Southern Literature From 1579-1895 Part 22

[_From the Essay on Demosthenes._]

The charge of effeminacy and want of courage in battle seems to be considered as better founded. Plutarch admits it fully. His foppery is matter of ridicule to aeschines, who, at the same time, in rather a remarkable pa.s.sage in his speech on the Crown, gives us some clue to the popular report as to his deficiency in the military virtues of antiquity. "Who," says he "will be there to sympathize with him? Not they who have been trained with him in the same gymnasium? No, by Olympian Jove! for, in his youth, instead of hunting the wild boar and addicting himself to exercises which give strength and activity to the body, he was studying the arts that were one day to make him the scourge of the rich." Those exercises were, in the system of the Greeks, . . . considered as absolutely indispensable to a liberal education. That of Demosthenes was certainly neglected by his guardians, and the probability is that the effeminacy with which he was reproached meant nothing more than that he had not frequented in youth the palestra and the gymnasium, and that his bodily training had been sacrificed to his intellectual.

That he possessed moral courage of the most sublime order is pa.s.sed all question; but his nerves were weak. If the tradition that is come down to us in regard to his natural defects as an orator is not a gross exaggeration, he had enough to occupy him for years in the correction of them. But what an idea does it suggest to us of the mighty will, the indomitable spirit, the decided and unchangeable vocation, that, in spite of so many impediments, his genius fulfilled its destiny, and attained at last to the supremacy at which it aimed from the first! His was that deep love of ideal beauty, that pa.s.sionate pursuit of eloquence in the abstract, that insatiable thirst after perfection in art for its own sake, without which no man ever produced a masterpiece of genius. Plutarch, in his usual graphic style, places him before us as if he were an acquaintance,--aloof from the world; immersed in the study of his high calling, with his brow never unbent from care and thought; severely abstemious in the midst of dissoluteness and debauchery; a water-drinker among Greeks; like that other Agonistes, elected and ordained to struggle, to suffer, and to perish for a people unworthy of him:--

"His mighty champion, strong above compare, Whose drink was only from the liquid brook."

Let any one who has considered the state of manners at Athens just at the moment of his appearance upon the stage of public life, imagine what an impression such a phenomenon must have made upon a people so lost in profligacy and sensuality of all sorts. What wonder that the unprincipled though gifted Demades, the very personification of the witty and reckless libertinism of the age, should deride and scoff at this strange man, living as n.o.body else lived, thinking as n.o.body else thought; a prophet, crying from his solitude of great troubles at hand; the apostle of the past; the preacher of an impossible restoration; the witness to his contemporaries that their degeneracy was incorrigible and their doom hopeless; and that another seal in the book was broken, and a new era of calamity and downfall opened in the history of nations.

We have said that the character of Demosthenes might be divined from his eloquence; and so the character of his eloquence was a mere emanation of his own. It was the life and soul of the man, the patriot, the statesman. "Its highest attribute of all," says Dionysius, "is the spirit of life--+to pneuma+--that pervades it."

A DUKE'S OPINIONS OF VIRGINIA, NORTH AND SOUTH CAROLINA, AND GEORGIA.

[_From a Review of "Travels of the Duke of Saxe-Weimar" in 1825-6._]

In his journey through Virginia, our traveller visited Mr. Jefferson, with whom, however, he does not appear to have been as much struck as he had been with the late Mr. Adams. The Natural Bridge he p.r.o.nounces "one of the greatest wonders of nature he ever beheld," albeit he had seen "Vesuvius and the Phlegrean Fields, the Giant's Causeway in Ireland, the Island of Staffa, and the Falls of Niagara." "Finally"

(to use a favorite mode of expression of his own), he is amazed at the profusion of militia t.i.tles in Virginia, which almost persuaded him that he was at the headquarters of a grand army, and at the aristocratic notions of some of the gentlemen in the same state, who make no secret of their taste for primogeniture laws and hereditary n.o.bility.

He pa.s.sed through North Carolina too rapidly to do anything like justice to the many remarkable things which that respectable state has to boast of. Accordingly, his observations are princ.i.p.ally confined to the inns where he stopped, the roads over which he travelled, and the mere exterior of the towns and villages which the stage-coach traverses in its route. He is of opinion, from what he saw in that region, that "it would be a good speculation to establish a gla.s.s manufactory in a country, where there is such a want of gla.s.s, and a superabundance of pine-trees and sand." It had almost escaped us, that he here for the first time made the acquaintance of a "great many large vultures, called buzzards, the shooting of which is prohibited, as they feed upon carrion, and contribute in this manner to the salubrity of the country." This "parlous wild-fowl" has the honor to attract the attention of his Highness again in Charleston, where he informs us that its life is, in like manner, protected by law, and where it is called from its resemblance to another bird, the turkey-buzzard. . . . In Columbia, he became acquainted with most of the distinguished inhabitants, of whose very kind attentions to him he speaks in high terms. The following good-natured hint too may not be altogether useless: "At Professor Henry's a very agreeable society a.s.sembled at dinner. At that party I observed a singular manner which is practiced; the ladies sit down by themselves at one of the corners of the table. But I broke the old custom, and glided between them; and no one's appet.i.te was injured thereby." . . . .

