But let us admit that this extraordinary theory is sound, and that LAW is the active agent which controls all physical phenomena. Now this thing, called LAW, must be either spirit or matter, or a compound of both. If it be spirit, then it acts upon matter directly; if, on the contrary, it be itself matter, then spirit acts upon it; and, finally, if it be a compound of the two, then it affords still stronger evidence of reciprocal effects, which are decisive of the whole question in dispute. We are conscious, however, that this reasoning is almost puerile; for laws are mere abstractions, and not actual entities. They indicate the mode in which causes produce effects; in other words, they are signs of the intention and purpose with which the Great Spirit carries on all his mighty works.

It is hardly necessary, in order to sustain our position, to follow the steps of our contributor, in his attempted investigation of the mode of communication between the human soul and the outer world, through the senses. Many of his ideas might afford ground for interesting comment. But the point in dispute is too distinct and circumscribed to require many words for its elucidation. It is sufficient to say that in the process of perception through sensation, there must be some point of contact, at which the mind and the material object perceived by it are brought into the relations of mutual influence. Whenever a material object is cognized, there is a direct effect of matter upon the mind. And so, likewise, in every case of voluntary muscular exertion, the mandate of the will is communicated through the nerves, and the spirit thus acts directly upon matter. No refinement of theory will avail to get rid of these obvious facts; for, whatever intermediate agencies may be imagined by way of explanation, they leave the ultimate truth indisputable, that in some mysterious way, spirit and matter do effectually operate upon each other.

We are in no degree committed to the doctrines of modern spiritualism, and we shall not take issue with our contributor in his vehement protest against the belief that disembodied spirits ever visit 'the warm precincts of the cheerful day,' and make themselves known to living mortals. An orthodox Christian, however, might have some hesitation, in view of certain passages of Scripture, in utterly denying the possibility of such phenomena; and every reader of history and student of philosophy might well exclaim with Tennyson:

'Dare I say No spirit ever brake the band That stays him from the native land Where first he walked when wrapped in clay?'

But we are quite as far from having asserted the existence of such preternatural phenomena, and we shall surely not attempt to establish facts of which we have no experience whatever. All that we have done has been merely to question the validity of that curt and summary argument, which assumes that matter and spirit are incapable of acting upon each other, and in this way cuts off all investigation.

We were somewhat disappointed and discouraged as we followed our contributor into that passage in which he seems to think that after death, the soul of man is removed beyond all knowledge of material things, and becomes incapable of ever perceiving their existence. It is true, this is but the logical deduction from his premises; and yet we felt some emotions of terror—some shrinking from that great and impassable gulf which he represents as then to be fixed between us and the objects of our life-long acquaintance—'the gulf which separates time from eternity.' But we were soon relieved; for in the conclusion of his article he waxes eloquent upon the higher faculties with which the soul will doubtless be endowed in its new state of existence, and with apparent unconsciousness of all inconsistency, assumes the very opposite of the whole preceding part of his argument. 'But,' he exclaims, 'when we shall stand in all the nakedness of pure, unfettered spirit,' 'and gaze with all the clearness of unveiled spiritual vision upon the wonderful mechanism of the universe,' etc. We might inquire of our author how, upon his principles, with merely spiritual vision, we can expect to behold anything so gross and material as the mechanism of the universe; but we overlook and forgive the apparent inconsistency—we are willing ourselves to be vanquished in the argument—for the sake of the noble idea that we may hereafter 'pass from blindness to far-stretching, unimpeded sight,' and 'be able at a glance to count the very stars, and to see the network of laws which binds them to their places, and controls, not only their motions, but the minutest particulars of their internal organism.' We are thankful, at all events, that, though matter and spirit may be so far apart in this our mortal state of existence, in the spiritual world, at least, we shall not lose all memory and knowledge of the grand material creation, of which we have learned so little here, but shall still be able, with even clearer vision, to perceive and comprehend the works of God, and, in the light of a nobler understanding, to adore the unfathomable wisdom which the Omnipotent Spirit has displayed in the arrangements of the boundless universe—the magnificent dwelling place of his creature man.

F. P. S.



EXTRATERRITORIALITY IN CHINA.[10]

History pays no more than a just tribute to commerce, when she accords to that agency important civilizing influences; yet it must be admitted that it has frequently pursued a tortuous course, has often been unscrupulous in the means that it has employed, and has not always been reciprocal in its advantages. Like religion, it has been used as an opening wedge to conquest. As the establishment of a factory in Bengal prepared the way for the battle of Plassy, so the founding of a mission in Manilla led to the subjugation of the Philippines. Or as, in our day, opium breached the walls of China, so the Society of Jesus, by its labor in Anam, has caused the dismemberment of that empire. British commerce demanded for its development successive wars. Gallican religion exacts from each dynasty the employment of the sword as an auxiliary of propagandism.

These aggressions have been facilitated by the assumption, on the part of Christian powers, of the exemption of their subjects from local jurisdiction in Mohammedan and pagan countries. A factory or a mission is established, which, from the outset, is an imperium in imperio, and becomes a permanent conspiracy which soon finds causes of complaint against the government of the land in which, without invitation, its members have become domiciled. Essentially this is filibusterism, more dangerous because more insidious than an armed invasion; it has caused nearly all the collisions which have occurred in oriental and occidental intercourse. If, in the discussions that have arisen on eastern questions, this consideration of the subject had not been wholly ignored, the courses pursued by western powers would be even less defensible than they have been made to appear. No one can arrive at correct conclusions on questions affecting China, Japan, Siam and other pagan states without an attentive consideration of the claims which those weak countries have upon us in view of their being compelled to join the family of nations, and render themselves amenable to international law, while they are debarred from the semblance of reciprocity.

Extraterritoriality originated in the Levant. The mercantile establishments that sprang up in Western Asia and Northern Africa, as Moslem power began to wane, partook of a semi-official character; being recognized as an appendage of the diplomatic corps of that country, it became the practice to accord to the trading Frank the exemption from local jurisdiction which was accorded to the official representative of his country.

This abdication of authority, on the part of those states, has been effected gradually, and the usurpation on the part of Christian powers has only been perfected and secured by treaty in our own day. Great Britain, in her treaty with the emperor of Morocco (1760), agreed that 'if there shall happen any quarrel or dispute between an Englishman and a Mussulman, by which any of them shall receive detriment, the same shall be heard and determined by the emperor alone.'

In the following year we find the sublime Porte, in a treaty with Prussia, jealously guarding Turkish interterritorial rights, stipulating that the Ottoman tribunals should take cognizance of cases arising between Prussian subjects and those of the Porte. All that the Porte was then willing to concede, was the presence of the Prussian consul at such trials, and the privilege of adjudicating in disputes arising between his countrymen.

In the treaty between France and Algiers (1764), it was agreed that offences occurring at sea, should be tried by the French consul, when the offender was a Frenchman; and by the dey, when the offender was an Algerine. And, at the same time, in her treaty with Morocco, France merely secured the stipulation that 'if a Frenchman should strike a subject of Morocco, he shall be tried only in presence of his consul, who shall defend his cause, and he shall be judged impartially.' A French edict of 1778, in reference to the duties of consuls, alludes to trials occurring in Constantinople, which clearly admit interterritorial jurisdiction. The Republic, in 1801, also admitted that right on the part of Moslem states.

Algiers, in her treaty with Denmark (1792), expressly provides for jurisdiction over the Danes in her dominion.

Russia negotiated a treaty, in 1783, with the Porte, stipulating only for the privilege of exercising jurisdiction through her ministers or consuls, in cases of quarrels between Russians.

Spain was content, in 1784, to secure from Tripoli the presence in a Tripolitan court of a Spanish consul on the trial of a Spaniard.

Our own country uniformly conceded to Barbary powers entire jurisdiction over our resident citizens. The treaty with Morocco (1787) reads: 'When a citizen of the United States kills or wounds a subject of Morocco, or if a subject of Morocco kills or wounds a citizen of the United States, the laws of the country are to be followed; equal justice, and the presence of the consul, being alone stipulated for.' And in the treaty with Algiers (1816), we merely require that the 'sentence of punishment of an American citizen shall not be greater, or more severe, than it would be against a Turk in the same predicament.'

With Tunis there was the same understanding. Again, in the treaty of 1836, with Morocco, no claim is made for jurisdiction by us over our citizens; the presence of the consul at a trial being deemed a sufficient guarantee for an equitable trial; showing, that up to that date Morocco resisted the extraterritorial aggression to which the Ottoman power had already yielded.

