where the usual ceremony of washing, by pouring water on the hands, was first performed on myself, and then on the other ladies. As an especial mark of distinction,-and it is considered one of the greatest honours that can be showed, the Secretary and the royal favourite held the basin and towel to me; while numerous attendants waited upon them. The repast comprehended fruits and sweetmeats of almost every kind, beautifully arranged, and all served on silver. The Turkish ladies now laid aside all restraint and voluntary humility, and were about as merry and noisy a group as I ever saw. When the repast was finished, there was a general and most indecorous scramble for the dainty remains of the feast; each one appropriating whatever she could most readily grasp. I was highly amused at this sight. What a strange contrast such frolicsome and boisterous demeanour presented, to the measured tread, the timid carriage, and the servile observances of the court! On returning to the saloon, I found that Her Highness was gone; and I therefore made that the pretext for retiring from this regal fantisea. Cairo. A. L. THE COLLEGE OF PHYSICIANS. THE College of Physicians, which was founded in the year 1518, was the first national institution which Cardinal Wolsey patronized for the improvement of knowledge. Prior to that event, the state of medical science was very low in England. It was only remarkable for ingenious hypotheses, unsupported by the evidence of facts, and for a credulous faith on astrological influence equally visionary. The kingdom, particularly London, had often been visited by a most destructive pestilence, the sweating sickness a disease which was deemed peculiar to the English climate, but which has since been happily eradicated. The infected died within three hours after the first symptoms, and no cure could be found. The administration of justice was suspended during its continuance, and the court removed from place to place with precipitation and fear. Half the people in some places were swept away, and the principal trade practised was in coffins and shrouds; but even that, in the progress of the plague, was generally abandoned. At London, vast sepulchral pits were prepared every morning, into which the victims were thrown promiscuously. The only sounds in the city during the day were the doleful monotony of unceasing knells, and the lamentation of the tainted, deserted by their friends, crying from the windows to passengers to pray for them. The door of almost every house was marked with a red cross, the sign that the destroying angel had been there; and all night, as the loaded wheels of the death-waggons rolled heavily along, a continual cry was heard of, "Bring out your dead." To discover a remedy, or some mode of averting the recurrence of this terrible calamity, the King, at the suggestion of Dr. Linacre, was induced to establish the College of Physicians: among others mentioned in the charter as the advisers of this beneficial institution, Wolsey is particularly mentioned. 35 ON ROMANTICISM, AND ON THE PRESENT STATE OF BY GUSTAVE MASSON, B.A., UNIVERS. GALLIC. PART I. (To the Editor of the Wesleyan-Methodist Magazine.) I WILL venture to say, that, since the celebrated discussion which set, during the Middle Ages, the realists and nominalists at variance against one another, no literary controversy ever excited so much animosity as the case of Romanticism versus classical doctrines brought forward in France, for the first time, about twenty years ago. The magnificent and elegant tyranny of Louis XIV. had, it is true, witnessed something like a civil war in the republic of letters: Fontenelle and Perrault, in maintaining the superiority of modern writers over Cicero or Euripides, had incurred Boileau's displeasure,* called for La Bruyère's witty reproof,+ drawn upon themselves even the mild Racine's indignation; but this was only a premature manifestation of the spirit which, in after-days, produced Hernani and Henri III.: it was Romanticism struggling for an untimely birth: it may be considered as an affair of out-posts preliminary to the decisive battle of 1820-1830. The fact is, that we have here only one of the thousand expressions of the continuous antagonism which has, since the beginning of time, existed between inquiry and compulsion, a radical school of æsthetics protesting against the conservative doctrines of Horace and Boileau. This feature, so apparent to persons who view the subject in its proper light, renders the romantic question one of general and permanent interest. It is closely connected with the history of the human intellect at large; it is not circumscribed by certain geographical limits: its claims, therefore, upon the attention of thinkers in England are quite as evident as the direct relation it bears towards modern French literature. We would, moreover, justify, in a more serious point of view, the short remarks we purpose to offer in these papers. We can take a higher ground than that of mere criticism: the low state of public morals in France will very properly come under our observation, and we shall have to notice the melancholy way in which taste is affected by the want of settled opinions on the subject of religion, unfortunately so prevalent among our polite neighbours. A difficulty arises at our very starting-point. Chambers makes out that it is impossible to