Chapter 3 No.3

"They du say Swan Day's gun off for good!" said Cely Temple, as she returned from the store, with a Dutch-oven in her hand, which she had purchased,-"an' to th' East Injees!"

"I want to know!" rejoined Mrs. Fox.

"I know some'll be sorry!" continued Cely, while Dorcas diligently stirred a five-pail kettle of apple-sauce, that hung stewing over the low fire.

Mrs. Fox looked up quickly at her daughter, but Dorcas continued quietly stirring, and without turning round.

"Mahala Dorr, I guess," said she.

"Wall, M'hala'll be, an' so'll others," answered Cely, prudently. "But I expect likely Swan'll do well, ef he don't die. They say the atemuspere is pison there!-especially for dark-complected folks."

To this hopeful remark Mrs. Fox rejoined, that "old Miss Day come herself from a warm country, and 't was likely her son would settle there for good, and enjoy his health there better than what he would here."

"He'll look out well for Number One, anyhow!" said Cely, lifting the lid of the Dutch-oven from the fire.

Dorcas shot an angry glance at the apple-sauce.

Nothing further passed on the subject, and Dorcas somehow felt, as she stirred, as if Swan were already a long, long way off,-as if the ship had sailed, and would stay sailed, like an enchanted ship, hovering on the horizon, and never come near enough for the passengers to be distinguished,-or else, maybe, go up into the clouds, and rest there with all its masts and spars distinct against the rose-mist, as she had read of once in a book of travels,-or, perhaps, even be inverted, and stand there on its head, as it were, always: but everything must be upside down, of course, in China. Already the thought of Swan Day had mingled with the mists of the past. The outline became indefinite, and softened into a golden splendor, that belonged no more to her, but was essentially of another hemisphere. He had by this time cut loose from home and country. Whether a hundred, or a hundred thousand miles, it mattered not. Since she could not grasp the idea, the distance was as good as infinite to her.

This, you see, is not exactly coquetry. But events drifted her.

When supper was over, and Dinah had gone to sleep, and Cely to visit the neighbors, as usual, Dorcas shyly approached the subject which occupied her thoughts, by getting the little box of jewelry, and looking at it. Her mother called her from the kitchen, out of which the bed-room opened.

"Does mother want me?" asked Dorcas, turning round, with the box in her hand.

"No, no matter," answered the mother; and, possibly with an intuitive feeling of what was in her daughter's thought, she went into the bed-room, and looked with her at the pin and ring of Aunt Dorcas.

"Was it-was it a long time, mother,-I mean, before he came back?" said Dorcas.

"Who? Captain Waterhouse? Bless you! they was as good as merried for ten year, an' he was goin' all the time, an' then, jest at the last minute, to be 'racked! It's 'most always so, when people goes to sea," added she, in a plaintive tone.

Dorcas meditated; she looked wistfully at her mother.

"It's a pretty pin,-dreadful pretty round the edge."

"Yes, 't is! I expect likely them's di'mon's. 'T was made over in foreign parts. He was goin' to bring his picter, too, from there. But he's lost and gone! Your Aunt Dorcas never had no more suitors after that, and she kind o' gin in, and never had no sperits."

Dorcas's eyes filled, and she closed the box.

Henry Mowers would not come to the Fox farm till the next Sunday night. That was as much settled as the new moon. So Dorcas had the whole week to herself, to be thoroughly unhappy in,-all the more so, a thousand times more so, for being utterly incapable of saying or seeing why. An instinctive delicacy kept her from showing to any of the family that she was even depressed; and her voice was heard steadily warbling one of Wesley's hymns, or "Wolfe's Address to his Army," in clear, brilliant tones, that rang up-stairs and down. The general impression of distance and water associated her absent lover with all that was heroic and romantic in song; for of novels she knew nothing,-the Colonel's library being limited, in the imaginative line, to a torn copy of the "Iliad," which had been left at the house by a travelling cobbler.

However, romance is before all rules, and shapes its own adventures. The beauty of Swan Day, which, dark and slight as it was, gleamed with a power for Dorcas's eye and heart before which Buonarotti's would have been only pale stone forever,-that beauty dwelt in her imagination and memory, as only first romantic impressions can. Distance canonized him, enthroned him, glorified him. And when she thought of his setting forth so boldly, so bravely, to tread the wide water, to tempt the hot sun, the foreign exposure, the perpetual dangers of heathen countries, for her unworthy sake, all that was tenderest, most grateful, in her now first wakened nature, rose up in distressful tumult, and agitated the depths that are in all women's souls.

If there had been anybody to whom she could confide the sad wrenching of her spirit, any one who would have cleared her vision, and taught her to look on "this picture and on this," she might not have been so puzzled between her two Hyperions. But as it was, it was a sorrowful struggle. One had the advantage of distance and imagination,-one of presence, and of the magnetism of eye and lip.

"I am a wicked, wicked girl!" said she, as she stood before the glass, and loosened the locks that fell like sunshine over her shoulders. But this confession, with true New-England reticence, was uttered only to one listener,-herself.

Then, she recalled, for it was Monday night once more, the frank and noble nature of Henry: how he had not asked her to promise him, but seemed to take for granted her truth and faith; how he had looked so fondly, so clearly into her eyes, not for what he might find there, but to show the transparent goodness and sincerity of his own; and how he had told her of all his plans and hopes, of his wish and her father's intention that they should be married that very fall; how little he had said of his own overflowing affection, only that "he had never thought of anybody else." Dorcas only felt, without putting the sense into language, that in this life-boat there was safety. But then had she not sent her heart on a venture in the other,-that other which even now was tossing on the waves of a future, full-freighted with hope, and faith in her truth?

She opened the little box again, and looked at the ring and painted pin. How sorrowfully she looked at them now, seen through tears of conscious experience! How mournful seemed the ground hair, and the tints woven of so many broken hopes, sad thoughts, and wrecked expectations! the hair, kissed so many times in the weary years of waiting, and then wept over in the drearier desolation, when the sight could only bring thoughts of the salt waves dashing amongst it in the deep sea! What a life that had been of poor Aunt Dorcas! Then came across her busy thought the words of her mother,-"It's 'most always so!"

Swan sailed very far away, in these tearful reveries, and took hope and life with him.

When the next Sunday evening came, and the next, and the next,-and when Dorcas had ceased to say, blushing and smiling,-"Don't, Henry! you know I should make such a poor kind of a wife for you! and your mother wouldn't think anything of me!"-and when, Henry had had an offer to go to Western New York, where there were nobody knew how many beautiful girls, all waiting to pounce on the tall, fine-looking young farmer,-when Colonel Fox forgot he was a deacon, and swore that Dorcas was undeserving of such a happy lot as was offered to her,-when the tears, and the reveries, and the pictures of far-away lands, and the hopes that might wither with long years of waiting, were all merged and effaced in the healthy happiness of the present,-Dorcas dried her tears, and applied herself diligently to building up her flaxen trousseau, and smothered in her heart the image of dark and brilliant beauty that had for a time occupied it.

"She waited-a long time!-years-and years!" murmured Dorcas, sorrowfully, as she looked at the pin and ring, which in her mind were associated strongly with only one person,-and that one hereafter to be dead to her. As soon as events clearly defined her duties, Dorcas had no further questions with herself. If the box had been Pandora's, not the less resolutely would she have shut it forever, and so crushed the hope that it could never have leaped out.

So, with choking tears, and throbbing pulses, she followed many brilliant fancies and hopes to their last resting-place. Henceforth her path was open and clear, her duties defined, and with daily occupation of hand and thought she strove to displace all that had ever made her other than the cheerful and busy Dorcas. For the last time, she closed and put away the box.

* * * * *

THRENODY.

[Among the imprinted papers of the author of "Charles Auchester" and "Counterparts" was found this poem, addressed to a father on the death of a favorite son, whose noble disposition and intellectual gifts were all enlisted on the side of suffering humanity.]

O mourner by the ever-mourning deep,

Full as the sea of tears! imperial heart,

King in thy sorrow over all who weep!

O wrestler with the darkness set apart

In clouds of woe whose lightnings are the throb

Of thy fast-flashing pulses! pause to hear

The lullabies of many an alien sob,

A storm of alien sighs,-so far! so near!

Oh that our vigils with thy gentle dead

Could charm thee from thy night-long agonies,

Could steep thy brain in slumber mild, and shed

Elysian dreams upon thy closing eyes!

In vain! all vain!-'tis yet the feast of tears;

Sorrow for sorrow is the only spell;

Nor wanders yet to melt in unspent years

The wringing murmur of our fresh farewell!

Thousands bereft strew wide the ashes dim;

Rich hearts, poor hands, the lovely, the unlearned,

Bemoan the angel of the age in him,

A star unto its starlight strength returned,

The City of Delights hath lost its gem,

The Sea the changeful glance so like its own,

Genius the darling of her diadem,

Whose smile made moonlight round her awful throne.

Those elfin steps their music moves no more

Beneath light domes to tune the festal train,

Nor at the moony eves along the shore

To brim with fairy forms that wizard brain.

Cold rocks, wild winds, and ever-changing waves,

Sad rains that fret the sea and drown the day,

We hail,-well pleased that stricken Autumn raves,

Though not with Winter shall our griefs decay.

On lurid mornings, when the lustrous sea

Is violet-shadowed from the warm blue air,

When the dark grasses brighten over thee,

And the winged sunbeams flutter golden there,-

Then to the wild green slope, thy chosen rest,

The blossoms of our spirits we will bring,

(Again a babe upon thy mother's breast,

An infant seed of the eternal Spring,)-

Thoughts bright and dark as violets in their dew,

Unfading memories of a smile more sweet

Than perfume of pale roses, hopes that strew

Ethereal lilies on those silent feet

The ghost of Pain haunts not that garden-land

Where Passion's phantom is so softly laid;

But Charity beside that earth doth stand,

Most lovely left of all, thy sister-shade.

Her baby-loves like trembling snowdrops lean

Above thy calm hands and thy quiet head,

When morn is fair, or noonday's glory keen

Or the white star-fire glistens on thy bed.

Her eyes of heaven upon thy slumbers brood,

Her watch is o'er thy pillow, and her breath

Tells every breeze that stirs thy solitude

How thou didst earn that rest on earth called Death,-

Earned in such quickening youth and brilliant years!

For us too early, not too soon for thee!-

So may we rest, when Death shall dry our tears,

Till everlasting Morning makes us free!

THE UTILITY AND THE FUTILITY OF APHORISMS.

The best aphorisms are pointed expressions of the results of observation, experience, and reflection. They are portable wisdom, the quintessential extracts of thought and feeling. They furnish the largest amount of intellectual stimulus and nutriment in the smallest compass. About every weak point in human nature, or vicious spot in human life, there is deposited a crystallization of warning and protective proverbs. For instance, with what relishing force such sayings as the following touch the evil resident in indolence and delay!-"An unemployed mind is the Devil's workshop"; "The industrious tortoise wins the race from the lagging eagle"; "When God says, To-day, the Devil says, To-morrow." In like manner, another cluster of adages depict the certainty of the detection and punishment of crime:-"Murder will out"; "Justice has feet of wool, but hands of iron"; "God's mills grind slow, but they grind sure." So in relation to every marked exposure of our life, there will be found in the records of the common thought of mankind a set of deprecating aphorisms.

The laconic compactness of these utterances, their constant applicability, the pungent patness with which they hit some fact of experience, principle of human nature, or phenomenon of life, the ease with which their racy sense may be apprehended and remembered, give them a powerful charm for the popular fancy. Accordingly, a multitude of proverbs are afloat in the writings and in the mouths of every civilized people. Groups of national proverbs exist in most of the languages of the world, each family of apothegms revealing the chief traits of the people who gave them birth. In these collective expressions of national mind, we can recognize-if so incomplete a characterization may be ventured-the indrawn meditativeness of the Hindu, the fiery imagination of the Arab, the devout and prudential understanding of the Hebrew, the ?sthetic subtilty of the Greek, the legal breadth and sensual recklessness of the Roman, the martial frenzy of the Goth, the chivalric and dark pride of the Spaniard, the treacherous blood of the Italian, the mercurial vanity of the Frenchman, the blunt realism of the Englishman.

It is obvious enough that the masses of moral statements or standing exhortations composing the aphorisms of a language cannot mix in the daily minds of men without deep cause and effect. It will be worth our while to inquire into the bearings of this matter; for, though many a gatherer has carried his basket through these diamond districts of the mind, we do not remember that any one has sharply examined the value of the treasures so often displayed, set forth the methods of their influence and its qualifications, and determined the respective limits of their use and their worthlessness. Undertaking this task, we must, in the outset, divide aphorisms into the two classes of proverbs and maxims, plebeian perceptions and aristocratic conclusions, moral axioms and philosophic rules. This distinction may easily be made clear, and will prove useful.

Popular proverbs are national, or cosmopolitan, and they are anonymous,-rising from among the multitude, and floating on their breath. They are generalizations of the average observation of a people. Undoubtedly, as a general thing, each one was first struck out by some superior mind. But usually this happened so early that the name of the author is lost. Proverbs-as the etymology hints-are words held before the common mind, words in front of the public. Wise maxims, on the contrary, are individual, may more commonly be traced to their origin in the writings of some renowned author, and are more limited in their audience. They are the results of comprehensive insight, the ripened products of searching meditation, the weighty utterances of weighty minds. The proverb, "A burnt child dreads the fire," flies over all climes and alights on every tongue. The maxim, "All true life begins with renunciation," appeals to comparatively few, and tarries only in prepared and thoughtful minds. Proverbs are often mere statements of facts, barren truisms, too obvious to instruct our thought, affect our feeling, or in any way change our conduct, though the accuracy with which the arrow is shot fixes our attention. Notice a few examples of this sort:-"A friend in need is a friend indeed"; "Many a little makes a mickle"; "Anger is a brief madness"; "It is an ill wind that blows nobody any good." Such affirmations are too general and obvious to be provocative awakeners of original reflection, sentiment, or will. Maxims, on the other hand, instead of being general descriptions or condensed common-places, are usually definite directions, discriminative exhortations. Notice such specimens as these:-"Take care of the pence, and the pounds will take care of themselves"; "When angry, count ten before you speak"; "Do the duty nearest your hand, and the next will already have grown clearer"; "Remember that a thing begun is half done." Proverbs, then, are results of observation, often affirmations of quite evident facts, as, "Necessity is the mother of invention," or, "Who follows the river will arrive at the sea." Maxims, in distinction, are results of reflection. They are experience generalized into rules for the guidance of action, as, "Think twice before you speak once," or, "Train up a child in the way he should go, and when he is old he will not depart from it." Proverbs are statical; maxims are dynamic. Those are wisdom embalmed; these wisdom vitalized. The former are literary fodder; the latter are literary pemmican.

The commonest application of proverbs is as mental economics, substitutes for thought. They are constantly employed by the ordinary sort of persons as provisions to avoid spiritual exertion, artifices to dispose of a matter with the smallest amount of intellectual trouble, as when one ends a controversy with the adage, "Least said, soonest mended." The majority of people desire to get along with the least possible expenditure of thinking. To many a hard-headed laborer, five minutes of girded and continuous thinking are more exhaustive than a whole day of muscular toil. No fact is more familiar than that illiterate minds are furnished with an abundance of trite sayings which they readily cite on all occasions. They thus hit, or at least fancy they hit, the principle which applies to the exigency, without the trouble of extemporaneously thinking it out for themselves on the spot. Such saws as, "The pot must not call the kettle black," "One swallow does not make a Spring," "Nought is never in danger," "Out of sight, out of mind," often give employment to an otherwise freightless tongue, and serve as excusing makeshifts for a mind incompetent, from ignorance, indolence, or fatigue, to discharge the duty of furnishing its own thought and expression for the occasion.

Proverbs are more frequently used as explanations than as guides of conduct, as the reason why we have acted in a certain manner than as a reason why we should act so. "Look before you leap," is usually said after we have leaped. When a miserly man refuses to give anything in behalf of some distant object, his refusal is not prompted by the remembrance of the proverb, "Charity begins at home"; but the stingy propensity first stirs in the man and actuates him, and then he expresses his motive, or evades the true issue, by quoting the selfish old saw ever ready at his hand. In such cases the axiom is not the forerunning cause of the action, but its justifying explanation. Sometimes, undeniably, an applicable proverb coming to mind does influence a man and decide his conduct. Coming at the right moment, in the wavering of his will, it suggests the principle which determines him, lends the needful balance of impulse for which he waited. An old proverb, indorsed by the usage of generations, strikes on the ear like a voice falling from the heights of antiquity; it is clothed with a kind of authority. Doubtless many a poor boy has received a sound flogging which he would have escaped, had not his father happened to recall the somewhat cruel and questionable aphorism of Solomon, currently abbreviated into "Spare the rod and spoil the child." When Charles IX. was hesitating as to the enactment of the Saint Bartholomew Massacre, his bigoted mother, infuriated with sectarian hate, whispered in his ear, "Clemency is sometimes cruelty, and cruelty clemency,"-and the fatal decree was sealed. But such instances are exceptional, and partly deceptive, too. Man is usually governed by his own passions, his own circumstances, or his own reason, not by any verbal propositions. And when an apt and timely adage seems to determine him, it is, for the most part, because it acts upon responsive feelings pre?xistent in him and already struggling to express themselves. And thus, upon the whole, it is to be concluded that proverbs are the children of Epimetheus, or afterthought, rather than of Prometheus, or forethought. They are rather products than producers,-intellectual forms rather than intellectual forces. The prevalent notion of their influence is a huge and singular error. One of our wisest authors, himself a great aphorist, says,-"Proverbs are the sanctuaries of the intuitions." But the intuitions, for the very reason that they are intuitive, need no advisory guidance, and admit of no verbal help.

But when we turn from the aphoristic proverbs of the people to the aphoristic maxims of the wise, a deep distinction and contrast confront us. These, so far from being evasions of effort or substitutes for thought, are direct stimulants to thought, provocative summonses to more earnest mental application. Seneca says, "Wouldst thou subject all things to thyself? Subject thyself to reason." A modern writer says, "They are not kings who have thrones, but they who know how to govern." Now any one meeting these maxims, if they have any effect on him, will be set a-thinking to discover the principle contained in them. He will feel that there is a profound significance in them; and his curiosity will be awakened, his intellect fired, to find out the grounds and bearings of the law they denote. In this way the words of the wise are goads to prick and urge the faculties of inferior minds. Pointed expressions of the experience of the sovereign masters of life and the world impel feebler and less agile natures to follow the tracks of light and emulate the choice examples set before them, with swifter movements and with richer results than they could ever have attained, if not thus encouraged. Proverbial axioms flourish copiously in the idiomatic ground and vernacular climate of unlearned, undisciplined, unreflective minds, as thistles on the highway where every ass may gather them. But precious maxims, those "short sentences drawn from a long experience," as Cervantes calls them, are found mostly in the writings of the greatest geniuses, Solomon, Aristotle, Shakspeare, Bacon, Goethe, Richter, Emerson: and they appeal comparatively but to a select class of minds, kindred in some degree to those that originated them.

To appreciate and use correctly a valuable maxim requires a genius, a vital appropriating exercise of mind, closely allied to that which first created it. In order to secure genuine profit here, the disciple must for himself repeat the processes of the teacher, reach the same conclusion, see the same truth. Wisdom cannot be mechanically taken, but must be spiritually assimilated,-cannot be put on as a coat or hat, used as a hammer or a sling, but must be intelligently grasped, digested, and organized into the mental structure and habits. The truth of this is at once so palpable and so important that it has found embodiment in numerous proverbs known to almost every one: "An ounce of mother-wit is worth a pound of school-wit"; "A pennyweight of your own wit is worth a ton of other people's"; "Who cannot work out his salvation by heart will never do it by book."

For the reason just indicated, we think the common estimate of the actual influence of even the costliest preceptive sayings is monstrously exaggerated. That an aphorism should really be of use, it must virtually be reproduced by the faculties of your own soul. But the mental energy and acquirement which thus recreate it in a great degree supersede the necessity of it, render it an expression not of a guidance you need from without, but of an insight and force already working within. Your character determines what maxims you will select or create far more than the maxims you choose or make determine what your character will be. Herbart says, "Characters with ruling plans are energetic; characters with ruling maxims are virtuous." This is true, since a continuous plan subsidizes the forces that would without it run to waste, and a deliberately chosen authority girds and guides the soul from perilous dallying and dissipation. Nevertheless, it is not so much that characters are energetic or virtuous because they have ruling plans or maxims as it is that they have ruling plans or maxims because they are energetic or virtuous. Say to a penurious, hard, grumpy man, "It is more blessed to give than to receive." Will you thus make him liberal, sympathetic, affable? No, his character will neutralize your precept, as vinegar receiving the sunshine into its bosom becomes more sour. Some persons seem to imagine that a wise maxim is a sort of fairy's wand, one touch of which will transform the loaded panniers of a donkey into the fiery wings of a Pegasus. Surely, it is a great error. Trench says, with an amusing na?veté, "There is scarcely a mistake which in the course of our lives we have committed, but some proverb, had we known and attended to its lesson, might have saved us from it." The two comprehensive conditions, "had we known and attended to its lesson," are discharging conductors, that empty the sentence of all proper meaning, and leave only a rank of hollow words behind. He might as well say, "Had we never been tempted, we had never fallen,-had we possessed all wisdom, we had never committed an error," The best maxim that ever was made cannot directly impart or create knowledge or virtue or spiritual force. It can only give a voice to those qualities where they already exist, and so set in motion a strengthening interchange of action and reaction. Though a fool's mouth be stuffed with proverbs, he still remains as much a fool as before. He is past preaching to who does not care to mend. As the brave Schiller affirms, "Heaven and earth fight in vain against a dunce." Eternal contact with nutritious wisdom can teach no lesson, nor profit at all one who has not a co?perative and assimilative mind. The anchor is always in the sea, but it never learns to swim. Philosophic precepts address the reason; but the springs of motive and regeneration are in the sentiments. To attempt the reformation of a bad man by means of fine aphorisms is as hopeless as to bombard a fortress with diamonds, or to strive to exhilarate the brain by pelting the forehead with grapes.

And yet, notwithstanding these large limitations and abatements, it is not to be denied that both proverbs and maxims, when habitually recalled, generally have some effect, often are strongly influential, and may, by a faithful observance of the conditions, be made extremely efficacious. What, then, are the conditions of deriving profit from the contemplation of aphorisms? How can we make their futility end, their utility begin? The first, ever indispensable condition is fresh discrimination. There are false, cynical, mean, devilish aphorisms, as well as sound and worthy ones. Each style of character, kind and grade of experience breathes itself out in corresponding expressions. "Self is the man"; "Look out for Number One"; "Devil take the hindmost"; "One for me is as good as two for you"; "Every man has his price"; "Draw the snake from its hole by another man's hand"; "Vengeance is a feast fit for the gods." The fact that such infernal sentiments are proverbs must be no excuse for not trampling them out of sight with disgust and scorn. Discrimination is needed not only to reject bad sayings, but also to correct incomplete or extravagant ones. The maxim, "Never judge by appearances," must be modified, because in reality appearances are all that we have to judge from. Its true rendering is, "Judge cautiously, for appearances are often deceptive." A proverb is almost always partial, presenting one aspect of the matter,-or excessive, making no allowance for exceptions. Here independent insight is requisite, that we may not err. As a general thing, aphorisms are particular truths put into forms of universality, and they must be severely scrutinized, lest a mere characteristic of the individual be mistaken for a normal faculty of the race. For instance, it is said, "A reconciled friend is an enemy in disguise." Not always, by any means; it depends greatly on the character of the man, "Forewarned is forearmed." Generally this is true, but not invariably; as sometimes a man, by being forewarned of danger, is unnerved with terror, and undone. So the two maxims, "Never abandon a certainty for an uncertainty," "Nothing venture, nothing have," destroy each other. Whether you shall give up the one bird in the hand and try for the two in the bush depends on the relative worth of the one and the two, and the probabilities of success in the trial. No abstract maxim can help solve that problem: it requires living intelligence. To follow a foreign rule empirically will often be to fare as the monkey fared, who, undertaking to shave, as he had seen his master do, gashed his face and paws. Fearful incisions of the soul will he get who accepts unqualifyingly the class of impulsive proverbs with their enormously overdrawn inferences: such as that of David, when he said in his haste, "All men are liars"; or that of Moore, when he said in his song, "The world is all a fleeting show, for man's illusion given"; or that maxim of Schopenhauer, so full of deadly misanthropy and melancholy that one would gladly turn his back on a world in which he believed such a rule necessary, "Love no one, hate no one, is the first half of all worldly wisdom; say nothing, believe nothing, is the other half."

The first condition of a profitable use of maxims being a thorough mastery of the rule proposed, with its limits, the next condition is an accurate self-knowledge. Know yourself, your weaknesses, your aptitudes, your exposures, your gifts and strength, in order that you may know what to seek or avoid, what to cherish or spurn, what to spur or curb, what to fortify or assail. For example, if your head is made of butter, it is clear that it will not do for you to be a baker. If you are a coward, you must not volunteer to lead a forlorn hope. The advantage of self-knowledge is that it enables us to prescribe for ourselves the contemplation of such principles and motives as we need. If our thought is narrow and our fancy cold, we should study the maxims that instruct,-as, "Joys are wings, sorrows are spurs." If our heart is faint and our will weak, we should study the maxims that inspire,-as, "The reward of a thing well done is to have done it." The instructive maxim opens a vista of truth to the intellect, as when Goethe said, "A man need not be an architect in order to live in a house." The inspiring maxim strikes a martial chord in the soul, as when Alexander said to his Greeks, shrinking at the sight of the multitudinous host of Persians, "One butcher does not fear many sheep." The evil of self-ignorance is, that it permits men to choose as their favorite and guiding maxims those adages which express and foster their already rampant propensities, leaving their drooping deficiencies to pine and cramp in neglect. The miser pampers his avarice by repeating a hundred times a day, "A penny saved is a penny gained": as if that were the maxim he needed! The spend-thrift comforts and confirms himself in his prodigality by saying, "God loveth a cheerful giver": as if that were not precisely the saying he ought never to recall! Audacity and arrogance constantly say to themselves, "Be bold, be bold, and evermore be bold." Timidity and distrust are ever whispering, "Be not too bold." Thus what would be one man's meat proves another man's poison; whereas, were it rightly distributed, both would be nourished into healthy development. The over-reckless should restrain himself by remembering that "Fools rush in where angels fear to tread." The over-cautious should animate himself with the reflection that "The coward dies a thousand deaths, the brave man only one." A man who, with deep self-knowledge, carefully chooses and perseveringly applies maxims adapted to check his excess and arouse his defect may derive unspeakable profit from them.

To do this with full success, however, he must have a discriminating knowledge of the circumstances as well as of the rule, and of himself. "Circumstances alter cases." What applies happily in one exigency may be perfectly absurd or ruinous in a different situation. The mule, loaded with salt, waded through a brook, and, as the salt melted, the burden grew light. The ass, loaded with wool, tried the same experiment; but the wool, saturated with water, was twice as heavy as before. So the Satyr, in ?sop's fable, asked the man coming in from the cold, "Why he blew on his fingers?" and was told, "To warm them." Soon after he asked, "Why he blew in his soup?" and was told, "To cool it." Whereupon he rushed on the man with a club and slew him as a liar. The ramifications of truth in varying emergencies are infinitely subtile and complicated, and often demand the very nicest care in distinguishing. Good advice, when empirically taken and rashly followed, is as an eye in the hand, sure to be put out the first thing on trying to use it. "Advice costs nothing and is good for nothing," it is often said. But that depends on the quality of the advice, on the circumstances, and on what kind of persons impart and receive the counsel. Advice given with earnestness and wisdom, and applied with docility and discrimination, may cost a great deal and be invaluable. Competence and aptness, or folly and heedlessness, make a world of difference. The great difficulty in regard to the fruitfulness of advice is the universal readiness to impart, the usual unwillingness to accept it. We give advice by the bucket, take it by the grain. For these reasons the world is yet surfeited with precept and starving for example: and the applicability is by no means exhausted of the fable of Brabrius, who tells how when an old crab said to her child, "Awkward one, walk not so crookedly!" he replied, "Mother, walk you straight, I will watch and follow." Verbal wisdom would direct us; exemplified wisdom draws us.

The first danger, then, from aphorisms is, that they may enable us to evade, instead of helping us to fulfil, the duty of meeting and solving for ourselves each mental exigency as it arises. In such a case, educative discipline and growth are forfeited. The other danger from them is, that they may be applied mechanically, without a just understanding of them, and thus that grievous mistakes may be made. Their genuine use is to excite our own minds to master the principles which their authors have set forth in them. Fresh honesty of personal thought, aspiration, and patience, is the spiritual talisman wherewith alone we can vivify truisms into truths, and transmute noble maxims into flesh and blood, nay, into immortal mind. The master-thinkers aid us to do this by the quickening power of their suggestions,-the great critic not only giving his readers direction, but also helping them to eyesight.

To traverse the works of some authors is like going through a carefully arranged herbarium, where every specimen is lifeless, shrivelled, dusty, crumbling to the touch. The writings of genuine men of genius are like a conservatory, where every plant of thought and sentiment, whether indigenous or exotic, is alive, full of bloom and fragrance, the sap at work in its veins. Verbal statements which are petrifactions of wisdom can neither stimulate nor nourish; but verbal statements which are vital concentrations of wisdom do both. He has learned one of the most important lessons in human life who understands adequately the difference between formal perception and organic experience, contrasting the futility of detached and deathly proverbs with the utility of nutritious and electrical maxims. A mechanical teacher crowds the ear with mummified precepts and exhortations; an inspired teacher brings surcharged examples and rules into contact with the mind. The distinction is world-wide and inexhaustible.

* * * * *

SHELLEY.

BY ONE WHO KNEW HIM.

If photography had existed during the lifetime of Shelley, it alone would have sufficed to correct many a misconception of his character founded upon imperfect portraiture; and even the most boyish recollections of him, matter-of-fact as they are, may help to solve the problem upon which many minds have been engaged without yet having finished the work. For Shelley still remains before the world misconceived because misdescribed; and if society is gradually clearing its ideas of the man, it is not only because the preconceptions of that multitudinous authority are themselves gradually drifting away, but also because substantial facts are slowly coming into view. Their development has been hindered by obstacles which will be understood when I have proceeded a little farther, and even within the compass of this brief sketch I hope that I shall be able to make readers on both sides of the Atlantic work their own way a little closer to the truth.

Shelley is still regarded by the majority, either as a victim of persecution, or a rebel against authority, or both,-his friends probably inclining to hold him up as a philosopher-patriot, whose resistance to intellectual oppression placed him in the condition of a martyr and robbed him of his fair share of life. My own earliest memory presents him very much in that aspect. I first recall him pale and slender, worn with anxiety, openly alluding to the marks of premature age in his own aspect, bursting with aspirations against tyranny of all kinds, and yielding to fits of dreadful despondency under sufferings inflicted by the dignitaries of the land at the instance of his own family. The circumstances by which he was surrounded contributed to this guise of martyrdom.

My own earliest recollections began in prison, where my father[A] was incarcerated for critical remarks which at the present day would scarcely attract attention, and which were put forth in no impulse of personal hostility, but under the strongest sense of duty, with the desire to vindicate the constitutional freedom of England against the perverted control of faction and the influences of a corrupt court. At that time my father was accounted a man prone to mutiny against "the powers that be," although his political opinions belonged to a class which would now be regarded as too moderate for popular liberalism. He has been censured for literary affectation and for personal improvidence, but only by those who do not understand the real elements of his character. The leading ideas of his mind were, first, earnest duty to his country at any cost to himself; next, the sacrifice of any ordinary consideration to personal affection and friendship; and lastly, the cultivation of "the ideal," especially as it is developed in imaginative literature. His life was passed in an absolute devotion to these three principles. A one-sided frankness has blazoned to the world the sacrifices which he accepted from friends, but has whispered nothing of the more than commensurate sacrifices made on his side; and the simplicity that rendered him the creature of the library in which he lived entered into the expression of all his thoughts and feelings.

[Footnote A: Leigh Hunt.]

Although I can remember some of the most eminent men who visited us in prison, Shelley I cannot; but I can well recall my father's description of the young stranger who came to him breathing the classic thoughts of college, ardent with aspirations for the emancipation of man from intellectual slavery, and endowed by Nature with an aspect truly "angelic."

In the interval before his next visit to us, Shelley had passed through the first serious passion of his youth, had married Harriet Westbrooke, had become the father of two children, and had thus to all appearance secured the transmission of the estates strictly entailed with the baronetcy,-but had also been exiled from his family-home, as well as from college, for his revolutionary and infidel principles, had gone through a course of domestic disappointment, had separated from his wife, and was threatened with the removal of his children, on the ground of the impious and "immoral" training to which they were destined under his guardianship. He came to our house for support and consolation; he found in it a home for his intellect as well as for his feelings, and he was as strictly a part of the family as any of our blood-relations, for he came and went at pleasure. I can remember that I performed his bidding equally with that of my father; and as to personal deference or regard, the only distinction which my memory can discover is, that I found in Shelley a companion whom I better understood, and whose country rambles I was more pleased to share. For this there were many reasons, and amongst them that Shelley entered more unreservedly into the sports and even the thoughts of children. I had probably awakened interest in him, not only because I was my father's eldest child, but still more because I had already begun to read with great avidity, and with an especial sense of imaginative wonders and horrors; and, familiarized with the conversation amongst literary men, I had really been able to understand something of his position, insomuch that no doubt he saw the intense interest I took in himself and his sufferings.

The emotions that he underwent were but too manifest in the unconcealed anxiety and the eager recital of newly awakened hopes, with intervals of the deepest depression. He suffered also from physical causes, which I then only in part understood. This suffering was traced to the attack made upon him at Tanyralt, in Wales, when, on the night of February the 26th, 1813, some man who had been prowling about the house in which he lived first fired at him through the window, and then entered the room, escaping when the man-servant was called in by the tumult and the screams of Mrs. Shelley. The whole incident has been doubted,-why, I can hardly understand, unless the reason is that some of the conjectures in which Mrs. Shelley indulged were over-imaginative. She mentions by name a political opponent who had said that "he would drive them out of the country." My own weak recollections point to reasons more personal. But what I do know is, that Shelley himself ascribed the injury from which he suffered to a pressure of the assassin's knee upon him in the struggle. The complaint was of long standing; the attacks were alarmingly severe, and the seizure very sudden. I can remember one day at Hampstead: it was soon after breakfast, and Shelley sat reading, when he suddenly threw up his book and hands, and fell back, the chair sliding sharply from under him, and he poured forth shrieks, loud and continuous, stamping his feet madly on the ground. My father rushed to him, and, while the women looked out for the usual remedies of cold water and hand-rubbing, applied a strong pressure to his side, kneading it with his hands; and the patient seemed gradually to be relieved by that process. This happened about the time when he was most anxious for the result of the trial which was to deprive him of his children. In the intervals he sought relief in reading, in conversation,-which especially turned upon classic literature,-in freedom of thought and action, and in play with the children of the house. I can remember well one day when we were both for some long time engaged in gambols, broken off by my terror at his screwing up his long and curling hair into a horn, and approaching me with rampant paws and frightful gestures as some imaginative monster.

