reading those with which he cannot coincide, by avoiding the expression of opinion altogether, on political subjects, and contenting ourselves with the bare recital of facts, as honestly and as truly as our means will permit. The controversialist also, must be contented, to find critical chastisements directed only against flagrant derelictions from those general and established principles, which are common to every denomination of conscientious Christians, or against feeble execution or incompetency, in the performance of the task which is self-imposed. In this determination, we repel beforehand, the possible charge of luke-warmness. Zeal and enthusiasm are very different qualities; and the former may consist with confining its expression to the proper time and place, while the latter obtrudes itself every where, without waiting for either ceremony or welcome. A magazine, however, would not be complete, which should omit from the number of its articles a passing notice of the state of the Fine Arts, and of whatever is connected with them. It would, indeed, be a gross neglect of a public caterer's duty, to forget or to pass by so delightful a dessert, as that afforded through such means. The pencil of the painter, the chisel of the sculptor, the strains of the musician, are subjects ever worthy of our best attention; nor should that epitome of all mankind, and the exhibitor of their passions, the actor, pass unnoticed. Each in his way does honor to human nature, and all tend to elevate our ideas, dignify our feelings, and furnish us with rational and even noble subjects of reflection. The public, therefore, are all interested in their prosperity, and in that of the several arts, which may ever be termed a moral thermometer, as they invariably flourish or decay precisely in the degree of moral refinement or degradation. After all, therefore, a well regulated periodical may be made to possess strong claims to public patronage and encouragement. So far from usurping the place of more grave and important writings, and frittering away the subjects upon which it touches; so far is it from being what prejudiced or shallow persons have sometimes termed it "a thing of shreds and patches," that it may be-we trust it is already, proved to be highly conducive to the cause of literature and science. No one believes that he can learn all that is to be learnt on an abstruse matter, in the pages of a magazine; it is never considered as more than either a synopsis or a condensation of a subject, in science, or an opinion of the merits of a work, in criticism. The most important objects, or the greatest beauties, of the writing, are displayed to the best advantage, and an incentive is given to farther inquiry and investigation on the part of those whose inclinations or circumstances lead that way. By its brevity and its variety, it enables the reader to pause at short stages; and it must be a dreary route indeed, in which the traveller can find neither fruit nor flowers to regale him, nor prospect to delight him, from the time he gets into the saddle until he alights at the next inn. But the crowning point, if it be presumed for a moment that there is a fair share of ability and industry, in the conduct of a work of this kind, is the integrity of purpose, and the undeviating resolution to hold the balance even, which should actuate every movement of its proprietors. Not only should political and controversial party be utterly excluded from their scheme, but party of every kind. Unfortunately in the often tried case of Practice v. Theory, literary jealousies have been found as vindictive as those which originate in more vulgar minds. It should be matter of con stant care and watchfulness, to avoid a fault, against which we are all ready to inveigh, and to endeavor by courtesy of language, as well as by amenity of disposition, to render pointless the saying with which censors are too frequently greeted— "Physician, heal thyself!" That the conductors of the American Monthly Magazine will at all times act up to the opinions here put forth, time only can show; that they are actuated by the sincere intention of so doing, may perhaps be evinced by their voluntarily promulgating rules of conduct, by which they must submit to be tried. Infallibility is not the attribute of mortals, and they are far from arrogating to themselves pretensions approaching to the term. Passion and prejudice will break out in an unguarded moment, even over the most watchful. The failings incidental to humanity, they feel assured will be pardoned in them, by the reflecting part of society, and for the opinions of the rest, they feel a perfect indifference. In rectitude of purpose they now address themselves to the task, being assured that whatever may be the particular bias at the commencement of an undertaking, the public judgment is always correct in the end. SONNET.