THE LIBRARY 
 
 OF 
 
 THE UNIVERSITY 
 OF CALIFORNIA 
 
CRITICAL AND SOCIAL 
 
 ESSAYS 
 
 REPRINTED FROM 
 
 THE NEW-YORK NATION 
 
 NEW YORK 
 
 LEYPOLDT & HOLT 
 
 1867 
 
Entered according to the Act of Congress, in the year 1867, by 
 
 E. L. GODKIN & CO., 
 
 In the Clerk s Office of the District Court of the United States, for the 
 Southern District of New York. 
 
 JOHN F. TROW & Co., 
 
 PRINTERS, STEREOTYPERS, AND ELECTROTYPERS, 
 
 50 Greene Street, New York. 
 
 GIFT 
 
cri 
 
 CONTENTS. 
 
 I. The Glut in the Fiction Market. ..December 6, 1866 I 
 
 II. Critics and Criticism July 6, 1865 1 1 
 
 III. Clergymen s Salaries March 22, 1866 19 
 
 IV. Popularizing Science January 10, 1867 27 
 
 V. The Good Old Times February I, 1866 41 
 
 VI. Why wt have no Saturday Reviews. ...Nov. 15, 1866 47 
 
 VII. Tinkering Hymns Jttly 26, 1866 65 
 
 VIII. American Ministers Abroad February 14, 1867 69 
 
 IX. Horse- Racing October 1 1, 1 866 79 
 
 X. Some of Our Social Philosophers June 15, 1866 89 
 
 XI. Waste March 8, 1866 97 
 
 XII. Dress and its Critics .January 4, 1866 105 
 
 XIII. The Social Influence of the National Debt 
 
 July 13, 1865 113 
 
 XIV. Hints for Fourth of July Orations. . .June 28, 1866 119 
 
 XV. American Refutations in England. . . .Jan. 1 8, 1866 127 
 
 XVI. The European and American Order of Thought, 
 
 October 12, 1865 137 
 
IV CONTENTS. 
 
 Page 
 
 XVII. Roads y une Uj lg66 J45 
 
 XVIII. Pews January 2$, 1866 155 
 
 XIX. A Connecticut Village August 17, 1865 163 
 
 XX. Voyages and Travels January 3, 1867 177 
 
 XXI. Verse-Making. May x> l866 ,g 5 
 
 . Something About Monuments Augttst 3, 1865 193 
 
 XXIII Our Love of Litxttry April iB-May 2, 1867 205 
 
 XXIV. A Plea for Culture February 21, 1867 215 
 
 XXV. Curiosities of Longevity March 8, 1866 223 
 
THE GLUT IN THE FICTION MARKET. 
 
 IT is told of Carlyle that once when he was thor 
 oughly fatigued in body and mind by the labor of pro 
 ducing one of his works, and had then been almost 
 thrown into despair because of the sudden and total 
 destruction of his manuscript before a word of it had 
 gone to the press, he shut himself up alone in his room 
 and deliberately read through the complete works of 
 Captain Marryatt. This singular proceeding certainly 
 appears to have in it something of that quality of mind 
 which earned for the sage of Chelsea, from some of the 
 irreverent, the title of " The Incoherent Thomas." He 
 was able, though, to give a sound reason for his seem 
 ingly absurd and inconsequent behavior. He wanted, 
 he said, to induce in his mind a perfect vacuity of 
 thought, and could hit upon no other expedient so well 
 adapted to his purpose. Why he should have chosen 
 Captain Marryatt in preference to a hundred or two 
 others it is not easy to see. We may plausibly account 
 for it by supposing that one day in the times when he 
 plied the birch at Ecclefechan school he had occasion 
 to confiscate certain dirty-looking paper-covered books 
 1 
 
2 The Glut in the Fiction Market. 
 
 there undergoing a surreptitious reading, and himself 
 cast a philosophic ,eye pyer. fhftir contents and marvelled 
 what mariner of.mtm! this .captain in the royal navy 
 could^be.; .W&belie-ve.he.found ln s experimental course 
 of I^hantbm Snips aM.Snarleyyow the Dog-Fiend and 
 Smallbones and Lieut. Vanslyperken and Midshipman 
 Easy and the ward-room life on board H.M.S. Calliope 
 all that he expected, and since reads no more novels. 
 
 From late information we infer that the British pub 
 lic in general are getting to be of his mind. News 
 comes from the other side of the water that Mudie s 
 and the other great circulating libraries no longer order 
 each new novel by the hundred or the thousand, as has 
 been their practice hitherto. If at first this seems al 
 most incredible, a longer consideration makes it appear 
 extremely probable, and, indeed, almost necessarily 
 true. It is true enough that now for a long time the 
 number of novels issuing from the British press not 
 of single volumes but of separate works, and not inclu 
 sive of reprints but of new books, and not inclusive of 
 translations but exclusively of books of home produc 
 tion has been on an average about two a week. Sup 
 pose this " vicious fecundity " to have lasted for thirty- 
 six years, since 1830, in which year the crop of fictions 
 gathered into the British Museum was one hundred and 
 one works, then in the eighteen hundred and seventy- 
 two weeks since that time there have been printed in 
 Great Britain and Ireland about three thousand seven 
 hundred and forty-four novels, and to this mass of fic 
 titious literature we must add, before the reckoning is 
 
The Glut in the Fiction Market. 3 
 
 complete, an enormous, an almost incalculable, heap of 
 short stories and tales and sketches for magazines. If, 
 now, it should seem not possible that a people demon- 
 strably so infatuated with novel-reading, a people for 
 whom this vast quantity of novel-writing is done, should 
 ever learn to do without it and dislike it, we must re 
 member that the vast quantity itself which they have 
 already devoured is the best of reasons why their stom 
 achs should at last begin " to loathe this light food." 
 
 For how old a story the modern novel has latterly 
 got to be ! Of course, there are plenty of reasons why 
 this should be so. " Mankind," according to that Jaco 
 bin whom Emerson once met, " mankind is a d d 
 
 fool ;" and this we are obliged to confess a very just 
 remark. At any rate, it is never very probable, we 
 may say, that the thought which the mass of novelists 
 will be able to offer their readers will be anything par 
 ticularly new or good ; and as to imagination, of what 
 value to anybody would be the imaginations of a fool 
 of the kind above specified ? So the great majority of 
 our fellow creatures, it should seem, are disqualified 
 for the production of novels, we do not say enduring, 
 but endurable. And, in point of fact, the creators of 
 characters in each generation of writers may usually be 
 counted on the fingers. Even of creators of character, 
 by no means every one after he has conceived and 
 formed his characters is able so to manage their inter 
 relations, so contrive their action on each other, and 
 join consequence to adequate cause, as to make his 
 creations seem like rational animals. At any given 
 
4 The Glut in the Fiction Market. 
 
 period, then, the conditions being so severe, there may 
 possibly be living in the world a single consummate 
 artist in this species of writing. Writing in any one 
 language there may perhaps be one or two great novel 
 ists and three or four clever ones, and the scores upon 
 scores of others will constitute the herd, and supply us 
 
 with our Cudjo s Caves or our Miss Gilbert s Careers 
 
 that is, with novels without novelty, with simulacra of 
 characters for characters, and guiltless of thought, or 
 guilty of false thinking and false sentiment. 
 
 How aged most of the incidents are ! It was six 
 teen or seventeen hundred years ago, when Lucius 
 of Corinth, being on his way to Hypata, in Thessaly, 
 fell in with Aristomenes, the commercial traveller, who 
 beguiled the time by relating his adventures at a cer 
 tain inn. For years past, and for years to come, many 
 a Mr. Baggs has told, and will tell, his similar tales to 
 the readers of English periodicals. And if there are 
 any more lives of noted highwaymen remaining to be 
 written, we suppose the Clipper will show us once again 
 the robbers cave precisely as Apuleius describes it for 
 us, and as we have since had it in the history of Six- 
 teen-String Jack, of Turpin, of Paul Clifford, of Gil 
 Bias, and, not to name a myriad others, of the Knight 
 of La Mancha. It was fifteen or sixteen centuries ago 
 that Theagenes, happening to go into the temple at 
 Delphos, found there the beautiful Chariclea, and be 
 came at once enamored ; and what man will undertake 
 to compute the great cloud of heroines Italians, Span 
 iards, and French and English, and dwellers in the 
 
The Glut in the Fiction Market. 5 
 
 isles of the sea who have captivated the heroes under 
 the same circumstances. We make no doubt that the 
 lives of a pair of lineal descendants of Heliodorus s 
 harassed lovers will be put on record in the January 
 number of " Harper s." Something like this it may be : 
 "Yes, it was settled that the church should be 
 trimmed for Christmas, and we young people were 
 glad the rest, because of the merry meetings when the 
 evergreen was gathered ; and I, because my artistic 
 nature craved better food than the bleak, bare walls, 
 and the pine-backed seats of our meeting-house. Ah ! 
 how I longed in those days for glorious Italy and di 
 vine Florence, and the crowned Niobe of nations tiara- 
 ed with the dome of Angelo ! And though Aunt 
 Eunice and the deacon thought it right down popery, 
 yet I think they were not ill-pleased when the stately 
 Mrs. Havisham, our pale, aristocratic neighbor, who 
 had recently bought the great house, and filled it with 
 such statuary as my eyes hungered to see, drove up in 
 her pony carriage, and insisted that Miss Carrie [Chari- 
 clea] must at once come up to the church. " We shall 
 read how Chariclea pleaded that the hospital patients 
 needed her services, and the sewing for the soldiers 
 was unfinished ; but how Mrs. Havisham still insisted 
 and urged that "your deft white hands and your artist 
 sense are absolutely needed," and told her how that 
 smallest sketch " the weird, wild sky, the pallid green 
 ocean, the shallop, with its one figure, driven upon the 
 close-reefed shore " had wonderfully impressed the 
 great artist, Merle Danforth, who had emphatically de- 
 
6 The Glut in the Fiction Market. 
 
 clared that Miss De Lorme s talents were God-given, 
 and should be cultivated ; and how, at last, though her 
 dress was rather scant for the bitter weather, and she 
 knew she should meet Keene Vandyke and Isopel 
 Kavanaugh, and Dr. Effingham and Hal Lenoir, she 
 decided to go ; and how Tracy Havisham (Theagenes), 
 arriving to visit his sister, gazed intently at her with 
 clairvoyant eyes of mystic power ; how, finally, despite 
 Isopel Kavanaugh, and forged letters, and suppressed 
 letters, and a wild purchase of a railroad ticket and a 
 dream-like ride to a city where Merle Danforth might 
 be found, and despite a fever and a declaration of love 
 from Merle, she grew in the art-sense, painted more 
 weird pic;;, res, and, at last, married Tracy Havisham. 
 
 The future writer in " Harper s," as well as the 
 past writers in that magazine, who hash up the early 
 romancers for us, sin in a great company ; like mathe 
 maticians, as you may say, they " go with numbers to do 
 evil." For, in regard to this particular novel of the 
 Bishop of Tricca s, those learned in these things count 
 among his imitators, or among those who have stolen 
 from him, Achilles Tatius, and half a dozen other great 
 story-tellers Gomberville, Scuderi, Guarini, D Urfe, 
 Tasso, Richardson, Hardy, Dorat and of these each 
 in turn has his imitators. And as we come down the 
 ages and reach the times when novels divide them 
 selves into various particular classes, the case is no 
 better, but worse. The characters are old acquaint 
 ances, the combinations have either all been made be 
 fore, or are not worth making, or both, and the book 
 
The Glut in the Fiction Market. 7 
 
 gets itself read by virtue of some small thing which 
 differences it from its brethren and sisters, or because 
 its brethren and sisters have gone to undeplored forget- 
 fulness. Why should a veteran customer of Mudie s 
 read any more of the ordinary novels ? He discerns 
 the end from the beginning, and he is familiar with all 
 the stages by the way, in all the novels the novel of 
 English life and manners ; of Scotch or Irish life and 
 manners ; of American life and American manners ; 
 the novel of military or naval life ; the ecclesiastical 
 novel ; the muscular Christianity novel ; the novel that 
 dissects the hero and reveals the melancholy heart and 
 moody mind of the hero, and puts them together again, 
 and marries him at last, and so solves the problem of 
 the universe; the novel of crime j the detective novel, 
 and all the rest. What a weariness it must, by this 
 time, have become to the veteran to think of going 
 down, by still another express train, to one more coun 
 try house, where he shall see the same dowagers, the 
 same wit, the same captains in the East India Company 
 or the Queen s service ; the same big woman and the 
 same small one, and assist at the regular lunching and 
 cricket and croquet and love-making ; and, by-and-by, 
 the man of business comes down, and there is a con 
 tested election and the return of Lionel, or there is an 
 elopement and the flight of Lady Agnes ; and then to 
 think of returning to town and meeting the old set at 
 the clubs, in both Houses of Parliament, at the ride in 
 the Park where he meets her, at the evening party 
 where he and she dance, in the dining-room whence 
 
8 The Glut in the Fiction Market. 
 
 the old lord retires to his blue-books, in the richly-fur 
 nished bachelor s apartments where the young baronet 
 discovers, the day after the Derby, that he is ruined, 
 and where he meditates matrimony, or whence he sets 
 ->ut for Calais and a Spa. Why should not he know, 
 who has patronized Mudie for ten years, whose arm is 
 to be broken in the first volume, and whom the sufferer 
 is to marry ; whether or not there is to be an elope 
 ment ; who is the real murderer ; where the missing will 
 is hid ; what has become of the lost son ; whether or 
 not young Gully, full of pluck, will be able, by smoking 
 a short black pipe and reading hard and swimming on 
 the coast of Devonshire, to convince himself that he 
 has a soul to be saved, that Christianity is the thing to 
 save it, and that Queen Elizabeth had auburn and not 
 red hair ; and whether Mopeington Crevecceur, who is 
 conscious of his inside, will or will not achieve true no 
 bility of character and a practical if not critical knowl 
 edge of the New Testament by giving up lying and lyrical 
 poetry and light food, and taking to service in the Cri 
 mean war and a beard and pluck and beef? The pa 
 tron of Mudie s knows, as well as if he had made them 
 himself, the noble but too free-handed and somewhat 
 embarrassed Irish gentleman who has one lovely 
 daughter ; the other Irish gentleman, not so noble, but 
 equally free-handed and even more embarrassed, who 
 has five or six strapping daughters and a fighting son 
 in the army, and dogs galore, who lives to hunt and 
 drink, and whose tenantry resist a process ; the young 
 lady who lets the poet love her but wants the duke, 
 
The Glut in the Fiction Market. 9 
 
 whereby cultivation and gain through sorrow accrue to 
 the poet ; the young gentleman, Mordaunt, a favorite of 
 women of the world and respected by men, who is the 
 soul of honor, has nursed his genius in solitude, goes 
 to college, where he forms a friendship with Trevylyan 
 the future statesman, and learns to quote Plotinus and 
 Tully, and distinguish between The Ideal with a big I 
 and ideal with a small i. He is familiar, perhaps to 
 the point of contempt and past it, with the young gen 
 tleman who takes a double-first and distinguishes him 
 self at the bar ; with the rector who leans towards cross- 
 bearers and incense, and calls a Protestant "a Prot. ;" 
 with the whist-playing rector, whose wife the butcher 
 hates ; with the bluff young man with the cynical 
 mouth and kindly eyes, who has the air of putting 
 his young friends in his waistcoat-pocket and talking 
 gruffly to them, but who, under the influence of tobacco, 
 appears as a man with a hidden grief which he fights 
 with and grandly buttons into a Petersham coat ; with 
 the yellow-headed murderess and the purple-browed 
 magnificent leopardess of a bigamist, and the gray- 
 faced female poisoner in whose thin cheek no blush 
 arises when she is tried in court ; with the Alpine 
 tourist and the young lady who sighs all up the Rhine, 
 but in Florence, in the picture gallery, sees Edward 
 watching her ; with the absentee landlord and the bil 
 liard-sharper, the banker and the reviewer, the Jew 
 money-lender and the bailiff, the policeman and the 
 governess, and the solitary horseman, and the faker 
 
 with his " nix my dolly " pals, the young man who has 
 !* 
 
io The Glut in the Fiction Market. 
 
 a place, and the good-natured young man who shoots 
 and is never in the way, and thousands more too nu 
 merous and too well known to mention. Unless he 
 has Carlyle s excuse, the aged novel-reader may as well 
 stop his subscription. And there is no good reason 
 why the American reader should persevere longer than 
 his British cousin. He has already read the Scarlet 
 Letter and the House of Seven Gables, and the Blithe- 
 dale Romance, and half a dozen of Cooper s, and two 
 of Mrs. Stowe s and if he has not read also some of 
 Miss Prescott s and Hot Corn and Queechy and sev 
 eral others he is very lucky and he may as well stop. 
 Somebody may perhaps by-and-by invent something 
 which will be an improvement on our realistic school 
 of writing fiction and our doctrinal dead-in-earnest and 
 dead novel, and then the regiments of people who have 
 to have a model, having a new one, may be less tire 
 some than at present, and Mudie s department of fic 
 tion may reach again its old importance. Meantime 
 we have among us still the woman who wrote Romola, 
 and the man who, if he did write Our Mutual Friend, 
 wrote David Copperfield, and was father and sponsor 
 of Mr. Richard Swiveller, and Mr. Samuel Weller and 
 his Prooshian Blue of a parent, Mr. Tony Weller ; and 
 we may be thankful, too, for the writer of Christie 
 Johnstone and The Cloister and the Hearth, and for 
 the author of that work of a good heart, John Halifax. 
 
CRITICS AND CRITICISM. 
 
 THE opinions are opposite as the poles. Some au 
 thors, and distinguished ones, too Irving was one, 
 Bulwer is another, Lowell another, though professing 
 to be also of the "ungentle craft" himself maintain 
 that your critic is a most unnecessary nuisance, a pesti 
 lent fellow, who tears the works of better men to pieces, 
 because he can produce nothing good himself, and 
 makes it his business to look for spots in the sun, and 
 calumniate the icicle on Diana s temple. On the other 
 hand, the critic not unfrequently proclaims himself a 
 fine gentleman, for whose amusement the author writes. 
 He discusses the book as he would a newly furnished 
 house or a state dinner. Talk to him of writing books 
 himself! Must Amphitryon be able to fry an omelette 
 or Lucullus to concoct meringue before he ventures to 
 find fault with Soyer s cotelettes d la Reformed Is 
 Brummell disqualified for passing judgment on Stultz s 
 coats because he has never handled the shears himself? 
 
 Equally opposite are the theories about the critic s 
 genesis. There was the old one of Queen Anne s 
 time, that he owed his life to the corruption of an au- 
 
12 Critics and Criticism. 
 
 thor, and merely sought to revenge his own failures on 
 more successful rivals. There is the modern theory, 
 upheld, if not suggested, by Thackeray, that the critic 
 is generally an immature author, who jests at scars be 
 cause he never felt a wound, and is prone to exaggerate 
 the errors because he has never experienced the diffi 
 culties of serious authorship. 
 
 On this debatable ground we shall be more likely 
 to go safely by taking a middle path. In political diffi 
 culties the boldest course is sometimes the most pru 
 dent, and nothing short of "thorough" will carry us 
 through j but in questions of taste it is always wise to 
 keep clear of extremes, for taste is eminently eclectic. 
 It is quite possible for a man to become a competent 
 critic without ever passing, or intending to pass, through 
 the stage of authorship. It is no paradox to call criti 
 cism a very subordinate and yet a very important 
 branch of literature, just as the constable, though of no 
 exalted official rank, is an indispensable portion of the 
 political framework. A man may be born with a large 
 share of the appreciative and discriminative faculties, 
 which may have been, as they most certainly are, 
 capable of being largely improved by education, at the 
 same time he may be entirely destitute of the creative 
 and imaginative faculties, which, unless given by na 
 ture, no education can implant. Indeed, there must 
 be such men, since the former qualities, though rare 
 enough, are less rare than the latter. A man thus in 
 tellectually furnished can never write anything like a 
 first-class novel or poem ; indeed, he is not very likely 
 
Critics and Criticism. 13 
 
 to make the attempt ; but he can criticise novels and 
 poems to any extent. 
 
 The case of translators is analogous. We often 
 hear it said that none but a poet can translate poetry. 
 The assertion is plausible ; but who would maintain 
 that none but a historian can translate a historiar 
 that it requires a Macaulay or a Merivale to render a 
 Michelet or a Thierry? Yet the rule ought to hold 
 good for both, if at all, although the author s tempta 
 tion to improve on his original shows itself differently ; 
 the poet s alterations would be made in the text, the 
 historian s would be expressed in notes and comments. 
 It is unfortunate that as a musician who plays well 
 enough to accompany nicely will seldom condescend to 
 accompaniment, so those whose talents and education 
 best fit them for translating are generally prone to aim 
 at original composition. Take a wort*, of learning and 
 research. The critic may be the author s superior in 
 knowledge of the subject, yet may never think of writ 
 ing such a book, either for want of the steady industry 
 necessary, or from the press of other avocations, or 
 even from deficiency in pecuniary means, since learned 
 authorship in most countries is generally a rich and 
 sometimes a very expensive luxury. 
 
 But why not give up the business of criticism to au 
 thors themselves ? For various reasons. In one sense 
 they are much too good for it that is, the best of them 
 are. It is cutting blocks with a razor, and putting 
 Pegasus into harness. A man of real, original creative 
 power is better employed in producing something him- 
 
* 4 Critics and Criticism. 
 
 self than in criticising the productions of others. Here 
 again translation furnishes us with analogies. Thus it 
 is highly probable that Tennyson might have achieved 
 the best English version of the " Iliad " ever written, 
 but how much better for the reading public and the 
 world of letters that he wrote Maud and the Princess ! 
 
 In other cases, they are not good enough. And 
 the reason is twofold. In the first place, authors, like 
 the rtst of mankind, are subject to the influence of pro 
 fessional jealousy. In nine cases out of ten such a 
 charge against the critic would be absurdly irrelevant. 
 He might as well be taxed with envying a general or a 
 Congressman. The only circumstances under which a 
 critic can be reasonably suspected of attacking an au 
 thor from this motive are these : Either he has written 
 a work on the same subject, and failed for if he has 
 succeeded he passes into the class of authors, as the 
 greater takes precedence of the less or he has a work 
 on the same subject in contemplation, and may feel 
 annoyed at the wind being taken out of his sails. But 
 the author is always tempted to find another author on 
 similar subjects a possible rival in his way. 
 
 Then, putting all bad motive out of the question, 
 the author is less apt to criticise fairly than the critic, 
 because he is more apt to be one-sided. His very 
 ability is likely to make him intense in one direction, 
 so that he will overvalue his own method of treatment. 
 The critic is, by profession, as it were, many-sided, a 
 proposition which we have already expressed in other 
 words by saying that taste is eminently eclectic. If, 
 
Critics and Criticism. 15 
 
 though one-sided, he obtains a reputation, as in Rus- 
 kin s case, it is because his excellences of style give 
 him a position as an author independent of the value of 
 his critical opinions. Byron strikingly illustrates both 
 these disqualifications. The former affected his judg 
 ment of Shelley, the latter his judgment of Wordsworth. 
 It is often assumed that the relations of critics are 
 only to authors, or at most to authors and the public. 
 This is a very inadequate statement; their relations to 
 publishers are even more important From one ^ ^ 
 of view the publisher is the public s natural ^nemy, and 
 the critic their natural protector. Now and then we 
 find a chivalric Moxon, who publishes a whole genera 
 tion of poets from pure love of poetry. But such are 
 exceptions. Publishers, like most men, usually pursue 
 their calling from a desire to make money by it, nor is 
 this fact more discreditable to them than to any other 
 class. But, like all dealers, the publisher is sometimes 
 mistaken in the quality of his wares ; he sometimes 
 buys or agrees to print a work which would not find 
 favor on its own merits. This want of merit he is too 
 often tempted to supply by systematic and unblushing 
 puffery. In this country (and England and France are 
 no better off) there is quite as much "shoddy" litera 
 ture as any other kind of deceptive goods disposed of 
 under the falsest pretences. To take the lowest view, 
 this is an imposition on the public. Every man who 
 pays a dollar or two for a worthless book is directly 
 swindled by the puffing publisher and the venal " notice- 
 writer " who have deluded him into the purchase. 
 
*6 Critics and Criticism. 
 
 It must not be inferred from anything which has 
 been said that we accept the ungracious theory of those 
 who make it the critic s business always and solely 
 to find fault. But the multitude of sham reviewers, 
 whose chief stock in trade consists of unmeaning adu 
 lation, may well make us forget that the American critic 
 has any laudatory functions. And at present, we be- 
 vveve that these are more wisely employed on subjects 
 than on individuals. There are some branches of lit 
 erature cind learning (classics and general philosophy, 
 - for instance) jn which the scarcity of valuable American 
 works is deplorable, ^nd this is in a great measure 
 owing to the want of Accomplished critics, who might 
 awaken a public cariosity in that direction. The 
 special branch of art-criticism has some peculiarities 
 arising from the nature of its subject-matter. Every 
 critic is in some sense an author that is, he writes for 
 publication ; the art-critic may also be an artist, but it 
 is not considered necessary that he should be in any 
 sense. But we can only allude to this division of our 
 subject, the proper handling of which would require a 
 separate paper to itself. 
 
 In a new country like ours, the public mind passes 
 through three stages before it is fully prepared to fur 
 nish or appreciate complete and well-balanced criticism. 
 First, there is the chaotic or embryo period, when the 
 whole energy of the people is employed in overcoming 
 physical obstacles. Literature and art are then re: 
 exotics, and their votaries run the risk of being consid 
 ered very eccentric, if not absolutely mad. There are 
 
Critics and Criticism. 17 
 
 men enough living who recollect this stage. Then suc 
 ceeds the childish age, or that of promiscuous and often 
 silly admiration. The last stage before reaching the 
 day of true criticism is a reaction from this, a period of 
 indiscriminate censure. In art-criticism we seem to 
 have arrived at the third stage, or at least to be very near 
 it. In literature we are not yet well out of the second, 
 though many spirited attempts have been made at in 
 tervals for thirty years or more to push us out of it ; 
 usually, as in Park Benjamin s case, for instance, they 
 failed to make any permanent impression or meet the 
 appreciation which they deserve^. We really think 
 that before our criticism comes to merit the name, it 
 will have to pass through this stormy and belligerent 
 stage, a period like that of English criticism during the 
 first quarter of the century. The great mischief has 
 always been that whenever our reviewers deviate from 
 the usual and popular course of panegyric, they start 
 from and end in personality, so that the public mind is 
 almost sure to connect unfavorable criticism with per 
 sonal animosity. Any review thus inspired is worth 
 exactly its weight in Confederate paper. The critic 
 ought to know the author only through his book ; he 
 should have the least possible personal knowledge of 
 him, should be ignorant (or at least affect to be igno 
 rant) whether he is rich or poor, handsome or ugly, mar 
 ried or single, whether his grandmother was a Presi 
 dent s sister, or his second cousin is a New York 
 alderman. Above all, it is absolutely necessary that 
 there should not be a shadow of personal difficulty be- 
 
1 8 Critics and Criticism. 
 
 tween them. With this proviso, we believe our authors 
 themselves would not be sorry for a little less butter 
 and a little more pepper ; we are certain it would do 
 them good, whether they liked it or not. 
 
CLERGYMEN S SALARIES. 
 
 A PROMINENT religious journal, with abundant abil 
 ity to procure information, and the strongest motives 
 for ensuring accuracy, has published the following state 
 ment of the rates of compensation paid to clergymen 
 in the State of Connecticut. The figures are taken 
 from the minutes of the General Association. From 
 these minutes it appears that three pastors have no pay 
 whatever; one has $100; one, $200; one, $300; nine 
 have $400 ; thirty-three, $500 ; one hundred and four, 
 $1,000 ; forty, $1,500; sixteen, $2,000; four, $2,500; 
 and three, $3,000 a year. No salary of more than 
 three thousand is mentioned ; the average remuneration 
 in the several counties is given thus : in Windham Co., 
 $653 ; in Tolland Co., $728 ; in Middlesex Co., $819 ; 
 in New London, $848 ; in Litchfield, $880 ; in Fair- 
 field, $1,044; in Hartford, $1,060; in New Haven, 
 $1,127. 
 
 This statement respecting the condition of ministers 
 of religion in New England, and, of all places, in Con 
 necticut, the stronghold of New England orthodoxy, 
 even where it excites no surprise, must awaken serious 
 
2o Clergymen s Salaries. 
 
 reflection on the religious state of the community. The 
 largest salary mentioned in the table is insufficient for 
 the support of a man and his family in days like these ; 
 and but three ministers receive that. Fifty-six receive 
 what at the best is scarcely more than a pittance ; and 
 forty-six receive less than a pittance. These men must 
 eat and drink, and have wherewithal they may be 
 clothed, even if they are not over-anxious about such 
 things. They must have a roof over their heads. 
 They are generally, we may presume, married j at all 
 events marriage is a privilege which cannot be refused 
 them. They have families of children, large in propor 
 tion to the smallness of the stipend. They are, more 
 over, in most cases, educated men, whose mental fur 
 niture has cost money, and is so much capital invested 
 in their profession. Their profession demands all 
 their time, as at present conducted. It leaves no leisure 
 for other means of obtaining a livelihood ; and if it did 
 leave leisure, it leaves no ability or aptitude for money- 
 making pursuits. Its duties, by their very nature, dis 
 qualify men for practical affairs ; they carry both mind 
 and will far away into regions remote from every kind 
 of market, even from the market of literature. Their 
 time, their strength, their feelings, sympathies, efforts, 
 even their flaccid purses, are incessantly and merciless 
 ly d.rawn upon by all sorts of people, who make them 
 do their work for them, and offer them no compensa 
 tion, often not even gratitude, for important services. 
 The poorest class in the community, they are the most 
 pitifully fleeced class in the community. 
 
Clergymen s Salaries. 21 
 
 It is urged that they are the most privileged class, 
 too ; that they are universally honored and beloved ; 
 that the best social position is cheerfully awarded to 
 them as by right ; that all doors are open to them ; that 
 they are admitted to intimacies such as no other class 
 of men are indulged with ; that they enjoy the distinc 
 tion of being reckoned a purely disinterested and self- 
 sacrificing order of men, whose reward is very certain 
 in the next world, and whose impecuniosity in this life 
 is abundantly compensated by the wealth of good-will 
 that is lavished upon them. All this is willingly con 
 ceded, so far as the social privilege and the parochial 
 affections are concerned, but we cannot see the rele 
 vancy of such considerations to the case in hand, so 
 long as all this social privilege and saintly fame amount 
 to so much practical impoverishment. " Fair words 
 butter no parsnips. " In this case they cause the trans 
 fer of the parsnips to another man s mouth. A reputa 
 tion for disinterestedness is a very fine thing, but it 
 will not pay the shoemaker, or the schoolmaster, or the 
 stationer, and it goes a very little way towards paying 
 the bookseller. It is fair, perhaps, that one s love for 
 his neighbor should make him rich for the next world, 
 but his neighbor s love for him should put something 
 in his pocket for this world ; and this precisely it fails 
 to do. 
 
 The argument that, on the whole, ministers receive 
 about as much as they are worth, is plausible at the 
 first glance, but it has no force. For why are they not 
 worth more ? Simply because they have no means to 
 
22 Clergymen s Salaries. 
 
 make themselves worth more. Their natures are 
 starved by their poverty. Mental nutriment cannot be 
 obtained, for papers, magazines, pamphlets, books, the 
 only and the indispensable food for the mind, are very 
 expensive. They cannot enlarge their observation or 
 increase their experience of the world by travel ; they 
 cannot profit by the stimulus of better minds, for they 
 gain no access to the intellectual centres where such 
 minds congregate. Their health surfers from enforced 
 confinement to one spot summer and winter. No 
 variety of scene or of influence changes their mood or 
 refreshes their spirit. No inspiration from mountain 
 or ocean gives them new hope and vigor. What can 
 be expected from men shut under the cover of an ex 
 hausted receiver ? Where is the stuff for sermons, or 
 for prayers, or for spiritual consolation and quickening 
 to come from ? The spirit is powerful and should be 
 put to its power ; ministers should not be so well paid 
 that they can dispense with it, or that it can dispense 
 with them ; but certain temporal conditions must be 
 conceded in order that the spirit may work at all. 
 
 That these conditions are less faithfully met now 
 than they were in former times, we have no right 
 to say. Probably they are not. Perhaps the clergy 
 are as much respected as they ever were. We have 
 seen no proof that their stipend has anywhere been 
 diminished. But that is not the point. The stipend 
 should be greatly increased to meet the material and 
 the intellectual demands of the time. The scale of 
 prices in the intellectual world has kept up with the 
 
Salaries. 23 
 
 scale of prices in the phyiscal world. It costs at least 
 as much, in proportion to the requirements of the last 
 generation, to keep a man s mind fully up to the stand 
 ard of culture at present maintained, as to keep the 
 man himself up to the same mark of animal comfort. 
 The old salaries, even when eked out as they used to 
 be with the minister s fire-wood or an occasional barrel 
 of potatoes, are not enough, nor anything like enough. 
 Ministers never were paid sufficiently ; and the reason 
 why they are not paid sufficiently now must, in our 
 judgment, be sought, not in any local or incidental 
 change in the public mind towards them ; not in any 
 altered relation between them and their parishioners ; 
 not in any disrespect or coldness towards them as a 
 class ; but rather in certain general dispositions which 
 we can by no means applaud, but which we must wait 
 on with such patience as we can command. 
 
 We account for the general "exploiting" of the 
 clergy, first, by the fact that men will not pay more for 
 any kind of service than they are obliged to pay in 
 order to have it ; and as women, and clergymen, who 
 are supposed to be a cross betwixt men and women, 
 are in the habit of taking what is given them as a favor, 
 making no remonstrance, they are kept without com 
 punction on starvation prices. People wonder how 
 they live ; but so long as they do live and do not rebel, 
 it is presumed they are content. It will be soon enough 
 to pay more when they demand more. In the next 
 place, the uneducated lay people be they farmers, 
 shop-keepers, mechanics, traders, or even merchants 
 
24 Clergymen s Salaries. 
 
 have no comprehension of the wants of intellectual 
 men ; no doubt in many respects they fancy their own 
 wants to be greater. They can understand that the 
 minister may need less meat and drink, being of a 
 "spiritual" mind; that he can dispense with carved 
 furniture and heavy draperies, with mirrors and Wilton 
 carpets, with paintings and bronzes, and such like gauds 
 of the world ; but they do not understand how neces 
 sary it is that he should have books, magazines, so 
 ciety, and, above these even, that intellectual repose, 
 that freedom from anxiety, which to themselves would 
 be simply intolerable. They therefore make provision 
 neither for the things he is supposed not to wish for 
 because he is "unworldly," nor for the things they 
 cannot see that he wants because he is intellectual. 
 They starve his flesh because he is not carnal, and they 
 starve his spirit because they do not know what it is 
 to be spiritual. 
 
 But more cogent than either of the two reasons as 
 signed for the low rate of ministerial compensation is, 
 probably, a third reason, namely, a general want of 
 appreciation of ministerial service. That such want 
 of appreciation should be found in New England is 
 very remarkable, and is a strong evidence of the fact 
 that people usually are indifferent to all affairs but their 
 own. In New England no class of men are practically 
 of more value than the clergy, and the same is, to a 
 large degree, the case in all our communities. Besides 
 preaching and doing pastoral work in families on all 
 the most trying occasions of life, they are the general 
 
Clergymen s Salaries. 25 
 
 patrons of education and the superintendents of char 
 ity. They serve diligently on school committees, they 
 supply lectures for lyceums, they are called on for ad 
 dresses on all occasions ; they perform a vast deal of 
 literary work that seems to belong to nobody in par 
 ticular ; they manage benevolent enterprises and work 
 the associations that are organized for the benefit of 
 the poor, the unfortunate, the abused ; they save time 
 and money to the whole community, as the community 
 would soon feel were their efforts to be suspended. 
 In small towns they are useful in keeping alive, even 
 in creating, the taste for literature, art, and cultivated 
 intercourse. They start the book clubs ; they form the 
 reading circles ; they encourage the debating societies ; 
 they lead in refined entertainments. All this is worth 
 money, and, if estimated at its value, would bring 
 money. Such a class of men should not be treated as 
 worthless and unaccountable rubbish. 
 
