PART II.

MISCELLANIES.

FIRST OF JANUARY

The new year dawns, and its appearance is hailed by a flutter of festivity. Men and women run from house to house, scattering gifts, smiles, and congratulations. It is a custom that seems borrowed from a better day, unless indeed it be a prophecy that such must come.

For why so much congratulation? A year has passed; we are nearer by a twelvemonth to the term of this earthly probation. It is a solemn thought; and though the consciousness of having hallowed the days by our best endeavor, and of having much occasion to look to the Ruling Power of all with grateful benediction, must, in cases where such feelings are unalloyed, bring joy, one would think it must even then be a grave joy, and one that would disincline to this loud gayety in welcoming a new year; another year--in which we may, indeed, strive forward in a good spirit, and find our strivings blest, but must surely expect trials, temptations, and disappointments from without; frailty, short-coming, or convulsion in ourselves.

If it be appropriate to a reflective habit of mind to ask with each night-fall the Pythagorean questions, how much more so at the close of the year!

"What hast thou done that's worth the doing? And what pursued that's worth pursuing? What sought thou knewest thou shouldst shun? What done thou shouldst have left undone?"

The intellectual man will also ask, What new truths have been opened to me, or what facts presented that will lead to the discovery of truths? The poet and the lover,--What new forms of beauty have been presented for my delight, and as memorable illustrations of the divine presence--unceasing, but oftentimes unfelt by our sluggish natures.

Are there many men who fail sometimes to ask themselves questions to this depth? who do not care to know whether they have done right, or forborne to do wrong; whether their spirits have been enlightened by truth, or kindled by beauty?

Yes, strange to say, there are many who, despite the natural aspirations of the soul and the revelations showered upon the world, think only whether they have made money; whether the world thinks more highly of them than it did in bygone years; whether wife and children have been in good bodily health, and what those who call to pay their respects and drink the new year's coffee, will think of their carpets, new also.

How often is it that the rich man thinks even of that proposed by Dickens as the noblest employment of the season, making the poor happy in the way he likes best for himself, by distribution of turkey and plum-pudding! Some, indeed, adorn the day with this much grace, though we doubt whether it be oftenest those who could each, with ease, make that one day a glimpse of comfort to a thousand who pass the other winter days in shivering poverty. But some such there are who go about to the dark and frosty dwellings, giving the "mite" where and when it is most needed. We knew a lady, all whose riches consisted in her good head and two hands. Widow of an eminent lawyer, but keeping boarders for a livelihood; engaged in that hardest of occupations, with her house full and her hands full, she yet found time to make and bake for new year's day a hundred pies--and not the pie from which, being cut, issued the famous four-and-twenty blackbirds, gave more cause for merriment, or was a fitter "dish to set before the king."

God bless his majesty, the _good_ king, who on such a day cares for the least as much as the greatest; and like Henry IV., proposes it as a worthy aim of his endeavor that "every poor man shall have his chicken in the pot." This does not seem, on superficial survey, such a wonderful boon to crave for creatures made in God's own likeness, yet is it one that no king could ever yet bestow on his subjects, if we except the king of Cockaigne. Our maker of the hundred pies is the best prophet we have seen, as yet, of such a blissful state.

But mostly to him who hath is given in material as well as in spiritual things, and we fear the pleasures of this day are arranged almost wholly in reference to the beautiful, the healthy, the wealthy, the witty, and that but few banquets are prepared for the halt, the blind, and the sorrowful. But where they are, of a surety water turns to wine by inevitable Christ-power; no aid of miracle need be invoked. As for thoughts which should make an epoch of the period, we suppose the number of these to be in about the same proportion to the number of minds capable of thought, that the pearls now existent bear to the oysters still subsistent.

Can we make pearls from our oyster-bed? At least, let us open some of the shells and try.

Dear public and friends! we wish you a happy new year. We trust that the year past has given earnest of such a one in so far as having taught you somewhat how to deserve and to appreciate it.

For ourselves, the months have brought much, though, perhaps, superficial instruction. Its scope has been chiefly love and hope for all human beings, and among others for thyself.

We have seen many fair poesies of human life, in which, however, the tragic thread has not been wanting. We have beheld the exquisite developments of childhood, and sunned the heart in its smiles. But also have we discerned the evil star looming up that threatened cloud and wreck to its future years. We have seen beings of some precious gifts lost irrecoverably, as regards this present life, from inheritance of a bad organization and unfortunate circumstances of early years. The victims of vice we have observed lying in the gutter, companied by vermin, trampled upon by sensuality and ignorance, and saw those who wished not to rise, and those who strove so to do, but fell back through weakness. Sadder and more ominous still, we have seen the good man--in many impulses and acts of most pure, most liberal, and undoubted goodness--yet have we noted a spot of base indulgence, a fibre of brutality canker in a vital part this fine plant, and, while we could not withdraw love and esteem for the good we could not doubt, have wept secretly in the heart for the ill we could not deny. We have observed two deaths; one of the sinner, early cut down; one of the just, full of years and honor--_both_ were calm; both professed their reliance on the wisdom of a heavenly Father. We have looked upon the beauteous shows of nature in undisturbed succession, holy moonlight on the snows, loving moonlight on the summer fields, the stars which disappoint never and bless ever, the flowing waters which soothe and stimulate, a garden of roses calling for queens among women, poets and heroes among men. We have marked a desire to answer to this call, and genius brought rich wine, but spilt it on the way, from her careless, fickle gait; and virtue tainted with a touch of the peacock; and philosophy, never enjoying, always seeking, had got together all the materials for the crowning experiment, but there was no love to kindle the fire under the furnace, and the precious secret is not precipitated yet, for the pot will not boil to make the gold through your

"Double, double, Toil and trouble,"

if love do not fan the fire.

We have seen the decay of friendships unable to endure the light of an ideal hope--have seen, too, their resurrection in a faith and hope beyond the tomb, where the form lies we once so fondly cherished. It is not dead, but sleepeth; and we watch, but must weep, too, sometimes, for the night is cold and lonely in the place of tombs.

Nature has appeared dressed in her veil of snowy flowers for the bridal. We have seen her brooding over her joys, a young mother in the pride and fulness of beauty, and then bearing her offspring to their richly ornamented sepulchre, and lately observed her as if kneeling with folded hands in the stillness of prayer, while the bare trees and frozen streams bore witness to her patience.

O, much, much have we seen, and a little learned. Such is the record of the private mind; and yet, as the bright snake-skin is cast, many sigh and cry,--

"The wiser mind Mourns less for what Time takes away Than what he leaves behind."

But for ourselves, we find there is kernel in the nut, though its ripening be deferred till the late frosty weather, and it prove a hard nut to crack even then. Looking at the individual, we see a degree of growth, or the promise of such. In the child there is a force which will outlast the wreck, and reach at last the promised shore. The good man, once roused from his moral lethargy, shall make atonement for his fault, and endure a penance that will deepen and purify his whole nature. The poor lost ones claim a new trial in a new life, and will there, we trust, seize firmer hold on the good for the experience they have had of the bad.

"We never see the stars Till we can see nought else."

The seeming losses are, in truth, but as pruning of the vine to make the grapes swell more richly.

But how is it with those larger individuals, the nations, and that congress of such, the world? We must take a broad and superficial view of these, as we have of private life; and in neither case can more be done. The secrets of the confessional, or rather of the shrine, do not come on paper, unless in poetic form.

So we will not try to search and mine, but only to look over the world from an ideal point of view.

Here we find the same phenomena repeated; the good nation is yet somehow so sick at heart that you are not sure its goodness will ever produce a harmony of life; over the young nation, (our own,) rich in energy and full of glee, brood terrible omens; others, as Poland and Italy, seem irrecoverably lost. They may revive, but we feel as if it must be under new forms.

Forms come and go, but principles are developed and displayed more and more. The caldron simmers, and so great is the fire that we expect it soon to boil over, and new fates appear for Europe.

Spain is dying by inches; England shows symptoms of having passed her meridian; Austria has taken opium, but she must awake ere long; France is in an uneasy dream--she knows she has been very sick, has had terrible remedies administered, and ought to be getting thoroughly well, which she is not. Louis Philippe watches by her pillow, doses and bleeds her, so that she cannot fairly try her strength, and find whether something or nothing has been done. But Louis Philippe and Metternich must soon, in the course of nature, leave this scene; and then there will be none to keep out air and light from the chamber, and the patients will be roused and ascertain their true condition.

No power is in the ascending course except the Russian; and that has such a condensation of brute force, animated by despotic will, that it seems sometimes as if it might by and by stride over Europe and face us across the water. Then would be opposed to one another the two extremes of Autocracy and Democracy, and a trial of strength would ensue between the two principles more grand and full than any ever seen on this planet, and of which the result must be to bind mankind by one chain of convictions. Should, indeed, Despotism and Democracy meet as the two slaveholding powers of the world, the result can hardly be predicted. But there is room in the intervening age for many changes, and the czars profess to wish to free their serfs, as our planters do to free their slaves, and we suppose with equal sincerity; but the need of sometimes professing such desires is a deference to the progress of principles which bid fair to have their era yet.

We hope such an era steadfastly, notwithstanding the deeds of darkness that have made this year forever memorable in our annals. Our nation has indeed shown that the lust of gain is at present her ruling passion. She is not only resolute, but shameless, about it, and has no doubt or scruple as to laying aside the glorious office, assigned her by fate, of herald of freedom, light, and peace to the civilized world.

Yet we must not despair. Even so the Jewish king, crowned with all gifts that Heaven could bestow, was intoxicated by their plenitude, and went astray after the most worthless idols. But he was not permitted to forfeit finally the position designed for him: he was drawn or dragged back to it; and so shall it be with this nation. There are trials in store which shall amend us.

We must believe that the pure blood shown in the time of our revolution still glows in the heart; but the body of our nation is full of foreign elements. A large proportion of our citizens, or their parents, came here for worldly advantage, and have never raised their minds to any idea of destiny or duty. More money--more land! are all the watchwords they know. They have received the inheritance earned by the fathers of the revolution, without their wisdom and virtue to use it. But this cannot last. The vision of those prophetic souls must be realized, else the nation could not exist; every body must at least "have soul enough to save the expense of salt," or it cannot be preserved alive.

What a year it has been with us! Texas annexed, and more annexations in store; slavery perpetuated, as the most striking new feature of these movements. Such are the fruits of American love of liberty! Mormons murdered and driven out, as an expression of American freedom of conscience; Cassius Clay's paper expelled from Kentucky; that is American freedom of the press. And all these deeds defended on the true Russian grounds, "We (the stronger) know what you (the weaker) ought to do and be, and it _shall_ be so."

Thus the principles which it was supposed, some ten years back, had begun to regenerate the world, are left without a trophy for this past year, except in the spread of Rongé's movement in Germany, and that of associative and communist principles both here and in Europe, which, let the worldling deem as he will about their practicability, he cannot deny to be animated by faith in God and a desire for the good of man. We must add to these the important symptoms of the spread of peace principles.

Meanwhile, if the more valuable springs of action seem to lie dormant for a time, there is a constant invention and perfection of the means of action and communication which seems to say, "Do but wait patiently; there is something of universal importance to be done by and by, and all is preparing for it to be universally known and used at once." Else what avail magnetic telegraphs, steamers, and rail-cars traversing every rood of land and ocean, phonography and the mingling of all literatures, till North embraces South and Denmark lays her head upon the lap of Italy? Surely there would not be all this pomp of preparation as to the means of communion, unless there were like to be something worthy to be communicated.

Amid the signs of the breaking down of barriers, we may mention the Emperor Nicholas letting his daughter pass from the Greek to the Roman church, for the sake of marrying her to the Austrian prince. Again, similarity between him and us: he, too, is shameless; for while he signs this marriage contract with one hand, he holds the knout in the other to drive the Roman Catholic Poles into the Greek church. But it is a fatal sign for his empire. 'Tis but the first step that costs, and the Russians may look back to the marriage of the Grand Duchess Olga, as the Chinese will to the cannonading of the English, as the first sign of dissolution in the present form of national life.

A similar token is given by the violation of etiquette of which Mr. Polk is accused in his message. He, at the head of a government, speaks of governments and their doings straightforward, as he would of persons, and the tower, stronghold of the idea of a former age, now propped up by etiquettes and civilities only, trembles to its foundation.

Another sign of the times is the general panic which the decay of the potato causes. We believe this is not without a providential meaning, and will call attention still more to the wants of the people at large. New and more provident regulations must be brought out, that they may not again be left with only a potato between them and starvation. By another of these whimsical coincidences between the histories of Aristocracy and Democracy, the supply of _truffles_ is also failing. The land is losing the "nice things" that the queen (truly a young queen) thought might be eaten in place of bread. Does not this indicate a period in which it will be felt that there must be provision for all--the rich shall not have their truffles if the poor are driven to eat nettles, as the French and Irish have in bygone ages?

The poem of which we here give a prose translation lately appeared in Germany. It is written by Moritz Hartmann, and contains the _gist_ of the matter.

MISTRESS POTATO.

There was a great stately house full of people, who have been running in and out of its lofty gates ever since the gray times of Olympus. There they wept, laughed, shouted, mourned, and, like day and night, came the usual changes of joys with plagues and sorrows. Haunting that great house up and down, making, baking, and roasting, covering and waiting on the table, has there lived a vast number of years a loyal serving maid of the olden time--her name was Mrs. Potato. She was a still, little, old mother, who wore no bawbles or laces, but always had to be satisfied with her plain, every-day clothes; and unheeded, unhonored, oftentimes jeered at and forgotten, she served all day at the kitchen fire, and slept at night in the worst room. When she brought the dishes to table she got rarely a thankful glance; only at times some very poor man would in secret shake kindly her hand.

Generation after generation passed by, as the trees blossom, bear fruit, and wither; but faithful remained the old housemaid, always the servant of the last heir.

But one morning--hear what happened. All the people came to table, and lo! there was nothing to eat, for our good old Mistress Potato had not been able to rise from her bed. She felt sharp pains creeping through her poor old bones. No wonder she was worn out at last! She had not in all her life dared take a day's rest, lest so the poor should starve. Indeed, it is wonderful that her good will should have kept her up so long. She must have had a great constitution to begin with.

The guests had to go away without breakfast. They were a little troubled, but hoped to make up for it at dinner time. But dinner time came, and the table was empty; and then, indeed, they began to inquire about the welfare of Cookmaid Potato. And up into her dark chamber, where she lay on her poor bed, came great and little, young and old, to ask after the good creature. "What can be done for her?" "Bring warm clothes, medicine, a better bed." "Lay aside your work to help her." "If she dies we shall never again be able to fill the table;" and now, indeed, they sang her praises.

O, what a fuss about the sick bed in that moist and mouldy chamber! and out doors it was just the same--priests with their masses, processions, and prayers, and all the world ready to walk to penance, if Mistress Potato could but be saved. And the doctors in their wigs, and counsellors in masks of gravity, sat there to devise some remedy to avert this terrible ill.

As when a most illustrious dame is recovering from birth of a son, so now bulletins inform the world of the health of Mistress Potato, and, not content with what they thus learn, couriers and lackeys besiege the door; nay, the king's coach is stopping there. Yes! yes! the humble poor maid, 'tis about her they are all so frightened! Who would ever have believed it in days when the table was nicely covered?

The gentlemen of pens and books, priests, kings, lords, and ministers, all have senses to scent our famine. Natheless Mistress Potato gets no better. May God help her for the sake, not of such people, but of the poor. For the great it is a token they should note, that all must crumble and fall to ruin, if they will work and weary to death the poor maid who cooks in the kitchen.

She lived for you in the dirt and ashes, provided daily for poor and rich; you ought to humble yourselves for her sake. Ah, could we hope that you would take a hint, and _next time_ pay some heed to the housemaid before she is worn and wearied to death!

* * * * *

So sighs, rather than hopes, Moritz Hartmann. The wise ministers of England, indeed, seem much more composed than he supposes them. They are like the old man who, when he saw the avalanche coming down upon his village, said, "It is coming, but I shall have time to fill my pipe once more." _He_ went in to do so, and was buried beneath the ruins. But Sir Robert Peel, who is so deliberate, has, doubtless, manna in store for those who have lost their customary food.

Another sign of the times is, that there are left on the earth none of the last dynasty of geniuses, rich in so many imperial heads. The world is full of talent, but it flows downward to water the plain. There are no towering heights, no Mont Blancs now. We cannot recall one great genius at this day living. The time of prophets is over, and the era they prophesied must be at hand; in its couduct a larger proportion of the human race shall take part than ever before. As prime ministers have succeeded kings in the substantiate of monarchy, so now shall a house of representatives succeed prime ministers.

Altogether, it looks as if a great time was coming, and that time one of democracy. Our country will play a ruling part. Her eagle will lead the van; but whether to soar upward to the sun or to stoop for helpless prey, who now dares promise? At present she has scarce achieved a Roman nobleness, a Roman liberty; and whether her eagle is less like the vulture, and more like the Phoeix, than was the fierce Roman bird, we dare not say. May the new year give hopes of the latter, even if the bird need first to be purified by fire.

_Jan. 1, 1846._

NEW YEAR'S DAY.

It was a beautiful custom among some of the Indian tribes, once a year, to extinguish all the fires, and, by a day of fasting and profound devotion, to propitiate the Great Spirit for the coming year. They then produced sparks by friction, and lighted up afresh the altar and the hearth with the new fire.

And this fire was considered as the most precious and sacred gift from one person to another, binding them in bonds of inviolate friendship for that year, certainly; with a hope that the same might endure through life. From the young to the old, it was a token of the highest respect; from the old to the young, of a great expectation.

To us would that it might be granted to solemnize the new year by the mental renovation of which this ceremony was the eloquent symbol. Would that we might extinguish, if only for a day, those fires where an uninformed religious ardor has led to human sacrifices; which have warmed the household, but, also, prepared pernicious, more than wholesome, viands for their use.

The Indian produced the new spark by friction. It would be a still more beautiful emblem, and expressive of the more extended powers of civilized men, if we should draw the spark from the centre of our system and the source of light, by means of the burning glass.

Where, then, is to be found the new knowledge, the new thought, the new hope, that shall begin a new year in a spirit not discordant with "the acceptable year of the Lord"? Surely there must be such existing, if latent--some sparks of new fire, pure from ashes and from smoke, worthy to be offered as a new year's gift. Let us look at the signs of the times, to see in what spot this fire shall be sought--on what fuel it may be fed. The ancients poured out libations of the choicest juices of earth, to express their gratitude to the Power that had enabled them to be sustained from her bosom. They enfranchised slaves, to show that devotion to the gods induced a sympathy with men.

Let us look about us to see with what rites, what acts of devotion, this modern Christian nation greets the approach of the new year; by what signs she denotes the clear morning of a better day, such as may be expected when the eagle has entered into covenant with the dove.

This last week brings tidings that a portion of the inhabitants of Illinois, the rich and blooming region on which every gift of nature has been lavished, to encourage the industry and brighten the hopes of man, not only refuses a libation to the Power that has so blessed their fields, but declares that the dew is theirs, and the sunlight is theirs--that they live from and for themselves, acknowledging no obligation and no duty to God or to man.[28]

One man has freed a slave; but a great part of the nation is now busy in contriving measures that may best rivet the fetters on those now chained, and forge them strongest for millions yet unborn.

Selfishness and tyranny no longer wear the mask; they walk haughtily abroad, affronting with their hard-hearted boasts and brazen resolves the patience of the sweet heavens. National honor is trodden under foot for a national bribe, and neither sex nor age defends the redresser of injuries from the rage of the injurer.

Yet, amid these reports which come flying on the paperwings of every day, the scornful laugh of the gnomes, who begin to believe they can buy all souls with their gold, was checked a moment when the aged knight[29] of the better cause answered the challenge--truly in keeping with the "chivalry" of the time--"You are in the wrong, and I will kick you," by holding the hands of the chevalier till those around secured him. We think the man of old must have held him with his eye, as physicians of moral power can insane patients. Great as are his exploits for his age, he cannot have much bodily strength, unless by miracle.

The treatment of Mr. Adams and Mr. Hoar seems to show that we are not fitted to emulate the savages in preparation for the new fire. The Indians knew how to reverence the old and the wise.

Among the manifestos of the day, it is impossible not to respect that of the Mexican minister for the manly indignation with which he has uttered truths, however deep our mortification at hearing them. It has been observed for the last fifty years, that the tone of diplomatic correspondence was much improved, as to simplicity and directness. Once, diplomacy was another name for intrigue, and a paper of this sort was expected to be a mesh of artful phrases, through which the true meaning might be detected, but never actually grasped. Now, here is one where an occasion being afforded by the unutterable folly of the corresponding party, a minister speaks the truth as it lies in his mind, directly and plainly, as man speaks to man. His statement will command the sympathy of the civilized world.

As to the state papers that have followed, they are of a nature to make the Austrian despot sneer, as he counts in his oratory the woollen stockings he has got knit by imprisoning all the free geniuses in his dominions. He, at least, only appeals to the legitimacy of blood; these dare appeal to legitimacy, as seen from a moral point of view. History will class such claims with the brags of sharpers, who bully their victims about their honor, while they stretch forth their hands for the gold they have won with loaded dice. "Do you dare to say the dice are loaded? Prove it; _and_ I will shoot you for injuring my honor."

The Mexican makes his gloss on the page of American honor;[30] the girl[31] in the Kentucky prison on that of her freedom; the delegate of Massachusetts,[32] on that of her union. Ye stars, whose image America has placed upon her banner, answer us! Are not your unions of a different sort? Do they not work to other results?

Yet we cannot lightly be discouraged, or alarmed, as to the destiny of our country. The whole history of its discovery and early progress indicates too clearly the purposes of Heaven with regard to it. Could we relinquish the thought that it was destined for the scene of a new and illustrious act in the great drama, the past would be inexplicable, no less than the future without hope.

Last week, which brought us so many unpleasant notices of home affairs, brought also an account of the magnificent telescope lately perfected by the Earl of Rosse. With means of observation now almost divine, we perceive that some of the brightest stars, of which Sirius is one, have dark companions, whose presence is, by earthly spectators, only to be detected from the inequalities they cause in the motions of their radiant companions. It was a new and most imposing illustration how, in carrying out the divine scheme, of which we have as yet only spelled out the few first lines, the dark is made to wait upon, and, in the full result, harmonize with, the bright. The sense of such pervasive analogies should enlarge patience and animate hope.

Yet, if offences must come, woe be to those by whom they come; and that of men, who sin against a heritage like ours, is as that of the backsliders among the chosen people of the elder day. We, too, have been chosen, and plain indications been given, by a wonderful conjunction of auspicious influences, that the ark of human hopes has been placed for the present in our charge. Woe be to those who betray this trust! On their heads are to be heaped the curses of unnumbered ages!

Can he sleep, who in this past year has wickedly or lightly committed acts calculated to injure the few or many; who has poisoned the ears and the hearts he might have rightly informed; who has steeped in tears the cup of thousands; who has put back, as far as in him lay, the accomplishment of general good and happiness for the sake of his selfish aggrandizement or selfish luxury; who has sold to a party what was meant for mankind? If such sleep, dreadful shall be the waking.

"Deliver us from evil." In public or in private, it is easy to give pain--hard to give pure pleasure; easy to do evil--hard to do good. God does his good in the whole, despite of bad men; but only from a very pure mind will he permit original good to proceed in the day. Happy those who can feel that during the past year, they have, to the best of their knowledge, refrained from evil. Happy those who determine to proceed in this by the light of conscience. It is but a spark; yet from that spark may be drawn fire-light enough for worlds and systems of worlds--and that light is ever new.

And with this thought rises again the memory of the fair lines that light has brought to view in the histories of some men. If the nation tends to wrong, there are yet present the ten just men. The hands and lips of this great form may be impure, but pure blood flows yet within her veins--the blood of the noble bands who first sought these shores from the British isles and France, for conscience sake. Too many have come since, for bread alone. We cannot blame--we must not reject them; but let us teach them, in giving them bread, to prize that salt, too, without which all on earth must lose its savor. Yes! let us teach them, not rail at their inevitable ignorance and unenlightened action, but teach them and their children as our own; if we do so, their children and ours may yet act as one body obedient to one soul; and if we act rightly now, that soul a pure soul.

And ye, sable bands, forced hither against your will, kept down here now by a force hateful to nature, a will alien from God! It does sometimes seem as if the avenging angel wore your hue, and would place in your hands the sword to punish the cruel injustice of our fathers, the selfish perversity of the sons. Yet are there no means of atonement? Must the innocent suffer with the guilty? Teach us, O All-Wise, the clew out of this labyrinth; and if we faithfully encounter its darkness and dread, and emerge into clear light, wilt thou not bid us "go and sin no more"?

