The Reveries of Reverdy.
we have made a discovery — a literary discovery. One of the sweetest and prettiest writers in this land of Hail Columbia, is the Hon. Reverdy Johnson, of Lyndhurst, near Baltimore, in the Commonwealth of Maryland. When, as became watchful journalists, we underwent the perusal of the proceedings of the Palace Garden Democracy, we found Judge Parker not fascinating, his only joke being green with the moss of several centuries, and his serious, alarming and hortatory passages, so intolerably, consummately and miraculously dull, that we were nearly in as much danger of coma as the Union--Heaven bless the dear old venerable concern!--is of dissolution. Judge Parker does not appear to be one of your brilliant men, the sort of person to hang up in a dark alley. He is solid, we suppose, and sensible, and practical, perhaps, and able. But not a shiner — at least not in a report. Then there was the Hon. Jefferson Davis, who intimated that we Republicans are men of low “instinct,” Mr. Davis being, we suppose, a man of instinct high, lofty, elevated, sublime, towering, soaring and tall. This disrespectful language did so discompose, disarrange and irritate our minds, that we incontinently vowed to read no more of Jefferson Davis, so that we missed all his serene gems and blushing flowers, and were compelled to fall back upon Reverdy. He was, as the young ladies lisp, “be-you-tiful.” A kind of frisky Dr. Johnson, [43] we should say, stately, but smiling; sesquipedalian, but fascinating; plethoric, but pretty. The epistle of Reverdy to the New Yorkers is good. As we perused his well-padded sentences, we were so solaced by sound that we ceased to look for sense, but suffered ourselves to be borne upon the tide of his eloquence, quiescent and unresisting. When Reverdy described the wreck and ruin of Dissolution, we could hardly go on, and yet, some strange fascinating power fixed our right orb on the page, while the left organ of vision performed a series of vibrating winks at a curiously rapid rate. These phenomena were accompanied by an almost irresistible desire to place the thumb to the nose. Dissolve the Union, says Reverdy, and you are physically, morally, socially and economically “done for.” He uses no such vulgar language, but that is what he means. He says to us: “Dissolve, and your downfall fall commences, and rapid will be its progress” A progressive downfall, Heaven save us! must be something perfectly awful, and suggests the dire catastrophe of Jack and Gill and the well-known pail of water. But hearken to the Baltimore Jeremiah! Having smashed the Union, he paints the cruel consequence of the division to the Northern half, or, to speak more accurately, two-thirds. Our “magnificent commercial marine will be one no longer.” Minus the Stars and Stripes, it will go at once to the celebrated locker of D. Jones. We shall “dwindle to the feebleness of a German principality.” We [44] can only “traverse the deep by permission of the great nations of the world.” “The charm of your enterprise,” says Jeremiah Johnson, “will be broken, the foundation of your strength destroyed, and you remitted to worse than infantile imbecility.” A pretty prospect, indeed! Mr. Johnson concludes with “total ruin” , and thus finishes the most melancholy epistle which we have read for many a day. We will do him the justice to say that in the water-cart style he is easily first. Choate is lurid, but Johnson is moist. The only encouraging thing which he says is, that the Kansas excitement is permanently closed; and he exults thereat. If he really thought so, he might have made his letter somewhat shorter and a trifle gayer. Why doleful dumps should now the Johnsonian mind oppress; why he should continue to sigh, and sob, and groan, and grunt, and cry, and choke; why he should persist in shouting fire, now that the fire is extinguished; why he should not, the danger past, come out of the tombs, shave himself, and put on a clean shirt and a smiling face, he may know, but we certainly do not. Does he like the luxury of woe? Does he find tears sweet? and sighs pleasant? and apprehension comforting? We advise him to bid farewell to idle fears, and to wipe his eyes with a star-spangled pocket handkerchief. Let him profit by the example of John Van Buren, who wrote to the Palace Garden to say that he could not come to the meeting, but sent his best love and encouragement. John may [45] sometimes swear and sometimes laugh, but he knows altogether too much to cry. So, upon this occasion, he comes bravely up to the scratch, and does not doubt at all. He is in the most altitudinous spirits. He sees victory in the distance preparing wreaths for the inevitable and triumphant Democracy into a particularly large chaplet for himself. Now, we like pluck, and we must say that the Prince presents a contrast very much in his own favor to the dyspeptic Mr. Reverdy, who must watch over that sensitive nature of his carefully, or he will be doing himself an injury in the next dangerous month of November. We thought that the fashion of lugubriosity had gone out, and that our public men of the Democratic party were about to show a little valor, and affect a confidence in the stability of the Union, even if they possessed it not. But they get worse and worse. The Hon. Rufus Choate, as we understand, now wears a hair shirt, fasts for seven days together, and spends all his leisure hours in offering prayers for the preservation of the Union. The Hon. Edward Everett has been a stranger to happiness for several years, and here turns up the Hon. Reverdy Johnson, by not a little the most frightened man in the Confederacy. Now, we are for a modicum of fun, and cannot possibly see the use of fingering our eyes, snuffling and trembling, like boys seeing, or expecting to see, a ghost. Care, too, which remorselessly killed the cat, will kill these sensitive patriots, unless they better control themselves. We, therefore, recommend to Mr. Reverdy Johnson some light purgative medicine, [46] regular hours, cheerful society, and a reasonable effort to rely, just the least in the world, upon Divine Providence.October 21, 1858.
