^y\LiroRNiA I "BRIGHT-EYED FANCY, HOVERiMG O'ER, ^ ( SCATTERS FROM HER PICTURED URN \\l TH0U6HTS THAT 8flEATHE AND WORDS j ' i THAT BURN." t kJ Library of Congress; ^ I^^qUNITED STATES OF AMERICA. : W^l^ 9—167 , j^- // 11 99 -M/''^ N California Anthology: OR Striking ihoiights on Many i hemes, CAREFULLY SELECTED FROM California Writers and Speakers, OSCAR T. SHUCK. (lOMPILRR OK THE "CALIFORNIA SCRAP BOOK" AND EDITOR OF " Rkprksf.ntativr Men of thf. Pacific." SAN FRANCISCO: From tite Prkss of BARRY & BAIRD, 419 Sacramento St. A. .J. Lrary, Publisher, 402 and 404 Sansome St. 18 80. 54638 EnTKRBJ), ACCORniNG TO ACT 01' CONGRKSS, IN TIIK YEAR 1880, By OSCAR T SHUCK, In the Office of the Librarian of Congress, at Washington, D. C. I VENTURE TO INSCRIBE TH IS VOLUME Distinguished Citizen of California, A CONSPICUOUS PILLAR, AND A FORMER GOVERNOR, OF THE STATE, WUOSli PERMISSIOX, ON ACCOl ST OF lilS ABSENCE IN EUROPE, I IIAVE NOT BEES ABLE TO SOLICIT, The HON. LELAND STANFORD, NOTED ALIKE FOR THE HEA1.TH FULNESS OF HIS PUBLIC SPIRIT AND THE PURITY OF HIS PRIVATE LIFE. The Editor. Names of Writers and Speakers Quoted ix THIS Volume. Anderson, Rkv. T. H. B. Baker, Gex. E. D. Baldwin, Joseph G. Bancroft, Hubert H. Barnes, Gen. W. H. L. Barstow, George Bartlett, W. C. Bausman, "William Bell, Samuel B. Bennett, Nathaniel Bonte, Rev. J. H. C. Booth, Newton Bierce, a. G. Briggs, Rev. M. C. Browne, J. Ros.s Bunker, Wm. M. Burnett, Peter H. Casserly, Eugene Clarke, Chas. Russell Collins, Gen. John A Coolbrith, Ina D. Cooper, Sarah B. Craddock, Chas. F. Crittenden, R. D. Curtls, N. Greene Dall, W. H. Davidson, Prof. George Deerixg, F. p. DwiNELLE, John W. Ewer, Rev. F. C. Felton, John B. Field, Judge Stephen J. Finney, Selden J. Fisher, Philip M- Fitch, Thomas FooTE, Gen. L. H. Freelon, T. W. Fremont. Gen. J. C. George, Henry' Goodman, Joseph T. Gordon, Georgk Gray, Dr. Henry M. Guard, Rev. Thomas Hallidie, a. S. Hamilton, Rev. L. Harmon, J. B. Harte, F. Bret Hayes, William Highton, Henry E. Howard, J. G. hurlbut, g. c. Ijams, Rev. W. E. Kellogg, Prof. Martin Kendall, W. A. Kewen, Col. E. J. C. King, Thomas Starr Latham, Milton S. Le Conte, Prof. John Le Conte, Prof. Joseph Marshall, E. C. McDonald, Da. R. H. McDougall, Gen. Jas. A. McKin.stry, Judge. E. W. Montgomery, Zachary Moore, George R. Neale, Mrs. James O'CoNNELL, Daniel Pixley, F. M. Platt, Rev. William H. Pratt, Judge L. E. NAMES OF WRITERS AND SPEAKERS. Pratt, Judge 0. C. PPvOFFATT, Johx Randolph, Edmund Redding, B. B. Reid, Henry H. Rhodus, W. H. Robinson, Tod ROYCE, JoSIAH Sargent, A. A. Scott, Rev. Dr. W. A. Shafter, Jas. McM. Shattuck, Judge D. O. Shinn, Charles H. Shore, Dr. J. C. Shurtleff, Dr. G. A. Sill, E. R. Skidmore, Miss H. M. Soule, Frank Speer, Rev. William Stanford, Leland St^vnly, Edward Stebbins, Rev. H. Stoddard, Chas. Warren Stone, Rev. Dr. A. L. Stout, Dr. A. B. Stuart, Hector A. Sullivan, Francis J. Sumner, Chas. A. Swift, John F. TiLFORD, Frank Tompkins, Edward Tuthill, Dr. Franklin Upham, M. J. Waite, E. G. Warwick, J. H. Wattson, John V. Wheeler, Judge E. D. WiNANS, Joseph W. WiNCHELL, Judge E. C. Williams, Samuel Wilson, Samuel M. GENERAL DIVISIONS. I'ART. Page. I. Science axd Art, ...... 9 II. LiTEKATURE AND EDUCATION, ... 49 III. The Conduc .• of Life, . . . - . 83 IV. Religion and the Future Life, - - 131 V. The Farm and Garden, - - - - 157 VI. Society and the State, - - - - 181 VII. Fraternal Societies, . . . - . 2G1 V^III. Distinguished Men, ----- 299 IX. C'aliforniana, - - - - - - -3G1 X. Miscellany, .--..- 391 PREFACE As a labor of love, in my leisure hours, I have gathered from all ijarts of the Golden State a varied collection of jirecious gems. All of these had sparkled for a time in the public eye, but the lapse of years had left most of them hidden away between faded leaves — consigned to the "dust and silence of the upper shelf." I have brouglit them forth again, their luster still un- dimmed, and have given them new setting in a single cluster, with the two-fold motive of securing their com- mon preservation, and enhancing their beauty and value by making their contrasted colors emit intenser light. They are distinctively and exclusively Californian. I proffer them to an appreciative public. They are the jewels of others, only the setting is mine. O. T. S. Sa7i Francisco, A^ig. ist, iS^Ck I. SCIENCE AND ART. PART I. SCIENCE AND ART. 1. Oh, Science! Thou thought-clad leader of the company of pure and great souls that toil for their race and love their kind ; measurer of the depths of earth and the recesses of heaven; apostle of civilization, handmaid of religion, teacher of human equality and human right, perpetual witness for the divine wisdom — be ever, as now, the great minister of peace! Let thy starry brow and benign front still gleam in the van of progress, brighter than the sword of the conqueror, and welcome as the light of heaven. — Gen. E. D. Baker. 2. Science Destroys Not, But Fulfills. — The end and mission of science is not only to discover new truth, but also, and even more distinctively, to give new and more rational form to old truth — to transfigure the old into the more glorious form of the new. Science is come not to destroy, but, aided by a rational philosophy, to fulfill all the noblest aspirations, the most glorious hopes of our race. Sometimes, in- deed, the change which she brings about may be like a metamorphosis — the useless shell is burst and cast off and a more beautiful and less gross form appears, but still 10 CALIFORNIA ANTHOLOGY. it is always a process of evolution — of derivation. We never shall reach a rational philosophy until we recog- nize this fundamental truth. The nczu must include the old. the old must incorporate and assimilate the new, and each must modify and be modified by the other. Progress in all things — in geology, in society, in phi- losophy — is by evolution and growth. — Prof. Joseph LeConte. 3. Science the Student of Nature. — The writ- ings of the metaphysicians, from the earliest dawn of scientific inquiry, have done much to retard the pro- gress of the physical sciences, which were classified by them as belonging to an inferior sphere of intellectual pursuits; and it is not the least merit of the mathema- ticians of the last and present centuries to have pricked that bubble, and by the immense discoveries to which the calculus has given rise, to' have shown the superi- ority and practical utility of their method. The true philosophy of nature must have nature for its basis, and apply to it the scientific discipline. It consists in ap- plying the reasoning faculties of the mind to the rational conception of cause and effect in the infinite variety of natural phonomena. Whenever philosophy leaves na- ture as the object of its inquiries, when the mind of the philosopher attempts to contemplate itself as an object, independent of the natural phenomena which are con- nected with and reflected from it, he sets himself an im- possible task, and begins to reason in a circle. The conception of the grandeur, order, harmony, and nnity of nature, whether it acts on an infinitely great, or an infinitely small scale, is the true end of all human phi- SCIENCE AND ART. 11 losophy, as the knowledge of the laws of nature is the true means of increasing the happiness and power of the human race. — Milton S. Latham. 4. A Progress Steady and Serene. — Amid the cyclical movement of society, the rise and fall of nations and civilizations, the flux and reflux of opinions, the revolutions of all kinds, which agitate, like a seething cauldron, the popular mind, science alone — because it is the simplest and purest embodiment of the human in- tellect, unaffected by the passions which mingle with all other pursuits — science alone, among all human works, moves steadily onward and upward, ever increasing in grandeur and beauty. Like a magnificent temple, grandly and steadily it rises, under the busy hands of thousands of eager workers, the greatest monument of human genius. — Pi'-of. Jos. LcContc. 6. Scientific Methods. — Scientific methods bear the same relation to intelledtial progress which ma- chines, instruments, tools, do to material progress. The civilized man is not superior to the savage in physical strength. The wonderful mechanical results achieved by civilized man are possible only by the use of mechanical contrivances. So, also, the scientists dif- fer from the unscientific not by any superior intellec- tual power. The astounding intellectual results achieved by science have been attained wholly by the use of intellectual contrivances, called methods. As in the lower sphere of material progress, the greatest bene- factors of our race are the inventors or perfecters of new mechanical contrivances or machines; so in the 12 CALIFORNIA ANTHOLOGY. higher sphere of intellectual progress the greatest benefactors of our race are the inventors or perfectcrs of new intellectual contrivances, or methods. — Pi'of. Jos. LcCoiitc. 6. Proclaiming Truth, Science enriches Fancy. The most casual observation is sufficient to convince every reflective mind that in the present century we feel the necessity of reconciling the worlds of reason and imagination. This reconciliation cannot be effected in a moment; it must be the result of repeated and prolonged efforts. In this work of establishing harmony between these two great faculties of the soul it is evident that science is destined to play a very im- portant part. Whenever old and deep-rooted errors are exploded by the increase of knowledge, a feeling of insecurity arises in the ill-instructed multitude. The half-educated pretender gladly embraces the opportu- nity to promulgate his narrow-minded views; doubt, scepticism and infidelity, with regard to all intellectual questions, take the place of security, faith and mental repose. Hence arises that strange dread, pos- sessed by so many, of the results of science; a dread which threatens to destroy that world which their faith and feeling for the beautiful had created. They are thus consigned to a state of vacuity and nothingness, which would indeed be lamentable and fearful, were it unavoidable. The triumphant conquests of science which give us the purest pleasure are, for such unhappy beings, no less than the dangerous approaches of a des- olating foe. The source of the evil must be sought in the ignorance of the true principles of science and in SCIENCE AND ART. 13 the weakness of man's faith in the eternal and inde- structible nature of truth. When the former ideas of the physical universe are broken up, there is a period of insecurity and mistrust, in which even the more thoughtful of men feel a vague apprehension that the enlargement of the empire of reality must necessarily contract the domains in which the creative powers of fancy delight to rove. It seems to me that such a view is based upon a misconception of the subject. For it is evident that each step that we make in the more inti- mate knowledge of science, leads us to the threshold of new labyj-inths. The circle of illumination is en- larged; but the shadowy, half-transparent, vapor- veiled circumference, by which it is perpetually bordered, incessantly recedes before the eyes of the enquirer, con- stituting a fairy-land where imagination revels and lends a definite outline to the ever unfolding manifesta- tions of ideal creation. Thus it is, that every acces- sion to the sciences enriches the fields of fancy by bring- ing new mysteries within their sphere, and opening to them higher and more soul-elevating sources of enjoy- ment. — Prof, yohn LeConte. 7. Truth the Guiding Star of Science. — So far as my observation goes, — so far as my intercourse with men of scientific pursuits teaches me. Science is the embodiment and personification of peace. Its very existence is the issue of calm experiment, persistent in- vestigation, and deliberate thought. It seeks no bub- ble reputation at the cannon's mouth ; no ephemeral glory in the fierce conflict of politics. It is born, bred and nurtured in the serene quietness of Nature. 14 CALIFORNIA ANTHOLOGY. The devotees of Science are warriors only in an- other sense, — they dare be true, earnest and brave in the pursuit of true knowledge ; and firm, steadfast, and unyielding in maintaining that which is demon- strated. Men of original research in Science are in the fullest sense of the word Discoverers, forced to traverse the great ocean of illogical thought and imperfect observa- tion ; and when they reach the shores of Investigation, it is an essential part of their undertaking to burn their ships of early prejudice, of traditional supersti- tions, and of inconsequent learning. Their guiding star in all research, in all deduction, is Truth, — and Truth for Truth's sake alone. The strug- gle for mastery over the errors of the earlier educa- tion is intense, and can only be fully understood by those who have conquered. And yet as new relations in Nature are unfolded, the observer soon finds the scales of defective teachinjjs falling- from his mental vision, and he is impelled by the very truthfulness of his work to urge his labors, and to gather into consecu- tive order the fruits of his discoveries. And it must be gratifying to every teacher of youth, and of older acje — ^I mean teachers in the broadest terms which the word will admit — the preacher, the artist, the professor, the actor — to know how the moral sense of truth is enlarged, intensified, and attuned by the very effort of investigation and deduction. I can fancy no other occupation except that of the mathema- tician, that will, in its workings alone, bear comparison with original research in thus developing one of the SCIEN'CE AND ART. 15 highest attributes of our present condition. And the spread of this taste for examination is to me the most hopeful sign in an age when charlatans in many profes- sions are endeavoring to cut loose the moorings of pub- Lc and private morals. The history of the Inductive Sciences abounds in examples and lessons bearing pertinently upon the po- sition and relations of discovery with society at large ; and it would appear pedantic even to mention the early observers in astronomy and physics ; investigators whose advances were notedly marked by the long and persistent opposition which they encountered. The " warfare " was decidedly one-sided ; the aggressors were assuredly not the investigators ; nevertheless, the attacks of prejudice, of scholastic dogmatism, of unrea- soning credulity, were powerless to stay the march of deduced Truth. Almost in our own time we have had presented to us several remarkable fields of investigation that were held and entrenched by the blindest faith, and nothing but the unwaverinof labor of the investigator has drawn light and truth from them. With the opening of the present century there dawned a new era in Palaeontology; a few clear minds had caught its whisperings, and it has emerged a science. The previous investigators had indeed been in advance 'of their times, but the modes of independent thought had not then been fully developed; and moreover, their conclusions were warped and trammelled by the same causes that had so long repressed the acceptance of the new cosmogony. But the clear truths of discovery 16 CALIFORNIA ANTHOLOGY. accumulated, and of necessity the earlier education was pushed aside whenever and wherever it stood in con- flict with the deductions of the bolder thinking. System now guides investigation, and method has constructed coherent and more comprehensive theories. To-day there is admitted no "sports of nature " on the palseon- tological record, but order, succession, and inevitable law. The stratigraphical record of the earth is now read as certainly, if not so easily, as the hieroglyphics of Egypt, or the cuneiform inscriptions of Assyria. It seemed almost seeking and courting the condem- nation of the so-called " learned professions " when the Archaeologist first propounded the proofs of man's early existence on the face of the earth; and yet the searchers after truth have brought such evidences of his presence here, even before the last glacial period, that only the " doubting Thomases " can fail to see the import and weight of their investigations. Very much more re- mains to be done before the " mint stamp " is placed upon any given archaeological theory ; but the stream of evidence gathers volume and momentum, and will yet carry the law with it. And in the " new chemistry " is it not remarkable what great strides have been taken, and what broader horizons have been opened before us, in the investiga- tions and illustrations of "the Molecular Theory?" The old atom of our student days still claims and still holds a qualified existence, but the wonderful microcosm of the " molecule " has immensely enlarged the views of the physicist, and enabled him to almost penetrate the arcana of ultimate matter. The mathematician SCIENCE AND ART. 17 sees in it the opportunity for the legitimate application of his analysis, and we may rest assured, from the pres- ent progress in the examination, that he will ultimately master the problem. And curiously enough, in this branch of science, the modern investigator has trodden upon the domain of the metaphysician, and shown that the infinite divisibility of matter is a phantasm of the brain of the closet philosopher ; for the atom and the molecule have their sizes determinable. By direct experiment, also, the chemist has placed three distinct bodies of the same volume in the space occupied by one of them ; and again confounded the " inner con- sciousness " of the metaphysical dreamer. In the rich field of Zoology and Biology, we have found, and we may reasonably expect to find, more of the highest developments in the law of evolution, for the very essence and integrity of the law, in one of its more important phases, is ever-present within our means of investigation. It is comparatively young among the modern sciences, and yet its deductions point unerringly to the same pole in the heavens of true knowledge. For these sciences, and for all the others, the specialist must be peculiarly gifted for research ; his education develops as he advances; and his deductions are founded only upon the sequence and coherence of observed facts. All the streams of knowledge will flow into the same great channel and homologate. We may not imagine that channel banks-full until our race reaches a higher development ; we may not hear the announcement of the grand formula of evolution, but we experience the lb CALIFORNIA ANTHOLOGY, lively satisfaction of the ancient geometer, and know that we are on the right line of research and deduction towards it. And yet in our hopefulness and trustful- ness of the very evolution of law in the cosmos, we feel that at any day may arise the man and the brain to grasp and announce the intimate relations of all matter and of all forces. These views are not confined to the scientist ; you know that, in one shape or another, they are permeat- ing the earth. The war-cries of dogmatism, of imper- fect education, of unquestioning faith, may be raised against them, but the world " still moves." The discovery of America was an epoch of restless inquiry, and opened a fresh field for growth and culti- vation of free thought and free deductions ; the activity of the last century has wonderfully accelerated their exposition ; and to-day our children are starting where we are leaving off. To every teacher of youth, to every adviser of ma- turer age and thought, the newer education must come in direct conflict with part of their earlier and more contracted education ; and they must abandon the dicta of mere " schools " and teach these higher laws of science, or be dragged at the wheels of irresistible men- tal and moral progress. — Prof. Geo. Davidson. 8. Science Knows not Prejudice or Passion. — It is the felicity of the scientific man, that the truth he seeks is cosmopolitan. It knows not state or nation, tribe or race, but is world-truth and world-law. The distin- guished representatives of that truth have a clear at- SCIENCE AND ART. 19 mosphere, and if their moral nature is strong enough to sustain itself in those rarified heights, they lead a life of singular dignity and freedom, their minds dashed with no color of prejudice or passion — seeking what is. To know what is in the world of things, is the vocation of the man of science. His reputation is the reputa- tioi> of truth, strong and still as the sun ; and his name is the property of mankind. — Rev. Horatio Stebbins. 9. The Evolution of Science and Art. — This age is one of science, as contra-distinguished from the ages of poetry, the arts, conquest and superstition. The Greeks, who are our masters, and the masters of all the succeeding ages in all that relates to sculp- ture, poetry, taste, refinement of thought and feeling* rhetoric, logic, eloquence and ideal philosophy, were yet children in the natural sciences, though they were far from beine deficient in certain branches of mathe- matics and were accurate observers of men and things. There is not a principle in abstract logic which was not as well understood by Aristotle as it now is by the most eminent in Europe or America, and no abstract principle of moral philosophy which .the Greeks did not elaborate, refine, and adorn with the elegance and grace of their language, and their peculiar adoration of the sublime and beautiful. But their artistic taste, and the ideality of their con- ceptions, rendered them far more apt to speculate on the natural sciences and to establish beautiful theories, than to go through the painful process of methodical investigation, aided by actual experiments. 20 CALIFORNIA ANTHOLOGY. They were most accurate observers of nature, as far as the latter is revealed to the senses, and they pos- sessed a wonderful combination of thouofht, and reason- ing to draw conclusions and to build up systems ; but where their senses erred they necessarily arrived at wrong conclusions; and they had no means of following nature into her dark chambers of inquisition, putting questions to her, compelling answers and racking the truth from her by means of philosophical apparatus. They had no telescope, no microscope, no physical in- struments or chemical laboratories of any importance, and the mechanical arts were not sufficiently advanced to furnish either. The heroes of the Iliad knew neither iron nor steel ; they fought their battles with arms made of copper, and the accomplished Aspasia, though decked with gems of art which our modern cameo cutters would vainly imi- tate, knew neither gauze, silk, nor muslin. Considering the limited means of observation and construction possessed by the Greeks, they achieved wonders in the correct classification of phenomena and their accurate description of them, and in the acuteness of the process of reasoning brought to bear upon them. But they had not data enough to reason from, though they had in many instances a presentiment of truth amounting almost to intuition. And to their ever- lasting honor be it spoken, they sought truth, merely for the sake of truth, on account of its divine essence and ennoblinp- character. There was no stimulus given to inventors and dis- coverers in the shape of patents and privileges for the SCIENCE AND ART. 21 accumulation of large fortunes ; and the answer given by Archimedes to his pupil who wished to devote him- self to the divine science of mathematics, because its application had saved the state, furnishes a powerful contrast to the sordid motives which but too often gov- ern our modern votaries of science. " Science was divine," replied Archimedes, " before it served the state, and he who only worships her on ac- count of the uses to which she may be put, desecrates her shrine." Yet even Archimedes, with his knowledge of geometry, mechanics and hydraulics, would now be scarcely able to pass an examination for admission into the Polytechnic School of Paris, or rank with an under- graduate of the Military Academy of West Point. The Romans, at the period of their Greek conquest, were a semi-barbarous people, but naturally possessed of great aptitudes. They soon perceived and imitated the superior civilization and refinement of the Greeks, and as Pliny expressed it in one of his letters, " were in turn subdued and conquered by the vanquished." But the Romans never equaled the Greeks in the fine arts ; neither did they materially add to Greek science. They were essentially a military people, who looked upon themselves as the masters of the world, and upon the rest of mankind as tributary to their greatness. To carry out this view required not only great valor [virtus it was called) and great generalship, but also fixed prin- ciples of policy in regard to their neighbors and the peoples subjected to their rule. The Romans culti- vated statesmanship, and felt at an early period the 22 CALIFORNIA ANTHOLOGY. necessity of law. The relations of property called for the exercise of legislative wisdom, and led to the en- actment of codes which have become models of legal reasoning to all subsequent legislators. The code of Justinian is still in force in many coun- tries in Europe, and Roman law, as an introduction to the study of all other law, is required in most Euro- pean Universities. Ng nation has elaborated the spirit or science of law more fully than the Romans, and if the legislators of England and France have found it expedient to vary from it in one or the other respect, it was done simply with a view of meeting the altered state of society, and the new relations of property aris- ing from new modes of acquisition. Leibnitz, the great mathematician and logician, compared the study of the Roman law to a course of mathematics, so vig- orous did he find its process of reasoning, its logical deductions, and its demonstrative justice. Our com- mon law derived from England is undoubtedly better adapted to the wants of a free and simple hearted peo- ple, for the common law is a school of freedom, a bul- wark against tyranny ; but no law has, like the Roman, so entirely met the requirements of abstract justice. Greeks and Romans then were our masters. Greek philosophy and art, and Roman law and statesmanship, have assisted in shaping our present civilization. But Greek philosophy had to be stripped of its poetical dress, and to Roman law had to be added the chapter on inalienable Inmian rights and the duties of nations toward each other, to prepare the further development of the intellectual and moral faculties of man. The SCIENCE AND ART. 23 Romans had no idea of international law; no suspicion that a conquered nation had any rights at all, or that Rome had any obligation to ?. foreign nation, except those which were dictated by her own interests. Her conduct toward neutral powers and toward the con- quered, were alike the result of policy. Some of the Greek philosophers — among others, Socrates, in his dialogues — had much higher conceptions of the mutual duties and obligations of men and peo- ples ; but they never succeeded in having their views adopted, as a principle of action, either state or individual. In this respect our civilisation and learning are far in advance of the ancients, and far more in harmony with the general laws of nature. We have evidently advanced in knowledge, though we may remain far behind the Greeks, not only in performance, but also in the appreciation of the fine arts. We have no reason to regret this deterioration in one respect, and advance in another ; for, in spite of the fostering care bestowed by legislation on science and art, there is a certain antagonism between them distinctly marked in ihe history of each nation. The inspirations of the artist consist in an intuitive perception of truth, and in an undefined, but neverthe- less entire appreciation of the harmony of all created things. Imagination must of course elaborate each individual conception of the artist ; but it must always be in harmony with nature, or, to use a more familiar phrase, it must be " true to nature." The process of science is the reverse. Here nothing is intuition ; all is either analysis or synthetic reasoning from cause to 24 CALIFORNIA ANTHOLOGY, effect. Both processes are gradual, and necessarily exclude the influence of the imagination. In the artist, union of design is the first essential pre-requisite ; in science, union is the result of many truths combined into one after a long process of reasoning. The exclu- sion of the imagination from scientific pursuits pre- cludes artistic conception and vice versa. The arts have preceded science all over the world, as poetry was written before prose. Men felt truth before they were conscious of it, as a child learns to speak before it studies grammar, or as a mind may be logical without having paid much attention to catego- ries. Science consists in conscious truth, — in truth demonstrated. It is this latter perception of truth which gives man power over matter, which teaches him his moral and physical status in the universe, and brinofs him in contact with the infinite. Greek and Roman art flourished without rigorous perceptions of scientfiic truths, and painting and statuary reached the highest perfection of art in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, amidst grotesque superstitions, which, not- withstanding the great discoveries of that period, in more than one respect checked the progress of scientific pursuits. The first impulse to the logical pursuit of science was given by Bacon. Not that he established any particular theory or hypothesis of his own, but because he upset all those which had hitherto been established, and which had prevented all real scientific progress. He is the founder of experimental philosophy; that is, the knowledge of nature arising from certain proofs SCIENCE AND ART. 25 furnished by nature herself when subjected to certain tests. Philosophers had ever after to deal in facts, not in theories ; and when these facts were not obvious to the senses, they had to be illustrated by actual experi- ments. Experience, not ingenious conjecture, was henceforth to guide the explorer of nature and her laws. The metamorphosis wrought by this change of system in the mode of reasoning on natural subjects, changed Astrology into Astronomy, Alchemy into Chemistry, and the search after the Philosopher's Stone into Min- eralogy and Geology. It has added many new branches to science, branches for which even the names were wanting in former ages^ and which have since led the way to the most important inventions, changed the form and aspect of the civilized world. And it has also shown to us that all natural sciences are intimately connected with each other ; that there is, in fact, but one great science — that of nature — and that all the sci- ences men have cultivated from time to time, in differ- ent ages, are but so many fractional parts of that uni- versal unit. — Milton S. Latham. 