give a definition of a gentleman: we may just as safely decline embodying, in a correct and concise statement, an accurate idea of the romantic literary school. "The peculiar character of Romanticism," says one, "consists in the material which it selects as a ground-work for the imagination to act upon. It rejects the mythology of Greece and Rome; born with Christianity and modern society, it seeks its inspirations among the reminiscences of chivalry, or the poetry of the Troubadours." This view, as must undoubtedly appear, is too comprehensive, and therefore insufficient. Corneille's Le Cid cannot be called a romantic tragedy merely because the subject selected by the author belongs to the Christian era; nor could the dramatis persona of Shakspeare's Coriolanus entitle this magnificent composition, in * Euvres de Boileau, Epigrammes. La Bruyère, Des Ouvrages de L'Esprit. the opinion of French or German critics, to the appellation of a classical chef-d'œuvre. And here let us notice, by the bye, a subsidiary, but very forcible, proof of the vagueness generally attached to the words "classic,' "romantic." A Frenchman sees a catalogue of works announced as the "British Classics," and, to his great astonishment, the list includes not only Addison and Pope,-those two fervent admirers of M. Boileau Despréaux,-but Byron and ce bouffon de Shakspeare ! Shakspeare a classic! He whom Voltaire could not understand; whose name Victor Hugo has linked to his own! Truly, we must leave this point to be settled by more experienced judges, and profess ourselves unable to state,— Quid deceat, quid non; quò virtus, quò ferat error. Madame de Staël, the first author who directed her countrymen to new paths in the field of literature, says, "The word 'romantic' has been introduced lately in Germany, to designate that poetry which has sprung out of the songs of the Troubadours, and which owes its birth to chivalry and to Christianity. If you do not admit that Paganism and Christianity, the north and the south, antiquity and the Middle Ages, chivalry and the institutions of Rome and Greece, have divided between themselves the realms of literature, you will never be able to judge, philosophically, the principles of ancient and modern criticism." * In the curious prefaces to his several works, Victor Hugo has, perhaps, given the completest theory extant of romantic doctrines: we cannot even attempt to sketch it here; but we would notice the following axiom :-" Romanticism is nothing else but Liberalism applied to literary questions." A very witty and elegant writer had already said, "Literature is neither classic nor romantic: it is either genuine or adulterated, good or bad." We believe we can safely affirm, that not one of our readers is disposed to find fault with these unquestionable truths. But it will be necessary to take a wider scope, and to examine, comparatively, the very spirit of ancient and modern civilization, in order that we may account for the differences which characterize their respective literatures. We may admit, almost as a matter of certainty, that, in the earliest stage of society, Paganism had received from tradition a few vestiges of the only true doctrines which the Almighty committed, as a sacred charge, to the Jewish nation. However, as ages rolled on, and men settled down into something like political families, these vestiges became more and more obliterated, till they gave way to the deification of nature, and of the physical agents which seem to overrule the universe. Men saw that the seasons succeed each other in unvaried order; that "the ordinances of heaven" are controlled by stated laws; that, as far as the material world is concerned, there is, emphatically, "nothing new under the sun." These conclusions were soon applied to man as a moral agent. "Nature,” said the poets and philosophers, "is governed by fatum, so is man." Impelled by an irresistible power, we are hurled along down the hill of life, without the means of expostulation or remonstrance. The ground-work of ancient mythology being the relation between man and nature, it followed, as a matter of course, that it was represented not by doctrines, but by symbols. "Man invariably brought his soul to act upon external objects: the idea of conscience itself was embodied in tangible signs, and the torches of the * De L'Allemagne, 2 partie, ch. 11, Furies showered remorse upon the head of the guilty." If, like Prometheus on Mount Athos, we are bound as slaves to the wild caprice of an unpitying deity, we have nothing to do but to worship nature, to submit, and to turn from the contemplation of futurity as from an object of gloomy foreboding. The system of theology, founded on externals, explains, in a most satisfactory manner, why the Priests, who ministered at the altars of Jupiter, Apollo, &c., were not teachers, but merely masters of ceremonies; why philosophers and sages were the real Doctors of religion; why every rite, worship, act of adoration, was swallowed up in the worship of the great Pan, the god of nature,― "The leaven, That spreading in this dull and clodded earth, But here we have also the key to the noble structure and multifarious resources of classical poetry and art in general. If the Greek tragedies are so simple; if the statues of Rome or Athens are usually isolated figures, not groups; if there is something so calm, so