ters.

anon in the progress of human thought-times of counsellors there is safety," has an applicawhen all thinkers, like worshippers of the sun on tion of no ill appropriateness in historical matPersian plains, have their faces turned eastward. Another maxim of a people who were no The fable of the chameleon used to be in the fools, may also be thought of by the readers of school-books. It has a new fulfilment in the these Sketches: Audi alteram partem; or as the deep perplexity which overlies the minds of men elder McCalla used to render it: Keep the other in these days, as to the real color of the reputa-ear open. Aye, let them all come-all that are tion of our much-lauded and much-traduced, an- based on undying truth, sought and found; until cient and unterrified, degenerate and ever-glori- they amount even to a great cloud of good, bold, ous Commonwealth of Virginia. We are prob- clear witnesses; not with voices muffled in the ably not a thousand leagues off from the denoue- effort to appear impartial where impartiality ment of the apologue. Something like due at- would be either more than human, and so detention-we rejoice to see and to say-is begin- mand angelic attributes; or less than human, and ning to be paid to its history. Howe's very val- so suicidally turn itself into hypocrisy ; but each uable, but improvable antiquarian collections-speaking forth his own honest convictions in the History of Virginia, by Charles Campbell, brave and manly tones; each supplying some of with which the pages of this magazine were first the colors of the past which the others had overadorned-Mr. Howison's History of Virginia-looked; each throwing into a fuller relief and Contributions to her Ecclesiastic History by Dr. into a clearer light, some scenes in the mellowHawks-and now the very important addition to ing drama of the life of former days, which the the list,"SKETCHES OF VIRGINIA," by Dr. Foote rest had shown too dimly; each touching more of Romney, bearing a general analogy to the skilfully than the rest, the key-note of some eterlast mentioned, but directing attention to a differ-nal truth, which shall reverberate amid the pracent class of facts-have all been published within tical utilities of human life to the end of time. the score of years already mentioned as so enriched with historic productions.

These thoughts about our knowledge of what is now past, lead us to implore a place in the reader's attention for a word or two about the present, its lessons and its whole history, when it shall have become the past; and when the fu

Dr. Foote's volume on Virginia is after the model of a well-received volume published by him a few years since, entitled "Sketches of North Carolina," by which he obtained merited ture men of Virginia shall be looking back to these honor as an indefatigable and successful gatherer of fast-vanishing legends, concerning things as precious as gold, whose memory would have been lost from among men. The thanks of the public are the more due to such a Froissart, that in the half of another score of years, many, if not all of the gray-haired witnesses of former times from whom the best parts of these volumes have been gleaned, would have been numbered with the unreturning dead, and the work would thus have been rendered impossible.

very days of ours, as days of which they would fain read the full history could they find the tabblets on which ít could be found written. The historic spirit, as has been shown, is now aroused in the reading and the writing world. Can we not avail ourselves of these auspices, to put into operation some means of making the future historian's work easier-some way to catch and stenograph and stereotype admonitory, instructive, cheering events as they occur?

Questions of grave practical import arise in “There have lived men, in Virginia, whose every generation which it must solve in the light names are worthy of everlasting remembrance. of the probabilities by which after all, the affairs There have been events which should never be of life are governed. Time, and that alone, forgotten. There have been principles avowed proves the wisdom of such solutions. And the whose influence will be felt throughout all time. record of these solutions, and the verdict of time There have been historians of Virginia-there as to their wisdom, uttered in the ears of the have been volumes of biography worthy of the generations to come, as a voice of experience, writers, and of the men whose lives they record. will render the probabilities by which men shall The materials for these volumes have been found decide the same questions in future days, stronabundant, and are not yet exhausted." Such is ger and clearer, and thus aid in dispelling the the spirit-stirring utterance with which these clouds from human judgment. And that is the "SKETCHES" begin. We shall reserve for a fu- best legacy which one generation can transmit ture number, and for a more attentive perusal, to another. In that way alone can man justify our full verdict. But we heartily welcome these the old sage's definition of him, that he is a being Sketches, and we believe that the public will who looks behind him and before him. How full also heartily welcome them. Let these fresh is every year of our nation of such instruction! contributions come! Let them all come! The There are thirty-one centres of political thought proverb of the wise man, that "in the multitude and discussion within it. Momentous moral and

the stolid and unwise among the nations, to be willing for a minute to run the risk of growing no wiser by the lessons of time; so as to have to endure the crucible and the refining fire over again, whenever the dilemma arises, as it often does, of drawing wisdom from past experience, or renewing the pain and wisdom, mingled like