It was at this time that the incident happened which has been mentioned by my father. A poor woman had been attending her son before a criminal court in London. As they were returning home at night, fatigue and anxiety so overcame her that she fell on the ground in convulsions, where she was found by Shelley. He appealed to a very opulent person, who lived on the top of the hill, asking admission for the woman into the house, or the use of the carriage, which had just set the family down at the door. The stranger was repulsed with the cold remark that impostors swarmed everywhere, and that his own conduct was "extraordinary." The good Samaritan, whom the Christian would not help, warned the uncharitable man that such treatment of the poor is sometimes chastised by hard treatment of the rich in days of trouble; and I heard Shelley describe the manner in which the gentleman retreated into his mansion, exclaiming, "God bless me, Sir! dear me, Sir!" In the account of the occurrence given by my father, he has omitted to mention that Shelley and the woman's son, who had already carried her a considerable way up the main hill of Hampstead, brought her on from the inhospitable mansion to our house in their arms; and I believe, that, the son's strength failing, for some way down the hill into the Vale of Health Shelley carried her on his back. I cannot help contrasting this action of the wanderer with the careful self-regard of another friend who often came to see us, though I do not remember that any of us were ever inside his doors. He was, I believe, for some time actually a pensioner on Shelley's generosity, though he ultimately rose to be comparatively wealthy. One night, when he had been visiting us, he was in trouble because no person had been sent from a tavern at the top of the hill to light him up the pathway across the heath. That same self-caring gentleman afterwards became one of the apologists who most powerfully contributed to mislead public opinion in regard to his benefactor.

Shelley often called me for a long ramble on the heath, or into regions which I then thought far distant; and I went with him rather than with my father, because he walked faster, and talked with me while he walked, instead of being lost in his own thoughts and conversing only at intervals. A love of wandering seemed to possess him in the most literal sense; his rambles appeared to be without design, or any limit but my fatigue; and when I was "done up," he carried me home in his arms, on his shoulder, or pickback. Our communion was not always concord; as I have intimated, he took a pleasure in frightening me, though I never really lost my confidence in his protection, if he would only drop the fantastic aspects that he delighted to assume. Sometimes, but much more rarely, he teased me with exasperating banter; and, inheriting from some of my progenitors a vindictive temper, I once retaliated severely. We were in the sitting-room with my father and some others, while I was tortured. The chancery-suit was just then approaching its most critical point, and, to inflict the cruellest stroke I could think of, I looked him in the face, and expressed a hope that he would be beaten in the trial and have his children taken from him. I was sitting on his knee, and as I spoke, he let himself fall listlessly back in his chair, without attempting to conceal the shock I had given him. But presently he folded his arms round me and kissed me; and I perfectly understood that he saw how sorry I was, and was as anxious as I was to be friends again. It was not very long after that we were playing with paper boats on the pond in the Vale of Health, watching the way in which the wind carried some of them over, or swamped most of them before they had surmounted many billows; and Shelley then playfully said how much he should like it, if we could get into one of the boats and be shipwrecked,-it was a death he should like better than any other.

After the death of Harriet, Shelley's life entirely changed; and I think I shall be able to show in the sequel that the change was far greater than any of his biographers, except perhaps one who was most likely to know, have acknowledged. Conventional form and Shelley are almost incompatible ideas; as his admirable wife has said of him, "He lived to idealize reality,-to ally the love of abstract truth, and adoration of abstract good, with the living sympathies. And long as he did this without injury to others, he had the reverse of any respect for the dictates of orthodoxy or convention." As soon, therefore, as the obstacle to a second marriage was removed, he and Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin were regularly joined in matrimony, and retired to Great Marlow, in Buckinghamshire. A brief year Shelley passed in the position of a country-gentleman on a small scale. His abode was a rough house in the village, with a garden at the back and nothing beyond but the country. Close to the house there was a small pleasure-ground, with a mound at the farther end of the lawn slightly inclosing the view. Behind the mound there was a kitchen-garden, not unintermixed with flowers and ornamental vegetation; and farther still was a piece of ground traversed by a lane deeply excavated in the chalk soil. At that time Shelley had a thousand a year allowed to him by his father; but although he was in no respect the unreckoning, wasteful person that many have represented him to be, such a sum must have been insufficient for the mode in which he lived. His family comprised himself, Mary, William their eldest son, and Claire Claremont,-the daughter of Godwin's second wife, and therefore the half-sister of Mary Shelley,-a girl of great ability, strong feelings, lively temper, and, though not regularly handsome, of brilliant appearance. They kept three servants, if not a fourth assistant: a cook; élise, a Swiss gouvernante for the child; and Harry, a man who did the work of gardener and man-servant in general. He kept something like open house; for while I was there with my father and mother, there also came, for a short time, several other friends, some of whom stopped for more than a passing visit. He played the Lord Bountiful among his humbler neighbors, not only helping them with money or money's-worth, but also advising them in sickness; for he had made some study of medicine, in part, I suspect, to be the more useful.

I have already intimated that he had assisted certain of his companions; and I am convinced that these circumstances contributed to the resolution which Shelley formed to leave England for Italy in the year 1818, although he then ascribed his doing so to the score of health,-or rather, as he said, of life. He then believed himself to be laboring under a tendency to consumption, not without medical warnings to that effect, although there were strong reasons for doubting the validity of the belief, which was based upon less precise grounds before the introduction of auscultation and the careful examinations of our day. It was, however, characteristic of Shelley to rest his actions upon the dominant motive; so that, if several inducements operated to the same end, he absolutely discarded the minor considerations, and acted solely upon the grand one. I can well remember, that, when other persons urged upon him cumulative reasons for any course of action, whether in politics, or morality, or trifling personal matters of the day, he indignantly cast aside all such makeweights, and insisted upon the one sufficient motive. I mention this the more explicitly because the opposite course is the most common, and some who did not sympathize with his concentration of purpose afterwards imputed the suppression of all but one, out of several apparent motives, to reserve, or even to a want of candor. The accusation was first made by some of Shelley's false friends,-creatures who gathered round him to get what they could, and afterwards made a market of their connection, to his disadvantage. But I was shocked to find a sanction for the notion under the hand of one of Shelley's first and most faithful friends, and I discovered it, too, when death had barred me from the opportunity of controverting the mistake. It was easily accounted for. The writer to whom I allude was himself a person whose scrupulous conscience and strong mistrust of his own judgment, unless supported on every side, induced him to accumulate and to avow as many motives as possible for each single act. He could scarcely understand or believe the existence of a mind which, although powerful and comprehensive in its grasp, should nevertheless deliberately set aside all motives but one, and actually proceed upon that exclusive ground without regard to the others.

Both Shelley and his friends seem to have underrated his strength, and one little incident will illustrate my meaning. He kept no horse or carriage; but in accordance with his ruling passion he had a boat on the river of sufficient size to carry a numerous party. It was made both for sailing and rowing; and I can remember being one of an expedition which went some distance up the Thames, when Shelley himself towed the boat on the return home, while I walked, by his side. His health had very much improved with the change that had taken place in his mode of life, his more settled condition, and the abatement of anxiety, with the absolute removal of some of its causes. I am well aware that he had suffered severely, and that he continued to be haunted by certain recollections, partly real and partly imaginative, which pursued him like an Orestes. He frequently talked on such subjects; but it has always appeared to me that those who have reported what he said have been guilty of a singular confusion in their interpretations. As I proceed, you will find that certain facts in his life have never yet been distinctly related, and I have a strong reason for believing that some circumstances of which I became accidentally aware were never disclosed at all, except to Mary; while in her writings I can trace allusions to them, that remind me of passages in ancient authors,-in Ovid, for instance,-which would have been absolutely unintelligible, except for accidental references. In spite, however, of the rude trials to which his constitution had been subjected, and of new symptoms supposed to indicate pulmonary weakness, there was a marked improvement in his aspect since he had visited London. He still had that ultra-youthful figure that partook the traits of the hobbledehoy, arrived at man's stature, but not yet possessing the full manly proportions. His extremities were large, his limbs long, his face small, and his thorax very partially developed, especially in girth. An habitual eagerness of mood, thrusting forward his face, made him stoop, with sunken chest and rounded shoulders; and this was even more apparent in the easy costume of the country than in London dress. But in his countenance there was life instead of weariness; melancholy more often yielded to alternations of bright thoughts; and paleness had given way to a certain freshness of color, with something like roses in the cheeks. Notwithstanding the sense of weakness in the chest, which attacked him on any sudden effort, his power of exertion was considerable. Once, returning from a long excursion, and entering the house by the back way, up a precipitous, though not perpendicular bank, the women of the party had to be helped; and Shelley was the most active in rendering that assistance. While others were content to accomplish the feat for one, he, I think, helped three up the bank, sliding in a half-sitting posture when he returned to fetch a new charge. I well remember his shooting past me in a cloud of chalk-dust, as I was slowly climbing up. He had a fit of panting after it, but he made light of the exertion. I can also recollect, that, although he frequently preferred to steer rather than to put forth his strength, yet, if it were necessary, he would take an oar, and could stick to his seat for any time against any force of current or of wind, not only without complaining, but without being compelled to give in until the set task was accomplished, though it should involve some miles of hard pulling. These facts indicate the amount of "grit" that lay under the outward appearance of weakness and excitable nerves.

Shelley's fulness of vitality did not at that time seem to be shared by the partner of his life. Mary's intellectual powers had already been manifested. He must to some extent have known the force of her affection, and the tenderness of her nature; but it is remarkable that her youth was not the period of her greatest beauty, and certainly at that date she did not do justice to herself either in her aspect or in the tone of her conversation. She was singularly pale. With a figure that needed to be set off, she was careless in her dress; and the decision of purpose which ultimately gained her the playful title of "Wilful Woman" then appeared, at least in society, principally in the negative form,-her temper being easily crossed, and her resentments taking a somewhat querulous and peevish tone. Both of the pair were still young, and their ideas of education were adverse to the received doctrines of the day, rather than substantive; and their own principles in this matter were exemplified somewhat perversely by little William. Even at that early age the child called forth frequent and poignant remonstrances from his gouvernante, and occasionally drew perplexed exclamations or desponding looks from his father, who took the child's little perversities seriously to heart, and sometimes vented his embarrassment in generalized remarks on human nature.

Some years elapsed between the night when I saw Shelley pack up his pistols-which he allowed me to examine-for his departure for the South, and the moment when, after our own arrival in Italy, my attention was again called to his presence by the shrill sound of his voice, as he rushed into my father's arms, which he did with an impetuousness and a fervor scarcely to be imagined by any who did not know the intensity of his feelings and the deep nature of his affection for that friend. I remember his crying out that he was "so inexpressibly delighted!-you cannot think how inexpressibly happy it makes me!"

The history of Shelley's brief visit to Pisa has been related by many, and is, I believe, told in his published letters; but it appears to me that those who have recounted it have in some respects fallen short. Excepting Mary Shelley, the best-informed spoke too soon after the event. Shelley's own letters are slightly misleading, from a very intelligible cause. After he had encouraged, if he did not suggest, the enterprise of "The Liberal,"-and I believe it would be nearly impossible for any one of the three men interested in that venture to ascertain exactly who was its author,-his mind misgave him. He knew my father's necessities and his childish capacities for business. With a keen sense of the power displayed in "Don Juan," and even in more melodramatic works, Shelley had acquired a full knowledge of the singularly licentious training from which Byron had then scarcely emerged, and of the vacillating caprice which enfeebled all his actions. His own ability to grapple with practical affairs was very great; but he himself had scarcely formed a sufficient estimate of it. Determined to maintain a thorough equality and freedom with the noble bard in their social relations, he shrank from any position which might raise in Byron's jealous and unstable mind the idea that he was under pressure; yet he was anxious to prevent disappointment for Leigh Hunt. He dreaded failure, and resolved that he would do his best to prevent it; and yet again he scarcely anticipated success.

As early as the end of 1818, he described the way in which Byron spent his life, after he had been partly exiled, partly emancipated from the ordinary restraints of society. At that time, "the Italian women were the most contemptible of all who existed under the moon,-an ordinary Englishman could not approach them"; "but," writes Shelley, "Lord Byron is familiar with the lowest sort of these women,-the people his gondolieri pick up in the streets." Byron's curiosity, indeed, tempted him to learn something of vice in its most revolting aspects. "He has," writes Shelley, "a certain degree of candor, while you talk to him, but unfortunately it does not outlast your departure." I am sure that before 1821 Byron had risen in his friend's estimation, or the "Liberal" scheme would never have been contemplated; and there were excellent reasons for the change. It is only by degrees that men have learned to appreciate at once the extraordinary nature and force of Byron's genius and the equally monstrous and marvellous nature of the evil training by which he was "dragged up." In the midst of extravagant license he gained experiences which might have extinguished his mind, but which, as they did not have that effect, added to his resources. In the process some of his personal qualities as a companion suffered severely. Very few grown men have been so extravagantly sensitive to personal approbation; and he was anxious to conciliate the liking of all who approached him, however foreign to his own set, however humble, or however insignificant. He was as mistrustful as a greedy child. He could be extravagant, but he was not open-handed; and yet he would give up what he coveted for himself, if he were urged by those whose esteem he desired to win. Now, of all persons who came near him, Shelley was the one that combined the greatest number of qualities calculated to influence a creature like Byron. He was of gentle blood; he was as resolute as he was able to maintain what is popularly called an independent position; he was truly sincere; and his way of life displayed a purity which Byron admired, though he fell from it so lamentably. On the other hand, Shelley was at odds with society on the very same questions of morals; he possessed all the philosophy for understanding the complicated perplexities of aberrant genius; did actually make allowances for Byron; estimated his powers more accurately, and therefore more highly, than any other person who came near him; and thus commanded at once his sympathies, his ambition, and his confidence. Everybody knows that in the interval between 1818 and the date of his death at Missolonghi, Byron's discipline of life had undergone a marked and beneficial change, and many agencies have been mentioned as contributing to that result, but I am sure that no one was so all-sufficient as the personal association with Shelley. Nothing of this is gainsaid by the fact that the greater part of this improvement was displayed after Shelley's death. Change of scene, intercourse with others, opportunities for acting upon his new principles, all helped, together, probably, with the graver sense of counsel bequeathed by the friend whom he had lost. Certain it is that Byron never mentioned Shelley in my hearing without a peculiarly emphatic manner. I know that to more than one person he performed acts of kindness and friendly aid as tributes to the memory of Shelley; and if any action were urged upon him as worthy of his own genius and dignity, nothing clenched the appeal like the name of Shelley. But if you will for a moment compare the characters of the two men,-if you will contrast the large self-sacrifice of the one with the self-indulgence of the other, the independence of the one with the craving of the other for approval, the absolute trust in human hope and goodness of Shelley with the blasé cynicism of Byron, I think two conclusions must instantly strike you,-first, that Shelley must have possessed almost unequalled power of influence over those who surrounded him, and, secondly, that Byron himself must have been a much better man, or possessing much more in common with Shelley than society or some of his most intellectual companions at all imagined. Part of the facts bearing upon the subject have come out since the death of both. My own attention was drawn to the point by the striking discord between the way in which other people speak of their relations and the manner of Shelley and Byron towards each other, and especially Byron's way in speaking of Shelley. It is not probable that Shelley formed to himself any such idea of his own power; yet you will find hints at it in his letters, you will see, curious traces of it in the letters of others, and nothing else will fully explain the change in Byron's life. Moreover, it reconciles the apparent inconsistencies of Shelley's reservations in talking about Byron with his manifest and practical confidence in the result of their joint working.

When I met Shelley again in Italy, it was easy to see that a grand change had come over his appearance and condition. The Southern climate had suited him, and the boat which caused his death had in the mean while been instrumental in developing his life. His retirement from painful personal conflict had given him greater ease; intercourse with Mary had made his life better; and, not to overlook one important fact, he had grown since he left England. For physiologists attest the truth, that growth continues throughout human existence, even until after decay begins; and Shelley's constitution was of that kind-strong in some of its developments, slow in others-which needed longer time than many to arrive at its full proportions. For instance, in the interval since I had seen him his chest had manifestly become of a larger girth. I am speaking only upon distant recollection; but I should judge it to have been three or four inches larger round, or perhaps more. His voice was stronger, his manner more confident and downright, and, although not less emphatic, yet decidedly less impulsively changeful. I can recall his reading from an ancient author, translating as he went, a passage about the making of the first man; and I remember it from the subject and from the easy flow of his translation, but chiefly from the air of strength and cheerfulness which I noticed in his voice and manner. In nothing, however, does Shelley appear to me to have been so misdescribed as in the outward man,-partly, as usual, from overstatement of peculiarities, and partly because each artist has painted the portrait from his own favorite view. Many, through exaggeration, or imperfect knowledge, have equally misconstrued his moral character, and have omitted to report the real conduct of his understanding as he advanced towards "the middle of the way of life."

From the story of his life after I first saw him, as well as from many things that I have heard him say of his family, and the strange recollections that he had of home, it is easy to understand the general tenor of his early life. Through some caprice in genealogical chemistry, in Percy the Shelley race struck out an entirely new idea: an apparent caprice in the sequence of houses that has often been noticed. For how often may we observe that the union of the most remarkable intellects produces a tertium quid which is the reverse of an equivalent to the combined totals, representing only a fraction of their qualities, and that fraction in its negative aspect; while, on the other hand, rivulets of blood which have gained for themselves no name upon earth may combine to form a river illustrious to the whole world. In the latter case, not an unusual effect is that those who are charged with the infancy of the new type in the family are incompetent to their duty; and accordingly Shelley was regarded merely as "a strange boy," wayward, mutinous, and to be severely chastised into obedience. It has been said that he attracted no particular notice at school; but this is not true. At Eton his resentment of tyrannical authority displayed itself not only against the masters, but against the privileges of young patricians. He refused to be "fag"; and on one occasion he so braved the youthful public-opinion, that, on being dared to the act by the surrounding boys, he pinned a companion's hand to the table with a fork. According to my recollection, the immediate provocative was that he was dared to do it; but the incident arose out of his resistance to the seniors amongst the scholars and to the customs of the school. It was evident that the masters had their eye upon him. Such a youth, with a command of language that was a born faculty and not simply acquired, must have attracted very positive attention on the part of the teachers; but it was certain, that, with the tendencies of those days, they would have thought it discreet to say as little as possible about the slender mutineer. It is equally well known, that, notwithstanding his youth, religious opinions caused his expulsion from college; and when we turn to the earliest of his writings which assumed anything like a complete shape, we discover at once the nature of those powers which could not have been overlooked,-we detect the genius, the revolutionary ideas, and the extraordinary command which he had acquired over the subject-matter of much that is taught in schools and colleges. Amid the orthodox reaction that followed upon the French Revolution, he was struck with the excesses to which despotic power could be carried. He read history with sympathies for the natural impulses and aspirations of the race, as opposed to the small circles which comprise established authorities. He looked upon knowledge as the means of serving, not enslaving the race. And therefore, while he excused the crimes of the Revolution, on the score of the ignorance in which the people had been kept, their sufferings, and the natural revulsion against such painful down-treading, he regarded the counter acts of authority as a treachery to wisdom itself. He says,-

"Hath Nature's soul,

That formed this world so beautiful....

And filled the meanest worm that crawls in dust

With spirit, thought, and love, on Man alone,

Partial in causeless malice, wantonly

Heaped ruin, vice, and slavery?

Nature?-no!

Kings, priests, and statesmen blast the human flower

Even in its tender bud; their influence darts

Like subtle poison through the bloodless veins

Of desolate society."

The pretension of authority to speak with a supernatural warrant provoked him to deny the warrant itself, or the sources from which it was said to emanate.

"Is there a God?-ay, an almighty God,

And vengeful as almighty? Once his voice

Was heard on earth; earth shuddered at the sound,

The fiery-visaged firmament expressed

Abhorrence, and the grave of Nature yawned

To swallow all the dauntless and the good

That dared to hurl defiance at his throne,

Girt as it was with power. None but slaves

Survived,-cold-blooded slaves, who did the work

Of tyrranous omnipotence."

To these superstitious and ambitious pretensions he traced the corruption which disorganized society, leading it down even to the very worst immoralities.

"All things are sold: the very light of heaven

Is venal....

Those duties which heart of human love

Should urge him to perform instinctively

Are bought and sold as in a public mart.

* * * * *

Even love is sold; the solace of all woe

Is turned to deadliest agony, old age

Shivers in selfish beauty's loathing arms,

And youth's corrupted impulses prepare

A life of horror from the blighting bane

Of commerce; whilst the pestilence that springs

From unenjoying sensualism has filled

All human life with hydra-headed woes."

"Shelley," says Mary, in her note on the poem, "was eighteen when he wrote 'Queen Mab.' He never published it. When it was written, he had come to the decision that he was too young to be a judge of controversies." The wife-editor refers to a series of articles published in the "New Monthly Magazine" for 1832 by a fellow-collegian, a warm friend of Shelley's, touching upon his school-life, and describing the state of his mind at college. The worst of all these biographical sketches of remarkable men is, that delicacy, discretion, or some other euphemistically named form of hesitancy, induces writers to suppress the incidents which supply the very angles of the form they want to delineate; and it is especially so in Shelley's case. I am sure, that, if Mary, or my father, or any of those with whom Shelley conversed most thoroughly, had related some of the more extravagant incidents of his early life exactly as they occurred, we should better understand the tenor of his thought,-and we should also have the most valuable complement to that part of his intellectual progress which stands in contrast with the earlier portion. Now, as I have said, at school Shelley was a more practical and impracticable mutineer than his friends have generally allowed. They have been anxious to soften his "faults"; and the consequence is, that we miss the force of the boy's logic and the vigor of his Catonian experiments.

Again, accident has made me aware of facts which give me to understand, that, in passing through the usual curriculum of a college life in all its paths, Shelley did not go scathless,-but that, in the tampering with venal pleasures, his health was seriously, and not transiently, injured. The effect was far greater on his mind than on his body; and the intellectual being greater than the physical power, the healthy reaction was greater. But that reaction was also, especially in early youth, principally marked by horror and antagonism. Conscientious, far beyond even the ordinary maximum amongst ordinary men, he felt bound to denounce the mischief from which he saw others suffer more severely than himself, since in them there was no such reaction. I have no doubt that he himself would have spoken even plainer language, though to me his language is perfectly transparent, if he had not been restrained by a superstitious notion of his own, that the true escape from the pestilent and abhorrent brutalities which he detected around him in "real" life is found in "the ideal" form of thought and language. Ardent and romantic, he was eager to discover beauty "beneath" every natural aspect. Of all men living, I am the one most bound to be aware of the inconsistency; but you will see it reconciled a little later.

Shelley left college prone "to fall in love,"-having already, indeed, gone through some very slight experiences of that process. In his wanderings, in a humble position which conciliated rather than repelled him, he met with Harriet Westbrooke, a very comely, pleasing, and simple type of girlhood. She was at some disadvantage, under some kind of domestic oppression; so she served at once as an object for his disengaged affection, and a subject for his liberating theories, and as a substratum for the idealizing process upon which he constructed a fictitious creation of Harriet Westbrooke. His dreams bearing but a faint and controversial resemblance to the Harriet Westbrooke of daily life, the fictitious image prevented him from knowing her, until the reality broke through the poetical vision only to shock him by its inferiority or repulsiveness. As to the poor girl herself, she never had the capacity for learning to know him. In the sequel she proved to be the not unwilling slave of a petty domestic intrigue,-oppression from which he would have rescued her. Married life enabled him to discover that she was the reverse of the being that he had fancied. They were first married in Scotland in 1811. Shelley made acquaintance with the Godwins in 1812, before his eldest child was born. I am not sure whether he was acquainted with Mary at that time; but some circumstances which I cannot verify make me doubt it. Harriet's daughter was born early in the summer of 1813, and it was before the close of that year that the couple began to disagree. The wife was evidently under the dominion of a relative whose influence was injurious to her. I do not find a hint of any imputation upon what is usually called her "fidelity"; but the relative manifestly desired to show her power over both. It is probable that at an early day Shelley's disposition to see "sermons in stones and good in everything" made him think better of that interloping lady than she deserved,-and that consequently he not only gave her encouragement, but committed himself to something which, to Harriet's mind, justified her deference for ill-considered advice. It is very likely that she was counselled to extend her power over Shelley in a manner which her own simple nature would not have suggested; but, being as foolish as it was cunning and vulgar, such conduct could no result but that of repelling a man like Shelley. That he acquired a detestation of the relative is a certain fact. He must have been expecting a second child when he formally remarried Harriet in England on the twenty-fourth of March, 1814; and that ceremony has been mentioned by several writers to prove the most opposite conclusions,-that Shelley was devoted to his first wife, and that he behaved to her with the basest hypocrisy. It proves nothing but his desire to place the hereditary rights of the second child, who might be a boy, beyond doubt; and the precaution was justified by the event. Before the close of the same year Harriet returned to her father's house, and there she gave birth to a son, Charles, who would have inherited the baronetcy, if he had not died in 1826, after his father's death. The parting took place about the twenty-fourth of June, 1814; and at the same time Shelley wrote a poem, of which fragments are given in the recently published "Relics." The verse shows, first, that Shelley was suffering severely from the chronic conflict which he had undergone, and, secondly, that he had found some novel comfort in the intercourse with Mary.

"To sit and curb the soul's mute rage,

Which preys upon itself alone;

To curse the life which is the cage

Of fettered grief that dares not groan,

Hiding from many a careless eye

The scorned load of agony.

"Upon my heart thy accents sweet

Of peace and pity fell like dew

On flowers half dead....

"We are not happy, sweet! our state

Is strange and full of doubt and fear;

More need of words that ills abate;-

Reserve or censure come not near

Our sacred friendship, lest there be

No solace left for thee and me."

It is obvious that considerably after the date of this poem, Harriet remained in amicable correspondence with Shelley; and not only so, but, while she altogether abstained from opposing his new connection, she was actually on friendly terms with Mary. It is easy to understand how a limited nature like Harriet's should be worn out by the exaction and impracticability of one like Shelley; for to her most impracticable would seem his lofty and ideal requirements. On the other hand, it is evident that Shelley regarded the unfortunate girl with feelings of deep commiseration; and I know that he not only pitied her, but felt strong compunctions for the share which his own mistaken conduct at the beginning, even more than at the end, had had in drawing her aside from what would have been her natural course in ordinary life. Mary, I believe, clearly understood the whole case, and felt nothing but compassion for one who was a "victim to circumstances."

The sequel has been alluded to in several publications, but so obscurely as to be more than unintelligible; for the reader is led to conclusions the reverse of the fact. In the "Memorials," at page 63, the subject is barely touched upon. I take the whole passage.

"Towards the close of 1813, estrangements, which for some time had

been slowly growing between Mr. and Mrs. Shelley, came to a crisis.

Separation ensued; and Mrs. Shelley returned to her father's house.

Here she gave birth to her second child,-a son, who died in 1826.

"The occurrences of this painful epoch in Shelley's life, and the causes which led to them, I am spared from relating. In Mary Shelley's own words:-'This is not the time to relate the truth; and I should reject any coloring of the truth.'

* * * * *

"Of those remaining who were intimate with Shelley at this time, each has given us a different version of this sad event, colored by his own views and personal feelings. Evidently, Shelley confided to none of these friends. We, who bear his name and are of his family, have in our possession papers written by his own hand, which, in after-years, may make the story of his life complete, and which few now living, except Shelley's own children, have ever perused.

"One mistake which has gone forth to the world we feel ourselves called upon positively to contradict. Harriet's death has sometimes been ascribed to Shelley. This is entirely false. There was no immediate connection whatever between her tragic end and any conduct on the part of her husband."

At the end of the "Relics" is a memorandum entitled, "Harriet Shelley and Mr. Thomas Love Peacock." Mr. Peacock had been writing in "Fraser's Magazine" a series of articles on Shelley; in "Macmillan's Magazine" for June, 1866, was an article by Mr. Richard Garnet, entitled, "Shelley in Pall-Mall"; to this Mr. Peacock replied in "Percy Bysshe Shelley: Supplementary Notice"; and Mr. Garnet rejoined in the new little volume which he ha; edited. The main purpose of this last notice is, to show that Mr. Peacock was not accurate in his chronology or in his interpretation of the severance between Shelley and Harriet. Alluding either to the discretion which prevented Shelley from making a confidant of Mr. Peacock, or to his grief occasioned by the fate of Harriet, the writer refers to "the proof which exists in a series of letters written by Shelley at this very time to one in whom he had confidence, and at present in possession of his family," and then proceeds thus:-"Nothing more beautiful or characteristic ever proceeded from his pen; and they afford the most unequivocal testimony of the grief and horror occasioned by the tragical incident to which they bear reference. Yet self-reproach formed no element of his sorrow, in the midst of which he could proudly say, '---, ---,' (mentioning two dry, unbiased men of business,) 'every one, does me full justice, bears testimony to the uprightness and liberality of my conduct to her.'"

In the "Memorials" and the "Relics" there is no further allusion to the circumstances which preceded Harriet's suicide; but it appears to me very desirable that the whole story should be brought out much more distinctly, and I can at least show why I say so. The correspondence in question took place in the middle of December, 1816. Shelley was married to Mary about a fortnight later; and in the most emphatic terms he alluded not only to the solace which he derived from the conversation of his host, but to the manner in which my father spoke of Mary. My own recollection goes back to the period, and I have already testified to the state of Shelley's mind. He was just then instituting the process to recover the children, and he caught at an opinion that had been expressed, that, in the event of his again becoming contracted in marriage, there would be no longer any pretence to deprive him of the children.

Let me for a moment pause on this incident, as it establishes two facts of some interest. In the first place, it shows some of the grounds of the very strong and unalterable friendship which subsisted between my father and Mary,-a friendship which stood the test of many vicissitudes, and even of some differences of opinion; both persons being very sensitive in feeling, quick in temper, thoroughly outspoken, and obstinately tenacious of their own convictions. Secondly, it corroborates what I have said with regard to the community of spirit that Shelley found in his real wife,-the woman who became the companion of his fortunes, of his thoughts, of his sufferings, and of his hopes. It will be seen, that, even before marriage with his second wife, he was counting upon Mary's help in preventing his separation from the two children already born to him. She was a woman uniting intellectual faculties with strong ambitions of affection as well as intellect; and esteem thus substantially shown, at that early age, by two such men as Percy Shelley and Leigh Hunt, must have conveyed the deepest gratification.

Throughout these communications Shelley evinced the strong pity that he felt for the unhappy being whom he had known. Circumstances had come to his knowledge which had thrown considerable light upon his relations with Harriet. There can be no doubt that one member of the family had hoped to derive gain from the connection with himself, as a person of rank and property. There seems also reason to suppose, that, about the same time, Harriet's father, an aged man, became so ill that his death might be regarded as approaching, and he had something to leave. Poor, foolish Harriet had undoubtedly formed an attachment to Shelley, whom she had been allowed to marry; but she had then suffered herself to become a tool in the hands of others, and the fact accounted for the idle way in which she importuned him to do things repugnant to his feelings and convictions. She thus exasperated his temper, and lost her own; they quarrelled, in the ordinary conjugal sense, and, from all I have learned, I am induced to guess, that, when she left him, it was not only in the indulgence of self-will, but also in the vain hope that her retreating would induce him to follow her, perhaps in a more obedient spirit. She sought refuge in her father's house, where she might have expected kindness; but, as the old man bent towards the grave, with rapid loss of faculties, he became more severe in his treatment of the poor woman; and she was driven from the paternal roof. This Shelley did not know at the time; nor did he until afterwards learn the process by which she arrived at her fate. Too late she became aware how fatal to her interests had been the intrigues of which she had been the passive instrument; and I suspect that she was debarred from seeking forgiveness and help partly by false shame, and partly by the terrible adaptability of weak natures to the condition of the society in which they find themselves. I have said that there is not a trace of evidence or a whisper of scandal against her before her voluntary departure from Shelley, and I have indicated the most probable motives of that step; but subsequently she forfeited her claim to a return, even in the eye of the law. Shelley had information which made him believe that she fell even to the depth of actual prostitution. If she left him, it would appear that she herself was deserted in turn by a man in a very humble grade of life; and it was in consequence of this desertion that she killed herself.

The change in his personal aspect that showed itself at Marlow appeared also in his writings,-the most typical of his works for this period being naturally the most complete that issued from his pen, the "Revolt of Islam." We find there identically the same doctrine that there is in "Queen Mab,"-a systematic abhorrence of the servility which renders man captive to power, denunciation of the love of gain which blinds his insight and destroys his energy, of the prostitution of religious faith, and, above all, of the slavery of womanhood. But by this time the doctrine has more distinct in its expression, and far more powerful in its utterance.

"Man seeks for gold in mines, that he may weave

A lasting chain for his own slavery;

In fear and restless care that he may live,

He toils for others, who must ever be

The joyless thralls of like captivity;

He murders, for his chiefs delight in ruin;

He builds the altar, that its idol's fee

May be his very blood; he is pursuing,

O blind and willing wretch! his own obscure undoing.

"Woman!-she is his slave, she has become

A thing I weep to speak,-the child of scorn,

The outcast of a desolated home.

Falsehood and fear and toil, like waves, have worn

Channels upon her cheek, which smiles adorn,

As calm decks the false ocean. Well ye know

What woman is; for none of woman born

Can choose but drain the bitter dregs of woe,

Which ever from the oppressed to the oppressors flow."

The indignation against the revolting subjugation of womanhood comes out still more distinctly in the preceding canto, where Cythna relates the horrors to which she was subjected.

"One was she among the many there, the thralls

Of the cold tyrant's cruel lust; and they

Laughed mournfully in those polluted halls;

But she was calm and sad, musing alway

On loftiest enterprise, till on a day

* * * * *

She told me what a loathsome agony

Is that when selfishness mocks love's delight,

Foul as in dreams' most fearful imagery

To dally with the mowing dead;-that night

All torture, fear, or horror made seem light

Which the soul dreams or knows."

The poet bears testimony to the spiritual power which rules throughout Nature; the monster recovering his dignity while he is under the higher influence.

"Even when he saw her wondrous loveliness,

One moment to great Nature's sacred power

He bent and was no longer passionless;

But when he bade her to his secret bower

Be borne a loveless victim, and she tore

Her locks in agony, and her words of flame

And mightier looks availed not, then he bore

Again his load of slavery, and became

A king, a heartless beast, a pageant and a name.

...."When the day

Shone on her awful frenzy, from the sight,

Where like a spirit in fleshly chains she lay

Struggling, aghast and pale the tyrant fled away.

"Her madness was a beam of light, a power

Which dawned through the rent soul; and words it gave,

Gestures and looks, such as in whirlwinds bore

Which might not be withstood."

The doctrine involved in this passage is very clear, and it marks a decided progress since the days of "Queen Mab." It will be observed that Shelley's mind had become familiarized with the idea of a spirit ruling throughout Nature, obedience to which constitutes human power. Most remarkable is the passage in which the tyrant recovers his faculties through his subjection to this spirit; because it indicates Shelley's faithful adhesion to the universal, though oft obscurely formed belief, that the ability to receive influence is the most exalted faculty to which human nature can attain, while the exercise of an arbitrary power centring in self is not only debasing, but is an actual destroyer of human faculty.

