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the same thoughts, speak the same speeches, and tread the same routine. In the days of the Revolution, and in the earlier days of the Republic, the popular eye, educated by pressing dangers, and made wary by unceasing emergencies, was sure to recognize the true man upon the instant of his appearance. He had but to speak and all were listeners; he had but to command and all were obedient; he was a leader by the importunate election of an endangered people, and a ruler by the divine right of a superior nature.

mention of a people called Anthropophagi-eat- who are all made after the same pattern, think ers of men-which all men's hearts abhor to hear of; and yet, alas! by St. Paul's rules, England is full of such. Every man envieth another; every man biteth and grinneth upon another with venomous adder's tongues far more noisome than any teeth." What would Gilpin have said, if he had lived here and now and had remarked the recent scrambles? The foundations of the Government giving way-civil war raising its horrid front—the minds of all the good and generous and gentle full of fearful forebodings-and yet that steady stream of selfish expectants pours into Washington, every man of it crying, "Give! give!" mixed with terrible telegrams which told us that the bloody business had commenced, came such words as these: "Snooks expects the Little Peddlington Post-office, but I think that Jones has the inside track." O Heavens! that the minds of men will never rise to the dignity of the present that the sublime of history must be seen by us through bleared antiquarian eyes, and events be recognized only when ticketed and red-taped and pigeon-holed in the Circumlocution Office! It is really refreshing to me now, though in a painfully advanced stage of impecuniosity, to think that I have asked for nothing. Especially as it is quite evident that the poor President has but little to give. Once in four years we expect the Head of the Government to re-enact the Miracle of the Loaves and Fishes, and as often are we notably disappointed. And yet

Flimflam preferred to myself for the coveted Consulate! I really can not get over it. I am a victim of the popular mania! All my philosophy, of which I have a great stock, can not dissuade me from still hoping. If the President would but write to me to say that he wished to express to me the assurances of his distinguished consideration! Alas, he does not answer my letters at all! Wherefore, let me find consolation in a little slip-slop philosophy. Involving myself in my virtue, as Horace has it, let me take notice how this foolish old world permits its rheumy old eyes to tell falsehoods to its addled old brains-how it will believe in nothing upon which it can not lay its cautious fingerhow it still spins about in a muddle of optical delusions-how it will still put its faith in noise drowning the still small voice-how it best likes to think in herds, and to be virtuous in copartnership-how it finds consolation in jostling crowds, and prefers to be saved in mass-meeting.

We are so apt to think of men merely as millions making their finest figure in election returns, and we are so democratically disdainful of the one domineering mind; we are so accustomed to revere only what is just above a low average of mediocrity; we have such wholesome fear of subjecting our precious independence to any undue influences, that we fall into lamentable and contemptible straits in stormy weather when only a strong hand at the helm can save us from the savage shore. We have thousands and tens of thousands of politicians

The clear and original thinker, who, from the study of all histories, had come thrice-armed to create a new one, understood that all human action, to find a permanent embodiment in human society, must be moved by a vital principle, true of itself, and, in spite of low and temporary vicissitudes, as true in the hour of defeat as at the moment of victory. Hence the philosophical accuracy of the language of the Declaration of Independence. Hence the erudite arguments of John Adams-eloquent, indeed, and illustrated by all the fire of his passionate nature, but based upon all the learning of all the civilians, and made impregnable by the whole law of England. Hence the uncommon common-sense of Franklin, sublime in its simplicity, beautiful in its homely vigor, equable always, and equal to any fortune, our finest specimen of the unshaken, solid, Roman mind. For centuries our fathers had been accustomed to battle, but never to battle without a reason. The first great martyr of the English Revolution, from which, humanly speaking, our own arose, was its finest parliamentary debater, and by far its ablest political manager. The soldiers of these great days are indeed remembered, and should never be forgotten; but above them, for the affectionate reverence of the age, stands that sacred form of our divinest singer, and looks down upon us that face so full of light from within that we forget those darkened orbs and that blindness, which was John Milton's contribution to English liberty and the liberty of nations. Nor must we forget, in our rapt contemplation of that awful form, a lesser servant of social freedom-lesser in all else save unquestioning devotion and the greater penalty which he paid for his fidelity. All honor, say I, in the language of Tindall, his biographer, to "the worthy memory of James Harrington, a bright ornament of useful learning, a hearty lover of his native country, and a generous benefactor to the whole world; a person who obscured the false lustre of our modern politicians, and that equaled, if not exceeded, all the ancient legislators." As I write the old folio is before me, worn in the service of one hundred and sixty years of time; full of quaint learning, and of that earnest pedantry which is restless to find ancient precedents even for modern truth; confused and crude; not pleasant reading I fancy to the men of its time-very little read, I think, by the men of our time; but over its yellow pages, and in every line and circle of its antique type, there is the halo of