So far as appears from Marten's Recueil des Traites, the Sublime Porte was the first to yield the point, suffering it to go by default, however, of exempting resident foreigners from local jurisdiction, rather than by a formal abdication of authority in a treaty. The earliest admission that we have met with, strange to say, occurs in the United States' treaty, negotiated with Turkey in 1830. 'If litigation and disputes should arise between subjects of the Sublime Porte and citizens of the United States, the parties shall not be heard, nor shall judgment be pronounced, unless the American dragoman be present. Citizens of the United States, committing an offence, shall not be arrested and put to prison by the local authorities, but they shall be tried by their minister or consul, and punished according to their offence, following in this respect the usage observed toward other Franks.'

With Persia, in 1856, we stipulated only that the American consul shall be present at the tribunal, when Americans are parties in a trial.

Our earliest treaty in Eastern Asia was negotiated in 1833, with Siam, with which power we agreed, 'that merchants of the United States, trading in the kingdom of Siam, shall respect and follow the laws and customs of the country in all points'—conceding not only interterritoriality to the fullest extent; but making it the duty of American traders to creep on all fours when in the presence of a high functionary of that kingdom, and to become orthodox Buddhists! Inadvertently, no doubt, going farther than Joel Barlow, who thought it expedient in his treaty with Tripoli (1797) to insert a sort of disclaimer against Christianity, inserting in the treaty, 'the Government of the United States is not in any sense founded on the Christian religion,' a sort of offset, in accordance with the fashion of the period, to the Austrian treaty of nearly the same date, which was negotiated in the name of the 'Most Holy Trinity.'

As regards Mohammedan countries, it is not likely that grave evils will soon arise from the exempting of foreigners from local jurisdiction; there is yet so much vigor in the government of those states, and so much vindictiveness toward the giaour foreigners there will be deterred from those practices which render them a terror to the more servile people of Buddhist countries. But the extension of the principle to Eastern Asia has been extremely disastrous to the peoples of those countries, and has not been unattended by inimical reflex influences on the wrong doers of the West.

To understand the operation of extraterritorial jurisdiction, let us suppose the principle to be applied to ourselves. A European merchant or sailor inflicts corporal chastisement on one of our citizens in Broadway, and the prestige which the foreigner enjoys, precludes interference on the part of bystanders and police. If the New Yorker happens to be desirous of obtaining redress, he must first discover and identify the assailant, and next ascertain his nationality. [A Chinaman, in like circumstances, would find as much trouble in arriving at the truth, as if he were to attempt the investigation of the assailant's pedigree; he knows as little of our nationalities as we do of the forty tribes of Borneo.] Our persevering citizen succeeds at length in lodging a complaint at the consulate of the offender. The consul is perhaps a fellow merchant of the defendant, or head of the firm to which the offender is consigned. The complainant is accommodated with a blundering interpreter, and the case is tried according to the foreigner's code, which, on such occasions, is endowed with more than wonted elasticity. If, contrary to all probability, the foreigner is convicted, the citizen has the satisfaction of seeing the foreign assailant placed in confinement on the consul's premises, or perhaps mulcted to a small amount; and with this administration of justice, he and his country must be content. Who does not see that such an abdication of authority on our part would lead to the perpetration of wrongs that would soon become unendurable, even if we were first to become a broken spirited people? And, considering the arrogance and recklessness of many foreigners in China, and the pusillanimous character of the natives, what can be expected but contempt and aggression on one side, and mistrust and finesse on the other? What but a chronic discontent, wholly incompatible with healthful commerce and peaceful intercourse, can be expected from such a state of things? Consider further that this occurs among a people of the highest antiquity, with a history and a civilization of which they are justly proud; who, in political and moral science, were in advance of Greece and Rome, at a time when those, whom they now designate 'barbarians,' really were so. When our ancestors were half naked savages, the Chinese were a polished literary people. In calling attention to this subject we do so, not less in the interest of our oriental clients than in that of our own lands; for our relations with the empire of China will, with the growth of our power on the Pacific, assume such importance, that good policy demands that we should avoid any course likely to render hostile such a large portion of the human race. Many years ago we deprecated Chinese emigration into California, on the ground that, as proletaires, they would degrade labor, and leave that State without its most important element of strength; yet to the Chinese, in their own country, we would pursue a conciliatory instead of a domineering course.

Hardly had the Portuguese doubled the Cape of Good Hope, when the Chinese, who had but imperfectly resisted aggression from neighboring countries, began to suffer annoyance from the 'barbarians from the Western Ocean.' At an early day the Portuguese established a factory at the mouth of the river on which Ningpo is situated. The factory became a colony, and the colony a little state. 'At the origin of colonies,' says M. Cochin, 'we find in general two men, a filibuster and a missionary. To go so far, one must have either a devil in his body, or God in his heart. When to these two men is joined a third—a ruler—all goes on well; the first subjugates, the second converts, and the third organizes.' All these went to work in China: as elsewhere, affairs went on well as regards filibuster, missionary, and ruler. Courts of justice, hospitals, seminaries, and military posts were established. Natives joined the colonists in large numbers, adopting the foreign dress, customs, and religion, without a moment's hesitation. If the Chinese had been as few in number as the Aztecs, a Portuguese dominion would soon have arisen in Cathay; but the raids made by the colonists, the slaying of villagers, the violation and carrying off of women, the cruelty and robberies of the Christians, became so intolerable that the whole region was aroused, and the colonists exterminated. From that period Europeans were rigorously restricted to the port of Canton, and the coast enjoyed quiet, except interrupted by an occasional buccaneer, until the present century, when the opium traffic brought violent men to every port.

The Portuguese were not the only sufferers from trespassing upon the soil of China. Twenty Japanese filibusters were boiled to death in the streets of Ningpo, by order of an envoy of their country, who then (1406) happened to be in Peking. All their intercourse with foreigners seemed to confirm Chinamen in the belief that the barbarians were in their dispositions like wild beasts, unamenable to reason, and to be treated accordingly.

With feelings of mutual mistrust and hostility, commerce was long conducted by Europeans and Chinese at Canton. The question of foreign exemption from local jurisdiction only came up for discussion in cases of homicide; but in every instance the Chinese insisted on their right to punish the murderer. Foreign resistance to the claim was based only on the unwillingness of the Chinese to distinguish between killing by accident, in self-defence, or from malice. In the Chinese code such distinctions exist; but life for life was the inexorable demand when a native was slain by a foreigner; it was not, however, so much jealousy of foreign jurisdiction, as a desire of revenge, that actuated them, as was shown on many occasions. Whenever foreigners tried and executed one of their number for a murder of a Chinaman, the mandarins and people were satisfied. It was the practice of the local authorities to make a representation to the emperor to the effect that such trials and executions were in obedience to their orders, the foreigners being their submissive agents. The real difficulties occurred when an accidental or extenuating homicide took place, or where there was insufficient proof of the guilt of the accused. The condign punishment of those convicted did not meet the requirements of the Chinese authorities. They seized, and held as hostages, countrymen of the murderer, and demanded blood for blood, seeking not justice but revenge. The object was explicitly expressed by the emperor Kienlung, in an edict (1749): 'It is incumbent to have life for life, in order to frighten and repress the foreigner.'

Four years subsequent to the issuing of the edict of Kienlung, the Canton local government memorialized the emperor to disallow to foreigners the privilege of appeal, when sentenced to death. Except in times of insurrection no Chinaman can be executed until his death warrant is signed by the emperor. In compliance with that memorial, foreigners, guilty of homicide, were outlawed. It was formally announced that 'The barbarians are like beasts, and not to be ruled on the same principles as citizens. Were any to attempt controlling them by the great maxim of reason, it would tend to nothing but confusion. The ancient kings well understood this, and accordingly ruled barbarians by misrule. Therefore, to rule barbarians by misrule is the true way of ruling them.' It suited the purpose of European residents at Canton to descant upon the arrogance and inhumanity of the Chinese, as manifested by proceedings based upon those hostile edicts, while the provocations which explained and extenuated them were studiously concealed.

Considered apart from the misdemeanors of foreigners, the measures of the Chinese authorities justified the appeal to arms by the nation, whose interests were chiefly concerned in commercial dealings with that empire. The supremacy claimed by the Chinese over all countries occasioned frequent altercations between the mandarins at Canton and the English officers who were in charge of the East India Company's factory in that city. Hostile collisions were, however, comparatively unfrequent, owing to the authority exercised over all British subjects by the East India Company, that body having authority to deport any of their countrymen who acted disorderly. Their proceedings in that way gave a tone to the entire foreign community, and as intercourse was restricted to a single port, where the people were jealous, and mandarins vigilant, murderous affrays did not often take place; yet, when they did occur, the Chinese were resolute in claiming jurisdiction in each instance. In cases of assault, pecuniary recompense always satisfied the complainant; and in business transactions mutual confidence in each other's integrity rendered official intervention unnecessary.