 How it is to end no (5ne can certainly say. We 
 venture the opinion, however, that matters will not go 
 on from bad to worse. The religious sentiment must 
 have organized and instituted expression in the com 
 munities of men. When the present profuse experi 
 ments in lecturing, lay preaching, " inspirational utter 
 ance," and trance speaking shall have been fairly tried, 
 it will be found, we doubt not, that the best way of ob 
 taining wise and useful religious teaching is to have a 
 class of men gifted for it, educated in it, and devoted to 
 it through their lives. We are inclined to believe, too, 
 that the need of such a class will be recognized more 
 2 
 
26 Clergymen s Salaries. 
 
 as the people advance in intelligence. Increased cul 
 ture will bring increased appreciation of culture in this 
 highest form of knowledge ; and instead of reducing 
 the ministry to yet lower terms, if lower be possible, 
 rational men will supply them with more abundant 
 means of support, will exact of them higher service, 
 and will hold them in greater honor than before. 
 
POPULARIZING SCIENCE. 
 
 THESE are the days of popular lectures and familiar 
 treatises on scientific subjects. Let a discussion arise 
 among scientific men on any subject not narrowly tech 
 nical, and there is immediately an effort to throw the 
 weight of the popular applause into this scale or that. 
 If a scholar has any large project at heart a great 
 book to publish, a museum or an observatory to found 
 he must appeal, not to some one Maecenas, but to 
 masses of people ; he must fascinate two or three hun - 
 dred average American legislators ; he must deal skil 
 fully with reporters and editors ; he must exhibit his 
 disinterestedness, enthusiasm, and learning before large 
 audiences ; he must be constantly before the public in 
 newspapers, periodicals, and popular books. For the 
 noble patron we have substituted the long subscription 
 list. We read with an agreeable feeling of superiority 
 the obsequious dedications to fools of high-born patrons 
 which great scholars of other generations put in the 
 front of their works. Is it quite sure that the processes 
 by which some of our scholars propitiate their patron, 
 the public, are any more consistent with self-respect, 
 
28 Popularizing Science. 
 
 independence, and mental uprightness ? It must be 
 admitted that the process by which science is popular 
 ized nowadays is one fraught with distinct dangers both 
 to the speakers or writers themselves and to the public 
 whom they address ; to the speakers, because when a 
 retiring, single-minded, unworldly student, who is really 
 capable of successfully investigating the hidden things 
 of nature, is converted into an eloquent orator on sci 
 entific topics, a ready debater, or a plausible advocate 
 of his own opinions, the change is not for the advan 
 tage of the individual ; to the public, because they are 
 too apt to be fed with loose and inaccurate statements, 
 with sweeping generalizations, with false facts and false 
 logic, with appeals to their prejudices and preconcep 
 tions rather than to their reason. 
 
 We find some good illustrations of the temptations 
 to which even genuine scientific men are in these days 
 exposed in the printed reports of a course of lectures 
 lately delivered before a popular audience in Boston 
 by the eminent naturalist, Agassiz. To persuade his 
 hearers of the absurdity of the theory of progressive 
 development was the main purpose of the lecturer, al 
 though the lectures were largely made up of descrip 
 tions of the physical characteristics and natural history 
 of Brazil. It is not our present intention to question 
 the fairness of presenting to a large popular audience 
 only one side of a controversy like that upon the theory 
 of Darwin, although it seems clear that a just disputant 
 would state his adversaries argument with precision, 
 if only to refute it ; neither do we desire to call atten- 
 
Popularizing Science. 29 
 
 tion to the not infrequent inconsistencies of the lec 
 turer s own arguments ; the climax of Prof. Agassiz s 
 argument, contained in the concluding sentence of the 
 last lecture, will best illustrate what we feel to be the 
 dangerous tendencies of the present methods of popu 
 larizing science "We are the children of God, and 
 not the children of monkeys." In the first place, this 
 argument is grossly unjust to that decided majority of 
 living naturalists who have accepted and extended 
 Darwin s views ; for it implies that they deny the Fa 
 therhood of God. It is precisely this implication which 
 wins the applause of an indiscriminating audience, but 
 no aspersion could be more unwarrantable. The be 
 lief that the whole animate creation was developed 
 from a single germ is no more inconsistent with a firm 
 faith in the universal and incessant action, through all 
 nature, of an intelligent will, than our knowledge that 
 every human being grows to adult stature out of an 
 egg in which no trace of organization is perceptible is 
 inconsistent with the literal acceptance of the beautiful 
 faith that in God " we live and move and have our be 
 ing." To assert, or imply, that the development hy 
 pothesis is atheistic, is to assert that growth goes on 
 without God, than which there can hardly be a more 
 impious idea. A little four-year-old was told that God 
 made him. Measuring off a few inches on his arm, he 
 wrathfully replied, " No, he didn t ! God made me a 
 little mite of a thing so long, and I growed the rest my 
 self !" This is just the opinion of the theologians and 
 naturalists who would recognize God in spasmodic 
 
30 Popularizing Science. 
 
 creations, but admit him to no share in regular growth; 
 this is precisely the wisdom of those who teach that 
 man is less the child of God if his body was the natural 
 outgrowth of less perfect organisms than if it was a de 
 tached and abrupt creation out of the earth, water, and 
 fire after the Promethean fashion. No scientific lec 
 turer has a right to use, before a popular audience, an 
 argument which could not be addressed to an assem 
 blage of his peers in science. The mischief of mis 
 representing the views of sincere opponents is graver 
 in proportion to the incompetency of the audience to 
 allow for, or correct, the misrepresentation. 
 
 But the argument, "We are the children of God, 
 and not the children of monkeys," admirably illustrates 
 another temptation which besets popular lecturers ; it 
 is an appeal to a popular prejudice by a man who has 
 no such prejudice himself. It is an unwelcome idea to 
 an ignorant man that there is any natural connection 
 between monkeys and himself. That man is an im 
 proved monkey is a repugnant thought to the common 
 mind, just as it would be disagreeable for a New York 
 Democrat to believe that a white man is a bleached 
 negro. Indeed, considered as an argument against the 
 Darwinian hypothesis, Prof. Agassiz s appeal to the 
 monkey prejudice can only be compared, for irrele 
 vancy and inconclusiveness, to the well-known Dem 
 ocratic clincher, " Do you want your daughter to marry 
 a nigger ?" We are the more astonished at such an 
 argument against Darwinism from Prof. Agassiz, be 
 cause no one has stated more distinctly and positively 
 
Popularizing Science. 31 
 
 than Prof. Agassiz himself that man s physical nature 
 connects him directly with the animals, and that the 
 debasement of which man is capable is due to the fact 
 that he is thus descended from the beasts that perish. 
 Four or five years ago, Prof. Agassiz delivered a course 
 of lectures at the Lowell Institute, in Boston. These 
 lectures were then printed in the " Atlantic Monthly," 
 and finally they were collected in a volume which has 
 had a wide circulation under the title of " Methods of 
 Study in Natural History." On the yist page of this 
 book we read : " Man is the crowning work of God on 
 earth ; but though so nobly endowed we must not for 
 get that we are the lofty children of a race [the verte 
 brates] whose lowest forms lie prostrate within the 
 water, having no higher aspiration than the desire of 
 food ; and we cannot understand the possible degrada 
 tion and moral wretchedness of man without knowing 
 that his physical nature is rooted in all the material 
 characteristics that belong to his type, and link him 
 even with the fish." Truly, if the discussion concern 
 ing the Darwinian theory is to be reduced to a question 
 of man s ancestry, it may turn out that the popular ma 
 jority will prefer the monkey to the fish ; between the 
 baboon on the one hand and the sculpin or hornpout 
 on the other, many would think that the baboon was 
 the most desirable ancestor, both on the score of intel 
 ligence and of personal appearance. Prof. Agassiz has 
 already got so far as to think he can see a resemblance 
 between the head of an adult skate and that of a human 
 embryo ; on page 3 1 7 of the book already quoted he 
 
32 Popularizing Science. 
 
 says : " The resemblance of an adult skate, especially 
 in the configuration of the face, the form of the mouth, 
 the position of the nostrils, the arrangement of the gills, 
 to some of the earlier conditions in the growth of the 
 young mammal, not excepting the human family, is 
 equally striking." 
 
 The popular lecturer on science is exposed to still 
 a third temptation : speaking usually on subjects with 
 which his audiences have but very slight acquaintance, 
 he is checked by no fear of competent criticism of his 
 method, or of any immediate reply to loose or incor 
 rect statements. Like the clergyman, the lecturer suf 
 fers from his very exemption from the incessant, viva 
 voce, face-to-face discussions and debates which are the 
 everyday lot of most men. Accustomed to assume 
 that his audiences know little or nothing of subjects 
 with which he has been long familiar, he finally comes 
 to underrate the intelligence and attainments of his 
 auditors ; his lectures become more and more diluted ; 
 the hour s dish of discourse contains but a spoonful 
 of meat ; next he becomes careless in stating facts ; 
 and finally a fatal contempt for his hearers betrays him 
 into using methods of reasoning, argument, and illustra 
 tion which are plausible but not sound, taking but not 
 true. Who can blame him if, when he has made a 
 misstatement twenty or thirty times without contradic 
 tion, or has repeatedly won applause with some fanci 
 ful guesswork or specious fallacy, he at last begins to 
 flatter himself that his misstatements are true, his 
 guesswork what ought to be true, and his fallacies good 
 
Popularizing Science. 33 
 
 logic ? Every man who has followed college or medical- 
 school courses of lectures has seen abundant illustra 
 tions of all these points among lecturers on science. 
 We may again refer to Prof. Agassiz s former Lowell 
 lectures, the " Methods of Study in Natural History " 
 above mentioned, because, as there can be no question 
 as to his real knowledge, the careless confidence bred 
 of long impunity is the only explanation of the frequent 
 occurrence of most curious misstatements, even after 
 the lectures have been twice revised for the press. 
 Thus we are told (p. 69) that every vertebrate has 
 four locomotive appendages, whereas whales, dugongs, 
 manatees, and porpoises have only two. On page 74, 
 it is stated that in " the insects there are three nervous 
 centres, the largest in the head, a smaller one in the 
 chest, and the smallest in the hind body." The fact is 
 that there is one principal centre in the head, three in 
 the chest, which are sometimes blended into two or 
 even one, and ordinarily from nine to four centres in 
 the abdomen, which are sometimes fused together to 
 a less number of centres, and very exceptionally to one 
 centre. On page 114 it is positively asserted that the 
 seal " has no power of bending the wrist or the fingers," 
 whereas every boy who has seen a trained seal at an 
 aquarium knows that a seal can grind a hand-organ 
 with an easy flexible motion of the wrist. A popular 
 book on science is worse than useless if it be not accu 
 rate ; no amount of rhetoric can atone for heedless 
 errors in matters of fact. The lately published " Geo 
 logical Sketches," the second book in which Prof. 
 2* 
 
34 Popularizing Science. 
 
 Agassiz has endeavored to exhibit to unscientific read 
 ers the futility of the Darwinian hypothesis, is liable to 
 the same criticism as the " Methods of Study in Natural 
 History." The scientific journals which have noticed 
 this later work have given long lists of the errors in 
 matters of fact which abound upon its pages. 
 
 But graver reasons remain to be considered. Popu 
 lar lectures and popular treatises on scientific topics 
 have, since the days of the Bridgewater Treatises, done 
 an infinite mischief in fostering two amazing conceits, 
 originally invented by theologians, but strengthened 
 and confirmed in the popular mind by teachers of nat 
 ural science. The first of these conceits is the notion 
 that the boundless universe was made and is main 
 tained for man s sole use and benefit ; that its raison 
 d etre is man s education, development, and happiness ; 
 that its laws are specially adapted for the training of 
 the human intellect through the study of them ; and 
 that all its wonders and beauties are expressly provided 
 for the enjoyment of the little creature which for a few 
 of God s minutes has been pottering about on a small 
 fraction of the outside crust of one little speck of a 
 planet. 
 
 We are inclined to laugh at the argument urged 
 against the Copernican system by the religious authori 
 ties of those days that, as man is the central and ul 
 timate object of creation, it must be that man s dwelling 
 place is the centre around which all other spheres re 
 volve. But this generation is less logical than the 
 monks who persecuted Copernicus : we cling to the 
 
 
Popularizing Science, 35 
 
 superstition that the heavens and the earth were creat 
 ed for man s sole behoof, although we know that the 
 species lives in an obscure corner of a limitless uni 
 verse, of which man can see and understand and use 
 only an infinitesimal fraction. The popular scientific 
 books of the day are full of the assumption that man 
 is the summit of creation and the ultimate object of 
 the Creator in contriving and directing the material 
 universe. 
 
 The second false idea, pregnant with danger, which 
 popular treatises on science have done much to foster, 
 is the notion that men are capable of appreciating and 
 explaining the designs and purposes of God in making 
 things as they are. We are constantly called upon by 
 lecturers and writers to admire the exquisite adaptation 
 of this thing or that thing to what they imagine to be 
 its use and object, to worship the goodness and love 
 which made the infinite beauties and glories of light 
 and music, of ocean and air, of flowers and forests, of 
 mountains and the great heavens, to exercise and de 
 light the created senses and mind of man, as if this 
 were their sole or chief function. But is it not a harm 
 less and even a profitable exercise of the human facul 
 ties, this wonderful study of God s designs ? No ! for 
 it leads men to think that they can enter into God s 
 thoughts and understand the scope of his designs. If 
 men get into the habit of thinking they can fathom 
 God s intentions in the gentle and kindly things of na 
 ture, when they meet a terrible and, to human eyes, 
 injurious exhibition of natural forces, the confidence 
 
36 Popularizing Science. 
 
 they have acquired in their own judgment concerning 
 the final causes of things leads them to say, This is 
 not the work of a benevolent being at all, for it is a 
 cruel work ; these are a devil s doings, or the fruit of 
 man s sin. A shipwreck, for example, must be a "judg 
 ment," for was not the ocean made expressly to be the 
 pathway for man s ships? Professor Cooke, in his 
 Graham lectures on " Religion and Chemistry," declares 
 that it is not true that the material universe manifests 
 a God of unmixed beneficence, and he bases this 
 frightful conclusion on fact that " lightning and tem 
 pest, plague, pestilence, and famine, with all their aw 
 ful accompaniments, are no less facts of nature than 
 the golden sunset, the summer s breeze, and the ripen 
 ing harvest." The argument is this : Man is the ob 
 ject for which all things are made; man comprehends 
 God s purposes in creation ; the glories of sunset were 
 made to delight man s eyes, the gentle breeze to fan 
 his cheek, the abundant harvests to satisfy his hunger ; 
 these things are good for man ; they comfort and bless 
 him; God is good but earthquakes and volcanoes, 
 storms and pestilences, crush and destroy man ; man 
 is the ultimate object of creation; man appreciates 
 God s designs, and the design of these terrors is cruel ; 
 God is malevolent. If popular science had not insidi 
 ously taught people to believe that they can essentially 
 comprehend the benevolence of the seeming good in 
 nature, they would not be so -prone to think that they 
 can decide upon the malevolence of the seeming evil. 
 The fact is that natural science should have nothing 
 
Popularizing Science. 37 
 
 whatever to do with the discussion concerning final 
 causes. It is the province of science to investigate pa 
 tiently and record accurately the natural sequence of 
 events ; and there is work enough to be done in this 
 legitimate sphere without intruding upon the rightful 
 province of another philosophy. It is best to find out 
 the real facts of nature before we write poetry or ser 
 mons about them. At least, it will be well to really 
 find out how things are made before we enter upon any 
 deep speculation as to why they have been so made. 
 How many long chapters have been written about the 
 mathematical instinct of the honey-bee, and the won 
 derful precision with which it builds perfect hexagonal 
 cells ! But it turns out, after all, that the bee does not 
 build with any precision, and that it is constantly mak 
 ing pentagonal cells and crooked cells of irregular 
 shape, so that hardly a bit of honey-comb can be found 
 in which many irregularities and much patchwork do 
 not* occur. Indeed, no man ever saw a single honey- 
 cell in perfect form, in spite of Lord Brougham s extra 
 ordinary assertion in his " Natural Theology," that the 
 mathematical theory of the cell and the bee s practice 
 are absolutely coincident. And what becomes of all 
 the poetry about the Argonaut nautilus spreading its 
 sails to the favoring breeze and sailing over the summer 
 sea, when it appears that the arms of the nautilus are 
 never used in this manner, and that the little creature 
 is, and always was, quite incapable of any such exploit? 
 The natural theologians have always set great store by 
 the chambered nautilus on account of its supposed 
 
38 Popularizing Science. 
 
 power of condensing air in its unoccupied chambers, 
 so that the shell may be made to sink like a diving- 
 bell. This condensing power was justly considered an 
 extraordinary invention, a wonderful adaptation of 
 means to ends. And so perhaps it would be if it were 
 real ; unfortunately for the argument, it is not a fact that 
 the chambered nautilus performs any such remarkable 
 operation. Between a theologian dabbling in science 
 and a scientific man dabbling in theology, it is, indeed, 
 hard to choose. Any one who desires to see further in 
 stances of this method of studying nature may find 
 them ad nauseam, in such books as " Homes without 
 Hands," by the Rev. Mr. Wood, and the works of Mr. 
 Leo H. Grindon. 
 
 We scarcely realized how vicious the general method 
 of popularizing science has been until we lately took 
 up a collection of "Familiar Lectures on Scientific 
 Subjects," which is singularly free from the common 
 cant. Sir John Herschel has published under the 
 above title a collection of the lectures he has delivered 
 to popular audiences ; it contains lectures on " Volca 
 noes and Earthquakes," the " Sun," "Comets," "Light," 
 " Celestial Measurings and Weighings," and the " Origin 
 of Force," subjects which usually call forth the best 
 eloquence of those who think they can find out the 
 Almighty. Sir John Herschel treats all these great 
 subjects plainly, worthily, humbly. The inventive ge 
 nius of the Creator never receives laudatory mention, 
 the kind intentions of the Disposer of All are never 
 appreciatively alluded to, and no surprise is ever ex- 
 
Popularizing Science. 39 
 
 pressed that God allows this thing or that thing to 
 happen or to exist. It is a relief to find a new famil 
 iar treatise on scientific subjects which is accurate and 
 logical, and free from the flippant semi-religious senti- 
 mentalism which mars so many of the popular books 
 on such subjects. In one essay, however, that on "The 
 Yard, the Pendulum, and the Metre," we feel bound to 
 say that Herschel s English feeling gets altogether the 
 better of his reasoning faculty. 
 
 In thus speaking of the dangers which attend the 
 process of making science familiar, we have no desire 
 to gainsay the necessity of diffusing scientific informa 
 tion as widely as possible. But in pursuing this desir 
 able end, it is of primary importance that nothing but 
 real science should be diffused, and that the methods 
 of teaching employed should be, before everything, 
 characterized by simplicity, fairness, and humility. 
 
THE GOOD OLD TIMES. 
 
 THE advent of the new year suggested to us the idea 
 of noting down a few of the material indications of the 
 progress made by the world since the beginning of the 
 century, and we speedily made out a list of things 
 which are so familiar to us that we have not only ceased 
 to think of them as novelties, but very few of us can 
 even fancy the world getting on without them, though 
 our grandfathers had never heard of them. The ma 
 terial progress made within the present century is, to 
 be sure, a trite subject, but then we doubt whether, in 
 spite of all that has been said upon it, many people 
 have sufficient acquaintance with its details not to be 
 startled by seeing them grouped together. A man 
 need not be very old to remember the time when there 
 were no railroads, no locomotives, no steamships, and 
 no telegraph wires no gaslights, no petroleum, no 
 California gold, no india-rubber shoes or coats, no per 
 cussion caps or revolvers, no friction matches, no city 
 aqueduct, no steam printing presses, no sewing ma 
 chines, no reaping machines, no postage stamps or 
 envelopes or pens of steel or gold ; when there was no 
 
42 The Good Old Times. 
 
 homoeopathy or hydropathy, no chloroform or teeth ex 
 tracted without pain ; when there was no mesmerism, 
 no biology, and no table-tippings and marvels from the 
 spiritual world ; no planet Neptune, no Stuart s syrup, 
 no Hecker s flour, no temperance societies, no sax 
 horns or cornets or Boehm flutes or seven-octave pianos ; 
 no photographs, no paint-tubes for artists, no complete 
 stenography, no lithography or anastatic printing or 
 etching on stone, no illustrated news, and hardly a 
 decent wood-engraving; when omnibuses and street 
 cars were not dreamed of; when dull street lamps lit 
 with whale-oil were a luxury, and the Metropolitan Po 
 lice an Utopian vision ; when there was no unpopular 
 Christianity, no Emerson or Parker, no slavery agita 
 tion, no Garrison or Phillips ; Tennyson, Browning, 
 and Carlyle were in embryo, and even Wordsworth was 
 hardly known ; when there were no public schools, no 
 special departments of science in colleges, no gymna 
 siums, no art unions, no literary or political clubs, no 
 lyceum lectures, no wisely organized and widely oper 
 ating philanthrophic societies, no prison discipline, no 
 good lunatic asylums, no houses of employment and 
 reformation for young scamps and generally very little 
 hope of reform in young or old scamps. 
 
 In those days people drank green tea, and ate heavy 
 suppers, and went to bed with warming pans and night 
 caps, and slept on feather beds, with bed curtains round 
 them, and dreaded the fresh air in their rooms as much 
 as sensible folks nowadays dread to be without it. 
 And if they heard a noise in the night, they got up and 
 
The Good Old Times. 43 
 
 groped about in the dark, and procured a light with 
 much difficulty, with flint and steel and tinder-box, 
 and unpleasant sulphur matches, and went to their 
 medicine-chests and took calomel and blue pills, and 
 Peruvian bark, and salts and senna, and jalap and 
 rhubarb. In those days the fine gentlemen tippled old 
 Jamaica and bitters in the morning, and lawyers took 
 their clients to the sideboard for a dram while the 
 fine ladies lounged on sofas, reading Byron, and Moore, 
 and Scott s novels. In those days long leather fire- 
 buckets were hung in the entries, filled with water, and 
 when a fire broke out every citizen was a fireman. In 
 those days gentlemen chewed tobacco, indifferent where 
 they expectorated, and ladies cleaned their dental pearls 
 with snuff, and wore thin shoes, and laced themselves 
 into feminine wasps and consumption. Babies were 
 put to sleep with spanking and paregoric. Urchins 
 were flogged at school a posteriori, and subjected to all 
 sorts of unheard of chastisements. Picture books and 
 toys were dear and poor. Big boys played " hockey " 
 (or, as they called it South, " bandy ") in the streets, 
 with crooked sticks and hard wooden balls (policemen 
 being unknown), and went home to their mothers to 
 have broken shins anointed with opodeldoc. Street fights 
 occurred between schools, and schoolmasters were per 
 secuted by the biggest boys. Young ladies danced 
 nothing but formal and decorous cotillions, or fast and 
 furious Virginia reels, in wide entry halls, by the light 
 of candles that called for snuffers every ten minutes 
 to music by black fiddlers or cracked and jingling 
 
44 The Good Old Times. 
 
 pianos ; while mothers sat darning stockings, and fa 
 thers played backgammon, or gambled, and drank 
 brandy and water or came home late, roaring bac 
 chanalian songs, and inquiring of their sleepy wives in 
 which brown paper parcel the milk was tied up. 
 Boarding-school misses in calico gowns practised the 
 " Battle of Prague," or " The Caliph of Bagdad," or 
 dementi s " Sonatas " on instruments not much bigger 
 than a modern young lady s travelling trunk, strung 
 with jangling wires that were always snapping: and 
 occasionally chirped Moore s " Melodies," or such 
 airs as " Gaily the Troubadour," or " Pray, papa, stay 
 a little longer," or " The banks of the blue Mosche- 
 he-he-helle." Guests sat on hard wooden chairs, some 
 times with their feet up, over roaring wood-fires, " spit- 
 tin round and makin emselves sociable," with juleps, 
 egg-nogg, apples and cider. Every man shaved ; wore 
 a bell-crowned hat ; a swallow-tail coat, with a horse- 
 collar ; carried a turnip-shaped timekeeper in his waist 
 band, with a heavy seal hanging out ; had his breeches 
 pockets full of silver half dollars; wore round-toed 
 boots and linen shirts ; cased his throat in a high black 
 satin neck-stock or heavy cravat, with high standing 
 shirt collars ; ate all manner of indigestible food; 
 swallowed all manner of nauseous quack medicines; 
 dined at one o clock, some families eating the pudding 
 before the meat; took naps in the afternoon (on Sun 
 days preferring the pews for that purpose) ; had noth 
 ing to say against slavery or rum ; took a meagre 
 weekly newspaper; smoked "long nines;" ate fried 
 
The Good Old Times. 45 
 
 oysters, and lobster salad, and Welsh rarebit with 
 plenty of red pepper, and drank fiery Madeira or 
 punch, at twelve o clock at night ; got his feet wet on 
 slushy, snowy days; took awful colds and rheuma 
 tisms ; sent for Dr. Sangsue, and was bled, blistered, 
 and leeched; had nightmares, headaches, dyspepsia, 
 fever, delirium, death and darkened rooms. In those 
 days a journey from New York to Albany took as much 
 time and thought as a voyage now to Panama ; and a 
 voyage to Europe was like a departure to the next 
 world. We saw our friends aboard ship with sobs and 
 tears, and a letter from across the ocean was like an 
 angel s visit. 
 
 Such are a few of the reminiscences of fifty, nay, 
 forty, years ago. No doubt our horizon has expanded 
 in a vast number of directions since then. But, per 
 contra, have we not lost as well as gained ? If we are 
 better provided with ways and means for material com 
 fort, have we gained also in self-reliant and industrious 
 and simple habits? If we are all more on a level, 
 are we as courteous ? If riches abound more, do 
 not luxury and extravagance threaten us proportion 
 ally ? If we have grown more intelligent, have we 
 grown wiser? If humane and philanthropic associa 
 tions overspread the country, are we individually less 
 selfish ? But we are not going to preach. 
 
WHY WE HAVE NO SATURDAY REVIEWS." 
 
 MR. RICHARD GRANT WHITE discussed this ques 
 tion in a recent number of the " Galaxy," but failed, 
 we think, to give it a complete or satisfactory answer. 
 He has, doubtless, hit on some of the reasons which 
 have prevented the appearance in this country ere now 
 of a periodical of the character and pretensions of the 
 Saturday Review ; but he has left the principal one, 
 in our opinion, unnoticed. It is quite true, for instance, 
 that serious obstacles to the success of any such pub 
 lication are offered by the wideness of the area over 
 which persons of cultivation are scattered, the absence 
 of a literary metropolis, and the insatiable demands 
 made on the time and thoughts of all men of ability by 
 law, politics, and commerce. The small price paid by 
 publishers for contributions, which he also mentions, 
 we think of very little importance. If publishers do 
 not pay enough for articles, it is because it does not 
 pay them to pay more. They are but retailers, and 
 they give the manufacturers simply what the demand 
 on the part of their customers justifies them in giving. 
 
48 " Why we have no Saturday Reviews" 
 
 We think we can throw a little more light on this 
 momentous theme for momentous it is, if we are to 
 judge from the amount of talk there has been expended 
 on it by that very small class who have ever seen the 
 Saturday Review or know what it is. We shall com 
 mence by stating that, in our opinion, the grand and in 
 itself sufficient reason why the American public has not 
 had a Saturday Review before now is that it has not 
 wanted one. Those who have done most of the lament 
 ing over the absence of a weekly paper of this descrip 
 tion have always taken for granted that there existed 
 a demand for it on the part of the public : this we pro 
 nounce to be a baseless assumption. Mr. White asserts 
 that this demand has existed and does exist, but the 
 native manufacturers have not been able to supply it, 
 and consequently readers have betaken themselves to 
 the English article, and he mentions that the call "at 
 all the intellectual centres of the country for the first- 
 rate weekly papers of London the Saturday Review, 
 the Spectator, Athenteum, etc. is so large that one firm 
 lives chiefly by importing these papers to supply that 
 demand." How a man of Mr. White s knowledge of 
 the literary taste of the community ever got such a 
 notion as this into his head it is difficult to see. We 
 have always held, when listening to the prevalent 
 groanings for a Saturday Review or Spectator, that, if 
 either of these papers was published in the United 
 States, it would not circulate one thousand copies. As 
 it is, in spite of the craving for them at " the intellectual 
 centres," the firm which Mr. White supposes to " live 
 
" Why we have no Saturday Reviews" 49 
 
 chiefly by importing them," imports less than two hun 
 dred Saturday Reviews, and less than one hundred 
 Spectators, although it supplies Boston ; and, in fact, it 
 may be safely said that the total circulation of the 
 Saturday Review and Spectator together in the whole 
 United States does not reach five hundred copies. Mr. 
 White talks of this as a " large and increasing demand " 
 for the imported article, and ascribes it, in part at least, 
 to " the failure of the native production." But the 
 demand is not large it is very small ; and it is not in 
 creasing. If we subtracted from the two hundred 
 copies of the Saturday Review the number taken by 
 expatriated Britons and news rooms, we should prob 
 ably find that such was the dissatisfaction of the Amer 
 ican public with "the native product" that it had 
 furiously ordered about eighty copies of the first-class 
 English weeklies to supply the intellectual needs of a 
 population of 20,000,000. We, for our part, are firmly 
 convinced that when the American public, or any other 
 public, can bring into the market what political econo 
 mists call " an effective demand " for first-class period 
 icals, it will get them. That it has not wanted first- 
 class foreign weeklies, we conclude, from the fact that, 
 although such papers have been in existence for twenty 
 or thirty years, it has not bought them, and does not 
 buy them. 
 
 The shortcomings of authors and publishers on 
 which Mr. White comments have, we think, very little to 
 do with the matter. The circulation of the Saturday 
 Revieiv or Spectator, even in England, would here be 
 
50 " Why we have no Saturday Reviews." 
 
 considered very small. It is very small, and we ques 
 tion very much whether either of these papers derives 
 any profit worth speaking of from its sales. It is the 
 advertisements that keep them afloat and enrich the 
 proprietors ; and the income of the Saturday Review 
 from this source is very large, although most of its 
 advertisements are crowded into pages which readers 
 never cut. It is, nevertheless, able to ask for them 
 almost any price it pleases, and finds it cheerfully paid. 
 If a journal of similar circulation here were to ask for 
 advertisements at such rates, it would either be laughed 
 at or have to receive them as a great favor, probably 
 accompanied by a request for . a supplementary puff in 
 the editorial columns, such as religious weeklies accord 
 to good customers. The reason of this is not far to 
 seek. In aristocratic countries, traders of all kinds 
 rely rather on few sales at high prices than on large 
 sales at low prices. They therefore address their ad 
 vertisements to a small wealthy class, and in select 
 ing the paper in which they put them they consider 
 rather the social position and tastes of its readers than 
 their number that is to say, their quality rather than 
 their quantity. In England the wealthy class is the 
 cultivated class. In other words, the first-class week 
 lies are more read by the great buyers of books, 
 jewelry, clothes, and all luxuries than any other paper 
 except the Times. The Star, or Daily Telegraph, has 
 probably six times the circulation of the Saturday 
 Review ; but it probably does not receive one-tenth as 
 much for its advertisements. Here, the converse of 
 
" Why we have no Saturday Reviews" 51 
 
 this rule prevails. All advertising is paid for in strict 
 proportion to the number of eyes the paper reaches, no 
 matter what may be the position of those to whom the 
 eyes belong. How hardly this bears on papers which 
 address themselves mainly or solely to the cultivated 
 class, all the more as the cultivated class in America 
 is by no means the wealthiest class of the community, 
 we need not point out. Our large fortunes are too 
 frequently in the hands of men whose reading, from 
 their youth up, has rarely carried them beyond the 
 daily papers. 
 
 There is, of course, greater difficulty in securing good 
 writing, such as the first-class weeklies call for, here 
 than in England, and for various reasons, which we 
 have only time to glance at. The English universities 
 turn out every year as fair a proportion of dunces and 
 blockheads as any institutions of their size in the world. 
 But they also turn out a great number of young men of 
 remarkable maturity of mind as well as cultivation a 
 much greater number than American colleges. These 
 young men mostly go into the church or to the bar ; in 
 either case they have, during the best years of their life, 
 a superabundance of leisure. A man is very success 
 ful at the English bar who begins to creep into practice 
 at forty. An American lawyer is by that time near 
 being a grandfather and beginning to be worn out with 
 work and to occupy himself with the investment of a 
 snug fortune. The Englishman passes the golden fif 
 teen years of his prime in waiting, hoping, dining out, 
 and talking. He is surrounded by a very complex so- 
 
52 " Why we have no Saturday Reviews" 
 
 ciety, composed of several classes, differing in habits, 
 manners, and tone of thought, and he lives amongst 
 people who go into company as a pursuit, and are con 
 stantly occupied with the consideration of their relations 
 to other people of the same set, and of the various 
 means by which " social position " is won, or kept, or 
 lost. The result is that he can hardly help speculating 
 constantly on social phenomena, trifling often, but 
 generally interesting, and produces the " social articles " 
 which constitute so much of the attraction of the Spec 
 tator and Saturday Review, and for which we sigh so 
 often, and sigh in vain, in our own papers. The social 
 experience even of our middle-aged men is very small, 
 and our society has been hitherto too monotonous in its 
 coloring to furnish food for anything but very general 
 reflection. 
 
 The charge which Mr. White dwells on a good deal, 
 that American authors do not write well for American 
 periodicals because they are not paid enough, we think 
 has far more sound than substance. Writers are not 
 well enough paid ; but the fault is not with the publish 
 ers, but the public, as we have said already. We can 
 not agree with Mr. White that writers of articles for 
 periodicals should be paid at the same rate as men 
 bringing the same amount of time or ability to the 
 practice of the law. The practice of the law requires 
 special training ; the practice of literature needs only 
 such training as any man may get incidentally in the 
 course of a general education. A lawyer, too, is not 
 paid simply for his time or for the use of his brain. 
 

 " Why we have no Saturday Reviews." 53 
 
 He is paid for his character, his experience, and for 
 incurring tremendous responsibility, such as no literary 
 man knows anything about. Bad writing is, no doubt, 
 an offence against society, which every man should 
 avoid committing if his circumstances and his educa 
 tion will permit him ; but it cannot be compared to the 
 offence of betraying a client or mismanaging his busi 
 ness through negligence or ignorance or incapacity. 
 Writers even the best writers are not paid in Eng 
 land at the same rate as lawyers. Thackeray never 
 received nearly as much money in his most successful 
 year as Bethell, or Thesiger, or Cairns received year 
 after year as his regular income, to say nothing of the 
 official honors, which are in England part, and a large 
 part, of a successful lawyer s reward. 
 
 The real reason, as we believe or, at least, the great 
 reason why we have not hitherto had journals of the 
 literary standing of the first class English weeklies, has 
 been much the same as the reason why we have not 
 until very recently had any poets or historians or essay 
 ists or scientific men to compare to those of European 
 countries. It was neither the small pay, nor the size of 
 the republic, nor the absence of a literary metropolis 
 that deprived us of them, but the fact that the Revolu 
 tion left this country in a colonial condition, intellec 
 tually as well as in other ways, out of which it has ever 
 since been working, although traces of it are still to be 
 found. But we are making pretty rapid progress, and 
 we predict that Mr. White will live to see the day, not 
 when, as some wiseacres expect, America will have a 
 
54 " Why we have no Saturday Reviews" 
 
 new and peculiar literature of its own, and even an as 
 tronomy and pure mathematics of its own, but when it 
 will contribute its full share and that, too, a very im 
 portant share to the literary and scientific stock of 
 the civilized world. 
 
TINKERING HYMNS. 
 
 THE Protestant Episcopal Church has taken, or is 
 about to take, a step which the world religious and the 
 world literary pronounce "a crime against letters." 
 At the last General Convention of the Church, "hymn- 
 ody " was a subject of some consideration and much 
 discussion, and eventually received the usual American 
 panacea of being referred to a committee. This com 
 mittee has produced a small volume of sixty-five " Ad 
 ditional Hymns," which, " by direction of the House 
 of Bishops, are published under the supervision of the 
 joint committee," and are licensed for use. The 
 hymns are strictly " additional," for the Prayer Book 
 ends with hymn 212, and this volume begins with hymn 
 number 213. 
 
 The work which the General Convention intended 
 to assign to its committee, we undertake to say, was 
 that of selecting. The committee, however, seems to 
 have misread its authority into something like the fol 
 lowing : 
 
 Resolved, That a joint committee of clerical and lay 
 deputies be appointed to select and tinker hymns to 
 be used in the Protestant Episcopal Church. 
 
56 Tinkering Hymns. 
 
 If the committee had acted under such a resolution 
 we should say that its members had performed their 
 work well, except, perhaps, that the work of tinkering 
 too much exceeded the work of selecting. 
 
