15JC*3MC jmm^*3kmL^Sm^ ^XiMXEMMJtMMm *ji» * X ♦ A » x»iA mm>xm LIBRARY OF CONGRESS. ©i^p ©iTOrig^ ]|jj Shelf _..ti.2.<^ ( UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. .\^^ -v ^' ^ Poems and Essays, BY CHARLES W. HUBNER, Author of "Souvekirs of Luther;" "Wild Flowers " Cinderella, A Lyric L>rama ; " " Modern Communism." a- '• NEW YORK : r & DERBY, PUBLISHERS, (NO. 21 PARK PLACE.) 1881. M Copyright, 1881, Bv Charles W. IIudxek. SPRINGFIELD PRINTING CO., F.I.KCTROTYPERS, PRINTERS AND BINDEF SPRINGFIELD, M\SS. A r DEDICATION. To the loved ones "gone before," and to those who still remain — to Heaven and Home, therefore — in the first place, and, in the second, to the generous sym- pathy and kindly regard of the general reader, this book is dedicated. CHARLES W. HUBNER Atlanta, Georgia, 1881. CONTENTS POEMS. The Poet, 9 Beethovejt, 10 Four Years, 14 Bernard Mallon, 15 The Tide of Time 20 Acrostic, • 22 The Future.— Goethe, 23 Deaf — Dumb — Blind, 25 Julia, 28 Willie, 30 Waiting, 32 Bayard Taylor, 33 "Die Wacht Am Hhein.^' 35 Tallulah, 37 The River and the Book, 40 Alexander at Gatchina, 47 Resurgam, 48 The Legend of St. Fridolin.— Von Scheffel's: Der Trompeter von Scekkingen. — Canto iii., 49 Floaver and Star, 57 Beauty and Strength, 58 Fame, 59 Mother, 61 Through Night to Light, 62 Serenade Song, 63 Wedding Bells, 64 Necropolis, 65 The Lesson of the Leaf, 67 6 CONTENTS. Trust and Content, , 70 We Meet Again, 71 The Erl-king.— Goethe, 72 Fruition, 74 Winter-Morning. — Karl Knortz, 75 Christmas Carol, -. 76 Howard Heroes, 78 New Year's Eve, 81 " Im Schwartzwald." — From the German, 84 The Meadow-brook, 86 POEMS THE POET. RUE Poet! great or least, i^^ How blest is thy vocation! Seer, Teacher, Prophet, Priest By holy consecration; Who can thy sway resist ? Who ranketh thee in station ? . A lark above the lea Her sheer flight heavenward winging, A wondrous melody Like silvery spray outflinging. Thy perfect pattern be Poet! in all thy singing. Sing true, and sing thy best! It is well worth thy doing To bid the honest breast Beware of Falsehood's wooing, To sing of love and rest When hate and strife are brewing. Behold! the morning light Of a New Day is gleaming; O Poet! wing thy flight To greet its fuller beaming — When Wrong shall yield to Right, And Truth be more than Seeming. BEETHOVEN. tN some rare sutnmer night, when shines the face Of Heaven serenest, grandly glorified By the resplendent nimbus of the stars, When heart and soul in winged, impassioned mood With a diviner strength uplift themselves Beyond the dull, dead dross of common life. With manifold subtile threads of thought linked fast To the Eternal and the Beautiful — In such an hour of pure delight the eye Follows the scintillant spheres upon their path Thro' infinite space, till dazzled and amazed By the incessant splendor pouring vast From azure heights and purple depths of air. And maze of flashing planets numberless, Our vision wearies, and abides at last For respite on some " bright, particular star," Shining apart in unhedged majesty; Some star that seems to us the cynosure Of all the radiant orbs that belt the night, Because or hope or faith hath hallowed it. Or love — these fair ideals of the soul Endowing it with a superior power To shape our spirits' high imaginings — And thus we feel when Fancy's airy feet Ascend the heights of immemorial time. Thence to survey the pure empyrean Where shine the names of earth's immortal sons, Names that are blazoned on a thousand shrines. Ensphered in radiancy that shall shine on 'Till Time succumbs to changeless Fate, and yields His scepter and his throne to sovereign Death; BEETHOVEN. 11 Illustrious names of men whom Genius sired. And God sent forth as ministers of His To teach the nations, and illume the world With the candescence of their deathless thoughts ; As by the glory of a summer night Are we o'ercome and dazzled by this view Of the uncurtained firmament of fame — For such concentrate splendor who may bear With unaverted gaze? — Hence, I would fain Fix my dim, mortal sight on one alone Of all these glowing suns, and offer it Homage with reverent heart; a monarch orb In fame's empyrean throned — great Beethoven! Master of sound's ineffable mysteries! How well thy wondrous harmonies reveal The human soul's divine, eternal powers! Her primal godhood's glory, shining still From out the gloom of her mortality! Her mighty aspirations! heavenly hopes! Which neither time nor death can ever quench. Thy wizard's wand of melody can lift The veil that shrouds the awful Infinite, And break the brazen crust of Sense and Sin Coating the suffering soul's celestial fires; Beneath thy sway of tuneful ecstasy The mind dissolves in holy heat the chains That bind it to the murky cells of Self, And, spreading wide its strong, imperial wings, It soars above the noisome airs of earth. To hold communion with eternal things In that bright sphere whence first its being sprang. O Master, hear! we would invoke thee now! Thy sainted Spirit, slumbering in these chords 12 BEETHOVEN. We would awaken with most loving hand; Respond to us, and bid the dulcet tongues Of lip-kissed instruments, the choric voice Of silver-throated singers, and the deep, Vast diapason of the organ, speak The sweet, symphonious language of the spheres, In earthlier form familiar once to thee. But now thy mother-tongue, since Death unsealed Thy mortal darkened eyes, that thou might'st see The Seraphim, thy teachers. Unto thee With pensive, happy hearts, and heads bowed low In silent adoration, we will list As to an oracle, interpreting Omnipotent Beauty and divine Desire! Thou shalt revive our faint and thirsty souls With nectar draughts from Heliconian springs, And clothe the arid waste of earthly cares With the unfading verdure and the bloom Of Paradise — O mighty Master, hear! And for our sakes quit thou the blessed realm Where now thou lead'st the choiring Seraphim; Let the high music of their harps be still For a few fleeting hours, until thy harp Shall in their midst — though throned above them all, Resume its strain sublime. Hark! sweet and clear, Preludial, sense-entrancing melodies Swell soft upon the ear, and float away Like rosy mists that melt into the dawn. Or fall in scintillant showers of ecstasy From the aerial' arched and resonant roof; Now 'tis the fluting wind of June amid BEETHOVEN. 13 The forest tree-tops playing, in its mirth Shaking the murky pines till music rains In silvery pattering drops from all their boughs; Anon it is the hollow, solemn sough Of the sonorous and unfathomed Sea, Voicing eternal, awful, infinite Power; — Behold! I see a shimmering shaft of light, A Glory and a Splendor, like the sun. Riving the zenith! The disparted clouds Burn with supernal fire — auspicious sign! Peal forth, majestic harmonies! Ascend O jubilant Song, and make the welkin ring With melody! Ah, see! a glorious Shade, A heavenly Guest descends to visit us — Beethoven's spirit! Crown and honor him With loveful hearts, and to the Beautiful, The True, the Deathless, consecrate this hour! FOUR YEARS. yj^EAR wife! four years we've walked together, r^ In dreary and in pleasant weather, Life's toilsome way; Hopes that were flame are dust and embers, Bright summers waned to bleak Decembers, Night followed day. Yet o'er the stormy heights of duty Bends the blue sky in radiant beauty, The calm stars shine; In every valley, dim and lowly, Blow buds and blossoms, fair and holy, To pluck and twine. With steadfast feet that grow not weary. And hearts responding true and cheery To Love's sweet call, We'll climb the golden heights unclouded. Or tread the valleys sorrow-shrouded — God's over all! His arm almighty will defend us. His love and mercy still befriend us. Till we are dust, And life and love more fair and tender, In some immortal sphere of splendor Shall crown our trust. BERNARD MALLON. Organizer and First Superintendent of Public Schools, Atlanta, Georgia. Died at Huntsville, Texas. [Read at the " Mallou Memorial Meeting," Fourteenth Annual Convention Georgia Teachers' Association, Macon, May 4, 1880.J ^^^ULL many a kingly-souled, wise-moulded man, If ^j^ At Fortune's indiscriminative hands Receives the purple vestment and the crown That designate the sons of Fame, who sit High-throned above their fellows; on the fields Of battle-slaughter, where the scale of Fate, Swift-smitten by the fury-flaming sword, This way or that inclines, and so decides A nation's glory, or a nation's shame. The warrior wins the prize, nor counts the cost; Others, sure-poised upon the eagle-wings Of eloquence, from white, star-fronting peaks Hurling the lightnings of impassionate speech Upon the startled world, hear in the loud Reverberating echoes at their feet, The voice of their own immortality; Some, in familiar, life-long intercourse With Nature, watching patiently her moods. In some auspicious moment from her lips Shall hear the pass-word which to them shall ope The mighty portals of her Treasury, To gather wealth unlimited, and gird Her rare gems on their brows; and there are those Who, led by Science's resplendent star, 16 BERNARD MALLON. Make pilgrimage in search of Delphic shrines, And, finding them, from bleeding feet unloose Their sandals gladsomely, and — falling prone On holy ground — list to a Voice divine; Its oracles to men interpreting The world shall call them prophets, and inscribe Their nafnes on History's golden pages; some Challenge grim Death himself for Fame's sweet sake, Accounting life as nothing so they win A smile from their proud mistress, as they sink Dying in the arena; and a few — Souls of rare tenderness and ripest grace — Serving at Nature's altars as her priests, God's best beloved children, unto whom His spirit speaketh a familiar tongue. Who, His ineffable glory seeing, sing Sweetest to souls of men His praise, and teach As poets — hence. Heaven's best interpreters — Beauty and Truth — immortal themes that shape The spirit of the age to worthiest ends; These, ranking highest in the realm of Time, Descend to laureled graves, and with their dust Fame builds her proudest monuments, and rests Upon their lives her own eternity. Thou wast not one of these, departed friend! Not on such royal roads to fame thy feet AYalked wantonly, or. Fate-led and inspired, Rushed to the goal, as from a hunter's hand The lithe spear, shrilling, shimmers through the air! Thy paths were paths of peace; near quiet streams Through blossomy meadows flowing, or within The green and sheltered valleys, free from storms That wreck the pride and grandeur of the world, BERNARD MALLON. 17 Thy safe road lay to honors, bravely won! — The clamorous forum knew thee not; the field Where thunderous Mars lifts his mailed hand and hurls An empire to the dust within an hour, Could lure thee not; no blindly-venturous prow. That plows disastrous seas in search of shores Which, luring still, dissolve in mocking mists, Hath ever borne thy fortunes; not at shrines In which Divinity doth dwell to touch The lips of hoary men with heavenly fire, Didst thou bend knee and worship; not for thee The statesman's toga, or the poet's bays — Thine was an humbler lot, yet none the less Great in its noble purposes, full-fraught With kindly deeds for all, and in its fruits Fine-flavored, wholesome, flawless, beautiful! To rule the wanton will of Youth with firm Yet a most gentle hand; to sow the seed Of knowledge in our children's hearts, and rear The tender plantlet till it stood, self-poised. Symmetric, fruitful, fair, as God designed; To guide the wandering c^ld-soul patiently Over the mazy- winding paths that lead To the deep fountains of eternal truth. Wherein who bathes shall nevermore fear death; To teach that he who best obeys rules best. When Fate shall thrust a sceptre in his hands; To wake the spirit's sleeping potencies From their inglorious rest, and bid them leap, Alert and Titan-limbed, to bold emprise. Making the ages lustrous with high deeds; To fill the lissom lily-chalices Of blessed Girlhood with the dews that drip 18 BERNARD MALLON. From the Spring-skies of Heaven ; to shield the lark — That sports unheeding and with blithesome heart In the glad sunshine — from the prowling hawk; To feed the maiden soul with holy thoughts, God's manna, sent to strengthen innocence; With wise delays restraining rash resolves; To knowledge adding wisdom, grace to strength; With ardent, genial, joy-inspiring love Raising the Good to flower and fruit, the 111 Destroying with the frost of kind reproof; Untiring in the Heaven-ordained task Of training girls to Woman's sovereign sphere. And boys to knightly Manhood — this thy crown Of deathless fame, O stainless gentleman ! True man! true hero! true philanthropist! Thy name was " Great Heart," " Honor " was thy shield. Thy golden motto: " Duty without fear! " Ah, not in alien earth thy dust shall sleep — We claimed thee living, and we claim thee dead! It were not meet that other hands than ours Should place thee in thy sacred sepulchre. That other voices than our own should chant Thy requiem; nay! rest, where the west wind's breath Will bring — with its own tender music blent — The voices of the city of thy love; Rest, where thine ashes with mute eloquence May evermore appeal to hearts that knew Thy God-crowned noblehood, and to the lips That shall delight to speak thy praises; rest Where thou hast builded, with a master hand, Thine own imperishable monument In words and deeds, and in the hearts of men; BERNARD MALLON. 19 Rest, where with reverent mien and tearful eye They, who have Icved thee so, may come to bring Affection's blessed offerings to thy grave — Spring violets, bluer than a moonless sky; Or roses born in golden morns of June; Or starry asters, plucked by childish hands When Autumn's splendor flames on all the hills; Rest, where thy death-dimmed eyes (ere quite their lids Had veiled the soulful orbs in dreamless sleep) Turned tenderly one sad, sweet, lingering look Of memory and regret; yea, dear Heart! rest. Rest here until thy cloistered body, robed In glorious vestment free from mortal taint. Renascent shall arise to shine in Heaven. \ V'l THE TIDE OF TIME. ^1 LONG the delta that divides The Past, the Present and To-Be, How swift, O time! thy current glides Toward the black, abysmal Sea That men have named Eternity; Beyond the utmost range of thought Thy fountains lie, thy waters trend — Who shall declare when thou wast not ? Who will divine when thou shalt end ? Who can thy mystery comprehend ? Ere the Almighty's fiat swept Primeval night from Nature's face; Ere out of God's soul Adam leapt, Great sire of an immortal race! Or Chaos was — thou wast in space. The ages come, the ages go; Incessant whirl the planet-spheres; Sun-bright with weal, or black with wo. Sink in thy dismal depths the Years — No tittle changed thy tide appears; Yea, thou art nature's sepulchre! The charnel-crypt of Destiny, Where countless worlds already are Inurned, from all eternity — Thy rueful waves roll tranquilly; THE TIDE OF TIME. 21 Thy surging floods pour heedlessly Their ebbless and unending tide — What is this worthless world to thee ? Its sorry splendor ? puny pride ? — Soon over all thy waves shall glide; "With spider-threads of specious creeds We seek to bridge thy bleak expanse; On brittle shells and mouldering weeds — Cast by thy surges on the sands — Our Babel-tower of Reason stands; We play at Life upon thy breast — As fools or sages, kings or clowns, We strut the roles that suit us best, And^toil for food, or fight for crowns — The rout thy solemn murmur drowns; O thou, that blendest in thy flow Immortal woe, immortal joys. Holding twixt Heaven, and earth below, Life — Death in awful equipoise, Why heed we not thy warning voice ? For what are fame and honor worth ? The pride of pelf ? the pageantry, The wanton pleasures of the earth ? O'erwhelmed, O Tide of Time, by thee, How brief their tinsel splendors be! ACROSTIC. fLOSE round his soul Heaven-planted germs are twining, And from his face love's star-bright thoughts are shin- ing— Ripen, sweet germs, to fruits of deathless youth ! Light of his thoughts, shine clear for God and Truth ! I see in thee a Violet, in whose eye. Drooping with weight of vernal sweets, the sky. And fairer glory of the dawning summer lie. Rainbow, that spannest the spent storm's cloud; Odorous lily that scentest the shroud; Star of a sky where but one star can shine, Evermore lighting Love's desolate shrine. w THE FUTURE. kHE Future screeneth Happy and drear days; But ever fearless, Though slow it seemeth, Do we press forward. Heavy the pendent Curtain before us. Reverent rest o'er us The still stars resplendent — Beneath us the graves are. Behold