Thus, except in cases of homicide, the foreign claim of exemption from local jurisdiction was tacitly admitted, and no inconvenience followed. But where life was lost, even when both the murderer and his victim were foreigners, the right to try and execute the guilty was contended for, and in some cases admitted. Kienlung's demand of 'life for life' was always made, an innocent victim being not less acceptable than the real culprit. On one occasion (1772), when a Chinaman was killed in the Portuguese settlement of Macao, an Englishman, demanded by the Chinese, whom the Portuguese admitted to be guiltless, was by them given up, and by the Chinese strangled, to meet the claim of life for life. No regard was had for those who by accident caused loss of life. In 1780 a native was killed by the firing of a salute from an English vessel. The mandarins decoyed the supercargo and held him as a hostage until the gunner was delivered up. The innocent cause of the calamity was given up under a promise from the mandarins that he should have a fair trial, and that his life should not be endangered. He was immediately strangled. In 1821 an Italian sailor, in the service of an American merchantman, was the indirect cause of the death of a China boatwoman, who was by the side of his vessel. Trade was stopped until the poor man was delivered up; the committee of American merchants, in the examination of the sailor, protested against its irregularity. In sending the prisoner to be strangled, they said, 'We are bound to submit to your laws, while in your waters; be they ever so unjust, we will not resist them.' A plausible reason for a culpable act. They should have allowed the trade to stop, and quit the Chinese waters, rather than become parties to the murder of the Italian.

The abrogation of the monopoly of the East India Company, and the rapid extension of the illicit traffic in opium, caused a great influx of foreigners into China, who often forced their way to ports where intercourse was prohibited; these were among the causes which prepared the way for the war with Great Britain; but the question which precipitated that war, was one touching Chinese jurisdiction over contraband merchandise, smuggled into the empire in defiance of the efforts of the Chinese authorities to keep it out. Opium, the bane of their race, was stored up in the foreigners' vessels in Chinese waters. To obtain possession of the fatal drug, they placed the foreigners in duresse. The opium war followed, and next the treaty of Nanking, which secured all that Britain desired, save the legalization of the opium traffic.

Neither in the treaty of Nanking, nor the supplementary treaty, was the concession of exemption of British subjects from local Chinese jurisdiction formally expressed. Security to British subjects was guaranteed, while the British Government stipulated that they should keep a ship of war at each port 'to restrain sailors on board the English merchant vessels, which power the consuls may also avail themselves of, to keep in order the merchants of Great Britain and her colonies.'

That the Chinese regarded the principle of extraterritoriality as having been conceded, was shown by their ready assent to the insertion in the American treaty of a clause formally abdicating sovereignty to that extent. Our treaty says: 'Subjects of China, who may be guilty of any criminal act toward citizens of the United States, shall be arrested and punished by the Chinese authorities, according to the laws of China; and citizens of the United States, who may commit any crime in China, shall be tried and punished by the consul or other public functionary of the United States.' Provision was made for joint action between American and Chinese officials in certain cases. It was also stipulated that there should be no interference by the Chinese in any misunderstanding that might arise between Americans and people of other foreign countries.

In the third treaty—that negotiated by the French—foreign exemption from Chinese law was yet more explicitly declared: 'Every Frenchman, who harbors resentment or ill will toward a Chinese, ought first to inform the consul thereof, who will again distinctly investigate the matter, and endeavor to settle it. If a Chinese has a grudge against a Frenchman, the consul must impartially examine and fully arrange it for him. But if any dispute should arise, which the consul is unable to assuage, he will request the Chinese officer to cooeperate in arranging the matter, and having investigated the facts, justly bring the same to a conclusion. If there is any strife between French and Chinese, or any fight occurs in which one, two, or more men are wounded, or killed by firearms, or other weapons, the Chinese will, in such cases, be apprehended and punished, according to the laws of the Central Empire; the consul will use means to apprehend the Frenchmen, speedily investigate the matter, and punish them according to the French law. France will in future establish laws for their punishment. All other matters, not distinctly stated in this paragraph, will be arranged according to this, and greater or lesser crimes committed by the French, will be judged according to French law.'

China, stunned by the blows so unexpectedly inflicted by the barbarians, whom she despised and thought herself able to exterminate, made no resistance to the demands made for extraterritoriality. As a Chinaman does not hesitate to commit suicide when excited and alarmed, so Taukwang quietly acquiesced in terms which were fatal to the independence of his empire. When, subsequently, the English demanded from the Siamese similar conditions, those people, although feeble and servile, could not easily be made to brook the degradation. Sir John Bowring, who negotiated the treaty with that state, says, in his Kingdom and Prospects of Siam, 'The most difficult part of my negotiation was the emancipation of British subjects from subjection to Siamese authority.' Who can wonder? The emancipation of the guests required for its complement the disfranchisement of the host! The fact that the Siamese were aware of the nature of the concession affords hope that they will succeed in averting some of its mischievous consequences. Subsequently the Siamese made the same concession to Americans, thus abrogating our former self-stultifying stipulation.

Mr. Urquhart, in his work on Turkey and its Resources, expresses the opinion that the Ottoman empire and the Barbary States have acted unwisely in exempting resident Franks from jurisdiction; on which Mr. Cushing, who negotiated our treaty, remarked, when attorney-general of the United States: 'It may be unwise for them; but it will be time enough for them to obtain jurisdiction over Christian foreigners, when these last can visit Mecca, Damascus, or Fez as safely and freely as they do Rome and Paris, and when submission to local jurisdiction becomes reciprocal.' When have Mohammedans or Pagans refused submission to rulers in Christian lands? As regards China, Christian travellers enjoy the same immunities there that are accorded to them in Europe or America—they are safe and free; it is not easy, therefore, to frame a valid reason for extraterritorial practice in that empire.

No less a jurist than John Quincy Adams, in a lecture on the British war with China, delivered before the Massachusetts Historical Society (December, 1841), pronounced the cause of Britain 'righteous.' Mr. Adams, however, proceeded on the assumption that the real matter at issue was whether the assumption of Chinese supremacy should be admitted or not. He regarded the opium question as a mere incident in the controversy, and entirely overlooked the other question at issue, viz., the independence of China.

Let us now observe the operation of the extraterritorial policy. Besides Canton, four other ports were opened for trade, and the grant is made to England of full sovereignty of the island of Hongkong, commanding the entrance of the Pearl or Canton river. If the Chinese had been able to restrict its concession to the three treaty powers, England, United States, and France, the baneful consequences might have been easily controlled, for these countries immediately empowered their consuls to exercise jurisdiction over their respective countrymen. In one respect, Congress fully met the demands made upon the country by the position which we with others had assumed in China. Laws sufficiently stringent were enacted for the government of our citizens in that empire; but the consular system, that was inaugurated to meet the new order of things, was so defective, as to render those laws nearly inoperative. The salaries attached to these offices being totally inadequate, competent persons could not be induced to accept appointments; or when accepted, they were relinquished as soon as the incumbent became fully qualified by experience for the discharge of consular duties. Having to act as a magistrate, some knowledge of law was requisite; and having peculiar diplomatic duties to perform, considerable knowledge of Chinese polity, history, and customs was needed. The consequence was, as regards Americans, such a lax administration of justice that our disorderly countrymen were not subject to due restraint; and as American offenders easily eluded apprehension, or escaped punishment, lawless British subjects often found it advantageous to claim to be American citizens, insomuch as to cause irreparable damage to American character and influence. When the ports were first opened for trade, no people were regarded with as much favor as our countrymen; but since that period we have lost ground, and our influence has been greatly impaired through those causes.

The British consular system was made a service, its members being fairly remunerated and induced to make their occupation the profession of their lives; consequently the Government has at all times competent and reliable servants. British consuls, moreover, in their magisterial capacity were a terror to evil doers, the means placed at their disposal for repressing the unruly were ample; while the American consul, being unprovided with interpreters, and ignorant of the language, having no constable or marshal, clerks or assistants of any kind, and having no place wherein to confine a criminal, often failed to inspire respect.

It was, however, from the subjects of non-treaty powers that China was destined to suffer most from her concession of extraterritoriality. Men of every clime and nation claimed exemption from her laws. Vagabonds, whose government had no consular authority to restrain them, boldly defied the local authorities, becoming a law unto themselves. Lawless adventurers from the gold regions of Australia and California personated those nationalities; and the bewildered Chinese often despaired of success in distinguishing even the names of the nationalities they were called to encounter. When discharging consular duties in Ningpo, the mandarins frequently consulted us, soliciting information on this subject; they were apprehensive of offending one government or another, while seeking to afford protection to their own people.

