great effect, but with less analytic nicety; a woman herself, she cannot fully understand the feelings of men. and Shirley's lively mode is absolutely the only way to deal with it. Dead to all shame, or praise, or blame, and alive only to interest and self-importance, it forms what are called impracticable characters; men utterly unwarmed by moral influence or noble personal traits, and yet hindered by no foolish sensitiveness in carrying their own points. Any man, at any time, for any One defect running through these novels is, the unintended refinement even in the coarser personages. Women seldom know, unless by dire experience, the full brutality, or rather brutishness, of bad men's hearts. The submissive character of women tends, in imperfect natures, to meanness; the rug-purpose, is their golden rule. Their obged force of men, to brutality. The feminine fault, consequently, is shewn with great accuracy in the wife of Heathcliff; the masculine error is nowhere completely described. There is a refinement of nature even in the vampire Heathcliff, amid all his hideous harshness. The very awkardness with which the writer puts an occasional clumsy oath in his mouth, is an instance of this. The elements of character worked up in these books are phrenological; and the general interest they have awakened, is a strong tribute to that slumbering science. That angular family, the Yorkes, are a phrenological study. The censorious, strongminded Mrs. Yorke, with her jealous envy of the young and fair: Yorke himself, like a dry wine, harsh to the palate, but of delicious bouquet. His democracy, however, is not in keeping. His want of veneration would have made him merely indifferent to social distinctions, a poor man, he might have been a noisy democrat, but not an earnest one: a rich man, he would have sided with those that suited his tastes. Large veneration is required to respect ourselves or respect others, both of which feelings we must have to feel the stings of caste. We suspect, if Yorke was drawn from nature, there must have been a spice of vulgarity in the original, which, assuredly, there is not in the sketch; and he naturally contemns what he cannot attain. The curates, in Shirley, are a fine group, and stand out in bold relief from the rest of the book; the more so, that they seem to have nothing in the world to do in it. They shew strongly the authors inability to manage the mere frame work of a novel. Her mind teems with analysis of character, but wants power of artistic development. Donne is a gem. Self-esteem in some combination, thin-skinned, and all raw nerve, when alone, and unrestrained, wears a perfect coat of mail. Scorn, ridicule, contempt, are all wasted on its brazen front; tuseness they complacently call energy, and the world as complacently believes them. These writers invariably fail in benevolent characters. Whatever is within the compass of their own varying moods, they can accurately and dramatically portray. Beyond that no one can go. Feelings wanting in our own breasts, we can no more comprehend than a man, born blind, can light. Lack of conscience thinks right and wrong conventional forms. Unbenevolence calls pity, ostentation or weakness; and when experience forces it on us that these are really windows of the soul, which in ourselves are darkened, we still see only acts, not to be explained but by a moral sense unknown to ourselves. Hence, the tameness of the benevolent personages in these novels. In fact, there are none. Sometimes it is sympathy of man with man; sometime it is weakness. Caroline, the assemblage, otherwise, of all that is perfect in woman, sympthathizes fully, but sympathizes only, with the governess. Mr. Hall sympathizes with the pauper; at other times he is only a weak, simpering old gentleman. What this defect, however, loses in universality, it gains in piquancy. Every character in the books has a touch of it, and it gives most of their raciness to the Yorke family, Rochester, and Shirley. In Wuthering Heights and Wildfell Hall, both pity and justice are unknown words. The complete absence of the lattar feeling is singular. There is no intention about it; the writer is clearly unconscious of the want. There is no pruning away purposely to portray a one-sided character. The writer is of false proportions herself. This is plain in the heroine of Wildfell Hall, who tells her own story of her infamous husband, but who, as we read, we feel assured, conceals her own culpability. This character is not true. To benevolence, however, this authoress makes no pretence, and in this respect her sketches are truthful. She draws a phase of character not seen in Jane Eyre and Shirley. With few exceptions, her men and women all have the sullen lower of destructiveness. Her young people are tiger-whelps, that cuff each other for play. The whine of affection is followed by the growl of rage. The gloomy depths of her own heart she bares with terrible skill. She paints the wild beast in man, not gorging himself with blood, but in repose; and we shudder at his scowl and mutter, as