The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 03, No. 19, May, 1859

However, as we have already intimated, it is seldom that his authorities are submitted to this "ordeal," which we admit to be a trying one. Usually they are informed that their assertions "rest on air,"—that they are "foolish" and "baseless,"—"wild figments," or "intolerable nonsense." Cortés states that some of his men, who had been taken prisoners by the Mexicans, were offered up as sacrifices to the Aztec deities. Mr. Wilson, after telling that their hearts were cut out, and their bodies "tumbled to the ground," complains that "to this most probable act of an Indian enemy, is foolishly added—it was done in sacrifice to their idols, though the very existence of Indian idols is still problematical!" Cortés, who had seen too many Indian idols to entertain any doubts of their existence, ought, nevertheless, not to have mentioned them, because to Mr. Wilson the matter is still a problem. Whenever that gentleman finds it inconvenient to "reduce" the statements of the Spanish historians to "realities," he omits them altogether. Thus, he says not a word of those fearful spectacles which struck horror to the hearts of the Spaniards in their visit to the teocallis,—the pyramidal mound garnished with human skulls, the hideous idols and the blood-stained priests, the chapels drenched with gore, and other evidences of a diabolical worship. Not unfrequently he fills up what he considers as gaps in the ordinary narratives. Thus, he pictures the dying Cuitlahua as "stoically wrapping himself in his feathered mantle," and "rejoicing at his expected welcome to the celestial hunting-grounds," where he "felt that he was worthy a name among the immortal braves." This "wild figment" from Mr. Wilson's "fertile fancy" was, perhaps, suggested by Theobald's famous emendation in the description of Falstaff's death-scene,—"a babbled o' green fields." On such occasions, Mr. Wilson explains that he is relating the occurrences "as they are understood by one familiar with Indian affairs." A remarkable example of this method of narration shall close our citations from his work.

The reader is, doubtless, acquainted with the tradition, said to have been preserved among the Mexicans, of a fair-complexioned deity, with flowing beard, who had once ruled over them and taught them the arts of peace, and, being subsequently driven from the country, promised to return at some future time. Predictions of his reappearance lingered amongst them, and were supposed to be accomplished in the arrival of the Spaniards. Mr. Wilson tells us that "too much stress" has been laid on this tradition; but we know of no modern writer who has laid any stress on it except himself. It has been usually supposed to be one of those myths in which nations partially civilized embalm the memory of their heroes. Mr. Wilson does not believe the Mexicans to have been partially civilized. He regards them merely as a horde of savages. Nevertheless, he believes that among these savages "tradition [in the form here noticed] had handed down, through untold generations, from a remote antiquity," the establishment in America of Phoenician colonies, their history, and their subsequent extinction. Nor is this the whole story. In order to strengthen his argument, he gives a new and corrected version of this tradition. "It told," he writes, "that pale faces had once before occupied the hot country, coming from beyond the great water. Perhaps with this were coupled also tales of suffering and wrongs; perhaps how cruelly they, the natives, had been forced, by these hard task-masters, to labor upon the truncated pyramids and their crowning chapels. With unrequited Indian toil, these men had builded cities and public works which still preserved their memory, though they themselves had long since perished, having fulfilled their allotted centuries. But with their decaying monuments they left a fearful prophecy, and thus it ran: that floating houses would again return to the eastern coast, wafted by like winds, and filled with the same race, to teach the same religion, and to practise the same cruelties, until they again finished their cycle, and gave place to others, such as the laws of climate and population might determine." When the reader, after perusing this extraordinary relation, recovers his breath, he naturally casts his eye towards the bottom of the page, in the hope of finding some explanation of it. He accordingly discovers a note, in which Mr. Wilson states that he has "given a little different shading to the famous tradition," but that "such, translated into Indian phraseology, would be the popular accounts." Now he had a perfect right to interpret the tradition as he pleased. He was at liberty to conjecture that it related to the Phoenicians, as the Spaniards were at liberty to conjecture that it related to St. Thomas. Of the two interpretations, we prefer the latter. Mr. Wilson, were he consistent, would have done so too; for how could the Aztecs, when they saw the Spaniards desecrating the Phoenician temples and destroying the Phoenician idols, suppose that these people were of the "same race," and had come "to teach the same religion"? We care little for his inconsistencies; but the feat which he has here performed, by his "shadings," his "translations into Indian phraseology," and his medley of "pale faces," "great waters," "floating houses," "truncated pyramids," "hard taskmasters," "winds," "climates," "religions," and "laws of population," we believe to be unsurpassed by anything ever perpetrated in prose or rhyme, by Grecian bard or mediaeval monk.

