r MS A3 The original of tliis book is in tlie Cornell University Library. There are no known copyright restrictions in the United States on the use of the text. http ://www. arch i ve . o rg/detai Is/cu31 92406254471 7 Production Note Cornell University Library pro- duced this volume to replace the irreparably deteriorated original. It was scanned using Xerox soft- ware and equipment at 600 dots per inch resolution and com- pressed prior to storage using CCITT Group 4 compression. The digital data were used to create Cornell's replacement volume on paper that meets the ANSI Stand- ard Z39. 48-1984. The production of this volume was supported in part by the Commission on Pres- ervation and Access and the Xerox Corporation. Digital file copy- right by Cornell University Library 1991. BOUGHT WITH THE INCOME FROM THE SAGE ENDOWMENT FUND THE GIFT OF 1891 ^.iLoMl^.. i3Mk SYMBOLS or THE CAPITAL OR, CIVILIZATION IN NEW YORK. A. D. MAYO. NEW YORK: T H AT C H E: R &; H "LT T O H I N S O N . 523 (ST. NICHOLAS HOTEL) BROADWAY. 18 5 9. A.»t)'8t^4 E?(TiRSD aceordiiip to Act or Congress, in the yenr lEfif), by T HATCHER & HUTCHINSON, In tho Clerk 'i Office of ihe Distric. Cuiirt .if tiie Uiiilad Statea. for the Sontieiii D.atrlct of New Y< rk. W. H. Tfi>ao!(, Stureoiyper anJ Pniirar, Renr cf 43 & 45 Cfenlr« alrcirt, N. Y. PREFACE The subject of the following pages is American Civilization, as symbolized by the institutions of the chief State in the Republic. No State so completely represents the characteristic tendencies of society in our country as New York. Superior to all others in population, wealth and executive power ; containing a representative of every style of character and abil- ity at work in our new confederacy; closely linked with eveiy interest in the Union; its condition is, perhaps, the best mirror in which we can behold the reflection of our present progress, and the obstacles that hinder our more rapid advancement. The writer has selected the chief representative institutions of the capital city of New York, as sug- gestive of what life should be in every free common- IV PEEFACE. wealth. The work is, therefore, concerned with local themes, only as they lead the mind to the considera tion of the great privileges and obligations of Ameri- can citizenship. It is a sincere endeavor to aid the young men and women of our land in their attempt to realize a character that shall justify our professions of republicanism, and to establish a civilization which, in becommg national, shall illustrate every principle of a pure Chiistianity. CONTEJSTTS 1. PAOB TUE IIUIISON ; OR, LIFE IN THE COHNTRT, .... 7 II. THE CAPITAL CITY; OR, SOCIETY IN TOWN, .... 36 III. THE FOKCES OF FREE LABOR, 66 IV. MAN AND HIS MODERN INVENTIONS, 96 THE GOLD DOLLAR, . . ' 119 VI. THE NORMAL SCHOOL AND THE ODSERVATORT, . . . 143 T VI CONTENTS. PEDANTRY AND POWER, 1'73 VIII. TIIK CAPITOL AND THE HIGHER LATT, ..... 196 IX. THE STCDIOS; OB, ART IN NEW YORK, 223 X. TllK r;:..ITENTlARY; ok, chime in NEW YORE, . . . 247 XI. WOMAN IN AMERICA, ........ 275 XII. THE CntRCilLS; OR, REUniOX in NEW YORK, . . . 313 XIII. THE RURAL CEMETERY; OR, LIFE AND DEATH, . . . tiZ SYMBOLS OF THE CAPITAL. THE HUDSON; OB, LIFE IN THE COUNTEY. Theee are many great rivers on the western conti- nent ; but nowhere within a valley of three hun- dred miles is there such an appeal to the love of nature and the higher love of man, as in the glo- rious region of the Hudson. Its springs hide themselves amid the secrets of that mysterious wilderness, whose " cloud-splitting " summit soars above a wide sweeping circle of primitive woods and hills, and glistening lakes and streams, with a faint gleam of civilization quivering in the far-oft' horizon. "Within the broad bay, where its majes- tic tide lapses into the Atlantic, are reflected the T 8 THE HUDSON ; OR, masts of a commerce that searclies the ends of the earth, and the spires of that city which represents in all its wondrous phases the new civilization of the western world. Midway between the Adiron- dack and the ocean, scaling the hills and nestling amid the ravines of its superb shores, rises the Capital City of the greatest Kepublican State. And every mile of its joyous current above, or its stately tide below, is crowded with nature's grandeur or loveliness. Whether it reflects the swelling hills and wooded islands that smile over its marriage with the beautiful Mohawk ; or lingers reverently where the Catskills build their sapphire wall, terrace above terrace, along the western sky ; or washes the lazy feet of old quiet villages, and foams ai'ound the wharves of busy towns ; or glides by fertile fields that scale broad eastern uplands, shining like gardens of Paradise in the light of the sinking sun; or ripples at the end of shadowed paths, that lead to the embowered homes of culture and wealth and worth; or writhes through the girding Highlands ; or diffuses itself in inland bays ; or rolls by the solemn Palisades, to breast the ascending waves of the sea ; its journey is every- where a jubilee ; the triumphal march of nature out of her primeval wilderness to her mystic union with the noblest works of man. LIFE IN THE COFNTEY. 9 For glorious as may be this valley of the Hud- eon, yet around the least man that looks upon its waves, or treads its soil, lingers a charm as far above the magic of forest and sunset as the sky is lifted above the ground — the charm of an immor- tal spiritual existence. And nature's splendor along these three hundred wondrous miles is but a faint type of the grandeur of that human des- tiny wrought out amid her scenes. Two hundred and fifty years ago the little ship " Half Moon " first disturbed the waters of this unknown stream, bearing the heroic navigator whose name it has inherited. Seven years later a trading-post arose on one of its islands, and in 1623 were laid the foundations of Albany, the second town in those original colonies whose revolt from England cre- ated our Republic. Its junction with the sea wit- nessed the ceremonies that sealed its transmission to the English power in 1664 ; while on the region washed by its northern waters, the tide of French invasion was met and broken by the united bravery of New York and 'New England. Along its de- voted banks ebbed and flowed the wave of the Revolutionary struggle ; on the plains of Saratoga was struck the decisive blow that broke the spell of British success ; under the shadows of the High- lands watched and thought and commanded our 1* 10 THE rruDSOK ; on, Washington ; here, at the end of the long and dreary war, was disbanded the army of the Thir- teen Independent States ; and in full view of its waters was the Father of his Country inaugurated first President of the Eepublic. Just fifty years ago Eobert Fulton opened its second great era of human interest, and stowed in the hull of his little steamer, that crawled up to Albany, were the mighty agencies of civilization that have changed this wilderness to the garden valley it has become. Thrice since that day has the mighty West reached out a long arm and seized its shores with a giant grasp ; and now, along these avenues of wave and iron, sm-ges the noise of nations going to their destiny beyond onr sinking sun ; while the genius of New England, from her long line of mountain ridges, looks down with hope and pride into its fruitful valleys. New York has arisen, like a city in a fairy tale, repre- sentative of the best and the worst of American life ; and in the offices and halls of the buildings that crown the hills of Albany, has been elaborated the policy that has brought our State to its eminent position among the communities of men. In all the elements of human interest no river can surpass our own ; for while the plains of the Tiber and the Danube reflect the lingering glories rJITE m THE COUNTRY. 11 of empires that have gone, or totter on the giddy summit of despotic misrule, and the Seine and the Thames mirror the best results of that civilization based on the contempt for the natural rights of man, our Hudson is stirred from her Atlantic wave to her mountain springs by the great conflict of free- dom for the Boul. Though the cannon of the old Hevolution no longer awake the echoes of our hills, yet the American revolution now rages at its full nocn-tide heat along these valleys ; and when the armies of this revolution are disbanded on its shores, from the Capital City must go fortli the joy- ous word that declares the people of the Empire State free from political oppression, and the more subtle tjTanny of superstition, and the deadliest slavery of ignorance and social degeneracy. So does our Hudson flow towards the future, bearing on its swelling waves the hopes of a longing world for the final emancipation of man. And most fit- ting is it that the moral teacher who would point to the signs in the eastern heavens of this coming day of light and love should stand in the Capital City, of the most powerful commonwealth in the great republic, and make it, through its chief representa- tive institutions, preach those Christian lessons that are the essence of the best culture of our time. But as the cities that fill our lovely valley are 12 THE HUDSON; OE, enfolded and shadowed on every hand by the coun- try, so is their glory only representative, and they are only what they are made by those who till the plains, and toil upon the hillsides that stretch away from us to the limits of our State. Along the banks of the Hudson the cities and villages are but dots ; while the country is the ever present object of view. Therefore let our estimate of the forces that cluster in the Capital City be prefaced by an estimate of the country life of our great State. With the Hudson for a text, let the teacher speak of the capabilities of that country life for the pro- duction of a civilization which shall be the Amer- ican version of Christ's kingdom of heaven among men. Every wise observer of the affairs of the Eepub- lic must confess that our hope of a Christian Democracy is in the country life of the nation. America cannot be ruled by her great cities except by the substitution of the interests of a class for the elevation of the whole. The influence of our great capitals is comparatively small in the array of public forces. In the soathem half of the Union they are an insignificant element of power. The West has extemporized huge villages in the wilder- ness which, spite of their metropolitan pretensions, are only commercial depots erected by the imme- LIFE IN THE COCNTKT. 13 diate wants of a developing conntry. Even tlie older cities of the East, not excepting New York, are still gigantic caravansaries, so fluctuating in their population and tendencies that they cannot be estimated as a fixed power in the State. Their wealth, culture and moral enterprise are rivalled by thousands of smaller towns, bound together by rail-track and telegraph, which represent in turn a country population of landholders and indepen- dent laborers such as the world never before saw ; and whose enlightened watchfulness will not per- mit the conceit of citizen aristocracy, or the brutality of citizen barbarism to dictate terms to our new civilization. "While therefore the man of mature power may choose a city platform ou which to work the machinery of his influence, yet his mission is not so much among the flckle crowds of the towns as out among the villages and fanns. Whoever can make his mark deep and broad over the hills and fields of our Empire State can well afibrd to dispense with the homage paid by the metropolitan fashion of the hour to its favorite; for whatever idea of life rules the country must inevitably shape the destiny of the republic. In speaking of country life we shall therefore avoid that greenness in which the hackneyed citi- 14 IHE IIUDSOX ; OE, zen so often clothes himself when pronouncing his oracles for the entertainment of his rural brethren. We shall avoid that sentimental Arcadian view which lures young ladies and gentlemen, deep in the mysteries of pastoral poetry and the latest mode, to invade the rural districts in midsummer, and display their innocent and verdant fancies for the entertainment of the farmers' sons and the village housewives; for though a pardonable hallucina- tion in certain seasons of early adolescence, this pastoral view of country life can be dismissed by grown up men and women without serious damage to their mental integrity. We must also avoid the notion of a section of the mercantile world, whose views of the country have uniformly been through the telescope of speculation, and to whom the whole continent outside the pavement resolves itself into a universe of mill privileges, mercantile agencies, ups and downs of breadstuffs, and pro- spective comer-lots in cities yet hovering in the air. Equally useless for our purpose is that idea which painfully occupies the soul of the retired man of the town, who having recovered from the excitement of building his palace on the most inaccessible hill in the countiy, awakes to the direful apprehension that he has put himself into a fort- ress and must spend the remainder of his days in r.IFE IN THE CDUNTEY. 15 foraging for supplies of food and fuel and society. It is becoming quite unnecessary to dispel the fond dream of the city ecclesiastic or politician, that on the pulling of a certain wire above the chair of his sanctum ■whole districts of agricultural patriots and saints will dance most vigorously to his tune, since the cry of both these gentlemen is no>"v to gods and men for relief against the oppression of these dwellers on farms who are bent on making their vocation a sinecure. We can do justice to the artistic view of country life and still understand that the chief end of the laborer or village maid is not to figure in a smock-frock or flower-decked flat in his charming landscape. In contemplating the country life of New York, such views must only be considered as glimpses of the real world, like those caught while swiftly crossing one of the hill streets of the Capital City. But we shall transport ourselves to the homes of the people, and consider the case of those, who, born into the whole circle of country toils, trials and advanta- ges, will live and die outside of city walls. How does life appear to this vast majority of the Ameri- can people ; what opportunities aid and what hin- derances discourage their efi'orts for Christian manhood ; and how shall they solve the radical problem of our national destiny; — to combine 16 THE HUDSOK ; OE, individual freedom in every department of liimian existence with tlie duties of a citizen in our great general confederacy of independent States ? The advantages of country life will always bear repeating. First is health, which must deteriorate amid the poisonous vapors and artificial habits that now make our cities the graveyards of so much youth and beauty imported from the fields. 'Next is physical comfort, for a sober man will prefer the country where all things grow for his support and he can afford to be a hospitable neighbor to the city, where every addition of outward happiness must be bargained for and dearly bought. Better BtiU is the opportunity for personal consideration in a community that soon understands the real worth of its every member and assigns him the position his character demands, while the city must to a great degree live in ignorance of character, and promote men and women accord- ing to their strength in achieving a special success. The alternation of labor and leisure in the life of the farmer or dweller in villages secures time for mental improvement, and if the masses in the country are not more enlightened in literature than the overdriven and excited crowds that throng the pavement, it is their own deep disgrace. Art is the advantage of the town, but in the present state of LIFE IN THE COCNTET. 17 American art and manners we shall not be thought singular if we maintain that the privilege of look- ing from one of the hills that orershadow the valley of the Hudson, or contemplating the pictures framed by the window-sash of the householder among the western lakes, is superior to the attraction of a re- served seat at the Academy of Music, a ticket to the Art Galleries, a promenade down Broadway, or a carriage once a fortnight, with the invitation to occupy six square inches of an uptown saloon, for two fearful hours contending for personal safety in a mob of dress coats and a wilderness of crinoline. And when the lover of Christianity is brought to know the imveracities and obscenities and inhuman- ities that deep below deep undermine our gilded metropolitan life, he will see that the hope of a purer religion in America is given to those whose independent country life makes social servility and moral depravity an unpardonable offence. The sum of this advantage is that in the country the individual man is a more prominent object in the landscape of life than in the city : and while cor- porations and institutions are the rulers of the town it is easier for the dweller with nature to pos- sess himself and decide the great American prob- lem between man and the state according to his best intelligence. 18 THE HUDSON ; OE, Yet in many sections of the country there are great drawbacks to these advantages. The mono- tony of lonely life often stupefies rather than deepens the character. The want of society repre- senting varied interests and styles of thought may easily breed a conceit of superiority, which, alter- nating with the shyness of pride nourished in seclusion, shuts the door on improvement. The lack of that indefinable power we call manner or personal presence, which few can preserve away from intercourse with all varieties of people, is a great hinderance to the reserved countryman. Tlie absence of these powerful excitements which awake the latent energies and introduce a man to himself is also injurious to many a sleepy soul that suns its life away on green banks and lets nature over- power and demoralize the will. The remoteness from the centres of concentrated influence often begets a mischievous dependence in thought and habit. There is danger that the rural mind will fall into the ruts, and live and die unconscious of its decided advantages of position; and many a one has doubtless been galvanized into a noble manhood by the shocks of city life, who would have glided down the slow current of a country career hardly disturbing the waters till the final plunge. LIFE m THE COUHTBT. 19 The upshot of this controversy between country and town is, that each has great advantages for a strong soul. It is time that our people were de- livered from the cant that agriculture is an essen- tially ennobling pursuit, and that one has only to live in a fannhouse to be a worthy man. Selfish- ness as withering, meanness and craft as belittling, sensuality as brutalizing as any that dwells in city courts, often curses the farmer's home. IS^either the land nor the pavement makes the man, but a high spirit makes both the theatre of life's grandest achievement. Every honest and usefiil profession is good for the best uses of the soul. Labor is not confined to the field or the shop, but is the severe angel that stands by the elbow of him who thinks, or traffics, or guides society, and when- ever welcomed bestows her great rewards. Both countrymen and citizen need less false pride in their profession, more just pride to make that pro- fession the means of human elevation. The best product of the farm and plantation is not wheat and cotton, but man ; and our teeming prairies and rich uplands will only become a curse, unless the world values the planter above his bales, and the farmer beyond his grains. The especial need of the great agricultural classes in this land is more self-respect, founded not on their grounds, but on 20 THE HUDSON ; OE, their nature as souls created in the image of God ; and along with this a more rational estimate of their great opportunities to cultivate the best char- acter in their position, with an unobtrusive inde- pendence in forming theii* habits of life on the basis of the coimtry. A sham city in the rural districts is a painful sight which too often offends the eyes of the American. For, just now, commerce is flaunt- ing her sudden successes and intolerable follies of luxury in the eyes of the country, inflaming young men with the aspiration to exchange the honors of health and iadependence at home for slavery and effeminacy in the town ; and changing the good old race of country women into feeble imitators of the fashion plates, who sigh among the groves and gardens of the Hudson for the splendors of Broad- way milluiery and the exhausting pleasures of a city career. When our country youth come to their senses, and with no affectation of contempt for the town, devote themselves to the growth of their own manhood and womanhood in the ample spaces of their enviable lot, we shall be nearer the end of our American Revolution, and see more clearly how to organize upon our prairies, and river banks, and mountain sides, that Christian freedom of which they are the magnificent types and shadows. LIFE m THE COUNTET. 21 This idea of a life of Christian independence, amid the circumstances of the country would, doubtless, introduce extensive reforms in every department of rural existence. Beginning in the unobtrusive freedom of good families, it would gradually make its way through neighborhoods and districts, till the whole aspect of country life would be elevated and refined. First, it would remodel the physical arrange- ments of many of our country friends, and inaugu- rate a style of living which would secure a larger degree of health and comfort. It is melancholy that a people with such abundant means for health and comfort as the rural population of New York, shoidd so often pervert the benevolent gifts of God into cm'ses. Besides the intemperance in the use of alcoholic drinks, and that poisonous weed whose vile mark is seen over the whole face of America, there is a great neglect of the simplest laws of dress, diet, housing and labor by our country folks, which is laying the seeds of permanent physical de- generacy. Our capricious climate demands per- petual watchfulness, and the habit of reckless ex- posure, which in men is the result of carelessness, and in women of imitation of city fashions, lies at the foundation of our declining health. One would suppose that the daughters of the most intelligent 22 THE HUDSON ; OE, nation of farmers in the world would perceive the folly of arraying themselves in apparel which can hardly be excused in the drawing-rooms of the cities, and braving the terrors of a New York win- ter and the caprice of its spring and summer with the gossamer contrivances denominated fashionable shoes and hats and drapery ; .but the country wo- men dress on the whole, more unsuitably for their exposure than those of the city. As a result, fe- male health, the source of national health, is at a fearfully low ebb in our villages and rural districts. The wholesome preparation of good food, and the method of eating and drinking are yet an unknown science to millions of our countrymen. "We know the depth and breadth of this stolid American pre- judice against the religion of the kitchen. Many a family that worships God sincerely in morning and evening devotions is poisoning itself by a trans- gression of His laws around its daily table. The greed for more land often keeps the home of the farmer destitute of many essentials to the healthy education of the family. The habits of toil un- cheered by amusements, or the higher culture of the soul, cut short the days of hosts of our earnest countrymen. We cannot suggest the details of this physical reformation. It will come when the more sensible inhabitants of every district begin to think LITE IN THE COUITTET. 23 of the best way to prolong life and increase com- fort in their particular locality. Every state and region has peculiarities of cli- mate and circumstance to which the physical habits mast be adjusted. "We have outgrown the primi- tive pioneer life which hardened the bodies of our ancestors; we miist live in a more elegant style than they.; and the question for the country people in our State is, shall the town tailors, milliners, architects and cooks, dress your sons and daughters, build your houses, spread your tables, and dictate habits of labor and amusement, after some wretched imitations of old world folly ; or will you exercise your own common sense in the premises, build your house to suit the country, dress according to the peculiar exposure, eat and drink what will keep you in the best state of health and spirits, and play as rational experience demands ? The ques- tion is vital ; for life out of town will never be the noble and cheering thing it can be while it drags after it this lengthening chain of American dietetic abuse, beginning in the farmhouse and ending in the hells of city debauchery and crime. The next element of success in country life is the proper regulation of labor. Ifotwithstanding the boast of American Free Institutions, the American idea of work is still deplorably low. In half the 24 THE HUDSON ; OE, nation the laborer is a slave. Much of our northern labor is still in the bonds of ignorance and degrada- tion ; better than slavery or serfdom chiefly because the laborer is a citizen and has an outlook for his posterity, who, by the blessings of a free education, can hope to rise above the life-long drudging of their fathers. In large districts of our State work is still the curse of Adam, and thousands of our toiling people on the land and in mechanical em- ployments have not dreamed of what labor is to be imder the transforming influence of a Christian civilization. Intelligent work is ennobling; but perpetual drudgery is a terrible calamity. The way out of this prison-house of unremitting toil for a mere bodily subsistence is not an overturn of society or any form of agrarian politics, but the old way of spiritual cultivation. The young farmer of New York is offered, in the common school and associate advantages, the means of rising above ignorance. Science and the mechanic arts are toiling to put into his hands machinery that will abolish drudgery in the field and home. A suit- able practical education will fit any young man or woman to use these labor-saving agencies of modem agriculture. And when their use is acquired, let not the accursed spirit of gain come in and steal the leisure they aiford for new accumulations. If LIFE IN THE COUNTET. 25 our country people will educate themselves to use the scientific modes of labor which are the glory of our age, and then remain content with a com- petency of goods, and devote their leisure to that cultivation of the soul which makes the true citizen and Christian, the life of the farmer will become what God intended, and thousands who are now driven from its annihilating toils will gladly em- brace it. If our working men and women do not choose to bend tamely under the tyranny of a growing aristocracy that already proclaims the odious doctrine that the laborer belongs to the landowner, let them give their children the culti- vation to use the science of the 19th century to beat back the advancing tide of 14:th century serf- dom, and prove to the world that labor of the hands is one essential quality of the best Christian manhood in a republic. The despotism of the old world divides society into a class of landed gentry and a mob of servile laborers. In trying to elevate and equalize man- ners in America, we too often imagine that true gentility is the imitation of a gentry which is quite foreign to our ideas of social life. We are fast rising above that rudeness and indelicacy which for centuries have been the inheritance of the til- lers of the soil ; but our people have not known 2 26 THE HUDSON; OK, that America must produce her own methods of social intercourse, and learn by long experiment to blend the freedom of a true individualism with the courtesy of a fine reverence for humanity. In our escape from the servile politeness and iron conven- tionalities of despotic nations, we must endure awhile that impudence which excites mingled laughter and indignation in our Young America school of precocious boys and girls ; but this is not to be our national manner. Freedom implies re- spect for self, founded on reverence for man, and around no one should there hang a finer courtesy than the republican gentleman. Not the simplicity of ignorance, but of high intelligence; not the overthrow of conventions by imbridled sensuality and conceit, but their displacement by the broader and freer forms of a better moral culture ; not the imitation of finical notions of refined intercourse, but the delicacy of pure and trusting lives is to be our contribution to the science of human behavior. Let the young men and women of our State first try to be worthy their great destiny, and then act out their best conceptions of social intercourse. This accomplished, we need not be ashamed before the more elaborate manners of the decaying civili- zation of the past. Especially in the great problem of amusements ilFB IN THE COtJNTET. 27 let our people be wise in time. Doubtless we have toiled too hard and become too stern and joyless getting our nation on its legs ; and^ow the cry for a new organization of public and social recreation is rising quite too strong to be anathematized out of existence. But we are not pleading for the importation of that mixture of childish and sensual gaiety which charms our staid travellers out of their common sense on the continent. For these European popular amusements are the river of Lethe in which the masses plunge and forget the miseries of their actual lot. "We want nothing in America to steep us in light-hearted indifference to our great problem of republican life ; we are not far enough along to rejoice immoderately ; we have no right to revel while the eyes of the world are looking on us for an example of self government. Thus, while we have no sympathy with asceticism, we would still urge simplicity and temperance ; a heroic quality in our veiy sport, a something of thoughtful dignity even in our recreations. Our national amusements should be based on sincere admiration of American nature. "We cannot see too much of the glorious scenery of our country ; journeys, excursions, out-door pleasures will impart a tone to the mind, which will mould the pure and gentle delights of home, and out of our native 28 THE HUDSON ; OE, taste create sometliing more appropriate for public entertainment. Let our villagers and farmers not envy the metropolis its exhausting and artificial amusements. A majority of those who engage in them do not really enjoy or understand them. Let them not waste too much money running after city spectacles, but organize among themselves the best that the taste of the region will afford. Thus, by gradual experiment will our people learn the cheerfulness due to every citizen. The education of the country must rest upon the public school as its corner stone. Would that the people of New York co\ild know what a wound they give their State whenever they neglect this great republican institution. With a thorough organization of the free-school, and a judicious selection of the best public journals, a vigorous support of the lecture system untrammelled by sectarian or partisan bigotry, and a liberal provision of books through town and village libraries, there need be no want of mental enlightenment in the country. The farmers may have the most leisure of any class, and that leisure can be so used as to create a deep soil of thoughtful intelligence from which will spring genius in all its forms of com- manding power. Never was there such a hope of mental illumination opened to a people as to the LIFE m THE cauwiEY. 29 inhabitants of the northern states of America, and if the laboring masses of our great State choose to abide in the darkness of ignorance and prejudice they will deserve to be governed by the dema- gogues who now thrive on their defects and reckon on the 90,000 illiterate adults of New York, the benighted regions of Pennsylvania, and the shades of Egyptian Illinois, as so much capital in their infamous speculation upon the rights of humanity. Our hope of a pure democracy in America must rest upon the country ; not as it is, where whole districts are led by old prejudices or stolid tradi- tions artfully used by politicians who wield the city press; but as it will be when the laboring masses know the history of America and fully comprehend the great conflict of ideas by which the nation is now shaken. Every good patriot must desire that the country should be the chief power in the State, not because a man who drives a plough is better than a man who drives a quill, rather because there is more hope that the dwellers outside of towns will administer government for man. There is but one controverey now dividing our politics : — Is Government intended to protect classes or develop mem f For a feudal, a commer- cial, a manufacturing, a farming class to absorb the care of the state is equally dangerous and anti- 30 THE HDDSO.V ; OE, American. Only that republicanism will stand which proposes the recognition of human rights and their protection in a government that leaves to the individual the extreme of freedom compatible with the present safety of society, while its efforts are constantly directed to the wise enlargement of this area. And a truly educated rural population is better circumstanced to accept and administer this American idea than the dwellers in towns. In proportion as the millions of our laboring peo- ple make themselves capable of forming broad and independent judgments in public affairs will the occupation of the demagogues be gone, and the desperate diseases that now beset the state yield to a growing health in the body politic. This condition of life in the country can exist only on the basis of a personal character founded upon that love which eighteen centuries ago was declared religion. Vain is the hope to build up a civilization in the fields of America which will resist the fearful pressure of our Kepublican temp- tations on other foundations than this. Pride of family, public spirit, reverence for our political ancestry, the fear of encountering a world-wide shame, a jealous and irritable spirit of nationality ; how easily are such considerations washed down the tide of any fierce popular excitement! The LIFE IN THE CODNTEY. 31 citizen of our country is defended by its institutions against tlie forms of danger peculiar to established despotisms ; but what shall defend him from the people, when inflamed by a great delusion, or de- bauched by a mighty temptation, it charges down on his manhood in a majority swelling like the maddened waves of a storm-tossed sea ? Only cha- racter based on the everlasting rock of religious principle can offer to this onset a granite wall on which the popular surge shall be shivered to spraj'. Blessed will be the day when this fact shall be acknowledged all over our vast domain; when sects in and out of the church shall be stirred by a rivalry in righteousness more determined than their present warfare for precedence ; when holiness shall be regarded the most imperative need of this very land wherein we live ; when the widest free- dom in the sacred affairs of the soul shall be recon- ciled with the most efficient union of all good men in behalf of that practical morality which exalteth a state ; when the heathen sophism that religion should be separate from the daily life of the Kepub- lic, shall be left to those who need it to excuse their crimes against God and humanity; when the people shall exhibit their reverence for those who gained and preserved our heritage by scourging corruption, and blasphemy, and inhumanity from 32 THE HUDSON ; OE, all high places in the name of that law which abides forever. Then will religious institutions, severed from all ecclesiastical connection with the government, dispense that sacred wisdom which shall become the life blood of character and conse- crate our fair country to the holiest use of man. With such a realization of country life, what a new splendor would pervade our glorious valley and brood over the mountains and plains of our Empire State. Then would the farms and villages of New York produce a race worthy to sustain the honor of the Kepublic. Eeared amid the inspiring influences of nature and taught in the best school of youthful discipline, it would pour into our de- praved and debilitated cities the life blood of a higher civilization. And when the hot, weary day of middle age toil was past, how gladly would the citizen return to the quiet country, and pass away from earth amid the blessings of his childhood's home. Where shall this idea be realized if not in this valley within whose borders lie all the appli- ances of modern life ; where agriculture and com- merce embrace ; where the spires of the town are never out of sight ; and from every city roof is a vision of swelling hills and gleaming waves ? Who will not rejoice to dwell in a spot so favored by God and man ; and who will not- count it the LIFK IN THK COUNTEY. 33 greatest privilege of that lot to make the Hudson, now the symbol of all that is beautiful and sublime in nature, the higher type of those great and lovely elements of character and society which consecrate a Christian State. 2* II. THE CAPITAL CITY; OR SOCIETY m TOW jr. The City of Albany may justly challenge com- parison with the inland towns of America, for beauty of situation and peculiar historical interest. Midway in the lovely valley of the " Great Eiver of the Mountains," it scales its triple-headed hill, crowned by the Capitol, from whose dome is seen a landscape of wondrous beauty. The shadowy Catskills contend with drifting mountains of clouds along her southern horizon, subsiding into the ex- quisite azure hues of the Helderberg. Down the valley, the Hudson slowly winds its placid way around projecting headlands to the distant sea; and smiling with cultivated slopes and wooded knolls, its western shores ascend to the hills whence the mountains of Ifew England are seen an 36 THE CAPITAL CITT ; OE, to welcome the rising sun. All along these curv ing banks, up these woody ascents, and down this long, green vale is poured that indescribable at- mosphere of magic quiet which lulls the whole region, from the Adirondack to the ocean, to a calm sleep, startled now and then into the hurried dream of a busy town. A hundred thousand people are working out the problem of life beneath the gazer's eye ; their fret and toil and triumph en- folded in this drowsy enchantment of nature. Seen from the western hills, the city crowns her blended heights with a surpassing grace; while, in her own streets the citizen is arrested in his hurried walk by a vision of glittering waves and wooded summits and fertile fields, at the end of a vista of bricks and pavements. With no preten- sions to architectural grandeur, but vidth much of the reality of comfortable housing, healthful air, and solid prosperity, the dweller in our ancient town should long hesitate before he leaves her country-girdled streets for the prison of noisy ways and cmshing toil, the great cities of our land have become. And if, while standing in this post of observa- tion, the history of our venerable Capital City could pass in panorama before our eyes, what re- markable changes would excite our admiration. SOCIETY m TOWN. 37 Through the dim mist of 250 years, we behold the " Half Moon," Hendrick Hudson, master, crawling along the shores, gazed at by savages surprised in- to the mood of gentle children. Six years pass, and above tlie low flats of yonder island rises a Dutch trading-house — 26 by 36, stockaded fifty feet square, with its moat of eighteen feet, bristling with a few iron and stone guns, garrisoned by the ten men who have now become the 100,000 that people this area of ten miles. Anon the trading-house becomes a fort, first nestling where steamboats now do con- gregate, then bravely climbing the hill and laying its comer-stone as high as the roof of the pre- sent St. Peter's church. Another seven years finds the father of many Patroons the owner of his princely estate, stretching from the great Cohoes Falls, twenty-four miles on either side of the river; and lovelier manor never cheered the heart of feudal lord. In twelve years more the first minister of Christianity arrives and the germ of the piost an- cient church is planted. The little village of Beaverwyck, clustering beneath its fort, becomes the scene of fierce conflict, and violent hands from Manhattan tear down the flag of feudal proprietor- ship, and lay the foundations of the Corporation of Albany in the first court here instituted. Not long after the English power becomes supreme, in 1664, 38 TUE CAPITAL CITY ; OR, and in 1668 our town becomes the first char- tered city in the United States of America ; yet thirty years more will scarcely suffice to bring her a thousand citizens. Now look ahead three-fourths of a century, and you behold our slow Capital City, in 1Y45, laced up in a stockade, lying on the hill-side like a pear, whose stem is the fort opposite St. Peter's, and whose base is washed by the river. Garrulous old Peter Kalm strays up here, gets hooted in the streets by the boys for his French fashions, goes oif " in a huff," and tells sad stories about the little Dutch town on the borders of the interminable wil- derness. Its quiet is often disturbed by the bustle of public affairs ; a shudder runs through its drowsy streets as the news of French and Indian invasions come through the woods ; here encamp and equip the armies that are to hurl back the successive waves that rolled from the St. Lawrence, only to spend themselves in the woods above; here con- gregate the colonial governors to deliberate on American taxation ; and not a quarter of a century later the old town laughed outright as the famous procession, inaugurating the adoption of the Con- stitution of the United States, swept from the fields about Watervliet, to the big tent on the hill. We look again at the beginning of tlie present SOCIETY IN TOWN. 39 century, and behold a village of five thousand peo- ple, ten streets and lanes, one public hotel and six hundred houses, chiefly, according to the authority of the great Dr. Morse, " with their gable ends towards the streets." The pine groves close in this little provincial paradise ; the brambles and wild roses clamber up the sides of the ravines, the three " kills " sing down their steep beds, the willows and tall elms line the river bank, half a hun- dred sloops stir the waters of the river ; the pa- triarchs sit on their "stoops," along the sacred way of Pearl street, now and then pondering the meaning of a strange apparition of Tankeedom urging its sleds through the February snows to the " far west" of central New York — ^twelve hundred sleds in three days, five hundred in one day. But the sentence of doom for the quiet old town has been pronounced ; she is now the Capital City of the Kepublic of New York. Strong as were the first two centuries of her life, they are absorbed into the wider civilization of the State. As we look now we behold a modem city growing in wealth, honor, arts and industry, like a hundred cities of the republic in all save its representative capacity as the political capital of its chief state. "Would that the genius of America that has changed this village of five thousand to a valley 40 THE CAPITAL CITY ; OE, full of one hundred thousand and swept away the very landmarks of its old days, could have spared at least one street to remind us of the most pecu- liar civilization of our past. But they are gone, though the solid virtues that dwelt under these quaint gables are inwrought into the texture of our public and private life, an imperishable strand of that New Tork into which all the nationalities of earth are braided. But it is not of the Albany of the past or present, in itself considered, that we speak ; rather of Albany regarded first, as the type of city life in our land ; and secondly, as containing those public institutions which represent the best civilization of our republic. To the first of these considerations, Society in tovm as contrasted with life in the coun- try, attention is now invited. While we regret the entire obliteration of our city of half a century ago, and contrast the present capital of New York with the cities of the old world, rich in monumental tokens and venerable associations of the long gone past, we must still congratulate ourselves on the cause. The reason of this obUteration of old landmarks is not that we are peculiarly vandalic in our rage for improvement, but that an American city is essentia^ a different thing from an European capital. The old cities SOOIETr IN TOWN. 41 abroad are the growth of another state of human aifairs, and represent quite another phase in the his- tory of human progress than our own. They were the centres of imperial influence ; a court, a palace, a royal army, with the peculiar results of such institutions, made them the centres of permanent attraction. Here, too, were the famous seats of the ecclesiastical power that held the monarchy in check, and spite of its corruption, was for centuries the best thing in Europe. And most significant of all, the continental cities were the cradle of free- dom, where the mercantile and industrial interest first rallied and beat back the insolent feudalism that ruled over the broad country in the shape of a barbarous nobility; and in the independence of the English and German towns laid the corner stone of the liberty we to-day enjoy. And here were the great foundations of learning and culti- vation in the universities, scholars and artists, that are the real sovereigns of modern times. Thus an European city is a nation within a nation, a con- glomeration of institutions rooted in the soil of centuries, fiimly interlaced into a corporate struc- ture that resists the convulsions of ages. What wonder that Eome, Paris and London, Berlin, Moscow and Vienna should rule the nations they represent as our cities never can control 42 THE CAPITAL CFIT ; OK, the destinies of America ; and that they should exist in all their essential attributes, while dynas- ties, peoples, civilizations change; the gigantic monuments of the past, that no deluge of modern improvement can move from their foundations. But an American city is only a convenient hotel, where a free country people come up to tarry and do business, with old recollections of nature haunt- ing them amid its toil and confusion ; where the foreigner halts at his landing, and, if able and en- terprising, pushes on to the " Far West ;" where the representative men of various kinds congregate during the few years of their culminating power to organize institutions and policies that represent the property and ideas of the millions that people the fields and villages without. Thus the American municipality can never have more than a represen- tative character. Its money is the accumulation of the coimtry's industry ; its commerce is the ex- change of the products of the prairie, pla;ntation, lakes and rivers, and thousands of factory villages clustering about innumerable waterfalls among the hills ; its scholarship is the growth of far away col- leges ; its literature culminates in the daily jour- nals ; its intelligence is rivalled by country towns ; its society does not give the tone to, but is the growth of, the civilization of tl^e district it repre- SOCIETY IN TOWN. 43 sents ; its politics finally yield to an outside pres- sure, and its institutions of philanthropy and reli- gion are supported by contributions of men and means from the sects that spread over entire States. It is not the deep, firm root out of which rises the trunk and foliage of a great nationality ; rather a boat tossed on the billows of American enterprise and emigration. Let us rejoice that American cities must be re- presentative, and cannot become our masters until the republic loses aU but its name. Thank Hea- ven, liberty in New Tork is not compelled to bur- row in forts and throw barricades across metro- politan streets, but ranges over her moimtain tops, and along her plains, by the shores of her lakes, and down the valleys of her rivers. The open country is our fortress of freedom, and if the people know the worth of this precious boon, they will never per- mit the temporary classes of their cities to sacrifice it on the altar of municipal ambition. The cities of our State, even our proud " Metropolis," are but houses of industry, entertainment and public uti- lity, built by our people ; and while no individual right of the citizen is invaded, let them be so identi- fied in the general body politic, that they cannot be seized by demagogues who would turn them into barbaric castles, fortified by ignorance and 44 TETE CAPITAL CITY ; OK, vice against the fresh and inspiring growth of new world civilization. The sophistry of "municipal independence " with which our people are so often befogged, is quite out of place to-day in the United States. It meant something in the middle ages, when a ferocious nobility occupied the country, and held the farmer as a serf, and the gates of the town were the only defence for the merchant and the artisan ; but in a State where the land is owned by the people, and an intelligent, virtuous, and prosperous country population build villages and cities for their commerce and conveni- ence, the man who demands that these towns shall cut the vital cord that binds them to their creative and sustaining power, is advocating the cause of the Despotism that is passing away and not the welfare of the Humanity that is to come. Let the free winds of the country blow through every lane and whistle round every cor- ner; let the people of New York always keep their towns in their own hands ; then will the city in our republican life be what the garden is to the farm; the inclosure to which every forest and hill, and swamp, and brook and cultivated field has sent its tribute; that amid its bewildering walks and shaded arbors may be seen a represent- ative from every nook and corner of the broad SOCIETT ra TOWN. 45 domain, controlled by the genius of a free society and a Christian State. In view of these facts, the rage of the people of New York for city life is an evil that may well arrest the attention of the patriot and Christian. The Empire State contains 46,000 square miles of territory, of which only half, 13,000,000 acres, is cultivated at all, while 13,000,000 acres of unoccupied land, and untold mineral wealth invite to a century of industrial enterprise. Tet full one-third of our entire population of three and a half millions, is huddled into towns and exposed to the influences of American city life. Our young countrymen are bom with a fever in their blood which drives them from the farm, or the factory, or the mine, where actual production is the result of their efforts, and economy of health, property, and soul is promoted, to the town where ninety per cent, of the merchants fail, and the mechanic toils with a pit of starvation ever yawning beneath his feet, and an ever increasing series of middle men enhances the cost of living, and pitiless com- petition of labor and perpetual temptation imperil integrity of mind and purity of life. Our country girls push for the city as by a natural instinct, seem- ing to relish better the intoxicating charm of being one colored wave of the torrent that rolls along a 46 THE CAPITAL CITY; OE, Broadway than tlie centre of a neighborliood among the fields. We have the right to ask these heedless throngs what purpose drives them to the city ; and compel them to contemplate its nicely balanced advantages and disadvantages before they step over the threshold of natmo, and adventure in the labyrinth of artificial life. Doubtless, a city is a large labor-saving machine, where the gi'eatest amount of spiritual energy can be directed to a given point with the least waste of material resources. It is an undeniable advan- tage to an able man to occupy such a tower of observation, whence the forces of civilization can be seen in their accumulated vigor and mutual relation. Knowing what is the capacity of society in each department, and how much energy is enlisted for the development of each, he can adjust his own efforts, save himself useless expenditure of his powers, and direct his genius to the exact point of demand. Then it is a privilege to a strong man to enjoy companionship of his equals, to learn to make a straight path through the tangled feet of others as indefatigable as himself; to be drilled and criticised, and finally educated by his peers. This is the great charm of the city to the leaders of cA'^ery realm of life. Here, too, the tendencies of classes, the need of crowds, and the secrets of SOCIETY IN TOWN. 47 public and wide-reaching influence over men, are best to be learned. And the town is a great work- shop filled with the best tools in the shape of organized forces and iustitations. Labor and busi- ness are systematized, society can be taken by the handle, literature is classified, and education and art in every branch assigned to its peculiar depart- ment. The caucus, the convention, the city church, the philanthropic institution, are the finest implements to do the kinds of work they represent. Doubtless, these are formidable tools for weak men to handle ; and the incompetent man or woman who aspires to their use is like a child in an armory, reaching on tip-toe to lift the sword and bayonet from their rack above its imperilled head ; but when a strong man of war appears, he can arm in the least time, with the best weapons. If one is up to the work, and can keep wide-awake without destruction to body and mind, there is a great op- portunity in sitting at the end of the wire when the earliest message comes ; in catching the last news of fluctuation in trade or society, before it falls into the hands of the reporters ; in discerning the premonitory symptoms of all changes that modify the activity of man. The enterprising citizen thus always knows a little ahead of his rural brother, and so has a foot in advance in the race for success. 