There can be no doubt that he had profited greatly in his moral condition, as well as in his bodily health, by the greater tranquillity which he enjoyed in the society of Mary, and also by the sympathy which gave full play to his ideas, instead of diverting and disappointing them. She was, indeed, herself a woman of extraordinary power, of heart as well as head. Many circumstances conspired to conceal some of her natural faculties. She lost her mother very young; her father-speaking with great diffidence, from a very slight and imperfect knowledge-appeared to me a harsh and ungenial man. She inherited from him her thin voice, but not the steel-edged sharpness of his own; and she inherited, not from him, but from her mother, a largeness of heart that entered proportionately into the working of her mind. She had a masculine capacity for study; for, though I suspect her early schooling was irregular, she remained a student all her life, and by painstaking industry made herself acquainted with any subject that she had to handle. Her command of history and her imaginative power are shown in such books as "Valperga" and "Castruccio"; but the daring originality of her mind comes out most distinctly in her earliest published work, "Frankenstein." Its leading idea has been ascribed to her husband, but, I am sure, unduly; and the vividness with which she has brought out the monstrous tale in all its horror, but without coarse or revolting incidents, is a proof of the genius which she inherited alike from both her parents. It is clear, also, that the society of Shelley was to her a great school, which she did not appreciate to the full until most calamitously it was taken away; and yet, of course, she could not fail to learn the greater part of what it had become to her. This again showed itself even in her appearance, after she had spent some years in Italy; for, while she had grown far more comely than she was in her mere youth, she had acquired a deeper insight into many subjects that interested Shelley, and some others; and she had learned to express the force of natural affection, which she was born to feel, but which had somehow been stunted and suppressed in her youth. In the preface to the collected edition of his works, she says: "I have the liveliest recollection of all that was done and said during the period of my knowing him. Every impression is as clear as if stamped yesterday, and I have no apprehension of any mistake in my statements, as far as they go. In other respects I am, indeed, incompetent; but I feel the importance of the task, and regard it as my most sacred duty. I endeavor to fulfil it in a manner he would himself approve; and hope in this publication to lay the first stone of a monument due to Shelley's genius, his sufferings, and his virtues." And in the postscript, written in November, 1839, she says: "At my request, the publisher has restored the omitted passages of 'Queen Mab.' I now present this edition as a complete collection of my husband's poetical works, and I do not foresee that I can hereafter add to or take away a word or line." So writes the wife-editor; and then "The Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley" begin with a dedication to Harriet, restored to its place by Mary. While the biographers of Shelley are chargeable with suppression, the most straightforward and frank of all of them is Mary, who, although not insensible to the passion of jealousy, and carrying with her the painful sense of a life-opportunity not fully used, thus writes the name of Harriet the first on her husband's monument, while she has nobly abstained from telling those things that other persons should have supplied to the narrative. I have heard her accused of an over-anxiety to be admired; and something of the sort was discernible in society: it was a weakness as venial as it was purely superficial. Away from society, she was as truthful and simple a woman as I have ever met,-was as faithful a friend as the world has produced,-using that unreserved directness towards those whom she regarded with affection which is the very crowning glory of friendly intercourse. I suspect that these qualities came out in their greatest force after her calamity; for many things which she said in her regret, and passages in Shelley's own poetry, make me doubt whether little habits of temper, and possibly of a refined and exacting coquettishness, had not prevented him from acquiring so full a knowledge of her as she had of him. This was natural for many reasons, and especially two. Shelley had not the opportunity of retrospectively studying her character, and his mind was by nature more constructed than hers was to be preoccupied. If the reader desires a portrait of Mary, he has one in the well-known antique bust sometimes called "Isis" and sometimes "Clytie": a woman's head and shoulders rising from a lotus-flower. It is most probably the portrait of a Roman lady, is in some degree more elongated and "classic" than Mary; but, on the other hand, it falls short of her, for it gives no idea of her tall and intellectual forehead, nor has it any trace of the bright, animated, and sweet expression that so often lighted up her face.

Attention has often been concentrated on the passage in "Epipsychidion" which appears to relate Shelley's experiences from earliest youth until he met with the noble and unfortunate "Lady Emilia V., now imprisoned in the convent of-," whose own words form the motto to the poem, and a key to the sympathy which the writer felt for her:-"The loving soul launches itself out of the created, and creates in the infinite a world all its own, far different from this dark and fearful abysm." The passage begins,-

"There was a being whom my spirit oft

Met on its visioned wanderings, far aloft,

In the clear golden prime of my youth's

dawn."

And this being was the worshipped object of Shelley's adoring aspirations in extreme youth; but it passed by him as a vision, though-

"And as a man with mighty loss dismayed,

I would have followed, though the grave between

Yawned like a gulf whose spectres are unseen:

When a voice said,-'O thou of hearts the weakest,

The phantom is beside thee whom thou seekest.'

Then I,-'Where?' The world's echo answered, 'Where'!"

She ever remained the veiled divinity of thoughts that worshipped her, while he went forth into the world with hope and fear,-

"Into the wintry forest of our life;

And struggling through its error with vain strife,

And stumbling in my weakness and my haste,

And half bewildered by new forms, I passed

Seeking among those untaught foresters

If I could find one form resembling hers

In which she might have masked herself from me."

The passage grows more and more intelligible. Hitherto he has been simply a dreamy seeker; but now, at last, he thinks that Fate has answered his questioning exclamation, "Where?"

"There, one whose voice was venomed melody

Sat by a well, under the nightshade bowers;

The breath of her false mouth was like faint flowers;

Her touch was as electric poison; flame

Out of her looks into my vitals came;

And from her living cheeks and bosom flew

A killing air which pierced like honey-dew

Into the core of my green heart, and lay

Upon its leaves,-until, as hair grown gray

O'er a young brow, they hid its unblown prime

With ruins of unseasonable time."

This is a plain and only too intelligible reference to the college experiences to which I have alluded. The youth for the moment thought that he had encountered her whom he was seeking, but, instead of the Florimel, he found her venal, hideous, and fatal simulacrum; and he indicates even the material consequences to himself in his injured aspect and hair touched with gray. He continues his search.

"In many mortal forms I rashly sought

The shadow of that idol of my thought:

And some were fair,-but beauty dies away;

Others were wise,-but honeyed words betray;

And one was true,-oh! why not true to me?

Then, as a hunted deer that could not flee,

I turned upon my thoughts and stood at bay."

"Oh! why not true to me?" has been taken by some very few who were cognizant of the facts as constituting an imputation on the one whom he first married; but I am convinced that the interpretation is wrong, although the surmise on which that interpretation is based was partly correct. Nothing is more evident than the fact that Harriet possessed rather an unusual degree of ability, but enormously less than Shelley desired in the being whom he sought, and equally less than his idealizing estimate originally ascribed to her. It is also plain, from her own letters, that she courted his approval in a way far too common with the wives of the artist-tribe, and perhaps with most wives: not being exactly what he wished her to be, and lacking the faculties to become so, she tried to seem it. The desire was partly sincere, partly an affectation, as we discern in such little trifles as her suddenly using the word "thou" in a letter to Hookham where she had previously been using the ordinary colloquial "you." That she was not quite ingenuous we also detect in the fast-and-loose conduct which enabled her, while affecting to become what Shelley deemed her to be, also to play into the hands of very inferior people, who must sometimes have counselled her against him behind his back; and this, I am sure, is what he means by "Oh! why not true to me?" though he may include in the question a fervent regret for the fate which attended her wandering from him. "Then like a hunted deer he turned upon his thoughts and stood at bay," until

"The cold day

Trembled, for pity of my strife and pain,

When, like a noonday dawn, there shone again

Deliverance. One stood on my path who seemed

As like the glorious shape that I had dreamed

As is the Moon, whose changes ever run

Into themselves, to the eternal Sun."

"The cold chaste moon" fails to satisfy the longing of his soul. "At her silver voice came death and life"; hope and despondency, expectation from her noble qualities, disappointment at the failure of response, were feelings that sprang from the exaggerations of his ideal longings.

"What storms then shook the ocean of my sleep,

Blotting that Moon whose pale and waning lips

Then shrank as in the sickness of eclipse!"

The whole passage is worth perusing; and again wrong interpretation has been given to this portion of his writing. I am still more firmly convinced that in the other case, when he says, "The planet of that hour was quenched," he alludes to nothing more than the partial failure of his own ideal requirements. At length into the obscure forest came

"The vision I had sought through grief and shame.

* * * * *

I stood and felt the dawn of my long night

Was penetrating me with living light:

I knew it was the vision veiled from me

So many years,-that it was Emily."

To grasp the entire meaning of this autobiographical episode, we must remember the extent to which Shelley idealizes. "More popular poets clothe the ideal with familiar and sensible imagery; Shelley loved to idealize the real,-to gift the mechanism of the material universe with a soul and a voice, and to bestow such also on the most delicate and abstract emotions and thoughts of the mind. Sophocles was his great master in this species of imagery." The heroine of the "Epipsychidion" is an imagination; a creature, like Raphael's Galatea, copied from no living model, but from "una certa idea"; a thing originally created by himself, and suggested only by the living portrait, as each one of the admired had previously suggested its ideal counterpart. Emilia, then, was the bride of a dream, and, in the indulgence of disappointed longing for a fuller satisfaction of his soul, Shelley mournfully contrasts this vision, who had so eloquently responded to his idealizing through her convent-bars, with Mary, whose stubborn, independent realism had checked and daunted him.

But the last year of Shelley's life had involved a very considerable progress in the formation of his intellectual character. The "Prometheus Unbound," perhaps at once the most characteristic and the most perfect of all his works, is identical in spirit and tendency even with the earliest, "Queen Mab"; but a re-perusal of it in comparison with the other writings, even the "Revolt of Islam," will show a more distinct presentment of the original ideas, coupled with a much more measured suggestion for acting on them, and a far less bitter allusion to the obstacles; while the charity and love are more all-embracing and apparent than ever. Imperfect as it is for dramatic representation, shortcoming even in the power to trace the working of emotions and ideas in utterly diverse characters, the "Cenci" does indicate a stronger aptitude for sympathy with other creatures on their own terms than any other of the poet's writings. He had, therefore, sobered in judgment, without declining in his inborn genius; but, on the contrary, with a clearer sense of the limits placed upon individual action, he had gained strength; and I feel certain that a corresponding change had taken place in his perception of the true import and value of characters unlike his own. The last few months of his life at Lerici had very materially contributed to this change. Although I cannot recall any distinct statement to that effect by Mary Shelley, her conversation had left that impression on me; it is also suggested by the way in which he himself spoke of it, and is fully confirmed by the tone of the letters addressed to her from Pisa.

All who have attempted to portray Shelley, either intellectually or physically, have done so from some appreciable, almost personal point of view. When many eyes see one object, it presents itself in as many different aspects, and the description given by each bears often a slight resemblance to that of others. So it has been with Shelley. The artistic portraits of him have happened to be particularly imperfect. I remember seeing a miniature by an amateur friend which actually suggested a form broad and square. The ordinarily received miniature is like almost all of its tribe, and resembles Shelley about as much as a lady in a book of fashions resembles real women; and it constitutes evidence all the more detrimental and misleading, since it appears to give as well as to receive a color of verisimilitude from the usual written description, which represents Shelley as "feminine," "almost girlish," "ideal," "angelic," and so forth. The accounts of him by firmer hands are still cramped by the individuality of the authorship.

His school-friend, Hogg, is a gentleman of independent property; Shelley detected the sensitiveness of his nature; and I know that the man has been capable of truly generous conduct. How is it, then, that he has written such utterly unintelligible stuff, and has descended to such evasions as to insert initials, lest people should detect amongst Shelley's correspondents a most admirable friend, who happened, it is supposed, to be of plebeian origin? Mr. Thomas Jefferson Hogg, I surmise, was conscious, somewhat early in life, that his better qualities were not fully appreciated; and his love of ease, his wit, his perception of the ludicrous, made him take refuge in cynicism until he learned almost to forget the origin of the real meaning of the things he talked about. His account of Shelley is like a figure seen through fantastically distorting panes of glass.

Thomas Love Peacock, again, is a man to whose extraordinary powers Shelley did full justice. He has worked through a long official career without losing his very peculiar dry wit; but a dry wit was not the man exactly to discern the form of Shelley's mind, or to portray it with accuracy and distinctness.

Few men knew the poet better than my father; but a mind checked by "over-refinement," excessive conscientiousness, and an irresistible tendency to find out niceties of difference,-a mind, in short, like that of Hamlet, cultivated rather than corrected by the trials of life, was scarcely suited to comprehend the strong instincts, indomitable will, and complete unity of idea which distinguished Shelley. Accordingly we have from my father a very doubtful portrait, seldom advancing beyond details, which are at once exaggerated and explained away by qualifications.

Byron, I suspect, through the natural strength of his perceptive power, was likely to have formed a better design; but the two were separated soon after he had begun to learn that such a man as Shelley might be found on the same earth with himself.

One or two others that have written have been mere tourists or acquaintances. Unquestionably the companion who knew him best of all was Mary; and although she lacked the power of distinct, positive, and absolute portraiture, her writings will be found to contain, together with his own, the best materials for forming an estimate of his natural character.

The real man was reconcilable with all these descriptions. His traits suggested everything that has been said of him; but his aspect, conformation, and personal qualities contained more than any one has ascribed to him, and more indeed than all put together. A few plain matters-of-fact will make this intelligible. Shelley was a tall man,-nearly, if not quite, five feet ten in height. He was peculiarly slender, and, as I have said already, his chest had palpably enlarged after the usual growing period. He retained the same kind of straitness in the perpendicular outline on each side of him; his shoulders were the reverse of broad, but yet they were not sloping, and a certain squareness in them was naturally incompatible with anything feminine in his appearance. To his last days he still suffered his chest to collapse; but it was less a stoop than a peculiar mode of holding the head and shoulders,-the face thrown a little forward, and the shoulders slightly elevated; though the whole attitude below the shoulders, when standing, was unusually upright, and had the appearance of litheness and activity. I have mentioned that bodily vigor which he could display; and from his action when I last saw him, as well as from Mary's account, it is evident that he had not abandoned his exercises, but the reverse. He had an oval face and delicate features, not unlike those given to him in the well-known miniature. His forehead was high. His fine, dark brown hair, when not cut close, disposed itself in playful and very beautiful curls over his brows and round the back of his neck. He had brown eyes, with a color in his cheek "like a girl's"; but as he grew older, his complexion bronzed. So far the reality agrees with the current descriptions; nevertheless they omit material facts. The outline of the features and face possessed a firmness and hardness entirely inconsistent with a feminine character. The outline was sharp and firm; the markings distinct, and indicating an energetic physique. The outline of the bone was distinctly perceptible at the temples, on the bridge of the nose, at the back portion of the cheeks, and in the jaw, and the artist could trace the principal muscles of the face. The beard also, although the reverse of strong, was clearly marked, especially about the chin. Thus, although the general aspect was peculiarly slight, youthful, and delicate, yet, when you looked to "the points" of the animal, you saw well enough the indications of a masculine vigor, in many respects far above the average. And what I say of the physical aspect of course bears upon the countenance. That changed with every feeling. It usually looked earnest,-when joyful, was singularly bright and animated, like that of a gay young girl,-when saddened, had an aspect of sorrow peculiarly touching, and sometimes it fell into a listless weariness still more mournful; but for the most part there was a look of active movement, promptitude, vigor, and decision, which bespoke a manly, and even a commanding character.

The general tendency that all who approached Shelley displayed to yield to his dictate is a practical testimony to these qualities; for his earnestness was apt to take a tone of command so generous, so free, so simple, as to be utterly devoid of offence, and yet to constitute him a sort of tyrant over all who came within his reach.

The weakness ascribed to Shelley's voice was equally taken from exceptional instances, and the account of it usually suggests the idea that he spoke in a falsetto which might almost be mistaken for the "shriek" of a harsh-toned woman. Nothing could be more unlike the reality. The voice was indeed quite peculiar, and I do not know where any parallel to it is likely to be found unless in Lancashire. Shelley had no ear for music,-the words that he wrote for existing airs being, strangely enough, inappropriate in rhythm and even in cadence; and though he had a manifest relish for music and often talked of it, I do not remember that I ever heard him sing even the briefest snatch. I cannot tell, therefore, what was the "register" of his singing voice; but his speaking voice unquestionably was then of a high natural counter-tenor. I should say that he usually spoke at a pitch somewhere about the D natural above the base line; but it was in no respect a falsetto. It was a natural chest-voice, not powerful, but telling, musical, and expressive. In reading aloud, the strain was peculiarly clear, and had a sustained, song-like quality, which came out more strongly when, as he often did, he recited verse. When he called out in pain,-a very rare occurrence,-or sometimes in comic playfulness, you might hear the "shrillness" of which people talk; but it was only because the organ was forced beyond the ordinary effort. His usual speech was clear, and yet with a breath in it, with an especially distinct articulation, a soft, vibrating tone, emphatic, pleasant, and persuasive.

It seems to me that these physical characteristics forcibly illustrate the moral and intellectual genius of the man. The impulsiveness which has been ascribed to him is a wrong expression, for it is usually interpreted to mean the action of sudden motives waywardly, capriciously, or at least intermittingly working; whereas the character which Shelley so constantly displayed was an overbearing strength of conviction and feeling, a species of audacious, but chivalrous readiness to act upon conviction as promptly as possible, and, above all, a zealous disposition to say out all that was in his mind. It is better expressed by the word which some satirist put into the mouth of Coleridge, speaking of himself, and, instead of impulsiveness, it should have been called an "utterancy," coupled with decision and promptitude of action. The physical development of the man with the progress of time may be traced in the advancement of his writings. The physical qualities which are equally to be found in his poetry and prose were quite as manifest in his aspect, and not less so in his conduct of affairs. It must be remembered that his life terminated long before he had arrived half-way, "nel mezzo del cammin di nostra vita," when more than one other great intellect has been but commencing its true work. I believe, that, if Shelley had lived, he would himself have been the most potent and useful commentator on his own writings, in the production of other and more complete works. But meanwhile the true measure of his genius is to be found in the influence which he has had, not only over those who have proclaimed their debt to him, but over numbers who have mistrusted and even denounced him.

THE TEST.

"Farewell awhile, my bonnie darling!

One long, close kiss, and I depart:

I hear the angry trumpet snarling,

The drum-beat tingles at my heart."

Behind him, softest flutes were breathing

Across the vale their sweet recall;

Before him burst the battle, seething

In flame beneath its thunder-pall.

All sights and sounds to stay invited;

The meadows tossed their foam of flowers;

The lingering Day beheld, delighted,

The dances of his amorous Hours.

He paused: again the fond temptation

Assailed his heart, so firm before,

And tender dreams, of Love's creation,

Persuaded from the peaceful shore.

"But no!" he sternly cried; "I follow

The trumpet, not the shepherd's reed:

Let idlers pipe in pastoral hollow,-

Be mine the sword, and mine the deed!

"Farewell to Love!" he murmured, sighing:

"Perchance I lose what most is dear;

But better there, struck down and dying,

Than be a man and wanton here!"

He went where battle's voice was loudest;

He pressed where danger nearest came;

His hand advanced, among the proudest,

Their banner through the lines of flame.

And there, when wearied Carnage faltered,

He, foremost of the fallen, lay,

While Night looked down with brow unaltered,

And breathed the battle's dust away.

There lying, sore from wounds untended,

A vision crossed the starry gleam:

The girl he loved beside him bended,

And kissed him in his fever-dream.

"Oh, love!" she cried, "you fled, to find me;

I left with you the daisied vale;

I turned from flutes that wailed behind me,

To hear your trumpet's distant hail.

"Your tender vows, your peaceful kisses,

They scarce outlived the moment's breath;

But now we clasp immortal blisses

Of passion proved on brinks of Death!

"No fate henceforward shall estrange her

Who finds a heart more brave than fond;

For Love, forsook this side of danger,

Waits for the man who goes beyond!"

THE PREACHER'S TRIAL.

Sitting in my New-England study, as do so many of my tribe, to peruse the "Atlantic," I wonder whether, like its namesake, hospitable to many persons and things, it will for once let me write as well as read, and launch from my own calling a theme on its bosom. Our cloth has been worn so long in the world, I doubt how far it may suit with new fashions in fine company-parlors; but, seeing room is so cordially made for some of my brethren, as the Reverend Mr. Wilbur and "The Country Parson," to keep up the dignity of the profession, I am emboldened to come for a day with what the editorial piety may accept, "rejected article" as it might be elsewhere.

The pulpit has lost something of its old sacredness in the general mind. There is little popular superstition to endure its former dictation. No exclusive incarnate theocracy in any particular persons is left, Leviticus and the Hebrew priesthood are gone. Church, ministry, and Sabbath are the regular targets taken out by our moral riflemen and archers, though so seldom to hit fair in the centre, that we may find ourselves, like spectators at the match, respecting the old targets more than we do the shots. Yet homilies and exporters are thought fair game. I have even heard splendid lecturers whose wit ran so low or who were so pushed for matter as to talk of what divinity-students wear round their necks, which seems a superficial consideration. The anciently venerated desk has two sharp enemies, the radical and the conservative, aiming their artillery from opposite sides, putting it somewhat in the position of the poor fish who is in danger from diverse classes of its fellow-creatures, one in the air and one in the water, and knows not whether to dive or rise to the surface, till it can conclude which is the more pleasant exit from life, to be hawked at or swallowed outright.

While, however, critics and reformers fail to furnish a fit substitute for the sermon, and the finest essays show not only Bacon's "dry light," but a very cold one too, and the wit and humor of the lyceum fall short of any mark in the conscience of mankind, and philanthropy uses stabbing often instead of surgery, a clerical institution, on whose basis direct admonition can be administered by individuals without egotism or impertinence, maintains an indefeasible claim. Indeed, as was fancied of the innocent in the ordeal by fire, or like the children from the furnace, it comes out the other side of all censure, with some odor of sanctity yet on its unsinged robes and new power in higher quarters in its hands. Defective, indeed, it is. If some of its organs could speak a little more in their natural voice, and could, moreover, wash off the deformity of this Indian war-paint of high-wrought rhetoric,-if they could use a little more of the colloquial earnestness of the street and table in their style, instead of those freaks of eloquence which, among all our associations, there ought to be a society to put down,-they would more honor their vocation, and effect its purpose of saving human souls. Let us not be so loudmouthed, or bluster as we do. Our declamation will have to hush its barbarian noise some time. Nothing but conversation will be left in heaven; and it were well, could we have on earth sober and thoughtful assemblies, at blood-warmth instead of fever-heat, rather than those over-crowded halls from which hundreds go away unable to obtain admission.

But the present design is a plea for justice, not a fresh charge. The pulpit is to teach religion in application to life. But when we reflect what life is, how deep in the soul, how wide in the world, how complicated and delicate in its affairs and ties,-and when, we consider what religion is, the whole truth of heaven respecting all the operations of earth,-a kindly judgment is required for unavoidable short-comings and ministerial mistakes. With different ages, sexes, experiences, states of mind, degrees of intelligence and impressibleness in a congregation, it is a rare felicity for a sermon to reach all its members with equal impressiveness or acceptance. Who ever heard a uniform estimate of any discourse? There seems almost a curse upon the preacher's office from its very greatness, so that it is never finished, and no portion of it can be done perfectly well and secure against all objection. If he try to unfold the deep things of the Spirit, and bring his best thoughts, which he would not throw away, before his audience, though in language clearer than many a chapter of Paul's Epistles, some will call the topic obscure, and complain that their children cannot understand it, quoting, perhaps, the old sentence, that all truth necessary to salvation is so plain that he who runs may read, and the wayfaring man, though a fool, cannot err therein, and commending superficial homilies on other tongues to censure whatever is profound from his. But should the poor occupant of the desk venture to emulate this eulogized sonorous exhortation, exerting himself to come down to the ignorant and the young, there will be some to stigmatize that, too, as a sort of trifling and disrespect to mature minds. He has by a senior now and then been blamed for excessive attention to the lambs of his flock, and annoyed with the menace to stay away, if they were especially to be noticed. If a visitation of special grace or an exaltation of physical strength make the mortal incumbent happy in his exposition, so that he is listened to with edification and delight, it is, by some, not passed over to his credit at the ebb-tide of his power. Half the time the house is not half full, as though the institution which all order to be conducted nobody but he is bound to shoulder. If the preacher labor to express the mysterious relationship between God and Christ, the divine and human nature, he will be considered by some a sectarian, controversialist, or heretic. If he unfold what is above all denominational disputes, he will be fortunate to escape accusations of transcendentalism, pantheism, spiritualism. If, lucky man, he go scot-free of such indictment, a last stunning stroke, in the gantlet he runs, will be sure to fetch him up, in the vague and unanswerable imputation of being very peculiar in his views. If he insist on the miracles as literal facts, he will be laughed at as old-fashioned in one pew; if he slight them, he will be mourned over as unsound in the next. Men grumble at taxes and tolls; alas! nobody is stopped at so many gates and questioned in so many ways as he. If he take in hand the tender matter of consoling stricken hearts, the ecstasy of his visions will not save his topic from being regarded by some as painful, and by others as a mere shining of the moon. He will receive special requests not to harrow up the feelings he only meant to bind up in balm. He may be informed of an aversion, more or less extensive, to naming the grave or coffin and what it contains, though he only puts one foot by pall or bier to plant the other in paradise. If he turn the everlasting verities he is intrusted with to events transpiring on the public stage, though he never sided with any party in his life, and has no more committed himself to men than did his Master, some will be grieved at his preaching politics. His head has throbbed, his heart ached, his eyes were hot and wet once before he uttered himself; but he must suffer and weep worse afterwards, because he went too far for one man and not far enough for another. He is told, one day, that he is too severe on seceders, and the next, ironically, that, with such merciful sentiments towards them, he ought always to wear a cravat completely white. One man is amused at his sermon, and another thinks the same is sad. He will be asked if he cannot give a little less of one thing or more of another, as though he were a dealer in wares or an exhibiter of curious documents for a price, and could take an article from this or that shelf, or a paper from any one of a hundred pigeon-holes, when, if he be a servant of the Lord and organ of the Holy Ghost, he has no choice and is shut up to his errand,-necessity is laid upon him, woe is unto him if he deliver it not, but, like another Jonah, flee to Tarshish when the Lord tells him to go to Nineveh and cry against its wickedness; and he feels through every nerve that truth is not a thing to be carried round as merchandise or peddled out at all to suit particular tastes, to retain old friends or win new ones, hard as it may go, to the anguish of his soul, to lose the good-will of those he loves, and whose distrust is a chronic pang, though they come to love him again all the more for what he has suffered and said. But if, passing by discussions of general interest, and exposing himself to the hint of being behind the times, he grapple with the sins immediately about him, board the false customs of society and trade, and strike with the sword of the Lord at private vices and family faults, he will be blamed as very personal, and be apprised of his insults to those of whom in his delivery he never thought, as he may never preach at anybody, or even to anybody, in his most direct thrusting, more than to himself, reaching others only through his own wounded heart. Meantime, some of his ecclesiastical constituents will suspect him, in his local ethics, of leniency to wide-spread corruption; and professed philanthropists will brand him as a trimmer and coward, recreant, fawning, and dumb,-the term spaniel having been flung at one of the best men and most conscientious ministers that ever lived, simply because he could not vituperate as harshly as some of his neighbors. Some would have him remember only those in bonds; others say they cannot endure from him even the word slavery. Blessed, if, from all these troubles, he can, for solace, and with a sense of its significance, bethink himself of Christ's saying to his disciples, "Woe unto you, when all men shall speak well of you!" Thrice blessed, if he have an assurance and in that inward certificate possess the peace which passeth understanding!

I intend not, by my simple story, which has in it no fiction, to add to the lamentations of the old prophet, nor will allow Jeremiah to represent all my mood. It is perfectly fit the laity should criticize the clergy. The minister,-who is he but one of the people, set apart to particular functions, open to a judgment on the manner of their discharge, from which no sacred mission or supposed apostolic succession can exempt, the Apostles having been subject to it themselves? Under their robes and ordinances, in high-raised desks, priest and bishop are but men, after all. Ministers should be grateful for all the folk's frankness. Only let the criticism be considerate and fair; and in order to its becoming so, let us ascertain the perfect model of their calling. Did not their Master give it, when he said, "The field is the world"? If so, then to everything in the world must the pulpit apply the moral law. What department of it shall be excused? Politics,-because it embraces rival schools in the same worshipping body, and no disinterested justice in alluding to its principles can be expected from a preacher, or because whoever disagrees with his opinions must be silent, there being on Sunday and in the sanctuary no decency allowed of debate or reply, and therefore whatever concerns the civil welfare and salvation of the community is out of the watchman's beat now, though God so expressly bade him warn the city of old? Commerce,-because a minister understands nothing of the elements and necessities of business, and must blunder in pointing to banks and shops or any transactions of the street, though an old preacher, called Solomon, in his Proverbs refers so sharply to the buyer and the seller? Pleasure,-because the servant of the Lord cannot be supposed to sympathize with, but only to denounce, amusement which poor tired humanity employs for its recreation, though Miriam's smiting of her timbrel, which still rings from the borders of the raging Red Sea, and David's dancing in a linen ephod with all his might before the Lord, when the ark on a new cart came into the city, were a sort of refreshment of triumphant sport? The social circle,-because of course he cannot go to parties or comprehend the play of feeling in which the natural affections run to and fro, and should rather be at home reading his Bible, turning over his Concordance, and writing his sermon, letting senate and dance, market and exchange, opera and theatre, fights and negotiations go to the winds, so he only comes duly with his exegesis Sunday morning to his place? In short, is the minister's concern and call of God only, with certain imposing formalities and prearranged dogmas, to greet in their Sunday-clothes his friends who have laid aside their pursuits and delights with the gay garments or working-dress of the week, never reminding them of what, during the six days, they have heard or where they have been? "No!" let him say; "if this is to be a minister, no minister can I be!" For what is left of the field the Lord sends the minister into? It is cut up and fenced off into countless divisions, to every one of which some earthly-agent or interest brings a title-deed. The minister finds the land of the world, like some vast tract of uncivilized territory, seized by wild squatters, owned and settled by other parties, and, as a famous political-economist said in another connection, there is no cover at Nature's table for him. As with the soldier in the play, whose wars were over, his "occupation's gone."

What is the minister, then? A ghost, or a figure like some in the shop-window, all made up of dead cloth and color into an appearance of life? Verily, he comes almost to that. But no such shape, no spectre from extinct animation of thousands of years ago, like the geologist's skeletons reconstructed from lifeless strata of the earth, can answer the vital purposes of the revelation from God. Of no pompous or abstract ritual administration did the Son of God set an example. He had a parable for the steward living when He did; He called King Herod, then reigning, a fox, and the Scribes and Pharisees hypocrites; He declared the prerogatives of His Father beyond C?sar's; He maintained a responsibility of human beings coextensive with the stage and inseparable from the smallest trifle of their existence. He did not limit His marvellous tongue to antiquities and traditions. He used the mustard-seed in the field and the leaven in the lump for His everlasting designs. His finger was stretched out to the cruel stones of self-righteousness flying through the air, and phylacteries of dissimulation worn on the walk. He was so political, He would have saved Jerusalem and Judea from Roman ruin, and wept because He could not, with almost the only tears mentioned of His. Those who teach in His name should copy after His pattern.

"Confine yourselves to the old first Gospel, preach Christianity, early Christianity," we ministers are often told. But what is Christianity, early or late, and what does the Gospel mean, but a rule of holy living in every circumstance now? Grief and offence may come, as Jesus says they must; misapplications and complaints, which are almost always misapprehensions, may be made; but are not these better than indifference and death? No doubt there is a prudence, and still more an impartial candor and equity, in treating every matter, but no beauty in timid flight from any matter there is to treat. The clergyman, like every man, speaks at his peril, and is as accountable as any one for what he says. He ought justly and tenderly to remember the diverse tenets represented among his auditors, to side with no sect as such, to give no individual by his indorsement a mean advantage over any other, nor any one a handle of private persecution by his open anathema. Moreover, he should abstain from that particularity in secular themes which so easily wanders from all sight of spiritual law amid regions of uncertainty and speculative conjecture. He should shun explorations less fit for prophets than for experts. He should lay his finger on no details in which questions of right and wrong are not plainly involved. He must be public-spirited; he cannot be more concerned for his country and his race, that righteousness and liberty and love may prevail, than divine seers have ever been, as their books of record show; but, if he becomes a mere diplomatist, financier, secretary-of-state, or military general, in his counsels or his tone, he evacuates his own position, flees as a craven from his post, and assumes that of other men. Yet it is an extreme still worse for him to resort to lifeless generalities of doctrine and duty, producing as little effect as comes from electric batteries or telegraphic wires when no magnetic current is established and no object reached. What section, of the world should evade or defy the law of God?

O preachers, beware of your sentimental descant on the worth of goodness, the goodness of being good, and the sinfulness of sin, without specifying either! It is a blank cartridge, or one of treacherous sand instead of powder, or a spiked gun, only whose priming explodes without noise or execution. Let nobody dodge the sure direction of that better than lead or iron shot with which from you the conscience is pierced and iniquity slain. Suffer not the statesman to withdraw his policy, nor the broker his funds, nor the captain the cause he fights for, from the sentence of divine truth on the good or evil in all the acts of men.

The preacher, however, as he pronounces or reports that sentence, must never forget the bond he is under in his own temper to the spirit of impartial love. Whatever is vindictive vitiates his announcement all the more that he cannot be rebuked for it, as he ought to be, on the spot. Only let not the hearers mistake earnestness for vindictiveness. If kindly and with intense serenity he communicates what he has struggled long and hard to attain, then for their own sake, if not for his, they should beware of visiting him either with silent distrust or open reproach. He, just like them, must stand or fall according to his fidelity to the oracles of God. Only, once more, let him and let the Church comprehend that those oracles are not summed up in any laborious expounding of verbal texts. "The letter killeth," unless itself enlivened through the immediate Providence.

To be true to God, the preacher must be true to his time, as the Prophets, Jesus, and the Apostles were to theirs. The pulpit dies of its dignity, when it creeps into the exhausted receiver of foregone conclusions, and has nothing to say but of Adam and Pharaoh, Jew and Gentile, Palestine and Tyre so far away. Its decorum of being inoffensive to others is suicidal for itself. It is the sleep of death for all. As the inductive philosopher took all knowledge for his province, it must take all life. We have, indeed, a glorious and venerable charter of inestimable worth in our map of the religious history of mankind through centuries that are gone. We must study the true meaning of the Bible, the book and chief collection of the records of faith, precious above all for the immortal image and photograph, in so many a shifting light and various expression, of the transcendent form of divinity through manhood in Him to be ever reverently and lovingly named, Jesus Christ. But there is a spirit in man. "The word of God," says an Apostle, "is not bound"; nor can it be wholly bound up. The Holy Spirit of God that first descended never died, and never ceased to act on the human soul. The day of miracles is not past,-or, if none precisely like those of Jesus are still wrought, miracles of grace, the principal workings of the supernatural, of which external prodigies are the lowest species, are performed abundantly in the living breast. Jesus Himself, after all the sufficient and summary grandeur of His instructions, assures His followers of the Spirit that would come to lead them, beyond whatsoever He had said, into all truth. In that dispensation of the Spirit we live. Its sphere endures through all change, impregnable. It is "builded far from accident." No progress of earthly science can threat or hurt its eternal proportions. It is the supreme knowledge, and to whoever enters it a whisper comes whose only response is the confession of our noble hymn,-

"True science is to read Thy name."