 Is it really impossible for a church to add to its 
 hymnal hymns as their authors wrote them ? Can we 
 not have a collection of lyrics which to the element of 
 religion shall add the element of authenticity ? Will it 
 always be impossible for a few conscientious and intel 
 ligent gentlemen to sit down to this easy and pleasant 
 task without immediately becoming affected with this 
 horrible mania? Did not the late Dr. Bethune once 
 stop in the reading of a hymn and exclaim to his startled 
 choir ; " This hymn is not as Cowper wrote it ! Who 
 has dared to alter a hymn of Cowper s ? Sing it thus, 
 and not so" Does not a recent number of the " Con 
 temporary Review" ridicule and revile the English 
 collections which are labelled " Improved Versions ? " 
 Has not one of the eminent members of the bar of 
 England, Sir Roundell Palmer, published his "Book 
 of Praise " for the sake of restoring degraded hymns 
 to their original purity ? Do not the taste of the world 
 religious and the conscience of the world secular cry 
 out against all spurious emendations of an author s 
 text ? Year by year we travel back to past authors ; 
 we republish them with their antique inaccuracies of 
 spelling ; we reproduce them in the quaint garb of 
 their old English type ; we condemn the editions that 
 have tampered with the text, and cling to the origi 
 nal thoughts moulded in the original form. Who but 
 
Tinkering Hymns. 57 
 
 a madman would rush against such settled public sen 
 timent ? 
 
 The book before us is a small volume, but a great 
 innovation. We respect the boldness of the committee 
 in bringing forward hymns which, a quarter of a cen 
 tury ago, were exclusively the property of the Metho 
 dist or the Romanist. " Brown, of Ossawatomie," stands 
 at the first page. Every one in this nation knows that 
 " Blow ye the trumpet, blow," was John Brown s favorite 
 hymn, sung on his scaffold and at his burial ; and little 
 thought the world six years ago, when the old abolition 
 ist s death gave to the rude lyric a wide repute, that an 
 Episcopal convention would ever transplant it from the 
 field of the camp meeting to the guarded pages of the 
 revered and ever to be reverenced Book of Common 
 Prayer. Yet it is there, and it is first. 
 
 An index is not much of a literary work, and, ordi 
 narily, a reader abuses a book for not having one, or 
 abuses the index for not having all the contents. Here 
 he may go a little further, and say that even an index 
 can be made an instrument of error and injustice. 
 The compilers have appended to this index the names 
 of the authors. They were not obliged to supply such 
 a list ; but, if they undertook to do so, they were 
 bound to furnish one trustworthy and consistent. Yet 
 this humble part of their work seems to have been 
 thrown together in mere caprice, and to follow no con 
 sistent or intelligible rule. The hymn, "Oh, sacred 
 Head now wounded," is from the German of Paul 
 Gerhardt, which is from the "Salve caput cruentatum" 
 3* 
 
58 Tinkering Hymns. 
 
 of St. Bernard ; the index ignores the translator, and 
 calls the hymn Gerhardt s. The hymn " Creator 
 Spirit," is from the Latin " Veni Creator Spiritus ; " the 
 index ignores the original, and calls the hymn Dryden s. 
 " For thee, oh ! dear, dear country," is by Dr. Neale, 
 from the " Hora Novissima " of Bernard of Cluni ; the 
 index ignores both translator and author, and calls this 
 recent production " Ancient." " Jesus, the very thought 
 of Thee," is credited to St. Bernard, though St. Ber 
 nard was the contemporary of the Monk of Cluni. 
 " Jerusalem, my happy home," is called " Unknown" 
 a needless ignorance, since Mr. Prime s beautiful little 
 history of " Oh ! Mother Dear Jerusalem." "Jerusalem 
 the Golden " is left blank, though the work from which 
 the hymn was copied names both the author of the 
 translation and the author of the original. One of 
 Dr. Neale s unequalled and original translations is 
 called " Ancient," while three others are not named in 
 any way. Of what value is such a list of authors ? 
 
 There is one hymn with regard to which these extra 
 ordinary freaks of the index require particular inquiry. 
 " My faith looks up to Thee " is neither credited to its 
 author, Dr. Ray Palmer, nor to any one else, nor yet 
 marked as "anonymous" or "unknown." It is about 
 twenty years since the hymn was written. With the 
 exception of Bishop Doane s " Softly now the light of 
 day," we should say that it is more generally known 
 and more highly prized than any other recent Ameri 
 can hymn. Properly regarded, it is less a hymn than 
 a prayer a prayer deep, earnest, simple, pleading 
 
Tinkering Hymns. 59 
 
 with beautiful and touching pathos. The first stanza 
 is a supplication for hearing, the second for grace, the 
 third for guidance, and the fourth for the hour "when 
 ends life s transient dream." In one thing only is it 
 defective ; it intercedes for the day of tribulation, but 
 omits the wiser and rarer petition of the Litany, " In 
 all times of our prosperity." Yet this hymn, so beau 
 tiful, so brief, so peculiar, is abbreviated, and abbrevi 
 ated by the omission of the concluding stanza. To 
 shorten a long hymn may be necessary, and to cut 
 short one of four stanzas may be excusable ; but to 
 break such a hymn as this in pieces, and to leave the 
 suppliant asking only for the comforts of earth, striking 
 out his cry for final mercy, is, of a certainty, a strange 
 improvement. Yet of the hymn enough remains to be 
 credited to its author. When a compiler takes a work 
 without paying for it, the least he* can do is to ac 
 knowledge briefly that the author wrote it. With an 
 unknown work and an unknown author, such an 
 omission would be of little consequence, but not so 
 when the blank authorship relates to one of the valu 
 able pieces of the collection. 
 
 But of the alterations chiefly to be censured we have 
 not yet spoken. There is a small volume, published by 
 Randolph, called "The Seven Great Hymns of the 
 Mediaeval Church," which, whatever its merits or de 
 fects, adheres with scrupulous fidelity to the text of the 
 authors, even to the extent of noting a change in the 
 punctuation. From this small store of mediaeval wealth 
 the compilers have taken no less than six of their 
 
60 Tinkering Hymns. 
 
 sixty-five hymns ; and (so great was their zeal) not 
 one of these six hymns have they given as the author 
 wrote it. 
 
 First of the list stands the renowned " Dies Irae." 
 It may startle some people to learn that the " Great 
 Hymn," the famous sequence of the Romish burial 
 service, has its eighteen stanzas spread out to their 
 fullest extent in this brief addition to the Protestant 
 Episcopal Prayer-Book. 
 
 Yet we do not object to this; for, although the 
 " Dies Irae " will not be used by congregations as a 
 hymn, still there will be great occasions in great 
 churches when ambitious choirs will display their tal 
 ents on it, and when the people below will need a copy 
 of the hymn as a " libretto." But when such a hymn 
 as this is to be inserted in a book which will bring it 
 to the homes of thousands, who will see no other trans 
 lation, then the very best, if possible the standard 
 version alone, should be employed. The Catholics 
 have shown good sense and good taste by selecting for 
 the " St. Vincent Manual " the translation of the Prot 
 estant Roscommon. Our compilers had three versions 
 from which to choose. They might have taken that of 
 Gen. Dix, which would have been gratifying to the 
 loyal members of the Church and a graceful compli 
 ment to so distinguished a lay member, and would have 
 secured also the Church the best metrical translation 
 of the " Dies Irae." Or they might have taken the 
 British version of Dr. Irons, which would have had the 
 advantage of conforming the words of the Prayer-Book 
 
Tinkering Hymns. 61 
 
 to the words and music of the " Hymnal Noted." Or 
 they might have taken the old, established, and ever to 
 be admired translation of Roscommon. What have 
 the compilers given to the Church? Their version 
 opens with three false English rhymes : 
 
 " Day of wrath ! that day of mourning, 
 See fulfilled the prophet s warning, 
 Heaven and earth in ashes burning." 
 
 Examining it further, we find that the body of the 
 hymn is the version of Dr. Irons, but altered, patched, 
 and mutilated. Some of these changes are bad and 
 all are needless. The only alteration which is justifi 
 able is the change of the Latin " Jesu " to its English 
 form. Corrections are often worse than the faults they 
 seek to remove, and the amount of the injury can never 
 be measured by the amount of the alteration. In the 
 third stanza the compilers have but a part of the last 
 line; in the fifth they change but a single word. Yet 
 the latter is worse than the former. This alteration 
 furnishes an instance of the madness of tinkering. 
 The stanza in the original refers to the last judgment, 
 and the translation of Dr. Irons correctly expresses 
 that idea. Upon the day of judgment is to be brought 
 the book of judgment, and from its record judgment is 
 to be awarded. The compilers change "judgment" to 
 "justice " and make nonsense of the verse. 
 
 The thirteenth stanza is not by Dr. Irons, but has 
 been taken from the version of Gen. Dix. Yet, even 
 when interpolating a solitary stanza from another au 
 thor, the mania for tinkering could not be resisted. 
 
62 Tinkering Hymns. 
 
 We quote it to illustrate the needlessness and bad taste 
 of the alterations : 
 
 GEN. DIX. 
 
 " Thou to Mary gav st remission, 
 Heard st the dying thief s petition, 
 Bad st me hope in my contrition." 
 
 THE HASH. 
 
 " Thou the harlot gav st remission, 
 Heard st the dying thief s petition ; 
 Hopeless else were my condition." 
 
 The word which is substituted in the first line is not 
 in the original, and is not in the Bible ; it is needless, 
 coarse and repulsive ; it does not contain a new idea, 
 but repeats the old idea in a low form. There are 
 people who seem to suppose that such words can be 
 used with impunity, so long as it is religious composi 
 tion into which they are stuffed. It is time that this 
 supposition be extinguished, and people taught that 
 low and vulgar words needlessly used remain coarse and 
 vulgar wherever placed or by whomsoever spoken. 
 
 What, then, is the version of the great " Dies I roe " 
 which the joint committee has placed in the hymnal of 
 the Episcopal Church, to stand forever in her book of 
 prayer, and to be said and sung daily and hourly by 
 her children ? It may be analyzed thus : Six stanzas 
 are from the version of Dr. Irons, tinkered ; the thir 
 teenth is by General Dix, also tinkered ; while the 
 three false rhymes of the first are original with the 
 joint committee. 
 
 When a great name is attached to a hymn the or 
 dinary supposition is that the hymn was written by the 
 
Tinkering Hymns. 63 
 
 owner of the name. This supposition is almost ground 
 less when applied to the " Additional Hymns." For 
 when the members of the joint committee have exer 
 cised the extraordinary self-denial of not tinkering an 
 author s lines, they still have been unable to resist the 
 temptation of transposing, inverting, and rearranging 
 them. The mediaeval hymns are not classical Latin, 
 but many of their translations are classical English. 
 One would think that the most ruthless committee 
 would at least spare Dryden and Dr. Neale. Let us 
 see what our committee has done. 
 
 "The Seven Great Hymns" contains the "Veni 
 Creator " (ascribed by some to Charlemagne, by others 
 to Gregory the Great) and also the " paraphrase " of 
 Dryden. The compilers take several parts of the trans 
 lation, make no mention of the venerable original, and 
 call the hymn Dryden s. It is true that the words are 
 Dryden s. It is even true that the lines are Dryden s ; 
 but these lines of Dryden s are thrown together in this 
 wise : the first four form the first stanza of the hymn ; 
 the ninth, tenth, eleventh, and twelfth form the second 
 stanza; then the seventh, eighth, fifth, and sixth turn a 
 summersault over each other and turn up as the third 
 stanza ! And these literary gymnastics are called 
 Dryden s ! 
 
 The celebrated " Alleluiatic Sequence " of Godescal- 
 cus is translated by Dr. Neale in one of the most me 
 lodious and finished- translations ever made of any 
 poem. "And," says its author, "every sentence, I 
 almost said every word, of the version was carefully 
 

 64 Tinkering Hymns. 
 
 fitted to the music, and the length of the lines corre 
 sponds to the length of each troparion in the original." 
 Yet this could not be spared. Dr. Neale writes : 
 
 " To the glory of their King 
 Shall the ransomed people sing." 
 
 The compilers hunt out the insignificant little word 
 "to," and substitute "for." Dr. Neale writes : 
 
 " They through the fields of Paradise that roam, 
 The blessed ones, repeat through that bright home, Al 
 leluia." 
 
 The compilers re-write : 
 
 " They in the rest of Paradise who dwell, 
 The blessed ones, with joy the chorus swell, Alleluia." 
 
 The poem contains the following beautiful passage : 
 
 " Ye clouds that onward sweep ! 
 Ye winds on pinions light ! 
 Ye thunders echoing loud and deep ! 
 Ye lightnings wildly bright ! 
 In sweet consent unite your Alleluia." 
 
 The compilers (we are not jesting) actually have trans 
 posed these alternate rhymes ! Dr. Johnson said that 
 Gray should have omitted the expletives from the 
 "Elegy." If the joint committee had manufactured a 
 hymn out of it, they doubtless would have combined 
 this idea with their own, and then we should have had : 
 
 " The curfew tolls the knell of day, 
 The ploughman homeward plods his way, 
 The herds wind slowly o er the lea, 
 And leave the world to you and me." 
 
 This is ridiculous : but there is one hymn in the col 
 lection which, to many readers, will appear little less 
 than sacrilegious. "The Celestial Country" of Dr. 
 
Tinkering Hymns. 65 
 
 Neale, from the Latin of the Monk of Cluni, is among 
 the spiritually lovely poems of the language, and has 
 taken such a strong hold upon religious minds as few 
 works in prose or poetry have ever done. When a 
 reader stumbles upon a hymn taken from the refresh 
 ing poem which he loves, he brightens at the discovery 
 and congratulates himself that his favorite is to become 
 known in part to others. But when he reads a little 
 further and finds that it is not a quotation ; that neither 
 language nor thought nor sentiment has been retained ; 
 that the lines which have been read in sickness and in 
 sorrow have been fished out and jumbled together as 
 children "cap verses," then something rises up within 
 him to prevent his ever forgiving or accepting the bar 
 barism. Of such a character is the hymn beginning 
 "For thee, oh dear, dear country;" and bad as the 
 other mutilations are, those of this hymn exceed belief. 
 In " The Celestial Country " are two passages which, 
 in their proper place, are so spiritual, so exquisitely 
 beautiful, that no reader ever passed them unnoticed. 
 To illustrate this we quote the two stanzas precisely as 
 they are printed in the " Seven Great Hymns : " 
 
 " JESUS the Gem of Beauty, 
 
 True GOD and Man] they sing, 
 The never-failing Garden, 
 
 The ever-golden Ring; 
 The Door, the Pledge, the Husband, 
 
 The Guardian of his Court, 
 The Day-star of salvation, 
 
 The Porter and the Port ! " 
 
 " THOU HAST NO SHORE, FAIR OCEAN ! 
 THOU HAST NO TIME, BRIGHT DAY ! 
 
66 Tinkering Hymns. 
 
 DEAR FOUNTAIN OF REFRESHMENT 
 
 TO PILGRIMS FAR AWAY ! 
 UPON THE ROCK OF AGES 
 
 THEY RAISE THY HOLY TOWER ; 
 THINE is THE VICTOR S LAUREL, 
 
 AND THINE THE GOLDEN DOWER !" 
 
 From these stanzas the compilers have extracted the 
 finest figure have hitched to it a passage with which 
 it has no connection in thought, or style, or contiguity, 
 and have reduced it to mere rhyme and bad grammar, 
 in the following stanza : 
 
 " Oh one, oh only mansion, 
 
 Oh paradise of joy, 
 Where tears are ever banished, 
 
 And smiles have no alloy j 
 Thou hast no shores, fair ocean, 
 
 Thou hast no time, bright day, 
 Dear fountain of refreshment 
 
 To pilgrims far away." 
 
 But even this is not all. The thirty-fourth stanza of 
 "The Celestial Country" (we cite from the "Seven 
 Great Hymns," in which alone it is divided into num 
 bered stanzas) contains these lines : 
 
 " Jerusalem the glorious, 
 The glory of the elect, 
 O dear and future vision 
 That eager hearts expect" 
 
 The forty-second stanza contains these : 
 
 " O sweet and blessed country, 
 Shall I ever see thy face ? 
 O sweet and blessed country, 
 Shall I ever win thy grace ? " 
 
 Will it be believed that such remote and discon- 
 
Tinker i?ig Hymns. 67 
 
 nected lines have been extracted and brought together 
 thus ? 
 
 " Oh sweet and blessed country , 
 
 The home of God^s elect ! 
 Oh sweet and blessed country, 
 
 That eager hearts expect. 
 Jesus in mercy bring us 
 
 To that dear land of rest ; 
 Who art with God the Father 
 And Spirit ever blest." 
 
 The last four lines, it is to be observed, are not a part 
 of "The Celestial Country," but are the work of some 
 other author. Does any other hymnal in the English 
 language possess another such a specimen of conglom 
 erate as this unhappy stanza ? 
 
 The leading and intelligent minds of the Episcopal 
 Church will not accept these mutilated and injured 
 hymns. The originals are too well known to suffer 
 these spurious copies to be accepted or forgotten. 
 Within the last two years there has sprung up a 
 wonderful interest in these old lyrics of the me 
 diaeval church. As that study increases, this subject 
 will be reconsidered. The student who comes back to 
 his Prayer-Book to find that it is false to the authors 
 who enrich its pages, will seek to purify it. The cler 
 gyman who knows the original hymn will never inflict 
 on his congregation the spurious copy. Time will 
 right the error, if the Church be not wise enough to 
 right it now. 
 
AMERICAN MINISTERS ABROAD. 
 
 THE Motley correspondence brought prominently 
 into view some of the many small miseries and incon 
 veniences which those have to undergo who have the 
 honor or the misfortune to represent the United States 
 at foreign courts. In the first place, as diplomacy is 
 not a profession with us, the men who do our diplo 
 matic business are rarely trained for it a circum 
 stance which, if they only know the language of the 
 countries to which they are sent, and possess some 
 familiarity with the ways of European society, we do 
 not consider a very great disadvantage as far as the 
 conduct of the business is concerned. We have, on 
 the whole, fared very well in most of the great negotia 
 tions which we have had to carry on, and have had, 
 whenever we have taken pains, little difficulty in find 
 ing matches for the wariest and astutest of European 
 statesmen. But, then, the very fact that diplomacy is 
 not a profession in this country, and that all kinds of 
 men are, for all sorts of reasons, sent to represent us 
 abroad, inevitably lessens the social consideration en 
 joyed by even our best ministers. The best man we 
 
yo American Ministers Abroad. 
 
 can select suffers more or less at the outset, from the 
 fact that he is not a member of a regular calling, and 
 that his fitness, either natural or acquired, may have 
 had nothing whatever to do with his appointment. 
 Then he has, in a measure, to bear a portion of the 
 legacy of disgrace bequeathed by those who in the old 
 Democratic days got drunk at this court, did not pay 
 their bills at that one, and had street-fights at another, 
 and at a fourth lived in an attic and did their own 
 cooking. So that each American minister, instead of 
 finding a high social position ready-made for. him, as 
 the diplomatists of other nations do, is apt to have to 
 make one for himself. The presumptions, in fact, in 
 stead of being favorable to him, are too often against 
 him. This is a small matter in the case of men like 
 Motley or Adams or Marsh, whose character and 
 standing are already known in Europe ; but some 
 of their obscure brethren have found that being an 
 American minister did not at first smooth their path in 
 foreign society. 
 
 In the next place, the European and the American 
 theories of the use of foreign legations differ very mate 
 rially. To European governments the conduct of nego 
 tiations is but one part, and often only a subordinate 
 part, of a minister s business. In fact, it is very com 
 mon, when affairs of importance are under discussion, 
 to send out an envoy extraordinary to supersede, or at 
 least act as adjunct, to the regular resident. The main 
 object of European governments in keeping an ambas 
 sador at foreign courts is to get information of the 
 
American Ministers Abroad. 71 
 
 temper, feelings, and opinions and tendencies of the 
 classes who control the affairs of each country, so that 
 when difficult crises arise the government at home may 
 have such knowledge of the persons with whom it is 
 dealing and of the influences by which these persons 
 are affected as will help it to determine what it shall 
 ask or what it shall yield. The duty of the diplomatist 
 is, in other words, rather to supply facts than to make 
 bargains or express opinions. Now, the qualities which 
 fit a man to do this sort of work effectually are those 
 which would fit a man to shine in the " good society " 
 of any country good manners, a good deal of social 
 experience, a fair share of talent for conversation, con 
 siderable knowledge of the world in which he is moving, 
 skill in entertaining in his own house and money enough 
 to do it with, and, above all else, a good knowledge of 
 French, and also, in most cases, of the language of the 
 country to which he is accredited. But French is 
 always indispensable; we do not mean by "French" 
 the horrible jargon in which the mass of Americans 
 and Englishmen order their beefsteaks in Parisian res 
 taurants, but French which will fit a man to talk easily 
 and pleasantly on any subject which is likely to come 
 up at a dinner-table, to mark the finer distinctions in 
 his own thoughts and catch those which are made by 
 others in theirs, to play his part in a little badinage, to 
 carry him comfortably over as much literature or meta 
 physics as is likely to present itself in the salon, and 
 to qualify him to discuss any political subject with firm 
 ness and precision. No European diplomatist is con- 
 
72 American Ministers Abroad. 
 
 sidered fit for his place who has not at least the fore 
 going accomplishments. His government, if it be that 
 of a first-class power, pays him enough to entertain 
 freely and handsomely without encroaching on his pri 
 vate fortune, and generally provides him with a good 
 house. What it exacts of him is that he shall be civil 
 to such of his own countrymen as are of a certain rank, 
 that he shall mingle constantly and freely in foreign 
 society, and keep his eyes and ears open, and report 
 regularly and faithfully what he sees and hears. Most 
 of his work is really done at dinner-tables and evening 
 parties, and in clubs and in private chit-chat. Treaties, 
 protocols, and " notes " rarely contain anything which 
 has not been settled, or, at all events, shadowed forth 
 over the wine and the nuts in town and country houses. 
 The European ambassador is protected also from too 
 heavy drafts on his hospitality by the custom which 
 gives nobody a claim on his social recognition who is 
 not a member of the court circle at home, that is, who 
 has not been, or might not be, if he chose, presented 
 to his own sovereign. This not only keeps down the 
 number of claimants on the minister s attention, but 
 saves him the necessity of having to sift for himself 
 those of his country men and women who want to go 
 into foreign society under his wing. 
 
 The American idea of the uses of an ambassador 
 differs widely from the foregoing. The public here is 
 so little used to seeing any political results accomplish 
 ed by purely social influences, or in fact in any way 
 but through the ordinary process of agitation, speech- 
 
American Ministers Abroad. 73 
 
 making, and article-writing, that it would never think 
 of selecting an ambassador for his social gifts. We are 
 so far removed from government by classes or coteries, 
 that nine-tenths of our people would be greatly amused 
 if asked to give a man a high office because he spoke 
 French well, could give handsome dinners, and made 
 himself very agreeable in drawing-rooms. The claims 
 in a candidate for a diplomatic mission which most 
 commend themselves to the majority of our political 
 managers, who in this only reflect the popular senti 
 ment, are, of course, his political services in the last 
 party struggle, and his ability as a political speaker or 
 writer, or as a lawyer. Occasionally the standard rises 
 higher ; it did so during Mr. Lincoln s administration 
 under the pressure of terrible danger from abroad, but 
 this is of rare occurrence. 
 
 Consequently, the chances are that when one of our 
 ministers goes abroad, he finds himself unprovided with 
 any of the tools which his brother diplomatists are 
 using. He has, probably, never cultivated society 
 much, and has no great powers of conversation. His 
 knowledge of European life and habits of thought is 
 imperfect ; his knowledge of French so slight as to 
 condemn him either to total silence or pantomime in 
 general society. The Government gives him about the 
 salary which would enable him to make a good show 
 in a New England country town, and no house ; and, 
 nevertheless, makes it his sacred duty to pay every 
 possible civility to every American man, woman, or 
 child who can by hook or crook muster enough money 
 4 
 
74 American Ministers Abroad. 
 
 to pay his or her expenses to the door of the legation. 
 Fifty years ago, when it took six weeks with a fair 
 wind to get from New York to Liverpool, and when a 
 journey on the European Continent was done in dili 
 gences and post-chaises, and when only the Ticknors 
 and Sillimans and Irvings had made their way over, it 
 was easy enough for an American minister to open his 
 door to all his fellow-citizens and take them round to 
 see the King after dinner. But the times have changed. 
 Tens of thousands now cross the Atlantic every spring, 
 of whom three-eighths belong to a class which in no 
 other country in the world possesses the means of mak 
 ing the "grand tour," or ever thinks of it. Of late 
 years a very large proportion of the very wealthiest have 
 been persons who have made fortunes rapidly, and to 
 say the least are not attractive in mind or manners. 
 They swarm now in every European capital, and hav 
 ing plenty of diamonds and shawls, and couriers and 
 maids, they see no reason why the European salons 
 should not be open to them. They are nearly always 
 determined at all events to go to court, and to make 
 the minister take them, and the unfortunate man in 
 most cases dares not refuse. He is pricked on the one 
 side by the thorns of European etiquette, which he 
 knows makes it improper for him to take people of 
 certain callings or position into the presence of royalty ; 
 and he is assailed on the other by the fear of being 
 abused and held up to popular odium at home as a 
 snob and a flunky, a servile imitator of the bloated and 
 effete aristocracy. He is sure to be made miserable 
 
American Ministers Abroad. 75 
 
 whichever course he adopts, and as the opinion of his 
 own countrymen is after all what is of most importance 
 to him, he generally succumbs, and ushers them into 
 the court drawing-rooms in great droves, which furnish 
 a laughing-stock to the other diplomatists and the so 
 ciety of the place. This the droves do not mind, how 
 ever ; they see the Empress and show their own clothes, 
 and those may laugh who win. 
 
 The late Mr. Mason, during his occupancy of the 
 Paris mission, was in this particular one of the most 
 kind-hearted of men, and never had the heart to refuse 
 anybody who wanted a peep at the Tuileries on state 
 occasions. So he introduced Tom, Dick, and Harry 
 to the Empress, and at last introduced a German 
 barber, whose profession, though he went to court in 
 the sacred character of an American citizen, somebody 
 had the cruelty to reveal to her Majesty, who was high 
 ly indignant thereat, the European theory being that 
 the palace is the king s own house, and that he has as 
 much right to choose who shall come into it as his 
 guests as any private citizen in Fifth Avenue or Beacon 
 Street has to select his company. The result was that 
 it was determined at court to make an effort to sift the 
 American applications for invitations and presentations, 
 and when Mr. Dayton arrived and sent in his list, he 
 was asked to annex to each name the " qualite," i.e., 
 calling or condition of the owner. This he declined to 
 do, and the invitations were not issued, and some 
 scores of women, with their best clothes on and their 
 hair ready dressed, were stricken with consternation. 
 
76 American Ministers Abroad. 
 
 Somebody intervened at the last moment and had the 
 cards issued, so that much suffering and disappoint 
 ment was saved, but the whole party received a severe 
 scolding from Mr. Seward, who painted in glowing 
 colors the vanity of court life, and the indecency of 
 being abroad begging for Imperial invitations when the 
 country was convulsed by civil war. A sensitive minis 
 ter who mixes much in native society, and knows what 
 the feelings of his brother diplomatists are, probably 
 suffers enough in the course of a year, either from hav 
 ing to take his country men and women to court, or 
 from having to find excuses for not taking them, to en 
 title him to a retiring pension. It is related that one 
 distinguished diplomatist used, when a letter of intro 
 duction was sent up to him, to come down on tiptoe 
 and take a view of the bearer through a chink in the 
 door before receiving him ; if he did not like his ap 
 pearance, he was not at home ; but if the disappointed 
 visitor was a McCracken, he probably went off and de 
 nounced him as a "hater of our institutions" and a 
 servile worshipper of the aristocracy. 
 
 Our own opinion is that no American minister of 
 education and character will be able to endure the ser 
 vice, organized as it is, very much longer. The pay is 
 miserably insufficient; the position is in many ways 
 one of extreme difficulty and embarrassment. Ameri 
 can travellers multiply with the growth of the country 
 in wealth, and the impudence and exactions of many of 
 them increase in the ratio of their numbers. Their 
 minister is to a large proportion of them a kind 
 
American Ministers Abroad. 
 
 77 
 
 of valet de place, who is bound to secure for them 
 abroad things which in European society are only 
 granted to the possessors either of certain conventional 
 distinctions or to great talents or great charms. And 
 there is not one of them who may not prove any day, as 
 in McCracken s case, a spy and slanderer as well as a 
 bore, if there are men at Washington silly enough or 
 base enough to read and use his tattle. Where the 
 remedy is to be found we do not know, but it must be 
 found somewhere. Either our ministers abroad must 
 be released from all social duties, or they must, in per 
 forming them, be allowed to conform to the customs 
 and even prejudices of the society in which they are 
 living. 
 
HORSE-RACING. 
 
 AN attempt has been made lately to render horse- 
 racing a " genteel " amusement in this country some 
 thing which people belonging to what is called " good 
 society " will go to see, and, seeing, grow fond of by 
 the opening of a course called the "Jerome Park," 
 near this city. The matter has been taken in hand by 
 the chiefs of what are called " fashionable " circles in 
 New York. A good course has been laid out, a " grand 
 stand " provided, the sale of liquors prohibited, and 
 everything done that money or zeal can do to surround 
 the enterprise with an air of respectability, and, above 
 all, to make the course a "place fit for ladies." Good 
 horses, too, were entered for the opening races ; very 
 fair running was made ; the weather was fine ; the pro 
 ceedings were marked by the utmost order, and Gen 
 eral Grant was there. And yet we have no hesitation 
 in saying that, regarded as an attempt to make horse- 
 racing a national sport to which young and old of all 
 classes will turn with zest for enjoyment, it was a com 
 plete failure, and will prove a failure no matter how 
 often repeated. We do not by any means rejoice over 
 
8o Horse-Racing. 
 
 this result. In fact, we regret it ; because we believe 
 horse-racing might improve the breed of horses ; it is 
 not necessarily immoral, and we wish most heartily 
 that some means might be discovered of bringing large 
 bodies of Americans together in the open air for simple 
 amusement without any thought of "instruction." We 
 have no theatres out of New York, and we cannot be 
 exactly said to "unbend" at lectures or mass meet 
 ings. But horse-racing is not likely to prove our na 
 tional game, and we propose to give the reason why, 
 and more especially why the Jerome Park enterprise is 
 likely to prove a failure. 
 
 In the first place, that particular form of horse- 
 racing which is the only one which really tests the 
 animal s full powers galloping full speed under the 
 saddle is one which excites now hardly any real in 
 terest in the Northern States. We are no longer an 
 equestrian community. Not one in a thousand of our 
 men knows how to ride or ever gets into a saddle from 
 year s end to year s end. Without having any special 
 knowledge on the subject, we venture to assert that 
 the principal promoters of this very enterprise Mr. 
 Jerome himself, for example, or Mr. Belmont, are never 
 seen on horseback and do not particularly enjoy riding. 
 A certain taste for horseback exercise has been devel 
 oped of late years in New York and other cities, but 
 those who show it might be counted on one s fingers. 
 There are two or three dozen young men and women 
 in New York who ride regularly and enjoy it ; there 
 are some dozen of others, and a few elderly gentlemen, 
 
Horse-Racing. 8 1 
 
 who take it as a medicine, like bitters or cod-liver oil, 
 to cure dyspepsia, or avert consumption, or ward off 
 the assaults of old age ; but there is not amongst the 
 population at large, or even amongst the class which 
 can afford to keep horses, any hearty love of it, or any 
 interest in horses in their highest and noblest char 
 acter saddle-horses. 
 
 This is due partly to the fact that to love the sad 
 dle, to get into it with zest, one must use it from youth 
 up. But very few of our young men can afford to use 
 it. At the age when physical tastes and habits are 
 formed or developed, our men are generally poor and 
 struggling for subsistence. As they get older they are 
 absorbed in business, and by the time they have won 
 fortune and leisure they are stiff and flabby and nerv 
 ous. A trot or canter in the saddle has no more at 
 traction for them than exercise on parallel bars. Then, 
 our climate makes riding repulsive to all who have not 
 a strong natural love for it, and whose frame has not 
 become hardened to it. In winter the cold is intense 
 and the roads abominable. In summer the heat is so 
 great as to make all motion exhausting, and the roads 
 are dusty beyond endurance. In the spring and fall 
 the days are so short that for business men the hours 
 given to amusement in the open air would have to be 
 stolen from sleep. Carriages, too, are cheap and com 
 fortable, and in harness one horse can carry more than 
 one man an important consideration in a country in 
 which, until very recently, large fortunes, and especially 
 hereditary fortunes, were unknown. The result is that 
 4* 
 
82 Horse-Racing. 
 
 our lads have the same passion for wheeled vehicles 
 and have the same familiarity with the management of 
 them that a Hungarian boy or an English boy of the 
 upper classes has for saddle-horses. The ambition of 
 the American boy with a love for open-air life is, there 
 fore, a wagon and a fast trotter. He does not care 
 for a saddle-horse, and will rarely use one unless as a 
 means of accompanying a girl for whom he begins to 
 feel a "penchant," as the novel-writers say. The 
 saddle-horse is, in a certain sense, a strange animal to 
 him, which he ought, perhaps, to enjoy using, and of 
 which he feels bound to speak respectfully, but which 
 he does not take to. He is interested about trotting, 
 harness, wagons, blankets to wrap his feet in, but about 
 saddles, bridles, and "running" or galloping, he is 
 not interested. His first luxury is a one-horse team ; 
 as he gets older and richer he increases the number, 
 and reaches the summit of his ambition when, like Mr. 
 Jerome, he possesses and drives a four-in-hand, or, like 
 Mr. Vanderbilt or Mr. Bonner, has $15,000 or $20,000 
 invested in a pair which can outstrip everything he 
 meets. 
 
 Therefore, to most of those who went to the races at 
 the Jerome Park outside the old set who go to all 
 races for the sake of betting the galloping of horses 
 under the saddle was not very exciting or interesting. 
 Americans are thoroughly utilitarian even in their 
 sports, and the uselessness of speed in running is prob 
 ably present to the minds of nine men out of ten, and 
 women too, every time they witness it. That it is the 
 
Horse-Racing. 83 
 
 natural pace of the horse, that it ^g^y in it that his 
 full powers are brought into plzfi^f that its effects 
 on breeding are likely to be good, are considerations 
 too remote to affect the crowd. Trotting they under 
 stand ; fast trotting every man who gets into a wagon 
 can turn to account but " running " seems a sort of 
 idle trick, like those taught circus horses. In fact, we 
 have heard cantering one of the most graceful of 
 paces, and that which, on account of its ease for the 
 rider, is far better adapted to summer riding in our 
 climate than trotting sworn at on account of its resem 
 blance to the performances in the arena. 
 
 Now, to make racing under the saddle popular and 
 national, it must be begotten by the national tastes and 
 habits. There is only one country in the Western 
 world in which it can be said to be thus produced, and 
 that is England. The taste for saddle exercise is there 
 kept up by the time-honored practice of fox-hunting, 
 which makes it the darling ambition of every boy to be 
 able to " ride to hounds," and of every man who can 
 muster the means to be in the saddle as much as possi 
 ble. The climate, too, favors it, as there is no season 
 of the year in which active exercise in the open air is 
 not, as far as temperature is concerned, perfectly agree 
 able. Races there owed their origin to the desire of 
 improving the breed of hunters, and hunters are used 
 by the whole upper class men bred to the saddle 
 from their infancy, and exercising a most powerful 
 influence on all the classes below them. The practice 
 once begun, it has been kept up partly by the love of 
 
84 Horse-Racing. 
 
 horse-flesh thus^eveloped, and partly by the love of 
 gambling amongst those who know and care nothing 
 about horse-flesh, and partly by fashion. 
 
 It is needless to point out how widely different the 
 circumstances are under which the amusement is reviv 
 ed at the North. Those who are bolstering it up here 
 do not stand to the community in the same relation in 
 which the English patrons of the turf stand to English 
 society. Our patrons of horse-racing are not the cream 
 of our society, either mentally or physically or morally. 
 Their influence and example go for absolutely nothing, 
 except amongst a small set of not very refined people 
 in New York, who are attempting in various ways a 
 reproduction, by no means successful, of the follies and 
 absurdities of French life. Even in Paris, where there 
 is a court and a real aristocracy bred to " manly sports," 
 it has been found impossible to make horse-racing a 
 national amusement, in spite of the encouragement 
 given it by the Government and men of rank and fash 
 ion, and for the very reason which bars its success 
 here the fact that the French are not an equestrian 
 people, and do not as a community use the saddle. 
 The races at Longchamps, in spite of the eclat given 
 them by the court, are attended by the Parisians as a 
 " spectacle," just as a review of troops on the Champs 
 de Mars, and not because they care one straw about the 
 horses. When the races are over, nobody outside the 
 small betting circle round the Jockey Club knows the 
 name of the winning horse, or at least cares to know, 
 or has five sous depending on the result ; for the French 
 
Horse-Racing. 85 
 
 do not, for some reason or other, seem to take to this 
 form of gambling. 
 
