The philosophy of life, then, as far as this matter is concerned, must consist of two things: first, to keep ourselves out of irritable bodily states; and, second, to understand and control these states, when we cannot ward them off.

Of course, the first of these is the most important; and yet, of all things, it seems to be least looked into and understood. We find abundant rules for the government of the tongue and temper; it is a slough into which, John Bunyan hath it, cart-loads of wholesome instructions have been thrown; but how to get and keep that healthy state of brain, stomach, and nerves which takes away the temptation to ill-temper and anger is a subject which moral and religious teachers seem scarcely to touch upon.

Now, without running into technical, physiological language, it is evident, as regards us human beings, that there is a power by which we live and move and have our being,—by which the brain thinks and wills, the stomach digests, the blood circulates, and all the different provinces of the little man-kingdom do their work. This something—call it nervous fluid, nervous power, vital energy, life-force, or anything else that you will—is a perfectly understood, if not a definable thing. It is plain, too, that people possess this force in very different degrees: some generating it as a high-pressure engine does steam, and using it constantly, with an apparently inexhaustible flow; and others who have little, and spend it quickly. We have a common saying, that this or that person is soon used up. Now most nervous, irritable states of temper are the mere physical result of a used-up condition. The person has overspent his nervous energy,—like a man who should eat up on Monday the whole food which was to keep him for a week, and go growling and faint through the other days; or the quantity of nervous force which was wanted to carry on the whole system in all its parts is seized on by some one monopolizing portion, and used up to the loss and detriment of the rest, Thus, with men of letters, an exorbitant brain expends on its own workings what belongs to the other offices of the body: the stomach has nothing to carry on digestion; the secretions are badly made; and the imperfectly assimilated nourishment, that is conveyed to every little nerve and tissue, carries with it an acrid, irritating quality, producing general restlessness and discomfort. So men and women go struggling on through their three-score and ten years, scarcely one in a thousand knowing through life that perfect balance of parts, that appropriate harmony of energies, that make a healthy, kindly animal condition, predisposing to cheerfulness and good-will.

We Americans are, to begin with, a nervous, excitable people. Multitudes of children, probably the great majority in the upper walks of life, are born into the world with weaknesses of the nervous organization, or of the brain or stomach, which make them incapable of any strong excitement or prolonged exertion without some lesion or derangement; so that they are continually being checked, laid up, and invalided in the midst of their drugs. Life here in America is so fervid, so fast, our climate is so stimulating, with its clear, bright skies, its rapid and sudden changes of temperature, that the tendencies to nervous disease are constantly aggravated.

Under these circumstances, unless men and women make a conscience, a religion, of saving and sparing something of themselves expressly for home-life and home-consumption, it must follow that home will often be merely a sort of refuge for us to creep into when we are used up and irritable.

Papa is up and off, after a hasty breakfast, and drives all day in his business, putting into it all there is in him, letting it drink up brain and nerve and body and soul, and coming home jaded and exhausted, so that he cannot bear the cry of the baby, and the frolics and pattering of the nursery seem horrid and needless confusion. The little ones say, in their plain vernacular, "Papa is cross."

Mamma goes out to a party that keeps her up till one or two in the morning, breathes bad air, eats indigestible food, and the next day is so nervous that every straw and thread in her domestic path is insufferable.

Papas that pursue business thus day after day, and mammas that go into company, as it is called, night after night, what is there left in or of them to make an agreeable fireside with, to brighten their home and inspire their children?

True, the man says he cannot help himself,—business requires it. But what is the need of rolling up money at the rate at which he is seeking to do it? Why not have less, and take some time to enjoy his home, and cheer up his wife, and form the minds of his children? Why spend himself down to the last drop on the world, and give to the dearest friends he has only the bitter dregs?

Much of the preaching which the pulpit and the Church have levelled at fashionable amusements has failed of any effect at all, because wrongly put. A cannonade has been opened upon dancing, for example, and all for reasons that will not, in the least, bear looking into. It is vain to talk of dancing as a sin because practised in a dying world where souls are passing into eternity. If dancing is a sin for this reason, so is playing marbles, or frolicking with one's children, or enjoying a good dinner, or doing fifty other things which nobody ever dreamed of objecting to.

If the preacher were to say that anything is a sin which uses up the strength we need for daily duties, and leaves us fagged out and irritable at just those times and in just those places when and where we need most to be healthy, cheerful, and self-possessed, he would say a thing that none of his hearers would dispute. If he should add, that dancing-parties, beginning at ten o'clock at night and ending at four o'clock in the morning, do use up the strength, weaken the nerves, and leave a person wholly unfit for any home duty, he would also be saying what very few people would deny; and then his case would be made out. If he should say that it is wrong to breathe bad air and fill the stomach with unwholesome dainties, so as to make one restless, ill-natured, and irritable for days after, he would also say what few would deny, and his preaching might have some hope of success.

The true manner of judging of the worth of amusements is to try them by their effects on the nerves and spirits the day after. True amusement ought to be, as the word indicates, recreation,—something that refreshes, turns us out anew, rests the mind and body by change, and gives cheerfulness and alacrity to our return to duty.

The true objection to all stimulants, alcoholic and narcotic, consists simply in this,—that they are a form of overdraft on the nervous energy, which helps us to use up in one hour the strength of whole days.

A man uses up all the fair, legal interest of nervous power by too much business, too much care, or too much amusement. He has now a demand to meet. He has a complicate account to make up, an essay or a sermon to write, and he primes himself by a cup of coffee, a cigar, a glass of spirits. This is exactly the procedure of a man who, having used the interest of his money, begins to dip into the principal. The strength a man gets in this way is just so much taken out of his life-blood; it is borrowing of a merciless creditor, who will exact, in time, the pound of flesh nearest his heart.

Much of the irritability which spoils home happiness is the letting-down from the over-excitement of stimulus. Some will drink coffee, when they own every day that it makes them nervous; some will drug themselves with tobacco, and some with alcohol, and, for a few hours of extra brightness, give themselves and their friends many hours when amiability or agreeableness is quite out of the question. There are people calling themselves Christians who live in miserable thraldom, forever in debt to Nature, forever overdrawing on their just resources, and using up their patrimony, because they have not the moral courage to break away from a miserable appetite.

The same may be said of numberless indulgences of the palate, which tax the stomach beyond its power, and bring on all the horrors of indigestion. It is almost impossible for a confirmed dyspeptic to act like a good Christian; but a good Christian ought not to become a confirmed dyspeptic. Reasonable self-control, abstaining from all unseasonable indulgence, may prevent or put an end to dyspepsia, and many suffer and make their friends suffer only because they will persist in eating what they know is hurtful to them.

But it is not merely in worldly business, or fashionable amusements, or the gratification of appetite, that people are tempted to overdraw and use up in advance their life-force. It is done in ways more insidious, because connected with our moral and religious faculties. There are religious exaltations beyond the regular pulse and beatings of ordinary nature, that quite as surely gravitate downward into the mire of irritability. The ascent to the third heaven lets even the Apostle down to a thorn in the flesh, the messenger of Satan to buffet him.

It is the temptation of natures in which the moral faculties predominate to overdo in the outward expression and activities of religion till they are used up and irritable, and have no strength left to set a good example in domestic life.

The Reverend Mr. X. in the pulpit to-day appears with the face of an angel; he soars away into those regions of exalted devotion where his people can but faintly gaze after him; he tells them of the victory that overcometh the world, of an unmoved faith that fears no evil, of a serenity of love that no outward event can ruffle; and all look after him and wonder, and wish they could so soar.

