International Weekly Miscellany, Vol. 1, No. 5, July 29, 1850 written by Various
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Various >> International Weekly Miscellany, Vol. 1, No. 5, July 29, 1850
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8 INTERNATIONAL WEEKLY MISCELLANY
Of Literature, Art, and Science.
* * * * *
Vol. I. NEW YORK, JULY 29, 1850. No. 5.
* * * * *
TEA-SMUGGLING IN RUSSIA.
The history of smuggling in all countries abounds in curiosities of
which but few ever reach the eye of the public, the parties generally
preferring to keep their adventures to themselves. There often exist,
however, along frontier lines the traditions of thrilling exploits or
amusing tricks, recounted by old smugglers from the recollections
of their own youthful days or the narratives of their predecessors.
Perhaps no frontier is so rich in these tales as that between Spain
and France, where the mountainous recesses of the Pyrenees offer
secure retreats to the half-robber who drives the contraband trade, as
well as safe routes for the transportation of his merchandise. On the
line between the Russian Empire and Germany the trade is greater in
amount than elsewhere, but is devoid of the romantic features which it
possesses in other countries. There, owing to the universal corruption
of the servants of the Russian government, the smuggler and the
custom-house officer are on the best terms with each Other and often
are partners in business. We find in a late number of the _Deutsche
Reform_, a journal of Berlin, an interesting illustration of the
extent and manner in which these frauds on the Russian revenue are
carried on, and translate it for the _International_:
"The great annual tea-burning has just taken place at Suwalki:
25,000 pounds were destroyed at it. This curious proceeding is thus
explained. Of all contraband articles that on the exclusion of which
the most weight is laid, is the tea which is brought in from Prussia.
In no country is the consumption of tea so great as in Poland and
Russia. That smuggled in from Prussia, being imported from China by
ship, can be sold ten times cheaper than the so-called caravan-tea,
which is brought directly overland by Russian merchants. This overland
trade is one of the chief branches of Russian commerce, and suffers
serious injury from the introduction of the smuggled article.
Accordingly the government pays in cash, the extraordinary premium of
fifty cents per pound for all that is seized, a reward which is the
more attractive to the officers on the frontiers for the reason that
it is paid down and without any discount. Formerly the confiscated
tea was sold at public auction on the condition that the buyer should
carry it over the frontier; Russian officers were appointed to take
charge of it and deliver it in some Prussian frontier town in order
to be sure of its being carried out of the country. The consequence
was that the tea was regularly carried back again into Poland the
following night, most frequently by the Russian officers themselves.
In order to apply a radical cure to this evil, destruction by fire was
decreed as the fate of all tea that should be seized thereafter. Thus
it is that from 20,000 to 40,000 pounds are yearly destroyed in the
chief city of the province. About this the official story is, that it
is tea smuggled from Prussia, while the truth is that it is usually
nothing but brown paper or damaged tea that is consumed by the fire.
In the first place the Russian officials are too rational to burn
up good tea, when by chance a real confiscation of that article has
taken place; in such a case the gentlemen take the tea, and put upon
the burning pile an equal weight of brown paper or rags done up to
resemble genuine packages. In the second place, it is mostly damaged
or useless tea that is seized. The premium for seizures being so
high, the custom-house officers themselves cause Polish Jews to buy
up quantities of worthless stuff and bring it over the lines for the
express purpose of being seized. The time and place for smuggling it
are agreed upon. The officer lies in wait with a third person whom he
takes with him. The Jew comes with the goods, is hailed by the officer
and takes to flight. The officer pursues the fugitive, but cannot
reach him, and fires his musket after him. Hereupon the Jew drops
the package which the officer takes and carries to the office, where
he gets his reward. The witness whom he has with him--by accident of
course--testifies to the zeal of his exertions, fruitless though they
were, for the seizure of the unknown smuggler. The smuggler afterward
receives from the officer the stipulated portion of the reward. This
trick is constantly practiced along the frontier, and to meet the
demand the Prussian dealers keep stocks of good-for-nothing tea, which
they sell generally at five silver groschen (12-1/2 cents) a pound."
