But, after all, the fulcrum for our lever must be that master quality of the mind which, in its sure and triumphant course, overcomes all difficulties, and without which all effort were valueless and vain-we mean the persistence of perseverance. Patience and perseverance will at last achieve the work when all other things fail. Even the largest resources and the greatest talents cannot achieve the largest success in a day. Geologists and scientific men have demonstrated that the saying of the vulgar is founded in fact, that "the world was not made in a day," nor in six; but that thousands of years were required to bring it to the perfection demanded by the first human pair who walked hand in hand, wondering and amazed, amidst its awful solitudes and solemn shades. If, therefore, the Great Creative Power above and around us needed time to fashion and complete His master-piece-"to make the world and all things therein "it is not to be supposed that man can do less than imitate him in this. The foundations of all things which are destined to endure, to be great and lasting, must be laid wide and deep, and by the slow results of laborious years. And the same law which applies to nature in all her manifestations also holds with regard to art; especially apparent is this truth as it bears upon the production of a work of genius; especially true is it as it contemplates the production of a great orator. Not in an hour, in a day, nor in years alone, is he fashioned whose intellect and will, arrayed in the glowing periods of a massive rhetoric, and finding expression in a sublime and eloquent declamation, that sway and impress as well as convince and convict the world, crown and robe him as a prince among orators. Of the eloquence of speech we have written; of its value and importance to mankind we have spoken. We are conscious that we have but imperfectly performed our task. We have not sought to do more than present an outline of the great subject which has engaged our thought at this time. In regard to eloquence, we can only say that there is no art like it, none so worthy of the study and thought of our youth, who are arising to assume the positions of those who, to-day, by reason of the pressing weight of years and of honors, are leaving the stage whereon they have, to the best of their abili ties we would hope, performed their parts.

We close our sketch in the language of one* who was worthy to testify to the truth of the utterance; who united in himself the gifts and graces he so eloquently recommended to others; who, amid all his labors in the senate and at the bar, never forgot the main, the chief desire and ambition of his soul

*Cicero.

to be an accomplished orator: "Is there anything so commanding, so grand, as that the eloquence of man should direct the inclinations of the people, the consciences of judges, and the majesty of senates ?"

ART. VII.—1. The Insurance Monitor and Wall Street Review.

2. The Wall Street Underwriter.

Philadelphia.
Boston.

3. The Commercial and Insurance Journal.
4. The New England Insurance Gazette.
5. The United States Insurance Magazine. New York.

IN venturing to write the brief article entitled "Quackery of Insurance Companies," which appeared in our September number, we had little idea of the penalty we should have to pay for our rashness. Had we anticipated one-fourth the abuse we have since received, and which continues unabated to the present day, we are not sure that we would have made the attempt, for we do dislike to be barked at and besmeared with mud, even though neither do us any great harm. But we have now got so well used to both, that we cannot say we are very sorry after all. We had not been aware that quackery has its regular organs, whose chief business it is to act the bully for its professors. Had it been otherwise, we might have shrunk from the undertaking; but it so happens that the advocates are as frothy as their clients. The logic of the former has as little genuineness in it as the capital of the latter; one has as much exaggeration and imposture in it as the other. In other words, the organs are, indeed, ready enough for war; on this their very existence depends. But their mode of warfare is peculiar; their onset is somewhat like that of the Chinese warriors, who depend much more on the sound of their gongs and other noisy instruments, than on the sharpness of their steel. In short, they belong to that class of champions who hurt themselves or the cause they espouse much more than they do their antagonists; so that even the quacks may well exclaim, "Save us from our friends!"

Not one of them has disproved a single assertion we have made. Instead of attempting anything of this kind, they attribute to us all kinds of bad motives. One says that we were paid by one company to distinguish itself from all the rest, as respectable and reliable; another, that we were actuated by personal malice; another, that we wished to be revenged because insurance companies would not patronize our journal;

another, that our main object was to make a covert attack on Appleton's Cyclopædia, &c.

We trust it is hardly necessary for us to deny any of these charges; yet we will make a few observations on the subject in passing, and then leave the reader to judge between us and our accusers. As to the first charge, in remarking that we were very willing to admit that there are as honest and honorable companies at the present day as ever were, we mentioned one as an illustration. Simply because we did this, it must follow that we were paid for it! But the truth is, that the president mentioned knew nothing of the circumstance until the article was published. We had never consulted with him on the subject in any way, directly or indirectly. We had never mentioned to him, or to any other insurance official, that we had any intention of writing such an article; nor have we ever to this day asked or received any payment, remuneration, or compensation from him for it, or from anybody else on his behalf. To this it is hardly necessary to add, that the gentleman alluded to has never asked us to say one word in his favor; nor has any officer of his company. We believed him to be as faithful and reliable as he is courteous, and we spoke of him accordingly as an illustration Voilà tout!

