Such is our whole knowledge of the person of A large portion of Mr. Dana's prose is in the Tom Thornton; yet we can see him as distinctly, form of narrative, and that essentially dramatic. so well is his character elsewhere developed, as if The longest, and in our judgment by far the best, he had been our playmate at school, and had watched of his tales is Paul Felton. It is a strange and sad all the changes of his eventful life. There is a history: a mind made up of the finest elements, gradpicture of another face. “The nose and the lines ually clouded and distempered, by an excess of the from it expressed sarcasm, which was tempered, very qualities which made its peculiar worth, till however, by a playful good-nature about the lips; the cloud became darkness, and the distemper madand his eyes had that look of inward contemplation, ness; the fond and trustful affections of a wife which makes the finest eyes in the world. For the harshly wrung, and suddenly crushed out of life, by most part, there was a rich haze over them, but the jealousy of a maniac: a witless, outcast, dewhen they turned their notice outward, they sent moniac boy, clinging with fatal gratitude to the forth rays like the sun bursting through a mist."* hand that first showed him kindness. It is a tale There seems to many, in description in this man- of the most tragic emotions; love, distrust, hate, ner, nothing but vague, loose, cloudy representation. fear, frenzy, and all traced out, in their minutest And yet to one who has been used to read the in-workings, with terrible distinctness. And over all ward life of men in their countenances, there is is thrown the shade of superstitious alarms, the here a clear presentment of a marked feature, which mysterious excitement of supernatural agencies, he has some time observed, and this serves to indi- never visible, but always, in the later scenes of the vidualize and identify the man. A skilful artist story, felt to be present. It is a tale of tragic surely could transfer this description accurately to actions; of tender looks turned to frowns, confiding his canvass, without another hint; as indeed from words exchanged for half-uttered prophecies of some works of the old masters, those too accounted wrath and evil, of a wilful subjection, under the their best, we carry away precisely such a concep- pressure of a wayward nature, to the powers of evil, tion, and no more; the one feature, which so re- and all ending in causeless murder and the burial veals the depths of the heart, absorbs our attention of a suicide. while we gaze on it, and this is all that our memory will retain. And, we are sure, the commonest minds, whose range and habit of experience have made lead naturally to the catastrophe, which yet comes one such case familiar, will more easily apprehend on the reader with a shock, as if he had been in no this description, than they will form into a whole way prepared for it. It may seem like a partial any separate sketches of several outward charac-estimate, but we know of nothing, since Shaksteristics of a man. In fact, we are so accustomed peare's Othello, which we think, in this respect, its to regard the human face as a token of somewhat superior. And Mr. Dana gave himself a harder For while Othello had ever at his hidden, and which it partially discloses, that we find task even. it difficult to look on it otherwise; and we require elbow, a most malignant spirit, who could make in a description, that the author should render to us circumstances, and misinterpret them, and urge the impression which the person he has conceived on, with subtile surmises, the gentle temper of the has made on him, and are not content with the bare Moor; he has sketched such circumstances only as apparition, as a mirror would give it back. may daily occur in a thousand cases, and has made The qualities of description which we have their effect to arise solely from the moody and touched on, are eminently characteristic of Mr. yet most generous temper of the unhappy subject Dana. They do not preclude the more common of his tale. "Trifles light as air" have here no style of representing things as they seem to the neighbor's tongue to tell their import, but work eye only; far less do they imply any want of dis-their deadly work in the recesses of a heart full of tinctness or vividness in his sketches. Indeed we noble sentiments and too exquisite feelings, and know few authors who bring the scenes they de-framed thereby to receive their entire impression. scribe more distinctly before us, and more comWe have sometimes heard the character of Paul pletely persuade us that we have somewhere al- complained of as unnatural, and as on this depends ready seen the like; or who give us in their the truthfulness of the whole piece, and it is indeed sonages more of a genuine flesh-and-blood reality, the key to the whole, we will offer one or two sugand make them at once familiar to our eye and our affections: and though the traits we have referred to

per

may endear him most to those who have a like eye and a kindred fellowship with nature, even those who are not so fortunate can hardly fail to recognize in his portraiture, whether of nature or of man, the marks of a genius of a high order.

