"Thou unrelenting Past! Strong are the barriers round thy dark domain, And fetters, sure and fast, Hold all that enter thy unbreathing reign.

"Far in thy realm withdrawn, Old empires sit in sullenness and gloom, And glorious ages gone Lie deep within the shadow of thy womb.

"Childhood, with all its mirth, Youth, Manhood, Age, that draws us to the ground, And last, Man's Life on earth, Glide to thy dim dominions, and are bound.

* * * * *

"In thy abysses hide Beauty and excellence unknown,—to thee Earth's wonder and her pride Are gathered, as the waters to the sea;

"Labors of good to man, Unpublished charity, unbroken faith,— Love, that 'midst grief began, And grew with years, and faltered not in death.

"Full many a mighty name Lurks in thy depths, unuttered, unrevered; With thee are silent fame. Forgotten arts, and wisdom disappeared.

"Thine for a space are they,— Yet shalt thou yield thy treasures up at last; Thy gates shall yet give way, Thy bolts shall fall, inexorable Past!

"All that of good and fair Has gone into thy womb from earliest time Shall then come forth to wear The glory and the beauty of its prime."

Here is nothing new. It is the old, sad strain, of coeval birth with poetry itself. It may be read in the Hebrew of the Book of Job and in the Greek of Homer: but with what dignity of sentiment, what majestic music, what beauty of language, the oft-repeated lesson of humanity is enforced! Every word is chosen with unerring judgment, and no needless dilution of language weakens the force of the conceptions and pictures. Bryant is one of the few poets who will bear the test of the well-nigh obsolete art of verbal criticism: observe the expressions, "silent fame," "forgotten arts," "wisdom disappeared": how exactly these epithets satisfy the ear and the mind! how impossible to change any one of them for the better!

In Bryant's descriptive poems there is the same finished execution and the same beauty of style as in his reflective and didactic poems, with more originality of treatment. It was his fortune to be born and reared in the western part of Massachusetts, and to become familiar with some of the most beautiful inland scenery of New England in youth and early manhood, when the mind takes impressions which the attrition of life never wears out. In his study of Nature he combines the faculty and the vision, the eye of the naturalist and the imagination of the poet. No man observes the outward shows of earth and sky more accurately; no man feels them more vividly; no man describes them more beautifully. He was the first of our poets who, deserting the conventional paths in which imitators move, studied and delineated Nature as it exists in New England, modified by the elements of a comparatively low latitude, a brilliant sky, uncertain springs, short and hot summers, richly colored autumns, and winters of pure and crystal cold. The merit and the popularity of Bryant's descriptive poetry prove how intimate is the relation between imagination and truth, and how the poet who is faithful to the highest requisitions of his art must obey laws as rigid as those of science itself. Here, at the risk of making our readers read again what they may have read before, we transcribe a passage from a memorandum of Mr. Morritt's, containing an account of Scott's proceedings while studying the localities of "Rokeby":—

"I observed him noting down even the peculiar little wild flowers and herbs that accidentally grew round and on the side of a bold crag near his intended Cave of Grey Denzil, and could not help saying, that, as he was not to be upon oath in his work, daisies, violets, and primroses would be as poetical as any of the humble plants he was examining. I laughed, in short, at his scrupulousness; but I understood him when he replied, 'that in Nature no two scenes were exactly alike, and that whoever copied truly what was before his eyes would possess the same variety in his descriptions, and exhibit apparently an imagination as boundless as the range of Nature in the scenes he recorded; whereas, whoever trusted to his imagination would soon find his own mind circumscribed and contracted to a few images, and the repetition of these would sooner or later produce that very monotony and barrenness which had always haunted descriptive poetry in the hands of any but the patient worshippers of truth.'"

This is excellent good sense, and the descriptive poetry of Bryant shows how carefully he has observed the rules which Scott has laid down. He never has a conventional image, and never resorts to the second-hand frippery of a poetical commonplace-book to tag his verses with. Every season of our American year has been delineated by him, and the drawing and coloring of his pictures are always correct. Our American springs, for instance, are not at all the ideal or poetical springs, and Bryant does not pretend that they are; and yet he can find a poetical side to them, as witness his poem entitled "March":—

"The stormy March is come at last, With wind, and cloud, and changing skies: I hear the rushing of the blast That through the snowy valley flies.

"Ah, passing few are they who speak, Wild, stormy month! in praise of thee; Yet, though thy winds are loud and bleak, Thou art a welcome month to me.

"For thou to northern lands again The glad and glorious sun dost bring; And them hast joined the gentle train, And wear'st the gentle name of Spring.

"And in thy reign of blast and storm Smiles many a long, bright, sunny day, When the changed winds are soft and warm, And heaven puts on the blue of May."

This is all as strictly true as if it were drawn up for an affidavit. March, as we all know, is the eldest daughter of Winter, and bitterly like her grim sire. The snow which has melted from the uplands lingers in the valleys; the storms, and the cloudy skies, and the rushing blasts mark the sullen retreat of winter; but the days are growing longer, the sun mounts higher, and sometimes a soft and vernal air flows from the blue sky, like Burns's daisy "glinting forth" amid the storm.

March and April come and go, and May succeeds. Hers is not quite the "blue, voluptuous eye" she wears in the portraits which poets paint of her, and those who court her smiles are sometimes chilled by decidedly wintry glances. Bryant gives us her best aspect:—

"The sun of May was bright in middle heaven, And steeped the sprouting forests, the green hills, And emerald wheat-fields, in his yellow light. Upon the apple-tree, where rosy buds Stood clustered, ready to burst forth in bloom, The robin warbled forth his full clear note For hours, and wearied not. Within the woods, Where young and half-transparent leaves scarce cast A shade, gay circles of anemones Danced on their stalks; the shad-bush, white with flowers, Brightened the glens; the new-leaved butternut And quivering poplar to the roving breeze Gave a balsamic fragrance."

How admirable this is! And with what truth, we had almost said courage, the poet makes his report. The emerald wheat-fields, the rosy buds of the apple-tree, the half-transparent leaves of the trees, the anemones on their restless stalks, the shad-bush (Amelanchier Botryapium), the quivering poplars, and the peculiar balsamic odor which one perceives in the woods at that season are so exactly what we find in our New-England May! How much better these distinct statements are than a tissue of generalities about flowery wreaths, and fragrant zephyrs, and genial rays, and fresh verdure, and vernal airs, and ambrosial dews!

But the year goes on. Our fitful and capricious spring passes by, and summer takes its place. But our New-England summer is not like the summer of Thomson and Cowper, and images drawn from English poetry and transplanted here would be out of place; and our faithful interpreter of American Nature takes nothing at second-hand. How correctly he delineates the characteristic features of our glorious month of June!

"There, through the long, long summer hours, The golden light should lie, And thick young herbs and groups of flowers Stand in their beauty by. The oriole should build and tell His love-tale close beside my cell; The idle butterfly Should rest him here, and there be heard The housewife-bee and humming-bird."

The housewife-bee is an expressive epithet. Does it involve a double meaning, and insinuate that as a bee carries a sting, so women who are stirring, notable, and good housekeepers have something sharp in their natures?

Next comes midsummer with its fervid and overpowering heats, which find in our poet also an accurate delineator.

"It is a sultry day: the sun has drunk The dew that lay upon the morning grass; There is no rustling in the lofty elm That canopies my dwelling, and its shade Scarce cools me. All is silent, save the faint And interrupted murmur of the bee, Settling on the sick flowers, and then again Instantly on the wing. The plants around Feel the too potent fervors: the tall maize Rolls up its long green leaves; the clover droops Its tender foliage, and declines its blooms. But far in the fierce sunshine tower the hills With all their growth of woods, silent and stern, As if the scorching heat and dazzling light Were but an element they loved."

But our radiant and many-colored autumn is Bryant's favorite season, and some of his most beautiful and characteristic passages are those which paint its hues of crimson and purple, and the vaporous gold of its atmosphere. Such is the number of these passages that it is difficult to make a selection of one or two for quotation. Here is one from "Autumn Woods."

"Let in through all the trees, Come the strange rays; the forest-depths are bright; Their sunny-colored foliage, in the breeze, Twinkles like beams of light.

"The rivulet, late unseen, Where bickering through the shrubs its waters run, Shines with the image of its golden screen And glimmerings of the sun.

"But, 'neath yon crimson tree, Lover to listening maid might breathe his flame, Nor mark, within its roseate canopy, Her blush of maiden shame."

Here is nothing imitative or borrowed, and here are no unmeaning generalities. Everything is exact and local,—drawn from an American autumn, and no other. And how lovely an image is that in the third stanza, and what an added charm it gives to an object in itself most beautiful!