10. The Masterbuilders in the Temple of Science. — In the noble army of Science — that army so compactly organized for the conquest of darkness and the extension of the empire of light — there are many valiant fighters, but there can be but few leaders. In the construction of the great temple of science — that eternal temple made without hands — the only tem- ple ever erected by man worthy to be dedicated to the 26 CALIFORNIA ANTHOLOGY. great Author of Nature — there are many busy, eager, joyous workmen, but there can be but few master- builders. As we look back, over the history of science, we see, at long intervals, certain men who seem to tower far above their fellows. In what consists their greatness ? They are men who have introduced great ideas or nenu methods into science — ideas which extend the domain of human thought, or methods which increase our power over nature, facilitate the progress of discovery, and thus open the way to the conquest of new fields. Such men were Copernicus, and Galileo, and Kepler,, and Newton, and Herschel, in astronomy ; such were Linnaeus, and Buffon, and Cuvier and Agassiz, in or- ganic science. — Prof. Joseph LeConte. 11. Evolution and Materialism. — It is believed by many that science starves all our noblest faculties, quenches all our most glorious aspirations, and buries all our heavenly hopes in the cold earth of a vulgar materialism. Now, it is indeed true, that there has been in these modern times a strong tendency, a current of thought, in the direction of materialism. It is true, too, that this- tendency is strongest in the domain of science, and among sciences, strongest of all, in biology and geology; but I believe it is true, also, that this is only a passing phase of thought, an ephemeral fashion of philosophy. As a sympathizer with the age in which I live, still more as a scientist, and most of all as a biologist and geologist, I have felt the full force of this tendency. SCIENCE AND ART. 27 In this stream of tendency I have stood, during all my active life, just where the current ran swiftest, and con- fess to you that I have been sometimes almost swept off my feet. But it is the duty of every independent thinker not to yield blindly to the spirit of the age, but to exercise his own unprejudiced reason ; not to float and drift, but to stand. I wish frankly to acknowledge that I am myself an evolutionist. I may not agree with most that evolu- tion advances always citm ccqtio pcdc. On the contrary, I believe that there have been periods of slow and periods of rapid, almost paroxysmal, evolution. I may not agree with most that we already have in Darwinism, the final form, and in survival of the fittest, the prime factor of evolution. On the contrary, I believe that the most important factors of evolution are still un- known — that there are more and crreater factors in o evolution than are dreamed of in the Darwinian phi- losophy. Nevertheless, evolution is a grand fact,, involving alike every department of nature ; and more especially evolution of the organic kingdom and the origin of species by derivation, must be regarded as an established truth of science. But remember, evolution is one thing and materialism another and quite a differ- ent thing. The one is a sure result of science ; the other a doubtful inference of philosophy. Let no one who is led step by step through the paths of evolution, from the mineral to the organic, from the organic to the animate, and from the animate to the rational, until he lands logically, as he supposes, into blank and universal materialism ; let no such one, I say, imagine for a ■28 CALIFORNIA ANTHOLOGY. moment that he has been walking all the way in the domain of science. He has stepped across the boundary of science into the domain of philosophy. Yet the step seems so easy, so natural, so inevitable, that most do not distinguish between the teachings of science and the inference of philosophy, and thus the whole is unjustly accredited to science. — Prof. Jos. LeConte. 12. Evolution the Grandest Idea of Modern Science. — Evolution is certainly the grandest idea of modern science, embracing alike every department of nature. The law of evolution is as universal as the ■law of gravitation. The one is the universal law of time, as the other is of space. In its widest and truest sense, evolution constitutes the subject matter of at least one-half of all science. Now, in this wide sense, there can be no doubt of the evolution of the organic kingdom. There may be, ■and in fact there is, much difference of opinion as to the causes or factors of evolution — there may be, and in fact there is, much difference of opinion as to the rate of evolution, whether always uniform or often more or less paroxysmal ; but of the fact of progressive movement of the whole organic kingdom to higher and higher conditions, and that the laws of the progressive movement are similar to those which determine the movement in all evolution, there is no longer any doubt. These formal laws of continuous movement — e. g., the law of differentiation, the law of progress, etc. — these are the really grand things about the evolution theory, and for these we are indebted to Agassiz, Yes, Agassiz, SCIENCE AND ART. 29* althoug-h he, to his latest utterances, contested modern views, was himself the great founder and apostle of evolution. All the laws of the evolution of the organic kingdom, as now recognized, were announced by him. His whole life and stren";th were devoted to enforcino: and illustrating these laws, although he denied the exist-, ence of any discoverable cause except the Great First Cause. To him the organic kingdom seemed a great work of art, wrought out through inconceivable time to higher and more perfect conditions, according to a plan predetermined in the mind of God ; and he was undoubtedly right. Darwin, on the other hand, at- tempted to discover the secondary causes by means of which this marvellous result was attained. To him the organic kingdom, as a whole, was a great and complex organism developing under the operation of resident forces; and he also, as I conceive, was right Agassiz announced 3\\ formal laws oi the universe of time as Kepler did those of the universe of space ; he was the legislator of the dark abyss behind us. as Kepler was of the overarching abyss above us. — Prof. Jos. LeConte. 13. Evolution not Ungodly. — There are three corresponding views in regard to the origin of the individual,— of you, of me, of each of us. The first is that of the little innocent, who thinks God made him as he (the little innocent) makes dirt-pies\ the second is that of the little hoodlum, who says, " I wasn't made at all, I growed ;" the third is the usual adult belief- — that we are made by a process of evolution. Do you. so CALIFORNIA ANTHOLOGY. not observe, then, that in the matter of the origin of species, many good theologians and pietists are in the position of the httle innocent ? They think that species were made zaitkotit natural process. On the other hand, most evolutionists are in the position of the little hoodlum ; for they think that species, because they ^'growed" werent made at all. But there is a higher and more rational philosophy than either, which holds that the ideas of making and of growing are not incon- sistent with each other — that evolution does not and cannot destroy the conception of, or the belief in, an intelligent Creator and Author of the Cosmos. This view combines and reconciles the two preceding antag- onistic views, and is therefore more comprehensive, more rational, and more true. But let us not fail to do justice — let us not overlook the fact that the most important and noblest truths are overlooked only by the hoodlum and materialist. Of the two sides of the .shield, the little innocent and the pietist sees, at least, .the whiter and more beautiful. — Prof. Jos. LeConte. 14. Science and Art Omnipotent. — Science and Art flourish best in a Republican soil. Their achieve- ments are of no hot house growth. Where the human mind is left free to grapple with Nature, the contest is unequal The intrepid Franklin grasped the motive power of the Universe. Morse, the artist-philosopher, tamed and subdued it into obedience, and endowed it with thought and speech. Swift as the flash of God's eye, and in mysterious silence, the thought of one hemisphere is uttered in the other. The events of SCIENCE AND ART. 31 to-day are matters of history to-morrow. Space is annihilated, and time is no more. The intensity and activity of our existence are truly appalling. Omnipo- tence, a grand and fearful attribute of Deity, has been usurped by man. The elements are subjected to his will, and perform the most menial services. The winds and waves are set at defiance, and commerce and humanity rejoice at the achievements of steam. Labor, the great element of Democracy, has been elevated to a Science, and its light illuminates the workshops of the world. The hand of invention strikes the shackle from toiling millions. — yohn V. Wattson. IB. Great Ideas in Science. — Let me illustrate the effect of the introduction of great ideas into science. I will select one example from astronomy, and one from geology. Before the time of Copernicus and Galileo, this, our earth, was all of space for us. Sun, moon, and stars were but little satellites revolving about us at incon- siderable distances. Astronomy then was but the geome- try of the heavens, the geometry of the curious lines traced by these wandering fires on the concave of heaven. But. with the first glance through the telescope, the phases of Venus and the satellites of Jupiter re- vealed the existence of other worlds beside our own. In that moment the fundamental idea of modern as- tronomy, the idea of infinite space filled with worlds like our own, was fully born in the mind of Galileo. In that moment the intellectual vision of man was infinitely extended. 32 CALIFORNIA ANTHOLOGY. Aeain, before the time of Bufifon and Cuvi'er, this^ our human epoch, the history of our race, was all of time for us. Shells and other remains of marine animals, had, indeed, been found far in the interior of the conti- nents, and high up the slopes of mountains, and there had been much speculation as to their origin. Some may have thought by means of these to extend the limits of our epoch, but none dreamed of other epochs- Some may have thought they were discovering newcoast islands along the shores, but none dreamed that these were the evidences of new worlds in the infinite abyss, of time. It was reserved for Buffon and Cuvier first to recoenize the entire difference between fossil and living species. In that moment was born the funda- mental idea of geology, the idea of infinite time con- taining many successive epochs, or time-worlds like our own. In that moment the intellectual horizon of man was again infinitely extended. These two are the grandest moments in the history of science; yea, in the intellectual history of our race. The one opened the gates of infinite space, and showed us many space worlds; the other opened up the gates of infinite time, and showed us as many successive creations or time-worlds. We see, then, the intellectual impulse communicated by a great new idea. — Prof. Jos. LcConte. 16. O, Science ! high-priest of truth, interpreter of nature, explorer of the infinite ! unto whom it is given, to walk upon the waters of the deep, to tread the ocean's bed, to pass through furnaces of fire, to kiss SCIENCE AND ART. 33 the burning lips of the crater, to play with the thunder- bolts of heaven, and to cleave thy bright way among the everlasting stars ! We greet thee as the sovereign genius of a wide and widening realm. Pursue thy glorious march of conquest, multiply thy triumphs and enlarge thy dominion, giving to humanity thy garnered fruits, and ever leading us to higher planes of knowl- edge. So may we keep in harmony with God's will. — Oscar T. Shuck. Y7 . Chemistry, youngest daughter of the Sciences, born amidst flame, and cradled in billows of fire! — W. H. Rhodes. 18. The Great Scientific Explorer. — In the darkness of the night, from his vessel's prow, Colum- bus saw wavinof licfhts in front of him, which the dawn of morn showed him to come from regions new and undiscovered, but which had been so near him in the night, that he had scented the perfume of the trees and flowers. And so I doubt not the eager searcher for truth, the Columbus of Science, has often seen in the darkness of this life, glimmering lights from the other world — lights which the morning of immortality has revealed to him as coming from regions which had been so near to him in the night of life, that even then a little more light, a little more range of organs, would have discovered them. It has often seemed to me that the great scientific man, after death, must have started to find how near he was, when in this world, to the discovery of the whole secret of being. Often I have imagined such a one saying to 3 34 CALIFORNIA ANTHOLOGY. himself: "Why, this great truth was hidden in facts long familiar to me in my studies on earth. This great mechanism, every spring of which I now comprehend, simple as is all the mechanism of God, needed but one more generalization ; one more syllogism ; one more bold effort of the reason, and I had found it out, even with the dull organs of mortality. — John B. Felton. 19. The winds of heaven trample down the pines, Or creep in lazy tides along the lea; Leap the wild waters from the smitten rock, Or crawl with childish babble to the sea; But why the tempests out of heaven blow, Or what the purpose of the seaward flow. No man hath known, and none shall ever know. Why seek to know ? To follow Nature up Against the current to her source, why care } Vain is the toil; he's wisest still who knows All science is but formulated prayer — Prayer for the warm winds and the quickening rain, Prayer for sharp sickle and for laboring wain, To gather from the planted past the grain. — A. G. Bierce. 20. No Antagonism between Science and Re- ligion. — I am ready to say and boldly maintain that there is not, and cannot be, any real antagonism or controversy between true science and true religion. All truth is of God, and is a unit. Science and religion are twin sisters from the throne of the Eternal Law- giver. There is no real controversy between them — SCIENCE AND ART. 35 no Strife but as to which branch of knowledge can do most for mankind. Properly interpreted, they come from the same glorious hand and tend to the same result — the happiness of mankind and the glory of the Creator. I honor science, and heartily bid God-speed to every honest investigator of the laws of the universe. As a theologian, I have never had the slightest fear concerning the advance of true science. Our natural philosophers cannot travel so far, but they will find the Creator has been there before them; and as they climb through space and journey among planets and systems unnumbered, they will all find that the ladder by which they have ascended to the very outposts of the universe was built for them by the hand of an all-wise Law- giver, possessed of supreme intelligence, will, and power. — Rev. Dr. IV. A. Scott. 21. Essentially there is no conflict between re- ligion and science, and never can be. Their boundaries are undefined, as the boundaries between the known and the unknown, the apprehended and the comprehended, always will be. — Rev. Horatio Stebbins. 22. Fine art has an ideal which it seeks to embody. Morphology also has an ideal {the archetype) which it seeks to discover. The ideal of art is that toward which all nature ceaselessly strives, — the ideal of science, that fro?n which all nature is ceaselessly u7ifolded. Both must ever remain ideals at an infinite distance from us. We must forever approach, but can never attain them. For the ideal of science is to be found only in the 36 CALIFORNIA ANTHOLOGY. eternal thoughts of God the Father — the Ideal of art only in the person of God the Son. Religion, more perfect, and far more practical than either, strives, through the influence of the third person, the Holy Spirit, to embody the same ideal, not in human thought nor in human works of art, but in human life and human character. — Prof. Joseph LeConte. 23. Drawing. — Drawing, or the art of design, is often pointed at as a superfluous study. It is only another mode of writing ; it is the shorthand of idio- graphic teaching; while the hands are young and the fingers pliant they are the most easily trained to pre- cision; the picture teaches at a glance that which it would cost pages of verbal description to explain. The books of science of the present day teem with illustra- trations, and therein it is that the youth of this age far outstrip those of former years in the rapidity of their education. He who learns to-day will teach to-morrow, and to him should be given every facility with which to stamp his thought on paper. Let the machinist, the engineer, the shipbuilder, the architect, the mechanic, the engraver, all answer what can they do without their drawings and their plans ? — Dr. A. B. Stout. 24. The Home of Art. — The home of art is where Nature stimulates the sensual and spiritual- intellectual. Art flourished under Grecian skies. In- spired by the spirit of beauty that dwelt where the chiefest joys of earth, sea, and sky were blended, the Parthenon arose upon the brow of the Acropolis in the transparent air of Attica, classic groves were adorned SCIENCE AND ART. 37 with marble men, and chastest temples solemnized with statues of gods. As art has flourished in a zone where the charms of Nature invite man to their enjoyment, and away from anxious cares for self-preservation, so to the stimulation of a generous climate and its attendant advantages for cesthetic culture, we are to look for the founding of the great schools of art upon our continent. Where else are they to appear but on the Pacific shores of the Great Republic ? — -E. G. Waite. 26. Art in California. — The little that has been done in California in Art is rather a sign of better things to come. Art must not only have inspiration, but it needs wealth and the society of a ripe commu- nity for its best estate. It is possible to paint for immortality in a garret; but a great deal of work done there has gone to the lumber-room. Not only must there be the fostering spirit of wealth and letters, but Art also needs a picturesque world without — the grand estate of mountains and valleys, atmospheres, tones lights, shadows ; and if there be a picturesque people, we might look for a new school of Art, and even famous painters. Where a poet can be inspired, there look also for the poetry, which is put on canvas. In spite of our civilization there is a great deal that is picturesque among the people — the Parsee, Moham- medan, Malay and Mongol, whom one may sometimes meet on the same street — the red shirt of the Italian fisherman, and the lateen sail which sends his boat flying over the water. The very distresses and dis- trusts of men here have made them picturesque. 38 CALIFORNIA ANTHOLOGY. Moreover the whole physical aspect of the country is wonderfully picturesque. The palm tree, lifting up its fronded head in the desert, the great fir tree, set against the ineffable azure of the heavens, the vine-clad hills, th serrated mountains, which the frosts have canonized with their sealed and unsealed fountains, and all the gold and purple which touch the hills at eventide — these are the full rich ministries of Nature. It may take Art a thousand years to ripen even here. For how many ages had the long procession of painters come and gone before Raphael and Michael Angelo appeared ? Our young Art school will some day have its treas- ures ; and there will be hung on our walls the portraits of other men, whose culture and influence will be worth more than all the gold of our mountains. Let the artist set up his easel and write his silent poem upon the canvas. Welcome all influences which soften this hard and barren materialism. Before the mountains were unvexed by the miner's drill, the land itself was a poem and a picture. One day the turbid streams will turn to crystal again, and the only miner will be the living glacier sitting on its white throne of judgment, and grinding the very mountains to pow- der. Fortunate they who can catch this wealth of in- spiration. These are the ministers and prophets whose larger and finer interpretation of Nature is part of the treasures of the new commonwealth. — W. C. Bartlett. 26. Sculpture. — It is said that the ancients have exhausted the domain of sculpture, because they have delineated the human form in its greatest perfection. SCIENCE AND ART. 39 They have done this and we concede it. But form is not all. There are also action, passion and senti- ment. We claim that we have advanced somewhat in two thousand years, and during that period have attained to a higher and more sentimental civilization. If this claim be true, then we have higher ideas and sentiments to express in painting and sculpture than had our predecessors in art, Zeuxis and Apelles, Phidias and Praxiteles. We may hope to equal them in the expression of physical beauty, and to excel them in moral and sentimental beauty. Let us, meanwile, be just to the ancients. They have left us so many impure and obscene remains, that many critics have considered them as characteristic specimens of th-^ir art. But a careful observation demonstrates that these impure remains are almost always in a style of art imperfect, both in design and execution, and that able artists would not degrade themselves to such subjects. Even at the Renaissance it is remarkable how the greatest modern artists often gave the grossest material interpretations to those mythological fables out of which the ancient Pagan artists constructed the most poetical conceptions. Titian represents Dance as purchased for the embraces of Jupiter by a shower of golden ducats poured into her lap. The Pagan artist, whose work is preserved at Pompeii, pictures her as an innocent maiden seated upon a green bank in the recesses of a garden, who unveils her bosom to a warm, moist mist, golden with the evening of sunshine, which gently wafts itself over her, and in this form the treacherous and seductive god 40 CALIFORNIA ANTHOLOGY. insinuates himself beneath the folds of her drapery. The modern artist portrays Leda submitting herself to Jove, approaching her under the form of a swan in the grossest and most material modes. The ancient painter depicts a swan fleeing from a vulture, and received by a compassionate virgin into her bosom, and shielded there by her arms and beneath her garments. And we are constantly called upon to wonder how the great artists of the fourteenth century could lend themselves to the most material conceptions. To say that modern art may not excel ancient art, is to say that we are to make no progress in sentiment and idea. The ancients expressed perfectly all they had to express. The Greek ideal and Roman ideal have survived to us. The Hebrew ideal has not come down to us, for the Jews did not cultivate sculpture or painting; nor the Egyptians, because among them it was reduced to merely conventional and sacerdotal forms. But there is nothing christian nor spiritual in Grecian or Roman art. Could a Greek or Roman artist even conceive such a picture as the Beatrice and Dante of Ary Scheffer ? a love so intense, so unsen- sual, so perfect, so pure ? And the Nydia, whom our own Randolph Rogers has consigned to immortality, is not a heathen but christian conception. " Greater love hath no man than this, that he give his life for his friend." In this marble there is the very highest expression of this sentiment ; a prophecy not merely of self-sacrifice to the Glaucus, whom Nydia loves with all the love of woman, but also of sacrifice to lone, whom he loves, the very rival of the devoted victim. SCIENCE AND ART. 41 Does all the poetry of antiquity mount to the con- ception of such a devotion as this ? Does all the art of antiquity excel its realization in the living marble ? In his beautiful romance of Zanoni, Bulwer repre- sents a sa^e who had won from nature the secret of immortal life upon earth, as apostrophizing the simple herbs which men unconsciously crushed beneath the tread of their feet, but in whose juices were concealed potential agencies which contain life and death, strength and paralysis, vigor and disease, wakefulness and sleep, hope and despair, madness and reason, tears and laughter. But it seems to me that the great magi- cian, the sculptor, has a vastly larger power than this. He breathes the breath of genius upon the dead marble, and it instinctively starts into perpetual life, in every possible form of action or repose, and beaming with every conceivable expression of passion or sentiment. And so with prophetic vision we can see the highest expression of the highest sentiment of the future perfected civilization going down to immortality with our own Nydia; with the gladiator forever dy- ing, yet never dead; with the perpetual agony of the Laocoon; with Niobe lamenting to all future genera- tions the slaughter of her children; and with Apollo, eternally triumphing with the majesty and beauty of a youthful god. — John W. Dwinelle. 27. Ancient Architecture. — In the morning of time, and long before civilization had visited the world, before the races of men had emerged from their tribal relations, the sounds of the Masons' labor were heard. 