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thorne, who seems rarely to have met an intellectual woman outside of his own and his wife's family, had a natural distaste for Margaret Fuller, it is not perhaps strange that he was taken in by it. But the curious thing is that when his talkative informant, who, as a Vermont boy, had not always mingled exclusively with lords and ladies, went on to hold up the Ossolis to shame for supporting themselves, in times of revolution and distress, by honest industry, the remark did not open the eyes of Hawthorne to the fact that he was talking with a very poor type of scandal-monger. The truth is that, while Hawthorne constantly showed his genius in his penetrating glimpses of the world around him, he still saw most of its details through a glass, darkly; his mental processes were unsteady and fragmentary, however brilliant, and it was only when he transmuted them into the final form of art that the result became great.

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All these facts and results are brought together by Mr. Julian Hawthorne, with little sifting, not much method, and, it is needless to say, the most utter and heroic disregard of the sensibilities of any living person. Thus he prints from his father's diary a long description, almost too frightful to put into words, tainly to put into types, of the precise appearance of the body of an innocent young girl who had drowned herself (i. 300). Had he introduced a series of photographs from the Paris morgue, the result would not have been more horrible; yet there it is in print, although the relations and schoolmates of the poor girl may still live in Concord. In one place in his diary, Hawthorne writes a sarcasm, rather ill-natured and decidedly coarse, upon a lifelong friend of his, now residing in Cambridge, and his editor takes pains to print it. While in England, Hawthorne was a guest at a hospitable home, that of Mr. M. F. Tupper, the author of Proverbial Philosophy. He wrote home a long de

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scription of the visit, which fills eight pages of the book (ii. 108-116). In this he says that he "instinctively knew [Tupper] to be a bore," that he was "the vainest little man of all little men," and much more of the same description. Mr. Tupper and his family are still living, and yet Mr. Julian Hawthorne prints it all. In the same way, Mrs. Ainsworth, of Hawthorne's favorite Smithell Hall, where he found the bloody footstep, —is pilloried to all time as a silly woman (ii. 69), although she seems to have shown him kind hospitality, and may still be living; as may Mr. Bromley Moore, of whom his guest complained that he alluded to the cost of his wines and valuables (ii. 41). Nay, the biographer apparently adds his own dislikes and grudges to those of his father, prints in full two innocent letters from a young poet (ii. 273) for no conceivable object but to turn them into ridicule, and goes out of his way (ii. 250) to vent his spite upon a very unimportant person, Mr. S. C. Hall.

But it is when we come to consider Mr. Julian Hawthorne's omissions that the tone of the book is most extraordinary. That he should mention the fact of his sister Rose's marriage, but entirely ig nore, both in the text and in the index, the name of her husband, is peculiar enough; but it is the omission of the name of Mr. James T. Fields that is especially objectionable. From his attributes both as publisher and man, Mr. Fields was practically the centre of the literary society of Boston during much of Hawthorne's career. A less discerning person would not have penetrated Hawthorne's shell as he did; interposed as a medium between a shy writer and a slow public; invited him, tempted him, urged him, encouraged him, and volunteered to put the stamp of the world upon the gold of genius. All who knew the lit erary society of that period knew how thoroughly and habitually Fields did this. He believed ardently in every word that

Hawthorne wrote; it would be almost true if we said that no man of his time believed in it so ardently, since such was Fields's temperament. Every one who ever heard Mrs. Hawthorne talk about her husband's literary career knows that, while it seemed to her a matter of course that all the world should bow down and acknowledge his greatness, she yet recognized Fields as the man who was first and most efficient in guiding the pilgrims to the shrine; and for this she expressed a gratitude which her son does not share. Who that will recur to the brief narrative long since given in this magazine (October, 1871), entitled An Evening with Mrs. Hawthorne, can help seeing the immense value to both the Hawthornes of that early morning call, when Fields broke in upon their solitude to tell them that he had sat up all night to read the manuscript of the Scarlet Letter. The ship then was launched at last; and the author who had carried all that winter " a knot in his forehead," according to his watchful wife, "came down with fire in his eyes, and walked about the room a different man."

And yet Mr. Julian Hawthorne, who, as an author himself, cannot be ignorant what a sympathetic friend does for an author at such a moment, sees fit not

merely to omit all direct reference to Mr. Fields in his book, but where he is obliged to allude to him as the "publisher" (ii. 304) or "the editor" (i. 311) makes no corresponding reference in his voluminous and careful index. To say that this is as if Lockhart's Life of Scott had omitted the name of Constable or Ballantyne is to say nothing; for the robust author of Waverley stood in no such need of publisher or editor as did Hawthorne. The qualities of this particular publisher were as well known to all Bostonians of his time as was his beaming and cordial personality; and of all the pettinesses of Mr. Julian Hawthorne's book, there is none so petty as this omission. For the sake of what can only be a personal grievance he has left a gap in his delineation; he has sacrificed the completeness of his work to what can be but an ungenerous whim. He has made an interesting and valuable book, for he happened to be the possessor of materials whose value could not be spoiled; but it is one which gives a very inadequate view of the father, and will do no lasting credit to the son. So far as filial affection goes, his claim cannot be disputed; but the quality is unfortunately shown in such a way as to confuse and becloud the serene memory of Hawthorne.

