all." Nevertheless, there is mournful emphasis in these revelations of mickonaree progress-and too much reason to accept the tenor of his remarks as correct, and to bewail the inapplicability to modern missionaries in general, of Wordsworth's lines Rich conquest waits them :—the tempestuous sea * For does not even so unexceptionable a pillar of orthodoxy as Sir Archibald Alison, express doubt as to the promise of Missions, in relation to any but European ethnology? affirming, indeed, that had Christianity been adapted to man in his rude and primeval state, it would have been revealed at an earlier period, and would have appeared in the age of Moses, not in that of Cæsar:-a dogmatic assertion, by the way, highly characteristic of the somewhat peremptory baronet, and not very harmonious, either in letter or spirit, with the broad text on which worldwide missionary enterprise is founded, and for which Sir Archibald must surely have an ethnic gloss of his own private interpretation: ПopEverTes μαθητεύσατε παντα τα έθνη. But to Mr. Melville. And in a new, and not improved aspect. Exit Omoo; enter Mardi. And the cry is, Heu! quantum mutatus ab illo— Alas, how changed from him, This vein of Ercles, and this soul of whim changed enough to threaten an exeunt omnes of his quondam admirers. The first part of "Mardi" is worthy of its antecedents; but too soon we are hurried whither we would not, and subjected to the caprices, velut ægri somnia, of one who, of malice aforethought, Delphinum silvis appingit, fluctibus aprum the last clause signifying that he bores us with his " sea of troubles," and provokes us to take arms against, and (if possible) by opposing, end them. Yet do some prefer his new shade of marine blue, and exult in this his "sea-change into something rich and strange." And the author of "Nile Notes" defines "Mardi," as a whole, to be unrhymed poetry, rhythmical and measured-the swell of its sentences having a low, lapping cadence, like the dip of the sun-stilled, Pacific waves, and sometimes the grave music of Bacon's Essays! Thou wert right, O Howadji, to add, "Who but an American could have written them." Aias, CisAtlantic criticism compared them to Foote's "What, no soap? So he died, and she very imprudently married the barber,"-with the wedding concomitants of the Picninnies and Great Panjandrum and gunpowderheeled terpsichorics-Foote being, moreover, preferred to Melville, on the score of superiority in sense, diversion, and brevity. Nevertheless, subsequent productions have proved the author of "Mardi" to plume himself on his craze, and love to have it so. And what will he do in the end thereof? In tone and taste "Redburn" was an improvement upon "Mardi," but was as deficient as the latter was overfraught with romance and advenWhether fiction or fact, this narrative of the first voyage of Wel ture. * See "Alison's History of Europe" (New Series), vol. i., p. 74. lingborough Redburn,* a New York merchant's son, as sailor-boy in a merchant-vessel, is even prosy, bald, and eventless; and would be dull beyond redemption, as a story, were not the author gifted with a scrutinising gaze, and a habit of taking notes as well as "prenting" them, which ensures his readers against absolute common-place. It is true, he more than once plunges into episodic extravaganzas-such as the gambling-house frenzy of Harry Bolton-but these are, in effect, the dullest of all his moods; and tend to produce, what surely they are inspired by, blue devils. Nor is he over chary of introducing the repulsive, notwithstanding his disclaimer, "Such is the fastidiousness of some readers, that, many times, they must lose the most striking incidents in a narrative like mine:" for not only some, but most readers, are too fastidious to enjoy such scenes as that of the starving, dying mother and children in a Liverpool cellar, and that of the dead mariner, from whose lips darted out, when the light touched them, "threads of greenish fire, like a forked tongue," till the cadaverous face was "crawled over by a swarm of wormlike flames"—a hideous picture, as deserving of a letter of remonstrance on æsthetic grounds, as Mr. Dickens' spontaneous combustion case (Krook) on physical. Apart from these exceptions, the experiences of Redburn during his "first voyage" are singularly free from excitement, and even incident. We have one or two "marine views" happily done, though not in the artist's very happiest style. The picture of a wreck may be referred to that of a dismantled, water-logged schooner, that had been drifting about for weeks; her bulwarks all but gone-the bare stanchions, or posts, left standing here and there, splitting in two the waves which broke clear over the deck-her open main-hatchway yawning into view every time she rolled in the trough of the sea, and submerged again, with a rushing, gurgling sound of many waters; the relic of a jacket nailed atop of the broken mainmast, for a signal; and, sad, stern sight-most strange and most unnatural-"three dark, green, grassy objects," lashed, and leaning over sideways against the taffrailslowly swaying with every roll, but otherwise motionless! There is a spirited sketch, too, of the sailor-boy's first ascent to "loose the mainskysail"-not daring to look down, but keeping his eyes glued to the shrouds-panting and breathing hard before he is half-way up-reaching the "Jacob's ladder," and at last, to his own amazement, finding himself hanging on the skysail yard, holding on might and main to the mast, and curling his