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    Oct. 19, 1850.] *&%t &*&&*?? 715

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    NEW NOVEL BY DUMAS. La Tulipc Noire. Par...

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    Montgomery's God And Man. God And Man: B...

    notony of cause and effect , and are , in a physical sense of relative action , * the same yesterday , to-day , and for ever . ' But a Being , greater and more glorious than Nature far , once came forth from the recesses of His eternity to visit our sinful world , and before the regal fiat of His lips her ancient fixities were interrupted , and her uniform sequences gave way . "

    Surely , Mr . Montgomery has erudition enough to know that the question about miracles was never this : could God alter the course of Nature ? but this : did he alter it ? Mr . Montgomery asks how any man can remain unmoved by the miracles ; no one does who believes them ; the question to be settled is : Were these miracles ever performed ? One more sample and we have done . Speaking of the " originality " Christ ' character , he says : —

    " Certain German rationalists and profane speculators in our English schools of infidelity have ventured to talk of Christ as a mere historical Myth ! ' But the deriiers of the Redeemer ' s historical reality appear to forget that , by this mad and miserable theory , they virttiaily declare the biographers of Jesus Christ toere tliemselyes so many counterfeits of their own ideal representation . In other words , unless we believe the Saviour to have been

    indeed the incarnated Son of the Everlasting Father , we must transfer the recorded graces of Jesus to the inventive minds of the Evangelists , —because this charge of historical invention renders these writers , in a more or less degree , the very archetypes whence they produced the Christ they exhibit ! Yet who does not at once perceive that , if this be asserted , then the moral impossibility is more astounding to pure reason than the superhuman grandeur of Christ is to the principle of faith ?"

    This is queer doctrine , and must startle poets , novelists , and dramatists . It was not generally thought that Richardson was the archetype from whence Pamela proceeded , nor did her untroubled virtue invest the author with saintlike glory . But Mr . Montgomery knows better : he knows it is impossible for the intellect to imagine a being greater and purer than the man who imagines it . Upon the «* Avvfulness of Human Speech , " he is , as you may expect , magnificent . He believes that the sway of words is more awfully vast than even

    that of mere reason can be " ; and a torrent of declamation thunders down to prove that words are little short of omnipotent . It will be cruel we know to disturb this theory , but we cannot help asking him whether , on reflection , it does not appear to him that the potency of words is proportionate to the meaning they convey ? If an orator flings forth " rabble rousing words " and a barricade results , cannot you , who are a philosopher , perceive that the words only roused the rabble because they had meaning in them ,

    terrible meaning to the rabble ? Is it not mind which influences mind ; and are words more than the winged messengers of communication ? You think that words are potent : strange error ! There are words enough in your volume , but they are not at all potent . " Printed , written , or spoken , we may well believe that human words affect all we are in time with their sway , and influence all we may become in eternity by their consequence . " Yes ; but there is one condition you have overlooked , viz ., that there be

    meaning in them . Mr . Montgomery not only clings to the God of the Jews and the morals of the Bible with greater pertinacity than theologians of our day generally exhibit —forgetting ( to use the noble language of Jeremy Taylor ) that , when God took upon him the two appellatives of " Father of our Lord Jesus " and the * ' God of Peace , " he was pleased to lay aside his title of the 11 Lord of Hosts , " forgetting that Christianity itself was a radical setting aside of the merciless dogmas of a barbarian people—but Mr . Montgomery also clings with the same fervor to that noble institution which

    carries out with such perfect purity , effectiveness , and disinterestedness , the doctrines of Christianity . Every one sees that we mean the Church of England . In defence of the Church hear how he treats Dissent : — " Dissent is from beginning to end , in origin , nature , and action , a subjective movement , having no outward authority from God , and no positive authentication from history , or ancient tradition from man , —to sanction its claims and support its pretensions . On the other hand , there stands the Church ! the one apostolic catholic Communion of England : and she claims to be the

    priestess and educatrix , the spiritual guide , moral teacher , and social regenerator of the empire . Catholic is her name because Christ is her head ; Apostles are her founders ; and Scripture is herruleof faith , attested by the one creed , which martyrs and saints have visibly proclaimed , and palpably taught . Neither civil power , nor human reason , nor conscience , nor will , nor expediency , nor social want , nor moral need , nor spiritual exigency , called this Church into being . She is no more created by man than the earth on which he treads , or the atmosphere which , he inhales . All , here , then , is objective , outward , visible , -undeniable , and invincible Fact ; it glares on the