But our renders must indulge us with one more quotation under this head, although we take it from one of the most popular—perhaps the most popular—of his poems, "The Death of the Flowers."

"The wind-flower and the violet, they perished long ago, And the brier-rose and the orchis died amid the summer glow; But on the hill the golden-rod, and the aster in the wood, And the yellow sunflower by the brook in autumn beauty stood, Till fell the frost from the clear, cold heaven, as falls the plague on men, And the brightness of their smile was gone, from upland, glade, and glen. And now, when comes the calm mid-day, as still such days will come, To call the squirrel and the bee from out their winter home, When the sound of dropping nuts is heard, though all the trees are still, And twinkle in the smoky light the waters of the rill, The south-wind searches for the flowers whose fragrance late he bore, And sighs to find them in the wood and by the stream no more."

Of the poetry of these exquisite lines, the melancholy sweetness of the sentiment, the delicate beauty of the versification, we need not say one word, but we claim a moment's attention to their fidelity to truth, and the accuracy of observation which they evince. The golden-rod and the aster are the characteristic autumn flowers in that zone of our continent in which New England is embraced, and the sunflower is a very common flower at that season. That lovely child of the declining year, the fringed gentian, would doubtless have been brought in with her fair sisters, had it not been for her somewhat unmanageable name. Bryant has written some beautiful stanzas to this flower, but in them he only calls it a "blossom." And how fine a landscape is condensed into the two delicious hues which we have Italicized! and yet no one ever walked into a New-England wood on a late day in autumn without hearing the nuts drop upon the withered leaves, and seeing the streams flash through the smoke-like haze which hangs over the landscape.

But winter, especially our clear and sparkling New-England winter, has its scenes of splendor and aspects of beauty; and the poet would not be true to his calling, if he failed to recognize them.

"Come when the rains Have glazed the snow, and clothed the trees with ice, While the slant sun of February pours Into the bowers a flood of light. Approach! The incrusted surface shall upbear thy steps, And the broad arching portals of the grove Welcome thy entering. Look! the massy Trunks are cased in the pure crystal; each light spray, Nodding and tinkling in the breath of heaven, Is studded with its trembling water-drops That glimmer with an amethystine light; But round the parent stem the long, low boughs Bend, in a glittering ring, and arbors hide The glassy floor."

There are many more lines equally good, but we have not space for them. This is a description of winter as we have it here, compounded of the elements of extreme cold, a transparent atmosphere, and brilliant sunshine. No English poet can see such a scene, at least in his own country: Ambrose Phillips did see something like it in Sweden, and described it in a poetical epistle to the Earl of Dorset, which is much the best thing he ever wrote, and has a pulse of truth and life in it, from the simple fact that he saw something new, and told his noble correspondent what he saw.

But Bryant's claims to the honors of a truly national poet do not rest solely upon the fidelity with which he has described the peculiar scenery of his native land, for no poet has expressed with more earnestness of conviction and more beauty of language the great ideas which have moulded our political institutions and our social life. Before the breaking out of the Civil War he was a member of that great political party of which Jefferson was the head, and he is still a Democrat in the primitive sense of the word; that is to say, he believes in man's capacity for self-government, and in his right to govern himself. He has full trust in human progress; age has not lessened the faith with which he looks forward to the future; his sympathies are with the many, and not with the few. Though he has travelled much in Europe, his imagination has been but little affected by the forms of beauty and grandeur which past ages have bequeathed to the present. He has not found inspiration in the palace, the cathedral, the ruined castle, the ivy-covered church, the rose-embowered cottage. Indeed, it is only by incidental and occasional touches that one would learn from his poetry that he had ever been out of his own country at all: his inspiration and his themes are alike drawn from the scenery, the institutions, the history of his native land. His imagination, as was the case with Milton, rests upon a basis of gravity deepening into sternness; and we have little doubt that not a few of the things in Europe, which move to pleasure the lightly stirred fancy of many American travellers, aroused in him a different feeling, as either memorials of an age or expressions of a system in which the many were sacrificed to the few. In his mental frame there is a pulse of indignation which is easily stirred against any form of injustice or oppression. His later poems, as might naturally be expected, are those in which the sentiments and aspirations of a patriotic and hopeful American are most distinctly expressed; among them are "The Battle-Field," "The Winds," "The Antiquity of Freedom," and that which is called, from its first line, "O Mother of a Mighty Race." It would be well to read these poems in connection with the seventeenth chapter of the second volume of De Tocqueville's "Democracy in America," which treats of the sources of poetry among democratic nations; and the comparison will furnish fresh cause for admiring the prophetic sagacity of that great philosophical thinker, who, at the time he wrote, predicted all our future, because he comprehended all our past.

And here we pray the indulgence of our readers to a rather liberal citation from one of these later poems, because it enables us to illustrate from his own lips what we have just been saying. It is also one of those passages, not uncommon in modern poetry, in which the poet admits us to his confidence, and lets us see the working of the machinery as well as its product. It is from "The Painted Cup," a poem so called from a scarlet flower of that name found upon the Western prairies,

"Now, if thou art a poet, tell me not That these bright chalices were tinted thus To hold the dew for fairies, when they meet On moonlight evenings in the hazel-bowers, And dance till they are thirsty. Call not up, Amid this fresh and virgin solitude, The faded fancies of an elder world; But leave these scarlet cups to spotted moths Of June, and glistening flies, and hummingbirds, To drink from, when on all these boundless lawns The morning sun looks hot. Or let the wind O'erturn in sport their ruddy brims, and pour A sudden shower upon the strawberry-plant, To swell the reddening fruit that even now Breathes a slight fragrance from the sunny slope.

"But thou art of a gayer fancy. Well, Let, then, the gentle Manitou of flowers, Lingering amid the bloomy waste he loves, Though all his swarthy worshippers are gone, Slender and small, his rounded cheek all brown And ruddy with the sunshine,—let him come On summer mornings, when the blossoms wake, And part with little hands the spiky grass, And, touching with his cherry lips the edge Of these bright beakers, drain the gathered dew."

What a lovely picture is this of the Manitou of flowers, and what a subject for an artist to embody in forms and colors! The whole passage is very beautiful, and its beauty is in part derived from its truth. It meets the requisitions of the philosophical understanding, as well as of the shaping and aggregating fancy. The poetry is manly, masculine, and simple. The ornaments are of pure gold, such as will bear the test of open daylight.

It is the function of the critic to discriminate and divide, and we have attempted to deal thus with the poems of Bryant; but some of the best of his productions cannot be classified and arranged under any particular head. They breathe the spirit of universal humanity, and speak a language intelligible to every human heart. Among these are "The Evening Wind," "The Conqueror's Grave," and "The Future Life." All of these are exquisite alike in conception and execution. We suppose that most persons have in regard to poetry certain fancies, whims, preferences, founded on reasons too delicate to be revealed or too airy to be expressed. As Mrs. Battles in a moment of confidence confessed to "Elia" that hearts was her favorite suit, so we breathe in the ear of the public an acknowledgment, that, of all Bryant's poems, "The Future Life" is that which we read the most frequently, and with the deepest feeling. We say read, but we have known it by heart for years. We will not affirm that it is the best of his poems, but it is that which moves us most, and which we feel most grateful to him for having written. The grace and charm of this poem come from regions beyond the range of literary criticism, and the heart shrinks from making a revelation of the emotions which it awakens.

We have left ourselves but little room to speak of the new volume, called "Thirty Poems," which lies before us. While nothing in it was needed for the poet's well-established and enduring fame, it will be welcomed by all his admirers as an accession to that stock of finished poetry which the world will not let die. Here we find the same dignity of sentiment, the same fine observation, the same grace of expression, as in the productions of his youth and manhood. The tone of thought is grave, earnest, sometimes pensive, but never querulous or desponding. Declining years have not abated in him a jot of heart or hope. His is the Indian-summer of the mind, made genial by soft airs and golden sunshine, by green meadows and lingering flowers; and still far distant is the time,—to borrow a noble image from this very volume,—

"When, upon the hill-side, all hardened into iron, Howling, like a wolf, flies the famished northern blast."

All honor to the strong-hearted singer who, in the late autumn of life, retains his love of Nature, his hatred of injustice and oppression, his sympathy with humanity, his intellectual activity, his faith in progress, his trust in God!

* * * * *

ANNESLEY HALL AND NEWSTEAD ABBEY.

The picturesque region of Matlock, with its cliffs and streams, its deep woods and romantic walks, is full of attraction. There we not only see the outward graces of Nature, but catch glimpses of her subtler elements. Springs, dripping from hidden sources, transform the fruit, or the bird's-nest with its fragile eggs, into stone with a Medusa touch; while in deep caverns are found beautiful spars, exquisitely tinted, as if prepared by the genii of the rock for the palace of their king.