these and ponder, And lo, Shadow haunted Are bosoms undaunted! The soul with awed wonder Feels solemn emotions; But from Aidenn bowers Call voices of sages, Great souls of the ages: " The Good and its powers Pursue, and neglect not; "Here chaplets are twining In silence forever, To crown their endeavor Who work without pining! We bid you be hopeful." In Carlyle's " Past and Present," (London, 1843,) p. 318, this poem of Goethe's is introduced by the fol- 24 THE FUTURE. lowing words, which prove the ardent admiration which Carlyle has ever felt, and on every occasion in the course of his masterly studies in German literature has expressed, for the majestic genius of the author of "Faust"; " My candid readers, we will march out of this Third Book with a rhythmic word of Goethe's on our tongue; a word which perhaps has already sung itself, in dark hours and in bright, through many a heart. To me, finding it devout, yet wholly credible and veritable, full of piety and free of cant; to me joyfully finding much in it, and joyfully missing so much in it, this lit- tle snatch of music, by the greatest German man, sounds like a stanza in the grand Road Song and Marching Song of our great Teutonic kindred — wending, wending, valiant and victorious, through the undiscovered Deeps of Time! " DEAF— DUMB— BLIND. ^ShE rain with silvery tinkling feet f^^ Patters the lush, resilient grass; The winds make music, passing sweet, At every tree and flower they pass; But not a single ear, alas! Though tuned to rapture once it was. Here heeds the soft, symphonious beat Of the glad rain-drops' twinkling feet. Or hears the winsome vinds that greet The trees and flowers they pass With music bland and sweet, A song for every flower and leaf — Alas, alas! the Dead are deaf. The eloquent tongues of nature teach Wisdom divinely, everywhere; God's power the flame-browed Tempests preach, His love the brook-side weeds declare; The crystal palace of the air. When the winged choirs assemble there, Is resonant with sweeter speech Than earthly art can ever reach; But sweeter far than all or each The sounds of Song's empyrean sphere The harmony of Human speech — Hark to yon voiceful city's hum! Alas, alas! the Dead are dumb. A splendid world of Summer bloom Enchants the contemplative eye; Yonder the russet mountains loom, 26 DEAF DUMB BLI2s^D. The quiet valleys darkling lie; Above the gleaming clouds float by, And melt where burns the sun-set sky; Their thrones the golden stars resume, And swift on Twilight's noiseless loom Night weaves her robe's resplendent gloom- Ah! Heaven itself seems bending nigh, And angels glide from tomb to tomb, Round each a star-light v/reath to wind- Alas, alas! the Dead are blind. Mourn not because the blithesome strain Of the winsome winds, and the Summer rain With its silvery symphony, sound in vain On the sealed ears of the heedless Dead — Patter the grass, soft-footed Showers! Sing, ye Winds, to the trees and the flowers! We, the lone living, will listen and — weep. Not for the dear Dead, sweetly asleep, Who care not for sunshine, who care not for rain, Deaf to life's music, and deaf to life's pain, For the living — who long for life's surcease, For the glory of death and its infinite peace — For these, O Heart! thy tears be shed; Not for the Crowned Ones overhead. The stainless, the painless, forever-blest Dead. O Heart! mourn not because the Dead are dumb. And can not speak within thy mortal hearing — There is no bar Faith can not overcome! Lay close thy subtile spirit-ear To their mute lips, unfearing, And hearken therewith— thou shalt hear DEAF DUMB BLIND. 27 The language that in Heaven is spoken, The matchless music of the Seraph sphere; Hear, and be not afraid! With an immortal speech, And eloquence impassionate Beyond our fancy's utmost reach, We hear them teach and preach, These blind, dumb ministers of God — the Dead. Mourn not, O Heart! because the Dead are blind, And can not see, with fleshly eyes. The splendor which around thee lies; Ah! in a world to which ours is A rush-light, swung in an abyss. In dark, foul-vapored darkness dying. What wondrous glories they are eyeing! Incomparably pure! Behold with eyes which sleep shall never sheathe With tear-wet lids, which blinding films of death Shall nevermore obscure! JULIA. ^^ I^E ASURED by days alone %j) Thy sojourn here how brief! The dew-drop's hold upon An aspen's trembling leaf, The spider's filmy thread By mighty storm-winds shred, Would aptest emblems be Of thy life's brevit3\ But thy frail life and ours, Welded and interblent By Love's alchemic powers, How boundless in extent! If thus life measured be, By all it doth involve. Only Eternity Our lives full sum shall solve! Thou wast and ever art (Oh! what else couldst thou be ?) Of our own souls a part — Thrice blest triunity! All that was laid away With sighs and tears to-day, Shrined in a tiny hill. Lives in our own lives still — A Presence in the soul Free from all earthly taint; Owning our mind's control, Serving our heart's constraint^ JULIA, . 29 Doing at Heaven's behest Whate'er is best for these, Blessing and being blest By mutual ministries. To thee we give the dust , Of this dear babe of ours, O Earth! With loving trust- As Spring gives thee her flowers; Transmute with tender care Her dust to roses rare. That e'en her mortal parts May blossom on our hearts I WILLIE. tWEET the voice of the carolling bird, In its nest, in the heart of the' forest heard When morn's first rays are beaming; And fair the skies when over the fields Day's silver-footed shadow steals, And the star of eve is gleaming; But O, my babe! the songs of birds What are they to the sweeter words I hear thy rose-lips whisper ? And fairer to me thy tender face Than the sunset sky with its aureole rays And its great stars golden glister. The blithe birds sing but know not wh}-^, And waste their merry minstrelsy Upon the heedless hours, But in the music of thy tongue Ringeth a new Life's morning song, Hymning the birth of powers Akin to all that is divine, August, immortal and sublime; In might and beauty growing. Till through the night of earthly strife A perfect soul, a perfect life. Shines forth with star-like glowing! And why thy face I fairer deem Than that of Heaven, when hill and stream Reflect the sunset's glory, WILLIE. 31 Is that because I know I see The glory of Eternity Brought face to face before me! And with this glory of thine eye I build a bridge from earth to sky O'er which my spirit marches By night and day, still back and forth, And with me angels come to earth Along its lustrous arches ; And as we go I breathe my prayers That they, through life's unfolding 3'ears, May nevermore forsake thee, But each be trusty guide and friend, Till Christ shall for thy Spirit send And back to Heaven take thee. WAITING. fEAl) ? deadl Nay, darling! thou art only sleep- ing, As sleeps the babe upon the mother breast, And I, who stand beside thee sadly weeping, Should smiling bless thy deep and holy rest ; My heart, be mute! thy tender vigil keeping — What speech hath e'er Love's ecstasy express'd ? When wintry Earth the flower-germs still entombeth, The Southwind comes, and pleadeth at her gates; And though they close against him, still he cometh And softly knocks, and sighs, and sings, and — waits. He knows that when the Spring her reign resumeth, She will restore to him his buried mates; Likewise will I — suppressed all vain regretting — In patience wait until we meet again ; All wintry fear in spring-time hope forgetting, My soul holds fast to Faith's celestial chain; Let Love in darkness have its earthly setting — In Heaven her zenith's glory to attain! BAYARD TAYLOR. ^^HY body with the dead f^^^ Sepulchered lies; In robe of light arrayed, With holy eyes Thy Spirit — ;perfect made — Looks from the skies. No more thy pilgrim prows Swim Orient seas, Where lotus-scented blows The wooing breeze, Or dare the polar snows' Weird mysteries. No more thy master-pen In limpid prose. Strange sights and scenes and men Doth deft disclose. Each limned line a gem. That gleams and glows; No more thy lofty lyre Its grand song sings, Winging a flight of fire With dove-like wings, Wooing the soul's desire To noblest things. A royal heritage Thou leavest us, Which will our grief assuage, 3 34 BAYARD TAYLOR. Make less our loss, Silver the dark cloud's edge, And crown our cross — Thy life, thy work, thy name! These are not fled; A pure and steadfast flame Shines overhead — The star-light of thy fame, O Poet dead! DIE WACHT AM RHEIN. GERMAN NATIONAL SONG. f shout as when the thunders roar, Swords clash, and billows beat the shore: " The Rhine, the Rhine, the German Rhine! Who will protect thee, River mine ? " Chorus: Dear Fatherland let peace be thine; Dear Fatherland let peace be thine; A faithful heart protects the Rhine, A faithful heart protects the Rhine! An hundred thousand hear the cry, And lightnings flash from every eye; Firm stands the German sentinel, And guards the holy landmark well! Chorus: Dear Fatherland let peace be thine; etc. The dead of an heroic race From Heaven look down and meet his gaze; He swears with dauntless heart : " O Rhine Be German as this breast of mine! " Chorus: Dear Fatherland let peace be thine; etc. While still one drop of blood shall blaze, Or single arm the sword can raise, Or trusty rifle rests in hand, No foeman's foot shall touch this strand! Chorus: Dear Fatherland let peace be thine; etc. 36 DIE WACHT AM KHEIN. The vow is sworn, the stream sweeps by, Our banners proudly wave on high Upon the Rhine — no harm be thine! We watch and guard the German Rhine! Chorus: Dear Fatherland let peace be thine; etc. TALLULAH. (^O^HEN first this rock-ribbed wild ^^jj^ The Indian — Nature's child And primal lord — With footsteps light as air Trailing the panther's lair, Found and explor'd, And heard thy thund'rous roar, And saw thy waters pour Their fuming flood, He, master'd by thy spell, Called thee " The Terrible," And wondering stood! Yea, terrible thou art As through the chasms swart That wall thee in. Full many a fathom deep Thy torrents roll and leap "With deafening din; The granite-bowldered shore, The hills, that high and hoar Circle thy sides. Shake as thy waters hurl, With many a madding swirl, Their volum'd tides. Type of the infinite! Of terror and of might! Starting thy race B8 TALLULAH. / / On Nature's natal morn With the first planet, born To shine in space — On earth what countless years! « From Heaven what host of spheres! Shall fade and fall Ere Fate thy power shall chain, And night and silence reign Supreme o'er all. Under thy beetling brow. Flushed by the sunset's glow. And iris-crown'd Speechless I stand, and gaze Upon thee, face to face, From depths profound — Away! nor linger here — Death, darkness, woe and fear, Shapes that are Hell's, Encompass me — away! Hark! o'er the frenzying fray A sweet voice swells: " Be not afraid," I hear In accents wondrous clear, "For it is I!" Immediate peace is mine — For soul and sense divine That God is nigh! He speaketh to the soul In roaring floods that roll Sheer from the sky. TALLULAH. 39 As tenderly and true As in the drops that dew The violet's eye; Thy vast flood's volum'd mass, Yon tiny blade of grass, And I — are one In God's paternal care; Each doth His glory share In part and sum. Tallulah! mighty one! Teacher! thy task is done — My soul is fraught With thoughts of noblest wing O would that I could sing As thou hast taught! THE RIVER AND THE BOOK. I. 'ITHIN the heart of these eternal hills, §^|^ And havened by their blissful peace, I rest ; Symphonious music, as of countless harps Breathing their tremulous golden harmonies Along the pine-clad steeps, salutes the sun Rising majestic in the cloudless east. The dews which fairies from their tresses shook, When from the star-clocks chimed the happy hours To elfish revels sacred, shine again With added radiance taken from the dawn's Illimitable glory; whirring wings, Brown, purple, blue, within the brightening gloom Of yon wide-arching, bowery branches flit — The minstrel-heralds of the coming Day, The blessed bird-souls of the world! The wind Chanteth a marvelous anthem from the heights. Mighty with trumpet-tones of jubilant song. Yet strangely blent with jarring sounds most sad, Threnetic, weird — a music which repels While yet it wooes the ever-curious soul; As doth the music of humanity, Within whose vast, mysterious diapase We listen vainly for the perfect chord. Yet listen none the less with willing ears To the immortal harmony that soars, As one majestic whole, to Heaven at last. Around me peace ineffable! Above The deep blue domed and everlasting sky. THE RIVER AND THE BOOK. 41 Immaculately radiant! beautiful! Uncircumscribed — save -where yon purple peaks Circle the central glory like a crown. Beneath me lies the waking world, whose voice, Soft as a sea-shell's murmur, or the thrill Of lute strings trembling at your listless touch, Floats faintly up. Impenetrable caves Beneath me are, unfathomable depths, By the clairvoyant eye of Fancy seen; Within their gloom are shrined and sealed, methinks, Insolvable mysteries, awful and sublime! Myths that were ancient when the hand of God Unveiled the face of Day and faint, white flames. Slow rounding into shining planet-worlds. Flickered and flashed athwart the pallid heavens, And Earth enrobed her virgin charms with light; Yea, throned within their central glooms I see A shadowy form of dreadful majesty, The awful Spirit of the under-world! There, like the sphynx he sits, his stony lips Forever closed to human questioning. Lo! yonder, scarce an arm-length's space away. Where tall and lithe the quivering rushes stand, Amid the emerald moss and succulent grass, Mine eyes descry bright glints and wavering lines Of opalescent light, that mark the course Of waters welling from a tiny spring; Swiftly, with many a whirl and wanton lapse, The rillet glides from out the strong embrace Of the gray-bearded boles that guard its source. Dancing and slipping passed the kissing mouths Of violets, and the blooms of tangled weeds. I could reach out, and with an acorn's cup 42 THE KIVER AND THE BOOK. Prison this prattling Naiad in her cell, And interrupt her race ingloriously — But why delay the lovely truant ? Down Precipitous pathways speeding, lo, at last My rillet rests upon the velvet lap Of fragrant meadows and brovvn-furrow'd fields, No more the elfin fountain of the hills, Which with an acorn's cup an idler's hand Could have imprisoned in its cradle-bed, Or which a chance-bent lily's chalice — nay! A rose-leaf, shaken from its stem by flap Of passing wing, could from its course have turned — But clothed with the dignity and state That doth become the youthhood of a brook, The stream glides on, through shimmering wolds and fields. Past bosky nooks whose odoriferous dusk Is lit by lucent disks of pendulous flowers. Through woods that far diifuse their grateful balms. And resonant with choral-singing birds — On sweeps the brave and ever broadening stream, Bolder the sweep of the translucent tide — Into the lordly River grown apace, A mighty voice proclaims his manhood's power! See where, with many a dallying, coy delay, With shining band of silver he enclasps A village, on yon willow-margined isle! And yonder, miles away, his mighty lance Hath pierced a town's invulnerable walls! Huge mill-wheels beat his rushing tide to foam, And the Briarian armed Titan — Steam, With mighty muscles and sharp steely teeth, Fuming uprears his front to hold him fast, THE RIVER AND THE BOOK. 43 But with unconquerable potency, Each turn and fret but adding to his power, The glorious river seaward rolls, the pride Of populous states, whom his charmed girdle gives Pre-eminence and sceptered sovereignty In the great realms of Commerce and of Trade. Behold in this the story of a rill! Once but a silver thread of dew-drops, spun By a blithe fountain-fairy of the hills Mid the fern-fronted mosses at my feet. It wanders on, by myriad fountains fed. And mountain Naiads, who from silver urns Pour tribute in its lap; and gathering strength E'en from the dews dropped from wind-shaken flowers, The rill rolls on, a mighty flood at last. Seeking the grander glory of the sea; Old Ocean smiles upon the kingly guest, And, opening wide his bosom, bids him pour His tribute in his dread abyss, and share. With him co-equal, through eternity His majesty, his beauty, and his might. II. As in the deep heart of the hills, the spring- In secret gathers, drop by drop, to leap Into the light at last and serve its fate. So in the human heart's unmeasured depths Our thoughts distill and gather silently; So from the soul's recesses rise our dreams. And clothe themselves with radiant loveliness Till they become a wonder and a power! Thought cannot be repressed, it will ascend Into the golden upper-world of light. 