The publishers on our route, have kept us so well supplied with new issues of the press, that it was scarcely possible to forbear reading, even when other attractions, usually more persuasive, were waiting out of doors. In this way, and by these means, we have commonly contrived to baffle the effects of bad weather, and, by forgetting ourselves in a good book, find it easy to forget what is ungenial in our horizon. To forget one-self, is really no bad method of losing the unpleasant consciousness that the world is going wrong with you. Among the volumes which we have been skimming over while en route, is that recently published by Mr. Rush, formerly minister plenipotentiary from the United States to the Court of St. James: "Memoranda of a Residence at the Court of London"-Published by Lea & Blanchard. Mr. Rush went to England in his official capacity, immediately after the close of the last war, and his diplomacy had for its foil no less a person than Lord Castlereagh-afterwards distinguished, by his own act, and by the epigram of Lord Byron, as— "Carotid artery-cutting Castlereagh." Though Mr. Rush made no great figure as a diplomatist, he yet maintained himself respectably; and his volume is one marked by the essentials of good sense, and a proper gentility. It is pleasantly interspersed with anecdote, and a considerable portion of its interest arises from the glimpses which it gives of distinguished foreigners—their biographies, modes of utterance, opinions, and so forth. Mr. Rush manages to let us see and hold intercourse with great men, without trespassing upon propriety, or violating any of the tacit pledges and securities of the social circle. We do not see a single instance, in his volume, where the subject of whom he speaks, and whose remarks he narrates, would have the slightest reason to complain. All is proper, and not unbecoming either in the gentleman or politician. We are particular in making this remark, as we have met those who think differently, and who are disposed to visit their censures, because of his alleged departures from proper rules, upon the head of our author. (TO BE CONTINUED IN OUR NEXT.) The Temperance Question.-We have given place in the present number of our Magazine, to a paper on this interesting subject, by a writer who finds much to object to in the course pursued by the several societies which devote themselves to the purposes of temperance. We have done so, though differing in several important respects from the writer, and prepared to answer him in future numbers of our Magazine, because we esteem his talents, his independence, and his acknowledged purity of character. Still, there is much of truth in what he states, and it is important that the friends of the cause should hear what is urged in hostility to their proceedings. As they cannot suppose themselves perfect, they will of course endeavor to ascertain what grounds of offence may have been given by the over-zealous, the imprudent and the misjudging among themselves, in order to the amendment and correction of the evil. Our correspondent, we may remark, writes for a very different community from ours, which is obviously not obnoxious to several points of his censure. We propose to discuss the subject at large hereafter. SOUTHERN AND WESTERN MAGAZINE AND REVIEW. VOL. II.] CHARLESTON, S. C., DECEMBER, 1845. [No. 6. RECOLLECTIONS OF W. J. FOX, THE UNITARIAN PREACHER. ONE of the few English contemporary authors of merit who have escaped the watchfulness and toadyism of American criticism for foreign excellence, and the not less keen-sighted penetration of Ame rican publishers, is W. J. Fox, the former Unitarian clergyman, lecturer at South Place, Finsbury, editor of the Monthly Repository, and present lecturer to the working classes, and contributor to the Morn ing Chronicle. And it might appear to many who were not acquainted with the irregularities and treachery of a false literary system, a singular circumstance, that this neglected author is precisely the man, of democratic and liberal principles, of earnest convictions of the importance of the people in government and the great work of social improvement, of hearty sympathies in the popular behalf-whose writings would appeal to the lives of our people, encouraging, cheering and enlightening them in their daily path. Yet so it is. A gentleman who has just returned from a tour on the great western waters, found the boatmen of the Mississippi eager purchasers of James's new novels. The brood of yellow pamphlets, typical of a moral plague, fly into every quarter of the land, while scarcely a syllable of a native author moves the national heart. Marryatt's vulgar admiration of aristocracy, and Featherstonhaugh's shabby travels, circulate in cheap editions for the people, while Fox and Elliott, (the Corn Law Rhymer,) friends to humanity, are unknown. Of one of these men, we shall give the reader a few transient glimpses, freely confessing ourselves unable, from want of information and complete literary material, to give any thing resembling a full length picture. We