The

He secured for the two great political antagonistic parties of England such leaders as Lord Brougham and Sir Robert Peel. For we find that with the growth of English thought the virulence of English politics is sensibly abated; and party lines long since lost the strictness of their tension. Venerable gentlemen still snarl; Parliamentary dogs still howl for the lash of the whipper-in; but never in English history-except perhaps at the period of the Orange revolution-have honest men been so disdainful of party trammels. The words of Coleridge are now the creed of Whig, of Tory, and of Radical

humanity; and from it, in sad sincerity, breathes | all to a more elevated ideal of rational endeavor. a wail for the follies of man and an aspiration for juster methods, and a divine order in the world's affairs. Harrington, diffuse as he was, concentrated all political truth in a single aphorism. "The errors and sufferings of the people," he said, “are from their governors." Declaration of Independence says no more. The Constitution of the United States says no more. Fresh from the study of Harrington, James Otis said no more when he thundered against Writs of Assistance. Fourth of July orators can say no more, however deftly they may embroider their rhetoric. Praise be to the honest aphorism, for it is the convenient artillery of revolu-alike: "It is a mockery of our fellow-creatures' tions for the right! It is the sharp, decisive wisdom which sternly silences silly contention. It is the previous question put to abate the hopeless jangle of the world's debate, and to arrange the Babel of Congressional helplessness.

wrongs to call them equal in rights, when, by the bitter compulsion of their wants, we make them inferior to us in all that can soften the heart or dignify the understanding." This is the opinion of all England now; there are none left to gainsay it; the Premier agrees to it, and so does Mr. Punch. All thinking people have come in time to believe in "those comforts and that illumination which far beyond all political ordinances are the true equalizers of men."

One is almost ashamed, in these days of multitudinous clangor and loud-tongued pretense, to invoke the presence of still another and a saintly shade even in the seclusion of humble study. The world, which remembers with all the tenacity of a gossip's memory, and with something of There is yet another noble name which can a gossip's invention, the weakness of Samuel not be forgotten in such discussions as these. It Taylor Coleridge, while it reads with salacious is that of one whose character has been made relish the long-drawn libels of De Quincey or the subject of much impertinent criticism; of the anile traditions of Cottle, shows no particular one whose sun went down not in glory but in appetite for the quiet and patient speculations gloom; of one who was called simply "The of "The Friend." Most men understand of this Dean" in his own time, but who living had more political thinker only that he was a Radical in power in Ireland than the Lord-Lieutenant or his youth and a Tory in his old age; but of the Lord-Lieutenant's Lord. All Irish men of what he thought as a Radical, or of what he letters-to their eternal good fame and name let wrote as a Tory, they have a notion which it it be said—have been patriotic. In song and in would be complimentary to call confused. Sharp, story, in the wail of despair or in the prophetic querulous, fussy scribblers-polyphonic per-peans of sunrise and of hope, away from the imformers upon platforms - dogmatic Quarterly mediate presence of Ireland's sufferings, amidst Reviewers, all joined in scolding chorus, and the seductions of a more fortunate civilization, with indignant scream hailed him renegade, traitor, and poltroon. Fidelity, with these men, meant fidelity to some proposed Act of Parliament, and courage consisted in braving Lord Eldon's decisions and Mr. Pitt's warrants. The Radicalism of England-with no undue disrespect be it mentioned-is wiser now, and is seeking loftier ends by larger means; and that it is so, and is doing so, is due, partly at least, to Coleridge, who was bold enough to say: "The majority of Democrats appear to me to have at-artistically written, his would be. He livedtained that portion of knowledge which infidels possess in religion ;" and sharp enough to say of another class, not unrepresented here: "On the report of French victories they blaze into republicanism; at a tale of French excesses they darken into aristocrats." "The dough-baked patriets," as Coleridge nicknamed them, were of course indignant; but I beg leave to think that their indignation, while it may have sadly unsettled many things, really settled nothing. The thoughts of Coleridge had nothing of a party bias; for to the end of his long life he rebuked all parties by turns—a fact always conveniently forgotten by his detractors. His only partisan influence was impartially exerted to raise them VOL. XXIII.-No. 135.-Z