 In the second place, racing, even in England, where 
 it is found in perhaps greater perfection than anywhere 
 else, has proved, in so far as it professes to be of ma 
 terial use, a dead failure. The great utilitarian argu 
 ment in its favor has been that it improved the breed 
 of horses. It is now confessed that it not only does 
 nothing of the kind, but that its influence on horse- 
 breeding is bad, and is every day growing worse. All 
 the great trainers and amateurs acknowledge this 
 with lamentations ; for some years back the press has 
 teemed with suggestions of remedy or reform. It has 
 been found that the race-course has developed the love 
 of gambling far more rapidly than the love of horse 
 flesh, so that the practice has grown up of running 
 leggy, weedy, half-developed two and three-year olds, 
 with just constitution enough for a short dash to decide 
 the bets, but not enough to keep them alive or worth 
 their feed after one or two races. A powerful horse, 
 with plenty of wind and bottom and in the prime of his 
 life, is now a rare sight on the English turf, and the 
 rickety condition of the thorough-breds of course grad 
 ually affects saddle-horses of all other grades. The 
 real lovers of the horse, and particularly the patrons of 
 the hunting-field, in which all a horse s powers are 
 really needed, have been for years greatly alarmed by 
 this state of things, and have been racking their brains 
 for a cure. One of the latest propositions with this 
 view was that the Prince of Wales should offer a prize 
 
86 Horse-Racing. 
 
 for four-year-olds to run a four-mile race, thus tempting 
 breeders to rear horses to maturity before bringing 
 them out. But no such plan is ever likely to produce 
 much effect. The sums of money that are now staked 
 on races at Epsom and Ascot and Newmarket are 
 enormous, and the temptation which besets a man who 
 has a colt or filly that can make a good burst for a 
 mile, even if it drops down dead at the end, to bring it 
 out at once, is not likely to be overcome by any prize 
 that can be offered. The horse has in fact become, on 
 the English turf, a mere instrument for deciding bets, 
 a kind of " little joker " whose absolute goodness is of 
 very small importance provided he is relatively fast. 
 If he gets in before anything else, it does not make the 
 least difference whether he makes a mile in a minute 
 or a mile in five minutes. In short, the turf has ceased 
 to exercise any improving influence on the breed of 
 horses, while it has done much to injure the morals of 
 the community ; many of its most respectable support 
 ers have been driven into closing their stables by the 
 disgust excited by the scoundrels with whom racing 
 brings them in contact. The turf is almost given over 
 to blacklegs and blackguards, fellows with whom an 
 honest man cannot even bet without contamination, 
 and the mania for betting has gone down through all 
 classes of the community. The example of the aris 
 tocracy has infected every other class. Merchants 
 bet, clerks bet, and errand-boys bet. Not a Derby- 
 day passes that there are not defalcations discovered 
 amongst unfortunate shopmen and employees whom 
 
Horse- Racing. 87 
 
 the gambling mania has driven into crime. A whole 
 class of professional swindlers, too, called "racing 
 prophets," has risen into existence, which trades on the 
 credulity of the betting world by pretending to be able 
 to tell the name of the horse that is to win, or to supply 
 information about training stables to assist in forming 
 an opinion, and openly seeks its dupes through adver 
 tisements in the sporting and Sunday papers. It is 
 needless to say what the effect would be here, with our 
 greater excitability of temperament, if horse-racing ever 
 became an object of general interest, and the turf were 
 not abandoned, as it now is, to as thorough a set of 
 sharpers as ever disgraced a moral and religious com 
 munity. 
 
SOME OF OUR SOCIAL PHILOSOPHERS. 
 
 THE riddle of the painful earth is naturally more 
 guessed at in the middle of Yankee land than in other 
 regions. Down South one rather exacting social prob 
 lem and the nocturnal patrol duty which its presence 
 entailed, distracted all attention from other questions 
 of like nature. These are mostly of recent growth, 
 and our Southern brethren are still bowing down to 
 Dr. Johnson in literature, Dr. Jalap in medicine, Dr. 
 John Knox in religion and theology ; and in sociology, 
 so far as it has been studied, Dr. Nott and Mr. Legree 
 were pretty good authorities up to a very recent date. 
 The negro and the Jewish Scriptures of the Old Tes 
 tament beat the Gospels and the Reformers quite out 
 of the field. In Baltimore, to be sure, the novel of 
 "Emily Chester" was produced, but that apotheosis 
 of goose-flesh was preceded by nothing like it and fol 
 lowed by nothing like it it was paroxysmal and excep 
 tional, and, besides, before it was published, Maryland 
 was a free State. 
 
90 Some of our Social Philosophers. 
 
 Here, in New York, we have Carl Benson, and we 
 used to have Fanny Fern, who now and then shed us a 
 ray of light on social questions. But the latter has 
 long been mute, we believe, and the fern leaves are 
 blown away, vanished out of sight and out of mind. 
 The former makes less impression than, with his abili 
 ties and opportunities, he ought, and we fear will never 
 be as useful to American society as he deserves to be. 
 He is apt to look at it from the window of his family 
 coach ; but this vehicle is so uncommon a locus standi 
 for observers in this country that not many people can 
 be at all expected to see things as he sees them, and he 
 can never address a thoroughly appreciative audience 
 till we get ourselves all ranged in ordered classes, with 
 the proper gulf fixed between Dives and Lazarus, and 
 Dives and Lazarus properly placed relatively to the 
 gulf and each other. But that, it is likely, will never 
 happen, Democracy being so much in love with itself. 
 Though it is unwashed, ungrateful, fierce, and a fail 
 ure, and makes the judicious grieve for these its many 
 faults, it adds to them impudent self-complacency and 
 robust perverseness ; to commit suicide because only 
 its friends like its behavior, and other people are really 
 compelled to confess themselves hardly satisfied with 
 all it does, it quite refuses. 
 
 In Massachusetts, however, we count our social 
 philosophers not by ones and twos ; they are many. 
 There are Mrs. Stowe, and the Autocrat of the Break 
 fast Table, and Gail Hamilton, and Timothy Titcomb, 
 and the author of " Moods," and the author of " Young 
 
Some of our Social Philosophers. 9 1 
 
 Knighthood," and not a few more who, if they do not 
 speak for themselves, need never, in Massachusetts, be 
 at a loss for some league or association to speak for 
 them. If Carl Benson habitually conceives of exis 
 tence from the point of view of a wealthy gentleman 
 with town-house and country-house, to whom life comes 
 in seasons as the season for woodcock, for yachting, 
 for returning to the city ; who possesses butler, picture- 
 gallery, library, and many ounces of plate, Mrs. Stowe 
 as habitually conceives of it as a succession of fore 
 noons with chores and housework, and an occasional 
 story of a squirrel to a small nephew hanging round 
 the bread-tray, and a succession of afternoons with 
 knitting and a book at home ; abroad, a soldier s aid 
 association, perhaps, or Dorcas society ; perhaps a run 
 into Messrs. Williams & Everett s ; and perhaps a call 
 on Mrs. Marvyn, who, we suppose, must now be read 
 ing " Ecce Homo," or pensively perusing " Les Apo- 
 tres," for the improvement of her time and mind. 
 
 She is shrewd and humorous and often poetical, but 
 above all things she is matronly and motherly. " Uncle 
 Tom s Cabin" is slavery exposed; but slavery as it 
 affects the mansion of the master and the hut of the 
 slave, the domestic relations, the life of the hearth 
 stone, and only incidentally is it revealed in its other 
 aspects. It was the shiftlessness of its household 
 management more than its wickeder features which 
 was trying to the soul of Miss Ophelia. Dred, and 
 Agnes of Sorrento, we are not, as yet, familiar with ; 
 but the " Minister s Wooing," certainly that was carried 
 
92 Some of our Social Philosophers. 
 
 on amid notable housekeeping and much dress-making 
 and Dr. Hopkins s singing angel of a Mary Scudder, 
 Mrs. Stowe, with characteristic wisdom, makes an ex 
 cellent plain cook, as knowing that if the road by way 
 of the eyes and ears is the shortest to a man s heart 
 before marriage, after marriage, even in the case of the 
 saintly man, the shortest road lies down his throat. 
 And nowadays being wise with the wisdom which it 
 gives to bear, to nurse, to rear, to watch, to lay out the 
 dead, to comfort the living, to order the household 
 well, to chronicle small beer, and devise recipes, she 
 naturally takes to the chimney corner, talking kindly, 
 sensibly, wittily, and sometimes, let us confess, just a 
 little prosily, as one may in one s own chimney corner ; 
 and all the young married men, and young married 
 women, and those who contemplate matrimony, and 
 gentlemen whose wives now and then nag viciously 
 and show temper and will not be amenable to the voice 
 of reason, and wives themselves who, after all, it is to 
 be remembered, can frequently on such occasions 
 plead that inflictions sore long time they bore from 
 servant girls, and these latter, perpetual emigrants all 
 may sit at her feet and learn of her the proper conduct 
 of life in kitchen, parlor, and pantry. 
 
 The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table evidently by 
 preference would be autocrat of the Monday morning 
 breakfast table of an evangelical church-going family. 
 It is a fresh sermon that he likes to take for the text 
 of his monologue. And as it is not always Monday 
 morning, he shrewdly gets board at a table where there 
 

 Some of our Social Philosophers. 93 
 
 is a divinity student, and so the dissection of dogmas 
 is always in order. The particular dogma of future 
 punishment, and the hopeless eternity of it, get atten 
 tion in " Elsie Venner " a scientific romance of the 
 destiny which a physician can discern in blood and 
 nervous tissue, the physiologist s flat contradiction of 
 the Westminster divine. This is the motive, as the 
 French would say, of works which not the Westminster 
 divine himself would deny flow from a reservoir of 
 observation and thought, and a natural fountain of wit 
 and humor. 
 
 Timothy Titcomb Holland has such a Tupperian 
 talent for truisms that his talent for truths can hardly 
 be immense, so we hesitate the less about refusing to 
 take his word when he informs us that in writing to 
 young men and young women he is as a brother. A 
 brother is of some particular sex, we at once reply, 
 displaying an astuteness which reminds us of Timothy 
 himself, and a conclusiveness which does not remind us 
 of him at all. To him, as Shakespeare says he could, 
 the poet of imagination all compact might give a local 
 habitation and a name ; but for us to decide upon his 
 position is as difficult as it might be easy, and must be 
 impolite, to say what it is that he writes. We had the 
 advantage of reading him for the first time in an itali 
 cized copy of his works, too, for, before we had it 
 from the library, it had passed under the pencils of 
 several young ladies. But we found this black-lead 
 commentary of more value in showing us that he wrote 
 either too feebly, or just feebly enough for a young 
 
94 Some of our Social Philosophers. 
 
 ladies boarding-school than in aiding us to discover 
 why he should write at all, or from what standing-point 
 he viewed the world. Perhaps he knew some of the 
 families, alas, how numerous ! which have on their book 
 shelf five secular books Abbott s " Life of Napoleon ; " 
 " The Prince of the House of David ; " a gift-enter 
 prise illustrated work on India, China, and Japan ; 
 Headley s " Washington and his Generals ; " and a 
 combination volume containing the " Proverbial Phi 
 losophy," Henry Kirke White, and Pollok s " Course 
 of Time " and knowing them, decided to write as one 
 who had found a market, and deliberately addresses 
 these numerous families of the house of Titcomb as 
 Mrs. Stowe addresses families in general, and Carl 
 Benson our first families, and the Autocrat families 
 with evangelical family altars. 
 
 Of the sex of Gail Hamilton, whose new book is the 
 cause of these remarks, there is not the least doubt. 
 She is an unmistakable woman when Mr. Gilfillan is not 
 her theme, not without the pertness and tartness with 
 which every Halicarnassus is acquainted, with the au 
 dacity which knows it is charming, with a trifle of what 
 a bachelor disputing with her might call the female 
 tendency to brag that if she cannot argue she can feel, 
 with the alleged willingness of lovely, lively woman 
 not only to speak her mind, which is much, but to 
 speak anyhow, which is something more. Gail Ham 
 ilton, as she confesses, is theological, for she cannot 
 help it, being essentially a Puritan. Mr. Vallandigham 
 
Some of our Social Philosophers. 95 
 
 would not recognize her, nor Colonel L. P. Milligan, 
 of Indiana, and we doubt if Mrs. Hemans would, or 
 most painters in the grand style, or Professor Charles 
 Kingsley (but this is a historical question), or any 
 Englishman with " The Scarlet Letter " in hand ; but 
 let a man study the last developments of the spirit of 
 Puritanism in its adopted and more kindly home, learn 
 what Palfrey and Lowell can teach him, and visit Con 
 cord a thing which can be thoroughly done without 
 travelling and he perceives that Gail Hamilton is a 
 graceful twig, frequently a switch, perhaps, of the old 
 Protestant stock. Equally with Cotton Mather or Jona 
 than Edwards she lives in a world which has heaven 
 close above it and hell close underneath it, though hers 
 is not exactly the hell and heaven of two hundred 
 years ago ; but the difference is not in the boundaries 
 of her earth nor the nearness of them. So, down on 
 the farm in the hay country, the meeting-house in sight, 
 the ancient church of Ipswich and the ancient church of 
 Chebacco, with their incidental villages, not far away, 
 she is theological and polemical and religious by virtue 
 of being alive. " Summer Rest," her last volume, with 
 a title, by the way, as pretty and as inconsequent as it 
 ought to be, will show all her characteristics, warlike 
 and otherwise, her surface flippancy and foolishness, 
 her real earnestness and honesty, her womanly good 
 ness and her good sense, her keenness of thought, her 
 independence, her horrible and shameless puns, her 
 frolic and sly humor and dry humor and wit, and her 
 
96 Some of our Social Philosophers. 
 
 eagerness to do to-day in her generation what her 
 Puritan fathers were doing generations ago in their 
 day working in the fear of God to free, so far as it 
 may be freed, the human spirit. 
 
WASTE. 
 
 IT will not be very strange if our remote posterity 
 have rather a poor opinion of us, their excellent ances 
 tors. They will have learned so much of which we are 
 ignorant that our civilization, admirable as it is, may 
 appear somewhat rude to them. Happy as we are, the 
 time may come, when we shall seem to still happier 
 generations to have had but scant experience of the 
 good things of this world. They will hardly look back 
 to our days, as Dante did to those of his ancestor 
 Cacciaguida, or as we look back to pre-revolutionary 
 times, as presenting a picture of delightful simplicity 
 of manners and innocence of living. And yet they 
 will not give us credit for having gained much in place 
 of our lost innocence. It would be a little trying, but 
 perhaps it is not impossible that they may even regard 
 us as having hardly got out of the woods of barbarism, 
 and may detect underneath our superficial pretences 
 the old habits of the savage still clinging to us. 
 
 We are, indeed, so well off that even this poor 
 opinion need not matter much to us. But we might, 
 if we chose, be a good deal better off. The arrange- 
 5 
 
98 Waste. 
 
 ments for the comfort, quiet, and enjoyment of daily 
 life are, to say the least, not quite so perfect as they 
 might be. M. Blot s excellent lectures on cookery are 
 a rather sharp criticism on our tastes and manners. 
 Will not some other M. Blot come to teach us how to 
 dress well, or how to build and furnish comfortable 
 houses ? 
 
 Who knows how to be rich in America? Plenty 
 of people know how to get money ; but not very many 
 know what best to do with it. To be rich properly 
 is, indeed, a fine art. It requires culture, imagination, 
 and character. A man who should practise this art 
 with success would be one of the greatest benefactors 
 of his time. He might win a pure fame and leave an 
 enduring example. To be rich is to be able to be 
 magnanimous ; to conceive and to execute large, splen 
 did, and permanent designs. It is to be at ease and 
 to set others at ease. It is only the rich man who 
 does not know how to be rich that finds it hard to 
 enter into the kingdom of heaven. The man who 
 knows the art passes through even this life, to use one 
 of the fine phrases of Marcus Aurelius, "like one who 
 has entrusted to the gods, with his whole soul, all that 
 he has." Suppose such a rich man to live in our time ! 
 " Assuredly," said Solon to Croesus, " he who possesses 
 great store of riches is no nearer happiness than he who 
 has what suffices for his daily needs ; " but surely he 
 has some means of happiness which the other does not 
 possess. 
 
 One of the signs of the barbaric as distinguished 
 
Waste. 99 
 
 from the civilized temper is the tendency to waste ; and 
 the less waste in a community, the higher, other things 
 being equal, is its civilization. Our social* organization 
 does not come out well if tried by this test. We Amer 
 icans are given to wastefulness. It is the reaction 
 from the parsimony and narrow frugalities of the hard 
 early days of the nation, and is one of the consequences 
 of our rapid growth in wealth. New York wastes every 
 day more than would have supplied all its wants fifty 
 years ago ; and, what is worse, it wastes the very source 
 of its own prosperity. Dirt is honest and useful matter 
 in the wrong place. To correct this misplacement 
 occupies a great part of the life of every man. The 
 accumulation of dirt on a large scale is productive of 
 innumerable offences and dangers to society. To uti 
 lize this accumulation by its proper distribution is one 
 of the chief objects of social organization ; to waste it 
 is to destroy one of the chief elements of social pros 
 perity. It has been well said that the value of the dirt 
 of a city in any given time is far greater than that of 
 any single product of industry or any article of com 
 merce. No gold mine is so full of value as the dirt of 
 our streets. It is on the proper distribution and appli 
 cation of this dirt, or its replacement in its right posi 
 tion, that the very life of the city in the long run de 
 pends. 
 
 England has been lately warned by a high authority 
 of the fatal diminution of her resources and her powers 
 )y her rejection and waste of the dirt of her cities. 
 
 lat the city draws to herself from the country and 
 

 ioo Waste. 
 
 turns to dirt, must be returned to the country if the 
 land is to remain capable of sustaining the continuous 
 drain. Nature takes a slow but sure revenge for the 
 neglect of man. Dirt wasted corrupts the air and the 
 waters, impoverishes the land, breeds pestilence, pro 
 duces poverty, and increases misery. Dirt utilized 
 makes the land rich, supplies the stores of nature, 
 diminishes poverty, increases happiness, and lengthens 
 life. And yet we waste our dirt and tax ourselves to 
 pay the expense attending the waste of it. 
 
 Our habit of wastefulness shows itself in the very 
 construction of our cities. Hardly a house in New 
 York is a hundred years old. The city has been pulled 
 down and rebuilt within the memory of man. It is 
 likely to be pulled down and rebuilt again before the 
 end of the century. This is, no doubt, due in part to 
 the absolute requirements of progress, to the change 
 in habits and in business, and to a natural growth. But, 
 however much of the rebuilding may be assigned to 
 these causes, there is still much that is merely and 
 disastrously wasteful ; for the waste of labor, of capital, 
 of design, involved in this constant process of destruc 
 tion and renewal is beyond computation. Each succes 
 sive generation has to do over again work that might 
 be done once for all. Work lasts but twenty years which 
 should last for a thousand. The accumulation of capi 
 tal is impeded, labor is employed unproductively, prog 
 ress in all cultivation is retarded, and the plainest dic 
 tates of economy and good sense are set at naught. 
 New York seems to fulfil the suggestion of Mr. Haw- 
 
Waste. 101 
 
 thorne s cynical humor, that no dwelling should be 
 allowed to serve for more than one generation of men. 
 One of the reasons why we fail to, rival the Old .World 
 in the possession of the products.; cf civilization,: is that 
 we have spent and are spending -so much-, of our time 
 and wealth and energy in doing -work over and. oVer 
 again. The palaces of Venice were not more costly 
 than the palaces of the Fifth Avenue. But those of 
 the Fifth Avenue have no tenure of existence. The 
 palaces of Florence are old, but better than new. 
 How .shall the arts flourish among us if their best 
 productions are to be more short-lived than the artist ? 
 
 For the mere material waste implied in this de 
 struction and rebuilding is not all. We fling away the 
 inheritance of memories and associations which dignify 
 and exalt life, which connect it by visible monuments 
 with the past and the future. Both the imagination 
 and the affections suffer where there is nothing vener 
 able for them to cling to, where there is no hope of 
 permanence for their highest achievements. We make 
 our lives barren by this waste. 
 
 Fine as our houses look, comfortable as many of 
 them are, they have not grown out of the heart. They 
 miss the essence of home. They are but the lodging 
 places of a family, and next year they will be to let to 
 new inmates. In one of his delightful descriptions of 
 an English place Mr. Hawthorne says : 
 
 All about the house and domain there is a perfection of com 
 fort and domestic taste, an amplitude of convenience, which could 
 have been brought about only by the slow ingenuity and labor of 
 
102 Waste. 
 
 many successive generations, intent upon adding all possible im 
 provement to the home where years gone by and years to come 
 give a sort of permanence to the intangible present. An Amer 
 ican is sometimes tempted to" -fancy that only by this long process 
 can real homes be produced. One man s lifetime is not enough 
 for the Hcccraplishir.trerit.o;f suclva work of art and nature, almost 
 the grsatVst merely temporary one that is confided to him; too 
 little, at any rate yet perhaps too long when he is discouraged 
 by the idea that he must make his house warm and delightful for 
 a miscellaneous race of successors, of whom the one thing certain 
 is that his own grandchildren will not be among them." 
 
 This absence of the sense of permanent possession, 
 and hence of interest in the real worth of things, is one 
 main cause of the evil of slight and poor work, which 
 involves not only waste but dishonesty. The dishonesty 
 of poor work may seem of little account to those who 
 are content with make-shifts. But, to look at it from 
 the lowest point of view, bad work costs in the long 
 run far more than good. In many of our trades the 
 thorough workman is rare. Our houses themselves, 
 our furniture, our books, our shoes, too often give the 
 plainest evidence of the prevalence of bad work. It is 
 in the main our own fault, for we are apt to prefer a 
 so-called cheapness to excellence. We have, too, so 
 much work to do that we slight it all. But the careless 
 workman is, according to Proverbs, "brother to him 
 that is a great waster." 
 
 Another most prevalent source of waste among us, 
 and another indication of the Oriental barbarism of 
 our tastes, is in our fondness for mere extravagance 
 and display unaccompanied by refinement or comfort. 
 
Waste. 103 
 
 The upholstery of a steamboat saloon or a hotel parlor, 
 the white satin hangings of the silly "bridal apart 
 ments," the wearisome excess of delicacies at our pub 
 lic and private entertainments, and the style of much 
 of the dressing of our women, are among the most 
 obvious instances of an extravagance which is purely 
 wasteful, without any compensation of elegance, luxury, 
 or even splendor. We are young and fond of youthful 
 follies, and shall get over them in time, no doubt ; but 
 it is a pity that our good sense should be bullied by 
 the vanity of " shoddy " and " petroleum." 
 
 The readers of Mr. Marsh s admirable book on 
 " Man and Nature " will not have forgotten how strik 
 ingly he exhibits the wasteful manner of our dealing 
 with nature herself, and with what force he sets forth 
 the penalties that follow upon it. The resources of 
 nature are inexhaustible ; but man may exhaust the 
 stores which she has provided for his use, and may so 
 deal with her as to prevent her from replenishing them. 
 Already the great continental forests, wantonly deso 
 lated, begin to fail in their supply. The destruction 
 of the woods diminishes the stream of the rivers, and 
 the axe in the hands of the wasteful wood-cutter cuts 
 off the waters from our mills and lessens the tonnage 
 in our river ports. We kill the goose who laid daily 
 the golden egg. Like profligates, we waste the inheri 
 tance of our children, and hand down to them the 
 ancient estate encumbered with post-obits, the records 
 of our useless squanderings. 
 
DRESS AND ITS CRITICS. 
 
 IT has recently become popular, if not fashionable, 
 to promulgate diatribes against the extravagant toilets 
 of American women. On the other hand, many for 
 eigners have openly remarked, and not a few natives 
 more quietly observed, a growing inattention to dress, 
 a tendency to shabbiness and slovenliness, on the part 
 of American men. The misogynist would probably 
 explain at once that the former phenomenon was the 
 direct cause of the latter ; the lords of creation cannot 
 attire themselves properly, because the ladies of crea 
 tion their wives and daughters spend all the money 
 for their own adornment. But the complaint against 
 female extravagance is as old as imperial Rome, nay, 
 as republican Athens ; it has often coincided with the 
 greatest displays of male dandyism ; and besides, this 
 hypothesis omits all consideration of unmarried men. 
 
 Many of the distinctive features of modern male 
 dress may be explained on the obvious principle of 
 convenience and common sense. Take, for instance, 
 the trousers of to-day as compared with the breeches 
 of our great-grandfathers. By-gone wits in various 
 5* 
 
106 Dress and its Critics. 
 
 languages have handed down to us several descriptions 
 of the beaux in former centuries getting into their 
 breeches \ an operation which took nearly as much 
 time and trouble as it now does to launch a man-of- 
 war. For a later example take the cloak. Men by no 
 means old enough to be grandsires can remember 
 when they sported the " full circle," with its dozen yards 
 or thereabouts of blue cloth. Elegant and graceful it 
 was, and, for a carriage ride to a full-dress party, very 
 convenient, but for all other purposes very inconven 
 ient, wherefore it has everywhere^ given place to some 
 form of great-coat. Even the "stove-pipe" hat is 
 gradually yielding to the " wide-awake." 
 
 Influences like these affect all nations ; but some 
 thing further seems to be at work among ourselves. 
 It would hardly be safe to accept as gospel the dicta 
 of all foreigners, such as Prince Napoleon s friend, who 
 asserted that tailors proper were unknown in the land : 
 " the American buys his clothes at a slop-shop, and 
 wears the same suit till it is worn out ; " or the more 
 recent writer in the Revue des Deux Mondes, who says 
 that the millionnaires of St. Louis dress like hodmen, 
 and the only decently attired males in the West are the 
 professional gamblers ; but, after paring down these 
 exaggerations, there is a very positive amount of truth 
 in the charge, and it is the more singular from the fact 
 that, till within a few years, Americans were noted for 
 the very opposite quality, too great attention to dress. 
 ( Vide Thackeray s " Kickleburys on the Rhine," and al 
 most any foreign visitor s book between 1840 and 1860.) 
 
Dress and its Critics. 107 
 
 Shall we say that this change is merely another 
 illustration of our national tendency to run from one 
 extreme to another? If so, why do not the women 
 participate in it to a greater extent ? Or is it a neces 
 sary result of the war? Hardly; for the war has not 
 put down equipages, or dinners, or many things that 
 cost quite as much as a man s wardrobe. Besides, the 
 deficiency is one of care rather than expense : a lack 
 of wash-tub and brush rather than of new broadcloth. 
 Still, war-prices may well have had their share in the 
 result. A comparatively minor expense may change 
 all a man s habits of dress. If he has to pay three 
 dollars instead of one for his dress-gloves, he will begin 
 to economize in them, and, from wearing shabby gloves, 
 he comes rapidly to neglect other details. 
 
 One of the main causes of negligence in dress 
 doubtless is the increasing size of our cities and the 
 want of any decent transport for persons of moderate 
 means. Men will not dress themselves carefully to go 
 to places of public resort if they have no reasonable 
 prospect of making a cleanly voyage thither; hence 
 the very rusty appearance presented by the pit, not 
 merely of our best theatres, but even of the opera. 
 Another is the increasing pressure of the public de 
 mands upon every man whose labor is of any value to 
 the public. He is obliged to take the shortest cut to 
 his business, in dress as in all other things. He can 
 not afford the time necessary to take precautions against 
 soiling his clothes. He does not change them or buy 
 new ones as often as he ought to for the same reason. 
 
io8 Dress and its Critics. 
 
 But whatever be the cause of the evil, we decidedly 
 maintain that it is not inherent in the modern shape 
 and style of dress ; and we cannot join in the condem 
 nation of that dress often uttered under artistic pre 
 tences. Thus, it is frequently said that our attire is 
 " unpicturesque," which really means little more than 
 that we are too familiar with it. Homer praised the 
 beauty of a formal garden because the uncivilization of 
 his day made it a rare object. The want of color is a 
 commonly urged fault; but we must remember that 
 grave tints for gentlemen s wear are no modern inven 
 tion ; the Spaniards adopted them centuries ago. One 
 strong objection to colored upper garments is their 
 glaring shabbiness when ever so little worn or faded ; 
 an old claret-colored coat, for instance, is ten times 
 seedier to view than an old black one. 
 
 But, then, there is no need of men s wearing either 
 a claret-colored coat or a black one. The love of black 
 broadcloth is, perhaps, that weakness of the Yankee 
 character which is best known to foreigners, and has 
 afforded foreign tourists most opportunities of making 
 little jokes in their diaries upon the personal appear 
 ance of the American traveller. Not that there is any 
 inherent impropriety in wearing black. On the con 
 trary, there is, perhaps, no color so suitable to the great 
 mass of men. In some sorts of material velvet, for 
 instance it furnishes the most becoming suit for almost 
 any kind of wear ever devised by the wit of tailor. But 
 the fact is, it is a bad working or lounging color, the 
 worst that ever a man amused himself or did business 
 
Dress and its Critics. 109 
 
 in. The consequence is that it has been discarded in 
 Europe for morning wear, and is now there mainly re 
 stricted to clergymen, notaries, and tradesmen in their 
 best clothes, and gentlemen in deep mourning. A 
 person presenting himself at a great London house to 
 make a morning call in a full suit of black, would 
 probably be received by the footman as a person who 
 had come to take my lady s measure for a pair of boots ; 
 and in Paris a flaneur who appeared on the Boule 
 vards in such melancholy attire would be set down 
 by his friends as being engaged in a "lark" or an 
 intrigue, or, in fact, as having some special reason for 
 disguising himself. 
 
 This conventional prohibition of the color has, like 
 nearly every other fashion in modern dress such, for 
 instance, as the low collars and light cravats of our 
 day a certain basis in common sense and convenience. 
 Modern life is not the stiff and stately thing that it was 
 when Vandyke and Velasquez painted noblemen and 
 grandees in lace and ruffles and black velvet doublets. 
 Men, even gentlemen, are nowadays all actively engaged 
 either in business or in pleasure. They are either hard 
 at work in offices, or in the fields, or in libraries. They 
 flit about muddy streets on foot, ride in dirty hacks, or 
 stand in dirtier cars, exposed to mud, dust, tobacco- 
 smoke, and all the other plagues of modern life. They 
 are constantly rubbing with back or elbows against 
 something. Consequently the grand requisite in their 
 clothes is that they shall not soil easily, show the dust 
 readily, or wear out rapidly. Black cloth, however, 
 
no Dress and its Critics. 
 
 grows seedy-looking sooner than most other colors, and 
 shows stains sooner, and dust sooner, and, therefore, 
 has been most wisely discarded by "good society," 
 except for evening dress and state occasions, when 
 dress is a subject of great care and a matter of import 
 ance. Through a large portion of the United States, 
 however, this distinction is unknown, black broadcloth 
 being considered the proper thing to wear to church 
 at home it is considered the proper thing to wear on 
 all occasions when a man wishes to appear " dressed," 
 no matter at what hour of the day. Consequently, 
 when the untravelled American goes to Europe, he 
 arrays himself carefully in the usual color, and appears at 
 all the railway stations and hotels as black as midnight 
 At the South, where, owing to the wild life led by 
 most of the population, one would expect black to be 
 rarely seen, it is, or rather was before the war we 
 presume any color is now welcome the color par 
 excellence which a "gentleman" was bound to wear, 
 and, as every white man is ex-qfficio a gentleman, every 
 body who could afford it wore black, the other colors 
 being left somewhat scornfully to stage-drivers and the 
 like. Every keeper of a wretched tavern in the South 
 west did his best to dawn on his guests every morning 
 in a full suit of black, and patent-leather boots, and 
 many a Northern traveller will remember being con 
 signed to the state-room over the boiler on a Missis 
 sippi steamboat, owing to the shabby appearance which 
 he presented in a good suit of travelling gray to the 
 "polite and gentlemanly clerk," who sat behind the 
 
Dress and its Critics. in 
 
 window black as a crow, but resplendent with diamonds. 
 The fact is, that as there is no country in which there 
 is so much work and so much travelling done as in 
 this, in which men s lives are so intensely active, there 
 is none in which black broadcloth as an everyday dress 
 should be more carefully avoided by everybody who 
 does not wish to look both dirty and shabby. The 
 same remark applies to patent-leather boots and pru 
 nella boots with patent-leather toes, to which third-rate 
 "swells," and, for some inscrutable reason, young 
 farmers, most of whose time is passed in muddy or 
 dusty fields or roads, are greatly addicted. 
 
 Long hair is another piece of personal ornamenta 
 tion which, in old countries, is being gradually laid 
 aside by the class which devotes most attention to 
 personal appearance. And yet amongst us those who, 
 being least able to take care of their hair, are least 
 entitled to wear it long, are the very men who cling 
 most tenaciously to it. It may be laid down as a gen 
 eral rule, with regard to all matters of dress, that a 
 man s first duty is to be clean, and to look neat. 
 Therefore, if he insists on having ringlets down on his 
 shoulders, he ought either keep them clean himself or 
 have a valet to do it, or ought not to expose them to 
 the dust and dirt of everyday life. Moreover, if he 
 considers it his duty to grease them every day, he ought 
 not to let them lie on the collar of his coat, as the shiny 
 appearance assumed by woollen cloth after repeated 
 applications of pomatum is not pleasing, to say the 
 least. By soldiers and men actively engaged during 
 
112 Dress and its Critics. 
 
 the day, with any real love of work and any real dis 
 like of dirt, the scissors ought to be unsparingly applied 
 to their " luxuriant locks," so that a brush and a sponge 
 will keep them in order. In other words, we, as a 
 nation, ought to be as remarkable for the shortness of 
 our hair as we are for its length. 
 
 Timothy Titcomb, in one of the bits of advice which 
 he gives to young men, lays it down somewhere, that 
 there should be in every man s dress some central 
 point, from which everything else should radiate, and 
 this point he declares to be the shirt-front, which he 
 would, doubtless, have of expansive dimensions and 
 snowy whiteness. But in this Timothy must have 
 spoken without due consideration. Snowy linen and 
 plenty of it is a pleasing spectacle, but it is a species 
 of display in which nobody should indulge who has not 
 time enough or money enough to change very fre 
 quently, or whose occupation is of a nature to soil or 
 ruffle his shirt-front rapidly. And yet, in this matter, 
 as in the matter of hair, we are apt to find that those 
 who can bestow least attention on their shirt-fronts are 
 the very men who make most show of them. No class, 
 probably, wear so few buttons in their waistcoats as 
 street-car conductors. The fact is that workers should 
 button well up, and if they show any more linen than 
 their shirt-collars, they should show only as much as 
 they can fairly protect from being soiled. The whole 
 question of modern dress is in fact, or ought to be, 
 determined by the exigencies of modern life. In this, 
 as in other things, we are growing daily more practical. 
 
THE SOCIAL INFLUENCE OF THE NATIONAL 
 DEBT. 
 
 SENATOR SHERMAN, in a recent speech, alluded some 
 what indistinctly to one or two probable, or perhaps 
 we should rather say possible consequences of the na 
 tional debt, which are worthy of more attention than 
 they have received. There is very little doubt that the 
 effect upon society in this country of the means which 
 the debt supplies of making sure investments, will, in 
 the course of a generation, should it not have been 
 paid off by that time, be very marked. 
 