MR. PARKMAN'S MONTCALM AND WOLFE.

THERE is a pleasure in taking up one of Mr. Parkman's histories, for the reader knows that he will be invited to a share in the results of the historian's patient labor without being made a partner in the labor itself. There are some historical writers who drag one along with them, and one has to work hard to make the book one's own; but Mr. Parkman's dealings with the reader

are of another sort. He assimilates his material so thoroughly that his narrative reads like the tale of a man who saw all, and if he was not a part of the action was all the better a narrator for being a bystander. The reader listens, and places implicit confidence in the narrator, not merely because the array of public and private authorities shows that Mr. Parkman has had access to material

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Mr. Parkman's Montcalm and Wolfe.

known in its mass to no other student,
but because the firm tone of the histori-
an carries conviction of his entire famil-
iarity with his subject.

Mr. Parkman occupies a somewhat
peculiar position as an historical writer.
He belongs, one would say, by culture
and by choice to the older school of nar-
rative historians, but he brings to his task
a scholarship which identifies him with
the newer school of critical historians.
He has the virtues of both schools, the
defects of neither. He avoids, on the
one hand, the tendency to rhetoric and
smoothness which makes one distrust
some very agreeable and even fascinat-
ing writers, men who are praised for
making history as interesting as a novel;
and he has none of that contempt for
human interest which leads the scientific
historian to treat all historical questions
as merely unsolved problems. His posi-
tive merit lies in the thoroughly scien-
tific method of his knowledge and the
fine artistic power of his expression;
while he never writes as a partisan, his
work is warm with a genuine human
sympathy.

His latest book1 affords a better opportunity than any of the previous volumes in the series for a judgment on Mr. Parkman's special gifts as a historical writer. The whole subject of France and England in North America, when treated in detail, is so dissipated, and owes its interest so much to detached incidents and half-isolated persons, that one is more impressed by Mr. Parkman's mastery of the separate passages and by his clear portraiture than by his dramatic power. The story of the downfall of France, however, as contained in the volumes before us, moves so swiftly to its conclusion, and involves such vast interests, that it might easily tempt one into a theatrical display. It is to the credit of Mr. Parkman's literary judg

1 Montcalm and Wolfe. By FRANCIS PARKMAN. In two volumes. Boston: Little, Brown & Co. 1884.

[February,

such temptation, but has so marshaled ment that he has not yielded to any his facts as to make the historical development depend for its impressiveness upon the luminous qualities of the narrative. The drama involved in the sequence of events receives no adventitious aid from any manipulation of detail.

Indeed, any mere scenic dramatic efnating encounter between Montcalm and fect is forbidden, except in the culmiWolfe on the Heights of Abraham. War, so far as America was concerned, The disputed points in the Seven Years' isbourg, Ticonderoga, and Crown Point, were not many,- Fort Du Quesne, Louthe western forts, Montreal and Quebec; but the campaigns were so independent, for the most part, so little under the control of one master mind, that the imgreat deal of straggling warfare, -an pression created on the reader is of a impression heightened by the remembrance of natural conditions, the dense forests, the trackless ways, the wilderness penetrated only by small parties, and by the frequent glimpses of Indians and bush-rangers, whose mode of warfare emphasizes the unscientific character of the entire struggle.

superficial picture, and it is this essenThe real drama lies deeper than this tial dramatic property which is never lost sight of by Mr. Parkman. Faithful as he is to the delineation of details in this dispersed conflict, he knows that nificance of the contest. There is needa bystander could not measure the sig ed that larger historical knowledge, of which prescience can only be dim, and in the light of that knowledge he is able the successive scenes upon the large to interpret the isolated fights, to sketch background of that ethnic struggle for stands revealed to the human mind. possession of the continent which now The brief introduction with which the first volume opens is a vigorous outline of the thought underlying the struggle, and in the first chapter the author has

given a rapid, trenchant sketch of the physical, political, and social conditions under which the movements were to be made.

It may be said, without extravagance, that Mr. Parkman's previous volumes in the series have been in the nature of introduction to this; for he appears from the beginning to have kept in mind the real character of the forces to be pitted against each other, and to have given hints occasionally to the reader of what was finally to be expected. All this will undoubtedly appear more clearly when the only missing link has been supplied, and the reader is able to follow the entire series from Pioneers of France in the New World down to this work. We cannot forbear now calling attention to a singularly perspicacious passage in his volume Frontenac and New France under Louis XIV., because it contains in a nutshell the difference of the two national elements at war with each other. It occurs in the eighteenth chapter, where the capture of Fort Nelson by Iberville leads Mr. Parkman into a sudden consideration of the rival colonies, English and French. "These northern conflicts," he says, were but episodes. In Hudson Bay, Newfoundland, and Acadia, the issues of the war were unimportant, compared with the momentous question whether France or England should be mistress of the West; that is to say, of the whole interior of the continent. There was a strange contrast in the attitude of the rival colonies toward this supreme prize: the one was inert, and seemingly indifferent; the other, intensely active." He then proceeds to analyze the character of the two colonies and their aim, in two or three pages, which are masterly in their clear, profound disclosure of the inherent differences between the French and the English.