at the death-roar. It is a perfect anatomy of ferocity. Destructiveness and combativeness in the brain lie side by side, and their mental developments are so closely combined, that to discriminate requires the nicest dissection. We see their combined action in varying shades, from the good-natured fight of the Englishman, followed by "shake hands and be friends," to the hacking and hewing of the Western gladiator with his bowie-knife. But here, there is none of the keenness of combativeness; nothing impulsive. All is sullen; the snapping and snarling of wolves, the hiss of the serpent, the yell of the panther. From the moral-picturesque of ferocity and tenderness, she works up some scenes of wild pathos. Sweetly across this wintry sky come soft gleams of light, a ray pierces the night, and the gloom of this iron soul changes into drear beauty. it is analytic and shrewd, and not lively, imaginative and tasteful. The writer could only draw from her own masculine mind, and half-masculine soul. Mrs. Pryor is an utter failure. Mrs. Yorke, on the other hand, one of the best characters in the book, is a matter-of-fact, heavy-minded Shirley. Jane Eyre is Shirley herself, under the depression of caste and wearying duties. This mannerism gives us a complete daguerreotype of the writer. By her works do we know her. Much of her history do we learn more of herself. She dwells apart, but phrenology will bring this fair star within our ken. Behold her, as she passes over the field of vision. but Her brow is neither high nor wide, projecting-Kant-like. Her temples, swelling with poesy and dramatic power, gleam white amid her curls. The central ridge of her forehead is the home of her searching thought. Back therefrom, sharp and angular, runs upward the inclined plane of her brain. We look in vain for the gentleness of woman, the pity that soothes, and not degrades. We look in vain for the venerative impulse, that gives life its earnestness and reality; its sadness, perchance, but its grandeur; that raises man to the throne of the god, and fills the heart of woman with devotion and deep truth. But high above, like watchers over the broken wall, sit conscience and resolute The writer is chary of these touches, will. Queen-like they have quelled the and hence the repulsive nature of this rising of passion, and whispering tenderbook. No simple element, moral or natu- ness. They have urged her patient footral, possesses beauty of itself. It is in the steps, as she plod unfailing over her once combination of contrasts that the heavenly dreary path. It is over, and now, like flame bursts forth. The representation of Shirley, "she saunters slowly along; her any one feeling is interesting only as scien- gait, her countenance, wearing that mixture tific analysis; but from the god and the fiend of wistfulness and carelessness, which, that sit side-by-side in man's breast are when quiescent, is the wonted cast of her evolved the true conditions of sublimity. look, and character of her soul." A winning smile, not gentle, plays at times over her face. Her greeting is genial and heart-felt; a warm grasp of her little hand; a glad eye-welcome. With ordinary people she is listless and absent-minded; revery has for her greater charms than the refinements of small-talk. Neither is she a bluestocking, that neuter gender of intellects. Her mind is simply masculine, bold, analytic and original; keen and carnest in discussion, at home in metaphysical disputation, and eager for the fray. Observing, In Shirley and Jane Eyre, there is not a single well-drawn female character that is not cast in the Shirleian mould. Caroline strikes us with an appearance of feebleness which by no means belongs to the gentleness and boundless devotion she is meant to personate. The authoress has little feeling of the kind herself, and she cannot distinguish between negation of force, and the traits that give sweetness and pliability to women. Caroline's mind, also, is not of the true feminine cast. Like Shirley's, but only to arrive at motives; that done, a character once dissected and laid away, she dismisses it from her attention; for at any moment, from the known quantity of a word or look, she can work out the unknown quantities in the formula of human nature. Little humor has she, but much wit; not loving satire for its own sake, when aroused her blade descends with lightning flash. Less pleasing is the picture we have of the authoress of Wuthering Heights. Dark and sad is her soul; a sullen fire is in her eye; her talk is cold and depressing. All weakness, and foibles of poor humanity she pounces on, as vultures on carrion. There is at times a cordial look, a heartiness about her, that surprises, and from its unexpectedness, wins. She has some friends in consequence who say she is not understood; that if she is a bitter foe, she is also a warm friend. She is sometimes a warm friend, and always a bitter foe. If she is fair, her beauty is of Pandemonium. She would make a glorious lover, but a very uncomfortable wife. The unfortunate, her husband, her love would