Alas! the exaltation which inspires these sublime conceptions, these celestial ecstasies, is a double and treble draft on Nature,—and poor Mrs. X. knows, when she hears him preaching, that days of miserable reaction are before her. He has been a fortnight driving before a gale of strong excitement, doing all the time twice or thrice as much as in his ordinary state he could, and sustaining himself by the stimulus of strong coffee. He has preached or exhorted every night, and conversed with religious inquirers every day, seeming to himself to become stronger and stronger, because every day more and more excitable and excited. To his hearers, with his flushed sunken cheek and his glittering eye, he looks like some spiritual being just trembling on his flight for upper worlds; but to poor Mrs. X., whose husband he is, things wear a very different aspect. Her woman and mother instincts tell her that he is drawing on his life-capital with both hands, and that the hours of a terrible settlement must come, and the days of darkness will be many. He who spoke so beautifully of the peace of a soul made perfect will not be able to bear the cry of his baby or the pattering feet of any of the poor little Xs., who must be sent

"Anywhere, anywhere, Out of his sight";

he who discoursed so devoutly of perfect trust in God will be nervous about the butcher's bill, sure of going to ruin because both ends of the salary don't meet; and he who could so admiringly tell of the silence of Jesus under provocation will but too often speak unadvisedly with his lips. Poor Mr. X. will be morally insane for days or weeks, and absolutely incapable of preaching Christ in the way that is the most effective, by setting Him forth in his own daily example.

What then? must we not do the work of the Lord?

Yes, certainly; but the first work of the Lord, that for which provision is to be made in the first place, is to set a good example as a Christian man. Better labor for years steadily, diligently, doing every day only what the night's rest can repair, avoiding those cheating stimulants that overtax Nature, and illustrating the sayings of the pulpit by the daily life in the family, than to pass life in exaltations and depressions.

The same principles apply to hearers as to preachers. Religious services must be judged of like amusements, by their effect on the life. If an overdose of prayers, hymns, and sermons leaves us tired, nervous, and cross, it is only not quite as bad as an overdose of fashionable folly.

It could be wished that in every neighborhood there might be one or two calm, sweet, daily services which should morning and evening unite for a few solemn moments the hearts of all as in one family, and feed with a constant, unnoticed daily supply the lamp of faith and love. Such are some of the daily prayer-meetings which for eight or ten years past have held their even tenor in some of our New England cities, and such the morning and evening services which we are glad to see obtaining in the Episcopal churches. Everything which brings religion into habitual contact with life, and makes it part of a healthy, cheerful average living, we hail as a sign of a better day. Nothing is so good for health as daily devotion. It is the best soother of the nerves, the best antidote to care; and we trust erelong that all Christian people will be of one mind in this, and that neighborhoods will be families gathering daily around one altar, praying not for themselves merely, but for each other.

The conclusion of the whole matter is this: Set apart some provision to make merry with at home, and guard that reserve as religiously as the priests guarded the shew-bread in the temple. However great you are, however good, however wide the general interests that you may control, you gain nothing by neglecting home-duties. You must leave enough of yourself to be able to bear and forbear, give and forgive, and be a source of life and cheerfulness around the hearthstone. The great sign given by the Prophets of the coming of the Millennium is,—what do you suppose?—"He shall turn the heart of the fathers to the children, and the heart of the children to their fathers, lest I come and smite the earth with a curse."

Thus much on avoiding unhealthy, irritable states.

But it still remains that a large number of people will be subject to them unavoidably for these reasons.

First. The use of tobacco, alcohol, and other kindred stimulants, for so many generations, has vitiated the brain and nervous system, so that it is not what it was in former times. Michelet treats of this subject quite at large in some of his late works; and we have to face the fact of a generation born with an impaired nervous organization, who will need constant care and wisdom to avoid unhealthy, morbid irritation.

There is a temperament called the HYPOCHONDRIAC, to which many persons, some of them the brightest, the most interesting, the most gifted, are born heirs,—a want of balance of the nervous powers, which tends constantly to periods of high excitement and of consequent depression,—an unfortunate inheritance for the possessor, though accompanied often with the greatest talents. Sometimes, too, it is the unfortunate lot of those who have not talents, who bear its burdens and its anguish without its rewards.

People of this temperament are subject to fits of gloom and despondency, of nervous irritability and suffering, which darken the aspect of the whole world to them, which present lying reports of their friends, of themselves, of the circumstances of their life, and of all with which they have to do.

Now the highest philosophy for persons thus afflicted is to understand themselves and their tendencies, to know that these fits of gloom and depression are just as much a form of disease as a fever or a toothache, to know that it is the peculiarity of the disease to fill the mind with wretched illusions, to make them seem miserable and unlovely to themselves, to make their nearest friends seem unjust and unkind, to make all events appear to be going wrong and tending to destruction and ruin.

The evils and burdens of such a temperament are half removed when a man once knows that he has it and recognizes it for a disease, when he does not trust himself to speak and act in those bitter hours as if there were any truth in what he thinks and feels and sees. He who has not attained to this wisdom overwhelms his friends and his family with the waters of bitterness; he stings with unjust accusations, and makes his fireside dreadful with fancies which are real to him, but false as the ravings of fever.

A sensible person, thus diseased, who has found out what ails him, will shut his mouth resolutely, not to give utterance to the dark thoughts that infest his soul.

A lady of great brilliancy and wit, who was subject to these periods, once said to me, "My dear Sir, there are times when I know I am possessed of the Devil, and then I never let myself speak." And so this wise woman carried her burden about with her in a determined, cheerful reticence, leaving always the impression of a cheery, kindly temper, when, if she had spoken out a tithe of what she thought and felt in her morbid hours, she would have driven all her friends from her, and made others as miserable as she was herself. She was a sunbeam, a life-giving presence in every family, by the power of self-knowledge and self-control.

Such victories as this are the victories of real saints.

But if the victim of these glooms is once tempted to lift their heavy load by the use of any stimulus whatever, he or she is a lost man or woman. It is from this sad class more than any other that the vast army of drunkards and opium-eaters is recruited. The hypochondriacs belong to the class so well described by that brilliant specimen of them, Dr. Johnson,—those who can practise ABSTINENCE, but not TEMPERANCE. They cannot, they will not be moderate. Whatever stimulant they take for relief will create an uncontrollable appetite, a burning passion. The temperament itself lies in the direction of insanity. It needs the most healthful, careful, even regime and management to keep it within the bounds of soundness; but the introduction of stimulants deepens its gloom almost to madness.

All parents, in the education of their children, should look out for and understand the signs of this temperament. It appears in early childhood; and a child inclined to fits of depression should be marked as a subject of the most thoughtful, painstaking physical and moral training. All over-excitement and stimulus should be carefully avoided, whether in the way of study, amusement, or diet. Judicious education may do much to mitigate the unavoidable pains and penalties of this most undesirable inheritance.

The second class of persons who need wisdom in the control of their moods is that large class whose unfortunate circumstances make it impossible for them to avoid constantly overdoing and overdrawing upon their nervous energies, and who therefore are always exhausted and worn out. Poor souls, who labor daily under a burden too heavy for them, and whose fretfulness and impatience are looked upon with sorrow, not anger, by pitying angels. Poor mothers, with families of little children clinging round them, and a baby that never lets them sleep; hard-working men, whose utmost toil, day and night, scarcely keeps the wolf from the door; and all the hard-laboring, heavy-laden, on whom the burdens of life press far beyond their strength.

There are but two things we know of for these,—two only remedies for the irritation that comes of these exhaustions: the habit of silence towards men, and of speech towards God. The heart must utter itself or burst; but let it learn to commune constantly and intimately with One always present and always sympathizing. This is the great, the only safeguard against fretfulness and complaint. Thus and thus only can peace spring out of confusion, and the breaking chords of an overtaxed nature be strung anew to a celestial harmony.



THE POPULAR LECTURE.