Meanwhile, let us proceed as we can, _picking our steps_ along the slippery road. If we keep the right direction, what matters it that we must pass through so much mud? The promise is sure:--

Angels shall free the feet from stain, to their own hue of snow, If, undismayed, we reach the hills where the true olives grow. The olive groves, which we must seek in cold and damp, Alone can yield us oil for a perpetual lamp. Then sound again the golden horn with promise ever new; The princely deer will ne'er be caught by those that slack pursue; Let the "White Doe" of angel hopes be always kept in view.

Yes! sound again the horn--of hope the golden horn! Answer it, flutes and pipes, from valleys still and lorn; Warders, from your high towers, with trumps of silver scorn, And harps in maidens' bowers, with strings from deep hearts torn,-- All answer to the horn--of hope the golden horn!

There is still hope, there is still an America, while private lives are ruled by the Puritan, by the Huguenot conscientiousness, and while there are some who can repudiate, not their debts, but the supposition that they will not strive to pay their debts to their age, and to Heaven, who gave them a share in its great promise.

ST. VALENTINES DAY.

This merry season of light jokes and lighter love-tokens, in which Cupid presents the feathered end of the dart, as if he meant to tickle before he wounded the captive, has always had a great charm for me. When but a child, I saw Allston's picture of the "Lady reading a Valentine," and the mild womanliness of the picture, so remote from passion no less than vanity, so capable of tenderness, so chastely timid in its self-possession, has given a color to the gayest thoughts connected with the day. From the ruff of Allston's Lady, whose clear starch is made to express all rosebud thoughts of girlish retirement, the soft unfledged hopes which never yet were tempted from the nest, to Sam Weller's Valentine, is indeed a broad step, but one which we can take without material change of mood.

But of all the thoughts and pictures associated with the day, none can surpass in interest those furnished by the way in which we celebrated it last week.

The Bloomingdale Asylum for the Insane is conducted on the most wise and liberal plan known at the present day. Its superintendent, Dr. Earle, has had ample opportunity to observe the best modes of managing this class of diseases both here and in Europe, and he is one able, by refined sympathies and intellectual discernment, to apply the best that is known and to discover more.

Under his care the beautifully situated establishment at Bloomingdale loses every sign of the hospital and the prison, not long since thought to be inseparable from such a place. It is a house of refuge, where those too deeply wounded or disturbed in body or spirit to keep up that semblance or degree of sanity which the conduct of affairs in the world at large demands, may be soothed by gentle care, intelligent sympathy, and a judicious attention to their physical welfare, into health, or, at least, into tranquillity.

Dr. Earle, in addition to modes of turning the attention from causes of morbid irritation, and promoting brighter and juster thoughts, which he uses in common with other institutions, has this winter delivered a course of lectures to the patients. We were present at one of these some weeks since. The subjects touched upon were, often, of a nature to demand as close attention as an audience of regular students (not college students, but real students) can be induced to give. The large assembly present were almost uniformly silent, to appearance interested, and showed a power of decorum and self-government often wanting among those who esteem themselves in healthful mastery of their morals and manners. We saw, with great satisfaction, generous thoughts and solid pursuits offered, as well as light amusements, for the choice of the sick in mind. For it is our experience that such sickness arises as often from want of concentration as any other cause. One of the noblest youths that ever trod this soil was wont to say, "he was never tired, if he could only see far enough." He is now gone where his view may be less bounded; but we, who stay behind, may take the hint that mania, no less than the commonest forms of prejudice, bespeaks a mind which does not see far enough to correct partial impressions. No doubt, in many cases, dissipation of thought, after attention is once distorted into some morbid direction, may be the first method of cure; but we are glad to see others provided for those who are ready for them.

St. Valentine's Eve had been appointed for one of the dancing parties at the institution, and a few friends from "the world's people" invited to be present.

At an early hour the company assembled in the well-lighted hall, still gracefully wreathed with its Christmas evergreens; the music struck up and the company entered.

And these are the people who, half a century ago, would have been chained in solitary cells, screaming out their anguish till silenced by threats or blows, lost, forsaken, hopeless, a blight to earth, a libel upon heaven!

Now, they are many of them happy, all interested. Even those who are troublesome and subject to violent excitement in every-day scenes, show here that the power of self-control is not lost, only lessened. Give them an impulse strong enough, favorable circumstances, and they will begin to use it again. They regulate their steps to music; they restrain their impatient impulses from respect to themselves and to others. The Power which shall yet shape order from all disorder, and turn ashes to beauty, as violets spring up from green graves, hath them also in its keeping.

The party were well dressed, with care and taste. The dancing was better than usual, because there was less of affectation and ennui. The party was more entertaining, because native traits came out more clear from the disguises of vanity and tact.

There was the blue-stocking lady, a mature belle and bel-esprit. Her condescending graces, her rounded compliments, her girlish, yet "highly intellectual" vivacity, expressed no less in her head-dress than her manner, were just that touch above the common with which the illustrator of Dickens has thought fit to heighten the charms of Mrs. Leo Hunter.

There was the travelled Englishman, _au fait_ to every thing beneath the moon and beyond. With his clipped and glib phrases, his bundle of conventionalities carried so neatly under his arm, and his "My dear sir," in the perfection of cockney dignity, what better could the most select dinner party furnish us in the way of distinguished strangerhood?

There was the hoidenish young girl, and the decorous, elegant lady smoothing down "the wild little thing." There was the sarcastic observer on the folly of the rest; in that, the greatest fool of all, unbeloved and unloving. In contrast to this were characters altogether lovely, full of all sweet affections, whose bells, if jangled out of tune, still retained their true tone.

One of the best things of the evening was a dance improvised by two elderly women. They asked the privilege of the floor, and, a suitable measure being played, performed this dance in a style lively, characteristic, yet moderate enough. It was true dancing, like peasant dancing.

An old man sang comic songs in the style of various nations and characters, with a dramatic expression that would have commanded applause "on any stage."

And all was done decently and in order, each biding his time. Slight symptoms of impatience here and there were easily soothed by the approach of this, truly "good physician," the touch of whose hand seemed to possess a talismanic power to soothe. We doubt not that all went to their beds exhilarated, free from irritation, and more attuned to concord than before. Good bishop Valentine! thy feast was well kept, and not without the usual jokes and flings at old bachelors, the exchange of sugar-plums, mottoes, and repartees.

This is the second festival I have kept with those whom society has placed, not outside her pale, indeed, but outside the hearing of her benison. Christmas I passed in a prison! There, too, I saw marks of the miraculous power of love, when guided by a pure faith in the goodness of its source, and intelligence as to the design of the creative intelligence. I saw enough of its power, impeded as it was by the ignorance of those who, eighteen hundred years after the coming of Christ, still believe more in fear and force: I saw enough, I say, of this power to convince me, if I needed conviction, that love is indeed omnipotent, as He said it was.

A companion, of that delicate nature by which a scar is felt as a wound, was saddened by the thought how very little our partialities, undue emotions, and manias need to be exaggerated to entitle us to rank among madmen. I cannot view it so. Rather let the sense that, with all our faults and follies, there is still a sound spot, a presentiment of eventual health in the inmost nature, embolden us to hope, to _know_ it is the same with all. A great thinker has spoken of the Greek, in highest praise, as "a self-renovating character." But we are all Greeks, if we will but think so. For the mentally or morally insane, there is no irreparable ill if the principle of life can but be aroused. And it can never be finally benumbed, except by our own will.

One of the famous pictures at Munich is of a madhouse. The painter has represented the moral obliquities of society exaggerated into madness; that is to say, self-indulgence has, in each instance, destroyed the power to forbear the ill or to discern the good. A celebrated writer has added a little book, to be used while looking at the picture, and drawn inferences of universal interest.

Such would we draw; such as this! Let no one dare to call another mad who is not himself willing to rank in the same class for every perversion and fault of judgment. Let no one dare aid in punishing another as criminal who is not willing to suffer the penalty due to his own offences.

Yet, while owning that we are all mad, all criminal, let us not despair, but rather believe that the Ruler of all never could permit such wide-spread ill but to good ends. It is permitted to give us a field to redeem it--

"to transmute, bereave Of an ill influence, and a good receive."

It flows inevitably from the emancipation of our wills, the development of individuality in us. These aims accomplished, all shall yet be well; and it is ours to learn _how_ that good time may be hastened.

We know no sign of the times more encouraging than the increasing nobleness and wisdom of view as to the government of asylums for the insane and of prisons. Whatever is learned as to these forms of society is learned for all. There is nothing that can be said of such government that must not be said, also, of the government of families, schools, and states. But we have much to say on this subject, and shall revert to it again, and often, though, perhaps, not with so pleasing a theme as this of St. Valentine's Eve.

FOURTH OF JULY.

The bells ring; the cannon rouse the echoes along the river shore; the boys sally forth with shouts and little flags, and crackers enough to frighten all the people they meet from sunrise to sunset. The orator is conning for the last time the speech in which he has vainly attempted to season with some new spice the yearly panegyric upon our country; its happiness and glory; the audience is putting on its best bib and tucker, and its blandest expression to listen.

And yet, no heart, we think, can beat to-day with one pulse of genuine, noble joy. Those who have obtained their selfish objects will not take especial pleasure in thinking of them to-day, while to unbiassed minds must come sad thoughts of national honor soiled in the eyes of other nations, of a great inheritance risked, if not forfeited.

Much has been achieved in this country since the Declaration of Independence. America is rich and strong; she has shown great talent and energy; vast prospects of aggrandizement open before her. But the noble sentiment which she expressed in her early youth is tarnished; she has shown that righteousness is not her chief desire, and her name is no longer a watchword for the highest hopes to the rest of the world. She knows this, but takes it very easily; she feels that she is growing richer and more powerful, and that seems to suffice her.

These facts are deeply saddening to those who can pronounce the words "my country" with pride and peace only so far as steadfast virtues, generous impulses, find their home in that country. They cannot be satisfied with superficial benefits, with luxuries and the means of obtaining knowledge which are multiplied for them. They could rejoice in full hands and a busy brain, if the soul were expanding and the heart pure; but, the higher conditions being violated, what is done cannot be done for good.

Such thoughts fill patriot minds as the cannon-peal bursts upon the ear. This year, which declares that the people at large consent to cherish and extend slavery as one of our "domestic institutions," takes from the patriot his home. This year, which attests their insatiate love of wealth and power, quenches the flame upon the altar.

Yet there remains that good part which cannot be taken away. If nations go astray, the narrow path may always be found and followed by the individual man. It is hard, hard indeed, when politics and trade are mixed up with evils so mighty that he scarcely dares touch them for fear of being defiled. He finds his activity checked in great natural outlets by the scruples of conscience. He cannot enjoy the free use of his limbs, glowing upon a favorable tide; but struggling, panting, must fix his eyes upon his aim, and fight against the current to reach it. It is not easy, it is very hard just now, to realize the blessings of independence.

For what _is_ independence if it do not lead to freedom?--freedom from fraud and meanness, from selfishness, from public opinion so far as it does not agree with the still, small voice of one's better self?

Yet there remains a great and worthy part to play. This country presents great temptations to ill, but also great inducements to good. Her health and strength are so remarkable, her youth so full of life, that disease cannot yet have taken deep hold of her. It has bewildered her brain, made her steps totter, fevered, but not yet tainted, her blood. Things are still in that state when ten just men may save the city. A few men are wanted, able to think and act upon principles of an eternal value. The safety of the country must lie in a few such men; men who have achieved the genuine independence, independence of wrong, of violence, of falsehood.

We want individuals to whom all eyes may turn as examples of the practicability of virtue. We want shining examples. We want deeply-rooted characters, who cannot be moved by flattery, by fear, even by hope, for they work in faith. The opportunity for such men is great; they will not be burned at the stake in their prime for bearing witness to the truth, yet they will be tested most severely in their adherence to it. There is nothing to hinder them from learning what is true and best; no physical tortures will be inflicted on them for expressing it. Let men feel that in private lives, more than in public measures, must the salvation of the country lie. If that country has so widely veered from the course she prescribed to herself, and that the hope of the world prescribed to her, it must be because she had not men ripened and confirmed for better things. They leaned too carelessly on one another; they had not deepened and purified the private lives from which the public vitality must spring, as the verdure of the plain from the fountains of the hills.

What a vast influence is given by sincerity alone. The bier of General Jackson has lately passed, upbearing a golden urn. The men who placed it there lament his departure, and esteem the measures which have led this country to her present position wise and good. The other side esteem them unwise, unjust, and disastrous in their consequences. But both respect him thus far, that his conduct was boldly sincere. The sage of Quincy! Men differ in their estimate of his abilities. None, probably, esteem his mind as one of the first magnitude. But both sides, all men, are influenced by the bold integrity of his character. Mr. Calhoun speaks straight out what he thinks. So far as this straightforwardness goes, he confers the benefits of virtue. If a character be uncorrupted, whatever bias it takes, it thus far is good and does good. It may help others to a higher, wiser, larger independence than its own.

We know not where to look for an example of all or many of the virtues we would seek from the man who is to begin the new dynasty that is needed of fathers of the country. The country needs to be born again; she is polluted with the lust of power, the lust of gain. She needs fathers good enough to be godfathers--men who will stand sponsors at the baptism with _all_ they possess, with all the goodness they can cherish, and all the wisdom they can win, to lead this child the way she should go, and never one step in another. Are there not in schools and colleges the boys who will become such men? Are there not those on the threshold of manhood who have not yet chosen the broad way into which the multitude rushes, led by the banner on which, strange to say, the royal Eagle is blazoned, together with the word Expediency? Let them decline that road, and take the narrow, thorny path where Integrity leads, though with no prouder emblem than the Dove. They may there find the needed remedy, which, like the white root, detected by the patient and resolved Odysseus, shall have power to restore the herd of men, disguised by the enchantress to whom they had willingly yielded in the forms of brutes, to the stature and beauty of men.

FIRST OF AUGUST.

Among the holidays of the year, some portion of our people borrow one from another land. They borrow what they fain would own, since their doing so would increase, not lessen, the joy and prosperity of the present owner. It is a holiday not to be celebrated, as others are, with boast, and shout, and gay procession, but solemnly, yet hopefully; in prayer and humiliation for much ill now existing; in faith that the God of good will not permit such ill to exist always; in aspiration to become his instruments for removal.

We borrow this holiday from England. We know not that she could lend us another such. Her career has been one of selfish aggrandizement. To carry her flag wherever the waters flow; to leave a strong mark of her footprint on every shore, that she might return and claim its spoils; to maintain in every way her own advantage,--is and has been her object, as much as that of any nation upon earth. The plundered Hindoo, the wronged Irish,--for ourselves we must add the outraged Chinese, (for we look on all that has been written about the right of that war as mere sophistry,)--no less than Napoleon, walking up and down, in his "tarred great-coat," in the unwholesome lodge at St. Helena,--all can tell whether she be righteous or generous in her conquests. Nay, let myriads of her own children say whether she will abstain from sacrificing, mercilessly, human freedom, happiness, and the education of immortal souls, for the sake of gains of money! We speak of Napoleon, for we must ever despise, with most profound contempt, the use she made of her power on that occasion. She had been the chief means of liberating Europe from his tyranny, and, though it was for her own sake, we must commend and admire her conduct and resolution thus far. But the unhandsome, base treatment of her captive, has never been enough contemned. Any private gentleman, in chaining up the foe that had put himself in his power, would at least have given him lodging, food, and clothes to his liking; and a civil turnkey--and a great nation could fail in this! O, it was shameful, if only for the vulgarity of feeling evinced! All this we say, because we are sometimes impatient of England's brag on the subject of slavery. Freedom! Because she has done one good act, is she entitled to the angelic privilege of being the champion of freedom?

And yet it is true that once she nobly awoke to a sense of what was right and wise. It is true that she also acted out that sense--acted fully, decidedly. She was willing to make sacrifices, even of the loved money. She has not let go the truth she then laid to heart, and continues the resolute foe of man's traffic in men. We must bend low to her as we borrow this holiday--the anniversary of the emancipation of slaves in the West Indies. We do not feel that the extent of her practice justifies the extent of her preaching; yet we must feel her to be, in this matter, an elder sister, entitled to cry shame to us. And if her feelings be those of a sister indeed, how must she mourn to see her next of kin pushing back, as far as in her lies, the advance of this good cause, binding those whom the old world had awakened from its sins enough to loose! But courage, sister! All is not yet lost! There is here a faithful band, determined to expiate the crimes that have been committed in the name of liberty. On this day they meet and vow themselves to the service; and, as they look in one another's glowing eyes, they read there assurance that the end is not yet, and that they, forced as they are

"To keep in company with Pain, And Fear, and Falsehood, miserable train,"

"Turn that necessity to glorious gain,"

"Transmute them and subdue."

Indeed, we do not see that they "bate a jot of heart or hope," and it is because they feel that the power of the Great Spirit, and its peculiar workings in the spirit of this age, are with them. There is action and reaction all the time; and though the main current is obvious, there are many little eddies and counter-currents. Mrs. Norton writes a poem on the sufferings of the poor, and in it she, as episode, tunefully laments the sufferings of the Emperor of all the Russias for the death of a beloved daughter. And it _was_ a deep grief; yet it did not soften his heart, or make it feel for man. The first signs of his recovered spirits are in new efforts to crush out the heart of Poland, and to make the Jews lay aside the hereditary marks of their national existence--to them a sacrifice far worse than death. But then,--Count Apraxin is burned alive by his infuriate serfs, and the life of a serf is far more dog-like, or rather machine-like, than that of _our_ slaves. Still the serf can rise in vengeance--can admonish the autocrat that humanity may yet turn again and rend him.

So with us. The most shameful deed has been done that ever disgraced a nation, because the most contrary to consciousness of right. Other nations have done wickedly, but we have surpassed them all in trampling under foot the principles that had been assumed as the basis of our national existence, and shown a willingness to forfeit our honor in the face of the world.

The following stanzas, written by a friend some time since, on the fourth of July, exhibit these contrasts so forcibly, that we cannot do better than insert them here:--

Loud peal of bells and beat of drums Salute approaching dawn; And the deep cannon's fearful bursts Announce a nation's morn.

Imposing ranks of freemen stand And claim their proud birthright; Impostors, rather! thus to brand A name they hold so bright.

Let the day see the pageant show; Float, banners, to the breeze! Shout Liberty's great name throughout Columbia's lands and seas!

Give open sunlight to the free; But for Truth's equal sake, When night sinks down upon the land, Proclaim dead Freedom's wake!

Beat, muffled drums! Toll, funeral bell Nail every flag half-mast; For though we fought the battle well, We're traitors at the last.

Let the whole nation join in one Procession to appear; We and our sons lead on the front, Our slaves bring up the rear.

America is rocked within Thy cradle, Liberty, By Africa's poor, palsied hand-- Strange inconsistency!

We've dug one grave as deep as Death, For Tyranny's black sin; And dug another at its side To thrust our brother in.

We challenge all the world aloud,-- "Lo, Tyranny's deep grave!" And all the world points back and cries, "Thou fool! Behold thy slave!"

Yes, rally, brave America, Thy noble hearts and free Around the Eagle, as he soars Upward in majesty.

One half thy emblem is the bird, Out-facing thus the day; But wouldst thou make him wholly thine,-- _Give him a helpless prey!_

This should be sung in Charleston at nine o'clock in the evening, when the drums are heard proclaiming "dead Freedom's wake," as they summon to their homes, or to the custody of the police, every human being with a black skin who is found walking without a pass from a white. Or it might have been sung to advantage the night after Charleston had shown her independence and care of domestic institutions by expulsion of the venerable envoy of Massachusetts! Its expression would seem even more forcible than now, when sung so near the facts, when the eagle soars so close above his prey.

How deep the shadow! yet cleft by light. There is a counter-current that sets towards the deep. We are inclined to weigh as of almost equal weight with all we have had to trouble us as to the prolongation of slavery, the hopes that may be gathered from the course of such a man as Cassius M. Clay,--a man open to none of the accusations brought to diminish the influence of abolitionists in general, for he has eaten the bread wrought from slavery, and has shared the education that excuses the blindness of the slaveholder. He speaks as one having authority; no one can deny that he knows where he is. In the prime of manhood, of talent, and the energy of a fine enthusiasm, he comes forward with deed and word to do his devoir in this cause, never to leave the field till he can take with him the wronged wretches rescued by his devotion.

Now he has made this last sacrifice of the prejudices of "southern chivalry," more persons than ever will be ready to join the herald's cry, "God speed the right!" And we cannot but believe his noble example will be followed by many young men in the slaveholding ranks, brothers in a new, sacred band, vowed to the duty, not merely of defending, but far more sacred, of purifying their homes.

The event of which this day is the anniversary, affords a sufficient guarantee of the safety and practicability of strong measures for this purification. Various accounts are given to the public, of the state of the British West Indies, and the foes of emancipation are of course constantly on the alert to detect any unfavorable result which may aid them in opposing the good work elsewhere. But through all statements these facts shine clear as the sun at noonday, that the measure was there carried into effect with an ease and success, and has shown in the African race a degree of goodness, docility, capacity for industry and self-culture entirely beyond or opposed to the predictions which darkened so many minds with fears. Those fears can never again be entertained or uttered with the same excuse. One great example of the _safety of doing right_ exists; true, there is but one of the sort, but volumes may be preached from such a text.

We, however, preach not; there are too many preachers already in the field, abler, more deeply devoted to the cause. Endless are the sermons of these modern crusaders, these ardent "sons of thunder," who have pledged themselves never to stop or falter till this one black spot be purged away from the land which gave them birth. They cry aloud and spare not; they spare not others, but then, neither do they spare themselves; and such are ever the harbingers of a new advent of the Holy Spirit. Our venerated friend, Dr. Channing, sainted in more memories than any man who has left us in this nineteenth century, uttered the last of his tones of soft, solemn, convincing, persuasive eloquence, on this day and this occasion. The hills of Lenox laughed and were glad as they heard him who showed in that last address (an address not only to the men of Lenox, but to all men, for he was in the highest sense the friend of man) the unsullied purity of infancy, the indignation of youth at vice and wrong, informed and tempered by the mild wisdom of age. It is a beautiful fact that this should have been the last public occasion of his life.

Last year a noble address was delivered by R. W. Emerson, in which he broadly showed the _juste milieu_ views upon this subject in the holy light of a high ideal day. The truest man grew more true as he listened; for the speech, though it had the force of fact and the lustre of thought, was chiefly remarkable as sharing the penetrating quality of the "still small voice," most often heard when no man speaks. Now it spoke _through_ a man; and no personalities, or prejudices, or passions could be perceived to veil or disturb its silver sound.

These speeches are on record; little can be said that is not contained in them. But we can add evermore our aspirations for thee, O our country! that thou mayst not long need to borrow a _holy_ day; not long have all thy festivals blackened by falsehood, tyranny, and a crime for which neither man below nor God above can much longer pardon thee. For ignorance may excuse error; but thine--it is vain to deny it--is conscious wrong, and vows thee to the Mammon whose wages are endless remorse or final death.

THANKSGIVING.

"Canst thou give thanks for aught that has been given Except by making earth more worthy heaven? Just stewardship the Master hoped from thee; Harvests from time to bless eternity."

Thanksgiving is peculiarly the festival day of New England. Elsewhere, other celebrations rival its attractions, but in that region where the Puritans first returned thanks that some among them had been sustained by a great hope and earnest resolve amid the perils of the ocean, wild beasts, and famine, the old spirit which hallowed the day still lingers, and forbids that it should be entirely devoted to play and plum-pudding.

And yet, as there is always this tendency; as the twelfth-night cake is baked by many a hostess who would be puzzled if you asked her, "Twelfth night after or before what?" and the Christmas cake by many who know no other Christmas service, so it requires very serious assertion and proof from the minister to convince his parishioners that the turkey and plum-pudding, which are presently to occupy his place in their attention, should not be the chief objects of the day.

And in other regions, where the occasion is observed, it is still more as one for a meeting of families and friends to the enjoyment of a good dinner, than for any higher purpose.

This, indeed, is one which we want not to depreciate. If this manner of keeping the day be likely to persuade the juniors of the party that the celebrated Jack Horner is the prime model for brave boys, and that grandparents are chiefly to be respected as the givers of grand feasts yet a meeting in the spirit of kindness, however dull and blind, is not wholly without use in healing differences and promoting good intentions. The instinct of family love, intended by Heaven to make those of one blood the various and harmonious organs of one mind, is never wholly without good influence. Family love, I say, for family pride is never without bad influence, and it too often takes the place of its mild and healthy sister.

Yet where society is at all simple, it is cheering to see the family circle thus assembled, if only because its patriarchal form is in itself so excellent. The presence of the children animates the old people, while the respect and attention they demand refine the gayety of the young. Yes, it is cheering to see, in some large room, the elders talking near the bright fire, while the cousins of all ages are amusing themselves in knots. Here is almost all the good, and very little of the ill, that can be found in society, got together merely for amusement.