He appears to think himself justified in taking these liberties with the Muse of History by his anxiety to construct a narrative that should not overstep the bounds of probability. As if all history were not a chain of improbabilities, and what is most improbable were not often that which is most certain! But if, at Mr. Wilson's summons, we reject as improbable a series of events supported by far stronger evidence than can be adduced for the conquests of Alexander, the Crusades, or the Norman conquest of England, what is it, we may ask, that he calls upon us to believe? His skepticism, as so often happens, affords the measure of his credulity. He contends that Cortés, the greatest Spaniard of the sixteenth century, a man little acquainted with books, but endowed with a gigantic genius and with all the qualities requisite for success in warlike enterprises and an adventurous career, had his brain so filled with the romances of chivalry, and so preoccupied with reminiscences of the Spanish contests with the Moslems, that he saw in the New World nothing but duplicates of those contests,—that his heated imagination turned wigwams into palaces, Indian villages into cities like Granada, swamps into lakes, a tribe of savages into an empire of civilized men,—that, in the midst of embarrassments and dangers which, even on Mr. Wilson's showing, must have taxed all his faculties to the utmost, he employed himself chiefly in coining lies with which to deceive his imperial master and all the inhabitants of Christendom,—that, although he had a host of powerful enemies among his countrymen, enemies who were in a position to discover the truth, his statements passed unchallenged and uncontradicted by them,—that the numerous adventurers and explorers who followed in his track, instead of exposing the falsity of his relations and descriptions, found their interest in embellishing the narrative,—that a similar drama was performed by other actors and on a different stage,—that the Peruvian civilization, so analogous to that of the Aztecs and yet so different from it, was, like that, the baseless fabric of a vision,—that the whole intellect, in short, of the sixteenth century was employed in fashioning a gorgeous fable, and that to this end continents were discovered, nations exterminated, countries laid waste, evidences forged, and witnesses invented. And this theory is to be swallowed in one solid and indigestible lump, unleavened with logic, unmoistened with grammar, unsweetened with rhetoric. Let those whose appetites are strong, and whose olfactory nerves are not too delicate, sit down to the repast.

For our own part, we are quite satisfied with the bare contemplation of the fare. Our readers, also, we suspect, have long ago been satiated. They have dropped off, one by one, and left us alone with our kind entertainer. What more we have to say must therefore be bestowed upon his private ear. We shall speak with the greater freedom. We know the exquisite pleasure we have given him. We are sure that he is not ungrateful. When his book comes to a second edition,—with a change of title-page corresponding to some change in the popular sentiment,—we shall have to submit to the same honors which he has inflicted on Mr. Prescott and "Rousseau de St. Hilaire"; he will reprint our article as "a flattering notice,"—as the "Atlantic Monthly's estimate of his researches." We beg to call his attention to our closing remarks, which, indeed, may serve as a digest of the whole. When he has "translated them into Indian phraseology," (we regret that we cannot save him this trouble,) and "reduced them to reality," we shall take our leave of him, not without a mournful presentiment that the separation is to be eternal.

There are many points of difference between his work and Mr. Prescott's "History of the Conquest of Mexico"; but the chief distinction, we think, may be thus stated. If the foundations on which Mr. Prescott's narrative is built should ever be overthrown,—a contingency which as yet we do not apprehend,—that narrative would still rank among the masterpieces of our literature. It could no longer be received as a truthful relation of what had actually happened in the past; but it would be received as a most faithful and graphic relation of what had been asserted, of what was once universally believed, to have so happened. If the reality appears strange, how much stranger would appear the fiction! The truth of such a story may seem improbable; the invention of such a story would be little short of miraculous. Prescott's work, if removed from its place among histories, must stand in the first rank among works of imagination,—must be classed with the "Odyssey" and the "Arabian Nights' Entertainments."