48 THE CAPITAL CITT ; OE, Able men will, therefore, always face towards the great centres of human activity, and since few young people count themselves fools, the American cities will be the battle-ground of annihilating competition in every department of republican society. From the newsboy whose voice best threads the labyrinth of street noises, to the preacher who knows the magic word that, spoken in the darkest chapel, will fill the street with a crowd of the best mind and heart of the town, every post of profit and influence will be contested inch by inch, and the victor stand at last surrounded by a score of fallen adventurers. The young who rush to the city thinking its brilliant positions are easily secured, do not understand that no man succeeds there otherwise than as a representative of a class ; that every citizen who permanently occupies an important position, holds it by virtue of some pecu- liar power in a certain direction persistently exer- cised. Many bad people rule in town, but no fool, no mediocre person long occupies a desirable emi- nence (unless in certain instances where the fools and platitudes need a representative, and choose the genius in stupidity to be their king or queen). That the vast majority of adventurers on the pave- ment do not succeed ; that they work harder, live closer, suffer tenfold the frets and sorrows of life, BOCIETT IN TOWN. 49 and peril the best prospects of character beyond comparison with the risks of a country career, is open to every one who will see ; and only an insane man will assert that a majority of the one million two hundred thousand people who are waging this pitiless war of competition on the pavements of the Empire State, would not be vastly more useful to themselves and to society, if employed in developing the teeming resources of physical and spiritual wealth that prophecy the future of our noble State. For out of this very representative character of citizen society spring the formidable disadvantages that to the mass of men quite overbalance the opportunities of the town. The quiet, affectionate youth comes from the genial atmosphere of the rural neighborhood, and finds himself struggling in a rushing crowd of adventurers, each bent on success. For here success is the only alternative of ruin. There is no long suffering, pitiful com- munity behind the combatant to receive him, wounded and weary in defeat; he must leave the pavement for the coimtry if he fails, and too often there is no home among the fields ; and the deep vault of sin and sorrow which runs under every drawing-room and counting-room, claims him at the end. But even if this fate is escaped, through 3 60 THE CAPITAL CITY ; OE, what prolonged and withering toils, amid what dangers of health and life, and sanity of soul, does the prosperous citizen approach his reward. The majority of successful dwellers in town are scarred in body and twisted in mind by their prolonged stimulation of all the powers of life, and in grasp- ing the prize of ambition have lost their own best resources of enjoyment. Soppiness does not depend so much on what we have as on a certain freshness of nature that illuminates every comer of our life with a light from within ; and how few preserve that freshness amid tlie monotonous toils and discouraging collisions of the city. But the greatest peril besets the soul. lie who has impaired his reverence for man, duty, God, and the high religious self-respect which scorns any stooping to success, has made a failure of existence. And it is not easy to elbow the way through crowds of unknown faces — ^to lose almost the recog- nition of individual character in the contact with masses — to be forced to treat our best friends as rivals, and the multitude as instruments, without a disastrous decline in that love to man from which grows the reverence for duty and the supreme love^ of God. It is harder yet to own one's-self in a field where society in every direction claims you as one spoke in the wheel of some powerful organization, SOniETY IN TOWK. 51 and to be " left out " is to live in a solitude more fearful tlian the primitive woods. "When the out- side of life is so large a point of immediate success, what a temptation to a soul-destroying career of fashion and luxury ! and those who know best the seductions of sensuality that lurk beneath the gild- ing and propriety of the city, most distrust tbeir own power of resistance. All dangers of the town may be summed up in this : that here, withdrawn from the blessed influ- ences of Nature, and set face to face against humanity, man loses his own nature and becomes a new and artificial creature — an unhuman cog in a social machinery that works like a fate, and cheats him of his true culture as a soul. The most unnatural fashions and habits, the strangest eccen- tricities of intellect, the wildest and most per- nicious theories in social morals, and the most appalling and incurable barbarism, are the legiti- mate growth of city life. K one has strength of constitution, physical, mental and moral, to push through all these hinderances, and stand upon the summit of the town, doubtless his experience of man is more profound and curious, and his power to dexterously administer affairs greater than in a more secluded position; but who will risk the 52 THE CAPITAL CITY; OE, chances of a strife, where the mass are beaten and the one who outlives his companions suc- ceeds, without deep reflection and for unanswer- able reasons? Who but a lunatic will rush into this melee, trusting to luck, where luck is always on the side of the wise and strong? Herefore, let our young people in the country take much counsel and be very well assured in their own sober judgment, before they cast their lot in the city. Remember that any point of New York is now in vital communication with the centres of civilization, and that every year is bring- ing all men nearer together. All the essential advantages of our republican life can be secured, by proper effort, in every village and cluster of farms in the Empire State ; and the extraordinary successes of towns are but for the few. Let not these few be too eager to vault to their post of ultimate power ; if the magnet is in them, the filings will concentrate anywhere; and only by long and patient experiment can any genuine man gain the magic platform whence electric wires course all over the land, and cause a thousand bosoms to thrill at every throb of his heart. For those adventurers who have concluded to sacrifice their manhood to a paltry success, we have nothing sociETT IS lows. 53 to advise ; " where thie carcass is, there will the eagles be gathered together." But we implore every honest youth in our land to ask this question of his innermost soul: "Am I sure I shall gain enough in happiness, worthy prosperity and manli- ness, to risk the perils and disadvantages of the town ?" For this is the only test, a gain of man- hood and womanhood. Oh, how far beneath any noble soul should be the weak hankering for such a success as comes to thousands of families in the city ; a gain in money purchased by the sacrifice of honesty and reverence for man, a gain in com- forts and luxuries which are a slow poison in the blood ; of social position, which changes a sincere wife to a managing mother and a pure child to a reckless young man or a bedizened victim of female vanity ; a success that is a dismal failure in all that is fit to be acquired. Better the most obscure lot in the bleakest northern wilderness with virtue, than a palace in town with such a wreck of souls within. Better far the opportunities and joys of our favored country life, for thousands who only leave it to tempt a certain damage to the highest interests of the individual and the demorali- zation of the republic. It would be a gi-eat triumph of philanthropy if the large class of the poor could be removed from 54 THE CAPITAL CITT ; OE, the cities of "New York and planted all over her wide territory ; and one dollar given to help a pau- per family out of town is better charity than a year's support in the garret where they now fight with starvation. And with them should go thou- sands who are just living above the precipice of hopeless poverty, whom a few months' suspension of labor will hurl into the abyss of want and crime. And still more imperatively does public economy demand the exit of other thousands of middlemen, who are too able and respectable to fulfill their destiny by gaining a living from the mere handling the necessaries of existence, when they might be producing much that is useful elsewhere. Were our cities swept clean of these classes, there would be still enough to fulfill all the uses of the town ; merchants whose talents and character are adequate to manage the machinery and resist the seductions of commerce; workmen of various kinds, whose superior skill and confirmed habits make them at home amid the intricacies of metropolitan industry; professional men, whose laudable ambition, forti- fied by ample experience, leads them to a munici- pal platform as their best position ; and enough of the rich and cultivated in manners to reform the vices of social life and organize amusements on a generous and Christian scale. But we cannot build SOCIETY IN TOWN. 55 cities " to order ;" they are and will be the huge receptacles for all varieties of humanity, and repre- sent the -worst as surely as the best in our Ameri- can character. All the teacher of Christianity can do is to take men and women in towns as he finds them, and, spite of disheartening influences, keep on forever warning, instructing and inspiring to vii'tue. One good man teaches better than all the ser- mons of the most eloquent doctors ; let me there- fore drop my vocation and introduce a worthy family, which will speak for itself on the interesting theme of city life. Coming down the steps of the capitol yesterday, whom should I meet but my old friend Mr. John Manhattan, who had stopped over Sunday in Albany, on a trip from New York to one of our pleasant western cities. He may even be reading these words ; if so, I trust he will par- don my use of his example where my preaching would fail. Mr. John Manhattan lived on his father's farm in a little town on the Hudson, where he saw light some fifty years ago, till he was eighteen years of age, when he took a turn of several years in the village " variety store ;" and thence by a natural gravitation of his excellent business talents, was landed in Albany at twenty-five. It M'as not 56 THE CAPITAL CITY ; OE, easy in any city twenty-five years ago for a rising young man to preserve his reputation and keep shy of the roistering habits, which were called " high life," by a large class of rich men's sons ; and we have heard that Mr. Manhattan was at first snub- bed by a good many young gentlemen who were afterwards very glad to intercede for his influence and cash to relieve them from the unpleasant con- sequences of their gentility. Friend John, after a few years' experience, came to the deliberate con- clusion that nothing would be so good a protection against the attractions of his gay acquaintances as a good wife, and he reasonably concluded that a fashionable young lady who could not keep her brother from making a fool of himself at every party of the season, would not aid him in living a sober Hfe. This idea was confirmed on a visit to a charming village in western New York (that trea- sury of sensible women), by the acquaintance of Miss Molly Mayflower, a young lady of Connecti- cut parentage, then keeping school in her native town. In due time (how it is unnecessary to ex- plain), the schoolmistress became the wife of our friend, and, as Mrs. Molly Mayflower Manhattan, has demonstrated the best way of reconciling na- tional peculiarities by creating a household in which the solidity and sagacity of New Nether- SOCIETY IN T0T7X. 57 lands and the enterprise and moral reiinement of New England have combined to enrich the civiliza- tion of New York by a model home. There was no danger of John falling asleep with a western schoolmistress of Yankee descent for a reminder ; indeed his old friends thought his business capacity decidedly increased by this addition of a silent partner. But they very early concluded that to kill themselves with work, in order to make a fortune, would be ridiculous ; so they pitched life on a moderate key — didn't try to sing in falsetto until they had mastered the lower regions of the scale. John buttoned up his coat after breakfast every morning and marched to his counting-room with the air of a man who knows just what he proposes to do, and intends to do it ; and when he walked home to spend the evening with his beloved wife, the work was generally done. He congratulated his "fast" friends on their speculations, was glad when Flash, Frisk, & Co., set up their carriage, and moved up town, but respectfully declined to indorse their notes for comer lots in the New Jerusalem Metropolitan Company. By close observation he acquired the science of business as distinguished fi.*om commer- cial quackery, and he is one of the ten young men, among the one hundred who began with him, that 3* 58 TUE cAPrrAL cnr ; oe, have never been obliged to investigate the pro- visions of the bankrupt law, and his honse is now a solid concern and has not figured in Mr. Bowen's list during the last panic. 1 never saw him angry but once, when he kicked a 'New York broker down stairs for proposing a partnership in the stock operations of a coal mine which he knew lay 500 feet under an inaccessible mountain ; but many a sensible scheme for valuable public improvements has been the better for his advice or material aid. Mrs. Molly needed no new-fangled doctor to inform her that if she poisoned her family three times a day by a luxurious table, or simple dishes villainously cooked, they would not live out half their days ; it was always a pleasure to eat one of her dinners, for every course was seasoned with her common sense ; the children did not need to have the military called out to disperse their riot among the victuals ; but ate and drank and dressed as Mrs. Molly Mayflower Manhattan decided was best ; much to the disgust of Mrs. Aurelia Bom- bazine across the way, whose first fifteen years of married life were passed chasing the milliners and French cooks, and her remaining days in chasing the doctors and studying into new systems of medicine. What rosy cheeks, what vigorous limbs, and straight backs these little Manhattans SOCIETY IN TOWN. 59 had ; somewhat furious and noisy, and occasionally riotous, from fullness of life and that portion of the " old Adam," that falls to the best of fami- lies ; but somehow they were managed, and I never heard in this house those peculiar domestic soimds wliich have greeted my ears when waiting in a fashionable parlor half an hour for the lady to array herself for a call of ten minutes, disciplining the nursery meanwhile. Mr. Manhattan lived in a medium house, fur- nished by his own and his wife's good taste, not by upsetting a cart of miscellaneous upholstery into his drawing-rooms. He knew what he spent, lived well enough, never gave or went to •' wine suppere," spent his summers in a way that in twenty years has filled the souls of parents and children with long galleries of pictures drawn by God's finger from the glorious mountain tops and valleys an^ lakes of our wondrous State. They live now in New York, very substantially and with that perfection of taste that everybody who enters their house seems to have found his own ideal of home. Very early did John and Molly learn to keep out of the prison of an artificial fashionable caste. Instead of straining towards the West End, they put themselves on their human worth, and accepted 60 THE CAPITAL dTT J OE, such friends as God sent ; and they have learned that "getting into society" is one of the chief American humbugs, that if you are true, good and beautiful in life's relations, Providence wiU send from every region of society those wJio a/re to he ywwr chosen friends. Mr. Manhattan's house is the resort of the best society I ever knew ; that is, the best people in every rank and class seem to have been drawn, as by a magnet, to his modest parlors, and society has been to his family a wide, rich and varied school of human experience, rather than the stifled inclosure of any conceited set of "first people." It was always his theory that there are good people in every place and every region of humanity, and a true man can find them without any creeping or masquerading, or going down on his knees before a plate glass window or a livery ; and he has found his own and kept his manhood, and therewith 4e and his are content. I don't think any of the little folks of this family ever were miseducated at a boarding-school, or forced into a precocious possession of useless knowledge. Of " yellow novels," they know only the name ; and they have the shocking taste to prefer the sweet pages of Washington Irving to the rawhead-and-bloody-bones creations of Mr. SOCIETY IN TOWN. 61 Sylvaniis Cobb, jr. But they know English, read good books, study hard, are very intelligent, and, best of all, know how to think. Their amuse- ments are so linked with duties and accomplish- ments that they seem to be the flower of all they do. Everything done indoors or out^ turns its sunny side ; home is a varied landscape of ever blooming joys; society is a pleasing recreation. They go together to an occasional lecture when they suppose the man has anything to say ; and once a month all hands are seen at the play, the concert, or some other place of entertainment; though the Rev. Dr. Doomsday one Sunday proved that the Devil is in all such carnal plea- sures, in a sermon of intense dramatic power, in which he was himself star actor, supernumeraries, and orchestra, the scene changed every five minutes, and the fifth act went out in a gigantic tableau of all creation going to universal crash, and which old Tom Parquette, who ought to know, vowed was the best performance he had ever seen, on or off the boards. Mr. Manhattan was never known to be absent from the caucus or the polls, and has used all his influence to make every city where he has lived a better community. He does not vote for a policy because it will benefit his trade, or to feather the 62 THE CAPITAL CITT ; OK, nest of some political friend ; but he tries to find out the best man to serve in city affairs ; and in the politics of state and nation, he stands on the old platform laid down eighteen hundred years ago : " Whatsoever you would that men should, do to you, do ye even so to them," by which "glitter- ing generality " he tests all public men and mea- sures ; and though he does not expect to be presi- dent in 1860, he believes that the country will be agitated more and more, as by whirlwinds and earthquakes, until all the good men unite on this platform of adamant, first to vote down and then to regenerate the demagogues and their troop of servile and ignorant followers. He is considered " visionary" by most of the party leaders ; but any of them would give his ears to get his influence to back him at a contested election. He is a patriot Christian, and whether office goes or stays, he intends to stand by man who was made before governments and will outlast fhem all. What a deal of ecclesiastical diplomacy has been used to get Mr. Manhattan into all the churches ; meek suggestions of the value of his great influ- ence ; sad suggestions of heavy debts impending over the new church ; hints that a vacant pew could be had next to Hon. So-and-so's seat ; mar- vellous interest in the children and relish of SOCIETY IN TOWN. 63 Mrs. Manhattan's teas by various worthy Doctors of Divinity. But for my life I don't know what church the good man attends ; he is so good a man, that theological dissensions always seemed an impertinence in his presence, and the most severe- faced bigot relents under the experience of an evening by his fireside. An atmosphere of tender piety hallows his habitation ; a fuU and silent tide of benevolence rolls from his doors, watering every interest of his brother man. The widow and orphan would bless him, but he is oflP, like a sun- beam, to escape their thanks, which fall on the hearts of Molly and the children hke perpetual dew from summer skies. And though the Gospel trumpet is not blown before his steps in the street, a worldly policy has only to show its head in his presence to shrink out of sight before his noble manhood, rooted in the everlasting laws of the Almighty. Such is my good old friend, and by such as he and his, will life in the American city become the fine and beautiful thing it may. Whoever can go and do likewise, let him seek the town, and there prove that after all it is not the sphere of action, but the soul that acts therein which ennobles our human existence. For a good soul is a breath of heaven among the fields and a sublimity among 64 THE CAPITAL OITT. the bills ; an angelic presence on the streets and a sanctity that makes every home in town a church of the living Father. Oh! that midway of this wondrous vaUey, on the sides of these sloping hills, among the streets and lanes, and in the chambers of this ancient town, might be realized that life of Christian manliness and womanly love which will make us indeed the Capital City of a State whose God is the Lord. III. THE FORCES OF FREE LABOR. The traveller who approaches our Capital City by any of its great routes of communication, is confronted by those Industrial Forces that repre- sent the Free Labor of the Empire State. Ware- houses and piers, crowded with produce and miles of lumber, suggest a mighty expanse of fertile western fields and the vast northern wilderness. The river banks, vocal with the hum of machinery and illuminated at night with the glow of furnaces, proclaim that here the myriad arms of manufac- turing toil are moulding the crude elements of nature into forms of use and beauty. The flitting cloud of vessels and the stir of life along the docks declare the presence of a commerce whose roots touch the shores of far-off nations, and which shoots a fruit-bearing branch into every street and lane of our venerable town. And if he looks beyond this area of activity, and studies the habits 65 66 THE FOECES OF FEEE LABOR. and occupations of the 116,000 inhabitants who people this busy valley, he will not be surprised at the wealth, comforts and refinement that have rewarded the toil of the past two centuries ; and he will surely not count that experiment of Free Labor a failure, which has already made an accu- mulation of property equal to $500, for every man, woman and child within the range of the strongest eye looking from the dome of the capitol, and reckons this gain of money the least of its many achievements in behalf of a true civilization. Concentrated within this lovely valley are the six great agencies of our system of Free Industry. In the spring of the year 1807, the first of these wonder-working forces might be seen in the shape of a strange craft, 100 feet by 12, drawing seven feet of water, creeping up the river at the rate of five miles an hour, trailing a dense cloud of smoke and sparks, bearing twelve passengers, who for the sum of $7 apiece bought the renown of sailing from New York on the firat steamboat, The Clermont, under the pilotage of Robert Fulton. A strange expedition was that accounted by the good people of the metropolis, not thirty of whom believed the vessel would move a mile from the wharf: one venerable man saying to Judge Wilson as he embarked, " John, vnll thee risk thy life in mich a THE FOECES OF FEEE LABOE, 67 concern? J tell thee, she is the most /^earful wiM fowl living, and thy father ought to restrain thee /" Could her heroic commander, as he stood silent on deck as this craft did move, amid the cheers of thousands of astonished spectators, have been told that his little steamship was to inaugu- rate the first of the gigantic forces of our new American Industry, what a reward for long years of neglect and imrequited toil. In the same year, 1803, that Fulton and Living- ston, obtained the exclusive right of navigating the waters of N. Y. with their new steamboat, Gover- neur Morris stirred up an active engineer to the gigantic idea of connecting the Hudson and the lakes by a great canal. Very slowly this second agency of our national civilization loitered towards its realization. Thirteen years passed before the final mandate went forth, in 1816, from yonder capitol, that the Hudson should be married to Lake Champlain and Lake Erie ; and eight years Avere necessary to complete these magnificent works (in 1825), concerning which the wildest rhapsodies of Geddes, and Morris, and Clinton, now read like the most prosaic commonplace. The year (1826) following the completion of the canals, was signalized by the passage of the first railroad charter in the Legislature of Ifew York, 68 THE FOKCES OF FEEE LABOB. ■ L and four years later (1830), the first train of cars rolling from the Mohawk to the Hudson, signalized the birth of the third of these servants of the Eepublic. And what a mighty power has that become. The Empire State is now veined by two thousand seven hundred and forty-nine miles of railroads, which furnish one-tenth of aU our assessed valuation of real and personal estate, whose em- ployees number one-fourteenth of our entire popu- lation and one-thirty-sixth of our voters ; over which seven hundred and fifty thousand tons bur- den roll yearly, and forty thousand people ride every day. To each inhabitant of the State is due one hundred and thirty-five miles of travel a year, with only the remote risk of death to one passen- ger in one million two hundred and sixty-two thousand one hundred and sixty-five, or one for every forty-seven millions one hundred and sixty- four thousand four hundred and twenty-six miles of travel. Contemporaneously with these has risen into power the wondrous energy of agricultural and manufacturing machinery, whereby the productive power of the JJepublic is enlarged tenfold, and one man, marshalling an army of wheels, and knives and spindles, can cut his way through nature's most obstinate defences, and stand victorious in THE FOEOES OF FEEE LABOE. 69 wealth and power to reach the largest manhood of the age. Crossing our streets and clustering under one watchful eye in an office on Broadway, we behold the fifth of these agencies in the Telegraph, that magic cord which weaves the people of a State into one family, and ere long wiU tie the family in New York to all the neighborhoods of the round globe, that Christ may come and make all one by the higher unity of Love. And finally, the child of all these mighty forces, and the most spiritual agency of Free Labor, is the Press — crowded with the daily and weekly results of our toil, reaching forth with such hands as the steamship, canal, railroad, machinery and tele- graph, and levying tribute over the whole world ; scattering 3,334,940 copies of its various issues per- petually over the State ; now a reflection of what is best and worst in our popular life, but destined hereafter to rise into the nobler form of an omni- present leader and propagandist of the Kepublic that is to be. These representative results and forces that cluster in the valley of the Capital City, are faint symbols of the mighty power of Labor that in 238 years has changed 46,000 square miles of wilder- ness into the world's chief Republican State. Of VO THE FORCES OF FKEE LAJ30S. her 26,000,000 acres, 13,000,000 already have yielded to cultivation, and sustain a population of 3,470,059, divided into 663,124 famUieB, who in all the elements of a Christian civilization, doubtless excel any equal number of people concentrated under one government. VTe have all read of the gigantic armies led forth by great commanders in ancient and modern times for the subjugation of empires. But could the army of Free Laborers in this Kepublic, through some long, bright day of our northern summer, on one of our broad western plains, defile in gigantic review before our eyes, how poor would seem the pomp and pageantry of destructive war. Let us figure to ourselves this review of our Lidnstrial host. First would appear a triumphal car, emblazoned with the records of the men and deeds, that make our history of 238 years, floated over by a banner inscribed with the proud device of our commonwealth — ^tlie rising sun and the inspiring " Excelsior." Now appears the foremost rank of tillers of the earth — a host of 253,292 strong men, with their wives and children, bearing their implements of conquest, followed by a cloud of 7,000,000 domes- tic animals and innumerable flying fowl ; trailing in great wagons, the varied productions of the THE FORCES OF FEEE LABOR. 71 land. Upon their standards would be read no chronicles of bloody fight, but such victories as these : Value of New York lands, $1,107,272,715 ; 3,256,948 tons of hay ; 62,449,093 bushels of grain; 17,127,338 bushels esculent roots; 4,907,556 lbs. flax ; 7,192,254 lbs. hops ; 13,668,830 bushels apples ; 9,231,959 lbs. wool ; $2,400,000, value of poiiltry; $1,421,750 miscellaneous roots and fruits; 20,965,861 gallons milk; 90,293,077 lbs. butter; 38,944,2-19 lbs. cheese ; 4,935,815 lbs. sugar ; 2,557,876 lbs. honey ; $1,138,082, value of gar- dens ; — gloi-ious, beneficent conquest of nature for the sustenance of man. 'Now comes the second anny of 214,899 free laborers in manufactures, not clad in ignorance and rags, but bearing the comforts of home, and tread- ing tlie earth with the bold step of men who know their position and rights in the State. To what grander music could this host keep step than the iron harmonies of machinery that night and day, from the Ocean to Niagara, sing the song of man's coming deliverance from slavery and want, and subjection to material things. Look at their ban- ners flashing in the sun, inscribed with their record : $106,349,977, capital of mechanical industry in New York; raw material employed, $178,394,329; manufactured articles, $317,686,685 ; 72 THE FOECES OF FBEE LABOR. 24,833 manufactories — or adorned with pictured representations of the myriad forms of grace, com- fort and loveliness that issue from the workman's busy hand. Next we behold the concentrated column of 20,Y58 merchants, who are the agents of the pre- ceding host in transmitting the fruits of their labors to the ends of the earth. Here are the humble traders of the half-peopled wilderness, side by side with the merchant princes of the city, all bound into a brotherhood of interest, and flanked by the professions that depend upon their aid. What a gorgeous spectacle is this ! Wares and merchan- dise, the products of all climes — the beauty, and manners, and civilization of every people — ^fleets of ships sailing and steaming on their ensigns — the long line of the freight car — ^the slow procession of boats moving through green fields— cities springing from the earth as by the summons of the enchanter, emblems of law, science, charity, religion, endowed and fostered by an all-embracing Commerce. And not far off, coming nearer as the years roll on, would cluster the army of laborers on the high- est soil of New York, the souls of her people. The teacher, who receives the child from its mother ; the lawyer and legislator, who embalm the peo- THE FOECES OF FREE LABOE^. 73 pie's idea of justice in a statute ; the editor, the lecturer and public speaker, who stand at the ear of the masses; the author and the scholar, who appeal from their obscurity of to-day to the fature meed of fame ; the artist, charming the crowd by the vision of beauty ; the preacher, prophesying of righteousness and love eternal ; — all these, now too often accounted the idlers in the field, shall one day be known as brother laborers, toiling on the summits of the Spiritual life, towards which the . slopes of this material success ascend. What a review were this — ^the most powerful KepubUc marshalling her armies of Industry — and bless God ! all Free Men. Nowhere upon her broad and fair expanse does man toil in servitude to his brother man ; and, so help us, the Father of all, while the Ocean washes the wharves of New York, and the Hudson flows to the sea, and the storms sing their anthems up in the Adirondack, and the sun sets, a golden glory beyond our western lakes — ^let no slave pollute our soil ! And the day whose dawn shaU behold this glorious army, as one soul, lifting up its voice before heaven, and registering an oath on high in behalf of man, shall not decline to its evening shades until it hears, borne on the south wind, the sigh of our Nation's barbarism, proclaiming that its sentence of death 4 74 THE FOBCES OF FEEE LABOR. has been uttered, and its hour of abdication draws nigh. Such is the spectacle presented by the Free Labor of New York in its material aggregates and secondary forces. But these lead us back to man, and while another class of teachers can best instruct the people on the details of political economy and the arts of industrial success, the most profound questions to the Christian philoso- pher will be : To what spiritual end is all this f in what relation does a Free Industry stand to nMiUs highest good? and ave we now on the way to the style of Labor, which is the jit expression of that best Civilization founded on the everlasting la/w of Love f Labor is the point where the soul of man touches the physical world; and the quality of work is the test of man's superiority over nature and alti- tude in the spiritual existence. Free Labor, in its largest sense, is the gauge of National Advance- ment. Every nation, in ancient or modem times, has been truly great in proportion to the emanci- pation of its workers. The historian, Niebuhr, dates the real decline of Home from the period when work ceased to be honorable, and the land once tilled in small farms by her statesmen and generals, was monopolized by rich men, and culti- THE FOECKS OF FEEE LABOE. 75 vated by hordes of slaves. Who cannot read the vhole degeneracy of Spain in the proud laziness of her population, or the real grandeur of England in the variety and growing freedom of her mighty industry? Indeed, the best state must be that which offers the broadest- field for the development of the active energies of its citizens ; which is dis- tinguished for the variety and vigor of its industrial professions ; and where it is easiest for every man to obtain the post in which his peculiar genius may find scope in creative toil. Free labor is the test of national superiority — not so much on account of what it produces, as for its results on the citizen. For only in such a con- dition of affairs can man receive the true education of all his powers, and use his circumstances for the building up of his manhood. Hence although the quantity and quality of production is one evidence of a prosperous people, yet a more striking proof is the effect of this work on the poptilation itself. Are the men and women of a state ennobled hy their occfwpaUon, and is their dmly business a school of Christian citizenship ? is the first question in this investigation. For the most astonishing works may doubtless be produced by the sacrifice of man ; and such labor is only Satanic. Compare the gigantic monuments of Eastern des- 76 THE FOECES OF FEEE LABOE. potism with the achievement of our New York industry! We can show no pyramids, no laby- rinths, no massive cities, tombs and temples, which will challenge the assaults of time. Bless God, we cannot point to mighty piles of stone and sculpture slowly raised by the hands of bondmen, cemented by the blood and tears of oppression ; huge grave- stones, marking the spot where the noblest aspira- tions of humanity were buried, and generations fell and wasted to please a despot's whim. But look at our monuments ; an Erie Canal, whose project- ing, construction and use, has been the primary school of the free industry of our State ; a system of railroads, extemporized by the spontaneous enter- prise of a whole people, groaning beneath the weight of free products or the armies of emigrants fleeing from oppression and poverty to comfort and liberty ; cities not built for a century's endurance, but such as a new State, using every vital energy to the utmost, can throw together to shelter the families and transact the business of a Republican community. So is the glory of our free Northern industry not fotmd in its great material results of agriculture, manufactures, commerce ; for doubtless our work is often crude, and partakes of the rawness of a continent coming out of the woods ; but in what THE F0ECE8 OF FKEE LABOE. 77 man has leariicd i\nd become in producing it all, and the new powers and opportunities for the best society he is daily acquiring in this magnificent school. And the chief superiority of our system of labor over that of other lands and other districts of our own continent is, that through it we are com- ing to that point where all industrial operations shall play into the hands of that highest form of work, the development of the best men. So the question of Free Labor is not to be argued so much from its economical results, though here the argument is triumphant, as from its spiritual aspects. Every true son of Adam will maintain that the happiest word that ever greeted his ears was his command to leave an Eden of childish innocence for a wilderness of manly toil. Free Industry is for the elevation and education of the race. All human experience has demonstrated that the only way to greatness of any kind is the straight and narrow way of labor. And when man toils, in the exercise of his great attribute of freedom, he is in the way to gain his chief distinc- tion. Creation is the grandest attribute of man — the point in which he approaches nearest his Maker. To create new combinations from the material universe ; by the discipline of free industry to discover the creative laws of Omnipotence, and 78 THE FOKCE8 OF FEEE LiBOE. by obedieuce to them to express Ms best concep- tions of existence ; to impress himself on the whole earth, and even fill the invisible elements with the finer energy of his victorious mind ; especially to create in the realm of spirit ; moulding human nature into higher forms of individual and social life, and by a far-reaching insight, peopling the realms of imagination with new and glorious beings, which bear the seal of reality and become the ideals of the generations ; this is God-like ; and only through Free Labor can man approach this throne of his power, and rise into the companion- ship of the creative love of the Father of aU. And herein is the overwhelming argument against the barbarous logic which is now filling the press of half our Union and the Legislative halls of the Kepublic with the assertion that labor belongs to capital, and the slave industry of the past is a greater success than the free labor of the present. No doubt statistics are against this theory, but when was a nation ever ciphered out of barbarism ? Let its advocates pile up their bales of cotton, their tons of sugar, their rice and hemp and loathsome tobacco, to the heavens, and exult- ingly cry : Tliis is ours ! But what has hecome of the Creative Power of Man Tnea/rvwhUef Where is your growth of that creative energy which lifts a THE FORCES OF FREE LABOR. 79 people ever higher in the scale of humanity? Where are the inventions, the labor-saving ma- chinery, the advanced modes of labor, the improve- ment of lands ; all that bears witness to the growth of intelligence and power over nature ? Tour 4,000,000 of laborers are a smaller creative force in the world's industry than many a New England village. Not even able to use what the rest of the world has invented, they plod on, a great black mass of brutal toil, tagging behind the peasantry of Europe. Where has fled the creative force of your nobler race? What element is the white laboring class in slave regions, in the inventive power of the world? Insignificant beyond com- parison. While England has built up an empire from a group of islands smaller than your oldest State, you have no resource but the barbarian's method of making one region a desert and striking your tents and moving to another. And where is your creative power in the higher regions of art, literature, theology, philosophy, politics, charac- ter? Let the best civilization of the age judge between you and itself. And this you call suc- cess — ^to sacrifice the creative energy of fifteen great States ; to carry labor back to the age of the Pharaohs ; to make yourself a cipher in the forces of an intelligent and Christianized industry ; and 80 THE F0ECE8 OF FEEE LABOE. boast of the cotton and sugar and tobacco you have received in exchange. And this Free Society you call a failure, which is increasing faster in creative power, in every realm of life, than any previous community on earth! Could you cover a con- tinent with your products, and spin a shroud of your cotton wide enough to wrap humanity for her burial, one free man, educated in the school of a Christian industry, would be a sufficient refutation of your shallow philosophy. And the same logic will scatter to the winds the affectation of superiority, which in a free State like ours, plumes itself on the distinction of laziness, and thinks gentility only the prerogative of the drone. Could the young man that saunters the streets to forget the lagging hours, and the maiden that scorns the severe toil of body and mind, but know what they are doing and becoming thereby, they would awaken from their dream of folly. For, pray tell me, is not true gentility also true nobility of character ? Is there any genuine superi- ority other than spiritual power and worth ? and when you despise labor of the hands and mind, do you not renounce that chief glory of man, his creative Life ? If you make nothing in the realm of nature, or think nothing in the realm of ideas, or mould no character or shape no social result in THE F0ECE3 OF FEKE LABOE. 81 the realm of Humanity — what are you but an underling, a worthless pensioner on society, taking the back track towards brutality and impotence ? Is your laziness fraught with joys to compensate for the abdication of your throne of creative dominion ? Are you satisfied to gravitate towards the irrational animals for the sake of their pleasant sensations and exemption from care ? Do you shrink from that trouble, toil and anxiety which are the inevitable accompaniments of all human achievements ? Learn that the utmost of these is only a penny toll paid at the gates which open into new regions of grandeur and loveliness ; and that he who really understands himself, quite for- gets these in the inspiration that burns higher, as he mounts the steep ways of Power. Aim to be the best, if you will, but show us your title in creative toil, superior to any other, before you expect of us a reception of your claim. Since Free Labor is valuable, chiefly for its spiritual results on man, it wiU only be found in its genuine form where man applies the highest facul- ties of his nature to the occupations of his every- day existence. Where every citizen puts his whole soul into his work, and makes it the expression of his finest conception of manliness or womanhood ; where a people writes out its grandest idea of 82 THE FORCIiS OF FEEE LABOK. truth, and justice and grace in the colossal dialect of an intense and varied industry, then shall we know what Free Labor can do. Thus we have only to look at the productions of any country to understand how far a liberal and elevated idea of work has advanced. Anybody could read the whole philosophy of Chinese art and life out of the manufactures of China. In the evidences of minute and patient drudgery, the gawky forms and richness of material displayed in their manu- factures, we discover the mark of an unprogressive nation, where life is so cheap that a man's whole existence can easily be spared to the elaboration of one corner of a shawl, or the carving on the leg of a table, where with the richest material and the utmost patience to mould them, the same stereo- type figures and shapes proclaim that generation after generation is inclosed in a wall of self-conceit and slavish routine. Compare with this spectacle the industry of the British islands, and behold in its ever-expanding variety, its constant improve- ment in all the appliances of machinery, its grow- ing beauty, its thoroughness, the evidence that liere man is gradually approaching a true idea of the mission of toil. Tested by this rule, we shall find much to criti- cise in the industry of our State, We may suppose THE FORCES OF FEEK LABOE, 83 that Labor is free in our great commonwealth; and so it is redeemed from the infamy of personal slavery ; bnt free from many hindrances to its highest development, it is not. We are yet in a transition state from the barbarism of servile labor to the Christian civilization of a truly enlightened and purified idea of work. Industry is yet embar- rassed by the obstinate tyranny of corporations ; by the tendency towards an aristocracy of wealth ; by the lingering sense of degradation that hangs about toil ; by the ignorance that oppresses so large a proportion of the toiling masses ; and, above all, by the dishonesty and unveracity that permeate our system of manufactures and trade. Our whole idea of life, as a people, is far below any worthy conception of human existence. We are, as a State, great in our worldliness ; pursuing material successes and temporary ambitions, to the woeful neglect of the higher achievements of life; more desirous of making splendid demonstrations in our own day, than of laying the deep foimdations of an enduring Kepublic. This popular notion of life expresses itself in our Labor, which is enslaved in every way that a man or a State is enslaved by a narrow and sensual view of existence. But let not our neighbors in the servile States exult over our panics and dangerous classes in com- 84 THE FOECES OF FEEE LABOR. mercial cities, and general sliort-comings ; great as our difficTilties are, they are sucli as these regions are not yet capable of feeling, nor will be for a century to come. Ours are the difficulties that en- noble a State by stimulating its best mind and heart into great effort, the struggles of millions of men, nominally free, to become spiritually emanci- pated; not the desperate, suUen heavings of a brutal race to rise to ownership of its own bodies and souls and the insolent and cruel effort of a superior caste to keep down this rising tide of human nature. Thus, while in half our coxmtry Free Labor can hardly be attained except by the very dissolution and reorganization of society, in New Tork we need no anarchy, no overturn in social and political constitutions ; but only a better understanding by our people of the dignity and relations of labor, and a persistent effort to elevate the men and women who compose our armies of industry. The first grand want of our present system of labor is intelligence. Ignorance is slavery by the inevitable laws of God ; and whoever flatters igno- rance anywhere does it for the purposes of despot- ism. Our labor is not truly free in New York, because it is not sufficiently cultivated. While thousands of farmers are prevented by their want THE FOECES OF FREE LABOR. 85 of information and prejudice from adopting the myriad improvements of modern scientific agricul- ture, and other thousands of our mechanics and operatives know just enough to be tied to one kind of secondary work all their lives, and our young men enter into mercantile life so ill prepared that seventy per cent, fail, how can there be anything but a practical enslavement of whole regions of society? Men and women thus qualified are always at the mercy of the better instructed. Beyond a limited circle of plodding toil, they are lost, and must woi'k as they are forced by the few clever people who organize the great machinery of labor and appoint them their place therein. They are exposed to distress in every great panic and are not able to avail themselves of times of prosperity. It is vain for such laboring classes to protest against the injustice they sufier. Nobody disputes that they are practically shut up in a narrow place ; but how came they there ? Chiefly because they have preferred ignorance to intelligence. The State makes provision for the instruction of all, and the means of practical improvement are open to whomsoever desires them. But if two hundred thousand children are kept out of school by the wickedness of their parents, and other hundreds of thousands of yoimg men and women prefer the 86 THE FORCES OF FEEE LABOE. luxury of ignorance, they are welcome to it ; but they will learn that it is the most expensive luxury in which they can indulge. No man or woman is too old to learn, no girl or boy is too young to be taught, that love for improvement which is the great emancipator of the laboring man. Especially let our youth of both sexes resolve to be generally cultivated, and whatever they under- take, learn to do in the best way. The young laborer in the household, in the shop or on the land, who is informed concerning his profession as a science, knows its central principles, its capacities for improvement, all its labor-saving machinery and its relations to other professions, is clothed with a power that will always defend him against the tyranny of his superior. Whoever resolves to have nothing to do with sham worth, to put the best he knows into all he does, and to learn the best there is to be learned, will gravitate to a higher position as he advances in skill and fidelity. What a garden would scientific fanning make of western New Tork and the valley of the Hud- son ; what a hive of industry could swarm in our mining districts; what wealth of manufacturing industry would a higher intelligence and wise legislation develop along our river banks ; what a THE FORCES OF FREE LABOR. 87 different thing were our commerce guided by a body of cultivated men ; and what a new life would dawn in our homes if the art of housekeeping, the finest of all professions, were well known, and wo- man were thoroughly instructed in every avocation where she could maintain herself. Who can com- pute the additional comfort, wealth and opportu- nity for human advancement, such a reform would inaugurate ? And even a greater want than intelligence is truth in our present system of labor. It is impos- sible that industry in New York should be free until it is honest. Let any man study the different phases that this imtruth assumes in all regions of our work, and he will no longer wonder at our thousand embarrassments. No class of laborers is exempt from it. The farmers are always too ready to slight their work, to cheat the land of its proper cultivation and defraud their crops and flocks and herds of their just attention, and therefore plunder society of what it has the right to expect from the soil ; to say nothing of their questionable ways of dealing in their products. The root of all other industrial dis- honesty is laid in the field, the pasture, the dairy and the kitchen. Thence the ill weed grows apace ; the manufacturer, thus skinned by the pro- 88 THE F0ECE8 OF FREE LABOR. ducer, slights his work, makes clothes and tools and shoes and furniture to " sell " and not to use. The mechanic who buys diluted milk, and half fatted beef and mutton, and flour that won't " rise," has his revenge by building a house that will tumble down over the heads of a second generation, by charging exorbitajit prices for poor service, and making his word as cheap as his work. The merchant, assailed by dishonesty on every side, strikes out to defend himself, and broken banks and exploding firms and gambling speculations make panic inevitable. Tlie great corporations contain the flower of this ini- quity, and a dozen respectable men as a " board of directors " will commit iniquities and oppressions of which either would be ashamed in his private affairs. Thus the rich, knowing that they have been obliged to fight to gain their money, have so little sense of public obligation in its use, and classes are set against each other, each fully aware of its own sins. Of course this dishonesty vitiates all other pro- fessions ; and the sons and daughters of people that cheat in labor will give us a sham instruction in school, a corrupt legislation in the senate, a litera- ture that reads best while seen on the wall in pass- ing, and a Gospel according to the fashion in the church. Let not the farmer, the mechanic and THE FOECES OF FEEE LABOB. 89 day-laborer accuse the men higher up of this dis- honesty ; they have created it by their own unfaith- fulness. K the primitive employments of life are honestly performed, those that grow out of them will be of like character. Thousands of the servant girls and day-workers who this winter will shiver and starve have done all they could to bring on this panic by unfaithful and dishonest labor, by extortion and extravagant expenditure in prosper- ous times. There is untnith enough in our New York labor yet to produce a general financial explo- sion every quarter of a century. All professions are involved in it; and as a consequence Free Labor does not exist. In proportion as industry is untrue to the eternal laws of rectitude, does it descend to the en- slavement of the less clever by the more clever. When we can honor each other so much that we regard every attempt at sham or knavery as an unpardonable insult to human nature, we shall begin to realize that " glorious liberty " which only rectitude confers. Any man, whether a sweeper of streets or a president of a railroad ; any woman, whether a cook or an artist, who slights work or wrongs a customer in any way, is to that extent laboring to enslave the human race ; and whoever iu the humblest walk of industry is faithful, is 90 THE FOECES OF FEEE LABOE. doing his utmost to emancipate society through the whole world. A radical reform in such particulars could not fail to be accompanied with an advance in beauty. Our industry would take a more graceful shape ; our life of toil would be less angular, coarse and uncongenial, and an increased appreciation of ele- gance appropriate to every production would every where make itself known. And through the State a more cheerful atmosphere and unostentatious loveliness would mark the growth of that industrial freedom which puts off at once the stolid, snUen gloom of the slave, and the gruff coarseness of the boor, and clothes itself in the natural and graceful deportment of the freeman. And this system of intelligent, honest, graceful Free Labor, would place our people on a higher spiritual plane of existence ; and it would then be un- derstood, that the end of man is not " bread alone," but manliood in its greatest sense. Tlien the folly that toil is degrading would be silenced by the comprehension of the true purpose of effort. It would be understood that the end of all professions is to acquire power and opportunity to cultivate the highest qualities of our nature; that a day- laborer may obtain this privilege, and a legislator can do no more; and that men are not to be THE F0ECE8 OF FREE LABOK. 91 honored according to the work they do, but accord- ing to the use they make of tlie power which that work has obtained. All industry of hand or mind is mean if done only for itself, and hallowed by no aspiration for a loftier character ; all effort is noble wbicb is linked with the best improvement of our nature, and bears the fruits of an enlarging life. The labor of the Empire State will be truly free when its great powers and growing opportunities are used as persistently for the spiritual regenera- tion of man and the elevation of society, as they now are for private selfishness and public material- ism. And let no sensual economist or political partisan promise the people larger freedom at any cheaper rate than a thorongh reform in intelligence, truth and beauty, and a consecration of their wealth and all its opportunities to the service of man. We shall, in the light of these principles, be at no loss to account for the great and deadly evils that still afflict our civilization. Does anybody wonder why New York, the most powerful Kepub- lican State in the world, is still, tried by the standard of Christianity, a half barbarous common- wealth ; that her cities swarm with multitudes vibrating between beggary and crime ; that igno- rance still holds the balance of political power ; and 92 TUB FOECES OF FEEE LABOR. superstition is so deep and dense over whole dis- tricts of her dominion ; and sensuality and intem- perance eat out so much of her best vitality ; why, in the great contest between the freedom of the whole and the tyranny of the few, she hardly seems yet to have a stable mind, and holds her great name as the watchword, now of a spasmodic liberty and now of an insolent despotism ? The answer is too plain. She is not yet a free State because so much of the same dark blood runs through her own veins that clogs the heart of communities lower yet in the scale of civilization. She has yet too many proud, sensual, selfish men, who despise work, and would gladly lash a black or white slave to do their toil ; too many frivolous and idle women, who care not whose body is bent or whose soul is cramped if they can live in ease and comfort; too many laborers who secretly despise their profession and only work to gain the means of degrading them- selves by senseless material pleasures and low ambition ; too few who have the courage to com- pliment the "masses by telling them they are not what the citizens of such a State should be ; that while they toil in their present spirit they must be content to see other States lead off in the sublime crusade for a freedom that here means Christian Democracy. THE FOECES OF FEEE LABOE. 93 Wten the young men of New York' resolve that they will regenerate industry from its present clogs of ignorance, untruth and vulgarity; when the young women of the Empire State decide to take the industrial field, and occupy and adorn every post of toil for which nature has given them the ability ; when we cease to boast so much of our great canals, and cities, and crops, and wealth, and concentrate our highest ambition on the quality of our humanity ; then may we hope to gain the re- nown of the freest commonwealth. But let no delusion possess our souls that liberty is extem- porized in political campaigns, or will come any the' sooner for our high-flown rhetorical adulation. Freedom comes only to a people that is resolved to work for it, protect it by all sacrifices, preserve it by individual consecration, and watch its ene- mies with an "eternal vigilance." So does our industry culminate in the sacred toil after that per- sonal freedom which, inspiring every soul with the highest spiritual activity, shall mould a free com- monwealth great and e'lorious bevond the fiTrmires of the earth. IV. MAN AND HIS MODERN INVENTIONS. On a bright October day I looked from the heights of Hoboken over the Metropolitan City of the United States. Beautiful was it outspread, clasped in azure arms to the beating bosom of its ample bay, its spires and masts bristling like the pinnacles of a fairy temple in the rosy distance. The ferry-boats shot in and out, like living crea- tures ; the Hudson steamer emerged from a golden vapor in the north, and every water craft was transformed by the magic atmosphere into a gilded barge navigating an enchanted sea. Viewed in the dreamy mood befitting the day, it was easy to transform the whole spectacle into a pictured symbol of the power of man. Out of a river, a bay and a savage island had this potent magician evoked the glorious creation, that hovered in this autumn haze. How easy to worship the Creator 9C 96 MAN AKD HIS MODEEN INVENTIONS. of all this, did not the reflection interpose, that even he is bound by a law that dates not from his own will, whose servant he is in his mightiest exer- cise of power. And then first dawned upon me the grand significance of these words, spoken in the old time, though fresher than the telegraphic dis- patch of to-day : " Seek ye first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, wnd all these things shall he added unto you." What a declaration is here of the relation of man to these modem inventions, which so often excite him to a deification of Immanity and a scorn- ful defiance of God's everlasting laws of the soul. Translated into our form of thought, it means : Cultivate the highest style of manhood, and the forces of nature shall become your servants, and life shall be full of opportunities. The "king- dom of God " is not a place away off in space, but is a state of character as possible to-day in New York as in any future world, at any point in eter- nity. Anywhere in this state, or that world to come, he who makes the acquisition of a religious character founded on love to God and humanity his supreme object, will be able to use the oppor- tunities offered by the state of existence in which he abides. Standing thus at the head of creation, man shall become its real sovereign by force of his MAS AND HIS MODEEN INVENTIONS. 