feet round the rigging, as if they were another pair of hands; thence gazing at length, mute and awe-stricken, on the dark midnight sea beneath, which looks like a great, black gulf, hemmed in all round by beetling black cliffs-the ship below, seeming like a long narrow plank in the water-the boy above, seeming in utter loneliness to tread the swart night clouds, and every second expecting to find himself falling-falling-falling, as he used to feel when the nightmare was on him. Redburn managed his first ascent deftly, and describes it admirably. Sir Nathaniel, indeed, never has been sedentary dia vUKTOS on a main skysail; but he is pretty sure, from these presents, that Mr. Melville has. *The hero himself is a sort of amalgam of Perceval Keene and Peter Simplethe keenness strangely antedating the simplicity. "Redburn," vol. ii., ch. 27. See G. H. Lewes' Two Letters. Equally sure, in his own case, is Sir N., that had he attained that giddy eminence, not only should he have expected to find himself fallingfalling-falling, but would have found himself, or been found, fallen: which Redburn was not. Gallant boy-clear-headed, light-hearted, fasthanded, nimble-footed!-he deserved to reach the top of the tree, and, having reached, to enjoy the sweet peril, like blossom that hangs on the bough: and that in time he did come to enjoy it we find from his record of the wild delirium there is about it-the fine rushing of the blood about the heart-the glad thrilling and throbbing of the whole system, to find yourself tossed up at every pitch into the clouds of a stormy sky, and hovering like a judgment angel between heaven and earth; both hands free, with one foot in the rigging, and one somewhere behind you in the air. 66 The crew, again, are sketched by a true draughtsman-though one misses the breadth and finish of his corresponding descriptions in "Omoo." There is Captain Riga, all soft-sawder ashore, all vinegar and mustard at sea-a gay Lothario of all inexperienced, sea-going youths, from the capital or the country-who condoles and sympathises with them in dock, but whom they will not know again when he gets out of sight of land, and mounts his cast-off clothes, and adjusts his character to the shabbiness of his coat, and holds the perplexed lads a little better than his boots, and will no more think of addressing them than of invoking wooden Donald, the figure-head at the ship's bows. There is Jackson-a meagre, consumptive, overbearing bully-squinting, broken-nosed, rheumatic-the weakest body and strongest will on board -"one glance of whose squinting eye was as good as a knock-down, for it was the most subtle, deep, infernal-looking eye ever lodged in a human head,” and must have once belonged to a wolf, or starved tiger,no oculist could ever "turn out a glass eye half so cold, and snaky, and deadly”—fit symbol of a man who, though he could not read a word, was spontaneously an atheist," and who, during the long night-watches, would enter into arguments to prove that there was nothing to be believed, or loved, or worth living for, but everything to be hated, in the wide world in short, "a Cain afloat; branded on his yellow brow with some inscrutable curse; and going about corrupting and searing every heart that beat near him." There is Jack Blunt, the " Irish Cockney," with his round face like a walrus, and his stumpy figure like a porpoise standing on end-full of dreams and marine romance-singing songs about susceptible mermaids-and holding fast a comfortable creed that all sailors are saved, having plenty of squalls here below, but fairweather aloft. There is Larry, the whaleman, or "blubber-boiler," everextolling the delights of the free and easy Indian Ocean, and deprecating civilised life, or, as he styles it, "snivelisation," which has "spiled him complete, when he might have been a great man in Madagasky." There is Dutch Max, stolid and seemingly respectable, but a systematic bi-(if not poly-)gamist. And there is the black cook, serious, metaphysical, and given to talk about original sin"-sitting all Sunday morning over his boiling pots, and reading grease-spotted good books; yet tempted to use some bad language occasionally, when the sea dashes into his stove, of cold, wet, stormy mornings. And, to conclude, there is the steward, a dandy mulatto, yclept Lavender; formerly a barber in West-Broadway, and still redolent of Cologne water and relics of his stock-in-trade there a sentimental darky, fond of reading "Charlotte Temple," and carrying a lock of frizzled hair in his waistcoat pocket, which he volunteers to show you, with his handkerchief to his eyes. Mr. Melville is perfectly au fait in nautical characterisation of this kind, and as thoroughly vapid when essaying revelations of English aristocratic life, and rhapsodies about Italian organ-boys, whose broken English resembles a mixture of "the potent wine of Oporto with some delicious syrup," and who discourse transcendentally and ravishingly about their mission, and impel the author to affirm that a Jew's-harp hath power to awaken all the fairies in our soul, and make them dance there, "as on a moonlit sward of violets ;" and that there is no humblest thing with music in it, not a fife, not a negrofiddle, that is not to be reverenced* as much as the grandest organ that ever rolled its flood-tide of harmony down a cathedral nave! What will Mr. Melville think of our taste, when we own to a delight in the cathedral organ, but also to an incurable irreverence towards street-organ, vagrant fiddle, and perambulatory fife?