 The difficulty with which every observer of Ameri 
 can society is familiar, of keeping large, or even small 
 fortunes together for any great length of time, in the 
 hands of one family, is usually ascribed to the influence 
 upon the minds of testators, of our laws of descent 
 and distribution, or of the democratic atmosphere in 
 which everybody lives. The fact is, however, that the 
 liberty of bequest is as great in England as it is here, 
 and the power of entail in many of the States New 
 York for one is almost as great 
 
 In England, the law of primogeniture, which is pop 
 ularly supposed to be the foundation on which the aristoc- 
 
H4 The Social Influence of the National Debt. 
 
 racy rests, in reality only operates in case of intestacy. 
 In the absence of a family settlement, a testator might 
 cut his estate up into as many parts as he had children. 
 What really gives the eldest son the preference in the 
 transmission of landed property is not the law, but 
 the feeling of the class. Almost every marriage settle 
 ment-entails the estate strictly on the eldest son to be 
 born of the union, and when he comes of age he almost 
 invariably joins his father in executing another entail, 
 handing it down to his own eldest son, and so on from 
 generation to generation, the younger children acquies 
 cing in the arrangement with a cheerfulness which is a 
 wonderful illustration of the strength of aristocratic feel 
 ing, and the solid satisfaction which people bred in an 
 aristocratic society take in belonging to a great house. 
 There is nothing in the law to prevent a man desir 
 ous of " founding a family " here from doing the same 
 thing. The obstacles to it are to be found not in the 
 statutes, but in the public sentiment, which would visit 
 anything of the kind with reprobation, and in the feel 
 ing of the children, who would consider any such dis 
 play of preference for the eldest son a piece of injustice 
 to themselves. The cases in which a man dies intes 
 tate, and leaves it to the law to divide his estate, are 
 too few in number to exercise much influence on the 
 general distribution of property. Nor can the facility 
 and rapidity with which the accumulations of one gen 
 eration are usually scattered in the next, be ascribed 
 altogether to the practice of dividing fortunes among 
 one s children. This practice prevails in many coun- 
 
The Social Influence of the National Debt. 115 
 
 tries, Holland and France, for instance, without causing 
 fortunes to pass out of the hands of the families. There 
 are various ways well known to lovers of money of keep 
 ing a fortune amongst persons of the same blood, for 
 many generations in succession, without marking out 
 any one individual for an undue share of it, such as in 
 termarriages, business partnerships, etc. In Holland 
 and in Switzerland, large properties have in this way 
 been transmitted in the same line for two or three hun 
 dred years without much if any diminution, often with 
 considerable increase. 
 
 In the United States, however, the cases, as every 
 body knows, are rare in which the grandson of a 
 wealthy man is found in possession of much of the an 
 cestral fortune. The largest fortunes are dissipated in 
 side fifty years, leaving the descendants of those who 
 built them up to begin life as their ancestors did, and 
 go through the tug and struggle over again. How few 
 families in any of the States that were rich at the beginning 
 of the present century can now show much evidence of 
 their former splendor ! In fact, there are probably 
 more vicissitudes of fortune crowded into half a century 
 in the history of any prominent American family, than 
 into that of any great house in Europe in a century and 
 a half. 
 
 Now there is very little question that though much 
 of this is due to the practice, enforced by public opin 
 ion as well as by family feeling, of dividing properties 
 on the death of the owners, a still larger portion of it is 
 due to the uncertain and precarious character of the 
 
1 1 6 The Social Influence of the National Debt. 
 
 modes of investment to which executors, administrators, 
 and heirs have hitherto been compelled to resort. Not 
 only does it require great skill and shrewdness, greater 
 than most men possess, to invest money in such a way 
 as to secure any return, but even in such a way as to 
 prevent total loss. This is a difficulty which is of 
 course encountered in every country ; but there is in 
 this country an additional and very formidable difficulty 
 created by the rapidity of its growth, the sudden and 
 wonderful changes which take place in the distribution 
 of population, in the nature and location of particular 
 branches of industry, and of the great seats of com 
 merce. Many of the great seaports of thirty or forty 
 years ago are now well-nigh deserted. Regions that at 
 the same period were wholly agricultural are now wholly 
 manufacturing; places that then were forest-covered 
 are now the sites of great cities ; lines of travel then 
 much frequented are now totally abandoned ; inven 
 tions that were then very valuable have since been su 
 perseded by others and are now worthless. And this 
 process is constantly going on all over the Union. 
 Even in the same city, the value of property in particu 
 lar quarters changes greatly inside ten or even five years. 
 Capital, too, deserts one locality to settle in another, 
 attracted by the discovery of peculiar natural advan 
 tages. 
 
 The effect of these changes on investments could 
 be readily imagined, even if it were not seen. In 
 vestments which to-day seem most prudent and for 
 tunate, may turn out in ten years fatal mistakes, owing 
 
The Social Influence of the National Debt. 117 
 
 to causes which the shrewdest calculator could neither 
 foresee nor prepare for. This is a danger against 
 which no provisions in a will, however stringent, can 
 furnish any adequate security; for unless money can 
 be invested in landed estates rented to farmers, or in 
 government stocks, as in England, much must be left 
 to the judgment of trustees, or even, if nothing is left 
 to their judgment, much must be left to the course of 
 events. 
 
 Our national debt, if it remains in existence long 
 enough, will furnish a means of investment which will 
 not be affected either by the fluctuations in the value 
 of property or in the course of trade, let them be ever 
 so violent. The interest on it will be paid in coin, no 
 matter what convulsions may occur in the commercial 
 world, or what changes may occur in the distribution 
 of population or capital. So that a family which was 
 determined to keep what it had got, and was not 
 anxious to get more, would find in it an easy means of 
 transmitting a large estate from generation to genera- 
 tion with little or no risk, trouble or anxiety. 
 
 Some of the consequences of this might be very 
 important, socially if not politically. It might create 
 and perpetuate a class, possessing secured wealth and 
 fixed social tastes and habits, which would gradually 
 grow in influence and size as the wealth of the country 
 increased, by gathering to itself the sons of all the 
 "new men," and might at last form in each State a 
 sort of aristocracy. Whether such a class could under 
 our institutions secure any political influence is doubt- 
 
1 1 8 The Social Influence of the National Debt. 
 
 ful ; but that it would secure a large amount of social 
 influence there is little question ; and though in many 
 ways class feeling is highly objectionable, there are 
 some ways in which a class of this kind would render 
 considerable service to American society. It would 
 create and keep up a more correct taste in art and 
 literature by giving large numbers of educated persons 
 time and means for their cultivation ; and it would com 
 municate greater fixity to habits, modes of thoughts, 
 and social usages. 
 
 But to calculate all the consequences that might 
 flow from its existence would force us on a wider field 
 of speculation than we have time or space to enter 
 upon. The subject is an interesting one, and well 
 worthy of discussion. 
 
HINTS FOR FOURTH OF JULY ORATIONS. 
 
 THE quality of American contributions to literature 
 and science has been, on the average, low, and their 
 quantity has been small. The annual literary and 
 scientific product of the people of the United States is 
 not the twentieth part of that of any other civilized 
 people. We read voraciously, but the bulk of our read 
 ing is of foreign origin. This is as true of our periodi 
 cal publications in all departments of science and 
 literature as of the books we consume. Reprinted or 
 translated books and articles constitute ninety-nine 
 hundredths of our reading matter. This aspect of our 
 national life is humiliating, and has often suggested to 
 sceptical minds, both at home and abroad, certain 
 curious doubts concerning the effect on literature and 
 science of a state of society in which there are neither 
 depths nor heights, but only one common level. 
 
 Acknowledging our inferiority in this regard, and 
 leaving it to the future to demonstrate the real in 
 fluence of republican institutions upon science and 
 letters, we may find a full well-spring of consolation 
 and hope in recalling the wonderful applications of 
 
120 Hints for Fourth of July Orations. 
 
 science and the inventions of fundamental importance 
 which the world owes to Americans of this generation. 
 We do not now refer to the innumerable ingenious de 
 vices for economizing time and labor which form a very 
 characteristic product of the Yankee mind ; we pro 
 pose to enumerate only those really great inventions 
 which are of universal application, and which are every 
 where recognized as American. 
 
 First upon this catalogue shall be named the prac 
 tical use of anaesthetic agents. In the whole history 
 of medicine and surgery there are but two or three dis 
 coveries which can take rank with this. Vaccination 
 is the best parallel. The property possessed by ether 
 and divers other substances of producing insensibility 
 had been known to a few isolated philosophers for 
 some time, though this property was undoubtedly re 
 discovered in this country. Neither was the idea of 
 applying these agents to the relief of pain a new one. 
 Ether itself had been before recommended for this very 
 use. Americans demonstrated that ether could be 
 safely admininistered in quantity sufficient to produce 
 complete unconsciousness during many minutes, and 
 that no evil effects whatever followed a prolonged in 
 halation of the vapor. American audacity and perse 
 verance changed what had been only a scientific sug 
 gestion, an ingenious idea, into a .practical and most 
 beneficent reality. Who can conceive of the infinite 
 load of misery which this invention has lightened ! It 
 is not only that it delivers poor human nature from the 
 actual pain of the knife and saw, from the pangs of 
 
Hints for Fourth of July Orations. 121 
 
 child-birth, and the physical agonies of death it de 
 livers also from the horror of anticipated pain. The 
 discovery will always remain one of the chief glories 
 of this generation. 
 
 The vast extent of our Western wheat-fields and 
 the high price of labor in our sparsely settled territory 
 guaranteed a rich reward for all successful applica 
 tions of machinery to agriculture. The actual introduc 
 tion of horse-reapers is an American achievement, and 
 one of the first importance not only to America, but to 
 every other country in which agriculture is carried on 
 upon a large scale. Accordingly, we find that the 
 American reapers have been copied, modified to meet 
 varying conditions, and not seldom spoilt, by the 
 mechanics and agricultural engineers of all the nations 
 of Europe. With the reapers should be mentioned the 
 sowing, raking, hulling, and threshing machines, 
 which play so important a part in American farming. 
 Agricultural work is the simplest and coarsest of all 
 forms of labor, and yet must be the occupation of the 
 vast majority of the people. The inventions which de 
 mand more skill from the farmer, which increase his 
 head-work and diminish his hand-work, which relieve 
 his muscles but exercise his mind, do much to elevate 
 and educate the class which must always constitute the 
 great bulk of the nation. They strengthen the repub 
 lic. 
 
 Another purely American invention of the first im 
 portance is the sewing-machine. This very recent in 
 vention has already increased tenfold the potential pro- 
 
122 Hints for Fourth of July Orations. 
 
 duction of every trade which uses a needle, and has 
 emancipated American women from that never-ending 
 toil with the needle which still oppresses all but the 
 richest and the poorest of other lands. It is by no 
 means possible to predict, as yet, the full effect of this 
 wonderful invention, but we may be sure that twenty 
 years hence hand-sewing will be as curious a sight as 
 is now hand-spinning, and that the next generation 
 will no more use hand-made garments than we use 
 wheat flour ground between two stones after the man 
 ner of the Pompeians. We see the Italian women to 
 day using precisely the same distaff with which the 
 Three Sisters spun their fateful thread. The Ameri 
 can women of this generation have seen the beginning 
 of a change the like of which has not come upon 
 humanity in thousands of years a change which is to 
 affect deeply the domestic habits and social customs 
 of the race. This great revolution dates from the in 
 vention of the American sewing-machine. 
 
 A complicated machine, like a reaper or sewing- 
 machine, embodies generally, with the one idea which 
 is new, a number of ideas which have become the com 
 mon property of mankind. The needle with the eye in 
 the point was new, but the treadle, the wheels of dif 
 ferent diameters, the cam, and the shuttle were but 
 applications of others thoughts become common prop 
 erty. Not so with the next discovery on this remark 
 able list. When melted rubber cools it remains so soft 
 and sticky as to be incapable of any useful application. 
 Owing nothing to science, borrowing no hint from the 
 
Hints for Fourth of July Orations. 123 
 
 experience of others, an American was found patient 
 enough, and, let it be added, reckless and improvident 
 enough, to spend the better part of a lifetime in mixing 
 one substance after another with hot rubber, until at 
 last, after many years of purely empirical seeking, he 
 found a substance which, when melted with rubber, 
 yielded a plastic and adhesive mixture that on cooling 
 lost its stickiness, but retained its elasticity and tough 
 ness. The so-called vulcanized india-rubber is a mix 
 ture of sulphur and rubber, in proportions which vary 
 according to the use to be made of the product. This 
 useful substance is now known and used the world over, 
 though it is not everywhere recognized as an American 
 invention. Its applications are almost infinitely various ; 
 there is hardly an art or trade in which its elasticity, 
 plasticity, toughness, or water-proof quality has not 
 found useful application. The mechanic, the mariner, 
 the physician, the chemist, the house-wife are all deeply 
 indebted to its admirable qualities. 
 
 Since the steam-engine no invention has had such 
 power for good and evil as the electric telegraph. 
 America had not much to do with the accumulation of the 
 scientific knowledge which made the telegraph possible. 
 Our acquaintance with the principles of electricity and 
 magnetism was the slow growth of several generations ; 
 the history of the development of the scientific princi 
 ples, and of the invention of the philosophical instru 
 ments, which were necessary to the telegraph, makes 
 distinguished mention of but one American name, a 
 name still held in high honor among those of the most 
 
124 Hints for Fourth of J uly Orations. 
 
 eminent living scientists. The idea of the telegraph 
 had been entertained by many minds little telegraphs 
 had been actually constructed and worked as scientific 
 toys or curious experiments but it was reserved for 
 American sagacity and enterprise to put in practice 
 upon a large scale the accumulated knowledge on the 
 subject, to realize the importance of the revolution a 
 practical telegraph would work, and to make a mechan 
 ical and commercial success of what had before been 
 a scientific curiosity, a philosophical plaything. It is 
 this actual realization of an idea perhaps not new, this 
 demonstration of value and power, which is often the 
 chiefest part of a great invention. The science involv 
 ed in the telegraph was chiefly European ; the idea of 
 the telegraph was not ours, but the practical applica 
 tion of the science and actual realization of the idea 
 were purely American. The steam-engine and the 
 telegraph are political powers they make the Amer 
 ican Union possible. Boston and Philadelphia were 
 as far apart eighty years ago as New York and San 
 Francisco now. 
 
 These great agencies, steam and electricity, created 
 a new want, and made necessary a supplementary in 
 vention. Why get news hot from the event, why send 
 the newspaper by steam over the face of the country, 
 if it must take a week to print a daily paper ? The 
 cylinder-press, which strikes a thousand copies an 
 hour, was a fit gift to the world from the land which 
 introduced the telegraph. American cylinder printing- 
 presses are used throughout the civilized world, wher- 
 
Hints for Fourth of July Orations. 125 
 
 ever large communities consume the daily newspapers 
 by tens of thousands. This invention was not the 
 result of a single brilliant conception, not the embodi 
 ment of a sudden inspiration, but rather the result of 
 patiently combining and improving ideas and methods 
 not absolutely new, but new in combination. It is not 
 the less on this account a great contribution to the 
 resources of modern communities. 
 
 We close this catalogue with the mention of an 
 invention which has justly reflected great honor upon 
 the American name in Europe, and which is truly 
 touching in contrast with the brilliant successes which 
 we have already enumerated. Most of the apparatus 
 by which the blind are taught is of American inven 
 tion. The whole system of printing for the blind, the 
 peculiar types, paper, and presses employed, the maps, 
 globes, and slates which are used, both in this country 
 and in Europe, are the product of the patient study and 
 devoted skill of an American inventor. It is not many 
 years since the British and Foreign Bible Society 
 caused their Bible for the blind to be printed at South 
 Boston, Massachusetts. Nothing can exceed the in 
 genuity exhibited in designing and executing the me 
 chanical contrivances by which touch is made to do the 
 work of sight in conveying knowledge. We have 
 adduced this beautiful series of inventions to illustrate 
 the fact that American inventors have not only worked 
 successfully for the bustling, laborious, active world, 
 not only for fame and money, but also in behalf of the 
 suffering blind, who, lacking a sense, have fared hardly, 
 
126 Hints for Fourth of July Orations, 
 
 these thousands of years, in the struggle for life, and 
 only in this generation have been able to enjoy some 
 thing like the same opportunities of intellectual and spir 
 itual instruction which those who have sight enjoy. It 
 is fitting that the name of the inventor of this appara 
 tus of instruction for the blind should be quite unknown 
 to the public, and that he should have had no reward 
 but that of the consciousness of having made many 
 happy. 
 
 The greatest of American inventions must not pass 
 unmentioned our political institutions, the product of 
 the common sense and practical Christianity of a peo 
 ple who have been free for many generations. Our 
 contributions to political science bid fair to prove of 
 enormous value, but of course until other nations have 
 more fully reaped the benefit of them we shall not 
 receive for them the meed of honor which will one day 
 be awarded us. Most foreign nations still look on our 
 political system with the doubt and suspicion which 
 usually greet untried inventions. 
 
AMERICAN REPUTATIONS IN ENGLAND. 
 
 CHARLES LAMB once wrote to his friend Manning, 
 who was travelling abroad : " It appears to me as if I 
 should die with joy at the first landing in a foreign 
 country. It is the nearest pleasure which a grown man 
 can substitute for that unknown one, which he can 
 never know, the pleasure of the first entrance into life 
 from the womb." Without stopping to discuss this fan 
 tastic, Charles-Lamb-like reference to a pleasure 
 which we " can never know " for the very good reason 
 that it never existed, there is a certain analogy between 
 the facts of being born into the world and of being born 
 into a foreign country. In either case, the man plants 
 his foot on the strange shore to find nearly every appeal 
 to his five senses wondrously novel, startling, amusing ; 
 and the newly arrived traveller, like the newly arrived 
 child, stares and listens, and puts out his hands at the 
 most insignificant objects. But more impressive to the 
 new comer than merely external innovations is this 
 
128 American Reputations in England. 
 
 realm of new ideas, new maxims, new whims, new pre 
 judices, new reputations, into which he is introduced, 
 with the inevitable obliteration of so many of those 
 which he has just emigrated from. To an American 
 coming to England, perhaps nothing gives a greater 
 spiritual jar, nothing more startles him into realizing 
 that he is actually abroad, than the discovery, constant 
 ly breaking upon him during the first weeks of his resi 
 dence here, that, when he sailed away from America, 
 he did indeed sail away from a whole hemisphere of 
 personal authorities and reputations from the princi 
 palities and powers of the literary, political, religious, 
 and social world before which he had loyally bowed 
 from his youth up. I think that, to any man, it would 
 give at least a momentary shock to find, for the first 
 time in his life, his references to illustrious names not 
 understood, to august authorities not regarded, the titu 
 lar dignitaries of his native chess-board not responded 
 to with deference or even with recognition. 
 
 As a matter of testimony upon this subject, perhaps 
 I may be allowed to refer to some of my own experi 
 ences during a residence in England now extending 
 over nearly three years. I well remember the first de 
 cided shock of this kind which I received. It was my 
 second Sunday in England, and I was spending a part 
 of the day at the house of a literary man whose name 
 (if I should mention it, which- I shall not) would be 
 recognized as a household word wherever the English 
 language is spoken. I was showing to him and to a 
 little circle of his friends my photograph album of 
 
American Reputations in England. 129 
 
 American celebrities j and when we came to a certain 
 face, they said, " Who is that ? " I replied, " Oliver 
 Wendell Holmes." "Who is he?" "Why, Dr. Holmes 
 did you never hear of him ? " " Never ! " I con 
 fess that then, for the first time, I felt a little homesick. 
 That word gave me, indeed, a sense of being " abroad" 
 Before me, then, yawned the dreary distance from that 
 dear spot which " there is no place like," with a vivid 
 ness more painful than I had derived from all the three 
 thousand farewells of the Atlantic, with all the taunts 
 and jeers flung at us by " the countless laughter of its 
 salt sea waves." Since then that particular reputation 
 has grown very rapidly in England ; and, of course, 
 even then there were here multitudes of the readers 
 and admirers of the autocratic-poet ; but it was simply 
 staggering to find men and women, eminent in English 
 literature, too, who did not remember to have heard 
 the name of Oliver Wendell Holmes ! 
 
 M. D. Conway told me that he talked with a poor 
 man in Venice who, he ascertained, had no knowledge 
 of Daniel Webster, but was acquainted with the name 
 and deeds of old John Brown. So I have found in Eng 
 land that, among the mass of the people among those, 
 for example, who make up a lecturer s audience at the 
 literary and mechanics institutes of the country any 
 reference to our great statesmen, jurists, and scholars 
 of the time just gone to Andrew Jackson, Webster, 
 Clay, Story, Choate, Felton, requires explanation, while 
 the mention of the names of philanthropists and reform 
 ers, especially of Garrison and Phillips, is generally 
 0* 
 
130 American Reputations in England. 
 
 caught up with instant appreciation and responded to 
 with enthusiasm. 
 
 I appeal to any American who has grown up under 
 the omnipresence and majesty of Daniel Webster s re 
 nown, if he would not have been punctured by a new 
 sensation had he gone through the following bit of ex 
 perience. Just before Christmas, a year ago, I arrived, 
 at the close of the day, in that noble old town on the 
 south coast of England where our Pilgrim Fathers bade 
 their last adieus to the cruel yet still beloved mother 
 who cast them forth. I went to a quiet inn, was usher 
 ed into the coffee-room, and, while waiting for dinner, 
 in the twilight, I thought I saw hanging upon the op 
 posite wall a portrait, of life-size and done in oil, of 
 Daniel Webster. It gave me a strange feeling full of 
 pleasure, like hearing some familiar air of home, like 
 seeing some well-known living face. I thought I must 
 be mistaken, but, on rushing across the room, I found 
 it was, indeed, a fine portrait of the great Daniel him 
 self. Wondering how such a thing could have found 
 its way into this quiet nook in one corner of England, 
 when the waiter came in a portly gentleman, dignified 
 as a chief-justice or one of the apostolic fathers I ask 
 ed him of whom that was the portrait. After some 
 hesitation he said, " Ah, sir, I think I have heard mas 
 ter say it was some American gentleman or other. I 
 will ask master, sir, if you wish." When he next enter 
 ed he said : " I have asked master, sir he does n t ex 
 actly remember the gentleman s name ; he bought the 
 picture at a sale ; he thinks it is some American gentle- 
 
American Reputations in England. 131 
 
 man or other." And that is Fame an old lady who 
 shudders at the Atlantic voyage. In the young Ply 
 mouth what an august personage would have been 
 evoked before every eye by that portrait ! Just across 
 the water, at the old Plymouth, it is merely the head of 
 " some American gentleman or other." 
 
 We all find here a perpetual source of amusement 
 in the very mixed apprehensions people have of the two 
 most celebrated members of the Beecher family. Every 
 body knows Mrs. Stowe, and calls her Mrs. Beecher- 
 Stowe. Everybody knows Henry Ward Beecher, and 
 nearly everybody calls him Mr. Beecher-Stowe. There 
 is a confused idea of some very near relationship be 
 tween these individuals. It is generally stated that 
 she is his wife, sometimes his daughter, occasionally 
 his mother, seldom what she is. I do not exaggerate 
 in saying that, in nine cases out of ten, Henry Ward 
 Beecher s name is by Englishmen enriched with the 
 pleasing suffix of Stowe. Yet, a few weeks ago, the 
 Times, in whose eyes he is of course a peculiarly en 
 deared person, took quite the opposite tack and got 
 the cart completely before the horse by speaking of 
 him as Mr. Beecher Ward ! 
 
 Excluding, in these remarks, the small minority of 
 English people who are really acquainted with our his 
 tory and literature, in travelling up and down England 
 I seldom meet with any one who has heard of George 
 W. Curtis, Dr. Holland, John G. Saxe, Col. Higginson, 
 Gail Hamilton, Bayard Taylor, Tuckerman, and Thomas 
 B. Aldrich, whom we know so well, but whose names pro- 
 
132 American Reputations in England. 
 
 nounced before a general English audience would be no 
 more recognized than the names of so many under-sec- 
 retaries of the Tycoon. It is true that the books of 
 some of them have had a considerable sale in England ; 
 but, in the first place, there is a large population of res 
 ident Americans here, who try to keep up an acquaint 
 ance with their country s authors ; and, in the next 
 place, there are a certain few English men and women 
 who get and study all our best books as they appear. 
 Upon the vast bulk of the population such names as 
 these have yet made no impression. Here and there 
 their books are to be found ; but such casual and sporad 
 ic circulation does not make fame or even reputation. 
 The supreme American literary reputation in England 
 is that of Longfellow. His renown has diffused itself 
 into every household ; his poems are in every drawing- 
 room ; he has more readers than any living English 
 poet. His is the one only American literary name that 
 may be mentioned in all companies with as much cer 
 tainty of recognition as the name of Shakespeare, though 
 even with Shakespeare s name it would not be safe to go 
 below a certain tide-mark of society. During the 
 Shakespearian festivals, last year, a London omnibus- 
 driver, by whose side I was sitting, whose daily jour 
 neys took him under the very walls of Apsley House and 
 Buckingham Palace, gravely asked me, " Who is this 
 fellow Shakespeare they re making such a damned row 
 about ? " My impression is, that next to Longfellow in 
 fame on British soil is Washington Irving, although an 
 English lady of wealth and literary proclivities once in- 
 
American Reputations in England. 133 
 
 quired of me whether that was "the Irving who attract 
 ed so much notice as an eccentric preacher in London 
 thirty years ago ! " Next in renown to Longfellow and 
 Irving, and in about the order given, are the names of 
 Hawthorne, Emerson, Prescott, Lowell, Dr. Channing, 
 Bryant, and Theodore Parker. I am surprised to find 
 how many there are who do not know Whittier. It 
 would be wrong to omit Elihu Burritt, who is every 
 where known in England, and for whom there is an 
 affectionate regard among multitudes of the purest and 
 best. He has passed many years here ; he has lectur 
 ed in nearly every town and village ; he has gone on 
 foot through the whole length of the island ; and by the 
 simplicity, beauty and amiability of his nature, by his 
 learning, by his calm thinking, by his modest yet glow 
 ing speech, has not only made fame for himself, but 
 has done much to change English estimates of the 
 American character. 
 
 It is very probable that Americans who have made 
 the tour of England may not be able altogether to 
 verify my statements by their own experience, and es 
 pecially may think that I have underrated the English 
 reputation of some whom I have referred to. This is 
 but natural. Mere tourists bring letters to the very 
 people who are most interested in America, who know 
 most about America, and in whose conversation these 
 names are most familiarly used. It would be a mistake 
 to infer that the English people in general have such 
 an acquaintance with our literary names. But having 
 travelled up and down England as a lecturer ; having 
 
134 American Reputations in England. 
 
 had the opportunity of experimenting with all sorts of 
 audiences in all sorts of places, by purposely throwing 
 in allusions to noted Americans and watching the ef 
 fect ; and having had in these journeys some glimpse 
 of the interior of English life, as well as some chance 
 of free conversation with vast numbers of the middle- 
 class English people, it is likely that my impressions 
 are not what they would be were I seeing England as a 
 tourist only. My duty in this paper, however, has been 
 not to account for the impressions of others, but truth 
 fully to relate my own. 
 
 It is with a melancholy interest that I look back 
 over the growth of the English fame of Abraham Lin 
 coln. During the first two years of my life here, he 
 was " the buffoon President," " the vulgar tyrant," " the 
 brutal despot revelling in the woes of a race." As his 
 name came naturally into some of my lectures, I 
 watched curiously the changes in the demonstrations 
 which it excited. Except in very polite audiences it 
 was always hissed. Even as late as the day on which 
 we received the news of Mr. Lincoln s re-election, the 
 mention of his name in a large audience convened in 
 the very heart of London created a stormy susurration 
 of hisses ; and when the hisses provoked a retort of 
 cheers, they rallied in ten-fold intensity, and won the 
 right. His death has now changed all. During the 
 past autumn (1865), laying the hand on the popular 
 pulse in the same way, from Cornwall to Yorkshire, I 
 found his name and praises welcomed with hearty 
 tributes of applause. 
 
American Reputations in England. 135 
 
 In the " Scarlet Letter " occurs this just remark, 
 that " it contributes greatly towards a man s moral and 
 intellectual health to be brought into habits of com 
 panionship with individuals unlike himself, who care 
 little for his pursuits, and whose sphere and abilities 
 he must go out of himself to appreciate." May not a 
 similar remark be made as to the advantages of com 
 panionship with those who care little for the personal 
 reputations which have always awed us, for the august 
 authorities with which we have been about to fortify 
 our speech, for the enthroned ones in literature with 
 whose images we had filled the pantheon of our youth 
 ful homage ? Yet it would be a rapture to get home 
 again among the old names, and to take on once more 
 the pleasant yoke of the old reputations. 
 
THE EUROPEAN AND AMERICAN ORDER 
 OF THOUGHT. 
 
 INTELLECTUAL timidity is the infirmity of cultivated 
 men. Property is essentially conservative, and as a 
 general rule, therefore, they who claim a present dis 
 tinction are willingly sceptical and indifferent to the 
 promise of the future. Such is human nature, and 
 nobody is to blame for it short of the original Adam. 
 A bird in the hand, says the proverbial wisdom of the 
 world, is worth two in the bush. Sure present posses 
 sion outweighs any amount of contingent future acquisi 
 tion. You would not expect a physician in good prac 
 tice to be foremost in denouncing his own therapeutics, 
 and advocating a better. You would not expect a 
 successful lawyer whose fame and revenues are depend 
 ent on the existing methods of his profession to be 
 over-zealous for the reform of those methods. Neither 
 would you expect a clergyman of conspicuous standing 
 in his church to take the lead there in inaugurating a 
 dogmatic or ritual revolution. Any particular lawyer, 
 doctor, or divine might, it is true, disconcert your ex 
 pectation ; but the expectation is nevertheless perfectly 
 reasonable, because it is based upon general experience, 
 
138 The European and American 
 
 or deduced from the principles which regulate human 
 nature itself, and which must, therefore, justify them 
 selves in the long run. The past, in so far as it over 
 laps the present, does so in purely fossil form, and 
 hence resists decay. And the present, in so far as it 
 has got itself formulated in institutions, or identified 
 with living interests, fights tooth and nail against the 
 future. In a word, conflict is the law of progress ; and 
 a very benignant law it is, no doubt, since we seem 
 incapable of greatly estimating any blessing which is 
 lightly won. We have no complaint to make of the 
 fact. We only adduce it by way of hinting a probable 
 explanation of the serious misconception into which 
 European, and especially English, conservatism has 
 been betrayed in respect to American character and 
 tendencies. 
 
 What makes the peculiarity of the era in which we 
 live is, that it is the consummation of a long conflict 
 between two civilizations one artificial and provisional, 
 as built on force ; the other natural and final, as built 
 on freedom, or the spontaneous tendencies of the mind ; 
 one, consequently, moribund, as referring its true vigor 
 to the past ; the other nascent, as finding its sure prom 
 ise in the future. The political life of Europe uni 
 versally, and that of England in an eminent degree, 
 amounts only to a temporary compromise or truce, not 
 to a permanent reconciliation, of this great warfare. 
 European, and especially English, culture aims to endow 
 man with civil freedom or citizenship, and contemplates 
 no higher destiny as within the range of his earthly 
 
Order of Thought. 139 
 
 possibilities. The European theory of human life is 
 that it is primarily civil and only derivatively social, so 
 that the persons who are identified with the civil ad 
 ministration have a legitimate title also to an excep 
 tional social position ; and its ideal of individual man 
 hood is that it is moral, not aesthetic voluntary, not 
 spontaneous. Now, the American idea, on both these 
 points, is strikingly opposed to the European one. 
 You have only to observe the popular instincts, as re 
 flected in the general tenor of our legislation, to per 
 ceive very plainly that our theory of human life is that 
 it is primarily social and only derivatively civil ; and 
 hence makes delight rather than duty, spontaneity 
 rather than will, the law of our individual development. 
 It is this fundamental yet wholly involuntary divergence 
 on our part from the traditions of the Old World which 
 exposes- us to European, and especially English, obloquy 
 and intolerance. It is not evolution they see in us, for 
 to that they could easily reconcile themselves ; it is 
 revolution, and revolution in the most inward and con 
 ventionally sacred realm of life. Practically, in fact, 
 our institutions are an exact inversion of theirs, what 
 is first and last in our estimation being severally last 
 and first in theirs, so that their judgments of us neces 
 sarily undergo the same dislocation with respect to the 
 actual facts of the case that our view of the landscape 
 undergoes when we look at it through an inverted 
 telescope. Their contempt of us is not voluntary or 
 conscious ; it is wholly instinctive and unconscious, 
 growing out of a sheer diversity of natural temperament 
 
140 The European and American 
 
 or providential direction between us, and arguing no 
 wilful perverseness on their part. It is the difference 
 between the conventionally righteous and the conven 
 tionally reprobate man of the gospels, the former of 
 whom cannot help saying, with all his heart, " Lord, I 
 thank thee that I am not as this publican," etc. And 
 it would be just as unreasonable in us to demand a 
 favorable European or English judgment of us as it 
 would be to ask a New York millionnaire to renounce 
 his wealth and trot about the streets in the insignia of 
 a voluntary or ostentatious poverty. 
 
 We emphasize the Englishman in all this matter, 
 because there is no bosom extant in which the social 
 principle, the principle of a wholly spontaneous equity 
 among men, is so weak as in the English, and the civic 
 or moral principle, the principle of voluntary or legal 
 rectitude, so strong. There is no one, consequently, so 
 eminently disqualified as the Englishman is by original 
 genius (and, indeed, acquired culture also) to do us 
 justice, in whose development the social sentiment 
 grows ever more absolute, and the moral sentiment 
 ever more impotent. It is this supremacy of will to 
 spontaneity, of moral to aesthetic force, of civic to social 
 aspiration, of outward letter, in short, to inward spirit, 
 which constitutes the strength of European conserva 
 tism, and which renders the Englishman specifically so 
 unsocial, or averse to all change which looks towards 
 the eventual brotherhood or fellowship of man. Our 
 political and ecclesiastical heritage cannot help striking 
 him as painfully squalid, because it disavows all sancti- 
 
Order of Thought. 141 
 
 ty underived from the popular heart. The supremacy 
 of the distinctively social conscience among us both to 
 the civic and ecclesiastic conscience, makes him pat 
 his own old paunch of privilege with infinite com 
 placency, and ensures us his boundless reprobation. 
 Every look at us is sure to inflame his arrogance, and 
 harden him inwardly against those tides of fellowship 
 or equality which are here flowing unchecked at all 
 events by institutions into the human mind, and so 
 preparing, let us hope, an immaculate divine edifice in 
 human nature. In short, belief in England and in the 
 permanence of English institutions and culture is a 
 religious obligation upon the average Englishman s 
 conscience ; and his contempt of you accordingly is not 
 wilful or flippant, but is a slow, dumpy, adipose product 
 of his defective spiritual respiration, of his still imma 
 ture manhood. It is an honest excrescence of natural 
 genius or temperament in him astonishing you, no 
 doubt, by its magnitude, benumbing you for the most 
 part by its contact, reducing you to impotence before 
 it; but you respect it in its place, just as you respect a 
 goitre in Switzerland or a blue-nose in Nova Scotia, 
 and never dream of making the unaffected individual 
 subject of it responsible. 
 
 There is, however, a spurious Englishman a cheap 
 modern edition of this ancient stately original the 
 Scotch, Canadian, or West Indian Englishman, who is 
 full, oftentimes, of wilful impertinence, and fidgets you 
 like fleas, poisoning your honest human flesh by his 
 venomous intention past all scratching to relieve, and 
 
142 The European and American 
 
 making you long to get well hold of him once between 
 finger and thumb, in order to do the wholesome world 
 a service. These parasitic English stand in the same 
 unhandsome relation to the true John Bull as the 
 retainers of a great house stand in towards its lord. 
 The heir of the house is incapable of parading his 
 dignity, but all they who wear his livery either under 
 or above their clothes namely, his poor relations and 
 his paid servants turn up their futile, consequential 
 noses in a manner so aggressive and violent as greatly 
 to invite pulling on the part of the embarrassed head 
 of the family, and dispose him oftentimes to renounce 
 a conventional dignity so fatal to all who underpin it 
 or even believe in it. There can be no doubt that this 
 provincial and colonial flunkeyism provokes the same 
 disgust in the manly English bosom that it does in 
 ours. However limited the Englishman may be in 
 point of social sympathy, he has none of this fretful, 
 mischievous, suspicious consciousness which you ob 
 serve in the Canadian, Scotch, or other poor relation. 
 And we must say we seldom meet in a respectable 
 English periodical the same shameless rage of insult 
 and defamation which is habitual to the Scotch " Black- 
 wood." The editorial temper of this snuffy, unventila- 
 ted magazine, both moral and intellectual, is morbid 
 enough to be the effect of a repelled eruption looks 
 like a cuticular irritation driven in to prey at leisure 
 upon heart and brain. It is the temper of a vixenish 
 old family nurse, with arms always akimbo, who feels 
 so sure of her darling provoking everybody s distrust 
 
Order of Thought. 143 
 
 or dislike as to be forever railing at the rest of the 
 parish by anticipation on his behalf. And we appre 
 hend that you may always, when you encounter any 
 thing very dirty or unscrupulous in English periodicals, 
 safely ascribe it, not to any Englishman who is socially 
 enfranchised, or entitled to the dignity of a man in his 
 own country, but to some underbred member of that 
 large herd who live by the pecuniary patronage or the 
 social tolerance of the aristocracy. 
 