religious problems also are annually working too late in the day to consider such things-as themselves to a solution. And yet indeed from an honest, flat-footed, republican citizen we used the very multiplicity of its points of inquiry, its to know, did-as Heliconisms, chimeras, air-cashistory is singularly intangible, inaccessible. The tles. Public men at least, hereafter, must know leaves on which time writes his oracles. are by a something of what has been, or they must be sort of necessity, scattered like those of the Sybil. noodles and nobodies. And it would seem to be Files of old newspapers, which at their current accepting for ourselves the terms which describe date are by no means thought to give a correct picture of the times; minutes of legislative bodies as numerous and as dry as the bones in the valley of vision; volumes written for the preseut market by authors to whom the most valuable of the materials were inaccessible, and who had not heard the verdict of time-these must be the guides of our future historians, unless they the arrows of Love and Death, of new experimay be the rare Old Mortalities, Froissarts, anti-ence. quarian rummagers in the crypts of hidden lore. In early Rome the Pontifex Maximus prepared and preserved a short annual catalogue of remarkable public events. Some literary journals, here and abroad, have tried similar periodical "views of public affairs," but without sufficient pertinacity; and have, in some cases at least, abandoned them before they became sufficiently known and tried to be esteemed. We believe

"THE BATTLE SUMMER.""

B.

"Ik. Marvel," our esteemed friend and contribsuch a plan, in spite of the obvious difficulties, utor, has written another book. It lies before us might be made eminently successful. We should in the clean typography of an excellent publishing attach a very high value to such annals, if we house of New York, and we have read it, from had them, of the twenty-five years last past. the little scrap of Montaigne which is stuck by And the period of the same length commencing way of motto on the title-page, to the fragment with the commencement of the present century of recondite Latinity which he cites at the conhow full would they be of what would not be inclusion. We need scarcely say that the whole no small degree pertinent and instructive! True, book has given us great delight—a sensation this history is not clean gone forever. But it is which we propose to communicate to our readnot in the most accessible of crevices and cran-ers by means of that privilege of unlimited quonies. No matter if such annals were tinctured tation accorded to the modern reviewer, who with partisan judgments and opinions. All hu- sits like an intellectual Jack Horner at the board man productions must be so tinctured to a greater of literature, appropriating the plums which garor less extent. There is no uninspired narrator nish the puddings of the publishers-extrahens of events whose standing point we can dispense prunum pollice, as the "Arundines Cami” has it, with knowing, in order to appreciate his historic with equal ease and satisfaction. judgments. But it is very far better to have that description of chromatic history than to be without it, or any other in its place.

It is a critical moment with the young author who has produced one work of recognized merit, when he comes forward with a second volume Could not some arrangement be formed be- for public approval. This second volume is to tween some office of the Commonwealth already establish him as an able writer, or to dash to the extant at the metropolis, and the offices of the ground the little reputation he has already built clerks of the counties, by which the ANNALS OF up-and it may fairly be assumed that the auTHE STATE should be written and embodied with thor, fully conscious of the issues that wait upon very small expense and trouble? Such a bureau the work itself, has put forth all his powers to would be worthy of a wise and civilized State. ensure a favorable sentence. No allowance is There can be no reasonable doubt of its complete therefore made for haste or inconsideration, and practicability; and though it would not be either although the Frenchman tells us Ce n'est que le rail-road, tunnel, canal, or turn-pike, yet it might premier pas qui coute, we are not sure that the and probably would, in the flight of years, even second step is not even more difficult. Considin the most utilitarian computation, and by the THE BATTLE SUMMER: BEING TRANSCRIPTS FROM most completely troy-weight standard, become PERSONAL OBSERVATIONS IN PARIS, During The Year worth more to thinking and deliberate men than 1848. By IK. MARVEL, Author of Fresh Gleanings, New all rail-roads, tunnels, canals or turnpikes. It is York: Baker and Scribner, 1850.

ering this fact, we confess to have looked for- | weary of my Lord Coke and sighed for a glimpse ward with some anxious interest to the appear- at La Liberté in the loose flaunting robes of her ance of "The Battle Summer," Ik. Marvel's Babylonian vesture. Our author expresses this second literary effort. Our apprehensions, such desire somewhat differently, in the Dedicatory as they were, have been happily quieted as to its letter which serves as prefacemerit, and while it is not all we could wish (for we shall have a word or two of gentle complaint to utter by and by) we have no hesitation in declaring that, in our judgment, it fixes its author's position as one of the most graphic and spirited writers of the day.