One disastrous result of the war with England was the discovery by the Chinese of the impotency of their rulers. No sooner had the lawless among them seen the ease with which a few foreigners dictated terms to the hitherto formidable mandarins, than they took to the sea as pirates. In a short space of time the coast became so infested by these marauders, that Chinese junks dared not put to sea without being under the convoy of a foreign, square-rigged vessel. A lucrative business soon sprang up in convoying. A foreign merchantman would sail in company with a fleet of junks, and by his presence intimidate the Chinese pirate. Gradually this business was monopolized by the Portuguese; the proximity of their Chinese possession, Macao, enabled them to fit out lorchas, or coasting sloops, which, being manned largely by Manilla men, were able to serve as a cheap and effective navy for the Chinese mercantile marine. Enjoying exemption from all control, these armed, irresponsible lorchamen early began to dictate terms to the Chinese mariners, and in a few months the unfortunate Chinaman was puzzled which to avoid, the piratical junk or the buccaneering lorcha, the extortions of the latter being as damaging as the robberies of the former. He was no more at liberty to decline the protection of a Portuguese convoy, on the terms which the foreigner saw fit to impose, than to refuse the demands of the professed pirate.

The Chinese pirates, finding their occupation so much interfered with by their foreign rivals, turned their attention to the poor fishermen, whom they mercilessly plundered. Foreign protection was invoked; and the protection of this important branch of industry was committed to the unprincipled lorchamen. When junkmen and fishermen discovered that the extortions of the foreigner were damaging as the exactions of the native pirate, they tried to make terms with the latter; but it was too late. It was no longer optional with them to accept or refuse protection. Black mail was levied upon all with the method and certainty of a revenue service. This was not effected without violence and bloodshed; but of this there were none to take cognizance. The outrages were perpetrated at ports or off coast, where there were no consuls. Hence anarchy reigned at all points beyond the precincts of the consular ports.

It is the nature of such a condition of things to extend; and it was not long before the lawless foreigners, chiefly Portuguese, but with a mixture of English, Americans, and all other nationalities, carried their depredations to the villages on the islands and mainland. Robbery and murder at sea were succeeded by like crimes on land. Whole villages were reduced to ashes; the men butchered, and the women violated; some being carried on board the lorchas and held to ransom. Chinese officials were slain on attempting to resist the corsairs. Much of our surgical practice in China was due to these piracies and forays.

Adventurers, who could not command a lorcha, fitted up native boats, and hoisting some foreign flag, carried on like depredations in the estuaries and rivers. Others went so far as to open offices in the small towns for the sale of passes, which boats crossing from headland to headland were compelled to show, in order to escape from greater exactions when under way. Not a small part of the wrongs thus perpetrated were by natives attired in foreign habiliments and under foreign direction. Such was the fear entertained of foreigners, that a bold and unscrupulous man could do anything with impunity. Take the following occurrence as an illustration: At the mouth of the Ningpo river is a small village of salt makers, at which the salt commissioner stations a deputy. This officer, after having been cruelly beaten, was driven away by the Portuguese, who issued a proclamation authorizing their employes to collect the salt gabel in the name of the Portuguese consul!

It is proper to remark that the transition from the protective to the piratical character of the lorchas was owing in some measure to the fatuous procedure of the mandarins themselves toward a formidable body of pirates, whose submission they purchased by conferring ranks and emoluments on the chiefs, and by giving employment to the whole fleet, constituting them guardians of the coast. In transforming the wolves into shepherds, a change of occupation was not attended by a change of character. In their new capacity as legalized fleecers, they came into collision with those of Macao; and what they lost as convoyers, they aimed to gain as pirates.

A general massacre of the Portuguese at Ningpo, by the Cantonese pirates, served to mitigate the evil by calling the attention of the English and Portuguese authorities to the anarchy which drew much of its support from Hongkong and Macao. The Portuguese were subjected to greater restraint, and a greater degree of order was thereby secured.

It is not easy to estimate the evil effects upon China of the possession of Hongkong and of Macao by the Portuguese. They are like corroding ulcers in her side. Imagine Bermuda and Nassau just off Sandy Hook, with every conceivable facility for smuggling into the port of New York; suppose the contraband traffic to be fatal to the health and morals of our citizens, as well as prejudicial to our revenue, and then extraterritorial privilege giving immunity to many of the foreigners' misdeeds; and the difficult position of Chinese authorities will be partially appreciated.

It was in part a question of jurisdiction that led to the second war with England—the 'lorcha' war. But for the assumption, on the part of the British, that the Chinese were in a measure a subjugated people, or not in possession of full sovereignty, they could not have again invaded China with any show of reason.

On the breaking out of hostilities there was a general demand, on the part of all mercantile powers, for the entire and unrestricted opening of the Chinese empire to all foreigners. At that juncture we felt called upon to remonstrate against such injustice toward an unoffending country. In a series of articles, published in the North China Herald, we attempted to show that an unqualified compliance with the demands of chambers of commerce and the press would be inimical to foreign no less than to Chinese interests: 'With one voice Christian nations demand the entire opening of China, and an extension of commercial advantages, regardless of Chinese rights in the matter. I believe that these rights cannot be infringed with impunity. China, it is true, must succumb before a requisite force; but the real difficulties of the aggressors will only then commence. Let us consider the consequences of an unconditional compliance with the demands of foreigners. You shall see the horrid barbarities, which have devastated the coast, reenacted in the interior. You shall see the adventurers, who shoot down Chinamen with no more malice or compunction than they shoot a pheasant, go further and travel faster than consul, merchant, or missionary. Murder, robbery, rape, and the like, will be common wherever the arm of authority is unfelt. Up her far-reaching rivers, along her interminable network of canals, on the surface of her broad lakes, through her every navigable water-course, China will be infested by desperadoes from all lands, scattering misery in every valley and throughout the great plain. Then will follow the assassination of the peaceful traveller; massacres, foreign intervention, blockades and wars, and the lasting impediments to commerce and civilization which these disorders engender.'

We proposed, as a check to the evil, a system of passports, limiting the privilege of travel or residence beyond consular ports to responsible persons—to those who could give some guarantee that the privilege should not be abused. Lord Elgin and Baron Gros, the allied plenipotentiaries, accepted the plan, and proposed it to the imperial commissioners. It is said that the commissioners eagerly seized the proposition, as, after the capture of Tien-tsin by the allied forces, they saw that submission was inevitable, yet durst not propose to the emperor unconditional acquiescence with the conquerors' demands, and represented the proposed passport system as a condition which they had imposed upon the barbarians. Thus they were empowered to negotiate the treaty of Tien-tsin, which averted a battle between that port and Peking, which neither party felt itself quite ready to commence.

About a dozen additional ports, some in the heart of the empire, are now open to the foreigner, and extraterritoriality obtains throughout the vast region subject to the sway of the Son of Heaven—which, with other corresponding causes, seems to be effecting the dismemberment of that hoary empire. The regimen to which the oldest of nations is subjected, is fast placing it in the condition of the 'sick man' of the Bosphorus.

As an evidence of the aggressive character of the foreigner, and of the desire of rendering extraterritoriality a means of subjugation, examine the claims set up within the past few months by mercantile interests. China, having surrendered her right over criminals in her territory, has been further called on to submit to British consular investigation and adjudication with the assistance of two assessors (British merchants), in all cases of seizure and confiscation by her customs authorities, whenever hardship or injustice is alleged—the custom-house officers to be cited before the consul to receive his judgment in the case!

Again, there is a foreign as well as a native Shanghai. This settlement, or city of foreigners, adjacent to Shanghai proper, occupies a considerable space of territory, and is a place of great wealth. Its warehouses are palatial, it has beautiful public and private edifices, and is governed by a municipality chosen by property holders from among themselves. Its police, streets, piers, race-course, and all the appurtenances of a city, are admirably arranged. Nowhere, in the whole empire, is there so much security for life and property; hence natives, who can afford to hire, from foreigners, houses which have been erected on this conceded ground, are glad to do so; it has consequently become a place of resort for well-to-do natives, who thus become exempt from the extortion of the mandarins. Latterly the Chinese local authorities have undertaken to impose a tax upon these extraterritorial natives, which their foreign clients resist, although one of the reasons assigned by the mandarins, for the levying of taxes on their people residing in the foreign settlement, is an increase of expenditure consequent on the employment of the Anglo-Chinese flotilla.

Happily the British Government has refused to enforce the claims of the merchants, as regards the exemption of their contraband goods from confiscation; and Sir F. Bruce, the British ambassador, and Mr. Burlingame, the United States ambassador, have admitted 'that the so-called foreign settlement of Shanghai is Chinese territory, and that the fact of Chinese occupying houses, which are the property of foreigners, does not in any way entitle such foreigners to interfere with the levying of taxes by Chinese officials.'