42 CALIFORNIA ANTHOLOGY. With such implements as the forest, the spoils of the chase and the quarry afforded, they performed their allotted tasks. Then began the earliest attempts at monumental architecture. They consisted of mounds of earth, solitary upright stones, tables of rock, and circles of the same material, often enclosing vast areas dotted with similar objects. These rude monuments, erected at a time and by peoples over, whose history rests the pall of everlasting silence, are found in every land. They stand on the plains and mountains of Europe, amid the deserts of the Orient, and in the shade of the primeval forests of America. They bear no design, and have no device or inscription to explain their origin or purpose. They are the weird and voice- less relics of a remote and unremembered past. We can only conjecture that they were intended to com- memorate some important event, and aid in transmit- ting the tradition of it to future generations. Long after the commencement of historic time such a custom prevailed, for we read in the holy writings that a leader of Israel placed a stone near the sanctuary where the Most High had spoken to his people, and said: " Be- hold this stone shall be a witness unto us, for it hath heard all the words of the Lord." At last the creative genius of a mortal, whose name or birth-place is un- known, conferred on his race a blessing like to that of the fabled Prometheus when he brought to earth a spark from the celestial fires. With an inspiration almost divine he discovered a mode of transmuting the dull ores of earth into lustrous metals, and fashioned them into the manifold tools and implements of labor. SCIENCE AND ART. 43 The light that shone from the first forge of the pre- historic age was the grandest illumination this world has ever witnessed. We can imaorine that the bricrht- eyed spirits of art, science, and of myriad industries beheld its rays from their starry home, and amid the heavenly symphonies of shining orbs winged their flight to a planet which now wooed their embraces. With the iron-age architecture assumed the exactness of a science while it retained all the graces of art. In the Valley of the Nile we find the earliest achieve- ments of architectural genius ; efforts which in grandeur and massiveness are unrivaled, and which may endure till Time shall be no more. In a narrow strip of inhabit- able land extending from the river to the rocks and deserts. Temples, Tombs, Pyramids and Obelisks rise in sublime vastness, the wonder and glory of the world, and the admiration of the aj^es. What mechanical agencies were employed in their construction, or what tools were used in tracing the inscriptions which are carved on their walls, are mysteries which the researches of science have failed to solve. The great pyramid of Ghizeh, far higher than any edifice which modern art has builded and dwarfing by comparison the most spa- cious cathedral of Europe, carries the imagination be- yond the period of authentic history into the twilight of tradition. When our continent was peopled by nations that have vanished like shadows from the earth; before the Israelites had escaped from thraldom and placed the oracles of God near the waters of Siloa; ages before civilization had dawned on the banks of the Tiber or the shores of Greece, this pyramid and 44 CALIFORNIA ANTHOLOGY. •Other tombs and temples of the Nile had witnessed the silent march of the centuries as they sped onward to the eternity of the past. Hundreds of generations of men have toiled and passed away — empires have arisen, flourished and died — creeds, systems, and dynasties have disappeared, leaving no trace on the sands of time; mountains have been upheaved by volcanic fires of the globe, islands have emerged from the depths of ocean and sunk beneath its waves, flaming worlds have shone in the firmament and wandered from their orbits into night and chaos; and yet, amid all changes and revolutions, these monuments have stood in their imperishable and unchangeable majesty on the confines of the mighty desert. On reflection we can readily trace to their proper cause the peculiar characteristics of the works of Egyp- tian masonry. The vast and shadeless deserts, the Nile with its turbid waters flowing from mysterious and unexplored sources to the sea, the sea itself — all sur- rounding, unfathomable and unknown — -were types of the illimitable and eternal Egyptian architecture that received from the influence of such scenes, form and expression. It was an inevitable result. Hence arose the structures w^hose massive strength and gloomy vast- ness have defied the power of man and the elements to mar or destroy. At a much later period, and in the Isles of Greece we behold architectural efforts, in style and design as divergent from the sombre monuments in the Valley of the Nile as" the versatile genius of the Greek differed from the gloomy mind of the oriental builder. The SCIENCE AND ART. 4^ happy temperament and brilliant fancy of the former revelled in the adoration of the beautiful. He delighted in every form of art and every manifestation of nature that pleased the senses or charmed the imagination. He peopled the rivers, groves, and mountains of his native land with beings of more than mortal loveliness. He heard the glad voices of his joyous deities in the rush of the waves, the rustle of the leaves, the murmur of the winds, the music of the waterfall, and embodied his poetic conceptions in sculpture, architecture, and verse that lives when the works of his plastic hand are in mouldering ruin. The Grecian temples in their free- dom, lightness, grace and variety, reflected alike the ideal character of the religion of the time, and the intellect of the people. The glory of Greece has departed. The same sun that gilded the gardens of Attica, and the plains of Marathon, shines now on the ruined walls and desecrated shrines of her temples. Land of philosophy, song, poesy and eloquence, whose immortal spirit illumes and instructs a world, how art thou fallen, and yet how lovely in thy desolation ! Roman, Goth, Moslem and Frank have ravaged thy fields and robbed thee of thy treasures of art, but happily none can tear from thy brow the amaranthine wreath of fame, or pale the glorious memories of the. past. " No earth of tbine is lost in common mould. But one vast realm of wonder spreads around, And all the muses' tales seem truly told." Rome, in the style of her temples, imitated, with very slight differences, Grecian architecture. Her architects -1() CALIFORNIA ANTHOLOGY. essayed at one time to improve on the beautiful origi- nal, and gave to the world the Tuscan and Composite orders. Vain attempt to rival in marble the maofnifi- ■cent conceptions of Greece ! The Doric, Ionic and Corinthian pillars, with their graceful shafts, capitals and exquisite mouldings, upheld and adorned the tem- ples of gods throughout the empire. To Rome, how- ever, the civilized world is indebted for the introduction of the Arch. The Greeks and the Egyptians were either neglectful or ignorant of its uses and principle. The Romans employed it not only to embellish and improve their cities, but carried it into distant provinces, and by its aid constructed bridges across wide and rapid streams for the passage of their victorious legions. In their forums with splendid architectural porticos, in their theatres and amphitheatres which could seat armies, in their mighty aqueducts through which the waters of rivers were conducted to their cities, the genius of the Roman people asserted its superiority, and left models for the nations of the present day to admire and imitate. With the fall of the Roman Empire in the west there arose another order of architecture. It indicated a new era in the world's history. In the fourth and fifth centuries the Goths and other races poured from their northern homes upon the doomed provinces of Rome. No human power availed against their resistless march. From the shores of the German ocean their camp-fires extended to the walls of the Imperial City. Among these warlike nations what is known as the Order of Gothic Architecture had its orimn. It was introduced SCIENCE AND ART. 47 by them into the north of Italy in the fourth century, and remained unchanged until the Crusaders at a later period engrafted upon it the designs of buildings which they had viewed with delight in the Mohammedan and Saracenic lands of the East. In the tall spires, pointed arches and delicate traceries of the Gothic architecture, we see the influence of fancies that had been moulded by the lights and shadows of the forest — by the over- arching- branches of the o-rand old trees, the caves with their sparry columns, and by the mountains with their dark cforsfes and beetlinof crag's. The Greeks dedicated their temples to the protect- ing deities of a city or state and displayed in their adornment a poetic character and speculative tendency. The Gothic races on the contrary designed their reli- gious edifices for the worship of a personal, ever-present God by the individual man. This idea predominates in the plan of every cathedral of the medieval ages, and is perhaps to-day the distinguishing trait which renders the Gothic architecture for devotional purposes more suitable than any model from antiquity. — Frank Tilford. ->^^^p^v II. LITERATURE AND EDUCATION. PART II. LITERATURE AND EDUCATION. 28. Education Aims to Perfect Man's Na- ture. — Education includes all the influences that are, or can be, brought to bear upon the individual, to form his constitution, actions, thoughts, and feelings ; soil, climate, parentage, laws, manners, customs, home, so- ciety, literature, and whatever else helps to build up the man into the perfection of his nature, or hinders the attainment of that perfection. — Rev. Horatio Stcbbins. 29. A Riddle.— A science in itself, it is the parent of all sciences, and though most studied, yet least understood. In what form, and by what agencies, and under what control, it ought to be administered, is a still unsettled problem. Constituting a state question of vital interest to all the foremost nations, it has only led into conflicting and distractive theories, while the enigma it presents still waits solution. No CEdipus can read the riddle of this modern sphinx. — Joseph W. Winans. 30. But One of Several Elements. — The neces- sity for the education of all the people must be con- 50 CALIFORNIA ANTHOLOGY. ceded, but the power of education is often over-esti- mated by our writers. It is but one of several patent elements, all of which are necessary to liberty and security. The capacity to know, and the will to per- form, are two very different things. Education will create the first, but cannot always confer the second. The history of mankind would seem to sustain this statement. — Petei" H. Burnett. 31. The Professional Teacher. — I have the highest respect for a teacher who devotes his life to teach- ing as a profession. Educated at great expense, always studying to keep up with all discoveries in science and advances in literature, he debars himself from all oppor- tunities for fortune that may disclose themselves in the avenues for wealth in the profitable world, that he may be poorly paid and have the consolation of knowing that some portion of mankind has made progress, and that the world will be the better because he has lived in it. Without men and women who will make this sacrifice, society would soon revert to its original bar- barous condition. Civilization is a perpetual struggle. After two thousand years of Christian teaching we can see daily that the cloak of civilization is but a thin garment, easily discarded and scantily covering the original savage. The teacher, clergyman, and the Christian missionary should be the most honored by society. They accept small pay and make lifelong sacrifices that the race may advance in knowledge and virtue. — B. B. Redding. literature and education. 51 32. The Necessity for Competent Teachers. — To bring a school of one or two hundred boys and girls, quick living minds, bright possibilities, into contact, day after day, with a sluggish, stupid, empty mind, the refuse of some college class, rejected with disdain by one of the other professions, is something worse than absurd and ridiculous ; it is no less an atrocity than that Mezentian punishment committed by the terrible ingenuity of Heathenism, when "it tied the healthy man to the loathsome corpse, and left the living and the dead to corrupt together." No, my friends, if there be any place under the sun from which stupid men and women should be inexorably banished, more than from any other, it is the teacher's desk. Better, by far, that they be set to work to make clumsy chairs and leaky boots and shoes, than to mar and ruin God's marvellous handiwork in a boy or girl. For the sake of the rising generation, for the sake of future developments in science and art, for the honor of the country, for a credit to ourselves, for the sake of the world, give to your schools nothing but a high and suitable order of mind. — Rev. F, C. Ewer. 33. Education as a Moral Force. — Education is not exclusively a literary, scientific, and aesthetic power, but it is besides, a potent moral force. It ren- ders him who, by his birth, was but an agency of evil, by his intelligence an instrument of good. Although there may be instances where the vices of humanity have been expanded into greater vigor, and rendered more destructive by the aid of knowledge, yet these 52 CALIFORNIA ANTHOLOGY. are but exceptional. It is a sarcasm, rather than an argument, which urges that the innate evil is only intensified by education into educated evil, and thus rendered more capable of mischief; for the very dis- cipline of mental culture, the habitudes it forms, the ideas it creates, the lessons it imparts, whether from nature, by scientific exploration, or from literature by the lofty sentiments of the poets, philosophers, his- torians and moralists of every age — all tend to stimu- late the moral sense. Thus grappling with man's mental, intellectual, and moral nature, education brings them from their lethargy into complete development. It is the fulcrum Archimedes needed to accomplish the Kosmon Kineso. It is the philosopher's stone which transmutes man's baser metal into gold. It is the chisel of Thorwalsden which forces out from the rough marble block a sculptured form of symmetry and beauty. The ugly duck, in the pathetic Apologue of Andersen, though persecuted by the flock, was a true swan from the beginning, and only grew from its original deformity into the natural comeliness of all its tribe. In seeming, merely, did it constitute the meaner bird. But education is not limited unto development. It recreates that which it beautifies. It turns the ugly duck into a swan, by an absolute reversal of its nature. — Joseph W. PVznans. 34. Intellectual Honesty. — What do we mean by intellectual development and the emancipation, or freedom of thoug-ht? There is reason to believe that there is a good deal of vague idea and loose talk, and LITERATURE AND EDUCATION. 53 perhaps some cant about these things. It is quite natural that there should be. New ideas are, to some minds, a little too bracing at first, and bring on the ex- hilaration of surprise, and a man is excited at finding the lost key of the universe. I met such an one the other day. He had got everything, but a nutshell to put it in. But let us forgive something to that pleas- ant confidence that in a moment of undue familiarity would lift the veil from the face of nature. The cant that is sometimes heard is not altogether discreditable, for cant is almost always about that which is good, and only indicates a lack of intellectual and moral fibre. By intellectual development, we do not surely mean that any new faculty has been added to the mind ; neither do we mean that any accession has been made to the fundamental and essential principles ot human nature. By intellectual development, I understand the gradual growth of improved methods of the mind in its inquiries after the truth of things and events in the material and i7i the httman world. It is a better logic, it is a better observation of facts, a finer perception of analogies, a more subtle detection of difference, a long- minded staying power of generalization, and a firmer grasp of the law of cause and efifect. The illustration of this is found in the fact that the reasons that satisfied the mind of an early age do not satisfy the mind of a later age, even when those reasons come to the same result. Socrates, in the Phcedo, draws persuasions for a belief in immortality, from the succession of day and night. That would hardly satisfy the mind of to-day ; the truth requires a better method in the mind. Intel- 54 CALIFORNIA ANTHOLOGY. lectual development has been attended by a recon- struction of the methods on which science depends, and Bacon, on the empirical side, and Descartes, on the in- tellectual side, are its great historic exponents. It is no spread-eagle glory, but a patient, subtle process of intellectual power. There are laws of thought: and reasoned truth, that knows no fortuitous luck, and no blind gropings of chance or passion, is the only worthy achievement of the mind. Intellectual development is not merely an individual endowment, but a common- sense of truth and right reason in the common mind. It is the increase of the idea of order, law, cause, and consequence in the mind of an age. Freedom of thought has no existence, except when based on intellectual development, such as this. On any other grounds, free thought is in the intellectual world what free love is in the sensual world. Without this recitude of the intellect, thinking itself is a vagary, and truth is a caprice of self-will. To be intellectually honest, is the last accomplishment of a mind that moves without passion or prejudice in the happy rhythm of truth, simply seeking to know what is. Intellectual honesty is much more rare than moral honesty. — Rev. Horatio Stcbbins. 35. The Pursuit of Knowledge. — The pursuit of knowledge may be likened to the ascent of a moun- tain. With slow and painful steps we climb its rugged side. Thorns and brambles block the way and lacerate the flesh. Through the rank undergrowth no vista is disclosed, no prospect opens. Dense thickets close LITERATURE AND EDUCATION. 55 each avenue of sight. From the thick atmosphere there comes a sense of stifling to the panting breast. Repeated pauses are enforced, to obviate exhaustion. As we mount higher, casual gleams appear of the expanding landscape far below, then flit away. New difficulties thwart our progress while we rise, until the jaded spirit seems about to faint. But when the sum- mit is attained, how utterly all consciousness of past endurance sinks beneath the Qrorp;eous vision which there bursts upon our gaze : "All is forgot in that blithe jubilee." So it is with the course of learning. Constrained into a hateful discipline, the mind shrinks from that dry detail of rules and problems, lines and angles, rudiments and grammars, which, from the out- set, guides the student on his upward path. They seem to him a miscellaneous array of things incongruous, without vitality or application, to be forced into memory by long and painful effort, for no seeming good. To them there is no landscape, no vistaed revelation of utility or beauty, — nothing but a close, stifling mental atmosphere that chokes the spirit. Yet when the stu- dent's life mounts higher up ; when these abstractions merge in bright and living truths ; when physics ulti- mate in those experimental facts which throw new light on science; when grammar opens up the rich resources of the Greek and Latin tongues, with all the modern classics — throwing open to the scholar's reach the grand ideas born in everv ac:e, the burninof thoughts and glowing words of sophists, statesmen, orators and poets ; when mathematics guide him to an undiscovered star; then is the mountain summit scaled, and knowledge 56 CALIFORNIA ANTHOLOGY. vindicates its power in the insufferable glory there revealed. — Joseph W. Winans. 36. The Evolution of Mind. — Genius alone, unaided by education, can have but a feeble flight. Innate intellect may exalt a self-taught poet; but can- not alone constitute an astronomer. The diamond in the rough may pass forever unheeded, but not until the friction of the wheel of labor and study shall have eli- cited its latent fire, will its polish reflect its merit. The development of education should follow the evolution of mind. The course of education is the mirror of nature, and should be achromatic in its re- flections of light. The direction of its instruction should be predicated upon the growth of the organic intellect. The first feeble glimmerings of brain-work in the infant, in its instincts to get nutrition, are progressively fostered by the mother until it learns to feed alone; the first rays of mind which kindle curiosity in the child are brightened by showing it noisy and glittering ob- jects ; the parent-puzzling boy, with his "whys" and " wherefores," is satisfied with lettered blocks, pictures and puzzles, until, with growing brain and expanding intelligence, he explores with his eyes the natural world around him, and finally, in manhood, seeks in books aid from his predecessors, aspiring to grasp in his com- prehension all the forces in illimitable space. These, then, are the natural epochs in life's education, and such the course to pursue in man's tuition. The edu- cation of the past has shot wide of this mark. How LITERATURE AND EDUCATION. 57 vain would be its recapitulation. Search the historic schools of philosophy. Logk at the inflictions of re- ligious and political powers. But ''the Now" is another era. The Present, in be- half of the Future, speaks with a loftier voice. With ''Truth" inscribed upon her banner, and " Freedom" em- blazoned on her escutcheon. Science calmly but surely advances, without arrogance, yet, with a step in her march, accelerated beyond what has ever heretofore been known. Doubtless it was this progress in learn- ing, this aspiration for freedom of thought, this expan- sive spirit of Science, which gave origin and impetus to the grand fusion of the divided German States into the great unified German Empire ; for Germany, however it may be a people's Empire, in Science, is Learning's Republic— Z>r. A. B. Stotit. 37. The Pen. — Ah, thou little implement, how much of undeserved reputation hast thou blazoned ! How many noble thoughts depicted! Hovr many phi- losophical reflections embodied! The tomes of history are thy biography ! Without thee tradition perishes. The troubadors who despised thee are extinct, and their improvised sonnets forgotten. With thy aid, the epics and heroics of the dead poets still survive to crown their names with immortality! "The pen," said the dramatist, "is mightier than the sword;" and the dramatist has said truly. It is the architect of mind that molds its language into form, and frescoes it with the word-limning of the scholar. It rescues, preserves, transmits, and fixes its subject like the granite base, for 58 CALIFORNIA ANTHOLOGY. the building- of a structure of fame! It stimulates the prosperity of states, and secures the triumph of diplo- macy. Heroes depend upon it for their ovations. To literature it is the oralleon, with flowins^ sails — frei^rhted with intellectual treasures. The down-hearted take cour- a.£re from the fearlessness of its strictures, and tyrants tremble at its power. This is thy eulogy, my companion^ and my friend. Plucked though thou be from an igno- ble wing, the Damacus steel can make no deeper or surer incision. The sword has no such panegyric. The phrase, "It destroys," is at once its history and its epitaph — and for the record of even this brief sentence, it is indebted to thee. Yes, thou art much greater than the sword; and so let the thesis and the antithesis of thy measurement go together. — Williafn Bausinaji. 38. Physical and Mental Pleasures. — The purely animal pleasures are adapted, evidently, by their narrowness of range, to this little span of life — hardly is there variety enough in them to go around the three- score-years-and-ten. Who, as he has sat down to his table, has not felt how monotonous and drear a life of a thousand years would be, with the same dull round of beef, pork, mutton or venison ? Who has not sym- pathized with me, when, long suffering man that I am, my temper gave way at the seventh reception of the saddle of lamb in the same week ? " Madame," I ex- claimed, "it seems to me that since our bridal we have had nothing but saddle ; if this goes on, I shall be like the horse that Motherwell's pathetic verse has immortal- LITERATURE AND EDUCATION. 59 ized. He went forth in the morning, and in the even- ing, " Home came the saddle, But lie nevermore." Who has not congratulated himself on his mortality, as he has taken up his cup, filled with the perpetual water, with its slight modification of wine, spirits, tea and coffee, and the more palatable of these, prohibited by that stern old moralist, the gout, who stands like a country schoolmaster, ready to mark the slightest devi- ation from soberness, with his inevitable chalk? Yet, from this limited variety, Heliogabalus must sup, and Lucullus dine; and the culinary genius of a Vatel, who kills himself because a soup is too little seasoned, must compose the dishes by which the sated palate of a Louis Fifteenth is stimulated. But for the mind — for the intellect — for the investi- gation of truth — here, variety is boundless. Here, de- sire finds ever new changing food to gratify it. Here^ as bodily faculties fail, and physical pleasures pall, the pleasures of the mind constantly increase in variety and intensity. In the gratification of these desires, we find our minds created for no finite bound of time, but everything is graduated on an eternal scale. — John B, Feltoii. 39. The Republic of Letters. — The world had better lose all other arts combined than to forfjet its A B Cs. Sometimes I have thought of them as of twenty-six soldiers that set out to conquer the world — that A was an archer, and B was a bugler, and C was a corporal, 60 CALIFORNIA ANTHOLOGY. and D was a drummer, and E was an ensign, and F was a fifer, and G was a gunner, down to Z, who was a zouave ; and these twenty-six drill-sergeants have subdued the kingdoms of the earth and air, taken pos- session of the realms of thought, and founded a repub- lic of which the wise and noble of all time are citizens and contemporaries, where their is neither death nor forgetfulness — the imperial Republic of Letters. Again I have thought of them as of a telegraphic cable, laid beneath the waters of time, safe from dis- turbing storm and tempest — so short, the child's primer will contain it ; so long, it connects the remotest ages with the present, and will stretch to the last syllable of recorded time. — Newton Booth. 40. Style. — No two styles are alike. They all differ, and must differ, because souls differ. Style is to the matter as atmosphere is to the landscape. Hang a New Hamj:fehire air over Florence, and is it Florence still? Strip the style of De Ouincey of its matter, and it is like taking the sound out of a grove of pines. No one has yet sounded this mystery of a style — how it is that an item penned by one man is common-place, and the same fact stated by another is a rifle-shot or a revelation; how words locked up in a form can contrive to tip a wink ; how a paragraph may drip with the honey of love ; how a phrase may be full of infinite suggestion; how a page may be as gorgeous as a tropi- cal landscape, or as cool as a December day in New England. The style is the man. There are elements in Hawthorne very repulsive, yet there is something LITERATURE AND EDUCATION. 61 infinitely attractive in his purest artistic English, of a higher order than Irving's. Whittier's style is like a trumpet sounding through his Quaker soul. There is an advancing melody in all of Longfellov/s handiwork, from the sweet sixteen air of his " Songs of Life," to the chapters of " Hiawatha," and his latest poem. — Thomas Starr King. THE PRESS. 41. Observe how the outer bark of the madrono and eucalyptus, with the coming of every summer, bursts, rolls up and falls to the ground, as so much rub- bish. That is a sign of expanding life. A great deal of newspaper rubbish to-day is a sign of growth. The outer rind and bark of things fall to the ground by that vital force which is continually developing a larger and nobler life in the community. No man will hereafter go to the head of this profession without fair scholar- ship, a wide range of observation, a large capacity to deal in a general way with human affairs, and that keen insight which catches the spirit and essence of this on- going life. Most difficult of all is a certain power of statement, which no school can teach, and without which the highest plane of the journalist cannot be reached. Your long story will not be heard. The world is wait- ing for the man of condensation. Tell it in few words. If you can master this eclecticism of thought and state- ment, I know of no more promising field for a young man to-day than that of journalism; if one cannot, the potato-field, in a season of blight, is quite as promising. 62 • CALIFORNIA ANTHOLOGY. The newspaper has been gradually encroaching on the domain of literature. It has absorbed monthly maga- zines, or forced publishers to resort to illustrations — to a sort of picture-book literature for grown-up child- ren. It has driven the lumbering quarterlies into smaller fields, and diminished their relative importance. The average citizen craves the news from a journal having the very dew of the morning and of the even- ing upon it. It must come to him damp and limp, bringing whatever is best at the smallest possible cost. The newspaper is the herald of the new era. Its errand must be swift, its statements compact, and its thought eclectic and comprehensive. Three thousand years ago, one of the grand old prophets spoke mysteriously of the "living spirit of the wheels." Was it other than the modern newspaper thrown off by the pulsing of the great cylinder press ? But observe, that through yonder Golden Gate, which the sun and the stars and the lamps of men glorify day and night, the devil-fish comes sailing up, and is not concerned whether his accursed tentacula close around saint or sinner. Is not that the fullest symbol of a public journal conducted by ignorant and unscrupulous men ? Rather would you not choose, as a more fitting symbol of the Ideal journal, one of the small globules of quicksilver, which you shall find on any of these en- circling hills, s'o powerless to draw to it an atom of filth or rubbish, but ever attracting the smallest particle of incorruptible silver and gold ? — W. C. Bartlett. LITERATURE AND EDUCATION.- 63 42. The liberty of the press is the highest safe- guard to all free government. Ours could not exist without it. It is with us, nay, with all men, like a great, exulting, and abounding river. It is fed by the dews of heaven, which distil their sweetest drops to form it. It gushes from the rill, as it breaks from the deep caverns of the earth. It is fed by a thousand affluents that dash from the mountain top to separate again into a thousand bounteous and irrigating rills around. On its broad bosom it bears a thousand barks. There genius spreads its purpling sail. There poetry dips its silver oar. There art, invention, discovery, science, morality, religion, may safely and securely float. It wanders through every land. It is a genial, cordial source of thought and inspiration wherever it touches, whatever it surrounds. Upon its borders there grows every flower of grace and every fruit of truth. I do not deny that that river sometimes oversteps its bounds. I do not deny that that river sometimes becomes a dangerous torrent, and destroys towns and cities upon its banks; but I say that without it, civilization, human- ity, government, all that makes society itself, would dis- appear, and the world would return to its ancient bar- barism. If that were to be possible, or thought possi- ble for a moment, the fine conception of the great poet would be realized. Civilization itself would roll the wheel of its car backward for two thousand years. If that were so, it would be true that " As one by one, in dread Medea's train, Star after star fades off th' etherial train, 64 CALIFORNIA ANTHOLOGY. Thus at her fell approach and secret might, Art after art goes out, and all is night. Philosophy, that leaned on heaven before. Sinks to her second cause, and is no more. Religion, blushing, veils her sacred fires, And, unawares, morality expires." — Ge7i. E. D. Baker. 