    practical conscience and into the plain reason , through the very senses , of a candid statesman ; and thus he need not plead that he is confounded by warring rivals and clashing sects , all proclaiming they each have the truth , and protesting against any political favour being shown to the other . The Church is not a sect : were she only one among sectarian forms of religious development , the State might be puzzled how to decide . But England ' s Church is a divine Reality , and outward and historical Truth , embodied in primeval rites , and public monuments , and traditional ceremonies , which are externally obvious , and authentic as the palpable phenomena of nature itself . " " We must now pause . A variety of passages marked by us , illustrative of his logic , platitude , and incoherence , we must omit : we presume those already given will suffice . But , having expressed our opinion of the intrinsic worth of the book , let us in all fairness add , the sesquipedalian magniloquence sometimes sobers down into real eloquence , and that amid the masses of verbiage there are occasional passages of a high and solemn strain , where the thought finds adequate expression . The following passage , though taste may reject certain phrases , is decidedly powerful : — LONELINESS OP SOUL . " There are countless believers whose hearts are unechoed , and whose bosomed trials are unsuspected , even by those with whom they appear to be in perpetual communion . We do not here allude to monastic isolation of mind , and still less to that morbid egotism , self-concentration , which poetic Byronism has too often both eulogized and fed : but by loneliness we mean that peculiar state of heart and mind where the individual feels isolated , not because he dislikes social manifestation of character , but because both mentally and morally he feels himself incompetent to interpret all he really and fundamentally is . Often , perchance , in some blest hour of deepening intercourse between himself and the friend of his soul , do the secrets of the heart ' s more hidden life come trembling upward to the very brink of outward utterance , and then melt back again into the cloisters of secrecy and silence , as though words were all unfit to unfold the inner man . Again ; there are thousands , whose shrinking delicacy of heart and almost supernatural sensitiveness of spirit have been encreased by some peculiarity of trial , temptation , or bereavement , unto which an inscrutable Providence has submitted their destiny . Thus circumstanced , intellectual reserve , moral shyness , and spiritual taciturnity have a natural origin and almost a necessary sway . Griefs they cannot define ; wants they cannot describe ; aspirations they would dread to submit before the rude coldness of the circle around them , —all these , together with yearnings and dejections , for which language has no term , and with which few can openly sympathize , demand an interpreter who is both human and divine . Human , or a kindred feeling would be wanting ; divine , or accurate perception would be limited . Now , here it is that the omniscient sympathies of the Son of God appeal with almighty tenderness unto a regenerate heart . The abstract perfections of Deity , the creed of a general providence , nay , even the direct promises of Scripture regarded only in their letter , —are all insufficient to cheer the echoless hearts of the sad , the desponding , and the lone . And oh ! what an ineffable comfort it is for the believer to know that there is one who not only beholds him from His throne of glory , but also sympathizes with his secret pang , his bosomed grief , and his voiceless care . The world may misunderstand his character ; the Church be unacquainted with his case ; friend , wife , and child , be all unable to enter behind that shroud of delicate reserve which curtains the soul from

    social view ; but his heart-beats are heard in heaven ; not a thrill of pain , nor throb of unrest , nor shade of inward suffering , which the sympathetic Redeemer does not perceive , number , and understand . And , therefore , let that man who is tempted to become the martyr of loneliness , the victim of a cloistered grief , and an uncommunicated woe , — remember a sympathizing Christ , adored in Heaven , is the sublimest antidote for a dejected care , which mourns on earth . "

    Oct. 19, 1850.] *&%T &*&&*?? 715

    Oct . 19 , 1850 . ] *& % t &*&&*?? 715

    New Novel By Dumas. La Tulipc Noire. Par...

    NEW NOVEL BY DUMAS . La Tulipc Noire . Par Alexandre Dumas . 2 vols . W . Jeffs * A question , reader ! Do you know what it is , at the close of a London season , fatigued and almost sad * dened by the insipid sameness of the faces and conversation—met everywhere , heard everywhere—and almost misanthropical from weariness of society , to spend a quiet evening with two or three simple friends whoso sympathies move in quite other circles , whose tastes are gentle and sequestered , who love the old poets and the quaint writers of our early literature , ignorant of the * ' great book of the season , "