44 THE RIVER AND THE BOOK. The gates of Night swing outward to the Day When Mind, the subtile seeker, lifts the latch. Swiftly the glittering rills of fancy glide Away into the world, to quicken it, And clothe its wastes with verdure and with bloom ; Imagination, gushing from the soul, Pours forth her flood of golden harmonies — The counterpart of that supernal song Attuned to which the heavenly spheres revolve. But who can trace the luminous tides of thought Down to their secret sources? who make known Their devious windings, and the hidden ways Wherein they reach their goal ? E'en to ourselves Our moods are mysteries, and the birth of thought Is veiled from the profaning gaze of men; We can but wait in wonder and in fear For that celestial messenger — whose hand. Unspeakable splendor flashing, shall disrupt The curtaining darkness and reveal the light — The angel Inspiration! Then the heart Will sate its noble hunger everywhere! From all terrestrial sources shall outflow Pierian waters to delight the soul; The whispering winds shall prompt us to sweet thoughts. The brooks and rivers sing for us, the Sea's Infinite mightiness shall make us mute With sheer excess of adoration; morn. And peaceful evening, and the choiring birds, The ancient Spirit of the mountains, throned Within the magic circle of the stars — Decipherer of the runes of fabled Eld! — The sea-like resonance of surging woods. THE RIVER AND THE BOOK. 45 An insect's chirp, the flutter of a wing — These shall be as a Voice within the soul, An Oracle, declaring holy things, Which we must needs — as God's interpreters — ■ Wisely proclaim, in human words, to men; Aye, the high heart, the nobly fashioned soul. Doth from the dark and terrible derive A precious lesson, which resistlessly Appeals for worthy utterance — from the storms Careering perilous on their wings of fire, From floods, and earthquakes; from the good and ill, The warp and woof of our humanity — The wondrous texture which doth make our hearts A deeper mystery than the elements That constitute the universe and garb The heavenly spheres with beauty — from all these The quickened soul absorbs sweet sustenance; These widen evermore her vision's scope. Add to her native powers diviner strength, Profounder depth to feeling's splendid tide; And as the sea's immeasurable gulfs Gather the wealth of countless argosies, The golden jetsam of a thousand years, So doth the soul become the treasure-house Of golden thoughts and princely purposes. Of glorious themes and fair imaginings — These from the spirit's iridescent deeps The plastic hand of Genius takes and shapes To an harmonious whole, and lo. The Book Hath its celestial birth! a child of Time And yet co-heir of Immortality — Wherein the crown and scepter of the go4 Within us reigning are made palpable 46 THE RIVEK AND THE BOOK. To human apprehension! the supreme Embodiment of our most god-like gifts — Reason and Ideality! twin powers That from their everlasting throne, the Book, Shall teach and rule the hearts and souls of men Till mind and matter (their inseparate tides Blent indistinguishably) merge at last With the eternal Mind — the Spirit-Sea Whose unimaginable glory holds. In circling light, the shoreless Universe. ALEXANDER AT GATCHINA. §LL-FATED scion of the mighty Czars! What profit thee thy sceptre and thy crown ? The dazzling splendors of thy high renown ? Imperial blazonry and bauble stars ? Show me in all thy realms a rustic clown Would give his hovel for thy gilded bars! What wouldst thou give, O terror-haunted King! For that with which thy meanest hinds are blest — Bright days of peace, and nights of perfect rest ? The freedom of a bird upon the wing! The love that dwelleth in the humblest nest! Or aught that doth make life a blessed thing. I pity thee, thou death's-head mask of State! Mock Majesty! that tremblest on thy throne, And canst not even call thy life thine own; Ah! keen and sleepless are the eyes of Hate- — Hide where thou wilt, her dogs will run thee down, Doomed victim of inexorable Fate! RESURGAM. /Q[ WFUL Death! inexorable ^o Pursuivant of Destiny! Sometime shall thy face confront me, Thy cold hand be laid on me; Somewhere shall this mortal vestment Holder back to dust again, Blent with the forgotten ashes Of a myriad other men; Be it so! This dissolution Shall be wondrous gain for me — Somewhere in yon shining heavens, I shall live eternally ; And my Spirit's voided vestment, Changed by heavenly alchemy Into robe of radiant glory. Sometime I again shall see. Come, then, Death, great Liberator! Smiling I will welcome thee. Bless thy hand, that sets the captive Singing soul within me free. THE LEGEND OF SAINT FRIDOLIN. [From ScheffeVs "■ Der Trovipeter von Soekkingen." — Canto III. §WIMS a barque upon the ocean, Strange in sail and strange in pennant, Speeding to the shores of Gallia, And beside the helm a pallid Man in monkish garb is sitting. Dull and doleful, like a song of Lamentation, sounds the language Of the strangers, pilgrim prayers Blending with the cries of sailors, Celtic sounds of ancient Erin, Of the Emerald Island, are they, And the little vessel beareth Fridolin, the Gospel-herald. " Mourn and weep not, dearest mother. Not with battle-ax or falchion Will thy son achieve his glory — Other times need other weapons. Faith and Love my shield and helm are. Unto my Redeemer faithful To the heathen I must hasten, Celtic blood impels me onward. In a dream I saw before me Foreign land and foreign mountains, Virgin stream with verdant island. Almost fair as mine own Erin; Thither pointed the Lord's finger, Thither now goes Fridolinus." 50 THE LEGEND OF SAINT FRIDOLIN. Forth upon his holy mission, With a few devout companions, Fared the pious Fridolinus; O'er the wide Atlantic waters Speeds his ship to Gallia's shores. And at Paris sits King Chlodwig — Smiling said he to the pilgrims: " Have but little use for friars. Nor for saints much predilection, But since all too close the cursed Sharp spears of the Alemanni Whistled by my ears at Zuelpich, I think somewhat better of you — For to the inevitable Even kings must bow, and hence I Grant you passport and protection Wheresoever you may journey; In particular I commend you To the Alemanni heathens Of the Upper-Rhine — rude fellows Are they all, and stubborn-headed; Change me these to pious people." So these godly men pursued their Toilsome way toward Helvetia, Where began their earnest labor. And the Cross' sacred symbol At the Saentis' foot they planted. And beside the Suabian sea. Jura's rugged side descending, Fridolin beheld the ruins Of Augusta Raiiracorum^ Roman walls — the crumbling pillars Of the temple of Serapis THE LEGEND OF SAINT FRIDOLIN. 51 Tower'd still above the rubbish Cover'd vesture of the valley, But the god's cell and the altar With the thistle's thorny web was Rankly overspun and hidden, And an Alemanni peasant, Whose progenitor had, maybe. Slain the last of all the priests who Served the altar of Serapis, Had affixed the sacred symbol Of the god, a basalt steer's head, High upon his cow-pen's gable. This saw Fridolin — devoutly Crossed himself, and journey'd gladsome Onward, up the shining river. It was evening; many a weary Mile the godly man had wander'd. When he came where wide the river's Rushing current forked, and midway In the green flood gleamed an island, Smiling welcome at the stranger. (Like a sack upon the water It appeared, and hence the natives — Little noted for refinement In comparisons — had named it. In rude phrase, /S'acco?^^wm.) It was evening; sweet the larks sang, And from out the river flashing Leaped the fishes, and the heart of Fridolin was filled with gladness. On his knees he fell, and prayed he; For the island he had dreamed of Long ago, lay there before him. And he praised the Lord in Heaven. 52 THE LEGEND OF SAINT FRIDOLIN. Doubtless many another son of Mortal dust, since then, hath dreamed of Some green island, fair and peaceful, Whereon it were bliss to nestle, And the weary heart might feast on Sabbath peace and woodland quiet; Many a one with yearning bosom Maketh quest, but when his wand'ring Feet seem close upon his dream-land, Suddenly it f adeth from him. As in southern skies the wondrous Mirage of the fay Morgana. Here, upon a rude raft crossed the Pilgrim, and the savage boatman Dubious shook his head, and marvel'd. Rough the island; in the swampy Soil the linden grew and alder; On the pebble-covered shore stood Ancient willows, and a few rude Straw-thatched hovels; there in summer, When the migratory salmon From the North Sea up the Rhine swam, Lurked the Alemanni fishers. Spear in hand, among the osiers. Undismayed the priest began his Labors, and on firm foundation Soon his block-house stood completed, And the cross of Christ before it; When his tiny bell at twilight Rang out clear: Ave Maria! Far and wide, and at the cross' THE LEGEND OF SAINT FRIDOLIN. 53 Foot the holy man was kneeHng, Crowds would gather by the river, Shyly gazing at the island. Sullen were the Alemanni, Once the Roman gods they hated, And they hated now the Frank's God, Who upon their host at Zuelpich Like a thunder-bolt had fallen. When on winter nights the master Yawned and lolled upon his bear-skin, And the female folk were busy With their tongues in household gossip: How the milk had turned to clabber, And the roof was struck by lightning. How upon the chase the boar's tooth Grievously had fleshed a youngster; Then the Alemanni grandam Meditatively would answer: " No one else but yonder pallid Praying stranger on the island. Is the cause of these disasters. Put your trust not in the Frank's God, Put your trust not in King Chlodwig! " And they feared and shunned the stranger. Once upon a solstice feast-day, Landed they upon his island, There to drink, as was the custom. Out of huge jugs their methegUn, And they sought the priest to slay him. But on that day he was absent On a journey down the river. " We will leave the pale-face," said they, "i\ memorial of our feast-day! " 54 THE LEGEXD OF SAi^sT FKIDOLIN. And upon the humble hut of Fridolinus flew the fire-brands, Through the flames rejoicing leap'd they Crying: " Hail and praise be Wodan!" From afar all this the grandam Gladsome saw — and in the fire-glow Baleful shone her wrinkled features. Fridolin returned, and sadly Smiling gazed upon the ruin, And he said: " We are made stronger By our trials and afflictions, And for this, O Lord! I thank thee." And anew he built his dwelling, Finding a sure way to reach the Rude hearts of his neighbors; children Hearken'd first, and then the women, To his words of love, and many a Grim-browed man would nod approval As he listened, when he showed them How his countrymen in Erin Defter, surer, caught the salmon, When he sang of olden legends. How upon the Caledonian Cliffs had hotly raged the battle With the Roman, and how Fingal Fought and vanquished Caracalla. And they said thereat: " A mighty God must be the one who sent this Man among us, and a good God, For his herald's presence brings us Luck in fishing." And in vain the Grandam groaned her eerie warning: " Put your trust not in the Frank's God, Put your trust not in King Chlodwig! " THE LEGEND OF SAINT FRIDOLIN. 00 Yea, the rugged hearts he won and Willingly, albeit slowly. They began to learn the lesson That he taught them — how the giving Is more blessed than the taking. Suffering nobler still than slaying, And of all the gods the highest He, the holy Crucified One. Thus a year passed; 'twas Palm Sunday — Round about from all the hillsides Came the people, and their skiffs sped To the isle of Fridolinus. Peacefully they laid aside their Swords, and shields, and battle-axes, And the romping children pluck'd the Violets on the river margin. From his cloister, clad in priestly Vestment, forth came Fridolinus, And beside him the companions Who from far had come to meet him, Gallus from Helvetia; from the Boden See, Saint Columban; And the multitude of converts Led they to the river, wherein They baptized them in the triune Name of Father, Son, and Spirit. She alone came not, the sullen Ancient grandam, to the island Of good Fridolinus — saying: " Have no need for new gods, now that Life is closing; with the ancient Gods have I been well contented. They were kind alway and gracious, 56 . THE LEGEND OP SAINT FRIDOLIN. Gave me my brave husband, Siegbert; When I come to die I would not Meet with him again, and all my Soul goes out to him in yearning; Lay my bones to rest beneath the Mistletoe twined pine-tree, in the Forest, where the mystic mandrake Sprouts in secret; but I wish no Crucifix to mark my grave-mound; Let its blessing be for others." On that very day, however. Was the convent's and the city's Corner-stone laid by their founder, Fridolinus, and apace his Work grew up and flourished — greatly Was he honored by the people. When again he entered Paris, And the royal court of Chlodwig, At the sovereign's right hand sat he, And the island, and much other Land adjacent to the convent By the gracious King was granted. Yea, a mighty Saint became he. Do you know the legend of the Court-day, and of dead Count Ursus, Pictured still in carven image Standing at the church's portal ? Yea, a mighty Saint became he. As their Patron-saint the people Of the Rhine-land yet revere him. And the peasant on the mountains Christens still his first-born " Fridli." FLOWER AND STAR. ^ c) The soul's divinest feeling, When from the heart's imprisoning cells — Where, waiting long, she listening dwells — Love leaps, her heavenly charms revealing! Semi-Chorus. Hark! Hark! The wind, that sinks and swells Over the hills and dells, Wafts the wedding bells' soft pealing — Hark! Hark! The wedding bells! The merry, merry wedding bells! How sweet! How clear They chime! O, hear! Chorus. They seem not far, they seem not near; Their music wanders here and there; As if in their rejoicing. Their transport's wondrous voicing, They knew not end or measure, Intent to pour their treasure Of bliss on every living thing, And swing! And ring! Till all the happy world shall hear The glad evangel that they bear, The golden song they sing! NECROPOLIS. ^T is all the same cQI To the sleepers in the graves, Whether on hill and plain, Spring's wreathed banner waves, Or the lark's entrancing tune Pours joy, like a silver rain, From the heaven of June; Or whether the wind, that kills Beauty with icy breath. Moans loud on the lifeless heath, Or dark on a thousand hills Loom shadows of death. It is all the same To the sleepers in the graves, Whether men praise or blame. Die freemen, or live slaves; They have mastered the mystery Of Life— of its joy or pain- Yea, the dead are free! And their dust even singeth songs, In language sweeter than chords Of harps which the winds lend words- Ah! did we but heed the tongues Of these holy hoards! There is peace and rest With the sleepers in the graves- Delightful thought and blest. How sweetly sorrow's waves Are quieted by thee! As the halcyon's soothing breast 66 NECROPOLIS. Calms the clamorous Sea. O, Angel of Death! O Time! Star-born, inseparate pair! When, when will ye bid me share The rest and the peace divine Of the sleepers, there ? THE LESSON OF THE LEAF. " We all do fade as the leaf" Who scoffs these sympathies Makes mock of the divinity within ; Nor feels he, gently breathing through his soul, The universal spirit. fN sun and star light shimmering, And fanned by zephyr's silken wing, Ah! what a blithe and beauteous thing, Dead leaf, wert thou; All through the summer's merry time Rejoicing still, or rain or shine, Upon the bough. Resplendent o'er thine airy home Arose the sky's majestic dome — Had never king upon the throne Such canopy! The bliss divine of sun and moon. Of stars, and song, and fragrant bloom, Was given to thee. And blew from east, or blew from west, Sudden the wanton whirHng blast, Thy trembling tender form to wrest From its frail hold. As for his child a father would. The oak the tempest's wrath withstood. And held thee and thy sisterhood Safe in the fold. 68 THE LESSON OF THE LEAF. So pure, so gay, so fair a sprite! Born of the season of delight, With all the winsome grace bedight It could bestow — Ah! who that saw thee in thy prime Thought of the fate that would be thine, And that the deadly hand of Time Would lay thee low? How short thy life — how soon decay Its light and beauty swept away, " To dumb f orgetfulness a prey " For evermore! Thy dust, blown by the whistling wind, In the cold earth will burial find. With myriad millions of thy kind, Long gone before. A wind-blown, worthless thing — and yet More costly than a coronet. To him who in his heart shall set The golden thought Which, like a precious jewel, lies Beneath th}^ perishing disguise — The magic stone the worldly-wise So long have sought. Like thine our youth is fresh and green; Our summer time a merry scene; The sky is bright with wondrous sheen, Our path with flowers; What splendor circles our estate! How leaps the heart, with hope elate! How little do we dream of fate, And wintry hours! THE LESSO^N OF THE LEAF. 69 But well thou tellest, little leaf, Life's pride is vain, its glory brief ! Cold blow the whirling blasts of grief, And lay us low; Death comes to palace and to cot; Our dust will share the common lot, And Oh, how soon it is forgot Beneath the snow! Learn from the lesson of the leaf That death is sure, that life is brief ; And foolish he whose ear is deaf. And hath not caught With subtile sense the solemn sound, The perfect harmony profound Of Nature, lifting round by round The soul to God. TRUST AND CONTENT. t SWEET Content! O, perfect Trust! 