No additional evidence need be adduced to show that, in exempting resident foreigners from criminal and civil jurisdiction, the Chinese have opened the way for endless complications, for ever-recurring aggressions. What are the duties of our Government and people with regard to the Chinese, in view of the position in which those people are placed? We hold that it is not our duty to abandon the concession, which thus imperils the existence of the Chinese empire. It is not clear that if all nations, having intercourse with China, were to agree to renounce the privilege they have extorted, it would be best to suffer their people to trust wholly to Chinese tribunals for protection. Cases could not fail to arise demanding foreign interference, if foreigners were permitted to go to China at all. And since the re-sealing of the empire is out of the question, less evil is perhaps likely to accrue, as things now are, than by a change of policy. There is so little regard for human life among the Chinese, so much venality at the tribunals of justice, that foreigners would be endangered in person and property, unless protected by some extraordinary safeguards, perhaps even to the extent secured by treaty. Assuming, then, as we do, this jurisdiction in China, we incur a grave responsibility. It is incumbent on us loyally to fulfil the obligations that we have assumed; to see that we do not, by a lax administration of justice, encourage unprincipled men in violating Chinese law. No new laws are required, but a faithful enforcement of those already enacted. To accomplish this, we need to amend and improve our consular system. Consulates in China cannot be rendered efficient until they are filled by competent men, who shall hold their office during good behavior, and to whom inducement should be made to spend the best part of their lives in the service. We cannot, like the English, hold out the prospect of a retiring pension to one who serves the State twenty years in that uncongenial climate; but we can refrain from making those frequent changes which prove so detrimental to every interest concerned. The consuls should either be acquainted with the Chinese language, a work for a lifetime, or have an American interpreter. The practice of having a Chinese linguist is most damaging—the native linguist being invariably a lying knave, who becomes consul de facto, whom no native can approach without a bribe, which it is supposed goes in part to the consul. As the points where consuls are needed are numerous, some of them being where the honorable merchantman from the United States rarely visits, it may seem that the expense would prove an insuperable objection to the establishment of a full and efficient consular system. This objection ought to have no weight. If we are not prepared to allow the Chinese to exercise jurisdiction over our wandering citizens, we are bound, at any cost, ourselves to discharge that duty. And in view of the fact that American officials possess power of life and death over their fellow citizens, our Government should appoint a judicial officer, also holding office during good behavior, by whom all grave cases should be tried. If we cannot afford to be just, let us economize by abrogating the office of commissioner or ambassador to Peking. That is an office which, from its emoluments, must always be given, whichever party may be in power, as a reward for party services to one who will return or be recalled before he begins to understand his business. A charge des affaires, with our admiral on the station, could attend to all needful diplomacy, and thus a saving could be made and carried to the credit of the consulates.

Further, as by express stipulation we debar the Chinese from adjudicating in quarrels which may arise between our citizens and the people of other countries in China, we ought to take measures for the establishing of a mixed tribunal to exercise jurisdiction in such cases; and there ought to be an arrangement by which countries which are properly represented in China might investigate and adjudicate in offences committed by foreigners not properly represented in that country: a most dangerous class of persons, who enjoy the privilege of extraterritoriality, without amenability to any tribunal, and who by their misconduct place every foreign interest in jeopardy.

As with the advance of Christian civilization, society is more and more disposed to accord the rights of manhood to men of every race; so, let us hope, nations will yet be found willing to forego the advantages that greater power confers, no longer employing that power in oppressing or subverting weak states.

FOOTNOTES:

[10] The second number of a series of articles on Eastern Asia.



REASON, RHYME, AND RHYTHM

CHAPTER VII.—THE ARTIST AND HIS REALM.

The Divine Attributes the base of all true Art.

Aristotle teaches that: 'The object of the poet is not to conceive or treat the True as it really happened, but as it should have happened. The essential difference between the poet and historian is not that the one speaks in verse, the other in prose, for the work of Herodotus in verse would still be a history; that is, it would still relate what had actually occurred, while it is the province of a poem to detail that which should have taken place.' Thus the human soul exacts in the finite creations of the poet that justice which it ever divines, but cannot always see, because the end passes beyond its present vision, in the varying dramas of human destiny written in the Book of the Infinite God.

Carefully keeping in mind that the end of such divine dramas is not here, we see that, in accordance with the above views of Aristotle, the true is not that which really occurs, but that which our feelings and intellect tell us ought to occur. The actually occurring, the Real, has always been confounded with the abstractly true, but they are very different things. Virtue, morality, such as revealed by Christianity, and confirmed by reason, are certainly true; but in relation to that which is, to the real, the actual, what man has ever yet succeeded in realizing the pure, high model set forth in the Gospel? In accordance with the theory that the Actual is the true, the nature of a saintly hero, a self-abnegating martyr, would not be a true nature; while the fact is, it alone is true to the purposes of its creation.

Sophocles, Raphael, Michael Angelo, Fra Angelico, etc., etc., did not mean by truth in the arts, the pure and simple expression of that which really is, but the expression of that which is rarely found in the actual, but is suggested by it. Aquinas makes an acute distinction between the intellect passive, which merely receives impressions from without, and the intellect active, which reasons upon and draws inferences from them. The senses can only give or know the individual; the active intellect alone conceives the universal. Our eyes perceive a triangle; but as we have this perception in common with the brutes, it cannot raise us above their level; and to take our rank as intelligences, as men, we must rise from the mere perception of the individual triangle to the general idea of triangularity. Thus it is the power of generalizing which marks us as men; and the senses have in reality nothing to do with the internal operation; they but receive the impressions, and convey them to the active intellect. Thus to the impressions given by the senses of finite things to the passive mind, the active intellect adds the idea of infinity. The eager soul, always longing for the infinite, the absolute, then seeks to invest all with that perfection which it divines in the Maker of all; the possibility of which conception of perfection is added or attached by the Creator to the Real, as a supersensuous gift to those made in His own image. Such conceptions live ever firm and fair in the charmed world of the artist, for his world is the Realm of pure Ideas.

Much may be quoted in proof of this view. Cicero says:

'When Phidias formed his Jupiter, he had no living model before his eyes, but having conceived an idea of perfect beauty in his soul, he labored only to imitate it, to produce it in the marble without change.'

Raphael says:

'Having found no model sufficiently beautiful for my Galatea, I worked from a certain Idea which I found in my own mind.'

Fra Angelico furnishes a striking example of working from images found in the soul. He was an artist of very devout character, early devoting himself and his art to God, saying: Those who work for Christ, must dwell in Christ. Always, before commencing a picture which was to be consecrated to the honor of God, he prepared himself with fervent prayer and meditation, and then began in humble trust that 'it would be put into his mind what he ought to delineate;' he would never deviate from the first idea, for, as he said, 'that was the will of God.' This he said not in presumption, but in faith and simplicity of heart. So he passed his life in imaging his own ideas, which were sent to his meek soul by no fabled muse, but by that Spirit 'that doth prefer before all temples the upright heart and pure;' and never before or since was earthly material worked up into soul, nor earthly forms refined into spirit, as under the hands of this devout painter. He became sublime through trusting goodness and humility. It was as if Paradise had opened upon him—a Paradise of rest and joy, of purity and love, where no trouble, no guile, no change could enter; and if his celestial creations lack force, we feel that before these ethereal beings, power itself would be powerless; his angels are resistless in their soft serenity; his virgins are pure from all earthly stain; his redeemed spirits in meek rapture glide into Paradise; his martyrs and confessors are absorbed in devout ecstasy. Well has he been named IL BEATO E ANGELICO, whose life was participate with the angels even in this world. Is it not clear that Fra Angelico had found the Realm of the Artist; the fair and happy clime of the Ideal?

Our readers must not confound the ideal with the imaginary: the ideal is rather that which the real requires to invest it with that beauty which it would have possessed had the spirits of Death and sin never thrown their dark shadows over God's perfect work. Let not the poet fear the reproach that his characters are too ideal; if harmoniously constructed, but true in the higher sense, such reproach is praise.

Man rises spontaneously from the perception of the finite beauty of creatures to the conception of the sovereign beauty of the Creator, which idea has indeed its first condition in the perception of the senses; but it passes on until it extends its sphere through all our faculties, all our moral life, until the distant vision of Absolute Beauty attracts us from the limited sphere of the senses to the realm of the ideal. Thus the artist, that he may appease the insatiate thirst for Absolute Beauty, which ever pursues him, strives to bring down upon earth the divine but veiled images, which he beholds in that fair clime.