-against which we have a habit of shutting the window, and retiring to a back room. That we are moved by their concord of sweet sounds, we allow; but it is to a wish that they would 66 move on," and sometimes to a mental invocation of the police. Whence, possibly, Mr. Melville will infer, on Shakspearian authority, that we are meet only for Treasons, stratagems, and spoils; and will demand, quoad our critical taste, Let no such man be trusted. Next came "White Jacket; or, the World in a Man-of-War." The hero's soubriquet is derived from his-shirt, or "white duck frock,” his only wrap-rascal-a garment patched with old socks and old trouser-legs, bedarned and bequilted till stiff as King James's cotton-stuffed and dagger-proof doublet provided, moreover with a great variety of pockets, pantries, clothes-presses, and cupboards, and "several unseen recesses behind the arras,❞—insomuch, exclaims the proud, glad owner, "that my jacket, like an old castle, was full of winding stairs, and mysterious closets, crypts, and cabinets; and like a confidential writingdesk, abounded in snug little out-of-the-way lairs and hiding-places, for the storage of valuables." The adventures of the adventurous proprietor of this encyclopaedic toga, this cheap magazine of a coat, are detailed with that eager vivacity, and sometimes that unlicensed extravagance, which are characteristic of the scribe. Some of the sea-pictures are worthy of his highest mood-when a fine imagination over-rides and represses the chaos of a wanton fancy. Give him to describe a storm on the wide waters-the gallant ship labouring for life and against hopethe gigantic masts snapping almost under the strain of the top-sails-the ship's bell dismally tolling, and this at murk midnight-the rampant billows curling their crests in triumph-the gale flattening the mariners against the rigging as they toil upwards, while a hurricane of slanting *No parallel passage is that fine saying of Sir Thomas Browne in "Religio Medici," ii., 9. sleet and hail pelts them in savage wrath: and he will thrill us quiet landsmen who dwell at home at ease. For so successful a trader in "marine stores" as Mr. Melville, "The Whale" seemed a speculation every way big with promise. From such a master of his harpoon might have been expected a prodigious hit. There was about blubber and spermaceti something unctuously suggestive, with him for whaleman. And his three volumes entitled "The Whale" undoubtedly contain much vigorous description, much wild power, many striking details. But the effect is distressingly marred throughout by an extravagant treatment of the subject. The style is maniacal-mad as a March hare-mowing, gibbering, screaming, like an incurable Bedlamite, reckless of keeper or strait-waistcoat. Now it vaults on stilts, and performs Bombastes Furioso with contortions of figure, and straining strides, and swashbuckler fustian, far beyond Pistol in that Ancient's happiest mood. Now it is seized with spasms, acute and convulsive enough to excite bewilderment in all beholders. When he pleases, Mr. Melville can be so lucid, straightforward, hearty, and unaffected, and displays so unmistakable a shrewdness, and satirical sense of the ridiculous, that it is hard to suppose that he can have indited the rhodomontade to which we allude. Surely the man is a Doppelganger-a dual number incarnate (singular though he be, in and out of all conscience): surely he is two single gentlemen rolled into one, but retaining their respective idiosyncrasies the one sensible, sagacious, observant, graphic, and producing admirable matter-the other maundering, drivelling, subject to paroxysms, cramps, and total collapse, and penning exceeding many pages of unaccountable" bosh." So that in tackling every new chapter, one is disposed to question it beforehand, "Under which king, Bezonian?”—the sane or the insane; the constitutional and legitimate, or the absolute and usurping? Writing of Leviathan, he exclaims, " Unconsciously my chirography expands into placard capitals. Give me a condor's quill! Give me Vesuvius' crater for an inkstand! Friends, hold my arms!" Oh that his friends had obeyed that summons! They might have saved society from a huge dose of hyperbolical slang, maudlin sentimentalism, and tragi-comic bubble and squeak. 66 His Yankeeisms are plentiful as blackberries. "I am tormented," quoth he, "with an everlasting itch for things remote." Remote, too frequently, from good taste, good manners, and good sense. We need not pause at such expressions as "looking a sort of diabolically funny;" -"beefsteaks done rare ;"-" a speechlessly quick chaotic bundling of a man into eternity;"-" bidding adieu to circumspect life, to exist only in a delirious throb." But why wax fast and furious in a thousand such paragraphs as these:-" In landlessness alone resides the highest truth, indefinite as the Almighty. . . . Take heart, take heart, O Bulkington! Bear thee grimly, demi-god! Up from the spray of thy ocean-perishing -straight up, leaps thy apotheosis !"-" Thou [scil. Spirit of Equality] great God! who didst not refuse to the swart convict, Bunyan, the pale, poetic pearl; Thou who didst clothe with doubly hammered leaves of finest gold the stumped and paupered arm of old Cervantes; Thou who didst pick up Andrew Jackson from the pebbles; who didst hurl him upon a war-horse; who didst thunder him higher than a throne!"-" If such a furious trope may stand, his [Capt. Ahab's] special lunacy stormed his |