1 Through you I but the merrier sing When days are dark, and soon you bring My burdened soul from out the dust, As through the garden's icy crust The flowers come at the call of Spring. Abide with me forevermore! And make my soul your dwelHng-place ; Endow me with Love's sovereign grace, Her strength divine and holy lore. Teach me to walk in humbleness The pathway of mine earthly days, Till, landed on the heavenly shore. Time and its trials shall be o'er. To God my soul — to you my dust O, sweet Content! O, perfect Trust! WE MEET AGAIN. |HIS is the song the Spirit sings, The burden of its glad refrain, When, mounting on celestial wings, It seeks the source from whence it came. When, soaring to the skies, it sings: "Beyond the grave we meet again; " And though it wounds the loving heart To feel we meet on earth no more. The loved, from whom we here must part. Will greet us on a fairer shore. Where we will clasp them heart to heart, And live and love for evermore ! THE ERL-KING. [From the German of Gcethe.'] /I^HE Erlkoenig, or Ei'lenhoenig , as it is written in roN^German, is the name applied to a personified nat- ural power, or elementary spirit, which, according to German poetical authorities, prepares mischief or ruin for mankind, especially for children, through delusive seductions. The term, very probably, signifies " King of the Elves." It is asserted in legendary lore, that this goblin haunts the " Black Forest," one of the most beautiful and picturesque mountainous districts of Thuringia, in South Germany. The existence of such elementary spirits, and their connection with mankind, have, in the earliest times, occupied the imagination of the most widely different races. The Erl-king was introduced into German poetry from the sagas of the North, through Herder's transla- tion of the Danish ballad of " Sir Olaf and the Erl- king's Daughter," and has become universally known through Goethe's ballad of the " Erl-koenig." Who rideth so late through the tempest wild ? It is the father and his child ; He holds the boy close in his arm — He holds him safely, he holds him warm. " My son, why hide you your face in fear ? " " Do you not see the Erl-king there ? The Erl-king, father, with crown and train — " " Son, 'tis the fog-drift on the plain." THE ERL-KING. 73 " Thou darling child, come, go with me — In merry sports I'll frolic with thee. Flowers brightly blooming thou shalt behold ; My mother hath many a robe of gold ! " " My father, my father, and hear not you What Erl-King hath whisper'd that he will do ? " " Be quiet, my child, rest still and at ease — In the withered branches murmurs the breeze." " Say, dainty boy, willt thou go with me ? My daughters will wait on thee royally; My daughters nightly gay festivals keep, They'll rock thee, and swing thee, and sing thee to sleep." " My father, my father, and see you not Erl-King's daughters in yonder dark spot ? " " My son, my son, I see it all — yea. Yon hoary old willows shining so gray." " I love thee — thy beauty entrances me quite, And art thou not willing, then yield to my might ! " " My father, my father, he grasjDeth my arm — Erl-King, father, hath done me a harm." In terror the father rideth with haste. His moaning child by his arms embraced; The court he gains with toil and dread — Upon his bosom the child lay dead. FRUITION. ©ET thy life be like the day, ^tL Dying 'mid the sunset's roses — Fairest when about thy way Death's eternal shadow closes; Let it be like summer-time, Season of supernal splendor! Full of promises divine. Love, and joy, and music tender; Like the autumn let it be. When the world's aglow with beauty- Rich with golden sheaves, for thee Ripened in the fields of Duty. WINTER-MORNING. [F7^om the German of Karl Knortz.\ fWOKE, a dream of deep delight Had poured celestial splendor o'er me — O, blessed be, thou winter night, The land of Eden lay before me! The window was abloom with bowers Wherein familiar airs were ringing, The meadow luminous with flowers, And thousand summer birds were singing; A murmuring brooklet on its way Toward the forest's friendly cover. Running its path with prattling play Beneath the hedges, bending over; Two lovers by the forest's brink Reclined, with Love's sweet languor smitten- Enough! on yonder panes, I think. All of my dream in frost is written. CHRISTMAS CAROL. ING, happy bells! ^\3 With links of harmony Encircle earth and sky; Pour golden floods of music from your cells! Ring, happy bells! Ring, happy bells! With grand, majestic voice, Shout to the hills : "Rejoice! In purple clad, and crowned, salute the morn! " Ring, happy bells! Ring, happy bells! Let vale, and grove and plain. Repeat your sweet refrain : "Be glad ! be glad ! to-day was Jesus born! " Ring, happy bells! Ring, happy bells! What joy — for glory shed On Bethlehem's manger-bed — From out your pealing bosoms trembling swells ! Ring, happy bells! Ring, happy bells! Of chains asunder burst That bound us, sin-accurs'd, Each jubilant iron tongue acclaiming tells! Ring, happy bells! CHRISTMAS CAEOL. 77 Ring, happy bells! Ring in the blessed morn When Christ, the Lord, was born, Whose holy name all other names excels! Ring, happy bells! Ring, happy bells! Till time itself shall cease Proclaim the Prince of Peace, And laud his name to races yet unborn! Ring, happy bells! Ring, happy bells! Lead with your pealing tongues The nations' choral songs. That heavenward soar on this memorial morn! Ring, happy bells! HOWARD HEROES. fHE Howard nurse is only mentioned in the papers as " one of twenty-five " arriving on such a date, or " one of twenty " who are dead. His name nobody knows. If he falls, his friends only learn of it because he fails to return. In the future there is to be no roll- call of a victorious army, with the proud answer to his name, " Dead upon the field of honor." He gives his life for some plague-stricken wretch, where there is none but God to know. — New York Tribune. " Dead upon the field of honor " — Sweet and clear the legend rings Through the music of the ages, And the song the poet sings. Telling of the mighty heroes Fallen in the strife of kings. Loud the trumpet wails its sorrow O'er the ashes of the slain. And the thunder of the cannon, And the hoarse drum's hollow strain, Voice a nation's saddened triumph On the battle's fateful plain; And upon the storied column, That a grateful nation rears As a landmark of its glory, Lo ! each hero's name appears, And the laurel wreaths that twine it Loyal hearts bedew with tears. HOWARD llEEOES. 79 But who mourneth for the heroes Who, at Duty's sacred call, God -commissioned, calm, undaunted Leave the hovel and the hall, To confront the yellow cohorts Of the Angel of the Pall ? Where for these the golden glamour Art and Song and Story shed ? Pomp and peans, proud orations. Solemn requiems for the dead ? Or the storied column grandly Soaring from the narrow bed ? When, at last, this Spartan phalanx — In the dread, unequal fray With Azrael's ruthless legions Battling bravely, night and day — Like ripe grain beneath the sickle Falling, melt in death away ; On the altar of high duty, Immolated — laying down Life and hope, and every jewel Of their being's robe and crown ; Dying with the dying wretches Of the plague-devoured town ? Ah ! they need no storied columns, Such as tell the pride of kings ; Pomp and peans, proud orations, Were for these but idle things — Deeds of such immortal splendor Soar to Heaven on seraph wings! 80 HOWARD HEROES. Nameless heroes! Noble martyrs! How sublime is your repose! How you died, and dying conquered More than fame, no record shows — At the Day of Judgment, angels Shall the mystery disclose. NEW YEAR'S EYE. ^OW shall we speed the Old Year out, And greet the New Year, coming in? With wassail, dance and noisy rout? With clinking glass, and banquet din? Shall wanton Circe weave her spells And ply at will her wizard wand? Shall Bacchus bring his satyr band? And Folly ring his foolscap bells? Back Circe! with thy viper wand; Bacchus, begone! Thy brutish band With riot shall not curse the land; Go, Folly! change thy court-fool dress, For garb of sense and soberness; On one day of the year, at least, Herd not with demon and with beast; Approach not with thy Bacchant rout, Thy motley retinue of Sin, When we would speed the Old Year out, And greet the New Year, coming in; Far otherwise. Old Year! shall be The parting we would have with thee, Gray pilgrim to Eternity. Turn we the pages of the past, And read in silence, first to last, The records which the passing year Hath writ imperishably there; How many a page is blurred with tears, And interlined with doubts and fears! 6 82 NEAV teak's eve. How many a worthless blank appears, Mementoes sad of fruitless hours, Neglected duties, wasted powers! How frequently between the lines, We meet with freakful Folly's signs! When recklessly we crushed the flowers That bloomed, to bless us and to cheer. Along the pathway of the year. We mind not now the tears, the pain. The summer's showers, the winter's rain, For but for these much golden grain Would dormant in our hearts have lain, Which now the reaper's scythe shall know- They made the roots of Purpose grow Firm 'round the rock-fast soul below. And many a fragrant flower arose From out the ashes of our woes; And as for fear, and sham, and doubt. That blot the pages roundabout, Time's hand will surely wipe them out! But Oh ! these dreadful blanks, that stand Accusing ghosts in Memory's land, Pointing to wrecks that strew the strand, These will not at our bidding go. Nor vanish with the winter's snow. Gray pilgrim to Eternity! Shall we in vain appeal to thee To hide these specters from our eyes, And leave to us their lessons wise? Ah! heed our penitential sighs Before thy brief existence ends. Our future yet shall make amends — • NEW year's eve. 83 Come, come, Old Year, let's part as friends! For lo! upon the threshold stand, Faith, Hope and Love, linked hand to hand, Bright heralds from the Heavenly Land! And I must haste to let them in, Already their sweet songs begin: A tender, solemn song, to suit the sadness That doth befit the parting hour of friends — • A blithesome song, of triumph and of gladness. To greet the New Year when the Old Year ends. r^I "IM SCHWARTZ WALD." [From the German.] T was March. And still the Winter c^ Masqueraded; and fantastic Garnished with their icy crystals Low the boughs hung; here and yonder From the ground their tiny heads raised Primrose and anemone. As out o'er the deluge direful Father Noah sent the white dove, So the ice-encumbered earth sends, Restless, forth her firstling flowerets Dubious, deeming the Oppressor On his death-bed may be lying. From the mountain-ridges rushing Cometh Master Storm- wind, blust'ring; Downward to the darksome pine-wood Hies he, saying: " Friends, I greet you! Well you know why I am coming. — Faith, because from some one's head I Knock a hat oif, people fancy I come but to terrify them. Tush! that were a pretty business, Cracking chimneys, breaking windows. Straw-roofs sudden skyward whirling. Gown of grandam toss and tousel Till she cross herself affrighted. Calling on the saints to help her — Nay, my friends, you know me better! Me, the Scavenger of Spring, who ., " IM SCHWARTZWALD." 85 Sweeps away the foul and rotten, The worm-eaten tears to splinters, Earth from all defilement cleanses, That my radiant lord and master Worthily his realm may enter. I my secret will reveal to You, my stately forest comrades, Who with front of iron ofttimes, And defiant, brave my onset. To whose boles I am indebted For the blue marks on my skull here — Spring himself is coming! and when Every sprig and bough shall bourgeon, Lark and blackbird carol joyous. Warmly on your head the sun shines, Then remember me, the Courier Of the Spring, whom you to-day see Speeding onward in his service." But the pine-trees took his homage In high dudgeon; from the tree-tops Sharp and scornful rings the answer: *'Get thee gone, ill-manner'd fellow! We desire not thy acquaintance. And regret that gentle masters Should employ such boorish servants; Surly fellow, leave us! Hunt the Alps about for nuts, and crack them; There, of barren precipices, Ask, sir, friendly entertainment." THE MEADOW BROOK. f meadow brook! that roamest ) So blithe and free, Bearing thy silver tribute To the far sea, Wilt thou reveal the secret — If such it is — That giveth to thy spirit Its endless bliss? On thy green margin musing In shine and shade, I know that time no changes In thee hath made; For aye thy placid waters Will glide along, Still singing, singing, singing, The same sweet song. Explain the mystic meaning Of Life to me ? Shall human hearts be never From sorrow free? Ah, blithesome, bonny rover To the far sea, Thou makest answer only; "I sing for thee!" ESSAYS Authors, 91 A Perfect Life,- 101 The Melancholy Days, 106 An Age of Progress, 110 At The Threshold, 114 "Happy New Year," 119 What is a Communist? 123 Child and Poet, 128 Victor Hugo and Woman's Rights, 132 The Truth of Fiction, 136 Immortal, 140 Macaulay on Democracy, 144 Religion and Science, 152 Pot-pourri, . . 156 AUTHORS. "An author ! 'Tis a venerable name ! How few deserve it, and what numbers claim ! Unblest with sense above their peers refined, Who shall stand up, dictators to mankind? Nay, who dare shine, if not in Virtue's cause? That sole proprietor of just applause." '^HAT- erudite, colossal-brained Jupiter tonans in f^^c* the realm of English letters, Dr. Samuel Johnson, declared that " the chief glory of every people arises from its authors." Of course he meant — he could only mean — good, wise, pure-hearted and noble-minded authors, whose works are wholesome in their effects upon the minds and hearts of their readers. He meant writers whose pens are a potent force in human life for the promotion of virtue in all its forms, and who help Civilization in the achievement of whatsoever is best, truest and most beautiful, within reach of the human soul. In this sense Dr. Johnson's declaration is axiomatic. Deplorable indeed is the fact, that the high duties of authorship are often neglected, and the power of the pen made to serve ignoble purposes. How lamentable it is that Genius should suffer himself to become the slave of Vice, the dupe of Craft, the hired drudge of Falsehood! Thus degraded, how deep the shame of authorship — how vilely shorn of its glory ! The greater the power, the persuasiveness, the beauty of argument and rhetoric employed by Genius in his fallen estate, the more pernicious will be the work, the more delete- rious the influence exercised upon the life of the age. 92 AUTHORS. the darker will be the shadow cast upon the history of the people among whom he fulfills his evil purposes. With this exception duly considered, the rule, as stated by Dr. Johnson, that " the chief glory of every people arises from its authors," is irrefutable. Nothing can be nobler than the majesty of noble thoughts, filled with wisdom derived from heavenly sources, brilliant with the inspiration of genius, arranged in harmonious order, embellished with the graces o"f language, and given to the world, as a precious heritage, in the per- manent form of books, which are, as Mrs. Browning tersely says: " The only men That speak aloud for future times to hear." Quaint, child-hearted Charles Lamb, whose sensitive temperament embraced all nature with the tendrils of affection, and to whom the commonest enjoyment of the senses was a blessing to be devoutly grateful for, speaking of saying grace before dinner, remarked: " Why have we not a form of grace for books, those spiritual repasts — a grace before Milton, a grace before Shakespeare, a devotional exercise proper to be said before reading * The Faery Queen ? ' " Good books are, under all circumstances, a blessing for which we can never be thankful enough. A home that is without them lacks one of the main elements of genuine domestic happiness. The light that radiates from a good book shines with a steady flame; the dark- est cloud of misfortune cannot deprive us of its warmth and luster; nay, the light becomes brighter by contrast with the surrounding gloom. There is no selfishness in the counsel given by a good book; it is not influenced by the poverty or wealth, the humble or exalted rank, AUTHORS. 