The popular lecture, in the Northern States of America, has become, in Yankee parlance, "an institution"; and it has attained such prevalence and power that it deserves more attention and more respect from those who assume the control of the motive influences of society than it has hitherto received. It has been the habit of certain literary men, (more particularly of such as do not possess a gift for public speech,) and of certain literary magazines, (managed by persons of delicate habit and weak lungs,) to regard and to treat the popular lecture with a measure of contempt. For the last fifteen years the downfall of what has been popularly denominated "The Lecture System" has been confidently predicted by those who, granting them the wisdom which they assume, should have been so well acquainted with its nature and its adaptation to a permanent popular want as to see that it must live and thrive until something more practicable can be contrived to take its place. If anything more interesting, cheaper, simpler, or more portable can be found than a vigorous man, with a pleasant manner, good voice, and something to say, then the popular lecture will certainly be superseded; but the man who will invent this substitute is at present engaged on a new order of architecture and the problem of perpetual motion, with such prospect of full employment for the present as will give "the lecture system" sufficient time to die gracefully. An institution which can maintain its foothold in the popular regard throughout such a war as has challenged the interest and taxed the energies of this nation during the last three years is one which will not easily die; and the history of the popular lecture proves, that, wherever it has been once established, it retains its place through all changes of social material and all phases of political and religious influence. Circumstances there may be which will bring intermissions in its yearly operations; but no instance can be found of its permanent relinquishment by a community which has once enjoyed its privileges, and acquired a taste for the food and inspiration which it furnishes.

An exposition of the character of the popular lecture, the machinery by which it is supported, and the results which it aims at and accomplishes, cannot be without interest to thoughtful readers.

What is the popular lecture in America? It will not help us in this inquest to refer to a dictionary; for it is not necessary that the performance which Americans call a lecture should be an instructive discourse at all. A lecture before the Young Men's Associations and lecture organizations of the country is any characteristic utterance of any man who speaks in their employment. The word "lecture" covers generally generically all the orations, declamations, dissertations, exhortations, recitations, humorous extravaganzas, narratives of travel, harangues, sermons, semi-sermons, demi-semi-sermons, and lectures proper, which can be crowded into what is called "a course," but which might be more properly called a bundle, the bundle depending for its size upon the depth of the managerial purse. Ten or twelve lectures are the usual number, although in some of the larger cities, beginning early in "the lecture season," and ending late, the number given may reach twenty.

The machinery for the management and support of these lectures is as simple as possible, the lecturers themselves having nothing to do with it. There are library associations or lyceum associations, composed principally of young men, in all the cities and large villages, which institute and manage courses of lectures every winter, for the double purpose of interesting and instructing the public and replenishing their treasury. The latter object, it must be confessed, occupies the principal place, although, as it depends for its attainment on the success of the former, the public is as well served as if its entertainment were alone consulted. In the smaller towns there are usually temporary associations, organized for the simple purpose of obtaining lecturers and managing the business incident to a course. Not unfrequently, ten, twenty, or thirty men pledge themselves to make up any deficiency there may be in the funds required for the season's entertainments, and place the management in the hands of a committee. Sometimes two or three persons call themselves a lecture-committee, and employ lecturers, themselves risking the possible loss, and dividing among themselves any profits which their course may produce. The opposition or independent courses in the larger cities are often instituted by such organizations,—sometimes, indeed, by a single person, who has a natural turn for this sort of enterprise. The invitations to lecturers are usually sent out months in advance, though very few courses are definitely provided for and arranged before the first of November. The fees of lecturers range from fifty to a hundred dollars. A few uniformly command the latter sum, and lecture-committees find it for their interest to employ them. It is to be presumed that the universal rise of prices will change these figures somewhat.

The popular lecture is the most purely democratic of all our democratic institutions. The people hear a second time only those who interest them. If a lecturer cannot engage the interest of his audience, his fame or greatness or learning will pass for nothing. A lecture-audience will forgive extravagance, but never dulness. They will give a man one chance to interest them, and if he fails, that is the last of him. The lecture-committees understand this, and gauge the public taste or the public humor as delicately as the most accomplished theatrical manager. The man who receives their invitation may generally be certain that the public wish either to see or hear him. Popularity is the test. Only popularity after trial, or notoriety before, can draw houses. Only popularity and notoriety can pay expenses and swell the balance of profit. Notoriety in the various walks of life and the personal influence of friends and admirers can usually secure a single hearing, but no outside influence can keep a lecturer permanently in the field. If the people "love to hear" him, he can lecture from Maine to California six months in the year; if not, he cannot get so much as a second invitation.

One of the noticeable features of the public humor in this matter is the aversion to professional lecturers,—to those who make lecturing a business, with no higher aim than that of getting a living. No calling or profession can possibly be more legitimate than that of the lecturer; there is nothing immodest or otherwise improper in the advertisement of a man's literary wares; yet it is true, beyond dispute, that the public do not regard with favor those who make lecturing their business, particularly if they present themselves uninvited. So well is this understood by this class of lecturers that a part of their machinery consists of invitations numerously signed, which invitations are written and circulated by themselves, their interested friends, or their authorized agents, and published as their apology for appearing. A man who has no other place in the world than that which he makes for himself on the platform is never a popular favorite, unless he uses the platform for the advocacy of some great philanthropic movement or reform, into which he throws unselfishly the leading efforts of his life. Referring to the history of the last twenty years, it will readily be seen that those who have undertaken to make lecturing a business, without side pursuit or superior aim, are either retired from the field or are very low in the public favor. The public insist, that, in order to be an acceptable lecturer, a man must be something else, that he must begin and remain something else; and it will be found to-day that those only who work worthily in other fields have a permanent hold upon the affections of lecture-going people. It is the public judgment or caprice that the work of the lecturer shall be incidental to some worthy pursuit, from which that work temporarily calls him. There seems to be a kind of coquetry in this. The public do not accept of those who are too openly in the market or who are too easily won. They prefer to entice a man from his chosen love, and account his favors sweeter because the wedded favorite is deprived of them.

A lecturer's first invitation, in consonance with these facts, is almost always suggested by his excellence or notoriety in some department of life that may or may not be allied to the platform. If a man makes a remarkable speech, he is very naturally invited to lecture; but he is no more certain to be invited than he who wins a battle. A showman gets his first invitation for the same reason that an author does,—because he is notorious. Nearly all new men in the lecture-field are introduced through the popular desire to see notorious or famous people. A man whose name is on the popular tongue is a man whom the popular eye desires to see. Such a man will always draw one audience; and a single occasion is all that he is engaged for. After getting a place upon the platform, it is for him to prove his power to hold it. If he does not lecture as well as he writes, or fights, or walks, or lifts, or leaps, or hunts lions, or manages an exhibition, or plays a French horn, or does anything which has made him a desirable man for curious people to see, then he makes way for the next notoriety. Very few courses of lectures are delivered in the cities and larger villages that do not present at least one new man, who is invited simply because people are curious to see him. The popular desire is strong to come in some way into personal contact with those who do remarkable things. They cannot be chased in the street; they can be seen only to a limited extent in the drawing-room; but it is easy to pay twenty-five cents to hear them lecture, with the privilege of looking at them for an hour and criticizing them for a week.

It is a noteworthy fact, in this connection, that, while there are thousands of cultivated men who would esteem it a privilege to lecture for the lecturer's usual fee, there are hardly more than twenty-five in the country whom the public considers it a privilege worth paying for to hear. It is astonishing, that, in a country so fertile as this in the production of gifted and cultivated men, so few find it possible to establish themselves upon the platform as popular favorites. If the accepted ones were in a number of obvious particulars alike, there could be some intelligent generalizing upon the subject; but men possessing fewer points of resemblance, or presenting stronger contrasts, in style of person and performance, than the established favorites of lecture-going people, cannot be found in the world; and if any generalization be attempted, it must relate to matters below the surface and beyond the common apprehension. It is certain that not always the greatest or the most brilliant or the most accomplished men are to be found among the popular lecturers. A man may make a great, even a brilliant speech on an important public question, and be utterly dreary in the lecture-room. There are multitudes of eloquent clergymen who in their pulpits command the attention of immense congregations, yet who meet with no acknowledgment of power upon the platform.