 We have been indulging in no personal comparisons 
 between the European and the American, to the latter s 
 advantage. Our purpose has been simply to contrast 
 the spirit which animates European institutions with 
 that which animates ours ; and to show that while the 
 one contemplates and provides for the highest individual 
 distinction among men, at the risk if not at the actual 
 cost of a permanent debasement of all the rest, the 
 other provides for and tolerates no such distinction 
 which does not grow out of the gradual elevation of the 
 masses. We have no doubt that so far as the personal 
 attitude of the European and the American is concern 
 ed, with reference to the reigning temper of their re 
 spective institutions, the advantage is very apt to be 
 with the European; for he is oftentimes individually 
 very much in advance of his institutions, while the 
 American is almost never quite up to his. 
 

ROADS. 
 
 ABOUT this period of the year there is, all over the 
 Union, or at least all over the Northern States, a gen 
 eral repairing of the roads. The frost is fairly gone. 
 The scars the snow and the winter torrents have left 
 on the highways have to be removed. The season for 
 riding has fairly set in, and ways have to be made safe 
 and pleasant for the great swarm of buggies, wagons, 
 rockaways, barouches, gigs, and chaises which issue 
 from their winter hiding-places as soon as the spring 
 mud has dried. The roadmasters, contractors, and 
 selectmen accordingly go to work with great zeal and 
 assiduity to put the public highways in order, and the 
 way in which they attempt to do this is so extraordi 
 nary that nothing but long habit prevents the public 
 from enjoying its absurdity. There is, perhaps, no way 
 in which we can bring the nature of the process so 
 fully before the mind of our readers as by stating that, 
 except in very rocky or mountainous districts, there is, 
 perhaps, hardly a mile of road north of Mason and 
 Dixon s line which, after receiving the last touches from 
 the road mender, is not capable, if the traffic on it be 
 7 
 
146 Roads. 
 
 suspended, of producing a luxuriant crop of potatoes, 
 cabbages, or of any other garden vegetable. The rea 
 son of this is that the highway is the only portion of 
 our Northern country which is every year systemati 
 cally and richly manured. Most city people even, are 
 probably aware that, roads being generally slightly ele 
 vated, there runs along on each side of them a hollow 
 or ditch into which the rains sweep most of the mud 
 from their surface as well as the mould of the adjoin 
 ing fields, the dead leaves of the trees, and a large 
 quantity of other decaying or decayed vegetable mat 
 ter. These, consequently, form on the road-side de 
 posits of soil or manure of great value for agricultural 
 purposes, and which farmers, if they were wise, would 
 cart away and spread over their weary fields. The 
 deposits accumulate without disturbance during the 
 summer, fall, and winter, and in the spring comes the 
 road-mender and scrapes them out, sometimes with a 
 spade, sometimes with a plough and yoke of oxen, and 
 carefully spreads them on the middle of the highway 
 wherever he sees a hollow place. Most intelligent for 
 eigners who witness this process, and are not familiar 
 with the agricultural theory of roads, are apt to imagine 
 that it is dictated by malice or carelessness that the 
 farmer wants to clean his ditches out, and, to save him 
 self trouble, dumps the contents in the road, in sheer 
 indifference to the comforts or convenience of travellers. 
 Nobody who was familiar with the result could honestly 
 say that this suspicion was entirely unjustifiable, for the 
 stuff that is thus put on never hardens. After rain it 
 
Roads. 147 
 
 becomes a quagmire ; two or three days of sun convert 
 it into dust, which horses and wheels raise into thick 
 clouds, rendering driving in dry weather something only 
 to be undertaken under pressure of necessity. It is 
 not unnatural, therefore, to ascribe the putting of it 
 on to malignity or selfishness. Nature, if left to her 
 self, converts a track made over most parts of the 
 country into a tolerably good road in time. The rains 
 wash away the loose and soft clay from the surface and 
 bring us rapidly down to "the hard pan," which, if 
 kept tolerably level by filling the hollows with gravel 
 and picking out protruding stones, is perhaps as good 
 a highway as we can have without paving or macadam 
 izing, except in very miry districts where the subsoil 
 itself is soft. But this our road-menders are careful 
 not to do. They pile on the " hard pan " all the soft, 
 glutinous, gelatinous substances to be found in the 
 neighborhood, or in other words, supply the materials 
 for the two great pests of American country life the 
 mud and the dust. On the by-roads this nuisance is 
 not so serious, because they are very rarely repaired, 
 and one can accordingly often jog over them, if 
 with a good deal of jolting, at least with eyes un- 
 bleared and lungs and nostrils unchoked. But the 
 post-roads and great thoroughfares no trouble is spared 
 to make impassable. Whatever ploughing and piling 
 up soft dirt can do to make them killing to beasts and 
 offensive to men is done with almost amusing conscien 
 tiousness. We never pass a party repairing a road in 
 this way that we are not touched by the simple, un- 
 
148 Roads. 
 
 conscious, and unabashed air with which they dump 
 the manure right under our wheels. 
 
 As there are a good many very worthy people who 
 think this the proper way to make or repair a road, we 
 may be pardoned for stating that ever since the days of 
 the Romans it has been an acknowledged canon of 
 the road-making art, that the first requisite of a road is 
 hardness. The wheels of vehicles must not sink in it. 
 Rain must not affect it beyond making it dirty. There 
 must not be on it anything which the sun can convert 
 into deep dust. The Romans found out, as soon as 
 the empire began to extend, that nothing but hard 
 highways diverging from the capital to every corner of 
 their dominion would suffice to bind it together. The 
 result was the construction of those magnificent cause 
 ways, composed of large square blocks of hewn stone, 
 crossing hill and dale, and piercing right through for 
 est and swamp for hundreds or thousands of miles as 
 the crow flies, in every direction, and bringing home I 
 to the inhabitants of the remotest provinces, as nothing j 
 else could, the extent of the imperial power. " Far as : 
 the eye could reach," says the latest historian of the : .: 
 empire, " stretched these mysterious symbols of her \ 
 all-attaining influence, and where the sense failed to 
 follow, the imagination came into play, and wafted the 
 thoughts of the awe-stricken provincial to the gates of 
 Rome and the praetorium of the venerable imperator." 
 When Rome fell, the roads went gradually to decay. 
 During the Middle Ages nothing was done to repair 
 them. Many of the great lines were totally abandoned. 
 
Roads. 149 
 
 Forests grew over them, the soil covered them, and the 
 return of civilization found the modern world toiling 
 through the mud of the self-same tracks across 
 country which Ca3sar had got rid of a thousand years 
 previously. In short, the art of road-making was lost, 
 and was not revived till the close of the last century, 
 and the beginning of this, when good macadamized or 
 paved roads began to make their appearance in all the 
 countries of Western Europe, and had become general 
 before the railroads took away the greater part of their 
 importance. 
 
 With us, however, the smallness of the population 
 compared to the area over which it was scattered, ren 
 dered any means of inland communication better than 
 a cleared track through the forest out of the question. 
 There was neither the money nor the labor to spare for 
 anything better, and the sea and the rivers offered 
 ample facilities for the transportation of merchandise ; 
 carriages were scarce ; people performed most of their 
 journeys on horseback, and we had hardly become 
 conscious that our roads were bad, or rather that we 
 had no roads, when railroads were invented. These of 
 course became at once the great highways of the 
 country, and the common roads relapsed into the ap 
 parently complete insignificance in which we now find 
 them. That the public has not always been content 
 with the " dirt road," however, was shown a few years 
 ago by the number of plank roads that were con 
 structed ; but it is safe to say that but very few people 
 who have not seen the network of roads by which con- 
 
150 Roads. 
 
 tinental Europe and England are covered, or those of 
 the Central Park, in New York, have any adequate idea 
 either of what a good road is, or what a luxury it is to 
 those who live beside it or have occasion to use it. 
 The notions of the farmers on this subject are revealed 
 in the kind of thing which they dress up in spring 
 and call a good road a bank of soft earth, slightly 
 convex, and as far as contour goes sufficiently near 
 perfection, but allowing wheels in wet weather to sink 
 axle-deep in mud and in dry weather axle-deep in dust 
 in other words, differing in no respect from the ad 
 joining fields except in the absence of grass and in 
 being smoothed off. 
 
 This horrible simplicity of ours in the matter of 
 roads, and, we may add, in all matters connected with 
 travelling, is rendered more remarkable by our luxu- 
 riousness in other things hotels, for instance and by 
 the fact that there is no people in the world who ride so 
 much in carriages for pleasure. We believe there are not 
 less than twenty carriages kept in America in propor 
 tion to population, for mere recreation, for the one kept 
 in any European country, and, if we put aside the hacks 
 in the great cities, in the use of which Europeans, for 
 obvious reasons, far surpass us, we believe it is safe to 
 say that for one vehicle hired in any European country 
 for recreation, forty are hired here ; so that there is, 
 perhaps, no country in the world in which the condition 
 of the roads is of so much importance to so large a 
 number of persons. Why, then, are they not better ? 
 
 That their length is so great in proportion to the 
 
Roads. 151 
 
 population, may be a sufficient answer as far as regards 
 the West, but not as regards the Eastern States. The 
 roads round Boston, or New York, or Philadelphia are 
 in precisely the same condition as those of Iowa or 
 Minnesota ; that is to say, they are hard or soft, wet or 
 dry, according to the nature of the soil over which they 
 pass, although they lie in some of the most densely peo 
 pled districts of the western world. Nor is the great 
 cost of macadamizing any answer either. There are no 
 richer communities to be found anywhere than those 
 of our Eastern States as compared say with Ireland 
 or Switzerland, they may be called enormously wealthy 
 and yet both of these latter countries are covered 
 with macadamized roads of the most extraordinary 
 smoothness and hardness, always in perfect repair, and 
 exhibiting, in the case of Switzerland, engineering 
 triumphs of the most remarkable kind. The cost of 
 some of the Swiss roads, such as that which has lately 
 been completed across the Briinig Pass, or that which 
 ascends from the Valais to Loeche, must have been 
 enormous. And yet the Irish and Swiss roads are 
 paid for and kept in repair by a population of poor 
 fanners by rates levied on the counties or cantons. To 
 be sure, in the case of the Swiss, good roads are part 
 of their stock in trade, furnishing a strong attraction to 
 tourists ; but this by no means covers the whole case. 
 On the other hand, roads may be found in our Eastern 
 States, running between miles on miles of villas or neat 
 farm-houses, to the owners of which the cost of macad 
 amizing the whole county would be a trifle, but who 
 
152 Roads. 
 
 nevertheless toil through mud and dust from year to 
 year with saintly resignation. 
 
 We are driven to the conclusion, therefore, that it is 
 because our people do not know what good roads are 
 that they go without them, and for this reason we look 
 upon the roads in the Central Park as possessing a value 
 far beyond that which lies in the convenience they af 
 ford to promenaders. They are real educators. No 
 body who walks or rides over them, and sees what wear 
 and tear they save in horse-flesh, in harness, and car 
 riages, is ever likely to be content again with the dirty 
 lanes which the towns and villages of the country dis 
 tricts offer to the wayfarer, and in fact we already see 
 macadamized roads spreading around New York. 
 
 We should hardly have dwelt on this matter at such 
 length, important as it is in a material point of view, 
 but for the bearing it has on that most serious problem 
 over which so many Americans are now puzzling, of 
 where and how to live. We are constantly deploring 
 the growing tendency to crowd into the cities ; but of all 
 the things which contribute to make the country repul 
 sive as a dwelling place to make life in it dull, monot 
 onous, gloomy, and not always healthful the badness 
 of the roads stands first. It makes exercise on foot 
 impossible except in the fall. It doubles the labor of 
 horses and makes it necessary to keep two to do the 
 work of one ; it doubles the cost of carriage repairs j it 
 makes social visiting difficult even between near neigh 
 bors, and in fact during two-thirds of the year relegates 
 all who cannot afford to keep large studs to their own 
 
Roads. 153 
 
 houses and gardens. The road outside is in winter a 
 river of mud ; in summer, a pit full of dust ; and it may 
 be safely said, in fact, that children are able to be out 
 of doors a far greater number of hours in the course of 
 the year in the city than in the country, owing to the 
 fact that in the former they have a paved sidewalk to 
 take exercise on, from October until June. 
 7* 
 
PEWS. 
 
 THE annual pew-renting at Mr. Beecher s meeting 
 house in Brooklyn concerns so many people, and inter 
 ests so many whom it does not concern, that it is, in 
 some sort, a public matter, and may be fairly made a 
 subject of comment by the press. It shall certainly 
 have no unfavorable or unfriendly comment from us. 
 We have no reflections to make either on the operation 
 itself or on the details of its conduct. Whatever want 
 of taste there may be in the public exhibition which at 
 tracts the large crowd and excites so much pleasantry, 
 is incidental merely, and in no wise detracts from the 
 credit of the preacher whose power draws people from 
 vast distances to hear him, and forces them into vehe 
 ment competition for seats in his sanctuary. In few 
 cases would the system adopted at Plymouth Church 
 be anything but foolish and ruinous. It can succeed 
 only where there is great demand for seats. Only ex 
 traordinary power will create such a demand, and, 
 where the demand exists, it is natural that it should be 
 used for purposes of revenue. It is in its general as 
 pects that the question engages our attention. The 
 
156 Pews. 
 
 public are interested in knowing the best way of sup 
 porting religious institutions, and, at the same time, giv 
 ing the advantage of them to the largest number of 
 people, especially to those who most need or desire 
 them, namely, the people in moderate circumstances. 
 Religious instruction has become the luxury of the rich. 
 Is there any help for it ? If there is not, religion may 
 as well be handed over to the upholsterers, to be used 
 frankly for purposes of decoration. If there is a reme 
 dy, where is it ? Must it not be found in some differ 
 ent method of seating people in places of worship ? 
 Here is the point. Three methods are in vogue : that 
 of selling the pews and levying a specific tax on them 
 for current expenses ; that of annually renting them to 
 the highest bidder ; and that of leaving the sittings free 
 and meeting the expenses by the voluntary subscriptions 
 of those who are most interested and can best afford to 
 pay. Of course we have no purpose to discuss at 
 length the actual or the relative advantages or disad 
 vantages of these methods ; but the annual rental at 
 Mr. Beecher s suggests a few thoughts bearing on the 
 subject which may be worth considering. 
 
 To take, first, the unfavorable side of the Brooklyn 
 plan, as that side is the most obvious, it may not be 
 presuming to intimate that the " temporalities," as they 
 are courteously called in plain language, the money 
 matters crop out with an unseemly prominence in this 
 method. When the pews are sold at a fixed price the 
 financial movement is very quiet. The treasurer sends 
 his bills to the proprietors, collects the rents, and 
 

 Pews. 157 
 
 makes his annual business statement. Should the rev 
 enue be inadequate to meet the expenses, the tax on 
 the original valuation of the pews is increased one or 
 two per cent., and the additional income is gathered up 
 as quietly as before. Nothing is said in church about 
 money. The bare mention of money under this arrange 
 ment comes at last to be resented as an impertinence. 
 In the free churches the contribution-box is a frequent 
 apparition, but so frequent as to cause no surprise and 
 occasion no disturbance in the train of thought. The 
 bulk of the expense is carried by a few who privately 
 subscribe and pay their promised sum. But on the 
 auction principle there is no escaping the ring of the 
 coin on the counter. The money-changers have the 
 temple for one memorable evening the Gospel is put 
 up to the highest bidder, and he who can pay most has 
 publicly assigned to him the best seat. There is the 
 auctioneer, fresh from his sale of dry goods, stirring up 
 the crowd to pay down a good price for their wine and 
 milk, provoking competition, tempting all, perhaps, to 
 give more than they want to, and many to pay more 
 than they can afford, and making no few ashamed of 
 their impecuniosity and their back seat. Dives antici 
 pates his place in the kingdom, and Lazarus must be 
 contented with his dim anticipation of Abraham s bo 
 som. The rich man comes up to the Christ, holds out 
 his porte-monnaie instead of dropping on his knees, and, 
 instead of being sent away sorrowful, is invited to take 
 the front seat. This is not handsome. 
 
 It is not handsome either to associate position in the 
 
158 Pews. 
 
 church with money. The aristocratic spirit will find its 
 way into churches fast enough. Fashion will get its 
 ecclesiastical authentication. The first society will 
 have its chosen temple, and its favorite place therein. 
 But these temples are not always associated with 
 money ; nor are these favorite places identified with 
 success in trade. The choice seats represent social 
 position on the ground of family or elegance or culture, 
 all implying a certain amount of refined taste bad 
 enough, to be sure ; exquisitely bad ; Pharisaism is 
 none the worthier for being graceful, nor is snobbery 
 any the less offensive to the spiritual sense for having 
 its name on the selectest visiting list. Still, though no 
 less offensive to the spiritual sense, to the aesthetical 
 sense it is far less offensive. Worldiness is worldiness ; 
 but refined worldiness is less shocking than unrefined. 
 Money may be at the bottom of all of it at last, but 
 money transmuted into gentle sentiment and lovely 
 manners stands less in the way of worship than does 
 money in the shape of bank-notes. There is such a thing 
 as idealizing bullion, and pray let religion have it in its 
 most ideal form. 
 
 But to touch a more vital point. What becomes of 
 the poor in churches where the seats are knocked 
 clown to the highest bidder, and where the number of 
 bidders is great enough to take up all the seats ? The 
 poor it may be said have no chance in any popular 
 church, whatever the mode of raising the income. If 
 the pews are sold, the rich buy them. If they are tax 
 ed, the poor cannot pay the taxes. If admitted at all, 
 
Pews. 159 
 
 they must take such places as nobody wants. They 
 may like good preaching as well as their richer neigh 
 bors ; but if the preaching be worth having, how are 
 they to get it ? True ; but they are not usually pushed 
 out as poor. They are not palpably made to feel their 
 poverty. They are not known of all men as persons 
 who are unable to hire seats. They are not forced to 
 sit under the charge of demerit. Under the auction 
 system, if they find admittance at all, they come in to 
 take, not what is generously set apart for them, but 
 what nobody can be found willing to pay for, what has 
 been put up for sale and met no purchaser in a word, 
 what was left. And is not this to make poverty not 
 only a misfortune, but a reproach, and a reproach in 
 the very place of all places where it should be allowed 
 to forget itself in the company of Him who was the 
 great friend of the poor ? 
 
 To balance these disadvantages, the rental system 
 has one great advantage which it shares in common 
 with the free system, but which the ordinary system of 
 sale and taxation misses entirely. It breaks up the 
 uniformity of audiences, and allows congregations to 
 change at least once a year. The free system allows 
 them to change once a week, which is better, admitting 
 of a constant flux and reflux, an incessant variety, and 
 at the same time breaking up monotony in the weekly 
 assemblies, flinging the people of all conditions pro 
 miscuously together, permitting no association to be 
 come fixed, no places to become appropriated, but en 
 forcing an external semblance of humanity, which be- 
 
i6o 
 
 Pews. 
 
 comes more than a semblance in course of time. The 
 custom of proprietorship in pews is fatal to everything 
 of this kind. The society becomes more compact, but 
 it does not become more sympathetic. It acquires an 
 element of permanency, but it loses the element of hu 
 manity. It makes sure of people by pinning them to 
 one and the same spot. The preacher sees before him 
 year after year precisely the same persons. For a gen 
 eration, perhaps, his auditors may not perceptibly 
 change in character ; some will die ; some will leave 
 the city or the neighborhood ; but the great body of them 
 stay where they are. To the undevout it must seem as 
 if the preacher could not but tell them all he knows a 
 great many times over, and be tempted to tell them a 
 great deal more than he knows for the sake of gaining 
 their attention. The Word finds no vent or diffusion! 
 Often the people cannot get away from the minister if 
 they wish to. Their bodies are with their treasure, 
 while their hearts are elsewhere ; they own the pew, 
 and cannot sell it, so they go to church for their 
 money s worth ; they would go elsewhere if they could, 
 but they cannot afford two pews ; they wish it were in 
 their power to give place to somebody who would en 
 joy the ministrations ; but it is not. 
 
 Often under this system the minister cannot get rid 
 of his people. He knows that they dislike him on ac 
 count of his opinions. He is sure that they are talking 
 and plotting against him. He would be thankful if 
 they would go and let others in. But how can he 
 make them go ? They stand on their rights of prop- 
 
Pews. 161 
 
 erty ; they fortify their pews against the pulpit : they 
 extend their fortifications by buying more pews, every 
 pew representing a vote. They turn the church into a 
 battle-ground, and are ready to fight it out till the 
 minister leaves. This is no .uncommon occurrence 
 where pews are held as property Under the auction 
 rule nothing of this sort is possible. Discontent can 
 not be long lived. At the end of the year the malcontents 
 have a chance to go. The preacher may feel all the 
 time that he is preaching to people who, of their own 
 free choice, come to hear him. Each hearer must de 
 cide deliberately whether to continue a hearer or not. 
 If any come who do not wish to come, they must be 
 very few. The audience will change materially every 
 twelve months, and if they are floating, so much the 
 better, for while they stay they will be alive, and when 
 they go they will go to find something they like better. 
 But theoretically the free system commends itself as 
 the most rational system. It is the only system that is 
 truly social, hospitable, and sympathetic. It is the only 
 system that fairly puts all worshippers on the same 
 level. It is rarely attempted on a large scale ; it is 
 seldom successful even on a small scale. It is not 
 generally deemed practicable. But until it can be made 
 so, the administration of religion will never, we are sat 
 isfied, be what it should be. The difficulties in the 
 way of its operation are very great. We have few rich 
 ecclesiastical corporations, very few wealthy religious 
 endowments. We have divorced religion from the state, 
 and forced it to depend for its support on the voluntary 
 
1 62 Pews. 
 
 contributions of its friends. The consequence is that 
 few will pay for any religion but their own. But the 
 time may come yet when the opulent classes will rec 
 ognize religion, like education, as being a great public 
 interest, to be maintained by those who are able to 
 support it for those who are not. If that time ever 
 does come, churches for the people will be established, 
 as schools and colleges are, for the general benefit. All 
 alike will share the blessing ; those who can will bear 
 the cost. 
 
 
A CONNECTICUT VILLAGE. 
 
 IT was founded in 1639, and by a small colony of 
 emigrants from Stratford-on-Avon. This fact alone 
 might well make us respect the place, but there is not 
 a town or village in New England that could better rest 
 satisfied with its many attractions. It stands on the 
 western bank of the Housatonic or Ousatonick River, 
 on a level plain, with the Sound three miles away on 
 the south, the city of Bridgeport a little further off on 
 the west, and with a rolling, rich, well-cultivated, and 
 picturesque country on the north ; and although crossed 
 by the line of the New York and New Haven Railroad, 
 is one of the most quiet and lovely villages in the land. 
 Its original name was Cupheag, and an Englishman 
 named Fairchild purchased the land of the Poquanuck 
 Indians, and was the first white man vested with authority 
 over the town. When the purchase was first made, the 
 whole township comprised what have since been known 
 as the towns of Trumbull, Huntington, and Bridgeport, 
 the last of which has become a flourishing city. The 
 price paid for the whole grant is not known, but it is 
 on record that a neighboring tract of land cost ten 
 
J^4 A Connecticut Village, 
 
 blankets, six coats, one kettle, and a small assortment 
 of hoes, hatchets, knives, and glasses. It was on 
 account of similar outlays, undoubtedly, that the au 
 thorities of Stratford, thirty years after its settlement, 
 voted that the Indians should not "be permitted to plant 
 corn anywhere, have their weapons mended by the 
 smith, nor be employed by any citizens to look after 
 " the horses, hogs, and other cattle." The town was 
 named in memory of the English Stratford, is said to 
 have been laid out after the same fashion, and, by those 
 who have seen the two, the American town has been 
 pronounced the more beautiful. The principal street 
 is a mile long, runs north and south, and is intersected 
 by a number of others, all of which are lined by unpre 
 tending houses, each one flanked by a handsome gar 
 den. The streets are wide, richly carpeted by a green 
 sward, and fringed on either side by regular rows of 
 elm and other trees, which are constantly composing 
 themselves into beautiful pictures; while the rural 
 beauty of the place is greatly enhanced by two or three 
 of those open spaces which the old men of New Eng 
 land love to remember, in connection with their boy 
 hood, as the village green. Two handsome churches 
 with graceful spires, and another with less pretension, 
 loom up above the sea of foliage ; there is not a tavern 
 in the place, nor any groggeries or drinking saloons ; a 
 local newspaper was never dreamed of; and the few 
 shops, whose owners do not deem it necessary to hang 
 out any signs, are stocked with very small and very 
 miscellaneous assortments of merchandise. Birds build 
 
A Connecticut Village. 165 
 
 their nests in every direction, and their sweet singing 
 may be heard through all the hours of the summer day. 
 Each householder in the town seems to be the possessor 
 of a cow, and these cattle are driven to pasture in the 
 morning, watched during the day, and brought home at 
 sundown by a regular herdsman ; and were it not for 
 the occasional whistle of the passing locomotives, the 
 charming quiet of the place would be profound and 
 unbroken. 
 
 Two stories are told, illustrative of the repose which 
 reigns in Stratford. 
 
 Some years ago a strange gentleman and his wife 
 arrived in the village in their carriage, -and after driving 
 from one end of it to the other two or three times with 
 out meeting a single person, they became alarmed, and 
 fancied that a plague might have depopulated the place. 
 On further reflection, however, the stranger determined 
 to stop at one of the pleasant houses he saw on every 
 side. He did so, and the sound of the knocker on the 
 door almost startled him with its terrible noise. In due 
 time a lady made her appearance, and was saluted with 
 the question : 
 
 "Can you tell me, madam, if this town is in 
 habited?" 
 
 " Yes, sir, it is," replied the lady, " and by way of 
 relieving your anxiety I will mention one fact. The 
 reason why our streets are so quiet is this : the men of 
 the place are all in the fields at work, the children are 
 at school, and the housewives are at home preparing a 
 good dinner for their families." The gentleman thus 
 obtained a new idea, and was satisfied. 
 
J 66 A Connecticut Village. 
 
 The other is as follows: A Stratford gentleman 
 
 one day entered his house in a troubled manner, pale 
 
 and fainting, and earnestly called upon his wife and 
 
 daughters for some camphor or cologne. These things 
 
 were promptly administered, and after he had fairly 
 
 recovered his speech, his wife bent over him and said : 
 
 " What is the matter with you, my dear ? " 
 
 To this the invalid replied : " Nothing very serious, 
 
 I hope, but while passing along Elm Street I actually 
 
 saw a man." 
 
 The condition of things in Stratford has somewhat 
 changed during the past few years, but the quiet and 
 repose of the village are still delightful. Many of its 
 native citizens continue to live in the pleasant homes 
 where they were born ; others who were tempted to try 
 and obtain fortunes in New York and other cities were 
 successful, and, like men of sterling sense, have return 
 ed here to spend their declining years in peace. 
 
 That such a town as Stratford should afford any 
 thing in the way of romantic personal histories was 
 hardly to be expected, but the subjoined story is authen 
 tic as well as interesting. At the commencement of the 
 present century a young man made his appearance in 
 the village, and spent a few weeks at the tavern which 
 then existed to afford shelter to stage-coach travellers. 
 Whence he came and what his business none could 
 guess. Directly opposite the tavern stood the small 
 cottage and the forge of a blacksmith named Folsom. 
 He had a daughter who was the beauty of the village, 
 and it was her fortune to captivate the heart of the 
 
A Connecticut Village. 167 
 
 young stranger. He told his love, said that he was 
 from Scotland, that he was travelling incog., but in con 
 fidence gave her his real name, affirming that he was 
 heir to a large fortune. She returned his love, and they 
 were married. A few weeks thereafter the stranger 
 told his wife that he must visit New Orleans ; he did 
 so, and the gossips of the town made the young wife 
 unhappy by their disagreeable hints and jeers. In a few 
 months the husband returned, but before a week had 
 elapsed he received a large budget of letters, and told 
 his wife that he must at once return to England, and 
 must go alone. He took his departure, and the gossips 
 had another glorious opportunity to make a confiding 
 woman wretched. To all but herself it was a clear 
 case of desertion ; the wife became a mother, and for 
 two years lived on in silence and in hope. At the end 
 of that time a letter was received by the Stratford 
 beauty from her husband, directing her to go at once to 
 New York with her child, taking nothing with her but 
 the clothes she wore, and embark in a ship for her home 
 in England. On her arrival in New York she found a 
 ship splendidly furnished with every convenience and 
 luxury for her comfort, and two servants ready to obey 
 every wish that she might express. The ship duly ar 
 rived in England, and the Stratford girl became the 
 mistress of a superb mansion, and, as the wife of a 
 baronet, was saluted by the aristocracy as Lady Samuel 
 Sterling. On the death of her husband many years 
 ago, the Stratford boy succeeded to the title and the 
 wealth of his fathers, and in the last edition of the 
 
1 68 A Connecticut Village. 
 
 " Peerage and Baronetage," he is spoken of as the issue 
 of " Miss Folsom of Stratford, North America." When 
 the late Professor Silliman visited England some years 
 since, he had the pleasure of meeting Lady Sterling at 
 a dinner party, and was delighted to answer her many 
 questions about her birthplace in Connecticut. 
 
 If this paper were designed to be a complete history 
 of Stratford, it would be necessary to print many pages 
 about the early struggles and subsequent success of re 
 ligion in this region. That is out of the question ; but, 
 on account of the personal history of one most interest 
 ing divine and author connected with it, a passing 
 notice of the Episcopal Church in Stratford is indis 
 pensable. It was the first established in Connecticut, 
 and its founder was one who left the Puritans to become 
 an Episcopalian, and whose name was Samuel Johnson. 
 He was born at Guilford, Connecticut, October 14, 
 1696, where were also born his father and grandfather, 
 both men of distinction and deacons in the Congre 
 gational Church, while his great-grandfather, who came 
 from Yorkshire, England, was one of the first settlers 
 of New Haven. He was educated at the College of 
 Saybrook, which subsequently found a permanent rest 
 ing place in New Haven, and after the change of loca 
 tion, and while only twenty years of age, he became a 
 tutor in what is now known as Yale College ; was hon 
 ored with the degree of Master of Arts ; and was the 
 first man who in 1718 lodged and set up housekeeping 
 in the institution. In 1720 he became a preacher of 
 the Gospel, and was settled at West Haven as a Con- 
 
A Connecticut Village. 169 
 
 gregationalist. He soon afterwards became the leader 
 of a party of three or four who pioneered their way 
 into the Episcopal Church, and, resigning his charge, 
 he went to England to obtain orders, received from Ox 
 ford and Cambridge the degree of Master of Arts, and 
 in 1723 was settled in Stratford as the first regularly 
 ordained Episcopal clergyman in the colony. At first 
 his flock consisted of only thirty families, and the persecu 
 tions which he endured from the Congregationalists were 
 almost unparalleled. Some of them went so far as to put 
 chains across their streets to prevent the horrible Epis 
 copalians from going to church, while others would not 
 sell him vegetables and other country produce for the 
 support of his family. His great ability, however, as 
 well as his high character as a man of intellect and a 
 Christian, overcame all these obstacles, and he was 
 triumphantly successful. 
 
 On the arrival in this country of Berkeley (the Dean 
 of Derry and Bishop of Cloyne), in 1729, the rector of 
 Stratford became his intimate friend, corresponded with 
 him for many years, introduced his works to the literati 
 of America, made him so interested in Yale College as 
 to secure a present of one thousand valuable books to 
 that institution, as well as a present of ninety acres of 
 land in Rhode Island for its benefit. After a contin 
 uous battle of twenty years in behalf of his Church, the 
 University of Oxford conferred upon our rector the 
 degree of Doctor of Divinity, which honor was followed 
 by many kind letters from the best men in England. 
 In 1754, against his own wishes, but because eminent 
 8 
 
lyo A Connecticut Village. 
 
 friends told him it was his duty, he accepted the presi 
 dency of the newly established King s College in New 
 York (now Columbia College), where his services were 
 invaluable until 1763, when he returned to Stratford to 
 spend the remainder of his days in ease and leisure. 
 Here he died on the 6th of January, 1772, and lies 
 buried in the grave-yard of Christ Church, where two 
 church buildings were erected under his eye, and were 
 the predecessors of the present tasteful edifice occupy 
 ing the same site. On the monument which commem 
 orates his death are inscribed, after a Latin inscrip 
 tion, the following lines : 
 
 " If decent dignity and modest mien, 
 - The cheerful heart and countenance serene ; 
 If pure religion and unsullied truth, 
 His ags solace, and his search in youth ; 
 If piety in all the paths he trod, 
 Still rising vigorous to his Lord and God : 
 If charity thro all the race he ran, 
 Still willing well, and doing good to man ; 
 If LEARNING, free from pedantry and pride ; 
 If FAITH and VIRTUE, walking side by side ; 
 If well to mark his being s aim and end, 
 To shine through life a HUSBAND, FATHER, FRIEND, 
 If these ambition in thy soul can raise, 
 Excite thy reverence, or demand thy praise ; 
 Reader, ere yet thou quit this earthly scene, 
 Revere his name, and be what he has been." 
 
 MYLES COOPER. 
 
 For a sketch of the life of Doctor Johnson, and an 
 eloquent estimate of his exalted character as the first 
 scholar of the day in America, the reader is referred to 
 a small volume, published in 1805, by Dr. Thomas B. 
 Chandler, of New Jersey, while the subjoined list of his 
 
A Connecticut Village. 171 
 
 writings will afford an opportunity of estimating his 
 services as an author, viz. : " Plain Reasons for Con 
 forming to the Church ; " " Compendium of Logic and 
 Metaphysics " printed by Franklin ; " Demonstration 
 on the Reasonableness and Duty of Prayer ; " " Beauty 
 of Holiness in the Worship of the Church of England ; " 
 an English grammar, a Church catechism, a Hebrew 
 grammar, an English and Hebrew grammar, and a 
 variety of pamphlets on theological and literary subjects, 
 published between the years 1732 and 1771. 
 
 Another man of note associated with Stratford was 
 William S. Johnson, son of Dr. Samuel. He was bom 
 here October 7, 1727, graduated at Yale College in 
 1744, and was a lawyer of distinction and an eloquent 
 orator. In 1765 and 1785 he was a delegate to the 
 Congress at New York, and in 1776 an agent for the 
 Colony to England, where he formed the acquaintance 
 of many leading men. In 1772 he was judge of the 
 Connecticut Supreme Court and a member of the con 
 vention that formed the Federal Constitution. He was 
 also a Senator in Congress from 1789 to 1791 ; received 
 from Oxford the degree of Doctor of Laws ; and from 
 1792 to 1800 he was president of Columbia College, 
 New York, after which he returned to Stratford, where 
 he died November 14, 1819, and lies buried by the side 
 of his distinguished father. 
 
 As allusions have already been made to five genera 
 tions of the Johnson family of Stratford, it may here 
 be mentioned, for the sake of completeness, that 
 Samuel William Johnson, a lawyer and judge of retired 
 
172 A Connecticut Village. 
 
 habits, was the son of the senator, and that his son, 
 William Samuel Johnson, is the present representative 
 of the family, who has several brothers to participate 
 with him in bearing the honored name. And this fact 
 brings us (as did the courtesy of that gentleman bring 
 the writer of this chapter) into the Johnson Library of 
 Stratford. This collection numbers between four and 
 five thousand volumes, and seven generations of highly 
 educated men have participated in the labor of bringing 
 them together. It was also enriched by contributions 
 from such men as Bishop Berkeley, Benjamin Franklin, 
 and Samuel Johnson, the great author of England. The 
 several proprietors of this rare and truly precious 
 private library have occasionally given away what we 
 might call a swarm of books, but perhaps the most 
 graceful present of this kind was one of several hundred 
 volumes, printed between the years 1577 and 1791, and 
 presented to Columbia College by the present owner. 
 The collection, as it now stands, is especially rich in 
 theology, the early English classics, the antiquities of 
 England, the Greek and Latin authors, and in its dic 
 tionaries, with a rare sprinkling of black letter and El 
 zevir volumes. Here may also be found several curious 
 editions of the Bible ; but perhaps the most curious, 
 interesting, and valuable single volume is the " Icon 
 JBasilike ; or, The Works of that Great Monarch and 
 Glorious Martyr, King Charles I., both Civil and Sa 
 cred ; and Pourtraicture of his Sacred Majesty in his 
 Solitudes and Sufferings." The edition here mentioned 
 was printed at the Hague in 1648, a few days after the 
 
A Connecticut Village. 173 
 
 death of the king, and hence its especial value. Those 
 acquainted with the work need not be told that the 
 proof is quite conclusive as to its having been the 
 veritable production of the king, though long disputed ; 
 that it went through fifty editions in one year ; that 
 Hume declares it to have led to the restoration of the 
 royal family ; that it was greatly praised even by Mil 
 ton, the personal friend of Cromwell ; that, as the al 
 leged production of the murdered sovereign, it caused 
 an intense interest throughout the world ; and that the 
 critics of the time pronounced it the best specimen of 
 English writing then in existence. The man whose 
 taste and learning are chiefly represented by this ad 
 mirable library was the Rev. Dr. Samuel Johnson. 
 Here it was that, after his return from New York, sur 
 rounded by these venerable tomes, he lived the happy 
 and peaceful life of a scholar, and kept up an extensive 
 correspondence with the most learned and eminent men 
 of England and America. And that mass of cor 
 respondence, which is still preserved, with an elaborate 
 journal kept by Dr. Samuel Johnson, may, perhaps, be 
 considered the very cream of the Johnson library. 
 That portion of it bearing upon church history has al 
 ready been extensively studied by clerical pilgrims from 
 all parts of the land ; while that portion which is of a 
 miscellaneous character, addressed to the rector and 
 senator, is quietly awaiting the fate of all unpublished 
 correspondence by men of distinction. 
 