Much is said of a contradictory relation of science to faith. But the statement is a misnomer. True faith is the lushest science, even the knowledge of God. Putting fishes or birds, shells or flowers, stones or stars, in a circle or a row is a lower science than the sublime intercommunication of the soul by prayer and love with its Father. Mere physical, without spiritual science, has no bottom to hold anything, and no foundation of peace. The king of science is not the naturalist as such, but the saint conversing with Divinity,-not so much Humboldt or La Place as Fénelon or Luther. So far as the progress of outward science saps accredited writings, they must give way, or rather any false conceptions of Nature they imply must yield, leaving whatever spirituality there is in them untouched. But this is from no essential contradiction between science and religious faith. What faith or religion is there in believing the world was made in six days? Less than in calculating, with Agassiz, by the coral reefs of Florida, that to make one bit of it took more than sixty thousand years. Religious faith, what is it? It is the trembling transport with which the soul hearkens and gives itself up to God, in sympathy with all likewise entranced souls. But from such consecrated listening to the voice of Deity, fresh in our bosom or echoed from without by those He has inspired, we verify the rule already affirmed, and fetch advice and command for all the affairs of life. It is emphatically the minister's duty thus to join the vision to the fact, that they may strike through and through one another. Certainly, so the true minister's speech should run. Let him stand up and boldly say, or always imply, "I so construe it; and if the Church interpret it otherwise, the Church is no place for me. If the world will accept no such method, the world is no place for me. I see not why I was born, or what with Church or world I have to do. From Church and world I should beg leave to retire, trusting that God's Universe, somewhere beyond this dingy spot, is true to the persuasion of His mind. I must apply religion universally to life, or not at all. If, when my country is in peril, I cannot bring her to the altar and ask that she may be lifted up in the arms of a common supplication,-if, in the terrible game of honesty with political corruption, when 'Check' is said to the adverse power, I cannot wish and pray that 'Checkmate' may follow,-when some huge evil, sorely wounded, in its fierce throes spreads destruction about, as the dying monster in Northern seas casts up boat-loads of dying men who fall bruised and bleeding among the fragments into the waves with the threshing of its angry tail, if then I cannot hope that the struggle may be short, and the ship of the Republic gather back her crew from prevailing in the conflict to sail prosperous with all her rich cargo of truth and freedom on the voyage over the sea of Time,-if no sound of the news-boy's cry must mix with the echoes of solemn courts, and no reflection of wasting fires in which life and treasure melt can flash through their windows, and no deeds of manly heroism or womanly patriotism are to have applause before God and Christ in the temple,-if nothing but some preexisting scheme of salvation, distinct from all living activity, must absorb the mind,-then I totally misunderstand and am quite out of my place. Then let me go. It is high time I were away. I have stayed too long already." Such should be the speech of the minister, knowing he is not tempted to be a partisan, and is possessed with but an over-kind sensibility to dread any ruffling of others' feelings or discord with those that are dear.

In the first year of a young minister's service, Dr. Channing besought him to let no possible independence of parochial support relax his industry: a needless caution to one not constituted to feel seductions of sloth, in whom active energy is no merit, and who can have no motive but the people's good. What else is there for him to seek? There is no by-end open, and no virtue in a devotedness there is no lure to forego. There is no position he can covet, as politicians are said to bid for the Presidency. But one thing is indispensable: he must tell what he thinks; he is strong only in his convictions; the sacrifice of them he cannot make; it were but his debility, if he did; and the treasury of all the fortunes of the richest parish were no more than a cipher to purchase it from any one who, quick as he may be to human kindness, may have a more tremulous rapture for the approbation of God.

After all, to his profession and parish the preacher is in debt. Exquisite rewards his work yields. If controversy arise on some point with his friends, there may, after a while, be no remnant of hard feeling,-as there are heavy cannonades, and no bit of wadding picked up. Those who have striven with or defamed may come to cherish him all the more for their alienation. Those who could not hear him, or, when they heard, thought him too long, or what they heard did not like, may own with him, out of their discontent, closer and sweeter bonds. His business is expansive in its nature. The seasons of human life in broad representation are always before him. How many moral springs and summers, autumns and winters he sees, till he can hardly tell whether his musing on this curious existence be memory or hope, retrospect of earth or prospect of heaven! and he begins to think the spiritual world abolishes distinctions of spheres and times, as parents, that were his lambs, bring their babes to his arms, and, even in the flesh, his mortal passing into eternal vision, he beholds, as in vivid dreaming, other parents leading their children on other shores, unseen, though hard by. Where, after a score or two of years, is his church? He has several congregations,-one within the dedicated walls, one of emigrants whom his fancy instead of the bell assembles, and a third of elders and little ones gone back through the shadow of mystery whence they came. In what abides of the flock nothing remains as it was. Wondrous transformations snow maturity or decline in the very forms that, to his also changing eye and hand, once wore soft cheeks and silken locks. In his experience, miracle is less than creation and lower than truth. He cannot credit Memory's ever losing her seat, he has such things to remember. The best thereof can never be written down, published, uttered by orators, or blown from the trumpet of Fame, whose "brave instrument" must put up with a meaner message and inferior breath. Out of his affections are born his beliefs; earth is the cradle of his expectancy and persuasion of heaven; and not otherwise than through the glass of his experience could he have sight of a sphere of ineffable glory for better growth than Nature here affords in all her gardens and fields.

So let the preacher stand by his order. But let him be just, also, to the constituency from which it springs. Hearty and cheerful, though obscure worker, let him be. Let him fling his weaver's shuttle still, daily while he lives, through the crossing party-colored threads of human life, till, in his factory too, beauty flows from confusion, contradiction ends in harmony, and the blows with which each one has been stricken form the perfect pattern from all. There is a unity which all faithful labor, through whatever jars, consults and creates. Of all criticisms the resultant is truth; be the conflicts what they may, the issue shall be peace; and one music of affection is yet angelically to flow from the many divided notes of human life. Who is the minister, then? No ordained functionary alone, but every man or woman that has lived and served, loved and lamented, and now, for such ends, suffers and hopes.

THE GHOST OF LITTLE JACQUES.

How quiet the saloon was, that morning, as I groped my way through the little white tables, the light chairs, and the dimness of early dawn to the windows. It was my business to open the windows every morning, finding my way down as best I could; for it was not permitted to light the gas at that hour, and no candles were allowed, lest they should soil the furniture. This morning the glass dome which brightened the ceiling, and helped to lighten the saloon, was of very little effect, so cloudy and dusk was the sky. The high houses which shut in the strip of garden on all sides reflected not a ray of light. A chill struck through me, as I passed along the marble pavement; a saloon-dampness, empty, vault-like, hung about the fireless, sunless place; and the plashing of the fountain which dripped into the marble basin beyond-dropping, dropping, incessantly-struck upon my ear like water trickling down the side of a cave.

It had never occurred to me to think the place lonely or dreary before, or to demur at this morning operation of opening it for the day; a tawdry, gilded, showy hall, it had seemed to me quite a grand affair, compared with those in which I had hitherto found employment. Now I shuddered and shivered, and felt the task, always regarded as a compliment to my honesty, to be indeed hard and heavy enough.

It might have been-yet I was not a coward-that the little coffin in that little room at the end of the saloon had something to do with this uneasiness. On each side of that narrow room (which opened upon a long hall leading to the front of the building) were the small windows looking out upon the garden, which I always unbolted first. I say I do not know that this presence of death had anything to do with my trepidation. The death of a child was no very solemn or very uncommon thing in my master's family. He had many children, and, when death thinned their ranks, took the loss like a philosopher,-as he was,-a French philosopher. He philosophized that his utmost exertions could not do much more for the child than bequeath to him just such a life as he led, and a share in just such a saloon as he owned; and therefore, if a priest and a coffin insured the little innocent admission into heaven without any extra charge, he would not betray such lack of wisdom as to demur at the proposition. Therefore, very quietly, since I had been in his employ, (about a twelvemonth,) three of his children, one by one, had been brought down to that little room at the end of the saloon, and thence through the long hall, through the crowded street out to some unheard-of burying-ground, where a pot of flowers and a painted cross supplied the place of a head-stone. The shop was not shut up on these occasions: that would have been an unnecessary interference with the comfort of customers, and loss of time and money. The necessity of providing for his little living family had quite disenthralled Monsieur C-- from any weakly sentimentality in regard to his little dead family.

So I do not know why I shuddered, being also myself somewhat of a philosopher,-of such cool philosophy as grows out inevitably from the hard and stony strata of an overworked life. The sleeper within was certainly better cared for now than he ever had been in life. Monsieur's purse afforded no holiday-dress but a shroud; three of these in requisition within so short a time quite scanted the wardrobe of the other children. Little Jacques had always been a somewhat restless and unhappy baby, longing for fresh air, and a change which he never got; it seemed likely, so far as the child's promise was concerned, that the "great change" was his only chance of variety, and the very best thing that could have happened to him.

And yet, after all, there was something about his death which individualized it, and hung a certain sadness over its occurrence that does not often belong to the death of children, or at least had not marked the departure of his two stout little brothers. Scarlet-fever and croup and measles are such every-day, red-winged, mottled angels, that no one is appalled at their presence; they take off the little sufferer in such vigorous fashion, clutch him with so hearty a grip, that one is compelled to open the door, let them out, and feel relieved when the exit is made. It is only when some dim-eyed, white-robed shape, scarcely seen, scarcely felt, steps softly in and steals away the little troublesome bundle of life with solemn eye and hushed lip, that we have time to pause, to look, to grieve.

This little Jacques, when I came to his father's house, was a rampant, noisy, cunning child, with the vivacity of French and American blood mingling in his veins, and filling him with strongest tendencies to mischief, and prompting elfish feats of activity. He was not by any means a fascinating child,-in fact, no children ever fascinated me,-but this little fellow was rather disagreeable, a wonder to his father, a horror to his mother, and a great annoyance generally; we were all rather cross with him, and he was universally put down, thrust aside, and ordered out of the way.

This was the state of affairs when I came. It was little Jacques, with a high forehead, white, tightly curling hair, and mischief-full blue eye, who made himself translator of all imaginable inquisitorial French phrases for my benefit,-who questioned, and tormented, and made faces at me,-who pulled my apron, disappeared with my carpet-bag, and placed a generous slice of molasses-candy upon the seat of my chair, when I sat down to rest myself.

Little Jacques ardently loved a sly fishing-expedition on the edge of the marble fountain-basin, and had lured one or two unthinking gold-fish to destruction with fly and a crooked pin. He would sit perched up there at an odd chance, when his father was away, and he dared venture into the saloon,-his little bare feet twinkling against the water, his plump figure curled up into the minutest size, but ready for a spring and a dart up-stairs at the shortest notice of danger. This piscatory propensity had been severely punished by both Monsieur and Madame C--, who could not afford to encourage such an expensive Izaak Walton; but there was no managing the child. He seemed to possess an impish capability of eluding detection and angry denunciations. To be sure, circumstances were against any very strict guard being kept over the youngster. Madame C-- was a very weak woman, a very weak woman indeed,-she declared that such was the case,-a nervous, dispirited woman, whom everything troubled, who could not bear the noise and tramp of life, and altogether sank under it. Destiny had had no mercy on her weakness, however, and had left her to get along with an innumerable family of children, a philosophic husband, who took all her troubles coolly, and a constant demand for her services either in the shop or at the cradle. She could not, therefore, have patience with the incessant anxiety which little Jacques excited by his pranks.

One day Madame C-- had gone out for a walk, leaving the children locked in a room above, five of them, two younger and two older than Jacques; and these together had been in a state of riotous insurrection the whole morning. Little Jacques was not of a disposition to submit to ignominious imprisonment, when human ingenuity could devise means of escape; while his brothers were running wild together, he soberly hunted up another key, screwed and scraped and got it into the key-hole; it turned, and he was out.

Half an hour afterwards, his mother, returning, caught the unfortunate fugitive contemplatively perched on the edge of the fountain-basin. In such a frenzy of anger as only unreasonable people are subject to, she caught the child, shivering with terror, and thrust him into the water. The gold-fish splashed and swirled, and the water streamed over the sides of the basin. It was only an instant's work; snatching up the forlorn fisher, she shook him unmercifully, and set him upon the floor, dripping and breathless. I saw nothing of them until night. His mother had then recovered her usual peevishness, weakness, and inefficiency; the ebullition of energy had entirely subsided. I was curious to know whether the summary punishment had had any effect upon Jacques; but he was asleep, as soundly as usual after a day's hard frolic.

My curiosity was likely to be gratified to satiety. A strange change came over the little fellow after this. To one accustomed to his apish activity, and to being annoyed by it, there was something plaintive in the fact of having got rid of that trouble. The child was silent, mopish, "good," as his mother said, congratulating herself on the effect of her summary visitation upon the offender.

When, however, a month passed without any return of the evil propensities, this continued quiescence grew to be something ghostly, and, to people who had only their own hands to depend on for a living, a subject of anxiety and alarm: it was expensive to clothe and feed a child who promised but little service in future.

"The enfant will never come to anything," said Monsieur; "we could better have spared him than Jean."

To which his wife shook her head, and solemnly assented.

The 'enfant,' however, gave no signs of taking the hint. Day after day his little ministerial head and flaxen curls were visible over the top of his old-fashioned arm-chair, and day after day his food was demanded, and his appetite was as good as ever.

Watching the child, whose blue eyes, now the mischief was out of them, grew utterly vacant of expression, I unaccountably to myself came to feel an uncomfortable interest in, a morbid sympathy with him,-an uneasy, unhappy sympathy, more physical than mental.

No fault could have been found with the motherly carefulness and attention of Madame C--. It was charmingly polite and French. But the sight of her preparing the child's food, or coaxing him with unaccustomed delicacies and bonbons, grew to be utterly distasteful,-an infliction so nervously annoying that I could not overcome it. A secret antipathy which I had nourished against Madame seemed to be germinating; every action of hers irritated me, every sound of her sharp, yet well-modulated voice gave me a tremor. The truth was, that plunge into the water, taking place so unexpectedly in my presence, had startled and upset me almost as completely as if it had befallen myself. A hard-working woman had no business with such nerves. I knew that, and tried to annihilate them; but the more I cut them down, the more they bled. The thing was a mere trifle,-the fountain-basin was shallow, the water healthy,-nothing could be more healthy than bathing,-and, at any rate, it was no affair of mine. Yet my mind in some unhealthy mood aggravated the circumstances, and colored everything with its own dark hue.

I could not give up my place, of course not; I was not likely to get so good a situation anywhere else; I could not risk it; and yet the servitude of horror under which I was held for a few weeks was almost enough to reconcile one to starvation. Only that I was kept busy in the shop most of the time, and had little leisure to observe the course of affairs, or to be in Madame's society, I should have given warning,-foolishly enough,-for there was not a tangible thing of which I had to complain. But a shapeless suspicion which for some days had been brooding in my mind was taking form, too dim for me to dare to recognize it, but real enough to make me feel a miserable fascination to the house while little Jacques still lived, a magnetic, uncomfortable necessity for my presence, as though it were in some sort a protection against an impending evil.

Such suspicion I did not, of course, presume to name, scarcely presumed to think, it seemed so like an unnatural monstrosity of my own mind. But when, one morning, the child died, holding in his hands the bonbons his mother had given him, and Madame C--, all agitation and frenzy and weeping, still contrived to extract them from the tightly closed, tiny fists, and threw them into the grate, I felt a horrid thrill like the effect of the last scene in a tragedy. I knew that the bonbons were poisoned.

So that is the reason I shuddered as I passed through the saloon.

Throwing open the window, a dim light flickered through, and a sickly ray fell upon the fountain. It shivered upon the dripping marble column in its centre, and struck with an icy hue the water in the basin below. The fountain was not in my range of vision from the window; but I often turned to look at it as I opened the shutters, thinking it a pretty sight when the drops sparkled in the misty light against the background of the otherwise darkened room. It pleased my imagination to watch the effect produced by a little more or a little less opening of the shutters,-a nonsensical morning play-spell, which quite enlivened me for the sedate occupations of the day. It was, however, not imagination now which whispered to me that there was something else to look at beside the jet of water and the shadowy play of light. Stooping down upon the fountain-brink, absorbed in contemplating the gold-fish swimming below, and with its naked little feet touching the water's edge, a tiny figure sat. My first thought (the first thoughts of fear are never reasonable) was, that some child from up-stairs had stolen down unawares, (as children are quite as fond as grown folks of forbidden pleasures,) to amuse itself with the water. But the children were not risen yet, and the saloon was too utterly dark and dismal at that hour to tempt the bravest of them. Second thoughts reminded me of that certainty, and I looked again. The figure raised its head from its drooping posture, and gazed vacantly, out of a pair of dim blue eyes, at me. The eyes were the eyes of little Jacques.

I do not know how I should have been so utterly overcome, but I started up in terror as I felt the dreamy phantom-gaze fixed upon me, raising my hands wildly above my head. The hammer which I held in my hand to drive back the bolts of the shutters flew from my grasp and struck the great mirror,-the new mirror which had just been bought, and was not yet hung up. All the savings of a year were shivered to fragments in an instant. My horror at this catastrophe recalled my presence of mind; for I was a poor woman, dependent for my bread on the family. Poor women cannot afford to have fancies; some prompt reality always startles them out of dream or superstition. My superstition fled in dismay as I stooped over the fragments of the looking-glass. What should I do? Where should I hide myself? I involuntarily took hold of the mirror with the instinctive intention of turning it to the wall. It was very heavy; I could scarcely lift it. Pausing a moment, and looking forward at its shattered face in utter anguish of despair, I saw again, repeated in a hundred jagged splinters, up and down in zigzag confusion, in demoniac omnipresence, the uncanny eye, the spectral shape, which had so appalled me. The little phantom had arisen, its slim finger was outstretched,-it beckoned, slowly beckoned, growing indistinct, it receded farther and farther out from the saloon towards the shop.

The fascination of a spell was upon me; I turned and followed the retreating figure. The shutters of the show-window were not yet taken down, but thin lines of light filtered through them,-light enough to see that the apparition made its way to a forbidden spot slyly haunted by the little boy in his days of mischief,-a certain shelf where a box of some peculiar sort of expensive confections was kept. I had seen his mother, with unwonted generosity, give the child a handful of these a day or two before his death. I could go no farther. A mighty fear fell upon me, a dimness of vision and a terrible faintness; for that child-phantom, gliding on before, stopped like a retribution at that very spot, and, raising its little hand, pointed to that very box, glancing upward with its solemn eye, as, rising slowly in the air, it grew indistinct, its outlines fading into darkness, and disappeared.

I did not fall or faint, however; I hastened out to the saloon again.

The door of the little room where the coffin stood was open, and

Madame stepping out, looked vaguely about her.

"Madame! Madame!" I cried, "oh, I have seen-I have seen a terrible sight!"

Madame's face grew white, very white. She grasped me harshly by the arm.

"What are you talking about, you crazy woman? You are getting quite wild, I think. Do you imagine you can hide your guilt in that way?" and she shook me with a savage fierceness that made my very bones ache. "This is carrying it with a high hand, to be sure, to flatter yourself that such wilful carelessness will not be discovered. Do you suppose," she cried, pointing to the fragments of glass, "that my nerves could feel a crash like that, and I not come down to see what had happened?"

She spoke so volubly, and kept so firm a grip of my arm, that I could not get breath to utter a word of self-defence,-indeed, what defence could I make? Yet I should say, from my mistress's singular manner, that she had seen that vision too, so wild were her eyes, so haggard her face.

Little Jacques was buried. His attentive parents enjoyed a carriage-ride, with his miniature coffin between them, quite as well as if the little fellow had accompanied them alive and full of mischief.

Outside matters, as Monsieur said, being now off his mind, he could attend to business again.

The mirror belonged to "business." I had been writhing under that knowledge all the morning of their absence.

Monsieur took the sight of his despoiled glass as calmly as Diogenes might have viewed a similar disaster from his tub. Monsieur's philosophy was grounded upon common sense. He knew that the frame was valuable. He knew also that I had saved enough to pay for the accident. I knew it, too, and was well aware that he would exact payment to the uttermost farthing. Monsieur, therefore, was quite cool. He laughed loudly at Madame's excitement, and the feverish account she gave of my fright, my deceitfulness, and pretending to see what nobody else saw.

"Little Jacques!" I heard him exclaim, as I entered the room, shrugging his shoulders with such a contemptuously good-natured sneer as only a Frenchman can manufacture; and raising both his hands derisively, he went off with vivacity to his business.

In the morning I left. Monsieur endeavored to persuade me to stay. But my business there was finished. I was quite as cool as Monsieur,-in fact, a little chilly. I was determined to go. Madame was determined also; we could no longer get along together; each hated and feared the other; and Madame C-- having used overnight what influence she possessed to bring her husband to see the necessity of my departure, his objections were not very difficult to remove.

I could not afford to be out of work, that was true, and it might take me a long time to get it; but I was tired to death, and glad of any excuse for a little rest. What, after all, if I did lie by for a little while? there was not much pleasure or profit either way.

I should not grow rich by my work; I could not grow much poorer by being idle. The past year, which I had spent in the service of Monsieur and Madame C--, had been one of constant annoyance and irritating variety of employment. I had grown fretful in the constant hurry and drive, and the baneful atmosphere of Madame's peevishness. Body and soul cried out for a season of release, which never in all my life of service had I thought of before.

I had my desire now. I had put away my bondage. I had ceased my unprofitable labor. The rest I had so long craved was at hand. I might take a jubilee, a siesta, if I pleased, of half a year, and nobody be the wiser. I was responsible to nobody. Nobody had any demands upon my time or exertion. Free! I stood in a vacuum; no rush of air, no tempest or whirlpool stirred its infinite profundity. At length I was at peace,-a peace which seemed likely to last as long as my slim purse held out; for employment was not easy to obtain. Did I enjoy it? Did I lap myself in the long-desired repose in thankful quiescence of spirit? Perhaps,-I cannot tell; restlessness had become a chronic disease with me. I felt like a ship drifted from its moorings: the winds and the tides were pleasant; the ocean was at lull; but the ship rocked aimless and unsteady upon the waters. The heavy weights of life and activity so suddenly withdrawn left painful lightness akin to emptiness. The broken chains trailed noisily after me. The time hung heavily which I had so long prayed for. Long years of monotonous servitude had made a very machine of me. I could only rust in inaction. Some other power, to rack and grind and urge me on, was necessary to my very existence.

So it happened, that, at last, my holiday having spun out to the end of my means, I left the city, and engaged work at very low wages in a country-village. The situation and the remuneration were not in the least calculated to stimulate ambition or avarice; and I remained obscurely housed, incessantly busy, and coarsely clothed and fed, in this place, for two years. They were not long years either. I had no hard taskmaster, however hard my task, no uneasy, unexplainable apprehensions, no moody forebodings of evil, no troublesome children to distress me. At the end of that time I heard of a better situation, and returned to the city.

I had been engaged about a twelvemonth in my new place, a very pleasant little shop, though the pay was less and the work harder than I had had with Monsieur C--, when, one morning, standing at the shop-window, I saw that gentleman pass: very brisk, very spruce, very plump he looked. Glancing in, (I flatter myself that a show-window arranged as I could arrange it would attract any one's eye,) he espied me. A speedy recognition and a long conversation were the result. It was early morning, and we had the store to ourselves. Monsieur was very friendly. His business was very good. Poor Madame! he wished she could have lived to see it; but she was gone, poor soul! out of a world of trouble. And Monsieur plaintively fixed his eyes on the black crape upon his hat. The unhappy exit took place a few months after my departure. The children had gone to one or another relative. Monsieur was all alone; he had been away since then himself, had been doing as well as a bereaved man could do, and, having saved a snug little sum, had returned to buy out the old stand, and re?stablish himself in the old place. No one was with him; he wished he could get a good hand to superintend the concern, now his own hands were so full. It would be a good situation for somebody. In short, Monsieur came again and again, until, as I was poor and lonely, and had almost overworked myself just to keep soul and body together, whose union, after all, was of no importance to any one save myself, and as I was quite glad to find some one else who was interested in the preservation of the partnership, I consented to be his wife. It was a very sensible and philosophic arrangement for both of us. We could make more money together than apart, and were stout and well able to help each other, if only well taken care of. So we settled the business, and settled ourselves as partners in the saloon.

Three years had passed, and we were in the old place still. We had been very busy that day. Many orders to fill, many customers to wait upon. Monsieur, completely worn out, was sound asleep on the sofa up-stairs. It was late; I was very much fatigued, as I descended, according to my usual custom, to see that everything was safe about the house and shop. The place was all shut and empty; the lights were all out. A cushioned lounge in one corner of the saloon-my saloon now-attracted my weary limbs, and I threw myself upon it, setting the lamp upon a marble table by its side. With a complacent sense of rest settling upon me, I drowsily looked about at the dim magnificence of loneliness which surrounded me. The night-lamp made more shadow than shine; but even by its obscured rays one who had known the old place would have been struck with the wonderful improvement we had made. So I thought. It was almost like a palace, gilded, and mirrored, and hung with silken curtains. Monsieur and I had thriven together, had worked hard and saved much these many years to produce the change. But the change had been, as everything we effected was, well considered, and had proved very profitable in the end. Better reception-rooms brought better customers; higher prices a higher class of patronage. It was very pleasant, lying there, to reflect that we were actually succeeding in the world; and a pleasant and quiet mood fell upon me, as, hopeful of the future, I looked back at the past. I thought of my old days in that saloon; I thought of little Jacques. Little Jacques was still a thought of some horror to me, and I generally avoided any allusion to him. But to-night, in this subdued and contemplative mood, I even let the little phantom glide into my reverie without being startled. I even speculated on the old theme which had so haunted me. I wondered whether my suspicions had been correct, and whether-whether Madame C-- was guilty of sending her little son before her into the other world. So thinking,-I might have been almost dreaming,-a slight rustle in the shop aroused me. I was not alarmed; my nerves are now much healthier, and I wisely make a point of not getting them unstrung by violent movements, or unaccustomed feats of activity, when anything astonishing happens. I therefore lifted my head calmly and looked about,-it might be a mouse. The noise ceased that instant, as if the intruder were aware of being observed. Mice sometimes have this instinct. We had some valuable new confections, which I had no desire should be disposed of by such customers. So, taking up my lamp, and peering cautiously about me, I proceeded to the shop. The light flickered,-flickered on something tall and white,-something white and shadowy, standing erect, and shrinking aside, behind the counter. My heart stood still; a sepulchral chill came over me. My old self, trembling, angry, foreboding, stepped suddenly within the niche whence the self-confident, full-grown, sensible woman had vanished utterly. For an instant, I felt like a ghost myself. It seemed natural that ghosts, if such there were, should spy me out, and appall my heart with their presence. For there, in that old, haunted spot, where long years ago the spectre of little Jacques had lifted its menacing finger, stood the form of Marie, Madame C--. I knew it well; shuddering and shivering myself, more like an intruder than one intruded upon, I laid my hand upon the chill marble counter for support. It was no creation of imagination; the figure laid its hand also upon the marble, and, stretching over its gaunt neck, stood and peered into my eyes.

"Madame C--! Madame C--!" I cried; "what in the name of God would you have of me?"

"Nothing," she answered,-"nothing of you,-and nothing in the name of God. Oh, you need not shudder at me,-Christine C--! I know you well enough. You haven't got over your old tricks yet. I'm no ghost, though. Mayhap you'd rather I'd be, for all your nerves, eh?"-and she shook her head in the old vengeful, threatening way.

It was true enough. "What evil atmosphere surrounded me? What fell snare environed me? I looked about like a hunted animal brought to bay,-like a robber suddenly entrapped in the midst of his ill-gotten gains. For this was no dead woman, but a living vengeance, more terrible than death, brought to my very door. Some unseen power, it seemed, full of evil influence, full of malignant justice, stretched its long arms through my life, and would not let me by any means escape to peace, to rest. A direful vision of horrible struggles yet to come-of want, despair, disgrace in reservation-sickened my soul.

"I will call-I will call," said I, gasping,-"I will call Monsieur

C--; he"--

"Don't, don't, I beg of you!" she cried, catching me by the sleeve, with a sardonic laugh; low, whispering, full of direful meaning, it stealthily echoed through the saloon. "Don't disturb the good man. He sleeps so soundly after his well-spent days! He doesn't have any bad dreams, I fancy,-rid of such a troublesome, vicious wife,-a wife who harassed her husband to death, and murdered her little boy,-he sleeps sound, doesn't he? And yet-I declare, in the name of God, Christine C--,"-and she lifted up her bony finger like an avenging fate,-"he did it!"

I had been endeavoring to calm myself while this woman of spectral face and form stared at me with her maniac eye across the counter. I had succeeded. At any rate, this was a tangible horror, and could be grappled with; it was not beyond human reach, a shadowy retribution from the invisible world. To face the circumstances, however repulsive, is less depressing than to await in suspense the coming of their footsteps, and the descent of that blow we know they will inflict. I had always found that policy best which was bravest. I remembered this now. Dropping my high tone, and soothing my excited features, I beckoned the woman and gave her a chair; I took a chair myself, wrapping a shawl close about me to repress the shivering I could not yet overcome, and I and that woman, returned from the grave, as it seemed to me, sat calmly down in business-fashion, and held a long conversation.

Madame C-- had loved her husband with that sort of respectful, awe-filled affection which lower natures experience towards those which are a grade above them. She had loved her children, too, although they were her torment. Her inability to manage or keep them in order fretted and irritated her excessively. Monsieur, as a philosopher, could not understand the anomaly, that a woman who was perpetually unhappy and ill-tempered, while her children, young, buoyant, and mischievous, were about her, should sympathize with and care for them when sick. He could not understand her conscience-stricken misery when little Jacques drooped after her severity towards him. Monsieur was a kind husband, however, and a wise man in many things. He had studied much in his youth, chiefly medical works, of which he had quite a collection. He could not understand the whimsical nervousness of women, but, when so slight a thing as a child's illness appeared to be the cause of it, could unhesitatingly undertake to remove the difficulty. He had prescribed attentively for the two children who died before Jacques, thereby rendering them comfortable and quiet, and saving quite an item in the doctor's bill.

When little Jacques fell ill, and Madame fretted incessantly about his loss of vigor and vivacity, Monsieur, with fatherly kindness, undertook, in the midst of his pressing business, to give the child his medicine, which had to be most carefully prepared. Sometimes the powders were disguised in bonbons, the more agreeably to dose the patient little fellow; these were prepared with Monsieur's own fatherly hands, and during his absence were once in a while left for Madame to administer. Madame had great faith in these medicines,-great faith in her husband's skill; but the child's disease was obstinate, very; no progress could be discovered. It was a comforting thought, at least, that, if his recovery was beyond possibility, something had been done to soothe his pain and quiet the vexed spirit in its bitter struggle with dissolution. Yes, the medicines were certainly very quieting,-so quieting, so death-like in their influence,-she could not tell how a suspicion (perhaps the strange expression of the child's eye, when they were administered) glided into her imagination (having so great a reverence for her husband, it took no place in her mind for an instant,-it was merely a spectral, haunting shadow) that these things were getting the child no better,-that they were not medicine for keeping him here, but for helping him away. This suspicion, breathing its baleful breath across her mind, weak, vacillating, incapable of energetic action, had rendered her miserable, morose, irritable, more so than ever before. Yet little Jacques in his last hour hankered for the medicine, and craved feverishly the delicate powder, the sweet confection, his father prepared for him.

While inwardly brooding over this unnamed terror, and cowering before this shapeless thought which loomed in the darkness of her mental gloom, an idea entered her mind that I, too, was suspicious that something was going wrong,-that I was watching,-waiting the evil to come. The child died. Her fear for him was utterly superseded by fear for her husband. What if I should find him out and betray him? The anxiety occasioned by this possibility made her hate me. The agony of her little one's departure, the fear of some dire discovery, the consciousness of guilt near enough of vicinage almost to seem her own, combined to nearly distract her mind, and it seemed like a joyful relief when I departed. The sudden release from that constant pressure of fear (she knew I could do nothing against them without money, credit, or friends) made her ill for a time, quite ill, she said. She knew not what was done for her during this sickness,-who nursed her, or who gave her medicine. But one morning, on waking from what seemed a long sleep, in which she had dreamed strangely and talked wildly, she beheld Monsieur, smiling kindly, standing beside her bed with a vial and a spoon in his hand.

"It is a cordial, my dear, which will strengthen and bring you round again very soon. You need a sedative,-something to allay fever and excitement."

"Is it little Jacques's medicine?"

"Quite similar, my dear,-not the powders,-the liquid. Equally soothing to the nerves, and promotive of sleep."

She turned her face away. She had slept long enough. She thanked Monsieur, not daring to look up, but capriciously refused to touch little Jacques's medicine.

"And Monsieur," she said, "Monsieur was very angry. He said I was a disobedient wife, who did not wish to get well, but desired to be a constant expense and trouble to her husband.

"And so, Christine C--, I trembled and shook, and let fall words I never meant to have uttered to Monsieur, and I said he had killed the child, and wished to kill me, that he might marry Mademoiselle Christine. I did not say any more that day. In the morning, Monsieur and I discoursed together again. I declared I would get well and go away. Oh! Monsieur knew well I would not betray him. He was willing, very willing to consent to my departure. He cared for me well, and gave me much money; and I went away to my old aunt, who lived in Paris. I have been dead,-I have died to Monsieur. I should never have returned, but that my good aunt is gone. When I buried her,-shut her kind eyes, and wrapped her so snugly in her shroud,-I thought it a horrible thing to be living without a soul to care for me, or comfort me, or even to wrap me up as I did her when the time was come. I felt then a thirsty spirit rising within me to see my old place where I had comfort and shelter long ago, and to see my children. I have been to see them: they are in B--; they did not know me there. I did not tell them who I was. I have been faithful to my promise. I tell no one but you, Christine C--, who have stepped into my place, and stolen away my home. A prettier home you have made of it for a prettier wife; but it's the old place yet, with the old stain upon it."

Wishing to consider a moment what I should do, half paralyzed, like one who is stricken with death, I left that other ME, (for was she not also my husband's wife?) apparently exhausted, lying upon the sofa, and went wearily up-stairs, with heavy steps, like one whose life has suddenly become a weight to him. What, indeed, should I do? Starvation and misery stared me in the face. If I left the house, casting its guilt and its comfort behind me, where could I go? I could do nothing, earn nothing now. My reputation, now that we were so lone established, would be entirely gone. And if I left all for which I had labored so hard, for another to enjoy, would that better the matter? Great God! would anything help me? Before me in terrific vision rose a dim vista of future ruin, of ineffectual years writhing in the inescapable power of the law, of long trial, of horrible suspense, of garish publicity, of my name handed from mouth to mouth, a forlorn, duped, degraded thing, whose blighted life was a theme of newspaper comment and cavil. These thoughts swept over me as a tempest sweeps over the young tree whose roots are not firm in the soil, whose writhing and wrestling are impotent to defend it from certain destruction. There was no one I loved especially, no one I cared for anxiously, to relieve the bitter thoughts which centred in myself alone. Monsieur awoke as I was sitting thus, in ineffectual effort to compose myself. Seeing me sitting near him, still dressed, the door open, and the light burning, he inquired what was the matter. I had something below requiring his attention, I said, and, taking up the lamp, ushered him down-stairs. My chaotic thoughts were beginning to settle themselves,-to form a nucleus about the first circumstance that thrust itself definitely before them. That poor wretch waiting below,-that forsaken, abject, dishonored wife,-I would confront him with her, and charge him with his guilt. Opening the saloon-door, I stepped in before him. The lamp which I had left upon the stand was out, and the slender thread of light which fell from the one in my hand, sweeping across the gloom, rested upon the deserted sofa. The saloon was empty; no trace, no sign could be discovered of any human being. The hush, the solemnity of night brooded over the place. Monsieur mockingly, but unsteadily, inquired what child's game I was playing,-he was too tired to be fooled with. He spoke hotly and quickly, as he never had spoken to me before,-like one who has long been ill at ease, and deems a slight circumstance portentous.

