny him the praise to actual defeat in a similar dilem. ma, it must at least be a consolation to him to have done all he could to deserve it. The conquering cause might please the Gods and the Basques, but to have been conquered is the glory of Cato.

But we cannot, meantime, always preserve our gravity at the solemn and ceaseless complaints of every party in Spain against their own partizans, as well as their antagonists. In what a mournful state must a country be when the leading members of its community, whose imbecility is the universal confession, are allowed to continue for years the same course, though they change hands with their rivals occasionally. What must be the apathy Yet it seems that the want of common of a nation that can look on for years at equipments is not the only obstacle to the the destruction, not only of their existing inmilitary success of the Constitutionalists. stitutions, but of their own property and Espartero, a general of nearly equal fame rights, by the hands of those whom they with his great rival, though unreasonable despise! If the probe of steel applied for enough to gain victory in defiance of all pre- thirty years has not yet reached the botcedents and shoes, has been far too rational tom of the wound, what an inconceivable to prosecute his advantages to the destruction mass of corruption must the mis-government of his antagonist. This modest conqueror of centuries have produced! How strongly has disdained to march from conquest to con- the lessons of history speak to our ears, yet quest, snd we even fear that his recent lau- revolutionary demagogues would fain, in rels may have inconvenienced him by their their novel theories, restore us only to the unaccustomed weight in the sultry season of worst errors of the past. The existence of the last campaign; but we trust that his un-separate States in a kingdom, and the conseinterrupted siesta of the last twenty weeks quent weakness of the presiding Power, has may yet enable the indefatigable warrior to led the latter in every instance to sow disopen his eyes again some time within the sensions between the rivals, and take ad. course of the next twelve months. The advantage of their mutual jealousies and oppo. vantage of making but one movement per annum is obvious in the great savings thereby effected, for the shoes of the army, if not for the state; and if history has dwelt on that act of martial courtesy, when the French

sition to secure Despotism for itself, so soon as the occasion was favorable for crushing them all. The one Parliament of England has saved her from the ruin achieved by the various and independent contes of

early Spain; yet there are not wanting those who would establish separate Legis. latures here, in blindness to the inevitable result, that the kingly power would join with each in turn, to control and destroy the rest.

ART. XI.-Les Soirées de Jonathan. (Jonathan's Evenings.) Par X. B. Saintine. 2 tom. 12mo. Paris, 1837.

M. SAINTINE is very generally known as the author of that singular, and as singularly popular, novel-Picciola; the whole interest | of which turns upon the passionate love of a profligate atheist for a flower, and his, the said profligate atheist's consequent conversion to sensibility, religion and virtue. The literary and moral phenomenon of Picciola's existence and popularity in France, it should naturally have been our business to announce and explain to our readers-that is to say, to explain if we could; seeing that the problem, how such a simple tale of floral influence upon the heart and mind, of floral illustration of natural theology, should captivate the fancy of a nation to whose palled senses every thing short of incest and parricide had for years appeared insipid, is not one of very easy solution.

245

The very essence of that tale was the developing the action of external causes upon the mind, and of the mind under varying cir. cumstances, upon itself. The growth of atheism, heartlessness, and utter disbelief in virtue and the kindly feelings of human nature, through a course of libertinism, is indeed but slightly touched, nor was more than a slight sketch needed-of such progressive degradation, we have had enough, more than enough, in books and in real life. But the re-action, from the first slight sense of kindness and interest, awakened in the sullenly apathetic prisoner by his own almost unconscious act of forbearance in avoiding to crush beneath his foot the nascent plant, peeping forth between the flags of his prison walk, through the hold upon his attention thus gained by the plant, the interest in its growth, resulting from its thus attracting his attention, the gradual thawing of his ice-bound feelings by the mere mental act-or, should we say, passion ?-of taking any interest in any thing, and the slow consequent progress to philanthropy, to trustfulness in human nature, and to piety-which, as we are not reviewing Picciola, we cannot afford time here to trace, step by step-all this is so nicely, intellectually, and delicately unfolded, that even those supercilious critics who most sneered at such a fuss about a flower could not but be pleased and touched with much of the working out of this most unincidental, and yet in effect eventful, metephysical tale. We ourselves were highly gratified therewith; and even when the pathos became too much for our official gravity, as we most honestly confess it at length did, we continued to be gratified, nay, to be touched, even whilst we laughed, and in spite of our hearty laughter.