Yet how much nobler, more exhilarating, and purer would be the atmosphere of that circle if the design of its pious founders were remembered by those who partake this festival! if they dared not attend the public jubilee till private retrospect of the past year had been taken in the spirit of the old rhyme, which we all bear in mind if not in heart,--

"What hast thou done that's worth the doing, And what pursued that's worth pursuing? What sought thou knew'st that thou shouldst shun, What done thou shouldst have left undone?"

A crusade needs also to be made this day into the wild places of each heart, taking for its device, "Lord, cleanse thou me from secret faults; keep back thy servant also from presumptuous sins." Would not that circle be happy as if music, from invisible agents, floated through it if each member of it considered every other member as a bequest from heaven; if he supposed that the appointed nearness in blood or lot was a sign to him that he must exercise his gifts of every kind as given peculiarly in their behalf; that if richer in temper, in talents, in knowledge, or in worldly goods, here was the innermost circle of his poor; that he must clothe these naked, whether in body or mind, soothing the perverse, casting light into the narrow chamber, or, most welcome task of all! extending a hand at the right moment to one uncertain of his way? It is this spirit that makes the old man to be revered as a Nestor, rather than put aside like a worn-out garment. It is such a spirit that sometimes has given to the young child a ministry as of a parent in the house.

But, if charity begin at home, it must not end there; and, while purifying the innermost circle, let us not forget that it depends upon the great circle, and that again on it; that no home can be healthful in which are not cherished seeds of good for the world at large. Thy child, thy brother, are given to thee only as an example of what is due from thee to all men. It is true that, if you, in anger, call your brother fool, no deeds of so-called philanthropy shall save you from the punishment; for your philanthropy must be from the love of excitement, not the love of man, or of goodness. But then you must visit the Gentiles also, and take time for knowing what aid the woman of Samaria may need.

A noble Catholic writer, in the true sense as well as by name a Catholic, describes a tailor as giving a dinner on an occasion which had brought honor to his house, which, though a humble, was not a poor house. In his glee, the tailor was boasting a little of the favors and blessings of his lot, when suddenly a thought stung him. He stopped, and cutting away half the fowl that lay before him, sent it in a dish with the best knives, bread, and napkin, and a brotherly message that was better still, to a widow near, who must, he knew, be sitting in sadness and poverty among her children. His little daughter was the messenger. If parents followed up the indulgences heaped upon their children at Thanksgiving dinners with similar messages, there would not be danger that children should think enjoyment of sensual pleasures the only occasion that demands Thanksgiving.

And suppose, while the children were absent on their errands of justice, as they could not fail to think them, if they compared the hovels they must visit with their own comfortable homes, their elders, touched by a sense of right, should be led from discussion of the rivalries of trade or fashion to inquiry whether they could not impart of all that was theirs, not merely one poor dinner once a year, but all their mental and material wealth for the benefit of all men. If they do not sell it _all_ at once, as the rich young man was bid to do as a test of his sincerity, they may find some way in which it could be invested so as to show enough obedience to the law and the prophets to love our neighbor as ourselves.

And he who once gives himself to such thoughts will find it is not merely moral gain for which he shall return thanks another year with the return of this day. In the present complex state of human affairs, you cannot be kind unless you are wise. Thoughts of amaranthine bloom will spring up in the fields ploughed to give food to suffering men. It would, indeed, seem to be a simple matter at first glance. "Lovest thou me?"--"Feed my lambs." But now we have not only to find pasture, but to detect the lambs under the disguise of wolves, and restore them by a spell, like that the shepherd used, to their natural form and whiteness.

And for this present day appointed for Thanksgiving, we may say that if we know of so many wrongs, woes, and errors in the world yet unredressed; if in this nation recent decisions have shown a want of moral discrimination in important subjects, that make us pause and doubt whether we can join in the formal congratulations that we are still bodily alive, unassailed by the ruder modes of warfare, and enriched with the fatness of the land; yet, on the other side, we know of causes not so loudly proclaimed why we should give thanks. Abundantly and humbly we must render them for the movement, now sensible in the heart of the civilized world, although it has not pervaded the entire frame--for that movement of contrition and love which forbids men of earnest thought to eat, drink, or be merry while other men are steeped in ignorance, corruption, and woe; which calls the king from his throne of gold, and the poet from his throne of mind, to lie with the beggar in the kennel, or raise him from it; which says to the poet, "You must reform rather than create a world," and to him of the golden crown, "You cannot long remain a king unless you are also a man."

Wherever this impulse of social or political reform darts up its rill through the crusts of selfishness, scoff and dread also arise, and hang like a heavy mist above it. But the voice of the rill penetrates far enough for those who have ears to hear. And sometimes it is the case that "those who came to scoff remain to pray." In two articles of reviews, one foreign and one domestic, which have come under our eye within the last fortnight, the writers who began by jeering at the visionaries, seemed, as they wrote, to be touched by a sense that without a high and pure faith none can have the only true vision of the intention of God as to the destiny of man.

We recognized as a happy omen that there is cause for thanksgiving, and that our people may be better than they seem, the recent meeting to organize an association for the benefit of prisoners. We are not, then, wholly Pharisees. We shall not ask the blessing of this day in the mood of, "Lord, I thank thee that I, and my son, and my brother, are not as other men are,--not as those publicans imprisoned there," while the still small voice cannot make us hear its evidence that, but for instruction, example, and the "preventing God," every sin that can be named might riot in our hearts. The prisoner, too, may become a man. Neither his open nor our secret fault must utterly dismay us. We will treat him as if he had a soul. We will not dare to hunt him into a beast of prey, or trample him into a serpent. We will give him some crumbs from the table which grace from above and parental love below have spread for us, and perhaps he will recover from these ghastly ulcers that deform him now.

We were much pleased with the spirit of the meeting for the benefit of prisoners, to which we have just alluded. It was simple, business-like, in a serious, affectionate temper. The speakers did not make phrases or compliments--did not slur over the truth. The audience showed a ready vibration to the touch of just and tender feeling. The time was evidently ripe for this movement. We doubt not that many now darkened souls will give thanks for the ray of light that will have been let in by this time next year. It is but a grain of mustard seed, but the promised tree will grow swiftly if tended in a pure spirit; and the influence of good measures in any one place will be immediate in this province, as has been the case with every attempt in behalf of another sorrowing class, the insane.

While reading a notice of a successful attempt to have musical performances carried through in concert by the insane at Rouen, we were forcibly reminded of a similar performance we heard a few weeks ago at Sing Sing. There the female prisoners joined in singing a hymn, or rather choral, which describes the last thoughts of a spirit about to be enfranchised from the body; each stanza of which ends with the words, "All is well;" and they sang it--those suffering, degraded children of society--with as gentle and resigned an expression as if they were sure of going to sleep in the arms of a pure mother. The good spirit that dwelt in the music made them its own. And shall not the good spirit of religious sympathy make them its own also, and more permanently? We shall see. Should the _morally_ insane, by wise and gentle care, be won back to health, as the wretched bedlamites have been, will not the angels themselves give thanks? And will any man dare take the risk of opposing plans that afford even a chance of such a result?

Apart also from good that is public and many-voiced, does not each of us know, in private experience, much to be thankful for? Not only the innocent and daily pleasures that we have prized according to our wisdom; of the sun and starry skies, the fields of green, or snow scarcely less beautiful, the loaf eaten with an appetite, the glow of labor, the gentle signs of common affection; but have not some, have not many of us, cause to be thankful for enfranchisement from error or infatuation; a growth in knowledge of outward things, and instruction within the soul from a higher source. Have we not acquired a sense of more refined enjoyments; clear convictions; sometimes a serenity in which, as in the first days of June, all things grow, and the blossom gives place to fruit? Have we not been weaned from what was unfit for us, or unworthy our care? and have not those ties been drawn more close, and are not those objects seen more distinctly, which shall forever be worthy the purest desires of our souls? Have we learned to do any thing, the humblest, in the service and by the spirit of the power which meaneth all things well? If so, we may give thanks, and, perhaps, venture to offer our solicitations in behalf of those as yet less favored by circumstances. When even a few shall dare do so with the whole heart--for only a pure heart, can "avail much" in such prayers--then ALL shall soon be well.

CHRISTMAS.

Our festivals come rather too near together, since we have so few of them; thanksgiving, Christmas, new year's day,--and then none again till July. We know not but these four, with the addition of "a day set apart for fasting and prayer," might answer the purposes of rest and edification, as well as a calendar full of saints' days, if they were observed in a better spirit. But thanksgiving is devoted to good dinners; Christmas and new year's days, to making presents and compliments; fast day, to playing at cricket and other games; and the fourth of July, to boasting of the past, rather than to plans how to deserve its benefits and secure its fruits.

We value means of marking time by appointed days, because man, on one side of his nature so ardent and aspiring, is on the other so slippery and indolent a being, that he needs incessant admonitions to redeem the time. Time flows on steadily, whether he regards it or not; yet unless _he keep time_, there is no music in that flow. The sands drop with inevitable speed, yet each waits long enough to receive, if it be ready, the intellectual touch that should turn it to a sand of gold.

Time, says the Grecian fable, is the parent of Power; Power is the father of Genius and Wisdom; Time, then, is grandfather of the noblest of the human family, and we must respect the aged sire whom we see on the frontispiece of the almanacs, and believe his scythe was meant to mow down harvests ripened for an immortal use.

Yet the best provision made by the mind of society, at large, for these admonitions, soon loses its efficacy, and requires that individual earnestness, individual piety, should continually reanimate the most beautiful form. The world has never seen arrangements which might more naturally offer good suggestions, than those of the church of Rome. The founders of that church stood very near a history, radiant at every page with divine light. All their rites and ceremonial days illustrate facts of a universal interest. But the life with which piety, first, and afterwards the genius of great artists, invested these symbols, waned at last, except to a thoughtful few. Reverence was forgotten in the multitude of genuflections; the rosary became a string of beads, rather than a series of religious meditations, and "the glorious company of saints and martyrs" were not so much regarded as the teachers of heavenly truth, as intercessors to obtain for their votaries the temporal gifts they craved.

Yet we regret that some of these symbols had not been more reverenced by Protestants, as the possible occasion of good thoughts. And among others we regret that the day set apart to commemorate the birth of Jesus should have been stripped, even by those who observe it, of many impressive and touching accessories.

If ever there was an occasion on which the arts could become all but omnipotent in the service of a holy thought, it is this of the birth of the child Jesus. In the palmy days of the Catholic religion, they may be said to have wrought miracles in its behalf; and, in our colder time, when we rather reflect that light from a different point of view, than transport ourselves into it,--who, that has an eye and ear faithful to the soul, is not conscious of inexhaustible benefits from some of the works by which sublime geniuses have expressed their ideas in the adorations of the Magi and the Shepherds, in the Virgin with the infant Jesus, or that work which expresses what Christendom at large has not even begun to realize,--that work which makes us conscious, as we listen, why the soul of man was thought worthy and able to upbear a cross of such dreadful weight--the Messiah of Handel.

Christmas would seem to be the day peculiarly sacred to children, and something of this feeling here shows itself among us, though rather from German influence than of native growth. The evergreen tree is often reared for the children on Christmas evening, and its branches cluster with little tokens that may, at least, give them a sense that the world is rich, and that there are some in it who care to bless them. It is a charming sight to see their glittering eyes, and well worth much trouble in preparing the Christmas tree.

Yet, on this occasion as on all others, we could wish to see pleasure offered them in a form less selfish than it is. When shall we read of banquets prepared for the halt, the lame, and the blind, on the day that is said to have brought _their_ Friend into the world? When will the children be taught to ask all the cold and ragged little ones, whom they have seen during the day wistfully gazing at the displays in the shop-windows, to share the joys of Christmas eve?

We borrow the Christmas tree from Germany. Would that we might but borrow with it that feeling which pervades all their stories about the influence of the Christ child; and has, I doubt not,--for the spirit of literature is always, though refined, the essence of popular life,--pervaded the conduct of children there!

We will mention two of these as happily expressive of different sides of the desirable character. One is a legend of the Saint Hermann Joseph. The legend runs, that this saint, when a little boy, passed daily by a niche where was an image of the Virgin and Child, and delighted there to pay his devotions. His heart was so drawn towards the holy child, that, one day, having received what seemed to him a gift truly precious,--to wit, a beautiful red and yellow apple,--he ventured to offer it, with his prayer. To his unspeakable delight, the child put forth its hand and took the apple. After that day, never was a gift bestowed upon the little Hermann that was not carried to the same place. He needed nothing for himself, but dedicated all his childish goods to the altar.

After a while, grief comes. His father, who was a poor man, finds it necessary to take him from school and bind him to a trade. He communicates his woes to his friends of the niche, and the Virgin comforts him, like a mother, and bestows on him money, by means of which he rises, (not to ride in a gilt coach like Lord Mayor Whittington,) but to be a learned and tender shepherd of men.

Another still more touching story is that of the holy Rupert. Rupert was the only child of a princely house, and had something to give besides apples. But his generosity and human love were such, that, as a child, he could never see poor children suffering without despoiling himself of all he had with him in their behalf. His mother was, at first, displeased at this; but when he replied, "They are thy children too," her reproofs yielded to tears.

One time, when he had given away his coat to a poor child, he got wearied and belated on his homeward way. He lay down a while, and fell asleep. Then he dreamed that he was on a river shore, and saw a mild and noble old man bathing many children. After he had plunged them into the water, he would place them on a beautiful island, where they looked white and glorious as little angels. Rupert was seized with strong desire to join them, and begged the old man to bathe him, also, in the stream. But he was answered, "It is not yet time." Just then a rainbow spanned the island, and on its arch was enthroned the child Jesus, dressed in a coat that Rupert knew to be his own. And the child said to the others, "See this coat; it is one my brother Rupert has just sent to me. He has given us many gifts from his love; shall we not ask him to join us here?" And they shouted a musical "yes;" and the child started from his dream. But he had lain too long on the damp bank of the river, without his coat. A cold, and fever soon sent him to join the band of his brothers in their home.

These are legends, superstitions, will you say? But, in casting aside the shell, have we retained the kernel? The image of the child Jesus is not seen in the open street; does his spirit find other means to express itself there? Protestantism did not mean, we suppose, to deaden the spirit in excluding the form?

The thought of Jesus, as a child, has great weight with children who have learned to think of him at all. In thinking of him, they form an image of all that the morning of a pure and fervent life should be and bring. In former days I knew a boy artist, whose genius, at that time, showed high promise. He was not more than fourteen years old; a slight, pale boy, with a beaming eye. The hopes and sympathy of friends, gained by his talent, had furnished him with a studio and orders for some pictures. He had picked up from the streets a boy still younger and poorer than himself, to take care of the room and prepare his colors; and the two boys were as content in their relation as Michael Angelo with his Urbino. If you went there you found exposed to view many pretty pictures: a Girl with a Dove, the Guitar Player and such subjects as are commonly supposed to interest at his age. But, hid in a corner, and never, shown, unless to the beggar page, or some most confidential friend, was the real object of his love and pride, the slowly growing work of secret hours. The subject of this picture was Christ teaching the doctors. And in those doctors he had expressed all he had already observed of the pedantry and shallow conceit of those in whom mature years have not unfolded the soul; and in the child, all he felt that early youth should be and seek, though, alas! his own feet failed him on the difficult road. This one record of the youth of Jesus had, at least, been much to his mind.

In earlier days, the little saints thought they best imitated the Emanuel by giving apples and coats; but we know not why, in our age, that esteems itself so enlightened, they should not become also the givers of spiritual gifts. We see in them, continually, impulses that only require a good direction to effect infinite good. See the little girls at work for foreign missions; that is not useless. They devote the time to a purpose that is not selfish; the horizon of their thoughts is extended. But they are perfectly capable of becoming home missionaries as well. The principle of stewardship would make them so.

I have seen a little girl of thirteen,--who had much service, too, to perform, for a hard-working mother,--in the midst of a circle of poor children whom she gathered daily to a morning school. She took them from the door-steps and the ditches; she washed their hands and faces; she taught them to read and to sew; and she told them stories that had delighted her own infancy. In her face, though in feature and complexion plain, was something, already, of a Madonna sweetness, and it had no way eclipsed the gayety of childhood.

I have seen a boy scarce older, brought up for some time with the sons of laborers, who, so soon as he found himself possessed of superior advantages, thought not of surpassing others, but of excelling, and then imparting--and he was able to do it. If the other boys had less leisure, and could pay for less instruction, they did not suffer for it. He could not be happy unless they also could enjoy Milton, and pass from nature to natural philosophy. He performed, though in a childish way, and in no Grecian garb, the part of Apollo amid the herdsmen of Admetus.

The cause of education would be indefinitely furthered, if, in addition to formal means, there were but this principle awakened in the hearts of the young, that what they have they must bestow. All are not natural instructors, but a large proportion are; and those who do possess such a talent are the best possible teachers to those a little younger than themselves. Many have more patience with the difficulties they have lately left behind, and enjoy their power of assisting more than those farther removed in age and knowledge do.

Then the intercourse may be far more congenial and profitable than where the teacher receives for hire all sorts of pupils, as they are sent him by their guardians. Here he need only choose those who have a predisposition for what he is best able to teach. And, as I would have the so-called higher instruction as much diffused in this way as the lower, there would be a chance of awakening all the power that now lies latent.

If a girl, for instance, who has only a passable talent for music, but who, from the advantage of social position, has been able to gain thorough instruction, felt it her duty to teach whomsoever she knew that had such a talent, without money to cultivate it, the good is obvious.

Those who are learning receive an immediate benefit by an effort to rearrange and interpret what they learn; so the use of this justice would be twofold.

Some efforts are made here and there; nay, sometimes there are those who can say they have returned usury for every gift of fate. And, would others make the same experiments, they might find Utopia not so far off as the children of this world, wise in securing their own selfish ease, would persuade us it must always be.

We have hinted what sort of Christmas box we would wish for the children. It would be one full, as that of the child Christ must be, of the pieces of silver that were lost and are found. But Christmas, with its peculiar associations, has deep interest for men, and women too, no less. It has so in their mutual relations. At the time thus celebrated, a pure woman saw in her child what the Son of man should be as a child of God. She anticipated for him a life of glory to God, peace and good will to man. In every young mother's heart, who has any purity of heart, the same feelings arise. But most of these mothers let them go without obeying their instructions. If they did not, we should see other children--other men than now throng our streets. The boy could not invariably disappoint the mother, the man the wife, who steadily demanded of him such a career.

And man looks upon woman, in this relation, always as he should. Does he see in her a holy mother worthy to guard the infancy of an immortal soul? Then she assumes in his eyes those traits which the Romish church loved to revere in Mary. Frivolity, base appetite, contempt are exorcised; and man and woman appear again in unprofaned connection, as brother and sister, the children and the servants of the one Divine Love, and pilgrims to a common aim.

Were all this right in the private sphere, the public would soon right itself also, and the nations of Christendom might join in a celebration, such as "kings and prophets waited for," and so many martyrs died to achieve, of Christ-Mass.

MARIANA[33]

Among those whom I met in a recent visit at Chicago was Mrs. Z., the aunt of an old schoolmate, to whom I impatiently hastened, to demand news of Mariana. The answer startled me. Mariana, so full of life, was dead. That form, the most rich in energy and coloring of any I had ever seen, had faded from the earth. The circle of youthful associations had given way in the part that seemed the strongest. What I now learned of the story of this life, and what was by myself remembered, may be bound together in this slight sketch.

At the boarding school to which I was too early sent, a fond, a proud, and timid child, I saw among the ranks of the gay and graceful, bright or earnest girls, only one who interested my fancy or touched my young heart; and this was Mariana. She was, on the father's side, of Spanish Creole blood, but had been sent to the Atlantic coast, to receive a school education under the care of her aunt, Mrs. Z.

This lady had kept her mostly at home with herself, and Mariana had gone from her house to a day school; but the aunt being absent for a time in Europe, she had now been unfortunately committed for some time to the mercies of a boarding school.

A strange bird she proved there--a lonely one, that could not make for itself a summer. At first, her schoolmates were captivated with her ways, her love of wild dances and sudden song, her freaks of passion and of wit. She was always new, always surprising, and, for a time, charming.

But, after a while, they tired of her. She could never be depended on to join in their plans, yet she expected them to follow out hers with their whole strength. She was very loving, even infatuated in her own affections, and exacted from those who had professed any love for her, the devotion she was willing to bestow.

Yet there was a vein of haughty caprice in her character; a love of solitude, which made her at times wish to retire entirely; and at these times she would expect to be thoroughly understood, and let alone, yet to be welcomed back when she returned. She did not thwart others in their humors, but she never doubted of great indulgence from them.

Some singular ways she had, which, when new, charmed, but, after acquaintance, displeased her companions. She had by nature the same habit and power of excitement that is described in the spinning dervishes of the East. Like them, she would spin until all around her were giddy, while her own brain, instead of being disturbed, was excited to great action. Pausing, she would declaim verse of others or her own; perform many parts, with strange catch-words and burdens that seemed to act with mystical power on her own fancy, sometimes stimulating her to convulse the hearer with laughter, sometimes to melt him to tears. When her power began to languish, she would spin again till fired to recommence her singular drama, into which she wove figures from the scenes of her earlier childhood, her companions, and the dignitaries she sometimes saw, with fantasies unknown to life, unknown to heaven or earth.

This excitement, as may be supposed, was not good for her. It oftenest came on in the evening, and spoiled her sleep. She would wake in the night, and cheat her restlessness by inventions that teased, while they sometimes diverted her companions.

She was also a sleep-walker; and this one trait of her case did somewhat alarm her guardians, who, otherwise, showed the same profound stupidity, as to this peculiar being, usual in the overseers of the young. They consulted a physician, who said she would outgrow it, and prescribed a milk diet.

Meantime, the fever of this ardent and too early stimulated nature was constantly increased by the restraints and narrow routine of the boarding school. She was always devising means to break in upon it. She had a taste, which would have seemed ludicrous to her mates, if they had not felt some awe of her, from a touch of genius and power, that never left her, for costume and fancy dresses; always some sash twisted about her, some drapery, something odd in the arrangement of her hair and dress; so that the methodical preceptress dared not let her go out without a careful scrutiny and remodelling, whose soberizing effects generally disappeared the moment she was in the free air.

At last, a vent for her was found in private theatricals. Play followed play, and in these and the rehearsals she found entertainment congenial with her. The principal parts, as a matter of course, fell to her lot; most of the good suggestions and arrangements came from her, and for a time she ruled masterly and shone triumphant.

During these performances the girls had heightened their natural bloom with artificial red; this was delightful to them--it was something so out of the way. But Mariana, after the plays were over, kept her carmine saucer on the dressing table, and put on her blushes regularly as the morning.

When stared and jeered at, she at first said she did it because she thought it made her look prettier; but, after a while, she became quite petulant about it--would make no reply to any joke, but merely kept on doing it.

This irritated the girls, as all eccentricity does the world in general, more than vice or malignity. They talked it over among themselves, till they got wrought up to a desire of punishing, once for all, this sometimes amusing, but so often provoking nonconformist.

Having obtained the leave of the mistress, they laid, with great glee, a plan one evening, which was to be carried into execution next day at dinner.

Among Mariana's irregularities was a great aversion to the meal-time ceremonial. So long, so tiresome she found it, to be seated at a certain moment, to wait while each one was served at so large a table, and one where there was scarcely any conversation; from day to day it became more heavy to her to sit there, or go there at all. Often as possible she excused herself on the ever-convenient plea of headache, and was hardly ever ready when the dinner bell rang.

To-day it found her on the balcony, lost in gazing on the beautiful prospect. I have heard her say, afterwards, she had rarely in her life been so happy--and she was one with whom happiness was a still rapture. It was one of the most blessed summer days; the shadows of great white clouds empurpled the distant hills for a few moments only to leave them more golden; the tall grass of the wide fields waved in the softest breeze. Pure blue were the heavens, and the same hue of pure contentment was in the heart of Mariana.

Suddenly on her bright mood jarred the dinner bell. At first rose her usual thought, I will not, cannot go; and then the _must_, which daily life can always enforce, even upon the butterflies and birds, came, and she walked reluctantly to her room. She merely changed her dress, and never thought of adding the artificial rose to her cheek.

When she took her seat in the dining hall, and was asked if she would be helped, raising her eyes, she saw the person who asked her was deeply rouged, with a bright, glaring spot, perfectly round, in either cheek. She looked at the next--the same apparition! She then slowly passed her eyes down the whole line, and saw the same, with a suppressed smile distorting every countenance. Catching the design at once she deliberately looked along her own side of the table, at every schoolmate in turn; every one had joined in the trick. The teachers strove to be grave, but she saw they enjoyed the joke. The servants could not suppress a titter.

When Warren Hastings stood at the bar of Westminster Hall; when the Methodist preacher walked through a line of men, each of whom greeted him with a brickbat or a rotten egg,--they had some preparation for the crisis, and it might not be very difficult to meet it with an impassive brow. Our little girl was quite unprepared to find herself in the midst of a world which despised her, and triumphed in her disgrace.