Varied and wonderful are the workings of earth, air, fire, and water in the Derbyshire valley, where a sensitive nature recognizes more things in heaven and earth than are dreamt of in the philosophy of many a passing traveller. To this region of beauty and mystery Byron often came in his youth. These cliffs and streams and woods were familiar to the young poet, and his retentive memory must have received here many of Nature's deep and marvellous lessons. Perhaps among these scenes there came to him those

"noble aspirations in his youth To make his mind the mind of other men, The enlightener of nations, and to rise He know not whither, it might be to fall, But fall, even as the mountain-cataract, Which, having leapt from its more dazzling height, Lies low, but mighty still."

In Byron's day, Matlock was a fashionable watering-place; and the drawing-room of the "Old Bath," with cut-glass chandeliers, old engravings, and cushioned window-seats, looks much the same as when it witnessed many a gay assembly. In this room the wayward and sensitive youth, secretly writhing with mortification at being prevented by lameness from leading Mary Chaworth to the dance, watched, her more fortunate partners with moody envy. The young Lady of Annesley little imagined that the lame boy, with his handsome face and troublesome temper, would link her name to deathless song.

On a fair, sunny morning, towards the close of October, we left Matlock for Annesley Hall and Newstead Abbey. The day was in harmony with the poetical associations of our excursion: a gentle mist hung like a veil over hills and groves, giving a dreamy aspect to Nature, and rendering the places we intended to visit creations of fancy rather than actual facts. Very unromantic personages, however, answered our inquiries for Annesley, which reassured us of its reality. Byron's "Dream" had rendered the scenery familiar to our memory.

"The hill Green and of mild declivity, the last, As 't were the cape, of a long ridge of such, Save that there was no sea to lave its base, But a most living landscape."

Our approach led us beside those gentle slopes, and we seemed to see the maiden and the youth standing on the mild declivity, with its crowning circlet of trees.

"And both were young, but not alike in youth: As the sweet moon on the horizon's verge, The maid was on the eve of womanhood; The boy had fewer summers.

"... She was his life, The ocean to the river of his thoughts. Her sighs were not for him; to her he was Even as a brother, but no more; 'twas much, For brotherless she was, save in the name Her infant friendship had bestowed on him, Herself the solitary scion left Of a time-honored race.

"Even now she loved another, And on the summit of that hill she stood Looking afar, if yet her lover's steed Kept pace with her expectancy and flew."

That lover, soon after, became the husband of Mary Chaworth. It is not for us to speculate wherefore Destiny entangled the threads in that web of existence which originally seemed to have woven the fates of Byron and Mary Chaworth together. We are ignorant of spiritual laws, and know little of the origin whence come those strange attractions, mind to mind, heart to heart, which make or mar the life-experiences of us all.

Had events been ordered otherwise, Byron might have been a better and happier man, but the world would never have received the gift of "Childe Harold." Alas, that the soul must be ploughed and harrowed, and the precious seed trodden in, before it can give forth its fairest-flowers or its immortal fruit!

When we had last heard of Annesley Hall, it was ruinous and desolate, and we knew not in what condition it might now be found. Passing through an avenue of ancient oaks, the road winds down to an old picturesque gate-house, and, leaving the carriage, we walked onward. Looking through the arch of entrance, we saw as in a picture, nay, as in the poet's dream, "the venerable mansion," sitting quietly in autumn sunshine on its old terrace. To gray walls and peaks clung a climbing plant, its leaves red with touch of frost, contrasting deliciously with green ivy, and putting a bit of color into darker hues of stone-work. As we passed beyond the gate, we saw that the mansion had been, restored and repaired by careful hands guided by tasteful eyes and loving hearts. Above the hall-door was a bay-window, which instinct told us belonged to the "antique oratory," but we walked onward to the terrace, with its stone balustrade, inclosing a bright flower-garden. On the other side of the house stretches the lawn and park, with deer feeding quietly in the distance. No human form appeared; all was silent and peaceful. We walked thoughtfully on the old terrace, recalling the images of the poet and the Lady of Annesley; but looking up at the ancient sun-dial on one of the gables, we perceived that its shadow fell deeper and deeper with the declining day, telling us, as it had told many before, how time waited not, and reminding us that we, also were travellers. Passing again round the mansion, and casting a wistful look within, we saw a woman sitting at a low window, sorting fruit. We approached, and asked if strangers were permitted to see the Hall. She replied gently, that it was not "a show-house." We pleaded our cause successfully, however, when we told her how the thought of Mary Chaworth had led us here from a distant land. If the owners of Annesley knew that once an exception was made to a general rule, we trust they also believed that the visitors were not actuated by an idle curiosity.

Our request being granted, our guide laid aside her plums, and with a kind hand admitted us into the entrance-hall. It was low and venerable, with family-portraits on the walls, among them that of the Mr. Chaworth whom the "wicked Lord Byron" of other days shot in a duel. From the hall we entered the modern part of the house, harmoniously blended with the older portion of the building. In the drawing-room, two noble portraits by Sir Joshua Reynolds arrested our attention. The lady (as Miss Burney tells us in her journal) was a beauty and a belle of Sir Joshua's time, and the painter has done justice to his subject, who is drawn at full length, feeding an eagle,—a spirited, splendid woman, who looks down from the canvas with bright, triumphant eyes. In the next apartment we were shown a portrait which touched deeper chords in our heart. It was a likeness of Mary Chaworth in miniature, representing a mature and beautiful woman.

"Upon her face there was a tint of grief, The settled shadow of an inward strife, And an unquiet drooping of the eye, As if its lids were charged with unshed tears."

The truth of this description startled us, and revealed instantly how deeply impressed upon the mind of her youthful lover must have been that face which was the starlight of his boyhood. Tears had passed since they parted, and chasms of time and gulfs yet deeper and wider than time ever knows had separated Byron from Annesley and England, and yet, when he wrote those lines, her face rose before him so clearly, wearing on its loveliness the impress of care and sorrow which he knew must be there, that no words but his can truly describe the expression of her features. Turning to our conductress, we asked if she had ever seen the Lady of Annesley. "Yes, I knew and loved her well, for I was her maid many years"; and, with a faltering tone, she added, "she died in my arms." Genius has immortalized Mary Chaworth; yet the tender and heartfelt tribute of one who had been the humble, but daily witness of the beauty of her life, was worth a thousand homilies.

We were conducted through the library, which had been in other days the drawing-room, out of which opens a small apartment, known to the readers of the "Dream" as the "antique oratory." Leading from the old entrance-hall is the favorite sitting-room of Mary Chaworth in her happy childhood and youth; and here, in his boyish days, Byron often sat beside her while she played for him his favorite airs on the piano-forte. Beneath the window is a little garden, where she cultivated the flowers she loved best, and which are still cherished for her memory. Our guide gathered a few of these, and gave them to our young companion: they now lie before us, carefully preserved, with some of their gay tints yet unfaded,—memorials, not only of Mary Chaworth, who lived and loved and suffered through all the varied experience of woman's life, but also of her to whom the blossoms were given, the fair, young girl, "who lived long enough on earth to learn its better lessons, but passed from it upwards and onwards without a knowledge of sin except the shadow it casts on the world."

Taking leave of our kind guide, to whom we were indebted for a visit of deep interest, we paused a moment on the terrace ere we "passed the massy gate of that old hall," to receive once more into our memory

"the old mansion and the accustomed hall And the remembered chambers, and the place, The day, the hour, the sunshine, and the shade."

A holy stillness pervaded the venerable house and its surrounding scenery, a peace which breathed of a purer sphere, where what is best on earth finds its correspondence.

We wondered not, that, when the deep waters of the poet's soul, too often ruffled by passion, polluted by vice, or made turbid by selfishness, were calm and pure enough to mirror heaven, they ever reflected the bright and morning star of Annesley.

The transition from Annesley Hall to Newstead Abbey is inevitable in thought and rapid in fact,—the road, over which the young poet so often passed, between the two estates, being only three miles in length. We had lingered so long at Annesley that the day was nearly spent before we reached the Abbey. How did the venerable pile, with its mysterious memories, fateful histories, and poetical associations, flash out into light and darken into shadow as the October sun sank behind the distant hills!

The Abbey church is now only a ruin, but the airy span of its rich Gothic window remains, as evidence of its original beauty. Through the now vacant space, once the wide door of entrance, we saw the floor of green grass, and in the centre the monument to Byron's favorite dog, Bowswain. All was silent about the ruin, except the cawing of a thousand rooks, who were settling themselves for the night with a vast amount of noise and bustle on the high branches of the old trees which sweep down on one side of the Abbey.