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It was in 1697 that Iberville took Fort Nelson. The attitude of the two nations was not essentially different in

1759, except that even under the narrow policy of France Canadian self-consciousness had grown more firm, and the community occupying the basin of the St. Lawrence could no longer be described as a mere French camp. Mr. Parkman occasionally hints at, but nowhere that we remember calls special attention to, the fact that in the final struggle Canada counted upon the side of France with something of the force that New England counted on the side of England. With something of the force, we say, for relatively New England was far more an integer in the struggle, and the evolution of the two peoples in America proceeded with greater rapidity in the case of the English settlers, since they were helped, not only as were the others, by physical conditions, but also by the accumulating influence of political and intellectual principles which made for freedom.

Mr. Parkman says in his introduction that "it was the fatuity of Louis XV. and his Pompadour that made the conquest of Canada possible," an epigram like Emerson's "In the year 1775 we had many enemies and many friends in England, but our one benefactor was King George the Third." If one concentrates one's attention, it is not difficult to sum the matter into such phrases, and Mr. Parkman gives abundant proof of the weakness of Canada through the fatuity of the French court, but his two volumes diminish the force of his epigram. He might with equal truth have said that it was the reinforcement of England by Pitt that made the conquest of Canada possible; and indeed one of the most brilliant passages in the work is to be found in the contrast drawn in the two pictures of Pitt and Pompadour :

"The Great Commoner was not a man of the people, in the popular sense of that hackneyed phrase. Though himself poor, being a younger son, he came of a rich and influential family; he was

patrician at heart; both his faults and his virtues, his proud incorruptibility and passionate, domineering patriotism, bore the patrician stamp. Yet he loved liberty and he loved the people, because they were the English people. The effusive humanitarianism of to-day had no part in him, and the democracy of to-day would detest him. Yet to the middle-class England of his own time, that unenfranchised England which had little representation in Parliament, he was a voice, an inspiration, and a tower of strength. He would not flatter the people; but, turning with contempt from the tricks and devices of official politics, he threw himself with a confidence that never wavered on their patriotism and public spirit. They answered him with a boundless trust, asked but to follow his lead, gave him without stint their money and their blood, loved him for his domestic virtues and his disinterestedness, believed him even in his self-contradiction, and idolized him even in his bursts of arrogant passion. It was he who waked England from her lethargy, shook off the spell that Newcastle and his fellowenchanters had cast over her, and taught her to know herself again. A heart that beat in unison with all that was British found responsive throbs in every corner of the vast empire that through him was to become more vast. the instinct of his fervid patriotism he would join all its far-extended members into one, not by vain assertions of parliamentary supremacy, but by bonds of sympathy and ties of a common freedom and a common cause. The passion for power and glory subdued in him all the sordid parts of humanity, and he made the power and glory of England one with his own. He could change front through resentment or through policy, but in whatever path he moved his objects were the same: not to curb the power of France in America, but to annihilate it, crush her navy, cripple

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her foreign trade, ruin her in India, in Africa, and wherever else, east or west, she had found foothold; gain for England the mastery of the seas, open to her the great highways of the globe, make her supreme in commerce and colonization, and while limiting the activities of her rival to the European continent give to her the whole world for a sphere.

"To this British Roman was opposed the pampered Sardanapalus of Versailles, with the silken favorite who by calculated adultery had bought the power to ruin France. The Marquise de Pompadour, who began life as Jeanne Poisson, Jane Fish, daughter of the head clerk of a banking-house, who then became wife of a rich financier, and then, as mistress of the king, rose to a pinnacle of gilded ignominy, chose this time to turn out of office the two ministers who had shown most ability and force, Argenson, head of the department of war, and Machault, head of the marine and colonies: the one because he was not subservient to her will, and the other because he had unwittingly touched the self-love of her royal paramour. She aspired to a share in the conduct of the war, and not only made and unmade ministers and generals, but discussed campaigns: and battles with them, while they listened to her prating with a show of obsequious respect, since to lose her favor was to risk losing all. A few months later, when blows fell heavy and fast, she turned a deaf ear to representations of financial straits and military disasters, played the heroine, affected a greatness of soul superior to misfortune, and in her perfumed boudoir varied her fulsome graces by posing as a Roman matron. In fact, she never wavered in her spite against Frederic, and her fortitude was perfect in bearing the suffering of others and defying dangers that could not touch her."

In these personal sketches Mr. Park

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