But this book of Wilson's must, under all conditions, and in any contingency, be regarded as worthless. Be the story of the Conquest true or false, this contains no relation of it, this contains no refutation of it. Not content with vilifying his authorities, with impugning their faith, denying their existence, and mangling their names, he has disfigured their statements, corrupted their narrative, and substituted gross absurdities for what was at least beautiful and coherent, whether it was fiction or reality. His book is in every sense a fabrication. It is no record of the truth; it is not a romance or a fable, artfully constructed and elegantly told; it is—to use that plain language which the occasion authorizes and demands—a barefaced, but awkward falsification of history,—so awkward, that it has cost us little trouble to detect it,—so barefaced, that it has been a duty, though, of course, a painful one, to expose it.

Mothers and Infants, Nurses and Nursing. Translated from the French of A Treatise, etc., by DR. AL. DONNÉ, late Head of the Clinical Department of the Faculty of Paris, etc., etc. Boston: Phillips, Sampson, & Co. 1859.

When the young Count of Paris was at the tender age which requires the food that only mothers and their substitutes can supply, M. Donné, the author of this work, was called in consultation at the royal palace. He had a new way of examining milk through the microscope, and deciding upon its healthy and nutritive qualities or its defects, as the case might be. The whole world was full of the great question just then,—for the deep-bosomed dame of Normandy or Picardy who should be selected was to be the nurse not of a child only, but of a dynasty. So thought short-sighted mortals, at least, in those days,—little dreaming what cradle would be under the square dome of the Tuileries before twenty years were past!

M. Donné, as we said, was the man selected from all men for the task of choosing a nurse for the most important baby of his time. This is a voucher for his position at that period in the great medical world of Paris. He is known, also, to the scientific world by a number of treatises, with some of which we have long been familiar, as, for instance, the "Cours de Microscopic," with the remarkable Atlas copied from daguerreotypes taken by the aid of the camera. The present work is of a somewhat more popular character than his previous productions.

Little "Nursing" America is the father of Young America that is to be. And there is no denying that our new vital conditions on this side of the planet suggest some very grave questions,—such as these:—Whether there be not a gradual deterioration of the primitive European stock under these influences; and, Whether it is not possible that the imported human breed may run out here, so that, some time or other, the resuscitated tribes of Algonquins and Hurons may show a long shank of the extinct Yankee, as they show the Dodo's foot at the British Museum.

It is this contingency against which many intelligent and worthy persons are now trying to provide. The indefatigable Dr. Bowditch has made a map of this State of Massachusetts, showing the distribution of consumption in its different localities. That is the first thing,—where to live. We have been told an alleged fact with reference to a certain large New England town, which, if it were true, would raise the value of real estate in that place a million of dollars, perhaps, in twenty-four hours. We do not tell it, though mentioned to us by a celebrated practitioner and professor, simply because we are afraid it is too good to be true. At any rate, attention is beginning to be thoroughly awake as to the point of where we shall live. Now, then, how shall we live?

It is just as well to begin early. Infancy is too late. If men were dealt with like other live stock, a contractor might undertake to deliver at Long Wharf a cargo of three-year old human colts and fillies of almost any required standard of development and health, in five years from date. If only a cheap article were required, such and such parents would be selected; if the young animals were to be of prime quality, he must know it long enough beforehand, and be particular in his choice. This is plain speaking, but true,—as everybody knows, who studies the laws of life. Ex nihilo nihil fit. Given a half-starved dyspeptic and a bloodless negative blonde as parents, Hercules or Apollo is an impossibility in their progeny. Yet people look with infinite expectations of health, strength, beauty, intellect, as the product of $0 times {-1}$. The late Colonel Jaques, of the "Ten Hills Farm," knew ever so much better;—what a pity so much sound physiology should have been confined to "Caelobs," and "Dolly Creampot," and the likes of them!