She had ruled like a queen in the midst of her companions; she had shed her animation through their lives, and loaded them with prodigal favors, nor once suspected that a powerful favorite might not be loved. Now, she felt that she had been but a dangerous plaything in the hands of those whose hearts she never had doubted.

Yet the occasion found her equal to it; for Mariana had the kind of spirit, which, in a better cause, had made the Roman matron truly say of her death wound, "It is not painful, Poetus." She did not blench--she did not change countenance. She swallowed her dinner with apparent composure. She made remarks to those near her as if she had no eyes.

The wrath of the foe of course rose higher, and the moment they were freed from the restraints of the dining room, they all ran off, gayly calling, and sarcastically laughing, with backward glances, at Mariana, left alone.

She went alone to her room, locked the door, and threw herself on the floor in strong convulsions. These had sometimes threatened her life, as a child, but of later years she had outgrown them. School hours came, and she was not there. A little girl, sent to her door, could get no answer. The teachers became alarmed, and broke it open. Bitter was their penitence and that of her companions at the state in which they found her. For some hours terrible anxiety was felt; but at last, Nature, exhausted, relieved herself by a deep slumber.

From this Mariana rose an altered being. She made no reply to the expressions of sorrow from her companions, none to the grave and kind, but undiscerning comments of her teacher. She did not name the source of her anguish, and its poisoned dart sunk deeply in. It was this thought which stung her so.--"What, not one, not a single one, in the hour of trial, to take my part! not one who refused to take part against me!" Past words of love, and caresses little heeded at the time, rose to her memory, and gave fuel to her distempered thoughts. Beyond the sense of universal perfidy, of burning resentment, she could not get. And Mariana, born for love, now hated all the world.

The change, however, which these feelings made in her conduct and appearance bore no such construction to the careless observer. Her gay freaks were quite gone, her wildness, her invention. Her dress was uniform, her manner much subdued. Her chief interest seemed now to lie in her studies and in music. Her companions she never sought; but they, partly from uneasy, remorseful feelings, partly that they really liked her much better now that she did not oppress and puzzle them, sought her continually. And here the black shadow comes upon her life--the only stain upon the history of Mariana.

They talked to her as girls, having few topics, naturally do of one another. And the demon rose within her, and spontaneously, without design, generally without words of positive falsehood, she became a genius of discord among them. She fanned those flames of envy and jealousy which a wise, true word from a third person will often quench forever; by a glance, or a seemingly light reply, she planted the seeds of dissension, till there was scarce a peaceful affection or sincere intimacy in the circle where she lived, and could not but rule, for she was one whose nature was to that of the others as fire to clay.

It was at this time that I came to the school, and first saw Mariana. Me she charmed at once, for I was a sentimental child, who, in my early ill health, had been indulged in reading novels till I had no eyes for the common greens and browns of life. The heroine of one of these, "the Bandit's Bride," I immediately saw in Mariana. Surely the Bandit's Bride had just such hair, and such strange, lively ways, and such a sudden flash of the eye. The Bandit's Bride, too, was born to be "misunderstood" by all but her lover. But Mariana, I was determined, should be more fortunate; for, until her lover appeared, I myself would be the wise and delicate being who could understand her.

It was not, however, easy to approach her for this purpose. Did I offer to run and fetch her handkerchief, she was obliged to go to her room, and would rather do it herself. She did not like to have people turn over for her the leaves of the music book as she played. Did I approach my stool to her feet, she moved away, as if to give me room. The bunch of wild flowers which I timidly laid beside her plate was left there.

After some weeks my desire to attract her notice really preyed upon me, and one day, meeting her alone in the entry, I fell upon my knees, and kissing her hand, cried, "O Mariana, do let me love you, and try to love me a little." But my idol snatched away her hand, and, laughing more wildly than the Bandit's Bride was ever described to have done, ran into her room. After that day her manner to me was not only cold, but repulsive; I felt myself scorned, and became very unhappy.

Perhaps four months had passed thus, when, one afternoon, it became obvious that something more than common was brewing. Dismay and mystery were written in many faces of the older girls; much whispering was going on in corners.

In the evening, after prayers, the principal bade us stay; and, in a grave, sad voice, summoned forth Mariana to answer charges to be made against her.

Mariana came forward, and leaned against the chimney-piece. Eight of the older girls came forward, and preferred against her charges--alas! too well founded--of calumny and falsehood.

My heart sank within me, as one after the other brought up their proofs, and I saw they were too strong to be resisted. I could not bear the thought of this second disgrace of my shining favorite. The first had been whispered to me, though the girls did not like to talk about it. I must confess, such is the charm of strength to softer natures, that neither of these crises could deprive Mariana of hers in my eyes.

At first, she defended herself with self-possession and eloquence. But when she found she could no more resist the truth, she suddenly threw herself down, dashing her head, with all her force, against the iron hearth, on which a fire was burning, and was taken up senseless.

The affright of those present was great. Now that they had perhaps killed her, they reflected it would have been as well if they had taken warning from the former occasion, and approached very carefully a nature so capable of any extreme. After a while she revived, with a faint groan, amid the sobs of her companions. I was on my knees by the bed, and held her cold hand. One of those most aggrieved took it from me to beg her pardon, and say it was impossible not to love her. She made no reply.

Neither that night, nor for several days, could a word be obtained from her, nor would she touch food; but, when it was presented to her, or any one drew near for any cause, she merely turned away her head, and gave no sign. The teacher saw that some terrible nervous affection had fallen upon her--that she grew more and more feverish. She knew not what to do.

Meanwhile, a new revolution had taken place in the mind of the passionate but nobly-tempered child. All these months nothing but the sense of injury had rankled in her heart. She had gone on in one mood, doing what the demon prompted, without scruple and without fear.

But at the moment of detection, the tide ebbed, and the bottom of her soul lay revealed to her eye. How black, how stained and sad! Strange, strange that she had not seen before the baseness and cruelty of falsehood, the loveliness of truth. Now, amid the wreck, uprose the moral nature which never before had attained the ascendant. "But," she thought, "too late sin is revealed to me in all its deformity, and sin-defiled, I will not, cannot live. The mainspring of life is broken."

And thus passed slowly by her hours in that black despair of which only youth is capable. In older years men suffer more dull pain, as each sorrow that comes drops its leaden weight into the past, and, similar features of character bringing similar results, draws up the heavy burden buried in those depths. But only youth has energy, with fixed, unwinking gaze, to contemplate grief, to hold it in the arms and to the heart, like a child which makes it wretched, yet is indubitably its own.

The lady who took charge of this sad child had never well understood her before, but had always looked on her with great tenderness. And now love seemed--when all around were in greatest distress, fearing to call in medical aid, fearing to do without it--to teach her where the only balm was to be found that could have healed this wounded spirit.

One night she came in, bringing a calming draught. Mariana was sitting, as usual, her hair loose, her dress the same robe they had put on her at first, her eyes fixed vacantly upon the whited wall. To the proffers and entreaties of her nurse she made no reply.

The lady burst into tears, but Mariana did not seem even to observe it.

The lady then said, "O my child, do not despair; do not think that one great fault can mar a whole life. Let me trust you, let me tell you the griefs of my sad life. I will tell to you, Mariana, what I never expected to impart to any one."

And so she told her tale: it was one of pain, of shame, borne, not for herself, but for one near and dear as herself. Mariana knew the lady--knew the pride and reserve of her nature. She had often admired to see how the cheek, lovely, but no longer young, mantled with the deepest blush of youth, and the blue eyes were cast down at any little emotion: she had understood the proud sensibility of the character. She fixed her eyes on those now raised to hers, bright with fast-falling tears. She heard the story to the end, and then, without saying a word, stretched out her hand for the cup.

She returned to life, but it was as one who has passed through the valley of death. The heart of stone was quite broken in her, the fiery life fallen from flame to coal. When her strength was a little restored, she had all her companions summoned, and said to them, "I deserved to die, but a generous trust has called me back to life. I will be worthy of it, nor ever betray the truth, or resent injury more. Can you forgive the past?"

And they not only forgave, but, with love and earnest tears, clasped in their arms the returning sister. They vied with one another in offices of humble love to the humbled one; and let it be recorded as an instance of the pure honor of which young hearts are capable, that these facts, known to forty persons, never, so far as I know, transpired beyond those walls.

It was not long after this that Mariana was summoned home. She went thither a wonderfully instructed being, though in ways that those who had sent her forth to learn little dreamed of.

Never was forgotten the vow of the returning prodigal. Mariana could not resent, could not play false. The terrible crisis which she so early passed through probably prevented the world from hearing much of her. A wild fire was tamed in that hour of penitence at the boarding school such as has oftentimes wrapped court and camp in its destructive glow.

But great were the perils she had yet to undergo, for she was one of those barks which easily get beyond soundings, and ride not lightly on the plunging billow.

Her return to her native climate seconded the effects of inward revolutions. The cool airs of the north had exasperated nerves too susceptible for their tension. Those of the south restored her to a more soft and indolent state. Energy gave place to feeling--turbulence to intensity of character.

At this time, love was the natural guest; and he came to her under a form that might have deluded one less ready for delusion.

Sylvain was a person well proportioned to her lot in years, family, and fortune. His personal beauty was not great, but of a noble description. Repose marked his slow gesture, and the steady gaze of his large brown eye; but it was a repose that would give way to a blaze of energy, when the occasion called. In his stature, expression, and heavy coloring, he might not unfitly be represented by the great magnolias that inhabit the forests of that climate. His voice, like every thing about him, was rich and soft, rather than sweet or delicate.

Mariana no sooner knew him than she loved; and her love, lovely as she was, soon excited his. But O, it is a curse to woman to love first, or most! In so doing she reverses the natural relations; and her heart can never, never be satisfied with what ensues.

Mariana loved first, and loved most, for she had most force and variety to love with. Sylvain seemed, at first, to take her to himself, as the deep southern night might some fair star; but it proved not so.

Mariana was a very intellectual being, and she needed companionship. This she could only have with Sylvain, in the paths of passion and action. Thoughts he had none, and little delicacy of sentiment. The gifts she loved to prepare of such for him he took with a sweet but indolent smile; he held them lightly, and soon they fell from his grasp. He loved to have her near him, to feel the glow and fragrance of her nature, but cared not to explore the little secret paths whence that fragrance was collected.

Mariana knew not this for a long time. Loving so much, she imagined all the rest; and, where she felt a blank, always hoped that further communion would fill it up. When she found this could never be,--that there was absolutely a whole province of her being to which nothing in his answered,--she was too deeply in love to leave him. Often, after passing hours together beneath the southern moon, when, amid the sweet intoxication of mutual love, she still felt the desolation of solitude, and a repression of her finer powers, she had asked herself, Can I give him up? But the heart always passionately answered, No! I may be wretched with him, but I cannot live without him.

And the last miserable feeling of these conflicts was, that if the lover--soon to be the bosom friend--could have dreamed of these conflicts, he would have laughed, or else been angry, even enough to give her up.

Ah, weakness of the strong! of those strong only where strength is weakness! Like others, she had the decisions of life to make before she had light by which to make them. Let none condemn her. Those who have not erred as fatally should thank the guardian angel who gave them more time to prepare for judgment, but blame no children who thought at arm's length to find the moon. Mariana, with a heart capable of highest Eros, gave it to one who knew love only as a flower or plaything, and bound her heartstrings to one who parted his as lightly as the ripe fruit leaves the bough. The sequel could not fail. Many console themselves for the one great mistake with their children, with the world. This was not possible to Mariana. A few months of domestic life she still was almost happy. But Sylvain then grew tired. He wanted business and the world: of these she had no knowledge, for them no faculties. He wanted in her the head of his house; she to make her heart his home. No compromise was possible between natures of such unequal poise, and which had met only on one or two points. Through all its stages she

"felt The agonizing sense Of seeing love from passion melt Into indifference; The fearful shame, that, day by day, Burns onward, still to burn, To have thrown her precious heart away, And met this black return,"

till death at last closed the scene. Not that she died of one downright blow on the heart. That is not the way such cases proceed. I cannot detail all the symptoms, for I was not there to watch them, and aunt Z., who described them, was neither so faithful an observer or narrator as I have shown myself in the school-day passages; but, generally, they were as follows.

Sylvain wanted to go into the world, or let it into his house. Mariana consented; but, with an unsatisfied heart, and no lightness of character, she played her part ill there. The sort of talent and facility she had displayed in early days were not the least like what is called out in the social world by the desire to please and to shine. Her excitement had been muse-like--that of the improvisatrice, whose kindling fancy seeks to create an atmosphere round it, and makes the chain through which to set free its electric sparks. That had been a time of wild and exuberant life. After her character became more tender and concentrated, strong affection or a pure enthusiasm might still have called out beautiful talents in her. But in the first she was utterly disappointed. The second was not roused within her mind. She did not expand into various life, and remained unequal; sometimes too passive, sometimes too ardent, and not sufficiently occupied with what occupied those around her to come on the same level with them and embellish their hours.

Thus she lost ground daily with her husband, who, comparing her with the careless shining dames of society, wondered why he had found her so charming in solitude.

At intervals, when they were left alone, Mariana wanted to open her heart, to tell the thoughts of her mind. She was so conscious of secret riches within herself, that sometimes it seemed, could she but reveal a glimpse of them to the eye of Sylvain, he would be attracted near her again, and take a path where they could walk hand in hand. Sylvain, in these intervals, wanted an indolent repose. His home was his castle. He wanted no scenes too exciting there. Light jousts and plays were well enough, but no grave encounters. He liked to lounge, to sing, to read, to sleep. In fine, Sylvain became the kind but preoccupied husband, Mariana the solitary and wretched wife. He was off, continually, with his male companions, on excursions or affairs of pleasure. At home Mariana found that neither her books nor music would console her.

She was of too strong a nature to yield without a struggle to so dull a fiend as despair. She looked into other hearts, seeking whether she could there find such home as an orphan asylum may afford. This she did rather because the chance came to her, and it seemed unfit not to seize the proffered plank, than in hope; for she was not one to double her stakes, but rather with Cassandra power to discern early the sure course of the game. And Cassandra whispered that she was one of those

"Whom men love not, but yet regret;"

and so it proved. Just as in her childish days, though in a different form, it happened betwixt her and these companions. She could not be content to receive them quietly, but was stimulated to throw herself too much into the tie, into the hour, till she filled it too full for them. Like Fortunio, who sought to do homage to his friends by building a fire of cinnamon, not knowing that its perfume would be too strong for their endurance, so did Mariana. What she wanted to tell they did not wish to hear; a little had pleased, so much overpowered, and they preferred the free air of the street, even, to the cinnamon perfume of her palace.

However, this did not signify; had they staid, it would not have availed her. It was a nobler road, a higher aim, she needed now; this did not become clear to her.

She lost her appetite, she fell sick, had fever. Sylvain was alarmed, nursed her tenderly; she grew better. Then his care ceased; he saw not the mind's disease, but left her to rise into health, and recover the tone of her spirits, as she might. More solitary than ever, she tried to raise herself; but she knew not yet enough. The weight laid upon her young life was a little too heavy for it. One long day she passed alone, and the thoughts and presages came too thick for her strength. She knew not what to do with them, relapsed into fever, and died.

Notwithstanding this weakness, I must ever think of her as a fine sample of womanhood, born to shed light and life on some palace home. Had she known more of God and the universe, she would not have given way where so many have conquered. But peace be with her; she now, perhaps, has entered into a larger freedom, which is knowledge. With her died a great interest in life to me. Since her I have never seen a Bandit's Bride. She, indeed, turned out to be only a merchant's. Sylvain is married again to a fair and laughing girl, who will not die, probably, till their marriage grows a "golden marriage."

Aunt Z. had with her some papers of Mariana's, which faintly shadow forth the thoughts that engaged her in the last days. One of these seems to have been written when some faint gleam had been thrown across the path only to make its darkness more visible. It seems to have been suggested by remembrance of the beautiful ballad, _Helen of Kirconnel Lee_, which once she loved to recite, and in tones that would not have sent a chill to the heart from which it came.

"Death Opens her sweet white arms, and whispers, Peace; Come, say thy sorrows in this bosom! This Will never close against thee, and my heart, Though cold, cannot be colder much than man's."

DISAPPOINTMENT.

"I wish I were where Helen lies." A lover in the times of old, Thus vents his grief in lonely sighs, And hot tears from a bosom cold.

But, mourner for thy martyred love, Couldst thou but know what hearts must feel. Where no sweet recollections move, Whose tears a desert fount reveal!

When "in thy arms bird Helen fell," She died, sad man, she died for thee; Nor could the films of death dispel Her loving eye's sweet radiancy.

Thou wert beloved, and she had loved, Till death alone the whole could tell; Death every shade of doubt removed, And steeped the star in its cold well.

On some fond breast the parting soul Relies--earth has no more to give; Who wholly loves has known the whole; The wholly loved doth truly live.

But some, sad outcasts from this prize, Do wither to a lonely grave; All hearts their hidden love despise, And leave them to the whelming wave.

They heart to heart have never pressed, Nor hands in holy pledge have given, By father's love were ne'er caressed, Nor in a mother's eye saw heaven.

A flowerless and fruitless tree, A dried-up stream, a mateless bird, They live, yet never living be, They die, their music all unheard.

I wish I were where Helen lies, For there I could not be alone; But now, when this dull body dies, The spirit still will make its moan.

Love passed me by, nor touched my brow; Life would not yield one perfect boon; And all too late it calls me now-- O, all too late, and all too soon.

If thou couldst the dark riddle read Which leaves this dart within my breast, Then might I think thou lov'st indeed, Then were the whole to thee confest.

Father, they will not take me home; To the poor child no heart is free; In sleet and snow all night I roam; Father, was this decreed by thee?

I will not try another door, To seek what I have never found; Now, till the very last is o'er, Upon the earth I'll wander round.

I will not hear the treacherous call That bids me stay and rest a while, For I have found that, one and all, They seek me for a prey and spoil.

They are not bad; I know it well; I know they know not what they do; They are the tools of the dread spell Which the lost lover must pursue.

In temples sometimes she may rest, In lonely groves, away from men, There bend the head, by heats distressed, Nor be by blows awoke again.

Nature is kind, and God is kind; And, if she had not had a heart, Only that great discerning mind, She might have acted well her part.

But O this thirst, that nought can fill, Save those unfounden waters free! The angel of my life must still And soothe me in eternity!

It marks the defect in the position of woman that one like Mariana should have found reason to write thus. To a man of equal power, equal sincerity, no more!--many resources would have presented themselves. He would not have needed to seek, he would have been called by life, and not permitted to be quite wrecked through the affections only. But such women as Mariana are often lost, unless they meet some man of sufficiently great soul to prize them.

Van Artevelde's Elena, though in her individual nature unlike my Mariana, is like her in a mind whose large impulses are disproportioned to the persons and occasions she meets, and which carry her beyond those reserves which mark the appointed lot of woman. But, when she met Van Artevelde, he was too great not to revere her rare nature, without regard to the stains and errors of its past history; great enough to receive her entirely, and make a new life for her; man enough to be a lover! But as such men come not so often as once an age, their presence should not be absolutely needed to sustain life.

SUNDAY MEDITATIONS ON VARIOUS TEXTS.

MEDITATION FIRST.

"And Jesus, answering, said unto them, Have faith in God."--_Mark_ xi. 22.

O, direction most difficult to follow! O, counsel most mighty of import! Beauteous harmony to the purified soul! Mysterious, confounding as an incantation to those yet groping and staggering amid the night, the fog, the chaos of their own inventions!

Yes, this is indeed the beginning and the end of all knowledge and virtue; the way and the goal; the enigma and its solution. The soul cannot prove to herself the existence of a God; she cannot prove her own immortality; she cannot prove the beauty of virtue, or the deformity of vice; her own consciousness, the first ground of this belief, cannot be compassed by the reason, that inferior faculty which the Deity gave for practical, temporal purposes only. This consciousness is divine; it is part of the Deity; through this alone we sympathize with the imperishable, the infinite, the nature of things. Were reason commensurate with this part of our intellectual life, what should we do with the things of time? The leaves and buds of earth would wither beneath the sun of our intelligence; its crags and precipices would be levelled before the mighty torrent of our will; all its dross would crumble to ashes under the fire of our philosophy.

God willed it otherwise; WHY, who can guess? Why this planet, with its tormenting limitations of space and time, was ever created,--why the soul was cased in this clogging, stifling integument, (which, while it conveys to the soul, in a roundabout way, knowledge which she might obviously acquire much better without its aid, tempts constantly to vice and indolence, suggesting sordid wants, and hampering or hindering thought,)--I pretend not to say. Let others toil to stifle sad distrust a thousand ways. Let them satisfy themselves by reasonings on the nature of free agency; let them imagine it was impossible men should be purified to angels, except by resisting the temptations of guilt and crime; let them be _reasonably_ content to feel that

"Faith conquers in no easy war; By toil alone the prize is won; The grape dissolves not in the cup-- Wine from the crushing press must run; And would a spirit heavenward go, A heart must break in death below."

Why an _omnipotent_ Deity should permit evil, either as necessary to produce good, or incident to laws framed for its production, must remain a mystery to me. True, _we_ cannot conceive how the world could have been ordered differently, and because _we_,--beings half of clay; beings bred amid, and nurtured upon imperfection and decay; beings who must not only sleep and eat, but pass the greater part of their temporal day in procuring the means to do so,--because WE, creatures so limited and blind, so weak of thought and dull of hearing, cannot conceive how evil could have been dispensed with, those among us who are styled _wise_ and _learned_ have thought fit to assume that the Infinite, the Omnipotent, could not have found a way! "Could not," "evil must be incident"--terms invented to express the thoughts or deeds of the children of dust. Shall they be applied to the Omnipotent? Is a confidence in the goodness of God more trying to faith, than the belief that a God exists, to whom these words, transcending our powers of conception, apply? O, no, no! "_Have faith in God!_" Strive to expand thy soul to the feeling of wisdom, of beauty, of goodness; live, and act as if these were the necessary elements of things; "live for thy faith, and thou shalt behold it living." In another world God will repay thy trust, and "reveal to thee the first causes of things which Leibnitz could not," as the queen of Prussia said, when she was dying. Socrates has declared that the belief in the soul's immortality is so delightful, so elevating, so purifying, that even were it not the truth, "we should daily strive to enchant ourselves with it." And thus with faith in wisdom and goodness,--that is to say, in God,--the earthquake-defying, rock-foundation of our hopes is laid; the sun-greeting dome which crowns the most superb palace of our knowledge is builded. A noble and accomplished man, of a later day, has said, "To credit ordinary and visible objects is not faith, but persuasion. I bless myself, and am thankful, that I lived not in the days of miracles, that I never saw Christ, nor his disciples; then had my faith been thrust upon me, nor could I enjoy that greater blessing pronounced upon those who believe yet saw not."

I cannot speak thus proudly and heartily. I find the world of sense strong enough against the intellectual and celestial world. It is easy to believe in our passionless moments, or in those when earth would seem too dark without the guiding star of faith; but to _live_ in faith, not sometimes to feel, but always to have it, is difficult. Were faith ever with us, how steady would be our energy, how equal our ambition, how calmly bright our hopes! The darts of envy would be blunted, the cup of disappointment lose its bitterness, the impassioned eagerness of the heart be stilled, tears would fall like holy dew, and blossoms fragrant with celestial May ensue.

But the prayer of most of us must be, "Lord, we believe--help thou our unbelief!" These are to me the most significant words of Holy Writ. I _will_ to believe; O, guide, support, strengthen, and soothe me to do so! Lord, grant me to believe firmly, and to act nobly. Let me not be tempted to waste my time, and weaken my powers, by attempts to soar on feeble pinions "where angels bashful look." In _faith_ let me interpret the universe!

MEDITATION SECOND.

"Why is light given to a man whose way is hid, and whom God hath hedged in?"--_Job_ iii. 23.

This pathetic inquiry rises from all parts of the globe, from millions of human souls, to that heaven from whence the light proceeds. From the young, full of eager aspirations after virtue and glory; with the glance of the falcon to descry the high-placed aim,--but ah! the wing of the wren to reach it! The young enthusiast must often weep. His heart glows, his eye sparkles as he reads of the youthful triumphs of a Pompey, the sublime devotion of an Agis;[34] he shuts the book, he looks around him for a theatre whereon to do likewise--petty pursuits, mean feelings, and trifling pleasures meet his eye; the cold breeze of selfishness has nipped every flower; the dull glow of prosaic life overpowers the beauties of the landscape. He plunges into the unloved pursuit, or some despised amusement, to soothe that day's impatience, and wakes on the morrow, crying, "I have lost a day; and where, where shall I now turn my steps to find the destined path?" The gilded image of some petty victory holds forth a talisman which seems to promise him sure tokens. He rushes forward; the swords of foes and rivals bar the way; the ground trembles and gives way beneath his feet; rapid streams, unseen at a distance, roll between him and the object of his pursuit; faint, giddy and exhausted by the loss of his best blood, he reaches the goal, seizes the talisman; his eyes devour the inscription--alas! the characters are unknown to him. He looks back for some friend who might aid him,--his friends are whelmed beneath the torrent, or have turned back disheartened. He must struggle onward alone and ignorant as before; yet in his wishes there is light.