43. A free press is the great economic illuminator of politics, art, religion, society, morals. It is at once the tribunal of taste and the articulator of thought It is the handmaid of enterprise, the fortress of order, the mailed, invincible right arm of freedom. Like commerce, it gives health and vigor to the life of nations; like commerce, its sceptre stretches from the shining temples of the Orient to the swimming forests of the Thames. Its shrouds stiffen and its white sheets fill with the winged gales of progress. Beating foam- ing paths through conquered waters; dashing on steeds of fire along iron ways; harnessing the elements to its chariot; reading the mysteries of the magnet; making a courier of the lightning, and guides of the sun and stars, it courses its way in majesty, in power and in glory, over a boundless sea of possibilities, and its do- minion broadens with every swell of the tide. Its many-colored fabric is meshed and fashioned in the be- neficent loom of cumulative emprise, and its shifting shuttle marks the pace of the world's advance. — Thomas FitcJi^ LITERATURE AND EDUCATION. 65 BOOKS. 44. The distance of a star, the age of a planet, the flow of history, the stories of biography, the vast spaces of fiction, the richest music — such knowledge and such society may be ours through only a hundred books, with a cultivated taste; such an altar may be erected in our memories, and such stately worshipers may face it as Mrs. Browning describes in lier "Vision of the Poets." The title to such a treasure is a taste for literature — reading with rigid selection and exclusion — reading for an end. — Thomas Stari' King. 46. There are books of fact, books of life, and books of art. The first include the sciences; the second em- brace history, biography, and all the inquiries into the substance of truth, as regards man's proper conduct and destiny ; the third comprehend verse and prose, not discussing abstract truth, but poetry, the drama, and the w^rld of fiction. A very few books of the first class suffice to start us. But it is a shame that we know so little of what constitute the glory and shadow of the world we live in — geology, which opens the cellar department, and astronomy, which interprets the dome of our habitation. The leisure evenino-s of a sinsfle winter, devoted to the Connections of Mrs. Somerville, to Ly ell's geology, Mitchell's stump speech concerning astronomy, Nicoll, Buckland and Gardner would so stretch the mind that one could not go to business in the morning, nor look out at night a moment at the sky, 5 66 CALIFORNIA ANTHOLOGY. without feeling what grand preparation had been made for his Hving. A traveler assures us that in a certain part of Liberia the people can see the satellites of Jupiter. The great heads of the Celestial chapters that hint the immensity of the Zodiac should always be in memory's si^ht: and half a dozen fascinatin(:j- books tell it all — books to be read not as water is poured out on the sand, but as it is fed to the roots of a tree. The deepest facts of thirty centuries may all be sounded in the leisure of a winter, so, at least, that a twilight intelli- ligence concerning them shall illuminate the memory. The distance of a star, the age of a planet, the flow of history, the stores of biography, the vast spaces of fic- tion, the richest music, — such knowledo'e and such society may be ours through only a hundred books. — Thomas Star?'- King. 46. All healthy souls love the society of trees; and the mold which feeds them is a better fertilizer of thought than the mold of many books. You see the marks of fires which liave swept along these mountain sides; here and there the trunk of a redwood has been streaked by a tongue of flame, but the tree wears its crown of eternal green. It is only the dry sticks and rubbish which are burned up, to make more room for the giants, while many noxious reptiles have been driven back to their holes. Possibly the wood-ticks number some millions less, but very little that is worth saving is consumed. We shall need a regenerating fire some day, to do for books what is done for forests. May it be a hot LITERATURE AND EDUCATION. 67 one when it comes. Let no dry sticks nor vermin escape. Ninety in every hundred books which have got into our hbraries within the last half century will fail to enlighten the world until there is one good, honest conflagration. Something might be gained from the ashes of these barren books; therefore, pile on the rubbish, and use the poker freely. Let not the fire go out until some cords of doggerel, concocted in the name of poetry, have been added thereto. The giants will survive the flames; but punk-wood, moths, and wood-ticks will all be gone. — W. C. Bartlett. 47. Guard against desultory reading. Yellow- backed literature, poorly-edited newspapers, and bad books, are the curse of this age. A pyramid of such trash is only fit to be burned for a light to read a good author by. Read but few books, and learn them well, and affectionate caressing will take the place of formal visits. We have too many books ; some of them are a curse to the student, and contemptible to the critic. Select a few of the best writers of ancient and modern times, and read them well, and your mind will be the best disciplined. Under the wear and tear of life, men usually forget much that they have read, because their memories are confused by irregular exercises; while on the other hand, organized and disciplined memories cling tenaciously to their stock of knowledge. When old age begins to assail the mind, legions of acquire- ments stretch themselves along the battlements of memory, and dispute every inch of its advance; and if there is a moment in man's eventful life when he is 68 CALIFORNIA ANTHOLOGY. grand, it is when the treasures of the mind are seen resisting, with unrelenting vigor, the encroachments of decay, as the pulses cease in the dead body. It is told of Rumford that he proposed a scheme to the Elector of Bavaria, by which he might economize in feeding his soldiers. His plan was small rations, and thorough mastication, holding that a crumb, well masticated, was better than a pone untoothed; so, a page, digested, is better than a book devoured. — Rev. T. H. B. Anderson, 48. There are friendships, regal and rare, be- gotten of communion with authors. Books smile, salute and fraternize; they are courteous, urbane, affable, friendly or fascinating, as the case may be. Their com- panionship is no myth or figure of speech. Their friendships have emancipated many a soul from the thraldom of chill and bitter loneliness. So viewed, how sacred is the mission of every printed page! Shall it carry health and healing, courage and sustenance, light and melody, hope and aspiration, or shall fever, or apathy and gloom distil and drop from its noxious sentiments and fancies ? Happy they who, with voice or pen, lubricate the jarring wheels of life by kindly interchange of generous word or helpful message ! Who, casting aside, with generous gesture, all selfish considerations, awaken by the concords of their own nature, music in the hearts of others, until even the prodigal in his exile shall catch the far-off melody of the home song, and turn repentant footsteps thither. — Sarah B. Cooper. LITERATURE AND EDUCATION. 69 -49. Literature may not create character, but it may influence it. Genius, a gift often connected with erratic fire, is ever hungry for intellectual food; but because it has in some cases floated down to depravity, is no ar- gument against indulging the mental appetite. Libraries open up to us the delicate organization of the brain, the wonderful formation of the eye, and their perfect con- nection, the strange meaning of the hand, the scratches upon the rocks, the marvellous beauties of the flower, the mysteries of the ocean, the land, the clouds, the air, and the starry wonders of the heavens. — Thomas Starr King. BO. The supreme privilege and advantage that so- ciety to-day enjoys over society five hundred years ago, is privilege of reading printed literature. Our educa- tion is conducted now by the first masters. At college we may have had third-rate professors, but for a dollar or two we have at our homes for professors, Faraday to teach us chemistry, Goodrich to instruct us in Greek, Owen to read us anatomy, Schlegel to explain the phil- osophy of literature, and Macaulay and Guizot to read lectures on the laws and heroes of the last eighteen hundred years. Books are our university, spirits are our teachers. All other helps to our cultivation are feeble in comparison. To hundreds of thousands of people the sky contains less of celestial phenomena than an ordinary treatise on astronomy. Thousands of men might skirt and tramp the whole region of the Alps and Andes, with eyes open too, and still know less of moun- tains than one learns on quietly reading the fourth vol- 70 CALIFORNIA ANTHOLOGY. ume of Ruskln's " Modern Painters." Though they roamed with the Wandering Jew, and heard him by the month detail the course of human events, they would know, when the last session ended, less than on reading Montesqueu's " Compend of Laws." The evenings of a single week in reading Agassiz' " Essay on Classifica- tion," would discover, to a man of average brain, more knowledge of natural history than if, two by two, all the animals of the globe were to parade before him, and when that pageantry had vanished, he were led into a museum where every species of the myriads that compose the crust of the globe were labelled and dis- played. Plato disparaged books in comparison with conver- sation. They, said he, stand like paintings — in just one form and attitude — and to all questioning return one and the self-same answer. Now, it is by the grace of print- ing that we know this saying of Plato. True, to know a rna^i is greater than to know the greatest book, yet no talk with Milton would have evoked a "Paradise Lost," or a "Comus" from his lips. Had you called on Newton, you might possibly have heard him fret — surely you would have heard him talk no chapter of queries as to Optics. If you had called on Shake- speare, he might have treated you to as much sack as you could stagger under, but in the interview he would not take you up to the region of his " Cassio " and " Imogene," or down into the depths of his feelings. Call on Thackery at London, and he might entertain you with his grievances at the hands of the member of his club who sketched his broken nose rather too dis- LITERATURE AND EDUCATION. 71 tinctly, but he would not sketch you a Major Pen- deiinis. Dickens, on your call, would be too busy with domestic troubles to' unveil that tropical sea of fancy, out of which the Agnes of "David Copperfield" sprung, like a new Aphrodite, from the foam. It would be pleasant to see truly reported an hour's free conversa- tion with Thomas DeOuincey, but for six bits, one may purchase his "Suspiria de Profundis," and sink into the music of the prose, the most rich and masterly since Hooker. You often may have thought what a privi- lege it had been to live in the time of Jesus; to hear the sermon on the Mount fall from his lips, to be pres- ent when he unsealed the eyes of Bartimeus, to be on the mount of transfiguration with him. Have you considered that by virtue of two hundred duodecimo pages, we all know more of him than any dweller in Canaan, any Gallilean, any citizen of Jeru- salem could have known ? Did they who saw but fragments of his life, see more than we, whose scope embraces all of it, from the birth in Bethlehem to the ascent from Olives,'* Was the privilege of the woman of Samaria, who heard him but briefly, and misunderstood most of what she heard, greater, or was your privilege greater — you who hear what he said at the well, who stand wjthin ear-shot of the talk with Nicodemus at night — who hear all the parables, the promises, and see him blessing little children ? Let every one who has a taste for books and music thank God that he was not born earlier. Books and music ! Books are music. What was knoivmg Beethoven compared with hearing the Andante of the Fifth Symphony ? 72 CALIFORNIA ANTHOLOGY. If the organ should grow conscious, and could play of itself, what music would it chatter, beside the flood of harmonies that pour out from it at some vesper-time when the player to its keys hints the thoughts that some master has set down in books ! It is the chatter of eenius that we get from their conversation — the earnest, noble, stirring thoughts we find when we sit down alone to their books. Books constitute not an Empire, but a Republic of Letters. Every steam engine looks to me like a snort- ing democrat. "Take a good stare at me, I'm one of the b'hoys," he seems to say. He seeks to know north and south, the east and west. He chafes and frets to be running on an excursion past Great Salt Lake, mak- ing Brigham Young fain to stop his ears at the screech- ine, with the ereat U. S. Mail on board, and the old flag gleaming through the clouds that issue from the smoke-pipe, with no star lacking. Genius may be miserly, and hoard its wealth, but the steam cylinder press screams: "In any nook or corner of the land, is there a desirable thing, let me know, and you will get it cheap at your door to-morrow. It will give you pub- lic documents, fish out forgotten knowledge, rummage private correspondence, ransack creation." The man of genius may be iPxcan, and wall himself in from the world, but the palace of truth that he rears in his se- clusion is as free to the world as St. Peter's is to the poorest believer in Rome. The ticket of the Alphabet admits you and me. When we come to talk more practically about books, we see the necessity of selection. In the Imperial LITERATURE AND ' EDUCATION. 73 Library at Paris (the largest in the world) there are eight hundred thousand volumes, and one hundred thousand MSS. ''Art is long, and time is fleeting." The reader who had beo^un in the reio"n of Kin[j David to read them, if stopped only on Sundays, to rest his eyes and cro to church, would be now about checking the the last volume. [Spoken a. d. i86i. Editor.] Set side by side single copies of all the books that have been printed, and they would reach from the vineyards of Los Angeles to the snowy beard of Mount Shasta. No man lives, no German professor, the juices of whose body are a decoction in equal parts of tobacco-juice and beer, can in all his life-time read through half the volumes of our San Francisco Mercantile Library. A hundred volumes might be selected which, if read with care, during their leisure hours, would make men of average brains better informed than are any, except those who are supereminent in knowledge — not the sort of specific knowledge which the great German grammarian in Latin craved, who, in his old age, re- marked that if he were to live life over again, he would devote himself entirely to the dative case. — Thomas Starr King. NOVELS. 51. A nation's literature is an index to its civiliza- tion. The cultivation of the study of letters and a high standard of literary work are consequent upon the refinement of a people. But may not literature bear to its country some more important relation than that 74 CALIFORNIA ANTHOLOGY. of a result ? May it not be a great element of national erowth ? I believe that literature is more than a mere accompaniment of culture, that it is a prime factor in advancing culture, that it is a proximate cause of civili- zation, that it may be made a mighty motor in redeem- ing from sluggishness and immorality the populace when taught to read. For a clear understanding of the idea I desire to il- lustrate, consider civilization to mean the moral and social status of a people, and literature to be their learn- ing and their fancy preserved in writing. It is the part that the latter may take in- raising the moral and social condition of our country, that we arc to regard. The department of literature that is most popular, and, therefore, is most Influential for good or for ill, that most earnestly requires the watchfulness of those who admire purity of character among us, is the department devoted to fiction. Of the various writings of the fic- titious school, the novel may be most easily turned to civilizing humanity, or to pandering to its most de- graded tastes. The novel reflects the experiences, the aims, the heroism of mankind; it holds up for sympa- thy, emulation or contempt, acts and emotions. All the manifold springs of human conduct find a source in the novel. With the novel the power lies of spreading abroad a sense of honor and of creating respect for true dignity of manhood. It should be life reproduced, not a mere representation of the phases of existence, but an impressive guide to the grand purpose of living. Romances are more numerous and of a better order in Great Britain than in America. Some authors be- LITERATURE AND EDUCATION. 75 lieve that the supremacy of the English, in this respect, is due to their systematized h'fe. One writer, of observ- ant mind, has assigned as a reason, to which he at- tached much importance, that in England almost the only readers of this style of literature, are found among those who have little to do, the nobility and the wealthy classes ; that their leisure makes them exacting, and their exactions must be heeded to insure the author's success. If this fact has a tendency to perfect the novel, it is entirely independent of the subject matter, upon the treatment of which its lasting merit and power for usefulness must depend. The subject matter is the life portrayed. What are the distinctive marks of life in this republic, drawn by lapse of time ? The cardinal principle of a democracy is original equality. We all start equals. It is curious, but true, that we claim equality with those only who have risen above us. The endeavor to justify our pre- tentions, is one of the causes of the restlessness pecu- liar to us. I do not say that envy and jealousy actuate us in seeking to better ourselves. I prefer to think that it is the possibility of improvement made manifest by the achievements of others, that impels us onward. But whatever may be the inner motive, the outward fact still remains. Democratic life is essentially nerv- ous, active, a chapter of successes and reverses. It is with the details of this life our novelist must deal. Do they not present to him a more inviting prospect than the regulated order of an aristocratic existence ? Yet this is the life of which DeTocqueville has said that "nothing conceivable is so petty, so insipid, so 76 CALIFORNIA ANTHOLOGY. crowded with paltry interests, in a word, so anti-poetic." Anti-poetic let it be; earnestness, not poetry, is the es- sential of a novel. But petty, insipid, or crowded with paltry interests, never. Here the individual lives, here man stands an architect of fame, with his doubts, with his passions, in the presence of rare prosperities, or in- conceivable wretchedness. These things are real, they are to be the theme of the novelist's story. In them each one will find something to touch his sympathy, to make him quiver with hope and exultation, or bow in pity. 'Tis sympathy moulds the most of us, and es- pecially the lowly. To that the novelist's creations must appeal that we may be made to glow with the in- spiration of manly purpose and with the possibilities born of resolve. It may be asked why the novel has not made its ap- pearance ere now, if it is so well adapted to our system of livinof. In strugforlinGf to exist we have had no time to look about us and write; and during our literary in- fancy, the literature of a mother-tongue was in its prime. Moreover, a literature can not be built in a day. The true novel can be drawn only by one of keen observation and wide sympathies. I speak of sym- pathies, not alone towards one's fellow man, but towards one's fellow people. Until some national feeling has sprung from the formative existence of a, people, until national traits are developed, In which we all take pride, we can expect no one to possess that subtle kinship with men at large, requisite to the broad effective pur- pose of the democratic novel. Our country has been pushed to conclusive heights, LITERATURE AND EDUCATION. 11 from which she is gradually settling to that stable condi- tion of society from which alone prosperity can be evolv- ed. The trials of past years have brought us to realize that this is not a grand speculation, but that steady, honest exertion is the only precursor of success. The presence of schools in all quarters familiarizes the popular mind with letters. We have had the fancies of Poe, the natural beauties of Bryant and Longfellow, the sunny mysteries of Hawthorne, and the sturdy purity of Em- erson. The time has come in our literary and historic growth for the advent of the novelist. It is for those who feel an interest in perpetuating the romance of life and of meaning, to aid the author in his self-im- posed task of writing for the advancement of his race, not with the sole motive of enriching himself He is but an artist who introduces into his living pictures real- istic forms. The age is propitious to the growth of strong men and women, whom the writer must copy. The novel, true to the world it represents, must have much in common with humanity; to be true to itself, it must turn this common bond to the enobling of hu- manity. The quality of his models and the nature of their thoucrhts and utterances determine the value of the novelist's gift to his country. It is for the people to furnish him with the originals of those instructive lives which he is to present as an example to his read- ers. And especially is it the duty of those whose studies bring them in contact with the grandest charac- ters of reality and of fancy, by their private lives and public opinions, to aid in fostering a general spirit of rectitude, that the novelist may be filled with it, and 78 CALIFORNIA ANTHOLOGY. that all may know it and feel its nearness when breathed upon from the pages of the opened volume. Then can the novel be made to elevate the moral and social status of a people. The companion of man's quiet hours, it will speak to him in his retirement, when he can commune with the thoughts its teachings may inspire. It will address him without the hollow sound- ing of words to mock the solemnity of what it says. It will have influence with him because it confides in him privately and makes him the unobserved discoverer of his own failings. It will benefit him, because his better nature, despite him, will be moved by all that is beautiful in its passages. In the presence of the true novel, man will grow erect in truth, as the human form, before the figure of the Apollo, unconsciously straight- ens itself — F. P. Deering. B2. The monthly reports of our Mercantile Library show that novels are as ten to one of all other books read in San Francisco. It is useless to quarrel with the fact, as it is absurd to quarrel with any primal pas- sion of our being. It is folly to cast a slight on novels, as a class. They constitute no class, but a mighty branch of literature. The Enfjlish and the German novels differ as much as a leopard and a hippopotamus. We are wont to speak of English books, pervaded with the Byronic spirit, as the "Satanic" in literature; but as Milton's fiend could find no bottom to the abyss, so from far deeper gulfs than any English novel ever opened, we see arising in the worst French fictions the LITERATURE AND EDUCATION. 79 presiding demon of all cancerous corruptions, issuing with appropriate odor, as if from Swedenborg's excre- mentitious hell. Bow with me to the genius of woman in modern times, as I call the roll of the choicer works of English fiction. Such creativeness as is displayed in the pro- duction of Charlotte Bronte and the author of "Adam Bede," has never been known since Shakespeare. A library of novels is like a gallery of pictures. One man saunters through it to see what the pictures are about; another sits down before the master-pieces to see what the artist was about; the first sees the paint, the second the paintings. It were well if every person, after read- ing a novel, were compelled to write out or to think out the axis of the whole. Suppose some reading circle should, at each session, agree to settle on one point, as to show which of all Scott's works exhibits the greater power; why Charles Reade, who is so brilliant in de- scription, so graphic and unapproachable in dialogue, can't sketch a character but he must desfrade both it and himself; why the close of Bulwer's " What Will He Do with It ? " is such an unmitigated piece of snob- bery that we feel inclined to pitch book and author to some place where types are never set up more; why Mrs. Stowe's "Dred," the first volume of which is far the grandest she ever wrote, in the second volume runs so swiftly to weakness and failure ; why the drawing of Rochester stands out more surprisingly on the tenth reading than on the first; why the author of "Adam Bede" is the most eminent of living novelists; why 80 CALIFORNIA ANTHOLOGY. each character on her page stands out like a star against the bkie sky in a clear, cool night; why the "Mill on the Floss," though still an able and more bitter book, is inferior to "Adam Bede." I have often thought that perhaps the pulpit could do no better service than to discourse faithfully, once a quarter, on the health or disease of the novel that all the ladies in the parish are just reading. It is often remarked that when his eyes are shut, man cannot, except by the odor, distinguish between beef and mutton, elk and pork. It is no reason why he should not with his eyes open. — Thomas Starr King. EDUCATION A SUPREME DUTY. 83. Minds there are, even in this generation, which outvalue, even according to the most material standard, all the rest of the world besides. The mind of Ericsson was a fortification to the whole coast of our country in time of war — of more worth than walls of earth and stone, on which millions have been spent. The active brain of Field set itself to work, and Europe and America became joined together by an imperishable band, like gigantic Siamese twins. The mind of Gari- baldi is Italy's hope of liberty. The mind of Bismarck contains Germany, centralized and united; and the traveller, whether he visits the cities or plains of Eu- rope, or ascends the Alps, still finds himself surrounned and enveloped by the intellect of Napoleon — dead half a century ago. LITERATURE AND EDUCATION. 81 Minds there have been of so much service to the generation in which they have lived, that all the united efforts of the millions of their contemporaries were val- ueless beside a single reflection or a single thought of theirs; and minds like these may be in the neglected children around you. Is it sound mercantile sense to waste a product so rich and so accessible ? To use a California figure of speech, every child has in his in- tellect a mine of pay-ore; every one of these mines will richly pay the working, and sometimes it will happen to you to strike a pocket of intellect that will enrich your whole generation. When such a mind is lost, for want of cultivation, who can tell how far the advance of the world is retarded ? Who can say to what point of pro- gress the world would not have attained, had it had the benefit of the well developed powers of those minds which, for want of education, have been utterly lost ? How grand, how swelling might have been the song of the mute, inglorious Milton! How vast the discoveries of some Newton, who has lived his ignoble life with as little reflection as the clod he worked ! Who can tell but that minds have lived which, if edu- cated, would have told us the secret of the birth of the sun and stars, would trace life to its source, would have opened new worlds to our gaze, and brought old ones nearer together. I tremble as I think how near the world was to losing alto^^ether, for want of educa- tion, those glorious creations of Shakespeare. The accident that gave him to us makes us thrill, as it shows us how many stately ships of intellect, which have left their native haven freighted to the water's edg-c with 82 CALIFORNIA ANTHOLOGY. the cargo for which mankind is famishing, have gone down in the darkness and the night. And if you wish that future generations should know and bless your name, link it to that of our great University, from whose loins shall spring the manly, stalwart minds, of which you will be the fathers. Aye, this is true fame — fame that lives. — JoJmi B. Felton. III. THE CONDUCT OF LIFE. PART III. THE CONDUCT OF LIFE. B4. Duty. — God demands greatness of us all, and not goodness merely. There is not a person so humble or so feebly gifted that the call is not to him or to her. If we have few qualities that can influence, and but a narrow sphere to fill, still we have ourselves to develop and ourselves to rule. — Thomas Starr King. 55. Out of the confusion and chaos of every un- finished, toilsome life, an Eden may arise; light may break forth. It is a vigilant regard for little things that begets happiness. — Sarah B. Cooper. 56. Be prompt in your attention to professional calls, even if t4iey be not urgent, and be punctual in the fulfilment of your appointments. He who delays until evening that which he can and should do in the morning, carries a burden on his mind all day for nothing. It is prompt performance which enables some persons to accomplish so much more than others. —Dr. G. A. Shurtleff. 84 CALIFORNIA ANTHOLOGY. B7. Life should bear good fruits. — Let me hope, for myself and us all, that when we have filled out our allotted space in this world; when we are at- tended by weeping friends, for the purpose of removing us to our last resting place, that it shall not be said of us that we have lived without purpose, but that we have gathered friends in the days of our manhood; that we have left fruits to bloom when we have departed. — Gen E. D. Baker. 58. The seasons when men are used as pipes through which to blow the Divine breath of Inspira- tion are short and soon pass away. Extraordinary success always brings extraordinary trials in its bril- liant train, which must be met with becominsf fortitude. — Thomas Starr King. B9. In mirth, men are sincere; in sobriety, hypo- critical. It is behind the mask of gravity that the fan- tastic tricks which turn and overturn society are per- formed. Joy is more dificult to counterfeit than sor- row. We may cloud the sun with smoked glass, but we cannot dissipate the clouds with any telescope of human invention. — Hubert H. Bancroft. 