But from this task of metaphysical investigation we were exempted, Picciola being withdrawn from the sphere of our jurisdiction, even before we had met with the book, by its almost immediate introduction into this country in an English version. The talent and the originality of the tale fixed our atten- The new volumes are of a character altotion, however, upon the author; and when gether different, as will be sufficiently manihe gave to the world two volumes of "Jona-fest from a very brief account of their conthan's Evenings," we lost no time in procuring the work, only wondering if France could have adopted English slang, and if this Jonathan could be our Brother Jonathan; but confident, whether M. Saintine had laid his scene in America or in Europe, of find. ing in his "Evenings" something impressive, powerful, out of the way, even if not peculiarly congenial to our own individual taste. These confident anticipations are, we grieve to acknowledge, materially disappointed. Not that the gifted author has here written, or ever could write, dully, without talent; but that he has, in Les Soirées de Jonathan, taken a line less in accordance with the pe. culiar bent of his genius. To exemplify this, we must be permitted to say another word or two of the character and especial merits of Picciola.

tents. They consist of the evening conversations of the suppositious writer, represented as a mere French gentleman, now dead, with his friend, a certain Jonathan, who, though apparently not above forty years of age, has evidently lived some few centuries, and confesses to his friend his possession of a secret for prolonging life far beyond the period usually allotted to man. This Jonathan dies, however, notwithstanding his secret, and dies in a somewhat mysterious, not to say preternatural, manner, merely because he cannot, by land or water, get out of Honfleur: then resuscitates in a learned pea. sant girl-who, we are sorry to add, turns out ill-and proves, moreover, to have been Pythagoras; that is to say, the peasant girl, alias Jonathan, establishes the doctrine of Imetempsychosis, asserting herself or himself,

amends for our censure, by giving a specimen of his style of narration. This we shall perhaps best do by selecting one of the shortest tales, which we can extract with very little abridgment, even in the small space we can allow him. The tale we prefer, as well for this reason as for its characteristic prettiness, is Les Bienfaiteurs, (the Benefactors,) and we must prefix the four mottoes, which it is, at least as we imagine, designed to il

"TENTH EVENING.

"THE BENEFACTOR.—(SPAIN.) hominem dixeris. (When you term a man "Omne dixeris maledictum, cum ingratum ungrateful, you have exhausted the language of reprobation.)—Cic.

ссххіх.

afone amongst mortals, to enjoy the invalua- | often entertaining, and often pleasing little ble power of preserving, through all changes volumes. We only regret to see the author of person, a continuous individual identity, leave the path which he has so successfully by distinctly recollecting the incidents, opi- trod, for one with the turns and bearings of nions, feelings, &c. &c. of every past state of which he seems less familiar. And, lest our existence. remarks may have been somewhat hypercriThis account of Jonathan, which, howe-tical, we will endeavor to make M. Saintine ver extravagant, is neither uninteresting nor ill-told, constitutes the introduction to the fifteen evenings; there being in fact so ma ny short narratives told by Jonathan of various incidents witnessed by, or at least known to him-(the most supernatural he distinctly avers that he witnessed)-within the few hundred years of his existence as Jonathan. These stories are necessarily too short to admit that development of mental action which appears to us to be M. Sain-lustrate :tine's forte. They are, for the most part, satirical, and many of them are imitations of originals of which it might have been wiser not to remind us; as of Voltaire's Ingénu, Mrs. Shelley's Frankenstein, the Arabian tale in which a sultan, whose name we forget, lives a whole life whilst dipping his "Tel homme est ingrat, qui est moins couhead into a bucket of water, &c. Now pable de son ingratitude que celui qui lui a there is no question of its being literally al- fait du bien. (Ingratitude may occasionally lowable to appropriate the invention of a fo. be less the fault of the ingrate than of the reign author, by adapting it to the different benefactor.—(Maximes de Larochefoucauld, manners, opinions, and feelings of the bor rower's own country. But-besides that the plea is inapplicable to the case of Voltaire, this lawful mode of appropriation is not M. Saintine's. If he has changed the venue of his borrowed idea, he has not used it for the portraiture of French society, but has laid the scene in other foreign lands. And this leads us to another fault that we find in these tales or anecdotes; to wit, a want of truth of costume, a disregard of the peculiar manners and habits of the nations amongst whom they are located; as, for instance, he represents the Germans as bad musicians; Mahometan women as so little secluded, that a customer, as a matter of course, sees and falls in love with the shopkeeper's pretty daughter; a Hindoo prince, before the Moslem conquest of Hindostan, as building both mosques and pagodas; strangers as living familiarly with the Japanese; the Caffres as cannibals, setting little value on their kin, and the like. Such misrepresentations, if less important in short stories and satires than in regular tales, still give a painful consciousness of falsehood to the reader who is acquainted--and, in these days of incessant and universal travel and travel-publication, who is not?-with the manners and characteristics of the different regions of the globe.