93 of him who asks. Good books are the friends of in- genuous Childhood, the bosom companions of Manhood's ardent prime, the solace of the retrospective heart of Old Age. They are the same gems of truth, in the palace or in the hut — no matter what their setting may be; and, borne aloft by the magical power of genius to the pinnacle of some grand, sky-piercing thought, beg- gar and prince — looking from that stand-point into the illimitable beyond of Time and Eternity — become pro- foundly conscious of the fact that, as souls, they are equals, and that " the rauk is but the guinea's stamp, The man's the gold for a' that." The author of a good book is a benefactor of man- kind. He is a creator of ideas, and ideas are deathless. Therefore, he has a just claim upon immortality. Greater is he than the victor in a hundred battles; mightier than the conqueror of a nation. These men overcome the material only; they control bodies; their success is confined to the perishable. But the Power whose symbol is the pen is limitless;* it controls the human will by divine and indisputable right ; its victo- ries are the victories of peace, which are worthy of far higher renown than the victories of war; its field of operation is the inconceivably glorious world of the spiritual; it does not destroy bodies — it builds up the souls of men. Whatsoever is best in the work per- formed by this Power is beyond the reach of decay; it is so deeply bedded in the heart of Humanity, that it becomes indissolubly a part of it; it is a deathless thing, blest of heaven forevermore. Time touches only to adorn it, just as the invisible fingers of the passing Years clothe with beauty the forms of venera- 94 AUTHORS. ble ruins, hiding the destructive effects of the elements with fresh and fragrant .greenery, and adorning their rugged fronts, night and day, with the glory of Sum- mer blossoms, or the dazzling jewelry of the Winter- King. Who, then, can refuse to pay homage to this trans- cendent Power ? What man or woman, divinely com- missioned to wield the scepter of creative Art, will not acknowledge the force of Wordsworth's claim for its excellence ? In the fine sonnet addressed to the artist Hayden, he says: " High is our calling, friend ! Creative art (Whether the instrument of words she use, Or pencil pregnant with etherial hues), Demands the service of a mind and heart Heroically fashioned." It may come to pass, in the course of time, that it will be imjDossible to ascertain precisely the paternity of a work, or the name and birthplace of the author, or to state the particular circumstances under which the work was conceived and written. Every authentic trace of these things may pass from the memory of man, buried under the gray dust of the moldering ages; yea, the substance of the work may have wasted away to a single and tiny gem in the world's treasury of Legend and Song, yet its spiritual effect will be intact; with protean adaptability it may have assumed a thousand different forms, but in each the light of its truth will shine as brightly, the fragrance of the thought will be as fresh and sweet, its ability to move the heart will be as potent, as in the golden day of its birth within the soul of the author. The trophies of war are worthless; the flames of implacable hate will shrivel the blood-flecked laurels; AUTHORS. 95 the tears of orphans and widows will, eventually, turn the wine of victory into the gall and poison of remorse — and its monuments are cuf ses in stone. Science would achieve her triumphs in vain, but for the preservative power of literature, which embalms in humble " print- er's ink " the precious results of the discoveries made in the arcana of Nature. Brief would be the triumph of impassionate oratory, and circumscribed the power of speech in thrilling the hearts of a people and direct- ing the course of empire, did not the omnipresent pen catch the silver-ringing words as they fall from the melodious tongue, and rescue them from oblivion by fixing the celestial images they portray imperishably upon the printed page. Talk of the might of imperial sceptres! The might of one word is sometimes immeasurably greater, and becomes " A voice that in the distance far away Wakens the slumbering ages." Crowns and banners are the trumpery of a passing masquerade. They amuse for a time. They cause the idle to stare and to wonder; they flatter the vain. Ignorance adores them as symbols of divinely derived might, and of mysteries that must be dreaded but can never be solved. The crafty use them for the accom- plishment of selfish schemes of aggrandizement — the wise alone despise them. Measured by the conceit of lofty station, how great is the difference between the bare-footed churl, who drives his master's cattle afield, and the crowned and purple-robed monarch, sitting upon his throne! In death — how equal! Nay, placed in the scales the churl's dust may outweigh the monarch's. 96 AUTHORS. Talk of glory in connection with the empty pomp of fortune, or the perilous accidency of political exalta- tion, or the unsatisfying, cloying fruits of wasted riches! Ah, such glory is " Figured in the moon ; they all wax dull And suffer their eclipses in the full." The glory of the mind, only, is true glory. Thought, the child of the Soul, is immortal. The sceptre of Fame is the pen. Wise Doctor Johnson! well hast thou said: " The chief glory of every people arises from its authors." Variable conditions characterize the trivial as w^ell as the important affairs and circumstances of individuals and of nations. In the case of the individual this ebb and flow in the tide of events may be manifest in a month or a year; but in the slowly accumulating his- tory of a nation, the development of these changes may require a century. In like manner genius is subject to changing moods, and there is an ebb-tide and a flood-tide in the world of Intellect. The literary value of an age is to be com- puted by the standard furnished by either of these phenomenons. It happens in the history of a people that its native genius will fall into a state of dormancy. A strange lassitude, a baleful torpor, creep over and paralyze the forces of intellectual energy; the wing of its spirit seems to be broken. A vast and arid expanse of mediocrity extends over the entire period, with, per- haps, here an eminence, apparently lost in the wilder- ness, and there a solitary spring, with its waters of truth wasting away unheeded in the sands. This uninteresting period may be followed by one of AUTHORS. 97 imposing intellectual activity. Imagination, resuming the robes of its celestial rank, will mount to the " high- est heaven of invention," there to hold familiar com- munion with the Spirit of Beauty in her divinest "forms. The history of every civilized nation shows these variations of the literary barometer, this decrease and increase of the mental forces. A single century may witness the gradual decay of a nation's literary potency. The crystalline waters of the Pierian fountain may gradually diminish in volume, dwindling in their ancient channels until shallows only, and barren sands, and the crumbling wrecks of former splendor, shall remain visible. In the succeeding century the fresh fountains of Thought will again be unsealed; the transparent and sparkling waters of the soul will gush from a thousand hidden springs; the swelling current will rush impetu- ously into the dry channels, and fill them; the waste of sands, the stagnant pools of mediocrity, will disappear. The broadening tide, overcoming every obstacle, shall again rise and crinkle around the beacon-like monu- ments of the past. By the force of rejuvenated intel- lect trophies of intellectual success will again be placed even upon the utmost verge of the attainable. Genius, living in the light and freedom of its royal estate, shall again create works, the peer of any that shine down upon us from the Walhallas of past centuries; nay, that shall be superior even to these, viewed in the purer light of the present, and measured by the stand- ards of increased experience and broader culture. No employment is more congenial to a contemplative mind, or more useful in many material respects, than the study of the literary annals oi a people. Such a 7 98 AUTHORS. study will furnish us with means by which the moral standing of a people can be accurately tested. More- over, the facts of intellectual development, thus ob- tained, will direct us no less clearly and significantly to the ascertainment of that people's relative political position. By this unfailing test the proper place of any people in the ranks of the grand phalanx of onward marching nations can be determined. Nor are th^ results of a wise and consistent study of this kind less interesting and valuable when the mind of the student occupies itself, exclusively, with the measurement of a people's religious and aesthetical progress. Let the student of literature enter the libraries of our own people with the spirit of a devout learner. Let him carefully examine the mental food prepared for our people by the press. Let him judge, fairly and criti- cally, the taste of the masses, as indicated by the quality of the literature circulating among them. By doing this he will not fail to arrive at a point whence he can satisfactorily survey the entire field of the mental and moral culture of the day, and ascertain the influence of the above mentioned elements upon the life and man- ners of the people. Very subtle indeed is the growth of the moral forces that successfully uphold the foundation-pillars of a State. Equally subtle are the evil influences that oper- ate against these sustaining forces, and which, unless counteracted in time, or promptly neutralized, tend to the gradual subversion of social order and the de- struction of material prosperity. A clear-headed, deep-thinking observer of a people's literature, will hold the key to results which to others will be wholly unaccountable events. AUTHORS. 99 In this connection it is proper to say that it is con- sistent with both theory and experience to hold, that a people who seek satisfaction and pleasure mainly in the gratification of selfish purposes ; to whom the ex- ercise of the grosser avocations of life is more congen- ial than the pursuit of aims which enlighten the mind, exalt the soul, and purify the heart ; a people resting contented in the worship of Mammon, who would rather lay sacrificial offerings upon the dark shrines of the Passions, than to sit at the feet of the apostles of Truth, or to listen to the sweet and blessed evangels of the chaste Spirit of Letters — in short, a people disin- clined to admit the unquestionable truth of the maxim that a people's chief glory lies in its authors, is one that will, of necessity, suffer degradation by such inju- dicious contempt for the superior claims of the pur- suits of the intellect. Willful blindness to the fadeless charms of literature is strong evidence of moral decay. Intellect, thoroughly cultivated, with all its splendid faculties consecrated to the service of " the True, the Good and the Beautiful," is a king v>^hose right to rule the world is a divine and unquestionable right. The ruler in the Empire of Mind has limitless dominion, and the loyal hearts of men are his subjects. He rules by wisdom, and commands by love. His throne is the earth. The lordly elements, the imperial potencies of nature, are his ministers. The mysterious operations, the holy and omnipotent influences of the spirit-world, obey his call, and unquestioningly fulfill the behests of their master. The gems that gleam and flash around his forehead, are the crown-jewels of Heaven. He is independent of time and of space. Innumerable cycles of ages feel the effects of his presence, and own the 100 AUTHORS. plastic power of his will. Eternity alone is broad enough, and deep enough, and wide enough for the full exercise of his sovereign powers. Profound is the wisdom and lofty the sentiment em- bodied in the following words of that grand woman, Mrs. Browning : " We want the touch of Christ's hand upon our literature, as it touched other dead things. We want the sense of the saturation of Christ's blood upon the souls of our poets, that it may cry through them in answer to the ceaseless wail of the sphinx of our Humanity, expounding agony into reno- vation. Something of this kind has been perceived in Art whenever its glory was at the fullest." We can not close without uttering the profound con- viction of our soul that genius, exercising its functions to the utmost, and endowed with every element essential to success in authorship, can never achieve permanent fame, unless the accomplished work shows, unmistak- ably, that the writer is loyally devoted to the cause of Truth. No laurel wreath, won in this arena, shall en- circle with unfading glory the brow of the victor, un- less its leaves have been dipped in the blood of Jesus, and the Spirit of Christianity shall bless it with sanc- tified immortality. A PERFECT LIFE. f PERFECT life is a perfect poem — a poem not only perfect in form, but also in its spiritual qual- ities. A perfect life is like a perfect poem, because it represents the crystallization of the subtle ele- ments of spiritual beauty, the transparent prism reflecting the light of Divine Love, with mellowed glory, upon the hearts of men; it is a revelation of divine truths; it is the embodiment of whatever is Christ-like in human nature. Such a Life-poem is scanned by the rules of Eternal Order; its melody is the song of the stars, joyfully marching around the heavens in everlasting procession. In my opinion this is, or should be, the ideal perfect life. Where shall we iiad it? Does it exist at ail ? There are such lives — buc they are very rare. They are pearls of great price, and, like many another prec- ious thing in this world, are often found where we least expect to find them. We do not look for roses and violets on lofty mountain peaks; scant, indeed, is the room for beauty and fragrance in a world of fear and desolation — we search for them, rather, in sheltered gardens, in secluded valleys, in green fields and shady woodlands. Nor should we search for the perfect human life among those who stand upon the summits of human greatness. Their very exaltation deprives them of the essential symmetry of character, prohibits them from freely discharging the sweet amenities of common life, and hardens their hearts against the softening influences which are the natural outcome of mutual sympathy and dependence. 