tions on the English Colonial Policy, and on the Character of Puritanism. By the late PETER OLIVER, of the Suffolk Bar. VIII. SPRAGUE'S AMERICAN PULPIT Annals of the American Pulpit; or, Commemorative Notices of Distinguished American Clergymen of Various Denominations, from the Early Settlement of the Country to the Close of the Year 1855. With Historical Introductions. By WILLIAM B. SPRAGUE, D. D. Vols. I. and II. Trinitarian Congregationalists. Hesperides or the Works both Humane and Divine of X. THE BRITISH ESSAYISTS With Prefaces, Historical and Biographical, by A. CHALMERS, F. S. A. XI. CONTEMPORARY FRENCH LITERATURE 1. MICHELET: La Ligue et Henri IV. 469 484 502 2. JULES JANIN: Histoire de la Littérature Dramatique. 3. JULES JANIN: Les Petits Bonheurs. 4. DR. VÉRON: "Quatre Ans de Règne, où en sommes nous?" 5. MARECHAL DE RAGUSE: Mémoires de 1792 à 1837. XII. THE REAL AND THE IDEAL IN NEW ENGLAND 1. Margaret: a Tale of the Real and the Ideal, Blight and Bloom; including Sketches of a Place not before described, called Mons Christi. By the Author of "Philo," "Richard Edney," &c. 2. Compositions in Outline, by FELIX O. C. DARLEY, from JUDD's Margaret. Engraved by KONRAD HUBER. XIII. CRITICAL NOTICES . 535 . 560 . 577 .583 NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW. No. CLXXV. APRIL, 1857. ART. I.1. Tausend und Ein Tag im Orient. Von FRIEDRICH BODENSTEDT. In 2 Bände. Berlin. 1850. 2. Die Lieder des MIRTSA-SCHAFFY. Von FRIEDRICH BODENSTEDT. Zweite Auflage. Berlin. 1853. On the last day of October, 1848, the Revolution was at its height in Vienna. A girdle of bayonets clasped the unhappy city. The flames of sacked houses reddened the evening sky, and ever and anon the explosion of artillery, the roll of drums, and the screams of wounded combatants, filled the air with horrible echoes. At twilight, in the chamber of a young poet who had recently returned from a sojourn of several years in the East, a group of friends sat engaged in broken and sorrowful conversation. Now a blast of the alarm trumpets pealed across the square; now a cannon-ball crashed through the barricades the people had erected in the street. "Bodenstedt!" said Auerbach, "you are less agitated than we; tell us some of your adventures in the Orient; it will transport us into a different world, and help us to forget the horrors of the present time." The whole company echoed the request. "Do consent!" they exclaimed, and drew their chairs closer around him. "Tell us of the Caucasus," said Kaufmann, "and of your famous teacher, Mirtsa-Schaffy: he is my favorite!" "And of the Black Sea," added Karl Beck, "and NO. 175. VOL. LXXXIV. - 26 "Also of the beautiful of the Cossacks, and of the Turks." Georgian maidens," cried Max Schlesinger, "and of Ararat and Armenia." The poet pilgrim willingly met the invitation, and recounted many an incident from his travels. He told them of MirtsaSchaffy; of his wisdom and delicious songs; of Ararat and Armenia; of the Caucasus, and the lovely Georgian girls; of the Black Sea; and of the Cossacks and the Turks. The company sat far into the night, listening to the unstudied recital, and scarcely thought of the dire tumult which raged without. Two years afterwards the narrator carefully wrote out in full, and gave to the public, what he had briefly sketched to his friends on that memorable night. Such was the interesting origin of the work - "Thousand and One Days in the Orient" -from which the present article is to be drawn. The book is a model of manifold excellence. It is published in a form of admirable taste and beauty. It abounds with picturesque descriptions of the scenery and society of the lands which its author traversed, and with spirited versions of the lyrics of their representative living poets. We propose here only to indicate its general course and character, and to hint, by a few suggestive outlines, the portrait of its central personage. Late in the September of 1844, a scholarly and adventurous young German, Frederic Bodenstedt by name, is on his way from Moscow, across the Steppes of the Don, to the immemorial world of the Orient. The landscape, thus soon, has assumed a wintry aspect. The sky is all gray, and the noon is gloomy, as if evening twilight already hung in the air. On the naked limbs of the trees perch horrid swarms of crows and ravens. The autumnal wind whistles, shudderingly, over the snow-clad fields, through which the road winds, like a gigantic black stripe. For, as yet, the ice is too thin and the snow too loose to resist the hoofs of the horses and the wheels of the wagons; and through every hole thus made the water oozes up from the slimy ground, as black as a fountain of tar. Toilsome and monotonous days have