97 moral energy, and " all things " needful to his eter- nal growth " shall be added nnto him." The peculiar state of American civilization to- day preaches a sermon from this text, which I shall only endeavor to report. Let me, with as little mixture of my own theories and fancies as may be, endeavor to interpret that civilization in its relations to man; show to what extent it is the creature of that spirit of invention which is the great obligation and privilege of our day; what we must be to live amid its -opportunities with dig- nity and success ; and what retributions will over- whelm us unless we become great and good enough to control it. 'No man should understand the scope and signi- ficance of the modem spirit of invention so well as the citizen of our Bepublic, for no coxmtry is so much its creature. In the despotic governments of Europe we discover the awkward contrast be- tween institutions a thousand years old and inven- tions of to-day ; and the great effort of their ruling classes is to monopolize the use of these new agen- cies and thereby increase their own power ten fold. All the mechanics of the nineteenth century con- centrate in the army of Louis Napoleon. Bussia is pushing the railroad and telegraph towards Asia to pour down her armed millions with greater dia- 5 98 HAN AND HIS UODEBN INVENTIONS. patch upon its enfeebled barbarism. The Frussian gOTemment has captured the common school, and made ereiy teacher a policeman to aid in the mannfactnre of a Frossian citizen. Even in Eng- land the new powers of life are jealously retained by the few and only by faltering steps do the igno- rant masses come into their inheritance. But in the United States of America these wonderful agencies are the possession of the people. Every man and woman of the ruling race has the nominal right to use them, and only ignorance or indiffer- ence is shut out from their enjoyment. Who, then, should understand the relation of man to his modem invention if not the citizen of that country which is itself the most surprising invention of these latter days ? Do we, indeed, realize how much in our circum- stances is new ? Truly, man is here, with his old nature ; the same creature in aU essential faculties and aspirations, as in the garden of Eden. But how novel are his surroundings I A thousand ma- terial forces aid him in his work. He cultivates the earth by machineiy ; shoots his own will and intelligence through an army of wheels and spin- dles, each of which is a better manufacturer than himself; and is driven about the world with a speed that makes the legs of man or beast ridiculous. MAS AND HIS MODEKN INVElITrONS. 99 HiB liouse is fashioned by a stroke of every arti- san's hammer since Tubal Cain; for the genera- tions have treasured their best ideas of conveni- ence under his roof. What a marvellous labor saving machine is our whole system of American business. A merchant in a counting-room on the banks of the Hudson, sits with his fingers on the pulse of the world's commerce. We have all the old literature reprinted at our hands ; yet the people are educated by the common school, the journal, the lecture, the caucus, the convention, and free discussion on every theme — a travelling college that keeps up with their haste, wherein, " he who runs may read." What a new thing is social life when the increase in home con- veniences and means of communication expand a neighborhood to a nation, and we need not per- sonal contact to know the condition of our beloved every hour. New ideas of amusement are rapidly coming in conflict With the old. Our system of government is a capital invention ; for the ballot in America means all that king, court, army, no- biUty, revolution mean abroad. One ballot with brains behind it wiU do what Caesar died to accom- plish; and one election day in New York may change the reading of history. What an invention is the Protestant Church, founded on the voluntary 100 MATJ AND HIS MODEEN INVENTIONS. system, divorced from the government. A world of ecclesiastical trash is superseded by the simple idea that every man shall worship God according to the dictates of his own manhood. And truly what is this Eepublic, with its fiery energies, tearing its way from the Atlantic to the Pacific, transforming the wilderness as it goes to fruitful States, but the latest invention of man to aid in that Christian civilization which is the kingdom of God on earth ? Here, then, where the inventive spirit has done its utmost, is the problem between man and his modern inventions to be solved. Now, there is astonishing confusion of thought among our people in regard to what may reason- ably be expected from this gigantic array of American inventions. Millions of our population are to-day behaving as if our new circumstances were to create a millennium ; and, of course, the land is full of demagogues, lay and clerical, who find it to their own advantage to persuade these confused millions that they are already in a Para- dise of Freedom. But the thoughtful moral teacher must insist that this magnificent array of conbri/oances can never do more than furnish, new opportunities for true manhood. Every new in- vention is a new opportunity, and every new opportunity imposes a new obligation. MATT AND HIS MODERN INVENTIONS. 101 Tie cultivated citizen of an American city, in comparison with tlie savage in Nebraska, has an incomparable advantage in his circumstances ; but this advantage finds its compensation in his fearful increase of moral obligation. The Indian can use all his opportunities for nobility, and sleep half the day in his wigwam ; the citizen can only use his privileges by a sleepless vigilance, and the ex- ercise of energies unknown to the red man. New oppoitunities do not make new men, or create a new civilization; they only call man to arouse from his slumber, and put forth some faculty hitherto dormant, and fix his eye on a higher excellence, and climb up them as up a ladder scaling a new heaven. And the awful fact about this matter is, that there can he no Icihor-sanymg machi/nefor the manufacture of character. Man is called to-day to do and be what was never before conceived of excellence and power; a new world is aroimd him — a world of slopes ascending to higher eminences, wandering off into a horizon of summits flushed with a glory as of angelic lands ; but, alas ! he can possess his new kingdom only in the old way. Just as Adam and Eve went out the gate of Eden and saw the earth before them, and began to mould that energy of moral manhood and womanhood which is the 102 MAN AHD HIS MODEEN INVENTIONS. sovereign power of creation, must the Young American pass out the gates of his infant inno- cence, and earn a spiritual position by the sweat of the brow and the soul. There is only one way to be great and good, and that the old way. Spite of all modem inventions and opportunities, the essential conflict of life is the same. Perhaps we sneer at the old Theological Devil ; but it is just as hard for us to resist evil as for those who believe in him. We scorn the monks, and hermits, and ascetics of the old days, yet under our broadcloth and satin and fine linen is the same death-grapple for manhood that bent Simeon Stylites on his pillar thirty years. Experience, character, cannot be in- herited ; opportunities can be inherited. You may come to your noble father's estate and position, but you cannot gain your father's nobility without working harder than he, for it is more to be noble to-day than in his day. America is the heir of all the ages ; every battle of freedom that has shaken the earth, every gain in knowledge, comforts, policy, has drifted a treasure across the ocean to her ; iut the experience of a naUon in the use of its opporPunities she cannot inherit/ that, she must learn for herself. Her character is her own to make or lose ; and never was there such a task set for a people as to shape a true civilization out of UAir AJSm HIS MODEBN ISYESnOSB. 108 our circnmBtanccs. Invention is both privilege and obligation ; and only in accepting and using both ■ is this great problem to be solved. "Whenever man fulfills this obligation and tries with all his might to become a noble being, as his oppoi-tunities increase, then is realized the law of snccess. " Seeking first the kingdom of God, and his righteousness, all these things are added unto him." All inventions, save drudgery, relieve man from the slavery to material things, and give him leisure to cultivate his higher nature. Thus, modem machinery will finally abolish slavery and ignorant labor. To manage a first-class kitchen is beyond the power of Kathleen or Minna, fresh from the other side ; they must become educated women, or first class employments closed against them. Sleepy old Jonathan or Knickerbocker, with his pipe in his month, cannot sit on a mowing machine ; a man must be wide awake to keep out of the way of its sharp wheels, or to follow a horse- rake, a planter, or a thresher. Wboever hasn't brains must " stitch, stitch, stitch," and leave her brighter cousin to use the sewing machine. A fool can be a priest in Italy ; but a minister in a Free Protestant Church must be much of a man to hold the people. So do all these inventions abolish drudgery, and demand culture for their use ; and 104 UAIT AND HIB HODEBN TSTESTIOSB. in OTir day, a succeBsfol farmer and his wife will nee more science in their dairy or their fields, than most of onr labor-despising, dilettante young peo- ple carry about at the end of the college or acade- mical course. Drudgery and the class of drudges must gradually disappear, and what has been re- garded menial work will become a fit employment for the most accomplished people. Thus a good deal of time will be saved from the lower side of Ufe, that may be used on the higher work of building a character in the image of God. And a true man will use his leisure for this pur- pose. He will recognize in his inventiye faculty the key to let him out of the dungeon of material dependence ; and when he is in the free air and light, he will put forth all the sublime and lovely attributes of his being. Think of the opportunity enjoyed by a young woman for the best culture to-day in town, compared with that of her grand- mother out in the country fifty years ago. The grandmother had no time fSr cultivation ; to cook, wash, bake and sew for self, husband and children was the life of a slave ; travelling was slow, popu- lation scattered; nature had her under her feet. If she became cultivated and noble, it was her own great merit toiling against difficulties. The grand-daughter can have her work chiefly done by MAN AND HIS MODERN INVENTIONS. 106 machinery ; the water-pipe is in the wall, the light flashes at the touch of her finger, the furnace and the range warm her and cook her dinner, the sew- ing has ceased to be a nightmare ; books, lectures, schools, cultivated society, and time enough to use all, are at her hand ; she can do just what she has the patience to achieve, and be what she will. What a world of drudgery is saved to this genera- tion ; what centuries of time have been rescued from material uses, so that eternity is becoming our inheritance. And he who has this, and will employ it aright, may become such a man as will eclipse the heroism of the past ; a sovereign with " all things uiider his feet," a man to whom we can say, in the glorious words of Paul : " All things are yours, whether the world, or life, or death, or things present, or things to come, all are yours." Yes ; this world can even now be used so well that it may become the ante-court of Heaven, and amid our common opportunities we can realize the experience of that immortal life which is only the ascending growth of the soul through wider spheres of knowledge and power, and beauty and love. But now suppose man, instead of doing this, does the contrary ; accepts the privilege a/nd repudiates tJie obligation of this new condition of human cir- 5* 106 MATJ Am) HI8 MODERN INTENTIONS. cv/mstances. He does not regard every invention as a new opportunity which demands new efforts after manliness, but clutches it as a fresh occasion for selfish indulgence. The wonderful improve- ments in modem labor and commerce he prizes chiefly as a more expeditious mode of making money. The increase in social conveniences is only an excuse for luxurious living. The facility of communication but enlarges his ambition for wide reputation. He abuses the freedom of reli- gious worship by refusing to countenance the insti- tutions of Christianity, or perverts the church of Christ to a movable platform of personal advance- ment. Our invaluable privilege of universal male suffrage he insults by the refusal to vote, or its prostitution to corrupt partisan ends. A free press means to him the liberty to flood the land with nonsense or scandal, and dilute his intellect by saturation in the thin gruel of popular literature. And Republicanism in America is to him but a conceit of selfish liberty to neglect the cause of his fellow man, and push his own whim to its utmost bound. Can there be any question what will be the consequences of such a criminal abandonment of the new obligations of an American citizen? Is any sober man so near a fool as to dream that he can use this splendid array of opportunities in MAN AND HIS MODERN INVENTIONS. 107 the new world for selfish ends and come out safely ? Are we so far gone in national conceit as to be- lieve that God loves his children in these United States so much better than the rest of mankind, that he will permit us to ignore this eternal law, that whosoever doth not i/mprove his opporlmnibles shaU lose them or Jvnd them his cfwrae f Let the ministers of religion, spite of the rage of the demagogues who live on the degeneracy of the State, reiterate the lesson that if man does not grow in character in America as he gains in privileges, his new inventions, will not save him ; nay, will become his special tormentors ; and from the abuse of the very freedom of which he boasts, will come his more fearful destruction. For see how these new inventions turn against him, when he makes himself morally incompetent to govern them. If a merchant has made up his mind to care for nothing but business, God help him in a modem counting-room ; for, instead of the moderate and contracted life of the trader of former days which oflFered many an occasion for quiet and enjoyment, he is tied into a network of nerves that enfolds the globe, and his heart beats, and his imagination shudders at every change of business at home or abroad. The anxiety of mil- lions of traders, the competition of nations, the 108 MAN AMD HIS MODERN mVEHTIOirS. hopes and fears of a world-wide speculation come like fiends to worry his poor brain ; and he is as surely imprisoned from the nobler joys of existence as if he were buried in one of his own mines, or nailed up in his own warehouse. Behold the fam- ily that eagerly prostitutes its wealth to luxury and social ambition. No sensuality of ancient Home or Ephesus or Corinth so quickly annihi- lated its victims, as the luxury of New York and Philadelphia, and Chicago ; no social ambition is so demeaning as this American rage for an aris- tocracy of money. What avails a free Protestantism to a man who has not moral courage to declare his religious opinions, but must enact the farce of the hypocrite every Sunday before his Creator on the crimson seats of a fashionable temple ? Gracious Heaven! Have martyrs died, and saints lived through persecutions, and Christians toiled and thought for eighteen centuries for this, that Ameri- can Protestants should be the cowards that they have become — hiding within a new church, built on credit, at every littie cloud of dust raised by the Devil in the streets ? A free Protestantism in- deed, when its liberty is interpreted as the license to transform the church of a crucified Saviour to a drawing-room, and the preacher of God's law to the gentleman usher in an ecclesiastical ceremony. MAN AND HIS MODEBN INVENTIONS. 109 and the awful prerogative of moral judgment to a separation of patrician sheep from plebeian goats. If any one doubts that a good man is needed to wield a Free Press, let him open a morning paper and find his own name dragged before the community in connection with some criminal or foolish charge, or assailed for his own opinions with barbarian rancor, and comfort himself with the assurance that he will be the subject of execration or ridicule from the Bay of Fundy to San Fran- cisco. Freedom of amusement is a great privilege, but when it turns out the freedom to get the delirium tremens and make one's self an appendage to a race-horse, an infamous woman, or a soul- destroying career of fashion, there is no question from what quarter that man's tormentors will come. The ballot is the last result of human government ; the prize of all the revolutions that have shaken the nations ; and now think of 20,000 men in the State of New York, and as many in Pennsylvania, the two most powerful States in the Union, wield- ing this fearful instrument, not one of them able to read the Constitution or write the name of America; then contemplate the increasing thous- ands in our more barbarous States, till you descend to the bloody arena of the territories, where the 110 MAN AUD HIS MODEEN rNTENTlONS. man who has the best rifle, and is least scrupulous as to its use, carries the election ; and tell me if we may not vote ourselves into as terrible calamities this side of the water, as any into which the people of Europe have ever fought themselves ? If we are to have no greater elevation of man- hood and womanhood in this age than the past, let us pray Heaven to destroy all our new inventions. For out of the opportunities of a people comes its reward, if it be worthy, or its retribution if it degenerates. We know the worst that old world privileges can inflict on a nation when man falls away from them. What he has suffered in Borne, in France, in Austria, history records; and that could be endured again. But what a fearful looking-for of judgment will there be for Ameri- cans, if they go down below their circumstances, and in the strife for selfish success forget their high obligation to God and man. Think of our com- mercial panics that scourge us for ignorance, haste and dishonesty in business ; of railroads, and steam- ships and machinery everywhere built by imfaith- ful workmen, and managed by heedless and wicked superintendency ; of the possibility of wreck to health and life implied in any street of modem residences inhabited by an effeminate population ; of the chaos of atheism and fanaticism into which MAN AOT) HIS MODERN HTVENTIONB. Ill our popular Protestantism can any day be plunged by a people who have forgotten God and man ; of the frantic gabbling of twenty-five millions of con- ceited tongues, educated on the trash that is daily hawked through the streets, and bound to settle every problem that tlie sages of the generations have left unsolved; of a nation like ours, driven into a war with a combined Europe, or a worse contest of sister States, by citizens too wicked to vote right, or too indifferent to vote intelligently ! Is this heU that yawns beneath our new civilization a pleasant place to look into ? Ah! the old theological lake of fire is not the only hell with which the preacher in our land may threaten his hearers ; nearer to them ore the "infernal regions" that America conld easily become with a population below its opportunities. Here might be seen a hell, where every other train ran off the track, and the dying shriek of the drowning passenger on the sea was caught by the Broking boat on the Hudson, and prolonged by the exploding craft upon the lakes, and swept down the Mississippi in a wail of death to the far off wreck- strewn shore of the Pacific — ^where dyspepsia and consumption, and "general debility" dwelt in every luxurious house, and the pale face of woman and the dimmed eye of man were the emblematic 112 MAK AND HIS MODEEN INVENTIONS. skeleton at every feast ; where pecuniary disaster lurted in every bargain ; and a reputation died at every stroke of the editor's pen ; and the church pulled down Christ, and set up some foul abomina- tion of our barbarism in His place ; and the State was in a chronic revolution! "What untold woes are hidden in this array of calamities, not fanciful, but such as even now, in part, we know — woes as new as the latest fashions, and as fearful as novel. Pray Heaven to avert such a fate, and second that prayer, by living up to your advantages. For should we get under the feet of our Inventions, no invasion of Goths and Vandals could be compared with the terrors of a State where man was the sport of his own contrivances, and every new agency with which his busy brain had peopled the earth, would be charged to an unhumau enemy for his persecution. This is the inevitable law, eternally enacted for every soul, that if man " seeketh first the king- dom of God, and his righteousness, all these things shall be added unto him ;" if, first, he seeketh his own selfishness, all things he has made shall turn against him. And thus the world he has created about himself, when viewed from the mount of Christian character, shall glow like the descending slopes of paradise beneath the sunshine of God's MAN AHD HIS MODERN INVENTIONS. 113 approTing love ; but viewed from the pit of un- christian degeneracy, shall glare like an impending firmament of storms lit by the lightnings of retri- butive doom. Do you need the application of this law to the public of to-day, and the land in which we live I Do you not understand that all our real prosperity as individuals and as a people, comes from the manly use which is made of our new life, and that all the varied troubles that harass our families and our States, and the more depressing fears that haunt those who can think and feel, are but the inevitable result of our neglect of Ameri- can obligations? In the last seventy-five years, what have we not invented ? Almost everything that makes us a " peculiar people," until we live in an outward world of our own. So far have we pushed out from the landmarks of the past that we are now drifting over an unexplored sea, of which there is no chart in any book of history, where only a force of character, such as was never before known, can save us. Have we that force of char- acter adequate to guide the ship of our civihzation to a safe port ? I do not know what new energies may be developed, what great heads may be bom, or what latent virtues may be dislodged by coming trials ; but it looks now to a reflecting man as if character in America was creeping on at a snail's 114 MAN AND mS MODEEN INVENTIONS. pace, and opportunity running on tlie wings of the wind. Our commercial panic, which lately excited us into semi-insanity, was not an isolated affair, it was one phase of a chronic American disease. That disease is the semi-barbarism of the people, where- by it havens that they home not Tnoral vnsdom erurugh to manage the involved machinery they ha/oe set vp on this continent. It is said that a celebrated engineer, having constructed an elaborate piece of machinery, on witnessing its first exhibition before a crowd, was so bewildered by the confusion of wheels, and mingled hum of axles, and shouts of applause, that he sprung into it and was torn in shreds by his own invention. Somewhat like this is the matter with the American people. They are confused with their own institutions. It needs an angelic clear- ness of mind and elevation of soul to guide aright this fearful mechanism of Republican govern- ment, church, literature, business, and society ; but through a continent of whirling forces we rush as wildly, and disport ourselves with as little fore- thought and firmness as if we ran over an open prairie. "What wonder that we receive our retri- bution on every hand. Now the disease breaks out in social life, and details of sensuality, luxury, crime and rottenness of domestic ties send a thrill MAN AND fflS MODEEN INTENTIONS. 116 of horror to every heart. Now it is a panic in the churches, Bomanism and Atheism threatening the people and a Protestant ecclesiasticism too busy in fighting over shreds of doctrine, or building Sun- day drawing-rooms for the elect, to stay the storm of erroL and sin. Now, our national ignorance looms above ns like a black cloud, and our new agencies of intelligence are perverted to its advo- cates. Again, it is a sectional political controversy and a revolutionary campaign wherein it requires no superabundance of insight to discover barbarism and civilization fighting over their old conflict be- tween man and man. And now the sympathies of the people are wrung even to insensibility by repeated disaster on land and sea. And now our commercial system explodes, and faith between man and man departs, and the nation, hke Tahtalus, sees its own abundance hanging as in mockery above its reach, while it wildly talks of starvation. These varied agitations are but the symptoms of one disease which visits in turn every limb of the body politic. We are living below our opportu- nities, we are under the feet of our own inven- tions ; and instead of rallying a new moral force of American manhood and womanhood for the crisis, we are dreaming that some new contrivance will get us out of the difficulty. How vain this hope I 116 MAN AUD HIS MODEEN mVEimOlTS. Not new inventions, hut 'better men to manage those we ha/ae, is the Tieed of the imnes. We are debating whether we shall repudiate our manhood in America, and go in for a "free fight" for the selfish enjoyment of American privileges ; already the shuddering throes in our national constitution proclaim the danger; and upon the decision of tliis question rests our success or disaster. I speak not to those who scorn the word of warn- ing ; but I ask thoughtful men and women if they can say in conscience that their own elevation of character is what it should be to control these agencies of our time ; are you honest enough, pure, intelligent enough; sufficiently economical and patriotic, and prudent? Do you live like wise men and women, determined to increase in rectitude as you increase in privileges, or are you catching the popular insanity ? And if your conscience rebukes you for short coming, what shall we say of those who are below; the great whirling, frantic mass who drift hither and thither with no care for their own souls or the good of the State ? I have no professional opinions to offer on the late business complications, for I do not know just what screw is loose this time in our complex system of American trade. But I do know what some of you perhaps do not, that in such a time every dis- MAN AND HIS MODERN INVENTIONS. 117 honest, or careless, or ignorant transaction of the past years comes in to make " confusion worse con- founded ;" and commerce reaps the bitter fruit of a colossal selfishness and a corroding untruth. We have traded in an imchristian manner, and here is the retribution. We have worshipped our calf of gold, and now it is ground to dust, and we are drinking the fiery draught. Once in twenty years we explode in a general panic ; if we loved our neighbor as ourself in our trade, would it be so with us ? Let these experiences teach us that never was it so imperative that man should mle his inventions as now. I^ever was Christian manhood so essen- tial to safety; never degeneracy of any kind so fatal as just here to-day. WiU we not arouse and be worthy to wield these forces of our own crea- tion ? Young men, young women, will not you become the kind of people America needs to guide her many-sided life and make it a blessing to the world? For present embarrassments and fears I have but this counsel : Do not lose the manliness you have in any confusion; come out of every " panic " better and wiser than you went in. In good time confidence will be restored, and your drooping fortunes will revive ; but do not then for- get the lesson of to-day. Let every man resolve 118 MAN AND HIS MODEEN INVENTIONS. that henceforth his character shall be his chief anxiety; let every woman keep her womanhood high above her estate in life. Thus will a slow re- action of health visit the feverish body of society. Thus wiU an example be afforded of that Christian consecration whose wide:- prevalence is the only power which in the fight between man and his modern inventions will lead him to victory and make his sovereignty in this world the type of the government of God. THE GOLD DOLLAR. At the first Exhibition ia the New York CryBtal Palace, I observed a Gold Dollar covered with finely-engraved letters, which, on the application of a glass, were resolved into the Lord's Prayer. Amid that dazzling show of use and beanty, I remember nothing so distinctly as this new Ameri- can Dollar, adorned with the oldest utterance of Christian devotion. By its intrinsic nature, the representative of the wondrous results of human industry around me; by the date of its coinage and its image and superscription, the type of the most characteristic age of our Republican civiliza- tion — suggesting our first great war of conquest, the golden visions of CaUfomia, and the great development of heroic enterprise awakened by this period; the symbol of the great material achievements of our country, and almost the god of its idolatry ; yet through that inscription seem- 119 120 THB GOLD DOLLAR ingly consecrated to the Father whose law is the real constitution of freemen, and whose loTe can alone save us from our own foUy and sin, what wonder that the objects around me appeared insig- mficant compared with this speaking emblem of a Christian society ? I have forgotten almost every- thing I saw in this Exhibition; it floats in my memory like a gilded mist, in the centre of which hovers this Dollar most clearly defined. I know not the intention of the engraver in this singular fancy ; but it was one of those things which, once done, become forever symbolic. It has preached to me so often on the great theme of our nation's peril and hope, that I will now declare to you some of its weighty lessons : The Gold Dollar: What does it represent t How shall we get it ? And what shaU we do with it? Let this be the subject of the present dis- course. I need not inform a Christian reader that all material things are representative of spiritual reali- ties. The faintest speck of dust that floats across a ray of light is the type of an eternal fact, as the noblest human form that ever walked the earth was the appropriate incarnation of the Kedeeming Love. Every well-instructed child can tell what the Gold Dollar is — a, bit of ore wrenched from the THE GOLD DOLLAR. 121 stem clutcli of California rocks, refined, alloyed and finally, at one blow of the great hammer in the Mint, struck into coin. Bat into what wonder- ful relations that bit of shining metal is introduced by one decisive blow, not all the men and women in America can fully declare. For, as from a new birth, it rises from metal to money ; and its natural worth as a piece of gold, is quite sunk in its spirit- iial value as the representative currency of the world's chief Eepublic. From the earliest history of man, money has been as powerful as to-day. In the life of every people, ancient and modem, it has been a control- ling force. Eighteen centuries ago, before this continent was discovered by civilized men, Jesus Christ in Judea told his disciples that the love of money is the root of all evil ; and the panic of the last year is the commentary the American people are compelled to write on the margin of that awful scripture. It is all this, because it is the most per- manent representative of that complex assemblage of possessions and powers which we call "This "World." Money is the symbol of material things ; not in their simply material aspect, but as they are related to man. Wherever man touches this world he must have a convenient emblem of what he can own in it, and what it can do for him ; and that 6 122 THE GOLD DOLLAB. emblem is money. Whether a belt of wampum, a load of iron rings, a bank bill, or a gold dollar, money is always the same : the representative of the uses of this world to the human soul. Of no value in itself, its values are unestimated while used as the type of this perpetual human relation. So this little Gold DoUar runs ever to and fro over the charmed cord that unites the soul and the world; passing from hand to hand, it transmits earthly necessities, comforts, luxuries, hopes, ener- gies, that terminate in worldly success, all indi- vidual power and position, all public grandeur and domination. I give this Dollar to my customer, and thereby endow him with a new power in American civilization ; and as far as human suc- cess to-day is involved in the possessions and achievements which relate to this state of being and this state of action, this Dollar confers it. So we may say tliat all the great visible America is compressed into this little Gold Dollar, for it represents the material aspects of the Kepublic. And were our eyes clear enough, we might behold delineated within its narrow rim the broad acres of American agriculture — ^fields of waving grass, hills of solemn forests, prairies of ripening grain, lonely plantations and reeking rice swamps, tilled by joy ous freemen, or scratched by lazy and sullen slave.- THE GOLD DOLLAR. 123 Beneath would appear the veins of coal underlying whole States ; deep caverns grim with iron, or rocks of marble cropping out from the sides of New England hills ; mountains of copper on Lake Superior, and rivers flowing over beds of gold into the Pacific. And girdling all with snowy sails, would Commerce weave her mystic dance about the coast, and every river beach and shore of inland sea be washed by the retreating wave of the steam- ship; and a snarl of iron cords would bind the land every year into a more inextricable knot of blended interests. Then what a picture of the varied indus- try of these millions ; factories wherein is concen- trated the invention of four thousand years ; me- chanics that arm man with the powers of a god. "What a vision of comfort; towns and villages lying under the shade of country elms : great cities over- looking the rivera and the ocean. And with tliis, how much that goes to ennoble man ; the School- house sown over the continent ; the Press toiling day and night in the service of the soul ; the Church warning the traveller a hundred times a day that there is a God ; Art, that ever pleads for beauty; the Family, that mirrors heaven; Govern- ment, the imitation on earth of the justice that rules the universe. All this would pass as in a pan- oramic vision across this little yellow disc — a min- 124 THE GOLD DOLLAK. iature .of the America of to-day. "VVlio wonders at the desire of men to gain this Gold Dollar, -which is the talisman introducing the humblest son of the Eepublic to the enjoyment of all its opportunities ? But the Gold Dollar cannot be this without being a gi-eat deal more. For this great visible America is tied to the soul of every human being that dwells therein, and is, at any moment of her career, the type of the average state of the American mind. The meaning of this vast heterogeneous appearance is this alone ; that here man, having reached a new and singulaa* state of culture — ^in which the noblest theories, and the loftiest aspirations, are mingled with the most degrading inhumanities — ^has stamp- ed himself on the new continent, and in American civilization drawn a picture of his own soul. So this Gold Dollar, representing that visible civilization, has also a moral significance, and its inscription is the national idea of life, its objects of worship, its sense of duty, its consciousness of im- mortality. If those spiritual ideals of the country could be read on its face, as I read the dollar in the Crystal Palace, I fear the Lord's Prayer would not be found thereon inscribed; but quite another statement of religion, in which a Christian profes- sion would be strangely mingled with a record of heathen practices. And could the real creed of THE GOLD DOLLAF. 125 America be Avritten thus on her gold dollar ; could the secret, potent ideal of life that sways the forces of her nationality be compressed into a few words, and there read by every man who handles it, what an almost incredible distance would appear be- tween the prayer of Jesus in Palestine and the peti- tion of the great KepubUc to-day ! "We might then behold how slowly the world gi-avitates towards that divine love incarnate in the Saviour, and, by the slowness of its approach, measure at once the depth of its estrangement from God, and the mighty power of his redeeming grace. But not alone is the Gold Dollar the emblem of the national ideal of spiritual affairs ; it pei-fonns the same symbolic office for each of us. True, a dollar is the same to every man as long as he wishes to buy bread ; but when taken as the representa- tive of his character, what different inscriptions would it bear ! In each man's hand it is a pecu- liar thing, bearing the image and superscription of his soul. For a dollar is really to each one of us the object proposed in gaining it, and the motive that dictates its use. Could every American, when he receives it, behold engraved on its face some picture explanatory of his motives in its acquisi- tion, what a startling gospel would be read off e\'ery hour in the day, all over the land ! To one J 26 THE GOLD DOLLAR. man would appear the doleful picture of his brother in chains, his body stamped with the marks of pro- perty, his soul groping in his dark prison towards a ray of God's holy light of freedom. Another would behold a ruined home cursed by the demon of the bottle which he has sent in there to do its work of hell. To a third might appear a youth passing into the sad blight of honesty and honor, coiTupted by it, and changed from a man to a sharper. To the murderer what a vision of his vic- tim lying plundered and bleeding in some lonely spot, lighted by flickering flames that will bum deeper and deeper into his writhing soul ! Let the corrupt ruler look at his Dollar, and see there a pic- ture of his country insulted and disgraced before the world by his wicked bribe. Let the maiden in her bridal array consult this min-or, and perchance to her startled vision will appear sensual and covet- ous age, leading captive ambitious girlhood by the lure of gold. Might not the wearied merchant at his midnight toil for more wealth, would he look into this circle, behold his prodigal son, his imbe- cile daughter, his wife changed from the maid he loved to the scheming matron who now leads him chained to her car of social success? Could every form of suffering, degradation, meanness, crime that men encounter in gaining this dollar. THE GOLn DOLLAR. 127 appear on its face when they took it into their hand, "what a sight were there ! Yet it is all there as truly as if the magic picture were discerned ; for every bad man's dollar is the type of his sin ; every dollar gained by fraud and crime, by the unchris- tian devotion to gain, or the sacrifice of any ele- ment of manhood, is stained by the prostitution of the soul ; and to such may we say in the words of the blunt and honest Apostle James : " Your gold arid silver is cankered/ and the rust of them shall be a witness against you, and shall eat your flesh as it weref/reP But what a different thing is the Dollar when it represents the putting forth of industry for the noblest uses of life ! TTie father who toils to sus- tain his home and make it the image of heaven, may heboid thereon the beloved circle, the ruddy evening glow, the sweet faces lit by love and peace. The poor girl sewing in her garret to save her old decrepit mother from starvation, if she remain pure and thankful to God, may see an angel standing in the little golden mirror. The heroic mother sav- ing and tolling for her darling boy may see a noble man in the Senate of his country, pouring forth a nation's rising indignation against a woeful wrong, till the pictured face of Washington almost smiles afresh from the walls, and the enemies of man 128 THK GOLD DOLLAR. gnash their teeth -with infernal rage. What a Dol lar was that which Fulton first receiyed at New York for a fare on his new vessel ; he says he felt half ashamed to take it — ^but if he kept it until he reached Albany, he could have seen all the rivers, lakes, and oceans of the world ebbing and flowing, and his vessels flying to and fro like the minister- ing spirits of the world's new day. The true artist's Dollar is but a frame, in which he beholds new forms of loveliness and majesty. The right-hearted citizen of our land, when he receives it as the re- ward of a day's toil, may behold it radiant with a patriot's hopes. The author, teacher, minister of religion may not fear to soil their hands with it for to them it is not base unless they have stained the whiteness of their genius by selling its power as a slave in the service of sin. The great states man who has come out of office uncontaminated with bribes, can behold thereon the page of history whereon his name burns with a white light amid annals of infamy. And in private station, many is the good man who can read off the Lord's Prayer from his Dollar, and feel no sense of incongruity. So is this little coin the representative of our rela- tion to our country ; base or beautiful as we have been in gaining it. So is it the symbol of our rela- tion to this world • and whatever use we propose THE GOLD DOLLAK. 129 to make of our earthly circninstances is there re- corded. So is it the type of our position towards God ; and the man who can honestly write the Saviour's Prayer on his Dollar has overcome the world by consecrating all its opportunities to the sublime oflBce of fashioning a character in the image of "the perfect man, the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ." When, therefore, I proceed to answer the ques- tion. How to get the Gold Dollar, you will under- stand that I am speaking only of that which represents the best manhood in its relations to this world — ^the Dollar inscribed with the Lord's Prayer. For all kinds are to be obtained, and there are all kinds of teachers to instruct in the acquisition. One class of these instructors, whose certificate runs back to the money-changers whom Jesus scourged out of the Temple, protest against the interference of the clergy in financial matters ; just as a class of statesmen, descended from Pilate and Herod, are grieved at the interference of the teachers of reli- gion in public affairs. But let them not be cast down ; as far as I know the clergy, they do not attempt to infringe on their vocation of teaching the art of " gaining the whole world and losing the soul." In all the tricks by whicli the base counter- feit Dollar, which symbolizes the loss of manhood, is 6* 130 , THE GOLD DOLLAK. gained, they are far too expert to dread any rivalry. But when it comes to telling the young how to •gain the Dollar that gleams with the light of an elevated character, we have a word to say, since manhood is our province. I do not here attempt to describe the special operations in the varied forms of human effort by which this consecrated Dollar may be obtained — they are as nimiercus as the honorable professions and the righteous men in the world — ^but I maintain that the method in all is the same, and I only proclaim the everlasting law of Christian acquisition. The Dollar is a new privilege in the life of this world, for which every man should pay his fair equivalent of work. Labor of some description ; of the hands, or the mind, or subtler toil of noble living, is the God-ordained condition of the best earthly opportunities. For labor is not alone of the hands, and the worker on matter is not alone worthy of his hire. "Whoever thinks a shorter way to do any necessary thing, or a better thing to do, or a finer grace of manliness to be obtained, de- serves the Dollar, that he may occupy a wider field of effort, wherein he may bless mankind with his new discovery. And there are those who live so grandly that all the gold and jewels in the world are a poor tribute to their worth, and we are THE GOIJJ DOLLAR. 131 honored by giving them money, that their orbit of love and light may evermore expand. Service is manifold, and the worker in spiritual stuff is most deserving. Work alone deserves the Dollar ; not that a bit of gold c&npay any man for honest toil ; but it is the key which unlocks the door to a new region of advantages, to which the laborer has gained the right to ascend. Therefore, let no man, or woman, old or young, dream that laziness de- serves anything but starvation and disgrace. Who- ever will not work in some good way while he can — or when his strength is gone, live so nobly that his services increase as his body declines — shall not obtain the consecrated Dollar ; if he obtain any it shall be a curse to his soul, for the lazy man's gold is a key that opens the ward of a lower heU, to which his sin has doomed him. Neither shall make-believe work deserve the true reward. Who- ever gets his living by doing what hinders society, or is superfluous in its occupations, only disgraces himself; for there is a valuable thing for every soul to do that is bom into this world, and whoever plays at work does the double mischief of leaving Iiis task undone, and perpetrating a new sham. Oh ! what a wreck does this savage old school-mas- ter. Panic, make with all this trumpery of unreal labor ! How do whole professions disappear, and 132 THE GOLD DOLLAB. whole classes of men shrink to their native poverty, before his relentless gaze! Better live with him and munch your crust, than feast with a prosperity built on false pretences ; for the world knows what it needs, and there will be confusion in the money market a good many centuries yet, until ' all men get into their own place and do their full measure of their own work. Then do your best work on the highest plane of your manhood. Multitudes of men think business means going into the lower regions of their life to gain a base Dollar, and then coming up and put- ting on their clean clothes to enjoy it. But do you rather array yourselves in the purple robes of your largest manhood to go about your daily toil. Put your whole soul into your common life. Put in truth. Let every blow you strike come faithfully down on a real spot ; and as you value yourself, do not sink to a dishonesty though buried deep as the bottom of the sea ; for you cannot slight your work, or cheat your neighbor, or dodge your obli- gation, without taking it out of your own charac- ter, and erasing a letter of the Lord's Prayer from your Dollar. Put in patience and persistence — ^for there is no good thing, though hung up in the seventh heavens, that cannot be reached by suffi- cient toil ; and no scandal, though rooted down in THE GOLD rOLLAE. 133 the seventh hell, that cannot be plucked up by him that " endureth to the end." Put in moderation — for a crazy man only gravitates to a strait-jacket in any region of life. Put in skill — ^for you are bound to do your work better in some way than it was ever done before. Put in reverence for man — ^for true work is always in his service — and your Savi- our came to minister to us all ; and to defraud in your toil is such an insult to him and disgrace to you as all the material prosperity upon earth can- not conceal. Put in self-reverence; love for family ; respect for just law ; patriotic devotion to your coimtry's real good ; philanthropic concern for all men — ^reverence for man implies all these. And no job is really done until all these appear in its doing. Do nothing in your work you are ashamed to publish to the world, to yourself, to your God. Yoimg woman, receive no Dollar that degrades your womanhood. If you are living as true daugh- ter, wife, mother, friend, you are not in degrading dependence, but it is your right to receive as the privilege of man to give, the Dollar rightly earned. But oh ! beware the curse of taking the base Dollar ; of tempting man to earn it by the disgrace of his manlinesss : for could you see your- self walking in fine raiment bought by money 134 THE GOLD DOLLAE. wmng from your neighbor in the bitter competi- tions of dishonest trade ; filched from the slow-wit- ted ; plundered from the foolish, the unfortunate, the desparing — as the angels behold you ; could every dollar that goes to buy luxuries for your social state and position in the world, reveal the history of its acquisition, would you be able to face your present success ? Pitch your wants on a key so low that they can all be satisfied by the conse- crated Dollar, and scorn any advantage gained by other coin as you would shrink from pollution. Say not this method of getting the Dollar is impracticable — a minister's fancy 1 For the only practical thing in business is to get money that represents the best manhood ; and to sell your soul at retail to the devil, for a Dollar a fibre, is about the most unpractical sort of speculation in which a shrewd man can engage. I know it is not very easy to get rich in this way. It is very easy to get rich in America in many lower ways ; but all the " fine gold " thus gained is " dimmed " in the get- ting, and we shall go down hill as we accumulate these riches. And of all men who thus obtain the Dollar, Jesus said : " It is easier for a camel to go throiTgh the eye of a needle than for them to enter the kingdom of God." It is as hard in America as it ever was in the world to earn the consecrated THE GOLD DOLLAK. 135 Dollar ; but the ambition to gain it is worthy our young men, and challenges their finest talent and their uttermost heroism. For to desire the conse- crated Dollar is nothing less than to long for a larger field of usefulness ; to wish for more of the world to fill with love ; to pray for the power to be a providence among men. Such a love of money is the root of nobility, and whoever acquires wealth that represents the best he knows and can do in life, has treasure laid up in heaven. This style of getting the Gold Dollar will insure the true method of its use. The fortune meanly gained will be meanly spent ; for the plain reason that the same man who degraded himself to obtain his money, unless he becomes a better man, will continue to act from the same low level, and scourge the community worse in the use than in the getting of his wealth. The reason of so much criminal and foolish expenditure of money in America is found in the wicked modes of acquir- ing property. Is it strange that the scamp who has sprang a trap in speculution and caught a for- tune, should go on speculating in higher things than railroad stocks, and prostitute his ill-gotten substance to pollute the ballot-box, or bribe the community into granting him a social position he does not deserve ? Will not the young man who 136 THE GOLD DOLLAR. fills his pocket at the gaming-table, or by some shrewd legal way of swindling, conclude to buy the privilege of unlimited sensuality, or naturally aspire to the chance of spreading himself as an omnipresent coxcomb through the wide limbo of fashionable life ? Is it surprising that a wife who shuts her eyes on the questionable tricks of her husband's trade, and tempts him to new meanness by her prodigality, will use her gold in spoiling the bodies and souls of her children, and putting out the light of heaven in her home ? Whoever gains money like a knave will spend it like a snob, because the money-making sharper by success is naturally developed into the upstart of society. I want no better test of a man's way of using than a knowledge of his manner of getting ; and when I see ostentation, or avarice, or hard, cold selfishness in the owner of large possessions, I can prophesy that if the whole story were told, his title of posses- sion would be stained by many a damning sin before God, and outrage done to man. But when the Dollar has been so truly earned that it repre- sents the best manhood of its possessor, I need no assurance that the same nobility will preside over its use, and bless the world as much in the spend- ing as in the gaining. Money is tlie talisman that opens the wards of THE GOLD DOLLAR. 137 all regions of life, and he who has it can buy op- portunities of many kinds. But since nobody is rich enough to buy all the opportunities of Ameri- can society, or great enough to use them if they were possessed, there must be a choice in expendi- ture, and economy in use. Every man must save somewhere ; it is honorable to stint ourselves in some directions, that we may obtain better things in others. Therefore, the wisest man is he who spends his Dollar to buy the opportunity most use- ful for his own growth in character and service to the world. Only a fool throws away his money on things that degrade himself or positions he can not occupy with honor to the people ; but the greatest bargain is made when we buy those opportunities that we can fill full of our own power and make permanent positions of Christian influence among men. The bodily necessities of life are very few. Our Saviour while in the flesh was poorer than any of you whom I address ; and almost every man can have something to purchase the position he can best use for himself and the world. Have you then an especial talent for any honor- able trade, or have you discovered a new and finer way of doing any necessary kind of work ? Save everywhere else, and buy the opportunity to de- velop your genius in this direction — ^for this is the 138 THE GOLD DOLLAR. best gift you can bestow on society, and througli such an elevation of labor, freedom and religion will gain a better cbance among men. A true la- borer, farmer, mechanic, merchant, who thus fills his profession brim full of his best mental and moral life, is a centre of power in any community, and his position is a seminary in the arts of a con- secrated business. Do your abilities fit you best for social influence ? then spend your money on a home, broad, elegant, hospitable ; only remember to be so great that men shall forget your house while looking at you. Take your position in society, and then teach your neighbors Christian manners. Christian hospitality. Christian amusements. Let your family circle become a school of social wisdom and beauty ; and win America from the worship of tapestry and gilding, and barbaric luxury and habits, to the love of true elegance and the grace of real gentility. Have you an unmistakable genius for lettere or art, or are your children gifted with power to charm and bless the world ? Tlien spend for the best culture of the mind. Let fine house, fine clothes, society, business, sink to subordinate matters, and buy the company of the best wisdom, the instruction of the most accomplished in the arts. And when gained, stand on your own man- hood, and spend all your life to purchase greater THE CiOLD DOLLAE. 139 opportunity to moTe the world in this excellent way. Are you gifted with that peculiar combina- tion of faculties that fit you to heal the sick, to plead the law, to prophesy in the pulpit or outside the Chui'ch, on the people's platform ? Let no ex- pense be spared to get you into your place, and when there, do not spoil everything by using your position to make money, but use your money to en- large your position, and trust to your service in that way for your vindication among men. You are born to rule, to live an executive life. You understand the movements of public aflFairs, and can keep cool and calm, and grow in manhood amid the fierce heats of political conflict. Use all the money you can get honestly to obtain a post of influence. Do not buy voters, or bribe editors, or insult any man by proposing any partnership in meanness ; but buy honestly the opportunity to serve your country. Buy a newspaper, buy a stump, buy a standing-place, and begin to talk. Spend your money to sow the land from ocean to ocean with stining appeals and invincible reasons for freedom ; and every shoot you plant shall spring up in time a free and pure American voter. "When you get power, do not try to seize a new place, before you know the duties of tlie old. If only a policeman, put your whole soul into your baton. 140 THE GOLD DOLLAR. and let it fall like a bolt of lightning upon the evil- doer, and flash like a ray of light before the op- pressed within your "beat." And by saving everywhere else and using your money to enlarge your power to serve the people, you may become a statesman, such as lived in the old days, when great men dwelt under humble roofs, and went forth from narrow farms to guide the destinies of mighty states. And if you can be a wise philanthropist, and are sure that you know some good way to cure those social evils we all too plainly see, pray spend your Dollar to gain a place where you can be an angel of deliverance to the sorrowing, the sinful, the oppressed. The crown of earthly privilege is to occupy your own place, and the only wise use of money -Is to buy that place. And then all is in your hands — for the wisdom to fill it, and the virtue to make it a centre of power aud love, no money can buy ; that must be gained by long, weary service, obedience to God, reverence for man, and devotion to those graces of the soul that mould the religious life. The Gold Dollar is the type of American civiliza- tion. As it is a metallic plate on which we may write the Tempter's creed or the Saviour's prayer, so is our country such a material opportunity as was never seen, Avhercwith we can do what we THE GOLD DOLLAK. 