102 A PJiKFEOT LIFE. The lovely, the serene, the unblemishably pure na- ture, united as it invariably is with extreme sensitive- ness, shrinks from the pomp and glitter, the noise and demonstrativeness, which are the concomitants of earthly grandeur. Such a nature prefers the cool twi- light of sober meditation to the meridian splendor of the turbulent day of our common world. It would rather listen to the still, small voice of contentment, than to the harsh blare of the trumpet, and the clang and clash of arms. It loves to watch the linnet in her nest rather than the majestic eagle in his sunward flight; it holds fellowship with the brook that sparkles and murmurs in the quiet meadow, but flies in dismay from the chasm into whose awful depths the torrent leaps thundering. The poem of a perfect life is the hymn which a soul sings in praise of the incarnation of goodness — sublime, heroic goodness, that ultimate result of virtue which is to be obtained only when human nature has been puri- fied by fire from Heaven, and when the heart has con- secrated itself absolutely to the service of God before the holy altar of Duty. A life thus consecrated seeks for no other adornment than that which Christian rec- titude can give; it labors gladly for the good of others; it despises selfish gain, and the success to be achieved by mercenary and questionable efforts; it prefers to bestow its charities unknown to the world, even though the gift is but a kind word, or a comforting hand be laid, with a murmured blessing, upon the head that is bowed with pain and sorrow, or a cup of cold water be given for Christ's sake. The language spoken by such a life is celestial mel- ody. In the presence of such a life we breathe the A PERFECT LIFE. 103 fragrance of those fields of supernal bliss that lie so far beyond the range of our earthly vision, and within the ineffable glory that circles the empyreal sphere. Such a life, in its splendid reality, is fairer than the fairest vision the poet, " with eye in a fine frenzy rolling " has ever beheld rising from the fathomless depths of his fancy; sweeter than any dream of Arcadia that may come into his soul as he wanders by the margin of pur- ling brooks, or while listening to the golden legends which are whispered by the spirit tongues of the pines, as he sits and watches, with feelings that can not be uttered, the burial of the sun in " old ocean's gray and melancholy waste." What is the substance and sum of such a life? No- ble purposes fruited in noble deeds. It means unwav- eriQg loyalty to duty — duty to God and to man, terms which are indissolubly connected in their meaning; a connection like that of the tree's roots with the crown; bravely and grandly is the crown uplifted into the free light of heaven, the roots, with the tenacity of steel, fastened around the heart of the world; the branches affording grateful shelter in the heat of the day; the fruit sweet and nourishing when the harvest comes. A life of this kind, in the loyal performance of its duty, may be called upon to crucify the dearest hopes of the heart; it may be compelled to see overthrown, in shapeless ruin, the sacred temple wherein it has been wont to worship its beautiful ideals — Oh, the unspeak- able pain of this! Oh, the woful sight of it! Yet from the ashes will rise the phoenix, and more and more starlike will shine the glory of its moral heroism. Never may the world become aware of the cruel, the glorious self-sacrifice — what does it matter ? The peans 104 A PERFECT LIFE. of angels shall praise it, and God will make it manifest in due time. Grander epics are enacted in the humblest spheres of life than were ever written in the golden age of Romance; and the breaking heart-strings of some nameless martyr have made sublimer music than was ever evoked from the wonderful world of harmony by the witching touch of a Handel or a Beethoven. The heart, inspired by such a life, no matter how discouraging the circumstances may be by which it is surrounded, constantly feels that it is more blessed to give than it is to receive. Its gentle ministrations are for the benefit of all, and, like the dews that moisten and fructify the earth, nourish, sweeten and revive all other hearts. It works in silence for the common wel- fare. Its greatest happiness is to see the tender blades, whose rootlets it nourished secretly, shoot upward into the gladsome sunlight, and grow into leafage, and blos- soms and fruit, without even dreaming from whence flow the potent juices that enabled them to thrive so lustily in strength, and beauty, and usefulness. Such a heart, under the sunny sky of its spirit, cul- tivates the most beautiful flowers of love and sentiment for no other purpose than that it may be able to lay them at the feet of some loved one as an offering of devotion, or that it may be able to scatter them over the rugged pathways, and thus make the sharp rocks softer to the touch of some weary wanderer's feet. There is in the very smile of such a heart the charm of inspiration, it gives a new light to the world, and wooes us to attempt, with renewed energy, the ascent of the star-crowned heights of hope and fame. It can trans- mute even our severest afflictions into the fine gold of heavenly thoughts and serene resignation. A PERFECT LIFE. 105 O, blessed forevermore be these angel-hearts ! these glorious lives ! these living epics of god-like deeds ! these tenderest of deathless songs of Life, that breathe the spirit of a divinely fashioned humanity, and prove to the world that its Creator is a God of infinite love, truth, mercy and compassion ! THE MELANCHOLY DAYS. " /^^HE melancholy days have come, the saddest of the njN^ year," sings the poet, and his song is as sweet and pathetic as the voice that speaks to us out of the sea as we stand, musing and dreaming, upon the shore. The moaning of the soul suffering under the immovable burden of the chains of Fate, the sublime peans of faith and triumph w^hicji, from the lifted lips, wing themselves with superhuman heroism into the silent heavens of the Eternal Hereafter, are mingled in this sad, sweet music of humanity. The poet seats himself by the roadside, on the verge of the many-voiced for- est, among the drifted leaves and the bright-eyed autumn flowers, and proceeds to give us his reasons for saying that the season of falling leaves should be considered sad and melancholy. The hollow^s are filled with dead leaves; the crow, in the tree-top, increases the gloom of the day by his dolorous crooning ; the beau- tiful sisterhood of the flowers, the gentlest race of earth, are in their graves, where so much that is good and beautiful lies buried ; the cold November rain patters drearily upon their dust ; even the orphan flowfers of the summer, that cling so faithfully and lovingly to the hill-tops, and hide in the sunny nooks of the forest, or that nestle under the sheltering margins of the brooks, drop away from the breast of Mother Nature, failing to find there eitlier warmth or nourishment. The south wind, like a home-sick w^anderer yearning to see once more the blessed scenes of his childhood, may return for a day, and through the strange stillness of the misty fields, and the shivering woods, and along THE MELANCHOLY DAYS. 107 the windings of the shrunken rills, may search for the beauty and fragrance once so familiar to him, yet his search will be in vain. Thus, through the deepening shadows of the passing year, the Spirit of Sorrow unveils her pallid face to the musing bard, and out of the cold, moist earth rises the beloved form of one that was fair and meek as any blossom, and who, for a brief time, grew up by his side, stately and sun-crowned as the lily, but, alas, as frail. The day of weeping comes, the melancholy day, the saddest of life, when she drooped with the perish- ing flowers, and, like them, was laid away under the dust of the dying year — a burial meet for one so pure, so gentle, so beautiful. But, despite the tender sorrow, the pathetic threnody of the contemplative poet's soul, we contend that the twilight season of the year offers more exquisite pleas- ure, a rarer and more subtile enjoyment, than the sum- mer can ever give, and that the phrase " melancholy days, the saddest of the year," can not justly be ap- plied. The governing spirit of the season is rest. Can the heart of man place itself under a more blissful spell than the feeling that " after life's fitful fever " we shall " sleep well ? " When out of the sunset clouds lying along the horizon of mortality, the revivifying dews of a divine peace are falling upon the weary soul; when we feel that the heat, the tumult of the great bat- tle called Life, is changing to a scene of the^most charming loveliness, tenderly green as the hill-slopes of Paradise, calm as its seraph-guarded valleys, and filled with the fragrance of the flowers of immortality ? When we feel that the open grave before us is the 108 THE MELANCHOLY DAYS. starry portal to the Temple of Eternity, the entrance to the Golden City, whose ia>.itly figured outlines we may have had a glimjDse of in our most adventurous dreams ? The past, with its lights and shrdows, sinks beneath the horizon of the years behind us; the wonder-land of the soul rises before us, out of the veiled glory of a strange and incomprehensible To-Be. Hope, love, sor- ro'.., ambition, despondency, regret, surprise, the pain of the unachieved and the full joy of the achieved — every feeling of the heart, every active faculty of the mind, lie quiescent, steeped in an odorous languor. Buoyed by the deep sea swell of a marvelously majes- tic expectancy, our souls are adrift in a star-lit atmos- phere of utter beatitude, that is filled with more fra- grant farewells than all the roses can sigh to the dying Summer, and resonant with sweeter harmony than the harps of the autumn woods, or the plaintive lutes of the rills, can ever breathe as a requiem over the graves of the beautiful flowers. High above the monotone of " the melancholy days," and beyond the snowy barriers of the year, Nature hears the trumpet-calls of the fairy legions of the Spring; she sees the mighty hosts of the Sun-queen gathering on the eastward shore of time, with waving banners and glittering spears. The battle-cry "i?e- surganij^ echoes across the glad seas. She wraps the robes of sleep around her glorious form, and sleeps — to dream of her happy waking. So the soul, that can divest itself for a moment from the blinding mist of the earthly, will not find the autumn of life a sad and melancholy scene. Through the rents of our mortality will shimmer the unfading THE MELANCHOLY DAYS. 109 starlight of the Land of BKss; the music of angelic \choirs will cause the sighs of sorrow, and the moanings of regret, to faint away into an unappreciable whisper; the broad and tranquil light of an everlasting day will illumine the clouds that overhang the approaching Qoom, and transform them into a miraculous apparition o^ supernal glory, while clear and triumphant, above the saddest farewells that may be breathed, will rise the golden harmony of an anthem whose divine refrain is — " rest and resurrectio7i I " AN AGE OF PROGRESS. V^^&X^E are told by an eminent authority in the Chris- &^iQ) tian Church that exaggeration, amusement, novelty, paradox, is the popular demand of the hour, and that a part of this " age of progress " is " to court a smile when one should win a soul." This popular demand is made the measure even of a rising or a waning minis- try, the very article of a standing or a falling church. Bringing his accusation against the age home to the Church itself, the distinguished writer says: — "The young candidate must trim his sails to catch this breeze. The old minister, who has lived too late to learn the art, is expected to vacate the course. New ideas, new methods, new maxims, new doctrines, new discoveries, now clamor for a hearing; and the further a man gets away from the old beaten track of common sense, the more is he likely to be lionized." This, certainly, is not a pleasant picture of our age. It behooves us to examine it more in detail, to see how much truth there is in it, whether the artist has exag- gerated his effects, or has kept himself in harmony with fact and nature. Our opinion is, that the picture is in keeping with the leading features of the times, but the causes of which these features are the result, and their real value as tokens of the world's progress, appear to us to be inaccurately appreciated and represented. By inference, at least, modern civilization is charged with shortcomings and vices not warranted by the facts. New ideas, methods, maxims, doctrines, discoveries, rush before the world, clamoring to be heard and seen, and people willingly give them audience. The conflict \ AN AGE OF PROGRESS. Ill etween the opposing forces of the new and old engen- (^ers paradox, doubt and exaggeration, in form and in spirit, on either side. Taking advantage of the melee the False raises its brazen front boldly, and the popu- lace, led hither and thither by the din of contending authorities, is tempted to forget the seriousness of the question involved, in order to amuse itself over the novel, and frequently the ludicrous, aspects in which the combatants show themselves, as well as the subject at issue. But, after all, the frivolity of the age, leading the public mind to vexful dalliance with questions and issues in which important interests are at stake, is, like beauty, only skin deep ; it does not affect the vast and solid structure of truth, which, like the coral pillars of continents that have risen from the fathomless heart of Indian seas, has steadily grown in strength and beauty, and which will continue to expand into imperishable forms of glory to the end of time. The superficial, the flippant tone of the times, is the sea-wave's froth, glittering in ephemeral light, a play- thing of the passing winds; far beneath the surface mighty currents, invisible to the casual eye, rush on in their Heaven-appointed courses, with resistless majesty. We believe in the steadfastness of the world's com- mon sense; we believe that the thought-currents of the rolling years, despite eddies of doubt, whirlpools of sensuous amusements, and the attrition of conflicting opinions, add silently, immovably, grain upon grain, stone upon stone, to the mighty break-water which the eternal forces of the Good and the True are incessantly upbuilding against the False and the Evil; thus reduc- ing, from generation unto generation, the area occu- 112 AN AGE OF PROGRESS. pied by the latter, and . perceivably bringing nearer to the yearning human soul the blessed era when they shall find no lodgment upon earth; when the Spirit of Christ, alone, shall rest upon all things in radiant, all-sufficient, all-embracing glory. In the grand evolution of the years, in the sea-]ike sweep of time toward this shining goal of the future, ideas which we seek to express by the word " prog- ress," many crude notions, many false conceptions, sensational novelties, and disappointing ingredients, are upheaved and swept along before our sight; but let us strive to be contented with the belief that these im- pediments are upon the surface; that they are natural sequences of an uncontrollable power, which is continu- ously bringing forth good out of evil, although we may not be able to trace and understand its purpose and tendencies. Progress is essential to human happiness; though in its minuter aspects, or viewed from stand-points that prevent us from surveying the entire scope of the ag- gregating centuries, many details of the advance may appear incongruous, and discordant notes are detected by those who hold the ear too close to that many- chorded instrument which men call Life. If the common-sense of a " candidate," or of any other man, tells him that the popular demand of the hour is foolish, it is plainly his duty to oppose that demand, and to keep his head and heart deal- of the prevailing folly. If he violates his Christian manhood, and " trims his sails to catch the passing breeze," he will deservedly be swept into oblivion — no onust can be maiie applicable, in such a case, to an honest and con- scientious maix; those differently constituted ought to be swept away — the sooner the better for the world. % AN AGE OF PROGRESS. 113 The " old minister," if he is true to himself, and to his Bible, will stand unshaken, like a rock, spurning the froth and fuming fury of the breakers at his feet, with head held high in the pure heavens of Gospel truth, and serenely wearing his crown of celestial splendor. The " church " that is built upon the shifting sands of novelty, or popular excitement, is necessarily 2, fall- ing church, the ephemera of a whim, the ignis fatims of error — let it fall. The church that is built upon the Bible stands upon the foundation rock of the universe, and God himself is its architect — it can not fall. The man willing to forsake the track of common- sense, for the sake of being " lionized," and willing to jeopardize his holiest interests for such a pitiably little motive, certainly commits a terrible mistake, for to such as he is significantly applicable the warning ques- tion of Holy Writ: " What shall it profit a man if he should gain the whole world, and lose his own soul ? " 8 AT THE THRESHOLD. 