The gentleman who figures under the domino of "Ik. Marvel" made a tour of Europe, after taking his degree at a Northern College, and upon his return, nearly three years since, like many of his peripatetic predecessors, wrote a book of travels. There was something in the appearance of the volume to attract observation. It did not look like the mass of continental diaries and Alpine albums that had been kept by the herd of former tourists in Europe, and what was more-it did not read like them. It seemed to be, on the contrary, just such a Sentimental Journey as Laurence Sterne would have written in 1847—if he had gone flying over the face of Picardy by the rail, instead of travelling in the chaise from Calais with the lady whose "face of about six and twenty—of a clear transparent brown" is so fresh in our recollections. There were passages, here and there, scarcely less deeply pathetic than the story of Maria, touches of that peculiar humor that no one else than Sterne ever displayed, and views of life and character indicating an intellect of rare strength and acuteness. The book was generally read. Everybody began to inquire about "Ik. Marvel" and whether that was his real name or not. Meanwhile our pseudonymous author had commenced the study of the law in an office in Wall Street, leaving his literary reputation to take care of itself.

"To me, with whom the memories of courts and monarchic splendors were still fresh and green, such sudden news was startling. I torof cities was now looking;-and how the shops; tured my brain with thinking-how the prince -and how the gaiety? I conjured up images of the New Order, and the images dogged me in the street, and at my desk, and made my sleep -a nightmare! They blurred the type of Blackstone, and made the mazes of Chitty ten fold dead letter; and the New Practice worse than greater. The New Statutes were dull, and a new. For a while I struggled manfully with my work, but it was a heavy school-boy task-it was like the knottiest of the Tusculan Questions, with vacation in prospect.

The office was empty one day: I had been breaking ground in Puffendorf;-one page-two here and there with a magical illustration of King pages-three pages-very dull, but illumined Louis, or stately poet Lamartine; when on a sudden, as one of these illustrations came in, with the old Palais de Justice in the back ground, I slammed together the heavy book-lids, saying to tius, and even amiable, aristocratic Blackstone myself;-Is not the time of Puffendorf, and Grogone by? And are there not new Kingdommakers, and new law-makers, and new codemakers astir, mustering with all their souls and voices, such measures of Government as will, by not these New-men, making, and doing, and and by, make beacons and maxims? And are being, what the old men only wrote of?

Are not those people of France and wide-skirted German land, lit up by hatred and aggression, and love of something better, putting old law, and maxim, and jurisprudence into the crucible of human feeling, and pouring them into the of human right, and heating them over the fire mould of human judgment, to make up a new casting of Constitutional Order?

And as for the New Practice, is there not a new practice evolving over seas,—not very precise, perhaps, about costs and demurrers, and bills of exception.-but a practice of new-gained rights, new-organized courts, new-made authorpractice, not only of Courts, but of Human Nature, and Passion, and Power?

ties, new-wakened mind,-in short, the whole

But very soon the news came across the water that strange events had occurred in la belle ville— a Republic had been proclaimed for France, and the fat old King had taken flight by a back staircase, without even carrying with him the famous cotton umbrella, the riflard royal, to shelter him from the driving rains of the Channel, and altogether without protection against the still more cruel tempest of popular rebuke.— Paris was now to be seen in a new phase, and although it might not wear as gay an air as under the fallen monarchy, though fewer dashing equipages were to be met in the Bois de Boulogne and les Anglaises had fled, we do not wonder that those Americans who had lived there during the ancient regime, and who still retained delight ful recollections of Very's, should desire to see the great metropolis under republican rule. We are not surprised therefore that Ik. Marvel grew see?"

Are they not acting over there in France, in the street, in the court, and in the Assembly, palpably and visibly, with their magnificent Laand oratoric strong-words, and bayonet bloodybor Organizations, and Omuibus-built barricades, thrusts, a set of ideas about Constitutional Liberty, and Right to Property, and offences civil, wider, and newer, and richer than all preached about, in all the pages of all these fusty Latin

ists?