The residence which adjoins the church, once a monastery, was inherited by Lord Byron, with the title: to part with it was a dire necessity. Colonel Wildman, the school-fellow of Byron at Harrow, purchased the estate from the unhappy poet in the most liberal and generous manner, and blessed it into a home. On entering the house, we were shown through long corridors and vaulted passages, in which the monastic character of the building was preserved. When Byron came to Newstead from college, the Abbey was in a most dilapidated condition, and he had only means enough to make a few rooms habitable for himself and his mother. A gloomy and desolate abode it must have been. The furniture of Byron's bedroom remains as it stood when removed from Cambridge. On the walls are prints of his school at Harrow, and Trinity College, with various relics and boyish treasures. The window commands a view of the sheet of water which stretches before the Abbey, with its wooded banks,—a scene which he loves and remembers even when "Lake Leman wooes him with her crystal face," for he writes to his sister,—

"It doth remind me of our own dear lake By the old hall, which shall be mine no more."

Adjoining Byron's room is a suite of apartments, ruinous and roofless in his day, but which Colonel Wildman has restored, and furnished most appropriately with old tapestry and antique tables and chairs. These rooms wear a ghostly aspect, and we were not surprised to learn that one, at least, had the reputation of being haunted. The great drawing-room, once the dormitory of the monks, is now a splendid apartment richly decorated; above the chimney is a fine portrait of Lord Byron, and in an ancient cabinet was shown the cup made from a skull found in one of the stone coffins near the Abbey church. It is mounted in silver, and the well-known lines, written by Byron, are engraved on the rim. "Having it made" was, as he said himself, "one of his foolish freaks, of which he was ashamed." The cup, however, bears little resemblance to a skull. Colonel Wildman preserved the furniture of Byron's dining-room, and other apartments, (very simple it is,) without alteration, in the hope that he might return from Greece and revisit the halls of his fathers. Had Fate so willed, he would have found how kindly and faithfully his early friend had associated him with Newstead, and preserved every memorial of past history connected with the place. Yet thoughts of bitterness would even then have mingled with these familiar scenes, for it was not the heir of the Byrons who had restored Newstead Abbey to beauty and order.

Quitting the Abbey, and passing into the gardens, we followed the gardener through the deepening gloom to the wood, where, in former days, an ancestor of the Byrons set up leaden statues of satyrs, which the country-people called "the old lord's devils"; and very much like demons they looked. The tree was pointed out upon which Byron cut the names of "Augusta" and "Byron," with the date, during a last walk the brother and sister took together at Newstead. It is a double tree, springing from one root, which he chose as emblematical of themselves. The dim light barely enabled us to discern letters deeply carved, but growing less visible with the expanding bark. One of the trees has withered under that spell which seems to have blasted all connected with the name, and is cut off just above the inscription. The oak planted by Byron in his youth in a different part of the grounds was also shown to us. It is yet strong and vigorous. We picked up a yellow leaf, which the wind bore to our feet, as a fitting memorial of the place and the hour.

Passing again through the old Abbey church, the chill of the evening met us, cold and damp,—fit atmosphere for the place. The rooks were all asleep in their high nests; silence, darkness, and mist were fast casting their mantle over old Newstead; and the only cheerful sign came from the distant window of the Colonel's library, whence shot out a generous gleam of household fire,—emblem of that warm heart which had shed light upon the once desolate abode of its early friend.

Since our visit to Newstead, (seven years ago,) the Abbey has passed into other hands, and even a royal owner is now reported to possess the poet's ancestral home. We shall ever deem ourselves fortunate that our destiny led us to make this pilgrimage during the lifetime of Colonel Wildman and while the place was under his enlightened and generous ownership.

A few miles from Newstead Abbey is Hucknall, a poor, desolate-looking village, at the end of whose street stands an old church, beneath which is the burial-place of the Byrons. The building is ancient and gray, but dreary rather than venerable. Standing in its comfortless interior, we remembered that Byron once asked to be buried under the green, grassy floor of the roofless church at Newstead Abbey, with his faithful dog at his feet. The poet, whose rapid glance seized every glory and beauty of Nature, whose memory, wax to receive, and marble to retain, transferred the vision through the medium of his rare command of language, should have had a grave over which winds sweep, birds sing, and stars watch. Not so. A white marble tablet let into the wall above the family-vault was erected to Byron's memory by his sister. Perhaps the simplicity of the monument was suggested by these lines, written at the early age of nineteen years:—

"When to his airy hall my father's voice Shall call my spirit, happy in the choice, When poised upon the gale my form shall ride, Or dark in mist descend the mountain-side, Oh, may my shade behold no sculptured urns To mark the spot where dust to dust returns, No lengthened scroll, no praise-encumbered stone! My epitaph shall be my name alone. If that with honor fail to crown my clay, Oh, may no other fame my deeds repay! That, only that, shall single out the spot By that remembered, or by that forgot."

The inscription upon the tablet, after his name and title, designates him as the Author of "Childe Harold's Pilgrimage," who died while aiding the cause of Liberty in Greece: thus striking the noblest notes in a powerful, eccentric, blotted score, as the fundamental chord of Byron's requiem.

* * * * *

THE LAST CHARGE.

Now, men of the North! will you join in the strife For country, for freedom, for honor, for life? The giant grows blind in his fury and spite,— One blow on his forehead will settle the fight!

Flash full in his eyes the blue lightning of steel, And stun him with cannon-bolts, peal upon peal! Mount, troopers, and follow your game to its lair, As the hound tracks the wolf and the beagle the hare!

Blow, trumpets, your summons, till sluggards awake! Beat, drums, till the roofs of the faint-hearted shake! Yet, yet, ere the signet is stamped on the scroll, Their names may be traced on the blood-sprinkled roll!

Trust not the false herald that painted your shield: True honor to-day must be sought on the field! Her scutcheon shows white with a blazon of red,— The life-drops of crimson for liberty shed!

The hour is at hand, and the moment draws nigh! The dog-star of treason grows dim in the sky! Shine forth from the battle-cloud, light of the morn, Call back the bright hour when the Nation was born!

The rivers of peace through our valleys shall run, As the glaciers of tyranny melt in the sun; Smite, smite the proud parricide down from his throne,— His sceptre once broken, the world is our own!

* * * * *

NORTHERN INVASIONS.

Northern Invasions, when successful, advance the civilization of the world.

It would not be difficult to present from all history a mass of illustrations of this thesis wellnigh sufficient in themselves to establish it. And there is no doubt that the principles of human nature, which appear in those illustrations, can be set in such order as to prove the thesis beyond a question. The softness of Southern climates produces, in the long run, gentleness, effeminacy, and indolence, or passionate rather than persevering effort. It produces, again, the palliatives or disguises of these traits which are found in formal religions, and in institutions of caste or slavery. The rigor of Northern climates produces, on the other hand, in the long run, hardy physical constitutions among men, with determined individuality of character. It produces, therefore, freedom even to democracy in politics, protestantism even to rationalism in religion, and grim perseverance even to the bitter end in war. A certain stern morality, often amounting to asceticism, is imposed on Northern constitutions. So superficial is it, so much a creature of circumstance, that Norman, Scandinavian, Goth, or Icelander, deserves no sort of credit for it. All history shows that it vanishes before the temptations of any Vinland which the frozen barbarians stumble upon. None the less does it give them vigor of muscle, and power to endure hardship, which, in the end, tells, over the accomplishments of the most warlike Romans, Greeks, Persians, or other Southrons. "Fight us, if you like," said Ariovistus to Caesar; "but remember that none of us have slept under a roof for fourteen years." That sort of people are apt to succeed in the long run.

When they succeed, as we have said, they advance civilization. To begin with the farthest East, all such strength as the Chinese Empire has to-day is due to the Tartar cross in its blood; that is, it results from the conquest of imbecile China by Northern Tartar tribes. One or two more such invasions, followed by colonization of Northern emigrants, would have made China a much stronger power this day than she is, and a nation of higher grade. The history of Indian civilization, again, is a history of Northern conquests. They tell us, indeed, that the Indian castes may be resolved into so many beach-marks of the waves of successive invasions from the North, the highest caste representing the last innovation. When Abraham crossed from Ur of the Chaldees into Canaan, when Cambyses broke open the secrets of Egyptian civilization, when Alexander first opened to the world Egyptian science, these were illustrations of the same thing,—Canaan, Egypt, and the world were all improved by those processes. Greece died out, and has never yet reestablished herself, because she never had a complete infusion of Gothic blood in her worn-out system. Italy, on the other hand, had a new birth, and at this moment has a magnificent future, because Goths and Lombards did sweep in upon her with their up-country virtues and wilderness moralities. What the Ostrogoths did for Spain, what the Franks did for Gaul, what the Northmen did for England, are so many more illustrations. What Gustavus Adolphus would have done for Germany, if he had succeeded, would have been another.