Granted a sound, fair baby,—viable, as the French say,—liveable, or life-capable, and life-worthy. What shall we do with it?

A baby answers to the lively definition of an animal as "a stomach provided with organs." It lives to feed. It does not know much, but in its speciality it is unrivalled. The way in which it helps itself from the sources of life is a masterpiece of hydraulic skill. Once let it lose the Heaven-imparted art of haustion, and all the arts and academies of the world can never teach it again.

To manage this little feeding organism, with its wondrous instinct and capacity of imbibition, is the first great question after that of race is settled. Shall the mother's blood continue to flow through its fast-throbbing heart, and all the subtile affinities that bind the two lives be continued until reason and affection take up the chain where the link of bodily dependence is broken? Or shall it cleave no more to her bosom, but transfer its endearing dependence to a stranger, or learn to call a bottle its mother?

These are some of the questions learnedly, and yet familiarly, discussed in M. Donné's book. He has laid down many excellent rules for the physical and moral management of the infant, which the young mother can readily learn and put in practice. For the physician, his work contains many interesting facts with reference to the quality and the microscopic appearances of milk, as obtained from various sources and under different circumstances.

On one or two points our American experience would somewhat modify the rules commonly accepted in Paris. The nurse from the French provinces is evidently a different being from our Milesian milky mothers. So, too, the rules given by our own venerable and sagacious observer, Dr. James Jackson, as to the period of separating the infant from its mother or nurse, should be borne in mind, as laid down in his admirable "Letters to a Young Physician."

But there is a great deal of information applicable to children and their mothers in all civilized regions; and as we wish to start fair with the next generation, we are very glad to have so intelligent a guide for the management of our infant citizens.

Street Thoughts. By the Rev. Henry M. Dexter, Pastor of Pine-Street Church, Boston. With Illustrations by Billings. Boston: Crosby, Nichols, & Co. 1859.

If a profusion of introductory mottoes were any indication of the excellence of a book, this volume would be indeed a chef-d'oeuvre. On the page usually devoted to the Dedication, we have no less than six more or less appropriate quotations: a Greek one from Julian, a Latin one from Quintilian, a dramatic one from Shakspeare, a metrical one from Young, a ponderous philosophical one from Dr. Johnson, and a commonplace one from Bryant. In consideration of the number and learnedness of these certificates of character, we approach the lucubrations of the Reverend Mr. Dexter with profound respect.

In the days when controversial literature was fashionable in England, and the strife between Protestantism and Catholicism possessed some interest for the public, we remember with considerable amusement the manner in which the champions on either side conducted the attack. The Romish warrior would this month issue a formidable volume entitled "A Conversation between a Roman Catholic English Nobleman and an Irish Protestant." In this work the Roman Catholic lord had it all his own way; the Irish Protestant was accommodatingly weak in all his arguments, and the noble Papist battered him famously. But the Episcopal side was on hand next month with a volume entitled "A Dialogue between a Protestant Peer and an Irish Papist." Here the whole thing was reversed. The noble was still victorious, but he had changed his religion; and this time the Roman Catholic was feeble, and the Protestant stalwart. It is worthy of remark, however, that in both cases the nobleman was on the right side.

The Reverend Mr. Dexter thoroughly comprehends this ingenious method of attack. Does he, for instance, desire to impress upon the mind of his reader that it is in the highest degree criminal to wear kid gloves in the street, he, by a happy accident, encounters on his way to the office two persons conversing upon that important topic. He innocently eavesdrops. The individual who advocates the wearing of gloves is (of course) frivolous, fashionable, and feeble. His companion, who despises such vanities, is poor, though honest,—brawny and impregnable. It is wonderful how stupidly the kid-glove advocate reasons. The honest son of toil overwhelms him in a few moments. When a man talks so splendidly about the hard palm of labor being more useful to the world than the silken fingers of the aristocrat, who would have the courage to reply? The feeble aristocrat is (very properly) discomfited, and the curtain falls amid applause from the gallery.