* * * * *
MORE OF LEIGH HUNT.[1]
Although a large portion, perhaps more than half, of these volumes has
been given to the world in previous publications, yet the work carries
this recommendation with it, that it presents in an accessible and
consecutive form a great deal of that felicitous portrait-painting,
hit off in a few words, that pleasant anecdote, and cheerful wisdom,
which lie scattered about in books not now readily to be met with, and
which will be new and acceptable to the reading generation which has
sprung up within the last half-score years. Mr. Hunt almost disarms
criticism by the candid avowal that this performance was commenced
under circumstances which committed him to its execution, and he tells
us that it would have been abandoned at almost every step, had these
circumstances allowed. We are not sorry that circumstances did not
allow of its being abandoned, for the autobiography, altogether apart
from its stores of pleasant readable matter, is pervaded throughout by
a beautiful tone of charity and reconcilement which does honor to the
writer's heart, and proves that the discipline of life has exercised
on him its most chastening and benign influence:--
For he has learned
To look on Nature, not as in the hour
Of thoughtless youth, but hearing oftentimes
The still, sad, music of Humanity,
Nor harsh nor grating, though of ample power
To chasten and subdue.
The reader will find numerous striking exemplifications of this spirit
as he goes along with our author. From the serene heights of old age,
"the gray-haired boy whose heart can never grow old," ever and anon
regrets and rebukes some egotism or assumption, or petty irritation
of bygone years, and confesses that he can now cheerfully accept
the fortunes, good and bad, which have occurred to him, "with the
disposition to believe them the best that could have happened, whether
for the correction of what was wrong in him, or the improvement of
what was right."
The concluding chapters contain a brief account of Mr. Hunt's
occupations during the last twenty-five years; his residence
successively at Highgate, Hampstead, Chelsea, and Kensington, and of
his literary labors while living at these places. Many interesting
topics are touched upon--among which we point to his remarks on the
difficulties experienced by him in meeting the literary requirements
of the day, and the peculiar demands of editors; his opinion of Mr.
Carlyle; the present condition of the stage, the absurd pretensions of
actors, and the delusions attempted respecting the "legitimate" drama;
the question of the laureateship, and his own qualifications for
holding that office; his habits of reading; and finally an avowal of
his religious opinions. We miss some account of Mr. Hazlitt. Surely
we had a better right to expect at the hands of Hunt a sketch of that
remarkable writer, than of Coleridge, of whom he saw comparatively
little. We also expected to find some allusion to the "Round Table," a
series of essays which appeared in the _Examiner_, about 1815, written
chiefly by Hazlitt, but amongst which are about a dozen by Hunt
himself, some of them perhaps the best things he has written: we need
only allude to "A Day by the Fire," a paper eminently characteristic
of the author, and we doubt not fully appreciated by those who know
his writings. Hunt regrets having re-cast the "Story of Rimini," and
tells us that a new edition of the poem is meditated, in which, while
retaining the improvement in the versification, he proposes to restore
the narrative to its first course.
We take leave of the work, with a few more characteristic passages.
* * * * *
A GLIMPSE OF PITT AND FOX.--Some years later, I saw Mr. Pitt in a
blue coat, buckskin breeches and boots, and a round hat, with powder
and pigtail. He was thin and gaunt, with his hat off his forehead,
and his nose in the air. Much about the same time I saw his friend,
the first Lord Liverpool, a respectable looking old gentleman, in a
brown wig. Later still, I saw Mr. Fox, fat and jovial, though he was
then declining. He, who had been a "bean" in his youth, then looked
something quaker-like as to dress, with plain colored clothes, a
broad round hat, white waistcoat, and, if I am not mistaken, white
stockings. He was standing in Parliament street, just where the street
commences as you leave Whitehall; and was making two young gentlemen
laugh heartily at something which he seemed to be relating.
* * * * *
COOKE'S EDITION OF THE BRITISH POETS.--In those times, Cooke's edition
of the British Poets came up. I had got an odd volume of Spenser; and
I fell passionately in love with Collins and Gray. How I loved those
little sixpenny numbers, containing whole poets! I doated on their
size; I doated on their type, on their ornaments, on their wrappers
containing lists of other poets, and on the engraving from Kirk. I
bought them over and over again, and used to get up select sets, which
disappeared like buttered crumpets; for I could resist neither giving
them away nor possessing them. When the master tormented me, when
I used to hate and loathe the sight of Homer, and Demosthenes, and
Cicero, I would comfort myself with thinking of the sixpence in my
pocket, with which I should go out to Paternoster Row, when school
was over, and buy another number of an English poet.