Every work of art implies three acts of the intellect: an act, by which the artist conceives the pure idea, the soul of his creation; an act, by which he conceives or invents the form in which he is to incarnate this idea, the body of his creation; and, lastly, a conception of the relations between the pure idea and its material form, the rendering of the body a fit vehicle and indwelling-place for the soul. Three acts—but an artist of genius produces the three simultaneously; consequently a marvellous life and unity mark all his works: an artist of mere talent must be contented simply with the production of new combinations of form, since Genius alone can create artistic soul; while the assiduous student, without any peculiar natural gift, is capable of the third act, as it is only an intellectual exercise in which the scientific principles of art are skilfully applied to given forms.

Artists are frequently considered as deficient in the faculty of Reason, whereas no one was ever a great artist without possessing it in a high degree, and mankind are rapidly becoming aware of this fact. It is true they often jump the middle terms of their syllogisms, and assume premises to which the world has not yet arrived; but time stamps their rapid deductions as invincible, for genius dwells in the REALM OF THE IDEAL: the realm, not of contingent and phenomenal actualities, but of eternal truths. 'For the ideal is destined to transform man and the world entire into its own image; and in this gradual and successive transformation consists the whole progressive history of humanity.'

Genius discerns the true and beautiful in itself, in the world of ideas, in God.

Talent lies on a lower level. It is the power of manifesting to men, whether by words, sounds, or plastic signs, the ideas already suggested by genius, or found by the reasoning faculties.

Genius is intuitive and creative—talent, reflective and acute.

Shakespeare was a poet of unequalled genius—Milton, of unrivalled talent.

Chopin is a composer of profound genius—Mendelssohn, of highly cultivated talent.

Madame de Staeel was a woman of genius—Miss Edgeworth, one of talent.

Elizabeth Barrett is a poet of genius—Tennyson, of talent.

Genius descends from the Idea to the Form—from the invisible to the visible: talent mounts from the visible to the invisible.

Genius holds its objects with and by the heart; talent seizes and masters them through the understanding. Genius creates body, soul, and fitness; talent combines new forms for the immortal souls already created by genius.

Taste, in its highest grade, ranks above talent, and stands next to genius; nay, it is sometimes known as receptive genius. It is the faculty of recognizing the Beautiful in the world of thought, art, and nature; in words, tones, forms, and colors. Taste is a higher faculty than is generally supposed. Genius and Taste are the Eros and Anteros of art. Without his brother, the first would remain ever a child. Taste is that innate and God-given faculty which at once perceives and hails as true, ideas, which it, however, has not the power to discover for itself. It should be educated and carefully fostered; but no amount of cultivation will give it where not already in existence, for it is as truly innate as genius itself.

In its lowest form, it is the comprehension of the scientific principles of art, and the judging of artistic works in accordance with scientific rules.

What is known as tact, is a curious social development of the same faculty. Taste is the child of the mind and soul; tact, of the soul and heart. Both are incommunicable.

The word taste is frequently misapplied. Thus a man, with what is blunderingly called a classical taste, is incapable of aught but the classic; that is to say, he recognizes in a new work that which makes the charm of an old one, and pronounces it worthy of admiration. Put the right foot of an Apollo forward, instead of the left, and call it Philip of Pokanoket, and he will fall into ecstasies over a work at once so truly national and classic. He would have stood dumb and with an untouched heart, before the Apollo, fresh from the chisel of the sculptor. Such men have graduated at Vanity Fair, and are the old-clothesmen of art.

Thus the men of talent are almost invariably recognized and crowned in their own days; because they always deal with ideas in a measure already familiar to the multitude. But, alas for the sensitive child of genius! The bold explorer of untrodden paths must cut away the underbrush that others may follow him; he must himself create the taste in the masses, by which he is afterward to be judged. His bold, daring, and original conceptions serve only to dazzle, confuse, and blind the multitude; and as it requires time to understand them, to read their living characters of glowing light, the laurel wreaths of appreciation and sympathy, which should have graced his brow and cheered his heart, too often trail their deathless green in vain luxuriance round the chill marble covering the early grave of a broken heart. Ah, friends! Genius demands sympathy in its impassioned creations; loving and laboring for humanity, it exacts comprehension, at least, in return. Yet how very difficult it is for an artist to win such comprehension! And, by a strange fatality, the more original his compositions, the greater the difficulty. He must amuse the men of the senses; satisfy the precision of the men of the schools; and succeed in rendering intelligible to the uncultured masses the subtile links of ethereal connection which chain the finite, the relative of his compositions, to the Infinite, the Absolute.

For it is a pregnant fact, with regard to the masses, that only so far as they can be made to feel the connection of things with the Absolute, can they be induced to appreciate them. For instance, tell them that the stars attract in the direct ratio of their masses, in inverse ratio to the squares of the distance, and they may almost fail to understand you; but tell them, in the words of the Divine Book, so marvellously adapted to their comprehension, that 'the stars declare the glory of God,' and you are at once understood. Tell them they ought to love one another, because 'they are members of the same spiritual body'—and, although, in this concise statement, you have declared to them the internal constitution of the moral world, revealed the inner meaning of the laws of order, of social harmony, of their own destiny, and of the progress of the race—you may utterly fail in awakening their interest. But show them a Being who lived for this truth, whose life was one of sacrifice and abnegation, who died for its manifestation—they are immediately touched, interested, because you have left the unsympathetic region of abstract formulas; you have given law a visible, palpitating, feeling, suffering, and rejoicing Body—you awaken their love, their gratitude—they adore their godlike Brother, and now feel themselves members of the one spiritual body.

It is this very possibility, on a lower plane, of thus clothing his thoughts with a visible body, which gives the artist an advantage over the man of science, who presents the formula of the law with the aid of the contingent finite idea, but without connecting it with its First Cause. Confining itself to the limits of the thing examined, science tries to explain the finite rationale of its being; while art gives its formula by the aid of a material sign, a form or body, which contains or suggests both limits of its double existence, viz.: the finite and the infinite. For the true artist always connects the relative with the Absolute, the second cause with the First; in the finite he seeks the Infinite—therefore he finds mystic and hidden truths in essential harmony with the soul of man. He is always returning to unity. The man of science, on the contrary, always beginning with the variable and contingent facts of this world, is often lost in the wildering whirl of the ever-moving and unceasing variety around him, finding it hard to link his widely severed facts with the Supreme Unity, which gives to all its reason for being, its true worth. Variety and Unity—the created and the Creator!

It is almost universally believed that there is more truth in science than in poetry—a vulgar error refuted both by reason and common sense. Poetry, being the expression of the necessary with the Absolute, must, in consequence, be nearer truth than science, which has, for the most part, its starting point in contingent, variable, and fugitive facts, and either succeeds in seizing in an uncertain manner or fails to seize at all the one Idea imbosomed in such a multitudinous array of facts. The whole creation is but the visible expression of the laws of our unseen God: the man of science mounts from the visible fact to the unseen Idea, while the poet descends from the idea to the fact, thus humbly imitating the work of creation.

It was man who introduced disorder into the finite: regenerated through the incarnation of the Divine, he must labor with all his powers to restore it to its pristine order. He must remodel the physical world by his industry, and task his intellect in the paths of science, that the truths of nature may be developed, that the well-being of his body, his material nature may be properly cared for: by his courage and endurance he must alleviate all wrongs, and set free the oppressed; he must elevate his soul and ennoble his heart by a grateful attention to his religious duties; he must increase and multiply his happy and helpful relations with his brother men by a faithful and devout culture of the fine arts.

The Beautiful does not address itself principally to the senses; but, by its exhibition of eternal laws, through them to the soul, for the manifestation of the Divine attributes is the mystic Heart of all true Beauty.'

To give an example of the different appeals made by science and by art, let us open alternately the pages of the poet and savant, let us take some familiar thing, for instance, a common flower, and see what they will tell us of its character, relations, and worth. The botanist notes the distinctions of the flower, that his herbarium may be increased—the poet, that he may make them vehicles of expression, of emotion. The savant counts the stamens, numbers the pistils, delineates the leaves, marks the manner of growth, classifies, affixes a name, and is satisfied;—the poet studies the whole character of the plant, considering each of its attributes as a vehicle of expression, an ethical lesson; he notes its color, he seizes on its lines of grace or energy, rigidity or repose, remarks the feebleness or vigor, the serenity or tremulousness of its hues, observes its local habits, its love or fear of peculiar places, associating it with the features of the situations it inhabits, and the ministering agencies necessary to its support. It becomes to him a living creature, with histories written on its leaves, and passion breathing in its tremulous stems. He associates and identifies it with the history and emotions of humanity. Feeling that even these fragile flowers are symbolic of a moral world, he crowns the bride with white roses, orange buds, or snowy myrtle wreaths, to typify that innocence and chastity are essential to a love that is to last as long as life endures. He wreathes the redeemed with undying amaranth, unfading palms, to symbolize that their meek triumph is for eternity; while he places in the hands of the angels the sculptured chalice of the snowy lily, with its breath of incense and stamens of molten gold, as an imperfect type of the perfect purity, sweet peace, and glorious golden splendor of the Heavenly City.