Another is attracted by a lovely phantom; with airy step she precedes him, holding, as he thinks, in her upward-pointing hand the faithful needle which might point him to the pole-star of his wishes. Unwearied he follows, imploring her in most moving terms to pause but a moment and let him take her hand. Heedless she flits onward to some hopeless desert, where she pauses only to turn to her unfortunate captive the malicious face of a very Morgana.

The old,--O their sighs are deeper still! They have wandered far, toiled much; the true light is now shown them. Ah, why was it reflected so falsely through "life's many-colored dome of painted glass" upon their youthful, anxious gaze? And now the path they came by is hedged in by new circumstances against the feet of others, and its devious course vainly mapped in their memories; should the light of their example lead others into the same track, these unlucky followers will vainly seek an issue. They attempt to unroll their charts for the use of their children, and their children's children. They feed the dark lantern of wisdom with the oil of experience, and hold it aloft over the declivity up which these youth are blundering, in vain; some fall, misled by the flickering light; others seek by-paths, along which they hope to be guided by suns or moons of their own. All meet at last, only to bemoan or sneer together. How many strive with feverish zeal to paint on the clouds of outward life the hues of their own souls; what do not these suffer? What baffling,--what change in the atmosphere on which they depend,--yet _not_ in vain! Something they realize, something they grasp, something (O, how unlike the theme of their hope!) they have created. A transient glow, a deceitful thrill,--these be the blisses of mortals. Yet have these given birth to noble deeds, and thoughts worthy to be recorded by the pens of angels on the tablets of immortality.

And this, O man! is thy only solace in those paroxysms of despair which must result to the yet eager heart from the vast disproportion between our perceptions and our exhibition of those perceptions. Seize on all the twigs that may help thee in thine ascent, though the thorns upon them rend thee. Toil ceaselessly towards the Source of light, and remember that he who thus eloquently lamented found that, although far worse than his dark presentiments had pictured came upon him, though vainly he feared and trembled, and there was no safety for him, yet his sighings came before his meat, and, happy in their recollection, he found at last that danger and imprisonment are but for a season, and that God is _good_, as he is great.

APPEAL FOR AN ASYLUM FOR DISCHARGED FEMALE CONVICTS.

The ladies of the Prison Association have been from time to time engaged in the endeavor to procure funds for establishing this asylum.[35] They have met, thus far, with little success; but touched by the position of several women, who, on receiving their discharge, were anxiously waiting in hope there would be means provided to save them from return to their former suffering and polluted life, they have taken a house, and begun their good work, in faith that Heaven must take heed that such an enterprise may not fail, and touch the hearts of men to aid it.

They have taken a house, and secured the superintendence of an excellent matron. There are already six women under her care. But this house is unprovided with furniture, or the means of securing food for body and mind to these unfortunates, during the brief novitiate which gives them so much to learn and unlearn.

The object is to lend a helping hand to the many who show a desire of reformation, but have hitherto been inevitably repelled into infamy by the lack of friends to find them honest employment, and a temporary refuge till it can be procured. Efforts will be made to instruct them how to break up bad habits, and begin a healthy course for body and mind.

The house has in it scarcely any thing. It is a true Lazarus establishment, asking for the crumbs that fall from the rich man's table. Old furniture would be acceptable, clothes, books that are no longer needed by their owners.

This statement we make in appealing to the poor, though they are, usually, the most generous. Not that they are, originally, better than the rich, but circumstances have fitted them to appreciate the misfortunes, the trials, the wrongs that beset those a little lower than themselves. But we have seen too many instances where those who were educated in luxury would cast aside sloth and selfishness with eagerness when once awakened to better things, not to hope in appealing to the rich also.

And to all we appeal: to the poor, who will know how to sympathize with those who are not only poor but degraded, diseased, likely to be hurried onward to a shameful, hopeless death; to the rich, to equalize the advantages of which they have received more than their share; to men, to atone for wrongs inflicted by men on that "weaker sex," who should, they say, be soft, confiding, dependent on them for protection; to women, to feel for those who have not been guarded either by social influence or inward strength from that first mistake which the opinion of the world makes irrevocable for women alone. Since their danger is so great, their fall so remediless, let mercies be multiplied when there is a chance of that partial restoration which society at present permits.

In New York we have come little into contact with that class of society which has a surplus of leisure at command; but in other cities we have, found in their ranks many--some men, more women--who wanted only a decided object and clear light to fill the noble office of disinterested educators and guardians to their less fortunate fellows. It has been our happiness, in not a few instances, by merely apprising such persons of what was to be done, to rouse that generous spirit which relieved them from ennui and a gradual ossification of the whole system, and transferred them into a thoughtful, sympathetic, and beneficent existence. Such, no doubt, are near us here, if we could but know it. A poet writes thus of the cities:--

Cities of proud hotels, Houses of rich and great, A stack of smoking chimneys, A roof of frozen slate! It cannot conquer folly, Time, and space, conquering steam, And the light, outspeeding telegraph, Bears nothing on its beam.

The politics are base, The letters do not cheer, And 'tis far in the deeps of history, The voice that speaketh clear. Trade and the streets insnare us, Our bodies are weak and worn, We plot and corrupt each other, And we despoil the unborn.

Yet there in the parlor sits Some figure of noble guise, Our angel in a stranger's form, Or woman's pleading eyes. Or only a flashing sunbeam In at the window pane, Or music pours on mortals Its beautiful disdain.

These "pleading eyes," these "angels in strangers' forms," we meet, or seem to meet, as we pass through the thoroughfares of this great city. We do not know their names or homes. We cannot go to those still and sheltered abodes and tell them the tales that would be sure to awaken the heart to a deep and active interest in this matter. But should these words meet their eyes, we would say, "Have you entertained your leisure hours with the Mysteries of Paris, or the pathetic story of Violet Woodville?" Then you have some idea how innocence, worthy of the brightest planet, may be betrayed by want, or by the most generous tenderness; how the energies of a noble reformation may lie hidden beneath the ashes of a long burning, as in the case of "La Louve." You must have felt that yourselves are not better, only more protected children of God than these. Do you want to link these fictions, which have made you weep, with facts around you where your pity might be of use? Go to the Penitentiary at Blackwell's Island. You may be repelled by seeing those who are in health while at work together, keeping up one another's careless spirit and effrontery by bad association. But see them in the Hospital,--where the worn features of the sick show the sad ruins of past loveliness, past gentleness. See in the eyes of the nurses the woman's spirit still, so kindly, so inspiring. See those little girls huddled in a corner, their neglected dress and hair contrasting with some ribbon of cherished finery held fast in a childish hand. Think what "sweet seventeen" was to you, and what it is to them, and see if you do not wish to aid in any enterprise that gives them a chance of better days. We assume no higher claim for this enterprise. The dreadful social malady which creates the need of it, is one that imperatively demands deep-searching, preventive measures; it is beyond cure. But, here and there, some precious soul may be saved from unwilling sin, unutterable woe. Is not the hope to save here and there _one_ worthy of great and persistent sacrifice?

THE RICH MAN.

AN IDEAL SKETCH.

In my walks through this city, the sight of spacious and expensive dwelling-houses now in process of building, has called up the following reverie.

All benevolent persons, whether deeply-thinking on, or deeply-feeling, the woes, difficulties, and dangers of our present social system, are agreed that either great improvements are needed, or a thorough reform.

Those who desire the latter include the majority of thinkers. And we ourselves, both from personal observation and the testimony of others, are convinced that a radical reform is needed; not a reform that rejects the instruction of the past, or asserts that God and man have made mistakes till now. We believe that all past developments have taken place under natural and necessary laws, and that the Paternal Spirit has at no period forgotten his children, but granted to all generations and all ages their chances of good to balance inevitable ills. We prize the past; we recognize it as our parent, our nurse, and our teacher; and we know that for a time the new wine required the old bottles, to prevent its being spilled upon the ground.

Still we feel that the time is come which not only permits, but demands, a wider statement and a nobler action. The aspect of society presents mighty problems, which must be solved by the soul of man "divinely-intending" itself to the task, or all will become worse instead of better, and ere long the social fabric totter to decay.

Yet while the new measures are ripening, and the new men educating, there is still room on the old platform for some worthy action. It is possible for a man of piety, resolution, and good sense, to lead a life which, if not expansive, generous, graceful, and pure from suspicion and contempt, is yet not entirely unworthy of his position as the child of God, and ruler of a planet.

Let us take, then, some men just where they find themselves, in a mixed state of society, where, in quantity, we are free to say the bad preponderates, though the good, from its superior energy in quality, may finally redeem and efface its plague-spots.

Our society is ostensibly under the rule of the precepts of Jesus. We will then suppose a youth sufficiently imbued with these, to understand what is conveyed under the parables of the unjust steward, and the prodigal son, as well as the denunciations of the opulent Jews. He understands that it is needful to preserve purity and teachableness, since of those most like little children is the kingdom of heaven; mercy for the sinner, since there is peculiar joy in heaven at the salvation of such; perpetual care for the unfortunate, since only to the just steward shall his possessions be pardoned. Imbued with such love, the young man joins the active,--we will say, in choosing an instance,--joins the commercial world.

His views of his profession are not those which make of the many a herd, not superior, except in the far reach of their selfish interests, to the animals; mere calculating, money-making machines.

He sees in commerce a representation of most important interests, a grand school that may teach the heart and soul of the civilized world to a willing, thinking mind. He plays his part in the game, but not for himself alone; he sees the interests of all mankind engaged with his, and remembers them while he furthers his own. His intellectual discernment, no less than his moral, thus teaching the undesirableness of lying and stealing, he does not practise or connive at the falsities and meannesses so frequent among his fellows; he suffers many turns of the wheel of fortune to pass unused, since he cannot avail himself of them and keep clean his hands. What he gains is by superior assiduity, skill in combination and calculation, and quickness of sight. His gains are legitimate, so far as the present state of things permits any gains to be.

Nor is this honorable man denied his due rank in the most corrupt state of society. Here, happily, we draw from life, and speak of what we know. Honesty is, indeed, the best policy, only it is so in the long run, and therefore a policy which a selfish man has not faith and patience to pursue. The influence of the honest man is in the end predominant, and the rogues who sneer because he will not shuffle the cards in _their_ way, are forced to bow to it at last.

But while thus conscientious and mentally-progressive, he does not forget to live. The sharp and care-worn faces, the joyless lives that throng the busy street, do not make him forget his need of tender affections, of the practices of bounty and love. His family, his acquaintance, especially those who are struggling with the difficulties of life, are not obliged to wait till he has accumulated a certain sum. He is sunlight and dew to them now, day by day. No less do all in his employment prize and bless the just, the brotherly man. He dares not, would not, climb to power upon their necks. He requites their toil handsomely, always; if his success be unusual, they share the benefit. Their comfort is cared for in all the arrangements for their work. He takes care, too, to be personally acquainted with those he employs, regarding them, not as mere tools of his purpose, but as human beings also; he keeps them in his eye, and if it be in his power to supply their need of consolation, instruction, or even pleasure, they find they have a friend.

"Nonsense!" exclaims our sharp-eyed, thin-lipped antagonist. "Such a man would never get rich,--or even _get along_!"

You are mistaken, Mr. Stockjobber. Thus far many lines of our sketch are drawn from real life; though for the second part, which follows, we want, as yet, a worthy model.

We must imagine, then, our ideal merchant to have grown rich in some forty years of toil passed in the way we have indicated. His hair is touched with white, but his form is vigorous yet. Neither _gourmandise_ nor the fever of gain has destroyed his complexion, quenched the light of his eye, or substituted sneers for smiles. He is an upright, strong, sagacious, generous-looking man; and if his movements be abrupt, and his language concise, somewhat beyond the standard of beauty, he is still the gentleman; mercantile, but a mercantile nobleman.

Our nation is not silly in striving for an aristocracy. Humanity longs for its upper classes. But the silliness consists in making them out of clothes, equipage, and a servile imitation of foreign manners, instead of the genuine elegance and distinction that can only be produced by genuine culture. Shame upon the stupidity which, when all circumstances leave us free for the introduction of a real aristocracy such as the world never saw, bases its pretensions on, or makes its bow to the footman behind, the coach, instead of the person within it.

But our merchant shall be a real nobleman, whose noble manners spring from a noble mind, whose fashions from a sincere, intelligent love of the beautiful.

We will also indulge the fancy of giving him a wife and children worthy of himself. Having lived in sympathy with him, they have acquired no taste for luxury; they do not think that the best use for wealth and power is in self-indulgence, but, on the contrary, that "it is more blessed to give than to receive."

He is now having one of those fine houses built, and, as in other things, proceeds on a few simple principles. It is substantial, for he wishes to give no countenance to the paper buildings that correspond with other worthless paper currency of a credit system. It is thoroughly finished and furnished, for he has a conscience about his house, as about the neatness of his person. All must be of a piece. Harmony and a wise utility are consulted, without regard to show. Still, as a rich man, we allow him reception-rooms, lofty, large, adorned with good copies of ancient works of art, and fine specimens of modern.

I admit, in this instance, the propriety of my nobleman often choosing by advice of friends, who may have had more leisure and opportunity to acquire a sure appreciation of merit in these walks. His character being simple, he will, no doubt, appreciate a great part of what is truly grand and beautiful. But also, from imperfect culture, he might often reject what in the end he would have found most valuable to himself and others. For he has not done learning, but only acquired the privilege of helping to open a domestic school, in which he will find himself a pupil as well as a master. So he may well make use, in furnishing himself with the school apparatus, of the best counsel. The same applies to making his library a good one. Only there must be no sham; no pluming himself on possessions that represent his wealth, but the taste of others. Our nobleman is incapable of pretension, or the airs of connoisseurship; his object is to furnish a home with those testimonies of a higher life in man, that may best aid to cultivate the same in himself and those assembled round him.

He shall also have a fine garden and greenhouses. But the flowers shall not be used only to decorate his apartments, or the hair of his daughters, but shall often bless, by their soft and exquisite eloquence, the poor invalid, or others whose sorrowful hearts find in their society a consolation and a hope which nothing else bestows. For flowers, the highest expression of the bounty of nature, declare that for all men, not merely labor, or luxury, but gentle, buoyant, ever-energetic joy, was intended, and bid us hope that we shall not forever be kept back from our inheritance.

All the persons who have aided in building up this domestic temple, from the artist who painted the ceilings to the poorest hodman, shall be well paid and cared for during its erection; for it is a necessary part of the happiness of our nobleman, to feel that all concerned in creating his home are the happier for it.

We have said nothing about the architecture of the house, and yet this is only for want of room. We do consider it one grand duty of every person able to build a good house, also to aim at building a beautiful one. We do not want imitations of what was used in other ages, nations, and climates, but what is simple, noble, and in conformity with the wants of our own. Room enough, simplicity of design, and judicious adjustment of the parts to their uses and to the whole, are the first requisites; the ornaments are merely the finish on these. We hope to see a good style of civic architecture long before any material improvement in the country edifices, for reasons that would be tedious to enumerate here. Suffice it to say that we are far more anxious to see an American architecture than an American literature; for we are sure there is here already something individual to express.

Well, suppose the house built and equipped with man and horse. You may be sure my nobleman gives his "hired help" good accommodations for their sleeping and waking hours,--baths, books, and some leisure to use them. Nay, I assure you--and this assurance also is drawn from life--that it is possible, even in our present social relations, for the man who does common justice, in these respects, to his fellows, and shows a friendly heart, that thoroughly feels service to be no degradation, but an honor, who believes

"A man's a MAN for a' that;"-- "Honor in the king the wisdom of his service, Honor in the serf the fidelity of his service,"--

to have around him those who do their work in serenity of mind, neither deceiving nor envying him whom circumstances have enabled to command their service. As to the carriage, that is used for the purpose of going to and fro in bad weather, or ill health, or haste, or for drives to enjoy the country. But my nobleman and his family are too well born and bred not to prefer employing their own feet when possible. And their carriage is much appropriated to the use of poor invalids, even among the abhorred class of poor relations, so that often they have not room in it for themselves, much less for flaunting dames and lazy dandies.

We need hardly add that, their attendants wear no liveries. They are aware that, in a society where none of the causes exist that justify this habit abroad, the practice would have no other result than to call up a sneer to the lips of the most complaisant "milor," when "Mrs. Higginbottom's carriage stops the way," with its tawdry, ill-fancied accompaniments. _Will_ none of their "governors" tell our cits the Æsopian fable of the donkey that tried to imitate the gambols of the little dog?

The wife of my nobleman is so well matched with him that she has no need to be the better half. She is his almoner, his counsellor, and the priestess who keeps burning on the domestic hearth a fire from the fuel he collects in his out-door work, whose genial heart and aspiring flame comfort and animate all who come within its range.

His children are his ministers, whose leisure and various qualifications enable them to carry out his good thoughts. They hold all that they possess--time, money, talents, acquirements--on the principle of stewardship. They wake up the seeds of virtue and genius in all the young persons of their acquaintance; but the poorer classes are especially their care. Among them they seek for those who are threatened with dying--"mute, inglorious" Hampdens and Miltons--but for their scrutiny and care; of these they become the teachers and patrons to the extent of their power. Such knowledge of the arts, sciences, and just principles of action as they have been favored with, they communicate, and thereby form novices worthy to fill up the ranks of the true American aristocracy.

And the house--it is a large one; a simple family does not fill its chambers. Some of them are devoted to the use of men of genius, who need a serene home, free from care, while they pursue their labors for the good of the world. Thus, as in the palaces of the little princes of Italy in a better day, these chambers become hallowed by the nativities of great thoughts; and the horoscopes of the human births that may take place there, are likely to read the better for it. Suffering virtue sometimes finds herself taken home here, instead of being sent to the almshouse, or presented with half a dollar and a ticket for coal, and finds upon my nobleman's mattresses (for the wealth of Croesus would not lure him or his to sleep upon down) dreams of angelic protection which enable her to rise refreshed for the struggle of the morrow.

The uses of hospitality are very little understood among us, so that we fear generally there is a small chance of entertaining gods and angels unawares, as the Greeks and Hebrews did in the generous time of hospitality, when every man had a claim on the roof of fellow-man. Now, none is received to a bed and breakfast unless he come as "bearer of despatches" from His Excellency So-and-so.

But let us not be supposed to advocate the system of all work and no play, or to delight exclusively in the pedagogic and Goody-Two-Shoes vein. Reader, if any such accompany me to this scene of my vision, cheer up; I hear the sound of music in full band, and see the banquet prepared. Perhaps they are even dancing the polka and redowa in those airy, well-lighted rooms. In another they find in the acting of extempore dramas, arrangement of tableaux, little concerts or recitations, intermingled with beautiful national or fancy dances, some portion of the enchanting, refining, and ennobling influence of the arts. The finest engravings on all subjects attend such as like to employ themselves more quietly, while those who can find a companion or congenial group to converse with, find also plenty of recesses and still rooms, with softened light, provided for their pleasure.

There is not on this side of the Atlantic--we dare our glove upon it--a more devout believer than ourselves in the worship of the Muses and Graces, both for itself, and its importance no less to the moral than to the intellectual life of a nation. Perhaps there is not one who has _so_ deep a feeling, or so many suggestions ready, in the fulness of time, to be hazarded on the subject.

But in order to such worship, what standard is there as to admission to the service? Talents of gold, or Delphian talents? fashion or elegance? "standing" or the power to move gracefully from one position to another?

Our nobleman did not hesitate; the handle to his door bell was not of gold, but mother-of-pearl, pure and prismatic.

If he did not go into the alleys to pick up the poor, they were not excluded, if qualified by intrinsic qualities to adorn the scene. Neither were wealth or fashion a cause of exclusion, more than of admission. All depended on the person; yet he did not _seek_ his guests among the slaves of fashion, for he knew that persons highly endowed rarely had patience with the frivolities of that class, but retired, and left it to be peopled mostly by weak and plebeian natures. Yet all depended on the individual. Was the person fair, noble, wise, brilliant, or even only youthfully innocent and gay, or venerable in a good old age, he or she was welcome. Still, as simplicity of character and some qualification positively good, healthy, and natural, was requisite for admission, we must say the company was select. Our nobleman and his family had weeded their "circle" carefully, year by year.

Some valued acquaintances they had made in ball-rooms and boudoirs, and kept; but far more had been made through the daily wants of life, and shoemakers, seamstresses, and graziers mingled happily with artists and statesmen, to the benefit of both. (N.B.--None used the poisonous weed, in or out of our domestic temple.)

I cannot tell you what infinite good our nobleman and his family were doing by creation of this true social centre, where the legitimate aristocracy of the land assembled, not to be dazzled by expensive furniture, (our nobleman bought what was good in texture and beautiful in form, but not _because_ it was expensive,) not to be feasted on rare wines and highly-seasoned dainties, though they found simple refreshments well prepared, as indeed it was a matter of duty and conscience in that house that the least office should be well fulfilled, but to enjoy the generous confluence of mind with mind and heart with heart, the pastimes that are not waste-times of taste and inventive fancy, the cordial union of beings from all points and places in noble human sympathy. New York was beginning to be truly American, or rather Columbian, and money stood for something in the records of history. It had brought opportunity to genius and aid to virtue. But just at this moment, the jostling showed me that I had reached the corner of Wall Street. I looked earnestly at the omnibuses discharging their eager freight, as if I hoped to see my merchant. "Perhaps he has gone to the post office to take out letters from his friends in Utopia," thought I. "Please give me a penny," screamed a half-starved ragged little street-sweep, and the fancied cradle of the American Utopia receded, or rather proceeded, fifty years, at least, into the future.

THE POOR MAN.

AN IDEAL SKETCH.

The foregoing sketch of the Rich Man, seems to require this companion-piece; and we shall make the attempt, though the subject is far more difficult than the former was.

In the first place, we must state what we mean by a poor man, for it is a term of wide range in its relative applications. A painstaking artisan, trained to self-denial, and a strict adaptation, not of his means to his wants, but of his wants to his means, finds himself rich and grateful, if some unexpected fortune enables him to give his wife a new gown, his children cheap holiday joys, and his starving neighbor a decent meal; while George IV., when heir apparent to the throne of Great Britain, considered himself driven by the pressure of poverty to become a debtor, a beggar, a swindler, and, by the aid of perjury, the husband of two wives at the same time, neither of whom he treated well. Since poverty is made an excuse for such depravity in conduct, it would be well to mark the limits within which self-control and resistance to temptation may be expected.

When he of the olden time prayed, "Give me neither poverty nor riches," we presume he meant that proportion of means to the average wants of a human being which secures freedom from pecuniary cares, freedom of motion, and a moderate enjoyment of the common blessings offered by earth, air, water, the natural relations, and the subjects for thought which every day presents. We shall certainly not look above this point for our poor man. A prince may be poor, if he has not means to relieve the sufferings of his subjects, or secure to them needed benefits. Or he may make himself so, just as a well-paid laborer by drinking brings poverty to his roof. So may the prince, by the mental gin of horse-racing or gambling, grow a beggar. But we shall not consider these cases.

Our subject will be taken between the medium we have spoken of as answer to the wise man's prayer, and that destitution which we must style infamous, either to the individual or to the society whose vices have caused that stage of poverty, in which there is no certainty, and often no probability, of work or bread from day to day,--in which cleanliness and all the decencies of life are impossible, and the natural human feelings are turned to gall because the man finds himself on this earth in a far worse situation than the brute. In this stage there is no ideal, and from its abyss, if the unfortunates look up to Heaven, or the state of things as they ought to be, it is with suffocating gasps which demand relief or death. This degree of poverty is common, as we all know; but we who do not share it have no right to address those who do from our own standard, till we have placed their feet on our own level. Accursed is he who does not long to have this so--to take out at least the physical hell from this world! Unblest is he who is not seeking, either by thought or act, to effect this poor degree of amelioration in the circumstances of his race.

We take the subject of our sketch, then, somewhere between the abjectly poor and those in moderate circumstances. What we have to say may apply to either sex, and to any grade in this division of the human family, from the hodman and washerwoman up to the hard-working, poorly-paid lawyer clerk, schoolmaster, or scribe.

The advantages of such a position are many. In the first place, you belong, inevitably, to the active and suffering part of the world. You know the ills that try men's souls and bodies. You cannot creep into a safe retreat, arrogantly to judge, or heartlessly to forget, the others. They are always before you; you see the path stained by their bleeding feet; stupid and flinty, indeed, must you be, if you can hastily wound, or indolently forbear to aid them. Then, as to yourself, you know what your resources are; what you can do, what bear; there is small chance for you to escape a well-tempered modesty. Then again, if you find power in yourself to endure the trial, there is reason and reality in some degree of self-reliance. The moral advantages of such training can scarcely fail to amount to something; and as to the mental, that most important chapter, how the lives of men are fashioned and transfused by the experience of passion and the development of thought, presents new sections at every turn, such as the distant dilettante's opera-glasses will never detect,--to say nothing of the exercise of mere faculty, which, though insensible in its daily course, leads to results of immense importance.