* * * * *
CHILDREN'S BOOKS: "SANDFORD AND MERTON."--The children's books
in those days were Hogarth's pictures taken in their most literal
acceptation. Every good boy was to ride in his coach, and be a lord
mayor; and every bad boy was to be hung, or eaten by lions. The
gingerbread was gilt, and the books were gilt like the gingerbread:
a "take in" the more gross, inasmuch as nothing could be plainer
or less dazzling than the books of the same boys when they grew a
little older. There was a lingering old ballad or so in favor of the
gallanter apprentices who tore out lions' hearts and astonished gazing
sultans; and in antiquarian corners, Percy's "Reliques" were preparing
a nobler age, both in poetry and prose. But the first counteraction
came, as it ought, in the shape of a new book for children. The pool
of mercenary and time-serving ethics was first blown over by the fresh
country breeze of Mr. Day's "Sandford and Merton," a production that
I well remember, and shall ever be grateful for. It came in aid of my
mother's perplexities, between delicacy and hardihood, between courage
and conscientiousness. It assisted the cheerfulness I inherited from
my father; showed me that circumstances were not to check a healthy
gaiety, or the most masculine self-respect; and helped to supply me
with the resolution of standing by a principle, not merely as a point
of lowly or lofty sacrifice, but as a matter of common sense and duty,
and a simple cooeperation with the elements natural warfare.
* * * * *
CHRIST'S HOSPITAL.--Perhaps there is not foundation in the country
so truly English, taking that word to mean what Englishmen wish it to
mean:--something solid, unpretending, of good character, and free to
all. More boys are to be found in it, who issue from a greater variety
of ranks, than in any other school in the kingdom and as it is the
most various, so it is the largest, of all the free schools. Nobility
do not go there except as boarders. Now and then a boy of a noble
family may be met with, and he is reckoned an interloper, and against
the charter; but the sons of poor gentry and London citizens abound;
and with them, an equal share is given to the sons of tradesmen of the
very humblest description, not omitting servants. I would not take
my oath, but I have a strong recollection that in my time there were
two boys, one of whom went up into the drawing-room to his father,
the master of the house; and the other, down into the kitchen to his
father, the coachman. One thing, however, I know to be certain, and it
is the noblest of all; namely, that the boys themselves (at least it
was so in my time) had no sort of feeling of the difference of one
another's ranks out of doors. The cleverest boy was the noblest, let
his father be who he might.
* * * * *
AN INTENSE YOUTHFUL FRIENDSHIP.--If I had reaped no other benefit
from Christ Hospital, the school would be ever dear to me from the
recollection of the friendships I formed in it, and of the first
heavenly taste it gave me of that most spiritual of the affections.
I use the word "heavenly" advisedly; and I call friendship the most
spiritual of the affections, because even one's kindred, in partaking
of our flesh and blood, become, in a manner, mixed up with our
entire being. Not that I would disparage any other form of affection,
worshiping, as I do, all forms of it, love in particular, which, in
its highest state, is friendship and something more. But if ever I
tasted a disembodied transport on earth, it was in those friendships
which I entertained at school, before I dreamt of any maturer feeling.
I shall never forget the impression it first made on me. I loved my
friend for his gentleness, his candor, his truth, his good repute,
his freedom even from my own livelier manner, his calm and reasonable
kindness. It was not any particular talent that attracted me to him
or anything striking whatsoever. I should say in one word, it was
his goodness. I doubt whether he ever had a conception of a tithe of
the regard and respect I entertained for him; and I smile to think
of the perplexity (though he never showed it) which he probably felt
sometimes at my enthusiastic expressions; for I thought him a kind of
angel. It is no exaggeration to say, that, take away the unspiritual
part of it--the genius and the knowledge--and there is no height of
conceit indulged in by the most romantic character in Shakspeare,
which surpassed what I felt toward the merits I ascribed to him, and
the delight which I took in his society. With the other boys I played
antics, and rioted in fantastic jests; but in his society, or whenever
I thought of him, I fell into a kind of Sabbath state of bliss; and I
am sure I could have died for him.