In a survey of those who are the established favorites, it will be found that there are no slaves among them. The people will not accept those who are creed-bound, or those who bow to any authority but God and themselves. They insist that those who address them shall be absolutely free, and that they shall speak only for themselves. Party and sectarian spokesmen find no permanent place upon the platform. It is only when a lecturer cuts loose from all his conventional belongings, and speaks with thought and tongue unfettered, that he finds his way to the popular heart. This freedom has sometimes been considered dangerous by the more conservative members of society; and they have not unfrequently managed to get the lectures into their own hands, or to organize courses representing more moderate views in matters of society, politics, and religion; but their efforts have uniformly proved failures. The people have always refused to support lectures which brought before them the bondmen of creeds and parties. Year after year men have been invited to address audiences three fourths of whom disagreed utterly with the sentiments and opinions which it was well understood such men would present, simply because they were free men, with minds of their own and tongues that would speak those minds or be dumb. Names could be mentioned of those who for the last fifteen years have been established favorites in communities which listened to them respectfully, nay, applauded them warmly, and then abused them for the remainder of the year.

It is not enough, however, that a lecturer be free. He must have something fresh to say, or a fresh and attractive way of saying that which is not altogether new. Individuality, and a certain personal quality which, for lack of a better name, is called magnetism, are also essential to the popular lecturer. People desire to be moved, to be acted upon by a strong and positive nature. They like to be furnished with fresh ideas, or with old ideas put into a fresh and practical form, so that they can be readily apprehended and appropriated.

And here comes the grand difficulty which every lecturer encounters, and over which so many stumble into failure,—that of interesting and refreshing men and women of education and culture, and, at the same time, of pleasing, moving, and instructing those of feebler acquirements or no acquirements at all. Most men of fine powers fail before a popular audience, because they do not fully apprehend the thing to be done. They almost invariably write above the level of one half of their audience, and below the level of the other half. In either event, they fail, and have the mortification of seeing others of inferior gifts succeed through a nicer adaptation of their literary wares to the wants of the market. Much depends upon the choice of a subject. If that be selected from those which touch universal interests and address common motives, half the work is done. A clear, simple, direct style of composition, apt illustration, (and the power of this is marvellous,) and a distinct and pleasant delivery, will do much to complete the success.

It is about equally painful and amusing to witness the efforts which some men make to write down to the supposed capacity of a popular audience. The puerilities and buffooneries that are sometimes undertaken by these men, for the purpose of conciliating the crowd, certainly amuse the crowd, and so answer their end, though not in a way to bring reputation to the actors. No greater mistake can possibly be made than that of regarding an American lecture-going audience with contempt. There is no literary tribunal in this country that can more readily and justly decide whether a man has anything to say, and can say it well, than a lecture-audience in one of the smaller cities and larger villages of the Northern States. It is quite common to suppose that a Western audience demands a lower grade of literary effort, and a rougher style of speech, than an Eastern audience. Indeed, there are those who suppose that a lecture which would fully meet the demands of an average Eastern audience would be beyond the comprehension of an average Western audience; but the lecturer who shall accept any such assumption as this will find himself very unpleasantly mistaken. At the West, the lecture is both popular and fashionable, and the best people attend it. A lecturer may always be certain, then, that the best he can do will be thoroughly appreciated. The West is not particularly tolerant of dull men; but if a man be alive, he will find a market there for the best thought he produces.

In the larger cities of the East, the opera, the play, the frequent concert, the exhibition, the club-house, the social assembly, and a variety of public gatherings and public excitements, take from the lecture-audiences the class that furnishes the best material in the smaller cities; so that a lecturer rarely or never sees his best audiences in New York, or Boston, or Philadelphia.

Another requisite to popularity upon the platform is earnestness. Those who imagine that a permanent hold upon the people can be obtained by amusing them are widely mistaken. The popular lecture has fallen into disrepute with many worthy persons in consequence of the admission of buffoons and triflers to the lecturer's platform; and it is an evil which ought to be remedied. It is an evil, indeed, which is slowly working its own remedy. It is a disgraceful fact, that, in order to draw together crowds of people, men have been admitted to the platform whose notoriety was won by the grossest of literary charlatanism,—men whose only hold upon the public was gained by extravagances of thought and expression which would compromise the dignity and destroy the self-respect of any man of character and common sense. It is not enough that these persons quickly disgust their audiences, and have a brief life upon the list. They ought never to be introduced to the public as lecturers; and any momentary augmentation of receipts that may be secured from the rabble by the patronage of such mountebanks is more than lost by the disgrace they bring and the damage they do to what is called "The Lecture System." It is an insult to any lyceum-audience to suppose that it can have a strong and permanent interest in a trifler; and it is a gross injustice to every respectable lecturer in the field to introduce into his guild men who have no better motive and no higher mission than the stage-clown and the negro-minstrel.

But the career of triflers is always short. Only he who feels that he has something to do in making the world wiser and better, and who, in a bold and manly way, tries persistently to do it, is always welcome; and this fact—an incontrovertible one—is a sufficient vindication of the popular lecture from all the aspersions that have been cast upon it by disappointed aspirants for its honors, and shallow observers of its tendencies and results.

The choice of a subject has already been spoken of as a matter of importance, and a word should be said touching its manner of treatment. This introduces a discussion of the kind of lecture which at the present time is mainly in demand. Many wise and good men have questioned the character of the popular lecture. In their view, it does not add sufficiently to the stock of popular knowledge. The results are not solid and tangible. They would prefer scientific, or historical, or philosophical discourses. This conviction is so strong with these men, and the men themselves are so much respected, that the people are inclined to coincide with them in the matter of theory, while at the same time they refuse to give their theory practical entertainment. One reason why scientific and historical lectures are not popular is to be found in the difficulty of obtaining lecturers who have sufficient ingenuity and enthusiasm to make such lectures interesting. The number of men in the United States who can make such lectures attractive to popular audiences can be counted on the fingers of a single hand. We have had but one universally popular lecturer on astronomy in twenty years, and he is now numbered among the precious sacrifices of the war. There is only one entirely acceptable popular lecturer on the natural sciences in New England; and what is he among so many?

But this class of lectures has not been widely successful, even under the most favorable circumstances, and with the very best lecturers; and it is to be observed, that they grow less successful with the increasing intelligence of the people. In this fact is to be found an entirely rational and competent explanation of their failure. The schools have done so much toward popularizing science, and the circulating-library has rendered so familiar the prominent facts of history, that men and women do not go to the lecture to learn, and, as far as any appreciably practical benefit is concerned, do not need to go. It is only when some eminent enthusiast in these walks of learning consents to address them that they come out, and then it is rather to place themselves under the influence of his personality than to acquire the knowledge which he dispenses. Facts, if they are identified in any special way with the experience and life of the lecturer, are always acceptable; but facts which are recorded in books find a poor market in the popular lecture-room. Thus, while purely historical and scientific lectures are entirely neglected, narratives of personal travel, which, combine much of historical and scientific interest, have been quite popular, and, indeed, have been the specialties of more than one of the most popular of American lecturers, whose names will be suggested at once by this statement.

Twenty years ago the first popular lectures on anatomy and physiology were given, and a corps of lecturers came up and swept over the whole country, with much of interest and instruction to the people and no small profit to themselves. These lectures called the attention of educators to these sciences. Text-books for schools and colleges were prepared, and anatomy and physiology became common studies for the young. In various ways, through school-books and magazines and newspapers, there has accumulated a stock of popular knowledge of these sciences, and an apprehension of the limit of their practical usefulness, which have quite destroyed the demand for lectures upon them. Though a new generation has risen since the lecture on anatomy and physiology was the rage, no leaner field could possibly be found than that which the country now presents to the popular lecturer on these sciences. These facts are interesting in themselves, and they serve to illustrate the truth of that which has been stated touching lectures upon general historical and scientific subjects.