14:1 will for man and God. But we have not yet learned liow to gain the Dollar, nor do we really know how to use it. "We run about calling to the nations — " Who will sell an empire ? for our puree is mil, we would buy — who can offer a new pleas- ure, a new luxury, a new way to pave the road of common life with gold? we have more than we can waste — who wants a new railroad? we will survey one to the moon — ^let us float a palace of gold and tapestry on every river and lake, and build up a fairy mart of commerce, wherein every man shall have a stall, and all be rich !" O foolish young nation ! save your money, till you learn that the more you spend this way the leaner your soul will grow, till you learn in the fires of panic and the collapse of credit, and the wreck of your lofty hopes, to spend for man. For man is the summit of American civilization, and for him should we gain ; for him use the golden talisman. Spend to organize a free and solid industry from sea to sea. Spend for the home ; spend for the school ; spend for a pure Gospel ; spend for true art and generous manners ; spend for justice, and order, and oflBcial integrity; oh! spend for freedom, the emancipa- tion of man from the tyrannies of the past, that he may learn to obey the eternal laws of Gcd. All virtue and skill in our outward life concentrates 142 THE GOLD DOLLAU, now in learning the value of this familiar Dollar : in stamping it with the image and superscription of liberty ; in gaining it by the exercise of our ut- termost nobility ; in using it to buy success in our experiment of a Christian democracy. Always before our eyes shall hovjr this shining circle, illu- minated with the words of Christ ; and while fol- lowing this gleam of the gold, a finer radiance shall mingle with its light, till along the horizon of our coimtry's hopes its circle shall fade into the golden flush of a rising dawn, and over the hills shall leap the new day of love and joy, and the Christ shall again be born in a nation's life, and from the private heart and the public soul shall ascend the prayer : " Our Father who art in Heav- en, hallowed be thy name. Thy kingdom come. Thy will be done in earth, as it is in Heaven," VI. THE NORMAL SCHOOL AND THE OBSERVATORY; OR, EDUCATION IN NEW YORK. On the 18th December, 1844, was inaugurated in the City of Albany the most characteristic of our institutions of learning — the State Normal School. Beginning with the humblest pretensions, a little group of twenty-nine pupils and their teachers, it has gradually increased to its present importance. A legislative appropriation in 1844 of $10,000 a year, for five years, was its first impulse. In 1848, $15,000, and subsequently $10,000 followed as an Appropriation for the pre- sent building, which was occupied July 30th, 1849. During the thirteen years of its existence, 2,887 pupils have received educational discipline within its walls, at an expense of $45 a piece; and it would be difficult to name the public or private 14S IM THE NOKJIAL SCHOOL AND 0BSEE7AT0EY ; investment of $130,000, which has borne such fruits within our prosperous Kepublic. The observatory which now crowns one of our most conspucious heights, and overlooks an enchant- ing landscape while it sweeps a vast horizon, is a later child of the same desire to promote the inter- ests of sound learning. Founded in the spring of 1853, and enriched by the successive contributions of the citizens of Albany and our State, it was inaugurated at the meeting of the American Scien- tilic Association in this city, Aug. 28th, 1856. The eloquent peiiods of the greatest living master of ceremonial oratory in our language still linger in our ears as we recall that day ; and we may antici- pate the time when his glowing prophecies will be realized in its valuable contributions to astrono- mical science. But it is not to sound the praises of these admira- ble institutions, yet in their infancy, that I have placed their names at the head of my discourse. There are other and more celebrated observatories and Normal Schools than these, and the people of the greatest existing republic must enrich and enlarge all their educational establishments far beyond their present limits to supply their own wants. But situated as these institutions are, in the capital city of New York, and representing, as OEj EDUCATION IN NEW YORK. 145 they do, the two great central ideas of mental cul- ture, I may use them as symbolic of the complete intellectual development of our commonwealth. The Normal School is the comer-stone of our system of free instruction; and from the 11,492 free school-houses of New York radiate those influences which create the newspaper, the maga- zine, our fugitive literature, the public library, the popular oratory in behalf of social and politi- cal interests, and the system of literary lectures which has done so much for the more advanced of our Northern States. These are the agencies of that mental culture of the people which is the glory of our civilization, and the foundation of popular intelligence : and of this side of the educa- tion of New York, the Normal School is the most characteristic type. The Observatory, wherein are conducted the investigations of the most sublime of our natural • sciences, is the best representative of that profound culture in abstract truth without which popular education aud institutions inevitably degenerate to a superficial and transient existence. The refer- ence to fundamental principles in every depart- ment of intellectual life will create a valuable body of scientific knowledge, a broad and reliable professional education, a permanent national litera- 1 14:6 THK NORMAL SCHOOL AND OBSEEVATOET ; ture; and from these springs among the highlands of thought will flow innumerable streams of fertil- izing, practical energy. To show the relations of these two divisions of intellectual culture, and vindicate the imperative necessity of theii* perfect union in the mental development of our State, is the theme of the present discourse. I certainly may be excused for declining to defend the necessity of a thorough Intellectual Cul- ture for the whole population of New York. I do not question that there are many persons yet living in our State, who would demand proof of this com- monplace. I could not convince the ignorant disci- ples of this gospel according to the dunces of their error; but fortunately a good Providence can be trusted sooner or later to bring every unlettered citizen of this republic into a position where he will at least stop boasting of his disgrace, and cease from any open attack upon his own best interests. And I have but one thing to say of any cultivated man or woman who openly or secretly resists the best culture of the people — ^that such a person is a public enemy and should be marked and watched as a traitor to Liberty and Humanity. Whether the opposition is from the conceit of a lite- rary class, or the fanaticism of a mediaeval relig- ious sect, or the baser desire to play the demagogiie OE, EDUCATION IN NEW YORK. 147 at the head of a rabble ; it is equally dangerous, and equally to be denounced by all who believe in American Freedom and the Christian Re- ligion. But there is an eiTor, more deeply seated than we may imagine, which requires a more respectful notice ; not because it is less dangerous, but is the result of honest misconception of the office of men- tal culture itself, and entertained by thousands of well meaning people. There is doubtless a tendency in some regions of our most cultivated society to undervalue popu- lar culture ; to cut off from its support or the coop- eration with its various agencies, and to sneer at the superficiality that does exist in the common school, the press, the fugitive literature, and the popular oratory, rather than to labor for their elevation. On the other hand, a tendency is developing among the masses of the people, fostered too often by their present instructors, to undervalue the study of abstract principles; to force all education to become what is falsely called " practical ;" to break down the higher institutions of learning in favor of professional schools ; to smother a permanent literature in a deluge of journalism ; and to discourage the thinking head on the platform in favor of the most voluble lis THE NORMAL SCHOOL AND OB8EEVATOET ; tongue, and bring all subjects of intellectual cul- ture into subjection to the suffrages of the peo- ple. Both these delusions will vanish before the ques- tion, " What is the use of mental education f " It is evidently, first, to develop the individual man into the completeness of his humanity ; and second, to unfold the mind of a State in its largest and noblest dimensions. Intellectual culture has not done its work when it has made a scholar in any department of learn- ing ; for this scholar may be only half of a man, a mere child of impulse, void of commanding will or wisdom, intrusted with a casket of the jewels of knowledge. Until his acquisitions have become a part of his vital blood and bone and sinew, and science has borne its fruit of a wise and lofty char- acter, he is yet a " freshman " in the great college of life. Neither has a man succeeded better who uses knowledge only so far as it serves him for some material end ; and ignores the claims of a liberal culture as impractical. This man is as surely a pedant as the scholar he despises, and his pedantry is more degrading, shutting his soul in a prison of material and seMsh occupations. In- tellectual culture is first for the sake of manhood and womanhood ; to unfold the divine faculty of OK, EDUCATION IN NEW YOKK. 149 reason, to impart the ability of reflection and ac- curacy of judgment in all regions of human experience, to clothe man with his complete power, which may be used in the service of truth and righteousness. It is not to prepare a man for one position, to do a special work, whether in a college or a workshop ; these are but its incidental results ; rather to develop souls into the likeness of Eternal wisdom. The public function of education is not to raise up a literary or learned class in the State, or to teach the masses alone the best method of work. The experience of European society is not inspir- ing in its division into a learned fraternity and an ignorant populace. We are not so enamored of literature that we are willing to pay for it the price of political degradation. We want no servile cul- tivated class fawning about the feet of despotic power, holding the pen under the eye of a police, and flying off into regions of insane abstract specu- lation as a relief from the barbarous tyranny that forbids genius to speak on the rights of man ; but that we must have unless we teach the whole people ; we have it already in those portions of America most nearly resembling the old world. Better postpone the hopes of American scholarship a thousand years, than sacrifice the grander hopes 150 THE NOEMAl 6CHOOL AND OB3EEVATOET ; of Bepublican life in our new world. But let us not swing off into the opposite danger of a purely material and superficial education ; for thus we check the growth of the American mind in its infancy, and destroy the hope of an elevated civil- ization. If we are to have nothing better for all the trouble and peril of a democracy, than cheaper bread, better clothes and houses, more money in our pockets, and the ambitious shrewdness and unscrupulous energy that now dominates every- where in our society, we have made a failure. And whoever discourages the most generous and profound culture, is helping to fix us in this dis- graceful attitude before mankind. But we endure much that now offends us in the ardent hope that through oar singular mixture of population and varied public and private experience, aided by the widest mental discipline, a new and grander order of mind is slowly growing up in our State and country ; a mind in which ultimately the energy that now surveys railroads, and ploughs over ter- ritories, will mount to higher realms of spiritual activity and mightily advance the cause of man's eternal destiny. Thus the second use of intellec- tual culture, as a whole, is to serve this highest interest of our State in the training of an American character foimded on the everlasting law of love OE, EDUCATION IN NEW TOEK. 151 as translated in our great national declaration of human rights. Therefore let there be no jealousy between the scholars and the people. Each can live in New York only by tlie aid of the other. The most generous popular cultivation should lead men to perceive the infinite value of these central prin- cipals that lie at the foundations of the soul and life upon earth; the most profound scholarship should count the spiritual elevation of a Kepublic a work as far transcending any achievment in special science as man transcends the planet he in- habits. The Normal School and the Observatory are twin symbols of a culture that, laying its vast foundations in the education of every soul in the State, shall rise by gradual ascents to those sublime heights of abstract truth gilded by the eternal morning of an omnipresent love. The Normal School is the corner-stone of the popular mental culture of our State. For the teacher is the soul of that free school where the vast majority of our people wiU learn the rudiments of knowledge. According to the quality of the 31,503 instructors who direct the 1,214,771 child- ren of New York in the paths of learning, will be the future tastes of those children in intellectual pursuits. Whether they read the best or the worst 152 THE NOEMAL SCHOOL AND OBSEEVATOET ; of our public journals ; whether they abide in the valleys of literature or strain up its invigorating heights; whether wisdom or folly in the popular assembly, and the high places of influence shall Bway their opinions, is due chiefly to their first years of training in the school-room. And without any special censure of these 31,000 teachers who now consent to lay the mental founda- tions of our Kepublic for the paltry compensation of less than $200 per year, we may boldly declare that while less than one-fifth of them receive any preliminary training in any preparatory institu- tions, inefficiency and failure must be the rule as often as the exception in this sacred sphere of efibrt. We venture to say that the people would complain if a shoal of preachers, doctors and law- yers were let loose on the State with no prepara- tion for their important vocations. Yet none of these professional characters claim a tithe of the opportunity of permanent public influence possess- ed by the teacher in the free school ; and, strange to declare, we commit the intellectual training of tbe whole coming generation to transient, poorly- paid and sustained agents, not one in five of whom pretends to have received any training for the most honorable office in the Commonwealth. While, therefore, we fully appreciate the fidelity of those OB, EDUCATION IN NEW TOEK. 153 who are laboring at the task of elevating the teachers in the one State Normal School, in the Teachers' Institutes, and in the academical depart- ments, which out of our metropoMs are the only establishments for such a work, we insist that the work of creating a profession of competent andjper- manent common school teachers, whose services shall com/pd an adequate reward, is only begun. This re- form lies at the basis of all others in our complex and somewhat unwieldy school system. Let every friend of the people sound the cry from New York to Niagara : '■'■More Normal Schools y more i/ravni/ng for the teachers /" The cry of pohtical parties is ever for economy. Let our pubUc servants retrench in that enormous waste of money, and mind, and civilization which attends a body of unprepared teachers of the young ; and inaugurate decided measures for enlarging and improving our establish- ments for the discipline of public instructors, and whatever politicians may say, the people wiU finally pronounce that they have seized the true principle of economy. Let the people demand and pay for the best opportunities of modem culture for these 31,000 sovereigns who now rule the millions of youth that are to rule the Commonwealth. We have spoken of the Free School as that in which the vast majority of our people are to be 7* 154 THB NOEMAL 8CH00L AND OBSERVATORY; educated. Already the number of children in it, compared with private Bchools, is as thirty to one, and the disproportion is yearly increasing. Indeed, it is doubtful whether the private schools of New York, except in occasional exceptions, are equal to our best public establishments, while the expense of education is fearfully greater. I am assured by competent authority that in a certain town in our State, containing 3,000 children, as much money is paid for the instruction of 240 youth in private schools as the entire expense for the remainder in good public institutions. Out of this state of society I suppose the people expect a Democracy! But the extravagance in money is a small part of the evil. Of course, pri- vate special instruction will always be a necessity in a cultivated commimity ; but to count upon any form of select schools to do the work of educating a State like New York is a folly that sensible men should outgrow. The experience of Prussia and New England are conclusive that the people can be best educated in public institutions, and the great results both in popular intelligence and ele- vated scholarship attained in these communities prove the efficacy of the system. It is almost im- possible to find a Prussian citizen unable to read and write ; and New England is faet approaching OK, EDUCATION iN KEW TOEK. 155 this condition ; wliile the liigh culture and Bcholar- sbip of these countries lead the literature of Ger- many and America. England, with no general system of free public instruction, is half untaught. Even "New York, with her conflicting system, has 150,000 adult citizens unable to write. It may not appear to those whose social or sectarian prejudices make them look coldly on our noble system of public instruction, that they are unconsciously the allies of the worst barbarism in the State; that while they hesitate to pay their money and elevate their free schools to the front rank of merit, thou- sands of youth are joining the armies of the igno- rant and swelling the vandal horde that already howls and thunders at the gates of our new civiliz- ation. If the children of a Webster or an Everett or of the great scholars of Germany can be taught as they have been in the public school, cannot we in New Tork make ours the suitable place for the culture of the whole people ? I must believe that the most dangerous form of sectarianism is that which would break down this great interest, and commit whole regions of our society to the culture of a Catholic or Protestant priesthood. I count no social Aristocracy so odious as that which, out of contempt for the children of the people, withdraws money, influence and patronage from the great 156 THE NOEMA.L SCHOOL AND 0B8ERVAT0EY ; nursery of the State, and immures a select few in tlie walls of a narrow culture which must be a com- plete disqualification for any broad life. The public school, organized by our best wis- dom, supported by our wealth, and officered by a thoroughly trained corps of public servants, would be an influence as far above any form of select in- struction, as the heart of a great people beats higher than the pulse of a clique or a corporation. Let our Capital City take her own youth in hand ; call in the 2,000 vagrant children that roam her streets ; cover her hills with school-houses after the pattern of the last ample structure ; offer a seat therein to every child ; from her abundant means se- cure the ablest teachers in the State ; without delay establish a free school for girls and boys ; and lend the due proportion of her vaunted political influence to the elevation of the whole people ; or she may yet encounter the reproach of spending thousands for the select culture of the few, while she is training up an army of savages by the teachers of the street. Next in importance to the common school in our popular culture, is the Press, as organized in the newspaper, magazine and fugitive literature. It would probably surprise any man to learn the ex- tent to which the literary wants of our population OR, KDUCATION IN NKW TOKK. 157 are supplied from this source. The State census of 1855 reports 559 newspapers and 112 periodicals, whose circulation is : daily, 312,783 ; tri-weekly, 8,400; send-weekly, 40,387; weekly, 1,294,340; semi-monthly, 264,600 ; monthly, 1,287,650 ; quar- terly, 31,950 ; semi-annual, 11,000 ; annual, 96,950. Doubtless a considerable proportion of this matter circulates outside of the State, and is a part of the national influence of our popular culture; but enough remains in the State to excite the amaze- ment of any uninformed observer. And when we add to this the vast number of books, written in essentiially the same style, we must say that our wants for popular reading are most bountifully supplied. It is one of the cheapest ways of aflfecting su- perior culture to sneer at this whole mass of pop- ular literature ; but it is a wiser thing to examine the phenomenon and report on its significance. This rage for transient reading proves, not that the taste of the cultivated has declined, but that tJie people a/re learning to read. Never were so many feramia reaMng a/nything before as now in a few of the States of the Union. Whole classes now read that once were wholly ignorant. Of course, when a State begins its journey in the world of literature, it takes the easiest path ; reads the news 168 THE NORMAL SCHOOL AXn OBSERVATOET ; of the day; is interested chiefly in pithy and sketchy methods of conveying information ; pre- fers monthly picture-books illustrated with read- ing to permanent works of genius; and if it entei-s the domain of books, craves those which have grown out of the newspaper and magazine, and demand only an ordinary comprehension for enjoyment. Thus we should rather rejoice that so many have began to read in New York, than turn with disgust from much they do read. That this phenomenon of journalism in its pre- sent form is to be permanent, we have no belief. It is a sort of railroad to carry our people over from ignorance to a love for good literature, arid is doing the work with as few accidents as could be expected. If a majority of the journals are parti- san advocates, and feed the people with much that degrades their taste and embitters their spirit, it is also true that there is a minority which furnish writing of a respectable and often of a high degree . of merit, conducted by editors of high attainments and elevated principles. The newspaper is the re- presentative, not the leader, of the people. Every joui-nal represents its public, and cannot long abide above its level. If there are papers that appear to be edited by Satan, it is because a class of the people is on good terms with that sulphur- OR, EDUCATION IN HEW TOKK. 159 ous functionary. K some of our best journals teem with the lowest details of crime and folly, it is be- cause there are so many respectable people who like to sit in their arm-chair in the family, and look through this popular telescope down into the lowest hells of creation. If the political and theo- logical " organs " are yet grossly partisan, and live on misrepresentation and suppression, it is because the majority of the people yet postpone the labor of thinking, for the more congenial occupation of training under leaders, and mustering upon plat- forms. But there is much that is good in all our journals. The best give us every day as good essays as were written by the wits of Queen Anne's time, for the delectation of the scholars ; and altogether our popular writing is purer and more elevating than the whole body of English litera- ture in some of its most illustrious periods. The duty of the cultivated and religious community is to urge selection, to hold this press to a stem litera- ry and moral criticism, and demand the best the people can bear. A thousand editors will accept the chairs of those who now write when called to do higher work. Let good men rally about the best journals and periodicals, and unite to ovei-whelm the base and mean by a persistent letting alone of their foul wares. 160 THE NOEMAX SCHOOL AND OBSEEVATOEY , Especially sliould we sustain the efforts making to develop a high-toned and free periodical wor- thy of the best state of American civilization. The word has already gone forth that no magazine shall live which does not go down into the dust before our national bigotry and despotism. There may be a popular censorship more destructive than an Austrian police of literature, and the efforts to crush out the best utterances of genius should be met by the stem rebuke of every man who desires to see literature a power in our Democracy, rather than the dancing attendant on a ruling class, or a dominant creed. It is not clearly understood that this great out- burst of popular writing in journals, magazines and fugitive books is the Mrth of American literature. Our national literature is not to be the reproduction of any foreign culture. It will not come from the brains of pedants or criti- cal students of the past ; but will spring out of the souls of men and women that are filled with the great American idea, inspired by her magnifi- cent opportunities and solemnized by her wavering destiny. Already scattered through these fugitive leaves are not a few ominous words that sound the key note to the chorus of the future. Let us not complain too much of the mania for scribbling that OE, EDUCATION IN NEW YOBK. 161 infests all classes of oiir youth. Some of these boys and girls will catch a glimpse of our Ameri- can realities and inscribe them in enduring lines. And with a thorough popular education and the unbounded facilities for reading, travel and social intercourse, added to the stimulant of our public life, many a scribbler will be trained in journalism for the loftier flights of authorship. The help of public libraries is now greatly needed. Every town in New Tork needs a copi- ous free library of good literature, where its youth can find a counter-influence to the fluctuating waves of journalism. With such aids to receive the child from the school-room, we may look for a soil of popular intelligence that shall bear fruits in literature and life worthy our best hopes. These agencies of popular culture find their com- pletion in our popular oratory. The stump to which our servants must all descend from their official chairs, and face theii' masters ; the platform where the special reformer thunders out his indig- nation, sure of stirring some wai-m hearts to sym- pathy; and the desk where the "Lions" duly appear and shake their manes and roar to the delectation or disgust of the literary societies, are doubtless not inferior to any mental influence save the teachers. Books and journals will never 162 THE NOBMAL SCHOOL AND OBSEKVATOBT ; extinguish man ; Oratory is still the highest of human arts, and the most potent engine of human persuasion. Our people are greatly taught by this public speaking ; and it only needs a more com- plete organization and a larger freedom to insure the grandest results. Of course, the same condi- tions accompany this as all forms of culture. In many localities a noisy humbug will talk to the people while a wise man cannot be heard ; but the test of a true speaker is to wait and grow by the con- tact with the few until the people, tired of their quacks, come to him for relief. And then the same car that carries Prof. Windbags will convey the real orator to stir up a people in one hour so that henceforth they never can live as they have existed. The studious effort now making in many quarters to keep the best of our public orators from the platform, and compel the people to hear second rate talk, will return to plague its inventors, and only confirm the people in the resolution to hear all sides on the great questions of our civi- lization through their acknowledged represen- tatives. America is destined to be the home of such elo- quence as never yet has shaken the nations. Great orators are made by great occasions and great listening; and the American orator, whose OE, EDUCATION IN NEW YORK. 163 every thrilling period, and fervent thought, is flashed along the wires through the area of mighty States, whose themes range around the highest earthly interests of man amid the strange circum- stances of a new existence, is exalted to an oppor- tunity equal to the noblest human aspiration. Let the people listen rightly and their souls will not be unvisited by the prophecies and visions of truth which the men of former days desired in vain. The best results of these combined agencies for popular cultivation, will be the production of a rich, deep soil of general intelligence ; the best nursery <5f genius. Gi*eat minds are largely modified by the spirit of an age, birth-place, and social influence. A man of genius, born and train- ed amid a cultivated class, is quite another being from the offspring of a great and intelligent people. First class men oftenest have arisen outside the narrow circles of social caste or special scholar- ship ; and so far from universal education dwarfing extraordinary talent, it will only form a deeper and stronger mould in which loftier trees may strike a firmer root. In proportion as the average of cidture rises, will the variety and number of specially gifted souls increase. The true sy tem of Education in New York is one which, founded on the broadest basis of popular instruction, shall 164 THE NOBMAL SCHOOL AND OBSKEVATOKT ; gradually rise througli the Free High School to professional Seminaries, and the best University privileges of the time. Thus will the State be in a condition to arrest every man and woman of ex- traordinary promise, and proffer such encourage- ment as would develop all the genius of the commonwealth in the largest style. When we consider what a waste of talent is incurred by our present condition of affairs; how many young women of genius are hindered from their proper opportunities; and what a perversion of shining abilities there is into unsuitable employments, we must accuse our republic of a criminal ;^odigality in her best treasure. If we have done so much in spite of our lack of advantages, what could not be done by organization of all the appliances of the highest culture, and their union with the system of popular Education. The Observatory is the type of that severe study of abstract principles, which is the final test of hu- man culture ; for we must never forget that facts and knowledge are only valuable to men as they are brought into relation to the everlasting ideas and laws on which life itself reposes. There is great danger that our youth will lose themselves in this drifting ocean of popular education, and fall into that most deplorable of mental states, the OE, KDUCATION IN HKW YOKE. 165 sport of every new theory and the victim of to- day's excitement. More than ever before, it is now important that we should have some deeply grounded ideas of existence — some immovable principle of character, and guide our conduct by an unchangeable law of public and private right ; but such principals cannot be borrowed — cannot be shot into men from the stump, or crammed into the telegraphic column of the newspaper; they are the fruit of self-knowledge, toil, and thought ; and unless the youthful mind is trained to the severe investigation of ideas in science and society, it is not probable that the task will be learned amid the cares and excitement of middle-age. Hence the very abundance of our popular privileges will be our worst enemy, un- less we knit up into the system the most complete opportunities for the profoundest study, and the wisest range through the loftier fields of intel- lectual enterprise. The University is the place where our chosen youth are to be instructed in the investigation of ideas and principles, and shoAvn the extent and grandeur of the realms of human knowledge ; while the Professional School receives those who require special training in each department of life; although all teaching in the Common School 166 THB NOEMAL SCHOOL AND OBSEEVATOET ; should aim at a discipline of the miad in reflection and the search for the central laws of thought. That our present machinery for developing the higher intelligence of this State is adequate, we suppose no well instructed man will assert. While New York was passing tr. rough its transition from a wilderness to the world's first republic, it was necessary to plant an academy or college in every accessible place, and thus carry the best education that could be procured to the people. But New York, seamed with railroads, with her 3,500,000 souls virtually a family, will not long be content with this temporary arrangement. She has now 10 colleges, with 100 professors and 1,000 students; 210 academies, with 850 teachers and 23,000 schol- ars, conducted at an expense of more than $2,500,- 000 ; while her citizens proclaim that there is no university or school of commanding rank. Is it not time that Legislatures should cease from this dis- persion of the means of high culture over such a wide area, and look for its concentration in some first class TJniversity worthy of this great State ? The Free High School, properly developed, would do the work of a majority of our academies better and on a larger scale ; while the best academical in- stitutions might be elevated to preparatory schools for the University. Three colleges are better than OR, KnncATio:* in new toek. 167 ten ; a concentration of Professional Schools would raise the character and usefulness of special cul- ture; and the establishment of Seminaries for agricultural and mechanical training of various kinds, would complete the circle. Then what is to prevent a great University, enriched by the wealth and fostered by the protection of the State, where every young man and woman of extraordi- nary promise could be invited by the Common- wealth, and assisted in the enjoyment of the best advantages of modem culture? Contraction in the number of our higher Seminraies ; larger op- portunities in all, and the admission of woman to equal privileges with man; with a provision for free culture in the highest no less than the lowest departments of thought, is the direction in which we must move, or see our choicest youth drawn to other States to seek the generous training denied them in our own. Who can contemplate the result of such reforms on the whole professional class ? To say nothing of the advantage from elevating agricultural, domestic and mechanical pursuits, to the rank of professions, the whole body of men introduced to the pulpit, the bar, the legislative halls, medical science and editorship, would become more able and efficient. We shall be very blind if we do 168 THE NOEMAL SCnOOL AND OBSEEVATOEY ; not perceive that such a population as our's needs every year more careful handling — demands wiser leaders in every region of public activity. Many evils that now afflict the American church, state and society, would vanish, were a new and higher class of men to appear and occupy the chief posi- tions. Such youth we have, and only need our best training to prepare them for the inspu-ing du- ties of our future. And how would our native lite- rature and art advance, could every youth of genius look confidently to the State for a helping hand at every step, from the alphabet to the high- est opportunities of the age. What a field for the development of great genius is here; our superb and varied scenery ; our growing vigor and influ- ence ; never were richer materials offered to the author and the artist. Let the Commonwealth welcome her gifted children to the whole circle of modern high culture, and her presses will groan with books that the nation will read and her gal- leries shine with the idealizations of her nature and her civilization. From such a blending of interests the scholar would become the elder brother of the people, and from the heights of science would flow down per- petual blessings of practical power to the plains, even as the rivers that water the valleys, rise from OE, EDUCATION IN NKW TOEK. 169 silent far off mountain springs. Then would ap- pear an ever-gaining intercourse between all classes of society ; tlie vulgarity of ignorance would disappear, and the cultivated mind, no long- er driven within a narrow circle, would range like a beneficent teacher through all the regions of our population. Then would the present monotony of our social affairs give place to a charming variety, since well educated men and women will always make life more varied and complex, and break down barriers founded on mere length of purse and pride of family or race. Then would the pre- sent jealousy between city and country disappear; for the barbarism of the city, and the vandalism of the country, which now lie at the foundation of such contentions, would vanish, and sensible people would soon perceive that between the field and the pavement there is no real opposition. And the present desolating contentions of partisan poli- tics would depart with the extinction of the hordes of ignorant voters, who are now the body- guard of artful demagogues; and the State, no longer torn by internal feuds on secondary affairs, Avould move to her place as the leader of Freedom in 3!f ational Affairs. Doubtless the end of this scheme of culture would be the development of a peculiar civlliza- 8 170 THE NORMAL SCHOOL AND OBSEEVATOET ; tion, founded on the genius of our people. The inind of New York is superior to that of any other American State, in breadth of view, the capacity for great public undertakings, executive ability, and powerful enthusiasm for the right. If New England is privileged to be the home of ideas, the nursery of the most accurate c\xlture and the most fastidious refinement, it is equally the fact, that her ideas must be reorganized, adjusted and adminis- tered in New York, before they can operate on a scale as large as the whole of America. By our mixture of races, we can comprehend the wants of all. By our commanding position, we can re- ceive the best the old world has to give, and mould it for the common wants of the new. Our cosmopolitan style of society and manners has repeated itself as far as the Pacific ; our political and industrial energy concentrated in our great cities, is felt through the entire Union of States. Would to Heaven we could cease our proverbial boasting of opportunities we so shamefully abuse ; would that, filled with a profound gratitude for our privileges and a solemn sense of our responsibility for our administration thereof, we could first lay deep and strong the foundation of permanent gi'eatness and indestructible liberty in the educa- tion of every citizen. Tlien, instead of strewing OK, EDUCATION IN NEW TOEK. 171 the wilderness of the tropics with the bones of our young men, slain in the piratical conquest of sav- age lands, we might leave behind us institutions of learning and wisdom, which, in every genera- tion, would send forth new armies of millions of intelligent freemen, who, in every part of the earth, would testify against the wrong, and mighti- ly uphold the right. YII. PEDANTEY AND POWER. In a former discourse we have unfolded the true idea of mental culture for the citizens of the Empire State. But we are aware that when this is attained we encounter an ancient and unrecon- ciled quarrel between the man of letters and the man of action. The practical genius of our great commonwealth is always jealous of the interfe- rence of the scholastic mind in affairs. It would drive the scholar and professional man off into a narrow circle of mental operations and claim the whole field of actual life for itself. As a conse- quence, the scholar is forced to underrate practical efficiency and is confirmed in his own isolation from society. The great end of all human culture is yet imperfectly understood, even by those who claim to be cultivated. As a completion to our review of the education of the people of New York, let us state the true object of all developments of the ITS 174 PEDANTET AND POWEE. mind ; and as truth is often enforced by contrast, we may speak of that false culture whose result is seen in an all-prevailing pedantry, and set it over against that true education whose finest attainment is the acquisition of Power. We shall be greatly mistaken if we suppose that what often goes by the name of "Culture" in Society develops spiritual Power. Indeed the well nigh universal result of culture in all depart- ments of American life is pedantry. Pedantry and power are the antagonistic ends of two ideas of education. To the vast majority of men, culture means the imposition of knowledge and arbitrary rules from without, — an exercise chiefly taxing the memory, leaving the man unaffected. The culti- vated man, according to this idea, is he whose memory is crowded with the results of other men's thoughts, whose life is spent in recollecting what he has learned, and squaring his opinions and con- duct to such laws as may find their way to this storehouse of the mind. The deep places of his nature are undisturbed ; his reason, afifections, imagination, will have never been roused, fired, concentrated in any crisis of original thought, but are cold spectators of mental pictures thrown upon the walls of the soul by the camera obscura of memory. This kind of culture makes pedants, or PEDANTET AND POWER. 175 men in whom life waits upon knowledge, not men in whom knowledge is fused into life. AYe shall greatly mistake if we suppose the pedant is found only in the study. The literary pedant, the little man tottering under the crushing weight of his own memory, has been so often held up to ridicule, that it may be supposed his failing is the peculiar infirmity of the literary class. Not so ! Society is crowded with pedants — the apt scholars of a system of education that would change men by dressing them in certain garments of conventional law and miscellaneous knowledge. Behold the merchant pedant, who has toiled himself into gray hairs and chronic restlessness, and never learned the alphabet of his trade ; that a merchant is a man applying the eternal laws of nature and justice to practical affairs, not a man driven in a harness, whose reins are clutched in the unfeeling gripe of a false popular system of business. Behold the agricultural pedant, who spends fifty years trying to adjust the earth to the few notions of fanning he has inherited from his ancestors or gathered from his neighbors. Have you not seen the female social pedant, whose idea of woman is a creature made to keep house and rear children like everybody else, be clothed upon as the Juno nods from the sacred mount of fashion whence 176 PEDAITTET AND POWEE. ' descends the apparel of the " angels upon earth," to revolve in the monotonous treadmill which somebody calls good society, and pilot her soul within the breakers whereon she is assured all who venture oiitside the reigning conventionalism are fatally wrecked ? I think I have seen the pedant of politics whose platform is " man for constitu- tion," not " the constitution for man." Practical people are fond of ascribing all pedan- try to the men of letters — rthe preachers, the law- yers, the doctors, the scholars. We accept their most severe criticism, and only hope grace will be given us to see that man is the true centre of all professional life ; but we cannot be ignorant that pedantry is the curse of common life and most des- tructive thereto. Whatever sinks the man into an appendage to the memory and crowds the mind with knowledge without arousing the soul, is false culture and ends in folly. How has the sacred office of instruction suffered at the hands of such men and women, schoolmasters and schoolmis- tresses who shout forevermore to their scholai'S from behind a barricade of words, disjointed facts, superficial theories, and conventional rules ; whose souls never touch the soul they affect to teach ; who know not what it is to stand by human nature and invoke its sublime energies to harmonious power. PEDAN'lEY AND POWER. 177 There is another style of culture which arouses the nature, by the contact of life and the stimu- lant of science, and when the faculties are actually awakened and trained, leads the mind up to the avenues of knowledge, and points along these grand vistas the way to Spiritual Power. " Strait is the gate and narrow is the way " of this high cul- ture, " and few there he that find it." Few indeed are they in any walk of life who have gained posses- sion of their own powers, assimilated their know- ledge and experience into the blood of life, who grow in human excellence as the years bear them on ; who placed before a new subject of thought or thrown into a new complication of affairs, bring to the solution of their present problem a fresh origi- nal Spiritual Power. These souls are the rulers of life, the only "cultivated." It has been a tradi- tion of the past, that these men must always remain a class ; but we are bound to show that this is the natural training to which every soul has a right. The constituents of Spiritual Power are Freedom, Earnestness and Purity. It is a criminal mockery to demand Spiritual Power where Freedom is denied. Freedom is the unlimited privilege of searching for truth, and making its unrestricted application in life. Ca- price is not freedom ; willfulness is not freedom ; 8* 178 PEDANTRY AND POWEE. incontinence of body or soul is not freedom ; tliese ai'e the slavery of the higher to the lower faculties of man. Only through reverence for the true, and love for the good, does the soul rise into an ever-widening universe of thought and life, and under the lead of such an inspiration, no man can be safely hindered in his journey to Spiritual Power. For there is no faculty in man which may not rightly claim its legitimate exercise. Who shall forbid the ocean of human affection, whose waves conceal the awful boimdary line between the soul and its Maker, to ebb and flow responsive to divine attraction in God and Man ? What pre- tentious philosophy will dare to chain reason with- in the bounds of a foregone conclusion, and thus insult Omniscience through its only delegete on earth ? Is any conventional notion of morality so valuable, that we can afford to sacrifice the imagi- nation, whereby we behold and reproduce the eter- nal beauty on its altar ? Is it not a shameful thing that man claims the absolute power over his fellow- man, and scorns the will, which is our most human possession? And if all our hopes of success in this state of being depend on the welfare of the temple in which our spirit dwells, is it not a crime to degrade the body and vilify nature, either by a narrow asceticism or a beastly sensuality ? PKDANTKT AND POWEE. 179 And if all human faculties may rightfully claim Freedom, who will presume to fence off any por- tion of the field of human knowledge and life, and forbid the entrance of man therein? who knows what subjects are beyond the reach of human thought ? who has sm-veyed the universe, that he should draw a chart of the coast along which man must inevitably sail ? Away with this pedantry ! Far more reverent is the most daring explorer of God's spiritual creation, than he who assumes to fix the limits of the soul at the point where he be- came tired and fell asleep. Limits to human know- ledge there may or may not be, but no man yet knows where the adamantine hills cut off the hori- zon. Doubtless Freedom is perilous, but the peril is not of our creation ; it is the peril of our nature, from which there is no escape, least of all through slavery. It is a very perilous thing to be a man, but we have been created men, and what shall we do with ourselves ? "We cannot become trees or clods, or irrational beings ; we can spoil our man- hood by throwing away the Freedom which is its glory and peril, or we can gird ourselves to the eternal work of vindicating ourselves. Weakness lies in the one path, the other path is the highway to spiritual power. And who will dare to be at once a traitor to 180 PEDANTRY AND POWEE. human nature, and Lis native land, and withhold Freedom from the American youth ? Do you point to the folh'es and crimes of Young America as the fruit of Freedom ? This bad boy is the fruit of Despotism ; his scandal is the reaction against the tyrannical social shams that have come over the water, and yet poison our Kepublican Society Xo American genei-ation has yet been reared in. true independence; what wonder that those who have not been awakened to the glories of Spiritual Freedom should mistake license for liberty. The American young man and woman are compelled to go forth upon a new Continent, and organize a new State, Church, School, Household, Art, Busi- ness — for all these things spoil in a voyage over the ocean. Tlicre are many fine things of this sort abroad ; grand results of the whole past of the Eastern Continent ; and the admiring traveller longs to put them aboard the first steamer for home use ; but somehow he cannot keep England, France, and Germany healthy, during a fortnight's voyage, and these majestic institutions issue from their state rooms in New York and Boston, the sickly shadow of what charms the conservative American abroad. No, we must make America out of the world's whole past, and the whole European pi-e- sent, jpl^is ourselves, and if this latter quantity be PEDANTET AND POWER. 181 false, -wliere is America to come from ? How can Ave know what is good in the world's past, what is valuable in Europe's present ; how to adopt, how to combine, how to create, how to organize the life of a continent unless we are free ? And free men and women are not extemporized on 4th July or election days, but are formed by a free cultuv; — a culture that, beginning with trust in onrnatm-e, unfolds all human powers, throws open all fields of thought, leads the soul to the heights that overlook the vast areas of obligation, and sends it forth to become a citizen and a man in the might of Spirit- ual Power. Another element in Spiritual Power is Earnest- ness. I use tliis term to indicate the v/hole group of qualities that form the habit of efficient labor. Thousands of well meaning people read books, as- sociate with learned men, take degrees in literary institutions, or mingle in stirring scenes of life, witli- out forming the idea of that habitual labor which is the working power of genius, and the assurance of success. To this Earnestness belongs a perpet- ual Industry which rejects every plea for laziness, however wreathed in pleasant fancies or disguised in the pretence of duty, that toils on unobserved, and rests only while energy may accumulate. And along with this goes Prudence, jealous of wasted 182 PEDANTET AND POWEE. efforts, witli clear eyes watching for opportunities to accomplish difficult things in the most decisive way, guarding the thoughts, lips, and life, not to shirk responsibility, but to meet it in the most un- compromising style ; a power whose absence brings confusion and defeat upon the most generous mind. And to this we must add Courage, without which Earnestness dwindles to a nervous imtability of the conscience on the side of truth ; Courage, that fears not to encounter the eye of a foe, to differ from a friend, to face labor, to cut the meshes of skepticism, to take arms against whatever lurking selfishness would unman the spirit. Its decisive moments are unknown to the world, for the things that really scare men are spectres seen by them alone. Beside these we must gain persistence, the power of doing things again and again, doing our best whether anybody is or is not looking on ; for somebody knows of every noble word or deed ; that enlists for life, uses failure for a school-master, despises any success that claims to be a finality, and has pressed on out of sight while men are shouting their approbation or displeasure. And what will all this come to without patience ; the calm, forgiving, relentless waiting for the re- sult, which keeps the true man firm when his com- panions fall into discouragement, that sees tlie end PKBANTRT AND POWER. 183 in vision and toils a whole life towards it. In these and similar yirtnes resides that quality of the soul which, under the name of earnestness, chains observers, wins men, overcomes obstacles and culminates in power. We shall confess the necessity of this quality when we remember that spiritual power is not an instantaneous, natural endowment or an inherit- ance, but something into which a faithful man grows. No great soul could ever "tell its ex- perience." The autobiographies of great lives sur- prise us by their meagre outlines ; tliey relate how this admirable person got up in the morning and drank his tea, chatted with his neighbors, went to his study, his work, or his fighting, resting after dinner, saw company and went to sleep — in short, lived outwardly almost as every dunce has lived since Adam. "Where is the history of the man's power? Ah, that is what he cannot write, what he knows less about than we suppose, what he sometimes doubts himself. All he or anybody knows is, that moved by the impulse, willing and faithful to conscience, he pushes on, his earnestness like a slow fire burning its way through wliatever brushwood or rock obstructs his path. He does not think he has attained, but is dimly conscious of a growing vigor and consistency of being. 184: PEDANTRY AND POWKE. And now and then, lifted on the spring-tide of his own power, he is borne into new regions of hope, and feels along his nerves the sublime thrills of an incomprehensible energy, beholds new worlds to conquer, and resolves like an archangel. This is his hour of vision, when like the wanderer among interminable mountains, he comes out upon a new summit, and beholds far below the former peak of his ambition and throws his gaze with eager long- ing to the blue spectral heights that haunt the hori- zon line. Well it is for us that we cannot knoAV the mysterious gi-owth of spiritual power ; better than such knowledge is the earnestness that drives us towards it with motion as steady and fatal as the march of the systems, or the swing of the sea. Let me urge this complete earnestness upon the young who hear me. Do not mistake for it the mental neuralgia that afflicts so many American youth. An American is but a man, no law of life has been suspended for his sake, and any out- rage of the virtues that make up true earnestness will bring him into the same trouble that besets all transgressors. Kashness, imprudence, caprice, foolhardy and heated action, thinking like chain lightning and doing like the thunderbolt, may be fine fun for a while, but such play turns out the PEDANTET AND POWEE. 185 dearest kind of work that must be done over again. " A fast man " is one tMng, an earnest man quite another. Jehu the son of Jonathan drives furious- ly in the year 1858, as old Jehu drove in Bible days. He yokes the unwhipped horses of specu- lation and over-trading to his chariot of business and vanishes in a cloud of dust, and to-moi-rcr is hauled out of the ditch from beneath the ruins of his equipage by some poor patient donkey that has been plodding on far behind. Jehu drives fast in domestic affairs ; up goes the brown stone front, in and out the doors flash Mrs. Jehu and the little Jehus, resplendent in diamonds and taffeta ; what a crowd mobs his saloon on re- ception nights ! Alas ! one silent gentleman rings the bell, calls Jehu aside, and, lo ! the sheriff has dissolved the illusion, and old Slow jogs up to the auction and buys out the concern at a ruinous dis- count. How Jehu cracks his whip in the Senate. Onward and upward, new worlds to conquer; a fig for justice, hurra for success; man and God stand aside ! Alas, the poor creature is only run- ning himself blind and mad, and will soon lie breathless, his hot cheek pressed against the cold adamant of the higher law. Poor Jehu does no better at his books — ^lie may study himself into any of tbe fifty new Ameiican diseases, shriek 186 PEDANTRY AND POWER. througli liigh-pressure oratory, write new theories of the universe in extempore trance, rave in the newspapers, and swear upon the stump ; old Ger- many can take the noisy boy on his knee and teach him his A B C's. Jehu is attractive, but his steeds always run away with him. It is a sorry ambition, this rage for being " fast ;"' better be an earnest man, an earnest woman, and grow as the years grow, and you will see all along your way the bleaching bones of these insane mnners for the prize of life. The crowning element in Spiritual Power is Purity. By Purity I mean more than that nega- tive amiability, or general inoffensive habit, whose sphere is the drawing-room and whose resistance to evil culminates in a flood of tears, or a passive submission to violence. The virtue I enforce is the combination of all mental and moral powers in a character that responds to the Divine Perfections, and realizes the ideal of Humanity. In such a character, heroism, sti-ength, firmness, invincible rectitude and uncompromising hostility to evil are the central substances, enveloped and harmonized by enduring love and unaffected grace ; for men have yet to learn that power is really not power, till it is dissolved in affection and spiritualized into beauty. PEDANTKT AND POWEE. 