-ON THE DESTRUCTION OF GENOA. From the Italian of Giovambatista Pastorini. My glorious Genoa, if with tearless eye With pride I view thy towers, though fallen, free- More dear-than e'en defeat-hath victory cost M Buonaparte's Voyage to St. Helena, comprising the Diary of Rear Admiral Sir GEORGE COCKBURN, during his passage from England to St. Helena, in 1815. From the original manuscript in the handwriting of his private secretary. (pp. 124.) Boston. Lilly, Wait & Co., 1833. WHEN Will the incidents, relating to the life of the most extraordinary man that ever lived, either in ancient or modern days, be summed up? Or when will the interest which his name continually excites, have reached its acme? Eighteen years have elapsed since his political existence was brought to a close, after a career more brilliant than one man ever before achieved; and twelve years have gone over our heads since his mortal remains were gathered to their parent earth, after an incarceration and a series of insults, disgraceful to the character of enlightened Europe that planned them, ten times disgraceful to the state which inflicted them. Yet vainly did the powers on the other side of the Atlantic suppose that, by placing such a man on a lonely island, far from the scenes of his exploits, and out of the sight of those, who had so long and so frequently withered at his frown, they could cause him to be forgotten, and hope that by-gone follies and enormities might be restored in peace, that legitimacy, the watchword of drivellers, might again become the paramount principle among the nations, and that they might once more become the great ones of the earth. Vainly they expected to silence that universal voice, which called to mankind, no longer to remain supine under the despotism and bigotry of sensual and besotted monarchs, who deemed their subjects an inheritance, and their own rights divine, because for a series of generations their authority had not been disputed. The man who had swayed the destinies of the old world, had at last surrendered himself to their power. To become his murderers in direct act exceeded even the resolution that a mob of kings could assume; but they would drive him back to obscurity, cause his name to perish, and let spleen within and cruelty without, work their way upon him. They drive him into obscurity! The fiat of all the assembled princes of the earth could not dim the splendor of the roof that covered Napoleon! The coruscations by which he had surrounded himself shone far and wide, and the rock of St. Helena became the gaze of the whole earth. They cause his name to perish! It is imperishable, as the rock on which he rests. The annals of Europe attest the magnitude of his public acts, in terms which cannot be erased; his fame was wafted on the four winds of heaven whilst he remained in power; and no sooner was he dragged to the vainly imagined obscurity in the remotest part of the ocean, than myriads started forth to trace his life, and to perpetuate that fame by a more extensive medium than the reading of state papers. Generals, admirals, courtiers, ladies, the philosopher in the closet, the merchant at his desk, ministers of state, and menials, princesses of the blood, and waiting women;-whosoever could produce an anecdote of Buonaparte in addition to the common stock,-be the matter ever so trivial, be the time ever so remote,-deemed himself capable of doing the public good service, and contributed his mite of information with an air of infinite complacency, as one who had been a public benefactor. The publication before us does not profess to be of a higher character than that which we have just described. It pretends to be no more than a few casual remarks, made during a voyage of a few weeks, from the British Channel to the Island of St. Helena, for the purpose of conveying the illustrious captive to his prison, his tortures, and his grave. Oh! Better far that he had died at Elba, or had fallen at Waterloo; nay, rather that the Holy ALLIANCE had dispatched him, after a mock trial and a show of justice, than thus to extract patience and life by drops, under the galling sensation that he had found malignity where he had looked for magnanimity, and that where "national honor" is most strongly mouthed, he had perceived "all is not gold that glitters !" Of the present work we may fairly complain of the poverty, whether we consider its matter or its manner; and we feel somewhat at a loss to describe accurately our opinions upon it, as a veracious transcript. On the one hand it contains the recital of a great variety of circumstances which have not the slightest improbability, though few are important; and on the other hand, we think neither the remarks themselves, nor the style in which they are clothed, are or can be the language of Sir G. Cockburn. The language is anything but seamanlike, and Admiral Cockburn is a thoroughbred and thorough-going seamen. The remarks are frequently puerile, and sometimes petulant, faults, of which from all we have heard of Cockburn he was entirely exempt. As a public officer, ordered by his country upon a service which must be disagreeable to every man of delicate feelings, he obeyed his orders with reluctance, but he did only his duty; and even Napoleon acquits him of such deportment as is implied in the preface of this book, that he viewed his prisoner and his actions "with much the same feeling that would induce the keeper of the Tower Menagerie to note down the peculiar habits of any new and extraordinary animal