For facts alone the modern American public does not go hungry. American life is crowded with facts, to which the newspaper gives daily record and diffusion. Ideas, motives, thoughts, these are always in demand. Men wish for nothing more than to know how to classify their facts, what to do with them, how to govern them, and how far to be governed by them; and the man who takes the facts with which the popular life has come into contact and association, and draws from them their nutritive and motive power, and points out their relations to individual and universal good, and organizes around them the popular thought, and uses them to give direction to the popular life, and does all this with masterly skill, is the man whose houses are never large enough to contain those who throng to hear him. This is the popular lecturer, par excellence. The people have an earnest desire to know what a strong, independent, free man has to say about those facts which touch the experience, the direction, and the duty of their daily life; and the lecturer who with a hearty human sympathy addresses himself to this desire, and enters upon the service with genuine enthusiasm, wins the highest reward there is to be won in his field of effort.

The more ill-natured critics of the popular lecturer have reflected with ridicule upon his habit of repetition, A lecturer in full employment will deliver the same discourse perhaps fifty or a hundred times in a single season. There are probably half a dozen favorite lectures which have been delivered from two hundred to five hundred times within the last fifteen years. It does, indeed, at first glance, seem ridiculous for a man to stand, night after night, and deliver the same words, with the original enthusiasm apparently at its full height; and some lecturers, with an extra spice of mirthfulness in their composition, have given public record of their impressions in this respect. There are, however, certain facts to be considered which at least relieve him from the charge of literary sterility. A lecture often becomes famous, and is demanded by each succeeding audience, whatever the lecturer's preferences may be. There are lectures called for every year by audiences and committees which the lecturer would be glad never to see again, and which he never would see again, if he were to consult his own judgment alone. Then the popular lecturer, as has been already intimated, is usually engaged during two thirds of the year in some business or profession whose duties forbid the worthy preparation of more than one discourse for winter use. Then, if he has numerous engagements, he has neither time nor strength to do more than his nightly work; for, among all the pursuits in which literary men engage, none is more exhaustive in its demands upon the nervous energy than that of constant lecturing. The fulfilment of from seventy-five to ninety engagements involves, in round numbers, ten thousand miles of railroad-travel, much of it in the night, and all of it during the most unpleasant season of the year. There is probably nothing short of a military campaign that is attended by so many discomforts and genuine hardships as a season of active lecturing. Unless a man be young and endowed with an extraordinary amount of vital power, he becomes entirely unfitted by his nightly work, and the dissipation consequent upon constant change of scene, for consecutive thought and elaborate composition.

It is fortunate for the lecturer that there is no necessity for variety. The oft-repeated lecture is new to each new audience, and, being thoroughly in hand, and entirely familiar, is delivered with better effect than if the speaker were frequently choosing from a well-furnished repertory. It is popularly supposed that a lecturer loses all interest in a performance which he repeats so many times. This supposition is correct, in certain aspects of the matter, but not in any sense which detracts from his power to make it interesting to others. It is the general experience of lecturers, that, until they have delivered a discourse from ten to twenty times, they are themselves unable to measure its power; so that a performance which is offered at first timidly and with many doubts comes at length to be delivered confidently, and with measurable certainty of acceptance and success. The grand interest of a lecturer is in his new audience, in his experiment on an assembly of fresh minds. The lecture itself is regarded only as an instrument by which a desirable and important result is to be achieved; and familiarity with it, and steady use in its elocutionary handling, are conditions of the best success. Having selected the subject which, at the time, and for the times, he considers freshest and most fruitful, and with thorough care written out all he has to say upon it, there is no call for recurrence to minor themes, either as regards the credit of the lecturer or the best interests of those whom he addresses.

What good has the popular lecture accomplished? Its most enthusiastic advocates will not assert that it has added greatly to the stock of popular knowledge, in science or art, in history, philosophy, or literature; yet the most modest of them may claim that it has bestowed upon American society a permanent good of incalculable value. The relentless foe of all bigotry in politics and religion, the constant opponent of every form of bondage to party and sect, the practical teacher of the broadest toleration of individual opinion, it has had more to do with the steady melioration of the prejudices growing out of denominational interests in Church and State than any other agency whatever. The platform of the lecture-hall has been common ground for the representatives of all our social, political, and religious organizations. It is there that orthodox and heterodox, progressive and conservative, have won respect for themselves and toleration for their opinions by the demonstration of their own manhood, and the recognition of the common human brotherhood; for one has only to prove himself a true man, and to show a universal sympathy with men, to secure popular toleration for any opinion he may hold. Hardly a decade has passed away since, in nearly every Northern State, men suffered social depreciation in consequence of their political and religious opinions. Party and sectarian names have been freely used as reproachful and even as disgraceful epithets. To call a man by the name which he had chosen as the representative of his political or religious opinions was considered equivalent to calling him a knave or a fool; and if it happened that he was in the minority, his name alone was regarded as the stamp of social degradation. Now, thanks to the influence of the popular lecture mainly, men have made, and are rapidly making, room for each other. A man may be in the minority now without consequently being in personal disgrace. Men of liberal and even latitudinarian views are generously received in orthodox communities, and those of orthodox faith are gladly welcomed by men who subscribe to a shorter creed and bear a broader charter of life and liberty. There certainly has never been a time in the history of America when there was such generous and general toleration of all men and all opinions as now; and as the popular lecture has been universal, with a determined aim and a manifest influence toward this end, it is but fair to claim for it a prominent agency in the result.

Another good which may be counted among the fruits of the popular lecture is the education of the public taste in intellectual amusements. The end which the lecture-goer seeks is not always improvement, in any respect. Multitudes of men and women have attended the lecture to be interested, and to be interested intellectually is to be intellectually amused. Lecturers who have appealed simply to the emotional nature, without attempting to engage the intellect, have ceased to be popular favorites. So far as the popular lecture has taken hold of the affections of a community, and secured its constant support, it has destroyed the desire for all amusements of a lower grade; and it will be found, that, generally, those who attend the lecture rarely or never give their patronage and presence to the buffooneries of the day. They have found something better,—something with more of flavor in the eating, with more of nutriment in the digestion. How great a good this is those only can judge who realize that men will have amusements of some sort, and that, if they cannot obtain such as will elevate them, they will indulge in such as are frivolous and dissipating. The lecture does quite as much for elevated amusement out of the hall as in it. The quickening social influence of an excellent lecture, particularly in a community where life flows sluggishly and all are absorbed in manual labor, is as remarkable as it is beneficent. The lecture and the lecturer are the common topics of discussion for a week, and the conversation which is so apt to cling to health and the weather is raised above the level of commonplace.

Notwithstanding the fact that a moiety, or a majority, of the popular lecturers are clergymen, the lecture has not always received the favor of the cloth. Indeed, there has often been private and sometimes public complaint on the part of preachers, that the finished productions of the lecturer, the results of long and patient elaboration, rendered doubly attractive by a style of delivery to be won only by frequent repetition of the same discourse, have brought the hastily prepared and plainly presented Sunday sermon into an unjust and damaging comparison. The complaint is a strange one, particularly as no one has ever claimed that the highest style of eloquence or the most remarkable models of rhetoric are to be found in the lecture-hall. There has, at least, been no general conviction that a standard of excellence in English and its utterance has been maintained there too high for the comfort and credit of the pulpit. It is possible, therefore, that the pulpit betrays its weak point, and needs the comparison which it deprecates. A man of brains will gratefully receive suggestions from any quarter. That impulses to a more familiar and direct style of sermonizing, a brighter and better elocution, and a bolder utterance of personal convictions, have come to the pulpit from the platform, there is no question. This feeling on the part of preachers is by no means universal, however; for some of them have long regarded the lecture with contempt, and have sometimes resented it as an impertinence. And it may be (for there shall be no quarrel in the matter) that lecturers are quacks, and that lectures, like homoeopathic remedies, are very contemptible things; but they have pleasantly modified the doses of the old practice, however slow the doctors are to confess it; and so much, at least, may be counted among the beneficent results of the system under discussion.