187 Spiritual Power in its last analysis, is the consoli- dation of all gifts, acquirements, and opportunities into Character. A soul has not possession of its self, till it has banished every lower aim of life ; for any partial object, however inspiring, becomes finally a chronic weakness. To cultivate all facul- ties, to seize every occasion, to acquire all possible learning, skill and experience, for the sake, first and last, always and everywhere of character ; to toil in professional life as a help in this grand pro- fession ; to value social enjoyment and human af- fection, not for the pleasure they bring, but the manhood they enlarge ; to become a good citizen, that one may be a noble man ; to obey the decrees of nature, and wreathe life with joy, that the char- acter may be refined ; this is the end of life, this is Spiritual Power, the end of culture. For Char- acter is good in itself, is not a coin to buy happi- ness, but is the sublime object of human existence in time and eternity. How such a purpose, inaugurated in youth, aids the man at every step in the acquisition of Spirit- ual Power, can only be known by joyful experience. How many knotty problems of action does it solve for the young man winding through the mazes of common life. How many confusing dilemmas does it clear up for the young woman ensnared in 188 PEDANTRY AND POWER. the cobwebs of false society. A whole class of questionable occupations, perilous associations, and doubtful adventures, that beset every youth, are looked out of sight by the clear, forward-gazing eyes of Purity. Can it be a question to the young man or woman, resolved to make Character the end of life, whether dishonest business, selfish poli- tics, sensual indulgence, calculating marriage with- out love, followed by an ambitious domestic career without peace, shall be accepted, or rejected? These are questions that bewilder half the world, and to which no refinement of logic will bring a solution, but which answer themselves the moment we step up to the heights of a worthy manhood. How does Purity clear the mind for all investiga- tions ; how it stirs the fire of industry ; how it con- soles and sustains us in failure ; how wise it makes lis in success ; infinite are the modes in which it is our right hand of success in honorable enterprise. It brings the soul into union with the laws of na- ture, and led by the star of manhood, we go es- corted by the servants of Omnipotence, and our best deeds are but the symbol of the grander works done through us. And no less does Purity serve us in the use of our Power. The vital question with every human being, on which rests the whole claim to manhood PEDANTRY AND POWEE. 189 is not " what is the extent of his power / but, hmo does he use his power f " Whether the power re- Bides in great possessions, in vast acquirements, in splendid genius, is all the same ; whether it has se- cured lofty position, or yet awaits its fitting place, is not the question ; but what motive lies behind it, of what quality and character is the man who wields it? Divorced from Character, Power is as hateful for its evil as contemptible for its weakness. There can be no compromise in the use of Power. In proportion to its quantity must it de- clare itself for good or evU. It is of little impor- tance on which side the moral line a fool stands ; he is impotent for good, harmless for evil ; but as a man rises above that zero of human abihty, the good claims him, the evil fights for him with deadly per- sistence. Anything short of entire consecration to the Truth is then treason to the Spiritual order of the universe. It is a sin to withhold countenance from the Truth ; it is wicked to propose any agreement that admits the supposition that Error has right in the world ; it is ruin to go over to the bad side, and be a respectable or a flagrant villain. All such ex- periments, often as they are tried, come out finally in Spiritual Soicide. A temporary success, how- ever brilliant, is only part of a bad man's retribu- 190 PEDANTET AND POWEE. tion, for it brings new responsibilities to be evaded and lays up a fearful account for the day of reckon- ing — a madness whicli finally compels sane men to rise and put him down. But Character is an ever growing wisdom, an ever culminating power, a quiet advocate for all m?.i's suffrage: a success whose only question is of time. Happy the youth that has learned this fact out of his books, and teachers, and School years — ^that Purity is the synonym of Spiritual Power. Every advance position of man makes Purity more indispensable and evil more destructive. Never was it so important that the power of a people should be wielded by character as to-day in America. What unnumbered curses beset us from a selfish culture ! All over society, in every cor- ner of our civilization, swarms tliis crowd of culti- vated mercenaries. Practical men, strong with the gifts of modern science and large experience in affairs, ready to sell their influence for gold and monopoly ; women, radiant with beauty, and more radiant with mental gifts and social tact woven in- to the most siibtle power that guides the world, turning traitors to the eternal laws of love and honesty ; refined Circassians, glorying in their price at the market-place, where fashion and Plutus bid for w^omanhood ; shrewd men, versed in PKDANTRT AND POWEE. 191 public affairs who know history, know the law, hold tlie mysteries of popular influence, and the Chi- nese puzzle of parliamentary tactics at their fingers' ends, calling out — " Who pays most for the clev- erest defence of infamy, the subtlest cheat of the people, the most decisive betrayal of Freedom ?" deeply read men of science ; men that write books that everybody reads; editors that overlook the nation from their sanctum windows ; poets and artists that the refined love and honor ; men and women apt in conversation, whose presence is a magic centre in the community ; divines who have studied the fathers and overlooked reverent crowds — all for sale — some bought with the pot- tage of personal comfort, some bribed with the devil's gold, some baited with popular approbation, some purchased witli office ; spiiitual Hessians — each ready to fight for the Truth or against the Truth, according as either gives better pay and ra- tions. This mob of cultivated mercenaries, not the mob of barbarians that make a night of civilization in the heart of the city and hold back the great day in the country, is making our republicanism a jest, and befogging a people in its search after manhood. The masses are driven hither and thither by contrary gusts of passion and interest, and clouds are scaling our zenith, frowning as they 192 PEDANTET AND POWEE. climb, because so many able men and women have their price — seem not to know that character in such as themselves is the nation's ballast — ^that where the culture of a generation is vitiated and debased by sovereign selfishness the crowds be- low are degraded to base instruments to work its wicked will. Every mercenary powerful mind in America is a gun charged with hot shot aimed at the inflammable citadel of our freedom. Will you, young men, young women of New York, go forth to join this pretorian band? or shall Purity lead you to tlie ranks of that little army, which hard beset and often driven from the field, bears in its heart the hope of the continent. We can go on with such mental culture as we have; there are clever people enough in the United States, if we can only have Purity to direct the actual energy we have. Oh, could all this skill, this money, this enterprise, this daring heroism, this learning, this popular intelligence, all that is strong in man and lovely in woman, become a weapon in the hand of a genuine national character, what a republic this would be ! We look to the youth of our commonwealth to bring in this reign of Spiritual Power, the antago- nist of Pedantry, the result of Freedom and Ear- nestness culminating in Purity. In the great PED4.NTKT AND POWER. 193 school of our best civilization, man and woman can be furnisbed together for the holy mission of civil- izing the republic. Each may here be developed in characteristic power, both may here join hands in lofty purpose, together they may swear a great oath against the barbarism that yet shadows our sunniest uplands and broods over all the deep places of the land — one and all, they may resolve to give ignorance, ugliness, superstition and evil no quar- ters. Happy are you who are thus ready to meet your duties, for outside yonder door of maturity waits the proudest State of modem times, encir- cled by her children, to welcome you to a noble office. In every vocation, in every community, wherever you may be and whatever you may be called to do, in your fidelity reposes the hope of society. Go forth, young men, young women, and vnock this ideal of power by the glorious reality of a cultivated and Christian State. VIII. THE CAPITOL AND THE HIGHER LAW. The sight-seer in search of gorgeous monuments of imperial dominion, would not linger on the hill crowned by the modest capitol of New York ; but he who would behold in a public edifice the repre- sentative of a peculiar and protracted struggle for a Christian Democracy, need go no farther than the city of Albany. From the steps of our capitol he may overlook the scenes of the two most impor- tant political assemblies ever called in America — the meeting of colonial Governors in July, 1748, to deliberate on the scheme of taxing the people, and the convention of delegates in June, 1754, at which the plan of a Federal Union was presented by Franklin, who lived to see his early dream mocked by a more majestic reality. Out of the former of these conventions came the oppression of 19B 196 THE CAPITOL AND Great Britain, out of the latter the American Union. Against that despotism no State rendered more signal services than New York, and New York is now the State whose final position will decide whether that Union shall degenerate to a new Empire, or advance to a Christian Kepublic. Our unpretending capitol sits upon its hill, the sym- bol of a political struggle in New York whose his- tory, when truly written, wiU be a permanent accession to the annals of humanity. Massachusetts was founded by the radical English mind of the 17th century ; and starting from Plymouth Bock, the idea of individual free- dom has scaled the Bocky Mountains and this year comes back from the Pacific shore the res- ponse to the Pilgrims in the new free Constitution of Oregon. Virginia was founded by the repre- sentatives of the English gentry of the 17th cen- tury; and the landed monopoly and chattel slavery of fifteen American States is but the lengthened shadow of that British aristocracy, ever creeping farther south to find in Central America the home now denied it in the North. To New York, seated midway between these radical States, was given the problem of moulding a population, the most diverse of any that has colonized this continent, into the most powerful Kepublic of modem times. THE HIOHEB LAW. 197 To briefly recall the elements of this great execu- tive process and set forth the supreme law of a Christain citizenship for our Empire State, is the object of this discourse. The genius of despotism stood by the cradle of New York ciTilization and has never ceased to threaten till the present day. The State was founded in 1614 by a trading company from a nation where popular liberty was then imknown : and from the possession of the Holland merchants it became, in 1668, the manor of the Duke of York. Feudalism was thus established on the Hudson Eiver that for two centuries controlled her des- tinies in its two most odious forms of a great landed aristocracy and negro chattel slavery. Under the shadow of this oppression, popular intel- ligence languished and has slowly fought its way up to its present attainment. The diversity of nationality which always made our largest city a caravansary for the whole civilized world, and has planted obstinate prejudices of race aU over our wide domain, long prevented that entire fusion of the people which is the soul of enterprise and the spirit of a compact Kepublicanism. The central and commanding position of New York in the original colonies has always exposed her civilization to formidable dangers. Her northern frontier long 198 THE CAPITOL AND bore the brunt of French invasion, leagued with the most formidable of the Indian tribes. Her com- mercial metropolis was selected by English tyranny as the most suitable place for repeated experiment in despotism. On the banks of her great rivers the American revolution twice turned a short corner; and our Highlands were the watch-tower, and fortress of that long struggle for independence. Very early did her political importance as the opponent of Virginia involve her in the corrupting whirlpool of National affairs, and with the Admin- istration of Washington commenced that conflict between federal and State patronage which still debauches every generation of her politicians. On the island of Manhattan has sprung up the com- mercial exchange of the old and new worlds, and the gold of two continents is every year cast into her scale, against the rights of man. Her landed aris- tocracy has perished before the more subtile invad- ing power of the gigantic corporations that are fighting in the dark to replace the feudalism of the landowner by the oligarchy of the merchant : and the last twenty-five years has witnessed the conversion of her chief cities into little foreign nationalities, challenging the right and defying the power of the government to treat them as vital portions of the commonwealth. THE HIGHER LAW. 199 But on the other side of the cradle of our Her- cules, stood the genius of Freedom. Among the emigrants to New E"etherlands came many smart- ing from the tyranny that had devastated their European homes and driven them exiles for liberty across the sea. Out of this element arose the struggle for representation which convulsed the Dutch colony, and was not staid by English power tUl it reached its goal, and in 1683, sixty- nine years after the settlement of Albany, gained that first assembly of seventeen representatives of the people of New York. For ninety-two years the history of that little Assembly marks the rugged road by which the colony fought its way up to independence. Brow-beaten and tempted and prorogued by a succession of insolent British governors, backed by a subservient council, it had a charmed existence, for it was the concentration of the free side of colonial life. It rallied again and again on the struggle for the revenue, pro- tested in documents that might stir the blood of the most supple politician (if such individuals ever read the records of the Fathers) ; and when it succumbed to the rising storm of foreign wrath in 1775, out of its ashes sprvmg the Provincial Con- gress, which on the 9th of July, 1776, ratified the Declaration of Independence : in 1777 adopted the 200 THE CAPITOL AND first constitution whicli for forty-four years was the organic law of the State : sat armed during the war wherever it could find a refuge, and with George Clinton for Governor, took its place in the Union in 1797. Thanks to the tyranny that in 1663 placed the Judiciary of New York in complete dependence on the crown, a fire was kindled that has burned till every court in our great State is now created by the people. The very diversity of our popula- tion has always made ecclesiastical tyranny an impossibility. Every attempt by Catholic or Pro- testant church to control the State has brought down the people in an avalanche on its head ; and every party formed on a sectarian platform has vanished as soon as it was bom. And as a provi- dential compensation for the temptations of our central position, our people have gained from it a certain largeness of view and facility of dealing with public afiairs which has developed an execu- tive power which, always eminent, has finally eclipsed every American State. Half a century ago, began that wondrous tide of emigration from the eastern hive, which has built up a new nation west of Albany, the ally of freedom on the Hud- son, taking up the battle, where the old patriots left it, and carrying it on to victory. The day THE HIGHEB LAW. 201 when De Witt Clinton discovered that to link his name with the Erie Canal was a more permanent honor than to become President of the Kepublic, inaugurated an era of popular enterprise, which in Bending a railroad to every corner of the State, and creating the daily press of our great cities, and arousing the masses everywhere to activity, has become the missionary of freedom which, now, under the name of an " Emigrant Aid Society," has taken the field against piracy in Central Amer- ica, and aspires to the colonization of a continent with free men. And, best of all, the free school is now fairly on its iron legs which will run to and fro, and never tire, till intelligence and freedom pervade our illustrious commonwealth. This great conflict rapidly approaches its crisis, and no man doubts on whose banners victory will alight. A few more efforts to remodel the institu- tions of 'New York, on a scale demanded by her present growth and her greater future ;^ the last relict of feudal vassalage and disability of race swept away ; a few years more of unrelenting devotion to liberty; will forever consecrate the policy of our State to the rights of men. And when the Empire State finally assumes the leader- ship of the host of a Christian civilization, the revo- lution that began in 1615 in her Broadway will 9* 202 THE CAPITOL AND close by the assurance that through the countless ages of the future, the dominant and creative power on the western continent will be the civiliz- ation of the Saviour's golden rule : and over her avenues of travel, on her ships, and upon the wings of her press, the evangel of freedom wiU fly to all the nations of the world. Citizens of New York, this is your past ; your work is before you; your destiny beckons from the future. Standing in your Capital City, let me, as a citizen of your State, a citizen of the United States, and a teacher of Christianity, speak of your obligations, and direct your contemplation to the eternal law of God, which embosoms all earthly justice, and controls the affairs of men. In no spirit of sect or party, in no personal controversy with those who solicit the votes of to-day by blas- phemy against Him who endureth forever, let me expound that Higher La/w which holds every soul in the Republic by sanctions, as profound as the humanity of man, as everlasting as the divinity of the most High. The conception of a government by the whole people is the inevitable result of the Christian idea of God and man. God is the Father of all men, and has made of one blood all nations upon the earth. The inhabitants of this world are all his THE HIGHEE LAW. 203 children, inheritors of His nature and heirs of His immortality. Mankind is a family, related in its every member more closely than any earthly ties can biad together. The sole obligation of humani- ty as a whole, and in its every individual, is love to God and love to man. On this foimdation of adamant rests our claim for human rights and dem- ocratic government. For the government of God is not the ruling ot an arbitrary despot over an empire of abject slaves, but the training of a world of immortal children into holiness of character through a moral disci- pUne. Every citizen in God's vast republic is free, and, encompassed by influences human and divine, decides this crowning question of character alone. The inevitable law of a God of love is ever before, the wondrous agencies of an ineffable benignity invite and the certainty of retribution warn him, but no arbitrary fate drags him into heaven or thrusts him into perdition. No prisoner of despotic justice, man walks a free citizen of a divine gov- ernment that respects his natural rights as a living immortal soul, and rules only to develop that soul into an ever expanding image of its Creator. Then must every human government, in imita- tion of God's, rule men only to aid in Ihe unfold- ing of a character founded on love, and the crea- 204 THE CAPITOL AND tion of a state which shall be the kingdom of heaven. In such a state no man oi* class can as- sume a power which God himself does not claim ; to own and dispose of men by arbitrary selfishness. The natural rights of every citizen must be re- spected, and to every one must be guaranteed free- dom to act out his himian capacities and become what his Creator intended. The right of a man, a class, a race, to plunder the least soul of its free- dom in such use of its faculties is no "divine right," for no divine being thus governs men ; but a Satanic travesty of God's supremacy. Human government thus ]j|ecomeB one of the agencies by which God educates His children into the citizen- ship of eternity; a humble imitation of His re- public wherein love reigns supreme, and justice is but a divine method of its administration. All authority of human government is from its resem- blance to this government of God; there is no other real authority among men, and in proportion as it departs from this law of love and reverence for human freedom does it forfeit its claim on our reve- rence and obedience. All just government is by divine right, and while acting according to God's law of love, claims our respect by divine authority; and to disobey it is to renounce the allegiance to the Father of all ; to drop our high citizenship in THE HIOBEB LAW. 205 the divine order and become the slave of disorder and its father, the devil. But where resides the original authority to insti- tute such government on earth, which shall be one of God's agents to mould this world into the king- dom of heaven ? The source of all secondary au- thority in human affairs is the individual soul. Every intelligent being is first and last and forever, a citizen of God's great republic, and can never become an alien therefrom by any action of man. Whatever human arrangement he accepts, is with the full understanding that he shall be required to do nothing inconsistent with this primary obliga- tion ; what&oer constitution he swears to d)ey, the very oath is an affirmaUon that he wiU not dAsobey OoWs la/w of love; iaiwhat a ilasphenuyus ah»wr- (Uty to swear in the name of God to disobey God. And in every contested question between human government and the individual, the final appeal is to the higher and prior citizenship of the divine re- public through conscience, its ever-present deputy in the soul. Such appeal is always heard on high, though scorned below, and in the long run every individual has his rights, to the confusion of a world in opposition. Conscience, the final delibe- rate voice of the soul, after all the evidence is in and the whole ground of duty has been surveyed. 206 THE CAPITOL AND is the law of human duty ; not 'because the indvoid- ual inva/riahly will go right ^ hut the obedience to conscience is the recognition of the supreme obliga- tions to obey God's law of love forever. This right to appeal to the higher law no man does or can lay down on his entrance into any association of men ; could he, the renunciation would be the wreck of his manhood, and from a living soul he would fall to the degradation of a mechanical power. With this reservation of appeal to God, man may enter the government which comes nearest the divine order, because in it the natural right to free development is best secured — a KepubUc. Here a majority rules to-day as the servant of the whole, subject in its act to the revision of erery individual through free thought, speech, or influ- ence, and liable at stated periods to be called to deliver up its trust, or change its policy. For the majority of the Kepublic is not the despot of the minority, but the servant of the whole ; and when it comes down from its lofty elevation of acting for the best welfare of the whole state, and seeks to punish or oppress the minority, the act is not civil government, but barbarian piracy. And when a majority, by corrupt acts, bribery, the terrorism or seductions of power, or any way but an appeal to its services to the people, seeks to perpetuate its THE HIGHER LAW. 207 dominion, it is usurpation and ungodly tyranny. But where the majority serves the state, full in view of the conscience of every man, always sub- ject to periodical dismissal or approval, there is the nearest approach to the divine order now possible on earth. So is the government of the people, by the peo- ple through a representative majority, the best im- itation of God's government now attainable, and claims the obedience and cooperation of every in- dividual according as it realizes to him the divine order. Then is our republicanism foimded on the authority of the Higher Law. Then is Democracy but another name for the Golden Kule. And the citizen at the ballot-box, the legislator in the Capi- tol, the Judge on the bench, the Executive in the chair of state, are all agents selected by the divine wisdom, to promote justice and holiness 'on earth. The least these agents can safely do the better for the man, since human government is not to super- sede the divine, but chiefly to protect man from in- justice, and place the weakest and strongest in the position to freely develop his nature into the stat- ure of the perfect man in Christ. And herein appears the folly of that Democracy which openly denounces God and proclaims a state free from every moral restraint. For if there 208 THE cApiToi, Airo be no God, as certain of the Ked Bepublicans Bay, pray what becomes of the rights of man ? If the soul be only the temporary result of material com- bination, with no claim to spirituality, where are its natural rights ? Talk of the right of Freedom, to think, speak, act in a being that has no living soul, no radical moral obligation, no human alle- giance to a creative mind, and an immortal hu- manity? Why, such a race as this is not a human race, but a great machine, whose cranks and wheels, and pulleys all spin around the laws of a remorseless fate, where freedom cannot exist and progress is a dream, and life itself, hut the submission of the soul to the animal. We can understand that the suffering millions of Europe, maddened by the religious pretensions of their oppressors in church and state, should in their frenzy imagine that religion is itself their chief oppressor. But that a man should laboriously reason away his soid to prove his right to freedom is like the miser who killed himself to realize on his life insurance. The true remedy for Europe, is to unmask the hypocrites who steals the clothes of religion to serve the devil of their ambition, to explode the divine rights of kings by the as- sertion of the divine paternity of God, and the divine nature of man, his immortal child, and THE HIQHEE LAW. 209 compel a satanic selfishness to abdicate in favor of a Christian civilization, founded on the love of the brother. May the day be far distant, when the pious heroism and devotional patriotism of our fathers shall give way either to the moon-struck meanderings of an atheistic republicanism, or the frantic appetite for tyranny by which men give melancholy evidence how deeply the iron of old oppression is rusted into their innermost souls. Therefore, when we affirm that every citizen of New York should carry his religion into the sphere of his political conduct, we neither assert any union of church and state, nor claim any right of ecclesiastical dictation of legislation, .nor justify the position outside of society assumed by a sin- cere but mistaken class of public reformers. No visionary and impracticable scheme of conduct, but the most practical and possible application of the everlasting laws of right to every act of public and private life is our demand. We reaffirm the simple truth announced by Jesus Christ : " "What- soever ye would that men should do to you, do you even so to them." With every competent expoun- der of Christianity, since the day of Christ, we maintain that every member of human society is bound by an eternal obligation to gain a holy char- acter founded on love to God and man, and to act 210 THE OAPITOL AND from that character in every huinan relation. As the family, the market, the pulpit, the saloon claim our best manhood and "womanhood, that home, trade, prophesy, and pleasure, may all be elerated by religion, so is the realm of citizenfihip no excep- tion to this ; but -whoever ^oes in there shaU carry his entire manhood and abate not one jot or tittle of his Christian integrity. It has been affirmed that while the preacher should expound the abstract law of right, the statesman should ignore it in favor of expediency. A true expediency is only a righteous w.an doing all the good that present ci/rcimistances permit as a stepping-stpne to better achievements; and any other expediency is as disgraceful in the senate as in the church. Strange morality this — ^that while a mem sits in his pew on Sunday where he can do nothing, he mMy acTcnowledge the obligations of God's law / but when he sits in the Gapitol and holds the civil- ization of New York in tlie hollow o-^ his hand, he is no longer bound by such obligation. Could Satan ash for a more complete license than this ? Life is the place where men prove their religious character; in the church they can only meditate and be instructed. "What a caricature of Christ- ianity to glow with sacred fires before the altar, and cast off the eternal law of love upon the tern- THE HIGHEE LAW. 211 pie steps. Let no sophistry of this kind delude the citizens of our State ; for only on condition that every soul in l^ew York labors for the highest Christian character and throws its whole force persistently on the side of righteousness in every comer of life, will our great domain lead the world as the first republic. This religious obligation holds every inhabitant of New York in his relations to that form of social affairs into which he is bom. For the evils of that system of government into which we are called by the flat of Providence we are not respon- sible. They are the results of the wickedness of those who have gone before, and society as we find it at our appearance in life is our field of opera- tions. Our whole duly concerning it is to reform as much evil and conserve as much good therein as we can by the healthy, constant exercise of our best powers through life. This done, our charac- ter is guiltless for that evil we cannot remove, and human affairs are left on a higher basis for our ex- istence. Each inhabitant of the State should labor according to his opportunity in the best place he can honorably occupy and all endeavor to leave society a more heavenly thing than they found it. What does this obligation demand of us as citizens, rulers and subjects of the law ? 212 THE CAPITOL AND It demands that each individual of the Empire State shall gratefully accept all the faculties, rights, privileges and opportunities into which he is bom, and out of these materials mould the best possible character and throw the whole force of manhood or womanhood in the scale of a Christian Demo- cracy. The voter is the most privileged person in our State ; for, in addition to all the opportunities of moral influence, his yearly vote can shape the poli- tical policy of a great community and may be the turning point in the destiny of America. To say that he should use such a position, the highest in the world, to create a lofty religious character, ap- ply the law of love in every sphere of life, and em- ploy his political opportunities for the largest good of man, is a truism that is ignored not because it is unreasonable, but because it conflicts with the wickedness that scorns reason and right. The spectacle of a voter in New York using his whole weight of character and opportunity to hinder or crush out any portion of God's family is one over which evil spirits may well rejoice, and angels veil their faces in shame and grief. No man can pre- scribe the course of policy of any individual ; that is an affair of his own conscience ; but he may command every voting citizen, on the authority of THE HIGHKE LAW. 213 God's law, to use his glorious privilege to the ut- most and follow the highest leading of his unse- duced conscience in his relations to the State. And whatever inconvenience might occasionally result from a " crotchety conscience " in such case would be overcome a thousand fold by the advantages of righteousness in public affairs. The religious obligation to the State holds that portion of our male citizens who are yet denied the right of suffrage, either from unjust prejudice against color, or a judicious preparatory naturali- zation. Some of the worst dangers to the commu- nity may arise from the notion that the members of this class are released from the duties of Christ- ian patriotism. Under their present disabilities they are blessed beyond their brethren in other ages and nations. Will they use their influence to advance their own freedom and the general good, or to breed discord and disgrace by degene- racy of character and disobedience to law ? Let these men remember, that if still denied the crovm- ing privilege of citizenship, they are called by God to a determined advocacy of the rights of the oppressed. And on no man is there such a bless- ing as upon him who employs his own misfortune to gain the sympathy and espouse the cause of his brother in suffering. Every virtuous and patriotic 214 THE CAPITOL AND alien in New York is strengthening the hands of those who are using their own privilege to fight his battles ; every wicked and riotous man of this class is confirming the hostile purpose of those who yet deny his rights. Next in outward privilege are the women of the Empire State : deprived of many social and politi- cal privileges by society, yet possessing, beyond their sisters of any state or age, the sacred opportu- nities of womanhood. Their political duties are not to be overlooked, because of certain disa- bilities. To them, chiejly, is intrvMed the TTumldmg of character in youth — the greatest earthly opportunity ; and the most intimate rela- tion to, and siihtlest injl/uence over the heart of manhood — the second prvoilege of hv/inardty. The voice of God commands them to use this central and all-pervading infiuence for the highest good of the State. A race of mothers such as the women of New York can now become, might edu- cate a race of men who would count it the highest privilege of their manhood to welcome them to every position they might claim. "We cannot understand the feelings of any woman who per- mits herself to be crushed by her position, and neglects the practice of the most precious human obligations. Her political duties are no less im- THE HIGHEE LAW. 215 portant than those of man : let her perform them to the utmost, and if society refuse her what she then asks, it will be the first time American men have denied woman anything on which she has insisted. To the youth of New York what an invitation is given to prepare themselves by the largest human culture for the republic of another generation, compared with whose grandeur of resource and inspiring obligations, our present State is but a family party. Do not fear, young men and women of New York, that you can know too much, or be too noble for the inheritance that awaits you. Heirs of the most splendid heritage of modern times, become the illustrious men and women whom it will gracefully adorn. No inhabitant of New York can rightly sepa- rate himself from his obligations to society. The least privileged has a protection and opportunity deserving a boundless gratitude and claiming his best devotion to the State. It is a spurious asser- tion of individuality to affect to stand aside from this great family and criticise the doings of other men : for man was made for society, and his mis- sion is to bear the law of love into human affairs, and share in the toils of the wise and good for a better day. The law of God requires no impractical be- 216 THE oiPrroL and havior in the rulers chosen to posts of influence m the Empire State. It does forbid that wretched traffic in offices by candidates, which makes the very name of free institutions a jest. / hnovo of no good a ruler can do to New York, which will compensate for the evil of iriMng one voter, or corruptMvg the jnMic mind hy owe falsehood. Every structure of justice built over a defiled franchise, or a dishonest system of party machin- ery, is a house built on the crust of an abyss. Liberty suffers for every unveracity perpetrated in her name : and, to huy a man in, New York even to vote against despotism is to enslave a man to-day for the uncertain eaypectation of Itheratiing hvmuvnity to-morrow. The enemies of man will not heed our warnings : but on the escutcheon of the friends of man, let no stain of suspicion abide : for surely as they endeavor to gain power by any unworthy arts, will the defence of human rights be taken from them and given to those whose pure hands are fit to bear the banner of justice. The legislator is not the attorney of his party ; but first the servant of God and next the servant of the whole State. ELis sole duty is to reenact as much of the law of Ood as the people can now sus- tain and enforce, and hy his whole injl/uence to educate society to a higher poUUcal moraUty. To • THE HIGHEE LAW. 217 the judiciary is committed the office of interpreting the law and presiding over the administration of justice, and if there be a crime in America it is the prostitution of that exalted position to the uses of any party or interest lower than man. "When in the legislative, judical or executive sphere a controversy occurs, let the rulmg ahoays he infa/vor of man — who was not Tnade for laws a/nd courts, but courts a/nd laws a/nd constitutions for him,. The organic law of the State is not an iron frame into which the public officer is to be driven to petrify into a machine, but the best realization of God's law that the State has so far obtained; hence to interpret it doumwards in favor of the iarba/rism of the past, is treason a^gainst hvmia/rdty. A true statesmanship interprets orgamc lams v/pwan'ds in favor of the cmUisation thai is to come. Head history and behold how every politician who has interpreted the organic laws of states downward towards barbarism has filed off into the Umbo of human contempt and execration, and every statesman who has read constitutions upwards towards man has walked up to a throne where he now sits and receives the admiration of the world. Were the law of God thus applied in the sphere of citizenship and official duty, the question of 10 218 THE OAPITOL AND obedience to human laws wonld at once be Bimpli- fied. For the case would hardly occur that a law could be enacted by a righteous people which a good man could not obey. But we are not yet in the millennium, and our rulers sometimes forget God and man and command us to do what a Christ- ian manhood refuses to accept. A good man is not released &om his obligations to the State by a bad law. He is still a citizen, though government turns against him, and his duty centres in sustain- ing a true order while he seeks to elevate the pub- lic conception of law. His duty increases in pro- portion to the degeneracy of legislation, and instead of quitting politics in disgust because of its cor- ruption, the best men should especially go in then and turn the scale. A godly citizen will submit to much wrong for the sake of order : he will patiently use every legal means of redress, every force of moral influence, and count a life well spent in shaping a righteous policy that wiU gra- dually overcome the wrong. And if brought to a crisis, where the law commands him to commit a wicked act, he can testify his reverence to the State by suffering her penalties while he asserts his man- hood by refusing to disobey God. This has been in every past age one of the most efficient means of reform ; and no men have done more to advance THE HIOHEB LAW. 219 a good government than those martyrs who have suffered or died because they would not commit sin against God and humanity. I cannot recognize the right of armed revolution by the citizens of the State while the Kepublic pre- serves its reality. While men can speak and write and vote and hold office they may suffer for the right; but to grasp the sword is to dissolve the whole social fabric, to fall into anarchy and trust to luck for a reorganization oi society. But under the forms of a republic a real despotism may creep in, and a minority be deprived of all just rights through the forms of law. Then revolution is the just appeal ; because physical life is not the most sacred thing on earth, and when it and the natural rights of the soul are confronted, the soul must stand and the body must fall. But this right of revolution is to be exercised only in the last extremity and never should be perverted to the ends of party agitation, or used to excuse the toil- some duties of peaceful reform. I am not ignorant of the possible abuse of these extreme rights of the subject of human law ; but those who assert the contrary doctrine seem to be ignorant of the abuses of their own. If the one may drive a fanatical citizen to his destruction, or agitate a State with fears of anarchy, the other id 220 THE CAPITOL AND the creed of despotism from the foundation of the world, and if adopted in a republic would leave every man and every nainority at the unmitigated mercy of a wicked majority. The man who preaches unconditional submission to human law, preaches the political ideas of oriental tyranny, and if it be treason, as some say, to refuse to sin and suffer for that refusal, what shall we call the crime of sustaining an irresponsible despotism in the name of law ? This right of resistance, so far from treasonable, is the real safeguard of the Republic. There are few classes of men, there are few parties in the State which would not com- mit enormities beyond endurance, did they not know that man never has, never will, and never ought to submit to the last extremity of wrong, but will now, as he ever has, overthrow the tyrant that drives him to the wall, or perish in the conflict for human rights. While religion would guard this right of disobedience, and the appeal to the God of battles from every abuse, it would still assert it as the last human safeguard in every state of society the world has yet attained. These ideas of a religious patriotism are no fig- ments of philosophical speculation, but the daily bread of life for the citizens of our Commonwealth. On their hearty acceptance and application, depends THE HIGHER LAW. 221 our success in the long struggle of two hundred and forty-four years for the freedom of man in this goodly domain of nature. 'Ne-w York has the materials for a magnificent nation, and her first duty is by all justice and righteousness to lift her- self ever higher in the rank of noble States that stand for man ; and her second duty is like unto it, to throw her entire influence on the side of a Christian Democracy in the Federal Union. When the Empire State shall have made up her mind for freedom, and spoken it in words that cannot be mistaken, and cannot be taken back, will the un- godly scramble for despotism in the national councils come to a swift end. From the midst of an age of conflict, from the summit of a crisis in the affairs of a Continent, rises the call as of an angel's voice to stand upright for Liberty, the cause of God and man. Shall the call be heard ? When will New Tork spurn the rewards of tyran- ny, which endure but for a day, and accept the perils of that defence of freedom which ripens into the enduring glory of mankind ? IX. THE STUDIOS; OB, ART IN NEW YORK. The most striking work of art, in the most at- tractive studio in the Capital City, is Palmer's model for his coUossal group ; " The Lcmdmg cf the PUgrvmsP When elevated to its place in the pediment of a great public structure, this admirable work will afford a worthy symbol of the mission of Art in a Eepublican State. The barren landscape, haunted by the wolf and the savage, and brooded over by the wintry sky, incloses a group that represents the chief forces of a Christian civilization in their true relations. A strong man half reclines upon the cold ground, impatient of his overpowering fatigue. Between the shivered trunks of two gigantic trees, kneels another in meek resignation to a mysterious Provi- 224 THE STUDIOS J OE, dence. A venerable scholar bows his head in a prayer, that elevates his human knowledge to a divine wisdom. A boy clings to the arm of a maiden, and a little girl nestles by the knees of a youth ; all in characteristic ways, oppressed or ex- cited by the strange scene. A young man leans upon his axe. A soldier bows his head with arms folded in stem devotion. A young woman kneels in pious trust, and a mother folds her late bom child to her bosom, in overflowing gratitude to the Heavenly love ; while in the centre of the group, stands the majestic form of the Eeligious Teacher, with outstretched arms, and face upturned in a pe- tition that binds all hearts in one, and prophecies a state, founded upon the Eternal Law. Every figure is representative of a vital force in American so- ciety. The bond of union is no tyrant's mandate, nor priestly dogma, but the voluntary unity of free souls, in the sublime idea of consecration to the Father of all. And glowing in every feature and attitude, and enfolding the whole group in an at- mosphere of wondrous grace, is that austere beauty which descends from heaven to earth only when all the elements of humanity concentrate in due proportion to form the kingdom of God. Let this achievement of a son of the Empire State, be our Symbol of an Art, which is no taste- AET IN NEW TOEK. 225 ful ornament of a factitioTis gentility, but the ideal- ization of our Commonwealth. No bird of foreign plumage flying over the sea, and perching on our metropolitan roofs, is the art which we celebrate, but that central Spirit of Beauty which appre- hends and reproduces the splendors of our nature, penetrates to the sublimity of our idea of human- ity, and through the carved marble, on the painted canvas, in the blended sounds of music, by the proportions of architecture, and the arrangements of a free industry, in the higher loveliness of home, and the graces and pleasures of a society as generous as refined, proclaims the Harmony of a Civilization, which, founded on the reverence for God and man in the soul of every inhabitant of New York, shall rise into the well-built fabric of a Republican State, great and glorious in its fidelity to the Eternal Eule of Love. The State of New York has not withh olden her tribute to the progress of Art in America. Among the earliest associations for the promotion of good taste in our country was the Academy of Fine Arts in our chief city, established in 1804, by the exer- tions of such men as Chancellor Livingston, De Witt Clinton and Eobert Fulton. In 1826, was founded the National Academy of Design by the energy of the Artists of the same city, led by one 10* THE STUDIOS ; OR, whose name is forever connected with the Mag- netic Telegraph, the crowning romance of Modem Life. At different times since, other associations have arisen in various portions of the State, which deserve the praise of awakening the inhabitants of a growing commonwealth to the claims of artis- tic cxdtivation. In the honorable array of names devoted to the arts none are more worthy than those who were bom upon our soil or have been drawn hither by our opportunities for the practice of their high profession. And whatever may be the claims of other States in special refinement, the united voice of the country now declares our greatest city the centre of artistic influences for America. Within the memory of young men this door to European culture and refinement has been thrown wide open, and henceforth the old world win be laid under tribute for her best trea- sures to grace the life of the metropolis of lihe western continent. And by its commanding po- sition our State must become the grand distributor of these influences through the vast area from the Atlantic to the Faciflc shores. The social ideas and the conceptions of art which prevail in our commonwealth must, by the necessities of that position, become the most powerful instructors of millions of our countrymen. Elected by Provi- AKT m NEW YORK. 227 dence to guide the youthful taste of a nation on whose fate the hopes of human freedom are now staked ; with what purity of heart and energy of patriotic enthusiasm should we gird ourselves to the high task of making New York, now greatest in power, chief in the nobler eminence of a refine ment that is the form of justice and love. From our central and commanding position two decided tendencies in Artistic Life have already appeared. In many wealthy and cultivated cir- cles of our cities no one can mistake a sincere pre- judice in favor of those ideas of man and society which are the soul of old world despotism. This idea of man proceeds logically to the European idea of refinement as associated with a permanent nobility of wealth, rank, or cultivation and art as the finest luxury of an aristocracy rather than the idealization of a people's existence. This belief appears in that wholesale imitation of foreign so- ciety, amusements, and arts which turns in disgust from the vital developments of native civilization and aims at building a little Europe in the cities of New York, which shall give down the law of life to the benighted freemen of the Empire State. In opposition to this effort to reproduce an old world conception of refinement, we everywhere discover the vigorous growth of that indescribable 228 THE studios; oe, and original taste, which is known all over the cirilized world as New YorTdsm. In its best ap- pearance it is the vigorous assertion of an enthu- siastic and confident individuality. The true New Yorker firmly believes himself the most splendidly endowed and circumstanced creature of God's earth. He identifies himself with the greatness of his State, and from this mount of vision generously dispenses himself among the rest of mankind as their various needs may demand. When bounded by the limits of moral law, this character with its inspiring swing of executive force, the bewildering grandeur of its imagination and the contagious generosity of its sentiments, is one of the most irresistible ever let loose on this planet, and contains the elements of im- mense success or fearful wreck in American affairs. But while we are occasionally inspired with its highest manifestations, we are too often shocked and disgusted with the splendid selfishness and magnificent vulgarity that attend its lower demon- strations. Our new prosperity is playing such antics in every town and vUlage as shock every mind of true refinement. In the audacity of a social aristocracy seated on its heap of gold; in the frightful sensuality of multitudes of first people from New Tork to Niagara; in the ostentations AET IN NEW TOEK. style of building, upholstery, dress and equipage, and the steamboat manners and expensive pleasures by which hosts of our young people vainly at- tempt to become the gentlemen and ladies they never can be until they return to nature and com- mon sense ; and in that capacity of miscellaneous enthusiasm which leaves our metropolitan mind the victim to any powerful excitement from the horrors of a Burdell tragedy, or the fervors of a Great Awakening to the showy follies of a Broad- way reception of a popular demagogue or the pompous funeral of a native bully ; we are ever re- minded that our native development of taste is still dashing through the low grounds of materialism and in danger of being swamped in the slough of a new barbarism. Yet between these dangers of a servile worship of foreign ideas and a native barbarian luxury, we have no hesitation in choosing the tendency to N&w Torkism. "We know its present immorality and vulgarity, but this is not the whole, nor the most vital part of its life. It is the people of New York trying to create a society a/nd art expressive of their existence. As such we hail its belief in individual man, its grandeur of purpose, its splen- did generosity, its irresistible enthusiasm, and believe in these great elements is vigorous life to 230 THE STUDIOS ; OE, shake itself clear of the ridiculous and wicked habits that now deform its character. Every first effort of a whole people for refinement is necessarily rude and somewhat wrong-headed and low-hearted ; but in the sincerity with which New York is rushing towards a splendid ideal, is a pro- phecy of success. And we can only praise that confident and enthusiastic sense of power, without which no great people can get out of the woods. A self-depreciating, finical, drawing-room refine ment, may be a pleasant guest at an evening entertainment in certain quarters, but it is a poor weapon to cut down the American forests of ignorance, vulgarity and sin, vanquish the thou- sand foes of freedom, and lay the comer-stone of a glorious State, deep and strong enough to bear up the majestic temple of a Christian society. We are not on the side of those who would detract from the refinement of the past and the old world. Thank God for all that has been and is there of beauty and cultivation. But New York has a better destiny than to go down on her knees before a class refinement, that dates from the contempt of man; even the destiny of inaugurating a refine- ment that includes the whole people of a great State. Let her take her stand boldly and hope- fully on man and work for him, and as she AST IN HEW TOEK. 231 advances in her Bublime toil, generously appropri- ate every vital and congenial element of foreign or past culture that can be wrought into her web of beauty; and while withholding no admiration from the few souls whose genius and fame are of the world and for all time, still keep her footstep on her own soil and her eye lifted upward towards the rising sun and the " Excelsior " that inspired the faith of the fathers to make her what she is. For ov/r curt Tuiust he the idealization of" mam, in his nati/oe dignity, growing amid the cir- cumstances of a new world into a nobler social state than the earth has yet beheld j an art to which all re/mements of the old time and all cidiure of for- eign lands shall finally become tributary : and which can afford to be yowng and crude for a cen- tury m hope of a glorious mMlmri1/y, which shall be a new descent of beauty from Hea/oen to ma/n. "We insist on the fidelity of New York to her best native taste as the chief condition of asserting her position as the dispenser of ideas of beauty in the Bepublic. The path to American art is the same that was opened by the immortal declaration of our national independence. The true culture of every nation is the idealization of its deepest conviction and highest admiration in art and character ; and no people can permanently be attracted by what 232 THE STUDIOS ; OE, is not rooted in tlieir most profound national life Every ordinary success in the realm of the beauti- ful has been achieved by obedience to this law. The sculpture, and architecture, and poetry of Greece were only the majestic idealization of what all Greeks beUeved of man. If it still remains the grandest monument to physical beauty and intel- lectual power ever erected by human genius, it is because symbolic of one view of humanity which will never be repeated on so complete a scale. The painting, poesy and architecture of the great Ca- tholic artists of the middle ages, were the highest representation of that sentiment of adoration for a Divine Polity which changed a barbarous Europe into the forms of modem civilization: and the permanence of this art is assured because the world can never again so entirely prostrate itself before this idea. Who does not know that the Ger- man music of the last century is the most subtle in- terpreter of the wondrous German character and civilization; and must forever remain a world apart, wherein humanity may read this phase of its varied history. The most characteristic political genius of Ameri- can civilization struck the key note of her art as the prophecy of her Kepnblicanism in the sublime preamble to the Declaration of Independence. ABT IN NEW TOKK. 233 Our nationality can become a commanding and en- during force in human affairs, only by fidelity to the belief in man, there announced. Man, the centre of the created universe, the crown of God's work and the brightest suggestion of His glory ; under divine guidance capable of self-government in all things ; instructed here in a school of moral and social freedom, for the larger realization of his destiny hereafter, is the corner-stone of American existence. On this rock of adamant must we build in our national art, or the foundations of our most showy imitations of foreign ideas will be under- mined and the memory of our servility in the domain of beauty pass away from the earth. Every success of the mind of New York in ideal- izing past ideas of man, however graceful and complete in appearance, will be only the small suc- cess of a clique, and recognized only as imitation of what can never be twice done for eternity. But the sincere endeavor to symbolize her best idea of man will abide, however rude may be its first en- deavors. Many a page in the daily journal filled with the hot blood of our crude aspiration for free- dom will endure beyond the most elegant repro- duction of a literature that is passing away. And many an American artist of hopeful powers, is now laboriously paddling his craft back into the ideas 234 THE STUDIOS ; OE, of the middle ages only to be lost in it gilded haze, while others of feebler sldll but sterner fidelity wiU be borne along the current of our life to the haven of an honorable fame. But that fame will be proportioned to the faith in the most profound ideas of the Eepublic. There are many ways of believing in man, and the civilization of our Commonwealth is