With regard to the second charge, it is sufficient to say, that had our motive been personal malice, we should hardly have sought vent for it in so general a way as to have criticised insurance quackery in the aggregate without mentioning a single name as an illustration. The amount of malice that could fall to the share of each of the representatives of one hundred and eighty insurance offices would be slight indeed. If we described the official conduct of one president-without, however, mentioning either his own name or that of the company to which he belongs we did so the same as we give an extract from an indifferent book as a specimen of its general contents. And far from overdrawing the picture, we omitted many shades which we would readily have used had our object been, not to expose an extensive system of swindling and imposture, but to gratify a private pique against an insurance president.

In reference to the third charge, we had no cause for revenge against insurance companies, since they advertised more in our journal than in any other literary periodical whatever. Nor did the president whose portrait we sketched form an exception; he had advertised in it several times. Had our object been to make money by the insurance companies, as their organs represent, we could have done so in a much easier and less hazardous way than by exposing their quackery as we did; for all that was necessary was to devote a brief paragraph to each,

representing that it was superior in certain important particulars to all others. In other words, we had only to give editorial "puffs" in order to get insurance advertisements. Before the editor had anything whatever to do with the business department, several companies had advertised in the "National Quarterly." One was so liberal of its patronage, as to insert four pages in two successive numbers; but the president was highly indignant because he did not get an amount of editorial praise proportioned to the extent of his advertisement! Instead of this, however, he did not get one line or one word. Of course he did not put in his advertisement the third time; nor has he inserted it again to this day, although nearly three years have elapsed since his liberality was so conspicuous. He thought us all the more negligent and unappreciative in not praising his company, because he had furnished us all the arguments ready made in his favor; for like the renowned Hudibras,

"He could raise scruples dark and nice,

And then solve them in a trice."

He would not have thanked us for saying that his company was as good as others; in order to conciliate him, we should have asserted that "its assets are larger than those of any other life insurance company in the United States, amounting to over six millions of dollars." Nor would this have been sufficient; we should have added certain other important particulars-such as, that "its dividends have been greater than those of any other companies." Then we should have proceeded to explain that this resulted from "a very low rate of mortality among the insured," thus showing that among the many other blessings conferred by the company for a very small consideration, is that of longevity! Lest the skeptic should inquire too curiously how this occurred, we should have informed our readers that "The mortality among its (the company's) members has been proportionally less than that of any other life insurance company in either America or Europe, whose experience has been made known," &c.; and we should have taken care to put the principal words in capital letters, if not in red. All this, however, would have been only an introduc tion to the principal work. We should then have proceeded to raise objections which it might puzzle us to answer, were the answers not ready at our hand.

Thus, for instance, Mr. Smith being called upon by the canvasser, says, "I cannot afford to insure my life;" but we, knowing his affairs better than himself, should have proceeded, at once, to convince him of his error, after the following fashion: "Twenty-five cents a week will insure $1,000 on the life of a

man aged 30," &c., &c. Mr. Jones being called on for the same purpose, replies thus: "I can make a better investment for the benefit of my wife and family;" and when it comes to Mr. Brown's turn, he replies, " The policy may not be paidoffices sometimes fail." True, answers have been furnished for these as well as other objections; but we thought that, at least in this particular instance, Jones and Brown had by far the better part of the argument, and accordingly we begged leave to decline urging the contrary view of the case. As we have already observed, we got no further patronage from this company. Does this show that we have been actuated by vindictive motives?

This case, too, we merely mention as an illustration. That is, several companies advertise in our journal; and seeing that we would not praise them editorially, or make assertions, for their benefit, which we do not believe to be true, they withdraw in disgust, and bestow their favors where they get a better price for them. In proof that we made no attempt to retain such patronage, we refer to our pages. In no number of the "National Quarterly" have we said one word in favor of any insurance company; the smallest paragraph of the kind has never appeared in our journal. The first instance in which we ever referred to insurance in any form, pro or con, was that of the article in our last September number, and we took up the subject then, the same as we had that of the Quack Doctors, more than a year previously. The latter, too, accused us of "malice prepense. They had no doubt that our motives were of the worst kind. More than one of them told us so; but the conduct of the worst of them was decent, intelligent, and sensible, compared to that of the insurance quacks, as illustrated in their two organs published in Wall Street, in this city-one entitled The Insurance Monitor and Wall Street Review; the other, The Underwriter and Stock Jobber's Journal, or some such name. We have no intention, however, of abusing either in return. The public would derive no benefit from our doing so; nor would it afford us any gratification to call the editor of one or the other opprobrious names. We are well aware that both have to place their columns at the service of the quacks, when any attempt is made to expose their impostures as we have done. Why, then, should we not rather pity than blame them? Even the quacks who employ them we should readily forgive, if they would only mend their ways, for we believe with Coleridge, that there is "an involuntary sense of fear from which

*See Nat. Quarterly for March, 1861, Art. Quackery and the Quacked.