* * * * *
ANECDOTE OF MATHEWS.--One morning, after stopping all night at this
pleasant house, I was getting up to breakfast, when I heard the noise
of a little boy having his face washed. Our host was a merry bachelor,
and to the rosiness of a priest might, for aught I knew, have added
the paternity; but I had never heard of it, and still less expected
to find a child in his house. More obvious and obstreperous proofs,
however, of the existence of a boy with a dirty face, could not have
been met with. You heard the child crying and objecting; then the
woman remonstrating; then the cries of the child snubbed and swallowed
up in the hard towel; and at intervals out came his voice bubbling
and deploring, and was again swallowed up. At breakfast, the child
being pitied, I ventured to speak about it, and was laughing and
sympathizing in perfect good faith, when Mathews came in, and I found
that the little urchin was he.
* * * * *
SHELLEY'S GENEROSITY.--As an instance of Shelley's extraordinary
generosity, a friend of his, a man of letters, enjoyed from him
at that period a pension of a hundred a year, though he had but
a thousand of his own; and he continued to enjoy it till fortune
rendered it superfluous. But the princeliness of his disposition
was seen most in his behavior to another friend, the writer of this
memoir, who is proud to relate that, with money raised with an
effort, Shelley once made him a present of fourteen hundred pounds,
to extricate him from debt. I was not extricated, for I had not yet
learned to be careful; but the shame of not being so, after such
generosity, and the pain which my friend afterward underwent when
I was in trouble and he was helpless, were the first causes of my
thinking of money matters to any purpose. His last sixpence was ever
at my service, had I chosen to share it. In a poetical epistle
written some years after, and published in the volume of "Posthumous
Poems," Shelley, in alluding to his friend's circumstances, which
for the second time were then straitened, only made an affectionate
lamentation that he himself was poor; never once hinting that he had
himself drained his purse for his friend.
* * * * *
MRS. JORDAN.--Mrs. Jordan was inimitable in exemplifying the
consequences of too much restraint in ill-educated country girls, in
romps, in hoydens, and in wards on whom the mercenary have designs.
She wore a bib and tucker, and pinafore, with a bouncing propriety,
fit to make the boldest spectator alarmed at the idea of bringing
such a household responsibility on his shoulders. To see her when
thus attired, shed blubbering tears for some disappointment, and eat
all the while a great thick slice of bread and butter, weeping, and
moaning, and munching, and eyeing at very bite the part she meant
to bite next, was a lesson against will and appetite worth a hundred
sermons, and no one could produce such an impression in favor of
amiableness as she did, when she acted in gentle, generous, and
confiding character. The way in which she would take a friend by
the cheek and kiss her, or make up a quarrel with a lover, or coax a
guardian into good humor, or sing (without accompaniment) the song
of, "Since then I'm doom'd," or "In the dead of the night," trusting,
as she had a right to do, and as the house wished her to do, to the
sole effect of her sweet, mellow, and loving voice--the reader will
pardon me, but tears of pleasure and regret come into my eyes at
the recollection, as if she personified whatsoever was happy at that
period of life, and which has gone like herself. The very sound of the
familiar word 'bud' from her lips (the abbreviation of husband,) as
she packed it closer, as it were, in the utterance, and pouted it up
with fondness in the man's face, taking him at the same time by the
chin, was a whole concentrated world of the power of loving.
* * * * *
RESIDENCE AT CHELSEA.--REMOTENESS IN NEARNESS.--From the noise and
dust of the New Road, my family removed to a corner in Chelsea where
the air of the neighboring river was so refreshing, and the quiet of
the "no-thoroughfare" so full of repose, that, although our fortunes
were at their worst, and my health almost of a piece with them, I
felt for some weeks as if I could sit still for ever, embalmed in
the silence. I got to like the very cries in the street for making
me the more aware of it for the contrast. I fancied they were unlike
the cries in other quarters of the suburbs, and that they retained
something of the old quaintness and melodiousness which procured them
the reputation of having been composed by Purcell and others. Nor
is this unlikely, when it is considered how fond those masters were
of sporting with their art, and setting the most trivial words to
music in their glees and catches. The primitive cries of cowslips,
primroses, and hot cross buns, seemed never to have quitted this
sequestered region. They were like daisies in a bit of surviving
field. There was an old seller of fish in particular, whose cry of
"Shrimps as large as prawns," was such a regular, long-drawn, and
truly pleasing melody, that in spite of his hoarse, and I am afraid,
drunken voice, I used to wish for it of an evening, and hail it
when it came. It lasted for some years, then faded, and went out;
I suppose, with the poor old weather-beaten fellow's existence.