But, whilst thus criticising, let us not be understood as condemning these two clever,

des ingrats; mais c'en est un insupportable
"Ce n'est pas un grand malheur d'obliger
d'être obligé à un malhonnête homme. (It is
no great misfortune to oblige ingrates;
but it is insupportable to be obliged to a
worthless man.)—Ib., cccxxiv.
tre les ingrats, mais on a laissé les bienfai-
"On a beaucoup écrit, et avec raison, con-
teurs en repos, et c'est un chapitre qui manque
á l'histoire des tyrans. (Much has been
written against the ungrateful, and justly,
but benefactors have been let alone; 'tis
a chapter wanting to the history of ty-
rants.)—Maximes et principes de d'Alembert,
p. 62.

cottage, but it was situated under the deli-
"Lopez had no better habitation than a
cious sky of Andalusia, in the little king-
dom of Jaen, at the flowery foot of the
Sierra Morena; and his daughter Inesilla,
his only child, his good, his beautiful, and
dearly beloved Inesilla, inhabited it with
him. Of his lost wealth he regretted no-
brilliant education of his daughter, which
thing except the means of completing the
his misfortunes had interrupted.

"Inesilla,' he would sometimes say, 'in the days of my prosperity I often did good to others, and no one comes to my assistance. Seldom does generosity dwell in the heart of man!'

"From the immense number of ingrates, I should infer the reverse,' was Inesilla's answer.

"Ingratitude would be less common, were benefactions wisely conferred. But

the rich and powerful, ever surrounded by | pez, I have riches, and a feeling heart; you lacqueys, flatterers, intriguers, know not will not reject the offer I am about to make how to break through the servile throng, yon. Sooner or later you must recover your to offer to virtuous indigence assistance fortune; meanwhile condescend to be my that might relieve without degrading. He debtor.' who obliges ought first to know well whom he is about to oblige.'

Bitterly does he now, in his solitary "Scarcely did she venture to touch the cottage, repent his former habitual confood, in order to leave the more for the demnation of mankind; and this self-reguest. He appeared unobservant; but he proach is prodigiously increased when he managed so skilfully to draw Lopez into one day accidentally observes a vulture a discussion upon the comparative excel- carefully feeding an unfledged dove nest. lence of the produce of the best Spanish ling, whose parent birds had seemingly been vineyards, and upon the preparation of destroyed. olla podrida, that nothing could seem more natural than the following exclamation, with which he interrupted the old man.

her!

66

Lopez was a witness to the catastrophe, and stood confounded. 'Merciful Heaven!' he exclaimed, what do I see!' (The good

carefully rearing her and he devoured, reader to imagine the second catastrophe. But we cannot conclude without observing, that neither Don Fernando nor the vulture really are benefactors, although they momentarily and hypocritically assume the semblance thereof, for base or selfish purposes; and that, therefore, although the story fully illustrates the last axiom of poor Lopez, to wit, the necessity of ascertaining who and what the person is from whom a favor is to to be accepted, it by no means illustrates the prefixed mottoes, which refer to the misery of lying under obligations to the worthless. A subject, by the way, which we should much like to see, treated and skilfully eluci

old soul wondered at the vulture's eating a dove, whilst only the contrary would have been miraculous.) Instantly the idea of his daughter burst upon his mind. My Inesilla, my dove!' said he, to himself; is not she likewise under the protection of a vulture, of a courtly grandee, of a man of prey, in short? Oh, let me not lose a moment!'

During his journey he almost incessantly repeated to himself, Before accepting a favor, the character of those who confer it should be ascertained; protectors and protegés should not adopt each other without pre-dated and exemplified; inasmuch as it apvious, reciprocal investigations.'

As he pronounced these words for the hundredth time, he reached Cazorla. Panting for breath, he flew to the house where dwelt his daughter. Alas!" The story thus abruptly ends, leaving the

pears to us to be as rich in situations of the deep agony produced by conflicting virtuous emotions, as the heart of novelist or dramatist could possibly desire.