60. A PREMIUM on heels involves a discount on heads, while a fair valuation of each argues a healthy condition. — Sarah B Cooper. 61. We must be not merely tolerant, but liberal; and must advance by the law, not of antagonism, but of sympathy. I do not care to acknowledge as my friend THE CONDUCT OF LIFE. 85 the man who is so narrow as to see nothing good out- side of his own Httle clique, or party, or faith, or race. I honor the cosmopoHtan soul. — Rev. VV. E. IJams. 62. Each man is a divinely chartered corporation, to trade with all nature, to enrich himself by commerce with all that he can reach by any of his arts; and the moment that this commerce ceases, he begins to die, though he may continue to exist until all of his stored stock is exhausted. — T/ios. Starr Ki7ig. 63. The justice of heaven is sure and unerring. Success may for a season gild a wicked career, and throw around it a false and illusive lustre, yet, just as certain as night follows the day, retribution waits on crime. This lesson is repeated in the pages of univer- sal history, is inscribed on the tombs of dead nations, and written in the experience of all living men. — Frank Tilford. 64. A DANDY lives not by the clock or almanac, but from one neck-tie to another; a fashionable woman lives from one wrinkle to another; the politician from one Presidential election to another; the epicure from one turtle to another; the philosopher from the perception of one principle to the dawning of another; the phi- lanthropist from one act of charity to another. — Thos. Starr Kino-. 65. On many a tomb-stone, where it is written, "Here lies so-and-so, aged seventy years," the true in- scription would read, 'Tn memory of a soul who, in 86 CALIFORNIA ANTHOLOGY. seventy years, lived about five minutes, and that was when he first found himself in love." — Thos. Starr King. QQ. The popular notion that a ghost is a soul unclothed with a body, is fallacious ; your genuine ghost is a body not vitalized by a soul — a mere machine for converting potatoes and meat into the straps and cords of humanity. The soulless rich man is mere bank paper that adversity tears to shreds. The soul- less office-holder is a bladder, which at the expiration of his term of office, is pricked, collapses, and tumbles out of siorfit. But the dandv is entitled to stand in the first rank of ghosts — he is a whiskered essence, an organized perfume. — -TJiomas Starr King. 67. If men, like balloons, could be allowed to cut loose from their bodies, and soar to their actual planes of culture and refinement, we should see some slinking into the alleys, some rising into the brilliant sphere of truth, some to the rosy realms of beauty, and some, the selected band, into the serene light of charity. It would be Dante's dream again, the series of circles narrowing down to the base of the pit, and circling with broader sweeps as it rose to the joys of Paradise. — Thomas Starr King. 68. Noble Lives. — Life is a channel of intel- lectual power. Living is a fine art. Great lives mean more than the noblest orations. There are facts in Fenelon's life that are as rich and eloquent as any passages in Shakespeare. Washington was not felt as a literary power; his words do not kindle us; but his THE CONDUCT OF LIFE. 87 faith, decision, fortitude did, and continue to. His soul lived a literature more terrible to despotism than ever was penned. We speak of Cordelia as one of Shakespeare's noblest creations, and Jennie Deans as one of Scott's richest productions. Is it any less to be a Jennie Deans or a Cordelia than to write her ? Is the echo more musical than the notes that create it, or the mirror's reflection more perfect than the face that is mirrored ? If lives could take outward shape, we would learn better to appreciate their nobleness. — Thos. Starr King. 69. Let your thoughts grow. To have beautiful thoughts and suppress them, is like destroying the seed of a beautiful flower. How can you have beautiful flowers unless you cultivate and cherish them ? First preparing the soil best adapted to their growth, and selecting those seeds and plants you wish to cultivate, you are well repaid in beholding them spring up to greet you with beauty and fragrance. How pleasant to see homes decorated with those beautiful teachers of love and purity. We can cultivate beautiful thoughts by ex- pressing such as come to us, freely, without stint, with- out thinking how they will please. When you have a train of beautiful thoughts, be free to speak them. It may incline other minds to new ideas which may draw forth the language of harmony. How many beautiful ideas have been suppressed, for fear of what the world might say — thoughts that flow like living waters from the soul. — M. y. Up/mm. 88 CALIFORNIA ANTHOLOGY. 70. Marriage. — As we advance in life the cordage of kindred breaks away. Aged parents drop in the tomb. We know that sisterly fondness, once so earnest, has diverged into a new channel. A husband and off- spring have become the reservoirs of her affections. The stern cares of life have longf agfo solidified a brother's heart. It is true we form occasional and strong frienships with the outer world. They are rarely more, however, than companionable and mental affinites. They ruffle a little the heart's surface, while the emotional depths are undisturbed. There is no union and interblending of soul. In intercourse with his fellows, the most communicative man reserves a host of sensations and delicate sensibilities. They are the soft murmurinofs and dulcet warblinsfs from the better and purer portions of our nature. He feels it profanation to breathe them into the ear of his dearest male friend. A mother could sympathize with them. But since she is dead they have sunk back upon the heart. They will lie there forever, unless a loved and confiding wife attract them forth by the magnetism of a tender and unsullied soul. This unfettered inter- communion of feeling is the joy and rivet of the marriage tie. If falsehood or concealment intervene on either side, a calamitous future will inevitably ensue. — James G. Howard. 71. The tree of Love should have generous oppor- tunity to strike root, and gather strength and tenacity, before the scion of marriage be crafted into it ; for, though shoot and stock become thereafter one tree, yet THE CONDUCT OF LIFE. 89 the graft determines the kind of fruit it shall bear. Be- fore marriage, Love's Inquisition should be keen-eyed, keen-eared, almost relentless, in ferreting out the subtle faults and weaknesses of the enthroned ideal ; but, after leaving the bridal altar, all inquisitorial robes should be thrown aside at once and forever, and upon the threshold of every new day should be inscribed the gentle sug- gestion : Be to each fault a little blind; Be to each failing wondrous kind. — Sarah B. Cooper. 72. Oh, Charity ! friend of the fatherless, com- forter of the afflicted ! On thy starry brow is stamped the sign-manual of the Omnipotent ; on thy cheek is the smile of heaven; in thy hand is the balsam of life. Child of Christianity ! in the quivering light that gleams in thy glowing features are seen the emblems of Peace, Joy and Hope ! Thy softening and refining influence is divinely sweeter on the great ocean of life, as it ebbs and flows and beats upon the shores of time, than silvery notes of music, which, rippling o'er the moon- li. Dr. Thos, Gtmrd. 121. The belief in God is an inevitable part of our human nature; it is born with us, it is a universal belief; we cannot be brothers without having a com- mon father. However much a man may persuade him- self that he believes there is no God, when he is con- fronted with his own soul, he knows and feels that God exists. If there is no God to whom we owe our common origin, what relation can exist among men ? — John B. Felton. 122. Emotional Religion. — Keep out of the so- ciety of sickly sentimentalists, and dreamy, morbid enthusiasts. Our friends ought to be people of good common sense, and honest and open moral principles. The religion of "Gush" is not the religion to carry us through any great crisis. Conscience, and not emo- tion, is what we require. — Rev. W. E. /jams. 123. Decline of Orthodoxy. — The old ortho- doxy is virtually dead. You can still find it in books. RELIGION AND THE FUTURE LIFE. 133 It Still lives in printed creeds, but it has received 'so broad an interpretation as to be really a new thing under the sun. Not one minister in a thousand preaches the old creeds as they were preached. The preaching is better than the creed, and let us hope that, by and by, ministers will be honest enough to change their creeds, so that preaching and creed shall be in complete and even liberal harmony. — Rev. W. E. Ijains. 124. Holiness the End of Human Life. — If holiness is the beauty and perfection of the Divine Nature, surely it is also the beauty and perfection of human nature. The whole work of man on this earth is to restore or perfect the Divine image in the nature of man — in the reason of man as truth, in the heart of man as love. Now, it is the harmonious combination of all these Divine features that constitutes the beauty of the Divine image, or holiness, in man. Holiness, therefore, is the true end of human life, and every other is false. — P'^^of. yos. LeConte. 125. Foreknowledge of God. — Man, short-sighted and finite, changes or improves his original plan, from time to time, as unforseen contingencies arise. But God, foreseeing and foreknowing the end from the beginning, every possible contingency is included and provided for in the original conception. The whole idea of that infinite work of art which we call nature, is contained in the first strokes of the Great Artist's pencil, and the ceaseless activity of the Deity is employed through infinite time only in the unfolding of the original con- ception. Can we conceive anything which so nobly 134 CALIFORNIA ANTHOLOGY. illustrates the all-comjDrehensive fore-knowledge and the immutability of the Deity ? — Prof. Joseph LeConte. 126. The Inner Life. — So many of us there are who have no majestic landscapes for the heart — no gardens in the inner life ! We live on the flats, in a country which is dry, droughty, barren. We look up to no hights whence shadows fall and streams flow, singing. We have no great hopes. We have no sense of infinite guard and care. We have no sacred and cleansing fears. We have no consciousness of Divine, All-enfolding Love. We may make an outward visit to the Sierras, but there are no Yosemites in the soul. — Thos. Starr King. 127. The Words of Christ. — ■ History, until of late, has been mostly a record of battles, many of which had no effect upon society. But history, truly written, will show that the hinge-epoch of centuries was when no battle- sound was heard on the earth — when in Gali- lee one was uttering sentiments in a language now nowhere spoken, never deigning to write a line, but entrustmg to the air his words. The Caesar whose servant ordained the crucifixion — all the Caesars — are dust; but His words live yet, the substantial agents of civilization, the pillars of our welfare, the hope of the race. — Thomas Starr Kins'. "^ 128. The Church Essential to the Nation. — The true life of a nation is moral. The church is set as the spring of that life. To her it is left to promulgate the doctrines from which moral apprehensions arise and RELIGION AND THE FUTURE LIFE. 135 moral principles are evolved. She is commissioned to hold aloft true standards, and radiate the light of swift and strong rebuke upon sin in low and high places. While the church lives the nation cannot die. The light of the "city set on a hill" cannot be hidden or ob- scured from without; it must decline and darken from within. A perversion of religion must both precede and accompany every devastating overflow of de- pravity. — Rev. M. C. Briggs. IMMORTALITY. 129. The mysteries of the other world are not re- vealed. The principles of judgment, the tests of ac- ceptance, and of the supreme eminence, are unfolded. Intellect, genius, knowledge, shall be as nothing be- fore humility, sacrifice, charity. But in the uses of charity, the fiery tongue, the furnished mind, the un- quailing heart shall have ample opportunities, and ampler than here. Paul goes to an immense service still, as an Apostle; Newton, to reflect from grander heavens a vaster light. — TJios. Starr King. 130. The soul is not a shadow; the body is. Genius is not a shadow; it is a substance. Patriotism is not a shadow, it is light. Great purposes, and the spirit that counts death nothing in contrast with honor and the welfare of our country — these are the witnesses that man is not a passing vapor, but an immortal spirit. — Tlios. Starr Kins'. 136 CALIFORNIA ANTHOLOGY. 131. The yearning for a future life is natural and deep. It grows with intellectual growth, and perhaps none really feel it more than those who have begun to see how ereat is the universe, and how infinite are the vistas which every advance in knowledge opens before us — vistas which would require nothing short of eter- nity to explore. But in the mental atmosphere of our times, to the great majority of men on whom mere creeds have lost their hold, it seems impossible to look on this yearning save as a vain and childish hope, aris- ing from man's egotism, and for which there is not the slightest ground or warrant, but which, on the contrary, seems inconsistent with positive knowledge. Now, when we come to analyze and trace up the ideas that thus destroy the hope of a future life, we shall find them, I think, to have their source, not in any revelations of physical science, but in certain teachings of political and moral science which have deeply per- meated thought in all directions. They have their root in the doctrines that there is a tendency to the produc- tion of more human beings than can be provided for ; that vice and misery are the result of natural laws; and the means by which advance goes on; and that human progress is by a slow race development. These doc- trines, which have been generally accepted as approved truth, do what the extensions of physical science do not do — they reduce the individual to insignificance; they destroy the idea that there can be in the ordering of the universe any regard for his existence, or any recognition of what we call moral qualities. It is diffi- RELIGION AND THE FUTURE LIFE. 137 cult to reconcile the idea of human immortality with the idea that nature wastes men by constantly bringing them into beinof where there is no room for them It is impossible to reconcile the idea of an intelligent and beneficent Creator with the belief that the wretchedness and degradation, which are the lot of such a large proportion of human kind, result from his enactments; while the idea that man, mentally and physically, is the result of slow modifications perpetu- ated by heredity, irresistibly suggests the idea that it is the race life, not the individual life, which is the object of human existence. Thus has vanished, with many of us, and is still vanishing with more of us, that belief which in the battles and ills of life, affords the strongest support and deepest consolation. Population does not tend to outrun subsistence; the waste of human powers and the prodigality of human suffering do not spring from natural laws, but from the iofnorance and selfishness of men in refusing: to conform to natural laws. Human progress is not by altering the nature of men, but, on the contrary, the nature of men seems, generally speaking, always the same. — Henry George. 182. The idea of development involves the idea of maturity, and this, that of decay ; in other words, it involves the idea of cyclical movement; there is no such thing as stability in things material. The uni- verse itself is passing through its cycle of changes which must finally close; the universe itself is en- wrapped within the complex coils of a law which must eventually strangle it to death. 138 CALIFORNIA ANTHOLOGY. Thus the cycle of the individual closes in death, but the race progresses; the cycle of the race closes in death, but the earth abides; the cycle of the earth closes, but the universe remains; finally the cycle of the universe itself must close. The law is absolutely universal among things material. Where, then, shall we look for true, rectilinear, ever-onward progress.'* Where, but in that world where the soaring spirit of man is freed from the trammels of material laws — the world of immortal spirits. — Prof. Jos. LeCo7ite. 133.— In thought, in feeling, and in love. Things do not perish, though they pass; The form is shattered to the eye, But only broken is the glass. Sun, friend, and flower have each become A part of my immortal part; They are not lost, but evermore Shine, live and bloom within my heart. — W. A. Kendall. 134. Infinity. — Physical causes have entirely con- cealed three-sevenths of the moon from our observa- tion. And this must always remain so under existing cosmical arrangements. No conceivable progress in astronomy — no possible improvement in the telescope can remove or abate the difficulty. It is true that it is very seldom that we find the limits of human knowledge so sharply defined, as in the case of the physical aspect RELIGION AND THE FUTURE LIFE. * 139 of our planetary companion. Nevertheless, nearly simi- lar conditions exist in the intellectual world, where, in the domain of deep research into the mysteries and the primeval creative forces of Nature, there are regions similarly turned away from us and apparently forever unattainable. So likewise, in those systems of double stars, which the astronomer finds scattered through the awful abysses of space; how remote the analogies to our system ! What complex reactions must exist be- tween the planets engirdling the double suns and their duplex centres of power and energy ! But their features are forever hidden from man; we can never hope to explore those sacred mysteries. It seems to me that no one need regret that there are some enclosed spots, some secluded regions, some quietudes in creation, which will be unexplored and unpenetrated forever. These are the resfions in the intellectual world into which faintness, weariness, and broken-heartedness may sometimes flee, and find shelter and repose! Sweet and inviting mysteries — encouraging mysteries — among whose gentle shadows all our holy aspirations, our unnamed yearnings, humbly and tremblingly advance, and find or fashion for themselves images of purity and love — convictions of immortality — vistas of a life to come ! — P^vf. Jos. LeConte. 135. One All-Pervading Principle. — The Ionic philosophers saw only one all-pervading principle in nature, though personified in the minds of some by one element and in the minds of others by another. Thus, Thales thought it water, Anaxagoras atoms, Anaximenes 140 CALIFORNIA ANTHOLOGY. air, Heraclitus fire. But whatever it is, science and rehVion see, feel it, and believe in the same thinsf, though they call it by different names and numberless sub-names. We feel God in nature and in ourselves as the blind child, feeling with its fingers the lineaments of the face it loves, reads thus the secrets of the heart behind it. — Hubert H. Bancroft. 136. Faith.^ — Happily, for all things beyond the selfishness of the day, the heart is stronger than the head. No nation has accomplished a high destiny without a belief in something' better and his/her than itself Faith is the parent of aspiration. We have a high destiny before us; let us have faith in it; and faith in the Hi!:^her Power which beckons us towards its accomplishment. Years ago, maternal hands led us to the modest church which gently crowns the village green; or by our mother's side we knelt within the dim aisles of the cathedral, which was all lighted up, for us, by the glory of the Madonna and the smile of the infant Jesus. There we heard those sublime words, the crown of the wisdom of Socrates and of the philosophy of Plato, towards which all good men haci groped before, and which all good men have followed since: "Do unto others as ye would that they should do unto you." We have been taught the life-giving principles, which are the (jerm of the reliofion of the church in all acres — of the religion of England, of the religion of our fathers, the religion of good deeds and noble sacrifices; we have our faith ; we will abide by it, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it. — T. W. Frcelon. I RELIGION AND THE FUTURE LIFE. 141 137. O, Affection, Forgiveness, Faith ! — Ye are mighty spirits, ye are powerful angels. And the soul that in its dying moments trusts to thee, cannot be far from the gates of heaven, whatever the past life may have been. However passion or excitement may have led it astray, if at the last and final hour it returns to the lessons of a mother's love, of a father's care — if it leiirns the fjreat lesson of foro[-iveness to its enemies — if at the last moment it can utter these words: "Father of light, and life, and love!" these shall be winged angels — troops of blessed spirits — that will bear the fainting, wounded soul to the blessed abodes, and for- ever guard it against despair. Oh, my friends ! those mighty gates, built by the Almighty to guard the entrance to the unseen world, will not open at the battle-axe of the conqueror; they will not roll back if all the artillery of earth were to thunder forth a demand, which, indeed, would be lost in the infinite regions of eternal space ! but they will open with thoughts of affection, with forgiveness of injuries, and with prayer. — Ge7i. E. D. Baker. 138. Atheism. — The clinching argument against atheism is not that there is such constant order in the universe, but that so many facts, apparently independ- ent of order, play so beautifully Into each other in per- fect harmony. Can it be chance that determines the mad but punctual whirling of the universe ? Think of a heap of letters dropped from space, sent fluttering 142 CALIFORNIA ANTHOLOGY. through the air, Hke snow-flakes, and by chance arrang- ing themselves into the scenes, the stirring passages, the solemn climax of the tragedy of Macbeth, so that all the characters should be there ! The proposition obliges atheism and probability to look each other in the face. If Macbeth is probable as a result of such a shower of letters, hurled down by chance, then it may be confessed that chance hurled the immense physical alphabet into this grand poem of nature, whose leaves are systems and each word a world. — TJios. Starr King. 139. Religion Native to the Heart. — Religious sentiments are native to the heart of man. They dwell in the heart of the savage, they illuminate the under- standing of the sage, they radiate amid the haunts of civilization and refinement. Human nature, after grop- ing for a season in the darkness of its fall, began to trace, amid the aspirations and sublime conceptions of its inner thought, the glimmer of a light divine. Un- satisfied longings, restless strivings after some far-off good, soon taught the soul, through the demonstrations of its inward promptings, that its essence was immortal. What the acute investigations of reason, aided by the deep study of the page of nature, imparted to the con- templations of philosophy, the light of revelation finally made clear. Socrates beheld, and imparted to his acolytes, the sureties of an immortal life and the in- finite being of a God. Cicero had bright conceptions of an existence, Morious and unending, in another RELIGION AND THE FUTURE LIFE. 143 world. These minds, and multitudes of others, soared beyond the vain tenets of the day, which frittered away, in a multitude of deified attributes, all just ideas of a God, and their piercing flight ceased not till it pene- trated to the lofty realms of truth. In all periods of the world's history, there have been painful spectacles of free opinion, but they have proved exceptions to the spirit of the age. They stand as stands a charred and lightening-blasted oak, among the stalwart giants of the forest. Even in the midst of the dark ages, the spirit of religion still survived. Wherever Romanism was rejected, a Theurgical system took its place, which linked the mind of man to the mysteries of a world unseen, and his spirit to the worship of Divinity. — yos. W. IVinans. 140. Man's Mission.— Franklin, when he inter- rogated the thunder-cloud, and received in response a shock from the key, an assurance of its relationship to electricity, designed not to change, but to imdcrstaiid, the laws that control this element of terror that had been regarded as God's avenging messenger. This knowledge enabled him to construct lightning-rods to protect buildings from its damaging presence. By studying the laws of this ever present but unseen agent, Morse was enabled to subordinate it to the noblest purposes. May not the study of the soul's origin, its capacity and destiny, from a scientific stand- point, reveal to us knowledge that may be applied for our own benefit and to the advancement of our race .-* There may be laws too occult for our understanding. i '4 CALIFORNIA ANTHOLOGY. but there are none so sacred as to forbid our desire for their comprehension. This immense domain for human exploration, for the present and for the eternal future, demonstrates the grandeur of man's character and mission; and the great minds which occasionally roll up between the centuries and flash their light like meteors in the sky, are an earnest of man's capacities, and the future possibilities of all. Copernicus, Socrates, Plato, Galileo, Newton, Locke, Melancthon, Edwards, La Place, Bowditch, Leverrier and others, are historical monuments, not only for our admiration, but our imita- tion. It is a glorious as well as a consoling thought, that every person born into this world, is in the posses- ion of the germs of the undeveloped faculties, which may. at some period in the vast future, transcend in its attainments, these great lights of the world ; like an inverted pyramid, spreading outward and upward in its lofty and expansive growth, taking hold on knowledge, that carries it, as it were, into the realms of the infinite. What man has accomplished, it may be possible for all men to acquire. This opens to us the beauty and glory of that life and future into which we all are soon to enter, when to know and to love shall constitutue the two orreat forces that are to move us onward and upward, into the empire of wisdom and the realms of eternal bliss. — Gen. John A. Collins. 141. The Golden Age to Come. — It is a oflorious three-fold truth: That over us and over all things there exists a benignant mind; that he presides over all the commotions and revolutions of history; and RELIGION AND THE FUTURE LIFE. 145 that he has an increasinq; kinfjdom, which he is evolving out of the very evils of the present, as a lily springs, white and beautiful, out of the quagmire. Christianity invites us to a wide survey. Its visions and vistas are not those of an hour, or a day or a century, but rather those of immeasurable ages. God is in no hurry — He rests not, hastes not. He employed untold ages to complete the solid earth we now inhabit, and he may employ even a longer period to carry to its final stages the grander process of the moral world. The mythol- ogy of Greece and Rome placed the Golden Age back in the distant past. Christianity, on the other hand, places the Golden Age forward in a distant future. Their religion was a bright memory, ours a glorious hope. — Rev. W. E. Ijams. 142. The Sceptic — Ancient and Modern. — The ancient skeptic or philosopher, in assailing dogmas and destroying systems, had (at least in his best judgment believed he had) higher ethics and purer systems to offer in their place; while our modern sceptic, in his rage for novelty, affectation of learning, and monstrous lust of destruction, brutally impugns the existing order of things — long established standards of right, our present system of religion and morality, dismantling it of all its holy traditions, ridiculing its struggles, dispa- raging its triumphs, and consigning to puerility the reverence which centuries have paid it; and when his devilish work is done, when with sacrilegious wanton- ness he has scattered our sacred treasures to the four winds of heaven, ignored principles which mighty 146 CALIFORNIA ANTHOLOGY. minds established, and destroyed the chart by which the good men of hundreds of generations have traveled on happy and contented in their journey to God, — I say, when all this work of destruction is complete; when this deadly conspiracy against humanity is fully accomplished; and man's reason, in its hour of grievous unrest, asks the sceptic for something outside of self and its possibilities, upon which it can depend for reference, guidance and instruction ; when man's heart, with jDlaintive prayer, asks for something to love, something to cling to, some source of consolation in this disap- pointing world, some hope in the bitterness of death, the sceptic's hands are empty, his heart is cold, his voice is silent; having robbed us of our birth-rio-ht, in which all these blessings were comprehended, he gives us what he calls a "liberated manhood," what we know to be an incarnate malediction, an existence without an object, adversity without a remedy, a grave without a hope, a death which means annihilation. — Dr. J. Campbell SJiorb. 