A Letter from Town, p. 394.

The incidents of the tale are arrayed with consummate art. Each is natural in its place, and all

gestions about it. If we were to take as the standard of naturalness that which will commend itself as such to all minds, we should exclude all heroism,

and deny to fiction even the range of common life.

might be developed in any and every body, if we The developments of common qualities, as they measure it by this, would make us all unnatural. The truth is rather, that the qualities which are common to all, are unfolded in each, under peculiar

Most men of sensitive natures, and yet of

conditions, and so in pecular forms, and as we see | appreciate his thoughts and the depth of his charevery day, what is natural in one, is not so in another ; acter. He would pour out on her a prodigal affecand is natural in one only because it springs out of tion, and demand the fulness of her own heart in his nature, t. e., is the common nature as unfolded | return. in him,―under his conditions. The writer of fiction, some experience of the world, have probably looked which always partakes of the ideal, is not bound to forward with pain to the moment when a casual incopy any one of the forms which may have chanced cident, a look, or chance word should betray a trace to come under his own observation; but may blend of earthliness in the one whom they have loved with the common elements as he will, if only the combina- | a spiritual affection ; or, at least, when the revelation be such, as our experience shows readily may tion was made, have felt a conscious chill and shudbe. That such a man as Paul Felton ever existed, dering, and as if their affection had been wronged. we need not affirm. We only need to know, from The fault of such an one as Paul Felton was, that our recollection of what has passed within ourselves, he could not at once understand how one may be a or what we have seen among our fellows, that such perfect woman, and still less than an angel; and a man would have been one of us, entitled to our that a diffusive regard, a radiant benevolence, which sympathy and affection, and acting from feelings rejoices with all who rejoice, and admires all that which influence us also, though not perhaps in man-is worthy, can consist with a sole and engrossing ner and form as they do him. Else, Richard were passion for one. Out of this difficulty, Mr. Dana no more natural than Caliban. Judged in this way, has made Paul's jealousy of Esther to grow, first surely no man, who can sympathize with sensitive as a doubt of his own worthiness, then the suspifeelings, nursed till they become passions, or who cion of fickleness in her, then of alienation, then of has seen how the most delicate sentiments, when dishonor. His dark mind, brooding on the first, outraged, become fierce, and make men sullen and passes rapidly to the rest and his love, because it vindictive, can fail to apprehend this character as was so strong, when it is changed to doubt, becomes one that may have been, and that has the marks intolerable; and when certainty has ripened it into of truth and nature, even if he have not seen one hatred, it becomes the fierceness of frenzy. The among his own friends, who, with some slight change several steps in this mournful process are told, as of features, might have sat for the picture. Paul he only who has sounded the mysteries of the huFelton was, (we can not but speak of him as of man heart can tell them: how his mind is first shaone whom we have known well enough to have ded by suspicion, and, as if harshly touched, shrinks made a friend of him,) a man, who lived not the life into itself: how he, with a perverse delight, tortures of the senses. To him, sentiments, affections, pas- | anew the bared nerve : how the gloom overshadows sions, were the great realities. His heart was in him: how spirits haunt him, more cruel and relenthis thoughts, and his thoughts were dreams. Bred less than the heathen destiny: the ineffectual strugin solitude; among books; trees, clouds, birds more gles of one willing to be tormented: the alternate his companions than men; a youth of glowing fan- sway of hope and despair, of jealous hatred and cies, yet tinged in all his musings with deep mel-returning love the abandonment of all restraint ancholy, he became, of course, self-inspecting, and self-distrusting. The very fineness of his sentiments made him proud; the absence of human fellowship rendered him shy and abstracted; his own rich thoughts, ever seeking utterance, yet hid in his own bosom for want of response in those around him, In the whole compass of modern literature, we made him suspicious and gloomy; and the want of know not a more genuine creation, than this misthose graces of person and manner, which make erable Abel. Lean, shambling and odious, loathed men welcome in society, while it made his sensi- by all and self-loathing, avoided, as polluting, by the bilities keener, gave a tenfold impulse to all the virtuous and decent, and dreading contact with them peculiarities of his character. Such a mind is lest he should convey some strange infection, solitrained to self-torture. Its nicer perceptions of tary and yet dreading solitude, consciously the propriety and beauty are continually pained, by the victim of a foul fiend, sold to him to do his bidding, rude jostlings of the every day life of men. Its carried hither and thither by him, without his will; model, like that of youth, has too much of the ideal, feeble withal in intellect, and of wandering senses, and of an ideal formed on its own meditations, to be he excites at once disgust, and horror, and compassatisfied with what makes our common happiness. sion. We know not where in books to find a type And when, with a warm and impetuous tempera- of him; and though we have seen the like in the ment, it insists on its own model, it becomes, as men say, morbid, and passes sometimes among us into settled misanthropy.