This sense of quiet and repose may have been increased by an early
association of Chelsea with something out of the pale; nay, remote.
It may seem strange to hear a man who has crossed the Alps talk of
one suburb as being remote from another. But the sense of distance is
not in space only; it is in difference and discontinuance. A little
back-room in a street in London is further removed from the noise,
than a front room in a country town. In childhood, the farthest local
point which I reached anywhere, provided it was quiet, always seemed
to me a sort of end of the world; and I remembered particularly
feeling this, the only time when I had previously visited Chelsea,
which was at that period of life.... I know not whether the corner I
speak of remains as quiet as it was. I am afraid not; for steamboats
have carried vicissitude into Chelsea, and Belgravia threatens it with
her mighty advent. But to complete my sense of repose and distance,
the house was of that old-fashioned sort which I have always loved
best, familiar to the eyes of my parents, and associated with
childhood. It had seats in the windows, a small third room on the
first floor, of which I made a _sanctum_, into which no perturbation
was to enter, except to calm itself with religious and cheerful
thoughts (a room thus appropriated in a house appears to me an
excellent thing;) and there were a few lime-trees in front, which in
their due season diffused a fragrance.
[Footnote 1: The Autobiography of Leigh Hunt. Two volumes. Harper &
Brothers. 1850.]
* * * * *
LAMARTINE'S NEW ROMANCE.
The great poet of affairs, philosophy, and sentiment, before leaving
the scenes of his triumphs and misfortunes for his present visit
to the East, confided to the proprietors of _Le Constitutionel_
a new chapter of his romanticized memoirs to be published in the
_feuilleton_ of that journal, under the name of "Genevieve." This
work, which promises to surpass in attractive interest anything
Lamartine has given to the public in many years, will be translated as
rapidly as the advanced sheets of it are received here, by Mr. Fayette
Robinson, whose thorough apprehension and enjoyment of the nicest
delicacies of the French language, and free and manly style of
English, qualify him to do the fullest justice to such an author
and subject. His version of "Genevieve" will be issued, upon its
completion, by the publishers of _The International_. We give a
specimen of its quality in the following characteristic description,
of Marseilles, premising that the work is dedicated to "Mlle.
Reine-Garde, seamstress, and formerly a servant, at Aix, in Provence."
"Before I commence with the history of Genevieve, this series of
stories and dialogues used by country people, it is necessary to
define the spirit which animated their composition and to tell why
they were written. I must also tell why I dedicate this first story to
Mlle. Reine-Garde, seamstress and servant at Aix in Provence. This is
the reason.
"I had passed a portion of the summer of 1846 at that Smyrna of
France, called Marseilles, that city, the commercial activity of which
has become the chief _ladder_ of national enterprise, and the general
rendezvous, of those steam caravans of the West, our railroads; a city
the Attic taste of which justifies it in assuming to itself all the
intellectual cultivation, like the Asiatic Smyrna, inherent in the
memory of great poets. I lived outside of the city, the heat of which
was too great for an invalid, in one of those villas formerly called
_bastides_, so contrived as to enable the occupants during the
calmness of a summer evening--and no people in the world love nature
so well--to watch the white sails and look on the motion of the
southern breeze. Never did any other people imbibe more of the spirit
of poetry than does that of Marseilles. So much does climate do for
it.
"The garden of the little villa in which I dwelt opened by a gateway
to the sandy shore of the sea. Between it and the water was a long
avenue of plane trees, behind the mountain of Notre Dame de la Garde,
and almost touching the little lily-bordered stream which surrounded
the beautiful park and villa of the Borelli. We heard at our windows
every motion of the sea as it tossed on its couch and pillow of sand,
and when the garden gate was opened, the sea foam reached almost
the wall of the house, and seemed to withdraw so gradually as if to
deceive and laugh at any hand which would seek to bedew itself with
its moisture. I thus passed hour after hour seated on a huge stone
beneath a fig-tree, looking on that mingling of light and motion which
we call _the Sea_. From time to time the sail of a fisherman's boat,
or the smoke which hung like drapery above the pipe of a steamer,
rose above the chord of the arc which formed the gulf, and afforded a
relief to the monotony of the horizon.
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