passed. Behind our traveller now lie the Steppes, and before him loom the misty giants of the Caucasus. But the heaven is so clouded, the dense fog so baffles his prying gaze, that he might fancy him self still upon the plain. Suddenly the cloud-veil parts, the mist falls, and the legendary peaks on one of whose cliffs Prometheus formerly hung-tower on his sight in stupendous glory. At equal distances, right and left, seventeen thousand feet in height, the summits of Elborz and Kasbek shimmer in a magic play of colors, while, half-way between, a savage group of Titans hold the blue floor of heaven on their frosty polls. Yonder, from the turbid mouth of the river Kouban to the fire-temples of the Parsees on the Caspian shore, runs the ragged and terrible mountain wall which separates Asia from Europe. Directly in front of him, a monstrous mountain rises above the luxuriant vegetation at his feet, above the gloomier verdure which spreads as a broad girdle around its flanks, above the straggling grass and dwarf shrubs which speck the higher rocks, until its enormous shoulders, emerging in naked beauty, receive their winter-robe of such dazzling whiteness that it seems composed of woven diamonds. Our pilgrim has made the frightful pass, and appears again, just at sunset, dragging his tired feet towards Duschett, the first village that snuggles at the Asiatic base of the Caucasus. Behind him soars the mountain realm in its icy splendor, with its dreadful precipices, its dizzy chasms, and thunderplunging avalanches. Beneath his eyes stretches a blooming land of soft-swelling fields, veined with a murmuring river. The snow has not melted from his boots when they crush the flowers smiling in his path. A gentle breeze whispers through the foliage of the acacias; grape-vines of prodigious size twine in all directions; and singing-birds warble from the branches of the flowering almonds. He has stepped from the frozen door of winter into a garden redolent with roses and blushing in the sunshine. In a few days Bodenstedt enters Tiflis, the capital of Georgia. Several of his former Moscow friends, now settled here, celebrate his arrival by a feast served in true Oriental style. Circassian boys, arrayed in picturesque dresses, bring forward the dishes; a slender Armenian distributes gigantic silverornamented buffalo-horns, full of blood-red wine; a Persian singer in a blue robe, a high-peaked cap on his head, his beard close-trimmed, his fingers' ends dyed blue, his face aglow, plays on a lyre and sings the choicest odes of Hafiz. Wherever the Western stranger turns his eyes, he discerns something new and curious. He seems to be living over in reality a tale of the "Thousand and One Nights," whereof as a boy he has so often read and dreamed. When the party separate, and go upon the roofs to their couches, the brilliant and fragrant night is reigning in all its charms. It is one of those enchanted nights known only under the Georgian sky, where the moon illumines the noiseless landscape, as if its radiance were the sunlight, falling, softened, through some mysterious, tender-woven veil. Bodenstedt desires an instructor to guide and help him in his studies of Tartar, Persian, and Arabic literature. Accident favors his search; for he is introduced to Mirtsa-Schaffy, the Wise Man of Gjändsha, as he names himself from the village where he was born, in the province of Karadagh, on the banks of the ancient Araxes. In Mirtsa-Schaffy we have a thorough and admirable specimen of Oriental character, an excellent representative of his class, the scholars and poets of Persia. The comic side of his character, resulting from no buffoonery or crudeness of nature, but from his perfect ingen. uousness, his primeval simplicity and frankness both in action and speech, is most amusing. At the same time he is vain as Absalom, irascible as Ali, wise as Lokman, and affectionate as Hatim. His learning, in its department, is extensive. his literary taste exquisite, his wedded wit and humor inex haustible, the creative swiftness and scope of his lyric genius quite marvellous. We proceed now to illustrate these statements by examples, confident that a picture, however unskil fully drawn, of a living Persian poet, a not unworthy succes sor of Hafiz, will have a novel interest for our readers. It is matter of great astonishment to Mirtsa-Schaffy how the travellers from the Western nations, dwelling as they do there in darkness and unbelief, totally ignorant of the sacred languages, Persian and Arabic, can yet boast of possessing literati. However, he willingly forgives this pretension in Bodenstedt, upon the promise of a silver dollar for each lesson in these tongues, the depositories of all true wisdom. |