Last in the brief enumeration of the benefits of the popular lecture, it has been the devoted, consistent, never tiring champion of universal liberty. If the popular lecturer has not been a power in this nation for the overthrow of American Slavery,—for its overthrow in the conscientious convictions and the legal and conventional fastnesses of the nation,—then have the friends of oppression grossly lied; for none have received their malicious and angry objurgations more unsparingly than our plain-speaking gentleman who makes his yearly circuit among the lyceums. No champion of slavery, no advocate of privilege, no apologist for systematized and legalized wrong has ever been able to establish himself as a popular lecturer. The people may listen respectfully to such a man once; but, having heard him, they drop him forever. In truth, a man cannot be a popular lecturer who does not plant himself upon the eternal principles of justice. He must be a democrat, a believer in and an advocate of the equal rights of men. A slavery-loving, slavery-upholding lecturer would be just as much of an anomaly as a slavery-loving and slavery-singing poet. The taint so vitiates the whole aesthetic nature, so poisons the moral sense, so palsies the finer powers, so destroys all true sympathy with universal humanity, that the composition of an acceptable lecture becomes impossible to the man who bears it. The popular lecture, as it has been described in this article, has never existed at the South, and could not be tolerated there. Until within three years it has never found opportunity for utterance in the capital of the nation; but where liberty goes, it makes its way, and helps to break the way for liberty everywhere.

It is a noteworthy fact, that the popular lecturer, though the devoted advocate of freedom to the slave, has rarely been regarded as either a trustworthy or an important man in the party which has represented his principles in this country. He has always been too free to be a partisan, too radical and intractable for a party seeking power or striving to preserve it. No party of any considerable magnitude has ever regarded him as its expositor. A thousand times have party-speakers and party-organs, professing principles identical with his own, washed their hands of all responsibility for his utterances. Even now, when the sound of falling shackles is in the air, and the smoke of the torment of the oppressor fills the sky, old partisans of freedom cannot quite forget their stupid and hackneyed animosities, but still bemoan the baleful influence of this fiery itinerant. Representative of none but himself, disowned or hated by all parties, acknowledging responsibility to God and his own conscience only, he has done his work, and done it well,—done it amid careful questionings and careless curses,—done it, and been royally paid for it, when speakers who fairly represented the political and religious prejudices of the people could not have called around them a baker's dozen, with tickets at half-price or at no price at all.

When the cloud which now envelops the country shall gather up its sulphurous folds and roll away, tinted in its retiring by the smile of God beaming from a calm sky upon a nation redeemed to freedom and justice, and the historian, in the light of that smile, shall trace home to their fountains the streams of influence and power which will then join to form the river of the national life, he will find one, starting far inland among the mountains, longer than the rest and mightier than most, and will recognize it as the confluent outpouring of living, Christian speech, from ten thousand lecture-platforms, on which free men stood and vindicated the right of man to freedom.



THE HOUR OF VICTORY.

Meridian moments! grandly given To cheer the warrior's soul from heaven! God's ancient boon, vouchsafed to those Who battle long with Freedom's foes,— Oh, what in life can claim the power To match with that divinest hour?

I see the avenging angel wave His banner o'er the embattled brave; I hear above Hate's trumpet-blare The shout that rends the smoking air, And then I know at whose command The victor sweeps the Rebel land!

Enduring Valor lifts his head To count the flying and the dead; Returning Virtue still maintains The right to break unhallowed chains; While sacred Justice, born of God, Walks regnant o'er the bleeding sod.



THE CAUSES OF FOREIGN ENMITY TO THE UNITED STATES.

The hostility of foreign governments to the United States is due as much at least to dread of their growing power as dislike of their democracy; and accordingly the theory of the Secessionists as to the character of our Union has been as acceptable to the understandings of our foreign enemies as the acts of the Rebels against its government have been pleasing to their sympathies. They well know that a union of States whose government recognized the right of Secession would be as weak as an ordinary league between independent sovereignties; and as the rapid growth of the States in population, wealth, and power is certain, they naturally desire, that, if united, these States shall be an aggregation of forces, neutralizing each other, rather than a fusion of forces, which, for general purposes, would make them a giant nationality. Accordingly, centralized France reads to us edifying homilies on the advantages of disintegration; and England, rich with the spoils of suppressed insurrections, adjures us most plaintively to respect the sacred rights of rebellion. The simple explanation of this hypocrisy or irony is, that both France and England are anxious that the strength of the United States shall not correspond to their bulk. The looser the tie of union, the greater the number of confederacies into which the nation should split, the safer they would feel. The doctrine of the inherent and undivided sovereignty of the States will therefore find resolute champions abroad as long as it has the most inconsiderable faction to support it at home.

The European nations are kept in order by what is called the Balance of Power, and this policy they would delight to see established on this continent. Should the different States of the American Union be occupied, like the European states, in checking each other, they could not act as a unit, and their terrific rate of growth in wealth and population, as compared with that of the nations across the Atlantic, would not excite in the latter such irritation and alarm. The magic which has changed English abolitionists into partisans of slaveholders, and French imperialists into champions of insurrection, came from the figures of the Census Reports. It is calculated that the United States, if the rate of growth which obtained between 1850 and 1860 is continued, will have, forty years hence, a hundred millions of inhabitants, and four hundred and twenty thousand millions of dollars of taxable wealth,—over three times the present population, and over ten times the present wealth, of the richest of European nations. It is probable that this concrete fact exerts more influence on the long-headed statesmen of Europe than any abstract dislike of democracy. The only union which they could bring against such a power would be a league, a confederacy, a continuous and subsisting treaty, between sovereign powers. Is it surprising that they should wish our union to be of the same character? Is it surprising that the contemplation of a government, whether despotic or democratic, which could act directly on a hundred millions of people, with the supreme right of taxing property to the amount of four hundred and twenty billions of dollars, should fill them with dismay?

The inherent weakness of a league, even when its general object is such as to influence the passions of the nations which compose it, is well known to all European statesmen. The various alliances against France show the insuperable difficulties in the way of giving to confederacies of sovereign states a unity and efficiency corresponding to their aggregate strength, and the necessity which the leaders of such alliances are always under of expending half their skill and energy in preventing the loosely compacted league from falling to pieces. The alliance under the lead of William III. barely sustained itself against Louis XIV., though William was the ablest statesman in Europe, and had been trained in the tactics of confederacies from his cradle. The alliance under the lead of Marlborough owed its measure of success to his infinite address and miraculous patience as much as to his consummate military genius; and the ignominious "secession" of England, in the treaty of Utrecht, ended in making it one of the most conspicuous examples of the weakness of such combinations. When the exceptional military genius, as in the case of Frederick and Napoleon, has been on the side of the single power assailed, the results have been all the more remarkable. The coalition against Frederick, the ruler of five millions of people, was composed of sovereigns who ruled a hundred millions; and at the end of seven years of war they had not succeeded in wringing permanently from his grasp a square mile of territory. The first coalitions against Napoleon resulted only in making him the master of Europe; and he was crushed at last merely by the dead weight of the nations which the senselessness of his political passions brought down upon his empire. Indeed, the trouble with all leagues is, that they are commanded, more or less, by debating-societies; and a debating-society is weak before a man. The Southern Confederacy is a confederacy only in name; for no despotism in Europe or Asia has more relentless unity of purpose, and in none does debate exercise less control over executive affairs. All the powers of the government are practically absorbed in Jefferson Davis, and a rebellion in the name of State Rights has ended in a military autocracy, in which all rights, personal and State, are suspended.