The reverend gentleman seems to combine with his talent for eavesdropping a most remarkable good-fortune in the contrasts afforded by the various interlocutors whose conversation he overhears. Whether he is in a shop, or an omnibus, or on the sidewalk, he is certain to encounter a foolish person and a sensible person (according to Mr. Dexter's idea of sense) discussing some important social topic,—such as, Whether dancing is criminal, or, Whether people should wear stove-pipe hats. At the end of the discussion, the reverend listener appears in a paragraph as the deus ex machinâ of the drama, pats the victorious sensible boy on the head, and treats the foolish boy with silent contempt. It does not take much to win Mr. Dexter's approval. He goes into rhapsodies over a rich man who insists on carrying home his own bundle; while another purchaser, who is villain enough to desire his parcel to be sent to his house, meets with all the scorn that he merits. Our author takes cheerful views of life. He goes into State Street, and, struck with the great crowds of people, asks the solemn question, "Whither are they going?"—"To the open grave!" is his jocund reply. He, in fact, sees nothing but a job for the undertaker in all the health and life by which he is surrounded; and a file of schoolboys out for a walk would doubtless to him be nothing more than the beginning of a procession to Mount Auburn. The shop-keepers should beware of Mr. Dexter. He is the avowed enemy of nice coats, kid gloves, silk dresses, fine houses, and his proof-reader knows what other et ceteras which ignorant people have been in the habit of looking on as commodities useful in helping trade, and consequently forwarding civilization.

We really thought that this shallow philosophy had completely died out, and that every educated person had been brought to comprehend the uses of Beauty and Luxury. Mr. Dexter's "Street Thoughts" is a silly proof that there are men yet living whose theory of social ethics may apparently be summed up thus: Live meanly, be afraid of God, and listen at keyholes.

The Mathematical Monthly. Edited by J.D. RUNKLE, A.M., A.A.S. Nos. I.-VII. October, 1858, to April, 1859. Cambridge: John Bartlett. 4to. pp. 284.

The title of Mr. Runkle's Monthly is much drier than its table of contents. He has aimed at interesting all classes of mathematicians, has introduced problems and discussions intelligible to scholars in our High Schools, and has also published contributions to the highest departments of the science. Educational questions have great prominence on the pages of his journal; he gives frequent notes upon the best modes of teaching the elementary branches, and proposes to publish in a serial form treatises adapted to use in the school-room. Every number of the "Monthly" contains five prize problems for students. Nor are its pages confined to topics strictly mathematical. The number for February introduces a problem by a quotation from Longfellow's "Hiawatha"; another gives a list of fifty-five of the Asteroid group, with their orbits, and the circumstances of their discovery. The March number explains an ingenious holocryptic cipher, written with the English alphabet, with no more letters than would be required for ordinary writing, yet so curiously complicated, that, while with the key easy to understand, it is without the key absolutely undecipherible, even to the inventor of the plan; and the key is capable of so many variations, that every pair of correspondents in Christendom may have their own cipher practically different from all others. In the November and December numbers, a popular account of Donati's Comet was given by Geo. P. Bond, then assistant, now chief director of the Observatory at Cambridge. This paper has been issued separately, very finely illustrated by twenty-one cuts, and by two beautiful engravings. No papers, readily accessible to the public, contain, in a form so entirely devoid of technicalities, and so clearly illustrated to the eye, so much information relative to the nature of cornels in general, and in particular to the phenomena of this most beautiful comet of the present century.

The purely mathematical articles are all original, many are of great value, and some are, to those who understand their secret meaning, peculiarly interesting. A note of Peirce's, for example, in the number for February, proposes two new symbols, one for the mystic ratio of the circumference to the diameter, a second for the base of Napier's logarithms,—and then, by joining them in an equation with the imaginary symbol, expresses in a single sentence the mutual relation of the three great talismans in the magic of modern science. Another article, in the April number, by Chauncey Wright, contains a new view of the law of Phyllotaxis, approaching it from an a priori stand-point, and showing that the natural arrangement of leaves about the stems of plants is precisely that which will keep the leaves most perfectly distributed for the reception of light and air.