143. True Religion Welcomes Truth. — The theory that the Bible is an infallible record has wrought incalculable disaster both to science and religion, and is the secret of the alienation between them. Why not, then, admit that a man may be inspired as to spiritual truth, and yet be ignorant as to scientific truth } If religious people would only be reasonable, there would be no more conflict between science and religion. What is religion ? Is it not the supreme love of God, RELIGION AND THE FUTURE LIFE. 147 and the unselfish love of my neighbor ? Religion, loaded with the traditions of mythology, the errors of Hebrew poesy, or the imperfections growing out of the human element of inspiration, will terminate in the de- feat of faith and the triumph of philosophy. Man is naturally a religious being. The instinct of faith in God is a real one. Man is not man without reliirion. Ministers of the gospel should not be afraid of science. Chemistry should be in alliance with all truth; and we should be ready to surrender any dogma, however dear, at the bidding of any real truth, come whence it may. — Rev. W. E. Ijams. 144. The Spiritual Feeling. — Let a man once realize the full sense of the truth that he is a spirit, and he will begin to act like an immortal child of an Infinite Father. Let him feel that this earth is only a nursery of souls, that here he learns the mere alphabet of God's great volume of everlasting truth, that this is merely a short space in his whole career, and he will begin to rise out of the filth, how deeply soever he may be sunk in it; he will begin to stir himself, he will begin to lift his head up among the stars, he will begin to open his bosom to the inspiring music of the heavens, and to realize his affinity with all that is beautiful, glorious and divine. We will no longer build our religious temples of philosophy out of the old debris of the dead centu- ries; we will build them out of the blocks of solid light which science has quarried out of the eternal deeps of n.iture. We will build their crystal walls of the pure, transparent and dazzling beams drawn from nature's 148 CALIFORNIA ANTHOLOGY. entire compass. They shall go up grandly, until the domes shall pierce the heavens, and all mankind wor- ship around their altars — sacred to the rights, liberties and progress of all. We will have no spiritual hier- archy, but inspired men and women shall receive their commissions from the Genius of Nature; and we will have for a ritual the repetition of the order and har- mony and beauty that print themselves in letters of blazing light on the face of the midnight sky. We will have for members all humanity that carries in its bosom faith and hope, and would fain get rid, some day, of this encompassing and cramping flesh which, when we are once fairly out of it, will enable us all the more to en- joy the freedom of the spiritual republic in Heaven. All the truths of the past are ours; science is their handmaiden; it teaches the tender sympathies of the soul to blossom with more than their usual freedom and beauty; it has a smile for the faithful, encourage- ment for the disappointed, inspiration for the dull, and hope for all mankind. — Sclden J. Finney. THE CORRUPTING INFLUENCE OF REVIVALS. 145. I. Revival METHODS ARE RADICALLY VICIOUS. — The speeches and prayers, limited to three minutes, and stopped by a tinkle of the conductor's bell; the reading of piles of notes for the conversion of indicated persons, and the offering of supplication for them, as though prayer were a method of sacred sorcery; the asking of young persons if they "know the Lord;" the RELIGION AND THE FUTURE LIFE. 149 solicitation of people to publish their most sacred feel- ings of penitence, or their equally sacred glooms and distrusts and scepticism, the flitting about of experts in the system of evangelical pathology — if one can contem- plate such methods of dealing with the religious nature, in a season of excitement, without feeling that permanent harm must result to those who conduct the system and those who are the victims of it, he must hold a conception of religion and religious sensibilities that needs, I think, to be enlarged and refined. Safety is still the word and motive that is executed with all possible modulations and variations in the whole fan- tasia of praying, note-reading, and appeal. "Come to Christ;" "get an interest in Christ;" "fly to the cross;" "find the Saviour;" "delay is dangerous, for death may overtake you to-morrow;" — these are the char- acteristic calls and warnings of the movement. This shows its radical vice. Its working-force, so far as the instruction and the teachers give it character, is not the glory of truth, the beauty of holiness, the need of human nature, for its health, to begin to serve God and be educated in a spiritual estimate of all nature and all life. The long arm of its lever is selfish fear. Its fulcrum is the death-bed. Its airrt is the swinging of men, from the edge of the grave, over the abyss, into a mechanical heaven. II. Revivals poison manhood. — I cannot do any thing else than say that this is poison. The religious emo- tion that goes to the meetings may be pure and hope- ful. But when it is met by this kind of instruction, or 150 CALIFORNIA ANTHOLOGY. is Stimulated thus to more intense vitality, a bane is taken into the spiritual blood that I believe almost neutralizes the good effect of a renunciation of open sins. Just to the extent that this doctrineJs absorbed into character, the manhood is injured. The person may not be a gross offender, as before, against the commandments, he may be a frequenter of prayer- meetings, and a sincere exhorter to flee from the wrath to come, but he is converted to be stunted ; he is innoculated with a virus that chills and shrivels his humanity; he is turned from a careless and perhaps generous-hearted sinner, into a miserable, starveling dwarf of the spiritual order, on the side of the Lord. III. Revivals corrupt youth. — Not long ago I read a volume containing twenty-five sermons, recently preached in New York and Brooklyn with reference to the revival, by the most distinguished and cultivated ministers of those cities. Some of the most powerful of the discourses, I read in my library till past mid- night. The air at last seemed full of infernal terrors and woe, and I shut the dreadful book. In a room up stairs, my little daughter, six years old, was sleeping, with whom I have often the most sweet conversation upon God and Christ, and the life hereafter. But I said to myself then, in excitement of soul, what I will say here with seriousness and deliberation, that rather than my child should have the awful the- ology of the average of that book stamped upon her heart, I should unspeakably prefer that she should grow up an atheist. As an atheist, the best currents of RELIGION AND THE FUTURE LIFE. 151 human nature would not be corrupted in her. Believ- iuLT what that book teaches, and havins: her whole nature cramped and distorted into its mould, it would not be possible that her spirit could have any religious beauty, cheer, or peace. IV. Revivals dishonor the deity. — A large num- ber of men and women, no doubt, do reject most of this venom. They are sound and noble in spite of their theology. Their spiritual sense is instinctively so deli- cate and healthy, that this leaven of Satan in the bread of life offered to them, is quietly cast out before it can pass into their moral blood. But the majority take it into their constitution. It becomes their wisdom, their motive, their measure of God's character. And then what can they know of the Infinite Perfectness ? Be- lieving that God has appointed a terrible and irreversible fmal doom, that yawns just beyond the sepulchre, for every man that has misused the opportunities of this life; that he will never pity or forgive any spirit he has made, on the most thorough repentance, through eter- nity — what can they know, under such instruction, of that perfectness of God which is more than the sum of all the holy and lovely qualities of human character on earth ? Make God just as good in eternity as he is in time. Put religion on its natural basis, and you kill the revi- vals, you shrivel the inquiry-meetings. V. Revivals repel from religion the young life AND THE BEST INTELLECT OK THE LAND. — -Let any man go through the West, and talk with the men who repre- 152 CALIFORNIA ANTHOLOGY. sent the energy and future of the great rising States; let him hear their lamentations over thp dreariness and huskiness of the theology that is poured from the pulpits, their confessions of the inward rebellion and loathing which, when they go to church, they listen to its effete traditions, its ghastly philosophy of life, its artificial terrors, its theories of the government of the moral world, so discordant with the simplicity of science, so foreign from the clearest insiofht which our best literature reveals; let him hear them utter their fears for the effect on society, after two generations more of this dismal parody of a gospel, and ask if some nobler administration of truth cannot be inaugurated soon and widely. The awakening in this country by which hopes will be re-animated, and fresh light poured into the popular heart, will flow from the silent stealing of new truth into our theology. We want such an access of truth that the general mind can be fed with a worthier con- ception of God, that will make every thought of him inspiring as the dawn of the morning, and will banish the superstition that this life is the final state of proba- tion, as an insult to his plan of eternal education, and a chimera of a barbarous age. — Thomas Star)" King. THIS LIFE THE AVENUE TO ANOTHER. 146. Political Economy has been called the dismal science, and, as currently taught, is hopeless and de- spairing. But this is solely because she has been shackled and degraded; her truths dislocated; her RELIGIOX AND THE FUTURE LIFE. 153 harmonics iofnored; the words she would utter oracfSfed in her mouth, and her protest against wrong turned into an endorsement of injustice. Freed in her own proper symmetry, PoHtical Economy is radiant with hope. Properly understood, the laws which govern the pro- duction and distribution of wealth show that the want and injustice of the present social state are not neces- sary; but that, on the contrary, a social state is possible in which poverty would be unknown, and all the better . qualities and higher powers of human nature would have opportunity for full development. Further than this, when we see that social development is governed neither by a Special Providence nor by a merciless fate, but by law, at once unchangeable and beneficent; when we see that human will is the great factor, and that, taking men in the aggregate, their condition is as they make it; when we see that economic law and moral law are essentially one, and that the truth which the intellect grasps after toilsome effort, is but that which the moral sense reaches by a quick intuition, a flood of light breaks in upon the problem of individual life. These countless millions like ourselves, who, on this earth of ours have passed and still are passing, with their joys and sorrows, their toil and their striving, their aspirations and their fears, their strong percep- tions of things deeper than sense, their common feelings which form the basis even of the most divergent creeds — their little lives do not seem so much like meaning- less waste. The great fact which Science in all her branches shows is the universality of law. Wherever he can 154 CALIFORNIA ANTHOOLGY. trace it, whether in the fall of an apple or in the revo- lution of binary suns, the astronomer sees the working of the same law, which operates in the minutest divi- sions in which we may distinguish space, as it does in the immeasurable distances with which his science deals. Out of that which lies beyond his telescope comes a moving body, and again it disappears. So far as he can trace its course the law is ignored. Does he say that this is an exception ? On the contrary, he says that this is merely a part of its orbit that he has seen ; that beyond the reach of his telescope the law holds good. He makes his calculations, and after centuries they are proved. Now, if we trace out the laws which govern human life in society, we find that in the largest as in the smallest community they are the same. We find that what seem at first sight like divergences and exceptions, are but manifestations of the same principles. And we find that everywhere we can trace it, the social law runs into and conforms with the moral law; that in the life of a community, justice infallibly brings its reward, and injustice its punishment. But this we cannot see in individual life. If we look merely at individual life, we cannot see that the laws of the universe have the slightest relation to good or bad, to right or wrong, to just or unjust. Shall we then say that the law which is manifest in social life is not true of individual life '^ It is not scientific to say so. We would not say so in reference to anything else. Shall we not rather say this simply proves that we do not see the whole of individual life ? RELIGION AND THE FUTURE LIFE. 155 The laws which Political Economy discovers, like the facts and relations of physical nature, harmonize with what seems to be the law of mental development — not a necessary and involuntary progress, but a pro- gress in which the human will is an initiatory force. But in life, as we are cognizant of it, mental develop- ment can go but a little ways. The mind hardly begins to awake ere the bodily powers ciecline — it but becomes dimly conscious of the vast fields before it, but begins to learn and to use its streno^th — to recognize relations and extend its sympathies — when, with the death of the body, it passes away. Unless there is something more, there seems here a break, a failure. Whether it be a Humboldt or a Herschel, a Moses who looks from Pisgah, a Joshua who leads the host, or one of those sweet and patient souls who in narrow circles live radiant lives, there seems, if mind and character here developed can go no further, a purposelessness incon- sistent with what we can see of the linked sequence of the universe. By a fundamental law of our minds — the law, in fact, upon which Political Economy relies in all her deduc- tions — we cannot conceive of a means without an end, a contrivance without an object. Now, to all nature, so far as we come in contact with it in this world, the support and employment of the intelligence that is in man furnishes such an end and object. But unless man himself may rise to or bring forth something higher, his existence is unintellifjible. So stronof is this meta- physical necessity, that those who deny to the individ- ual anything more than this life, are compelled to trans- 156 CALIFORNIA ANTHOLOGY. fer the idea of perfectibility to the race. But there is nothing whatever to show any essential race improve- ment. Human progress is not the improvement of human nature. The advances in which civilization consists are not secured in the constitution of man, but in the constitution of society. They are thus not fixed and permanent, but may at any time be lost, nay, are constantly tending to be lost. And further than this, if human life does not continue beyond what we see of it here, then we are confronted, with regard to the race, with the same difficulty as with the individual. For it is as certain that the race must die as it is that the in- dividual must die. We know that there have been geologic conditions under which human life was im- possible on this earth. We know that they must re- turn again. Even now, as the earth circles on her ap- pointed orbit, the northern ice-cap slowly thickens, and the time gradually approaches when glaciers will flow again, and austral seas, sweeping northward, bury the seats of present civilization under ocean wastes, as, it may be, they now bury what was once as high a civili- zation as our own. And beyond these periods, science discerns a dead earth, an exhausted sun — a time when, clashing together, the solar system shall resolve itself into a gaseous form, again to begin immeasurable mu- tations. What, then, is the meaning of life — of life absolutely and inevitably bounded by death } To me it only seems intelligible as the avenue and vestibule to another life. — Henjy George. V. THE FARM AND GARDEN. PART V. THE FARM AND GARDEN, 147. The intellect must be plowed deeper than the furrows of the field, or the farmer is a mere serf of the soil — a superior kind of dray-horse — a kind of clown, but without his suppleness of wit or limb. — Saimiel B. BelL 148. The farmer that pays his debts can't get rich dishonestly, in the sight of heaven. There can't be too much wheat, too many noble cattle, too much wool, an excess of excellent peaches and pears, too many pumpkins, or even too great a crowd of cabbages^ if they are not eaten so immoderately as to come to a head acjain on human shoulders. — Thos. Starr Kiiis^. 149. The first man, being historically and tra- ditionally perfect, had a garden as his noblest allotment The farther the race drifts away from the cultivation of the soil, the nearer it gets to barbarism. The Apache is not a good horticulturalist, and therefore there is no gentlen(iss in his blood. Teach him to love and culti- vate a garden, and he is no longer a savage. The best thought and the best inspiration may come to one when all the gentle ministries of his garden wait upon him; 158 CALIFORNIA ANTHOLOGY. when the soul of things is concurrent with his own; and bee and almond-blossom, the rose, and the smallest song-sparrow in the tree-top, are revelators and in- structors. — IV. C. Bartlctt. 150. Economy in Agriculture. — The Creator, who gave the globe to Adam, with the command to dress and keep it, has connected economy with its fertility. Economy lies at the base of high and permanent civili- zation. Where a river rises every year, overflows its banks, and renews the elements which the land has ex- pended into crops, men are absolved from the duty and need of caring for the soil. God takes the capital unto his own keeping, and notifies man that he will prevent its waste. . But where this is not done, men arc notified just as plainly that they must repair the capital and pre- serve it at a point where the returns will be generous and perpetual. The interests of the human race re- pose on agriculture, and agriculture reposes on this law. To fulfill it, requires immense knowledge, and a reverent and persistent thrift. The farmer that under- stands it, and acts upon it, stands at the head of all workers on the planet. — Thos. Starr King. 151. Agriculture Stimulates Patriotism. — As the roots of a tree derive their nourishment, so the foundations of society derive their strength from the culture of the soil. It was her devotion to agricultural pursuits that rendered Poland so glorious in her strug- gle against tyranny — so deeply imbued with the spirit of freedom that the whole civilized world grew sympa- THE FARM AND GARDEN. 159 thetic in her cause, until the very name of Pole, whether applied to those who chafed at home under the thrall of despotism, or those who were sorrowing abroad in exile, became a symbol of the love of country. The spread of farms is fatal to the growth of penitentiaries. — Joseph W. Wmans. 152. Conditions of Successful Farming. — Agri- culture can be successful only where the people are moral ; where they try diligently to learn the conditions of success in treating the land, and will receive it as a trust; and where, too, the State is so well and justly organized that near markets are afforded, so that the soil can receive back the aliments received from it and essential to its fertility. As yet in history the king- doms have been very few that could take care of and develop their richest soils. They have known enough to be warriors and conquerors, to create literature, to gem magnificent temples and museums with trophies of art; but they have not known enough to be successful farmers, to insure the fir tree for the thorn and the myrtle tree for the brier, to bring out and keep out the beauty on the land which Providence designed, and to base a permanent civilization on fields thoroughly plowed and refreshed, and on meadows and morasses dried, diked, and guarded by watchful energy and thrift. — Thomas Starr King. 153. The True Nobleman. — The farmer is the true nobleman of nature. . He enjoys a rank superior to that of the patricians of all other orders. The chief 160 CALIFORNIA ANTHOLOGY. nobles of every country in Europe derive their titles from their estates; as if the battle-fields, reeking with their red glories, could afford no appellation so endear- ing- and honorable as the little farm upon which a hero was born. His avocation renders him tolerant and kind, industrious and hospitable, independent and free. In peace, he is amicable, in war, invincible. Every blow that he strikes, either with his sword or his hoe, is struck for mankind. The farm-house is the true Temple of Liberty, the Shrine of Virtue, the Altar of Patriot- ism.— /'Fzy/z'^;?^ H. Rhodes. 1B4. The Farmer Face to Face with God. — Abandoned, indeed, must be the heart of that man whose tongue could blaspheme or refuse to honor the name of the Most High, while the very birds are thril- ling the air with the notes of His praise. Every occu- pation of the farmer brings him, as it were, face to face with his Maker, and teaches him lessons of truth, justice and piety. When he plows his ground and sows his seed, he relies not upon the slippery promises of men, but upon God himself, to supply the moisture and to so temper the atmosphere as to sprout the seed and mature the crop. Every flower that blooms, every blade of grass that grows, and every insect that crawls, tell him of the wisdom, power, goodness, justice, and mercy of the Almighty. When he plucks from the tree the rich, ripe fruit, as it hangs in tempting clusters around the parent stem, how sublime the thought that he receives this luscious food direct from God^ no mor- tal hand intruding between the giver and the receiver THE FARM AND GARDEN. IGl to break the charm which Divinity throws around the precious gift. Accustomed as he is to rely upon God and his own strong arm for what he eats, drinks :md wears, he dares to think what is right, and to speak and act as he thinks. — Zachary Montgomery. 156. The Farmer The Universal Master. — We cotild strike from society the merchant, lawyer, doctor, manufacturer and mechanic, and still the human family could be sustained in the enjoyment of life; still the great work of moral and mental improvement could go on. But strike from society the farmer's calling, para- lyze the farmer's hand, and society would not alone be shaken to its base, but its very foundations would be swept away so utterly as to leave not a wreck behind. Let the seasons but for one year cease to yield their fertilizing influence, the husbandman's labors throughout the world fail for one year, and wherever civilized man exists would be exhibited a scene of desolation and woe, such as was felt in Egypt when the angel of death went forth and struck down the eldest-born in every household. The worst scenes of the French Revolution, the hour of its deepest and darkest orgies, would everywhere appear ; death would be on every hand ; suffering at every door. Every father would mourn the death of his first-born; every mother would be a Rachel, weeping for her children, because they were not. '"' '" ''• Three-quarters of all the people in the United States are engaged in farming. The farmer alone is independent; he alone is master of the labor and the talents of every other class. His avocation is 11 162 CALIFORNIA ANTHOLOGY. the highest of all arts. Has the plodding plowman ever thought of that ? It is not only a higher pursuit, being independent of all others, but it is the highest of all arts. It is even given to the farmer and gardener to do that which in poetical conception, was considered impossible — "to paint the lily and add fresh perfume to the violet." It is most singular that this pursuit, that employs the greatest part of our population, the most important in its interests, upon which all other pursuits depend and on which society itself exists, has never been fostered by the Government, which also depends upon it for its own maintenance. No statesman has taken a large view of the agricultural interest, to make it the basis of an extensive political economy. But such is the fortunate position of the farming interest that it needs not this support. It is one of its greatest triumphs, one of its noblest encomiums, that it can say: "I care not for the protection of the Government. All I ask of Government is to let me alone; let me take care of myself, and I will take care of myself and you, too." — Tod Robinson. 156. The Farm the Abode of Content. — The judicious and methodical farmer extracts abundant leisure for domestic duties and home delights. In the good progress of the agricultural art, he can still hover about his domestic circle, and bend upon it the proper amount of regard and attention. He may not, by some hazardous speculation in trade, realize a startling in- crease to his hoards, but he is ever certain of compe- THE FARM AND GARDEN. 163 tence, and can surely calculate on moderate gain. Bet- ter than all else, he enjoys the sweet repose of heart and mind. He clusters about him his intelligent friends, and quaffs the nectar of social wisdom. The cares and anxieties and acerbities of the great world never reach his happy home. The diseased excitements and prurient amusements of the great city have no charm for him. He revolves about a world of his own. He has an isolated fireside of his own, virtuous and happy. Gradual old age steals upon him; but it finds him cheerful and vigorous, hemmed in on all sides by the ramparts of intelligence and affection. So I wonder that men of substance linger about a city when the country beckons them to affluent bliss. Old Sam Johnson applauded a city life to the day of his death. But Sam. though a good and a learned man, was wedded to his club and his porter and his coterie of adulators. He was prejudiced against rusticity; and a prejudice with him had the strength that lies in the tail of Leviathan. He loved to bully and swagger over timid city gentlemen. Old Falstaff, bloated with sack to elephantine rotundity, bubbling with civic wit, and oozing the lard of metropolitan repartee as a wounded whale its blubber, had yet a green cleft amid the sterile crags of his memory. Disease, as winnowing wind, often puffs aside the chaff of lecherous thought and worldly humors, and reveals the grain of earnest and truthful nature. Dying in penury and disgrace, his mind flew back to his gambols of boyhood upon the green sward. He babbled of green fields. The crea- 164 CALIFORNIA ANTHOLOGY. tions of Shakespeare are humanity in its truth and fer- vor and condensation. — yames G. Howard. 157. Sanitary Influence of Trees. — Rich, moist, prohfic land, with decaying vegetation, in a chmate hke that of portions of the interior of CaHfornia, will pro- duce miasma; and the more favorable the conditions for vigorous and abundant growth and consequent abundance of vegetation to decay, the larger the amount of miasma generated or given off Such lands will always be sought because profitable for cultivation, notwithstanding the penalty attached to residing upon them. This penalty may be mitigated or perhaps avoided by a knowledge of what has been observed ol the laws governing this cause of disease. While miasma is given off by decaying vegetation, it is absorbed or arrested by growing vegetation. No other fact seems to be so universally conceded as this. Primitive forests, when left to the undisturbed opera- tions of nature, preserve the balance between growth and decay, and do not largely generate miasma. It does not prevail in the bogs of Ireland, nor in the Dismal Swamp of Virginia and North Carolina, while their surfaces are covered by perpetually growing mosses and other vegetation. When forests are cut down and the balance destroyed between growth and decay, the means provided by nature for the absorption of miasma are removed, and it is left free to poison the air. This law cannot be better illustrated than in the history of the Campagna near Rome. At the commencement of the Christian THE FARM AND GARDEN. 165 era it was covered with forests of trees and gardens^ On it were erected the magnificent villas of the Em- perors Domitian and Hadrian. The effect of the destruction of the trees in changing this paradise to a pestilential desert is observed by every traveler. It is now so terribly stricken hy mala- ria that beyond the Church of St. Paul, about two miles from the walls of Rome, I could not see a human habitation to break the utter solitude. The people who cultivate small portions of it, go down from the hills each day, long after the sun has risen, do their work in the heat of the day, and escape back to the hills arain before the sun has set. It will be seen how great is the benefit to be derived from the planting of forest trees, and how great is the crime in the wanton and needless destruction of the trees on the borders of our rivers, sloughs and over- flowed lands, and the certain penalty that follows this crime. — B. B. Redding. 