Now, as it is impossible for European governments to combine efficiently against such a colossal power as the United States promise within a few generations to be, provided the unity of the nation is preserved with its growth, they naturally favor every element of disintegration which will reduce the separate States to the condition of European states. Earl Russell's famous saying, that "the North is fighting for power, the South for independence," is to be interpreted in this sense. What he overlooked was the striking fact which distinguishes the States of the American Republic from the states of Europe. The latter are generally separated by race and nationality, or, where composed of heterogeneous materials, are held together by military power. The people of the United States are homogeneous, and rapidly assimilate into American citizens the foreigners they so cordially welcome. No man has lifted his hand against the government as an Irishman, a Frenchman, a German, an Italian, a Dane, but only as a slaveholder, or as a citizen of a State controlled by slaveholders. The insurrection was started in the interest of an institution, and not of a race. To compare such a rebellion with European rebellions is to confuse things essentially distinct. The American government is so constituted that nobody has an interest in overturning it, unless his interest is opposed to that of the mass of the citizens with whom he is place on an equality; and hence his treason is necessarily a revolt against the principle of equal rights. In Europe, it is needless to say, every rebellion with which an American can sympathise is a rebellion in favor of the principle against which the slaveholders' rebellion is an armed protest. An insurrection in Russia to restore serfdom, an insurrection in Italy to restore the dethroned despots, an insurrection in England to restore the Stuart system of kingly government, an insurrection anywhere to restore what the progress of civilization had made contemptible or accursed, would be the only fit parallel to the insurrection of the Southern Confederates. The North is fighting for power which is its due, because it is just and right; the South is fighting for independence, in order to remove all checks on its purpose to oppress and enslave. The fact that the power for which the North fights is a very different thing from the power which a European monarchy struggles to preserve and extend, the fact that it is the kind of power which oppressed nationalities seek in their efforts for independence, only makes our foreign critics more apprehensive of its effects. It is a dangerous power to them, because, founded in the consent of the people, there is no limit to its possible extension, except in the madness or guilt of that portion of the people who are restive under the restraints of justice and impatient under the rule of freedom.

It would be doing cruel wrong to Earl Russell's intelligence to suppose that he really believed what he said, when he drew a parallel between the American Revolution and the Rebellion of the Confederate States, and asserted that the right of the Southern States to secede from the American Union was identical with the right of the Colonies to sever their connection with Great Britain. We believe the Colonies were right in their revolt. But if the circumstances had been different,—if since the reign of William III. they had nominated or controlled almost every Prime Minister, had shaped the policy of the British Empire, had enjoyed not only a representation in Parliament, but in the basis of representation had been favored with a special discrimination in their favor against Kent and Yorkshire,—if both in the House of Lords and the House of Commons they had not only been dominant, but had treated the Bentincks, Cavendishes, and Russells, the Montagus, Walpoles, and Pitts, with overbearing insolence,—and if, after wielding power so long and so arrogantly, they had rebelled at the first turn in political affairs which seemed to indicate that they were to be reduced from a position of superiority to one of equality,—if our forefathers had acted after this wild fashion, we should not only think that the Revolution they achieved was altogether unjustifiable, but we should blush at the thought of being descended from such despot-demagogues. This is a very feeble statement of the case which would connect the Revolt of the American Colonies with the Revolt of the American Liberticides; and Earl Russell is too well-informed a statesman not to know that his parallel fails in every essential particular. He threw it out, as he threw out his sounding antithesis about "power" and "independence," to catch ears not specially blessed with brains between them.

But European statesmen, in order to promote the causes of American dissensions, are willing not only to hazard fallacies which do not impose on their own understandings, but to give aid and comfort to iniquities which in Europe have long been antiquated. They thus tolerate chattel slavery, not because they sympathize with it, but because it is an element of disturbance in the growth of American power. Though it has for centuries been outgrown by the nations of Western Europe, and is repugnant to all their ideas and sentiments, they are willing to give it their moral support, provided it will break up the union of the people of the States, or remain as a constantly operating cause of enmity between the sections of a reconstructed Union. They would tolerate Mormonism or Atheism or Diabolism, if they thought it would have a similar effect; but at the same time they would not themselves legalize polygamy, or deny the existence of God, or inaugurate the worship of the Devil. Indeed, while giving slavery a politic sanction, they despise in their hearts the people who are so barbarous as to maintain such an institution; and the Southern rebel or Northern demagogue who thinks his championship of slavery really earns him any European respect is under that kind of delusion which it is always for the interest of the plotter to cultivate in the tool. It was common, a few years ago, to represent the Abolitionist as the dupe or agent of the aristocracies of Europe. It certainly might be supposed that persons who made this foolish charge were competent at least to see that the present enemy of the unity of the American people is the pro-slavery fanatic, and that it is on his knavery or stupidity that the ill-wishers to American unity now chiefly rely.

For the war has compelled these ill-wishers to modify their most cherished theory of democracy in the United States. They thought that the marvellous energy for military combination, developed by a democracy suddenly emancipated from oppression, such as was presented by the French people in the Revolution of 1789, was not the characteristic of a democracy which had grown up under democratic institutions. The first was anarchy plus the dictator; the second was merely "anarchy plus the constable." They had an obstinate prepossession, that, in a settled democracy like ours, the selfishness of the individual was so stimulated that he became incapable of self-sacrifice for the public good. The ease with which the government of the United States has raised men by the million and money by the billion has overturned this theory, and shown that a republic, of which individual liberty and general equality form the animating principles, can still rapidly avail itself of the property and personal service of all the individuals who compose it, and that self-seeking is not more characteristic of a democracy in time of peace than self-sacrifice is characteristic of the same democracy in time of war. The overwhelming and apparently unlimited power of a government thus of the people and for the people is what the war has demonstrated, and it very naturally excites the fear and jealousy of governments which are based on less firm foundations in the popular mind and heart and will.

It is doubtless true that many candid foreign thinkers favor the disintegration of the American Union because they believe that the consolidation of its power would make it the meddlesome tyrant of the world. They admit that the enterprise, skill, and labor of the people, applied to the unbounded undeveloped resources of the country, will enable them to create wealth very much faster than other nations, and that the population, fed by continual streams of immigration, will also increase with a corresponding rapidity. They admit, that, if kept united, a few generations will be sufficient to make them the richest, largest, and most powerful nation in the world. But they also fear that this nation will be an armed and aggressive democracy, deficient in public reason and public conscience, disposed to push unjust claims with insolent pertinacity, and impelled by a spirit of propagandism which will continually disturb the peace of Europe. It is curious that this impression is derived from the actions of the government while it was controlled by the traitors now in rebellion against it, and from the professions of those Northern demagogues who are most in sympathy with European opinion concerning the justice and policy of the war. Mr. Fernando Wood, the most resolute of all the Northern advocates of peace, recommended from his seat in Congress but a month ago, that a compromise be patched up with the Rebels on the principle of sacrificing the negro, and then that both sections unite to seize Canada, Cuba, and Mexico. The kind of "democracy" which Mr. Jefferson Davis and Mr. Fernando Wood represent is the kind of democracy which has always been the great disturber of our foreign relations, and it is a democracy which will be rendered powerless by the triumph of the national arms. The United States of 1900, with their population of a hundred millions, and their wealth of four hundred and twenty billions, will, we believe, be a power for good, and not for evil. They will be strong enough to make their rights respected everywhere; but they will not force their ideas on other nations at the point of the bayonet; they will not waste their energies in playing the part of the armed propagandist of democratic opinions in Europe; and the contagion of their principles will only be the natural result of the example of peace, prosperity, freedom, and justice, which they will present to the world. In Europe, where power commonly exists only to be abused, this statement would be received with an incredulous smile; but we have no reason to doubt, that, among the earnest patriots who are urging on the present war for Liberty and Union to a victorious conclusion, it would be considered the most commonplace of truths.



REVIEWS AND LITERARY NOTICES.

The Seer, or Commonplaces Refreshed. By LEIGH HUNT. In Two Volumes. Boston: Roberts Brothers.