intrusted to his care." The dialogue is also too abruptly introduced. Considering the terms on which he was brought on board the Northumberland, the rank he had sustained in the world for such a length of time, the studied indignity that was thrown upon him every time he was addressed, and his well known peculiar dislike to the naval profession generally, we can hardly bring ourselves to the belief that he was so like a bottle of ripe Champaigne, with its cork flying out, to discharge the contents of his bosom on all around him. The anxiety, throughout, to show the details up as conversations, proves too much; the continual "I told him," and "he told me," with which the work is interlarded, renders its authenticity somewhat doubtful in its very face. It does not ring true; it is like the man discovered to be no Athenian, by speaking the Attic dialect in a manner too rigidly correct. The mode by which the book has found its way to the public notice, is also a little remarkable. The account in the title page and preface,—we beg the publishers' pardon-appears to us somewhat apocryphal. The original manuscript of Sir G. Cockburn, either would not be, or ought not to be, in the possession of his private secretary for eighteen years after the event on which it treats; but granting it to be so, and to be discovered after the secretary's decease, we surmise that the first person to whom they would be presented, would be the admiral himself, particularly as they are presumed to be written by him in the first person. There is nothing contained in the diary offensive to either the principles or the feelings of any human being in England, unless the casual mention of Mr. Goldsmith may be thought so, therefore the intimation of the impropriety or impolicy of its publication there, is worse than ridiculous. Yet there is internal evidence that such conversations, or a least remarks, may have fallen from Napoleon; but they have travelled through various hands; and are, far more probably, collections of gossip, picked up at St. Helena by some mercantile resident there, than details of conversations between the greatest man in the world, and a distinguished British officer. There runs throughout, a vein of feeling, which denotes a person more conversant in the fate of dollars, than of empires; and a deficiency of grammatical knowledge, of which if Sir G. Cockburn was not ashamed, at least his secretary ought to have been. It is not from reading such works as this "Diary," that farther intimacy with the "where-abouts" of such a man as Napoleon can be obtained. The grand page of Modern History for forty years, is but the biography of that singular man. Before his day, hereditary blockheads, or heads of worse character, were the rulers of states, which had submitted, from century to century, to take as guides for their conduct, and as regulators of their political movements, men who had not a second idea beyond the thought of their own, or their family aggrandizement; and who considered the great bulk of mankind as but instruments subservient to that all important end. So true is it that man is the creature of habit;-though conscious of mental vigor equal to that of others called their superiors, though equally conscious of bodily and numerical strength far greater than those,-though writhing under grievance, and groaning under tyranny,-it is not until they are goaded to madness by extremity of insult, or roused to the vindication of their rights by the voice of undaunted patriotism, that mankind think of examining the texture of their bonds, hallowed by lapse of time, and rendered familiar by constant wearing. Buonaparte found the world of politics a chaos; his master-spirit moved the discordant elements, and gradually restored order, LIGHT, and splendor to his country. His aspiring mind could not repose with a partial re-animation; he undertook to organize anew the powers of government which over the face of all Europe had become paralyzed. The example of France had spread its influence in greater or less degree through all the continent, and it was he who fed and nourished the flame which has since attained to an almost universal blaze. True it is, that the cause which animated the breast of Napoleon, was not a spark of so holy a fire as that which kindled the soul of Washington; nor did he close the career of his exploits with the calm philosophical elevation of that heaven-born liberator. There was leaven of earth and of earthly feelings in the bosom of the one, from which the patriotic, the-dare we say-immaculate heart of the other, was free. Yet it is small deterioration of the one, to say only that he was unequal to the other. The voice of ambition has ever been found captivating, the acts of successful ambition have ever been found dazzling, heroes have proclaimed deceptive reasonings to others, until they have deceived even themselves; but only one Cincinnatus and one Washington, have obeyed their country's call, to deliver it from the yoke of oppression, and then retired, with the admiration of a world, to the tranquillity of domestic life. Even the former of these two characters is problematical, whilst of the latter, we have blessed and daily proof. |