make miserable; her hate would give him a taste of purgatory. Both Wuthering Heights and Jane Eyre have been reviled for their immoral tendency; the first deservedly enough; the latter, for no good reason that we can see. The influence that novels exert, proceeds almost entirely from sympathy; in other words, the evolutions in our own breasts of feelings similar to those depictured, according to these feelings, is a book, a strengthener of morality, or a fire-brand in society. No feeling, as God has given it to us, is in vain. Each has its proper sphere and limits; and anything that, within these limits, develops emotions that give breadth and force to character, is useful in its degree. It is true, one hour spent in actual exertion of our finer sentiments, is worth days of fictitious life. But novels, we take it, are an amusement. They cheer old age with the joys of retrospection; they divert the mind of youth from the strife of rising passions; and give freshness and relief to middle life. They bring the gay world to the quiet fireside, and supply the place of more noxious relaxations. We have risen to them from the sports of the amphitheatre, through the tournament, the bull-fight and bear-baiting, the coffeehouse and the club. In this light, then, they are useful. If they do us no harm in our grappling with the stern duties of life, it is well; if they actually assist us, it is better. Sympathy, however, may be carried too far; sentiments may be developed so as to deprive the character of its due balance, or associations thrown around to rob them of their purity. This is the case with Wuthering Heights. A degree of ferocity necessary to primitive man, the forest-prowler, wild as the beasts that wrestle with him for his prey, would hardly suit the men of the nineteenth century. Such pictures might give vigor to weakness, iron to the feeble blood; but few men need such promptings. There is enough in the world, and more than enough, to change the kindliest nature to gall. The frenzied love, too, so powerfully pictured in these volumes, fresh and undefiled, free alike from sensuality and sentiment, such as men might have felt when the world was young, is unhallowed; and thus leads our noblest impulses to sympathize with crime. No poetical retribution can destroy influences like these. The moral, in fact, in such books, is a sop to Cerberus, to blind to the effect of a series of prurient and exciting scenes. The soul is seared by blasts from hell, and then told to be strong and fail not. But in Jane Eyre, every thing tends to the side of virtue. The patient plodding through long dull years of toil, so difficult of dramatic representation, is here finely brought out. As we read, our breasts are filled with the sombre dogged spirit that chained the maiden to her duties. When the mystery is cleared up that makes it crime for Jane, or the reader, to listen to words of love, she flees from its pollution; and its voice is no more heard, till punishment frees the man's hands, and purifies his soul. T. C. C. BRITISH ENCROACHMENTS AND AGGRESSIONS IN CENTRAL AMERICA. THE MOSQUITO QUESTION. (Continued from page 218.) [THEN followed another grant, comprehending all the territory south of the river San Juan to the boundaries of New Grenada, including Bora del Toro and Chiriqui Lagoon. This grant was made in the same terms with the first. MSS. Another grant, made Feb. 1st. 1839, giving, "Little Corn Island; and," says our author, "it is possible a keg of rum would have procured a similar grant of Mexico or the United States" from the same royal hands. The assent of the Mosquito dignitaries was obtained in form, and each man made his mark. MSS.] "These are to certify, that in consequence of the very low price of tortoise shell, on which we and our people depend for our living, it is entirely out of our power to pay our debts, &c. It, therefore, gives us great satisfaction, &c., that our good king, &c., has, by giving a grant of land, freed us from all debts due to those traders, &c., &c., &c." Signed by the Mosquito dignitaries. [MSS.] [There were other cessions to other individuals, covering nearly the entire "kingdom." these cessions. But the royal word had been plighted, or rather his Majesty stood in too great bodily awe of the Jamaica traders: the attempt failed. Col. M'Donald, however, secured from him the accompanying document, which is certainly a curiosity in regal history. Here follows, in the English form, the "Will of his Majesty the King of the Mosquito nation," directing, that in the event of his death, the "affairs of his kingdom" should be continued in the hands of "Commissioners, appointed by me, upon the nomination of His Excellency, Col. M'Donald, Her Majesty's Superintendent," as Regents during the minority of the heir. Also, that the United Church of England and Ireland shall be the established religion of the Mosquito nation, for ever." Col. M'Donald and the Commissioners, or Regents, are also made guardians of the "royal" children. In case of the death of Col. M'Donald, Commissioners are directed to