 A desultory account of Stratford, like the present, 
 should not omit an allusion to General David Wooster, 
 
174 ^ Connecticut Village. 
 
 who was born here in 1711. He graduated at Yale 
 College in 1738, served as the captain of an armed 
 vessel in the Spanish war, as a captain of militia in the 
 expedition against Louisburg in 1745, went to France 
 with a lot of prisoners, and from thence to England, 
 where he received certain honors, served as command 
 ant of a brigade in the French war, espoused the cause 
 of America in 1764, aided in defending New York, had 
 command of our troops in Canada, where he rendered 
 important services, was subsequently made a major- 
 general of the Connecticut militia, and during a skir 
 mish with the British troops at the time of their incur 
 sion to Danbury in 1777, received a shot which termi 
 nated his life in a few days. He was a brave officer, 
 an ardent patriot, and a man of the highest integrity 
 and virtue. 
 
 But a few additional words must be devoted to the 
 Stratford of the present time. A love of religion amid 
 of the intellectual and beautiful seems to permeate its 
 entire population ; and although its two leading de 
 nominations of Christians were wont to battle valiantly 
 for the cause of truth and prejudice in the olden times, 
 the most perfect harmony now exists between them, and 
 both alike deserve honorable mention for what they 
 have accomplished. To church people alone the his 
 tory of the Congregational Church is quite as interest 
 ing as that of the Episcopal, but the latter had the ad 
 vantage on the score of general interest on account of 
 its distinguished founder. American literature has also 
 been enriched by two citizens of Stratford now living, 
 
A Connecticut tillage. 175 
 
 viz., Rev. J. Mitchell and J. Olney, Esq. "The 
 Reminiscences of Scenes and Characters of College, 
 by a Graduate of Yale," the work of the former, is an 
 exceedingly well written volume, useful in purpose and 
 full of sound wisdom and Christian feeling. And the 
 same compliment may be paid to his other productions, 
 viz., " Notes from over the Sea," " My Mother ; or, Re 
 collections of Maternal Influence," " Days of Boyhood," 
 a tale entitled " Rachell Kell," and "The New England 
 Churches," in which the subject of Congregationalism 
 is well-nigh exhausted. This gentleman was also for 
 many years editor of the Christian Spectator in New 
 Haven, and his books were published anonymously. 
 The School Geographies and Histories of the latter are 
 well known as having acquired an almost unequalled 
 circulation. While the art treasures of the town are 
 not extensive, there are a few pictures here which will 
 he found worth hunting up by men of taste. In the 
 Johnson Library may be found the best portrait extant 
 of Jonathan Edwards, a connection of the family, paint 
 ed by or copied after Copley ; one of Rev. Dr. John 
 son, also by Copley; one of Senator Johnson, by 
 Stuart ; and a print of Samuel Johnson of England, 
 after Reynolds, which was presented to Senator John 
 son by the original, and pronounced by him the best 
 likeness ever executed. 
 
VOYAGES AND TRAVELS. 
 
 MR. JOHN FOSTER, the most uncomfortable person 
 of the last two or three centuries, a man who delighted 
 himself by elaborating doleful essays on " Decision of 
 Character," " Popular Ignorance," and similar depress 
 ing subjects, not content with making himself as 
 wretched as possible by sad consideration of the past 
 history of the human race, the present unhappy estate 
 of himself and every other human being, and the mel 
 ancholy condition to which we are all to be reduced 
 hereafter, used to torment himself, as the readers of his 
 works may see, by reflecting despondently on the griefs 
 and woes of posterity. In more than one place he has 
 expressed in his habitual style a style, by the way, 
 which is the vehicle of thoughts so gloomy, and withal 
 so dead, that one is reminded of a highly ornamented 
 hearse his painful sense of the hardships and labors 
 to be endured by the people of the twentieth century. 
 Prominent among these prospective miseries he placed 
 the growth and, of course, he expected their increase 
 to be in a villainous geometrical ratio of books of 
 8* 
 
*7& Voyages and Travels. 
 
 travels. A man, says he, going from one capital to 
 ^ another, by ordinary means of conveyance, is able to 
 * see for about a gunshot on each side of the road. The 
 people and their manners the wayfarer observes in the 
 stages and at the taverns where he sleeps. Then he 
 must write a book. But, says Foster, still borrowing 
 trouble, suppose the section of country which the tourist 
 has seen to be represented on a map of the world, and 
 it will be represented fairly by a light pencil-mark. 
 Now consider, he goes on, the small part of the world 
 at present covered by these pencil-marks ; consider the 
 nature of the tourist, and how necessary it is to him to 
 produce these volumes ; and, again, consider the enor 
 mous number of such volumes already printed, and 
 yet again consider, says poor Foster, getting unhappier 
 every moment, consider the likelihood of improvement 
 in the means of locomotion ; the imagination begins to 
 faint under the idea of the task to be performed by our 
 miserable posterity when the whole round world is just 
 newly pencilled over. 
 
 In fact, however, we who are the posterity in ques 
 tion seem to be not staggering under our anticipated 
 burden. Heads of families, we should say, have ceased 
 to advise the young to " peruse voyages and travels," 
 and to shun novels, and probably the last uncle has 
 presented the last nephew with the last copy of " Travels 
 in the Interior Districts of Africa, by Mungo Park," 
 which once every Young Man s Guide recommended, 
 as combining instruction with entertainment. The army 
 of old-time tourists who, when they went abroad, took 
 
Voyages and Travels. 179 
 
 blank books with them, and made them blanker, and 
 then put them into print, does not now exist in anything 
 like its old force. Mr. Hepworth Dixon, to be sure, 
 occasionally " does " a country, and there is also Mr. 
 Bayard Taylor, who has utilized all the kingdoms of the 
 earth, and J. Ross Browne and G. Augustus Sala 
 pretty continually go to and fro on the globe, and wander 
 up and down it. And of course the Englishman 
 travelling in the United States regards the custom of 
 old days as being still so much in force as to warrant 
 him in writing an astonishing book of observations upon 
 the Yankee, his cataract of Niagara, his Mammoth Cave, 
 his manners, his beasts of chase, and the really aston 
 ishing growth of his towns. The Owen or Agassiz of 
 these specimens of literature might construct one of 
 them complete from such a sample bit of them as this, 
 for instance, which we suppose to have been written in 
 1837, or thereabouts. We quote from memory : " Niles 
 is a thriving town, on the St. Joseph River, on the bor 
 ders of the Potawatamie territory. Churches, a print 
 ing-press, and a theatre are now in operation where but 
 ten years ago the ring of the woodman s axe was rarely 
 heard. We observed a mounted Indian riding down 
 the bluff and looking toward the town, pondering, per 
 haps, on the fate of his race doomed to cruel extinc 
 tion, and in the streets we saw several squaws wearing 
 nose-rings and other barbaric ornaments. Of course, 
 having arrived late at the hotel, it was impossible to 
 procure supper after the regular feeding-time, and ^ye 
 had to content ourselves by liquoring-up in the baa:- 
 
180 Voyages and Travels. 
 
 room and eating a dry cracker. " The Frenchman, 
 too, occasionally puts forth a work of philosophy and 
 feeling, exposes the want of insight of his British brother, 
 felicitates his country, France, ever generous and mag 
 nanimous, on having created this wonderful state, so 
 strong, so new, so fresh, which lays the foundations of 
 the future, while Europe is engaged in patching and 
 sweeping clean its ruins of the past, and marvels at the 
 respect of Americans for women ; he shows how this is 
 accounted for by the free institutions which Jefferson, 
 profoundly impressed by the ideas of France, planted 
 here, and how alas ! one must confess it this respect 
 for these beings so beautiful but so fragile, so destitute 
 of thought, so without the care of the mother, loved by 
 men immersed in business, whom the stranger can see 
 to be adored but without influence, unsatisfied, full of 
 vague longing in fine, so unhappy this respect is 
 apparent rather than real. 
 
 But, on the whole, the readers, and consequently 
 the writers, of books of travel have vastly decreased in 
 numbers within twenty-five or thirty years. Perhaps 
 their books have not absolutely decreased in numbers, 
 but relatively to other books they have. Volumes upon 
 the grand tour are altogether out of date. Almost no 
 Americans even inform us, nowadays, of the condition 
 of Shakespeare s tomb, and describe Westminster Ab 
 bey, or make reflections on the evils of monarchies 
 and dine with the aristocracy of England, or ramble 
 with us through the galleries of continental cities, or 
 describe the Bay of Naples and the picturesque Italian 
 
Voyages and Travels. 181 
 
 peasant. The " English Reader," if it were now to be 
 prepared for the use of schools, would no more con 
 tain its account of the Grotto of Antiparos than it 
 would contain those extracts from Cicero against 
 Verres, or its " How long, O Catiline ! wilt thou abuse 
 our patience ? " There is no boy who now reads those 
 tales of shipwreck in the polar seas or captivity among 
 the Moors which once were bought for every Young 
 Men s Library. We doubt if, among all the readers of 
 the Boston Investigator, any one now buys M. Volney s 
 evil-intentioned " Travels through Egypt and Syria in 
 the years 1783, 1784, and 1785." 
 
 M. Volney, by the way, after telling us that a small 
 sum of money fell to him by inheritance, and that his 
 thirst for knowledge disposed him to spend it in travel 
 rather than otherwise, and that he decided upon going 
 to the countries where arose those religious customs 
 and ideas that have had so much influence on mankind, 
 states that he was confirmed in his resolution to pub 
 lish "by the difficulties attending travelling in those 
 countries, which have therefore but seldom been visited, 
 and are but imperfectly known." 
 
 Doubtless this remark of his suggests a good part of 
 the reason why this once most popular of all branches 
 of literature has so much fallen into decay. Mr. Sew- 
 ard telegraphed the other day to a United States Con 
 sul residing not far from the pyramids. The revolt in 
 Crete is detailed by the Hoe presses of Athens. A 
 man can count the days required for journeying by rail 
 and steamship from London, through the Pillars of 
 
1 82 Voyages and Travels. 
 
 Hercules and the Red Sea, to the East Indies and Fai 
 Kathay. What country or countries remain in which 
 there are " difficulties attending travelling ; " and, now 
 that young English persons of both sexes " leave their 
 copies of Tennyson on the top of Mont Blanc," what 
 places are there which " have but seldom been visited, 
 and are, therefore, but imperfectly known ? " Exceed 
 ingly few. Palgrave was able to make a fine book 
 about Arabia a while ago ; and the interior districts of 
 Africa since Mungo Park was there, if nobody knows 
 how many stupid books they have furnished material 
 for, have also been the subject of four or five excellent 
 works. The springs of the Nile are now discovered 
 though exit Africa. Vambery s remarkable book is 
 not to be forgotten either. And no doubt Turkestan, 
 and Thibet, and Japan, and Siberia, if all its tremen 
 dous story could be told, might fill some volumes which 
 would be entertaining enough and would satisfy a good 
 deal of curiosity. Besides, even half-civilized and 
 savage mankind are worth studying, for man is a prob 
 lem that cannot well be looked at from too many points 
 of view. But universal trade and railroads and tele 
 graphs have made it so easy to see strange countries 
 that there are hardly any strange countries left to see, 
 and as the age of travel begins, the age of books of 
 travel disappears. 
 
 But this facility of locomotion and the excess to 
 which the writing of travels was once pushed cannot be 
 held the sole cause of the result we see. A fanciful 
 man might speculate curiously whether the introspective 
 
Voyages and Travels. 183 
 
 tendencies of the modern mind may not have had 
 much to do with diminishing a sort of literatuie es 
 sentially objective. And a historian of travel-writing, 
 adopting this theory, might show the gradual descent 
 from the objective writing of Herodotus in the first age of 
 literature, or of Benjamin of Tudela or Sir John Mande- 
 ville in the Middle ages, down through the jumble of 
 objective-subjective in the writings of those tourists 
 who record for us their bills of fare and no sooner get 
 from home than they think themselves of importance 
 enough to have their indigestions chronicled, down fur 
 ther to travellers such in dead earnest as Sterne was 
 half in jest, whose journeys are sentimental and records 
 of their whims, or like Chateaubriand, whose journeys 
 are sentimentalistic and full of gushing eloquence. 
 Quite possibly it may be that the study of the micro 
 cosm has interfered with the study of the macrocosm ; 
 a century of which Hamlet is said to be the type, 
 should hardly be much inclined to go far and wide 
 seeking other men, or women either, under foreign foul 
 collections of vapors. 
 
 But it is the periodical press which has been the 
 chief agent in driving the labored volume of travels out 
 of the field. The newspapers send out a correspon 
 dent if there is war in Wallachia, and another to the 
 Tyrol when war comes there, and others to India or 
 Tennessee or the Crimea, or to Japan with the em 
 bassy, and another to Jamaica when the results of 
 emancipation are to be studied, and to Bermuda to see 
 how coolies work, and to the land of claret and olives 
 
184 Voyages and Travels. 
 
 when information is wanted as to the French system of 
 minute division of land among heirs. No reader of 
 the Herald need be ignorant that the Russians drink 
 lemon-juice in their tea, or that they embrace and kiss 
 their male friend though he should hold an official po 
 sition of dignity. What country, from Sable Island to 
 the Black Sea, has not been put into papers for " Har 
 per s Monthly ? " Has not the Tribune resident cor 
 respondents in all quarters of the globe ? No book on 
 England contains the tenth part of what one may read 
 in the regular London correspondence of Cincinnati 
 Gazettes and Chicago Tribunes ; yea, even from coun 
 tries dead and gone one reads letters, as, for example, 
 the dismal screeds that somebody sends to the Times 
 from the late Confederacy, to say nothing of the Toledo 
 Blade, with its correspondent at Confedrit Cross Roads. 
 And, till newspapers that must be rilled each day, and 
 magazines that must be filled each month, shall be 
 abolished, and until the people cease to thirst for im 
 mediate* news from every point, where anything that 
 can be called news is happening, we shall still see the 
 world in the journals, and keep our Hakluyts on our 
 newspaper files and in our cyclopaedias. 
 
VERSE-MAKING. 
 
 IT was once the custom in many reviews, calling 
 themselves Christian and civilized, and so regarded 
 each by its private sect or following, to immolate at 
 least one young poet quarterly at the shrine of stony- 
 faced and rocky-bosomed criticism. It was esteemed 
 a charming diversion, if not an act of religion, in the 
 days of Mr. GirTord or of Mr. Wilson Croker, to make 
 some timid and feeble rhymer ridiculous, to put him 
 out of countenance by merciless sneering, and to 
 demonstrate his foibles and failures for the amusement 
 of a giggling public. Pope set the fashion of denounc 
 ing dunces, and all the writers who had bad hearts, 
 and could string together ten-syllabled couplets, thought 
 it manly and vigorous to follow his somewhat peevish 
 example. Criticism, however purposeless and virulent, 
 is apt to assume the airs of an offended and impatient 
 morality, and to take credit to itself for smiting re 
 morselessly and conscientiously. But imbecility, at least 
 when it is inoffensive, should be privileged, and pro 
 fessional flaw-picking, exercised sheerly for the purpose 
 of giving pain, is no more respectable than the profes- 
 
1 8 6 Verse- Making. 
 
 sional flogging and pickling which prevailed not long 
 ago in certain parts of the United States. At the same 
 time, while avoiding all personal application, we may 
 venture to point out a foible which is a well-marked 
 and not altogether an encouraging characteristic of our 
 own clay, and to suggest to the innumerable writers of 
 verse that, however much they may be permitted to 
 sing for their own sake, the world just now has but 
 small need of their wares. Goethe once boasted that, 
 in all his life, he had " never thought about thinking," 
 and we would enter a protest which we are sure is 
 honest, and which we think is timely, against the mak 
 ing of verses for the sake of verse-making. Metrical 
 indulgence, both in England and this country, has 
 grown into an epidemical and inveterate habit, not 
 cultivated as it should be, if at all, in a corner, but 
 published to all the world, which is continually chal 
 lenged to admire endless variations of a few themes 
 long ago worn threadbare. Facility of execution, at 
 best a natural or acquired knack, is mistaken for gen 
 uine inspiration ; nor does there seem to be any pre 
 tence of considering whether the world is in need of 
 any addition to its already large poetical stock. It is 
 with the most sincere kindness that we take the liberty 
 of pointing out, particularly to the young, the waste of 
 time, of strength, and of mental serenity which this 
 universal strumming involves. 
 
 Twenty years ago there was exhibited in London a 
 machine, not the human product of a college, but 
 literally a material machine, which made excellent 
 
Verse-Making. 187 
 
 Latin hexameters. The unfortunate inventor had spent 
 thirteen precious years of his life in perfecting "the 
 Eureka," as he called it. Without wasting our time in 
 explaining this curious puzzle, it is enough to say that 
 it actually ground out hexameters which were like those 
 of Virgil in some respects, but considerably unlike them 
 in others. 
 
 It seems to us that it is very much in this way that 
 many modern brains produce what its authors call 
 poetry, and its judicious critics verse. It is a literal 
 making. The memory is full of phrases, the ear of 
 familiar quantities ; fashion or accident supplies the 
 subject, and daily practice renders the construction 
 easy. So skilful sometimes is this species of metrical 
 manufacture, that it is hard to determine with accuracy, 
 while we feel its deficiency, in what that deficiency 
 consists. There is a modest respectability which de 
 ceives the careless reader who accepts sound for sense, 
 without any suspicion of the trick which is played upon 
 his ear. Coleridge once wrote a few verses of absolute 
 nonsense in the manner of Dr. Darwin, which he read 
 to a lady, who rewarded him by seriously exclaiming, 
 " Ah, Mr. Coleridge, now I see that you are a poet." 
 This we admit to be an extreme illustration ; but there 
 are thousands of rhymers now spinning longs and 
 shorts, and sometimes confounding them, whose work, 
 we must say unfortunately, has just sense enough in it 
 to save it from wholesome and decisive condemnation. 
 If they were absolute fools they would soon be laughed 
 into silence ; but as their stanzas are to a certain ex- 
 
i88 Verse-Making. 
 
 tent rational, the good-natured public receives them 
 with a fatal affability, and has no call to forgive a 
 mediocrity which it is too indolent or too indifferent to 
 detect. Every editor receives bushels of verses which 
 he might print, if he had but room for them, without 
 any particular discredit to his taste or judgment. Their 
 authors naturally do not understand their rejection. 
 " Is not this," they say, " as good as Tennyson ? Is it 
 not, at least, very much like him ? Does not this re 
 mind you of Mr. Browning ? Might not this be mis 
 taken for one of Mr. Longfellow s own productions ? " 
 Of course there is bitter disappointment. 
 
 We readily admit that verse-making is an elegant 
 accomplishment, an innocent amusement, and a real 
 auxiliary in the education of the mind to elevated habits 
 and a daily recognition of the comely and ideal in spite 
 of the pertinacious intrusion of the inevitable vulgarities 
 of life. It is, or it can be trained to be, a protection 
 against those low aims and selfish purposes into the 
 adoption of which we are so easily betrayed. As the 
 record of our best experiences and healthiest discipline, 
 as a memorandum of our sincerest resolutions and most 
 earnest regrets, as a relief to the sorrow which other 
 wise might too bitterly prey upon the mind, as a grate 
 ful tribute to love or to affection, as the natural expres 
 sion of a certain class of noble and lovely thoughts, 
 verse may be the readiest and most appropriate form 
 of recording so much of our life as we wish especially 
 to remember. It may train the hand as a fine land 
 scape trains the eye, and make the best words and 
 
Verse-Making. 189 
 
 phrases habitual in our conversation. But the chief 
 charm not less than the chief utility of this private verse- 
 making is in its indomitable privacy, and in the indig 
 nation and just self-estimate with which it shrinks from 
 publication. " I have painted many bad pictures," said 
 a gentleman in our hearing, " but I have never exhib 
 ited them ; " and there was wisdom in the painting not 
 less than in the privacy. It was well to paint it was 
 well also to conceal ; it is well to write verse it may 
 be excellent to keep it in one s portfolio, to be resolute 
 against sending it to the newspapers, to be chary of 
 reading it to the best beloved and most patient of 
 friends. It is certainly no argument against the valid 
 ity of any composition that it embodies thoughts and 
 feelings which, though novel to the individual, are yet 
 common to the race ; but this consideration diminishes 
 the necessity and propriety of formal publication, and 
 should warn us against the sheer vanity of parading 
 truisms which, however fine and familiar, are truisms 
 still. It is the secret of poetical vitality that it expresses 
 what the majority of men have felt, and after one happy 
 spirit has found fit words and music for the general 
 thought, a mockery of the original song becomes easy 
 to hundreds who sing from a recollection of what has 
 pleased them, and ape the minstrel airs of the Byron 
 of yesterday or of the Tennyson of to-day. It is won 
 derful how much clever journey-work of this kind is 
 performed, and from one point of view it is encouraging, 
 for the prevalence of this accomplishment does indicate, 
 we are free to admit, a degree of popular refinement, 
 
190 Verse-Making. 
 
 and even a good deal of appreciative taste. But there 
 is nothing new in it. We suppose that there was a 
 mob of gentlemen in Rome who wrote easily, as we 
 know that there was in England in the days of Dryden. 
 But schools, magazines, newspapers, have made this 
 poetical imitation cheap and common, while the passion 
 for printing has kept pace with the multiplied mechan 
 ical facilities of printing the power-press being re 
 sponsible for thousands of volumes which nothing can 
 save from oblivion, and which represent more heart 
 burning, more disappointment, and more ludicrous self- 
 complacency than we care to compute. Poetry has 
 grown to be like photography. We have all one s 
 friends and acquaintances in our albums in their holi 
 day raiment and with a perpetual putting on of their 
 best looks ; and altogether they are not worth so much 
 to us as some old portrait of some unknown man or 
 woman long ago dead, the painter of which knew the 
 secret of avoiding that air of conscious propriety which 
 no sitter before the camera can put off. There is no 
 fault to be found with the photograph except the para 
 doxical one that it is so extremely like that it is not 
 like at all. It is equally hard to say, sometimes, why 
 or in what poetical disciples are not the equals of their 
 masters ; but the mysterious vice of imitation makes us 
 indifferent to their best stanzas and deprives their 
 finest tunes of the charm of sincerity. Byron said of 
 Mr. Sotheby that he had imitated all the poets of his 
 time, and had occasionally beaten all his models ; yet 
 a verse-maker more entirely forgotten than Mr. Sotheby 
 we cannot at this moment remember. 
 
Verse- Making. 191 
 
 We protest, in conclusion, that we have no quarrel 
 with the cacoethes scribcndi, which we believe may often 
 be turned to good account. It is from the folly of 
 printing or of attempting to print that we would good- 
 naturedly dissuade hundreds of estimable persons. 
 The young gentleman who can make a clever sketch 
 does not send it to the Artists Exhibition. The young 
 lady who can play tolerably well a concerto of Beetho 
 ven does not advertise a concert at the Academy. The 
 best declaimer of the " private theatricals " does not 
 apply to Mr. Wallack for an engagement. If we have 
 amateur fiddlers and painters and pianists content 
 with strictly domestic glory, why may we not have 
 amateur versifiers building the lofty rhyme without the 
 least ambition, and sending their sonnets to the seclu 
 sion of their desks, or to the albums of their gentle if 
 not judicious friends ? It may be pleasant to print, 
 but it is also pleasant to burn ; and to those who have 
 never experienced the latter gratification, we cordially 
 commend the experiment 
 
SOMETHING ABOUT MONUMENTS. 
 
 LET us assume that about one-half of the memorial 
 buildings which it is now proposed to erect within the 
 United States will be built during the next few years. 
 It appears, then, that many American cities and villages, 
 now somewhat bare of other ornament than wayside 
 trees, will either be adorned by good buildings or dis 
 figured by very bad ones, and that many cemeteries will 
 either gain their first good monuments or be more than 
 ever burdened by those which are poor and tame. For 
 it is difficult to build a monument of negative merit. 
 Such buildings, as they have no utilitarian character, 
 must be truly beautiful, or they are ugly and hurtful ; 
 like statues, they must be noble, or they are worthless. 
 And there is a necessity, similar and almost as positive, 
 of great artistic excellence in those buildings which unite 
 a practical use with their monumental purpose. 
 
 It will be well, therefore, if those who intend to give 
 money or time to build monuments will give a little 
 thought on the subject as well. We Americans are not 
 so sure of ourselves in artistic enterprises that we can 
 afford to omit the common precaution of thinking about 
 9 
 
194 Something about Monuments. 
 
 the work we mean to do. Good monuments are not so 
 plenty anywhere in the world that habit has grown to 
 be second nature, and that monuments in the future will 
 somehow be good also. But, in both these cases, the 
 converse is true. Of thousands of sepulchral and com 
 memorative monuments built during the last three 
 hundred years in Europe, statues, triumphal arches, 
 columns, temples, obelisks, scarce one in a thousand is 
 good. Out of hundreds of architectural enterprises 
 brought to some conclusion in America, scarce one in a 
 hundred has been even reasonably successful. There 
 is no undertaking for which most people in the United 
 States are less ready than this of building the monu 
 ments which they earnestly desire to build monuments 
 to their townsmen, college-mates, or associates, who 
 have fallen in the war monuments to the more cele 
 brated of our military heroes monuments to the 
 honored memory of our dead President. 
 
 Peculiar difficulties will surround and hinder these 
 undertakings, because nearly all these proposed memo 
 rials will be built, if at all, by associations j few by pri 
 vate persons. When a gentleman of average intelli 
 gence wishes to erect a monument to his brother or 
 friend, there is a reasonable chance that he will employ 
 an architect or sculptor of reputation and professional 
 ambition, even if not of the first artistic skill, and so 
 get a memorial that neither artist nor employer need be 
 ashamed of. But there is much less chance of this in 
 the case of action by a community or association. If a 
 city or society employ an artist, without experimenting 
 
Something about Monuments. 195 
 
 with a "competition," they very seldom select the best 
 or even one among the best of the artists within their 
 reach ; political influence, private friendship, personal 
 popularity, accidental availability, or temporary popular 
 favor, always interfere to govern the choice. If they 
 resort to competition the result is not practically differ 
 ent ; for, supposing the most absolutely fair and careful 
 consideration by the judges of the submitted designs, 
 and supposing the submission of a great number of good 
 designs, what likelihood is there that the judges are fit 
 to judge ? How many committees of management, or 
 boards of trustees, or building committees with power, 
 contain each a majority of men who understand the 
 complex and many-sided art of ornamental architecture ? 
 How many persons are there in the land, not professed 
 architects or sculptors, who can select the best among 
 twenty or ten designs, each design illustrated only by 
 formal and technical drawings, or by these aided by a 
 fancifully colored and shaded " perspective view " of a 
 building which it is proposed to erect? It is not enough 
 to have "good taste" to have a correct natural feeling 
 for beauty of form, or to be accustomed to drawings. 
 No man is at all fit to pick out one design among many, 
 unless he has some knowledge of what has been and 
 of what can be done in actual marble, stone, and bronze. 
 There is apt to be a gentleman on every committee who 
 has travelled in Europe, and who gets great credit for 
 knowledge and judgment, and great influence over his 
 colleagues on that account. But that gentleman must 
 give proof of a better than guide-book knowledge of 
 
196 Something about Monuments. 
 
 what he has seen, and of a less confused memory than 
 most travellers bring home, and of having bought pho 
 tographs of the best buildings instead of those most 
 beloved by valets de place, before he can be considered 
 an authority by sensible stayers-at-home. It will often 
 be better if the judges will decide by lot as judges 
 have been known to do among the designs laid before 
 them. There will then be a reasonable chance that 
 they accept the best design, which chance dwindles 
 indefinitely when most committees of selection attempt 
 to select. 
 
 Private tombstones are not included in the class of 
 monuments we are considering. But there is one sim 
 ple and not necessarily expensive kind of monument 
 which is often used for a private tombstone, and which 
 will answer as well for many other occasions, namely, 
 the obelisk. The word means any object of the well- 
 known shape, square in plan, higher than thick, grad 
 ually diminishing in size from the base upward, until 
 the gradual taper suddenly ends at a sharp edge, and 
 a square pyramid with much-inclined sides terminates 
 the whole. The form is wrongly used in such cases as 
 Bunker Hill Monument, because so large and expen 
 sive a building can be much more effective and beauti 
 ful in another form ; the famous monument named has 
 the one merit only of being likely to endure a long 
 time. It is wrongly used in such cases as the monu 
 ment at Munich to the Bavarians who fell in Napoleon s 
 Russian campaign, because bronze cannot be more 
 foolishly used than by being cast into flat plates, and 
 
Something about Monuments. 197 
 
 so built up into a hollow square tower, and the cannon 
 which were melted to make this monument would have 
 been better employed if they had been piled in pairs 
 like a child s corn-cob house. The obelisk should 
 always be a monolith, a single block of granite ; and in 
 that case it is not a contemptible ambition to get your 
 obelisk as large as possible, and pay largely for quarry 
 ing, transporting, and setting up a great stone. It 
 would not be a work of fine art, but it would be a labor 
 of love and a worthy work for a city, to try to get out 
 of American quarries a rival of the Egyptian Obelisk at 
 Paris, red syenite, seventy feet high, and half a million 
 pounds in weight ; or the equal of the yet vaster one at 
 Rome ; or one such as a czar might have had, accord 
 ing to the story, a hundred feet high, had not his work 
 men obeyed orders too literally. But the purpose of 
 an obelisk is not all fulfilled when it is smoothed and 
 set up. The Egyptian idea of this monument was the 
 idea of an excellent place for inscriptions. They 
 covered their obelisks with their picture-writing, from 
 base to summit. Not as the Worth Monument in New 
 York carries the names of battles, cut in raised letters, 
 at great expense ; not as the same ugly structure carries 
 its bas-reliefs, and " trophies of arms," in cast bronze ; 
 but simply cut into the smooth face of the granite, these 
 inscriptions can be seen from afar, and will remain for 
 ever. The obelisk shares with the pyramid the honor 
 of being an emblem of eternity. The granite monolith 
 is indestructible by time, and nearly so by the hand of 
 man. Cut to-day your inscription, half a volume long, 
 
198 Something about Monuments. 
 
 on the four smooth faces of a monolithic obelisk of 
 hard granite, and there is no reason why three thousand 
 years any more than one year should efface the letters. 
 Almost all forms of monument that have been sanc 
 tioned by the use of ages, and are in themselves excel 
 lent, are more or less associated with sculpture. And 
 memorial sculpture is, of course, generally portraiture. 
 It will be found that most of those monumental forms 
 which are the best and the most universally loved, were 
 originally intended for the reception, protection, and 
 exhibition of portrait statuary ; such, for instance, is 
 the monument in Trinity Church-yard, New York, in 
 memory of those who died in British prison-ships dur 
 ing the Revolutionary War. It is a canopy of four 
 Gothic arches, raised upon a high base, and surmount 
 ed by a tall spire. It is pleasing in outline and in 
 detail, but the open canopy is blank and empty, noth 
 ing being seen through its arches but the trees beyond. 
 The original type of this form of monument is found in 
 those canopied tombs of the Gothic time, so numerous 
 once in northern churches, still so numerous in Italy 
 both in churches and in the open air. And, looking 
 back to these, the models models, also, of all artistic 
 excellence we find the canopy put to use, covering 
 nearly always that modification of the ancient sarco 
 phagus known as the altar tomb. These tombs vary in 
 style and character with the different ages of the art, 
 but the typical form is a sarcophagus two or three feet 
 high, long enough to receive a life-sized effigy, and wide 
 enough for one such effigy or for two. Upon the slab 
 
Something about Monuments. 199 
 
 forming the cover was laid the figure of the dead, as if 
 asleep, the head upon a round pillow, the feet together, 
 and often resting upon a lion or hound, or else crossed 
 one over the other, the hands brought together as in 
 prayer. These effigies were sometimes carved in marble 
 or stone, sometimes cast in bronze. The sides of the 
 tomb were decorated with heraldic devices or with 
 figure sculpture representing incidents in the life of the 
 deceased, or, more simply, with little arcades or with 
 tracery. This representation of the figure as in placid 
 and motionless sleep is perfectly appropriate and right. 
 It has been felt by the best sculptors of our own time 
 to be the most fitting form for memorial statues, and, 
 with the revival of mediaeval architecture in Europe, 
 the sarcophagus and effigy have been restored to use. 
 It is hard for modern sculptors to retain the composed 
 stillness of the early statues ; the figure must be less 
 stiff to suit modern notions of gracefulness, and much 
 of the pathos and dignity of the old work is lost when 
 the change is made. Baron Marochetti s statue of the 
 Princess Elizabeth, daughter of Charles I., on the 
 tomb erected to her memory by Queen Victoria, is one 
 of the loveliest portrait statues of modern times ; but, 
 lovely as it is, it is open to the objection that it has too 
 much action for the effigy on a tomb. In some modern 
 tombs in Germany, the carefully modelled statues are 
 made ridiculous because couched upon an elaborate 
 mattress and pillow, and because posed in different 
 attitudes of uneasy sleep. 
 
 Many tombs remain to us from the best times of art 
 
2OO Something about Monuments. 
 
 without the life-size effigy on the top, but covered with 
 a heavy stone, figured only with a cross and sacred 
 monogram, but having the sides panelled, and each 
 panel filled with sculpture in relief. This plan has also 
 been followed in modern times, in cases where the 
 portrait statue was not to be had, as in the case of 
 soldiers who have died away from home, leaving no 
 sufficient material from which a portrait could be made. 
 But, as we have said above, memorial sculpture will 
 generally be portraiture. No other casting or carving 
 can be so fitting as a likeness of the dead whom we 
 wish to remember and honor. 
 
 The tombs of the Scala family at Verona, deservedly 
 celebrated as the most perfect monuments known to us, 
 have the sarcophagus and effigy, as was customary at 
 the time, but also the statue of the dead chief as in life. 
 The figure on the stone coffin is clothed in the long 
 gown of peace, and wears a simple fillet around the 
 head. The sides of the sarcophagus are carved with 
 incidents in the life of the dead man. A noble four- 
 arched canopy, resting on slender shafts, is raised above 
 it, and the arches support a square, steep roof or spire, 
 which is truncated, and bears upon the flat top a small 
 equestrian statue of the chief in his armor of battle. 
 These tombs, or the best two, those of Can Grande and 
 Can Mastino della Scala, are as perfect in design and 
 execution of details as in general feeling, and are mod 
 els of excellence in monumental work. 
 
 It should be observed, though, that these monu 
 ments, consisting of the sarcophagus and recumbent 
 
Something about Monuments. 201 
 
 figure, are designed for tombs proper designed, that 
 is, to be placed over or to contain the body itself. 
 They are not suitable for memorials, merely, to be erect 
 ed in memory of one who lies elsewhere. There is a 
 certain difficulty in fitting any monumental building, if 
 of the nature of a tomb, to this purpose. No structure 
 yet proposed is as suitable as a life-sized portrait statue, 
 erect or in sitting posture. The difficulty is, of course, 
 to get the statue. The cost may not be an objection. 
 Money can be raised to pay for the noblest figure, in 
 bronze or marble, of McPherson, or Wadsworth, or 
 Stevens, but who is the artist that is to carve it? 
 There are one or two sculptors in the country who have 
 approved ability, and they should be kept busy for the 
 five years to come modelling nothing but portraits, that 
 we may rightly remember our gallant dead. That they 
 should be left to waste their time on fancies and 
 "ideals" proves a radical deficiency somewhere in the 
 glorious laws of supply and demand. 
 