had heard generally of Mr. Fox as a liberal thinker, with a spice of the radical, and of power as a popular orator, when we took advantage of an opportunity in London, one Sunday morning, to go and hear him. At that time, in 1839, he lectured in South Place, Finsbury, (a region in the eastern part of London, in which the cele VOL. II-NO. VI. 31 brated Lackington kept his Temple of the Muses,) having some time previously separated from the body of the Unitarians, by circumstances growing out of that not uncommon source of difficulty with moral reformers, matrimonial life. He was now independent-on his own hook, as it is said-occupying much the position of Mr. Channing, the preacher of the Christian Union, in New-York. His creed might be defined as the absence of any creed whatever. One of the earliest remarks we heard from him, was the defence of a word generally very obnoxious to sectarians, which we often hear preached against in pulpits-latitudinarianism. He found in it more good than most people discover of evil. He fancied in it a release from cant, bigotry, narrow-mindedness, malice, hatred, and all uncharitableness, without ever suspecting in it a greater curse than either, confirmed and hopeless indifference. He was a latitudinarian preacher. How easy, natural, equable was his style, uncramped by theologica! distinctions, free from old pulpit saws-the rigors of the Old Testament abolished, and the New adapted to the penny-magazine state of intellect of the nineteenth century. He was one of the most pleasing speakers we ever listened to-long sonorous periods falling from his lips as easily and naturally as if they could flow forever. It was reposing on a couch to listen to him. In person, he was smooth and unctuous, "a fat, round, oily man," and might have been chaplain in the Castle of Indolence. As if this were not enough, he apologized for the tediousness of his preaching. It was impossible that the minds of the congregation should all be intent upon the same subject at the same moment; those who were insensible, should respect the intentness of the rest. He sat down, and the congregation without farther ceremony departed. The hour's experiment of every man his own priest, did not impress us favorably with the system. It was too much of the barber's shop and the newspaper-light and agreeable enough in its way, but inspiring no reverence, engrafting in the heart no abiding principles of faith, duty and submission. As a substitute for the Established Church, or for any church, we should hold Mr. Fox very low; as a lecturer for the people, the working classes as an useful adjunct to the reform party-he occupies an important position. A recently published volume by his pen, lies before us,-A Collection of Lectures delivered on Sunday evening, at the "National Hall of the Working-men's Association," in Holborn. An enumeration of the subjects will exhibit his scope. There are twenty in this volume. Of these, some half dozen are devoted to politics, a survey of contemporary questions something between the style of a newspaper and a history; a larger proportion are essays on moral topics, as "Suicide," "Temples and Theatres, or the relation between different forms of the drama and systems of religion," "Superstitions and abuses connected with the burial of the dead;" and a few are literary, embracing a review of "living poets and their services to the cause of political freedom and human progress," including Wordsworth, Ebenezer Elliott, Tennyson and Moore. As specimens. of his democratic fervor, we will take a few passages from the lecture on Wordsworth, whom he places at the head of his list, because he is understood to be a conservative, a lover of old ways and traditions, of the court and the crown, and opposed to political and even social reform, as his sonnets against the abolition of capital punishment and his dislike of rural railways, testify-and because he finds in him. not a reluctant, but perhaps unconscious witness, to the present democratic principles. "As you well know," says he, "William Wordsworth is not a reformer, or consciously and purposely an advocate of those principles which we deem essential to the good government and well-being of nations. Wordsworth is a conservative, and perhaps upon rather a narrow scale. He is not friendly to any broad foundation of democratical right as the basis of a state. He is a church-and-state man, apostrophizing the church and state of England. He is a supporter of ancient practices and beliefs, and looks fondly back to the time 'When miracles achieved, Wrought on men's minds like miracles believed;' and is very much disposed to have them "believed" over and over again, as long as the last rag of faith can hold out. He fires off one sonnet at the abolition of capital punishment, and another against the extension of rail-ways. He would re-erect the gallows, and put down locomotives by the power of versification. And therefore it is that I hold him to be the most fit, in the whole round of contemporary literature, to demonstrate the fact, that real poetry