subdued, and at the same time so desponding, in the production of the old artists; it is that they knew not all the depths of the human heart, and of course could not touch upon the chords which Christianity alone, in due time, was to bring into play. "Man personified nature; nature, in its turn, got hold of man, and made him resemble the torrent, the whirlwind, the volcano,-acting, as he did, by involuntary impulse and reflexion, having no power to control the motives or the consequences of his actions." * The delineation of a struggle between man and fate will, moreover, be as simple as the struggle itself. On one hand, we cannot imagine any protractedness in a conflict where there is such a disparity of resources; on the other, no subordinate intrigue can properly be introduced, to divert the attention from such a solemn scene as that of a mortal wrestling against higher powers. Hence the strict rules laid down by Aristotle for the composition of dramatic poetry; hence the three celebrated unities, the condemning or defending of which has lately given rise to so much scribbling. We may just notice, en passant, the absurdity of bringing the idea of fatality into a system of æsthetics founded, as ours ought to be, upon Christian civilization. Edipus, Clytemnestra, Prometheus, those gigantic characters, were antagonists fit to cope with old Fatum. Nesciaque humanis precibus assuescere corda. The overwhelming personification of Necessity was adapted to the spacious amphitheatre of Greece, to the cothurni, to the whole structure raised by the ancient poets; but when we see Zacharias Werner applying it to scenes of every-day life, and making a modern Edipus of a common Swiss peasant, we say, Non erat hic locus. The desponding character of pagan literature we have already alluded to as peculiarly striking. It could not be otherwise, inspired as it was by the ideas which constituted the popular belief. The views of the ancients, with respect to futurity, were dark in the extreme; nor had they any just notion of the immortal principle that constitutes our real personality. Although a few sages, especially among the disciples of Plato, conceived a more exalted, and, in some respects, a juster, idea of human nature,—yet * Madame de Staël, De L'Allemagne. "the doctrine of a future state was scarcely considered by the devout polytheists of Greece and Rome as a fundamental article of faith. The providence of the gods, as it related to public communities rather than to private individuals, was principally displayed on the visible theatre of the present world. The petitions which were offered on the altars of Jupiter or Apollo, expressed the anxiety of their worshippers for temporal happiness, and their ignorance or indifference concerning a future life.”* The natural man is so entirely taken up by the things of time and of sense, his understanding is so blinded, that he cannot grasp at anything beyond present enjoyment, nor think it worth his while pursuing what he takes to be shadows and "airy fantasies." He crowns himself with a wreath of roses, and says, “Behold, joy and gladness, slaying oxen and killing sheep; eating flesh and drinking wine: let us eat and drink, for to-morrow we shall die.” (Isai. xxii. 13.) "What advantageth it me if the dead rise not?" (1 Cor. xv. 32.) Epicurus had developed into a regular system the axiom, Carpe diem; and his principles, of course, soon became the popular code of morality; they supplanted all other rival doctrines; they constituted the groundwork of elegant literature. But it is curious to remark, in spite of the levity, the folly, the materialism which characterizes most of the ancient poets, how they seem to be, as it were in spite of themselves, haunted by "the King of terrors;" how "The dread of something after death,— The undiscover'd country, from whose bourn This constitutes the desponding character of classical literature; and any student who peruses Horace, the Greek Anthologia, Anacreon, or Catullus, will soon notice it. They have not that reverential fear of the Lord in which there is strong confidence, and which harmonizes with love and joy. "Like Felix, they sometimes feel an involuntary tremor, an inward misgiving of heart; but, like him, they labour to overcome the painful sensation, by removing, if possible, the cause of their uneasiness: Go thy way for this time; when I have a convenient season, I will call for thee.””† This Epicurean literature has, unfortunately, outlived Paganism. In England we have seen it lately represented by Robert Burns: in France, Béranger is now its acknowledged prototype. Béranger resembles the pagan poets; and much of that resemblance arises from confirmed irreligion acting upon a kindly, but melancholy, temperament. He may be gay and humourous, bitter, light, and careless on the surface; but plaintiveness is the hidden soul of all his poetry. To say the truth, there are many writers with more humour than Béranger: he makes us laugh; so does Voltaire ; The same * Gibbon, "Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire," chap. xv. author says, "The fashion of incredulity was communicated from the philosopher to the man of pleasure or business, from the noble to the plebeian, and from the master to the menial slave who waited at his table, and who eagerly listened to the freedom of his conversation." +"Christian Retirement." 8vo. |