So I turned upon him, with all the bitterness in my heart rising to my tongue. I told him the story. I charged him with the guilt. He listened in silence; marble-like he stood with folded arms, and heard the conclusion of the whole matter. When I was silent, he strode up to me, and, stooping, peered into my face steadily. His teeth were clenched, his eyes shot fire; otherwise he was calm, quite composed. He said, quietly,-

"Would you blame me for making an angel out of an idiot?"

Monsieur's philosophy was too subtile for me. GUILTY seemed a coarse word to apply to so fine a nature.

He denied having attempted to injure his wife in any way.

"Women are all fools," he said; "they are all alike,-go just as they are led, and do just as they are taught. They cannot think for themselves. They have no ideas of justice but just what the law furnishes them with. It was silly to complain; it argued a narrow mind to condemn merely because the laws condemn. In that case all should be acquitted whom the laws acquit,-did we ever do this? Would his darling Jacques, happy, angelic, condemn his parent for releasing him from the drudgery of life? Was it not better to play on a golden harp than to be a confectioner? Were not all men, in fact, more or less slayers of their brothers? Was I not myself guilty in attributing to Madame a deed in my eyes worthy of death, and of which she was innocent? It was only those whose courage induced them to venture a little farther who received condemnation. In some way or other, every soul is wearing out and overtasking somebody else's soul, and shortening somebody's days. A man who should throw his child into the water, in order to save him from being burned to death, would not be arraigned for the fierce choice. Little Jacques, if he had lived, would have lingered in misery and imbecility. Was a lingering death of torture to be preferred by a tenderhearted woman to one more rapid and less painful, where the certainty of death left only such preference? Ah, well! it was consolation that his little son was safe from all vicissitude, whatever might befall his devoted father!" and Monsieur wiped his eyes, and drew out a little miniature he always carried in his bosom. It was the portrait of little Jacques.

Well, as I have said, Monsieur was a philosopher, and I was a philosopher; and yet I must have been a woman incapable of reason, incapable of comprehending an argument; for the thought of this thing, and of being in the presence of a man capable of such a deed, made me uneasy, restless, unhappy, as though I were in some sort a partaker of the crime. I could not sleep; I was haunted with horrific dreams; and when, in few days, among the "accidents" the death of an unknown woman was recorded, whose body had drifted ashore at night, and I recognized by the description poor, unknown, uncared-for Madame C--, a wild fever burned in my veins, a frenzy of anguish akin to remorse, as if I had wronged the dead, and sent her drifting, helpless, out to the unknown world. A pitiable soul, who preferred misery for her portion, rather than betray the man she loved, or become partaker of his crime, had crept back, after years of self-imposed absence, with death in her heart, to see the old place and the new wife,-and how had I received her? With horror and shuddering, as though she were some guilty thing, to be held at arm's-length. Not as one woman, generous, forgiving, hoping for mercy hereafter, should receive another, however erring. It was a sad boon, perhaps, she had endowed me with; yet it was all she prized and cherished.

With a nobleness of magnanimity, a passionate self-sacrifice, which none but a woman could be capable of, Madame C-- had divested herself of all peculiarities of clothing by which she could be identified. It was only by recognizing the features, and a singular scar upon the forehead, that I knew it was herself. She was buried by stranger hands, however; we dared not come forward to claim her.

The excitement attendant on this miserable death, and the circumstances which preceded it, laid me, for the first time in my life, upon a sick-bed. I was unconscious for many weeks of anything save intolerable pain and intolerable heat. A fiery agony of fever leaped in my veins, and scorched up my life-blood. I believe Monsieur cared for me, and nursed me attentively during this illness.

The fever left me; exhausted, spent, my life shrunken up within me, my energy burned out, a puny, spiritless remnant of the strong woman who lay down upon that couch, I lay despondent, vacant of all interest in the world hitherto so exciting to me. I had not seen Monsieur since this apparent commencement of recovery. A great, good-natured nurse kept watch over me, and fed me with spiritless dainties, tasteless, unsatisfying.

One day, when my senses began to settle a little, and things began to take shape again, I asked for Monsieur. He came and stood at my bedside.

"Christine," said he, "you have no faith in my power of making angels. I have not made one of you. Being divided in our theories, we will divide our earthly goods. We will part. Should you as a woman deem it your duty to inform against me, I shall not think it wrong. I shall bear it as a philosopher. You have no proof, you can substantiate nothing; but it may be a satisfaction. I do not understand women; therefore I cannot tell."

"Monsieur," I answered, "leave it to God to fill His heaven as He thinks best. He has not invited your assistance; neither has He invited me to avenge Him. Since He does not punish, dare I invade His prerogative?"

And we did not part.

We will live together in peace, we said, and the past shall be utterly forgotten; shall not a whole lifetime of unwavering rectitude atone for this one crime?

I accepted my fate,-weakly, in the dread of poverty, in the horror of disgrace, shrinking within myself with the secret thrust upon me. I said we are all the makers of our own destiny, and there is nothing supernatural in life. If this course is best and wisest in my judgment, nothing evil will come of it. I said this, ignorant of the mystery of existence, and inexperienced in that subtile power which penetrates all the windings and turnings of humanity, searching out hidden things,-the Purifier, and the Avenger, allotting to each one his portion of bitterness, his inexorable punishment. "We will live together in peace": it was the thought of a sudden moment of fervor, which overleaped the dreary length of life, and assumed to compass the repentance of a whole existence in a single day.

But destiny holds always in store its retribution. God suffers no dropped stitches in the web of His universe, and the smallest truth evaded, the least wretch neglected, will surely be picked up again in the unending circle that is winding its certain thread around all beings, connecting by invisible links the most insignificant chances with the most significant events.

When I said we will be one, we will endure together, I thought that so, in my enduring strength, I could bear up whatever burden came. I know not how, by what invisible process, the load which I had lifted to my shoulders grew into leaden heaviness,-heavy, heavy, like the weight of some dead soul resting its lifeless shape upon my living spirit, till I staggered under the unbearable presence. I had doomed myself to stand side by side, to work hand in hand with guilt, to feel hourly the dread lest in some moment of frenzy engendered by the dumb anguish within me I might betray the secret whose rust was eating into my soul, and shriek out my misery in the ears of all men.

Monsieur, seeing me grow thin and pale, declared that I must have a change, I must go somewhere, to the sea-shore. To the sea-shore! No, I would not go to the sea-shore, or to any other shore; a stranded vessel, I could not struggle from the place of shipwreck.

Monsieur grew vexed and anxious, when I stubbornly shook my head. And when week after week I still refused, he grew strangely uneasy. I had better go; if I would not go alone, he would go with me, shut up the shop, and take a holiday.

I considered the matter that day. The project was a wild one; at this busiest season of the year, it would be an injury to our business. And what might the neighbors say? It might lead them to unpleasant suspicions. We were not popular among them. No, it would not do.

I explained this to Monsieur very calmly at the supper-table. His face was pale and quiet as usual. He did not interrupt me. When I concluded, he rose as if he would go out, but turning back suddenly and striking the table with his clenched fist,-

"God!" he exclaimed. "Woman would you see me die like a dog? The neighbors! for all I know, they have got me at their finger-ends now,-the vile rabble! That old hag, Madame Justine, at the ribbon-shop below,-some demon possessed her to look out that night when SHE came crawling home. She noted her well with her greedy eyes; some one so like my dear first wife, she told me. There is mischief and death in her eyes. She knows or guesses too much."

"What can she guess?" I asked; "she has only lately come into the neighborhood."

In answer to this, Monsieur informed me that she professed to have been an old friend of his wife's, who, in times gone by, half bewildered with her troubles, had probably dropped many unguarded words in this woman's presence. Madame C-- had died (to her old home) while this woman was away on a visit. "Ah!" she said, "she had her misgivings many a time. Did the same doctor attend Madame C-- who prescribed for little Jacques? He ought to be hung, then. Ah, well, if all men had their deserts, she knew many things that would hang some folks who looted all fair and square, and held their guilty heads higher than their neighbors."

"Well?" I said.

"Well!-you women are so virtuous, you have no mercy, Madame. Go, hang-go, drown the wretch who comes under the malediction of the ladies! Oh, there is nothing too hard for him! And this one owed me a grudge lately about a mistake,-a little mistake I made in an account with her, and would not alter because I thought it all right."

The preparations were going on silently and steadily that night. I would go anywhere now, anything would I do, to escape the fate whose stealthy footsteps were tracking us out. Well I knew, that, once in the power of the law, its firm grasp would wrest every secret from the deepest depths where it was hidden. Once out of the city, we could readily take flight, if immediate danger threatened.

The doors were all closed; the trunks stood corded in the hall. I was down-stairs, getting the silver together. Monsieur was in his room, packing up his medicine-chest. There was no weakness in my nerves now, no trembling in my limbs. I was determined. While thus engaged, pausing a moment amid the light tinkle of the silver spoons, I thought I heard footsteps in the saloon above. Softly ascending the stairs, I met Monsieur at the door. He had come down under the same impression, that some one was walking in the saloon, still holding in his hand the tiny cup in which he measured his medicines. It was full, and Monsieur carried it very carefully, as, opening the door, he looked cautiously about. Nothing stirred; all was silent as death; and walking forward toward the fountain, he straightened himself up, and his white face flushed as he said in a whisper,-

"Christine, everything is ready. We are safe yet; we shall escape. Once away, we will never return to this doomed place, let what will come of it. Yes, I am certain that we shall escape!"

Monsieur took a step forward as he said this, and stood transfixed. The light shook which he held in his hand, as if a strong wind had passed over it; his eye quailed; his cheek blanched to ghastly whiteness. I thought that undue excitement had brought on a fainting-fit of some kind, and was stooping to dip my hands in the water and bathe his forehead, when I saw, distinctly, like a white mist in the darkness, a visible shape sitting solemn upon the basin-edge; the room was very dim, and the falling spray fell over the shape like a weeping-willow, yet my eyes discerned it clearly. Oh, it was no dream that I had dreamed in my young days long ago! That little figure was no stranger to my vision, no stranger to the changeless waterfall. Did Monsieur see it also? He stood close beside the fountain now, with his face towards the spectre. The tiny cup in his hand fell from the loosened fingers down into the water; a lonely gold-fish, swimming there, turned over on its golden side and floated motionless upon the surface.

I scarcely noticed this, for, at the time, I heard the knob of the shop-door turn quickly, and the door was shaken violently. It was probably the night-watchman going his rounds; but, in my alarm and excitement, I thought we were betrayed. I stepped swiftly to the door, and pushed an extra bolt inside.

"Monsieur!" I cried, under my breath, "hide! hide yourself! Quick! in the name of Heaven!"

But he did not answer, and, hastening to his side, I saw the faint outlines of that shadowy visitant growing indistinct and disappearing. As it vanished, Monsieur turned deliberately toward me; his eyes were clear, the faintness was over; his voice was grave and steady, as he said,-

"Christine! I have seen it. It is the warning of death. There is no future and no escape for me. The retribution is at hand,"-and stooping swiftly down, he lifted the tiny cup brimming to his lips. "Go you," he said, huskily, "to the sea-shore. I have an errand elsewhere."

In the morning came the officers of justice; my dim eyes saw them, my ears heard unshrinking their stern voices demanding Monsieur C--. I did not answer; I pointed vaguely forward; and forward they marched, with a heavy tramp, to where the one whom they were seeking lay prone upon the marble floor, his head hanging nervelessly down over the water. He had been arrested by a Higher Power. Monsieur C-- was dead.

BOSTON HYMN.

The word of the Lord by night

To the watching Pilgrims came,

As they sat by the sea-side,

And filled their hearts with flame.

God said,-I am tired of kings,

I suffer them no more;

Up to my ear the morning brings

The outrage of the poor.

Think ye I made this ball

A field of havoc and war,

Where tyrants great and tyrants small

Might harry the weak and poor?

My angel,-his name is Freedom,

Choose him to be your king;

He shall cut pathways east and west,

And fend you with his wing.

Lo! I uncover the land

Which I hid of old time in the West,

As the sculptor uncovers his statue,

When he has wrought his best.

I show Columbia, of the rocks

Which dip their foot in the seas

And soar to the air-borne flocks

Of clouds, and the boreal fleece.

I will divide my goods,

Call in the wretch and slave:

None shall rule but the humble,

And none but Toil shall have.

I will have never a noble,

No lineage counted great:

Fishers and choppers and ploughmen

Shall constitute a State.

Go, cut down trees in the forest,

And trim the straightest boughs;

Cut down trees in the forest,

And build me a wooden house.

Call the people together,

The young men and the sires,

The digger in the harvest-field,

Hireling, and him that hires.

And here in a pine state-house

They shall choose men to rule

In every needful faculty,

In church, and state, and school.

Lo, now! if these poor men

Can govern the land and sea,

And make just laws below the sun,

As planets faithful be.

And ye shall succor men;

'T is nobleness to serve;

Help them who cannot help again;

Beware from right to swerve.

I break your bonds and masterships,

And I unchain the slave:

Free be his heart and hand henceforth,

As wind and wandering wave.

I cause from every creature

His proper good to flow:

So much as he is and doeth,

So much he shall bestow.

But, laying his hands on another

To coin his labor and sweat,

He goes in pawn to his victim

For eternal years in debt.

Pay ransom to the owner,

And fill the bag to the brim.

Who is the owner? The slave is owner,

And ever was. Pay him.

O North! give him beauty for rags,

And honor, O South! for his shame;

Nevada! coin thy golden crags

With Freedom's image and name.

Up! and the dusky race

That sat in darkness long,-

Be swift their feet as antelopes,

And as behemoth strong.

Come, East, and West, and North,

By races, as snow-flakes,

And carry my purpose forth,

Which neither halts nor shakes.

My will fulfilled shall be,

For, in daylight or in dark,

My thunderbolt has eyes to see

His way home to the mark.

THE SIEGE OF CINCINNATI.

The live man of the old Revolution, the daring Hotspur of those troublous days, was Anthony Wayne. The live man to-day of the great Northwest is Lewis Wallace. With all the chivalric clash of the stormer of Stony Point, he has a cooler head, with a capacity for larger plans, and the steady nerve to execute whatever he conceives. When a difficulty rises in his path, the difficulty, no matter what its proportions, moves aside; he does not. When a river like the Ohio at Cincinnati intervenes between him and his field of operations, there is a sudden sound of saws and hammers at sunset, and the next morning beholds the magic spectacle of a great pontoon-bridge stretching between the shores of Freedom and Slavery, its planks resounding to the heavy tread of almost endless regiments and army-wagons. Is a city like Cincinnati menaced by a hungry foe, striding on by forced marches, that foe sees his path suddenly blocked by ten miles of fortifications thoroughly manned and armed, and he finds it prudent, even with his twenty thousand veterans, to retreat faster than he came, strewing the road with whatever articles impede his haste. Some few incidents in the career of such a man, since he has taken the field, ought not to be uninteresting to those for whom he has fought so bravely; and we believe his services, when known, will be appreciated, otherwise we will come under the old ban against Republics, that they are ungrateful.

While returning from New York at the expiration of a short leave of absence, the first asked for since the beginning of the war, General Wallace was persuaded by Governor Morton to stump the State of Indiana in favor of voluntary enlistments, which at that time were progressing slowly. Wallace went to work in all earnestness. His idea was to obtain command of the new levies, drill them, and take them to the field; and this idea was circulated throughout the State. The result was, enlisting increased rapidly; the ardor for it rose shortly into a fever, and has not yet abated. Regiments are still forming, shedding additional lustre upon the name of patriotic Indiana.

General Wallace was thus engaged when the news was received from Morgan of the invasion of Kentucky by Kirby Smith. All eyes turned at once to Governor Morton, many of whose regiments were now ready to take the field, if they only had officers to lead them. Wallace came promptly to the Governor's assistance, and offered to take command of a regiment for the crisis. His offer was accepted, and he was sent to New Albany, where the Sixty-Sixth Indiana was in camp. In twelve hours he mustered it, paid its bounty money, clothed and armed it, and marched it to Louisville. Brigadier-General Boyle was in command of Kentucky. Wallace, who is a Major-General, reported to him at the above-named city, and a peculiar scene occurred.

"General Boyle," said Wallace, "I report to you the Sixty-Sixth

Indiana Regiment."

"Who commands it?" asked the General.

"I have that honor, Sir," was the reply.

"You want orders, I suppose?"

"Certainly."

"It is a difficult matter for me," said Boyle. "I have no right to order you."

"That difficulty is easily solved," Wallace replied, with characteristic promptness. "I come to report to you as a Colonel. I come to take orders as such."

General Boyle consulted with his Adjutant-General, and the result was a request that General Wallace would proceed to Lexington with his command. Here was exhibited the ready, self-sacrificing spirit of a true patriot: he did not stand and wait until he could find the position to which his high rank entitled him, but stepped into the place where he could best and quickest serve his country in her hour of peril.

While Wallace was still at the railway-station, he received an order from General Boyle, putting him in command of all the forces in Lexington. Here was a golden opportunity for our young commander. What higher honor could be coveted than to relieve the brave Morgan, pent up as he was with his little army in the mountain-gorges of the Cumberland? The idea fired the soul of Wallace, and he pushed on to Lexington. But here he was sadly disappointed. He found the forces waiting there inadequate to the task: instead of an army, there were only three regiments. He telegraphed for more troops. Indiana and Ohio responded promptly and nobly. In three days he received and brigaded nine regiments and started them toward the Gap.

No one but an experienced soldier, one who has indeed tried it, can conceive of the labor involved in such an undertaking. The material in his hands was, to say the best of it, magnificently raw. Officers, from colonels to corporals, brave though they might be as lions, knew literally nothing of military affairs. The men had not learned even to load their guns. Companies had to be led, like little children, by the hand as it were, into their places in line of battle. There was no cavalry, no artillery. It happened, however, that guns, horses, and supplies intended for Morgan at the Gap were in depot at Lexington. Then Wallace began to catch a glimpse of dawn through the dark tangle of the wilderness. Some kind of order, prompt and immediate, must be forced out of this chaos; and it came, for the master-spirit was there to arrange and compel. He mounted several hundred men, giving them rifles instead of sabres. He manned new guns, procuring harness and ammunition for them from Louisville. Where there were no caissons, he supplied wagons. But his regiments were not his sole reliance; he is a believer in riflemen, a fighting class of which Kentucky was full. These he summoned to his assistance, and was met by a ready and hearty response: they came trooping to him by hundreds. Among others, Garrett Davis, United States Senator, led a company of Home-Guards to Lexington. In this way General Wallace composed, or rather improvised a little army, and all without help, his regular staff being absent, mostly in Memphis.

"Kentucky has not been herself in this war," exclaimed General

Wallace; "she must be aroused; and I propose to do it thoroughly."

"How will you do it?" asked a skeptic.

"Easily enough, Sir. Kentucky has a host of great names. Kentuckians believe in great names. It is to this tune that the traitors have carried them to the field against us. I will take with me to the field all the men living, old and young, who have made those names great. Buckner took the young Crittendens and Clays; by Heaven, I'll take their fathers!"

"But they can't march."

"I'll haul them, then."

"They can be of no service in that way."

"But the magic of their names!" exclaimed Wallace. "What will the young Kentuckians say, when they hear John J. Crittenden, Leslie Combs, Robert Breckenridge, Tom Clay, Garrett Davis, Judge Goodloe, and fathers of that kind, are going down to battle with me?"

The skeptics held their peace.

General Wallace now constituted a volunteer staff. Wadsworth, M.C. from Maysville district, was his adjutant-general. Brand, Gratz, Goodloe, and young Tom Clay were his aids. Old Tom Clay, John J. Crittenden, Leslie Combs, Judge Goodloe, Garrett Davis, were all prepared and going, when General Wallace was suddenly relieved of his command by General Nelson.

Without instituting any comparison between these two generals, it is enough to say that the supersession of Wallace by Nelson at that moment was most unfortunate and untimely, as the sequel proved, fraught as it was with disastrous consequences. The circumstances were these.

Scott's Rebel cavalry had whipped Metcalf's regiment of Loyalists at Big Hill, some twelve or fifteen miles beyond Richmond, Kentucky, and followed them to within four miles of that town, where they were stopped by Lenck's brigade of infantry. The affair was reported to Wallace, with the number and situation of the enemy. He at once took prompt measures to meet the exigence of the situation. He could throw Lenck's and Clay's brigades upon the Rebel front; the brigade at Nicholasville could take them in flank by crossing the Kentucky River at Tatt's Ford; while, by uniting Clay Smith's command with that of Jacob, then en route for Nicholasville, he could plant seventeen hundred cavalry in their rear between Big Hill and Mount Vernon.

The enemy at this time were at least twenty miles in advance of their supports, and a night's march would have readily placed the several forces mentioned in position to attack them by daylight. This was Wallace's plan,-simple, feasible, and soldier-like. All his orders were given. A supply-train with extra ammunition and abundant rations was in line on the road to Richmond. Clay's brigade was drawn up ready to move, and General Wallace's horse was saddled. He was writing a last order in reference to the city of Lexington in his absence, and directing the officer left in charge to forward regiments to him at Richmond as fast as they should arrive, when General Nelson came and instantly took the command. Fifteen minutes more and General Wallace would have been on the road to Richmond to superintend the execution of his plan of attack. The supersession was, of course, a bitter disappointment; yet he never grumbled or demurred in the least, but, like a true soldier who knows his duty, offered that evening to serve his successor in any capacity, a generosity which General Nelson declined. The well-conceived plan which Wallace had matured failed for the simple reason, that, instead of marching to execute it that night, as common sense would seem to have dictated, Nelson did not leave Lexington until the next day at one o'clock; and at daylight, when the attack was to have been made, the Rebel leader, Scott, discovered his danger, and wisely retreated, finding nobody in his rear. The result was, Nelson went to Richmond and was defeated. It is possible that the same result might have followed Wallace; but by those competent to judge it is thought otherwise.

He had a plan adapted to the troops he was leading, who, although very raw, would have been invincible behind breastworks, as American troops have always shown themselves to be. Wallace never intended arraying these inexperienced men in the open field against the veteran troops of the Rebels. Neither did he intend they should dig. He had collected large quantities of intrenching tools, and was rapidly assembling a corps of negroes, nearly five hundred of whom he had already in waiting in Morgan's factory, all prepared to follow his column, armed with spades and picks. In Madison County he intended getting at least five hundred more. "I will march," he said, "like C?sar in Gaul, and intrench my camp every night. If I am attacked at any time in too great numbers, I can drop back to my nearest works, and wait for reinforcements." Such was his plan, and those who know him believe firmly that he could have been at the Cumberland Gap in time not only to succor our little army there, but to have prevented the destruction and evacuation of that very important post.

Wallace, finding himself thus suddenly superseded, his plans ignored, and his voluntary service bluffly refused, left Lexington for Cincinnati. While there the Battle of Richmond was fought, the disastrous results of which are still too fresh in the public mind to require repeating. Nelson, who did not arrive upon the field until the day was about lost, and only in time to use his sword against his own men in a fruitless endeavor to rally them, received a flesh-wound, and hastened back the same night to Cincinnati, leaving many dead and wounded on the field, and thousands of our brave boys prisoners to be paroled by the Rebels. These are simple matters of record, and are not here set down in any spirit of prejudice, or to throw a shadow upon the memory of the misguided, unfortunate, but courageous Nelson.

At this juncture General Wallace was again ordered to Lexington, this time by General Wright, a general whose gentlemanly bearing in all capacities makes him an ornament to the American army. Wallace was ordered thither to resume command of the forces; but on arriving at Paris, the order was countermanded, and he was sent back to take charge of the city of Cincinnati. Shrewdly suspecting that our forces would evacuate Lexington, he hastened to his new post. General Wright was at that time in Louisville. On his way back, Wallace was asked by one of his aids,-

"Do you believe the enemy will come to Cincinnati?"

"Yes," was the reply. "Kirby Smith will first go to Frankfort. He must have that place, if possible, for the political effect it will have. If he gets it, he will surely come to Cincinnati. He is an idiot, if he does not. Here is the material of war,-goods, groceries, salt, supplies, machinery, etc.,-enough to restock the whole bogus Confederacy."

"What are you going to do? You have nothing to defend the city with."

"I will show you," was the reply.

Within the first half-hour after his arrival in Cincinnati, General Wallace wrote and sent to the daily papers the following proclamation, which fully and clearly develops his whole plan.

"PROCLAMATION.

"The undersigned, by order of Major-General Wright, assumes command of

Cincinnati, Covington, and Newport.

"It is but fair to inform the citizens, that an active, daring, and powerful enemy threatens them with every consequence of war; yet the cities must be defended, and their inhabitants must assist in the preparation.

"Patriotism, duty, honor, self-preservation, call them to the labor, and it must be performed equally by all classes.

"First. All business must be suspended at nine o'clock to-day. Every business-house must be closed.

"Second. Under the direction of the Mayor, the citizens must, within an hour after the suspension of business, (ten o'clock, A.M.,) assemble in convenient public places ready for orders. As soon as possible they will then be assigned to their work.

"This labor ought to be that of love, and the undersigned trusts and believes it will be so. Anyhow, it must be done.

"The willing shall be properly credited; the unwilling promptly visited. The principle adopted is, Citizens for the labor, soldiers for the battle.

"Third. The ferry-boats will cease plying the river after four o'clock, A.M., until further orders.

"Martial law is hereby proclaimed in the three cities; but until they can be relieved by the military, the injunctions of this proclamation will be executed by the police.

"LEWIS WALLACE,

"Maj.-Gen'r'l Commanding."

Could anything be bolder and more to the purpose? It placed Cincinnati under martial law. It totally suspended business, and sent every citizen, without distinction, to the ranks or into the trenches. "Citizens for labor, soldiers for battle," was the principle underlying the whole plan,-a motto by which he reached every able-bodied man in the metropolis, and united the energies of forty thousand people,-a motto original with himself, and for which he should have the credit.

Imagine the astonishment that seized the city, when, in the morning, this bold proclamation was read,-a city unused to the din of war and its impediments. As yet there was no word of an advance of the enemy in the direction of Cincinnati. It was a question whether they would come or not. Thousands did not believe in the impending danger; yet the proclamation was obeyed to the letter, and this, too, when there was not a regiment to enforce it. The secret is easy of comprehension: it was the universal confidence reposed in the man who issued the order; and he was equally confident, not only in his own judgment, but in the people with whom he had to deal.

"If the enemy should not come after all this fuss," said one of the

General's friends, "you will be ruined."

"Very well," he replied; "but they will come. And if they do not, it will be because this same fuss has caused them to think better of it."

The ten days ensuing will be forever memorable in the annals of the city of Cincinnati. The cheerful alacrity with which the people rose en masse to swell the ranks and crowd into the trenches was a sight worth seeing, and being seen could not readily be forgotten.

Here were the representatives of all nations and classes. The sturdy German, the lithe and gay-hearted Irishman, went shoulder to shoulder in defence of their adopted country. The man of money, the man of law, the merchant, the artist, and the artisan swelled the lines hastening to the scene of action, armed either with musket, pick, or spade. Added to these was seen Dickson's long and dusky brigade of colored men, cheerfully wending their way to labor on the fortifications, evidently holding it their especial right to put whatever impediments they could in the northward path of those whom they considered their own peculiar foe. But the pleasantest and most picturesque sight of those remarkable days was the almost endless stream of sturdy men who rushed to the rescue from the rural districts of the State. These were known as the "Squirrel-Hunters." They came in files numbering thousands upon thousands, in all kinds of costumes, and armed with all kinds of fire-arms, but chiefly the deadly rifle, which they knew so well bow to use. Old men, middle-aged men, young men, and often mere boys, like the "minute-men" of the old Revolution, they left the plough in the furrow, the flail on the half-threshed sheaves, the unfinished iron upon the anvil,-in short, dropped all their peculiar avocations, and with their leathern pouches full of bullets and their ox-horns full of powder, poured into the city by every highway and by-way in such numbers that it seemed as if the whole State of Ohio were peopled only with hunters, and that the spirit of Daniel Boone stood upon the hills opposite the town beckoning them into Kentucky. The pontoon-bridge, which had been begun and completed between sundown and sundown, groaned day and night with the perpetual stream of life all setting southward. In three days there were ten miles of intrenchments lining the hills, making a semicircle from the river above the city to the banks of the river below; and these were thickly manned from end to end, and made terrible to the astonished enemy by black and frowning cannon. General Heath, with his twenty thousand Rebel veterans, flushed with their late success at Richmond, drew up before these formidable preparations, and deemed it prudent to take the matter into serious consideration before making the attack.

Our men were eagerly awaiting their approach, thousands in rifle-pits and tens of thousands along the whole line of the fortifications, while our scouts and pickets were skirmishing with their outposts in the plains in front. Should the foe make a sudden dash and carry any point of our lines, it was thought by some that nothing would prevent them from entering Cincinnati.

But for this also provision was made. The river about the city, above and below, was well protected by a flotilla of gun-boats improvised from the swarm of steamers which lay at the wharves. A storm of shot and shell, such as they had not dreamed of, would have played upon their advancing columns, while our regiments, pouring down from the fortifications, would have fallen upon their rear. The shrewd leaders of the Rebel army were probably kept well posted by traitors within our own lines in regard to the reception prepared for them, and, taking advantage of the darkness of night and the violence of a thunder-storm, made a hasty and ruinous retreat. Wallace was anxious to follow them, and was confident of success, but was overruled by those higher in authority.

The address which he now published to the citizens of Cincinnati,

Covington, and Newport was manly and well-deserved. He said,-

"For the present, at least, the enemy has fallen back, and your cities are safe. It is the time for acknowledgments. I beg leave to make you mine. When I assumed command, there was nothing to defend you with, except a few half-finished works and some dismounted guns; yet I was confident. The energies of a great city are boundless; they have only to be aroused, united, and directed. You were appealed to. The answer will never be forgotten. Paris may have seen something like it in her revolutionary days, but the cities of America never did. Be proud that you have given them an example so splendid. The most commercial of people, you submitted to a total suspension of business, and without a murmur adopted my principle, 'Citizens for labor, soldiers for battle.' In coming times, strangers viewing the works on the hills of Newport and Covington will ask, 'Who built these intrenchments? You can answer, 'We built them.' If they ask, 'Who guarded them?' you can reply, 'We helped in thousands.' If they inquire the result, your answer will be, 'The enemy came and looked at them, and stole away in the night.' You have won much honor. Keep your organizations ready to win more. Hereafter be always prepared to defend yourselves.

"LEWIS WALLACE,

"Maj.-Gen'r'l."

It can safely be claimed for our young General, that he was the moving spirit which inspired and directed the people, and thereby saved Cincinnati and the surrounding cities, and, in the very face of Heath and his victorious horde from Richmond, organized a new and formidable army. That the citizens fully indorsed this was well exemplified on the occasion of his leading back into the metropolis a number of her volunteer regiments when the danger was over. They lined the streets, crowded the doors and windows, and filled the air with shouts of applause, in honor of the great work he had done.

In writing this notice of Wallace and the siege, we have had no intention to overlook the services of his co-laborers, especially those rendered to the West by the gallant Wright, who holds command of the department. The writer has attempted to give what came directly under his own observation, and what he believes to be the core of the matter, and consequently most interesting to the public.

JANE AUSTEN.

In the old Cathedral of Winchester stand the tombs of kings, with dates stretching back to William Rufus and Canute; here, too, are the marble effigies of queens and noble ladies, of crusaders and warriors, of priests and bishops. But our pilgrimage led us to a slab of black marble set into the pavement of the north aisle, and there, under the grand old arches, we read the name of Jane Austen. Many-colored as the light which streams through painted windows, came the memories which floated in our soul as we read the simple inscription: happy hours, gladdened by her genius, weary hours, soothed by her touch; the honored and the wise who first placed her volumes in our hand; the beloved ones who had lingered over her pages, the voices of our distant home, associated with every familiar story.

The personal history of Jane Austen belongs to the close of the last and the beginning of the present century. Her father through forty years was rector of a parish in the South of England. Mr. Austen was a man of great taste in all literary matters; from him his daughter inherited many of her gifts. He probably guided her early education and influenced the direction of her genius. Her life was passed chiefly in the country. Bath, then a fashionable watering-place, with occasional glimpses of London, must have afforded all the intercourse which she held with what is called "the world." Her travels were limited to excursions in the vicinity of her father's residence. Those were days of post-chaises and sedan-chairs, when the rush of the locomotive was unknown. Steam, that genie of the vapor, was yet a little household elf, singing pleasant times by the evening fire, at quiet hearthstones; it has since expanded into a mighty giant, whose influences are no longer domestic. The circles of fashion are changed also. Those were the days of country-dances and India muslins; the beaux and belles of "the upper rooms" at Bath knew not the whirl of the waltz, nor the ceaseless involvements of "the German." Yet the measures of love and jealousy, of hope and fear, to which their hearts beat time, would be recognized to-night in every ballroom. Infinite sameness, infinite variety, are not more apparent in the outward than in the inward world, and the work of that writer will alone be lasting who recognizes and embodies this eternal law of the great Author.

Jane Austen possessed in a remarkable degree this rare intuition. The following passage is found in Sir Walter Scott's journal, under date of the fourteenth of March, 1826:-"Read again, and for the third time at least, Miss Austen's finely written novel of 'Pride and Prejudice.' That young lady had a talent for describing the involvements and feelings and characters of ordinary life, which is to me the most wonderful I ever met with. The Big Bow-wow strain I can do myself like any now going; but the exquisite touch which renders ordinary commonplace things and characters interesting from truth of the description and the sentiment is denied to me." This is high praise, but it is something more when we recur to the time at which Sir Walter writes this paragraph. It is amid the dreary entries in his journal of 1826, many of which make our hearts ache and our eyes overflow. He read the pages of Jane Austen on the fourteenth of March, and on the fifteenth he writes, "This morning I leave 39 Castle Street for the last time." It was something to have written a book sought for by him at such a moment. Even at Malta, in December, 1831, when the pressure of disease, as well as of misfortune, was upon him, Sir Walter was often found with a volume of Miss Austen in his hand, and said to a friend, "There is a finishing-off in some of her scenes that is really quite above everybody else."

Jane Austen's life-world presented such a limited experience that it is marvellous where she could have found the models from which she studied such a variety of forms. It is only another proof that the secret lies in the genius which seizes, not in the material which is seized. We have been told by one who knew her well, that Miss Austen never intentionally drew portraits from individuals, and avoided, if possible, all sketches that could be recognized. But she was so faithful to Nature, that many of her acquaintance, whose characters had never entered her mind, were much offended, and could not be persuaded that they or their friends had not been depicted in some of her less attractive personages: a feeling which we have frequently shared; for, as the touches of her pencil brought out the light and shades very quietly, we have been startled to recognize our own portrait come gradually out on the canvas, especially since we are not equal to the courage of Cromwell, who said, "Paint me as I am."

In the "Autobiography of Sir Egerton Brydges" we find the following passage: it is characteristic of the man:-

"I remember Jane Austen, the novelist, a little child. Her mother was a Miss Leigh, whose paternal grandmother was a sister of the first Duke of Chandos. Mr. Austen was of a Kentish family, of which several branches have been settled in the Weald, and some are still remaining there. When I knew Jane Austen, I never suspected she was an authoress; but my eyes told me that she was fair and handsome, slight and elegant, with cheeks a little too full. The last time, I think, I saw her was at Ramsgate, in 1803; perhaps she was then about twenty-seven years old. Even then I did not know that she was addicted to literary composition."