The pages of the poets are full of beautiful lessons and tender illustrations drawn from the fragile flowers. We cite Lowell's lines to one of our most common flowers:

TO THE DANDELION.

Dear common flower that grow'st beside the way, Fringing the dusty road with harmless gold, First pledge of blithesome May, Which children pluck, and, full of pride, uphold, High-hearted buccaneers, o'erjoyed that they An Eldorado in the grass have found, Which not the rich earth's ample round May match in wealth—thou art more dear to me Than all the prouder summer blooms may be.

Gold such as thine ne'er drew the Spanish prow Through the primeval hush of Indian seas, Nor wrinkled the lean brow Of age, to rob the lover's heart of ease; 'Tis the spring's largess, which she scatters now To rich and poor alike with lavish hand, Though most hearts never understand To take it at God's value, but pass by The offered wealth with unrewarded eye.

Thou art my tropics and mine Italy; To look at thee unlocks a warmer clime; The eyes thou givest me Are in the heart, and heed not space or time: Not in mid June the golden-cuirassed bee Feels a more summer-like warm ravishment In the white Lily's breezy tent, His fragrant Sybaris, than I, when first From the dark green thy yellow circles burst.

Then think I of deep shadows on the grass,— Of meadows where in sun the cattle graze, Where, as the breezes pass, The gleaming rushes lean a thousand ways,— Of leaves that slumber in a cloudy mass, Or whiten in the wind,—of waters blue That from the distance sparkle through Some woodland gap,—and of a sky above Where one white cloud like a stray lamb doth move.

My childhood's earliest thoughts are linked with thee; The sight of thee calls back the Robin's song Who, from the dark old tree Beside the door, sang clearly all day long, And I, secure in childish piety, Listened as if I heard an angel sing With news from heaven, which he could bring Fresh every day to my untainted ears, When birds and flowers and I were happy peers.

How like a prodigal doth nature seem When thou, with all thy gold, so common art! Thou teachest me to deem More sacredly of every human heart, Since each reflects in joy its scanty gleam Of heaven, and could some wondrous secret show, Did we but pay the love we owe, And with a child's undoubting wisdom look On all these living pages of God's book.

Wordsworth's 'Daisy' is very beautiful, and full of moral lessons:

In youth, from rock to rock I went, From hill to hill, in discontent Of pleasure high and turbulent, Most pleased when most uneasy; But now my own delights I make,— My thirst at every rill can slake, And gladly nature's love partake Of thee, sweet Daisy!

When winter decks his few gray hairs, Thee in the scanty wreath he wears; Spring parts the clouds with softest airs, That she may sun thee; Whole summer fields are thine by right; And Autumn, melancholy wight! Doth in thy crimson head delight When rains are on thee.

In shoals and bands, a morrice train, Thou greet'st the traveller in the lane; If welcome once, thou count'st it gain; Thou art not daunted, Nor car'st if thou be set at nought: And oft alone in nooks remote We meet thee, like a pleasant thought, When such are wanted.

Be violets in their secret mews The flowers the wanton Zephyrs choose; Proud be the Rose, with rains and dews Her head impearling; Thou liv'st with less ambitious aim, Yet hast not gone without thy fame; Thou art indeed by many a claim The Poet's darling.

If to a rock from rains he fly, Or, some bright day of April sky, Imprisoned by hot sunshine, lie Near the green holly, And wearily at length should fare; He needs but look about, and there Thou art: a friend at hand, to scare His melancholy.

A hundred times, by rock or bower, Ere thus I have lain couched an hour, Have I derived from thy sweet power Some apprehension; Some steady love, some brief delight; Some memory that had taken flight; Some chime of fancy wrong or right, Or stray invention.

If stately passions in me burn, And one chance look to thee should turn, I drink out of an humbler urn A lowlier pleasure; The homely sympathy that heeds The common life our nature breeds; A wisdom fitted to the needs Of hearts at leisure.

Sweet flower! for by that name at last, When all my reveries are past, I call thee, and to that cleave fast, Sweet, silent creature! That breath'st with me in sun and air, Do thou, as thou wert wont, repair My heart with gladness and a share Of thy meek nature!

With still deeper poetic feeling has that untutored bard of nature, poor Burns, written of this little flower:

TO A MOUNTAIN DAISY,

On turning one down with the plough, in April, 1786.

Wee, modest, crimson-tipped flow'r, Thou's met me in an evil hour; For I maun crush amang the stoure Thy slender stem; To spare thee now is past my power, Thou bonnie gem!

Alas! it's no thy neebor sweet, The bonnie Lark, companion meet, Bending thee 'mang the dewy weet, Wi' speckl'd breast, When upward springing, blithe, to greet The purpling east.

Cauld blew the bitter biting north Upon thy early, humble birth; Yet cheerfully thou glinted forth Amid the storm Scarce reared above the parent earth Thy tender form.

The flaunting flowers our gardens yield, High sheltering woods and wa's maun shield But thou, beneath the random bield O' clod or stane, Adorns the histie stibble field, Unseen, alane!

There, in thy scanty mantle clad, Thy snawie bosom sun-ward spread, Thou lifts thy unassuming head, In humble guise; But now the share uptears thy bed, And low thou lies!

Such is the fate of artless Maid, Sweet floweret of the rural shade! By love's simplicity betrayed, And guileless trust, Till she, like thee, all soiled, is laid Low i' the dust.

Such is the fate of simple Bard, On life's rough ocean; luckless starr'd, Unskilful he to note the card Of prudent lore, Till billows rage, and gales blow hard, And whelm him o'er!

Such fate to suffering worth is given, Who long with wants and woes has striven, By human pride or cunning driven To mis'ry's brink, Till, wrench'd of every stay but Heaven, He, ruin'd, sink!

Ev'n thou who mourn'st the Daisy's fate, That fate is thine—no distant date: Stern Ruin's ploughshare drives, elate, Full on thy bloom, Till crushed beneath the furrow's weight Shall be thy doom!

With our hearts full of love and tender sympathy with the author of this exquisite poem, let us now look among the botanists for a description of the Daisy. We will find: 'Perenuius (Daisy, E.W. & P. 21), leaves obovate, crenate; scape naked, 1 flowered; or, Leucanthemum (Ox-eyed Daisy), leaves clasping, lanceolate, serrate, cut-toothed at the base; stem erect, branching.' (See Eaton's Botany.)

All honor to the savant! Untiring in his investigations, ardent in his researches, the men of the senses are scarcely worthy to untie the latchet of his shoe, but he is slow in acknowledging the science of art, and apt to look down upon the artist from his throne of power! Because the artist deals with a different order of truths, unseen and belonging principally to the world of feeling, the savant rarely does justice to the intense study requisite for the mastery of the mere form of art; the long, unrequited, and patient toil requisite for its practice, or the soaring and loving genius required to fill the form when mastered with glowing life. All honor to the savant! but let him not fail to acknowledge the artist-brother at his side, who labors on for humanity with no hope of learned professorships to crown his career, nor venerable diplomas to assure him of social honor and position. Let him not be regarded as an idler by the wayside, nor let 'La Boheme' be any longer considered as his especial type and insignia! The useful and the beautiful should stand banded in the closest fellowship, since Truth must be the soul of both! Honor then the pure artist, while he still lives, nor keep the laurel only for his tomb!

In order to examine scientifically, the mind is generally forced to consider its object as deprived of life; indeed, the functions of living creatures cannot be fully analyzed without being first deprived of life. Science gives us its subject with the most rigorous exactitude, with the most scrupulous fidelity; but, alas! often without that magical kindler of love and sympathy, life. Art gives us its subject with vivid coloring, motion, palpitating life—often, indeed, by associative moral symbolism adding a still higher life to simple being, filling it, as in Burns's lines to the Daisy, with a purer flame.

Science daguerreotypes, art paints its objects. Science is necessarily abstract, discrete; art necessarily concrete. So true is this, that when art begins to decline, it manifests a tendency to pass from the concrete to the discrete, abstract; it becomes self-conscious, reflective, scientific. Body, form, is mistaken for soul, spirit. A discrete idea fails to move us, because it gives us only successively the relations subsisting between it and the First Cause, as its facts must be isolated, its elements decomposed, and presented to us in an inverse order to that in which they reveal themselves to the mind in the spontaneous and natural use of its powers. Science never appeals to our emotional faculties spontaneously; when it does speak to the heart, it is because the mind, linking together the successive ideas given by science, at last seizes upon the UNITY of the whole, supplying by its own conceptions the voids of science. When the savant possesses the creative power in a high degree, as did Kepler, he becomes prophet and artist. The concrete ideas of art appeal immediately to our feelings; emotions excited by them are spontaneous, because they aim at presenting their objects in all the splendor of their living light. Only life produces life; all our emotions and sympathies pertain to the suffering, the acting, the living—and thus an artistic conception appeals to our entire being. What psychological analysis of youthful and feminine loveliness could move us as a Juliet?