now be- fogged in the mists and bogs of a sensual " New Yorkism." It is easy for our young artists to drink of this highwine of our luxurious selfishness, till in their heady enthusiasm they sink to the representa- tion of the material side of society and that part of nature where the brute and man unite in a com- mon admiration. If they are* satisfied with the money, and flatulent praise and hectic notoriety which comes from the idealization of a " rowdy " •nature and a " fast " humanity, they may be safely left to their doom. But the young men and women who swear eternal fealty on the altar of man's spiri- tual dignity, and paint, carve, biuld, sing, live from that with a persistence that will resist every surge of popular sensuality and delusion, will be known and loved in the New York that is to be. There- fore, let every wise man free himself from all sus- picions of a refinement that is less than the sym- bol of a paramount reverence for the soul as the ABT nj NEW TOEK. 235 brightest image of God ; believing that no vulgar- ity is so fatal ia the end as that which despises one human being, and no beauty will endure save that which mirrors the eternal love of God. With this idea possessing his soul, let the citizen of New York wander over his own superb domain of nature and envy no man. For whether he meditates the fair picture of his Metropolitan City, blending with her surrounding waves in the golden dimness of an October afternoon ; or from Catskill's summit beholds the valley of the Hudson smitten by the morning sun ; or floats over the liquid mys- tery of Lake George and contemplates her silent mountains and enchanted shores; or from the towers of Utica, queen of inland towns, sees Oneida's fields sloping upwards to her encircling hills ; or m the rail car exults in the grandeur that hurries past the traveller over Erie's path of splen- dor ; or in the tossing skiff uncovers his face and gazes upward where the rejoicing sea bounds over Niagara's summit ; or from out the storm of spray on the " Maid of the Mist " beholds through watery vistas the emerald gates of Paradise swinging amid the flitting glory of a thousand vanishing rainbows ; or, tired of society, wanders off amid the awful snmnuts of the Adirondack, and in the solitude of endless streams and boundless woods finds himself 236 THE STUDIOS ; OK, in his eternal union with the Author of creation ; everywhere is her nature the wondrous type of his soul's destiny and the subtlest symbol of his earthly career. Then let him rejoice to know that nowhere on this commonwealth does the land overlay the spirit, for 600,000 freemen own its 13,000,000 cul- tivated acres and its wildernesses invite the occu- pation of thousands more. So is the earth in its native features and its cultivated aspects, adjusted to its lord, and man beholds therein his garden of industry and his emblem of existence. If this citizen be gifted with the genius to adorn the can- vas, let him follow the lead of our noblest painters, and in Durand's CatsHU Cloves, and Hart's Esopus, and Boughton's fragrant hayfields of the Hudson, and Kensett's gorgeous autumnal vie\f, and the Niagara of Church, recognize the true inspira- tion and follow the path to fame. But if it be not given him to idealize the nature of New York in any form of imitative art, let him remember that the perfect farm smiling out of a cultivated land- scape, the railway springing over a Portage bridge, the factory clustering around the mountain torrent, the steamer gliding over Champlain, and the ware- house beautiful in its order, and, chief of all, the tasteful home, are children of the same imagina- ABT IN NEW YOEK. 237 tion that carves an " Indian Girl,"' or sets a song of freedom to a people's voice. Let our youth be taught by parents and teachers the finest accom- plishment of looking at the nature of the Empire State with eyes of refined and generous enthu- siasm ; of sketching her scenes of beauty ; of living out of doors amid her ennobling and invigorating influences. So shall the people of this gracious domain learn to recognize the glory amid which they live ; and through affectionate admiration for nature, ever grow into worthier masters of a match- less heritage. "When we come to the contemplation of the individual man as the subject of art, let us not fall into the heresy of representing him according to any fantasy of despotism. Let his servile relations be forgotten, let degrading associations be ignored, and be it the destiny of our artists to symbolize that native dignity and equality of right which is the deepest fact of his nature and the key to his history. We have no admiration to bestow on those skillful workmen who represent humanity according to an European or Asiatic pattern. We felt that an Art Union that was filling our country houses with pictures of society in which the colored American appeared only as a slave, was a siimer against good taste no less than humanity. We 238 THE studios; ob, shall hail the day when our native music will strike a loftier string than its negro minstrelsy, which, spite of our laughter, is the mournful song of our national shame. When the drama is elevated enough to drop her flunkey adulation to kings and queens, and can see the tr;5gedy and comedy in the life of Mr. and Mrs. John Smith, citizens of the United States of America, eminent divines will not quarrel over the barren question whether the thea- tre is the road to heaven or heU, for the people will go to the play and return nobler men and women, and leave the doctors to weave cobwebs at their leisure. The artists are now alive who dare chal- lenge the people to admire the angelic childhood, generous womanhood and strong manhood of New York sculptured in living marble or breathing on the enchanted canvas. Let the youth of our State learn music in school, at home, everywhere in their daily life; and the harmony that sings of man's innate nobility will by and by entrance them beyond the mysteries of the foreign concert or opera, endured for dear fashion's sake. "Wherever man in his individual dignity appears in our higher poetry, let us hail the advent of a new fact in literature, and let the severe test of admittance to our fraternity of artistic life be reverence for the soul, devotion to freedom, belief in the supreme ABT IN NEW TOSK. 239 beauty of men's eternal childhood to the father whose smile is the love of the universe. This central reverence for man will be our guide through the region of those Ornamental Arts which beautify society while they stimulate the industry of the people. The architecture of New York should not, like that of Greece and Kome, work downward jfrom palaces and temples, but upward from the American home. The temporary fashion of huddling in marble fronted caravansaries, in im- itation of old-world habits, will finally disappear, and the home, built and furnished according to the means, convenience and finest taste of a Re- publican family, will become the germ of native architecture and ornamental arts. In New York the State and Church are but associations of free citizens, and our buildings for the accommodation of the servants of the people, and the ceremonies of Government and Keligion, will finally represent a Christian Democracy, as certainly as the acres of palace and cathedral, and the royal parks and hunting grounds, symbolize the Despotism abroad. Whatever public structure in New York sacrifices the convenience of the people to any architectural effect, will eventually be condemned. The finest and most characteristic public rooms in America are the beautiful halls that are appearing in every 240 THE STUDIOS ; OE, city and village in our Northern States, where multitudes can assemble for every honorable pur- pose, from an evening's entertainment to a Sun- day's worship. This Democratic assembly room will by and by expand to a People's Temple ; as the new hotel has sprung up to minister to the wants of our migratory population. Who will teach us to study the wants of a New York family, and build a home where economy, comfort, independence and the elegance of true refinement may concentrate ? Our State offers such facilities for a charming domestic life as few _^spots on earth. Our long green valleys, threaded by the railroad, open their arms to the weary citi- zen ; our thousand inland cities and villages can become as many centres' of taste and virtue. "When the young women of the Empire State learn to waive the excitements of a brick box on Madison Square, and the colored river of Broad- way in favor of a spacious home, and a garden cultivated by their own hands, with cheerfulness, usefulness and long life in our lovely country ; when the fashionable heresy of female idleness, shall be exploded in favor of the introduction of women to the practice of the many ornamental arts that ti-ansform a hard, barren existence to a genial and fruitful life ; we may look for a new AKT IN NEW TOEK. 241 revelation of Beauty whicli will convert the ex- terior of the Commonwealth to, a grander picture than artistic genius has conceived. The polite society of our State must recognize the native worth of Man, and free itself from all narrow conceits, which hinder the development of that cosmopolitan fraternity of feeliDg which be- comes a EepubUc composed of all civilized nations. While the descendants of each race, or the disci- ples of each " ism," or the retainers of each family, cuddle in little exclusive knots, we shall have no society worthy our great Civilization. Fortimate- ly there is little danger that the aristocracy of money will ever become a permanent fact; our periodical panic can be trusted to dissolve any col- lection of expensive families to their original ele- ments as often as may be desirable. The artificial manners of a clique will hardly corrupt our peo- ple while they only expose their unfortunate pro- fessors to that broad popular humor which is the best human instrument yet devised for "taking the starch out " of affected superiority. We must understand here, that a true American society means, first : a Christian home, strong, bright, hospitable and simple as becomes the sov- ereigns of a free soil ; and secondly, a wide, varied and natural style of social intercourse, excluding 11 242 THE STUDIOS ; OB, only vice and obstinate vulgarity. Doubtless in the organization of such a society, many a fastid- ious mind will find ample occasion for disgust at the rudeness and sensuality of the people. But since a Christian gentleman or lady should go abroad not to exhibit their own superiority, but to entertain, and elevate, and bless their fellow beings, we need waste no special pity on such finical griefs. Our social boisterousness and ambitious taste are but the effects of our popular vigor, and how much nobler to use the refinement we have to lift a neighborhood to the love of Beauty, than to draw off into the delicately tinted shell of our small conceit, and be a social snail in a world of living men. Our natural amusements are not being developed in the metropolis where thousands are squandered for the delectation of the few ; but in every neigh- borhood where the people are using the talent and resources they have to mate life cheerful. Do not sit in your rocking-chair over the register or the stove, young woman of the New York village or farm, dreaming of the glare of gas or the blaze of diamonds and the glittering crowd, that you saw on your last visit to the town ; but be up and astir among the people around you. The same human nature can here be developed into a refinement as AST m NEW TOEK. 243 genniiie as that of the capital. Make your home a paradise; stir up your neighbors to pure and pleasant enjoyments, and identify your name with the growth of a community in Kepublioan graco Do not wait tiU you have money and position there is money and pretension enough in the State now; our chief need is a pure, joyous, fearless spirit to organize our rich elements of life into the most inspiring society of the time. Eeject the pitiful ambition to push yourself among any circle of " select," for before you get there a turn of the wheel may disperse the circle and leave you alone with your wasted time. But cherish the laudable desire to leave the people about you more closely united by that respect for each other's manhood and womanhood which will blossom into the only refinement that will abide. Our habit of frequent public gathering in con- ventions and mass meetings will, by and by, put on another feature, and great public holidays relieve the monotomy of our life. The agricultu- ral fair, the teachers' association, the political mon- ster meetings where men, women, children and babies come by the acre and sit out the long, autumn day in council on the affairs of freedom are the natural holidays of New York ; and few sights are more inspiring to a generous taste than 244: THE STUDIOS ; OE, such outpourings of popular enthusiasm and joy. No man, no class is great enough to make society in New York ; but the wisest men and women can watch its native developments, and help the peo- ple realize their best ideas of social existence in the pure and refined union of an American bro- therhood. Thus are we led up the various degrees of ascent to the summit of Beauty, in a perfect state. For the culmination of art is not in painting, or sta- tuary, or music, or architecture, or polite society, since all these do but hint the glory of a social order founded on the sentiment of human love. The Bublimest achievement of man is a state wherein nature is wrought into the varied symbol of a free humanity; and every great interest, class and profession is harmoniously adjusted ; and the commonwealth, poised on everlasting justice, is the lively image of the great republic on high. Grander work than this was never given to man ; to mould New York into the commanding force in a Christian confederacy of States. In this mighty enterprise every inhabitant of our large domain becomes a worker elected by God, bound to leave on his comer of the majestic fabric the best results of character. Then whether our lot be cast AET m NEW TOBK. 245 within the circle of professional Art, or range out- side in the common area of life, each labors for the verdict of ages, beneath the eye of the Great Artist who created the world and pronounced it good. In such a calling let each fervent soul count it worthy of all devotion to become an image of the Divine Loveliness, and shape the commonwealth into a sublime figure of the kingdom of God. THE PENITENTIARY; OR, CRIME IF NEW YORK. It is a lasting honor to the city of Albany that she has chosen one of the healthiest and most charming sites upon her lovely range of hiUs for her model Penitentiary. This noble institution has been in complete operation ten years, and may challenge comparison with any similar establish- ment in our country. Notwithstanding the great variety in national character among its convicts — nearly every civilized country being represented in the inmates — and the large number and fre- quent changes of its inhabitants, 1,000 persons yearly passing under its discipline, many of whom are committed for a brief period, the success of its management has been undoubted. A perfect dis- cipline is enforced, habits of industry formed, and the receipts of the ten years amount to $10,000 84T 248 THE PEinTENTrAET : OE, beyond its expenditures. If more decided moral results are demanded we must not in justice expect them of the officers of the Penitentiary while the citizens of Albany permit 3,000 barbarous and untaught youth to roam her streets, pouring a constant stream of convicts in at its ever gaping doors and seething like a pit of perdition before every discharged criminal. To require the over- worked officers of such an institution to reform in a month these persons, we have spent twenty years in debauching from the paths of virtue, is an insult to humanity and common sense. The condition of criminal affairs in our own city, is a good type of this great state. We have the best penitentiary in America, and keep eight hundred grog-shops at work on 3,000 youthful vagrants, that it may not rot for want of tenants. Our State has a system of criminal jurispru- dence and a prison organization, needing only the lopping away of here and there a barbaric fea- ture, to make it the pride of a civilized community. But for want of wholesome prevention of crime and of Christian interest in the criminal, our laws are not executed, our courts too often made a mockery of justice, our State prisons left in the hands of partisan politicians, our jails and our poor-houses disgracefully neglected, our CEIME IN NEW TOEK. 249 benevolent and reformajory institutions chocked witli occupants, and altogether matters are in a bad state and rapidly becoming worse. To arouse the minds of the people to their duty on this great interest of the prevention and punishment of crime, and the Christian discipline of the criminal shall be the object of my present address. The State of New York has not been remiss in her efforts to solve the question of the puni^iinent of crime. The earliest movement for the melioration of her criminal code and the establishment of a system of prison discipline, was associated with the honored names of John Jay, Ambrose Spencer and General Schuyler. In 1776, siirteen oflFences were capitally punished by the laws of the State, and the Criminal Code was proportionally severe in other respects. Now, but three crimes are capitally punished, and the law in other respects is conformable to the growing humanity of the age. The first prison which resulted from this early movement — " Newgate," in the city of New York — ^was an imitation of the Pennsylvania system; but after repeated experiments in the social and solitary modes of discipline, it was reserved for Lyndes and Cray to inaugurate that system which is now adopted in nineteen States of the Union. This method provides for associated, though n* 250 THE PENTTENTIABT ; OE, silent labor by day, and solitary confinement by night, and with sure penalties annexed to disobedi- ence, and the aid of religious and literary privi- leges on Sundays and evenings of every day. In 1821, this system went into operation at Auburn, in 1825 the State Prison for male, and in 1835 for female convicts at Sing Sing, and in 1845, the Clinton prison, were built. New Yorit has also the honor of being the first State to establish a House of Kefuge for youthful offenders, and an Asylum for Idiots. We now have three State prisons, containing 2,000 convicts ; two Houses of Kefuge, and three county Penitentiaries, which, with our jails and work-houses, contain 4,000 more. In 1856 there were more than 11,000 con- victions for crime in the State. "We are not prepared to criticise the criminal system of our State. From our point of observa- tion, excepting its barbarous feature of capital punishment for three crimes (one of which was never committed, and the other two gaining impu- nity every year from the disinclination of the peo- ple to inflict their own inhuman penalty), the sys- tem appears well contrived and humane. Yet, it cannot be denied that, like every other great inter- est of humanity in New York, itB working is a sad commentary on our Christianily. We are still CEIME m NEW TOKK. 261 weak enongh to suppose tliat if a great public interest is well organized, it will take care of itself. Thus, having established a good system for educat- ing the people, and regulating crime, we leave it and rush off into the mad pursuit of wealth, and are surprised when statistics point to 90,000 unlet- tered adult citizens , and the armies of savages in our great cities ; and the daily journals teem with astoimding revelations of crime committed with impunity. "We appoint three Inspectora of State Prisons with almost despotic power for good or evil, and then permit the political parties to choose political as- pirants to this great priesthood of humanity, who fiU these schools of the State with a transient crowd of office seekers. We appoint chaplains and teachers and establish libraries in the prisons, but by our meagre salaries we bid for inefficiency in these sacred offices ; and while the preacher to a respectable congregation in New York has $5,000 a year, this great State hires a man to convert the congregation at Sing Sing for $500 ; while the teachers receive $150, and the libraries are meagre and insufficient. We are inexorable on the point that the State prisons shall " pay their way," not thinking that if these criminals can be reformed it will be a gain of manhood as well as money be- 252 THE PENTTENTIAltT ; OE, yond computation. Our benevolent associations that are empowered to elevate the condition of the prisoner, languish for want of support, and the em- barrassment cast in their way by refractory officials. We have sufficient legislation to secure a good con- dition of County Jails and Poor-houses, yet I am almost ashamed of human nature when I read the report of the Legislative committee of Jan. 9th, 1857, on the disgraceful state of many of these in- stitutions. Our Lunatic Asylum is overflowing, and humanity demands additional faciUties for the treatment of insanity and the classification of its victims. There is still great injustice committed in the imprisonment of witnessess. WLUe the people choose the men they often do to administer justice, the best organized court and noblest code in Christendom will be powerless to protect the peace, property and life of the community. And let not our executive be made the scape-goat to bear the retribution for all this, while the people, as represented by their courts and juries, think that all these faults can be atoned for by demanding an indiscriminate pardon of convicts. The cause of this state of anarchy into which our criminal affairs is drifting is found in the wicked indifference of the masses of our people to the whole subject of crime. Vainly will systems CEIME m NEW TOEK. 253 be deriaed, wMle their operation depends on a people who choose its oflBcers and inspire its spirit with the strangest disregard to Christian reflection, A vast majority of those who choose judges, legis- lators, inspectors, and appoint virtually all the officials of justice, neither know what our criminal system is, nor concern themselves for its operation. Of course this culpable negligence reacts on them- selves, and the fearful increase of crime hardens the hearts of the people against the crinunal. There are always men enough ready to stimulate the barbarism of the community into a ferocious demand for more severe penalties, and a furious onslaught against humane ideas of justice. Of all sorts of demagogues, we count those among the most dangerous who use their position in press, pulpit, or official station to exasperate the people against the criminal; urging them to atone for their own negligence in the administration of a good system by a return to the savage practices of a bygone age. We do not need a more severe criminal code ; indeed it is already in some points too stringent; we need no sudden reorganization of our courts, and system of pxmishments. But we do need a revival of attention among the 600,000 voters of this State to the whole subject of crime — its causes, prevention and discipline — which shall 254 THE PEOTTENTIABT ; OK, result in filling all positions of this department of society with firm, able, humane men, who will work the machinery according to the intention of its founders, and take such measures to protect society from the commission of wrong as a Christ- ianized people can devise. The most magnifi- cently built and rigged ship cannot sail if the tide flows out from beneath her keel and leaves her in the muddy bottom of the harbor; the grandest system of criminal discipline in a Republic, can only float when public opinion runs deep, strong and full below it and wafts it to the haven of success. We have, therefore, no right to impute the pre- sent working of our criminal affairs to the failure of that system of Humanity which proposes the protection of society through the reformation of the criminal as the great end. When the people have done their duty, it will be time to decide whether we shall cease dealing with the criminal as a man, and remand him to the conditions of a wild beast. We claim that the reformatory method of dealing with this fearful problem is the only one which will ultimately redeem society. And this method is not founded, as is so often asserted, on sympathy with, or even a light view of crime itself. CRIME m NEW TOEK. 255 We do not base the demand for reformatory treatment of the criminal on a loose, but on a strict view of his moral condition. It would only be a caricature of philanthropy to assert that the offen- der is made so entirely by circumstances, and is a more unfortunate, not a worse man than his neigh- bors. To assert that any large class of men is compelled to do wrong by circumstances, is to de- clare that the devil, not God, rules on the earth. Every soul is provided with a defence against temptation ; and the hardest extremity of human virtue always opens into the possibility of the glorious achievement of martyrdom. When we speak of circumstances we must be very uncertain who shall be excused on this ground, for it is by no means sure that the poor, ignorant and obscure are the most dangerously tempted. Nobody lives in such a fire of temptation iu America, as the man chosen by thirty-two States to stand for four years as the Representative of the Eepublic. The richest man in every town, the ablest man in every State, is beset with such fiends as make his position not enviable even when compared with the poorest man that lives upon his bounty. Every soul has its forty days in the wilderness, and in some way Satan has a tug at the heart- strings of each one of us. And to every child of 256 THE PENTTENTIAET ; OE, God is given the power to resist the uttermost as- saults of evil while reason and responsibility last. We propose no such fallacy as that of excusing any man for sin under the plea of his circum- stances. "We should doubtless endeavor to make the circumstances of all men more favorable to virtue ; the higher as well as lower classes of society need deliverance from their unfavorable surroundings. God alone can measure the guilt of each spirit. We are to assume that every man who does wrong has violated his holy law, and act accordingly.^ But here is our mistake : thai wiUfuL transgres- sion demands vindictive ptmisAment. ^Nothing of the kind is authorized in our dealing with our fel- low creatures. Every crime deserves at our hands, not revenge either for restitution or exam- ple, but discipline for the reformation of the offen- der. We deal with the criminal not as the final umpire on his fate — ^that is God's vocation — ^but to restore him to virtue. Thus only can we perform oilr duty to him or society. For society demands not the protection that comes from killing or caging a dangerous animal, but that which comes from the restoration of one of her members who has fallen out of his place. The criminal needs not punishment to embitter his lot ; God will give him CBIMB IN NEW YOBE. 257 a pain of conscience amply sufficient for his powers of endurance ; he needs the fatherly hand of society laid on him for wholesome restraint ; needs to be sequestered from the scene of his old temptations and crimes and taught by deprivation of accus- tomed social privileges, by constant industry, by reflection, aided by the counsels of good men and good books, how far he has strayed from his obli- gation ; if necessary, needs the whole moral force of society concentrated for his reformation. The State cannot afford to lose a man ; each soul is a vital individual in her brotherhood ; and when one does fall away, it may weU leave the ninety and nine and go out to seek for the lost one. If there be joy in heaven over one sinner that re- penteth; if God is wiUing to adjust the whole moral universe to promote the restoration of the vilest offender; should not the State consider it the noblest exercise of its majesty to bring forth every agency for the conversion of its worst crim- inal, and never be wearied of efforts to bring him home to truth and rectitude ? What a spectacle, should the world's chief Kepublic confess that it could not reform its own criminals ; but must kill some, and ostracize aU from the Christian sympa- thies of the people ! Would not such a state of society be a failure when' it could not convert one 258 THE PENITENTIABT ; OE, murderer, but would be obliged to put him out of the way ? Shall we be content to lose 11,000 men, women and children a year from their posts of service in the State ? Can we afford such a waste of manhood and womanhood ? Oh, let us arouse from our wicked chase for a material success, and save our brethren for themselves, for society, for the cause of Liberty and civilization. Only the Reformatory system will do all these things ; and to allege it will not, is a libel on Christianity. I know all the respectable sophistry by which this method of dealing with crime is opposed. We are charged with nourishing a sympathy for the criminal at the expense of sympathy for the victim of his act, and society. Well, pray, with whom should we sympathize, if not With the criminal? Did God send Jesus Christ to call the righteous or sinners to repentance ? Methinks a man needs our love in proportion as he is fallen from rectitude : needs it to arrest that despair which urges him to frantic excess of crime ; to arouse hope ; to evoke the latent vigor of his soul; to assure him first that man is still his brother, and wiU not let him go ; then, that God is his Father and still pleads with him for repentance ; to recall his self-respect and convince him that he can yet be a man. Is any one ashamed to bestow sympathy on a fallen CRIME ni NEW TOEK. 259 man? Then he is ashamed of that which made Jesus the Saviour of mankind. Does any man fear he shall be accused of sympathy for crime if he indulges in love and service for the criminal ? Jesus was called the " friend of publicans and sinners ;" and there are Pharisees to-day, who love to taunt every philanthropic man with the same charge ; but between Phariseeism and Christianity we should not be slow to choose. None should know better than those who utter this calumny, that we do not justify crime while we love and toil to save the criminal ; and it is time such mis- representation of Divine Charity should find its native home in the " Satanic Press " and not dis- turb the regions of respectable society in a Christ- ian Eepublic. Sympathy with the sufferer ? Why, we suppose the best sympathy we can show to an injured man, is to help him reform his enemy. If he demands our help to revenge himself on a criminal, we as Christ- ian believers must decline. Example? Why, what example are we bound to set before society : that of rendering vindictive punishment for crime, and thus compelling ourselves to become more barba- rous for every offence of the man we punish, or the example of taking possession of every offender to make him a good man, and becoming ourselves 260 THE PENITENTIAET ; OE, more Christian for every ein he commitB ? Donbt- lesB there may be a dangerous lenience, but it is usually the reaction from an overstrained severity. Let society insist on the punishment of death, and all good men will be tempted to let the murderer go; jury, judge, attorney, governor, populace, mil be forced into a dangerous sympathy with the criminal, to vindicate our common humanity. Let society set herself to the glorious task of redeeming her outcasts, and all good men will con- spire in every just method of restraint which will contribute to this end. Let us put away this unchristian hatred against the criminal, and apply ourselves to the Christian duty of recalling these estrays from society, to their renounced fellow- ship with man and thei repudiated obedience to God. The £rst obligation, in this department of duty, is the Prevention of Crime ; and the most impor- tant ; since only by drying the fountain, can the poisonous stream be arrested. The most efficient agency in this work of prevention is the support of aU those public and private means of improve- ment which make a Christian society. If you would prevent crime, teach your children to lovo industry and honesty in business. Idleness, and a habit of dishonesty in trade, are a fruitful source CEIME IN NEW YOEK. 261 of offence. Every young man or woman sent into our Republican society too unskillful or too proud to obtain an honest living by hard labor of hands or mind, or too selfish to respect the rights of others in getting it, is at the mercy of the tempter. Education is a great safeguard against crime, especially if it be a true education, which develops all the powers of our humanity into a harmonious manhood, rather than sharpens the intellect at the expense of the soul. It costs $2 25 a week to sup- port a convict in a jail in Hew York; and we can so administer our public schools that for $10 a year, every child in the State can be raised beyond the temptation of ignorance. The family is the great school where children are fitted for honor or dishonor. Many a child in good society is systematically trained to be a vil- lain by parents who weakly and wickedly indulge its whims, pamper its appetites and turn it loose, an organized willfulness, upon the world. The ambition and luxury of fashionable life tempt thousands to crimes of the deadliest nature ; indeed much that is winked at in the ordinary course of fashionable society, is itself as culpable as offences that send their perpetrators to a prison. Art and amusements inwrought into the texture of society are a safeguard. A hundred youth are driven to 262 THK PENITENTIAET ; OE, wickedness by the ewnui and monotony of our barren social American existence, where one falls through the temptations of such amusements as we now have ; and would Christian people cease their fruitless crusade against the recreations of society and attempt their reformation, we might hope for better things. But especially will education in that radical love of God and man, which is Christianity, insure us against public immorality; for, if anything is demonstrated, it is that respectability and superfi • cial moral propriety are no reliable defence against the surges of evil desire. Every man does the most for the truth by living a holy life in his ordi- nary sphere of duty ; and every noble character is a constant protest and preventive against crime. We have the right also to control those peculiar causes of offence which exist especially in densely populated communities. Blessed be the labors of those who gather together the orphans, the child- ren of the street, the sorely tempted, the poor and the outcast into the fold of a Christian Charity. They are the true architects of society, restoring its fallen members to an honorable place in its harmonies. We may also lay our hand on such causes of public immorality as pander to the worst passions of men. I doubt that intemperance in OEIMK IN NEW TOEK. 263 intoxicatiiig drinks is so large a source of crime as is alleged. Drunkenness itself, is commonly the result of a long deterioration of vitality in the wiU. The real cause of crime is a weakening of moral decision, which is the gradual result of a thousand influences. "When this disease of moral enervation has reached a certain point, it leaves the victim open to the assaults of sensual passions and habits which doubtless react and hasten his descent to ruin. Still, Intemperance is a curse of such potent force, that the State may well overstrain, rather than fail to assert her powers in its suppression. Yet the only test of sumptuary laws is the proba- bility of their enforcement. Not what corresponds to a preconceived theory of prohibition, but what can be thoroughly enforced, is the thing to be incorporated into a law. The failure of our legislation against intemperance, we believe, has been the result of its narrowness. We must include vagrant pauperism, sensuality and drunk- enness in any system of legislation for the preven- tion of crime. Hitherto, we have separated these branches of the same tree, and our success has been doubtful. "When a deeper philosophy comes into the consideration of that whole side of life given over to the debasement of man through his senses, we may be guided to a method which will 264 save the sinner and protect the State. We suspect that Eeformatory Asylums for the victims of the cup and the brothel are to figure largely in this system. Every influence that unites the several interests and classes of society is a preventive of crime. The present tendency that threatens to ostracize the great North American, Asiatic and African races from all participation in the rights of Ameri- can citizenship, will turn out a premium on disor- der. Every class in this republic thrust outside the common privilege of freedom, will finally become a criminal class. Degraded as may be the emigrant that seeks our shores, or the servant that crouches beneath our power at home, our only safety is in educating them to the rights and rank of freemen. Thus by fidelity to the culture of the community, by the wise management of the most obvious causes of offence, by, patriotic union of all classes in the hopes and duties of a common civiliza- tion, may we greatly prevent the approaches of crime. But while the human will remains free, our utmost effort at the prevention of crime will not insure its extirpation; and there seems little hope that our people will be suddenly awakened to their CEIME IN NEW YORK. 265 duties in tliis respect. "We shall doubtless not lack for criminals, these many years, in New York. Let US consider our obligations to them. The first and most imperative duty is to choose competent men to manage our existing system of criminal affairs. Let us apply our minds to ascer- tain just what our system can accomplish under a worthy administration. The greatest good that could happen would be the utter disconnection of our whole judicial and punitive system from parti- san politics. "WhUe men are looking to seats in our halls of justice, and promotion to tlie respon- sible offices in our reformatory institutions, as a reward for caucus services, it is almost vain to hope that any system, however admirable, will be well administered. Woe to that State whose courts, police and prisons, are swayed to and fro by the fierce waves of political change. Yet the tendency seems a growing one, to regard all the officers in a republic as advocates of a victorious party. We believe the people will be driven by sheer necessity and common sense from the dangerous tendency into which they are now hurried by ambitious leaders. We anticipate a revival of wisdom, which shall insist, first of all, on competency, in every candidate for a position connected with our crimi- nal affairs. Let us fill every judicial seat and 12 266 THE PEHITENTIAET ; OH, every post down to the lowest official in jail and police, with a man of first rate integrity and iindoubted capacity; pay well for services done, and be inexorable against neglect or abuse of the position. We may seem to many to be pleading in behalf of the millenninm, when we demand such behavior from the sovereign people ; but it is only by demanding it, and persuading or sham- ing the voters of New York into such a reasonable course, that there is any hope of the perpetuity of our society. Whoever tampers with the integrity of courts, or makes the administration of justice dependent on partisan favoritism, is knocking away the very foundations of social order, and doing his best to precipitate us all into the bottom- less pit of anarchy. The people of New York have the alternative of choosing honest and competent managers of their criminal system, or of submitting to the organization of all decent men into a " Vigi- lance Committee," for the protection of life and property. Let them learn betimes, and insist that the method now on the ground shall have a fair administration. When the court has performed its high obliga- tion, and the criminal passes out of society within the walls of the prison, let him feel that he has not entered a chamber of torture where the Empire CBIMK IN NEW TOBK. 267 State of the American Union wreaks its vengeance on his defenceless head; but rather a seminary, where the chief Eepublic of the world is not ashamed to become his father and mother and train him again in all the ways that lead to hon- orable manhood. Let the officials with whom he comes in contact, not appear so much the grim executioners of a despotic law, as the firm and humane representatives of a Christian Common- wealth that deplores the apostasy of her child, and will spare no pains to guide him into the ways of penitence and peace. Let him receive the comforts of life with none of its superfluities ; for he who would reflect deeply on his duty should waste no time or thought on the indulgence of the senses. The first element of reformation is the establishment of a habit of industry, and the State does wisely that teaches every convict the preliminary lesson of labor in some necessary occupation. But to make a criminal's life all toil, is to degrade him to a machine and destroy the hope of his restoration to manhood. Therefore the industrial life of the con- vict should be only the basis on which should be reared a superstructure of Christian training. Let the wisest teachers divert his mind from the insane intensity of criminal meditation to the contempla- tion of truth. Let him be won to study and 268 THE PENITEimAEY ; OE, thought; and the mental training of the prison not be a mere recreation of the imagination, but a stimulus that shall arouse long slumbering energies and direct the intellect aright. And let religion appear, not in the shape of a frowning superstition, threatening the wretch with tortures and stripes in eternity, but as the father running to meet the prodigal while yet a great way off, and bathing his head with tears of holy joy. Let woman be greatly employed in all those offices that touch on spiritual discipline ; for a pure and holy woman will often find a depth of repentant feeling in the soul of the outcast which would remain forever locked against the presence of man. And let the whole discipline of the Penitentiary resemble God's discipline of his creatures. As the offender rejects the proffered aid, let him behold society fading off from him, and his stone walls closing more firmly about his earthly life. As he accepts the offers of Christian discipline let a new light be cast on his path with every effort towards goodness. Thus may he be made by the State, as by God, in a measure the arbiter of his own destiny, and become an active partner in the exalted work of his own redemp- tion. And when, at last, his prison door opens and he stands again before the society he has offended, let CEIMK IN NEW YOKE. 269 him be met by those who will still be to him the representatives of a Christian brotherhood. No man should be permitted to fall a second time for lack of an arm to guide him away from scenes of old temptation. Here is a field that opens a wide sphere of usefulness to the benevolent heart. Oh, that thousands of the gifted and aspiring of our State might be made to feel that here they can serve their country more effectually than elsewhere. What are the joys of social applause, of literary reputation, of respectable position, compared with the heavenly consciousness of having met one man at the prison door and been his guardian angel back to the final trust and respect of his fellow men? "Who will complain of "nothing to do" when 11,000 of our fellow beings yearly issue from the reformatory institutions of this State, each one a subject for Christian sympathy and influence ? Thus, by a wise administration of a good system — the conversion of the prison into a convict's school, and of society into his instructor — we may solve this fearful problem according to the lights of Christianity, But there is one class of criminals who are placed by our law outside this system of reformation. Wliile the State sustains the attitude of a Christian missionary to the vast majority of her erring 270 THE PENITENTIAET ; OE, children, it still, in violation of her radical sys- tem, remains a pagan executioner towards those convicted of three capital crimes. Nothing so re- minds us of the mingled barbarity and vacillating weakness of an Oriental tyranny, as the position of the State before the murderer. It claims the right to punish without mercy, b\it all the while is shaken with human doubts and relentings, the result of which is, that at some stage of the pro- ceedings, between policeman and high sheriff, a majority of the worst criminals slip through the meshes of the law and go " unwhipped of justice." Those who protest so sternly against this state of affairs should remember that it is not so easy for a Governor of New York to change himself from a Chiistian gentleman to a pagan Brutus as they may imagine; and that to secure the invincible sternness they demand, they must go back at least five hundred years to an age of iron vindictiveness and bloodshed. This lenience of society is the universal protest against the law ; and if the statute stiU threatens death, it will increase till conviction will be impossible, and the murderer become a licensed character. "Why do we not learn wisdom of our past failures and repeal a law which now is a premium on the last extrenuty of crime ? It is to be hoped the time has passed when the CEIMK IN NEW YORK. 271 religious public will feel called upon to resist this greatly needed reform. We do not question the honesty of many religious people in obstructing this change, but we regard their view a supersti- tion none the less dangerous for being the result of an honest conviction. It is time the Bible should be rescued from that interpretation which makes it the corner-stone of the gallows. The common sense of the whole scriptural argument is: — ^that the Hebrew Nation, like every other Asiatic peo- ple, claimed God Almighty as the author of their code of laws ; and like every other Oriental nation, lived in the commission of slavery, polygamy, exterminating war and the punishment of death for crime. If the practice of the Jewish people is authority for capital punishment to-day, in New York, it is equally authority for slavery in South Carolina, for polygamy in Utah, for even more fierce wars of extermination than have yet been waged by our most savage backwoods soldiery against the pagan Indians. No man can logically defend the gallows from the Old Testament, while he rejects its testimony to these other ancient insti- tutions. The way out of this difficulty, is to inter- pret the Old Testament according to reason and Christianity, and to regard the Hebrew people as a barbarous nation, living 3,000 years ago in Asia, 272 THE PENITENTIAKT ; OE, whose customs, laws, ideas and practices have passed away into history, superseded by that better light of Christian love, under which only a Republic can exist. There is not a word, an act, an idea in the life of Jesus ; there is not a princi- ple of Christianity as he proclaimed it, that ' upholds the gallows. Christianity is the love of God and man ; and by no possible arrangement of the law of Love can you deduce the halter and the executioner. If man has the right to deprive his fellow man of life at all, it can only be in the last extremity of self-defence, of himself or society; and to affirm that society in the Empire State is in immi- nent danger from the presence of a few murderers under Christian discipline in her prisons, is an assertion too puerile to need refutation. Even if the abolition of the death penalty for a time seemed to encourage crime, it would only prove that society was too indolent to do its duty by the convict, not that humanity was a failure. But the testimony is all on the side of mercy. Every melioration of the criminal cgde under favorable circumstances has increased the security of life, and the safest condition of society is not now that where the criminal code is most unrelenting, but that in which death is a punishment never or most rarely known to the law. CEIME IN HKW TOEK. 273 Every plea for the retention of the gallows resolTcs itself into a plea for moral inaction. Ifo- body doubts it is easier for the people of this State to hire a hangman to put a criminal out of the world than to concentrate the moral forces of the commonwealth for his reformation ; but God will call us to a strict account for every man we thus destroy to save ourselves the trouble of his conver- sion. Are there not spiritual resources in this mighty Republic to reach the soul of any murderer in your domain ? If not, let us hold a day of fast- ing and prayer, and implore God to revive our religion again and again, till it is strong enough to grapple with these outcast ones and melt them by the power of love into penitence and reconciliation to heaven and man. Meanwhile, no service to our State is so valuable as labor directed to the reformation of the thou- sands of youth who are growing iip in our cities and towns in an apprenticeship to misery, ignor- ance and vice. The report of the Albany Peniten- tiary for 1856, declares that no less than 2,000 such youth roam the streets of our ancient city, and we know the depths of youthful depravity that fester in every large commimity in our State. Oh, let us be ashamed to call ourselves a Christian State, while these heathen rise up to mock our 12* 274 THE PENITEirnAET ; OR, pretence ! Men and women of wealth and culture ; young men and women whom I behold all about me, slowly perishing with ervwm and social formal- ity ; ministers of Christ, professors of Christianity ; people who only claim the reputation of common humanity; what are we doing for our heathen? Oh, fearful will be our retribution if we permit these youth to go on their gloomy way to crime and earthly ruin ! Let us awake to our obligation to these, our perishing brothers and sisters ! Let us all turn preachers in word and life, that society may be rescued from this moral scrofula in her blood; that every erring spirit may hear the tidings of salvation ; be saved for himself^ saved for the State, saved for citizenship in that Kingdom of Heaven, which will come when all men love God as the father, and the neighbor as them- selves. XI. WOMAN IN AMERICA. OuE consideration of civilization would be in- complete without a chapter on Wbmcm in America. What is the present condition, the true culture, the right position of woman in our Eepublican society ? America has no national type of female character and society. The American woman dwells in a nation that has not yet enjoyed a century of char- acteristic existence ; indeed the present generation is the first that has lived in a self-conscious America. Ten millions of American women are let loose over an area of three nullions of square miles to help ten millions of men and eight mil- lions of children create a Eepublican society. From these women restraint is removed as in no former period of the world's history. Freedom, in its widest and best significance, is dawning upon woman in our land, and she cannot fail to be influ- enced in her whole existence by her novel posi- tion. 276 •WOMAN IN AMERICA. To say that the American woman fully appre- ciates this glorious opportunity, much less acts ■worthy of her position, would be to affirm her the angel she is only in the poetaster's and story-teller's columns of the monthly magazines. With the same human nature that played false with Mother Eve, she is here called to realize a grander fact than ever before existed — a Eepublican society. It is no slander to say she has not yet realized it, but is enslaved in sight of her boundless opportunity. The material advantages of freedom are always appropriated before men rise to its spiritual appli- cations. If our young men too often differ from the young men of other cduntries, rather in their abuse, than appreciation of their social freedom, so, as far as our young women are American, do they to an equal extent exemplify the lower rather than the higher traits of the national character. Thus while everybody knows many fine women, nobody has found a fine republican neighborhood or a satisfactory state of social life. American women are, just now, bewildered by their own position. The great mixture of people in cities and large towns, where customs and fash- ions originate, divides the mass into a thousand contradictory elements. Society is an uncertain fluctuating ocean, on whose shore every girl stands W<1AIAN IN AMEKIOA. 277 watcliing her opportunity to spring aboard tlie finest craft that is whirled..,vf;thin her reach. During this formative period of social life, the material advantages of our condition have a fatal fascination to our young coimtry women. There was never a race of men acquiring wealth and position so fast as the young men of America ; so every farmer's, mechanic's or merchant's daughter ; every girl at her needle, her studies, her school- teacher's desk, has a mighty temptation to keep the brightest corner of her best eye open for the coming man, who shall appear in his coach at her mother's door, carry her to a beautiful home, and bear her on from triumph to triumph in her social career. Honor to those who fix their eyes on the higher spiritual prizes of American freedom, and live out the resolve to found their success on, something better than money and ease ; but they are the chosen few. The crowd of American girls do what women would do everywhere; neglect the higher culture of the soul in the scheming or waiting for the sensual advantages of life, and spend the golden years of their first quarter of a century, rather in superficial occupations and inquiring after desirable husbands, than in toiling to become good wives and Eepublican mothers. This fearful push for the material prizes of our 278 WOMAN m AMEBIOA. national life, explains the imperfect education of American young womdn; Mothers and daughters vie in the cultivation of those temporary graces and accomplishments vrhich are supposed to bring young men to a crisis in the affections, while the solid qualities which can alone retain the love of a rational man, or fit a woman for genuine success, are postponed till life is upon them. It also accounts for the ridiculous imitation of foreign fashions, which makes Boston a sham London, and New York a sham Paris, and arrays the girls of every western town in obedience to the fash- ion plates of Godey and Harper. It is the chief cause of the restlessness of women, and the want of peace in family and social life ; for young women who are crazed with this ambition, cannot be quiet enough to develop that sweetness and strength, which is the rock at the centre of earthly life, and next to God's love, the best support of man. And this is the secret cause of the fearful collapse of female health in America ; for standing on tiptoe, watching the chance to leap aboard a fairy, floating palace that wavers over a stormy sea, is not a healthy, though an exciting occupation. It forces children through the grades of girlhood with steam power rapidity to young ladyhood, while they should be romping in pantalets, learning wouAN m a2o;bica. 279 science or household duties tmder their teachers and mothers. This rush of energy to the surface of life, the excitements, hopes and fears of the young lady's career, leave the deep places of the heart dry, and create a morbid restlessness of the affections, that preys upon the very springs of phy- sical existence ; so the majority of American girls, when they have obtained their lover, are not physi- cally fit to become his wife and the mother of his children, and the bright path of girlhood dips down into the valley of shadows, that married life is to woman in thousands of American homes. This material ambition of the girls drives their companions of the other sex into overheated exer- tions in business and exhausts their health and freshness, by awakening at one-and-twenty the sense of obligation belonging to forty ; while their ill-health and practical effeminacy prevent thou- sands of young men from marrying, and thus fear- fully increase the sensuality of the community. It drives the young couple to live beyond their means and sacrifice constant comfort and true fapjily life to occasional splendor and periodical excitement. American men wear out in business keeping up the household, and women wear out in straining after social position. Children are bom with the mark of this career upon them, and brought up 280 WOMAN IN AMEEICA. in a more exaggerated style. The mother at last " breaks down " under social cares, and distrac- tions, and the father has no spot of rest on earth. The American woman has not yet created the American home. As a nation we are jaded, sad, nervous. Our men do not come out of their fine houses with the glory of the Lord shining in their faces, as Moses came down from the mount, but as tired and restless as they went in. The Kepub- lican home that shall cheer, console, and elevate the American people, and the Republican Society that is but its extension and idealization, are yet a vision. Such is now the condition of woman ia America, swayed to a dangerous extent by the temptations of the material side of Republicanism; and it becomes every wise man to drop that style of spread-eagle gallantry, with the Jonathonian order of rhetoric, which yet further inflames the sensualism of the people by false compliments, and speak severely of the faults of the American woman as he would invite her to a like criticism, in faith that she will respond to every true effort to raise her to the central power of the world's only Repub- lican Society. Already does this response begin to be heard. There is another tendency among American ■WOMAN IN AMEEICA. 