A man of such mould would readily fall in love with a high-minded and beautiful woman, who could

and effort: the giving himself up to fiendish influence and control: the resolute steadfastness of his fatal purpose: and through all, his passions swaying him as a leaf shaken by the wind and amid all, that dreadful boy!

form of most abject humanity, we have no where else found that conception of inward misery and

want.

All the accessaries to the singular union of the destiny of these two wretched beings, are most ap

propriate. That range of sand hills, blasted, as if with lightning, that hot forest glade,-that hut in the woods-that knife and stone.

had drenched him to the skin; his clothes clung to
his lean body, that shook as if it would come apart;
his eyes flew wildly, and his teeth chattered against
each other. The fears and torture of his mind gave
something unearthly to his look, that made Paul
start back.
Abel-boy-friend-speak! What

has seized you?'

"They told me so,' cried Abel,-'I've done it— I led the way for you-they're coming, they're coming-we're lost!'

"Peace, fool!' said Paul, trying to shake off the power he felt Abel to be gaining over him, and find us a shelter if you can.'

"There's only the hut,' said Abel, 'and I would'nt go into that if it rained fire.'

"And why not?'

"I once felt that it was for me to go, and I And I saw went so near as to see in at the door. something in the hut-it was not a man, for it heard two muttering something to one another; it flitted by the opening just like a shadow; and I was'nt like other sounds, for as soon as I heard it, it made me stop my ears. I could'nt stay any longer, and I ran till I cleared the wood.-O! 'tis His hiding place, when He comes to the wood.' "And is it of His own building?' asked Paul

666

sarcastically.