We can readily suppose that the spheres of Jane Austen and Sir Egerton could not be very congenial; and it does not appear that he was ever tempted from the contemplation of his own performances, to read her "literary compositions." A letter from Robert Southey to Sir Egerton shows that the latter had not quite forgotten her. Southey writes, under the dale of Keswick, April, 1830:-

"You mention Miss Austen; her novels are more true to Nature, and have (for my sympathies) passages of finer feeling than any others of this age. She was a person of whom I have heard so much, and think so highly, that I regret not having seen her, or ever had an opportunity of testifying to her the respect which I felt for her."

A pleasant anecdote, told to us on good authority in England, is illustrative of Miss Austen's power over various minds. A party of distinguished literary men met at a country-seat; among them was Macaulay, and, we believe, Hallam; at all events, they were men of high reputation. While discussing the merits of various authors, it was proposed that each should write down the name of that work of fiction which had given him the greatest pleasure. Much surprise and amusement followed; for, on opening the slips of paper, seven bore the name of "Mansfield Park,"-a coincidence of opinion most rare, and a tribute to an author unsurpassed.

Had we been of that party at the English country-house, we should have written, "The last novel by Miss Austen which we have read"; yet, forced to a selection, we should have named "Persuasion." But we withdraw our private preference, and, yielding to the decision of seven wise men, place "Mansfield Park" at the head of the list, and leave it there without further comment.

"Persuasion" was her latest work, and bears the impress of a matured mind and perfected style. The language of Miss Austen is, in all her pages, drawn from the "wells of English undefiled." Concise and clear, simple and vigorous, no word can be omitted that she puts down, and none can be added to heighten the effect of her sentences. In "Persuasion" there are passages whose depth and tenderness, welling up from deep fountains of feeling, impress us with the conviction that the angel of sorrow or suffering had troubled the waters, yet had left in them a healing influence, which is felt rather than revealed. Of all the heroines we have known through a long and somewhat varied experience, there is not one whose life-companionship we should so desire to secure as that of Anne Elliot. Ah! could she also forgive our faults and bear with our weaknesses, while we were animated by her sweet and noble example, existence would be, under any aspect, a blessing. This felicity was reserved for Captain Wentworth. Happy man! In "Persuasion" we also find the subtle Mr. Elliot. Here, as with Mr. Crawford in "Mansfield Park," Miss Austen deals dexterously with the character of a man of the world, and uses a nicer discernment than is often found in the writings of women, even those who assume masculine names.

"Emma" we know to have been a favorite with the author. "I have drawn a character full of faults," said she, "nevertheless I like her." In Emma's company we meet Mr. Knightley, Harriet Smith, and Frank Churchill. We sit beside good old Mr. Woodhouse, and please him by tasting his gruel. We walk through Highbury, we are patronized by Mrs. Elton, listen forbearingly to the indefatigable Miss Bates, and take an early walk to the post-office with Jane Fairfax. Once we found ourselves actually on "Box Hill," but it did not seem half so real as when we "explored" there with the party from Highbury.

"Pride and Prejudice" is piquant In style and masterly in portraiture. We make perhaps too many disagreeable acquaintances to enjoy ourselves entirely; yet who would forego Mr. Collins, or forget Lady Catherine de Bourgh, though each in their way is more stupid and odious than any one but Miss Austen could induce us to endure. Mr. Darcy's character is ably given; a very difficult one to sustain under all the circumstances in which he is placed. It is no small tribute to the power of the author to concede that she has so managed the workings of his real nature as to make it possible, and even probable, that a high-born, high-bred Englishman of Mr. Darcy's stamp could become the son-in-law of Mrs. Bennet. The scene of Darcy's declaration of love to Elizabeth, at the Hunsford Parsonage, is one of the most remarkable passages in Miss Austen's writings, and, indeed, we remember nothing equal to it among the many writers of fiction who have endeavored to describe that culminating point of human destiny.

"Northanger Abbey" is written in a fine vein of irony, called forth, in some degree, by the romantic school of Mrs. Radcliffe and her imitators. We doubt whether Miss Austen was not over-wise with regard to these romances. Though born after the Radcliffe era, we well remember shivering through the "Mysteries of Udolpho" with as quaking a heart as beat in the bosom of Catherine Morland. If Miss Austen was not equally impressed by the power of these romances, we rejoice that they were written, as with them we should have lost "Northanger Abbey." For ourselves, we spent one very rainy day in the streets of Bath, looking up every nook and corner familiar in the adventures of Catherine, and time, not faith, failed, for a visit to Northanger itself. Bath was also sanctified by the presence of Anne Elliot. Our inn, the "White Hart," (made classic by the adventures of various well-remembered characters,) was hallowed by exquisite memories which connected one of the rooms (we faithfully believed it was our apartment) with the conversation of Anne Elliot and Captain Harville, as they stood by the window, while Captain Wentworth listened and wrote. In vain did we gaze at the windows of Camden Place. No Anne Elliot appeared.

"Sense and Sensibility" was the first novel published by Miss Austen. It is marked by her peculiar genius, though it may be wanting in the nicer finish which experience gave to her later writings.

The Earl of Carlisle, when Lord Morpheth, wrote a poem for some now forgotten annual, entitled "The Lady and the Novel." The following lines occur among the verses:-

"Or is it thou, all-perfect Austen? here

Let one poor wreath adorn thy early bier,

That scarce allowed thy modest worth to claim

The living portion of thy honest fame:

Oh, Mrs. Bennet, Mrs. Morris, too,

While Memory survives, she'll dream of you;

And Mr. Woodhouse, with abstemious lip,

Must thin, but not too thin, the gruel sip;

Miss Bates, our idol, though the village bore,

And Mrs. Elton, ardent to explore;

While the clear style flows on without pretence,

With unstained purity, and unmatched sense."

If the Earl of Carlisle, in whose veins flows "the blood of all the Howards," is willing to acknowledge so many of our friends, who are anything but aristocratic, our republican soul shrinks not from the confession that we should like to accompany good-natured Mrs. Jennings in her hospitable carriage, (so useful to our young ladies of sense and sensibility,) witness the happiness of Elinor at the parsonage, and the reward of Colonel Brandon at the manor-house of Delaford, and share with Mrs. Jennings all the charms of the mulberry-tree and the yew arbor.

An article on "Recent Novels," in "Fraser's Magazine" for December, 1847, written by Mr. G.H. Lewes, contains the following paragraphs:-"What we most heartily enjoy and applaud is truth in the delineations of life and character.... To make our meaning precise, we would say that Fielding and Miss Austen are the greatest novelists in our language.... We would rather have written 'Pride and Prejudice,' or 'Tom Jones,' than any of the 'Waverley Novels'.... Miss Austen has been called a prose Shakspeare,-and among others, by Macaulay. In spite of the sense of incongruity which besets us in the words prose Shakspeare, we confess the greatness of Miss Austen, her marvellous dramatic power, seems, more than anything in Scott, akin to Shakspeare."

The conclusion of this article is devoted to a review of 'Jane Eyre,' and led to the correspondence between Miss Brontè and Mr. Lewes which will be found in the memoir of her life. In these letters it is apparent that Mr. Lewes wishes Miss Brontè to read and to enjoy Miss Austen's works, as he does himself. Mr. Lewes is disappointed, and felt, doubtless, what all true lovers of Jane Austen have experienced, a surprise to find how obtuse otherwise clever people sometimes are. In this instance, however, we think Mr. Lewes expected what was impossible. Charlotte Brontè could not harmonize with Jane Austen. The luminous and familiar star which comes forth into the quiet evening sky when the sun sets amid the amber light of an autumn evening, and the comet which started into sight, unheralded and unnamed, and flamed across the midnight sky, have no affinity, except in the Divine Mind, whence both originate.

The notice of Miss Austen, by Macaulay, to which Mr. Lewes alludes, must be, we presume, the passage which occurs in Macaulay's article on Madame D'Arblay, in the "Edinburgh Review," for January, 1843. We do not find the phrase, "prose Shakspeare," but the meaning is the same; we give the passage as it stands before us:-

"Shakspeare has neither equal nor second; but among writers who, in the point we have noticed, have approached nearest the manner of the great master, we have no hesitation in placing Jane Austen, as a woman of whom England is justly proud. She has given us a multitude of characters, all, in a certain sense, commonplace, all such as we meet every day. Yet they are all as perfectly discriminated from each other as if they were the most eccentric of human beings. There are, for example, four clergymen, none of whom we should be surprised to find in any parsonage in the kingdom,-Mr. Edward Ferrars, Mr. Henry Tilney, Mr. Edward Bertram, and Mr. Elton. They are all specimens of the upper part of the middle class. They have been all liberally educated. They all lie under the restraints of the same sacred profession. They are all young. They are all in love. Not any one of them has any hobby-horse, to use the phrase of Sterne. Not one has any ruling passion, such as we read in Pope. Who would not have expected them to be insipid likenesses of each other? No such thing. Harpagon is not more unlike Jourdain, Joseph Surface is not more unlike Sir Lucius O'Trigger, than every one of Miss Austen's young divines to all his reverend brethren. And almost all this is done by touches so delicate that they elude analysis, that they defy the powers of description, and that we know them to exist only by the general effect to which they have contributed."

Dr. Whately, the Archbishop of Dublin, in the "Quarterly Review," 1821, sums up his estimate of Miss Austen with these words: "The Eastern monarch who proclaimed a reward to him who should discover a new pleasure would have deserved well of mankind, had he stipulated it should be blameless. Those again who delight in the study of human nature may improve in the knowledge of it, and in the profitable application of that knowledge, by the perusal of such fictions. Miss Austen introduces very little of what is technically called religion into her books, yet that must be a blinded soul which does not recognize the vital essence, everywhere present in her pages, of a deep and enlightened piety.

There are but few descriptions of scenery in her novels. The figures of the piece are her care; and if she draws in a tree, a hill, or a manor-house, it is always in the background. This fact did not arise from any want of appreciation for the glories or the beauties of the outward creation, for we know that the pencil was as often in her hand as the pen. It was that unity of purpose, ever present to her mind, which never allowed her to swerve from the actual into the ideal, nor even to yield to tempting descriptions of Nature which might be near, and yet aside from the main object of her narrative. Her creations are living people, not masks behind which the author soliloquizes or lectures. These novels are impersonal; Miss Austen never herself appears; and if she ever had a lover, we cannot decide whom he resembled among the many masculine portraits she has drawn.

Very much has been said in her praise, and we, in this brief article, have summoned together witnesses to the extent of her powers, which are fit and not few. Yet we are aware that to a class of readers Miss Austen's novels must ever remain sealed books. So be it. While the English language is read, the world will always be provided with souls who can enjoy the rare excellence of that rich legacy left to them by her genius.

Once in our lifetime we spent three delicious days in the Isle of Wight, and then crossed the water to Portsmouth. After taking a turn on the ramparts in memory of Fanny Price, and looking upon the harbor whence the Thrush went out, we drove over Portsdown Hill to visit the surviving member of that household which called Jane Austen their own.

We had been preceded by a letter, introducing us to Admiral Austen as fervent admirers of his sister's genius, and were received by him with a gentle courtesy most winning to our heart.

In the finely-cut features of the brother, who retained at eighty years of age much of the early beauty of his youth, we fancied we must see a resemblance to his sister, of whom there exists no portrait.

It was delightful to us to hear him speak of "Jane," and to be brought so near the actual in her daily life. Of his sister's fame as a writer the Admiral spoke understandingly, but reservedly.

We found the old Admiral safely moored in that most delightful of havens, a quiet English country-home, with the beauty of Nature around the mansion, and the beauty of domestic love and happiness beneath its hospitable roof.

There we spent a summer day, and the passing hours seemed like the pages over which we had often lingered, written by her hand whose influence had guided us to those she loved. That day, with all its associations, has become a sacred memory, and links us to the sphere where dwells that soul whose gift of genius has rendered immortal the name of Jane Austen.

* * * * *

THE PROCLAMATION.

"I order and declare that all persons held as slaves in the said designated States and parts of States are and hereafter shall be free,... and I hereby enjoin upon the people so declared to be free to abstain from all violence, unless in necessary self-defence."

ABRAHAM LINCOLN.

Saint Patrick, slave to Milcho of the herds

Of Ballymena, sleeping, heard these words:

"Arise, and flee

Out from the land of bondage, and be free!"

Glad as a soul in pain, who hears from heaven

The angels singing of his sins forgiven,

And, wondering, sees

His prison opening to their golden keys,

He rose a man who laid him down a slave,

Shook from his locks the ashes of the grave,

And outward trod

Into the glorious liberty of God.

He cast the symbols of his shame away;

And passing where the sleeping Milcho lay,

Though back and limb

Smarted with wrong, he prayed, "God pardon him!"

So went he forth: but in God's time he came

To light on Uilline's hills a holy flame;

And, dying, gave

The land a saint that lost him as a slave.

O dark, sad millions, patiently and dumb

Waiting for God, your hour, at last, has come,

And freedom's song

Breaks the long silence of your night of wrong!

Arise and flee! shake off the vile restraint

Of ages! but, like Ballymena's saint,

The oppressor spare,

Heap only on his head the coals of prayer!

Go forth, like him! like him, return again,

To bless the land whereon in bitter pain

Ye toiled at first,

And heal with freedom what your slavery cursed!

* * * * *

THE LAW OF COSTS.

Our nation is now paying the price, not only of its vice, but also of its virtue,-not alone of its evil doing, but of its noble and admirable doing as well. It has of late been a customary cry with a certain class, that those who cherish freedom and advocate social justice are the proper authors of the present war. No doubt there is in this allegation an ungracious kind of truth; that is, had the nation been destitute of a political faith and of moral feeling, there would have been no contest. But were one lying ill of yellow-fever or small-pox, there would be the same sort of lying truth in the statement, that the life in him, which alone resists the disease, is really its cause; since to yellow-fever, or to any malady, dead bodies are not subject. There is no preventive of disease so effectual as death itself,-no place so impregnable to pestilence as the grave. So, had the vitality gone out of the nation's heart, had that lamp of love for freedom and justice and of homage to the being of man, which once burned in its bosom so brightly, already sunk into death-flicker and extinction, then in the sordid and icy dark that would remain there could be no war of like nature with this that to-day gives the land its woful baptism of blood and tears. Oh, no! there would have been peace-and putrefaction: peace, but without its sweetness, and death, but without its hopes.

In one important sense, however, this war-hateful and horrible though it be-is the price which the nation must pay for its ideas and its magnanimity. If you take a clear initial step toward any great end, you thereby assume as a debt to destiny the pursuit and completion of your action; and should you fail to meet this debt, it will not fail to meet you, though now in the shape of retribution and with a biting edge. The seaman who has signed shipping-papers owes a voyage, and must either sail or suffer. The nation which has recognized absolute rights of man, and in their name assumed to shed blood, has taken upon itself the burden of a high destination, and must bear it, if not willingly, reluctantly, if not in joy and honor, then in shame and weeping.

Our nation, by the early nobility of its faith and action, assumed such a debt to destiny, and now must pay it. It needed not to come in this shape: there need have been no horror of carnage,-no feast of vultures, and carnival of fiends,-no weeping of Rachel, mourning for her children, and refusing to be comforted, because they are not. There was required only a magnanimity in proceeding to sustain that of our beginning,-only a sympathy broad enough to take our little planet and all her human tribes in its arms, deep enough to go beneath the skin in which men differ, to the heart's blood in which they agree,-only pains and patience, faith and forbearance,-only a national obedience to that profound precept of Christianity which prescribes service to him that would be greatest, making the knowledge of the wise due to the ignorant, and the strength of the strong due to the weak. The costs of freedom would have been paid in the patient lifting up of a degraded race from the slough of servitude; and the nation would at the same time have avoided that slough of lava and fire wherein it is now ingulfed.

It was not to be so. History is coarse; it gets on by gross feeding and fevers, not by delicacy of temperance and wisdom of regimen. Our debt was to be paid, not in a pure form, but mixed with the costs of unbelief, cowardice, avarice. Yet primarily it is the cost, not of meanness, but of magnanimity, that we are now paying,-not of a base skepticism, but of a noble faith. For, in truth, normal qualities and actions involve costs no less than vicious and abnormal. Such is the law of the world; and it is this law of the costs of worthiness, of knowledge and nobility, of all memorable being and doing, that I now desire to set forth. Having obtained the scope and power of the law, having considered it also as applying to individuals, we may proceed to exhibit its bearing upon the present struggle of our Republic.

The general statement is this,-that whatever has a worth has also a cost. "The law of the universe," says a wise thinker, "is, Pay and take." If you desire silks of the mercer or supplies at the grocery, you, of course, pay money. Is it a harvest from the field that you seek? Tillage must be paid. Would you have the river toil in production of cloths for your raiment? Only pay the due modicum of knowledge, labor, and skill, and you shall bind its hand to your water-wheels, and turn all its prone strength into pliant service. Or perhaps you wish the comforts of a household. By payment of the due bearing of its burdens, you may hope to obtain it,-surely not otherwise. Do you ask that this house may be a true home, a treasury for wealth of the heart, a little heaven? Once more the word is pay,-pay your own heart's unselfish love, pay a generous trustfulness, a pure sympathy, a tender consideration, and a sweet firm-heartedness withal. And so, wherever there is a gaining, there is a warning,-wherever a well-being, a well-doing,-wherever a preciousness, a price of possession; and he who scants the payment stints the purchase; and he that will proffer nothing shall profit nothing; but he that freely and wisely gives shall receive as freely.

But these desiderata which I have named are all prices either of ordinary use, of comfort, or felicity; and it is generally understood that happiness is costly: but virtue? Virtue, so far from costing anything, is often supposed to be itself a price that you pay for happiness. It is told us that we shall be rewarded for our virtue; what moralistic commonplace is more common than this? But rewarded for your virtue you are not to be; you are to pay for it; at least, payment made, rather than received, is the principal fact. He who is honest for reward is a knave without reward. He who asks pay for telling truth has truth only on his tongue and a double lie in his heart. Do you think that the true artist strives to paint well that he may get money for his work? Or rather, is not his desire to pay money, to pay anything in reason, for the sake of excellence in his art? And, indeed, what is worthier than Worth? What fitter, therefore, to be paid for? And that payment is made, even under penal forms, every one may see. For what did Raleigh give his lofty head? For the privilege of being Raleigh, of being a man of great heart and a statesman of great mind, with a King James, a burlesque of all sovereignty, on the throne. For what did Socrates quaff the poison? For the privilege of that divine sincerity and penetration which characterized his life. For what did Kepler endure the last straits of poverty, his children crying for bread, while his own heart was pierced with their wailing? For the privilege-in his own noble words-"of reading God's thoughts after Him,"-God's thoughts written in stellar signs on the scroll of the skies. And Cicero and Thomas Cromwell, John Huss and John Knox, John Rogers and John Brown, and many another, high and low, famed and forgotten, must they not all make, as it were, penal payment for the privilege of being true men, truest among true? And again I say, that, if one knows something worthier than Worth, something more excellent than Excellence, then only does he know something fitter than they to be paid for.

Payment may assume a penal form: do not think this its only form. And to take the law at once out of the limitations which these examples suggest, let me show you that it is a law of healthy and unlamenting Nature. Look at the scale of existence, and you will see that for every step of advance in that scale payment is required. The animal is higher than the vegetable; the animal, accordingly, is subject to the sense of pain, the vegetable not; and among animals the pain may be keener as the organization is nobler. The susceptibility not only to pain, but to vital injury, observes the same gradation. A little girdling kills an oak; but some low fungus may be cut and troubled and trampled ad libitum, and it will not perish; and along the shores, farmers year after year pluck sea-weed from the rocks, and year after year it springs again lively as ever. Among the lowest orders of animals you shall find a creature that, if you cut it in two, straightway duplicates its existence and floats away twice as happy as before; but of the prick of a bodkin or the sting of a bee the noblest of men may die.

In the animal body the organs make a draft from the general vigors of the system just in proportion to their dignity. The eye,-what an expensive boarder at the gastric tables is that! Considerable provinces of the brain have to be made over to its exclusive use; and it will be remembered that a single ounce of delicate, sensitive brain, full of mysterious and marvellous powers, requires more vital support than many pounds of common muscle. The powers of the eye are great; it has a right to cost much, and it does cost. Also we observe that in this organ there is the exceeding susceptibility to injury, which, as we have observed, invariably accompanies powers of a lofty grade.

Noble senses cost much; noble susceptibilities cost vastly more. Compare oxen with men in respect to the amount of feeling and nervous wear and tear which they severally experience. The ox enjoys grass and sleep; he feels hunger and weariness, and he is wounded by that which goes through his hide. But upon the nerve of the man what an incessant thousandfold play! Out of the eyes of the passers-by pleasures and pains are rained upon him; a word, a look, a tone thrills his every fibre; the touch of a hand warms or chills the very marrow in his bones. Anticipation and memory, hope and regret, love and hate, ideal joy and sorrow and shame, ah, what troops of visitants are ever present with his soul, each and all, whether welcome guests or unwelcome, to be nourished from the resources of his bosom! And out of this high sensibility of man must come what innumerable stabs of quick agony, what slow, gasping hours of grief and pain, that to the cattle upon the hills are utterly unknown! But do you envy the ox his bovine peace? It is precisely that which makes him an ox, It is due to nothing but his insensibility,-by no means, as I take occasion to assure those poets who laud outward Nature and inferior creatures to the disparagement of man,-by no means due to composure and philosophy. The ox is no great hero, after all, for he will bellow at a thousandth part the sense of pain which from a Spartan child wrings no tear nor cry.

Yes, it is precisely this sensibility which makes man human. Were he incapable of ideal joy and sorrow, he, too, were brute. It is through this delicacy of conscious relationship, it is through this openness to the finest impressions, that he can become an organ of supernal intelligence, that he is capable of social and celestial inspirations. High spiritual sensibility is the central condition of a noble and admirable life; it is the hinge on which turn and open to man the gates of his highest glory and purest peace. Yet for this he must pay away all that induration of brutes and boors which sheds off so many a wasting excitement and stinging chagrin, as the feathers of the water-fowl shed rain.

In entering, therefore, upon any noble course of life, any generous and brave pursuit of excellence, understand, that, so far as ordinary coin is concerned, you are rather to pay, than to be paid, for your superiorities. Understand that the pursuit of excellence must indeed be brave to be prosperous,-that is, it is always in some way opposed and imperilled. Understand, that, with every step of spiritual elevation which you attain, some part of your audience and companionship will be left behind. Understand, that, if you carry lofty principles and philosophic intelligence into camps, these possessions will in general not be passed to your credit, but will be charged against you; and you must surpass your inferiors in their own kinds of virtue to regain what of popular regard these cost you. Understand, that, if you have a reverence for theoretical and absolute truth, less of common fortune will come to you in answer to equal business and professional ability than to those who do care for money, and do not care for truth. Are you a physician? Let me tell you that there is a possible excellence in your profession which will rather limit than increase your practice; yet that very excellence you must strive to attain, for your soul's life is concerned in your doing so. Are you a lawyer? Know that there is a depth and delicacy in the sense of justice, which will sometimes send clients from your office, and sometimes tie your tongue at the bar; yet, as you would preserve the majesty of your manhood, strive just for that unprofitable sense of justice,-unprofitable only because infinitely, rather than finitely, profitable. In a stormy and critical time, when much is ending and much beginning, and a great land is heaving and quivering with commingled agonies of dissolution and throes of new birth, are you a statesman of earnestness and insight, with your eye on the cardinal question of your epoch, its answer clearly in your heart, and your will irrevocably set to give it due enunciation and emphasis? Expect calumny and affected contempt from the base; expect alienation and misconstruction and undervaluing on the part of some who are honorable. Are you a woman rich in high aims, in noble sympathies and thrilling sensibilities, and, as must ever be the case with such, not too rich in a meet companionship? Expect loneliness, and wear it as a grace upon your brow; it is your laurel. Are you a true artist or thinker? Expect to go beyond popular appreciation; go beyond it, or the highest appreciation you will not deserve. In fine, for all excellence expect and seek to pay.

No one ever held this law more steadily in view than Jesus; and when ardent young people came to him proposing pupilage, he was wont at once to bring it before their eyes. It was on such an occasion that he uttered the words, so simple and intense that they thrill to the touch like the string of a harp, "The foxes have holes, and the birds of the air have nests; but the Son of Man hath not where to lay his head." Of like suggestion his question of the king going to war, who first sitteth down and consulteth whether he be able, and of the man about to build a house, who begins by counting the cost.

The cost,-question of this must arise; question of this must on all sides either be honestly met or dishonestly eluded. For observe, that attempt to escape payment for the purest values, no less than for the grossest, is dishonest. If one seek to compass possession of ordinary goods without compensation, we at once apply the opprobrious term of theft or fraud. Why does the same sort of attempt cease to be fraudulent when it is carried up to a higher degree and applied to possessions more precious? If he that evades the revenue law of the State be guilty of fraud, what of him who would import Nature's goods and pay no duties? For Nature has her own system of impost, and permits no smuggling. There was a tax on truth ere there was one on tea or on silver plate. Character, genius, high parts in history are all assessed upon. Nature lets out her houses and lands on liberal terms; but resorts to distraint, if her dues be not forthcoming. Be sure, therefore, that little success and little honor will wait upon any would-be thieving from God. He who attempts to purloin on this high scale has set all the wit of the universe at work to thwart him, and will certainly be worsted sorely in the end.

The moment, therefore, that any man is found engaged in this business, how to estimate him is clear. Daniel O'Connell tried the experiment of being an heroic patriot and making money by it. It is conceded by his friends that he applied to his private uses, to sustaining the magnificence of his household, the rent-moneys sweated from the foreheads of Irish peasants. But, they say, he had sacrificed many ambitions in taking up the r?le of a patriot; and he felt entitled to revenues as liberal as any indulgence of them could have procured him! The apology puts his case beyond all apology. He who-to employ the old phraseology-seeks to exact the same bribe of God that he might have obtained from the Devil is always the Devil's servant, no matter whose livery he wears. Had one often to apply the good word patriot to such men, it would soon blister his mouth. I find, in fact, no vice so bad as this spurious virtue, no sinners so unsavory as these mock saints.

To nations, also, this comprehensive law applies. Would you have a noble and orderly freedom? Buy it, and it is yours. "Liberty or death," cried eloquent Henry; and the speech is recited as bold and peculiar; but, by an enduring ordinance of Nature, the people that does not in its heart of hearts say, "Liberty or death," cannot have liberty. Many of us had learned to fancy that the stern tenure by which ancient communities held their civilization was now become an obsolete fact, and that without peril or sacrifice we might forever appropriate all that blesses nations; but by the iron throat of this war Providence is thundering down upon us the unalterable law, that man shall hold no ideal possession longer than he places all his lower treasures at its command.

But there was a special form of cost, invited by the virtue of our national existence; and it is this in particular that we are now paying,-paying it, I am sorry to say, in the form of retribution because the nation declined to meet it otherwise. But the peculiarity of the case is, as has been affirmed, that it was chiefly the virtue and nobility of the nation which created this debt at the outset.

And now what is the peculiar virtue and glory of this nation? Why, that its national existence is based upon a recognition of the absolute rights and duties of humanity. Theoretically this is our basis; practically there is a commixture; much of this cosmopolitan faith is mingled with much of confined self-regard. But the theoretical fact is the one here in point: since the question now is not of the national _un_faith or infidelity, but of the national faith. And beyond a question, the real faith of the nation, so far as it has one, is represented by its formal declaration, made sacred by the shedding of blood. Our belief really is not in the special right or privilege of Americans, but in the prerogative of man. This prerogative we may have succeeded well or ill in stating and interpreting; the fact, that our appeal is to this, alone concerns us here.

Now this national attitude, so far as history informs me, is unprecedented. The true-born son of Albion, save as an exceptional culture enlarges his soul, believes religiously that God is an Englishman, and that the interests of England precede those of the universe. When, therefore, he sees anything done which depletes the pocket of England, it affects him with a sense of infidelity in those to whom this loss is due. England professes to have a national religion; she has, and in a deeper sense than is commonly meant.

We will not disparage England overmuch; she has done good service in history. We will not boast of ourselves; the actual politics of this country have been, in no small part, base and infidel to a degree that is simply sickening. Nevertheless, it remains true that the fundamental idea of the State here represents a new phase of human history. Every European nationality had taken shape and character while yet our globe was not known to be a globe, while before the eyes of all lookers land and sea faded away into darkness and mystery; and it was not possible that common human sympathy should take into its arms a world of which it could not conceive. But a national spirit was here generated when the ocean had been crossed, when the earth had been rounded, when, too, Newton had, as it were, circumnavigated the solar system,-when, therefore, there could be, and must be, a new recognition of humanity. Our country, again, was peopled from the minorities of Europe, from those whom the spirit of the new time had touched, and taken away their content with old institutions,-a population restless, uncertain, yeasty, chaotic, it might be, full of the rawness of new conditions, mean and magnanimous by turns, as such people are wont, but all leavened more or less with a sentiment new in history,-all leavened with a kind of whole-world feeling, a sense of the oneness of humanity, and, as derived from this, a sense of absolute rights of man, of prerogatives belonging to human nature as such.

The truth of all this has been brought under suspicion by the flatulent oratory of our Fourth-of-Julys; but truth it remains. Our nation did enunciate a grand idea never equally felt by any other. Our nation has said, and said with the sword in its right hand, "Every man born into this world has the right from God to make the most and best of his existence, and society is established only to further and guard this sacred right." We thus established a new scale of justice; we raised a demand for the individual which had not been so made before. Freedom and order were made one; both were identified with justice, simple, broad, equal, universal justice. The American idea, then, what is it? The identification of politics with justice, this it is. With justice, and this, too, not on a scale of conventional usage, but on the scale of natural right. That, as I read, is the American idea,-making politics moral by their unity with natural justice, justice world-old and world-wide.

This conception-obscurely seen and felt, and mixed with the inevitable amount of folly and self-seeking, yet, after, all, this conception-our nation dared to stand up and announce, and to consecrate it by the shedding of blood, calling God and all good men to witness. The deed was grand; the hearts of men everywhere were more or less its accomplices; all the tides of history ran in its favor; kings, forgetting themselves into virtue and generosity, lent it good wishes or even good arms; it was successful; and on its primary success waited such prosperities as the world has seldom seen.

But, because the deed was noble, great costs must needs attend it, attend it long. And first of all the cost of applying our principle within our own borders. For, when a place had been obtained for us among nations, we looked down, and, lo! at our feet the African-in chains. A benighted and submissive race, down-trodden and despised from of old, a race of outcasts, of Pariahs, covered with the shame of servitude, and held by the claim of that terrible talisman, the word property,-here it crouched at our feet, lifting its hands, imploring. Yes, America, here is your task now; never flinch nor hesitate, never begin to question now; thrust your right hand deep into your heart's treasury, bring forth its costliest, purest justice, and lay its immeasurable bounty into this sable palm, bind its blessing on this degraded brow. Ah, but America did falter and question. "How can I?" it said. "This is a Negro, a Negro! Besides, he is PROPERTY!" And so America looked up, determined to ignore the kneeling form. With pious blasphemy it said, "He is here providentially; God in His own good time will dispose of him"; as if God's hour for a good effect were not the earliest hour at which courage and labor can bring it about, not the latest to which indolence and infidelity can postpone it. Then it looked away across oceans to other continents, and began again the chant, "Man is man; natural right is sacred forever; and of politics the sole basis is universal justice." Joyfully it sang for a while, but soon there began to come up the clank of chains mingling with its chant, and the groans of oppressed men and violated women, and prayers to Heaven for another justice than this; and then the words of its chant grew bitter in the mouth of our nation, and a sickness came in its heart, and an evil blush mounted and stood on its brow; and at length a devil spoke in its bosom and said, "The negro has no rights that a white man is bound to respect"; and ere the words were fairly uttered, their meaning, as was indeed inevitable, changed to this,-"A Northern 'mudsill' has no rights that a Southern gentleman is bound to respect"; and soon guns were heard booming about Sumter, and a new chapter in our history and in the world's history began.

Our nation refused allegiance to its own principles, refused to pay the lawful costs of its virtue and nobility; therefore it is sued in the courts of destiny, and the case is this day on trial.

The case is plain, the logic clear. Natural right is sacred, or it is not. If it is, the negro is lawfully free; if it is not, you may be lawfully a slave. Just how all this stands in the Constitution of the United States I do not presume to say. Other heads, whose business it is, must attend to that. Every man to his vocation. I speak from the stand-point of philosophy, not of politics; I attend to the logic of history, the logic of destiny, according to which, of course, final judgment will be rendered. It is not exactly to be supposed that the statute of any nation makes grass green, or establishes the relationship between cause and effect. The laws of the world are considerably older than our calendar, and therefore date yet more considerably beyond the year 1789. And by the laws of the world, by the eternal relationship between cause and effect, it stands enacted beyond repeal, and graven upon somewhat more durable than marble or brass, that the destiny of this nation for more than one century to come hinges upon its justice to that outcast race,-outcast, but not henceforth to be cast out by us, save to the utter casting down of ourselves. Once it might have been otherwise; now we have made it so. Justice to the African is salvation to the white man upon this continent. Oh, my America, you must not, cannot, shall not be blind to this fact! America, deeper in my love and higher in my esteem than ever before, newly illustrated in worth, newly proven to be capable still, in some directions, of exceeding magnanimity, open your eyes that your feet may have guidance, now when there is such need! Open your eyes to see, that, if you deliberately deny justice and human recognition to one innocent soul in all your borders, you stab at your own existence; for, in violating the unity of humanity, you break the principle that makes you a nation and alive. Give justice to black and white, recognize man as man; or the constituting idea, the vital faith, the crystallizing principle of the nation perishes, and the whole disintegrates, falls into dust.

I invite the attention of conservative men to the fact that in this due paying of costs lies the true conservation. I invite them to observe, that, as every living body has a principle which makes it alive, makes it a unit, harmonizing the action of its members,-as every crystal has a unitary law, which commands the arrangement of its particles, the number and arrangement of its faces and angles,-so it is with every orderly or living state. To this also there is a central, clarifying, unifying faith. Without this you may collect hordes into the brief, brutal empire of a Chingis Khan or Tamerlane; but you can have no firm, free, orderly, inspiring national life.

Whenever and wherever in history this central condition of national existence has been destroyed, there a nation has fallen into chaos, into imbecility, losing all power to produce genius, to generate able souls, to sustain the trust of men in each other, or to support any of the conditions of social health and order. Even advances in the right line of progress have to be made slowly, gradually, lest the shock of newness be too great, and break off a people from the traditions in which its faith is embodied; but a mere recoil, a mere denial and destruction of its centralizing principle, is the last and utmost calamity which can befall any nation.

This is no fine-spun doctrine, fit for parlors and lecture-rooms, but not for counting-rooms and congressional halls. It is solid, durable fact. History is full of it; and he is a mere mole, and blinder than midnight, who cannot perceive it. The spectacle of nations falling into sudden, chronic, careless imbecility is frequent and glaring enough for even wilfulness to see; and the central secret of this sad phenomenon, so I am sure, has been suggested here. When the socializing faith of a nation has perished, the alternative for it becomes this, that it can be stable only as it is stagnant, and vigorous only as it is lawless.