And I threw Puffendorf, big as he was, into the corner, and said,- -I will and g0

And he did go. If he had not gone, we should on the grand cordon of Legion of Honor, and not have had The Battle Summer- -we mean coat, rich in embroidery of gold; so he passes the book and not the season, which of course out, and passes in front of the thousand troops who are in the Great Court. It is his last ovacame duly with the revolution around the sun. tion-his last grateful-sounding-Vive le Roi! Before he reached the theatre of action, the ear- "The Queen hears it, and kindles again; lier scenes of the drama had already been per-black-skinned princess Montpensier hears it, and formed, but he describes some of them neverthe- her nostrils snuff the battle. less with the fidelity of an eye-witness. Let us take for example the description of that last breakfast of the citizen King eaten upon royal

"The National Guard listen, and hesitate; not so the throng in blouse. The Republicans have been before the Minister; they who have promise

of roast, will not dine on stews.

"The King is in his Cabinet, still wearing broad cordon of Legion of Honor. Little Thiers, comfort, to the now half-comfortable Majesty. puffing, heated, is there again. He brings sad The prestige of Thiers is gone: Barrot must be the man.

“—Eh bien, soit,—well, said the King.

honest, earnest Barrot, cannot make his voice "But even at the moment as we have said, heard over the welkin of the blouse-cries. Red banners are floating with impudent face.

"Down again, from classic Pantheon new stubayonets glitter; and hands that yesterday plied dent throngs push on. This time, swords and of St. Jacques and dirty la Harpe is moving.the scalpel, are chinking gun-locks. The whole The gray Sorbonne shoots out from its cavern

"At worst-say they-we can fall back on such as Thiers. En avant!-let us see the mid-ous courts hordes of scholar truants, and on they

dle of the Palace of the King.

66

sweep, over Pont Neuf, or under angle of som"And the paving stones clank on the rising ty's breakfast lies, half-eaten. bre Institute, hemming the Palace, where Royalwall and muskets glisten along the lifting line. "Barrot too, earnest, honest Barrot makes his Troops that yesterday held position in distant way in face of danger; the shopmen feel re-in-quarters, are retiring disheartened. First comes spired; the Guard sympathise. But there are Thiers, who says-stop fighting; it is I am Minthe blouses pushing on; they will not stop; they ister. Then comes Barrot, who says-It is I. will not listen; and enough of epauletted Guard Then Lamoriciere-not unpopular,-who says are with them, to give them confidence. On by thousands they push, hemming closer and closer the Palace walls.

"The clock upon the tower of the Horologe strikes ten.

-It is I.

"What wonder if they ground their muskets, and say-nous verrons?

"Meantime Republicans, slyly hiding bourgeois coat under blouse, are not waiting, but The King is at breakfast. The courtly, long-pushing on the people to what they call a peofaced Marie Amelie is there; the lively, fiery ple's triumph. little scion of the great house of Arragon-the Princess of Montpensier is with them; and by her side, with face that stormy events have made thoughful and care-worn beyond his years, sits her handsome, boy-faced husband.

"A tap is heard at the door; a valet announces the Deputy Rémusat; he wishes to speak with his Highness of Montpensier. The King

rises and the Queen.

"Gun-shots die away in distance, and all accumulates around the Palace.

"The King is in his Cabinet with Thiers, and Queen, and Rémusat, and others. The firing is coming nearer. The Proclamation-the torn one-is under the King's hand.

"The door opens, with little ceremony, and there enters a new man; his face all earnestness, all anxiety, and yet full of a calm determi"It is announced at last that the proclamations nation. are torn down; that neither Thiers nor Barrot -Sire,-he says-You lose time; a half can lay the storm; that cries are becoming dan-hour more, and Royalty in France is ended.— gerously threatening:-that the people-masses They pull down your proclamations; they will are hemming them round. have none of them.

66

"Now indeed the King trembles,-not unmind- "The King, perplexed, turns to his Councilful of a certain Tenth August! Measures of lors; the Councillors shake their heads. defence are proposed. The old Queen is stirred:

66

her Sicilian blood mounts; she would shoot the King. down the canaille.

60 Not so fast, good, old Queen Amelie! "Little Spanish Montpensier joins Sicilian age, fire flashing from her Castilian eyes. For a moment, the King wavers-then commands the carriages. But the carriages must pass the Carousel and Carousel is full of troops: they must not see such Royal retreat;-nor imagine it.

"Then, the King takes courage again, and puts

66

What shall be done,-que faire ?—says

Abdicate-says Emile de Girardin, for

he was the new comer.

"The King lets his pen drop: the fingers are weak; he has but half-breakfasted.

“A dreadful volley of musketry is heard; the Queen moves quick to the window and clasps her hands.

แ

"Sire, it must be-says Montpensier.
-Be it so-says the King.

And Girardin, his errand done, hurried away,