Among the books most prized, in our modest private book-room, are some which bear the delicate and graceful autograph of Leigh Hunt, having floated from his deserted library to these American shores. There is the Apollonius from which came the text of his poem of "The Panther";—this is his mark against the legend, on page sixty-nine; and here is the old engraving of Apollonius, which he no doubt inserted as a frontispiece to the book. Here again is his copy of Rousseau's "Confessions," Holyoake's translation, annotated through and through with Hunt's humane and penetrating criticisms on nature with which his own had much in common, though purer and sweeter. This volume of Milton's "Minor Poems" was his also, with the rich and varied notes of Warton, the edition of whose literary charms he somewhere speaks with such delight. Here also is Forster's "Perennial Calendar," a book of rural gossip, such as Leigh Hunt thoroughly enjoyed; and this copy of Aubrey de Vere's Poems was a present from the author. Above all, perhaps, one dwells with interest on a volume of Hennell's "Christianity and Infidelity," riddled through and through by pen-and-ink underscorings, extending sometimes to every line upon a page. The book ends with a generous paragraph in assertion of the comfort and sufficiency of Natural Religion; and after it comes, written originally in pencil, then in ink again, always with the same firm and elegant handwriting, the indorsement, "Amen. So be it. L. H. July 14th, 1857." This was written in his seventy-third year, two years before his death, and this must have been about the time of Hawthorne's visit to him. Read the "Amen" in the light of that beautiful description of patient and frugal old age, and it is a touching and noble memorial.

Americans often fancied that they noticed something American in Leigh Hunt's physique and manners, without knowing how near he came to owning a Cisatlantic birth. His mother was a Philadelphian; and his father, a West-Indian, resided in this country until within a few years of his death. It is fitting, therefore, that our publishers should keep his writings in the market, and this is well done in this handsome edition of "The Seer." These charming essays will bear preservation; none are more saturated with cultivated taste and literary allusion, and in none are more graceful pictures painted on a slighter canvas. If there is an occasional impression of fragility and superficiality, it is yet wholly in character, and seems not to interfere with the peculiar charm. Hunt, for instance, writes a delightful paper on the theme of "Cricket," without ten allusions to the game, or one indication of ever having stopped to watch it. He discourses deliciously upon Anacreon's "Tettix,"—the modern Cicada,—and then calls it a beetle. There is apt, indeed, to be a pervading trace of that kind of conscious effort which is technically called "book-making," and one certainly finds the entertainment a little frothy, at times, compared with the elder essayists. Nevertheless, Leigh Hunt's roses always bloom, his breezes are always "redolent of joy and youth," and his sunny spirit pervades even a rainy day. Chaucer and Keats never yet have found a more delicate or discriminating critic; and his paper on Wordsworth, beside the fine touches, has solider qualities that command one's admiration. The personal memorials of the author's literary friends have a peculiar charm to us in this land and generation, for whom Hazlitt and Keats are names almost as shadowy and romantic as Amadis or Lancelot; but best of all is his noble tribute to Shelley. After speaking (Vol. II. p. 38) of the deep philanthropy which lay beneath the apparent cynicism of Hazlitt, he thus continues:—"But only imagine a man who should feel this interest too, and be deeply amiable, and have great sufferings, bodily and mental, and know his own errors, and waive the claim of his own virtues, and manifest an unceasing considerateness of the comforts of those about him, in the very least as well as greatest things,—surviving, in the pure life of his heart, all mistake, all misconception, all exasperation, and ever having a soft word in his extremity, not only for those who consoled, but for those who distressed him; and imagine how we must have loved him. It was Mr. Shelley."

Such an epitaph writes the character not only of him who receives the tribute, but of him who pays it. And if there ever lived a literary man who might fitly claim for his funeral stone the inscription, "Lord, keep my memory green," it was the sweet-tempered, flower-loving Leigh Hunt.

Christ and his Salvation. In sermons variously related thereto. By HORACE BUSHNELL. New York: Charles Scribner.

These sermons are distinguished from the ordinary discourses of the pulpit by being the product not merely of religious faith and feeling, but of religious genius. They embody the thought and experience of a life, and the ideas they inculcate are not so much the dogmas of a sect as the divinations of an individual. "This is Christianity as it has been verified in my consciousness," might be taken as the motto of the volume. The result is, that the collection is an addition to religious literature, and will be read with satisfaction for its stimulating effect on the religious sense by hundreds who may disagree with its direct teachings.

The two most striking and characteristic sermons in the volume are the first and the last, respectively entitled, "Christ waiting to find Room," a masterly analysis of the worldliness of the so-called Christian world, and "Heaven Opened," a plea equally masterly for the existence in man of a supernatural sense to discern supernatural things. Between these come the sermons entitled, "The Gentleness of God," "The Insight of Love," "Salvation for the Lost Condition," "The Bad Mind makes a Bad Element," and "The Wrath of the Lamb," which illustrate so well the union in Dr. Bushnell's mind of practical sagacity and force of thought with keenness and reach of spiritual vision, that we select them from the rest as particularly worthy of the reader's attention. Indeed, to have written these discourses is to have done the work of a ministry.

The peculiarity of the whole volume, and a singular peculiarity in a collection of sermons, is the absence of commonplace. The writer's method is to bring his mind into close contact with things instead of phrases,—to think round his subject, and think into his subject, and, if possible, think through his subject to the law on which it depends; and thus, when his thinking results in no novelty of view, it is still the indorsement of an accepted truth by a fresh perception of it. Truths in such a process never put on the character of truisms, but are as vital to the last observer as to the first. There is hardly a page in the volume which is not original, in the sense of recording original impressions of objects, individually seen, grasped, and examined. There are numerous originalities of a different kind, which may not be so pleasing to some classes of Christians,—as when he aims to show that an accredited spiritual form does not express a corresponding spiritual fact, or as when he splits some shell of creed which imprisons rather than embodies the kernel of faith, and lets the oppressed truth go free.

This power of penetrating thought, so determined as at times to wear a look of doggedness,—this analysis which shrinks from no problems, which is provoked by obstacles into intenser effort, and which is almost fanatical in its desire to get at the idea and reason of everything it probes,—is relieved by a richly sympathetic and imaginative nature,—indeed, is so welded with it, that insight and analysis serve each other, and cool reason gives solidity to ecstatic experience. Perhaps as a seer Dr. Bushnell may be more certain of recognition than as a reasoner. Whatever may be thought of the orthodoxy of the doctrines he has rationalized, there can be no doubt as to the reality of the spiritual states he has described. His intellectual method may be wrong or incomplete, but it in some way enables him to reach the substance of Christian life and light and love and joy. There are passages in the volume which are all aglow with the sacred fire of that rapture which rewards only those souls that soar into the regions where the objects that kindle it abide; and this elevation which touches ecstasy, this effluence from the spiritual mood of the writer, is not limited to special bursts of eloquence, but gleams along the lines of many a clinching argument, and flashes out from many an uncadenced period.

The style of the book is what might be expected from the character of the author and the processes of his thinking. The mental state dictates the form of the sentence and the selection of the words. Thought and expression, so to speak, breed in and in. There is a certain roughness in the strength of the man, which is ever asserting itself through his cultured vigor; and in the diction, rustic plainness of speech alternates with the nomenclature of metaphysics, rugged sense with lifting raptures, and curt, blunt, homely expression with vivid, whatever may be his form of words, he always loads them with meaning, and with his own meaning. He is not a fluent writer, but his resources of expression ever correspond to his richness of thought. And if his style cannot be said to bend gracefully to the variations of his subject, it still bends and does not break. In felicity and originality of epithet, the usual sign of a writer's genuineness of perception, he is excelled by no theologian of the time. He also has that power of pithy and pointed language which so condenses a statement of a fact or principle that it gives forth the diamond sparkle of epigram. The effect of wit is produced while the purpose is the gravest possible: as when he tells some brother religionists, who base their creeds on the hyperboles of Scripture, that they mistake interjections for propositions,—or as when he reproves those pretenders to grace who count it apparently "a kind of merit that they live loosely enough to make salvation by merit impossible."