or bearing at home their bitter portion of her penury with the multitude around them-poets, and statesmen, and orators have never forgotten the sore state of their weeping country, the common mother of them all. The nature of Jonathan Swift was not poetical, if it is to be judged by modern æsthetical standards or by the clever social verses with which he beguiled the solitude of his life; but no biography known to us is such a grand Eschylian tragedy as, if faithfully and

and this was one of the cruel misfortunes of his life—he lived in an age in which the statesman was shallow, the politician venal, the church a shop, and the man of letters a sycophant; and yet all his views of public duty were broad and deep; all his performance of that duty was inadequately rewarded; while all his pastoral labor was performed with rigid fidelity, and the best of his works were scornful and merciless rebukes of human folly in high places. Whatever else may be said of him, it can not with truth be said that he abased himself to coronets, or while all other men were trading away their souls around him, that he sold his country for a bishopric. If the Castle was the kindly custodian

baronet. I presume if Bonaparte could have silenced Johann Gottlieb Fichte by the loss of a dozen of his best regiments, or by the spiking of five hundred French guns, that he would have had infinitely the best of the bargain. The great philosophic teacher, laughed at by the conqueror as a dreamer, yet pined to be a soldier. "If the orator," he said, "must content himself with speech-if he can not fight in your ranks to prove the truth of his principles by his actions, by his contempt of danger and of death, by his presence in the most perilous places of the combat-this is only the fault of the age, which has separated the calling of the scholar from that of the warrior. But he feels that if he had been taught to carry arms he would have been behind none in courage; he laments that his age has denied him the privilege accorded to Eschylus and Cervantes, to make good his words by manlike deeds. Since he may only speak, he would speak fire and sword." To this truth Fichte was always loyal. His was the one tongue in Germany which Napoleon never silenced. Driven from Berlin by the French occupation, he continued to speak boldly at Königsberg. The

of Irish rights and the nurse of Irish liberty, he most guns-in fact, upon the side of a vulgar was with the Castle; but as no project for the further enslavement of the most humble peasant escaped his attention, so no projector escaped the poisoned thong of his satire. In defiance of ministers he flung ballads into the public streets. He bombarded Mr. William Wood's brass mint with a broadside of pamphlets, and not an Irishman would touch the spurious coin of that adventurer. He loved the Church proudly if not tenderly; and when by audacious lampoons he proved his devotion, the antiquity of Rome and the novelty of dissent were involved in a common ridicule. When his position in Ireland became permanent, and that dream of preferment, the infirmity of his noble mind, had faded away, the cause of Irishmen became his own, and woeful was the fate of any man who betrayed it. His was a patriotism, if not of the highest, at least of the most passionate type; and it was the more creditable to his generosity because it was based upon resolute self-abnegation-because Dublin was not to him a place of residence voluntarily chosen or personally pleasant-because Irishmen, much as he loved them, continually vexed him, especially by their thriftlessness. At last he was left utterly alone. The friends of his youth-battle of Ey lau drove him to Copenhagen, whence, Pope, Gay, Arbuthnot, Bolingbroke-were far after the partial evacuation, he returned to Beraway; the fair women who once relieved by their lin, still seeking only the regeneration of Prussia, smiling elegance the rigidity of his demeanor, and delivering his celebrated "Addresses to the lived only in sad and thick-coming memories- People" while the French drums sounded under both had departed; a terrible disease, capable the windows of his lecture-room in which French of alleviation had it been recognized by his phy-spies were lurking to make due report of his pasicians, crushed his intellect; and if not "atriotic language. The day of deliverance came; show," at least a speechless "driveler," he stalked in voiceless agony to the place prepared for him. Yet he still lives in Irish hearts and upon Irish lips, by general distinction and notoriety, as "The Dean." If his life had but small practical influence upon the Ireland of his day-and little enough then and long after could any individual mind do for her-he is yet among her most priceless possessions: a great name in her history whenever her history shall be complete enough to write.