These are in a singular degree wild, and might seem fantastic, but for their being so completely in keeping with the supernatural features which add to the gloom of certain portionsof the tale. This supernatural does not consist in the introduction of impalpable, but living agencies,―the vulgar machinery of witches, spectres, or genii; but lies in the minds of the actors themselves, giving, in the excess of passionate emotions, a permanent reality, and the influence of a haunting presence to the conceptions, which those very passions have conjured up. So Paul, in the moodiness of his melancholy, felt himself impelled by unseen and relentless powers, around, above, within him, to some dreadful act, and was drawn on to it irresistibly as by the fascinations of a serpent. "Violent passions and dreadful thoughts," says Mr. Dana, "had now obtained so complete a mastery over Paul, that they came and went like powers independent of his will; and he felt himself as a creature lying at their mercy, He prayed to them to spare him, as if they had "No,' answered Abel; 'twas built by the two been beings that could enter him, and move about wood-cutters; and one of them came to a bloody him, and torment him as they would." (p.335.) The end; and they say the other died the same night, frenzy of the boy is different, yet like; and comes, foaming at the mouth like one possessed.-There not so much of turbulent passions, as of an intel- it is,' said he almost breathless, as he crouched lect, hardly removed from idiocy, and unsettled by not go, Sir,' he said, catching hold of the skirts of down, and pointed at the hut under the trees.-' Do neglect, taunting and abuse; and is that of one, to Paul's coat,- I've never dared go nigher since.' whom an exclusion from his fellows had given the "Let loose, boy,' cried Paul, striking Abel's sense of an alienated nature, and who, as feeling hand from his coat, I'll not be fooled with.' unfit for any other, fell into the companionship of shapes, which were only his own half-formed thoughts, shaped into outwardness and motion. A mind thus feeble might well construe its own conscious weakness into a restraint and pressure from without, and incapable of abstraction, would conceive that restraint to be some living thing, perpetually near to oppress and torment it: and thus, under the conscience of an evil deed, made the beings of its own creation hideous, as well as always present. We copy a passage, which illustrates both the characters and their accessaries, as well as exhibits the powers of the author:

"Day broke before they cleared the ridge; a drizzling rain came on; and the wind, beginning to rise, drove through the crevices in the rocks, with sharp, whistling sounds, which seemed to come from malignant spirits of the air."

"Abel, alarmed at being left alone, crawled after Paul, as far as he dared go; then taking hold of him once more, made a supplicating gesture for him without regarding him. to stop; he was afraid to speak. Paul pushed on

"The hut stood on the edge of a sand bank that was kept up by a large pine, whose roots and fibres, lying partly bare, looked like some giant spider that had half-buried himself in the sand. On the right of the hut was a patch of broken ground, in which were still standing a few straggling, dried stalks of Indian corn; and from two dead trees hung knotted pieces of broken line, which had formerly served for a clothes-line. The hut was built of half-trimed trunks of trees laid on each other, crossing at the four corners, and running out at unequal lengths, the chinks partly filled in with sods and moss. The door, which lay on the floor, was of twisted boughs; and the roof, of the same, was caved in, and but partly kept out the sun and rain. As Paul drew near the entrance, he stopped, though the wind They had scarcely entered the wood, when the just then came in a heavy gust, and the rain fell like a storm became furious; and the trees swaying and flood. It was not a dread of what he might see beating with their branches against one another, within; but it seemed to him, that there was a spell seemed possessed of a supernatural madness, and around him, drawing him nearer and nearer to its engaged in wild conflict, as if there were life and centre; and he felt the hand of some invisible power passion in them; and their broken, decayed arms, upon him. As he stepped into the hut, a chill ran groaned like things in torment. The terror of over him, and his eyes shut involuntarily. Abel these sights and sounds was too much for poor watched him eagerly and as he saw him enter, Abel it nearly crazed him; and he set up a shriek tossed his arms wildly, shouting, 'Gone, gone! that for a moment drowned the noise of the storm. They'll have me, too.-they're coming, they're It startled Paul; and when he looked at him, the coming!'-and threw himself on his face to the boy's face was of a ghostly whiteness. The rain ground."

The madness of Paul is peculiar in this, that it springs from a wounded feeling in a diseased mind preying upon itself, a feeling almost purely inward and of himself, and which could not have wrought in a well-balanced mind, as it did in his. And this gives the reader the impression, that while it was altogether involuntary, it was also in part wilful, and mingles something of pitying censure with his compassion. It was no mortification of pride, as in Ajax, nor keen sense of ingratitude, as in Lear, nor mere jealousy, as in Othello, nor a moralizing discontent, as in Hamlet: but a yielding of himself to an overmastering passion, which broken, let loose all his passions, and made of his noble powers a miserable wreck. There is deep pathos in the agonies of the dying Hercules, in the Philoctetes: but we are moved to a deeper commiseration, by the sorrows of a ruined intellect and a crushed heart.

