The Galaxy, Volume 23, No. 2, February, 1877

In Short

This volume is a quintessential nineteenth-century periodical, serving as a diverse cultural clearinghouse for a discerning, educated readership. It functions as a curated bridge between the immediate memories of the American Civil War and the burgeoning global interests of the Victorian age. By housing sober political histories alongside ghost stories, literary criticism, and reports on the latest archaeological and physical discoveries, the publication offers a window into how the era’s thinkers processed their shifting reality. It remains a valuable historical artifact of how nineteenth-century discourse balanced rigorous intellect with creative curiosity.

The Story

The volume opens with a reflective, authoritative examination of the Lincoln administration during the Thirty-seventh Congress. This political narrative charts the high-stakes friction within the government, detailing how the executive branch struggled to balance the demands of radical Republicans, wary Democrats, and the harsh realities of a nation at war. It specifically highlights the evolution of Thaddeus Stevens, tracing his shift from a fringe agitator to the commanding voice of the radical reconstruction movement. This historical focus provides the bedrock for the volume’s broader explorations of human character and societal change.

From the rigid hallways of Washington, the narrative shifts toward the psychological and the surreal. One striking arc follows a man haunted by spectral visions—a “ghost” that drives him to the brink of insanity and forces a desperate, silent flight from his own home. This darker, interior journey is mirrored by the travelogue of Mr. Margary, whose nine-hundred-mile trek through China serves as a counterpoint: a steady, realistic, and often courageous observation of foreign landscapes and customs. His journey, marked by diplomatic poise and a willingness to confront mobs with quiet reason rather than violence, contrasts sharply with the internal delirium of the man fleeing his ghosts.

The volume then pivots to a comparative study of the French novelist Honoré de Balzac and the English titan Charles Dickens. This analytical thread explores the shared intensity, "magnificent egotism," and professional obsession that defined both men, arguing that their creative brilliance was a self-consuming gold mine that inevitably ravaged their health. This leads into a wider discussion of literary appreciation, where the contributors critique the neglect of Shakespeare’s Troilus and Cressida and dismiss the "fussy" vanity of Shakespeare clubs in favor of a more direct, solitary engagement with the text.

The arc concludes with a series of disparate, modernizing vignettes: a debate on the physics of lightning rods, a report on the discovery of Neolithic skeletons in a French quarry, and a dry, meteorological summary of the previous October. It ends by evaluating contemporary fiction, panning a "Sunday-school" styled novel for its lack of realism and offering a skeptical view of another’s attempt to paint a girl as a "nymph" of the woods. These final notes leave the reader in a landscape of empirical facts and aesthetic judgments, grounding the lofty themes of politics and literature in the tangible, evolving world of the late 1870s.

How It Unfolds

The political crucible The volume begins by documenting the intense legislative pressures faced by the Lincoln administration, specifically the struggle to define a wartime policy regarding slavery and rebel property. It establishes a tone of retrospective scrutiny, examining the failures and successes of leadership during a time when precedent did not exist.

The haunted interior The narrative suddenly breaks into a visceral, gothic scene where a terrified man is pursued by visions of a sword-wielding angel. This intense psychological episode provides a sharp, chilling contrast to the preceding parliamentary history.

The traveler’s report A shift occurs as the focus turns to Mr. Margary’s factual, unvarnished account of his journey across China. His ability to calm a mob through mere civility is presented as a triumph of personality and intellect over chaos.

Literary portraiture The editor turns toward critical analysis, drawing a heavy, striking parallel between the lives and working habits of Balzac and Dickens. This section elevates the volume by situating its own literary interests within the broader European and English canons.

Scientific and critical finality The volume closes with a rapid-fire series of "Miscellany" reports, moving from the microscopic math of molecules to the classification of weather patterns. It ends with a blunt, honest assessment of new novels, reaffirming the publication’s role as an arbiter of cultural quality.

The People

Thaddeus Stevens serves as the volume’s primary political figure, characterized as an "astute" yet "rash" leader whose moral contradictions—such as his fierce devotion to the colored race coupled with his willingness to debauch political norms—make him a central force in the nation's reconstruction. He stands in stark contrast to the unnamed, wretched man who flees his home, a figure defined not by political power but by his total surrender to internal, ghostly terrors.

Alongside these, Mr. Margary emerges as the idealized man of action. He is composed, observant, and unprejudiced, successfully navigating the "debatable hill land" of China through a blend of passport-authorized authority and personal dignity. The volume also dwells on the ghosts of literary giants: Honoré de Balzac and Charles Dickens. These are treated as titans of industry, men whose "prodigious quantity of life" and "magnificent egotism" forced them to treat their creative imagination as a business. Finally, the "girl of the period" in the book reviews—and the young woman who rejects her suitor in favor of an ideal hero from a play—represent the era’s shifting gender dynamics and its obsession with the tension between romantic art and the "truth" of reality.

In Its Own Voice

"The second session of the Thirty-seventh Congress, from its commencement to its close, tested the strength of the Government and the capability of those who administered it."

The editor introduces the political instability of 1861, grounding the volume in the immense pressure of the Civil War.

"The beast had ripped the flesh from the bone nearly the length of his leg, as the surgeon ascertained, who was secretly called in."

The narrator recounts the gritty, dangerous reality behind the scenes of a circus performance involving a lion-tamer.

"In order to see the ultimate constitution of organic bodies, it would be necessary to use a magnifying power from 500 to 2,000 times greater than those we now possess."

The volume summarizes the scientific consensus on the limit of human vision, capturing the era’s mixture of humility and technological aspiration.

What It's Really About

The central theme is the attempt to reconcile the "heart of things"—the unchanging human nature—with a world rapidly advancing in scientific, political, and literary complexity. It explores the tension between the chaotic, often irrational experiences of individual life (hallucinations, political madness, personal hauntings) and the desire for structural, empirical truth. The book asks whether, in a world where we can calculate the number of atoms in a cubic inch, we can still account for the "strange contradictions" within figures like Thaddeus Stevens or the inexplicable apparitions that haunt the human mind. It is a meditation on the necessity of order in a century that felt increasingly, and dangerously, vast.

Why Read It Today

Readers who enjoy historical immersion will find this volume a rewarding, if challenging, experience. It does not speak to a modern audience in a modern voice; rather, it offers a direct, unmediated encounter with the language, prejudices, and intellectual enthusiasms of the 1870s. You will find the prose to be dense, authoritative, and occasionally opinionated, reflecting a time when editors felt free to dismiss "fussy" clubs or criticize the "monstrous" sweetness of popular stories.

The difficulty for the modern reader lies in the transition between its disparate sections, which jump from legislative history to ghost stories without apology. However, this is precisely why it remains compelling. It captures a specific, lost way of reading, where science and literature were not separate domains, but parts of a single, continuous intellectual journey. It is a slow, thoughtful read, best suited for those who want to understand the nineteenth-century mind—a mind that was simultaneously obsessed with the "great skies of a beautiful night" and the precise, cold measurements of atoms. It stays with you as a testament to an era that was trying, with remarkable vigor, to categorize, analyze, and ultimately understand its own place in the flow of history.