What we are to do in the South, when we succeed, will be another. It makes the subject of this paper.

* * * * *

Nobody pretends, of course, that War itself does anything final in the advance of civilization. War itself is, what the poets call it, a terrible piece of ploughing. With us, just now, it is subsoil-ploughing, very deep at that. Stumps and stones have to be heaved out, which had on them the moss and lichens and superficial soil of centuries, and which had fancied, in that heavy semi-consciousness which belongs to stumps and stones, that they were fixed forever. As the teams and the ploughshares pass over the ground which has lain fallow so long, they leave, God knows, and millions of bleeding hearts know, a very desolate prospect in the upheaved furrows behind them. It is very black, very rough, very desert to the eye, and in spots it is very bloody. This is what war does. So desolate the prospect, that we of the Northern States have certainly a right to thank God that it was not we who called out the ploughmen.

War, in itself, does nothing but plough,—but immediately on the end of the war, in any locality, he who succeeds begins on the harrowing and the planting. And because God is, and directs all such affairs, it is wonderful to see how short is the June which in His world covers all such furrows as His ploughmen make with new beauty. It is to the methods of that new harvest that the President has boldly led our attention in his admirable Proclamation of Amnesty. It is to the details of it that each loyal man has to look already. It is but a few weeks since we heard a sentimental grumbler, at a public meeting, lamenting over the discomforts of the freed slaves in the Southwest, as he compared them with their lost paradise. Men of his type, to whom the present is always worse than the past, succeed in persuading themselves that the incidental hardships of transition are to be taken as the type of a whole future. And so this apostle of discontent really believed that the condition of the fifty thousand freed slaves of the Mississippi, in the hands of such men as Grant, and Eliot, and Yeatman, and Wheelock, and Forman, and Fiske, and Howard, was really going to be worse than it was under the lashes of Legree, or at the auction-block of New Orleans. The more manly, as the more philosophical way of looking at the transition, is to discover the shortest path leading to that future, which, without such a transition, cannot come.

The President, with courage which does him infinite honor, leads the way to this future. His Proclamation is really a rallying-cry to all true men and women, whether they are living at the North or at the South, to take hold and work for its accomplishment. With an army posted in each of the revolted States, with more than one of them completely under National control, he considers that the time for planting has come. He is no such idealist or sentimentalist as to leave these new-made furrows, so terribly torn up in three years of war, to renew their own verdure by any mere spontaneous vegetation.

Practical as the President always is, he is sublimely practical in the Proclamation. "Let us make good out of this evil as quickly as we can," he says; "let peace bring in plenty as quickly as she can." To bring this about, he promises the strong arm of the nation to protect anything which shall show itself worth protecting, in the way of social institutions of republican liberty. He does not ask, like a conqueror, for the keys of a capital. He does not ask, like a Girondist, for the vote of a majority. He knows, it is true, as all the world knows, that, if the vote of all the men of the South could ever be obtained, the majority would utterly overshadow the handful of gentry who have been lording it over white trash and black slaves together. But the President has no wish to prolong martial law to that indefinite future when this handful of gentlemen shall let the majority of their own people pronounce upon their claims to rule them. Waiving the requisitions of the theorists, and at the same time relieving himself from the necessity of employing military power a moment longer than is necessary, he announces, in advance, what will be his policy in extending protection to loyal governments formed in Rebel States. If there can be found in any State enough righteous men willing to take the oath of allegiance and to sustain the nation in its determination for emancipation,—if there can be found only enough to be counted up as the tenth part of those who voted in the election of 1860, though their State should have sinned like Gomorrah, even though its name should be South Carolina, they shall be permitted to reconstruct its government, and that government shall be recognized by the government of the nation.

It is true that this gift is vastly more than any of the Rebel States has any right to claim. When the King of Oude rebels against England, he does not find, at the end of the war, that, because he is utterly defeated, things are to go on upon their old agreeable footing. Rebellion is not, in its nature, one of those pretty plays of little children, which can stop when either party is tired, because he asks for it to stop, so gently that both parties shall walk on hand in hand till either has got breath enough to begin the game again. If the nation were contending against real and permanent enemies, in reducing to order the States of the Confederacy, or if the national feeling towards the people of those States were the bitter feeling which their leaders profess towards our people, the nation would, of course, offer no such easy terms. The nation would say, "When you threw off the Constitution, you did it for better for worse. It guarantied to you your State governments. You spurned the guaranty. Let it be so. Let the guaranty be withdrawn. You cannot sustain them. Let them go, then. You have destroyed them. And the nation governs you by proconsuls." But the nation has no such desire to deal harshly with these people. The nation knows that more than half of them were never regarded as people at home,—that they had no more to do with the Rebellion than had the oxen with which they labored. The nation knows that of the rest of the Southern people literally only a handful professed power in the State. The nation knows, therefore, that what pretended to be a union of republics was, really, to take Gouverneur Morris's phrase, a union of republics with oligarchies,—seventeen republics united to fourteen oligarchies, when this thing began. The nation knows that the fourteen will be happier, stronger, more prosperous than ever, when their people have the rights of which they are partly conscious,—when they also become republics. The nation means to carry out the constitutional guaranty, and give them the republican government which under the Constitution belongs to every State in the Union. The nation looks forward to prosperous centuries, in which these States, with these people and the descendants of these people, shall be united in one nation with the republics which have been true to the nation. For all these reasons the nation has no thought of insisting on its rights as against Rebel States. It has no thunders of vengeance except for those who have led in these iniquities. For the people who have been misled it has pardon, protection, encouragement, and hope. It can afford to be generous. And at the President's hands it makes the offer which will be received.

* * * * *

We say this offer will be received. We know very well the difficulty with which an opinion long branded with ignominy makes head in countries where there is no press, where there is no free speech, where there are no large cities. Excepting Louisiana, the Southern States have none of these. And the "peculiar institutions" throw the control of what is called opinion more completely into the hands of a very small class of men, we might almost say a very small knot of men, than in any other oligarchy which we remember in modern history. It is in considering this very difficulty that we recognize the wisdom of the President's Proclamation. He is conscious of the difficulty, and has placed his minimum of loyal inhabitants at a very low point, that, even in the hardest cases, there may be a possibility of meeting his requisition.

It is not true, on the other hand, that he has placed his minimum so low as to involve the government in any difficulty in sustaining the State governments which will be framed at his call. It must be remembered that this "tenth part" of righteous men will have very strong allies in every Southern State. It is confessed, on all hands, that they will be supported by all the negroes in every State. Just in proportion to what was the strength of the planting interest is its weakness in the new order of things. Given such physical force, given the moral and physical strength which comes with national protection, and given the immense power which belongs to the wish for peace, and the "tenth part" will soon find its fraction becoming larger and more respectable by accretions at home and by emigration from other States. We shall soon learn that there is next to nobody who really favored this thing in the beginning. They will tell us that they all stood for their old State flag, and that they will be glad to stand for it in its new hands.

It will be only the first step that will cost. Everybody sees this. The President sees it. Mr. Davis sees it. He hopes nobody will take it. We hope a good many people will. The merit of the President's plan is that this step can be promptly taken. And so many are the openings by which national feeling now addresses the people of the States in revolt, and national men can call on them to express their real opinions and to act in their real interest, that we hope to see it taken in many places at the same time.

When Constantine made Christianity the religion of the Roman Empire, he supposed that one-thirteenth part of his people were Christians. He was statesman enough to know that a minority of one-thirteenth, united together because they had one cause, would be omnipotent over a majority of twelve-thirteenths, without a cause and disunited. So, if any one asks for an example in our history,—the Territory of Kansas was thrown open to emigration with every facility given to the Southern emigrant, and every discouragement offered to the Northerner. But forty men, organized together by a cause, settled Lawrence, and it was rumored that there was to be some organization of the other Northern settlers, and at that word the Northern hive emptied itself into Kansas, and the Atchisons and Bufords and Stringfellows abandoned their new territory, badly stung. These are illustrations, one of them on the largest scale, and the other belonging wholly to our own time and country, of the worth even of a very small minority, in such an initiative as is demanded now. What was done in Kansas can be done again in Florida, in Texas, if Texas do not take care for herself, in either Carolina, in any Southern State where the "righteous men" do not themselves appear to take this first step on which the President relies.