cannot be made inimical to human rights, enjoyments and progress. If this be true in his case, it must be so in all; and it is more strongly illustrated and confirmed by our taking such an exemplification of the fact. We may regard him as in the position of the old prophet Balaam; when he intends to curse democracy, he is obliged, from the power of truth within him, to bless it. He is like the soothsayer, sent for from a far country-the seven altars erected for sacrifice-the incense rising in clouds; but when the inspiration comes, instead of malediction upon the people, he begins-'How goodly are thy tents, O Jacob! and thy tabernacles, O Israel!" This is well stated, and delivered with the melodious utterance of the speaker, we can easily imagine to have been received with triumph by an intelligent audience, proud of a new democratic triumph in William Wordsworth. Let us hear him, as he proceeds. After alluding to the change which Wordsworth, after Cowper, wrought in the language of poetry, banishing its conventionalisms, and bringing it back to the use of men in real life, he goes on: "We do not, as formerly, take up a book and seem to be going into another world, where all is artificial and hollow, 'sounding brass and tinkling cymbal;' but we have to do with beings of like passions with ourselves, and find there a truthful and direct response to our own emotions. Then again, look at his subjects; for they were chosen upon the same principle. He selected some of the commonest and homeliest characters and events, such as existed in his own neighborhood, where he was dwelling among the peasantry. He tells us in harmonious song of the poor old woman stick-gathering, and cursed by the farmer, and of the re-action of that malediction upon his own imagination; of the wagoner and his temptation by the rustic dance, the delay of his team, his dismissal, and its passing away from the scenery in which its periodical appearance made it the mark of time and weekly calendar to the villagers; of Betty Foy and her idiot child, with all her anxiety and gladness; of the poor countryman, [woman?] located in a town, where, after many years, the recollection of his green fields came back upon him, at the sight of some old stunted trees at the corner of a street, with its brown leaves and bare branches; of Alice Fell and her cloak of duffil grey, 'proud creature;' of the beggar, and the gipsey, and the wandering street-musician, spreading pleasure around him, stray gifts' of gladness. All that is most common and obvious he notes; but yet detects in them as genuine poetry as though dwelling in the loftiest stations, or abounding with the most marvellous adventures. He does not deem it necessary that every person introduced upon the canvas of his picture, should be decked in purple and fine linen. He can do without kings, and find other heroes besides warriors. He has no occasion for oriental scenery or mythology. No genii or Glendoweers flutter in his pages. The commonest landscape suffices for him; the daisy and the daffodil blossom there, and the rainbow brightens over them, 'till the heart leaps up to behold its loveliness. He can stand upon Westminster bridge, and mark the stillness of the metropolis, when all that mighty heart is lying dead;' and you have a stronger sense of magnificence than many produce by description of Mont Blanc or the Andes." So he pursues his comment on the poems-but he gets more direct testimony to the cause of reform from one of the poems: "Although the sympathies of Wordsworth are with broad differences of rank in society, with aristocracy for its Corinthian capital, yet he has shown in one poem a very clear perception of the kind of training which is best for those who shall hereafter wield the advantages of station and power. There is a pretty legend of which he has availed himself, referring to the time of the wars between the White and Red Roses, when an infant son of Lord Clifford, one of the Lancasterian champions, was saved from slaughter by some dependant of the family, taken into a remote part of the country, and there trained as a shepherd boy. Time rolled on, and the usurpation of Richard III. ended on Bosworth field. The White and Red Roses were united in Henry the Seventh and Elizabeth of York. The shepherd-boy was brought from his retreat, invested with his possessions and honors—and, at the festival, an old harper of the castle is represented as singing a triumphant song for the recovery of their Lord, and indulging in anticipations of his inheriting not only the title and estates, but the courage, skill and warlike qualities of his ancestors. He thus comes to the conclusion of his lyric: 'Now another day is come, On the blood of Clifford calls;- Is the longing of the shield Tell thy name, thou trembling field; Field of death, where'er thou be, Groan thou with our victory! Happy day and mighty hour, When our shepherd in his power, Mailed and horsed, with lance and sword, To his ancestors restored, Like a re-appearing star, Like a glory from afar, First shall head the flock of war! |