But the evils, the disadvantages, the dangers, how many, how imminent! True, indeed, they are so. There is the early bending of the mind to the production of marketable results, which must hinder all this free play of intelligence, and deaden the powers that craved instruction. There is the callousness produced by the sight of more misery than it is possible to relieve; the heart, at first so sensitive, taking refuge in a stolid indifference against the pangs of sympathetic pain, it had not force to bear. There is the perverting influence of uncongenial employments, undertaken without or against choice, continued at unfit hours and seasons, till the man loses his natural relations with summer and winter, day and night, and has no sense more for natural beauty and joy. There is the mean providence, the perpetual caution to guard against ill, instead of the generous freedom of a mind which expects good to ensue from all good actions. There is the sad doubt whether it will _do_ to indulge the kindly impulse, the calculation of dangerous chances, and the cost between the loving impulse and its fulfilment. Yes; there is bitter chance of narrowness, meanness, and dulness on this path, and it requires great natural force, a wise and large view of life taken at an early age, or fervent trust in God, to evade them.

It is astonishing to see the poor, no less than the rich, the slaves of externals. One would think that, where the rich man once became aware of the worthlessness of the mere trappings of life from the weariness of a spirit that found itself entirely dissatisfied after pomp and self-indulgence, the poor man would learn this a hundred times from the experience how entirely independent of them is all that is intrinsically valuable in our life. But, no! The poor man wants dignity, wants elevation of spirit. It is his own servility that forges the fetters that enslave him. Whether he cringe to, or rudely defy, the man in the coach and handsome coat, the cause and effect are the same. He is influenced by a costume and a position. He is not firmly rooted in the truth that only in so far as outward beauty and grandeur are representative of the mind of the possessor, can they count for any thing at all. O, poor man! you are poor indeed, if you feel yourself so; poor if you do not feel that a soul born of God, a mind capable of scanning the wondrous works of time and space, and a flexible body for its service, are the essential riches of a man, and all he needs to make him the equal of any other man. You are mean, if the possession of money or other external advantages can make you envy or shrink from a being mean enough to value himself upon such. Stand where you may, O man, you cannot be noble and rich if your brow be not broad and steadfast, if your eye beam not with a consciousness of inward worth, of eternal claims and hopes which such trifles cannot at all affect. A man without this majesty is ridiculous amid the flourish and decorations procured by money, pitiable in the faded habiliments of poverty. But a man who is a man, a woman who is a woman, can never feel lessened or embarrassed because others look ignorantly on such matters. If they regret the want of these temporary means of power, it must be solely because it fetters their motions, deprives them of leisure and desired means of improvement, or of benefiting those they love or pity.

I have heard those possessed of rhetoric and imaginative tendency declare that they should have been outwardly great and inwardly free, victorious poets and heroes, if fate had allowed them a certain quantity of dollars. I have found it impossible to believe them. In early youth, penury may have power to freeze the genial current of the soul, and prevent it, during one short life, from becoming sensible of its true vocation and destiny. But if it _has_ become conscious of these, and yet there is not advance in any and all circumstances, no change would avail.

No, our poor man must begin higher! He must, in the first place, really believe there is a God who ruleth--a fact to which few men vitally bear witness, though most are ready to affirm it with the lips.

2. He must sincerely believe that rank and wealth

"are but the guinea's stamp; The man's the gold;"--

take his stand on his claims as a human being, made in God's own likeness, urge them when the occasion permits, but never be so false to them as to feel put down or injured by the want of mere external advantages.

3. He must accept his lot, while he is in it. If he can change it for the better, let his energies be exerted to do so. But if he cannot, there is none that will not yield an opening to Eden, to the glories of Zion, and even to the subterranean enchantments of our strange estate. There is none that may not be used with nobleness.

"Who sweeps a room, as for Thy sake Makes that and th' action clean."

4. Let him examine the subject enough to be convinced that there is not that vast difference between the employments that is supposed, in the means of expansion and refinement. All depends on the spirit as to the use that is made of an occupation. Mahomet was not a wealthy merchant, and profound philosophers have ripened on the benches, not of the lawyers, but the shoemakers. It did not hurt Milton to be a poor schoolmaster, nor Shakspeare to do the errands of a London play-house. Yes, "the mind is its own place," and if it will keep that place, all doors will be opened from it. Upon this subject we hope to offer some hints at a future day, in speaking of the different trades, professions, and modes of labor.

5. Let him remember that from no man can the chief wealth be kept. On all men the sun and stars shine; for all the oceans swell and rivers flow. All men may be brothers, lovers, fathers, friends; before all lie the mysteries of birth and death. If these wondrous means of wealth and blessing be likely to remain misused or unused, there are quite as many disadvantages in the way of the man of money as of the man who has none. Few who drain the choicest grape know the ecstasy of bliss and knowledge that follows a full draught of the wine of life. That has mostly been reserved for those on whose thoughts society, as a public, makes but a moderate claim. And if bitterness followed on the joy, if your fountain was frozen after its first gush by the cold winds of the world, yet, moneyless men, ye are at least not wholly ignorant of what a human being has force to know. You have not skimmed over surfaces, and been dozing on beds of down, during the rare and stealthy visits of Love and the Muses. Remember this, and, looking round on the arrangements of the lottery, see if you did not draw a prize in your turn.

It will be seen that our ideal poor man needs to be religious, wise, dignified, and humble, grasping at nothing, claiming all; willing to wait, never willing to give up; servile to none, the servant of all, and esteeming it the glory of a man to serve. The character is rare, but not unattainable. We have, however, found an approach to it more frequent in woman than in man.

THE CELESTIAL EMPIRE.

During a late visit to Boston, I visited with great pleasure the Chinese Museum, which has been opened there.

There was much satisfaction in surveying its rich contents, if merely on account of their splendor and elegance, which, though fantastic to our tastes, presented an obvious standard of its own by which to prize it. The rich dresses of the imperial court, the magnificent jars, (the largest worth three hundred dollars, and looking as if it was worth much more,) the present-boxes and ivory work, the elegant interiors of the home and counting-room,--all these gave pleasure by their perfection, each in its kind.

But the chief impression was of that unity of existence, so opposite to the European, and, for a change, so pleasant, from its repose and gilded lightness. Their imperial majesties do really seem so "perfectly serene," that we fancy we might become so under their sway, if not "thoroughly virtuous," as they profess to be. Entirely a new mood would be ours, as we should sup in one of those pleasure boats, by the light of fanciful lanterns, or listen to the tinkling of pagoda bells.

The highest conventional refinement, of a certain kind, is apparent in all that belongs to the Chinese. The inviolability of custom has not made their life heavy, but shaped it to the utmost adroitness for their own purposes. We are now somewhat familiar with their literature, and we see pervading it a poetry subtle and aromatic, like the odors of their appropriate beverage. Like that, too, it is all domestic,--never wild. The social genius, fluttering on the wings of compliment, pervades every thing Chinese. Society has moulded them, body and soul; the youngest children are more social and Chinese than human; and we doubt not the infant, with its first cry, shows its capacity for self-command and obedience to superiors.

Their great man, Confucius, expresses this social genius in its most perfect state and highest form. His golden wisdom is the quintescence of social justice. He never forgets conditions and limits; he is admirably wise, pure, and religious, but never towers above humanity--never soars into solitude. There is no token of the forest or cave in Confucius. Few men could understand him, because his nature was so thoroughly balanced, and his rectitude so pure; not because his thoughts were too deep, or too high for them. In him should be sought the best genius of the Chinese, with that perfect practical good sense whose uses are universal.

At one time I used to change from reading Confucius to one of the great religious books of another Eastern nation; and it was always like leaving the street and the palace for the blossoming forest of the East, where in earlier times we are told the angels walked with men and talked, not of earth, but of heaven.

As we looked at the forms moving about in the Museum, we could not wonder that the Chinese consider us, who call ourselves the civilized world, barbarians, so deficient were those forms in the sort of refinement that the Chinese prize above all. And our people deserve it for their senselessness in viewing _them_ as barbarians, instead of seeing how perfectly they represent their own idea. They are inferior to us in important developments, but, on the whole, approach far nearer their own standard than we do ours. And it is wonderful that an enlightened European can fail to prize the sort of beauty they do develop. Sets of engravings we have seen representing the culture of the tea plant, have brought to us images of an entirely original idyllic loveliness. One long resident in China has observed that nothing can be more enchanting than the smile of love on the regular, but otherwise expressionless face of a Chinese woman. It has the simplicity and abandonment of infantine, with the fulness of mature feeling. It never varies, but it does not tire.

The same sweetness and elegance stereotyped now, but having originally a deep root in their life as a race, may be seen in their poetry and music. The last we have heard, both from the voice and several instruments, at this Museum, for the first time, and were at first tempted to laugh, when something deeper forbade. Like their poetry, the music is of the narrowest monotony, a kind of rosary, a repetition of phrases, and, in its enthusiasm and conventional excitement, like nothing else in the heavens and on the earth. Yet both the poetry and music have in them an expression of birds, roses, and moonlight; indeed, they suggest that state where "moonlight, and music, and feeling are one," though the soul seems to twitter, rather than sing of it.

It is wonderful with how little practical insight travellers in China look on what they see. They seem to be struck by points of repulsion at once, and neither see nor tell us what could give any real clew to their facts. I do not speak now of the recent lecturers in this city, for I have not heard them; but of the many, many books into which I have earlier looked with eager curiosity,--in vain,--I always found the same external facts, and the same prejudices which disabled the observer from piercing beneath them. I feel that I know something of the Chinese when reading Confucius, or looking at the figures on their tea-cups, or drinking a cup of _genuine_ tea--rather an unusual felicity, it is said, in this ingenious city, which shares with the Chinese one trait at least. But the travellers rather take from than add to this knowledge; and a visit to this Museum would give more clear views than all the books I ever read yet.

The juggling was well done, and so solemnly, with the same concentrated look as the music! I saw the juggler afterwards at Ole Bull's concert, and he moved not a muscle while the nightingale was pouring forth its sweetest descant. Probably the avenues wanted for these strains to enter his heart had been closed by the imperial edict long ago. The resemblance borne by this juggler to our Indians is even greater than we have seen in any other case. His brotherhood does not, to us, seem surprising. Our Indians, too, are stereotyped, though in a different way; they are of a mould capable of retaining the impression through ages; and many of the traits of the two races, or two branches of a race, may seem to be identical, though so widely modified by circumstances. They are all opposite to us, who have made ships, and balloons, and magnetic telegraphs, as symbolic expressions of our wants, and the means of gratifying them. We must console ourselves with these, and our organs and pianos, for our want of perfect good breeding, serenity, and "thorough virtue."

KLOPSTOCK AND META.[36]

The poet had retired from the social circle. Its mirth was to his sickened soul a noisy discord, its sentiment a hollow mockery. With grief he felt that the recital of a generous action, the vivid expression of a noble thought, could only graze the surface of his mind. The desolate stillness of death lay brooding on its depths. The friendly smiles, the tender attentions which seemed so sweet in those hours when Meta was "crown of his cup and garnish of his dish," could give the present but a ghastly similitude to those blessed days. While his attention, disobedient to his wishes, kept turning painfully inward, the voice of the singer suddenly startled it back. A lovely maid, with moist, clear eye, and pleadi ng, earnest voice, was seated at the harpsichord. She sang a sad, and yet not hopeless, strain, like that of a lover who pines in absence, yet hopes again to meet his loved one.

The heart of Klopstock rose to his lips, and natural tears suffused his eyes. She paused. Some youth of untouched heart, shallow, as yet, in all things, asked for a lively song, the expression of animal enjoyment. She hesitated, and cast a sidelong glance at the mourner. Heedlessly the request was urged: she wafted over the keys an airy prelude. A cold rush of anguish came over the awakened heart; Klopstock rose, and hastily left the room.

He entered his apartment, and threw himself upon the bed. The moon was nearly at the full: a tree near the large window obscured its radiance, and cast into the room a flickering shadow, as its leaves kept swaying to and fro with the breeze.

Vainly Klopstock sought for soothing influences in the contemplation of the soft and varying light. Sadness is always deepest at this hour of celestial calmness. The soul realizes its wants, and longs to be in harmony with itself far more in such an hour than when any outward ill is arousing or oppressing it.

"Weak, fond wretch that I am!" cried he. "I, the bard of the Messiah! To what purpose have I nurtured my soul on the virtues of that sublime model, for whom no renunciation was too hard? Four years an angel sojourned with me: her presence vivified my soul into purity and benevolence like her own. Happy was I as the saints who rest after their long struggles in the bosom of perfect love. I thought myself good because I sinned not against a bounteous God, because my heart could spare some drops of its overflowing oil and balm for the wounds of others: now what am I? My angel leaves me, but she leaves with me the memory of blissful years and our perfect communion as an earnest of that happy meeting which awaits us, if I prove faithful to my own words of faith, to those strains of religious confidence which are even now cheering onward many an inexperienced youth. And what are my deeds and feelings? The springs of life and love frozen, here I lie, sunk in grief, as if I knew no world beyond the grave. The joy of others seems an insult, their grief a dead letter, compared with my own. Meta! Meta! couldst thou see me in my hour of trial, thou wouldst disdain thy chosen one!"

A strain of sweet and solemn music swelled on his ear--one of those majestic harmonies which, were there no other proof of the soul's immortality, must suggest the image of an intellectual paradise. It closed, and Meta stood before him. A long veil of silvery whiteness fell over her, through which might be seen the fixed but nobly-serene expression of the large blue eyes, and a holy, seraphic dignity of mien. Klopstock knelt before her: his soul was awed to earth. "Hast thou come, my adored!" said he, "from thy home of bliss, to tell me that thou no longer lovest thy unworthy friend?"

"O, speak not thus!" replied the softest and most penetrating of voices. "God wills not that his purified creatures should look in contempt or anger on those suffering the ills from which they are set free. O, no, my love! my husband! I come to speak consolation to thy sinking spirit. When you left me to breathe my last sigh in the arms of a sister, who, however dear, was nothing to my heart in comparison with you, I closed my eyes, wishing that the light of day might depart with thee. The thought of what thou must suffer convulsed my heart with one last pang. Once more I murmured the wish I had so often expressed, that the sorrows of the survivor might have fallen to my lot rather than to thine. In that pang my soul extricated itself from the body; a sensation like that from exquisite fragrance came over me, and with breezy lightness I rose into the pure serene. It was a moment of feeling almost wild,--so free, so unobscured. I had not yet passed the verge of comparison; I could not yet embrace the Infinite: therefore my joy was like those of earth--intoxicating.

"Words cannot paint, even to thy eager soul, my friend, the winged swiftness, the onward, glowing hopefulness of my path through the fields of azure. I paused, at length, in a region of keen, pure, bluish light, such as beams from Jupiter to thy planet on a lovely October evening.

"Here an immediate conviction pervaded me that this was home--was my appointed resting place; a full tide of hope and satisfaction similar to the emotion excited on my first acquaintance with thy poem flowed over this hour; a joyous confidence in the existence of Goodness and Beauty supplied for a season, the want of thy society. The delicious clearness of every emotion exalted my soul into a realm full of life. Some time elapsed in this state. The whole of my temporal existence passed in review before me. My thoughts, my actions, were placed in full relief before the cleared eye of my spirit. Beloved, thou wilt rejoice to know that thy Meta could then feel that her worst faults sprung from ignorance. As I was striving to connect my present state with my past, and, as it were, poising myself on the brink of space and time, the breath of another presence came across me, and, gradually evolving from the bosom of light, a figure rose before me, in grace, in sweetness, how excelling! Fixing her eyes on mine with the full gaze of love, she said, in flute-like tones, 'Dost thou know me, my sister?'

"'Art thou not,' I replied, 'the love of Petrarch? I have seen the portraiture of thy mortal lineaments, and now recognize that perfect beauty, the full violet flower which thy lover's genius was able to anticipate.'

"'Yes,' she said, 'I am Laura--on earth most happy, yet most sad; most rich, and yet most poor. I come to greet her whom I recognize as the inheritress of all that was lovely in my earthly being, more happy than I in her temporal state. I have sympathized, O wife of Klopstock! in thy transitory happiness. Thy lover was thy priest and thy poet; thy model and oracle was thy bosom friend. All that earth could give was thine; and I joyed to think on thy rewarded love, thy freedom of soul, and unchecked faith. Follow me now: we are to dwell in the same circle, and I am appointed to show thee thine abiding place.'

"She guided me towards the source of that light which I have described to thee. We paused before a structure of dazzling whiteness, which stood on a slope, and overlooked a valley of exceeding beauty. It was shaded by trees which had that peculiar calmness that the shadows of trees have below in the high noon of summer moonlight--

'... trees which are still As the shades of trees below, When they sleep on the lonely hill, In the summer moonlight glow.'

It was decked with majestic sculptures, of which I may speak in some future interview. Before it rose a fountain, from which the stream of light flowed down the valley, dividing it into two unequal parts. The larger and farther from us seemed, when I first looked on it, populous with shapes, beauteous as that of my guide. But, when I looked more fixedly, I saw only the valley, carpeted with large blue and white flowers, which emitted a hyacinthine odor. Here, Laura, turning round, asked, 'Is not this a poetic home, Meta?'

"I paused a moment ere I replied, 'It is indeed a place of beauty, but more like the Greek elysium than the home Klopstock and I were wont to picture to ourselves beyond the gates of Death.'

"'Thou sayest well,' she said; 'nor is this thy final home; thou wilt but wait here a season, till Klopstock comes.'

"'What' said I, 'alone! alone in Eden?'

"'Has not Meta, then, collected aught on which she might meditate? Hast thou never read, "While I was musing, the fire burned"?'

"'Laura,' said I, 'spare the reproach. The love of Petrach, whose soul grew up in golden fetters, whose strongest emotions, whose most natural actions were, through a long life, constantly repressed by the dictates of duty and honor, she content might pass long years in that contemplation which was on earth her only solace. But I, whose life has all been breathed out in love and ministry, can I endure that my existence be reversed? Can I live without utterance of spirit? or would such be a stage of that progressive happiness we are promised?'

"'True, little one!' said she, with her first heavenly smile; 'nor shall it be thus with thee. A ministry is appointed thee--the same which I exercised while waiting here for that friend whom below I was forbidden to call my own.'

"She touched me, and from my shoulders sprung a pair of wings, white and azure, wide and glistering.

"'Meta!' she resumed, 'spirit of love! be this thine office. Wherever a soul pines in absence from all companionship, breathe sweet thoughts of sympathy to be had in another life, if deserved by virtuous exertions and mental progress. Bind up the wounds of hearts torn by bereavement; teach them where healing is to be found. Revive in the betrayed and forsaken heart that belief in virtue and nobleness, without which life is an odious, disconnected dream. Fan every flame of generous enthusiasm, and on the altars where it is kindled strew thou the incense of wisdom. In such a ministry thou couldst never be alone, since hope must dwell with thee. But I shall often come and discourse to thee of the future glories of thy destiny. Yet more: Seest thou that marble tablet? Retire here when thy pinions are wearied. Give up thy soul to faith. Fix thine eyes on the tablet, and the deeds and thoughts which fill the days of Klopstock shall he traced on it. Thus shall ye not be for a day divided. Hast thou, Meta, aught more to ask?"

"'Messenger of peace and bliss!' said I, 'dare I frame another request? Is it too presumptuous to ask that Klopstock may be one of those to whom I minister, and that he may know it is Meta who consoles him?'

"'Even this, to a certain extent, I have power to grant. Most pure, most holy was thy life with Klopstock; ye taught one another only good things, and peculiarly are ye rewarded. Thou mayst occasionally manifest thyself to him, and answer his prayers with words,--so long,' she continued, looking fixedly at me, 'as he continues true to himself and thee!'

"O, my beloved, why tell thee what were my emotions at such a promise? Ah! I must now leave thee, for dawn is bringing back the world's doings. Soon I shall visit thee again. Farewell! Remember that thy every thought and deed will be known to me, and be happy!"

She vanished.

WHAT FITS A MAN TO BE A VOTER?

A FABLE.

The country had been denuded of its forests, and men cried, "Come! we must plant anew, or there will be no shade for the homes of our children, or fuel for their hearths. Let us find the best kernels for a new growth." And a basket of butternuts was offered.

But the planters rejected it with disgust. "What a black, rough coat it has!" said they; "it is entirely unfit for the dishes on a nobleman's table, nor have we ever seen it in such places. It must have a greasy, offensive kernel; nor can fine trees grow up from such a nut."

"Friends," said one of the planters, "this decision may be rash. The chestnut has not a handsome outside; it is long encased in troublesome burs, and, when disengaged, is almost as black as these nuts you despise. Yet from it grow trees of lofty stature, graceful form, and long life. Its kernel is white, and has furnished food to the most poetic and splendid nations of the older world."

"Don't tell me," says another; "brown is entirely different from black. I like brown very well; there is Oriental precedent for its respectability. Perhaps we will use some of your chestnuts, if we can get fine samples. But for the present, I think we should use only English walnuts, such as our forefathers delighted to honor. Here are many basketsful of them, quite enough for the present. We will plant them with a sprinkling between of the chestnut and acorn."

"But," rejoined the other, "many butternuts are beneath the sod, and you cannot help a mixture of them being in your wood, at any rate."

"Well, we will grub them up and cut them down whenever we find them. We can use the young shrubs for kindlings."

At that moment two persons entered the council of a darker complexion than most of those present, as if born beneath the glow of a more scorching sun. First came a woman, beautiful in the mild, pure grandeur of her look; in whose large dark eye a prophetic intelligence was mingled with infinite sweetness. She looked at the assembly with an air of surprise, as if its aspect was strange to her. She threw quite back her veil, and stepping aside, made room for her companion. His form was youthful, about the age of one we have seen in many a picture produced by the thought of eighteen centuries, as of one "instructing the doctors." I need not describe the features; all minds have their own impressions of such an image,

"Severe in youthful beauty."

In his hand he bore a white banner, on which was embroidered, "PEACE AND GOOD WILL TO MEN." And the words seemed to glitter and give out sparks, as he paused in the assembly.

"I came hither," said he, "an uninvited guest, because I read sculptured above the door 'All men born free and equal,' and in this dwelling hoped to find myself at home. What is the matter in dispute?"

Then they whispered one to another, and murmurs were heard--"He is a mere boy; young people are always foolish and extravagant;" or, "He looks like a fanatic." But others said, "He looks like one whom we have been taught to honor. It will be best to tell him the matter in dispute."

When he heard it, he smiled, and said, "It will be needful first to ascertain which of the nuts is soundest _within_." And with a hammer he broke one, two, and more of the English walnuts, and they were mouldy. Then he tried the other nuts, but found most of them fresh within and _white_, for they were fresh from the bosom of the earth, while the others had been kept in a damp cellar.

And he said, "You had better plant them together, lest none, or few, of the walnuts be sound. And why are you so reluctant? Has not Heaven permitted them both to grow on the same soil? and does not that show what is intended about it?"

And they said, "But they are black and ugly to look upon." He replied, "They do not seem so to me. What my Father has fashioned in such guise offends not mine eye."

And they said, "But from one of these trees flew a bird of prey, who has done great wrong. We meant, therefore, to suffer no such tree among us."

And he replied, "Amid the band of my countrymen and friends there was one guilty of the blackest crime--that of selling for a price the life of his dearest friend; yet all the others of his blood were not put under ban because of his guilt."

Then they said, "But in the Holy Book our teachers tell us, we are bid to keep in exile or distress whatsoever is black and unseemly in our eyes."

Then he put his hand to his brow, and cried in a voice of the most penetrating pathos, "Have I been so long among you, and ye have not known me?" And the woman turned from them the majestic hope of her glance, and both forms suddenly vanished; but the banner was left trailing in the dust.