Nothing . . . can be a stronger exemplification of the difficulties under which a stranger labors, in his efforts to acquire a knowledge of a country new to him, than the perpetual mistakes which our distinguished traveller commits in his brief notices of Georgia. . . .

Even the complexion of the people of Georgia displeased him, and, coming from a Court where French was not only the fas.h.i.+onable but the common language of social intercourse, he considers the education of women neglected, because they are not taught that language in situations where they might never have occasion to use it.

MIRABEAU BUONAPARTE LAMAR.

~1798=1859.~

MIRABEAU BUONAPARTE LAMAR, second president of the Republic of Texas, was born in Louisville, Georgia. In 1835 he emigrated to Texas and took part in the struggle for independence against Mexico, being major-general in the army. He was successively Attorney-General in the cabinet of President Houston, Secretary of War, Vice-president, and in 1838 President of the Republic, the second of the four presidents that Texas had before it became a State in the Union.

In 1857-8 he was United States minister to Central America.

WORKS.

Verse Memorials.

Lamar was rather a man of action than of letters; but the following verses speak for him as having true poetic appreciation of beauty and power to express it.

THE DAUGHTER OF MENDOZA.

O lend to me, sweet nightingale, Your music by the fountain, And lend to me your cadences, O rivers of the mountain!

That I may sing my gay brunette, A diamond spark in coral set, Gem for a prince's coronet-- The daughter of Mendoza.

How brilliant is the evening star, The evening light how tender,-- The light of both is in her eyes, Their softness and their splendor.

But for the lash that shades their light They were too dazzling for the sight, And when she shuts them, all is night,-- The daughter of Mendoza.

O ever bright and beauteous one, Bewildering and beguiling, The lute is in thy silvery tones, The rainbow in thy smiling; And thine is, too, o'er hill and dell, The bounding of the young gazelle, The arrow's flight and ocean's swell-- Sweet daughter of Mendoza!

What though, perchance, we no more meet,-- What though too soon we sever?

Thy form will float like emerald light Before my vision ever.

For who can see and then forget The glories of my gay brunette-- Thou art too bright a star to set, Sweet daughter of Mendoza!

FRANCIS LISTER HAWKS.

~1798=1866.~

FRANCIS LISTER HAWKS was born at New Berne, North Carolina, and educated at the State University. He became a clergyman of the Episcopal Church in 1827 and was rector of parishes in New York, New Orleans, and Baltimore. He was the first president of the University of Louisiana, and declined three elections to the bishopric. See Life by Rev. N. L. Richardson.

WORKS.

History of North Carolina.

History of the Protestant Episcopal Church in the United States.

History of the Protestant Episcopal Church in Maryland.

Const.i.tution and Canons of the Episcopal Church.

Auricular Confession in the Episcopal Church.

Egypt and Its Monuments.

Romance of Biography.

Cyclopaedia of Biography.

Perry's Expedition to j.a.pan.

Dr. Hawks was a distinguished pulpit orator as well as an able and untiring writer. His ecclesiastical works are considered a valuable contribution to the history of the church in the United States.

The book from which we quote, "History of North Carolina," was undertaken as a labor of love for his native State, prepared in the intervals of time allowed by "a laborious and responsible profession in a large city: . . . he frankly confesses that he would undergo such toil for no country but North Carolina. She has a claim upon his filial duty. In her bosom his infancy found protection and his childhood was nourished. He here lays his humble offering in her lap."

The story of the Lost Colony of Roanoke has been called "the tragedy of American colonization."

THE FIRST INDIAN BAPTISM IN AMERICA.

(_From History of North Carolina._)

The colony [1587] was probably not without its clergyman, and the faithful Manteo, who was among them, had by this time become in heart an Englishmen. . .

The mother and kindred of Manteo lived on the island of Croatan, and thither, very soon, a visit was made by the faithful Indian and a party of the English, who endeavored, through the instrumentality of the islanders, to establish friendly relations with the inhabitants on the main land; but the effort was in vain. In truth, the greater portion of the Indians around, manifested implacable ill-will, and had already murdered one of the a.s.sistants, who had incautiously strayed alone from the settlement on Roanoke island.

On the 13th of August, by direction of Raleigh, given before leaving England, Manteo was baptized, (being probably the first native of this continent who ever received this sacrament at the hands of the English) and was also called Lord of Roanoke and of Dasamonguepeuk, as the reward of his fidelity.