Something of contempt mingles with our pity for the madness of Ajax; the imbecility of Lear brings his frenzy sometimes to the borders of the ludicrous; we feel too little beside commiseration for Othello; and Hamlet has too much "method in his madness;" but we go along with Paul throughout, pitying, admiring, sorrowing, loving.

In fine contrast with this sad picture, is the graceful character of Esther. Pure, O! how pure! most free and generous in her affection, loving in all sincerity and nobleness; meek, long-enduring, always hoping, always trusting; alas! that she could not soothe the anguish of that perturbed spirit! Alas! that he who loved so deeply should so madly slay!

We cannot forbear to extract the scene, near the close, where Paul, under the overruling impression of his wife's unfaithfulness, sheds her innocent blood.

mind appeared elsewhere. There was no longer feeling in him. He seemed waiting the order of some stern power. The command at last came. lar beat; then drew the knife from his bosom. He laid his hand upon her heart, and felt its reguOnce more he laid his hand upon her heart; then put the point there. He pressed his eyes close with one hand, and the knife sunk to the handle. There was a convulsive start and a groan. He looked on her. A slight flutter passed over her frame, and her filmy eyes opened on him once; but he looked as senseless as the body that lay before him. The moon shone fully on the corpse, and on him that sat by it; and the silent night went on. By and by, up came the sun in the hot, flushed sky, and sent his rays over them. Paul moved not, nor tion-there were they two together, like two of heeded the change. There was no noise, nor mothe dead."

If we have given our readers any conception of the merits of this tale, and our own conception of it, an attempt to analyze the rest were needless; and if not, useless.

We were hardly critics, without some portion of fault-finding. We may say then, that, while with a certain class of minds, which must be such by nature, and cannot be trained to be such, Mr. Dana's Prose Writings will be eminently attractive, they may never be very popular. And this because of the highly ideal character which runs through them, and which requires a certain degree of refinement both of character and sentiment to understand it. His Edward and Mary, for example, is a sketch of the growth of a mutual affection between a youth and maiden, both of most delicate and quick sensibilities, and is drawn, as a man of kindred sensibilities would draw it. But after all, most persons will not conceive it to have much likeness to their own "courtship."

We may add that Mr. Dana does not seem to excel in the comic, which indeed he has rarely attempted.

have written so little.

Newbern, N. C.

F. M. H.

"He walked up cautiously to the door, and taking a key from his pocket, unlocked it, and went in. There was now a suspense of all feeling in him. He entered the parlor. His wife's shawl was hanging on the back of a chair; books, in which he The fault we are most disposed to censure, if we had read to her, were lying on the table, and her may indicate it without disrespect to Mr. Dana, is, work-table, near it, open. His eye passed over that one who could write so well as he can, should them, but there was no emotion. He left the room, and ascended the stairs with a slow, soft step, stealing through his own house cautiously as a thief. He unlocked the door of his dressing room, and passed on without noticing any part of it. His hand shook as he partly opened his wife's chamber door. He listened-all was still. He cast his eye round, then entered and shut the door after him. He walked up by the side of her bed without turning his eyes towards it, and seated himself down upon it, by her. Then it was he dared to look on her, as she lay in all her beauty, wrapt in a sleep so gentle he could not hear her breathing. She looked as if an angel talked with her in her dreams. The dark, glossy hair had fallen over her bright, fair neck and bosom, and the moonlight, striking through it, pencilled it in beautiful thready shadows on her.

"Paul sat for a while with folded arms, looking down on her. His eye moved not, and his dark face wore the unchanging hardness of stone. His

NIGHT.

BY MATILDA FREEMAN DANA.

Thou comest with an Angel tread,
A footstep soft and light;
All silently dost thou descend,

Oh, calm and holy night!
Thou bringest balm for troubled hearts,
Mourning o'er secret woes,

And o'er earth's weary children shed'st
The blessings of repose.