Of this I am sure; but whether Bullion Street can be willing to understand it I am not so sure. Yet if it cannot, or some one in its behalf, grass will grow there. And why should it refuse heed? Who is more concerned? Does Bullion Street desire chaos? Does it wish that the pith should be taken out of every statute, and the chief value from every piece of property? If not, its course is clear. This nation has a vital faith,-or had one,-well grounded in its traditions. Conserve this; or, if it has been impaired, renew its vigor. This faith is our one sole pledge of order, of peace, of growth, of all that we prize in the present, or hope for the future. That it is a noble faith, new in its breadth, its comprehension and magnanimity,-this would seem in my eyes rather to enhance than diminish the importance of its conservation. Yet the only argument against it is, that it is generous, broad, inspiring; and the only appeal in opposition to it must be made to the coldness of skepticism, the suicidal miserliness of egotism, or the folly and fatuity of ignorance.

Our nation has a political faith. Will you, conservative men, conserve this, and so regain and multiply the blessing it has already brought? or will you destroy it, and wait till, through at least a century of tossing and tumult, another, and that of less value, is grown? A faith, a crystallizing principle for many millions of people is not grown in a day; if it can be grown in a century is problematical. The fact, and the choice, are before you.

Our nation had a faith which it cherished with sincerity and sureness. If half the nation has fallen away from this,-if half the remaining moiety is doubtful, skeptical about it,-if, therefore, we are already a house divided against itself and tottering to its fall,-to what is all due? Simply to the fact that no nation can long unsay its central principle, and yet preserve it in faithfulness and power,-that no nation can long preach the sanctity of natural right, the venerableness of man's nature, and the identity of pure justice with political interest, from an auction-block on which men and maidens are sold,-that, in fine, a nation cannot continue long with impunity to play within its own borders the part both of Gessler and Tell, both of Washington and Benedict Arnold, both of Christ and of him that betrayed him.

We must choose. For our national faith we must make honest payment, so conserving it, and with it all for which nations may hope; or else, refusing to meet these costs, we must suffer the nation's soul to perish, and in the imbecility, the chaos, and shame that will follow, suffer therewith all that nations may lawfully fear.

What good omens, then, attend our time, now when the first officer of the land has put the trumpet to his mouth and blown round the world an intimation that, to the extent of the nation's power, these costs will begin to be paid, this true conservation to be practised! The work is not yet done; and the late elections betoken too much of moral debility in the people. But my trust continues firm. The work will be done,-at least, so far as we are responsible for its doing. And then! Then our shame, our misery, our deadly sickness will be taken away; no more that poison in our politics; no more that degradation in our commercial relations; no more that careful toning down of sentiment to low levels, that it may harmonize with low conditions; no more that need to shun the company of all healthful and heroic thoughts, such as are fit, indeed, to brace the sinews of a sincere social order, but sure to crack the sinews of a feeble and faithless conventionalism. Base men there will yet be, and therefore base politics; but when once our nation has paid the debt it owes to itself and the human race, when once it has got out of its blood the venom of this great injustice, it will, it must, arise beautiful in its young strength, noble in its new-consecrated faith, and stride away with a generous and achieving pace upon the great highways of historical progress. Other costs will come, if we are worthy; other lessons there will be to learn. I anticipate a place for brave and wise restrictions,-for I am no Red Republican,-as well as for brave and generous expansions. Lessons to learn, errors to unlearn, there will surely be; tasks to attempt, and disciplines to practise; but once place the nation in the condition of health, once get it at one with its own heart, once get it out of these aimless eddies into clear sea, out of these accursed "doldrums," (as the sailors phrase it,) this commixture of broiling calm and sky-bursting thunder-gust, into the great trade-winds of natural tendency that are so near at hand,-and I can trust it to meet all future emergency. All the freshest blood of the world is flowing hither: we have but to wed this with the life-blood of the universe, with eternal truth and justice, and God has in store no blessing for noblest nations that will not be secured for ours.

* * * * *

THE CHASSEURS à PIED.

Among the most celebrated corps of the French army, one of the most conspicuous and remarkable is that peculiar body of troops to which has been given the name of Chasseurs à Pied, or Foot-Chasseurs, to distinguish it from an organization of mounted men in the same service, uniformed and trained on similar principles. The Chasseurs à Pied have not attained the same romantic renown as that acquired by their brethren and rivals in arms, the Zouaves, but, nevertheless, they have had an exceedingly brilliant career in the late wars and conquests of France. They possess their own characteristics of originality, too, and are, in many respects, one of the most efficient and formidable forces in existence.

In order to convey a clear and correct idea of the new principles adopted in the organization and equipment of the Chasseurs, and to furnish our readers with some facts that may be interesting to them as historical students, and most useful to such among them as are connected with or may have any aspiration for military life, we must beg them to go back with us, for a moment, to the very period of the invention of gunpowder. It would be out of the question, of course, to attempt, in these pages, a description of all the curious weapons that were at first employed under the name of fire-arms. We will only remark that such weapons were, despite the anathemas of Bayard and the sarcasms of Ariosto, very much used as early as the middle of the sixteenth century, and played an important part on the battle-fields of that epoch.

To the Spaniards belongs the credit of having rendered the use of fire-arms more easy, more regular, and more general among the nations. For more than a hundred years the Spaniards were the very masters of the art of war. Their power had begun to decline, but they still retained their military superiority; and from the Battle of Ceresole, won by the Count of Enghien in 1544, down to the memorable victory of Rocroy, gained in 1643 by a hero of the same race and the same name, they had the upper-hand in all pitched engagements. Their generals were the very best and most thoroughly instructed, and formed a real school; they, too, were the only officers who practised strategy. Their organization was better than any other, and their celebrated tercios were the very model of all regiments. Their armament was likewise superior, as they had adopted the musket, which was the first fire-arm that a man could handle with any facility, load with rapidity, and aim with any precision. Each of their tercios or battalions contained a regulated proportion of these musketeers, and the number was large, compared to the whole mass of troops.

The excellent results attained by the Spaniards, in the more perfect organization and equipment of their infantry, did not escape the attention of the French officers; and one of them especially, the Duke Francis de Guise, endeavored to turn his observations to good account. It is to him that we are indebted for the first rough sketch of regimental organization modelled upon that of the tercios, and, in more than one encounter with the Huguenots, the numbers of thoroughly skilled arquebuse-men embodied in the old French bands in Picardy and Piedmont secured advantages to the Catholic armies. In the opposite party, a young general who was destined to become a great king, endowed with that creative instinct, that genius which is as readily applicable to the science of government as to that of war, and which, when tempered with good sense, may bestow glory and happiness upon whole nations, Henry IV., had taken particular pains to increase the number and the efficiency of his arquebuse-men, and frequently managed to employ them in ways as novel as they were successful. At the Battle of Coutras, he distributed them in groups of twenty-five, in the midst of his squadrons of cavalry, so that, when the royal gendarmerie advanced to charge the latter, they were suddenly received with murderous volleys by these arquebuse-men of the spur, as they were called, owing to their combination with the cavalry, and the shock they thus encountered gave victory to the Protestants. Henry IV. went even too far with his passion for fire-arms. He increased their number and their use among cavalry so extravagantly, that the latter arm was perverted from its proper object. The cavalry, for a long time, forgot that their strength lay in the points of their sabres, in the dash of the men, and the speed of their horses.

Most of the great captains of an early day thus signalized their progress by some improvement in the equipment of their infantry. One of the most formidable enemies of Spanish power, Maurice of Nassau, a skilful engineer and tactician, was the first to array infantry in such a manner as to combine the simultaneous use of the musket and the pike. Before his time, fire-arms had been used only for skirmishing service; he commenced to use them in line. This reform was, however, only foreshadowed, as it were, by the Dutch General; it was reserved for Gustavus Adolphus to complete it. While he was executing a series of military operations such as the world had not beheld since the days of C?sar, he was also creating a movable artillery, and giving to the fire of his infantry an efficacy which had not been attained before. For the heavy machines of war which were drawn by oxen to the field of battle, and which remained there motionless and paralyzed by the slightest movements of the contending armies, he substituted light cannon drawn by horses and following up all the manoeuvres of either cavalry or foot. He had found the infantry formed in dense battalions. His system arranged it in long continuous lines in which each rank of musketeers was sustained by several ranks of pikemen, so that his array, thus distributed, should present to the enemy a front bristling with steel, while, at the same time, it could cover a large space of ground with its discharge of lead. Attentive to all kinds of detail, he also gave his soldiers the cartouch-box and knapsack instead of the cumbersome apparatus to which they had been accustomed. In fact, Gustavus Adolphus was the founder of the modern science of battle. In strategy and the grand combinations of warfare, he was the disciple and rival of the ancient masters; for, even if this "divine portion" of the military art be inaccessible to the vast number of its votaries, and if history can easily enumerate those who were capable of comprehending it, and, more especially, of applying it, its rules and principles have, nevertheless, been by no means the same in all ages. On the contrary, the invention of fire-arms demanded an entirely new system of tactics, and this the Swedish hero introduced.

The example set by Gustavus was not, however, very rapidly followed, and, although some slight improvements were introduced by French officers during the seventeenth century, it was not until the time of Louis XIV. that the reforms started by Maurice of Nassau, and so successfully continued by the Swedish army, began to attain their consummation. The progress made in that direction was due to Vauban, whose eminent genius had mastered every question and every branch of study so completely, that, when applied to on any subject connected with politics or war, his opinion was always clear and correct. The very numerous essays and sketches from his hand which are found deposited in the fortresses and in the archives of France all reveal some flash of genius, and even his wildest speculations bear the stamp of his high intellect and excellent heart. Engineering science was carried by him to such a degree of perfection that it has made but few advances since his time; and it was Vauban who induced Louis XIV. to replace the pike and the musket with a weapon which should be, at one and the same time, an instrument for both firing and thrusting, namely, the bayonet-gun. The Royal Fusileer Regiment, since called the Royal Artillery, was the first one armed with this weapon, (in 1670,) and in 1703 the whole French army finally gave up the pike. Notwithstanding some reverses sustained by the infantry thus armed, and notwithstanding the disapproval of Puységur and others, this gun was soon adopted by all Europe, and the success of the great Frederick put a conclusive indorsement on this new style of weapon. Frederick had taken up and perfected the ideas of Gustavus Adolphus; and he now laid down certain rules for the formation and manoeuvring of infantry, which are still followed at this day; and since that time, no one has disputed the fact that the strength of foot-troops lies in their guns and their legs.

Our present firelock differs from the article used during the Seven Years' War only in its more careful construction and some modifications of detail. The most important of these relates to the more rapid explosion of the charge. In 1840 the old flint-locks were generally replaced by the percussion-lock, which is simpler, is less exposed to the effects of dampness, and more quickly and surely ignites the powder. Even the ordinary regulation-musket with its bayonet was spoken of by Napoleon in his time as "the best engine of warfare ever invented by man." Since the day of the Great Emperor, and even during the reign of the present Napoleon, continued improvements have been made in the character of the weapon used by the French infantry. The weight, length, correctness of aim, durability, and handiness of the gun have all been carefully examined and modified, to the advantage of the soldier, until, finally, we have a weapon which combines wonderful qualities of lightness, strength, correctness of equipoise, ease and rapidity of loading, with perfect adaptability as a combination of the lance, pike, and sword, when it has ceased to be a fire-arm.

We have not here the space to enter upon a disquisition concerning these progressive changes; but suffice it to say that nearly all the peculiar styles of fire-arms were well known at an early period, and that the rifling, etc., of guns and cannon, with the other modifications now adopted, are merely the development and consummation of old ideas. For instance, the rifled arquebuse was known and used at the close of the fifteenth century, and, although the rifled musket was not put in general use by the French infantry, from the fact that its reduced length and the greater complication of movements required in loading and discharging it deprived it of other advantages when in the hands of troops of the line, still it was adopted in a certain proportion in some branches of the French service.

As early as the middle of the seventeenth century, some corps of light cavalry called Carabins were armed with the short rifle-musket, and hence the derivation of the term carabines applied to the weapon. These "carabines" were also very promptly adopted by hunters and sportsmen everywhere. The Swiss and the Tyrolese employed them in chasing the chamois among their mountains, and practised their skill in the use of them at general shooting-matches, which to this very day are celebrated as national festivals. The Austrian Government was the first to profit by this preference on the part of certain populations for accurate fire-arms, and at once proceeded to organize battalions of Tyrolese Chasseurs, or Huntsmen,-to give the meaning of the French word. These Chasseurs were applied in the Austrian service as light troops, and so great was their efficiency against the Prussians that Frederick the Great was compelled, in his turn, to organize a battalion of Chasseur sharp-shooters. France followed suit, in the course of the eighteenth century, and called into existence various corps of the same description, under different names. These, however, were but short-lived, although some of them, for instance, the Grassin Legion, acquired quite a reputation.

Finally came the French Revolution. The troops of the Republic were more remarkable for courage and enthusiasm than for tactics and drill. They usually attacked as skirmishers,-a system which may be employed successfully by even the most regularly disciplined armies, but which is sometimes more especially useful to raw troops, because it gives the private soldier an opportunity to compensate by personal intelligence for the lack of thorough instruction. Struck by the aptitude of the French recruits for that kind of fighting, the Convention, in reorganizing the army, decreed the formation of some half-brigades of light infantry. The picked men were to be armed with the new weapon, and received the name of Carabiniers. The carabine of 1793 is the first specimen of that kind of arm which was regularly employed in France.

Subsequently, owing to many practical defects, when Napoleon reorganized the equipment of the French armies, the carabine was dropped from the service, although the regiments of light infantry were retained, and their picked companies preserved the title of Carabiniers. In the Imperial Guard, too, there were companies of Skirmishers, Flankers, and Chasseurs, but neither one of these corps was distinguished by any particular style of arms or drill. The Emperor's wish was to have the armament and training of all his infantry uniform, so that all the regiments should be equally adapted to the service of troops of the line or light troops. Finally, to carry out his design with greater ease, he formed all the men who were more active and agile than the rest, or whose low stature prevented them from becoming Grenadiers, into companies of Voltigeurs,-and this was one of his finest military creations.

However, notwithstanding the correctness of Napoleon's views, as a general principle, the thousand and one uses of a corps of picked marksmen as light troops were so universally admitted that the different nations of Europe continued and even augmented that branch of their military service. Under different names they were found not only in the armies of England, Austria, Prussia, and Russia, but also under the banners of the secondary powers, such as Sweden, Piedmont, and Switzerland.

After the disasters of 1815, the reorganization of the French army was confided to Marshal Gouvion de St. Cyr, who united to sincere patriotism every qualification of an able general. He gave to the French service the basis of its present success, his suggestions having, of course, been perfected and expanded in the mean time. Among other things, he prescribed the formation of battalions of Chasseurs, to be organized in legions, side by side with the infantry of the line, but with their own special equipment. This plan was not efficiently executed, and the Chasseur battalions shared the fate of the Department Legions of France, and were merged in the existing regiments.

The project, in a different form, was revived by Marshal Soult, who, as Minister of War, in 1833, succeeded in securing the passage of a royal ordinance prescribing the formation of companies of sharp-shooters "armed with carabines and uniformed in a manner befitting their special service." These companies were to be united subsequently into battalions, and were to undergo a particular course of training. Although the ordinance was not immediately carried into execution, the impulse had been given, and erelong successful improvements in the rifle having been effected by an old officer of the Royal Guard, named Delvigne, and a certain Colonel Poncharra, inspector of the manufacture of arms, the Duke of Orléans brought about the formation of a company of marksmen peculiarly trained and equipped, and provided with the so-called Delvigne-Poncharra carabine. This company was placed in garrison at Vincennes, where, under skilful and popular commanders, it gave such satisfaction that it was finally decided to try the experiment on a larger scale, and a decree of November 14, 1838, created a battalion of the same character.

This corps, then, and even now, known to the people as the Tirailleurs de Vincennes, wore a uniform very similar to that of the present Chasseurs, but quite different from that of the infantry of the period. Instead of the stiff accoutrements and heavy headgear of the latter, they assumed a frock, wide and roomy pantaloons, and a light military shako. The double folds of white buckskin, which were very fine to look at, to be sure, but which oppressed the lungs and offered a conspicuous mark to the enemy, were discarded; the sabre was no longer allowed to dangle between the legs of the soldier and impede his movements; while the necessary munitions were carried in a manner more convenient and better adapted to their preservation. The arms consisted of a carabine, and a long, solid, sharpened appendage to it, termed the sword-bayonet. This latter weapon was provided with a hilt, and could be used for both cut and thrust, with considerable effect, while, affixed to the end of the carabine, it furnished a most formidable pike.

Although the Delvigne-Poncharra carabine had great advantages, it still did not command the range of the coarser and heavier muskets of the line, and, in order to make up for this in some degree, the most robust and skilful men of the corps were armed with a heavier gun, constructed on the same principles, but capable of throwing a heavier charge with precision, to greater distances. The proportion of men so armed was one-eighth of the battalion. The use of these two different calibres of fire-arms had some drawbacks, but they were counterbalanced by some curious advantages. For instance, the battalion could keep up a steady fire at ordinary distances, while, at the same moment, the men armed with the heavy carabines, or Carabiniers, as they were distinctively called, even within their own battalion, could reach the enemy at points where he deemed himself beyond the range of the force he saw in front of him. United in groups, the Carabiniers could thus produce severe effect, and actually formed a sort of hand artillery,-to use an expression often employed concerning them.

The Tirailleurs thus composed were, owing to the shortness of their carabines, drawn up in two ranks, instead of in the regimental style of three ranks. They manoeuvred in line, like all other infantry battalions, but, in addition to the ordinary drill, were trained in gymnastics and double-quick evolutions, as well as in fencing with the bayonet, a special course of sharp-shooting, and what was termed the new Tirailleur drill.

Gymnastics have always been encouraged in the French army, and, when not carried to excess, they are of the greatest use, particularly in developing the strength of young men, giving suppleness and confidence to raw recruits, and facilitating their manoeuvres. Running was naturally a portion of these exercises, although it was rarely permitted in the evolutions of French troops, since it was found to produce much disorder. The Tirailleurs were so trained, however, that they could move, with all their accoutrements, in ranks, without noise and without confusion, at a cadenced and measured running step termed the pas gymnastique, or gymnastic step,-and they could use it even during complicated field-manoeuvres. This was a most excellent innovation, for it enabled infantry to pass rapidly to any important point, and to execute many evolutions with the promptitude in some degree which cavalry obtains from the combination of the two gaits.

The bayonet-exercise was very acceptable to the men, for it augmented their confidence in their weapons and their skill in handling them.

The target or sharp-shooting drill was much the most complicated and difficult, as the troops were taught to fire when kneeling and lying on the ground, and to avail themselves of the slightest favoring circumstances of the soil. The rules and methods adopted in this branch of the drill have been the subject of profound and careful study, and are exceedingly ingenious.

The approval of these measures by the French Government was such, that, by a decree of August 28th, 1839, the merely temporary organization of the Tirailleurs was made permanent and separate, and the corps was sent to camp at Fontainebleau. There, the agility of the men, their neat and convenient uniforms and equipments, and their rapid and orderly evolutions struck every one who saw them. When, at the close of their period of encampment, the King was passing them in review as a special compliment, he warmly asked Marshal Soult what he thought of the new corps. The Marshal, in replying, emphatically expressed the wish that His Majesty had thirty such battalions instead of only one.

However, the new organization found some opponents, and many urgent arguments were adduced to prevent its extension. In order to put all these to the test, it was finally determined to submit the Tirailleurs to the ordeal of actual warfare; and they were speedily shipped to Africa, where it was quickly discovered that their gymnastic training had so prepared them that they easily became inured to the fatigues and privations of campaigning life. Their heavy carabines succeeded admirably, and the skill of their marksmen-among others, of a certain Sergeant Pistouley-was the theme of universal praise.

The Tirailleurs were now brigaded with the Zouaves, and erelong had shared glorious laurels with those celebrated troops.

Finally, in 1840, the dangers that seemed to be accumulating over France on all sides assumed so dark a form that the patriotism of the whole nation was aroused, and, in the midst of the general outpouring of men and means, the Duke of Orléans was authorized to form no less than ten battalions of Chasseurs.

The Duke set himself about this important task with all the zeal that had characterized his first effort to create the organization, and all the erudition he had gleaned from years of military study and research. In the first place, he abandoned the title of Tirailleurs, as being not sufficiently distinctive, and adopted that of Chasseurs à Pied, or Foot-Chasseurs. The organization by battalions was retained, and the one formed two years before at Vincennes was designated as the First Battalion, and recalled from Africa to St. Omer as a model for the other nine that were to be organized. St. Omer offered extensive barracks, a vast field suitable to military exercise, and, in fine, all the establishments requisite for a large concourse of troops. The ranks were soon filled with picked men from all sides, and ardent, ambitious officers from every corps of the army sought commands. Among the latter we may mention a certain Captain, since Marshal de M'Mahon, who was put at the head of the Tenth Battalion.

Under the eyes of the Prince Royal, and in accordance with a series of regulations drawn up by him with the greatest care, and constantly modified to suit circumstances, the battalions were drilled and trained assiduously in all the walks of their profession connected with their own destined service. Every branch of their military life was illustrated by their exercises, and even the officers went through a thorough course of special instruction under accomplished tutors, who were also officers of peculiar ability and experience. While the Duke of Orléans, with the distinguished General Rostolan and two picked lieutenant-colonels, remained at St. Omer in charge of the growing force, another lieutenant-colonel was intrusted with the task of training subordinates to serve as teachers in sharp-shooting, and for this purpose a detachment was assembled at Vincennes, consisting of ten officers and a number of subalterns who had attracted attention by their particular aptitude. These, after having been thoroughly instructed in the manufacture of small arms, the preparation of munitions, and the rules and practice of sharp-shooting, were sent to St. Omer to furnish the new battalions with the officers who were to form part of the permanent organization. The weapon selected was an improvement upon the former carabines of the Tirailleurs; and while the old proportion, to wit, the eighth part of each battalion, were armed with guns of longer range, and styled distinctively Carabiniers, these were set apart as the picked company of each battalion. The Duke, taking up his residence at St. Omer, attended in person to all that was going forward; and so constant were his exertions, and so warm the zeal of those who assisted the enterprise, that in a few months all the battalions were equipped, armed, and well drilled.

One fine spring morning,-it was in May, 1841,-a long column of troops entered Paris with a celerity hitherto unknown. There was no false glitter, no tinsel; everything was neat and martial, with bugles for their only music, and a uniform that was sombre, indeed, but of such harmonious simplicity as to be by no means devoid of elegance. This column consisted of the Chasseurs, coming to receive their standard from the hands of Louis Philippe, and speeding through the streets with their gymnastic step. On the very next day, as though to signalize the serious and entirely military character of the organization, four of these battalions were sent off to Africa, and the remaining six posted at the different leading fortresses of France, where the collections of artillery, etc., enabled them to proceed with the perfect development of their training.

It was only a year later, when the Duke of Orléans was snatched away, on the very eve of some crowning experiments he was about to make in illustration of the full uses and capacities of this force, that it received the title of Chasseurs d'Orléans, which the modesty of its founder would not tolerate during his lifetime. This name they gallantly bore through the combats that marked their novitiate in Africa, where it was at once found that the complete preparation of both officers and men made victory comparatively easy for them. The deadly precision of their aim struck terror into the Arabs, and, as early as 1842, the splendid behavior of the Sixth Battalion in the bloody fights of the Oued Foddah at once ranged the Chasseurs among the finest troops in Africa. To attempt to follow them step by step in their career would be idle in the space we have here allotted to ourselves. We shall therefore cite merely a few instances where their courage and efficiency shone with peculiar lustre.

In the course of the year 1845, an impostor, playing upon the credulity of the Arabs, and artfully availing himself of the organization ready furnished by the religious sect to which he belonged, succeeded in bringing about a revolt of a great portion of the tribes in Algiers and Oran. He went by the title of "Master of the Hour," a sort of Messiah who had been long expected in that region. But he was more generally known as Bou-Maza, or The Father with the She-Goat, from the fact that a she-goat was his customary companion, and was supposed by the populace to serve him as a medium of communication with the supernatural Powers. This man exhibited a great deal of skill and audacity. His activity was so extraordinary, and he had been seen at so many different points at almost the same time, that his very existence was at first doubted, and many supposed him to be a myth. At one time it was thought that the insurrection had been quelled, as a chief calling himself Bou-Maza had been captured and shot, when, suddenly, the real leader reappeared among the Flittas, one of the most warlike tribes of Algeria, and living in a region very difficult of access. Against these and the Prophet, General Bourjolly, the French commander, marched at once, but unfortunately with very inadequate force. A terrible combat ensued, the Fourth Regiment of the Chasseurs d'Afrique and the Ninth Battalion of the Chasseurs d'Orléans having to sustain the brunt of it. Both these corps performed prodigies of valor, and it was worth while to hear the men of each reciprocally narrating the glory and the peril of their comrades,-these telling by what noble exploits the mounted Chasseurs (d'Afrique) had saved the remains of Lieutenant-Colonel Berthier, and the others describing the Chasseurs à Pied, how they stood immovable, although without cartridges, around the body of their commander, Clère, with their terrible sword-bayonets bloody to the hilt!

On almost the same day, the Eighth Battalion succumbed to a frightful catastrophe. At a period of supposed tranquillity, the Souhalia tribe, who had been steadfast allies of the French, were unexpectedly attacked by Abd-el-Kader at the head of an overwhelming force. Lieutenant-Colonel Montagnac, with only sixty-two horsemen of the Second Hussars and three hundred and fifty men of the Eighth Chasseurs d'Orléans, hurried to the rescue. He was repeatedly warned of the danger, but, despite all that could be said, he dashed at the whole force of Abd-el-Kader. At the very first discharge, Montagnac fell mortally wounded, and in a few moments all the horses and nearly all the men were disabled. Captain Cognord, of the Second Hussars, rallied the survivors, and this little handful of heroes, huddled together upon a hillock, fought like tigers, until their ammunition was exhausted. The Arabs then closed in upon the group, which had become motionless and silent, and, to use the expressive language of an eye-witness, "felled them to the earth as they would overturn a wall." The enemy found none remaining but the dead, or those who were so badly wounded that they gave no sign of life. Before expiring, Montagnac had summoned to his aid a small detachment he had left in reserve. The latter, on its approach, was immediately surrounded, and perished to the very last man. There was now surviving of the whole French force only the Carabinier company of the Eighth Chasseurs, upon whom the Arabs rushed with fury, from every side. After a resistance of almost fabulous heroism, during which the flag of the company was shot away in shreds, and the Carabiniers cut their bullets into six and eight pieces so as to prolong their defence, every volley decimating the foe, this little band of seventy men, encumbered with ten wounded, succeeded in wearying and disheartening the Emir to such an extent that he determined to abandon the direct assault which was costing him so dearly, and to surround the French detachment in the ruined building which served them for a refuge, and so starve them out. Captain Dutertre, Adjutant of the Eighth, who had been captured by the Arabs in the early part of the action, was sent forward by the enemy toward his old comrades. For a moment the firing ceased, and the Captain shouted so that all could hear him,-"Chasseurs, they have sworn to behead me, if you do not lay down your arms; and I say to you, Die, rather than surrender one single man!"

The Captain was instantly sabred, and the conflict recommenced. The same summons was repeated twice afterwards, and twice failed, when, finally, the firing ceased, and the Arabs bivouacked around their prey. Every possible approach was closed and guarded, and, thus caged in, the Chasseurs remained for three nights and days without food or drink. At length, by a sudden and desperate dash, on the morning of September 20th, the seventy heroes, bearing their ten wounded comrades, succeeded in breaking through the line of Arab sentinels, and escaped to a neighboring chain of hills. Thither they were pursued by their wild foemen, who, although infuriated at the daring and success of this sally, had a sufficient respect for the heavy carabines of the French, and merely hovered closely on their rear, awaiting some favorable opportunity to dash in upon them. This moment soon came. The French soldiers, no longer able to withstand the torments of thirst, descending from the hills, in spite of the entreaties of their officers, dashed into a neighboring stream to cool their burning lips. The instant of doom had come, and, in less time than it takes to recite the narrative, all but twelve of the little band were massacred by the exulting Arabs. The twelve escaped to Djemaa only after terrible privations and sufferings.

We might readily fill a volume with episodes equally glorious and equally gloomy in the career of the Chasseurs. They were in nearly all the brilliant actions of the ensuing Algerian campaigns, and, at Zaatcha, Isly, and other famed engagements, they contended side by side with the renowned Zouaves for the palm of military excellence. Their agility, their promptitude in action, their ardor in attack, and their solidity in retreat, their endurance on the march, their skill and intelligence in availing themselves of every inequality of ground and in turning everything to account, made them so conspicuously preferable, as an infantry corps, for certain operations, that Marshal Bugeaud caused the number of battalions employed in Africa to be increased to six. From that time to the present, continual progress has been, made in the organization, discipline, and instruction of the Chasseurs, and all the objections which at different periods were, raised against the special composition and details of the force having been one by one met and obviated, France now counts no less than twenty-one battalions of them in her army.

It was for a long time thought by some, that, although the Chasseurs, like the Zouaves, had been successful in the skirmishing engagements of Algeria, they would not be found so useful in European warfare. This opinion was proved to be erroneous at the siege of Rome, in 1849, where the Chasseurs, armed with their new and terrible weapon, the carabine à tige, in the management of which they had been thoroughly drilled, rendered the most important service; and from what was seen of them there it became evident that the existence of such a force, so perfected in every particular, would hereafter greatly modify the relations and conditions of the defence and attack of fortified works. The importance of this fact will impress the reader, when he remembers how large a part fortresses have played in warfare since 1815, and especially when he glances at the tendency everywhere perceptible now toward transforming military strongholds into great intrenched camps, as revealed at Antwerp in Belgium, Fredericia in Denmark, Buda and Comorn in Hungary, Peschiera, Mantua, Venice, Verona, and Rome in Italy, Silistria and Sebastopol in the East, and Washington, Manassas, and Richmond in America.

Other nations have not been slow to follow French example. Russia is rapidly manufacturing rifled pieces for her service; England is providing her whole army with the Minié musket, and Austria and Prussia are applying inventions of their own to the armament of corps organized and trained on the principle of the French Chasseurs.

The Duke of Wellington is said to have remarked, not long before his death, while speaking of the English troops, that they had, indeed, adopted the new musket, but that it would be physically difficult for them to transform themselves into light infantry. The same observation will undoubtedly apply to all the Continental nations excepting the French; but in the United States, while we could muster the finest heavy troops in the world, we have also the most abundant material for just such light infantry as those described in the foregoing sketch.

The Chasseurs are not merely distinguished as perfect light infantry, but they also form excellent troops of the line. By the weight of their fire, they are capable of producing in battles and sieges effects unknown before their appearance on the scene, and that is the great point, the entirely new feature about them.

The creation of these battalions, well planned and happily executed as it has been, remains a most important event in military history. Consecrated by the valor and the intelligence of the officers and soldiers of France, it has been the signal and the source of new and rapid reforms. One of these battalions attached to each infantry division adds fresh force to that fine classification which first arose under the Republic, and, although somewhat perverted under the Empire, still remains the basis of the French grand organization, recalling, as it does, the immortal idea of the Roman Legion.

With the aid of its example, and the emulation inspired by the success of the Chasseurs, the splendid system of the French infantry-service has been completed under the present Napoleon; and we now behold the race he rules so disciplined for war, the respective qualities of the North and the South of France, the firmness and solidity of the former and the enthusiasm and ardor of the latter, so beautifully blended, that we may well exclaim, "Here, indeed, is a whole nation armed! in pedite robur!"

In conclusion, the writer and compiler of this sketch would not be venturing too far, perhaps, were he to remark that so excellent an example can be nowhere better followed than in this country, if, as would to-day appear a certainty, we are to turn aside from the ways of peace to study the art of war. We have here precisely the material for whole armies of light infantry, the most favorable conditions for their equipment and instruction, and, owing to the nature of the region we inhabit, its dense woodlands, its wide savannas, its broad rivers, and its numerous ranges of rough mountains, the very land in which the tactics and marksmanship of the Chasseurs would be most available.

LATEST VIEWS OF MR. BIGLOW.

PRELIMINARY NOTE.

[It is with feelings of the liveliest pain that we inform our readers of the death of the Reverend Homer Wilbur, A.M., which took place suddenly, by an apoplectic stroke, on the afternoon of Christmas day, 1862. Our venerable friend (for so we may venture to call him, though we never enjoyed the high privilege of his personal acquaintance) was in his eighty-fourth year, having been born June 12, 1779, at Pigsgusset Precinct (now West Jerusha) in the then District of Maine. Graduated with distinction at Hubville College in 1805, he pursued his theological studies with the late Reverend Preserved Thacker, D.D., and was called to the charge of the First Society in Jaalam in 1809, where he remained till his death.

"As an antiquary he has probably left no superior, if, indeed, an equal," writes his friend and colleague, the Reverend Jeduthun Hitchcock, to whom we are indebted for the above facts; "in proof of which I need only allude to his 'History of Jaalam, Genealogical, Topographical, and Ecclesiastical,' 1849, which has won him an eminent and enduring place in our more solid and useful literature. It is only to be regretted that his intense application to historical studies should have so entirely withdrawn him from the pursuit of poetical composition, for which he was endowed by Nature with a remarkable aptitude. His well-known hymn, beginning, 'With clouds of care encompassed round,' has been attributed in some collections to the late President Dwight, and it is hardly presumptuous to affirm that the simile of the rainbow in the eighth stanza would do no discredit to that polished pen."

We regret that we have not room at present for the whole of Mr. Hitchcock's exceedingly valuable communication. We hope to lay more liberal extracts from it before our readers at an early day. A summary of its contents will give some notion of its importance and interest. It contains: 1st, A biographical sketch of Mr. Wilbur, with notices of his predecessors in the pastoral office, and of eminent clerical contemporaries; 2d, An obituary of deceased, from the Punkin-Falls "Weekly Parallel"; 3d, A list of his printed and manuscript productions and of projected works; 4th, Personal anecdotes and recollections, with specimens of table-talk; 5th, A tribute to his relict, Mrs. Dorcas (Pilcox) Wilbur; 6th, A list of graduates fitted for different colleges by Mr. Wilbur, with biographical memoranda touching the more distinguished; 7th, Concerning learned, charitable, and other societies, of which Mr. Wilbur was a member, and of those with which, had his life been prolonged, he would doubtless have been associated, with a complete catalogue of such Americans as have been Fellows of the Royal Society; 8th, A brief summary of Mr. Wilbur's latest conclusions concerning the Tenth Horn of the Beast in its special application to recent events, for which the public, as Mr. Hitchcock assures us, have been waiting with feelings of lively anticipation; 10th, Mr. Hitchcock's own views on the same topic; and, 11th, A brief essay on the importance of local histories. It will be apparent that the duty of preparing Mr. Wilbur's biography could not have fallen into more sympathetic hands.