281 women, equally characteristic of their position and prophetic of the largest results. This tendency may be called " the woman's movement," includ- ing in the term the whole of that new interest in the elevation of the sex, which is now one of the most striking phenomena of the time. "Whoever travels among our peoj^le and listens to the talk of all classes, feels himself in the presence of a mighty inspiration of our national idea of. Christian Freedom ; an aspiration after a freer and wider life, and impatience with the present re- straints and weaknesses of the sex — a blind impulse to do something more Kepublican than is now being done. This feeling, like all popular senti- ments, reveals itself according to the character and circumstances of those it animates. In some isolated circles of pedantic culture, in many homes sunk in materialism, in the saloons of selfish and sensual fashion, it hardly lives at all ; though even here a rousing blast from outside now and then slams an open door, or rattles the window shutters with portentous meaning. But in a thousand homes it prompts the serious inquiry into habits of living, economy, diet, dress, education, amusements, social ideas, and though such discussions are often but a tea-table vapor, their result is generally per- ceptible in the disuse of injurious customs, and the 282 WOUAN m AMEBTOA. begmning of more rational family Hfe. The fire gets into the maiden's eotil, and she grows restive under the round of inanity that the fashionable courteously call " life." Now and then one suc- ceeds in a new sphere and finds in a laborious independence, joys she never knew in a comforta- ble dependence. It sets people talking on mar- riage, and asking why, with such a liberty of choice, so many American women should be badly mated; and if such investigations now and then tip over a weak brother and sister into the gutter of free love, we cannot wonder that in a commu- nity where every other girl marries for something else than afFection, there should arise an army who clamor for the free indulgence of the ap- petites. The school education of girls is being discussed with a vigor and breadth that promises the best results; the college is changing from a monastic cloister, where men study Latin and Greek, to a Eepublican University, where men and women vie in the beautiful emulation for the knowledge that maketh wise for life. Teaching in the school and church is fast becoming the spe- cial province of woman, and the press and art are free to all who come. The question of female labor is fairly before the people. Several profes- sions are wholly or partly opened for the sex. WOMAN DT AMGBIOA. 283 anthorship is entirely free. Medicine is losing its masculine conceit. The lecture platform is open for any woman strong enough to face an audience and not be scared into a man ; and the pulpit opens its reluctant door to a few eloquent female preach- ers. "Woman is finding a wide and welcome sphere of activity in the various benevolent operations of the day, and the church would fall unless she held it up. Wherever a dozen young women are gathered together, we find some earnest soul asking what it shall do to be saved from the low contact of popular American life. If in many instances this longing begins with a chat and expires in a sigh, in many others it feeds a secret purpose that sooner or later ripens to a will and becomes a fact before the world. Among the more radical class of minds this spirit has wrought more decisively, and driven thousands of intelligent men and women into public protest against the whole structure of society. These per- sons boldly affirm the equality of woman and man, in power, right and position. This demand they enforce with great vigor and ingenuity of reason- ing, a fearful array of facts, and a scathing criti- cism of the present state of American society. We must not look to them for clearly defined ideas of woman's nature, or a philosophical estimate of her life ; for most of them have been driven into their 284 WOMAN EST AMERICA. position by personal experience of, or a quick sym- pathy with, woman's wrongs; and pathetic and stirring as are their appeals, they are not self-con- sistent, much less do they agree with each other. But the conventions in which this development culminates, are distinguished for great ability, decorum, and power over popular sentiment ; are least of a bore of any species of public conventions, because filled with live people. Every theory and vagary gets an airing on their platform, but after a liberal subtraction for nonsense and bad logic, a great mass of facts and argument remains that has never been answered, and on which only the next century of woman's career in America can be the commentary. The upshot of all this is, that we are bound to try the experiment of Democracy in America, and woman will have her part in the crusade ; and those agitators who take the stump in favor of the millennium, are only doing in their way what every true man and woman in the land is doing in another. In contemplating this great movement we do not need so much a caricature ot the foolish side of woman's conventions, or the exploding of rainbow social theories that will dis- solve into their elemental suds at the first collision with real life, as a true and bold statement, by every man and woman who thinks at all, of what WOMAN IN AMEEIOA. 286 that mind has been able to believe on a great and complicated movement, which, after all, wiU turn out not according to om* predictions but according to providential laws. Every discussion of human rights presupposes a discussion of human capacities. Before we de- scribe the path to true American womanhood let us give our best estimate of woman's nature ; re- membering that the nature of man and woman are so involved in each other, and both in God, that all attempts at description should be made with pro- found reverence, and held as a mere hint at a yet unfathomed mystery. It must be that the human race, from the crea- tion till this day, has not been deceived in ascribing superior energy of the affections to woman. In her, love is less mixed with passion, ambition or selfishness of any form than in man. The affection of few women is free from degrading weakness and instability, but even the perverted form in which it appears, testifies to the divine power lodged in every female soul. The development and the purification of the sentiments is the reward of all womanly culture. She is not paid for her hard toils and secret tears by outward advantages, but by gaining new capacity to love, and conse- quently to rule the world. In its noblest exercise, 286 WOUAN IN AMKBICA.. her affection penetrates to the possibilities of its object ; beholds the germs of its life and the latent energies of its being, and declares not so much what it wiU be in this world, as what it can be- come in the vast revolutions of its eternal career. Woman's true love does not exaggerate its object ; it is the only true estimate of its greatness of ca- pacity. Like the divine love it annihilates time, space, and circumstances, and looking along the vast reach of the soul's achievements, loves and waits in patience the time of realization. Shak- speare, beyond all men, has shown this in the far- seeing celestial calmness of Desdemona. To this angelic woman the tempest of offended honor in her Othello's breast is but a hurricane, blowing them both through the waves of this stormy life into the peaceful deeps of the life beyond; and she dies by his angry hands, knowing his soul can have no rest till it finds her beyond the grave, and welcomes her with a love too great for new distur- bance. The ideal affection of woman is the best representative of the divine love to man. We are not prepared to assert that woman is in- ferior to man in imagination. Imagination is the power whereby the soul penetrates to the essential nature of existence and prophesies its perfect de- velopment. And this is woman's strong ground. WOtlAN m AMEBICA. 287 True, she has not written poems, painted and carved, created music and architecture like man ; but she constantly does what is a more vital act of imagination: comprehends the secrets of the liv- ing soul, and moulds it into manhood and woman- hood ; creates the home, manners, amusements, so- cial life, and through these, civilization. Her imagination is so vital, that it scorns imitation and drives at once to real existence, and there wins its lasting triumphs, of which art is but the record. There is more intense and constructive imagination shown by many a village mother in comprehend- ing the natures of her children, and rearing them up without collision, into worthy men and women, than in writing poems or carving statues. Wo- man idealizes nature and spirit, and by her power thus to behold things as they were created to be, does she mould the world into constantly increas- ing forms of beauty and excellence. Whether woman is equal to man in intellect, by which we mean the whole region of the higher reason, and the understanding, logical and practi- cal, united in common sense, we cannot say. Cer- tainly, in quickness of apprehension, in the percep- tion of nice distinctions, in tact, in practical judg- ment, within a limited sphere, and generally in a common sense estimate of what is best to be done 288 WOMAN IN AMEEIOA. under any given complication of circumstances, she is the superior to man. But in that comprehensive- ness of mental view, which overlooks vast interests in their entire relations, and in that sublime ener- gy of pure reason, whereby ^nature and life are seen in their scientific correctness, and the laws discovered by which God rules his creation, she has not yet shown herself his equal. Here is the strong ground of man, and when truly himself, woman naturally looks upward to him as a supe- rior intelligence. Man is also the superior of woman in force of executive will. He possesses that restless energy, courage and consistency of purpose whereby he overruns the visible world, subdues nature, founds states, governments, institutions and civilizations. His physical being and the coarser texture of his mind qualify him for such a career. But when we go inward, and deal with more spiritual affairs, wo- man's will excels man as eminently as it falls below in the outward world. Before her incredi- ble patience, her life-long endurance, her power of concentration and persistence of purpose, man hides his face and submits to be led by her irre- sistible force of will. That will despises out- ward triumphs, that it may the more effectually rally in its fullness of spiritual energy around WOUAN IK AMESICA. 289 those critical spots that determine human des- tiny. Tet, whatever natural inferiorities woman suf- fers, are overbalanced by the superior fineness of her organization ; all her powers are more ethereal than those of her companion. She, therefore, sits at the centre of life, and does through agents what man is compelled to run about the earth and ac complish by the sweat of his brow. She is the equal, perhaps the superior, of man in entire force of being; is perhaps a better manifestation of God in the flesh than he. Now who will say that a being thus endowed can be developed within any narrow sphere of ex- istence? Each of woman's known superiorities points to an infinite satisfaction. But her entire nature is more than a combination of rare quali- ties, even a soul fashioned in a peculiar image of the Creator, and spurns every boundary line drawn around it by human conceit and tyranny. We pity the man who has no better work on hand than fencing in a district of humanily, and writing over the gateway, ""Woman's Sphere!" "We doubly pity the woman who can be content to pace the restricted area of this feminine pound, and provided she is well fed, housed and filled with comforts and flatteries, gracefully fondle the hand that in- 13 290 . WOMAN IN AHEBICA. Bcribes her sentence above her prison door. Man's sphere is what all the men in the world, working till the end of time, can naturally do. Woman's sphere is what all the women in the world, work- ing till the end of time, can accomplish. Every individual man's or woman's sphere, is aU that in- dividual, working from birth tiU death, can natu- rally and gracefully perform. Therefore, we must not limit woman anywhere in the healthy and vir- tuous exercise of her energies; we must throw open the whole field of human enterprise, and call her like man to come up and occupy according to her ability. Does the American woman, have this &ee field for the cultivation of her entire womanhood? Theoretically, she has it, especially in the northern States of the Kepublic, to an extent never before enjoyed, though not entirely. Practically, she has it not, but is yet living within various inclosures of custom, fashion, caste, which appear to her the granite walls of fate, but which are really walls of pasteboard, frescoed in imitation of the barriers of the universe. But, does the Creator place her in this hapless condition, as tyrants in the parlors, and hunkers in the pulpits solemnly proclaim? Surely not. Does man deprive her of the right she has inherited by nature, and doom her to a WOMAN IN AM^BICA. 291 gilded slavery, as frantic bloomers shriek to sym- pathetic conventions ? Just as surely not. God has treated her like all his creatures ; given her a na- ture, and set his universe before her, saying: " Take what belongs to thee." Man is as much the slave of woman, as woman is the slave of man, and his tyranny is only the sign of her imbecility; She is chiefly responsible for her slavery in every department of life. If her weak frame makes her a slave to nature, she has defaced that body, the perfection of na- ture's beauty, to a bimdle of quivering nerves and diseased organs. If her want of practical efficiency makes her the slave of her servants, she has let her native activity and tact nm to waste. If her ca- pricious, sensual and restless affections make her the slave of her lover, husband, child, it is because she has vacated the throne of her womanly love, and crowned effeminate sentiment the queen of her heart. If her want of cultivation makes her the slave of social customs she despises while she obeys, it is because she has preferred ease in the present to the labor that swings open the gates of the future. If the want of religious experience leaves her under the feet of circumstances, it is be- cause she has cared less for her soid than some temporary advantage, which, grasped, turns to 292 WOilAS IN AMEBICA. ashes in her hands and leaves her in spiritual beg- gary. Her slavery is the retribution of her sins. Man does oppress her grievously, but in every bat- tle she has the last word and the last blow, and never lies quietly in her chain, till she has fastened the other end on him. There is no hindrance to the development of wo- man in America but woman. Freedom must be won everywhere. The gracious Creator offers wo- man America — an ocean of republican possi- bility—for her inheritance. She receives as much as she can dip in her cup. If she can only catch a tea-cup, or a thimbleful, or scoop in her trem- bling hand a little that runs through her fingers, it is her misfortune ; but nobody's sin so much as hers. If she will go on with a brave heart, using what she has, she can be herself and occupy every position for which she is qualified, according to the same law by which man succeeds — unflinching toil in the acquisition and eternal vigilance in the preservation of Freedom. But such an effort can only come from a deep inspiration of religious obligation. Not the super- stition which makes woman the slave of a mascu- line priesthood, but the religion which is the new birth of the soul into love and freedom, can give her power, even to aspire to her destiny. The WOMAN IN AMEEICA. 293 sentiment of freedom must be purified, widened and deepened by religion, to a controlling principle in the souls of our young countrywomen, before the victory will be won. For this woman's war of independence is no seven years' conflict that can be fought through with a great effort ; but a series of petty skirmishes daily renewed, lengthening out through many generations. Her foes are not ar- mies in the field, forts and navies on coast and sea, not even the restless throng of men; she cannot fight her father, brother^husband ; but a thousand social gnats and mosquitoes, a swarm of domestic flies, little weaknesses that never take form, little selfishnesses that secretly spoil motives and con- duct of elevation, little jealousies, sensualities, un- veracities, mean hopes and cuiming plans, and de- grading half fears, that tie an invisible cord round every limb. She marches to her battle, not over ditches and up mounds where voUeying cannon shake the ground, and hissing bombs flame through the smoking air; but along a field of spider's webs, through forests interlaced with flow- ery vines, and thickets where thorns lurk under blossoming roses. Through perpetual irritations does she gain her freedom. A half-drunken soldier can run like a screeching demon up the road to the parapet, swept by its storm of fire and iron. 294 WOMAN IN AMEBICA. against a rampart of pointed steel ; but only a reli- gions woman can keep her nerves strong, and her spirit high, against the maddening vexations that, like mocking spirits, switch her with hairs, and prick her with needles, and throw flower dnst in her eyes along the path of social freedom. But she who endures unto the end shall be saved ; and as the Are bums deeper and calmer in her soul, shall a new vigor nerve her hands and feet, and a new grace hover about her form, and a lovelier halo of victorious womanhood encircle her brow, as she goes to her destiny like a queen to her coro- nation. There are three stubborn difficulties in the way of the American woman's achievement of her des- tiny — ^want of health, lack of practical training, and deficiency in genuine cultivation of mind and manners. Until our women get more bodily vigor, all their aspirations will be at the mercy of a ner- vous fit ; while they are so unpractical in common affairs, that their husbands must buy their dinners and keep their accounts, and their servants look down from the eminence of the cooking-stove and washing machine in insolent contempt of their mistress's shiftlessness, and a man with a cane and moustache must be the body-guard of their timor- ous irteps abroad, and two untirable arms bear them WCHAN IN AHBBIOA. 295 unharmed througli the perils of journey by rail- road and Bteamship ; why talk of more rights, when they have thrown away the primary human right of keeping out of fire and water and taking care of themselves? While they prefer a little embroidery and less French; a limb wrenched from the last opera, dissected again by the sharp edge of song ; a little waltzing and a good deal of dressing and party-going, to the knowledge that is gained only by years of patient observation, reading and reflection, and the social tact that is but the largest and wisest expression of a good heart and a refined mind — ^how can they expect to make a society that shall allure the strongest and best within its charmed walls ? A great religious inspiration can alone keep woman fixed to the toils which shall overcome these obstacles. Inspired with this spirit of re- ligious independence, and armed with the prac- tical forces of health, skiU and culture, the Ameri- can woman wiU be prepared to commence the work of regenerating and reconstructing our social state. Here she must begin on her own fanular ground — ^home. Woman must first have her rights under her own family roof, or all her at- tempts to gain them elsewhere wUl recoil upon herself. Therefore let the primary application 296 WOMAN IN AMEBICA. of her newly inspired energy be made within those four sacred walls, where she is mistress, if anywhere on earth. We have no American home. We have, doubtless, thousands of families more or less harmoniously constructed; we have other thousands of houses where two hard-working peo- ple and their children toil, eat, dress and sleep, with exemplary diligence for a quarter of a centu- ry; we have gilded metropolitan hotels, more or less splendid, in all large towns, where husband, wife and little ones, are stowed away in narrow private apartments, that they may shine in the splendor of the saloon and the dining-hall; we have boarding of all sorts, from genteel to ungen- teel, and one way and another, our people get more to eat, drink, wear and enjoy than any other people, but with a smaller result of real comfort and hap- piness. Our houses hardly rest on solid ground ; they go on wheels and rock on waves. The life of the street, like a strong wind, rushes continually through them. We are restless in our own rock- ing-chair, by our own table, on our own bed ; our family resources for happiness are meagre, and the morbid intensity of the household spoils health, and defeats the end of domestic life. The cultivated American woman must recreate this sphere of life. She must lay the foundation WOMAN IN AMERICA. 297 of home in deep quiet love, in unflagging dili- gence, in sound health, in a solid culture, and un- affected refinement of manners. Let her begin by marrying for spiritual companionship, and a Christ- ian home, not for a position. There can be no home to a pair falsely mated ; there may be splen- dor and success of many kinds, but the paradise of according minds and hearts, which swims like a mirage before the eye of the youth, will nerer be theirs. Then let her whole influence be exerted to found the practical side of the household, in that noble economy and simplicity that scorns to use what it has not ; and its spiritual side on a natural style of behavior and manners. Adopting foreign customs as far as they can be brought in vital con- nection with the life around her, and neglecting all nonsense, however popular, she may create a place where every power shall be refreshed, and every virtue developed. Let her keep her home, a home ; and not pervert it to a means of social ambition ; train her children to human worth, not to be spectacles in society ; and as wealth and op- portunities increase, build up on the side of true re- finement and lasting comfort. Thus wiU there be at last a home, pervaded with the American spirit of a cultivated freedom, where all shall be free, yet, each be the minister of all : and life shall 13* WOIIAN m AMEBIOA. deepen into peace and expand into power and grace. As Boon as this liome exists, woman will have all the rights over property and her own children, of which she is now unjustly deprived. Legislators will not dare to refuse the demand of the mass of cultivated wives and mothers, that they shall no longer be legally merged in man. The reason why the American people tolerate laws, derived from the society of the middle ages on these subjects, is that there are not women enough who care to en- ter or remain in domestic life, on dignified terms of equality with man to demand their alteration. It is easier for most women to trust to management and importunity for their pecuniary supplies, than to labor for the recognition of woman's just rights of property; and few mothers contemplate the event of being called to choose between a living death with their children in the house of a tyrant, or a selfish release to be shared alone ; and thus the abuse continues. But a true family life will bring the community to the point where such ine- qualities can no longer exist ; and when the Ameri- can woman claims justice, as one pillar of the Ee- publican home, it will not be denied. Standing firmly at home, woman will be able to look beyond her household, and claim her rights WOHAN m AUEBICA. in other spheres. First will come the demand for a better education. She may reasonably claim the highest opportunities for scholastic culture which are enjoyed by man. If she knew with what husks of knowledge she is put off, under the showy pre- tensions of fashionable girls' schools, ladies' maga- zines, popular lectures and female literature in general, she would scorn the flatteries by which her want of real culture is concealed. As a class, young women do not know the meaning of the word study as known to every educated man. Constantly fed on the flowers of science and litera- ture, and accustomed to turn away from every granite wall of culture, along the vine-decked paths that skirt its base, they come up to womanhood, perhaps confirmed in the delusion that they are edu- cated, while the intellectual life has never been awakened. Thus they are left at the beginning of their real life to the tender mercies of the polite literature of the day, and the popular lecture-room. The cure of this state of things is the imion of the sexes in the whole career of scholastic culture. The boys and girls of America should be put in the same school, under equally skillful teachers, carried through an equally thorough course of instruction in high school, academy and college. Now, the girl is stopped at the college door by a 300 WOMAN IN AMEBICA. polite usher, who conducts her to the fashionable female seminary, where she learns a more superfi- cial science, and is narrowed by exclusive contact with her own sex. The boy is taught to study in the severe discipline of the University, but his nature hardens, and his manners, health and habits are in peril through his seven years' collegiate and pro- fessional career; and when the sexes meet again after this monastic separation, they are changed fatally for future companionship. I solemnly believe that most of the foolish mar- riages and domestic unhappiness among educated men, are the results of this unnatural separation from women during the most sensitive portion of youth and early manhood. The only natural restraint on the rudeness and rampant passions of the growing boy, is the refining influence of a girl engaged in the same employment. Separate the two, and the boy becomes coarse and careless in manners, impure in thought, and half insane in imagination. Sitting on three chairs in a college room, in which disorder has become organized, deprived of his true society, he conjures up an ideal female, in whose construction his appetites and unpractical fancy fill the outline formed by the goddesses of Homer and Virgil, and the heroines of the English and French novelists ; and when he WOMAN IN AMERICA. 301 comes oat upon professional life, he issues into a new world, where every bright-eyed damsel sug- gests the ideal that wavered amid curling clouds of cigar smoke above his student head; and having married a goddess, he is very apt to awake to the saddening conviction that his happiness is wrecked on the rock of a false union. Were the sexes trained together they would know each other's strength and weakness, and not only stimulate each other to greater exertions, but also teach one another good breeding and knowledge of practical affairs. The tide of popular sentiment is now run- ning strongly in favor of this educational right of woman in America. Already our revised system of common schools is placing the sexes on common ground ; and several vigorous collegiate schools have demonstrated the advantage *of union in the higher walks of culture. ' It only remains for our young women to spurn with womanly contempt this sham education that is proffered them in fashionable life, and at any sacrifice secure the best advantages, and never give over their impor- tunity till their daughters shall be installed into the best privileges of American culture. The result of this increase of intelligence will be a new desire to enlarge the sphere of female in- dustry. Is there any reason that while the Ameri- 302 WOMAIT W AUEBICA. can boy is placed in a profession at one and twenty, the American girl is left dependent on her parents until this boy chooses to make her his wife ? It is false and injorions. Dependence is as galling to a true woman as to a man; and whatever disguise of sentimental rhetoric you throw over it, every sensible girl in a large family knows it is absurd that she should be a young lady without em- ployment, except such as she adopts to kill time, living on her father till she can find a husband. Wiat restlessness, what disgust of life, what temp- tation to unmaidenly scheming in the sacred affairs of the heart, what untold domestic wretchedness this state of gilded slavery entails on the sex, only a wise woman can describe. The remedy for this is not kitchen work alone; there is not enough domestic work in families of several girls to arouse the industrial energies of all. Study is not enough; for tme study without definite aim is only possible for highly cultivated minds, and only one girl in a thousand can regularly pur- sue a science or accomplishment for which she sees no practical bearing. The girls of America need a thorough training in some form of profitable and congenial labor, on which they can depend for steady occupation, which shall relieve them of pecuniary dependence, and keep their minds stea- WOMAN IN AMERICA. 803 died by actual contact with the real work-day world. Then, study will have a new charm, health wiU not be spoiled by inactivity, and every young woman can wait till a suitable young man appears before she marries. Then, young men will look on marriage as a privilege, knowing a wife will be a " help meet for them," not a bundle of physical helplessness draped in expensive dry goods ; and the practical skiU of the woman will keep the man industrious and virtuous. Whatever tlie last volume of poems you read may say to the contrary, young woman, nothing so claims the growing respect and holds the constant affection of men as the union of a womanly heart with womanly practical energy. Highly wrought raptures are veiy well in their time ; smiles and tears and sentimental longings are surely a part of life ; but the woman who can only sit in her rock- ing-chair, and drench her cambric handkerchief when hard labor, or narrow circumstances, or great sorrow darken the household; or can only dance when good fortune comes in at the door, cannot reckon on a permanent influence over any strong man. The most beautiful thing to our sex is an affection that is ever taking active forms of expression, that talks less than it does, that silently builds up a home while we are engrossed outside, 304 -WOMAN m AMEBICA. that is competent to advise ns in the conduct of affairs, and when we are at our wits' end has some happy plan in reserve by which we can go on. Such a woman takes her husband's arm and goes over every step in life, and when misfortune comes she does not become a dissolving view of ineffi- ciency and vaporous sentiment, but only clasps the friendly arm a little closer, and new courage flows through every manly nerve, to overcome the worst that life can do. We must throw open every species of labor to woman, and let her peculiar power choose what is best for herself. There is no danger that she will permanently occupy any place inconsistent with her womanly dignity, or drive men from any work they can do better than she. The community will know whose labor is most valuable in every depart- ment of activity, and ultimately sustain woman wherever she can sustain herself. I have no fear that our American girls will injure their womanhood behind the counter, in the manu- factory, in the printing office, or wherever they choose to go. I know tastes differ ; but I, in com- mon with many sensible men, prefer the spectacle of a company of intelligent young women in active employment at any respectable occupation, to the melancholy procession of idle, bedizened WOMAN IN AMERICA. 305 femininity that daily sweeps the pavements with swelling satin and French kid ; the funeral proces- sion of American womanhood. And if young women knew their own souls and true destiny, they would not rest till their hands and minds found substantial employment that would at once do something for society, and sustain and ennoble themselves. Until this is done, there is no hope of woman's emancipation ; for while man holds her in a pecuniary dependence from which she does not aspire to rise, her ideal of freedom will be only a school-girl's dream. I am aware that this extension of the field of female industry wiU bring woman into the sphere of professional life to a greater extent than now, and I am not ignorant of the ridicule with which thousands of women are accustomed to visit the efforts of their sisters in this direction. But is not the radical question of woman in the professions already settled by the community ? If ever the sex were to be shut out of this area of life, the time has passed, for women are already in several departments of professional activity. In author- ship, school teaching, and the fine arts of painting, sculpture, music, and the drama, they are natural- ized ; and probably no persons would more vigor- ously oppose any attempt to eject them from these 306 WOMAN IN AHEBICA. poBts than those who are shocked at their attempt to win new positions. The fact is proven, that woman can act in pnhlic capacity and not lose one grace of her nature, while her service to the com- munity is undoubted; and in two additional pro- fessions, medicine and popular lecturing, the people have already decided that she shall have her place. Surely it would be hard to deny to her who in her capacity of housekeeper, parent and creator of social customs, is responsible for a large share of the disease in the world, an opportunity to aid in its cure. Surely the present success of the medi- cal profession in preserving the health of the people is not so overwhelmingly evident that it can afford to spurn her proffered assistance. Nobody objects to a woman lecturer, if she lectures well, and I suppose nobody approves a man lecturer if he lectures ill. One sect of Christians has opened the office of religious instruction in the church to woman, and with no special evil results ; indeed, the best preacher in the American sect of Friends is now a woman. I cannot but think the time is coming when some of the high Christian culture that now especially distinguishes the best women of the land, wiU £nd a tongue and waken new echoes in consecrated places. In the present sub- VrOilXS IS AMEBICA. 307 division of the legal profession, I can hardly under stand why women might not occupy many posts as successfolly as men. This question of professional success is not to be decided d priori, but by ex- perience. It is absurd to say a woman loses dig- nity in the pulpit and at the bar, and retains it in the concert, on the stage, and in the public ball- room. Wbatever part of professional effort she can hold usefully to society and naturally to her- self, is hers by the only right which man can as- sert — the right of conquest. The more radical friends of the woman's move- ment affirm that the right of suffrage and elegi- bility to public office are essential to the freedom of the sex. With the logic that conducts to this conclusion I can discern no defect. If anybody can tell me why 20,000 men who cannot read and write should be permitted to vote in New York heccmae they are men, and the 20,000 most cultivated women refused that privilege iecaiise they cure women — ^wby thousands of wealthy females should pay taxes which they never have a voice in imposing — ^why woman should be tried in courts of justice exclusively before masculine juries — why men alone should make laws that women must obey — \ would be glad to hear a reasonable argument. I know the difficulties attending the 308 WOMAN IN AMERICA. whole complicated question of free suffrage ; but it seems to me, we must either restrict the right of suffrage in America yet more than now, or throw it open, in time, to the other sex. We do not yet know the result of unlimited suffrage ; the experiment is still being tried; experience alone will decide what is to come of it. Meanwhile women do already influence politics mightily. Tlie women of our Southern States sustain the great evil of negro slavery that rules the Govern- ment of America. If they would rise to-morrow and proclaim human bondage wicked and vulgar, every chain would fall and the oppressed go free. The women of the Northern States move the men that make the laws according to their intelligence and interest in the history and life of the nation ; and I cannot understand how a young American woman can be indifferent to the momentous ideas involved in our national experiment. I do not know whether the women of America will ever, as a body, demand the right of suffrage ; certain I am, if they do, we shall be as eager to give it them as we are now to give them the wealth and luxury we wear out our lives to obtain. Whatever woman wants in this country she can have ; and it rests with her whether she assumes the full privilege of Ameri- can citizenship or acts for the state through man. WOMAN m AMEEICA. 309 These are the several steps along which woman will advance to the Republican style of character, in America. At every step society will be richer and more characteristic of our great national idea. Only where acting freely and out of the fullness of her womanhood, can she construct that peculiar social state which is the outgrowth of our institutions. We do not know what that society wiU be ; but surely it will be truthful, wise, strong and free as it is not now. Under the guidance of cultivated woman, the American man wiU be a diflFerent being from the man we know; for in gaining peace and happiness he will gain purity and refinement. The crowning grace of our life wiU then be a new beauty — ^the beauty of freedom — ^which shall adorn and elevate the home, the street, the halls of pleasure, the seats of learning, and mould the manners and refine the public life of the people. Then shall we know, that, much as woman has been and done in the world, it was re- served for the magic influence of national liberty to reveal her nature in its entire loveliness and power. Then, imhindered by outward restrictions and set free from the bondage of selfishness within, will she become the divine force of love she was made to be, and strew the land vnth flowers by her presence. No nation of men worship woman with 310 WOMAN IN AMERICA. an adoration so sincere and blind, as the Ameri- cans ; will she be content to abuse this admiration, and while she is an idol, neglect the culture of that lofty womanhood which shall deserve it? This adoration we pay her is not folly ; it is now extrava- gance, for she does not disserve it ; but it is a pro- phecy of what woman can become under the in- spiration of freedom. For when the true woman of America shall appear, she whose nature will mirror the glories and graces of a Bepublican State, as the waters of our lakes and rivers mirror the mountains with their crowning forests and the overarching skies, and who can rouse up men to adorn Liberty by their justice at homg, and make it venerable to the nations abroad ; then will there be one who deserves our utmost reverence, and, next to God, claims our manly devotion and ador- ing love. That style of woman has not come ; but, young women, you are born to hasten her coming. Shall I af&ont you by the suspicion that you will prefer the material side of freedom to this, her noblest spiritual results ? Shall I not rather put into words the throbbing of your own hearts, now too way- ward to revere demands, yet generous to the high- est appeal, and say : Before God, this day shall witness a new consecration to the obligation of my W05IA1I IN AMERICA. 311 time and country ; for henceforth I live no more to self and sloth, but forgetting the mean prizes which slaves wring out of a newly-gained emancipation, move onward to the full consummation of that liberty which shall make me free in bonds of a love that binds self and home, society and country in a golden chain, and suspends the world below the throne of God. XII. THE CHURCHES; OR, RELIGION IN NEW YORK. It cannot be said the Capital City is destitate of Eeligious Institutions. The wants of its 60,000 people are ministered to by fifty churches, which, by their creeds and ceremonies, represent almost every form of faith, from the ancient Hebrew to the newest form of Protestant Christian. Fifty clergy- men officiate in these houses of worship, and among the homes of the people. There is, probably, a seat in a church for two of every three ia its popTilation, though the brightest Sunday morning sees only one-third of the whole people under a consecrated roof. Tliere are thirty-five Sunday-schools, con- taining 7,000 children ; and several mission-schools and benevolent institutions complete the ecclesi- astical machinery of the place. This relative proportion holds good throughout 14 813 314 THE CHURCHES ; OR, the State. New York contains 5,077 churches, affording seats for 2,141,159 of her 3,466,212 peo- ple, although the average attendance on public wor- ship is estimated at only 1,124,211; and there are only 702,384 members of churches. These churches, with other property connected, are valued in the census table at $31,480,128 ; and the yearly sala- ries of clergymen at $2,411,683, giving an average of $400 a year to a body of men harder worked and poorer paid than any class in the Common- wealth. Of these 5,077 churches, the Catholics own the comparatively small number of 291 ; there are 19 Jewish Synagogues ; and the remainder are divided among the Protestant sects, in the follow- ing order: Methodist, 1,580; Baptist, 882; Presby- terian, 710 ; Episcopalian, 346 ; Evangelical Congre- gational, 301 ; Reformed Dutch, 260 ; Liberal Christ- ians (including the Christians and Disciples), 250 ; Friends, 134; Lutheran and other German Evan- gelical, 132 ; Swedenborgian, 3 ; Second Advent, 8 ; Shakers, 3 ; while one solitary conventicle re- joices in the name of " Protestant Communion of Free Inspiration." But in estimating the religious institutions of our State, we must also reckon the large body of dissenters from all these forms of worship, whose wants are supplied by the numer- ous radical conventions and itinerant lecturers KELIGION IN NEW TOKK. 316 ■wMch have become a very characteristic mode of religious and philanthropic agitation in our north- em States. It is not too much to say, that full one- fourth of our population obtain all their public instruction in religion from these new sources. When we consider, in addition, the immense circu- lation of the religious press, in its various forms of theological and reformatory newspapers, pamph- lets and books ; and remember, also, that the city of New Tork is fast becoming the centre from which all our organized religious institutions operate, and where the plans are matured for pro- moting the success of every sect and party, con- servative and radical, we may well be astonished at the amount of energy, wealth, and ability, now engaged in representing the religious condition of our people ; and the questions : How far does this vast machinery represent the religion of the State ; • and how well is it adapted to the application of a pure Christianity to our civilization? assume an importance transcending any others that can be asked of our great Commonwealth. For to say that the success of a Republican civili- zation in New York depends on the success of a pure Christianity, is to report a fact demonstrated by the experience of mankind. In opposition to the strange assumptions of Mr, Buckle, that moral 316 THE CHUECJHES; OE, ideas have nothing to do with the progress of civi- h'zation, we believe the whole condition of every comnmnity on earth is an outgrowth from its reli- gious faith. The depth and intelligence of a peo- ple's belief in such questions as the origin, duty, and destiny of man, measure their achievements in all respects ; and those nations which have been farthest along in religion have ruled the earth by the power of their ideas, perpetuating themselves through generations. This State of New York is what she now is to-day by force, not of her super- ficial, but real belief or disbelief in these funda- mental questions of being ; and could we know the actual position of her people towards the ideas of love to God and man, which are the centre of Christianity, all the phenomena of her private and public life would be explained. The whole significance of Jesus Christ and the history of Christianity is concentrated in this law of love. "Whoever has attained a character shaped by the indwelling power of love to God and man is a Christian, and whatever people has achieved a civilization expressive of the same eter- nal love is a Christian state. The true Christian church in New York would therefore be the union of the Christian citizens of the State to resist every idea and practice opposed to the law of love, and EELIGION IN MEW YOKK. 317 to promote the elevation of public and private character towards this lofty ideal of human perfec- tion ; thus saving men from sin and making their present state of being a fit introduction to their immortal career. Whatever differences of cere- monial or organization might characterize its vari- ous divisions, these would never be permitted to obstruct the practical union of all good men and women for personal holiness and public virtue. However numerous the theories concerning Christian theology, or the creeds in which the thought of the past is condensed, the freedom of opinion would not be invaded, and every man's thought would be judged by his hfe, instead of his character being measured by his creed. Thus while all needful independence of theological speculation, and variety of religious ceremonial would be secured, the church of New York would be the spiritiial union of all Christians in love and charity, insuring a practical union for every emer- gency, when the powers of evil should challenge the friends of God and man to conflict for truth and righteousness. This is the idea of Christianity and the Christian Church, taught by the founder of our religion ; and until both are realized in this State, no excess of wealth, or culture, or political power, or social refinement will do more than gild 318 TUB CHCBCHES; OE, the barbarism in which man always remains until his life moves in glad obedience to the immutable law of the Divine Benevolence. Tried by this standard of excellence, we cannot acknowledge that New York is a Christian State. For however pure and active a minority of her citizens may be, it cannot be affirmed that the majority have attained a character moulded by Christian love. Neither does her civilization pre- figure the kingdom of heaven. Ai-e her industry, her politics, her society, her literature founded on Christian benevolence ? To ask the question is to answer it. Every good man knows that, however far in advance of former periods, or other comnm- nities, we are yet in the bonds of a materialistic idea of life ; are not civilized enough to acknowledge that love is the comer-stone of true success. Now what is the condition of the organized reli- gion on which we are depending for the conversion of this half barbarism to a true social state? Is the church in New York, a true Christian Church, according to the ideas of Jesus? Can we hope that our present ecclesiastical institutions, in their present method of operation, will make the Empire State first in righteousness, as she is already first in power among the free communities of the earth? That the church of New York is not doing this RELIGION m NEW YOBK. 319 work so well or so fast as good men could wish, is too obvious to be denied. In the first place, it can command the attendance of only one-third of the people on its ceremonies and instructions ; and numbers only one-fifth as nominal members of the Christian fold. With a population in open agree- ment with Christianity, with the field entirely undisputed, with all the aids of wealth, the press, and the perpetual services of 6,000 ministers trusted and privileged like no other class, it is still ob- liged to confess to this want of success. Even this one-fifth which constitutes the visible body of com- municants, caimot be called the leading force in the civilization of the State. The church has not uniformly led the people in the best social reforms of the past fifty years ; it has oftener been forced abroad by an outside pressure. It does not lead the State, to-day, in the most vital life of an advanc- ing society ; a few divisions of it are abreast of the best life of the times, but other divisions are back in the middle ages ; and as a whole, it is so divided by obstinate and bitter hostilities, so involved in its own machinery, that it has never, in one in- stance, united to do any one good work for the people. These 6,000 ministers are not the advance men of the day, not preeminently the moral leaders of the State. Tlie people show them great outward 320 THE CHUBCHES; OB, respect ; but four-fifths of them refuse to do what the clergy affirm is essential to eternal life, and they pay them $400 a year. As a necessary con- sequence, the majority of our people are unsettled in belief and practice to an alarming degree. A deep-rooted skepticism is spreading among the leading classes of every district, often concealed, but none the less destructive. Large masses of the people are adrift ; now excited by a revival, now by a radical convention, unsatisfied with either. "Who knows what his neighbor really believes on man's origin, duty, destiny? We do not affirm our organized religion a failure ; its various merits need no defence, and it does immense good, at least in keeping things as well as they are. But we are still less prepared to call it a great success, while its real hold on the people is so uncertain, and it is forced to take the secondary position in every battle between barbarism and practical Christianity. "We must assert that the church of New York is still far below the mark at which it may reasonably claim the superiority it now does ; that its condition is becoming a painful problem for all wise religious men to contemplate. "While we acknowledge the whole truth in regard to the difficulty of elevating any community by the purest religion, we must still declare that the liELIGlON m NEW YOKK, 321 church is greatly at fault in the preBent state of affairs. "We blame it not so much for its inabilitj to convert the wicked and indifferent, as for the spurious character of much of the Christianity in its own fold. It is because the religion it really creates is so often futile, timid, useless ; so much a thing of words and ceremonies, and so little a prac- tical force for the right, that we feel compelled, as its best friend, to proclaim its shortcomings, and assert that the Protestantism of New York to-day needs a Beformation as certainly as the Catholicism of Europe in the days of Luther. "We have no sympathy with the enemies of the church ; we do not believe Christian institutions are to die out as man grows ; but we believe the church must pass through many a period of regeneration before she will be the symbol of a pure Christianity, Eeform or die is now the destiny of our popular ecclesias- ticism. Not that the church of New York cannot exist as now, and become even more rich, splendid in its ceremonial, and popular in its dispensations than at present ; but then it wUl cease to be a church of God, and become only an ecclesiastical, a social corporation in no way representative of Christianity. To apply the law of love to the life of New York demands the reforming of several popular vices, and the cultivation of several uncom- 14* 322 TEE CHUBCHES : OB, mon virtues. Let us indicate the direction wMcli this revival of true religion in the church must take. The great European Reformation of the 16th century, which resulted in Protestantism, was chiefly a revolt against ecclesiastical tyranny. A mighty thing was done when the church was burst asunder and the despotic unity of Roman Catho- licism forever destroyed. But no great evil is cured at once, and ecclesiastical intolerance has been one of the greatest evils in Protestant lands. In the nations of Europe adopting the Reformed Religion, the most obstinate efforts of the people have not yet sufficed to shake off the oppression of great, consolidated establishments assuming the guardianship of God's truth. And in New York to-day, ecclesiasticism is a fearful power. Every Protestant sect is now a close coi-poration, working for power, often by very questionable means, cov- eting wealth and position, rewarding its friends and punishing its enemies. Its clergy and active laity are counted faithful in proportion as they toil for its aggrandizement. The enterprise and popu- lar habits of our people are strongly implicated in this work ; and to an outside observer, the mauoen- vering of these sects appears but little to excel those of the political parties in dignity or purity. EELIGION IK NEW TOEK. 323 Like the parties, they have their platfoiins, their campaign issues, their fusions and schisms, their system of rewarding friends and shooting deserters, and he must be credulous indeed who permits the assumption of a party phraseology to blind him to tlie realities of the case. If there is found a cer- tain security in the fact that these sects are so numerous and so evenly mated ; on the other hand, this encourages that strife for popularity, which is the demon of the American Church, The I'esults are the oppression of the people, who are wheeled about in masses by the church leaders, and cheated of their freedom by the force of social pressure and the theological fear of detraction; while each of the sects fears to commit itself to a pure morality, lest it should thereby be lowered in public estimation and outbid by a less scrupulous opponent. We need a new application of the great Protes- tant idea that man is superior to sects. The church in New Tork must learn that Eeligion is above corporations and parties ; that to create a great ecclesiasticism by flattering the vices of the people is not to do God's work but Satan's work ; that to grow rich, strong, numerous, by the acts of a ^fforldly policy, and use power thus gained to crush out opposition, is to kill Christian love, and 324 THK CRURCIIKS; OE, bring in the reign of universal skepticism. TJnleBS this tendency to sectarian partisanship is checked, it is not diflEicult to see that all true men wiU at last be disgusted, and driven from organizations that prefer their own enlargement and perpetuity to the glory of God and the good of man. But the peculiar evil of Protestantism is not so much ecclesiasticism as dogmatism. The reign of the pope in the middle ages has been followed by the reign of the creed in modem days. And an imperative necessity in the church of New York is the abolition of the whole system of infallible dog- mas. Each sect has now a creed which is practi- cally made the test of religious character. Who- ever accepts it and serves God tJutt way has a hope of eternal life ; whoever does not is in danger of perdition, or at least is reckoned unchristian. The Protestant Evangelical sects unite to call all the world unchristian who reject the so-called evangeli- cal dogmas ; the Eoman-Catholic retorts with equal insolence and equal reason; the Liberalists too often catch the intolerance and make the creed the measure of the life. Now a creed is a good thing if properly used. Every creed is the condensed idea of some division of Christendom on religion, and each probably contains some valuable truth. If men can be at liberty to investigate, compare. RELIGION IN NEW YOEK. 325 select, and Jiold them in tlie spirit of loyalty to truth, encouraged to enlarge their own belief as fast as they grow in knowledge, there is no harm in their use. But now, when they are used as for- tresses in which to shut up and imprison their nominal beliefs, they hare become a monstrous evil. What narrowness of mind, and uncharitable- ness of heart — ^what grinding tyranny over weak and timid minds — ^what wicked slander of oppo- nents — what hypocrisy and self delusions, grow out of this wretched assumption of theological in- fallibility is becoming more apparent to every good man. The Protestantism of the day must cease this mimicry of the worst sin of Papacy ; withdraw its absurd pretensions of infallibility, which only ex- pose it to the derision of reflecting minds; and while maintaining the truth given it with all its might, never deny the sacred right of free thought or expression on religion. We rejoice that a re- form is already commencing in this direction. The best ttdng in the revival of last winter was the agreement of a few sects to ignore doctrinal dis- tinctions for a time, in a work of Christian evan- gelization. The next great revival wiU demolish the remaining pretensions of a Protestant dog- matism to hold the keys of heaven and hell, and 326 THE cnuECHKS ; or, leave the people free to think, to the vast gain of pure religion. Equally essential is a reform in humanity. The Protestant church of New York is, as a whole, unhuman. It is a factitious world of its own ; a little realm of priests and churches and ceremonies and prayers outside the real world. It ignores New York in favor of some future heaven of which it talks much in proportion as it knows little. Con- sequently the church life of the State is quite too much aloof from the actual life of the people. The real evils of society, the real state of mind among the masses, the real course of events, are almost