but alas! it was the day of Fichte's deliverance also. He lived only to learn, in a lucid interval, of the expulsion of the French from Germany. "Give me no more medicine," said he; "I am well:" and so, in a pleasant slumber, he passed away-the chivalrous man of letters, the patriot and the philosopher.

Great events develop many different phases of character, and among these that of the timid conservative is the most melancholy-that of the bold conservative exceedingly respectable. In the frightened philosopher, be it admitted, there is often much to admire and reverence, if we do not turn away at first in sorrow, when we discover the lack of a vital and central manliness. Niebuhr, at almost every point except that of studious earnestness, was the opposite of Fichte. Niebuhr despaired-Fichte could only despair with the renunciation of his philosophy.

Nie

When Weimar saw the interview between Goethe and Napoleon there was much agreeable chat between them, as Hegel relates, concerning, among other things, the Destiny of the Greeks, which the Emperor insisted had been replaced, in modern politics, by what his Majesty was pleased to term policy. The courtly poet was too civil, without doubt, to say any thing to the great man before him, of the impolicy of attempt-buhr brought from his wanderings among the ing the subjugation of Germany, then not only thrilling with an affectionate patriotism, but wonderfully strengthened for philosophical endeavor and endurance by the recent revival of popular thought and intelligence. The Napoleonic notion of governing the world without ideas other than military ended in Corsica, in St. Helena, in very vulgar battles with Sir Hudson Lowe about bread, beans, and beef, in which, if we may judge by the still diminishing rations at Longwood, Providence seems to have been upon the side, not of the man who carried the

wrecks of empire a hopelessness of reconstruction; Fichte planted himself upon the eternal present. Niebuhr trembled for rule, for religion, for race; Fichte calmly said, while all Europe was under one foot: "Every true and good action prospers, and every bad action fails; and all things MUST work together for good to those who truly love goodness." In learning they were equal; perhaps in mere erudition Fichte was the inferior; but the stalwart and indomitable spirit which animated the strong frame of the giant philosopher was of the strain to enact and create

events which it is the lower duty of the historian and the other, "Crack up!" Since that time to record. Niebuhr's timidity at last became all things are infinitely changed for the better. ludicrous. Even in 1809 he thought that "the In the competition of news-giving the popular great judgment-day of the world" had come; mind has that which it most needs-an ample and he added: "It is a hard task to learn how armory of substantial facts. I do not mean to to live without hope." Only a few months be- say that there are no mistakes, nor that there fore Fichte was delivering his "Addresses to the are not too often bold, bald, prepense mendaciGerman People," surrounded by the soldiers and ties; but what I do mean to say is, that, in the spies of the autocrat. Fichte was doing while long-run, a lie has no chance of life. Every Niebuhr and Goethe were dreaming. The last newspaper stands guard over the veracity of its years of the great historian were a succession of neighbors, to whom also its ruin would be a alarming seasons. In 1828 he gloomily wrote cheerful diversion. Out of this jealousy the of England: "Its rapidly accelerating decline is public wins. To those who base opinion upon a very remarkable and mournful phenomenon; fancy-who never believe when belief will be it is a mortal sickness for which there is no remedy. unpleasant-who think only the thought of the I liken the English of the present day to the Ro- caucus, and who tread scrupulously in the footmans of the third century after Christ." Again, steps of the committee-who consider all men in the same letter: "Woe be to poor, divided, of their mind to be sheep, and all men not of decaying Germany." Soon came the Second their mind to be goats, the newspaper, if honestFrench Revolution to cap the climax of his ap-ly and wisely conducted, can be of small value prehension. "We in Germany," he cried, "are rapidly hastening toward barbarism, and it is not much better in France." He died at last a martyr to his anxiety. He was strongly interested in the trial of the ministers of Charles the Tenth; in going to the news-room he caught a cold; and in a week the wonderful antiquary was himself an antiquity.