'HEN we are about to undertake a voyage to 5>S< c) some country beyond the sea, upon whose shores we have never stood, but which fancy has pict- ured to our minds iiT a manner flattering to our wishes, though it may not truly represent the reality, we natu- rally linger upon the thresholds of our homes to impress upon our hearts the precious memory of " the days that are no more," and to recall, for a moment, the sacred associations which grew out of them, as the flowers grow out of the heart of the May-time. Sol- emnly meditating upon these hallowed reminiscences, we turn to look with sad yet hopeful eyes upon the future, whose horizon stretches out before us — an impenetrable veil, which the hand of God alone can uplift. With feelings that find their best expression in silence, and with thoughts which are too holy to be clothed in the garb of common speech, we turn away, with lagging- steps, from the beloved place, and follow the road that shall take us — where ? and to enter upon new scenes which, even when viewed through the magically mag- nifying lens of the imagination, are scarcely able to recompense us for the sundering of the golden chain which binds us to the past, and for the loss of the heavenly influences of " home, sweet home." Somewhat similar to these emotions, although more impressive in their effects and more solemn in their nature, are the emotions we feel as we stand upon the threshold of a new year ; when the angels who have lived so long with us in the homestead of the heart, stretch forth their hands to bid us an eternal farewell. AT THE THEESHOLD. 115 for " time flies," and they cannot tarry longer with their mortal host, no matter how pathetically he may plead to be allowed to enjoy still longer the solace and the beauty of their presence. Time — what a mysterious word it is ! We think of it in the abstract, we speak of it metaphorically ; with the help of fancy we conceive it to be a something that is winged, or personify it in the form of a decrepit reaper, with death-dealing scythe, constantly employed in mowing down the glory, the loveliness, the pride, the warm, pulsing life of the world, and performing the work of destruction as ruthlessly as the husbandman cutting down the golden wheat-heads in the harvest- field, or mowing the fragrant grass in the meadows. But in our rhetorical toying with this unpalpable thing we call " time," do we duly appreciate it as the most awfully real, the most impressively solemn, the most sublimely natured element of human life ? Time is visible Eternity. The low, monotonous click of the clock's pendulum is the audible pulse-throb of creation. The hours are marks and emblems of the Everlasting. They go and come, and come and go with the unvarying regularity which the Divine Will has ordained as the physical expression of its own ever- lasting harmony. They are the comprehensible atoms of that immeasurable cycle within whose periphery all that ever was or now is, exists, and which embraces all that is humanly conceivable in the physical, moral and spiritual creations of Jehovah. A subject so sublime as this ought to be viewed from this standpoint alone, by creatures endowed with reason and enlightened by knowledge. It is not to be questioned, therefore, that time is a theme well entitled 116 AT THE THRESHOLD. to the importance here given it, and that it must ever remain, by incontestable pre-eminence, the grandest subject upon which the powers of thought can be ex- ercised. The hour when the death of the old and the birth of a new year come before us, is certainly a period well calculated to impress upon our hearts the inestimable value of time. The celestial hue of divine truth is most apt then to color the meditations of our souls. At such a time the soul seems to be translated into a sphere of thought far beyond the reach of her ordi- nary flight. She is exalted by some mysterious, seraph-pinioned Power, and, from the summit of the etherial height unto which she is lifted, she surveys, with wondering eyes, an illimitable, Eden-like realm — the dream-veiled Land of the Future. How busy Memory is, too, at such a time ! See her grasping her pilgrim staff, to return over the paths by which we have come, and that are already darkening under the gathering twilight of time. Why should she wish to go back ? Ah ! there are jewels to be sought and recovered that dropped unnoticed from the heart's crown amid the shock and turmoil of life's battle — noio she remembers them, and is anxious to replace them, lest they be lost forever. Then the graves of dead hopes are to be visited, and to be adorned tenderly with roses and forget-me-nots, for love's sake ; the pleasant bowers are to be explored again where, time and again, we way-worn wanderers stopped, for rest and refreshment ; where fragrance from the lilied fields of paradise etherialized the com- mon air, and we were lulled to sleep with songs and harmonies sweeter than any that mortal lips can breathe AT THE THRESHOLD. 117 or earthly harps can compass ; where dreams dropped silently into our souls from the star-lands, as into the silver cups of the lilies the dews drop from the splendid skies of June. Over all this enchanted region, over which the sunset of the dying year throws its marvelous glamour, Memory walks, demurely and reverently, stopping at last to shed regretful tears at the spot where the gray Spirit of Neglect holds his doleful court, and the withering autumn leaves lie thickest — the grave of Lost Opportunities. Oh, that we could recall them ! Are they buried forever ? How beautifully they blossomed once along the path- way of the year! In their golden chalices glistened the wine of gladness; on their leaves lay the honey-dew of contentment; their roots drew sweet sustenance from secret and inexhaustible fountains; angels blest them and ministered unto them, and urged them upon our notice — but we turned awa*y from them, and refused to recognize them; our eyes were blinded by sin and selfishness; we treated them with contempt as worth- less weeds; they died, even as hearts sometimes wither and die — from the neglect of those they live for, and without whose love and sympathy it is impossible to live. And so these little golden Opportunities which, rightly used, might have made us happy, and better, and nobler, and more potent in soul, and more useful to our fellowmen, perished. For these reasons hath Memory come to kneel, with remorse and self-accusa- tion at the grave that shrines their dust, and to weep her useless, useless tears. When the New Year shall have crossed the threshold, to live with us as our guest, and to record daily iu the 118 AT THE THRESHOLD. great Book of Life our thoughts and our actions, will we earnestly determine to treasure the teachings of the Old, and to profit by our experiences in the past? Will we endeavor to be better, purer, nobler, and in all things worthier of the glorious destiny which our Father in Heaven has designed for us? Will we gladsomely accept the golden opportunities which time may offer unto us, instead of neglecting them as heretofore, to our loss and sorrow ? Will we devoutly employ the energies of mind and body in the pursuit and cultivation of the true and the good, and of whatso- ever will make life brighter and holier, and which shall make the world richer by what it inherits from our lives and labors, when our hands and brains are cold in death ? In a word — will we really be what we ought to be, and can be if we will it so ? May God give every heart the strength to do this. Let every one of us treasure the lessons of the passing years. Let us profit by their admonitions, and become wise by the wisdom with which they are willing to endow us. Let us remem- ber that nothing whatever transpires in human life from which something may not be gained which will either benefit the soul, instruct the heart, or widen the scope of our mental vision. Thus shall every new year " blossom as the rose " for us, and become a fragrant and acceptable offering to the Lord of Love and Holi- ness when, in due time, it waxeth gray, and becomes an old year, and is buried with its innumerable prede- cessors in the mausoleum of the Past. "HAPPY NEW YEAR." ;0W like a heavenly benediction these cheery words meet us everywhere ! How eagerly the heart lends itself to the tender influences that flow from the music of the simple phrase ! How we struggle with whatever doubts may haunt us that, somehow or other, the hope and comfort the words express are not for us; that, on the contrary, we alone should feel that it is our lot to stand outside of the magic circle of light wherein the New Year is throned, banished into outer darkness by some inexplicable and untoward de- cree of fate. Let us reason together, O friend ! concerning this. In the first place let me ask why this should not be to you — to all of us — " a happy new year ? " Do you anticipate trouble, loss, vexation, bereavement ? Are you chilled by the shadows of days yet to come, when they ought to be radiant with sunshine ? Do you fear that the springs by the roadside, with whose sweet waters you expected to quench your thirst, will be al- together dry, and the trees blasted and bare, within whose grateful shadow you hoped to rest in the heat of the weary day ? Are you afraid that the loved ones, that you now clasp so closely to your heart, and witli whom you wish to walk hand to hand, and for many a year, over the sunny slopes and through the pleasant valleys of this earthly life, will be, ruthlessly, suddenly snatched away from you by an invisible hand, never to be returned to you ? Do you ask yourself: " Have the sorrows of the past gone over me like a storm whose fury is spent, or will they come again with increased 120 "happy new year." violence ? Are you afraid the plans you have formed will fail; that the goal yoa are striving for will never be reached, or, if reached, that the bitter cup of disap- pointment will be pressed to your lip, and the olive branch and the crown withheld from the toiler ? " Suppose either or all of these shadowy portents should assume a tangible form, become stern realities, and bar your way ? Take courage ! Be not afraid ! Believe and have faith ! Believe in the sovereign Love that rules the universe; believe in the omnipotent Hand that guides the destiny of man; believe in the all-see- ing Eye that takes notice of the sparrow's fall, and be- holds the floating dust-atoms of a shivered world; have faith in the all-supporting strength of the Arm that enfolds the sleeping babe, and whirls the ringing spheres through the golden ether of the heavens ! The almighty Power that cares for these, will also care for you — believe and have faith. Believe and have faith in the risen Christ, in the crucified Redeemer of the world; in the Love that tri- umphed over Death; believe in Him whose sinless heart took upon itself all the shame and all the agony of our fallen nature; who died for us that we might live, as the children of our heavenly Father, rehabilitated and made joint-heirs of His eternal glory; believe that all things work together for good to them that love the Lord — believe and have faith ! With the splendor and majesty of Heaven round- about us, with the impenetrable armor of faith linked threefold about our hearts, with the Holy Spirit in our souls, with a Christian's prayers upon our lips, of what and of whom need we be afraid ? Trials are blessings in disguise. To the heart that is free from doubt, that "happy new year." 121 greets them as veritable messengers from Heaven, they will before long reveal themselves in all their celestial beauty. The ashes, in the urns they brought from the skies, will turn to gold-dust; their vesture of sack- cloth will be changed to shining robes; the punitive rod they bore to smite us with, will become a strong staff, to sustain our weary feet in the pilgrimage through the Land of Life; the tears that fell upon graves will be transmuted into everlasting asphodels, glistening in the morning light of Paradise. Ah ! why should we be so unwilling to undergo the ordeals which our Father has ordained in wisdom and iii love-^that we may fill the measure of our human capacity, that our hearts may grow in strength and virtue, that our lives may become more and more beau- tiful, that our souls may be full fledged when the time shall have come for the heavenward flight ? Manfully, cheerfully, humbly and prayerfully, let us meet the coming years, and face the responsibilities which they may bring us, in all things deporting our- selves like men and Christians. We are as children whom a parent has sent upon an errand to a distant city, knowing not what may befall us on the way, but implicitly trusting in the wisdom of the Father who hath sent us on our journey, knowing that it is done for our good, and that he will watch our progress with tender solicitude. We shall find the evil-threatening shapes that con- front us on the road vanish " like the baseless fabric of a dream," or see them changed to guardian angels; the dark shall be made bright; the singing birds by the wayside shall fill our souls with the benediction of song; beyond the passing cloud we shall see the stead- 122 "happy new year." fast, blessed sun; cooling waters shall well from tlie dust at our feet; sweet odors from the blossomy fields of Peace shall come to us on the morning and the evenino- winds; the trees shall stretch forth their great arms lovingly, to give us shelter and rest when the noon- time heat has overcome us. We know that the invisible Hand which taketh away, hath given, and 'will continue to give. We know that the crown follows the cross; that the seed must be buried in the earth, and sleep and moulder for awhile, before it can rise again and ripen for the har- vest; we know that this is true, also, of the body, laid to sleep in the bosom of mortality, to be quickened and raised again in a more glorious form in the Eternal Hereafter, when the morning,gates of the Resurrection, "on golden hinges turning," shall open to admit a re- deemed world! Let us labor and wait, do our duty — and leave the results with God. " He doeth all things well." The last sun of the dying year is sinking beyond the hills into the tideless, shoreless ocean of the Past. The shadows of night are slowly closing over the valleys of our humiliation and sorrow. Like the shrouded dead, the shrines of our sacrifices loom ghastly in the uncer- tain twilight. But, see! over all, high in the east, like the morning star, shines the Cross of Calvary, its orbed splendor heralding the New Day! Let us turn to greet the newcomer. Let us journey toward it, as the wise men of yore followed the beckoning glory of Bethlehem, leaving behind us, in the hands of God, the hallowed dust of the past, retaining only its precious memories, its deathless hopes. WHAT IS A COMMUNIST ? " What is a Communist 1 ' One who has yearnings For equal division of unequal earnings ; ' Idler, or bungler, or both, he is willing To fork out his jDenny and pocket your shilling." Ebenezer Elliott. i|^HE " Corn Law Rhymer," in his pithy, pungent f^^^ way, puts in a nut-shell the reply to the question in our caption. A learned work on the subject in a half dozen volumes would not state the truth as clearly as Elliott's simple stanza. In his day the meaning of Communism was as well understood as in the present day, although its baleful influence on politics and social life was not as pronounced then as now — an influence which has caused Pope Leo to designate Communism, in all its forms, as " a death-dealing plague that is creeping into all fibres of human society." If we add to Elliott's pen-picture a torch, a dagger, a pistol, a gibbet — we will have the model Communist of the present day. Nor will it be necessary to go to France, Russia, Germany or Italy for a specimen. The city of New York will furnish perfect samples — that brilliant model of American Communism, for iijstance, who in an address delivered in that city quite recently said, alluding to Queen Victoria: "I would guillotine her. I would have a court convene at Hyde Park, con- sisting of twelve Irish paupers, who would try her life, and cut off her head." This bloodthirsty individual was loudly applauded when he said that the Nihilist platform is the noblest that has ever been put before any party! 124: WHAT IS A COMMUNIST? It is not necessary to discuss at length the traditions of Communism, or its ancient and modern history; nor the minute shades of difference which philosophers and critical political economists have made the subjects of entertaining study. We have no inclination to under- take the task of tracing the high-wrought speculations of Plato; no desire to describe the political and social Eden created by that amiable and erudite optimist, Sir Thomas More. We will not endeavor to enter the golden gates of the " City of the Sun," nor venture to sail in the dream-shallops of fancy in quest of the ethe- rial shores of the " New Atlantis" and of "Oceana." This entertaining and harmless quixotry of the mind can be safely left to the lovers of quaint and antique lore, and to the curious scholar, as a relaxation from the toil and strain of scientific studies. The matter to be soberly considered is the profound, the portentous, the omnipresent problem presented by the revolutionary Socialism of our day; particularly that form of it which, under various disguises, incul- cates the Satanic creed of ultra-communism. As a whole it is the personification, the embodiment of what- soever is most wicked and bestial in human nature. It represents the Murderer whose bloody hand clutches at the throat of society. It is the Vandal, whose torch is held constantly in readiness to do its ruinous work. It is the Savage, whose dagger and pistol are busy now. It is the Ghoul, whose ghastly presence stalks at noon- day and at midnight through the streets of our capitals and emporiums, muttering curses and seeking for prey. We allude to that form of Socialism which has already used force of arms to attain its objects ; whicli covers streets and squares with infuriated mobs ; which WHAT IS A COMMUNIST? 