apply to the Queen of Great Britain to fill the vacany. Also a request that her Majesty will continue to protect the kingdom of Mos This will was signed by the "king" and the "judges of the Supreme Court of Honduras"!!] When the intelligence of these proceed-quito as heretofore. ings reached Jamaica and the Belize, it excited great alarm among the government conspirators. Col. M'Donald, the Superintendent of Belize, had "his Majesty Robert Charles Frederick," immediately brought within his jurisdiction, when every effort was made to procure a revocation of VOL. V. NO. III. NEW SERIES. Under this authority, certainly no better than that on which the Shepherds and others claimed their large tracts of territory, M'Donald proceeded to act as 16 he thought would best promote the ultimate designs of Great Britain. And, strange to say, the British Government pretends to regard this document as legal and binding, at the same time it sets aside all others executed by the same savage! As observed by a Spanish reviewer, the events which followed were better becoming the pen of Charivari or Punch than that of history. Perhaps villainy and fraud never assumed a more ludicrous garb, than in the subsequent transactions of M'Donald and his associates. Of course the Jamaica traders, in their new character of sovereigns, were not slow in improving the advantages of their new position. They sub-divided their territories, converting their titles into a sort of transmissible paper, which was negotiated not only in Jamaica and Belize, but also on the 'Change of London. The credit of this paper was, of course, not very high with those who stopped to inquire into its origin; and the standing of the Mosquito monarch among the potentates of the world was not particularly calculated to inspire confidence. But nevertheless, a considerable number of British subjects became involved in the speculation, and talked much of the Isthmus of Nicaragua, with its Oriental coasts and the probability of the English Government extending its power over it, of the opening of a ship canal, and the immense value of the lands on the banks of the San Juan, &c., &c. pro Indeed, so far was the delusion carried, that a large sale of the granted lands was sold to a Prussian company, which ceeded to establish a colony upon the coast, at the mouth of Bluefields river, where a shattered remnant still lingers, the miserable victims of fraud. M'Donald was beset with difficulties. If the claims of the Jamaica traders were recognised and protected on the ground of the proprietors being British subjects, then their subsequent sales were valid, and half the grants were already sold to Prussia, including the mouth of the river of San Juan! This could not be it would practically defeat the ultimate designs of the Government. There was but one course left, namely, to procure the revocation of the grants! : But the influence of the Jamaica traders was too great to be encountered at once. They were left for a second blow; and the king, although adhering to his own grants and those of his father, was willing to annul those granted by his royal ancestors previously. A Mr. Walker, better known on the coast as "Pat Walker," who was secretary to M'Donald, proceeded to Mosquito soon after, and succeeded in getting the signature of the king to the following document: REVOCATION, NO. I. Inasmuch as we and our late predecessor, George Frederic, have been accustomed to make grants of lands to British subjects in our dominions, for the purposes and with the view of cultivating and promoting the colonization of the rich and fertile soil of our coasts, in virtue of which cessions several British subjects and agricultural companies have taken possession and commenced the colonization of said lands; and, inasmuch, as we have just received information of certain pretenders of distinct lands of our territories, in virtue of cessions made by our predecessors, which lands have not been cultivated nor their possession conserved by any agent, &c., and now a period of more than half a century having passed away, the holders of our cessions and those made by our immediate predecessor having made great expenses to commence the colonization of said cessions: Therefore, be it known, for the satisfaction of the holders of our cessions and of those made by our predecessor, George Frederic, that we annul and make of no value all the anterior cessions to those made by our predecessor, in virtue of said anterior cessions having become extinct, according to the laws of England, by which we govern ourselves absolutely in all what concerns real estate, and as no possession has been taken of said cessions of lands, and they have not been reclaimed at a due time, &c. &c. Cape Gracias à Dios, May 23, 1841. (Signed) ROBERT CHARLES FREDERIC Not long after, the "King" had the consideration to die. M'Donald, as "Regent," could now act as he pleased. With the aid of his factotum Walker, the following document was issued, in the name of the sambo boy, "George William Clarence," the heir of the "Mosquito Kingdom." |