Take, for instance, this magnificent Florida, our own Italy,—if one can conceive of an Italy where till now men have been content to live a half-civilized life, only because the oranges grew to their hands, and there was no necessity for toil. The vote of Florida in 1860 was 14,347. So soon as in Florida one-tenth part of this number, or 1,435 men, take the oath of allegiance to the National Government, so soon, if they have the qualifications of electors under Florida law, shall we have a loyal State in Florida. It will be a Free State, offering the privileges of a Free State to the eager eyes of the North and of Europe. That valley of the St. John's, with its wealth of lumber,—the even climate of the western shore,—the navy-yard to be reestablished at Pensacola,—the commerce to be resumed at Jacksonville,—the Nice which we will build up for our invalids at St. Augustine,—the orange-groves which are wasting their sweetness at this moment, on the plantations and the islands,—will all be so many temptations to the emigrant, as soon as work is honorable in Florida. If the people who gave 5,437 votes for Bell and 367 for Douglas cannot furnish 1,435 men to establish this new State government, we here know who can.

"Armies composed of freemen conquer for themselves, not for their leaders." This is the happy phrase of Robertson, as he describes the reestablishment of society in Europe after the great Northern invasions, which gave new life to Roman effeminacy, and new strength to Roman corruption. The phrase is perfectly true. It is as true of the armies of freemen who have been called to the South now to keep the peace as it was of the armies of freemen who were called South then by the imbecility of Roman emperors or their mutual contentions. The lumbermen from Maine and New Hampshire who have seen the virgin riches of the St. John's, like the Massachusetts volunteers who have picked out their farms in the valley of the Shenandoah or established in prospect their forges on the falls of the Potomac, or like the Illinois regiments who have been introduced to the valleys of Tennessee or of Arkansas, will furnish men enough, well skilled in political systems, to start the new republics, in regions which have never known what a true republic was till now.

To carry out the President's plan, and to give us once more working State governments in the States which have rebelled,—to give them, indeed, the first true republican governments they have ever known,—would require for Virginia about 12,000 voters. They can be counted, we suppose, at this moment, in the counties under our military control. Indeed, the loyal State government of Virginia is at this moment organized. In North Carolina it would require 9,500 voters. The loyal North Carolina regiments are an evidence that that number of home-grown men will readily appear. In South Carolina, to give a generous estimate, we need 5,000 voters. It is the only State which we never heard my man wish to emigrate to. It is the hardest region, therefore, of any to redeem. At the worst, till the 5,000 appear, the new Georgia will be glad to govern all the country south of the Santee, and the new North Carolina what is north thereof. Georgia will need 10,000 loyal voters. There are more than that number now encamped upon her soil, willing to stay there. Of Florida we have spoken. Alabama requires 9,000. They have been hiding away from conscription; they have been fleeing into Kentucky and Ohio: they will not be unwilling to reappear when the inevitable "first step" is taken. For Mississippi we want 7,000. Mr. Reverdy Johnson has told us where they are. For Louisiana, one tenth is 5,000. More than that number voted in the elections which returned the sitting members to Congress. For Texas, the proportion is 6,200; for Arkansas, 5,400. Those States are already giving account of themselves. In Tennessee the fraction required is 14,500. And as the people of Knoxville said, "They could do that in the mountains alone."

We have no suspicion of a want of latent Southern loyalty. But we have brought together these figures to show how inevitable is a reconstruction on the President's plan, even if Southern loyalty were as abject and timid as some men try to persuade us. These figures show us, that, if, of the million Northern men who have "prospected" the Southern country, in the march of victorious armies, only seventy-three thousand determine to take up their future lot there, and to establish there free institutions, they would be enough, without the help of one native, to establish these republican institutions in all the Rebel States. The deserted plantations, the farms offered for sale, almost for nothing, all the attractions of a softer climate, and all the just pride which makes the American fond of founding empires, are so many incentives to the undertaking of the great initiative proposed. In the cases of Virginia and Tennessee, and, as we suppose, of Louisiana, Arkansas, and Texas, the beginning has already been made at home. In Florida a recent meeting at Fernandina gave promise for a like beginning. If it do not begin there, the Emigrant Aid Company must act at once to give the beginning.[52] There will remain the Carolinas and three of the Gulf States. The ploughing is not over there, and it is not time therefore to speak of the harvest. For the rest, we hope we have said enough to indicate to the ready and active men of the nation where their great present duty lies.

* * * * *

REVIEWS AND LITERARY NOTICES.

Principles of Political Economy, with Some of their Applications to Social Philosophy. By JOHN STUART MILL. New York: D. Appleton & Co.

If works upon Political Economy, representing the orthodox European doctrine, are to be written, John Stuart Mill is certainly the man to write them. Able, candid, judicial, indefatigable, powerfully poised,—characterized by remarkable mental amplitude, by a rare steadiness of brain, by an admirable sense of logical relation, by a singular ease of command over his intellectual forces, by a clear and discriminating eye that does not wink when a hand is shaken before it,—of a humane and widely related nature, whose heats lie deep, so deep that many may think him cold,—of an understanding as dry as John Locke's, wanting imagination in all its degrees, from rhetorical imagination, which is the lowest, to epic imagination, which is the highest, and therefore destitute of the sovereign insights which go only with this faculty in its higher degrees, while, on the other hand, freed from the enticements and attractions that are inseparable from it,—Mr. Mill has qualifications unsurpassed, perhaps, by those of any man living for considerate and serviceable thinking upon matters of immediate practical interest and of a somewhat tangible nature. His mental structure exhibits combinations which are by no means frequent. Seldom is seen a conjunction of such cold purity of thinking with such generosity of nature; seldom such considerateness, such industry, patience, and carefulness of deliberation, with a boldness so entire; seldom such ducal self-possession and self-sufficingness, with equal openness to social and sympathetic impression; nor less rare, perhaps, is the union of a reflective power so large and dominating with an observation so active.

These mental qualities fit him in a peculiar degree for service in the field of Political Economy as now commonly defined,—a branch of literature which, more, perhaps, than any other, represents at once the genius and the limitation of our time.

Political Economy is a half-science, not total or integral; and if it pretend to spherical completeness, as it often does, it becomes open to grave accusation. The charges against it, considered as a strict and complete science, are two.

Of these the first has been cogently urged by Mr. Ruskin, while virtual admissions to a like effect were made by Mr. Buckle in his spirited account of Adam Smith. It is this: as a science, Political Economy must assume the perfect selfishness of every human being. Every science requires necessary, and therefore invariable, conditions, which, when expounded, are named laws. Such in Astronomy is gravitation, with the law of its diminution by distance; such in Chemistry is chemical attraction, with the law of definite proportions. The natural and perpetual condition assumed by Political Economy is the absolute supremacy in man of pecuniary interest. Absolute: it can admit no modification of this; it can make no room within its province for generosity, or for any action of man's soul, without forfeiting, so far, its claim to the character of a science. Put a dollar, with all honor, liberal justice, and humane attraction, on the one hand; put a dollar and one cent, with mere legal right and consequent safety, on the other hand; and Political Economy must assume that every man will gravitate to the latter by the same necessity which makes the balance incline toward the heavier weight. Or, conceding the contrary, it yields also its claim to the character of a perfect science, and takes rank among those half-sciences which partly expound necessary laws and partly contingent effects.

Now this assumed sovereignty of pecuniary interest seems to us not a final account of human beings. There is honor among thieves; is there none among merchants? Does not every man put some generous consideration for others into his business-transactions? Has an honorable publisher no aim but to print that which will sell best? Has he no regard to the character of his house? Has he no desire to furnish a nourishing pabulum and a healthful inspiration to the mind of his country? In the employment of labor and the giving of wages do men generally quite forget the workman, and think only of the work and its profit? This does not happen to accord with our observation of human nature. We think there is a large element of honorable human feeling incessantly playing into the economies of the world; and we think it might be yet larger without any injurious perturbation of these economies.

Again, as a science, Political Economy considers wealth only as related to wealth, to itself, not to man. It assumes wealth, as absolute, and regards man as an instrument for its production and distribution. But this attitude must be reversed. Wealth cannot be treated of in a wholly healthful way until it is considered simply as instrumental toward the higher riches which are contained in man himself.

And here we reach the peculiar virtue of Mr. Mill's book.

In the first place, he accepts the science as such, accepts it cordially and almost with enthusiasm,—in fact, has a degree of faith in its completeness and of confidence in its uses, greater, perhaps, than our own final thought will justify; for the reader will already have perceived that we incline in some measure to the opposition, with Carlyle, Ruskin, and others. Proceeding upon this basis, Mr. Mill expounds the orthodox theories with that definiteness of thought, with that precision of statement, and that calmness and breadth of survey, which never fail to characterize his literary labor. Any one who assumes, and wishes to study the science, will find in this writer a guide through its intricacies, whom it were hardly an exaggeration to name as perfect. Always sound-hearted, always clear, candid, and logical, always maintaining a certain judicial superiority, he is a thinker in whose company one likes to go on his mental travels, and whose thought one will be inclined to trust rather too much than too little. In the second place, Mr. Mill discerns the limitations of the science more clearly, and acknowledges them more frankly, than, to the extent of our somewhat narrow conversance with such writers, has ever been done before by any one who regarded it with equal affection and reposed in its theories a like faith. This, too, is thoroughly characteristic of him. He is one of the sanest and sincerest of men.