I suppose if Niebuhr had but recovered from that fatal cold, he would ever after have held newspapers in mortal contempt; and even in this land of morning and evening editions, he would have had many to share that contempt with him. It is the misfortune of the newspapers that they pretend to do, not merely more than they can do, but more than they intend to do; and that their manufacture is, of necessity, a hasty one. All that can be fairly asked of them is-1. A statement of facts; and, 2. A statement of opinion. All the rest is simply superfluous. In both these divisions, of duty and responsibility, it is intelligence-though in different senses of the word-that is needed. And by the statement of opinion I do not mean Mr. Raymond's opinion of Colonel Webb, nor yet Mr. Bennett's opinion of Mr. Horace Greeley. The world, trust me, can make up its mind upon these important points without assistance. Nor do I any more mean a dry, judicial summing-up of the evidence, thus without law making every man a juryman, to the destruction of that serenity which befits the morning meal. In the delivery of his views I would by no means limit the exuberance of the honest editor, nor the exhibition of his good gifts of wit, fancy, humor, imagination, persuasion, and invective. All I ask is that the subject-matter of discussion shall be kept closely in hand, and that no little excursions shall be made for the purposes of assault and battery. When I was younger than I am now, and not so wise, an unfortunate newspaper was under my control; and, directed by me, it went triumphantly into bankruptcy in an incredibly short space of time. It was long ago; but I remember that I had but two formulas of command to my subalterns. "Smash!"

One was,

only. As its power is in its facts, in their clear statement and dexterous arrangement, each with its prominence philosophically determined by its importance; so, these conditions being observed, the newspaper is to the man of thought priceless and precious. The world moves fast. Railways and steamships and the telegraph give us no rest. The topic of the day, or at least certain phases of it, must be digested at once; for to-morrow will bring new occasions and new duties with them. The vulgar phrase, "posted up," expresses exactly the service which a good newspaper renders.

I have said nothing of the poets; for within the limits of this paper, upon so broad a theme, what can be worthily said-what more than mere mention can we accord to the martial or satiric singer? As I dream of these, I hear the harp of Tyrtæus resounding through the Lacedæmonian camp; and, for the love of the poetic art, I am ready to forget that Alcæus fled from battle, and that Horace left his shield at Philippi. I see Domitian writhe under the flail of Juvenal, and seeking escape from such fearful censure in the banishment of the rebuking bard. Nearer still, I hear the blood-stirring songs of Scotland's Burns, of England's Dibdin, of Ireland's Moore, and that one glorious lyric of our own Key; while through the lurid night of French delusion comes, chanted by ten thousand hoarse and hungry voices, the fitful notes of the Marseillaise. But enough of this.

Enough, because all our sweet singers have already tuned their lyres, and the Poets' Columns in the newspapers have become almost as formidable as those of General Scott. It is not given to all-ah! it is given but to few-worthily to weave the eternal lyric verses, and to sway whole peoples by the enchantment. But he who in days of public danger stands steadfast; he who yields to no sordid passion, to no selfish impulse, to no base promptings of interest; he who by the daily beauty of his life makes treason hideous; he who is true to his God, and so true to his country and his children--the soldier, in the faraway camp and thinking of his home-the states

It

man, by whose prudence we are to be saved, and the boy he had heard read it. He meant, as I whose ear is shut against every venal whisper-said, to take this story home with him. He the mother, giving her loved ones to the land- took it, but it proved a little burdensome as he the rich man and the poor man, each offering sauntered along the dock with Messmate. all the child, raising his tiny flag and sa- weighed upon him as he struck into the path luting it with his young, fresh voice-all these that led beside the rocky shore to the stone-house are poets-patriots, if you will-yes, patriot- and the light-house. When Deft came down to poets! meet him and he looked into his daughter's hap py face, it was almost with the relief a person feels when wakened from nightmare.