un- known to it. So it can gather the disciples into the charmed circle of the church and talk of future bliss, it gladly forgets the present. But whatever the church thinks, this State of New York is a great fact,, that cannot be spirited away by the theories of a million doctors of divinity. And whatever the clergy may agree to consider ortho- dox, no religion is truly Christian which cannot go to the people as they are, and regenerate them where they are, and make them holy by the ap- plication of the law of love, and extirpate the evils of society by testing every region of life, and every form of character by the law of God. Every church that cannot do the work of applying Christ- EELIOION IN NEW TORE. 327 ianity to this three and a half millions of people, and making a heaven of this forty-six thousand square miles of territory, may as well vacate at once, for its days are numbered. It would be gross injustice to deny that many portions of the church are awakening to this duty ; it would be flattery to say that there does not yet remain so much to be done, and that speedily, that safety lies only in repentance. The best people of New York are fast coming to the conclusion that a church that loves itself more than man is not worth the expense of keeping alive ; and the next quar- ter of a century will be shaken with an agitation, that win wake the sleepiest conventicle from its sacred repose to a perception of its duty to the struggling cause of righteousness in this Republic. As the legitimate result of these vices of dogma- tism, ecclesiasticism, and unhumanity, the church of New York is threatened with death from disinte- gi'ation. Of course every man who caimot live under the yoke of the creed, or the corporation, goes out, and either becomes a radical, or forms a new church. Thus sects multiply, conventicles increase in number, and decrease in supporters. Every village and town in the country is strug- gling to sustain several Protestant churches. The money which would support one clergyman is 328 THK CHUKCHES; OB, divided among three or four ; and this wretched system of compensation drives thousands of the best qualified youth away from a proper profession, and fills the pulpits with inferior men. This again reacts on the people, who lose interest in a Gospel so feebly proclaimed, and the church languishes towards a fall, and is only kept alive by frequent spasmodic excitements. A Christianity so divided and debilitated, can never unite to sustain the right in any great public emergency. Let any formidable enemy to society take the field, sup- ported by the passions of multitudes and the pres- tige of wealth, and what a feeble opponent it finds in the sects. Every church is pressed to live at all ; it cannot afford to offend even a few ad- herents, by actively exposing the truth. Every denomination is jealous of its neighbor, and will not unite with it, lest it should seem to indorse its deadly heresy. So the churches keep quiet, or talk in cloudy generalities, and the adversary walks over the course. A great public evil is always a unit; it goes together and conquers, by dividing its opponents. When the church condescends to learn from the devil his great secret of Ice&pmg his forces to- gether, it will conquer him ; till that, he will ravage the country even under the shadows of BKLIGION IN NEW YOEK. 329 the spires, and fear the sight of an ecclesiastical convention no more than an army would fear an undisciplined mob. The consequence of a refor- mation in the former respects will be a willingness to unite for all the uses of practical religion. Why, could this great church of New York heartily agree to make a holy crusade against any sin, it might render the most daring vice of our people execrable, and drive it out from the sight of decent society. Unless it can agree to do this, it will have a fearful account to settle with those who love God's trutli, and will not long be silent over its eclipse. Better no church, than one that can never be found when most wanted. Let the pre- sent establishment continue to crumble, till it leaves some way of concentrating its forces for God and humanity. How shall this good work of reform be accom- plished ? We answer, by the persistent efforts of the wisest and most religious people who still remain within the church ; and by a new movement to- wards a liberal organization among those who have permanently left it. There are two classes in the church, of whom little can be expected in this reformation. The first consists of the sincere bigots, who cannot understand liow a soul can get to heaven except 330 THE CHDBCHES; OB, by crawling through the eye of their sectarian needle. We can do justice to the sincerity and moral worth of many of these persons, and yet feel that if the church falls they are chiefly responsible. Little is to be expected from an honest bigot, because bigotry implies narrowness of mind, and while the sufferer, under this malady can see only through his present eyes, reason and charity will be alike nnavailing to move him onward. We can only leave him to the grace of God, and pray that his eyes may be opened in this world, or in some distant eternity. For the second class of worldly people who seek the church for sake of social position, pecuniary or other emoluments, even less can be expected. Of all people who fill our churches these are the most hopeless. For they are using Beligion for their own aggrandizement, and are quite indifferent to the meaning of Christianity. No sect is free from this class, although the most powerful are neces- sarily the most afflicted. Every attempt at reform will be frowned down by those who fear any loss of prosperity for their conventicle. They will shake hands with the most obstinate bigotry to keep affairs as they are, and it is chiefly by this unholy alli- ance of intolerance and worldliness that the church is kept so far behind the demands of the times. EKLIGION tN NEW YORK. 331 Leaving these two classes as almost hopeless for any onward movement, we can with more confi- dence appeal to the large body of truly Christian men and women that still exist in every sect. These persons, the very flower of our church life, whose piety and philanthropy save it from stagnation, are now quite too often overborne by the obstinacy and craft of the two classes before named. Many of them are those quiet disciples who avoid conten- tion and go on their own blameless way, not covet- ing the chief place in the organization; indeed often not knowing what the church as a public institution is about. Happy in their own private belief and the beautiful associations clustering about their spiritual home, they put o£F criticism of their ecclesiasticism, will not dwell on the un- lovely and depressing signs of its unfaithfulness, and are drifted along by a current of which they know not the force or the direction. They do not see that although they are in the dear old ship, yet the hand of an intolerant or artful policy is at the helm; that the vessel is officered by those bold ambitious spirits who love to walk tiie slippery decks and climb the storm-tossed shrouds ; and that while they are occupied in works of benevolence below, the old gospel craft is being steered on the breakers of intolerance, or the black flag of world- 332 THK CHUKOHES ; OK, liness is run up, and she is turned to a pirate in the service of oppression. Neither do they know that their acquiescence, even their very graces of mild- ness and peacefulness, are used by these theologi- cal wire-pullers to shield themselves from the just odium of an indignant community, as a general piles up bales of the whitest cotton to ward off the shot from the batteries of the enemy. Our only hope of Keligious Institutions is in arousing this large body of true Christians to a knowledge of what is done in their name, and a determination to assume their due share of influ- ence in the policy of the church. If they can be persuaded to look at the ecclesiastical intolerance, the dogmatic insolence, the inhumanity and the divisions of their organized Christianity through their own eyes ; can be rallied to a persistent ef- fort at their overthrow; we may hope much for religion in New Tork. We know how distasteful the warfare will be ; how quiet men and amiable women loathe the agitation attendant on defacing corrupt leaders and upsetting a mediaeval policy ; how indolence can easily disguise itself in the garb of Christian peace ; but we do not understand what claim the purest and gentlest have to live undisturbed in the service of a Christianity for whose establishment Jesus Christ and thousands of EELIGION IN NEW TOEK. 333 Ms followers have cheerfully gone to death, and others have borne the cross during their whole life. Does this loving, timid woman who fears the breath of slander or the sound of tumult near her home, reflect that her Saviour said, " I came not to send peace, but a sword ?" Do these quiet men consider that just on them who know and feel the divine worth of a free religion God lays the martyr's mission in these later days ? Thsy cure the people who should not keep still; who should rouse them- selves and put forth all the might of holiness in them to regenerate these great sects, slowly dying with the infection of our materialism. We do not ask them to renounce their belief as long as they can accept the creed ; but we demand that they shall compel their church to renounce their absurd and wicked claim of infallibility. "We ask them not to desert the ceremonial they have so long admired ; but when the priest curses and shuns all outside that prayer-book as unconverted, let them teach him the Christian charity he has forgotten. We do not know where they could find a church as practical as it should be if they left their own ; but we implore them to help wrench the iron foot of their own church from the wreck of a down-trodden humanity. If they will always stay in their present division of the fold, let them 334 THK CHURCHES ; OR, at least stretch their hands over the bridge and grasp the hands of Christians on the other side. These persons can yet. save our Protestantism irom the fate of Eoman Catholicism if they awake in time. If they will not awake, their very graces of peacefulness and piety will become criminal, since they hold them back from their duty. It may be a privilege to belong to the church, but then it is an obligation likewise, and those who enjoy the privilege and ignore the difficult duty are not the true disciples of Him who walked up Mount Cal- vary that we might look upon his cross, and learn the grandeur of self-sacrifice for the cause of God and man. "We are disposed to be hopeful, and believe that this class will finally be aroused in our churches, and the sects be converted to the cause of religion. But there is a struggle impending in New York which will tlirow all previous agitation in the shade. The bigotry and the worldliness in these great, rich corporations, are not going to subside at the bidding of any power ; and only when finally rooted out, will they give up the field. The pre- liminary skirmish can be witnessed in any week's reading of the church journals; but this is only the skirmish preparatory to a war which will purify, while it shakes, the churches. God speed EELIGION IN NEW TOBK. 335 all good men, who are toiling in this great reforma- tion ; they will have sorrow and labor enough for their portions in this life, but the favor of God and the deep gratitude of humanity will be their sure reward. Meanwhile, there is a vast body of people who are out of the church on principle. They cannot, in conscience, be held responsible for its glaring evils, and they have no stomach for the warfare that must slowly achieve its purification. They think the way, both to regenerate the church and to advance religion, is to act outside the organised ecclesiasticism. They have the right to do so ; and the wholesale slander with which this class, now far more numerous than the entire body of church members, and certainly not inferior in religious life, is visited by the regular clergy and the chiirch organs, is a wicked outrage on Christian cliarity. But this body of dissenters have their duties to perform. It may be a great privilege to have parted company with the organized church. Evan- gelical and Boman Catholic ; but that privilege is bought up with the obligation to teach and estab- lish a purer religion. Thousands of these dissenters seem quite thoughtless of this obligation. So they can enjoy their own fi-eedom of thought, expose the sins of the old establishments, and drop in once 336 THE CHUECHER ; OB, a month at a radical convention, or occasionaUy swell the crowd that throngs the steps of a great preacher, their work is done, while their families are often left utterly uninstructed in religious views and with no Christian associations. It is hard to convince those persons, that by this course they are perpetuating the reign of bigotry and inhumanity in religion. The Evangelical and Catholic churches are armies well officered and manoeuvered with consummate tact ; and while the dissenting host is scattered over the field as now, both these armies will conquer by sheer weight of discipline. "We have no hostility to mass conven- tions, and itinerant lecturers on religion and reform ; in the present state of affairs they have their uses, however capable in bad hands of being abused. But what does Archbishop Hughes care for a mass convention ? He knows it will be over in three days; that the public journals will emu- late each other in calling it by any name their subscribers desire ; that nobody there is responsible for anything said or done ; that in any moral crisis the endeavor to summon it and make it work would be equivalent to marshalling an equal number of birds to face a whirlwind. What do the managers at the Tract House, and the Bible House, care for the system of lectures on reform and religion RELIGION IN NEW YOKE. 337 unsupported by organization. ? They have a rich, close corporation, a press, can buy shrewd and eloquent men to plead their cause, and well they know they cannot fall until liberalism concentrates its forces in something more potent than a curious crowd. Meanwhile a vast system of visitation is preparing to operate on every family in the State, and bring the children into the Evangelical Sunday- school. Once there, the revival machinery, like a great elevator, lifts them into the church, and so the work of a generation turns round upon itself. The imperative duty of the dissenting force in New York now is organization. It is possible to gather the friends of free thought on religion into associations for the practice and study of religion. Let the best person attainable be selected as teacher, and a just freedom of thought be allowed in preacher and hearer ; all agreeing to unite to do works of benevolence and aid each other towards the best wisdom. Out of such associations, would finally come a multitude of free churches in the State. The children would have religious associa- tions, the minds of preacher and people be stimu- lated, and when the evil one blew his trumpet of defiance over the land, there would be an answer- ing blast from these societies — for the time become one — to repel this invasion of public morality. 15 338 THE CHOBOHES ; OE, Already are there some 250 such organizations in New York, mostly small in number and resources, but all capable, by liberal and religious manage- ment, of being placed on firm foundations and made the centres of a nesr religious life. There are materials for as many more ; and we urge upon the friends of religious liberty everywhere the duty of concentrating, and putting themselves in the way of permanent religious instruction. Even nothing more than a weekly assembly for the sincere dis- cussion of truths affecting man's origin, duty, and destiny, would be a great advance on the disorgan- ization of the present time. Thus alone can the great mass of truth imparted by conventions, lec- tures, and the press, be made available in the development of a growing life among the people. Could we see at the end of twenty-five yeare, only a few hundred such liberal Christian churches in New York, united in the determination to have the law of love applied to the life of the State, it would be a great aid to the establishments now on the ground. Neither Catholicism nor Evangel- icism could spring a plot against the freedom of the soul in the face of such a watchful organization. While they would both be pricked up to philan- thropy and purity by its powerful criticisms and example. Meanwhile the friends of a Keformed EELIGION IN NEW TOEK. 339 Christianity in these churches would succeed in beating down the evils that now cripple them. Feeble churches would unite on the ground of union in life and toleration in belief; the creeds would first lose their infallibility, and then become only the aids of men in learning of Christ. 'No ecclesiasticism would be able to shut up any large portion of the people away from the mass of be- lievers ; the practical work of reforming the State would take the place of useless ceremonial and indolent sentimentalism in the churches ; and, year by year, the sects and the individual congi-egations would be learning to combine for great public in- fluence on the side of the truth. Would it be too much to hope that half a cen- tury in this country of rapid growth would quite modify the condition of the church of New York ; and in place of a Babel of warring sects, give us a practical union of good men and women for the sanctification of society. To doubt that this is sometime to come is to condemn Christianity. For some religion must be had to regenerate this com- monwealth by the power of united love and free thought ; and if Christianity cannot do it, the peo- ple will have something that wiU. But Christianity can and will do it ; this is Christianity as it came from Jesus Christ, when he said Love to God and 340 THE CHUECHES; OE, man Is the whole law, and this is the glorious ideal he beheld when he prayed : " That they aU may he one; as thou, Father, art in me, and I in thee, that they also m,ay he one in us ; that the world may be- lieve that thou hast sent me." Christians of the Empire State, is this blessed hope to be longer mocked and changed into despair through your intolerance and contentions and un- humanity ? Behold the garden God has giyen you to till ; the greatest free State upon earth, rich in all materials of a Kepublican society. In your hands is placed its destiny. You may say whether Christianity here shall exhaust herself through her sins and quarrels, till she becomes the prey to a new barbarism ; or, freeing herself from present im- purities, rise to the controlling power in the souls of the people. We seek no complicity of church with the State ; no concentration of a great eccle- siasticism; no union with any outside interests. We only demand that those who love God and man shall agree to work together to make this magnificent commonwealth the garden of the Lord. What New York shall be religiously is, more and more, to determine the fate of Christ- ianity in the Republic. From our great metropo- lis go forth plans and ideas that shape new States and mould new orders of society. All the forces RELIGION IN NEW TOEK. 341 of Religion and Irreligion are gathering here for a final struggle. Should we behold spiritual despot- ism and superstition laying the foundations of so- cial and political tyranny, and not be up and do- ing, and save our State to a broad and pure Christ- ianity ? Save our country to the sacred cause of a righteous Liberty ; save the Religion of Jesus from being driven from our own land to seek in distant shores the home denied in this? Never did a nobler field invite the toil; never will a richer harvest reward the fidelity of man. XIII. THE RURAL CEMETERY; on, LIFE AND DEATH. Among the burial-places of our State, no one may better claim tbe admiration of the lover of beauty than the Albany Eural Cemetery. Situ- ated three rnUes north of the city, upon the west- ern bank of the Hudson, it includes, within the space of two hundred acres, a variety of surface remarkable even in this picturesque region. Its shaded avenues climb, by gradual acclivities, to lofty eminences, and hence the river is seen washing the wharves of two neighboring cities, and flowing between tranquil islands, down to the majes- tic curve, where it wheels off between a gateway of bold headlands. The cities and villages, the lovely wooded hills that soar to the opposite hor- izon, the distant spectral Oatskills, the strange blending of human activity with the bewitched 344 THE EDEAL CEMLTEKT ; OE, silence of tlie valley, detain the traveller long upon these enchanted summits. On descending, a new charm appears in a series of long ravines, extending down the entire slope, through which sequestered foot-paths lead among waterfalls and miniature lakes, and thread the flowery banks of perennial streams. Art has conspired with na- ture in the decoration of this beautiful city of the dead, which should be visited by every tourist to the ancient capital of our commonwealth. This Kural Cemetery dates from a meeting of the citizens of Albany, on December 31, 1840. An eloquent discourse from a venerable clergy- man, still living, had aroused the attention of the town to the necessity of better accommodations for the interment of the dead than the already crowded burial-places of the city afforded. In April, 1841, a legislative act of incorporation gave a new impulse to the scheme; and on the afternoon of October 7th, 1844, the grounds were solemnly dedicated, an immense concourse of citizens assembling to unite in the consecration. During the fourteen years of its existence, it has enlarged its boundaries, and is already one of the most attractive cemeteries in our country. At the time of the dedication, the Rural Ceme- tery was almost an experiment in the United UFE AND DEATH. 345 States. As earlj as 1831 the first essaj was made in Massachusetts, simultaneously witli a like move- ment in England ; for previous to 1832 this form of interment was almost unknown in Eastern Europe, though the Oriental nations have always inclined to this mode of burying the dead. Mount Auburn, near Boston, was the earliest result of this great movement of public feeling which has covered our States with countless ceme- teries. When the Albany inclosure was dedi- cated. Laurel HiU, in Philadelphia, Mount Hope, in Rochester, Greenwood, in New York, with Mount Auburn, were its chief competitors for public admiration. The act of the legislature of New York, in 1847, was a great spur to the public enterprise in this respect. By this statute any company exceeding seven persons, may be- come a corporation, holding not more than two hundred acres of land, and $5,000, personal estate, for cemetery purposes. The proceeds from the sale of lots are to be appropriated to the purchase and improvement of the grounds. The corporation is governed by a board of trustees, elected by the owners of lots. The interment of one body in a plot of ground makes the spot unalienable. TIic lands are exempt from taxation and liability for individual debts ; sacredly guarded from 15* 346 THE EUEAL CEMETEET ; OE, personal intrusion, and protected from the en- croachments of a vandalic spirit of "improve- ment." Under the impulse of this enactment, a great numher of cemeteries have been established in our State during the past ten years. Few large towns are now destitute of such a spot, to which the stranger is invited with laudable pride ; and every year witnesses the inauguration of new enterprises of this kind. The contagious enthu- siasm of the American people is a great aid in the prosecution of any new and worthy undertaking ; and although an occasional exhibition of fanatical excitement may provoke the disgust of the fasti- dious skeptic of Republican institutions, yet who- ever beholds the susceptibility of our population to noble enthusiasm, will rejoice over it as a provi- dential inspiration in the subjugation of a new world. Every new cemetery now stimulates a neighboring village to greater exertions in this direction, and another quarter of a century will doubtless see every community in New York sup- plied with a beautiful rural inclosure for the de- parted. Already the cities of the dead that crown the hills adjoining our metropolis divide the interest of the contemplative traveller with the cities of the LIFE A2JD DEATH. 347 living. Within two hours' ride of If ew York are no less than twelve noble cemeteries, two of which include four hundred acres each, and most of which cover a space of one hundred acres and up- wards. The situation of these cemeteries is un- rivalled by any in the world. From the high grounds of the most extensive is spread out the wondrous view of the bay of New York, with inter- mingled cities, shipping, islands, rivers and ocean. Others overlook the valley of the Hudson. All are beautifully diversified with forest, lakes, cool glens and sunny slopes, and all are rapidly advanc- ing in artistic merit. Oldest and most populous of these is Greenwood — incorporated in 1838, now containing 360 acres — a. world of loveliness and grandeur, wherein one may wander for days with ever new objects of attraction challenging his at- tention. Every friend of a Christian civilization in New York will rejoice over this growing evidence of respect for the departed. For it is not too much to say that the character of every people is tested by its mode of treating the bodies of the dead. The earliest glimpse of antiquity shows the belief in the sanctity of the body as a fixed sentiment in the race. It has been held by almost every people since the world began as a shameful outrage to 348 THE SURAL CEMETEBY ; OB, deny to the temple of the soul a decent respect from the living. The Egyptians embalmed their dead with great care and built their grandest monumental piles for the resting-place of their bodies, that when the soul should revisit the world it might find its tabernacle awaiting it. The Greeks and the Komans held that the spirit of the unburied man was excluded from the Elysian Fields for a century ; and enjoined upon the traveller, coming by chance upon a dead body, the pious duty of throwing dust three times on the inanimate form. How touching are those oft-repeated words in the elder Scriptures, describing the burial of their patri- archs : "He died and was gathered to his people." Ifo funeral service ever exceeded in simple gran- deur the words the ancient Hebrew was accustomed to utter at the grave of the deceased : " Blessed he Oodwho has formed thee, fed thee, maintained thee, and taken away thy life, oh. Dead. He knows your nurnhers a/nd shaR one day restore yowr life." It would seem that burial was the most ancient man- ner of disposing of the dead. The custom of burn- ing was probably of later origin, and we think the early Christians did wisely in retaining the custom of the primeval ages. There is something akin to the later elaborate Paganisms in the violent and sudden annihilation of the body by flame ; there is LIFE AND DEATH. 349 a beautiful harmony with Christianity in laying the deserted form in the groimd amid the glory of the changing seasons, to slowly yield to the laws of nature and be resolved again into her lovely forms. We could wish that the ancient custom of bury- ing outside of towns and cities had never been in- vaded ; and we approve the sentiment of the Christ- ians of the first five centuries against burials in churches and churchyards. The original instincts of humanity often point to the most admirable cus- toms ; and after three thousand years of burning, and hiding-in crypts and under pavements, and huddling in crowded churchyards, the better sense and finest taste of the American people are bring- ing lis back to the beautiful practice of the old Hebrew times, of gathering our dead in cemeteries adorned with the tokens of our affections. For the service it has rendered in the education of the soul in this the primary school of its immortal existence, we will bear the body, no longer needed, to the most quiet and lovely place our united hands can prepare, and there leave it to mingle with the ele- ments, and be wrought again into shapes of majesty and grace by those ever-acting laws of nature, which are but the direct presence of the all-creating God. 350 THE EUEAL CEMETEET ; OK, The improved ideas on tlie burial of the dead among us are a cheering sign of our advancement in a true Christian civilization. The stem neces- sities of a new country, and the divisions into rival classes and churches, incident to the transmission from a British province to a Kepublican Nation, still appear in the burial-places of many portions of our laud. The old burying-grounds of the country towns in the original northern States, bar- ren, bleak, poorly inclosed, and carelessly kept, bore witness to the hardships of a pioneer life, when a thousand pressing cares and hourly impend- ing dangers almost compelled the people to neglect the resting-places of their dead. The custom of burying in private inclosures is a relict of the old divisions of European society, where the families of the rich and distinguished, even in death, were desirous of impressing the common people with a sense of their superiority. The practice of church- yard interment grew up from the similar desire to keep separate the rival churches of Christ even in death. We are no longer compelled to overlook our burial-places by poverty, or hardships, or the ■alarms of war; all family distinctions are fast merging in the only permanent distinction of cha- racter, which a Christian democracy can approve ; and the contentious corporations that have too long LIFE AND DEATH. 361 waged unholy warfare in the name of Christ, are coming to see that the church of God in any com- munity is all the Christian people of that place, working for the abolition of wickedness and the success of holiness in time and eternity. All things are tending, at least in the more advanced portions of our country, to a broad and pure Ee- publicanism founded on the Christian law of love ; and what emblem can be more significant of this happy tendency than the American cemetery, con- structed by the money, taste, and sentiment of the whole people ; containing the dust of the earliest generation, removed thither with pious care ; re- ceiving the body of every citizen when his earthly work is done, and he steps down from his little eminence of worldly distinction to mingle with the great democracy of death ? We would therefore cherish the American cemetery as a most significant type of the great democratic idea on which our society is founded ; as a powerful aid in teaching the people the Christian view of life and death ; as a perpetual preacher on the relations of those who live in this world and in the world of souls. How impressive is the testimony of the ceme- tery to that true equality of man founded on re- spect for his nature ; and that union of all men for 352 THE BITBAIi CEMETEBT; OB, the common welfare, which is the foundation stone of our national existence. However we may be forced by shallow theories or selfish projects to de- spise or run over any man or class, in the mad struggle of our week-day life, we have only to come up here to be converted from the sin of contempt for humanity. For in the cemetery all dis- tinctions lie level with the dust. Friend and foe, rich and poor, wise and simple, good and bad, honored and obscure, are all here. Whatever they may have been, or may have done, above ground, our gentle mother earth opens her bosom to the least and greatest alike. However separated by the accidents of conventional society, Nature, the most illustrious hostess, keeps open house for all. From these green graves a voice shall speak to us saying : " Man is worthy of respect as man ;" and this primal reverence transcends all secondary dis- tinctions. Made in the image of a common Father ; clothed in the dust of the common earth ; bound to every spirit by a common nature ; destined to a common immortality ; the soul demands more reverence than any man can pay. Of all distinc- tions, but one endured beyond these walls ; and this only for the common good of humanity. Vainly will you seek to exalt the special rank of your dead by a show of monumental wealth and LIFE AND DEATH. 363 the elaborate recital of eartHy superiorities. Cover the marble tomb of your most famous man all over with letters of gold ; what is this to the majestic monument erected here by nature's God to the memory of the common humanity that sleeps beneath this turf? Will the flowers bloom more ten- derly, or the grass wave more greenly, or the wind sing a sweeter song up in the vocal foliage ; or the shower, the rain and the dew visit more generously, or the sounds from hill and vaUey wander hither with more harmonious murmur ; or the blue heavens light up by day and glow by night with a glory more sublime, above the bed of the mightiest than over the comer where sleeps the weakest of you all ? Come to the cemetery from the selfish competitions that divide man from man, and learn from the way our mother treats her every child, to reverence all men for their manhood derived from God ; learn to live for each other, counting any su- periority of native faculty, or culture, or character, as a trust to be used for the uplifting of the whole ; to make society in this community, in our beloved country, one family bound together by respect for the nature and rights of all ; a republic on earth, fit emblem of the kingdom of God in heaven. It is a happy thought that places so many of our most beautiful cemeteries at easy distances from 354: THE EUEAL CEMETEKy ; OE, the centres of activity, and throws them open for the constant visitation of the people. Thereby is no loss of reverence for sacred things ; but the popular views of life and death are insensibly ele- vated. The tendency of our insane activity is to shut the thought of death altogether from the mind ; and this fanaticism for work reacts in a no less destructive fanaticism of meditation which overlooks this world, and lives in ecstatic dreams of a future heaven. A pure and wise Christianity unites time and eternity in one complete view of spiritual life. The time is past when this world's activity can be disparaged or despised in behalf of any other world. Look upon this planet to-day, virtually bound into one community ; behold the vast sweep of its common interests ; see how the ordinary occupations of our life are entangled with the highest spiritual relations. Science, so long despised, has woven her magic wire to demonstrate the fact so grandly proclaimed of old, that we are all members of one body of humanity. Commerce, so often scorned, turns out a pioneer of civilization and Christianity. Every blow of the spade or sweep of the mower on the uplands and in the valleys of New Tork, is felt in the spiritual experience of these who dwell in far-off lands. If our only hope of religion lies in teaching man to despise this LIFE AND DEATH. 355 world's affaire just as Ee is now becoming endowed with angelic powers, and prepared to live a mag- nificent life on earth, our hope is vain. But, thank Heaven, religion needs no such defence. Christ- ianity teaches the glorious fact of one life for every soul ; beginning with its emergence from God and running on forever ; a life in which the change we call death is, perhaps, one of the least important events ; a life which is exalted or base, not according to the place of occupation, but the quality of the motives and the holiness of the character. Keligion commands the men and women of to-day, not to despise this glorious world, or underrate its oppor- tunities, but to use it and all its manifold advan- tages for the production of that Christian manhood and womanhood, which survive all changes of mor- tality, and excel all achievements of human power. Indeed, it is from this very worldly activity that stirs around, and burns within the veins of the American people, that the most cogent appeal arises for faith in the highest beliefs of religion. Were 1 challenged by the skeptics to show my strong reasons for the faith in God, and moral obli- gation and immortality, I do not think I should detain him in ray study among the volumes of dead divines, but I would lead him to the very throbbing heart of this world's activity, to the 366 THE BUBAL CEMETEBTJ OB, decks of those steamers freighted with the science and burdened with the hopes of two continents. There I would stand, as these messengers ploughed their way through the waves, breasting an ocean of incredulity more chilling than the surges of the cold Atlantic, I would bid him mark the demeanor of those toil-worn men ; their fidelity, their silent and sacred obedience to every command, the faith of their leader unsubdued by failure. I would ask him to follow that man as he walked up the shore of ^Newfoundland, and at night to awaken the sleeping electricians by the tidings that the continents were united — ^to behold that procession which bore the landed cable up to the station, and then bowed in prayer to God; and I would say. Is the instinct that bows great nations as one soul to a higher Power at such a time, a delusion ? Is the idea of fidelity to a great obligation that nears the hearts of the swarming crews of two great vessels into one heart, vibrating to every rustle of a frail cord, nothing ? Shall the thoughts of gene- rations flash along these wires, while the souls of Morse, and Field, and Hudson go out forever like a wasted taper's flame ? Believe who can, that he who thus pierces to the awful deeps of ocean, and shoots the lightnings through the sea and over the land, is the poor creature of chance ; his soul a LIFE AND DEATH. 357 bundle of nerves, his duty the whim of the day, his life a spark struck off the electric wheel of being to go out in blackness everlasting; his holiest and highest beliefs on which he falls back, like a cliild upon its mother's breast, in the mo- ment of his loftiest achievement, the dreams of a heated brain, that all things he has made shall outlive him ; and he, the lord of earth, drop from his own throne into blank annihilation ! Ah ! be- cause man is so powerful now, does he need to con- fess the God who made him, that, guided by the eter- nal laws of goodness, his activity may flow forth to Godlike uses, and bless while it astonishes the world. How admirable, then, is the sentiment that often places the Kural Cemetery within sight of all the agencies of our new civilization. Walking among its silent graves, you can almost hear the hum of the machinery that crowds the adjacent stream ; the meadows are sown and harvested beneath your eye ; the spires and roofs of the city gleam in the distance, or the village streets are vocal below ; the near river or blue ocean afar glitter with flitting sails ; the thunder and the scream of the lightning train startle the echoes of innu- merable ravines, and swift as thought, fly tidings of humanity over the glittering wire. All is life around ; oh, yes, and there is no death here. 358 THE BUEAL C3SMETEKT ; OR, Could you explore the secrets of these green graves, you would behold the irresistible laws of nature changing the body of your friend to the grass blade, and the flower-cup, and the glancing foliage. This mute form you buried out of your sight as dead, is rising to iui other life. Why fancy, then, that death is a reality ? "Why not accept the lesson of the Rural Cemetery, that the soul is the centre of the life that throbs adown the hills, and along these river shores ; that this soul is not here haunting its body ; that body and soul have gone to tlicir own place, the one to blossom in new ma- terial shapes, the other to inspire some grander sphere of toil in vaster worlds. Come not here to muse of death ; for science has confirmed tlie glori- ous doctrine of religion that " death is abolished," and there is only perpetual change in life; but come to think deeply and truly of that spiritual existence which is the gift of God ; what a glorious thing it is ; how it expands into immortality ; how it shall be employed, and how far along the road to perfection you shall be found, when the angel of shadowy countenance leads you through these flowery walks on to your future home. Come, then, to the Eural Cemetery in every con- dition and mood of your earthly existence. Let not the child fear to play among these green LIFE AND DEATH. 359 mounds, for perchance some deep intuition of life shall be struck into his joyous spirit like a soft sha- dow suddenly darkening the corner of a dancing pool. Come here when love first blossoms in the unspeakable tenderness of man's and maiden's soul, and ask if that thou feelest so tumultuous within can look calmly on change and claim its own beyond the tomb : come here with your new-born darling, and think of the angels whose little forms lie so white and still below : come, man of business, and think over your plans among these trees, and test them by the thought of your eternal life : come, mother, weighed down with little cares and confused by haunting duties, and ask yourself how you shall train your children so that they shall water jout headstone with tears from the deep wells of an undying gratitude: come when pros- perity makes high noon in your life, and let these silent monitors whisper of rectitude and humility : come in adversity, and read the deep meaning of sunlight on graves and a blessed Providence be- hind every cloud of grief : come and think of your duties to your country, and ask, When I am here in my narrow house, will man be the better for my vote or my policy of to-day? come and deposit here the tabernacle of clay through which, as through an illuminated transparency, you knew 360 THE EUKAL OEMETEET ; OE, the Boul of your neighbor; and "mourn not as those without hope," but go away believing more of God, of man, of life everlasting. So shall this silent place be more eloquent than the haunts of earthly noise and toil; yea, only here shall you learn what this bustle on the earth means; for, viewed from this " green hill," this life and all its affairs shall appear as the foreground of a spiritual existence that fades off into deeper shadows and more dazzling lights, and vanishes into the mystery of the all-comprehending life of God. Thus, by mingling your visits to this sacred place with aU the occurrences of your daily life, you will be taught to live in contact with everlast- ing realities; your every action will be adjusted to eternal ideas of right; your whole existence become a series of variations on the deep and sim- ple melody of love to God and man. And one thing more this cemetery will teach you : the way to think of your departed, and the highest mode of holding communion with the beloved in other states of being. We may scorn as we will the perpetual desire to cling to those who are translated to other states of being; but still the deep heart of humanity yearns for the sweet companionship of the absent. It is easy to ridicule or reprove the myi-iad superstitions LIFE AND DEATH. 361 into which oar fellow men are hurried by too much longing for those who are no longer in the flesh ; but while we lop away any growth of rank fanaticism, let us be careful that our knife of criti- cism does not wound the most sacred instincts of human affection. "We have only to see what a mighty power the desire to know the spirit world has always been in the individual and society, to learn that the only way to banish fanaticism on this awful theme, is to supply a true and healthy doctrine of our relations to those who have gone before us to the unexplored eternity. I believe the establishment of a beautiful ceme- tery in every village would do much towards ele- vating the tone of popular feeling con coming the departed. The soothing influence of a visit to a place of flowers and fragrant quiet, would do much to allay those frantic moods in which we would almost break through the bars of our mortality to get at those who are away. Here the mourner may reflect on the beautiful process of nature by which the form of the beloved is changing into other shapes of loveliness, and will no longer shud- der at the ghastly vision of decaying mortality. And here, lifted above the fret and fever of mere temporary excitements, the bereaved heart will find in the contemplation of the soul itself, the 16 362 THE EUEAL CEMETEET ; OE, spiritual life, and those ideas and facts that endm-e forever, a strength which often is better than the mere joy of communing minds. It will then be- come more apparent why we are called to part company with those on whom we lean so fondly. For we shall see that it is 'iften a needful disci j)line of our own spirits to be separated from those who were, perhaps, robbing us of our own strength, and liindering om- best growth through the very excess of their attentions. Kothiug is so good for the soul as love; but love meauo a great deal more than the sweetest indul- gg^ce of the sentiments, and is often strongest and pui-est in the absence of its object. Many a one who has done for us wliat no other human soul c<^d do by its presence, may, after a time, move us more potently, and stir a deeper place in our hearts, from its new home in the spirit world. You ra^ scorch the surface of your fields by kindling a,;^ire among the forests that shadow them, but Tviien you would send a thrill of warmth into every vein of the frozen and clammy soil, you must wait till God moves the sun a few degrees higher above the horizon ; and then, through incomprehensible distances, over the abysses of space, the level beams of light cleave their way to the centre of the earth, and the happy valley laughs out in a new LIFE AND DEATH. 363 spring. So, it is not by the loves of this state of being that our cold and selfisli hearts are melted into a springtime of love and faith, so much as by those miglity, unseen influences that come like changes of seasons upon the soul ; the tender com- passion of the beloved in their heaven of holy service; the contemplations of the great and good, ■n-ho move the world with every throb of their memory in the hearts of the generations; the Saviour, living and saving to-day more than when he dwelt in human form in Palestine ; God, " whom no man hath seen at any time," but whom every child may know, at all times, through the life of obedience and consecration. Thus contemplating the reasons of our separa- tion, and the most elevatiiiE; influences on our life, we shall gradually overcome tlie half insane desire to look perpetually in the faces of our friends. We know they live ; if their love was real, we know it is immortal, since no reality can ever perish ; we may trust God to keep us apart while it is best for us to live in solitude ; and when our deepest wants crave a communion of souls, they will not be absent long. So, let us not distract ourselves by vaitl and uneasy attempts to pursue the departing soul into the mysteries of its future home. If it be given to 364 THE RURAL CEMETERY; OR, US to meet again, tlie path is not in this direction, but rather in the way of a pure life and patient faith in the providence of the Most High. Let no man flatter himself he will know his departed while buried in the dust of selfish toil, or plunged in the slough of guilty indulgence, or whirling down the maelstrom of a godless ambition. Let no woman think that her tears and repinings, and frantic wrenchings of will, can force the gates of Paradise. Let it not be dreamed that the lost are found in the company of half-sensual, half-lunatic enthusiasts, who trade in the sacred weakness of the afiiicted. If we would know our best beloved again, and have our souls filled with the joy of their blissful presence as gardens are filled with the blown odor of fragrant roses, we must prepare for the visitation by long service and lofty medita- tions. " How pure at heart and sound in head, With what divine affections bold ; Should be the man whose thought would hold, An hour's communion with the dead. " In Tain shalt thou, or any, call The spirits from their golden day. Except, like them, thou too canst say, , My spirit is at peace with all. "They haunt the silence of the breast. Imaginations calm and fair, LIFE AND DEATH. 365 The memory like a cloudless air, The conscieDce as a sea at rest ; " But when the heart is full of din, And doubt beside the portal waits, They can but listen at the gates, And hear the household jar within !" "W^e best know our beloved in heaven, when in the sternest way of duty ; when we have conquered our worst temptations ; when we have loved our enemy and sacrificed ourself for our friend ; when, in some great spasm of public folly and injustice, we have stood firm and just ; when we have re- solved to live the godly life, and feel that our prayer has been answered. We know the illus- trious dead only when we are like them, and vainly do we insult their memory by words of praise, while our lives are traitors to their worth. Thus only by living nobly here do we know those who are living grandly elsewhere. Life gravitates to life, and while we are dead in any low state of existence, our communion will only be with " dead men's bones, and all uncleanness ;" but, as we rise through the spaces of the life in God, at every step of our progress we are hailed by some glorious spirit, and claim the friendship of some exalted soul. The noonday idler on your hill-sides does not behold the finest aspect of nature, but the 366 THE EUEAi, cemeteey; or, farmer wJio rests upon his plough to welcome the morning radiance streaking up the horizon; the busy traveller, borne through miles of autumnal glory, the mother who sits by her baby's cradle, while the sweet summer moonlight steals through the open doors. So do glimpses of Paradise and glances from angelic faces come oftenest to him who is most faithful in the nobler duties of life ; and plodding along the dusty road of common service, his soul leaps up at a vision of far-off vistas in heavenly lands. Thus shall we consecrate the Rural Cemetery to life and death. To the burial of the dead and the mstruction of the living. Let every community esteem most holy, and guard with watchful care, this sacred inclosure. Consecrate it by making it every year more beautiful; by holy meditations, and lofty ideas of life, and cheerful views of death, and solemn resolutions and dedication of the soul to eternal things. What can be a greater adorn- ment to any neighborhood than to have, withiji accessible distance, a spot of quiet beauty for the burial of the dead, which shall grow more beauti- ful as generations pass away; appealing to the holiest and calmest sentiments of our being through the spectacle of enchanting, natural scenery, and the associations of the beloved on earth, now LIFE AND DEATH. 367 beloved iu the spirit land. Let the gentle and persuasive influences of this gathering-place of the departed steal through the neighborhood, like per- fumes from the fields visiting the haunts of busi- ness and the sanctity of home. Let the life of the community be a perpetual consecration of this green inclosure by which, as through a flowery arch, the generations shall pass away to anotlier clime. And may every town and village in our great State found a cemetery worthy its finest taste and adequate to its entire needs. Then, looking off from the hills that front the stormy Atlantic, nestling in the mystic ravines, and climbing the varied slopes of the Hudson; reposing upon the sun-lit shores of our lakes, blending the exhilara- tion of the traveller for pleasure with the solemn exaltation of the traveller to heaven; clustering all along the blooming valley of the Mohawk, from its springs among the western hills to where it phmges down its foaming precipice to lose itself amid an island labyrinth ; the pride of every little village, the noblest sight to every visitor in tlie city ; these fields of the dead will blossom with a liarvest of ennobling influences for the living; proclaiming the equality and dignity of all men ; reconciling tlie life that now is, with the life that is to be ; lifting the souls that now tabernacle in 368 THE RURAL CKMKTEUY ; OK, LIFE AND DEATH. clay to inspiring comniuuion witli spirits that have put on immortality; and mingling the waves of the life that now waters these earthly scenes with that river of being, whose billows roll on forever- more towards the boundless ocean of Almighty love. THE END, THATGHEE & HUICHINSON PUBLISH A BOOK OF RARE MERIT, ENTITLED THE RELIGIOUS ASPECTS OP THE AGE, with a Glance at the Church of the Present and the Church of the Future, being Addresses delivered at the Anniversary of the Young Men's Christian Union of New York, on the 13th and 14th days of May, 185S, by Samuel Osgood, D.D., T. J. Sawyer, D.D., Kev. 0. B. FsoTHisGHAM, Rev. Henry Blanchabd, Rev. C. Miel, Eev. B. F. Barrstt, E. II. Chapin, D.D., Hesrt TV. Bellows, D.D., Rev. A. D. Mayo, Rev. T. V>'. HiGGissoN, Rev. B, Peters, Ricuard Warren, Esq., and Hon. Horace Greeley. lo which is added the Constitution and Rules of Oraer of the Young Men's Christian Union of New York. Price— In Paper Covers, §0 25 On heavy paper bound in Cloth, . 63 Do. Cloth, Full Gilt, . 1 00 PUBLISHERS' PSEFACE. The Anniversary of the " Young Men^s Christian Union of Xew York," on the 13lh and 14th days of May, 1S58, may justly be considered as marking an era in the history of the progress of the Christian Church in America ; inas- much as it was the first instance in which so many of the leading minds in the various branches of the liberal and progressive portion of the Christian Church have met on one common platform, for the purpose of discussing the practical bearings of that higher type of Christianity which refuses to be limited by any dogma or fettered by any creed. The occasion was one of peculiar interest. Such an array of talent as the speakers presented, would, under any circumstances, have given assurance of a rare literary feast; but when representatives of different branches of the Christian Church, hitherto somewhat antagonistic, found themselves side by side on a broad platform of Christian Charity and Brotherly Love, they could not but draw inspiratioD from the occasion as well as the soul-inspiring themes on which they dwelt. Believing that the publication of these addresses, in a suitable form for pre- servation, as weU as for general distribution, will be rendering a valuable ser- vice to the cause of practical Gbristiaoity, and one that practical Cbristiaiu all over the land will appreciate and encourage, we have assumed the risk, confi- dently relying on the efforts of all who sympathize with the progressive Christ- ian spirit of the age, to extend their circulation. The *' Religions Aspects of the Age," with a glance at the *' Church of the Present and the Church of the Future," is a subject in which all are, or should be, lotevesleil, and this title has been adopted on account of it-a peculiar adaptation to the contents of the book. To accommodate the means and taatea of all, we publish a cheap pamphlet edition, and another on superior paper, and neatly bound in cloth. MARTIN THATCHER, , , V Publish BOS. ORREN HUTCHINSON, \^ TABLE OF CONTENTS. Opektno ADi'RiiFS. By Richard Warren, E.*q , President of the Union, Thk Catholility op thb Church op thr Futurb. By Samuel Oi-'^oodf D.D. Thb Tkdk Bisis OF Christian Union By Rev. B. P. BHrrett. AVoRSnip — Its nkcrssitt. By Rev. B. Peters. The Cur siian J^piuit of Rufobm. By Horace Greeley. The Truk f-iRiusns of CHinsTiiN Union By Rct. A D, Mayo. ■\VoMAN IN Cmkistian CIVILIZATION. By Rcv. T. W.Higginson. Christian Umon By Rcv C. Miel. Inpll'rnck of 'J'uROLoriiCAL THKor.ms UPON THE Practical Conduct of Lipr, By lleiJiy Vi. BeUuws, D D. The Rlligion of Fs^b kkd the Relioion op Love. By Rev. Henry Btanchard. PRdPRR Treatment of the Infidel Tbndehciks ok our Bat. By Rev. 0. B. Prothingharn. True and false Views of Etasoelical Rrligion By T. J. Sawyer, D.D. Tkndrncirs or thk Age Friendly to Labgi:r ViKwa of Christianity. By E. H. Ciiiipin. D O. Appendix. Con':Iusion of Dr. Osgood's Afidress, in the form of a Letter to the Publiahit.g Coiiimiltee. OPINIONS OF THE PRESS. ** It iti a work of great merit, and one which will furniish a rich literary feast to the reader." — C-ihton Plain De ayy Gazeiif. "This Is a book which deserves to be widely circulated." — Naw York Even- ing Post. ** They treat of the most vitnl questions which can engage men*a minds or hearts* and look car<-fully nod seriously into the present religious af^pects of the age. . . . The book ought to hare, and will have, we believe, an extensive sale. . . . There are scores of men* and women too, we judge, now called Deists or Infidels, it may he, and who really reckon themselves as Ruch, per- haps, who would rejoice with unspeakable gladness to become acquainted with tiie iulerpretation of Christianity, or Christian doctrine, and the Christian life. which is presented in this attractive volume, and without some new vi'ion bre;LLs upon them, they will wander into hopeless and confirmeil uiibelief Wn hope the frien;!* oT liheml Cnristianity will circulate this and kindred boolca broadcast over the iHUd." — Star in the West. " Wh-jeV'^r procures tind reads It will make a pr>&table investment of time and money." — UniHAiHiUikt Qtuirtertp. *' T)ie speakers are known to the public, and are known to be men ofdistin- f^uished talents. Here are thirtei^n most valuable lecture?!— 179 p4ge9. paper coTef-s f-)r the suihII sum of 25 cents. 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