Thirdly, his inspiring and generative purpose is to lift the science into serviceable relation to the broad interests of man. Here we come to the real soul of the book. He accepts its customary limits chiefly that he may transcend them. He treats of wealth with a philosophical and cordial perception of its uses; but beyond and above this he is thinking of man, always of man,—and of man not merely as an eater and drinker, but as an intelligence and a candidate for moral or personal upbuilding. A reader would regard the work with a dull eye, who should miss this commanding feature. Sometimes by special discussions, as in his defence of peasant-properties in land,—sometimes only by an aroma pervading his pages, or bypassing expressions,—and always by the general ordering and culminating tendency of his thought,—one reads this perpetual question, the true and final question of all politics and economies:—How shall we secure the greatest number of intelligent and worthy men and women?

But while Mr. Mill's sympathy is with the people, the many, the whole of humanity, and while his desire for men is that they may attain the mental elevation which shall make them really human beings, yet a marked feature of his book is the mild Malthusian element which pervades it. Let no stigma be therefore fixed upon him. Let honor be rendered to the courage which steadily inquires, not what representation of the facts will win applause, but simply what the facts are. And undoubtedly it is true that all considerate men in England have been compelled to contemplate the possibility of over-population, of an insupportable pauperism, of a burden of helpless numbers which shall sink the whole nation into abysses of starvation with all its horrible accompaniments. It is but a few years since Ireland escaped unexampled death by famine only by an unexampled exodus. The New World opened its arms to the misery of the Old, and fed its famine to fatness,—and has got few thanks. But this rescue cannot be repeated without limit. And therefore forelooking men in England find the problem of their future one not too easy to solve. Mr. Carlyle, among others, has grappled with it. His brow has long been beaded with the sweat of this great wrestling; and if he seem to some of us a little abrupt and peculiar in his movements, we must at least do him the justice to remember that he, after the manner of ancient Jacob, is struggling with the angel of England's destiny. Mr. Mill, too, with an earnestness less passionate indeed, but perhaps not less real, is toiling at the same work.

And, by the way, an instructive comparison might be drawn between these two writers. Mr. Mill, not highly vitalized by belief, not nourished by any grand spiritual imaginations, hampered by a hard and poor philosophy, and with limited access to absolute truth, nevertheless, not only belongs fully to the opening modern epoch, but through a certain entireness of moral health and sanity is leading the time steadily forward into its great believing and builded future; though it may follow from his limitations that into this future he cannot accompany it very far. Mr. Carlyle, with a poetic profundity of nature and a force of insight which entitle him not merely to a high place among the men of our time, but to a name among the men of all time, standing face to face with the divine reality and wonder of existence, conversing with the heights and depths of being, and appreciating the significance of personality, as Mr. Mill never can, will accompany our epoch into its future farther than one can foresee, but to its present must render a mixed and imperfect service; for a sickness runs in his veins, and he is trying to force the age into a half-way house, which is built equally by his hope and his despair.

Were this not merely a general characterization, but a review, of Mr. Mill's powerful work, we should venture to take issue on some matters both general and special,—as an example of the latter, on the possible utility of protective duties. The reasoning by which he, in common with his class, proves these to be necessarily futile for good, is indeed faultless so far as it goes, but, in our clear judgment, fails to cover the whole case; so that the question, whether as one of general polity or of industrial economy, is still open to consideration. Especially it may be urged, that the infancy of human industries, like the infancy of human beings, may require protection, even though their adult vigor could be safely left to take care of itself. Suppose it conceded that this protection is at first costly. So are the cradle and the nursery. Yet it may be that they "pay" in the end. Nay, as the cradle may enrich the household through the new incentives to labor and frugality which it supplies, so protections of industry may evoke new industrial powers, and thus at once begin to enrich the nation, though the capital which supports these fresh industries could not at first hold its own, as against other capital, without the motherly cares it receives.

But enough. Here is a book on a matter of large and immediate importance, put forth by one of the amplest and soundest minds of our time,—a man so long-headed and clear-hearted, so able and intrepid to think, to speak, and to hear correction, so intent upon high ends and so calmly patient upon the way, that the public can neglect his thought only by a criminal neglect of its own interests.

A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life. With a Complete Bibliography of the Subject. By WILLIAM ROUNSEVILLE ALGER. Philadelphia: Geo. W. Childs.

Few "signs of the times" are more significant than the disposition shown on all sides to scrutinize and interpret the spiritual history of mankind. Lessing, Schlegel, Herder, Hegel, Guizot, Buckle, and others, endeavor, with various degrees of ambition and success, to estimate history considered as a progress; Carlyle in his "Heroes" and Emerson in the "Representative Men" regard it rather as a permanence, and seek to present its value in typical forms; meanwhile the Bibles and mythologies of the old world are collected, translated, subjected to interpretative study; and the critical scholarship of our time is almost wholly engaged in an endeavor either to arrive at the exact text or at the precise value of all the ancient literatures.

All men have at length discovered that the history of mankind means something, and are naturally intent on learning what it means. No one now regards it as a mere Devil's phantasmagoria, significant of nothing but Adam's sin in the Garden. However differing on other points, we all now perceive that the history of the mind of man is a more interior history of the universe,—that it must be studied, in the most earnest and reverential spirit of science,—that what Astronomy seeks to do in the heavens and Geology on the earth must be done in the realms of the mind itself,—and that, till we have found our Copernicus and our Newton of the human soul, modern science lingers in the porch, and does not find access to the temple. We all see that this history, not indeed as to the succession of its outward events, but as to its interior reality, must be grounded in the eternal truth and necessity of the universe. What wonder, that, having been so fully penetrated by the scientific spirit, modern minds should look with great longing toward these earths and skies of human history, coveting some knowledge of the law by which the thoughts and faiths of man perform their courses?

Nor any longer can "negative criticism" enlist the utmost interest. It is construction that is now desired; and he who studies history only that he may vanquish belief in the interest of knowledge cannot command the attention of those whose attention is best worth having. That fable is fable and mythus mythus no one need now plume himself on informing us, provided he has nothing further to say. Of course, we raise no childish and sentimental objection to what is called "negative criticism." It may not be the best possible policy to build the new house in the form of certain stories superimposed upon the old one, which, perhaps, is even now hardly strong enough to sustain its own weight. Let there be due clearing away; let us find foundations.

But the essence of the new point of view in the contemplation of history consists in this, that we no longer seek these foundations in the mere outward and literal history of man; we look, on the contrary, to his inward history, to perennial hopes and imaginations, to the evidence of his spiritual impulses and attractions, and just here find not only his real history, but also the basis for theoretical construction.

We see, indeed, as clearly as any Niebuhr or Strauss of them all, that the imagination so pours itself into history as to supersede, or to disguise by transfiguration, the literal facts. The incessant domination of man's inward over his outward history is apparent enough. What then? Does that make history worthless? Nay, it infinitely enhances the value of history. Who are more deserving of pity than the distracted critics that discriminate the imaginative element in the story of man's existence only to cast it away? "Facts" do they desire? These are the facts. What is the use of always mousing about for coprolites? Give us in the present form the product of man's spirit, and this to us shall constitute his history. Let us know what pictures he painted on the skies over his head, and he who desires shall be welcome to the relics which he left in the dust under his feet.

In our own country some worthy efforts have been made to set forth certain grand provinces in the spiritual history of the human race. Such was Mrs. Child's most readable book,—does she ever write anything which is not readable?—"The Progress of Religious Ideas." We have seen also some fine lectures on "Eastern Religions,"[53] which ought to go into print. And now Mr. Alger comes forward with his large and laborious work, seeking to contribute his portion to these new and precious constructions.

Mr. Alger's book is a real work. It is the result of no light nor trivial labor, of no timid nor indolent essay of thought. His aim has been to pass in judicial review the thoughts and imaginations of mankind concerning the destiny of the human soul. It is an instruction to the jury from the bench, summing up and passing continuous judgment upon the evidence on this subject contributed by the consciousness of the human race.