The men stood gazing at one another. After which one mounted on high, and said, "Perhaps, my friends, we carry too far this aversion to objects merely because they are black. I heard, the other day, a wise man say that black was the color of evil--marked as such by God, and that whenever a white man struck a black man he did an act of worship to God.[37] I could not quite believe him. I hope, in what I am about to add, I shall not be misunderstood. I am no abolitionist. I respect above all things, divine or human, the constitution framed by our forefathers, and the peculiar institutions hallowed by the usage of their sons. I have no sympathy with the black race in this country. I wish it to be understood that I feel towards negroes the purest personal antipathy. It is a family trait with us. My little son, scarce able to speak, will cry out, 'Nigger! Nigger!' whenever he sees one, and try to throw things at them. He made a whole omnibus load laugh the other day by his cunning way of doing this.[38] The child of my political antagonist, on the other hand, says 'he likes _tullared_ children the best.'[39] You see he is tainted in his cradle by the loose principles of his parents, even before he can say nigger, or pronounce the more refined appellation. But that is no matter. I merely mention this by the way; not to prejudice you against Mr.----, but that you may appreciate the very different state of things in my family, and not misinterpret what I have to say. I was lately in one of our prisons where a somewhat injudicious indulgence had extended to one of the condemned felons, a lost and wretched outcast from society, the use of materials for painting, that having been his profession. He had completed at his leisure a picture of the Lord's Supper. Most of the figures were well enough, but Judas he had represented as a black.[40] Now, gentlemen, I am of opinion that this is an unwarrantable liberty taken with the Holy Scriptures, and shows _too much_ prejudice in the community. It is my wish to be moderate and fair, and preserve a medium, neither, on the one hand, yielding the wholesome antipathies planted in our breasts as a safeguard against degradation, and our constitutional obligations, which, as I have before observed, are, with me, more binding than any other; nor, on the other hand, forgetting that liberality and wisdom which are the prerogative of every citizen of this free commonwealth. I agree, then, with our young visitor. I hardly know, indeed, why a stranger, and one so young, was permitted to mingle in this council; but it was certainly thoughtful in him to crack and examine the nuts. I agree that it may be well to plant some of the black nuts among the others, so that, if many of the walnuts fail, we may make use of this inferior tree."

At this moment arose a hubbub, and such a clamor of "dangerous innovation," "political capital," "low-minded demagogue," "infidel who denies the Bible," "lower link in the chain of creation," &c., that it is impossible to say what was the decision.

DISCOVERIES.

Sometimes, as we meet people in the street, we catch a sentence from their lips that affords a clew to their history and habits of mind, and puts our own minds on quite a new course.

Yesterday two female figures drew nigh upon the street, in whom we had only observed their tawdry, showy style of dress, when, as they passed, one remarked to the other, in the tone of a person who has just made a discovery, "_I_ think there is something very handsome in a fine child."

Poor woman! that seemed to have been the first time in her life that she had made the observation. The charms of the human being, in that fresh and flower-like age which is intended perpetually to refresh us in our riper, renovate us in our declining years, had never touched her heart, nor awakened for her the myriad thoughts and fancies that as naturally attend the sight of childhood as bees swarm to the blossoming bough. Instead of being to her the little angels and fairies, the embodied poems which may ennoble the humblest lot, they had been to her mere "torments," who "could never be kept still, or their faces clean."

How piteous is the loss of those who do not contemplate childhood in a spirit of holiness! The heavenly influence on their own minds, of attention to cultivate each germ of great and good qualities, of avoiding the least act likely to injure, is lost--a loss dreary and piteous! for which no gain can compensate. But how unspeakably deplorable the petrifaction of those who look upon their little friends without any sympathy even, whose hearts are, by selfishness, worldliness, and vanity, seared from all gentle instincts, who can no longer appreciate their spontaneous grace and glee, that eloquence in every look, motion, and stammered word, those lively and incessant charms, over which the action of the lower motives with which the social system is rife, may so soon draw a veil!

We can no longer speak thus of _all_ children. On some, especially in cities, the inheritance of sin and deformity from bad parents falls too heavily, and incases at once the spark of soul which God still doth not refuse in such instances, in a careful, knowing, sensual mask. Such are never, in fact, children at all. But the rudest little cubs that are free from taint, and show the affinities with nature and the soul, are still young and flexible, and rich in gleams of the loveliness to be hoped from perfected human nature.

It is sad that all men do not feel these things. It is sad that they wilfully renounce so large a part of their heritage, and go forth to buy filtered water, while the fountain is gushing freshly beside the door of their own huts. As with the charms of children, so with other things. They do not know that the sunset is worth seeing every night, and the shows of the forest better than those of the theatre, and the work of bees and beetles more instructive, if scanned with care, than the lyceum lecture. The cheap knowledge, the cheap pleasures, that are spread before every one, they cast aside in search of an uncertain and feverish joy. We did, indeed, hear one man say that he could not possibly be deprived of his pleasures, since he could always, even were his abode in the narrowest lane, have a blanket of sky above his head, where he could see the clouds pass, and the stars glitter. But men in general remain unaware that

"Life's best joys are nearest us, Lie close about our feet."

For them the light dresses all objects in endless novelty, the rose glows, domestic love smiles, and childhood gives out with sportive freedom its oracles--in vain. That woman had seen beauty in gay shawls, in teacups, in carpets; but only of late had she discovered that "there was something beautiful in a fine child." Poor human nature! Thou must have been changed at nurse by a bad demon at some time, and strangely maltreated,--to have such blind and rickety intervals as come upon thee now and then!

POLITENESS TOO GREAT A LUXURY TO BE GIVEN TO THE POOR.

A few days ago, a lady, crossing in one of the ferry boats that ply from this city, saw a young boy, poorly dressed, sitting with an infant in his arms on one of the benches. She observed that the child looked sickly and coughed. This, as the day was raw, made her anxious in its behalf, and she went to the boy and asked whether he was alone there with the baby, and if he did not think the cold breeze dangerous for it. He replied that he was sent out with the child to take care of it, and that his father said the fresh air from the water would do it good.

While he made this simple answer, a number of persons had collected around to listen, and one of them, a well-dressed woman, addressed the boy in a string of such questions and remarks as these:--

"What is your name? Where do you live? Are you telling us the truth? It's a shame to have that baby out in such weather; you'll be the death of it. (To the bystanders:) I would go and see his mother, and tell her about it, if I was sure he had told us the truth about where he lived. How do you expect to get back? Here, (in the rudest voice,) somebody says you have not told the truth as to where you live."

The child, whose only offence consisted in taking care of the little one in public, and answering when he was spoken to, began to shed tears at the accusations thus grossly preferred against him. The bystanders stared at both; but among them all there was not one with sufficiently clear notions of propriety and moral energy to say to this impudent questioner "Woman, do you suppose, because you wear a handsome shawl, and that boy a patched jacket, that you have any right to speak to him at all, unless he wishes it--far less to prefer against him these rude accusations? Your vulgarity is unendurable; leave the place or alter your manner."

Many such instances have we seen of insolent rudeness, or more insolent affability, founded on no apparent grounds, except an apparent difference in pecuniary position; for no one can suppose, in such cases, the offending party has really enjoyed the benefit of refined education and society, but all present let them pass as matters of course. It was sad to see how the poor would endure--mortifying to see how the purse-proud dared offend. An excellent man, who was, in his early years, a missionary to the poor, used to speak afterwards with great shame of the manner in which he had conducted himself towards them. "When I recollect," said he, "the freedom with which I entered their houses, inquired into all their affairs, commented on their conduct, and disputed their statements, I wonder I was never horsewhipped, and feel that I ought to have been; it would have done me good, for I needed as severe a lesson on the universal obligations of politeness in its only genuine form of respect for man as man, and delicate sympathy with each in his peculiar position."

Charles Lamb, who was indeed worthy to be called a human being because of those refined sympathies, said, "You call him a gentleman: does his washerwoman find him so?" We may say, if she did, she found him a _man_, neither treating her with vulgar abruptness, nor giving himself airs of condescending liveliness, but treating her with that genuine respect which a feeling of equality inspires.

To doubt the veracity of another is an insult which in most _civilized_ communities must in the so-called higher classes be atoned for by blood, but, in those same communities, the same men will, with the utmost lightness, doubt the truth of one who wears a ragged coat, and thus do all they can to injure and degrade him by assailing his self-respect, and breaking the feeling of personal honor--a wound to which hurts a man as a wound to its bark does a tree.

Then how rudely are favors conferred, just as a bone is thrown to a dog! A gentleman, indeed, will not do _that_ without accompanying signs of sympathy and regard. Just as this woman said, "If you have told the truth I will go and see your mother," are many acts performed on which the actors pride themselves as kind and charitable.

All men might learn from the French in these matters. That people, whatever be their faults, are really well bred, and many acts might be quoted from their romantic annals, where gifts were given from rich to poor with a graceful courtesy, equally honorable and delightful to the giver and the receiver.

In Catholic countries there is more courtesy, for charity is there a duty, and must be done for God's sake; there is less room for a man to give himself the pharisaical tone about it. A rich man is not so surprised to find himself in contact with a poor one; nor is the custom of kneeling on the open pavement, the silk robe close to the beggar's rags, without profit. The separation by pews, even on the day when all meet nearest, is as bad for the manners as the soul.

Blessed be he, or she, who has passed through this world, not only with an open purse and willingness to render the aid of mere outward benefits, but with an open eye and open heart, ready to cheer the downcast, and enlighten the dull by words of comfort and looks of love. The wayside charities are the most valuable both as to sustaining hope and diffusing knowledge, and none can render them who has not an expansive nature, a heart alive to affection, and some true notion, however imperfectly developed, of the meaning of human brotherhood.

Such a one can never sauce the given meat with taunts, freeze the viand by a cold glance of doubt, or plunge the man, who asked for his hand, deeper back into the mud by any kind of rudeness.

In the little instance with which we began, no help _was_ asked, unless by the sight of the timid little boy's old jacket. But the license which this seemed to the well-clothed woman to give to rudeness, was so characteristic of a deep fault now existing, that a volume of comments might follow and a host of anecdotes be drawn from almost any one's experience in exposition of it. These few words, perhaps, may awaken thought in those who have drawn tears from other's eyes through an ignorance brutal, but not hopelessly so, if they are willing to rise above it.

CASSIUS M. CLAY.

The meeting on Monday night at the Tabernacle was to us an occasion of deep and peculiar interest. It was deep, for the feelings there expressed and answered bore witness to the truth of our belief, that the sense of right is not dead, but only sleepeth in this nation. A man who is manly enough to appeal to it, will be answered, in feeling at least, if not in action, and while there is life there is hope. Those who so rapturously welcomed one who had sealed his faith by deeds of devotion, must yet acknowledge in their breasts the germs of like nobleness.

It was an occasion of peculiar interest, such as we have not had occasion to feel since, in childish years, we saw Lafayette welcomed by a grateful people. Even childhood well understood that the gratitude then expressed was not so much for the aid which had been received as for the motives and feelings with which it was given. The nation rushed out as one man to thank Lafayette, that he had been able, amid the prejudices and indulgences of high rank in the old _régime_ of society, to understand the great principles which were about to create a new form, and answer, manlike, with love, service, and contempt of selfish interests to the voice of humanity demanding its rights. Our freedom would have been achieved without Lafayette; but it was a happiness and a blessing to number the young French nobleman as the champion of American independence, and to know that he had given the prime of his life to our cause, because it was the cause of justice. With similar feelings of joy, pride, and hope, we welcome Cassius M. Clay, a man who has, in like manner, freed himself from the prejudices of his position, disregarded selfish considerations, and quitting the easy path in which he might have walked to station in the sight of men, and such external distinctions as his State and nation readily confer on men so born and bred, and with such abilities, chose rather an interest in their souls, and the honors history will not fail to award to the man who enrolls his name and elevates his life for the cause of right and those universal principles whose recognition can alone secure to man the destiny without which he cannot be happy, but which he is continually sacrificing for the impure worship of idols. Yea, in this country, more than in the old Palestine, do they give their children to the fire in honor of Moloch, and sell the ark confided to them by the Most High for shekels of gold and of silver. Partly it was the sense of this position which Mr. Clay holds, as a man who esteems his own individual convictions of right more than local interests or partial, political schemes, that gave him such an enthusiastic welcome on Monday night from the very hearts of the audience, but still more that his honor is at this moment identified with the liberty of the press, which has been insulted and infringed in him. About this there can be in fact but one opinion. In vain Kentucky calls meetings, states reasons, gives names of her own to what has been done.[41] The rest of the world knows very well what the action is, and will call it by but one name. Regardless of this ostrich mode of defence, the world has laughed and scoffed at the act of a people professing to be free and defenders of freedom, and the recording angel has written down the deed as a lawless act of violence and tyranny, from which the man is happy who can call himself pure.

With the usual rhetoric of the wrong side, the apologists for this mob violence have wished to injure Mr. Clay by the epithets of "hot-headed," "visionary," "fanatical." But, if any have believed that such could apply to a man so clear-sighted as to his objects and the way of achieving them, the mistake must have been corrected on Monday night. Whoever saw Mr. Clay that night, saw in him a man of deep and strong nature, thoroughly in earnest, who had well considered his ground, and saw that though open, as the truly _noble_ must be, to new views and convictions, yet his direction is taken, and the improvement to be made will not be to turn aside, but to expedite and widen his course in that direction. Mr. Clay is young, young enough, thank Heaven! to promise a long career of great thoughts and honorable deeds. But still, to those who esteem youth an unpardonable fault, and one that renders incapable of counsel, we would say that he is at the age when a man is capable of great thoughts and great deeds, if ever. His is not a character that will ever grow old; it is not capable of a petty and short-sighted prudence, but can only be guided by a large wisdom which is more young than old, for it has within itself the springs of perpetual youth, and which, being far-sighted and prophetical, joins ever with the progress party without waiting till it be obviously in the ascendant.

Mr. Clay has eloquence, but only from the soul. He does not possess the art of oratory, as an art. Before he gets warmed he is too slow, and breaks his sentences too much. His transitions are not made with skill, nor is the structure of his speech, as a whole, symmetrical; yet, throughout, his grasp is firm upon his subject, and all the words are laden with the electricity of a strong mind and generous nature. When he begins to glow, and his deep mellow eye fills with light, the speech melts and glows too, and he is able to impress upon the hearer the full effect of firm conviction, conceived with impassioned energy. His often rugged and harsh emphasis flashes and sparkles then, and we feel that there is in the furnace a stream of iron: iron, fortress of the nations and victor of the seas, worth far more, in stress of storm, than all the gold and gems of rhetoric.

The great principle that he who wrongs one wrongs all, and that no part can be wounded without endangering the whole, was the healthy root of Mr. Clay's speech. The report does not do justice to the turn of expression in some parts which were most characteristic. These, indeed, depended much on the tones and looks of the speaker. We should speak of them as full of a robust and homely sincerity, dignified by the heart of the gentleman, a heart too secure of its respect for the rights of others to need any of the usual interpositions. His good-humored sarcasm, on occasion of several vulgar interruptions, was very pleasant, and easily at those times might be recognized in him the man of heroical nature, who can only show himself adequately in time of interruption and of obstacle. If that be all that is wanted, we shall surely see him wholly; there will be no lack of American occasions to call out the Greek fire. We want them all--the Grecian men, who feel a godlike thirst for immortal glory, and to develop the peculiar powers with which the gods have gifted them. We want them all--the poet, the thinker, the hero. Whether our heroes need _swords_, is a more doubtful point, we think, than Mr. Clay believes. Neither do we believe in some of the means he proposes to further his aims. God uses all kinds of means, but men, his priests, must keep their hands pure. Nobody that needs a bribe shall be asked to further our schemes for emancipation. But there is room enough and time enough to think out these points till all is in harmony. For the good that has been done and the truth that has been spoken, for the love of such that has been seen in this great city struggling up through the love of money, we should to-day be thankful--and we are so.

THE MAGNOLIA OF LAKE PONTCHARTRAIN.

The stars tell all their secrets to the flowers, and, if we only knew how to look around us, we should not need to look above. But man is a plant of slow growth, and great heat is required to bring out his leaves. He must be promised a boundless futurity, to induce him to use aright the present hour. In youth, fixing his eyes on those distant worlds of light, he promises himself to attain them, and there find the answer to all his wishes. His eye grows keener as he gazes, a voice from the earth calls it downward, and he finds all at his feet.

I was riding on the shore of Lake Pontchartrain, musing on an old English expression, which I had only lately learned to interpret. "He was fulfilled of all nobleness." Words so significant charm us like a spell, long before we know their meaning. This I had now learned to interpret. Life had ripened from the green bud, and I had seen the difference, wide as from earth to heaven, between nobleness and the _fulfilment_ of nobleness.

A fragrance beyond any thing I had ever known came suddenly upon the air, and interrupted my meditation. I looked around me, but saw no flower from which it could proceed. There is no word for it; _exquisite_ and _delicious_ have lost all meaning now. It was of a full and penetrating sweetness, too keen and delicate to be cloying. Unable to trace it, I rode on, but the remembrance of it pursued me. I had a feeling that I must forever regret my loss, my want, if I did not return and find the poet of the lake, whose voice was such perfume. In earlier days, I might have disregarded such a feeling; but now I have learned to prize the monitions of my nature as they deserve, and learn sometimes what is not for sale in the market place. So I turned back, and rode to and fro, at the risk of abandoning the object of my ride.

I found her at last, the queen of the south, singing to herself in her lonely bower. Such should a sovereign be, most regal when alone; for then there is no disturbance to prevent the full consciousness of power. All occasions limit; a kingdom is but an occasion; and no sun ever saw itself adequately reflected on sea or land.

Nothing at the south had affected me like the magnolia. Sickness and sorrow, which have separated me from my kind, have requited my loss by making known to me the loveliest dialect of the divine language. "Flowers," it has been truly said, "are the only positive present made us by nature." Man has not been ungrateful, but consecrated the gift to adorn the darkest and brightest hours. If it is ever perverted, it is to be used as a medicine; and even this vexes me. But no matter for that. We have pure intercourse with these purest creations; we love them for their own sake, for their beauty's sake. As we grow beautiful and pure, we understand them better. With me knowledge of them is a circumstance, a habit of my life, rather than a merit. I have lived with them, and with them almost alone, till I have learned to interpret the slightest signs by which they manifest their fair thoughts. There is not a flower in my native region which has not for me a tale, to which every year is adding new incidents; yet the growths of this new climate brought me new and sweet emotions, and, above all others, was the magnolia a revelation. When I first beheld her, a stately tower of verdure, each cup, an imperial vestal, full-displayed to the eye of day, yet guarded from the too hasty touch even of the wind by its graceful decorums of firm, glistening, broad, green leaves, I stood astonished, as might a lover of music, who, after hearing in all his youth only the harp or the bugle, should be saluted, on entering some vast cathedral, by the full peal of its organ.

After I had recovered from my first surprise, I became acquainted with the flower, and found all its life in harmony. Its fragrance, less enchanting than that of the rose, excited a pleasure more full of life, and which could longer be enjoyed without satiety. Its blossoms, if plucked from their home, refused to retain their dazzling hue, but drooped and grew sallow, like princesses captive in the prison of a barbarous foe.

But there was something quite peculiar in the fragrance of this tree; so much so, that I had not at first recognized the magnolia. Thinking it must be of a species I had never yet seen, I alighted, and leaving my horse, drew near to question it with eyes of reverent love.

"Be not surprised," replied those lips of untouched purity, "stranger, who alone hast known to hear in my voice a tone more deep and full than that of my beautiful sisters. Sit down, and listen to my tale, nor fear that I will overpower thee by too much sweetness. I am, indeed, of the race you love, but in it I stand alone. In my family I have no sister of the heart, and though my root is the same as that of the other virgins of our royal house, I bear not the same blossom, nor can I unite my voice with theirs in the forest choir. Therefore I dwell here alone, nor did I ever expect to tell the secret of my loneliness. But to all that ask there is an answer, and I speak to thee.

"Indeed, we have met before, as that secret feeling of home, which makes delight so tender, must inform thee. The spirit that I utter once inhabited the glory of the most glorious climates. I dwelt once in the orange tree."

"Ah?" said I; "then I did not mistake. It is the same voice I heard in the saddest season of my youth. I stood one evening on a high terrace in another land, the land where 'the plant man has grown to greatest size.' It was an evening whose unrivalled splendor demanded perfection in man--answering to that he found in nature--a sky 'black-blue' deep as eternity, stars of holiest hope, a breeze promising rapture in every breath. I could not longer endure this discord between myself and such beauty; I retired within my window, and lit the lamp. Its rays fell on an orange tree, full clad in its golden fruit and bridal blossoms. How did we talk together then, fairest friend! Thou didst tell me all; and yet thou knowest, that even then, had I asked any part of thy dower, it would have been to bear the sweet fruit, rather than the sweeter blossoms. My wish had been expressed by another.

'O, that I were an orange tree, That busy plant! Then should I ever laden he, And never want Some fruit for him that dresseth me.'

Thou didst seem to me the happiest of all spirits in wealth of nature, in fulness of utterance. How is it that I find thee now in another habitation?"

"How is it, man, that thou art now content that thy life bears no golden fruit?"

"It is," I replied, "that I have at last, through privation, been initiated into the secret of peace. Blighted without, unable to find myself in other forms of nature, I was driven back upon the centre of my being, and there found all being. For the wise, the obedient child from one point can draw all lines, and in one germ read all the possible disclosures of successive life."

"Even so," replied the flower, "and ever for that reason am I trying to simplify my being. How happy I was in the 'spirit's dower when first it was wed,' I told thee in that earlier day. But after a while I grew weary of that fulness of speech; I felt a shame at telling all I knew, and challenging all sympathies; I was never silent, I was never alone; I had a voice for every season, for day and night; on me the merchant counted, the bride looked to me for her garland, the nobleman for the chief ornament of his princely hair, and the poor man for his wealth; all sang my praises, all extolled my beauty, all blessed my beneficence; and, for a while, my heart swelled with pride and pleasure. But, as years passed, my mood changed. The lonely moon rebuked me, as she hid from the wishes of man, nor would return till her due change was passed. The inaccessible sun looked on me with the same ray as on all others; my endless profusion could not bribe him to one smile sacred to me alone. The mysterious wind passed me by to tell its secret to the solemn pine, and the nightingale sang to the rose rather than me, though she was often silent, and buried herself yearly in the dark earth.

"I knew no mine or thine: I belonged to all. I could never rest: I was never at one. Painfully I felt this want, and from every blossom sighed entreaties for some being to come and satisfy it. With every bud I implored an answer, but each bud only produced an orange.

"At last this feeling grew more painful, and thrilled my very root. The earth trembled at the touch with a pulse so sympathetic that ever and anon it seemed, could I but retire and hide in that silent bosom for one calm winter, all would be told me, and tranquillity, deep as my desire, be mine. But the law of my being was on me, and man and nature seconded it. Ceaselessly they called on me for my beautiful gifts; they decked themselves with them, nor cared to know the saddened heart of the giver. O, how cruel they seemed at last, as they visited and despoiled me, yet never sought to aid me, or even paused to think that I might need their aid! yet I would not hate them. I saw it was my seeming riches that bereft me of sympathy. I saw they could not know what was hid beneath the perpetual veil of glowing life. I ceased to expect aught from them, and turned my eyes to the distant stars. I thought, could I but hoard from the daily expenditure of my juices till I grew tall enough, I might reach those distant spheres, which looked so silent and consecrated, and there pause a while from these weary joys of endless life, and in the lap of winter find my spring.

"But not so was my hope to be fulfilled. One starlight night I was looking, hoping, when a sudden breeze came up. It touched me, I thought, as if it were a cold, white beam from those stranger worlds. The cold gained upon my heart; every blossom trembled, every leaf grew brittle, and the fruit began to seem unconnected with the stem; soon I lost all feeling; and morning found the pride of the garden black, stiff, and powerless.

"As the rays of the morning sun touched me, consciousness returned, and I strove to speak, but in vain. Sealed were my fountains, and all my heartbeats still. I felt that I had been that beauteous tree, but now only was--what--I knew not; yet I was, and the voices of men said, It is dead; cast it forth, and plant another in the costly vase. A mystic shudder of pale joy then separated me wholly from my former abode.

"A moment more, and I was before the queen and guardian of the flowers. Of this being I cannot speak to thee in any language now possible betwixt us; for this is a being of another order from thee, an order whose presence thou mayst feel, nay, approach step by step, but which cannot be known till thou art of it, nor seen nor spoken of till thou hast passed through it.

"Suffice it to say, that it is not such a being as men love to paint; a fairy, like them, only lesser and more exquisite than they; a goddess, larger and of statelier proportion; an angel, like still, only with an added power. Man never creates; he only recombines the lines and colors of his own existence: only a deific fancy could evolve from the elements the form that took me home.

"Secret, radiant, profound ever, and never to be known, was she; many forms indicate, and none declare her. Like all such beings, she was feminine. All the secret powers are "mothers." There is but one paternal power.

"She had heard my wish while I looked at the stars, and in the silence of fate prepared its fulfilment. 'Child of my most communicative hour,' said she, 'the full pause must not follow such a burst of melody. Obey the gradations of nature, nor seek to retire at once into her utmost purity of silence. The vehemence of thy desire at once promises and forbids its gratification. Thou wert the keystone of the arch, and bound together the circling year: thou canst not at once become the base of the arch, the centre of the circle. Take a step inward, forget a voice, lose a power; no longer a bounteous sovereign, become a vestal priestess, and bide thy time in the magnolia.'