We are glad to learn that a constantly increasing subscription-list, both at home and abroad, shows, not only that Mr. Runkle judged wisely in thinking such a journal needed, but also that the editorial office has fallen upon the right man.

Memoir and Letters of the late Thomas Seddon, Artist, By his BROTHER. London: 1858.

Associations are fast gathering round the English Pre-Raphaelites. Those that come with honors and with death already belong to them. A permanent influence is assured to the new school by a continuance of vigor, and by the space which it already occupies in the history of Art. This little volume is of interest as being the first of its biographies. Mr. Seddon attained no wide reputation during his life, but he left a few pictures of enduring value; and his early death was felt, by those who best knew his powers and purposes, to be a great loss to Art.

He was the son of a cabinet-manufacturer, and was born in London in 1821. After receiving a good school-education, at the age of sixteen he entered his father's work-rooms. He had already shown a decided love of drawing. He had a quick perception of beauty, and excellent power of observation. His disposition was serious, and his conscience sensitive; but he had a pleasant vein of humor, and a generous nature. After some years of irksome work, he was sent to Paris to perfect himself in the arts of ornamentation, and his residence there seems to have confirmed his taste for painting, to the practice of which he desired to devote his life. But for the next ten years he was engaged in business, giving, however, his evenings and his few vacations to the study and practice of Art, and becoming more and more eager to leave an employment which was wholly uncongenial to him. At length, in his thirtieth year, he was able to begin his career as a professional artist. His experiences at first differed but little from those of the common run of young painters; but his fidelity in work, his conscientious rendering of the details of Nature, and his sincerity of purpose, gave real worth even to his earlier pictures, and brought him into relations of cordial friendship with Holman Hunt, Madox Brown, and others of the heads of Pre-Raphaelitism. After making a long visit, in company with Hunt, for the purposes of study, to Egypt and Palestine, and painting a few remarkable pictures, he returned home, and was married. Some months afterward he set out again for the East, but had hardly reached Cairo before he was seized with fatal illness. He died on the 23d of November, 1856,—just as he was grasping the fruit of years of labor and waiting.

The best part of the volume of memoirs is made up of Seddon's letters from the East. They exhibit his character in a most agreeable light, while, apart from any personal interest, they have a charm, as natural, vivid delineations of Eastern scenery and modes of life. He saw with a painter's eye, and he described what he saw clearly and vigorously, showing in his letters the same traits which he displayed in his pictures. Writing from his camping-ground on the edge of the Desert, he says,—"The Pyramids and Sphinxes, in ordinary daylight, are merely ugly, and do not look half as large as they ought to look from their real size; but in particular effects of light and shade, with a fine sunset behind them, for example, or when the sky lights up again, a quarter or half an hour afterwards,—when long beams of rose-colored light shoot up like a glory from behind the middle one into a sky of the most lovely violet,—they then look imposing, with their huge black masses against the flood of brilliant light behind."

Here is the first sight of Jerusalem:—"At length, about five o'clock, after expecting, for the last half-hour, that every hill-side we climbed would be the last, we came suddenly in full view of Jerusalem.—Few, I think, however careless, have looked for the first time on this scene, without some feelings of solemn awe. We read the accounts of all that passed within or around these walls with something of the vagueness that always veils the history of times that have gone by two thousand years ago; but however soon the feeling may wear off or be cast away, it is impossible, with the very spot before you where your Saviour lived and died, not to feel vividly impressed with the actual reality of what we have read of, and its intimate connection with ourselves.—But soon I was struck with the very erroneous idea I had had of Jerusalem. From the west it does not look at all like a city built on a hill; for, rather below you, at the farther end of a barren plain, you see nothing but the embattled walls of a feudal town, with one or two large buildings and a minaret alone visible above them. To the right the ground dips into the Valley of Hinnom,—but to the left it is level with the city-walls, and its surface is covered with bare ribs of rock running along it; and it is from this side that the Romans and Crusaders attacked. Behind the city, rather to the north, lay the Mount of Olives, and the long, straight lines of the Moab Mountains beyond the Dead Sea, stretching from horizon to horizon, half-shadowy and veiled in mist, through which they shone rosy in the evening's sunlight."