Mr. Alger is a brave man. He does not hesitate to grapple with the greatest thinkers, nor to measure the subtlest imaginations of all time. In the opening chapter, for example, which is appropriately devoted to a consideration of theories of the soul's origin, he lays hold of the boldest speculative imaginations to which the world has given birth, with no hesitating nor trembling hand. Occasionally the reader may, perhaps, be more inclined to tremble for him than he for himself. One remembers Goldsmith's line,—

"The dog it was that died";

but our author comes forth from the trial in ruddy health, and does not seem at all out of breath. And all through the book he delivers his sentence like a man who has earned the right to speak.

And has he not earned it? For some years Mr. Alger has been known to scholars and others as a most indefatigable and heroic worker. This book justifies that reputation. The amount of reading that has gone to it is almost portentous. To us, who can hardly manage twelve books, big and little, in as many months, this mountainous reading furnishes matter for wonder.

Neither has this reading been chiefly a work of memorizing, nor has it been expended chiefly upon works of history commonly so called. A product of man's spiritual consciousness being under consideration, it is works of thought and imagination, rather than works of narration, which claim our author's critical attention; and his reading has been reflective and deliberative, involving a judgment upon speculative more than upon historical data. And it may fairly be said, though it be much to say, that he has shrunk from nothing which a perfect performance of his task required. Whether we consider the formation or the expression of his judgments, it may still be affirmed that he has met his great theme fairly, and given to its exposition the utmost exercise of his powers and the unstinted devotion of his labor.

We can accordingly pass upon his work this rare commendation, that it is thoroughly honest. This may, indeed, seem to many no very high approval. But it is one of the very highest. For we mean by it not merely that he has refrained from conscious misrepresentation of fact,—that he has not lied, as Kingsley did about Hypatia in the novel wherein he borrowed, only to befoul, the name of that spotless woman, knowing all the while that his representation was contrary to the recorded facts of history. To say so much only of this book would be not to attribute to it a positive merit, but only to acquit it of damning demerit. But what we affirm is that Mr. Alger has fairly looked his facts in the face, and come to some understanding with himself about them. When he speaks, therefore, it is about facts, about realities, not merely about words; and what he offers is the result of genuine processes of production which have gone on in his own mind. If he speak of life, it is not life in the dictionary, but in the universe. If he profess to offer thoughts, he really gives the results of his thinking. He does not cant; he does not merely recite verbal formulas; he does not play the part of attorney, first determining what to advocate, and then seeking plausible reasons: everywhere one perceives that he has really brought his mind to bear upon facts, and so has come to real mental fruit. And it is this verity, this reality and genuineness, to which we give the name of intellectual honesty. It is a rare quality; and always the rarer in proportion to the depth of the matters treated of, on the one hand, and to their expression in customs and institutions, on the other. Institutions are masks. The thinker must have both earnestness and penetration, if he is to get behind them. And just in proportion as any element of man's spiritual consciousness has come to institutional expression, it is the easier to talk about it and the harder to think upon it,—to talk about it without talking of it. But our author has made the distinction, and to the extent of his power looks facts in the face.

Having come to an understanding with himself, he honestly tries, again, to come to an understanding with the reader. He honestly imparts his mind. We find the book in this respect worthy of especial admiration.

Mr. Alger always writes well when he is not overmuch trying to write well. If he forbear to covet striking effect, his style has perspicuity, directness, and vigor,—the essentials of all excellent writing,—and to these adds verbal affluence and occasional felicity. But if he be tempted of the Devil to become eloquent, and the father of all rhetorical evil strives hard to bring the soul of his style to perdition, then he begins to write badly. Let him, since he is capable of heroic things, imitate Luther, and fling his ink-pot. Even though it light upon the page, let him not be inconsolable, but remember that no blots are so bad as those made by ambitious inflation. We have not that horror of "fine writing" which leads The Saturday Review and Company to such obstreperous exclamation, and can endure the worst that Americans are guilty of in this matter quite as well as that affectation of off-hand ease and nonchalance which enhances the native clumsiness of many among the later English writers, and, to our mind, mars extremely the poetry of Browning. But if a writer has some propensity to rhetorical Babel-building, it were well for him to make an effort in the opposite direction, and try to build his sentences underground, like the houses of the Esquimaux.

Mr. Alger's book has minor faults and major excellences. But let him be content. He has faithfully performed a great labor, and we give him cordial approval. To a great theme he has brought great industry, a just appreciation, a fine spirit, and much of intellectual courage and activity.

Add that he is a man whose soul is in sympathy with the best thought, hope, and heart of the time. Brave, just, and humane, he is always on the right side, and always as direct and unflinching in the utterance of his faith as he is intrepid and right-natured in its adoption. Opinions are expressed in his work which do not accord with those of ecclesiastical majorities; nevertheless we think that those will thank him who least agree with him. It were, indeed, a shame that the people which sets the highest price upon political liberty should be the last to welcome the higher freedoms of thought; but it is a shame, we trust, which will not befall our country. We ourselves have, it is true, as little affection as most men for that sort of "free thinking" which consists in pouring out upon the public the mere wash and cerebral excretion of unclean spirits; but when any man has brought to a consideration of the greatest facts a pure and reverent spirit, he is entitled to present the results of his meditations with manly directness and vigor, as Mr. Alger has done in the work before us.

The "Complete Bibliography of the Subject" is an admirable piece of work. We present our respects to Mr. Ezra Abbot, Jr., and wish that many an earnest literary laborer had such a "friend."

Dream Children. By the Author of "Seven Little People and their Friends." Cambridge: Seaver & Francis.

The children seem to have found their Dickens at last. But, of course, it was to be expected that the child's Dickens would be different, in some important respects, from the Dickens of grown-up men and women. And so he is. Children do with the world in their thoughts pretty much as they will; and the genuine artist, working for children, must recognize this, or he will utterly fail. The author of "Dream Children," who made his introduction to the reading public as the author of "Seven Little People and their Friends," has the rare faculty of realizing for himself the exact position and attitude of the child. This position he takes so earnestly that he has nowhere the air of assumption or arbitrary fiction. The child lives so much in pictures! But the pictures must not betray one single feature of unreality, or the whole effect is spoiled; a moral may be pointed or a tale adorned, but the child has lost his natural food. We need such works as that under present notice to keep children from starving,—works that are not mechanically adapted to children, but which come to them as their own fresh, pure thoughts come, bringing them pictures like those which their own untrammelled fancy paints for them.

We have no space to enter into any details here. The children must do that for themselves; but not the children alone. For, as now and then we come upon a piece of Art, a painting or a statue, which from its subject would seem to belong peculiarly to the child's world, but which, because it is genuine Art, as to its manner and execution, rises out of this confinement to a single class, becoming universal, so it is with books of a similar character. This is true of the present work more emphatically than of the former work by the same author. The more external features of the work—its exquisite getting-up, in paper, binding, and especially in illustration—are only fitting to the inherent gracefulness of the writer's thought.

The subject is inviting, but we can only add that these short stories exhibit the rarest freshness and purity of imagination, the richest humor, and the most striking suggestion of an exhaustless fertility of invention which we remember ever to have seen in any child's book before. There is nowhere a careless execution; and the reason of this is probably that the characters have had a leisurely growth in the author's own mind. Generally it is supposed, that, to suit a subject to children, it is only necessary to go through some outward manifestations and to give the thing an air of novelty; but in this treatment there is no freshness, and no very great or very permanent moral expression. The writer of "Dream Children" will have a select audience, but he will have it pretty much to himself, and, as the best of all rewards which he could have, he will educate the thoughts of his juvenile readers imperceptibly into a greater love and reverence for the very heart of truth and beauty.

Remains in Verse and Prose of Arthur Henry Hallam; with a Preface and Memoir. Boston. Ticknor & Fields.

A permanent, though modest, place in the literature of the English language will be accorded to this little volume. Judged upon their intrinsic merits as compositions, the "Remains in Verse and Prose of Arthur Henry Hallam" would, nevertheless, hold no abiding position among the many pleasing poems, clever dissertations, and brilliant essays annually given to the press in Great Britain and America. Were they brought to us as the writings of a young man dying at thirty-two, instead of ten years earlier, we might hastily say, that, sacred as they must be to the personal friends of the author, there was in them no excellency sufficiently marked or marketable to warrant republication. But there gather other interests about them when we are told that these compositions came from the son of a very eminent man, and were written at an age at which we congratulate ourselves, if our college-boys are not oppressively foolish. For the rare instances of hereditary transmission of distinguished mental power are well worth attention, and the maturity of thought and the subtile trains of reflection in this youth now afford that large promise of genius which may not be confounded with those specious precocities of talent the world never lacks. Yet it is not probable that even these attractions could give to the literary remains of young Hallam that permanent place in letters which we have made bold to promise them. Only the inspirations of a great poet could wake the noblest sympathies of noblest hearts in perennial tribute to this friend so early called from life.