In a private letter with which the reverend gentleman has since favored us, he expresses the opinion that Mr. Wilbur's life was shortened by our unhappy civil war. It disturbed his studies, dislocated all his habitual associations and trains of thought, and unsettled the foundations of a faith, rather the result of habit than conviction, in the capacity of man for self-government. "Such has been the felicity of my life," he said to Mr. Hitchcock, on the very morning of the day he died, "that, through the divine mercy, I could always say, Summum nec metuo diem, nec opto. It has been my habit, as you know, on every recurrence of this blessed anniversary, to read Milton's 'Hymn of the Nativity' till its sublime harmonies so dilated my soul and quickened its spiritual sense that I seemed to hear that other song which gave assurance to the shepherds that there was One who would lead them also in green pastures and beside the still waters. But to-day I have been unable to think of anything but that mournful text, 'I came not to send peace, but a sword,' and, did it not smack of pagan presumptuousness, could almost wish I had never lived to see this day."

Mr. Hitchcock also informs us that his friend "lies buried in the Jaalam graveyard, under a large red-cedar which he specially admired. A neat and substantial monument is to be erected over his remains, with a Latin epitaph written by himself; for he was accustomed to say pleasantly that there was at least one occasion in a scholar's life when he might show the advantages of a classical training."

The following fragment of a letter addressed to us, and apparently intended to accompany Mr. Biglow's contribution to the present number, was found upon his table after his decease.-EDITORS ATLANTIC MONTHLY.]

To the Editors of the ATLANTIC MONTHLY.

Jaalam, 24th Dec'r, 1862

RESPECTED SIRS,-The infirm state of my bodily health would be a sufficient apology for not taking up the pen at this time, wholesome as I deem it for the mind to apricate in the shelter of epistolary confidence, were it not that a considerable, I might even say a large, number of individuals in this parish expect from their pastor some publick expression of sentiment at this crisis. Moreover, Qui tacitus ardet magis uritur. In trying times like these, the besetting sin of undisciplined minds is to seek refuge from inexplicable realities in the dangerous stimulant of angry partisanship or the indolent narcotick of vague and hopeful vaticination; fortunamque suo temperat arbitrio. Both by reason of my age and my natural temperament, I am unfitted for either. Unable to penetrate the inscrutable judgments of God, I am more than ever thankful that my life has been prolonged till I could in some small measure comprehend His mercy. As there is no man who does not at some time render himself amenable to the one,-quum vix Justus sit securus,-so there is none that does not feel himself in daily need of the other.

I confess, I cannot feel, as some do, a personal consolation for the manifest evils of this war in any remote or contingent advantages that may spring from it. I am old and weak, I can bear little, and can scarce hope to see better days; nor is it any adequate compensation to know that Nature is old and strong and can bear much. Old men philosophize over the past, but the present is only a burthen and a weariness. The one lies before them like a placid evening landscape; the other is full of the vexations and anxieties of housekeeping. It may be true enough that miscet haec illis, prohibetque Clotho fortunam stare, but he who said it was fain at last to call in Atropos with her shears before her time; and I cannot help selfishly mourning that the fortune of our Republick could not at least stand till my days were numbered.

Tibullus would find the origin of wars in the great exaggeration of riches, and does not stick to say that in the days of the beechen trencher there was peace. But averse as I am by nature from all wars, the more as they have been especially fatal to libraries, I would have this one go on till we are reduced to wooden platters again, rather than surrender the principle to defend which it was undertaken. Though I believe Slavery to have been the cause of it, by so thoroughly demoralizing Northern politicks for its own purposes as to give opportunity and hope to treason, yet I would not have our thought and purpose diverted from their true object,-the maintenance of the idea of Government. We are not merely suppressing an enormous riot, but contending for the possibility of permanent order coexisting with democratical fickleness; and while I would not superstitiously venerate form to the sacrifice of substance, neither would I forget that an adherence to precedent and prescription can alone give that continuity and coherence under a democratical constitution which are inherent in the person of a despotick monarch and the selfishness of an aristocratical class. Stet pro ratione voluntas is as dangerous in a majority as in a tyrant.

I cannot allow the present production of my young friend to go out without a protest from me against a certain extremeness in his views, more pardonable in the poet than the philosopher. While I agree with him that the only cure for rebellion is suppression by force, yet I must animadvert upon certain phrases where I seem to see a coincidence with a popular fallacy on the subject of compromise. On the one hand there are those who do not see that the vital principle of Government and the seminal principle of Law cannot properly be made a subject of compromise at all, and on the other those who are equally blind to the truth that without a compromise of individual opinions, interests, and even rights, no society would be possible. In medio tutissimus. For my own part, I would gladly--

Ef I a song or two could make,

Like rockets druv by their own burnin',

All leap an' light, to leave a wake

Men's hearts an' faces skyward turnin'!-

But, it strikes me, 't ain't jest the time

Fer stringin' words with settisfaction:

Wut's wanted now's the silent rhyme

'Twixt upright Will an' downright Action.

Words, ef you keep 'em, pay their keep,

But gabble's the short cut to ruin;

It's gratis, (gals half-price,) but cheap

At no rate, ef it henders doin';

Ther' 's nothin' wuss, 'less 't is to set

A martyr-prem'um upon jawrin':

Teapots git dangerous, ef you shet

Their lids down on 'em with Fort Warren.

'Bout long enough it's ben discussed

Who sot the magazine afire,

An' whether, ef Bob Wickliffe bust,

'T would scare us more or blow us higher,

D' ye s'pose the Gret Foreseer's plan

Wuz settled fer him in town-meetin'?

Or thet ther' 'd ben no Fall o' Man,

Ef Adam'd on'y bit a sweetin'?

Oh, Jon'than, ef you want to be

A rugged chap agin an' hearty,

Go fer wutever'll hurt Jeff D.,

Nut wut'll boost up ary party.

Here's hell broke loose, an' we lay flat

With half the univarse a-singein',

Till Sen'tor This an' Gov'nor Thet

Stop squabblin' fer the garding-ingin'.

It's war we're in, not politics;

It's systems wrastlin' now, not parties;

An' victory in the eend'll fix

Where longest will an' truest heart is.

An' wut's the Guv'ment folks about?

Tryin' to hope ther' 's nothin' doin',

An' look ez though they didn't doubt

Sunthin' pertickler wuz a-brewin'.

Ther' 's critters yit thet talk an' act

Fer wut they call Conciliation;

They'd hand a buff'lo-drove a tract

When they wuz madder than all Bashan.

Conciliate? it jest means be kicked,

No metter how they phrase an' tone it;

It means thet we're to set down licked,

Thet we're poor shotes an' glad to own it!

A war on tick's ez dear'z the deuce,

But it wun't leave no lastin' traces,

Ez't would to make a sneakin' truce

Without no moral specie-basis:

Ef green-backs ain't nut jest the cheese,

I guess ther' 's evils thet's extremer,-

Fer instance,-shinplaster idees

Like them put out by Gov'nor Seymour.

Last year, the Nation, at a word,

When tremblin' Freedom cried to shield her,

Flamed weldin' into one keen sword

Waitin' an' longin' fer a wielder:

A splendid flash!-an' how'd the grasp

With sech a chance ez thet wuz tally?

Ther' warn't no meanin' in our clasp,-

Half this, half thet, all shilly-shally.

More men? More Man! It's there we fail;

Weak plans grow weaker yit by lengthenin':

Wut use in addin' to the tail,

When it's the head's in need o' strengthenin'?

We wanted one thet felt all Chief

From roots o' hair to sole o' stockin',

Square-sot with thousan'-ton belief

In him an' us, ef earth went rockin'!

Ole Hick'ry wouldn't ha' stood see-saw

'Bout doin' things till they wuz done with,-

He'd smashed the tables o' the Law

In time o' need to load his gun with;

He couldn't see but jest one side,-

Ef his, 'twuz God's, an' thet wuz plenty;

An' so his "Forrards!" multiplied

An army's fightin' weight by twenty.

But this 'ere histin', creak, creak, creak,

Your cappen's heart up with a derrick,

This tryin' to coax a lightnin'-streak

Out of a half-discouraged hay-rick,

This hangin' on mont' arter mont'

Fer one sharp purpose 'mongst the twitter,-

I tell ye, it doos kind o' stunt

The peth an' sperit of a critter.

In six months where'll the People be,

Ef leaders look on revolution

Ez though it wuz a cup o' tea,-

Jest social el'ments in solution?

This weighin' things doos wal enough

When war cools down, an' comes to writin';

But while it's makin', the true stuff

Is pison-mad, pig-headed fightin'.

Democ'acy gives every man

A right to be his own oppressor;

But a loose Gov'ment ain't the plan,

Helpless ez spilled beans on a dresser:

I tell ye one thing we might larn

From them smart critters, the Seceders,-

Ef bein' right's the fust consarn,

The 'fore-the-fust 's cast-iron leaders.

But 'pears to me I see some signs

Thet we're a-goin' to use our senses:

Jeff druv us into these hard lines,

An' ough' to bear his half th' expenses;

Slavery's Secession's heart an' will,

South, North, East, West, where'er you find it,

An' ef it drors into War's mill,

D' ye say them thunder-stones sha'n't grind it?

D' ye s'pose, ef Jeff giv him a lick,

Ole Hick'ry'd tried his head to sof'n

So 's 't wouldn't hurt thet ebony stick

Thet's made our side see stars so of'n?

"No!" he'd ha' thundered, "on your knees,

An' own one flag, one road to glory!

Soft-heartedness, in times like these,

Shows sof'ness in the upper story!"

An' why should we kick up a muss

About the Pres'dunt's proclamation?

It ain't a-goin' to lib'rate us,

Ef we don't like emancipation:

The right to be a cussed fool

Is safe from all devices human,

It's common (ez a gin'l rule)

To every critter born o' woman.

So we're all right, an' I, fer one,

Don't think our cause'll lose in vally

By rammin' Scriptur' in our gun,

An' gittin' Natur' fer an ally:

Thank God, say I, fer even a plan

To lift one human bein's level,

Give one more chance to make a man,

Or, anyhow, to spile a devil!

Not thet I'm one thet much expec'

Millennium by express to-morrer;

They will miscarry,-I rec'lec'

Tu many on 'em, to my sorrer:

Men ain't made angels in a day,

No matter how you mould an' labor 'em,-

Nor 'riginal ones, I guess, don't stay

With Abe so of'n ez with Abraham,

The'ry thinks Fact a pooty thing,

An' wants the banns read right ensuin';

But Fact wun't noways wear the ring

'Thout years o' settin' up an' wooin':

But, arter all, Time's dial-plate

Marks cent'ries with the minute-finger,

An' Good can't never come tu late,

Though it doos seem to try an' linger.

An' come wut will, I think it's grand

Abe's gut his will et last bloom-furnaced

In trial-flames till it'11 stand

The strain o' bein' in deadly earnest:

Thet's wut we want,-we want to know

The folks on our side hez the bravery

To b'lieve ez hard, come weal, come woe,

In Freedom ez Jeff doos in Slavery.

Set the two forces foot to foot,

An' every man knows who'll be winner,

Whose faith in God hez ary root

Thet goes down deeper than his dinner:

Then 'twill be felt from pole to pole,

Without no need o' proclamation,

Earth's Biggest Country's gut her soul

An' risen up Earth's Greatest Nation!

REVIEWS AND LITERARY NOTICES.

Slavery and Secession in America, Historical and Economical; together with a Practical Scheme of Emancipation. By THOMAS ELLISON, F.S.S., etc. Second Edition: Enlarged. With a Reply to the Fundamental Arguments of Mr. James Spence, contained in his Work on the American Union, and Remarks on the Productions of Other Writers. With Map and Appendices. London: Sampson Low, Son, & Co.

We have too long delayed to speak of Mr. Ellison's book. More than a year ago, before Mr. Stuart Mill or Professor Cairnes had written in our behalf, before we had received a word of sympathy from any representative Englishman, save Mr. John Bright, the first edition of this work was placed before the British public. And we could not have asked for a better informed or more judicious defender than Mr. Ellison. "Slavery and Secession in America" is a temperate and concise statement of the essential features of our national struggle. The supposed interest of half a million of slaveholders in the extension of the Southern institution is truly represented as the cause of their guilty insurrection against the liberties of their countrymen. Mr. Ellison does not desire immediate emancipation, and wastes no sentiment upon the sufferings of the negro. But the economical and social position of Slavery is given with the unanswerable emphasis of careful figures. He traces the rise and increase of the institution in the States, until its disgrace culminates in a bloody rebellion. He clearly shows, that, by acknowledging the doctrine involved in Secession, by allowing it to govern the intercourse between nations, the morality of society would be shaken from its base. The anti-slavery character of the strife in which we are involved is made to appear,-slavery-diffusion being the object of the South, slavery-restriction the aim of the North. It is shown that the Secession ordinances utterly failed to point out a single instance in which the rights of the Southern people were infringed upon by the National Executive; also, that the alleged right of Secession is neither Constitutional, nor, when backed by no tangible grievance, can it he called revolutionary. In short, Mr. Ellison takes the only ground which seems possible to loyalists in America: namely, that Secession-in other words, the treason of slaveholders against the Constitution of their country-is of necessity punishable by law; and that good men of all nationalities should unite in the moral support of a benignant government thus wantonly assailed.

The "practical scheme of emancipation" promised us in the title can hardly be said to amount to a scheme at all; but there are suggestions worth attending to, if that delicate matter might be managed as we would, not as we must.

We have marked but two passages for a questioning comment. General Taylor, by an inadvertency strange to pass to a second edition, is represented as putting down the South-Carolina Nullifiers in 1838. Also, Dr. Charles Mackay, the New-York Correspondent of the London "Times," is quoted as having once borne anti-slavery testimony. This is certainly hard. Whatever emoluments slave-masters or their allies may hereafter have it in their power to bestow this gentleman has fairly earned. If he ever did say anything that was disagreeable to them, it should not be remembered against him.

The merit of Mr. Ellison's book is neither in rhetoric, philanthropic sentiment, nor any exalted theory of political philosophy; it is in an unanswerable appeal to statistics, and a condensed statement of facts. The work may be commended to all desirous of arriving at the truth.

But no conventional phrases of a book-notice can express our obligations to Mr. Ellison and those few of his countrymen who have publicly rebuked the noisy bitterness of writers striving, with too much success, to debauch the sentiment of England. Most dear to us is an occasional lull in that storm of insolence and mendacity designed to embarrass the Government of the United States in the august and solemn championship of human liberty committed to its charge. And let it be remarked that our expectations of English approval were never Utopian. The great principle involved in the American contest was so far above the level of the ordinary pursuits of men, that, even among ourselves, few have been able to transfuse it into their daily consciousness. We never looked to England for the encouragement of a popular enthusiasm,-hardly, perhaps, for a cold acquiescence. John Bull, we said, is proverbially a grumbler, proverbially indifferent to all affairs but his own; he will be annoyed by tariffs, and plagued by scarcity of cotton;-what wonder, if we are a little misunderstood? The minor contributors to his daily press will not be able to think long or wisely of what they write; we must be ready to pardon a certain amount of irritation and misstatement. That such was the feeling of intelligent Americans towards England, at the beginning of our troubles, we have no doubt. But for the scurrility heaped upon us by what claims to be the higher British press we were totally unprepared,-and for this good reason, that such malignity of criticism as is possible in America could never have suggested it. Let us not be misunderstood. We acknowledge the "Rowdy Journal" and Mr. Jefferson Brick. Undoubtedly, newspapers exist among us of which the description of Mr. Dickens is no very extravagant caricature. But their editors, if not of notoriously infamous life, are those whose minds are unenlarged by any generous education,-men whose lack of grammar suggests a certain palliation of their want of veracity and good-breeding. Such journals are seldom or never seen by the large class of cultivated American readers, and are in no sense representative of them. The "Saturday Review" and "Blackwood's Magazine" are said to be conducted by men of University training. Their articles are written in clear and precise English, and often contain vigorous thought. They publish few papers which do not give evidence of at least tolerable scholarship in their writers. Of kindred periodicals on this side of the ocean it may be safely said, that the intelligence of the reader forces their criticism up to some decent standard of honest painstaking. We may thus explain the bewilderment which came over us at that burst of vulgar ribaldry from the leading British press, in which the organs above named have achieved a scandalous preeminence. Vibrating from the extreme of shallowness to the extreme of sufficiency, scorning to be limited in abuse by adhering to any single hypothesis, the current literature of England has gloated over the rebellion of Slavery with the cynical chuckles of a sour spinster. Would that language less strong could express our meaning! President Lincoln-whatever may be judged his deficiency in resources of statesmanship-will be embalmed by history as one possessing many qualities peculiarly adapted to our perilous crisis, together with an integrity of life and purpose honorably representing the yeomanry of the Republic. This man, the ruler of a friendly people, British journalists have proclaimed guilty of crimes to which the records of the darkest despotisms can scarcely furnish a parallel. The precious blood of Ellsworth was taken by the "Saturday Review" as the text of such disgraceful banter as we trust few bar-keepers in America would bestow upon a bully killed in a pot-house fray. General Butler, for a verbal infelicity in an order of imperative necessity and wholesome effect, has been befouled by language which no careful historian would apply to Tiberius or Louis XV. But enough of this. We should be glad to believe that these utterers of false witness were boorish men, in dark and desperate ignorance of the true bearing of our current affairs. We are unable so to believe.

It is a relief to turn to that small company of Englishmen who have extended brother-hands to us in the day of our necessity. No world-homage of literary admiration is worth the personal emotion with which they are recognized in America as representatives of that Old England which has place in the affection and gratitude of every cultivated man among us. They have done us justice, when contempt for justice alone was popular, and a cynical skepticism seemed the only retreat from blatant abuse. Cairnes, Mill, Ellison, and others whom we need not name,-for the sake of such men let us still think of England in generous temper. Their sympathies have been with us through this terrible arbitrament of arms; they were with us in that solemn close of the old year, when the destiny of our dumb four millions weighed upon the night. These men have told us that the principle for which we contend is sound and worthy: they may also tell us that we have made occasional mistakes in reducing the principle to practice; and of this we are painfully conscious. It is well for us to forego that reckless bravado of unexampled prosperity once so offensive to foreign ears. Yet the best thing we ever had to boast of has been with us in the storm. According to the admirable observation of Niebuhr,-"Liberty exists where public opinion can constrain Government to fulfil its duties, and where, on the other side, in times of popular infatuation, the Government can maintain a wise course in spite of public opinion." This liberty has been preserved to us through all the turbulence of war. Like some divine element, it has mingled in the convulsion of human passion, and already prophesies the day when the service of man to man, as of man to God, shall be rendered in perfect freedom.

A Treatise on Military Law and the Practice of Courts-Martial. By

CAPTAIN S.V. BENéT, Ordnance Department, U.S. Army, late Assistant

Professor of Ethics, Law, etc., Military Academy, West Point. Mew

York: D. Van Nostrand.

In these days of large armies and intense military enthusiasm, the very title of a military book commends it, prima facie, to public interest; and when it promises to elucidate and systematize the intricate subject of military law, it has great specific importance in the eyes of the tens of thousands of officers who are constantly called upon to administer that law, and to whom the duties of courts-martial are new and difficult. But, to understand still more clearly the great value of such a work, supposing it to be well written, we must go back in the history of military courts, and see how little had been done to render them systematic and uniform,-what a comparatively unoccupied field the author had to reap in,-what needs there were to supply; and then we shall be better able to criticize his work, and to judge of its practical value.

For a very long period we followed, in our army, the practice of the English courts-martial, as we adopted the English Common Law in our civic courts.

The military code to be applied and administered by courts-martial is contained in the Act of Congress of the 10th of April, 1806, commonly called "The Rules and Articles of War," and in a few other acts and parts of acts, supplementary to these, which have been enacted from time to time, as circumstances seemed to require.

In the year 1839, Major-General Macomb, commander-in-chief of the army, prepared a little treatise on "The Practice of Courts-Martial," which, in lieu of something better, was generally used; and the modes of proceeding and forms of orders and records there given established uniformity in the actions and duties of such courts throughout the army.

Five or six years later, Captain John P. O'Brien, of the Fourth Artillery, issued "A Treatise on American Military Law and Practice of Courts-Martial." This work evinced a great deal of legal research, and a thorough knowledge of the practical applications of military law; but it is voluminous, wanting in arrangement, and, while valuable as a storehouse from which to draw materials, not suited for ready reference, or for the study of beginners. It is now, we believe, out of print; and, as its accomplished author is not living, it can hardly be adapted to the wants of the army at the present day.

In the year 1846, Captain William C. De Hart, of the Second Artillery, published his excellent work, entitled, "Observations on Military Law, and the Constitution and Practice of Courts-Martial." In his Preface he says,-"Since the legal establishment of the army and navy of the United States, there has been no work produced, written for the express purpose,... and intended as a guide for the administration of military justice." And, in a note, he adds, "The small treatise on courts-martial by the late Major-General Macomb is no exception to the remark." He makes, if we remember rightly, no reference to Captain O'Brien's work, which appeared but a short time before his own.

The work of Captain De Hart, so far in advance of what had yet appeared on this subject, written, too, by an expert, who had been long employed under the orders of the War Department as the acting judge-advocate of the army, (the office of judge-advocate not being created till a later day,) was regarded as the chief authority in the army. But it was never designed, nor can it be easily adapted, for instruction. It is a philosophical discussion of the subject, containing many historical citations and illustrations, which show the reader his authorities without fortifying his positions. For a text-book, therefore, it lacks arrangement, and is too discursive.

Up to this time, the subject of military law was not studied at the Military Academy; but in the year 1856, when the course of studies in that institution was lengthened, so as to consume five years instead of four, this branch was added to the curriculum, and has since been retained,-its importance being made every day more manifest. Then a treatise was wanted, which, while it could be used as authority in our vast army, should be also suited as a text-book for the cadets, from which they could recite in the section-room, and which should be their vade-mecum for future reference,-originally learned, and always consulted.

This was Captain Benét's self-appointed task, and he has performed it admirably. He has examined all the authorities, French and English, and his book bears the evidences of this original investigation. For purposes of study, his system is clear, his arrangement logical, and his divisions numerous and just. All the directions as to trials are very practically set forth, so that any sensible volunteer officer, appointed upon a court unexpectedly, could very soon, by the aid of these pages, make himself "master of the position." And as there is much concurrent, and sometimes apparently conflicting, jurisdiction of military and civic courts, this volume ought to be on every lawyer's table as the special expounder of military law, wherever it may approach the action of the civil code.

Having said thus much of the general plan, scope, and merits of the work, let us cast a brief glance at the nature of its contents. It is called a treatise on Military Law. What is military law? It is that law which governs the army, and all individuals connected with it. In other words, it has respect to military organization and discipline. It must not be confounded with Martial Law, which is the suspension of civic law, and the substitution of military law over citizens, not soldiers, in extraordinary circumstances.

Military law, which cannot wait for the slow processes of civic courts, is immediate and condign in its action, and is administered by courts-martial, to which are confided the powers of judge and jury. These courts examine into the cases, find verdicts, and pronounce sentences,-all, however, subject to the revision and sanction of the supreme authority which convened them.

Courts-martial are divided into two classes: General Courts, for the trial of officers, and of the higher grades of offences; and Regimental or Garrison Courts, for the consideration of less important cases in a regiment or garrison. General courts vary in the number of members: they must be composed of not less than five, and of never more than thirteen. Regimental or garrison courts are never composed of more than three members. For general courts, only, a judge-advocate is appointed to conduct the prosecution for the United States.

The offences against military law are determined by the "Rules and Articles of War," in which the principal offences are distinctly set forth and forbidden; and, that unanticipated misconduct may not be without cognizance and punishment, the ninety-ninth article includes all such cases under the charge of "conduct to the prejudice of good order and military discipline," which is of universal scope.

The punishments are also set forth in the Articles of War. Those prescribed for officers include death,-cashiering,[A]-cashiering, with a clause disabling the officer from ever holding any office under the United States,-dismissal,-suspension from rank and pay,-reprimand. For soldiers the principal punishments are death,-confinement,-confinement on bread-and-water diet,-solitary confinement,-forfeiture of pay and allowances,-discharges.

[Footnote A: Cashiering implies something infamous in the British service; and although it has been attempted to make no distinction between cashiering and dismissing in our service, something of the opprobrium still attaches to the former punishment.]

The conduct of the trial, the duties of all persons concerned, members, judge-advocate, prisoner, witnesses, counsel, etc., are given in detail, and will be very easily learned. Forms of orders for convening courts-martial, modes of recording the proceedings, the form of a general order confirming or disapproving the proceedings, the form of the judge-advocate's certificate, and the forms of charges and specifications under different articles of war, are given in the Appendix, and are used verbatim by all judge-advocates and recorders. There are also explanations of the duties of courts of inquiry, and of boards for retiring disabled officers; and extracts from the Acts of Congress bearing upon military law. The Articles of War are also given for reference. The book is thus rendered complete as a manual for the conduct of courts-martial, from the original order to the execution of the sentence.

From what has been said, it will be gathered that the work was needed, that it admirably supplies the need, and that it may be recommended, without qualification, as providing all the information which it purports to provide, and which could be demanded of it, in a lucid, systematic, and simple manner. It is an octavo volume, containing 377 pages, clearly printed in large type, and on excellent paper; the binding is serviceable, being in strong buff leather, like other law-books.

Lectures on Moral Science. Delivered before the Lowell Institute, Boston. By MARK HOPKINS, D.D., LL.D. Boston: Gould and Lincoln. 12mo.

It is a little curious that there is not a single science in which man is constitutionally, and therefore directly interested, to which Emanuel Kant has not, in one way or another, written a Prolegomena. Professionally he did so in the case of Metaphysic: and out of the great original claim which he here established there emanates a separate claim, in each particular science of the order already indicated, to a sublime dictatorship. And chiefly is this claim valid in Moral Philosophy; for it was his province, the first of all men, clearly to reveal, as a scientific fact certified by demonstration, the divine eminence of the practical above the merely speculative powers of man,-the fulfilment of which mission justly entitled him to all the privileges incident to the vantage-ground thus gained,-privileges widely significant in a survey of that field where chiefly these practical powers hold their Olympian supremacy, the field of Moral Philosophy.

Nothing could have afforded us a better excuse for a résumé of Kant, in this connection, than the new work of Dr. Hopkins. Of the many treatises on Moral Science with which the reading world has been flooded and bewildered since the time of Coleridge, there is this one alone found worthy of being ranged along-side of the works of the old K?nigsberg seer,-the one alone which, like his, deals with the grander features of the science. It is the best realization objectively of Kant's subjective principles that has yet been given. But how, the plain English reader will ask, are we to understand from this the place which the new work takes in literature? Not readily, indeed, unless one has already taken the trouble to examine such of Kant's treatises as have found their way out of German into hardly tolerable English, and has, moreover, reflected upon the importance of the principles therein established. But, of those who will read this notice, not one out of fifty has had even the opportunity for examination, not one out of five thousand has really taken the opportunity, and, of those that have, one half, at least, have done so independently of any philosophic aim, and have therefore reflected to very little purpose on the principles involved. Therefore, what the reader could not or has not chosen to do for himself we will do for him, at the same time congratulating him that there is now placed in his hands as complete and perfect a structure outwardly, in the work under notice, as the groundwork furnished by the old master was, in its subjective analysis, simple and profound.

Those who approach human nature, or the nature outside of us, with a reverence for reality, will give precedence, after the manner of Nature, to those powers which are predominant and determinative; and in man these are Reason and Will. These two exist as identical in Personality, which we may denominate as we choose, whether Rational Will, or, as Kant does more frequently, Practical Reason. Here, in the identity of these two powers in Personality, and still more in their relation to each other as they are differentiated in personal existence, does Morality originate and develop according to principles.

Now let it be remembered that Kant's mission was, as above indicated, to exclude the speculative side of our nature from any direct relation to human destiny, inasmuch as it could not answer either of the three great questions which every man everywhere and of necessity puts,-Whence am I? What am I? and Whither do I tend?-and therefore stood confused in the presence of any grand reality, whether human or divine, and to make the Practical Reason the sole and immediate link of connection between ourselves and the realities from the presence of which the Speculative Reason had been driven. Then will it be clearly seen how he would answer the fundamental question of Moral Philosophy,-Wherein does the quality of Goodness originally reside?

The answer, from Kant's own lips, is this: "There is nothing in the world, nor, generally speaking, even out of it, possible to be conceived, which can without limitation be held good, but a Good Will." The good is not in the end attained, not even in the volition, but is a principle resident in the will itself. "The volition is between its principle a priori, which is formal, and its spring a posteriori, which is material; and since it must be determined by something, and being deprived of every material principle, it must be determined by the formal."

Now, although President Hopkins considers Moral Philosophy as a philosophy of ends, he evidently does not mean ends a posteriori and material, but ends a priori, using the term as the best objective translation of principles. Almost as if with the conscious design of making his work harmonize with the groundwork furnished by Kant, he has developed a graduated series of conditions, according to which we ascend "the great world's altar-stairs," from lower and conditioned good up to that good which is the condition of all, itself unlimited, namely, in the will fulfilling its original design. The "law of limitation," according to which not only the subordinate powers of man, but even the forces of Nature, from those concerned in the highest animal organization down to that of gravitation, are made to take their places in the chain of dependence which hangs from the human will, is the most important part, scientifically, of the whole work. It is in accordance with this law that the science of Morals becomes a structure,-universal in its base and regularly ascending after the order of Nature, harmonious in all its parts, and proceeding upward within hearing of universal harmonies. Hitherto there has been no such structure; but only tabernacles have been built, because there was no Solomon to build a temple.

Once having determined the connection which there is between the Will and the principle of Good, there still remains to be determined the place which Reason has in this connection.

Merely to act according to some teleological or determining principle gives man no pre?minence above Nature, except in degree. That which is peculiar to man is that he has the faculty of acting according to laws as represented and reflected upon in the light of thought,-to which reason is absolutely indispensable. Reason is therefore necessary to choice,-to freedom. There can, therefore, no more be goodness without reason than there can be without will. Yet there might be, as Kant justly argues, if good were to be in any case identified with mere happiness. "For," says he, "all the actions which man has to perform with a view to happiness, and the whole rule of his conduct, would be much more exactly presented to him by instinct, and that end had been much more certainly attained than it ever can be by reason; and should the latter also be bestowed on the favored creature, it must be of use only in contemplating the happy predisposition lodged in instinct, to admire this, to rejoice in it, and be grateful for it to the beneficent Cause; in short, Nature would have prevented reason from any practical use in subduing appetite, etc., and from excogitating for itself a project of happiness; she would have taken upon herself not only the choice of ends, but the means, and had with wise care intrusted both to instinct merely." The fact, then, that reason has been given, and has been endowed with a practical use, is sufficient to prove that some more worthy end than felicity is designed,-namely, a will good in itself,-rationally good,-that is, from choice.

Out of the rationality of will is developed its morality. Here, only, is found the possibility of failure in respect of the end constitutionally indicated,-here only the avenues of temptation, by which alien elements come in to array the man against himself in a terrible conflict, so sublime that it is a spectacle to heavenly powers. It is only as this rationality is clearly developed, and is allotted its just place in Moral Science, that the universal structure to which we have already alluded, and which, as we saw, culminated in the will, assumes its peculiar sublimity. For the voluntariness which is consciously realized in reason gives man the mastery over constitutional processes, not merely to direct, but even to thwart them; nor this merely for himself, but it is in his power, through the nullification of his own constitution, to nullify also that of the world, to dally with the institutions of Nature, and on the grandest scale to play the meddler.

Merely of itself, apart from reason, the will could only work out its teleological type in darkness and by blind necessity; there could be no goodness, for this involves conscious elements. But through reason, that which of itself the will would yield as unconscious impulse obtains representation, and thus becomes a recognized principle, which in connection with the feelings involves an element of obligation.

Conscience, thus, instead of being a separate and independent faculty, is, as Dr. Hopkins also places it, a function of the moral reason. Into the courts of this reason come not only the higher indications of will, but also the impulses of appetite, instinct, and affection,-not moral in themselves, indeed, but yet assuming the garments of morality as seen in this high presence.

That which was made fundamental by Kant, in all that he has left on the subject of Moral Philosophy, is the position that it is wholly to be developed out of practical reason, or will as represented in reason. The same position is fundamental in President Hopkins's work, and it is here that its philosophic value chiefly rests. This position is developed in plain English, with strict scientific truth, and yet with a warm and sympathetic glow, as regards outward embodiment, that very much heightens the elevating power of the principles and conclusions evolved. Nor is man, because of his independent personality, made to stand alone, but always is he seen in the higher and All-Comprehending Presence. Ideal truth is reached without necessitating Idealism, and harmony is attained without Pantheism.

We have purposely confined ourselves to the most general feature of the work, because it is this which gives it its great and distinctive importance; yet the whole structure is as elaborately and beautifully wrought as it is fitly grounded in the truth of Nature.

The National Almanac and Annual Record for 1863. Philadelphia: George W. Childs. 12mo. pp. 600.

Volumes like this are the very staff of history. What a stride in literature from the "Prognostications" of Nostradamus and Partridge, and the imposture of such prophetic chap-books as the almanacs of Moore and Poor Robin, to the bulky volumes teeming with all manner of information, such as the "Almanach Impérial," the "New Edinburgh," or "Thorn's Irish Almanac"! In the list of superior works ranking with those just named is to be included the new "National Almanac." We have here assuredly a vast improvement over anything in this way which has heretofore been attempted among us. A more comprehensive range of topics is presented, and such standard subjects as we should naturally expect to find introduced are worked up with much more copiousness and accuracy of treatment. It is evident on every page that a thoroughly active and painstaking industry has presided over the preparation of the volume. Statistics have not been taken at second-hand, where the primary sources of knowledge could be rendered available. The details of the great Departments of the Federal Government have been revised by the Departments themselves. In like manner, the particulars concerning the several States have in most cases been corrected by a State officer. Thus, as respects the leading subjects in the book, we have here not only the most accurate information before the public, but we have it in the latest authorized or official form. Facts are as a general rule brought down to date, instead of being six or twelve months behind-hand, as has been the case heretofore in similar publications, the compilers of which were content to await the tardy printing by Congress of documents and reports. Hence the work is pervaded by an air of freshness and vitality. It is not merely a receptacle of outgrown facts and accomplished events, but the companion and interpreter of the scenes and activities of the stirring present. It strives to seize and embody the whole being and doing of the passing time.

It is quite impossible to exhibit in these few lines any adequate conception of the diversity and fulness of the subjects. All the valuable results of the last census are classified and incorporated. Then we have the entire organization of the military, naval, and civil service,-the tariff and tax laws conveniently arranged,-the financial, industrial, commercial, agricultural, literary, educational, and ecclesiastical elements of our condition,-the legislation of the last three sessions of Congress, and full and detailed statistics of the individual States,-to which is added a minute sketch of the foreign Governments. Nor can we overlook the fact, that, in the abundant matter relating to our present war, the narrative of events, obituary notices, etc., reach back to the commencement of the Rebellion, so as to furnish a complete and unbroken record of the contest from its outbreak. So much for the diversified nature of the matter; and an idea may be formed of its aggregate bulk from the fact that it exceeds, by nearly one-third, the size of the "American Almanac."

The publication is, we trust, the dawning of a new era in this department of our literature. We have done well heretofore, but we have been behind many of the leading foreign works. There are in this initial volume indications that the new series which it inaugurates will be conducted with a thoroughness, enterprise, and skill which cannot fail to supply a great want. The politician, statesman, and scholar, the merchant, mechanic, and tradesman, every newspaper-reader, and, in truth, every observant and thoughtful man, of whatsoever profession or business, always wants at hand a minute and trustworthy exhibition of the manifold elements which constitute the changeful present as it ebbs and flows around him. Such hand-books are indispensable for present reference, and they constitute an invaluable storehouse for the future.