"Such is my history, friend of my earlier day. Others of my family, that you have met, were formerly the religious lily, the lonely dahlia, fearless decking the cold autumn, and answering the shortest visits of the sun with the brightest hues; the narcissus, so rapt in self-contemplation that it could not abide the usual changes of a life. Some of these have perfume, others not, according to the habit of their earlier state; for, as spirits change, they still bear some trace, a faint reminder, of their latest step upwards or inwards. I still speak with somewhat of my former exuberance and over-ready tenderness to the dwellers on this shore; but each star sees me purer, of deeper thought, and more capable of retirement into my own heart. Nor shall I again detain a wanderer, luring him from afar; nor shall I again subject myself to be questioned by an alien spirit, to tell the tale of my being in words that divide it from itself. Farewell, stranger! and believe that nothing strange can meet me more. I have atoned by confession; further penance needs not; and I feel the Infinite possess me more and more. Farewell! to meet again in prayer, in destiny, in harmony, in elemental power."

The magnolia left me; I left not her, but must abide forever in the thought to which the clew was found in the margin of that lake of the South.

CONSECRATION OF GRACE CHURCH.

Whoever passes up Broadway finds his attention arrested by three fine structures--Trinity Church, that of the Messiah, and Grace Church.

His impressions are, probably, at first, of a pleasant character. He looks upon these edifices as expressions, which, however inferior in grandeur to the poems in stone which adorn the older world, surely indicate that man cannot rest content with his short earthly span, but prizes relations to eternity. The house in which he pays deference to claims which death will not cancel seems to be no less important in his eyes than those in which the affairs which press nearest are attended to.

So far, so good! That is expressed which gives man his superiority over the other orders of the natural world, that consciousness of spiritual affinities of which we see no unequivocal signs elsewhere.

But, if this be something great when compared with the rest of the animal creation, yet how little seems it when compared with the ideal that has been offered to him, as to the means of signifying such feelings! These temples! how far do they correspond with the idea of that religious sentiment from which they originally sprung? In the old world the history of such edifices, though not without its shadow, had many bright lines. Kings and emperors paid oftentimes for the materials and labor a price of blood and plunder, and many a wretched sinner sought by contributions of stone for their walls to roll off the burden he had laid on his conscience. Still the community amid which they rose knew little of these drawbacks. Pious legends attest the purity of feeling associated with each circumstance of their building. Mysterious orders, of which we know only that they were consecrated to brotherly love and the development of mind, produced the genius which animated the architecture; but the casting of the bells and suspending them in the tower was an act in which all orders of the community took part; for when those cathedrals were consecrated, it was for the use of all. Rich and poor knelt together upon their marble pavements, and the imperial altar welcomed the obscurest artisan.

This grace our churches want--the grace which belongs to all religions, but is peculiarly and solemnly enforced upon the followers of Jesus. The poor to whom he came to preach can have no share in the grace of Grace Church. In St. Peter's, if only as an empty form, the soiled feet of travel-worn disciples are washed; but such feet can never intrude on the fane of the holy Trinity here in republican America, and the Messiah may be supposed still to give as excuse for delay, "The poor you always have with you."

We must confess this circumstance is to us quite destructive of reverence and value for these buildings.

We are told, that at the late consecration, the claims of the poor were eloquently urged; and that an effort is to be made, by giving a side chapel, to atone for the luxury which shuts them out from the reflection of sunshine through those brilliant windows. It is certainly better that they should be offered the crumbs from the rich man's table than nothing at all, yet it is surely not _the_ way that Jesus would have taught to provide for the poor.

Would we not then have these splendid edifices erected? We certainly feel that the educational influence of good specimens of architecture (and we know no other argument in their favor) is far from being a counterpoise to the abstraction of so much money from purposes that would be more in fulfilment of that Christian idea which these assume to represent Were the rich to build such a church, and, dispensing with pews and all exclusive advantages, invite all who would to come in to the banquet, that were, indeed, noble and Christian. And, though we believe more, for our nation and time, in intellectual monuments than those of wood and stone, and, in opposition even to our admired Powers, think that Michael Angelo himself could have advised no more suitable monument to Washington than a house devoted to the instruction of the people, and think that great master, and the Greeks no less, would agree with us if they lived now to survey all the bearings of the subject, yet we would not object to these splendid churches, if the idea of Him they call Master were represented in them. But till it is, they can do no good, for the means are not in harmony with the end. The rich man sits in state while "near two hundred thousand" Lazaruses linger, unprovided for, without the gate. While this is so, they must not talk much, within, of Jesus of Nazareth, who called to him fishermen, laborers, and artisans, for his companions and disciples.

We find some excellent remarks on this subject from Rev. Stephen Olin, president of the Wesleyan University. They are appended as a note to a discourse addressed to young men, on the text, "Put ye on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make not provision for the flesh, to fulfil the lusts thereof."

This discourse, though it discloses formal and external views of religions ties and obligations, is dignified by a fervent, generous love for men, and a more than commonly catholic liberality; and though these remarks are made and meant to bear upon the interests of his own sect, yet they are anti-sectarian in their tendency, and worthy the consideration of all anxious to understand the call of duty in these matters. Earnest attention of this sort will better avail than fifteen hundred dollars, or more, paid for a post of exhibition in a fashionable church, where, if piety be provided with one chance, worldliness has twenty to stare it out of countenance.

"The strong tendency in our religious operations to gather the rich and the poor into separate folds, and so to generate and establish in the church distinctions utterly at variance with the spirit of our political institutions, is the very worst result of the multiplication of sects among us; and I fear it must be admitted that the evil is greatly aggravated by the otherwise benignant working of the voluntary system. Without insisting further upon the probable or possible injury which may befall our free country from this conflict of agencies, ever the most powerful in the formation of national and individual character, no one, I am sure, can fail to recognize in this development an influence utterly and irreconcilably hostile to the genius and cherished objects of Christianity. It is the peculiar glory of the gospel that, even under the most arbitrary governments, it has usually been able to vindicate and practically exemplify the essential equality of man. It has had one doctrine and one hope for all its children; and the highest and the lowest have been constrained to acknowledge one holy law of brotherhood in the common faith of which they are made partakers. Nowhere else, I believe, but in the United States--certainly nowhere else to the same extent--does this anti-Christian separation of classes prevail in the Christian church. The beggar in his tattered vestments walks the splendid courts of St. Peter's, and kneels at its costly altars by the side of dukes and cardinals. The peasant in his wooden shoes is welcomed in the gorgeous churches of Notre Dame and the Madeleine; and even in England, where political and social distinctions are more rigorously enforced than in any other country on earth, the lord and the peasant, the richest and the poorest, are usually occupants of the same church, and partakers of the same communion. That the reverse of all this is true in many parts of this country, every observing man knows full well; and what is yet more deplorable, while the lines of demarcation between the different classes have already become sufficiently distinct, the tendency is receiving new strength and development in a rapidly augmenting ratio. Even in country places, where the population is sparse, and the artificial distinctions of society are little known, the working of this strange element is, in many instances, made manifest, and a petty coterie of village magnates may be found worshipping God apart from the body of the people. But the evil is much more apparent, as well as more deeply seated, in our populous towns, where the causes which produce it have been longer in operation, and have more fully enjoyed the favor of circumstances. In these great centres of wealth, intelligence, and influence, the separation between the classes is, in many instances, complete, and in many more the process is rapidly progressive.

"There are crowded religious congregations composed so exclusively of the wealthy as scarcely to embrace an indigent family or individual; and the number of such churches, where the gospel is never preached to the poor, is constantly increasing. Rich men, instead of associating themselves with their more humble fellow-Christians, where their money as well as their influence and counsels are so much needed, usually combine to erect magnificent churches, in which sittings are too expensive for any but people of fortune, and from which their less-favored brethren are as effectually and peremptorily excluded as if there were dishonor or contagion in their presence. A congregation is thus constituted, able, without the slightest inconvenience, to bear the pecuniary burdens of twenty churches, monopolizing and consigning to comparative inactivity intellectual, moral, and material resources, for want of which so many other congregations are doomed to struggle with the most embarrassing difficulties. Can it for a moment be thought that such a state of things is desirable, or in harmony with the spirit and design of the gospel?

"A more difficult question arises when we inquire after a remedy for evils too glaring to be overlooked, and too grave to be tolerated, without an effort to palliate, if not to remove them. The most obvious palliative, and one which has already been tried to some extent by wealthy churches or individuals, is the erection of free places of worship for the poor. Such a provision for this class of persons would be more effectual in any other part of the world than in the United States. Whether it arises from the operation of our political system, or from the easy attainment of at least the prime necessaries of life, the poorer classes here are characterized by a proud spirit, which will not submit to receive even the highest benefits in any form that implies inferiority or dependence. This strong and prevalent feeling must continue to interpose serious obstacles in the way of these laudable attempts. If in a few instances churches for the poor have succeeded in our large cities, where the theory of social equality is so imperfectly realized in the actual condition of the people, and where the presence of a multitude of indigent foreigners tends to lower the sentiment of independence so strong in native-born Americans, the system is yet manifestly incapable of general application to the religious wants of our population. The same difficulty usually occurs in all attempts to induce the humbler classes to worship with the rich in sumptuous churches, by reserving for their benefit a portion of the sittings free, or at a nominal rent. A few only can be found who are willing to be recognized and provided for as beneficiaries and paupers, while the multitude will always prefer to make great sacrifices in order to provide for themselves in some humbler fane. It must be admitted that this subject is beset with practical difficulties, which are not likely to be removed speedily, or without some great and improbable revolution in our religious affairs. Yet if the respectable Christian denominations most concerned in the subject shall pursue a wise and liberal policy for the future, something may be done to check the evil. They may retard its rapid growth, perhaps, though it will most likely be found impossible to eradicate it altogether. It ought to be well understood, that the multiplication of magnificent churches is daily making the line of demarcation between the rich and the poor more and more palpable and impassable. There are many good reasons for the erection of such edifices. Increasing wealth and civilization seem to call for a liberal and tasteful outlay in behalf of religion; yet is it the dictate of prudence no less than of duty to balance carefully the good and the evil of every enterprise. It should ever be kept in mind, that such a church virtually writes above its sculptured portals an irrevocable prohibition to the poor--'_Procul, O procul este profani_.'"

LATE ASPIRATIONS.

LETTER TO H----.

You have put to me that case which puzzles more than almost any in this strange world--the case of a man of good intentions, with natural powers sufficient to carry them out, who, after having through great part of a life lived the best he knew, and, in the world's eye, lived admirably well, suddenly wakes to a consciousness of the soul's true aims. He finds that he has been a good son, husband, and father, an adroit man of business, respected by all around him, without ever having advanced one step in the life of the soul. His object has not been the development of his immortal being, nor has this been developed; all he has done bears upon the present life only, and even that in a way poor and limited, since no deep fountain of intellect or feeling has ever been unsealed for him. Now that his eyes are opened, he sees what communion is possible; what incorruptible riches may be accumulated by the man of true wisdom. But why is the hour of clear vision so late deferred? He cannot blame himself for his previous blindness. His eyes were holden that he saw not. He lived as well as he knew how.

And now that he would fain give himself up to the new oracle in his bosom, and to the inspirations of nature, all his old habits, all his previous connections, are unpropitious. He is bound by a thousand chains which press on him so as to leave no moment free. And perhaps it seems to him that, were he free, he should but feel the more forlorn. He sees the charm and nobleness of this new life, but knows not how to live it. It is an element to which his mental frame has not been trained. He knows not what to do to-day or to-morrow; how to stay by himself, or how to meet others; how to act, or how to rest. Looking on others who chose the path which now invites him at an age when their characters were yet plastic, and the world more freely opened before them, he deems them favored children, and cries in almost despairing sadness, Why, O Father of Spirits, didst thou not earlier enlighten me also? Why was I not led gently by the hand in the days of my youth? "And what," you ask, "could I reply?"

Much, much, dear H----, were this a friend whom I could see so often that his circumstances would be my text. For no subject has more engaged my thoughts, no difficulty is more frequently met. But now on this poor sheet I can only give you the clew to what I should say.

In the first place, the depth of the despair must be caused by the mistaken idea that this our present life is all the time allotted to man for the education of his nature for that state of consummation which is called heaven. Were it seen that this present is only one little link in the long chain of probations; were it felt that the Divine Justice is pledged to give the aspirations of the soul all the time they require for their fulfilment; were it recognized that disease, old age, and death are circumstances which can never touch the eternal youth of the spirit; that though the "plant man" grows more or less fair in hue and stature, according to the soil in which it is planted, yet the principle, which is the life of the plant, will not be defeated, but must scatter its seeds again and again, till it does at last come to perfect flower,--then would he, who is pausing to despair, realize that a new choice can never be too late, that false steps made in ignorance can never be counted by the All-Wise, and that, though a moment's delay against conviction is of incalculable weight the mistakes of forty years are but as dust on the balance held by an unerring hand. Despair is for time, hope for eternity.

Then he who looks at all at the working of the grand principle of compensation which holds all nature in equipoise, cannot long remain a stranger to the meaning of the beautiful parable of the prodigal son, and the joy over finding the one lost piece of silver. It is no arbitrary kindness, no generosity of the ruling powers, which causes that there be more joy in heaven over the one that returns, than over ninety and nine that never strayed. It is the inevitable working of a spiritual law that he who has been groping in darkness must feel the light most keenly, best know how to prize it--he who has long been exiled from the truth seize it with the most earnest grasp, live in it with the deepest joy. It was after descending to the very pit of sorrow, that our Elder Brother was permitted to ascend to the Father, who perchance said to the angels who had dwelt always about the throne, Ye are always with me, and all that I have is yours; but this is my Son; he has been into a far country, but could not there abide, and has returned. But if any one say, "I know not how to return," I should still use words from the same record: "Let him arise and go to his Father." Let him put his soul into that state of simple, fervent desire for truth alone, truth for its own sake, which is prayer, and not only the sight of truth, but the way to make it living, shall be shown. Obstacles, insuperable to the intellect of any adviser, shall melt away like frostwork before a ray from the celestial sun. The Father may hide his face for a time, till the earnestness of the suppliant child be proved; but he is not far from any that seek, and when he does resolve to make a revelation, will show not only the _what_, but the _how_; and none else can advise or aid the seeking soul, except by just observation on some matter of detail.

In this path, as in the downward one, must there be the first step that decides the whole--one sacrifice of the temporal for the eternal day is the grain of mustard seed which may give birth to a tree large enough to make a home for the sweetest singing birds. One moment of deep truth in life, of choosing not merely honesty, but purity, may leaven the whole mass.

FRAGMENTARY THOUGHTS FROM MARGARET FULLER'S JOURNAL.

I gave the world the fruit of earlier hours: O Solitude! reward me with some flowers; Or if their odorous bloom thou dost deny, Rain down some meteors from the winter sky!

_Poesy._--The expression of the sublime and beautiful, whether in measured words or in the fine arts. The human mind, apprehending the harmony of the universe, and making new combinations by its laws.

* * * * *

_Poetry._--The sublime and beautiful expressed in measured language. It is closely allied with the fine arts. It should sing to the ear, paint to the eye, and exhibit the symmetry of architecture. If perfect, it will satisfy the intellectual and moral faculties no less than the heart and the senses. It works chiefly by simile and melody. It is to prose as the garden to the house. Pleasure is the object of the one, convenience of the other. The flowers and fruits may be copied on the furniture of the house, but if their beauty be not subordinated to utility, they lose the charm of beauty, and degenerate into finery. The reverse is the case in the garden.

* * * * *

_Nature._--I would praise alike the soft gray and brown which soothed my eye erewhile, and the snowy fretwork which now decks the forest aisles. Every ripple in the snowy fields, every grass and fern which raises its petrified delicacy above them, seems to me to claim a voice. A voice! Canst thou not silently adore, but must needs be doing? Art thou too good to wait as a beggar at the door of the great temple?

_Woman--Man._--Woman is the flower, man the bee. She sighs out melodious fragrance, and invites the winged laborer. He drains her cup, and carries off the honey. She dies on the stalk; he returns to the hive, well fed, and praised as an active member of the community.

* * * * *

_Action symbolical of what is within._--Goethe says, "I have learned to consider all I do as symbolical,--so that it now matters little to me whether I make plates or dishes." And further, he says, "All manly effort goes from within outwards."

* * * * *

_Opportunity fleeting._--I held in my hand the cup. It was full of hot liquid. The air was cold; I delayed to drink, and its vital heat, its soul, curled upwards in delicatest wreaths. I looked delighted on their beauty; but while I waited, the essence of the draught was wasted on the cold air: it would not wait for me; it longed too much to utter itself: and when my lip was ready, only a flat, worthless sediment remained of what had been.

* * * * *

_Mingling of the heavenly with the earthly._--The son of the gods has sold his birthright. He has received in exchange one, not merely the fairest, but the sweetest and holiest of earth's daughters. Yet is it not a fit exchange. His pinions droop powerless; he must no longer soar amid the golden stars. No matter, he thinks; "I will take her to some green and flowery isle; I will pay the penalty of Adam for the sake of the daughter of Eve; I will make the earth fruitful by the sweat of my brow. No longer my hands shall bear the coal to the lips of the inspired singer--no longer my voice modulate its tones to the accompaniment of spheral harmonies. My hands now lift the clod of the valley which dares cling to them with brotherly familiarity. And for my soiling, dreary task-work all the day, I receive--food.

"But the smile with which she receives me at set of sun, is it not worth all that sun has seen me endure? Can angelic delights surpass those which I possess, when, facing the shore with her, watched by the quiet moon, we listen to the tide of the world surging up impatiently against the Eden it cannot conquer? Truly the joys of heaven were gregarious and low in comparison. This, this alone, is exquisite, because exclusive and peculiar."

Ah, seraph! but the winter's frost must nip thy vine; a viper lurks beneath the flowers to sting the foot of thy child, and pale decay must steal over the cheek thou dost adore. In the realm of ideas all was imperishable. Be blest while thou canst. I love thee, fallen seraph, but thou shouldst not have sold thy birthright.

"All for love and the world well lost." That sounds so true! But genius, when it sells itself, gives up, not only the world, but the universe.

Yet does not love comprehend the universe? The universe is love. Why should I weary my eye with scanning the parts, when I can clasp the whole this moment to my beating heart?

But if the intellect be repressed, the idea will never be brought out from the feeling. The amaranth wreath will in thy grasp be changed to one of roses, more fragrant indeed, but withering with a single sun!

* * * * *

_The Crisis with Goethe._--I have thought much whether Goethe did well in giving up Lili. That was the crisis in his existence. From that era dates his being as a "Weltweise;" the heroic element vanished irrecoverably from his character; he became an Epicurean and a Realist; plucking flowers and hammering stones instead of looking at the stars. How could he look through the blinds, and see her sitting alone in her beauty, yet give her up for so slight reasons? He was right as a genius, but wrong as a character.

* * * * *

_The Flower and the Pearl._---- has written wonders about the mystery of personality. Why do we love it? In the first place, each wishes to embrace a whole, and this seems the readiest way. The intellect soars, the heart clasps; from putting "a girdle round about the earth in forty minutes," thou wouldst return to thy own little green isle of emotion, and be the loving and playful fay, rather than the delicate Ariel.

Then most persons are plants, organic. We can predict their growth according to their own law. From the young girl we can predict the lustre, the fragrance of the future flower. It waves gracefully to the breeze, the dew rests upon its petals, the bee busies himself in them, and flies away after a brief rapture, richly laden.

When it fades, its leaves fall softly on the bosom of Mother Earth, to all whose feelings it has so closely conformed. It has lived as a part of nature; its life was music, and we open our hearts to the melody.

But characters like thine and mine are mineral. We are the bone and sinew, these the smiles and glances, of earth. We lie nearer the mighty heart, and boast an existence more enduring than they. The sod lies heavy on us, or, if we show ourselves, the melancholy moss clings to us. If we are to be made into palaces and temples, we must be hewn and chiselled by instruments of unsparing sharpness. The process is mechanical and unpleasing; the noises which accompany it, discordant and obtrusive; the artist is surrounded with rubbish. Yet we may be polished to marble smoothness. In our veins may lie the diamond, the ruby, perhaps the emblematic carbuncle.

The flower is pressed to the bosom with intense emotion, but in the home of love it withers and is cast away.

The gem is worn with less love, but with more pride; if we enjoy its sparkle, the joy is partly from calculation of its value; but if it be lost, we regret it long.

For myself, my name is Pearl.[42] That lies at the beginning, amid slime and foul prodigies from which only its unsightly shell protects. It is cradled and brought to its noblest state amid disease and decay. Only the experienced diver could have known that it was there, and brought it to the strand, where it is valued as pure, round, and, if less brilliant than the diamond, yet an ornament for a kingly head. Were it again immersed in the element where first it dwelt, now that it is stripped of the protecting shell, soon would it blacken into deformity. So what is noblest in my soul has sprung from disease, present defeat, disappointment, and untoward outward circumstance.

For you, I presume, from your want of steady light and brilliancy of sparks which are occasionally struck from you, that you are either a flint or a rough diamond. If the former, I hope you will find a home in some friendly tinder-box, instead of lying in the highway to answer the hasty hoof of the trampling steed. If a diamond, I hope to meet you in some imperishable crown, where we may long remain together; you lighting up my pallid orb, I tempering your blaze.

_Dried Ferns about my Lamp-shade._--"What pleasure do you, who have exiled those paper tissue covers, take in that bouquet of dried ferns? Their colors are less bright, and their shapes less graceful, than those of your shades."

I answer, "They grew beneath the solemn pines. They opened their hearts to the smile of summer, and answered to the sigh of autumn. _They_ remind me of the wealth of nature; the tissues, of the poverty of man. They were gathered by a cherished friend who worships in the woods, and behind them lurks a deep, enthusiastic eye. So my pleasure in seeing them is 'denkende' and 'menschliche.'"

"They are of no use."

"Good! I like useless things: they are to me the vouchers of a different state of existence."

* * * * *

_Light._--My lamp says to me, "Why do you disdain me, and use that candle, which you have the trouble of snuffing every five minutes, and which ever again grows dim, ungrateful for your care? I would burn steadily from sunset to midnight, and be your faithful, vigilant friend, yet never interrupt you an instant."

I reply, "But your steady light is also dull,--while his, at its best, is both brilliant and mellow. Besides, I love him for the trouble he gives; he calls on my sympathy, and admonishes me constantly to use my life, which likewise flickers as if near the socket."

* * * * *

_Wit and Satire._--I cannot endure people who do not distinguish between wit and satire; who think you, of course, laugh at people when you laugh _about_ them; and who have no perception of the peculiar pleasure derived from toying with lovely or tragic figures.

FAREWELL.[43]

Farewell to New York city, where twenty months have presented me with a richer and more varied exercise for thought and life, than twenty years could in any other part of these United States.

It is the common remark about New York, that it has at least nothing petty or provincial in its methods and habits. The place is large enough: there is room enough, and occupation enough, for men to have no need or excuse for small cavils or scrutinies. A person who is independent, and knows what he wants, may lead his proper life here, unimpeded by others.

Vice and crime, if flagrant and frequent, are less thickly coated by hypocrisy than elsewhere. The air comes sometimes to the most infected subjects.

New York is the focus, the point where American and European interests converge. There is no topic of general interest to men, that will not betimes be brought before the thinker by the quick turning of the wheel.

_Too_ quick that revolution,--some object. Life rushes wide and free, but _too fast_. Yet it is in the power of every one to avert from himself the evil that accompanies the good. He must build for his study, as did the German poet, a house beneath the bridge; and then all that passes above and by him will be heard and seen, but he will not be carried away with it.

Earlier views have been confirmed, and many new ones opened. On two great leadings, the superlative importance of promoting national education by heightening and deepening the cultivation of individual minds, and the part which is assigned to woman in the next stage of human progress in this country, where most important achievements are to be effected, I have received much encouragement, much instruction, and the fairest hopes of more.

On various subjects of minor importance, no less than these, I hope for good results, from observation, with my own eyes, of life in the old world, and to bring home some packages of seed for life in the new.

These words I address to my friends, for I feel that I have some. The degree of sympathetic response to the thoughts and suggestions I have offered through the columns of the Tribune, has indeed surprised me, conscious as I am of a natural and acquired aloofness from many, if not most popular tendencies of my time and place. It has greatly encouraged me, for none can sympathize with thoughts like mine, who are permanently insnared in the meshes of sect or party; none who prefer the formation and advancement of mere opinions to the free pursuit of truth. I see, surely, that the topmost bubble or sparkle of the cup is no voucher for the nature of its contents throughout, and shall, in future, feel that in our age, nobler in that respect than most of the preceding ages, each sincere and fervent act or word is secure, not only of a final, but of a speedy response.

I go to behold the wonders of art, and the temples of old religion. But I shall see no forms of beauty and majesty beyond what my country is capable of producing in myriad variety, if she has but the soul to will it; no temple to compare with what she might erect in the ages, if the catchword of the time, a sense of _divine order_, should become no more a mere word of form, but a deeply-rooted and pregnant idea in her life. Beneath the light of a hope that this may be, I say to my friends once more a kind farewell!