158. The Farmer a Co-Creator with the In- finite. — What honor the highest human intellis^ence pays to a painter like Landseer, who puts a superb mimic sheep on canvas; or to Troyon, who makes a dreamy-eyed beneficent cow look at us from his colors; or to Rosa Bonheur, who startles us with tableaux of horses clothed with thunder, and bulls whose look makes the room unsafe! This is right. But what shall we say of the farmers who push out of existence the tribes and very types of imperfect or degenerate cattle, and call up the actual horses that make the verses of 166 CALIFORNIA ANTHOLOGY. Job sing in the brain, and sheep fit to be clad in the finest merino, and herds whose very attitude is a ne_w masterpiece of lordHness or beauty ? In looking at such stock I can easily understand the enthusiasm which leads people to invest thousands and tens of thousands in the experiments of model farms. And then I wonder why anybody is led away by a liter- ary or artistic ambition, if he is not conscious of the first class of powers. Why will a man try to write imperfect rhymes, if he can make a perfect strawberry vine or moss rose ? Why put a blundering idea into a book, if you can raise a litter of Suffolk pigs, and thus see a divine idea multiplied in symmetrical pork ? Why waste effort with pigments on canvas, when you can put an Alderney calf on a landscape, with eye more poetic than any fawn or gazelle ever gazed with — or can ennoble an acre with an actual pair of young Devons surveying nature in their dumb dignity ? These gems of the annual shows make the farmer's office seem noble, a co-creator with the infinite. They make our average literature and art seem vapid, and in one light make society seem sad; for where are the men and women in society as yet that are as noble in their spheres as these animals — that are fit to own them, that come within a distant range of fulfilling their type in the Creator's mind, as the beasts do that are unstained with sin ? — Thos. Starr King. 1B9. The Beauty of Rural Homes. — Whoever in this fair State of ours, has become owner of a little nook of land which, by patient and well directed toil, THE FARM AND GARDEN. 167 may be changed into a garden, must feel in some degree as if he were the master of a new and glorious world. There lie the fresh and smoking furrows, smiling to think of the countless secrets they hide — the fruit and leaves and flowers, the shaded walks and the sloping lawns; there the new maker plans, in faith and patience, for the golden years of a long and useful life. The founding of a home is one of the purest joys left to fallen man ; it is the blessing which came softly out of Paradise with Adam, and has followed his wandering children ever since. In the desire for rural homes the perennial freshness of humanity is revealed. As every successive generation of children love to pull corn-silk, and tumble in the hay-fields, so every generation of busy, over-worked men, lawyers, politicians, merchants, editors, love to unfasten the chafing harness at times, and choose some happy spot, by the rippling streams, where they may be new Adams, received again into Paradise — new dwellers in Arcadia. Our modern intense life draws men in early manhood to the centers of activity, where fortunes and reputations are to be won ; but their hearts, as they grow older, turn back to the grassy fields, the blooming gardens, the quiet hearth, the country freedom; and they remember with deeper affection the old farm-house of their boyhood, the fruit- ful orchards, the fragrant garden. Men have a curious habit of stamping their person- ality on the clothes they wear, the team they drive, the house they live in, and all their property, real and per- sonal. In a most complete sense the grounds a man lays out, takes care of, and enjoys, become like himself; 1G8 CALIFORNIA ANTHOLOGY. or rather, in a very precise way, give us glimpses of his nature and hints of his possibiHties. Indeed, I love to notice the constant changes and little improvements in every village through which I pass, and make wonder- ing guesses concerning the owners of each successive cottage. Altheas, lilacs, a damask rose, groups of pan- sies, and clambering wealth of sweet peas, with perhaps a sugar maple, evidently cherished — it is a suggestion of a New England family. An Irish yew-tree by the gate, a row of black currants along the fence, Shrop- shire damsons and Kentish cherries in the orchard, box borders and Covent Garden Stocks — this is staid, portly old England, surely. Bottle gourds over the well, balsams and crape myrtle by the door, melons and gumbo in the vegetable garden — here is a picture from the sunny South. Dill, saffron, yellow marrigolds, sun-flowers and horse-beans, in straight rows, in front of a door painted red, yellow and blue — this can only be a Portuguese family from the Azores. It is the charm of California, in the eyes of her children, that so many variations are possible here; so many widely different types of gardening succeed and blend harmoniously in our landscapes. The man who chooses his nook of earth and founds a home there, is justly en- titled to that too-often bestowed title of "public bene- factor." The tired travelers, plodding wearily along the dusty summer road, look gladly on the waving spires of green, the soft, bright grass, the cool fountains, the flashes of color from the well kept beds, the bend- ing and fruitful boughs, and are made more hopeful by all this beauty and repose. It is for the owner a daily THE FARM AND GARDEN. 169 blessing. As the years increase, the hallowed memo- ries of home thickly cluster. The voices of happy children, some of them no longer on earth, and thus eternally young, yet seem to echo beneath the arching trees, which his own hand planted long before. The blue-bells and the violets, the fragrant lilies and the passion-hearted roses — these carry his dreams back to his boyhood, and move his soul to tears. The im- pulse is justified which led him to found a home. — Ckas. H. Shinn. 160. The Farmer the Monarch of Men. — Who is nurtured with such an education as the farmer ? He is nursed in the strong embrace of prolific, many- handed Nature, our mother who keeps the wisest school, and who is the voice and the hand, the ferule and the prize of Deity. I almost believe that no man can be one of God's great men, unless nurtured in the embrace of our great mother — on the bosom of the earth. All men should, some time in their lives, live out in the midst of nature, and till the soil. He who has been born and reared and lives in a city, debarred from the privilege of communing with Nature, is most unfortunate. He can never be a whole man. He lacks the stern, true, poetic teachings of the Great School. Nothing can compensate for it. An undevout farmer is a monster. Can the husbandman receive his food direct from heaven — its rains and dews and sunshine — its smile over him in the blue and peaceful vault, sun- and-moon-and-star-lit? — all around him the wavy grass and grain, the many tinted flowers, the voices of the 170 CALIFORNIA ANTHOLOGY. wind and bending trees — underneath him the prolific, fresh-turned soil — and still be a monster, out of tune with Nature? Who lives so far from temptation, so nigh to his Creator, enwrapt all round about with his arms, fed from his dazzling, munificent hand, sleeps between the leaves of God pictured book — the Uni- v.erse. "'' "" '" His tyranny is over barrenness. He smites, and lo! the sterile earth groans — but it is with abundance. He brinofs his enemies to the fasfSfot and stake — but they are the thorn, the thistle and the brier. He overruns and subdues the territories of his foes — but they are the swamp, the fen, and the quagmire. He plows up the very foundations of the strongholds of his destroyers — but they are the deadly malaria, the stinging insect, and the fanged, poisonous reptile. The Earth is his slave, but it is the slavery of love, for it buds and blossoms before him, and its trees clap their hands for joy of him. He chains his servants to do his will, but they are the elements, they are the huge and willing ox, the majestic horse, impatient to do his bidding, and champing for the word that bids him go. When he stretches his scepter abroad, cities spring up under its shadow. The sounds of the spindle, the loom and the anvil, and the ponderous foundry and mill, are heard. The hum of industry comes like the noise of many waters ; white-winged ships fly over the unstable main; men cast aside their hides and fig leaves, and put on imperial garments ; women are arrayed in fabrics fine as gossamer, and many tinted as the sun-set cloud. Penury, pestilence and famine he keeps bound in his prison house. Labor stands in the THE FARM AND GARDEN. 171 door of his magazine, and in his stalwart hands he holds scales of human life, and weighs out the supplies of Trade and Art and Armies; of School and Church and State ; Food and Raiment ; Abundance and Luxury. He deals out the Progress of Human Kind! He is the Monarch of Men ! — Samuel B. Bell. 161. A Vast Field of Knowledge. — Aericulture to the active intellect is fruitful in subjects of thought and contemplation, and, when intelligently pursued, the whole being is enriched by the vast field of knowledge it unfolds. It is an occupation that elevates the mind to a genial communion with surrounding nature; it is closely connected with the material wants of the whole human family; it develops and beautifies the earth; it produces a healthy, thrifty and virtuous population ; and, more than any other pursuit known to man, adds to the pride, prosperity and strength of a State. That it is intimately connected with the education and intelli- gence of a community, is clearly proved in the history of our country as well as the history of the world. To man's necessities, comfort and happiness, the tillage and yield of the soil are of the first consequence; and an intelligent prosecution of his work requires from the agriculturist a familiarity with the causes and effects of his labor, and a knowledge of botany and chemistry, which aids him in the development of his resources, and elevates his calling to the dignity of a science. The classic authors and orators of Greece and Rome delighted to write and speak of agriculture, and labored to instil a love for it into the mind. In those ancient 172 CALIFORNIA ANTHOLOGY. times, the highest citizens and most prominent states- men — the most successful warriors and the most con- vincing writers — were cultivators of the soil. Even kings and princes have been known to resign their power to become farmers, while farmers have been called from the field to become kings. The familiar story of Cin- cinnatus, who, in the days of the old Roman Republic, received an embassy from the people while in the very act of plowing in the field, had an illustrious prototype in the example of Elisha, whose mantle of a prophet was urged upon him while working his land with a team of twelve yoke of oxen. Among the great of modern times who have devoted themselves to farming, was he who was " first in peace " as in war. Few probably ever possessed so keen a love for rural pursuits, and a more unyielding pride in the profession of a farmer, than George Washington. Always an early riser, he was enabled to see that the day's work was properly begun, and careful to exact the utmost accuracy and fidelity from those he employed. Before the war his name was known in London as the most reliable planter in Virginia, and the produce of his plantations would command a better price than that of any other in the colonies. "I think," he said, "the life of a husbandman of all others is the most delightful. It is honorable, it is amusing, and with judicious management it is profita- ble." If it be true, then, that the dignity of a calling depends upon the character of those who pursue it, the status of the agriculturist has been fixed and ennobled from the remotest ages of the world to the present day. — Lcland Stanford. the farm and garden. 173 162. The Base of the Whole Fabric of Life. — As we stand and live upon our great mother earth, so the whole fabric of enlightened life stands upon agricul- ture. Not alone because it feeds and clothes our bodies, but because of its moral and philosophic forces as well as its physical. Egypt was the first cradle of agricul- ture; it was, therefore, the first cradle of civilization. The Israelites — the chosen people— were no excep- tion to the rule. In their early career, they did not till the soil. They had to be taken down into Egypt to learn Agriculture, or they w^ould have been barbarians. The Greek and the Roman would have been barbarians had they not learned agriculture. Men are mere tribes — hordes — without agriculture. It is the mother of stability, with infinite progression. It is the mother of wealth, of law and order, of manufactures, commerce and the arts. From this source spring the great emo- tions of the soul, patriotism, social and political order, churches, schools, science and religion, long life, strong life, abundance. Without it the world could not be populated. Pioneering tends to barbarism, because it tends to roving. Pioneering is almost buccaneering. We are pioneers (a. d. 1858) and yet see here this early and devout attention to agriculture. We are the mildc;st mannered buccaneers of history. What had this State done without agriculture.'* The present generation might have survived in some sort of repute, from the force of early education; but the generation to come would have been as the present Arab to the ancient Saracen, the present Mexican to the .ancient Spanish Cavalier. Gold is not wealth; it is but its con- 174 CALIFORNIA ANTHOLOGY. venient representative. Commerce is not wealth; it simply exchanges it. Manufactures and art are not wealth; they recombine it. Agriculture is the prolific mother of wealth. The rest simply handle it when it is produced and delivered into their hand. The earth breeds savages; agriculture breeds enlightened nations. It breeds houses and ships, temples and seminaries, manufactories, sculpture, painting and music. It would be folly to speak of the existence, beauty or power of any of these, without agriculture. The thermometer of civilization rises or falls as drives or pauses the plow. — Samuel B. Bell. 163. Nature Enforces Economy Toward The Soil. — Have you read in one of the volumes of "Les Miserables," Victor Hugo's description of the sewer of Paris, and his reflections on it ? He tells his country- men that all that filth is gold, and that they sweep it into the abyss. We fit out convoys of ships, at great expense, to gather up at the south pole the droppings of petrels and penguins, and the incalculable element of wealth which we have under our own hand we send to sea. All the fertilizing substance, human and ani- mal, which the world loses, restored to the land, instead of being thrown into the water, would sufBce to nourish the world. These heaps of garbage at the corners of the stone blocks, these tumbrels of mire jolting through the streets at nicfht, these horrid scavengers' carts, these streams of subterranean slime, which the pave- ment hides from you, do you not know what all this is? It is the flowering meadow; it is the green grass, it is THE FARM AND GARDEN. 175 marjoram and thyme and sage; it is game, it is cattle, it is the satisfied low of huge oxen at evening; it is perfumed hay, it is golden corn, it is bread on your table, it is warm blood in your veins, it is health, it is joy, it is life. Thus wills that mysterious creation which is transformation upon earth, and transformation in heaven. There is one thing in which the half-civilized Mongolians can defy their civilized foes to instruct them — the great art of keeping the soil fertile steadily for centuries. Japan is about as large as England and Ireland combined. So much of its area is hilly that hardly more than half is fit for tillage. Great Britain imports food from other countries to the extent of many millions annually. But Japan supports a larger popu- lation than England and Ireland. She exports grain now to foreign countries. She maintains the richness of her soil, and has kept it at a high and even rate of productiveness through centuries that stretch back beyond the decay of Greece, beyond the birth of Rome, to the days of Solomon, possibly to the age of Moses. She has done it by careful obedience to the laws of restoration which God has written in the soil. She treats the soil as a factory. Wanting cloth from it, she gives the woof out of which the cloth is woven. She finds that Nature will toil for man forever, if man will give her the elements of her miracles. She reverently offers to the wand of Providence the filth of cities, that it may be transmuted into flowers and bread. Cali- fornia will prove no exception to the general law of nature which enforces economy toward the soil. The Creator gives our land to us as a trust, and if we do 176 CALIFORNIA ANTHOLOGY. not try to pass it over to our children with but Httle reduction of its vitaHty, we are simply squandering our capital in our great harvests now, and mortgaging also the patrimony of posterity. — TJiomas Starr King. THE GARDENS OF THE PETERSKOI. 164. I spent an evening at the Peterskoi, which I shall long remember as one of the most interesting I ever spent at any place of popular amusement. The gardens of Peterskoi are a favorite place of resort in summer, near Moscow — famous for its chateau built by the Empress Elizabeth, in which Napoleon sought refuQ^e during^ the burningf of Moscow. The weather was charming; neither too warm nor too cool, but of that peculiarly soft and dreamy temperature which pre- disposes one for the enjoyment of music, flowers, the prattle of children, the fascinations of female beauty, and the luxuries of idleness. In such an atmosphere no man of sentiment can rack his brain with trouble- some problems concerning the origin of the human race, or abuse his limbs rambling through dirty streets in search of curiosities, or do any other labor usually allotted to the tourist. Such evenings, and such nights, when the sun lingers dreamily on the horizon, when the long twilight weaves a web of purple and gold that binds the niofht to the morninof; when nature, wearied of the dazzling glare of day, puts on her delicate silver-span- gled night robes, and reclining upon her couch, smiles upon her loving worshipers, and tells them to "woo THE FARM AND GARDEN, 177 her gently, and with honeyed words," when stubborn hearts are softened and haughty eyes made gentle by the invisible spirits that hover in the air — ah, surely such evenings and such nights were never made for sleep. The veriest monster in human shape cannot be utterly insensible to their inspiring influence. We must make love, sweet ladies, or die. The gardens of the Peterskoi are still • a dream to me. It was night when I first entered their portals. Guards, in imperial livery, glittering from head to foot with richly-wrought embroidery, stood at the gateway and ushered in the company with many profound and elegant bows. Policemen, with cocked hats and glitter- ing epaulettes, were stationed at intervals along the leading thoroughfares, to preserve order. The scene within was singularly rich, glowing and fanciful. In every feature it presented some striking combination of natural and artificial beauties, admirably calculated to fascinate the imac^ination. I have a vasfue recollec- tion of shady and undulating walks, winding sometimes over sweeping lawns, dotted with wide-spreading trees, copses of shrubbery and masses of flowers; sometimes over gentle acclivities, surmounted by rustic cottages, or points of rocks overhung with moss and fern; here branching off into cool umbrageous recesses, where caves, with glittering stalactites, invited the wayfarer to linger a while and rest; there driving suddenly into deep glens and retired grottos, where lovers, far hidden from the busy throng, might mingle their vows with the harmonv of fallingf waters. What a pity we should ever grow old, in this beauti- 12 178 CALIFORNIA ANTHOLOGY. ful world, with so many fair ladies in it to be wooed and won! Who could be insensible to their charms on such a night and amid such scenes, when the very flowers are whispering love to each other, and the lights and shadows are wrought into bridal wreaths? Here one can fancy the material world has ceased. Reality is merored into the realms of enchantment. Marble statues, representing the Graces, winged Mercuries and Cupids, with their bows and arrows, are so cunningly displayed in relief against the green banks of foliage, that they seem the natural inhabitants of the place. Snow-spirits, too, with outspread wings, hover in the air, as if to waft cooling zephyrs through the soft, sum- mer night. Fountains dash their sparkling waters high into the moonlight, spreading a mystic spray over the rich green sward. Through vistas of shrubbery gleam the bright waters of a lake, overhung by cliffs and em- battled towers and the drooping foliage of trees. On an elevated plateau stand Asiatic temples and pagodas, in which the chief entertainments are held. The ap- proaching avenues are illuminated with brilliant and many colored lights, hung from the branches of trees, and wind under triumphal arches overhung with flowers. Theaters present open fronts, richly and curiously dec- orated. Artificial grottoes and fountains, that seem to cast forth glittering gems; temples and embattled towers, palaces and ruins — all aglow with brilliant and mysterious lights, are scattered in sumptuous profusion over the grounds. The open spaces in front of the theaters are filled with the rank and fashion of the city, in all the glory of jeweled head dresses, brilliant cos- THE FARM AND GARDEN. 179 tumes, and decorations of Orders. Festoons of va- rieorated licrhts swino; from the trees over the audience. Painted figures of dragons and genii guard every ave- nue. Rustic seats and elegant divans are scattered in the most inviting nooks, and tables, overshadowed by hanging rocks, spangled with stalactites of silver, indi- cate where rest and refreshment lend their aid to the varied pleasures of the eye. The gorgeous profusion of lights and glittering ornaments, the endless variety of colors, the Asiatic character of the various temples of pleasure, the tropical luxuriance of the foliage; the gleaming white statuary; the gay company; the soft strains of music — all combine to make a scene of won- derful enchantment. High, overhead, dimly visible through the tops of the trees, the sky wears a rich, strange, almost preternatural aspect, in the short sum- mer nights. A soft, golden glow, flushes upward from the horizon, and lying outspread over the firmament, gives a peculiar spectral effect to the gentler and more delicate sheen of the moon. The stars shrink back into the dim infinity, as if unable to contend with the grander and more glowing effulgence of the great orb that rules the night; and the rapt spectator is uncon- scious whether the day is waning into the night or th j night into the morning. All is a grand anomaly — a rich, strange, and inexplicable combination of the glories of art with the wonders of nature. — J. Ross Browne. SOCIEH AND THE STATE. PART VI. SOCIETY AND THE STATE. 165. Dueling, — I utter my unqualified condemna- ture of the code which offers to personal vindictiveness a life due only to a country, a family, and to God. If I were, under any circumstances, an advocate for a duel, it should be at least a fair, equal and honorable duel. If, as was said by an eloquent advocate in its favor, " it was the light of past ages, which shed its radiance upon the hill-tops of civilization, although its light might be lost in the dark shade of the valleys below," I still maintain that a duel should be fair and equal; that skill should not be matched against igno- rance, practical training against its absence. No duel should stand the test of public opinion, independent of the law, except the great element of equality is there. In the pursuits of common life, no one not trained to a profession is supposed to be a match for a professional man in the duties of his profession. I am no match for a physician in any matters connected with his pursuits, nor would a physician be a match for me in a legal argument. The civilian not trained to the use of arms is no match for the soldier; nor, although his courage is equal, and he may have a profound conviction that he 182 CALIFORNIA ANTHOLOGY. is right, will, therefore, the contest be rendered equal and just. I denounce the system itself, because it loses annually hundreds of valuable lives, and, in the present state of civilization, it does no good, profits nothing, arrests no evil, but impels a thousand evils; but, above all, do I protest against any contests of this nature where, in skill, knowledge of weapons, or from any cause, the parties are not equal in all the conditions of that stern debate. The code of honor is a delusion and a snare. It palters with the hope of a true courage, and binds it at the feet of crafty and cruel skill. It surrounds its victim with the pomp and grace of the procession, but leaves him bleeding on the altar. It substitutes cold and deliberate preparation for courageous and manly impulse, and arms the one to disarm the other. It may prevent fraud between practiced duelists, who should be forever without its pale ; but it makes the mere " trick of the weapon " superior to the noblest cause and the truest courage. Its pretence of equality is a lie. It is equal in all the form, it is unequal in all the substance. The habitude of arms, the early training, the frontier life, the border war, the sectional custom^ the life of leisure — all these are advantages which no negotiation can neutralize and which no courage can overcome. Whatever there is, in the code of honor or out of it, that demands or allows a deadly combat where there is not in all things entire and certain equality, is a prosti- tution of the name, is an evasion of the substance, and SOCIETY AND THE STATE. 183 is a shield, blazoned with the name of Chivalry, to cover the malignity of murder. — Gen. E. D. Baker. 166. Popular Corruption. — For a lying press, for iniquitous politicians, and an ignorant pulpit, for the absurdities of fashion and the injustice of society, for prostitution, for gambling, for thieving, for the knaveries of the scheming capitalist, the grinding of monopolists, and the swindlings of corporations, the people have only themselves to blame, for all these enormities spring from the people and exist only on the sufferance of the people. — Hubert H. Bancroft. 167. Popular Justice. — I have the fullest confi- dence in the ultimate justice and judgment of the people. I am not afraid of them at all. Sometimes, when they do not understand, they stone the prophets, revile earnest reformers, and hang innocent men; but when, too late, they discover their error, they return in surging multitudes, build costly monuments over the victims of their phrenzy, plant sweet blooming fiowers, and water them with their tears. When the Athenian populace had accused Aristides of conspiracy, and had banished him from the Capital, they found out their mistake, and called him back with acclamation; and when, in the theater that night, the actor spoke of a true patriot and a just man, the whole audience rose and turned toward the exile. That was the most triumphant hour in the life of the warrior and states- man — grander, more glorious, more exultant than that of Marathon. Some years ago the people of San 184 CALIFORNIA ANTHOLOGY. Francisco chased away an eloquent old man, (Gen. E. D. Baker — Editor,) who took refuge in the mountains of Nevada. He was afterwards brouQ;ht back from the sacrificial heio;hts of Stone River, a mangled and speechless prophet of freedom, and fifty thousand peo- ple laid him tenderly on the altitudes of Lone Mount- ain, within hearing of the eternal dirges of the ocean — while his glorious declaration echoed and still echoes in the valleys and mountains from the fountains of the San Joaquin to the sources of the Columbia: "Years, years ago, I took my stand by Freedom, and where in youth my feet were planted, there my manhood and my age shall march." — Gcfi. yohn A. Collins. 168. Catholicity of Spirit. — Momus blamed Jupiter because, when he made man he put no window in his breast through which the heart micfht be seen. Momus was a sleepy god; and we mortals are likewise troubled with a lack of insight into human character. No doubt Jupiter should have done better. Man is far from a perfect creation. But as the gods saw fit to do no more for us, thanking them for what they have done, may we not now do something for ourselves ? Were not the eyes of Momus somewhat at fault, as well as the fingers of Jupiter? If we lay aside the narrowing prejudices of birth and education, under the influences of which it is impossible to balance nicely the actions of men, may we not discover here and there openings into the soul ? The homily of glowing patriot or zeal- ous sectarian, is not history, but verbiage. Let all that is worthy of censure in state, church and society, SOCIETY AND THE STATE. 185 be condemned; let all that is worthy of praise be ex- tolled; but let not censure and praise be meted out ac- cording to the maxims of country or creed. Let us meet every age and nation upon the broad platform of humanity, measuring no man's conscience by our own, but by the conscience of nature, and condemning cruelty and injustice wherever we find it, whether in Hebrew, Turk, Christian, Spaniard, or Anglo-Saxon. I hold it to be no less unwise than dishonest to wage vitupera- tive warfare against any nation or sect, as such. Would he keep pellucid the stream of thought, with his piety and patriotism, the writer of history will have little to do. — HiibciH H. Bancroft. 169. Social Artifices. — It is all very well for those who are perched upon the highest pinnacles to thng out the old aphorism, that water will always reach its level. They forget, for the nonce, that it is quite possi- ble to force water above its level by artificial appliances, and to keep it there, for a time, at least. Hydraulic pressure lends a momentum quite equal to the attain- ment of such results. Not more difficult is it to pre- vent water from reaching its level, by shutting it out almost entirely, by the construction of coffer dams. There are hydraulic rams constantly at work amid the complicated machinery of society; and their potent moving force is felt in the uplifting of many a dead weight into a hateful prominence, that would otherwise lie prone at the bottom. — Sarah B. Cooper. 