Analysis and reflection suppose the suspension of spontaneity, that is, of the free activity of the soul. Spontaneity and reflection are the two modes in which the spirit manifests its activity. Spontaneity is the living power which it possesses of acting without premeditation, without contingent ideas, of being influenced or determined by some power from without, the action thus produced blending the two primary elements of feeling and thought. This is the distinctive mode of woman's being. Reflection is that operation of the mind by which it turns its gaze in upon itself, and considers its own operations; it compares, analyzes, and constructs logical processes of thought. This is as natural to man, as spontaneity to woman. Now both of these modes are essentially necessary to the well-being of the individual, the one is the complement of the other; the cultivation of the one should never be sacrificed to that of the other. Teach woman to reason; develop spontaneity in man. But as the whole course of our education is solely addressed to the reflective faculties, intended chiefly for their culture, how is spontaneity to be developed? Certainly not through abstract science; for it, with its formulas, occupied only with contingent and relative ideas, addressing itself solely to the faculties concerned with the elaboration of the relative, that is, to the reflective faculties—how can it avail for the cultivation of spontaneity? It can be cultivated only through the due direction of the emotional nature; but how is that to be approached? In the first place through the joys and sorrows, the events of daily life; a training of such importance that the Great Creator, for the most part, retains it in His own hands: humanly speaking, only through the arts, which contain, at the same time, the scientific form of the finite, and the blissful intuition of the Infinite. As wisdom and love mark the works of the Creator, so thought and feeling meet in the creations of the artist, in the arts—but thought alone is concerned with the formulas of science. Now, if spontaneity be more conducive to man's happiness than reflection, then poetry, literature, and the arts are of more importance to him than abstract science. If, in appealing to spontaneous emotions, they give the legitimate influence to the heart which it should possess, because under their influence thought and feeling move in the proper unity of their divinely linked being, then must pure, creative, loving, and devout art at last take its rank, when spontaneity shall be regarded as the generatrix of reflection, above the cold and haughty pile reared by the reflective faculties alone, abstract science.

The aspirations of man constantly sigh for the limitless; his soul contains depths which his reason cannot fathom. How rapidly his surging ideas come and go! What flashes of supernatural light—what fearful obscurity! Heaven and Hell war in his soul! Strange visions traverse his intellect, throwing their lurid light into the vague depths of his heart. His power to love and feel seems boundless—his power to know almost at zero. What can he predicate even of himself, with his boundless desires for he knows not what—his fleeting emotions and insatiable wishes! Ah! if the language of poetry, of music, of the arts, came not to gift these passing images with external life, to fix them in the wildered consciousness, they would surge away almost unmarked, like lovely dreams, scarcely leaving their dim traces in the memory. For, with the generality of common minds, the actual is death to the ideal! But art speaks; spontaneity is justified; our inner being, so vague before, stands revealed before us; the beautiful must be the true, the chaos of the moral world is dispelled; we were created to enjoy the attributes of God, which, finitely manifested, are Truth and Beauty; and His light moves over the perturbed chaos of our dim being! What can abstract science, with its cold and finite language, do for a soul athirst for an infinite happiness? Nothing, unless its first postulate be God! Young people, generally, and women, in whom the love of Beauty is strongly developed, have almost a repulsion to the study of science. Wherefore? Because it often seems to exile God from His own creation. Let Him desert Paradise, and it becomes at once a desert. The Infinite is the Rose of Sharon and the Lily of the Valley! Besides, the reflective reasoning faculties awaken late with those in whom the intuitive faculties and sensibilities attain an early development. Let woman not despair. What use will there be for the reflective reason, when 'we shall know even as we are known,' and the vision in God shall make the spontaneous bliss of immortality?

The habit of only seeing, only studying, only analyzing the finite, is very apt to inspire the savant with a peculiar distrust of all spontaneous emotion. Ceasing to open his heart to that light from the Absolute, which ought to quicken it into bloom, it learns to dwell only in the sterile world of abstract formulas. If he could find algebraic signs for its expression, he would willingly believe in the immortality of the soul: the characters which he can never learn to comprehend, are precisely those in which dwell the intuitions of the infinite. He piques himself upon the precision of his language, not perceiving it has gained this boasted prim exactitude at the expense of breadth and depth. All honor to the savant! but let him keep the lamp of spontaneity ever burning in his soul. By its light the savage and the woman divine God; without it, he may weigh creation—and 'find Him not!'

Nothing can be more superficial than the intellects of men given over to formulas. They always imagine they can explore the depths of truth, if they can succeed in detecting an inch of its surface. When they arrive at the term of their own ideas, they believe they have exhausted the absolute. They frequently want feeling, because they have, in some way, destroyed their own spontaneity—that inexhaustible source of living and original thought, individualized and yet universal, of ever-thronging and vivid emotions.

The most spontaneous writer of the present day is a woman; fresh, rugged, rich, and natural, as the wayside gold of the Dandelion above described by Lowell—hence her sudden and great popularity with the people. She feels strongly, and thinks justly, and fears not to say what the great God gives her. May she continue to pour her 'wayside gold' through the literary waves of the 'Atlantic'—and still keep the molten treasure bright and burnished for the service of our altar. Let her not fly too near the candles of the clergy, and thus sear her Psyche wings. Need I name Gail Hamilton? Pardon the digression, courteous reader, and let a woman greet a gifted sister as she passes on.

Let me not be misunderstood in my estimate of the spontaneous and reflective faculties: they must combine in any man truly great. If I have dwelt on spontaneity, it is because it has not been sufficiently prized or cultivated. The savant must have the faculties of the artist, as had Kepler; the artist those of the savant, as had Michael Angelo and Leonardo da Vinci. Study, reflective power, logical ability, erudition, are absolutely necessary; but one of their principal functions is to be able to analyze aright the products of spontaneity; to give the soul the consciousness and comprehension of the innumerable phenomena which arise in it, in its varied relations with the world of ideas. The man who is at the same time spontaneous and reflective, is alone complete, be he artist or savant; he lives, yet is able to analyze life. Of such mental character are indeed all men of true genius, whether mechanicians, architects, philosophers, savants, or artists.

The truths surging dimly through the universal consciousness, find interpreters in the men of genius; through them the moral and religious ideas of an epoch take form, and crystallize themselves in poetry and the arts—as the laws of the divine geometry are realized in the crystallizations of minerals. Poetry and the arts may be regarded as the sum of the absolute truths to the conception of which the masses have risen at any given period in the life of a people.

Lamartine says:

'If humanity were forced to lose entirely one of the two orders of truth—either all the mathematical or all the moral truths—it should not hesitate to sacrifice the mathematical, for though it is true if these were lost the world would suffer immense detriment, yet if we should lose a single one of the moral truths, where would man himself be? Humanity would be decomposed and perish!'

It cannot be denied that art has an incontestable superiority over science in appealing to all, in addressing the masses in the language they most readily understand, the language of feeling, imagination, and enthusiasm. It is not intended only for men of culture, of leisure; all classes are to be benefited by its exalting influence. Men whose lives are almost entirely absorbed by occupations necessary for the comfort of their families, can scarcely be contented with the monotonous and wearisome spectacle of actual every-day life. Their cares are very exhausting, agitating the heart and mind with harassing emotions; while the immortal soul thirsts for eternal happiness. Can it be doubted that such dim, vague, unsatisfied longings are the source of much immorality? Mechanical operations, business speculations, commercial transactions, important as they may appear to the utilitarian, are far from responding to the requirements of the intellect, the imperious exactions of the heart. Such men pine unconsciously for a draught of higher life, they grow weary of existence. Literature and the arts may come to their aid, creating for them an ideal world in the midst of the actual, in the bosom of which they may find other emotions, interests, and images. They may open, even in the desert of the most conventional life, an unfailing spring of ideas and emotions, at which the poor world-wearied spirits may slake their mental and moral thirst. The wonders of commercial industry cannot quite chain the minds of men to the material world—it is certain that the thirst for the ideal ever increases in exact proportion with the development of the race. The true and high task of the artist, the poet, is to divine these wants of humanity, to cultivate these inchoate aspirations for the infinite, to hold its nectar to the toil-worn, weary lips, to soothe and elevate the restless spirits, to cultivate, in accordance with the essence of Christianity, this excess of moral and intellectual being, which the occupations of this weary earth-life cannot exhaust.