    and careless of all the noisy reputations of to-day r If you know what the delight of such an evening is , you will understand our meaning in comparing La Tulipc Noire with it ; after the tiresome French novels we have lately yawned over , it comes with a quite peculiar freshness . The unhealthy morals , the violations of all canons , both of decency and art , the heated Parisian atmosphere circulating through them , and the exceptional exotic characters and motives which flourish in those hot-beds , give a zest , a piquancy , a morning-freshness to this pretty simple tale , which may possibly load us to exaggerate its

    real merits , and of which , therefore , we forewarn you . Perhaps the question may suggest itself , why we read those French novels since we rail against them as so tiresome ? But , does your thinking that parties are stupid prevent your going to them ! At an hour when otherwise you would go to bed , do you not oil your whiskers and look out white gloves , sending Mary for a cab , the expence of which will never be repaid by the night ' s enjoyment ; and do you not find yourself leaning against the doorway in a room

    crowded with faces , too familiar to be interesting yet not with the familiarity of friendship , an atmosphere poisoned with over-animalization , a hubbub of conversation , not a phrase of which is worth listening to , forced to exchange commonplaces with a succession of acquaintances , and quitting the house with the melancholy reflection that you had much better have snored the night away in domestic quietude ? And does not this continue through the season ? Yet you go ! Of course you go , partly because you are asked , but more because every now and then you meet a pair of eyes more eloquent even than the lips , or you snatch

    half an hour ' s really interesting talk with some man of note , or you flirt , or you are admired—for some reason or other the evening has been delightful , and to enjoy such another you brave a round of parties . Just this motive makes us persist in French novels ; every now and then we find one that repays a whole shelf of improbability , bad taste , and bad style . La Tulipe Noire is such a work . Ce n ' est rien et e ' est charmant ! It has a pleasant naivete and novelty in it which season old materials , and the mastery of Dumas in I ' art de conter has made that charming which would otherwise have been childish . We will

    try our hands at an outline of the story . The scene is Holland , the time 1672 , and the opening chapters narrate the assassination of Jean and Cornelius de Witt in a graphic though conventional style , such as we have seen before in endless novels by Dumas . Just before his death Cornelius de Witt sends a faithful servant with a written message to his godchild Cornelius "Van Baerie , bidding him destroy at once , without opening it , the packet he confided to his care . This introduces us to the hero , "Van Baerle , a Dutch youth of much beauty and modesty , but absorbed by that passion of his age and country—the

    culture of tulips . He has wealth , learning , health , strength ; and he gives them all to tulips . Success crowns him ; and , as usual , success brings bitter rivalries . His neighbour , Isaac Boxtel , also a tulipist , grows lean with jealousy ; he watches Van Baerle with the vigilance of hate , he ties two cats together by the tail , and throws them at night into the garden of his rival , gloating over the destruction of tulips which their struggles to get loose have effected . Comic , and yet with a point of sadness , is the picture drawn of the envious tulipist and his mild unsuspecting rival .

    And now the tulip world is shaken from the crown to the base by the announcement that the horticultural society of Haarlem offers a prize of a hundred thousand francs for the discovery or creation of the Black Tulip , hitherto considered the Black Swan of Flora . Van Baerle and Boxtel of course resolved to win the prize , if possible ; and if Boxtel hated Van Baerle as a rival tulipist , what now is the passion of his hate when he sees Van Baerle in the right direction of discovering the Black Tulip ? He foregoes all care

    for his own plants , weeds boldly mingle with his former idols , for he is now possessed solely by the demon of envy and the determination to ateal Van Baerle ' s tulip . With a telescope he watches all his rival ' s movements . He sees Cornelius de Witt visit Van Baerle and confide to his care a sealed packet , which he sees placed in a drawer full of tulip bulbs . Hate , which sharpens all his faculties , enables him to divine that this packet has dangerous political contents . He denounces Van Baerle , who is imprisoned as an accomplice of de Witt . But Boxtel is foiled even here ? for Van Baerle on his arrest

    thrust the offshoots of his Black Tulip into his bosom , and carried them with him to prison . The rage of Boxtel when he discovors the inutility of his crime is very comic ; so , also , is the obstinate persistance with which ho follows Van Baerle from prison to prison , in the hope of stealing his tulip . But a guardian angel watches over the virtuous tulipist ; and this is llosa , the gaoler ' s daughter , a charming portrait , drawn with a dexterous hand . She falls in love witii Van Baerle , and aids him in the cultivation of the tulip . For tho various events which chequer their lives , for the progress of their court-

• Citation
  • Leader (1850-1860), Oct. 19, 1850, page 19, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/l/issues/cld_19101850/page/19/