170. Modern Civilization. — It may be a con- tested point whether modern civilization is more pro- 186 CALIFORNIA ANTHOLOGY. ductive of human happiness and morality than of vice and misery. It is true that culture and refinement, while they broaden the scope of joys and duties, and stimulate the moral and intellectual attributes, must increase the capabilities of crime. The educated villain can accomplish more evil than the ignorant knave can conceive. The heart of the cultivated and refined man can feel keener pangs than the benighted and blunted sensibilities of the primitive boor can imagine. But herein may lie the fallacy: It is not that enlightenment increases disproportionately crime over virtue, sorrow over gladness, but that it illumi- nates, and brings into such hideous contrast, the ex- tremes, so that we forget the bright, while we look lamentingly on the dark side of the picture. Those of us who are of the Pioneers of '50 and '52, know from experience, without the aid of rhetoric or logic, the change for gfood which the humanizino; influences of cultivated, social and intellectual society has wrought here in California. Where once the jingling of gold in the gfamblinof dens constituted the Sabbath music, broken now and then by the muttered oath or the shrieks of dying men, are now heard the swelling tones of the organ mins^lino; with the voices of the wor- shipers of God. — Nathaiiiel Bennett. 111. Continuous Social Advance. — In the pres- ent state of knowledge, the mystery of civilization, or social progress, like all the phenomena of evolution, is unexplainable ; and whatever opinion we may hold as to natural agencies, and supernatural interpositions, we SOCIETY AND THE STATE. 187 can best see marked by the centuries, a permanent and continuous unfolding and improvement, acting under laws as fixed as those which regulate siderial systems. Yet though predetermined and fixed in its efforts and results, like the plant artificially dwarfed or improved, progress may be hindered or accelerated by the charac- ter of individuals and the politics of society. Social disruptions, moral earthquakes, mobs, murders, and out- raged law, no less than literature, art, industry, and wealth, in their action and reaction on each other, fer- tilize intellect and stimulate intellectual growth. — Hubert H. Bancroft. 172. Our Moral Inheritance. — The geologists say that the earth's surface is made up of layers of sandstone, limestone, chalk and marl, the products of successive deposits. The moral world is as truly made up of layers of opinions hardened into beliefs ; of senti- ments, and thoughts. The best father of most of us is our great past. A man endowed with millions and with boundless square leagues of real estate, but with the civilization that he inherits all cancelled, is poorer than the poorest citizen surrounded by, and partaking in, our civilization. Better for us to lose the whole of our army and navy, and that all our ports be laid waste, than that one per cent, be abated of our respect for the forms of a public meeting, of our regard for law, of our love of home, of our dread of riot and anarchy. In the one case we part with the evidences and immediate instruments of our power, which may be replenished ; in the other we part with the forces that we have inherited from ages. — Thomas Starr King. 188 CALIFORNIA ANTHOLOGY. 173. Wine. — This conglomerate which you call society is hanging out a great many flags of distress. It babbles incoherently of perfectibility, and goes straightway to the bad. Are those reformers going to save the world, who, either through intemperance of speech or drink, must needs be moderated by a padlock put upon their mouths ? Nor is it safe, just now, to calculate the results of this feminine gospel of vitupera- tion. The back of the body politic may be the better for having a fly-blister laid on; and it might, perhaps, as well be done by feminine hands as by any other. But there are some evils too deep for surface remedies. If, for instance, vineyards are going to curse the people, as my moralizing friend insists, then humanity here- about is in a bad way, and needs reconstructing from the nethermost parts to the bald crown of the head. Why, a little generous wine ought to enrich the blood and inspire nobility of thought. If it does more than this — if it becomes a demon to drive men and hoe^s into the sea — then it is evident that both were on too low a plane of existence for any safe exaltation. But shall the vineyards be rooted up for all this } It is better to drown the swine, and let the grapes still grow purple upon the hill-sides. Oh, my friend, with thin and impoverished blood! do not pinch this question up in the vise of your morality. No doubt there was a vineyard in Eden, and there were ripe clusters close by the fig leaves. You cannot prove to me that sinless hands have not plucked the grapes, and that millions will not do it agfain. What we need is not a greater company of wailing prophets, but men SOCIETY AND THE STATE. 189 who will reveal to us the higher and nobler use of thinors. — Rev. W. C. Bartlett. 174. Conservatives and Radicals. — How con- stantly the different classes of mind are supplied. Con- servatives and radicals are made so more by nature than by argument. Some are born to hark for the tramp of new truths, to watch for gleams of new reve- lations; others are born to live with their faces nobly turned to the past. No nation is without her pro- gressive party, and no community, however fast, with- out its party of conservatives. If all were bound to cfo ahead, our (growth would be like the g-ourds. If the Hunker element were in excess, the tree would be all gnarls and knots. Where both are present, we have society like an oak, believing in air and leaves, with tough, wide-spreading limbs and twigs that respond to everv breeze, and coarse, rou^h bark and roots that mine the earth and fill the soil. If the bold critics of governments, if the agitators were all lost from the com- munity for a century, we should be like a train of cars without an enoine, rottinQ^ on the track; but with noth- ing but agitators in a State, we are like a line of loco- motives without a car, bound to tear on, so long as fuel and track hold out. — Thos. Star}" King. 17B. The Cause Calls Forth The Man. — All the efforts of Science have failed to trace back of itself the springs and sources of that subtle thing that we call life and know not what it is. So far as we can go is to discern back of each living thing some other living 100 CALIFORNIA ANTHOLOGY. thing. Yet so widely are its germs scattered, that, given but the conditions that support it, and there will life appear. And so it seems in the moral world. Whenever in human history occasion and opportunity wait the man, forth he steps, and as the common worker is on need transformed into a queen bee, so when circumstances are favorable, what might other- wise pass for a common man, rises into hero or leader, sage or saint. So widely has the sower scattered the good seed; so strong is the germinative force that bids it bud and blossom. But, alas ! for the stony ground, and the weeds and the tares ! For one who attains his full stature, how many are stunted and deformed ! — Henry George. 176. One-Sided Progress. — The winds do our bidding, and the occult pulses of the earth carry our words; we weigh the sun and analyze the stars. One after another, mightier genii than those that arise in Arabian Story have bowed to the call of the lamp of knowledge. And yet they throng and come, powers more vast, in shapes more towering. But to what end ? Look to the van of progress, where the conditions to which all progressive countries are tending are most fully realized, where wealth is most abundant and popu- lation densest — the great cities, where one may walk through miles of palaces, where are the grandest churches, the greatest libraries, the highest levels of luxury, and refinement, and education, and culture. Amid the greatest accumulations of wealth men die of starvation, and women prowl the streets to buy bread SOCIETY AND THE STATE. 191 with shame; in factories, where labor-saving machinery shows the last march of ingenuity, little children are at work who ought to be at play; where the new forces are most fully realized, large classes are doomed to pauperism or live just on its verge, while everywhere the all-absorbing chase of wealth, shows the force of the fear of want, and from altars dedicated to the Liv- ing God leers the molten image of the Golden Calf. Progress thus one-sided is not real, and cannot last. No chain is stronger than its weakest link. If the low are not brought up, the high shall be pulled down. This is the attraction of gravitation of the moral uni- verse; it is the fiat of the eternal justice that rules the world. It stands forth in the history of every civiliza- tion that has had its day and run its course. It is what the Sphinx says to us as she sitteth in desert sand, while the winored bulls of Nineveh bear her witness! It is written in the undecipherable hieroglyphics of Yucatan, in the brick mounds of Babylon, in the prostrate Col- umns of Persepolis, in the salt-sown plain of Carthage. It speaks to us from the shattered relics of Grecian art, from the ruins of the Coliseum ! — Hefiry George. 177. The Decay of Empires. — Science teaches that invisible things are more substantial than visible, and truth is the food of all that is substantial. Nations have seldom been drawn and quartered while in good health; they generally die of disease. If true coroners' verdicts were written on the tombstones of kingdoms, the theories of sensuous history would be sadly contra- dicted. Babylon died of delirium tremens; rum did it; 13 192 CALIFORNIA ANTHOLOGY. in a single night she staggered to her ruin. Nineveh was killed by apoplexy; Macedon died of a raging fever; Egypt of gluttony and gout; Rome of dropsy. We might go further, and make the diagnoses of dis- eases that are threatening living nations. — Thos. Starr King. 178. Patriotism. — The life-and-death-struggle of a free people to preserve their country is an event angels might weep and yet exult to see. Heroism defying wounds and death, pouring out its life blood freely, is the inspiration of country. Two ideas there are which, above all others, elevate and dignify a race, the idea of God and the idea of Country. How imperishable is the idea of country! How does it live within and ennoble the heart in spite of persecutions and trials, and difficulties and dangers ! After two thousand years of wandering, it makes the Jew a sharer in the glory of the prophets, the lawgivers, the warriors and poets, who lived in the morning of time. How does it toughen every fiber of an Englishman's frame, and imbue the spirit of Frenchmen with Napoleonic enthusiasm. How does the German carry with him even the old house furniture of the Rhine, surround himself with the sweet and tender associations of Fatherland, and, wheresoever he may be, the great names of German history shine like stars in the heaven above him. And the Irishman, though the political existence of his country is merged in a kingdom whose rule he may abhor, yet still do the chords of his heart vibrate reponsive to the tones of the harp of Erin, and SOCIETY AND THE STATE. 103 the lowly shamrock is dearer to his soul than the fame- crowning laurel, the love-breathing myrtle, or the storm-daring pine. What is our country ? Not alone the land and the sea, the lakes and rivers, and valleys and mountains — not alone the people, their customs and laws — not alone the memories of the past, the hopes of the future; it is something more than all these com- bined. It is a divine abstraction. You cannot tell what it is, but let its flag rustle above your head, you feel its living presence in your hearts. They tell us that our country must die; that the sun and stars will look down upon the Great Republic no more ; that already (a. d. 1862 — ^Editor) the black eagles of despo- tism are gathering in our political sky. That even now kings and emperors are casting lots for the gar- ments of our national glory. It shall not be ! Not yet, not yet, shall the nations lay the bleeding corpse of our country in the tomb. If they could, angels would roll the stone from the mouth of the sepulcher. It would burst the casements of the grave, and come forth a living presence, redeemed, regenerated, disenthralled. Not yet, not yet, shall the Republic die. The heavens are not darkened, the stones are not rent! It shall live — it shall live, the incarnation of freedom, it shall live the embodiment of the power and majesty of the people. Baptized anew, it shall live a thousand years to come, the Colossus of the nations — its feet upon the continents, its scepter over the seas, its forehead among the stars ! — Newto7i Booth. 179. Patriotism is but a reflex of egoism, and re- spect for statutes and constitutions is but another form 194 CALIFORNIA ANTHOLOGY. of loyalty. And as excessive love of country is simply excessive self-love, so undue worship of forms of law is nothing more than a part of that superstitious loyalty which of old held to the doctrine of divine kingship. If reverence is any whose due, whatever good there may be in loyalty, in that sentiment which unites indi- viduals under a common head, it is not the power of law which should be reverenced, but the power which creates and sustains law. This doctrine of divine king- ship appears in a sort of inverted form in the mind of the Athenian who held it wrong for a man to rise above his fellows — whence ostracism, or oyster-shell voting a great man out of the country. — Hubert H. Bancroft. 180. Politics. — The pursuit of politics is delusive and full of temptation. No man should forget the duty he owes his country, but all should remember that they owe a duty to themselves. When men, more par- ticularly young men, see a great statesman stand forth in the midst of a listening senate, and mark the stamp which he makes upon the public mind, and upon the policy of the country, by the force of his intellectual vigor, they are apt to forget the labors by which that proud position has been achieved ; to forget how many have sought to attain such a lofty place and have failed; and to forget that he who is filling their minds with admiration may be on the eve of a sudden fall. Politics should not be the pursuit, I mean the only pursuit, of any man. Representative honors, official station, should only be the occasional reward, or the occasional sacrifice; and if, forgetting this rule, young SOCIETY AND THE STATE. 195 men attempt to make politics their only hope, with the probability that in many cases they will fail, and that, if successful, they will surely be exposed to a thousand temptations; if they love excitement for its own sake — the noisy meetings, the conventions, the elections — this love for excitement will grow upon them, and they will soon be upon the high road to ruin. If anyone is de- termined to achieve, distinction in politics, let him first obtain a competency in some trade, profession, or pur- suit, and then, even if unsuccessful in politics, the mis- step will not be irretrievable. — Gen. E. D. Baker. 181. Free Trade. — Free trade, the right to buy in the cheapest and sell in the dearest market, is based upon a fundamental law, as inexorable as death, and the violation of which is inevitably followed by severe ret- ribution. This law no nation can overlook. It is the same law which gives to a man the right to enjoy life and to hold property without restrictions, except such as are absolutely needed for the benefit of the whole community of which he forms a part. When a govern- ment oversteps these limits, for the benefit of a particu- lar class, it in effect destroys rights which are inherent in the people, and with which no interference can be justi- fied. Commerce should be as free as the air we breathe. Its arms should extend to every spot upon the globe where human beings exist; and should have the right to grasp, unchecked, whatever can contribute to the happiness of men. The only regulations it requires are those which spring from the natural laws of supply and demand. Beyond these, all interference with its 196 CALIFORNIA ANTHOLOGY. operation is simply prescriptive and semi-barbarous; because, in addition to other arguments, it checks the progress of civilization. Commerce is the great civil- izer of the world. Bv facilitatino" intercourse and the free interchange of commodities, it conveys the great truths of progress into every land and over every sea. It knits humanity together; and by the very sympa- thies and interests it generates, tends to render war, which destroys what peace creates, impossible. That commerce must be free, is a decree of nature, before which all must bow; so that as it scatters broadcast the blessings of liberty, science and the arts may cause knowledge to spread, until it shall cover the earth as the waters cover the great deep. — Henry E. Highto7i. 182. National Character.— The orreat thinof for statesmen to learn as a primitive fundamental truth is this simple fact — that the organization of a State is not effect- ed by its paper bonds, but by its moral bonds. The Crea- tor always deals with a state as a great person. Laws are ever at work beneath the changes of its inhabitants and the struggles of its parties, weaving into stable character its passing experiences — character which is the noblest national reward, or the sternest retribution. Individuals are never conscious of this law. Very often they think that the forces of a nation's life are playing at haphazard. But the law plays around them, uses them, and no more permits a state to begin its life anew with each sfeneration than it allows a man to be^in his life anew after each night's sleep. It is the glory of the human intellect that it can detect law in the process SOCIETY AND THE STATE. 197 of the universe, and see at least in countless threads of order, the habits, purposes, and expressions of a crea- tive power. Everywhere we turn there is law, and the most striking expressions of it are in what we often consider to be the region of chance or lawlessness. Running up through the realm of science to society, and to the life of nations, we find that the apex-truth which the intellect discovers, is this : Character is of supreme importance for national growth, prosperity and stability. How impressive does history seem as a study, when we find that every country is a huge pedestal, lifting up one national figure, which symbo- lizes the pfospects and the perils of the millions that dwell around its base. — Thomas Starr King. CAPITAL AND LABOR. 183. Slavery is not dead, though its grosssst form be gone. What is the difference, whether my body is legally held by another, or whether he legally holds that by which alone I can live? Hunger is as cruel as the lash. The essence of slavery consists in taking from a man all the fruits of his labor except a bare living, and of how many thousands miscalled free is this the lot? Where wealth most abounds there are classes with whom the average plantation negro would have lost in comfort by exchanging. English villeins in the Fourteenth Century were better off than Eng- lish agricultural laborers of the Nineteenth. There is slavery and slavery. "The widow," says Carlyle, "is 198 CALIFORNIA ANTHOLOGY. gathering nettles for her children's dinner; a perfumed seigneur, delicately lounging in the CEil de Bceuf, has an alchemy whereby he will extract from her the third nettle, and call it rent!" Let us not be deluded by names. What is the use of a republic if labor must stand with its hat off, beg- ging leave to work; if "tramps" must throng the highways and children grow up in squalid tenement houses? Political institutions are but means to an end — the freedom and happiness of the individual; and just so far as they fail in that, call them what you will, they are condemned. Our conditions are changing. The laws which im- pel nations to seek a larger measure of liberty, or else take from them what they have, are working silently but with irresistible force. If we would perpetuate the Republic, we must come up to the spirit of the Decla- ration, and fully recognize the equal rights of all men. We must free labor from its burdens and trade from its fetters; we must cease to make ijovernment an excuse for enriching the few at the expense of the many, and confine it to necessary functions. We must cease to permit the monopolization of land and water by non- users, and apply the just rule, "no seat reserved unless occupied." We must cease the cruel wrong which, by first denying their natural rights, reduces laborers to the wages of competition, and then, under pretence of asserting the rights of another race, compels them to a competition that will not merely force them to a stand- ard of comfort unworthy the citizen of a free Republic, but ultimately deprive them of their equal right to live. SOCIETY AND THE STATE. 199 Here is the test : whatever conduces to their equal and inahenable rights to men is good — let us preserve it. Whatever denies or interferes with those equal rights is bad — let us sweep it away. If we thus make our institutions consistent with their theory, all difficul- ties must vanish. We will not merely have a republic, but social conditions consistent with a republic. If we will not do this, we surrender the Republic, either to be torn by the volcanic forces that already shake the ground beneath the standing armies of Europe, or to rot by slow degrees, and in its turn undergo the fate of all its predecessors. — Hciuy George. ^ 184. The Necessities of life, the wants of ad- vancing civilization, open a scope for employment wide as humanity. They demand the fullest exercise of the highest energies of every member of the human race. Let Society and Government seek to attain an organi- zation wherein Labor shall be elevated to its true position, and its claims recognized and rewarded. Government taxed to furnish employment ? Why, national prosperity must be vitalized every moment by increasing toil, or the value that capital represents would perish, and money become as worthless as the mere pictures on the coins. The roots of the tree of wealth must be continually watered by the sweat of the labor- er's brow, or its branches would die, its leaves wither, and its golden fruit turn to ashes on the lips of its possessor. Let labor suspend for a day, and the world would feel the shock. Let it cease for a month, and a crisis would come, such as commerce never felt, involv- 200 CALIFORNIA ANTHOLOGY. ing banks, moneyed institutions, and national credit in common ruin. Let it be idle for a single summer, and terror would come down on the strong and the weak, beauty would turn pale at the toilet, eloquence become dumb in the Senate, ships would open their seams, the grass grow in the market-place, and the nations be shaken to their foundations. Anarchy, bloody-handed revolu- tion, grim and ghastly famine, would shake their snaky locks in every land. Let it be paralyzed for a single year, and the world would be smitten as with the wrath of God. Jehovah, in his awful omnipotence, could devise no curse that would more blast, and scorch, and desolate the earth. Not Cotton is King; nor Gold. Labor is the true Monarch of the world ! With stal- wart frame and sinewy arm, and face bronzed and scarred, but still with " front of Jove and eye like Mars," he must be recrowned— crowned in the starry temple of science — with power for his throne, art his sceptre, and wealth his sparkling diadem. — Newton Booth. 185. There is no dogma, nor theory, nor de- vice under the sun, upon which men have been so universally agreed as that the right of property un- derlies all true religion, government and civilization. Without it, deprived of all motive to acquire beyond the most absolute necessity, man would sink into the savagedom from which it has taken five thousand years to raise him. The justice of allowing unlimited acqui- sition is evidenced by the fact that the desire is univer- SOCIETY AND THE STATE. 201 sal. No natural inherent quality or passion is ours without there is lying behind it a benign purpose. —James McM. Shafter. 186. It would be useless, vicious and insane to declaim with Proudhon against the rights of property. Property is the incentive to exertion. It is the stimu- lant which is the preventive of idleness, and its en- joyment should be the just reward of honest in- dustry. Its security is the very foundation of order. Take it away, and society would relapse into that anar- chy which is worse than despotism. It would be idle and visionary to join with Rousseau in his sentimental praises of barbarism. One Shakespeare, or Newton, or Fulton, or Washington, were worth all the savage tribes that ever lived. The world was not made for savages, but for men. We must not recede to a lower civilization, but advance to a higher; the type must not be broken, but improved. The means of production must continue to increase, but the principles of distribu- tion must become fair and equitable; the paradox that riches and poverty increase in the same ratio must be disproved. Wealth must not be diverted into reser- voirs to stagnate, but flow out in living streams, perpet- ual rivers of abundance, making the landscape beauti- ful, the fields green and fruitful, and all the people glad. Communists, socialists and Fourierists, have grappled with these difficulties in vain. Associations, phalanxes and communities, however beautiful in theory, have failed in their application to the facts of human nature. Society can never be modeled upon an invented plan; 202 CALIFORNIA ANTHOLOGY. it always casts itself in the mould of necessity — it obeys its own laws. We must seek in itself, in the ingredi- ents as they are, for the powers and agencies that shall evolve its improvements. Among these powers, what- * ever tends to diffuse the privileges that have been con- centrated, to scatter broadcast the blessings that have been garnered up, will be a noble and efficient instru- mentality for good. A free pulpit, speaking to the great heart of the people, a religion that goes into the highways and byways, free schools whose doors are open to the children of all, a free press sending its streams of literature to every man's home, science pop- ularized until its great truths blend with the public . mind, mechanical arts approaching that perfection that will so cheapen the commodities they manufacture as to place them withm the reach of all; life and health assurances and insurances, enabling the laborer to free himself and family from the crushingfear of want in the hour of sickness and calamity ; saving societies, whereby small sums can be made productive, and by their aggre- gation compete with individual wealth, are all remedial agencies whose influence will widen and deepen as they become more universal and permanent. And if, while new inventions continue to increase man's individual ability, the laws of distribution are made active, just as the powers of production are active, and labor receive its fair reward, there need be no fear that society will lapse towards barbarism in the pursuit of happiness, no fear that phrenzied passions will destroy the rights of property in vindication of the rights of man, no fear that the seats at the table of life will all be taken. SOCIETY AND THE STATE. 203 There will be room for all who come, at the bountiful board which nature will continue to spread, until the last syllable of recorded timt-.—Neza.foii BooUl. 187. So FAR as the labor question, as it is called, or labor and capital, is concerned with social discontent, there can be no settlement on any present terms of labor and capital. It is no local question, but of uni- versal human interest, and pervades Christendom. The only reconciliation of that difficulty is in moving for- ward on to a new ground, where the moral relations of employer and workman are recognized as clearly as the politico-economic relation. What men want is a respect- ful consideration of their welfare. It does not consist in the government taking them up, and finding work for all who want it. A parental government is a monarchy or a despotism where men cannot take care of them- selves; but in a free State men are supposed to be of age and able to take care of themselves. Capital and labor will never be at peace, nor will they ever reap their full rewards until they have a material and moral interest in each other's welfare over and above the wages paid on the one hand, or the service rendered on the other. The final goal is not parental government, nor socialism, nor communism, nor trades-unions, but co-operation. This will not be accomplished primarily by legislation, but it will be begun here and there by enlightened men of comprehensive and liberal views, who understand that good workmen must be the allies of their employers. A writer from that part of the country which we call The West — evidently a proprietor 204 CALIFORNIA ANTHOLOGY. and influential director of railroad management, sent a letter to a distinguished journal, setting forth in a clear and forcible way that owners, directors and managers of railroads should adopt some method of helping their workmen, outside the duties for which they are paid, in their private lives. He is a man of experience and ability. His view I will not discuss; it is the spirit of it that I notice. It is the appearance of the moral element in political economy which, until recently, has been alto^-ether ignored. Such movements will