 The need of statues of eminent soldiers suggests 
 inevitably the apropriateness to this need of equestrian 
 statues. And in connection with this theme, as the 
 bronze horsemen at Rome, at Venice, and at Padua 
 occur to the mind, the need of some knowledge on the 
 part of our people of what other people have done to 
 honor their illustrious dead becomes evident. Cannot 
 something be done to reproduce by a carefully made 
 cast as was done for the Sydenham Crystal Palace 
 Company the great statues of Coleone and Gattame- 
 lata ? When shall we learn that the way to teach 
 
202 Something about Monuments. 
 
 people art is to show it to them ? One great work of 
 art is worth a thousand lectures on art. If the lectures 
 also are good, they will be better when the work of art 
 is present to enforce their doctrine. 
 
 Some of the great colleges propose to build memo 
 rials to their graduates who have fallen in the war for 
 the national life. It seems that one of these great col 
 leges has put head and heart to the consideration of 
 the matter, for the rational and worthy conclusion is ar 
 rived at to build a hall for her living alumni in honor 
 of the dead. A good building thus serving each pres 
 ent generation, and full of memories of a past genera 
 tion of heroes ; greeting every graduate who enters to 
 share in literary or social festivity with welcome from a 
 noble past ; holding up, within and without, the names, 
 to honor, of good men and true, who have gone before 
 such a building would certainly be better than any huge 
 pile erected to memory only. But it must be a good 
 building. It must be a noble building. Every memo 
 rial must have these two characteristics, or it is worth 
 less ; it must be rich and ornamental, and even pro 
 fusely decorated ; and it must be built to last forever. 
 A plain building, well fitted to its purpose, and intelli 
 gently designed, such as would make a good alumni 
 hall, would not serve for a memorial. There must be 
 the evidences of lavish expense of money, all well 
 spent indeed, but also J reely spent, of beauty sought for 
 itself, and ornament loved for its own sake, and used to 
 dignify the building. Then there must be durability ; 
 of course no public monument is to be allowed to rival 
 
Something about Monuments. 203 
 
 those wooden head-boards which are still set up in 
 German village grave-yards; the Harvard memorial 
 should stand as firmly as Bunker Hill Monument 
 itself. 
 
 Another of the great colleges desires and hopes to 
 build a new and worthy chapel, and it is proposed to 
 add to the plan of such a chapel some cloister or ante- 
 chapel which shall afford a place for private memorials, 
 tablets, memorial windows, and mural monuments. 
 There is the same requirement here of heavy cost to 
 make a worthy building, and this is true to even a 
 greater extent than in the former case, for this church 
 and memorial combines in itself the most honorable 
 functions of a building. 
 
 In another case a campanile has been proposed, a 
 tall tower within which a gradual stairway or inclined 
 plane should ascend continually from base to summit 
 those who have ascended the great bell-tower of St. 
 Mark, in Venice Square, will remember the slow ascent 
 to the belfry chamber the walls of the stairway to be 
 incrusted with the tablets in memory of the dead. And 
 other forms of building have been and will be proposed. 
 We return to our first request, and ask the American 
 people to think a little of all these things, and see to it 
 that their willingly-given money shall be well spent. 
 No afterthought will avail. 
 
OUR LOVE OF LUXURY. 
 
 MANY republicans are apt to think the free spend 
 ing of money one of the essential attributes of royalty. 
 The fact is, however, that in this age wild and reckless 
 expenditure, without rhyme or reason in it, is now more 
 frequently seen in republican circles than in royal or 
 aristocratic ones. Until within the last forty years the 
 wealthiest class in the greater portion of the civilized 
 world has always been the landholding class, and one 
 of the peculiarities of this class has been the uniformity 
 and even monotony of the lives of its members. Their 
 income was generally fixed or varied very slightly from 
 year to year. They were exposed to no striking or 
 extraordinary vicissitudes ; most of the calamities which 
 afflicted other people, except wars and revolutions, did 
 not affect them. The calm of their existence and the 
 certainty and invariability of their revenues were, of 
 course, very favorable to the formation of fixed habits, 
 of fixed ways of dressing, eating, going about, and 
 spending money, which naturally came down from 
 generation to generation. The result was that they 
 were not on the whole, an extravagant class. They 
 
206 Our Love of Luxury. 
 
 have in most countries become impoverished, but only 
 in one or two, Ireland and Poland, through sheer waste 
 of money. In others they have been borne down by 
 political troubles, and by the difficulty of providing for 
 the younger members of families, owing to their rigid 
 exclusion from the privilege of earning their own bread 
 by any kind of honest labor except military service. 
 Everything considered, we believe that the landed 
 aristocracy of old countries would be found to have 
 been on the whole a careful, prudent, and thrifty body 
 of persons, resisting the influences of idleness, of im 
 perfect education, and the temptation to display as a 
 means of impressing " the lower orders " with great 
 persistence and, on the whole, great success. 
 
 It has, however, ceased to be the richest class of 
 the community. The English lord or Russian prince 
 is no longer the fat goose which the Continental hotel- 
 keepers long for and love to pluck. The animal now 
 generally presents himself in the shape of an American 
 or English cotton-spinner or contractor or inventor or 
 trader. But then the rich European of the commercial 
 class is a good deal influenced in his mode of spending 
 his money by the example of his aristocratic neighbors. 
 Of late years the landed aristocracy, finding they were 
 ceasing to be the richest portion of the community, and 
 that in mere external display, whether of equipages or 
 clothes or furniture or plate, large numbers of people 
 who have made their money in trade find no difficulty 
 in outshining them, have affected great sobriety in all 
 these particulars. A duke s carriage and harness are 
 
Our Love of Luxury. 207 
 
 now pretty sure to be amongst the plainest to be seen 
 in any crowd of equipages ; and the duke himself, in 
 stead of going about in pink or blue satin, belaced, 
 beruffled, and bespangled as his great-grandfather did, 
 is probably one of the most quietly dressed men to be 
 seen in street or park. 
 
 Of course this influence of the aristocracy of birth 
 is only an imperfect one ; on the Continent particularly, 
 where the line between the nobles and bourgeoisie is 
 strongly drawn and cannot be rubbed out even by 
 wealth, it is very imperfect, but still it exists. More 
 over, it is so difficult in the Old World to make a large 
 fortune that very few men do it without undergoing a 
 good deal of discipline and chastening in the process, 
 and without having their imaginations tamed, their 
 desires cooled, and their nerves a little shaken, so that 
 when they reach the summit of their ambition they are 
 apt to be willing enough to sit down and live as they 
 have always lived. In America, however, men reach 
 great wealth every year in the full vigor of their 
 powers, without having any models before their eyes 
 for imitation, and without having lost on the way a 
 particle of their energy, and with an untamable desire 
 to " enjoy their money." This is generally no easy 
 matter, and the devices by which they seek to extract 
 pleasure from " the pile " are amongst the most amus 
 ing and singular phenomena of our time, and it is the 
 oddity of these devices, particularly as practised in this 
 city, and the somewhat lavish expenditure of money by 
 Americans travelling in Europe, which have created 
 
208 Our Love of Luxury. 
 
 and spread abroad the notion so prevalent both here 
 and abroad that Americans are a wildly extravagant 
 people. This impression is strengthened, too, by the 
 dismal outcry of one of our leading newspapers every 
 year over the enormous amount we spend in " foreign 
 luxuries," silks, wines, and so forth, and the sapient 
 assertion which it makes year after year that we are 
 running in debt to Europe for them. 
 
 Now the fact is that, judged by the only rational 
 test of economy, the difference between income and 
 expenditure, the Americans are the most economical 
 people in the world. There is a popular fallacy that 
 extravagance in living is good for trade, and that the 
 poor are helped by rich men s spending a good deal 
 in food and drink and clothes and plate. Every cent 
 spent in any of these things is, however, on the con 
 trary, subtracted from the national capital, as if not 
 spent in this way it would, if left in bank or invested, 
 be used in employing productive labor. But it is also 
 a fallacy to suppose that the nation as a whole spends 
 more in luxuries than it can afford to spend. When 
 wiseacres run down to the Custom-House, examine the 
 tables of imports, and come back wringing their hands 
 over the general extravagance, they forget that, although 
 silks and satins are imported or manufactured in bales 
 and boxes, they are intended to be cut up into single 
 dresses, and are bought by individual women who, as a 
 general rule, know how much they can afford to lay 
 out on such things, and lay out this and no more. At 
 the bottom of two-thirds of the lamentations we hear 
 
Our Love of Luxury. 209 
 
 about the luxury of the times there is the feeling that 
 nearly everybody is living beyond his means. The 
 truth is there is hardly anybody who does not live 
 within his means. Political economists have called 
 man " an exchanging animal ; " they might with almost 
 as much accuracy call him a saving animal. It needs 
 very little reflection to see that if the majority of people, 
 or any but a very small minority, spent more than, or 
 even as much as, they earned, the growth of wealth in 
 every country would cease altogether, and not only 
 this, but positive decline would soon begin. Every 
 house and church and bridge and road and aqueduct 
 and work of art and ornament and book in the United 
 States is due to the general habit of saving something 
 out of the yearly income. The enormous increase in 
 the total wealth of the country which is recorded in 
 each census report is due to the same cause. In fact, 
 there is nothing which people do more generally, more 
 zealously, more eagerly, and more anxiously, than save ; 
 there is no instinct in human nature, except the parental 
 instinct, stronger than the instinct of accumulation. 
 Therefore, when we take up the Custom-House returns, 
 and read that this year and last year we bought an 
 enormous quantity of champagne and diamonds and 
 lace and silks and pictures, it is very absurd to rush to 
 the conclusion that we are ruining ourselves and getting 
 these things on credit. These things are brought over 
 for the use of separate families, and these families will 
 not, as a general rule, spend one cent more on them 
 than their income allows them to spend, after meeting 
 
210 Our Love of Luxury, 
 
 all debts, dues, and demands and making a comfortable 
 provision for the future. We should never think of 
 walking into Stewart s store on Broadway and rebuk 
 ing the ladies we saw there buying expensive dresses, 
 on the ground that they were purchasing things they 
 could not afford ; and yet this would be the same folly, 
 on a smaller scale, of which an editor is guilty when he 
 berates the nation at large on this ground for purchas 
 ing "foreign luxuries." The process which is wit 
 nessed every day at Stewart s is going on in every 
 other town and village. Men and women who find 
 that they have money to spare, go and spend it in the 
 nearest store on dress or jewellery or food, which they 
 do not absolutely need, but which they do not choose 
 to do without. However, let business become " dull," 
 or, in other words, incomes diminish, and forthwith a 
 great portion of the outlay ceases. The mass of peo 
 ple, not being " born naturals," on seeing their surplus 
 dwindle, begin to save more zealously than ever, and 
 cut off all superfluous outgo. Gentlemen who write 
 moral articles on luxury in the newspapers flatter them 
 selves that their warnings are necessary to bring about 
 this result. This is a mistake. People save in hard 
 times without hints from the newspapers, just as nat 
 urally as they put up their umbrellas when it begins 
 to rain. When they begin to retrench, of course the 
 sale of luxuries begins to fall off and importers cease 
 to import. Some importers, of course, are pretty sure 
 to be caught with a large stock on hand; but this is 
 the result of their own imprudence or want of foresight. 
 
Our Love of Luxury. 211 
 
 We always read the newspaper lamentations over 
 the popular appetite for " foreign luxuries " with very 
 much the same feeling that we read the Pope s curses 
 of modern literature and science, and consider them, 
 if we may be allowed to use the poor man s comment 
 on cabbage as an article of food, as "filling at the 
 money." They take up space in a harmless way, which 
 in these days of " enterprise " and " special despatches " 
 is a great thing. People will buy luxuries whenever 
 they have the money to spare in spite of the news 
 papers. Certainly newspaper editors are not the per 
 sons to call them to account for it, as they are not, we 
 believe, celebrated for their ascetic temperament, and 
 in most countries are not found to "lag behind the 
 age," as the phrase is, in pursuit of material comfort. 
 Clergymen might preach on the subject with a better 
 grace, as their congregations seem to enjoy confining 
 them to plain living we presume with the desire of hav 
 ing in every parish at least one model of Christian sim 
 plicity. But both editors and clergymen have preached 
 and will always preach in vain. The love of luxury, 
 that is, of the things which, at any particular period, or 
 in any particular country, are not considered necessary 
 to health or comfort, has always existed and always 
 will exist, and is one of the great springs of human 
 progress. Besides, luxury is a relative term. No such 
 thing as absolute luxury has as yet been discovered ; 
 and the luxuries of one generation become the neces 
 saries of the next, and the luxuries of one country are 
 the necessaries of another. In the Middle Ages night- 
 
212 Our Love of Luxury. 
 
 shirts were looked on as a silly piece of extravagance, 
 and people of all ranks and classes from the king down 
 slept in the simple costume in which they were born. 
 We have no doubt that when night-gowns began to 
 come into vogue people were accused of running in 
 debt for them to foreigners. In Queen Elizabeth s 
 time the owner of the plainest ingrain carpet, such as 
 may now be found in the house of every American 
 mechanic, would have been looked upon as an extrava 
 gant dog, unless he were a great noble, in which case 
 he would probably have excited the Queen s jealousy 
 and been put in the Tower. Over the greater part of 
 the world, to this day, the spectacle of a man s brush 
 ing his teeth will draw as large a crowd as the district 
 will afford, and excite amusement and disgust in about 
 equal proportions. In most parts of Turkey, taking 
 sugar habitually in his coffee would be considered, in 
 the case of a person of moderate means, a sign of 
 riotous living. What is now considered very poor 
 claret would in the fifteenth century have been pro 
 nounced a royal drink, and we have no doubt whatever 
 that the delicious " Greek wine " which the Jews used 
 to serve out in their back parlors out of " curious silver 
 goblets " to knights trying to raise a loan was execra 
 ble stuff. A bath-tub, which most people of intelli 
 gence now think a necessity, is in many parts of the 
 world, and even in many circles in highly civilized 
 countries, looked on as a kind of gewgaw for the use 
 of men and women who have little to do. Tea and 
 coffee were very idle and injurious luxuries little more 
 
Our Love of Luxury. 213 
 
 than a century ago. We might extend this catalogue 
 indefinitely. There is, of course, much to be said 
 against the expenditure of money in champagne and 
 diamonds, as there is against all gratification of the 
 palate and personal ornamentation. The only thing 
 that can be said for it is that it gives pleasure. 
 
 Whether it is well for people, even for those who 
 have money to spare, to spend money in luxuries, is a 
 question which has been discussed for four or five 
 thousand years. In the ancient world luxury was the 
 horror of the philosophers, and in the earlier ages of 
 Christianity it was the horror of the fathers of the 
 Church, whose indignation never glowed with so fierce 
 a flame as when they denounced it. It is becoming 
 the fashion in our day to think that both were mistaken ; 
 but we confess we do not think they were. In the 
 ancient world both moral and intellectual culture were 
 in so low a stage that luxury almost always assumed 
 the form of gross sensual and selfish indulgence, which 
 was gratified at any cost of suffering to others, and 
 there was hardly any wealth which was not the result 
 either of plunder or unrequited toil. Whenever any 
 community of that age grew in wealth, it was almost 
 always as the result of conquest ; and the pleasures of 
 the great were apt to bear a very strong resemblance 
 to the orgies of a bandit s cave. And we do not deny 
 that luxury in our own day, in any community or set 
 or circle which has not been prepared by moral and 
 intellectual culture to place a just value on merely 
 material comfort, and to make it what it should always 
 
214 Our Love of Luxury. 
 
 be, the accompaniment or casing merely of more sub 
 tle, more refined, and more lasting enjoyment, is apt to 
 be about as repulsive as luxury in the days of Sarda- 
 napalus or Lucullus. There are circles in Paris and in 
 this city of New York whose pleasures, if they were not 
 surrounded and held in check by a Christian public 
 opinion, would become as animal, and would display 
 as little evidence of sentiment or taste, as any which 
 disgraced the Lower Empire. But then to the luxury 
 to which the great mass of the people both here and in 
 Europe treat themselves, and to the measure in which 
 they enjoy it, no just objection can be made. The end 
 of labor and of economy and of art and science is 
 human enjoyment. If we saved for the mere purpose 
 of heaping up dollars, our industry and forethought, in 
 their moral and social aspects, would be in no respect 
 superior to those of the beaver or the squirrel. We 
 save that we may enjoy that we may have the means 
 of gratifying all innocent tastes and desires, for the 
 delight of our senses, within the limits prescribed by 
 religion and morality. It is, in fact, to the love of 
 luxury that we owe nearly all our progress in civiliza 
 tion. It is it which keeps art and invention alive and 
 busy, and gives each generation nearly every material 
 advance on its predecessor ; for it must not be for 
 gotten that the luxuries of one age are the necessaries 
 of the next. If we destroyed it, we should destroy 
 what is in our day and generation, and must have been 
 in all times of progress, the great spring of human 
 activity. 
 
"A PLEA FOR CULTURE." 
 
 A RECENT number of the " Atlantic Monthly " con 
 tained, under the above title, a strong argument from 
 the pen of Mr. T. W. Higginson in favor of the cre 
 ation, by some means, of an educated class amongst us, 
 to be the guardian of the traditions and feelings and 
 aspirations of high culture, and the diffuser of an atmos 
 phere of thought and study a kind of barrier, too, 
 against the growing materialism of the time, the grow 
 ing tendency to estimate the value of everything in 
 dollars and cents, and to despise or shirk all discipline 
 of mind or body which does not promise a speedy re 
 turn in hard cash. The absence of this class, and the 
 apparent failure of the universities to hold out even any 
 promise of it, and of society to appreciate it or call for 
 it, furnish to most cultivated Americans a standing 
 theme for lamentation. But an excellent illustration of 
 the very small extent to which Congress shares in 
 these regrets or longings has just been furnished by the 
 action of the Senate in passing the Tariff bill with an 
 ad valorem duty of 85 per cent, on all English books 
 printed since 1840. The publishers, we are told, not 
 
216 "A Pica for Culture." 
 
 satisfied with this, are endeavoring to have the duty 
 changed in the House to thirty cents a pound, and 
 have got the Committee of Ways and Means to clap on 
 ten cents a pound on all English books printed prior to 
 1850, and twenty-five cents a pound on all books print 
 ed since then. 
 
 Now in legislation of this kind, of course the inter 
 ests of the public of the men and women and children 
 of the country are generally disregarded. The class 
 interested in having books made scarce and dear if it 
 be not an absurdity to say this of any class in a com 
 munity like ours is, as compared to the total popula 
 tion, of course exceedingly small. It will astonish 
 many people to learn that the whole number of persons 
 in the United States, male and female, engaged in 
 paper-making, printing, type and stereotype founding, 
 printing-press making, in making bookbinders tools, 
 in bookbinding and publishing, was, in 1860, 37,723. 
 The sole reason for the existence of this class, its sole 
 use, is to furnish the remaining thirty millions with 
 the means of acquiring knowledge with the least 
 possible expenditure of time and money. That the 
 people of this country shall acquire knowledge easily is 
 of paramount importance. Compared with the ques 
 tion of education all other questions of our time sink 
 into insignificance. Except man s destiny in the world 
 to come, we know of no theme of such tremendous 
 moment as the cultivation of his mental powers in this. 
 Suppose all our publishers, printers, and bookbinders 
 in the United States swept into the sea to-morrow, we 
 
"A Plea for Culture." 217 
 
 should have to deplore the loss of many most respec 
 table and most useful citizens, but in a few months we 
 might get thirty thousand other book manufacturers, 
 not perhaps as good as they, but good enough for the 
 time being. But whatever makes it difficult or impos 
 sible for any considerable number of the people to cul 
 tivate any field of knowledge is an injury to society of 
 which the effects are incalculable and last through gen 
 erations. 
 
 It would be better for the nation, we say deliberate 
 ly, to settle large pensions on every paper-maker, 
 printer, and publisher in the country, than have ten 
 poor men forced to deny themselves a good book or 
 ten scholars forced to limit their purchases. And yet 
 publishers have apparently succeeded in impressing 
 Congress with the idea that the use of books is to 
 maintain publishers in comfort, and that authors and 
 readers are mere appendages or ornaments of the great 
 bookstores, whose wants and wishes are of little impor 
 tance. In fact, in all that regards the acquisition and 
 diffusion of knowledge, the legislation of the last two 
 Congresses has been little better than might be expect 
 ed from an assemblage of Goths or Huns dealing with 
 the fading and to them incomprehensible civilization 
 of the fallen empire. They have made books dear in 
 a republic to whose existence and prosperity the habit 
 of reading and thinking is as necessary as light and air 
 to individuals. Of their forgetfulness of the interests 
 of science a fine example has been afforded in the tax 
 on alcohol, which they made so enormous as for a 
 10 
 
2 i8 "A Plea for Culture." 
 
 while completely to arrest in this country all researches 
 in organic chemistry. The heavy internal taxation has 
 raised the price of all books produced and reprinted 
 here ; the duty and high price of gold have all but put 
 a stop to the importation of foreign books. Most of 
 the libraries may be said to have ceased to import 
 them, and very few are now called for except by that 
 exceedingly small band of wealthy men who devote 
 any attention to literature. 
 
 Nothing can be more disheartening, we had almost 
 said barbarous, than the indifference of politicians we 
 do not use the word in any opprobrious sense to the 
 interests of authors and readers in other words, of the 
 class who keep civilization alive and make progress, 
 either mental or material, possible. There are very 
 few men in Congress we cannot name one with confi 
 dence except Mr. Sumner who have kept the interests 
 of literature and science in view during the confused 
 financial legislation of the last four or five years. We 
 have before us a letter from a gentleman, himself an 
 author, who has taken a good deal of interest in the 
 copyright question. In telling us of the results of his 
 efforts to call the attention of some of our legislators 
 to the concern which our writers and thinkers have in 
 all legislation affecting literary property, he says that 
 one orator, not unknown to fame, and who doubtless 
 can spout by the hour on great moral questions, cut 
 short their conversation by saying : " I do not take any 
 interest in the question of authorship, and I do not be 
 lieve anybody can make me take an interest in it ; " 
 
"A Plea for Culture" 219 
 
 just such a reply as a Gothic warrior of the sixth cen 
 tury might have made to a Roman jurist pleading for a 
 guard for his library in a town captured by the bar 
 barians. 
 
 There is a class of books which can be produced, 
 and is produced, just as well in this country as in Eng 
 land, and with regard to which the American author 
 and publisher might, with some decency, ask for pro 
 tection we mean school-books, novels, and books of 
 travel. In these particular fields of literature the read 
 ing public does not suffer very much from heavy import 
 duties. Any portion of this class of works which is at 
 all valuable American publishers are likely to reprint, 
 or would reprint if the internal revenue system were re 
 formed. Those which they would not reprint, society 
 here would not suffer seriously from never seeing. But 
 there is a large class of books, historical, scientific, 
 legal, politico-economical, and metaphysical, of which 
 the English press is very prolific, either original or 
 translated in London from the French or German, for 
 which there is in America no popular demand, and 
 which therefore publishers do not reprint, and for which 
 no substitute is provided here. It is the product of the 
 higher cultivation of the Old World, and of which it is 
 not only our interest but our duty to avail ourselves, if 
 we mean to maintain our place or win a higher one in 
 civilization. This class of books is mainly sought for 
 by scholars and students, whose means are generally 
 limited, and to the wealthiest of whom an addition of 
 forty or fifty per cent, in the price of books is a serious 
 
220 " A Plea for Culture." 
 
 matter. The tax gain to the Government from even a 
 light duty on books of this kind would be too small to 
 be worth counting ; the gain from such a duty as is now 
 proposed would be absolutely nothing, for the tax is all 
 but prohibitory. The publishers will not profit by it, 
 for, as we have said, they would not reprint these books, 
 and native authors can hardly produce any books to 
 compete with them, if the word compete can ever be 
 applied in a commercial sense to the efforts made by 
 men of thought and learning to swell the sum of human 
 knowledge. 
 
 It cannot be too well understood or too often re 
 peated, however, that the progress of a nation is not 
 kept up simply by the general diffusion of a small degree 
 of education, such as men get in district schools or 
 " pick up " in the spare moments of a busy life. We 
 might all know how to read, write, and cipher, and 
 might all possess a passable acquaintance with what is 
 called " polite literature," and have a high respect for 
 knowledge, and yet settle down for ages in a state in no 
 respect superior to that of the Chinese. The move 
 ment of the world towards purer manners and nobler 
 laws ; towards larger liberty, deeper insight ; its growth 
 in faith and hope, and in moral and material power, is 
 due to the labors of a comparatively small number of 
 thinkers. Nearly all great advances in civilization are 
 brought about by the labors of men of high culture and 
 deep thought. They conceive what others execute ; 
 and it is the duty and interest of every nation, even of 
 those who consider material comfort to be the highest 
 
"A Pica for Culture." 221 
 
 good, to make, by all available means, the labors of its 
 men of science easy and, if possible, pleasant. So far 
 from discouraging them here, there is no country in the 
 world in which they need to be more cherished and 
 encouraged. We could name half a dozen men of 
 letters and of science in this country who are of more 
 value to the nation than double the whole number of 
 booksellers and printers which it now contains, to whose 
 door it would "pay" for the Government to deliver 
 gratis every work of importance that appears in any 
 part of the world. To make it difficult for such men 
 to become acquainted with the result of the labors of 
 their confreres in other countries, is to attack civilization 
 itself. Those who suppose, as some Congressmen seem 
 to do, that the newspaper is the only kind of literature 
 that America needs, and that the " reportorial corps," 
 as it calls itself, can supply all the facts that American 
 students need to know, differ less than they imagine 
 from the caliph who burnt the Alexandrian Library on 
 the theory of the all-sufficiency of the Koran. 
 
CURIOSITIES OF LONGEVITY. 
 
 EVERYBODY likes to hear of cases of remarkable 
 longevity. Everybody, indeed, affirms that he does not 
 wish to attain to it himself, but nobody that we know 
 of seems to be in any hurry to die in order to avoid it. 
 It is a perfectly natural and laudable feeling, however. 
 A very old person is a kind of living monument of past 
 times ; and this even if it be a slave who had never left 
 his plantation, or a peasant who had lived out his cen 
 tury on the estate where he was born. What revolu 
 tions, what wars, what changes have come over the 
 world since he first drew the breath of life ! He has 
 stood still, but what a marvellous procession of per 
 sonages and events has swept over the earth since he 
 has inhabited it ! One cannot help thinking what a 
 different world was the one he left from that he entered. 
 This interest is naturally much greater and this senti 
 ment stronger when the person exciting them has been 
 an actor in the events or a companion of the person 
 ages that have so changed the face of things, or even 
 if he have been but a spectator of the one and a chance 
 acquaintance of the other. Such instances seem to 
 
224 Curiosities of Longevity. 
 
 connect and bring close together points of time which 
 appear to us infinitely distant from each other. There 
 was the Marquis di Manso, for instance, who was the 
 common friend of Tasso and of Milton, though the 
 Italian died more than ten years before the English 
 epic poet was born. It were almost worth one s while 
 to have been dead two hundred years to have had such 
 luck as that. Lady Louisa Stuart, the daughter of the 
 famous Earl of Bute, whom our pre-revolutionary sires 
 used to burn vicariously in the similitude of a boot, died 
 since 1850, and actually remembered her grandmother, 
 Lady Mary Wortley Montague, who died in 1762. 
 She wrote the introductory anecdotes to Lord Wharn- 
 cliffe s edition of Lady Mary s works. She had seen 
 every celebrity of the last half of the last century, and 
 known most of them, from Johnson down to Dickens 
 and Tennyson, and was the intimate friend and corre 
 spondent of Scott, and one of the original depositaries 
 of the secret of the authorship of the Waverley novels. 
 Rogers, " the bard, the beau, the banker," was al 
 most exactly her contemporary, and must have known 
 many personal acquaintances of Pope, Swift and Guy, 
 and possibly of Addison and Steele. The Berry 
 sisters, who covered about the same period of time 
 with their lives, and who might have been, one or both 
 of them, Dowager Countess of Orford, as the widow of 
 Horace Walpole, for more than fifty years were links 
 connecting the long past with the present, and bringing 
 famous people of more than a century ago almost into 
 contact with the present generation. Then " Queeny " 
 
Curiosities of Longevity. 225 
 
 Thrale, who was Johnson s " plaything often when a 
 child," and his familiar acquaintance as a grown-up 
 young lady, and to whom he gave his blessing on his 
 death-bed, has not been ten years dead yet ; she may 
 have remembered Goldsmith, and certainly knew every 
 other member of the Literary Club and every social 
 and political celebrity of the last ninety years. She 
 was the second wife of the great Admiral Lord Keith. 
 
 But the instance of English longevity in the higher 
 ranks which seems to have brought distant points of 
 time nearest together was that of the Dowager Countess 
 of Hardwicke, who died, in 1858, at near a hundred 
 years old. Her father, the Scotch Earl of Balcarras, 
 was " out in the Fifteen " with Lord Derwenter and 
 Forster, and his life was spared through the interces 
 sion of the great Duke of Marlborough. There were 
 two lives of father and daughter which covered more 
 than half of this century, all of the last, and ten years 
 or more of the seventeenth ! It is a little odd that a 
 person should have been living eight years ago whose 
 father was strictly a contemporary of the Old Pretend 
 er, of Pope and Chesterfield, of Voltaire, and a gener 
 ation that looks to us as belonging to ancient history. 
 He was, of course, well stricken in years when his 
 daughter was born. But this was not the only curious 
 fact about this longevous dame. Her grandfather was 
 born in 1649, the year distinguished by the lesson in 
 natural history which, according to old Lord Auchin- 
 leck, BoswelPs father, was taught to kings, viz., that 
 " they have a joint in their necks ; " and when he mar- 
 10* 
 
226 Curiosities of Longevity. 
 
 ried her grandmother, that most religious king, Char 
 les II., gave away the bride. 
 
 Within the last month (February, 1866) a long life 
 came to an end in Boston, breaking one of the last 
 links that connect the present times with those before 
 the Revolution. In June, 1774, Copley, the great 
 portrait-painter, the American Van Dyke, sailed for 
 England in the last ship that left the port of Boston 
 before the oppressive Port Bill which closed it went 
 into effect. His three children, a son and two daugh 
 ters, accompanied him. Two years ago, all three of 
 these children were alive. A few weeks since, two of 
 them were still living, and one yet survives in England. 
 The son, we need hardly say, was the late Lord Lynd- 
 hurst, three times Chancellor, for many years the 
 leader, in the Lords, of the Tory party, and the origin 
 ator, in his extreme old age, of some of the most im 
 portant reforms that have ever been made in the Eng 
 lish law. He was the Nestor of English statesmen, 
 not only in having survived three generations of breath 
 ing men, but in eloquence and in political wisdom, both 
 of which seemed to increase with his years, and were 
 never more marked than when he was on the verge of 
 fourscore and ten. The elder sister, Mrs. Elizabeth 
 Copley Greene, died in Boston, only last year, at 
 the age of ninety-five. This venerable lady closed a 
 life as singularly prosperous and happy as it was long 
 by a death of perfect tranquillity and ease. She fur 
 nished one of the rare instances of a life completely 
 rounded, and ceasing from no disease or accident, but 
 
Curiosities of Longevity. 227 
 
 simply and purely because the vital machine had grad 
 ually and painlessly worn itself out and stopped. The 
 growing infirmities of age had withdrawn her for some 
 years from general society, of which she naturally stood 
 at the head from her high social position, her dignified, 
 graceful, and charming manners, her animated and 
 varied conversation, and her kindliness and friendli 
 ness of heart. She was liberal, hospitable, and chari 
 table in the dispensing of a large estate, and discharged 
 all the offices of a responsible position conscientiously 
 and with dignity. She will long be remembered by 
 those who had the privilege of her personal acquaint 
 ance as a most interesting example of one who had 
 lived one life, as it were, in the last century, and with a 
 generation which exists to us only in history or tradi 
 tion, before she had begun another long and various 
 life in this hemisphere. 
 
 It was odd to sit and talk with one who had known 
 Sir Joshua Reynolds familiarly, not as a child, but as a 
 young lady. Copley and Sir Joshua both lived on 
 Leicester square, which had not then been mediatized 
 and reduced to its present dilapidated state. It was a 
 well-reputed place of residence in those days, and its 
 flags were trodden by many a famous visitor of its in 
 habitants. The families of the president of the Academy 
 and of Copley, one of its chief members, were on terms 
 of familiar intimacy, and Mrs. Greene used to delight 
 to expatiate on the perfect manners and Old World 
 grace of Sir Joshua, and to describe the society she 
 used to meet at his delightful house. From the posi- 
 
228 Curiosities of Longevity. 
 
 tion of her father she had seen all and known many of 
 the chief celebrities of every kind of the last quarter of 
 the last century. She was, perhaps, the last survivor 
 of the spectators of that splendid scene in " the great 
 hall of William Rufus," which Macaulay has painted in 
 such gorgeous coloring the opening of the impeach 
 ment of Warren Hastings where " were collected to 
 gether grace and female loveliness, wit and learning, 
 the representatives of every science and of every art." 
 Of all that splendid audience, it is not likely that a 
 single one is now alive after the lapse of seventy-eight 
 years. To hear an actual eye-witness bear testimony 
 to the truth of the description, and describe the appear 
 ance of Burke and Fox and Sheridan in the fore front 
 of the Commons of England as the managers of the im 
 peachment, almost seemed to bring one into personal 
 relations with the scene and the actors, and to make 
 them present to the mind rather as recollections than 
 imaginary presentments. Two days afterwards she 
 heard the great opening speech of Burke, which has pass 
 ed into literature as an example of eloquence not excelled 
 in ancient or modern times. Very few persons, if a 
 single one, can be yet living, on whose ears that voice, 
 now silent for all but seventy years, can have ever 
 fallen, and probably not one who heard that crowning 
 triumph of its power. These are things which make 
 one feel that the long past and the present are not sep 
 arated by sharp divisions, as it is apt to seem to us at 
 a distance, but glide gradually and imperceptibly into 
 one another, kindred drops of one great stream of time. 
 
Curiosities of Longevity. 229 
 
 About the beginning of this century Miss Copley, 
 being then about thirty years of age, married Gardiner 
 Greene, of Boston, a man of large fortune and a gentle 
 man of the old school of finished courtesy and perfect 
 politeness. Here another life of some sixty-five years 
 was past. Her residence for about the half of it was 
 in one of those old pre-revolutionary houses, built and 
 its accompaniments laid out before land was sold by 
 the square foot. Such were to be found in all our 
 large cities forty years ago, and especially in Boston, 
 before the ruthless hand of improvement had swept 
 them out of its way. The tradition is, that it was the 
 quarters for a portion of the time of the siege of Bos 
 ton, at least, of Earl Percy, and it was certainly occu 
 pied by Mrs. Hayley, the sister of John Wilkes, whose 
 lot was cast in some way inexplicable by us upon Bos 
 ton for a while. It stood on the slope of one of the 
 three hills which gave Boston its second title of Tri- 
 mountain, and was approached by flights of steps 
 through a spacious "front yard." The garden behind 
 the house was terraced to the top of the hill, which was 
 crowned by large forest trees English elms, if we 
 recollect aright. Here it abutted upon other gardens 
 on the other slopes of the hill. It was a unique place, 
 with " no second and no third " like unto it that we 
 know of in any city. It should have been bought by 
 the city and preserved as a pleasure-ground for the 
 people. But aldermen are not aesthetic in their ideas, 
 and the speculators stepped in and it all soon vanished 
 out of sight. They had faith sufficient to remove the 
 
230 Curiosities of Longevity. 
 
 fair hill and cause it to be cast into the sea, and to 
 conjure up heaps of brick and mortar in its place. We 
 are happy to believe, however, that the speculation was 
 a very bad one. In this charming abode Miss Copley 
 lived out her second generation of men, with another 
 thirty years to spare before her summons came. What 
 changes had she not seen come over the face of the 
 world since she entered it ! The American Revolu 
 tion, and its daughter, that of France, the whole career 
 of Bonaparte, the entire history of the United States, 
 from the Convention of 1787 to the crushing of the 
 slaveholders rebellion ! Did any ninety-five years ever 
 comprise more eventful and fruitful history than hers ? 
 We think not, and believe that her example well de 
 serves to be added to those we have related as one of 
 the curiosities of longevity. 
 
 THE END. 
 
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