THE SEED PEARL.

I.

ARL HUNTER and his friend Messmate

nidog lounged in the

shade of the fine old hickory-trees which stood their ground, like faithful sentinels, between the grove and the High School of Liberty Street.

The old man was waiting till the recess-bell should sound; then, he knew, he would find market for the fruit and Deft's pin-cushions, which Messmate guarded with such jealous eyes. The basket also was protected by the shade, and the old man was resting while he waited. It was in truth no light burden he had brought hither on his left, his only, arm. His only arm. On the fourth day of July, just eighteen years ago, the right arm of Earl Hunter had departed this life; it perished by the premature discharge of a gun he was proudly loading. So Earl Hunter, the gallant sailor, had retired from the high road to promotion to manage his aspiring spirit as he might.

It happened not rarely that the old man waited many minutes in this place the sounding of the bell which should send the boys flying and shouting through the High School doors. When the windows of the lower floor were open he could distinctly hear the voices of lads in recitation. He had a good memory; he liked facts; his boyhood had no schooling. At home he had a daughter of whose intelligence he was justly proud; he liked to seem not ignorant in her eyes, her tender, loving eyes. If these points are rightly put together, and justly apprehended, the reader will see how Earl Hunter's memory came to bear a singular resemblance to the leaves of the "odd volume."

To-day he listened while a lad translated the story of Polycrates. A most strange tale it sounded to his ears, and peaches and pin-cushions were forgotten as he stood thinking it over. But soon the boys came swarming round him like bees about a flower-bed, for never the shout of welcome failed Earl Hunter on this ground. He might have been Socrates, by the students' eager pressing and bright looks! Alas, they were clamoring for peaches, and the sage must own to pocketing their pence in payment for his marketable treasure!

So they disturbed his reflections. Carrying an empty basket, and the old purse heavy with copper, he walked slowly from the ground when the bell had recalled the students. But Earl Hunter had made good this time of recess-he had bought cheap, with some of his best fruit, new recitation of the tale of Polycrates, from

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in whom might be recognized, by the knowing, her father's energy and thoughtfulness, and her lost mother's feeling heart. No coarse "crockery" came of this common earth. The lamp was porcelain, and the flame quite pure. Her stature and form were noble; the winds and the waves and the unconquerable heavens had much to do with it. She had an eye that would hold such mortals to the truth as of the truth were capable; an eye calm, but not cold. It seemed to say, however narrow, and however poor her fortunes might be in this life, they would not cramp the spirit; it could not lose its way when it escaped its daily revolution for the circle of eternity. My school-girl, mark that passage, and turn to it again when exhausted by the splendors of your rhetoric. I can not startle you with epithets in this day of endless exaggeration, yet would fain have you understand what is here claimed for Deft.

This father and this daughter were the best of friends. They trusted each other; were contented. Such measure of helplessness as Earl Hunter suffered from the loss of his arm was made painless as possible by his daughter's efficience. Nominally he was the keeper of the light-house, but it was Deft who performed the duties. It was she who suggested the summer marketing, when she saw how heavily time hung on the old man's hands. It was she who was ready to take the blame of extravagance upon herself when her father brought home another second-hand volume that had tempted him as he passed by the book-stall. Deft was Earl Hunter's boast when he gossiped with the dock hands; the school-boys knew her name, and bought her pincushions; the old man loved her better than hẹ would have loved his ship, had the brave purpose of his manly youth been realized.

As she came to meet her father the smile that had made her face bright all day still shone from Deft. Messmate leaped at the sight of her, and barked to the purpose. Earl Hunter showed his empty basket and full purse, and laughed as heartily as Messmate barked. So they went side by side to the house, talking over business. Supper was ready on the table, and when Deft had drawn her father's mug of beer they sat down, and while they ate Earl Hunter told his daughter about old-time Polycrates, whose name he had forgotten. Supper over he must rest, and while he slept Deft went to walk on the

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