125 shoots and hangs ; which looks upon the man who has saved a few hundreds or thousands of dollars out of his earnings as a thief ; of that Socialism which- has driven God from its heart, exalted Brutism to the throne of murdered Conscience, and expunged justice and decency from its social Code. We mean the bar- barians whose battle-cry is " Rule or Ruin," and their leaders, who are attempting to undermine society and to debase civilization by the promulgation of plausibly constructed but inevitably evil theories through the press and from the platform, thereby indorsing and insidiously aiding the more vulgar but more directly effective argument of the knife and the bludgeon. Conviction forces us to assert that another revolution in France will see the Communist tiger leap from his lair in Paris, as strong and as fierce as when he first lapped the blood of his prey ; that Germany will yet have its Reign of Terror, and Berlin its j^etrolleiise and its horrible fusillading ; timt the stately streets of impe- rial St. Petersburg will be blocked with the debris of barricades, and the windows of its palaces riddled with bullets; that rich and aristocratic England will clutch her money-bags in mortal fear, in desperate attempts to escape impending disaster ; and that a second Pitts- burg massacre, the locality changed perhaps to Chicago or New York, may again disgrace the annals of even this flourishing new Republic of ours. No man w^ho makes an intelligent use of his eyes and ears, and properly exercises his judgment, can fail to perceive that baleful influences are at work, corrupt- ing the people accessible to false doctrines, political and social ; the low creed of Materialism, the doubting, mocking, Mephistophelian spirit affected by many in the 126 WHAT IS A COMMUNIST ? higher ranks of life, and distinguished for scientific attainments, has not failed in its deleterious influence upon the lower ranks of the race in weakening the vital powers of public and private virtue. The hetero- geneous nature of our population offers a fine field of operation to the discontented and rebellious elements so characteristic of our times. It is an indisputable fact that no government, espe- cially in a republic, can exist without a respect for law, a love of order, and adherence to the supremacy of both. Deprive us of these, and we crumble to pieces under the rotting decomposition of riotous anarchy, or we rivet the chains of some master-spirit of evil around our craven souls. There is no question of this result. To the peaceful enjoyment of liberty there must be the sense of security; the quiet feeling of the absolute pro- tection of the cordon which law and order have draw^i around. Deprive men of this sense of security, let them feel that the law is incapable of protecting them, and they take up arms for their own preservation, and liberty, and justice, and security leave the land. AYe do not maintain that the weight of our Ameri- can civilization, the powers of law and order fully awakened by the increasing danger, and the divine majesty of justice, will not triumph over this evil force when the deadly conflict shall come. We believe that justice, truth and wisdom will win. We believe that the star of this splendid republic, however obscured it may be for a time, will shine on in steadfast glory while time shall last, because to doubt this would be to admit the possibility that the progressive, divinely-decreed civilization of the world is a complete failure, and that anarchy and barbarism is the predestined condition of WHAT IS A COMMUNIST? 127 our race, but we assert that the final struggle for suprem- acy will be tremendous ; that it will test our repel" lant powers to the utmost; and that the contest will shake our social and political fabric from center to cir- cumference. We earnestly insist that we ought not to underrate the strength of our enemy, nor allow our supineness to increase his means for doing mischief. Communism is a hydra-headed power. It is endowed with more suppleness of limb and ferocity of dispo- sition than the fabled dragon was alleged to be pos- sessed of. This more harmful modern dragon has been, temporarily, forced back into its lair in the " Cave of the Furies." The beast has been baffled — but he will come again. He is watching for a favorable opportu- nity. He is biding his time. Let us see to it that for him this time shall never come in the United States of America. CHILD AND POET. Oj)-\^E believe that the tenderest and purest chord ^^J^ of all that are struck in praise of earthly things by every true poet, is the chord devoted to the eulogy of childhood. How touching are the strings that vibrate to the music of its joys and its sorrows, its hopes and its fears! How sweet the notes that in- terpret the thoughts of children's hearts! How earn- estly we listen to the tones that recall to our memory the speech so familiar once to our own ears! It is a language that is never forgotten, though the clasli and the war of the world may have marred the blessed harmony of those perfect days, and scarcely recogniz- able are the echoes that float faintly over the sunrise hills of our being, to vanish at last, forever, in the dark valley of the west where our open graves are. Because children occupy an intermediate place in creation between the earthly and the heavenly; be- cause they are the best interpreters of nature; because of their innocence and unquestioning faith; because they are freshest from the loving hand of the Creator, ' and have still roundabout their souls the fragrance be- longing to immortal spirits but recently taken from the realms of beatitude; because of these and other equally potent causes, children have always occupied a high place in the hearts of the poets. To these priests of Nature children have been springs of joy and inspira- tion. There are but few bards whose works will not verify our statement. Even Goethe, whom many persons believe to have been the embodiment of cold, skeptical egotism, and CHILD AXD POET. 129 aristocratical hauteur, an intellectual glacier, vast, re- splendent, but chilling in lofty indifference to his sur- roundings, and callous to the sweet heart-thrills of our common humanity, speaks of the little ones with words of melting tenderness, and in the sweet spirit of Chris- tian humility. Speaking of his personal intercourse wdth these souls in the bud, he says: "Of all things upon earth, the children are near- est to my heart. When I see in the little creature the -germs of all the virtues and of all the strength which it will require in after life; when I see in its ob- stinacy all the future stability and firmness of youth, and in its childish mirthfulness all future good-humor, and the ability to glide smoothly over the rough places of life; when I see all the germs of character still unperverted — I continually repeat to myself the words of the Great Teacher: ' Unless ye become as lit- tle children, ye shall not enter into the Kingdom of Heaven.' " No poet of our age, however, has imbibed more copiously of the spirit of childhood then our own Quaker bard, Whittier. How tenderly and reverently his muse unveils for us the hearts of our Httle ones! Certainly, he loves children; he reveres them both for what they are and for what they suggest — simplicity, purity, innocence, proximity to God — every- quality the lack of whose ennobling influence we feel as we become hardened and seared in the fierce struggle with the world, and the early fragrance and freshness of heart and soul pass away, like the sweetness and beauty of a flower. We are always strongly tempted to measure the worth of a poet in the elements calculated to make him 9 130 CHILD AND POET. popular — that is to say, in the power he possesses to write himself into the homes and hearts of men — by the manner of his treatment of child-themes; by the spiritual insight he has of a child's soul; by his power in depicting the color, the glow, the ethereal light and shajile of that mysterious world which moves within the orbit of a child's eye, and whose light comes from sources so much nearer to the star-lands of Love and Peace than are the inferior sources from whence we de- rive our spiritual illumination. Only a true poet, , ex- ceptionally gifted, can do this; it requires the utmost perfection of art — simplicity without barrenness; strength finely proportioned with grace; perspicuity; originality of conception; thought sanctified by true emotion — in a word, the rare power that is able to send a noble thought from the heart straight into and through the heart of another, as an arrow speeds from the bow to the mark. In this excellence we believe Whittier to be unrivaled among the poets of our day. He is always frank, manly, sincere, direct, always loving, fatherly. How touching and true, how full of wisdom and gracious philosophy, are these two stan- zas from his pen: We need love's tender lessons taught, As only weakness can ; God hath his small interpreters ; The child must teach the man. We wander wide through evil years, Our eyes of faith grow dim ; But he is freshest from his hands, And nearest unto him. Ah, yes, what might lies slumbering in the weakness of a child! What a world of love it can bear upon its V CHILD AND POET. 131 small shoulders! How men who rule the world, and women who rule the men, are all ruled, and willingly too, by the little despots of the nursery! How illim- itable the power whose seat is in the cradle! What sceptre is more potent than a baby's hand! Yes, children are interpreters, teachers. " Of such is the Kingdom of Heaven." Fresh from the hands of God, and O! so near to him, why should they not be able to teach us what we are all so apt to forget — love, gentleness, charity, sincerity, purity, faith. Do we ever fully realize how hard it is to break the faith of a child ? Ought we not to become as one of these little ones ? A more precious boon than this could not be bestowed upon us by our heavenly Father. VICTOR HUGO AND WOMAN'S RIGHTS. ^jfylCTOR Hugo is by nature a romancer. He oJ^Xs delights in the vague and the extravagant; in effects that shock us by their unexpectedness; and in the lavish application of intensely brilliant colors upon every subject he brings within the range of his great but singularly erratic genius. No matter how plain and practical the question to be considered may be, it seems to be impossible for him to dispose of it without sub- jecting it to a heating race through a wonderful laby- rinth of blazing rhetoric, epigrammatic in form, but frequently strained beyond the utmost verge of com- prehension. This peculiarity is illustrated by a paper of his addressed to the " French Society for the Ame- lioration of the Position of Woman," in his role as champion of the cause commonly known in this country as " Woman's Rights." " Man," says Hugo, " has been the problem of the eighteenth century — woman is the problem of the nine- teenth; and to say woman is to say child, that is to say, the future. The question thus put appears in all its gravity. It is in its solution that the supreme social appeasal lies. Woman can do all for man — nothing for herself. The laws are impotent to make her so feeble when she is so powerful. Let us recognize that feeble- ness and protect it; let us recognize that power and direct it. There lies the duty of man; there lies also his interest. I do not tire of saying the problem is put; it must be solved. Half of the human race is outside of equality; it must be made to re-enter. It will be one of the great glories of our great century to give the VICTOR HUGO AND WOMAN S RIGHTS. VM) rights of the women as a counter-balance to the rights of the men — that is to say, to put laws in equilibrium with the customs." To us it appears inconsistent to say that man was the problem of the last century, and that woman is the problem of the present. If men were problems in the eighteenth century, they are problems still, just as the women are, and so they have been always. He fails to say what the problem is, or was, and by whom solved, or to be solved, if solved at all. He is clearer in his statement as to the woman problem of our own day. He asserts that one half of tlie human race (the women) are outside of equality, and must be made to re-enter. In what respect are women outside of the law ? In social law or the law of the courts ? We maintain that woman is supreme in society. She enforces custom and, consequently, has under her con- trol the laws that govern society in manners and in tastes. If these are wrong, or inadequate to the pur- poses for which they were designed, she has no one but herself to blame. If she is as powerful as Hugo says she is, and the truth of this statement we are not in the least degree inclined to doubt, what is to prevent her from exercising that power to suit herself, and to establish the condition she may consider to be the essential one ? In social life woman is the highest tribunal of appeal, to which all questions affecting the rights and privi- leges of society must come for final decision, and which she can decide, or ought to decide, in conformity with the social and aesthetic Code which civilized mankind, by common consent, has left to her judgment and in- terpretation. If he means that she is debarred from equality before 134 VICTOR HUGO AND AVOMAn's RIGHTS. the courts, we reply that the rights of men are fre- quently subject to influences that savor quite as much of inequality, and that are, apparently, as distinctly inconsistent with the fundamental principles of justice and right which ought to regulate every transaction in law. Laws should not be based upon customs, because customs are subject to the influences of rival opinions and ever- varying shades of taste and culture; frequently the only reason for their existence at all rests in their adaptability to certain contingencies. Laws should be, and they are supposed to be, founded upon primal principles of Right; they should be kept in their native purity, just as they came from the hand of God, and they should be enforced in accordance with the noblest powers of enlightened wisdom. The enforcement of such laws cannot interfere with the interest of any per- son, male or female; the evil lies in perverting them, to the inconvenience and injury of all classes of society. There is no reasonable ground for antagonism be- tween the sexes in law. We maintain that where such antagonism exists in Christian civil government, botli sides are blamable — men, because they obstruct the legitimate course of law, and, for selfish purposes, pre- vent its just and equable application, and women are censurable for the sin of omission, in that they fail to exercise their power to mould society to a nobler shape, and do not infuse into its composition the elements of their own superior nature. We claim that woman possesses this power, and can exercise it whenever she earnestly and consistently determines to do so. As mother she has the God-given power to mould the character of her son; as wife she VICTOR HUGO AND WOMAN^S EIGHTS. 135 • has potent, though it may be silent, influence over her husband ; these sons, these husbands, are the law- makers, and their actions as legislators will be governed, in a very great degree, by the influences of Christian wife and motherhood. Who can estimate the blessed inspirations of a home where the divinity of a noble woman's heart, and the love of her pure spirit, are the protecting and guiding penates ? To assert that men, who have from childhood grown up under such influences, and who by the force of habit have become strong in character, and by instinct loyal to virtue, are capable of making and enforcing laws that are derogatory to womanhood, and inconsistent with the spirit of integrity, honor, and truth, is to assert a proposition repellant to our sense of justice. The statement cannot be reconciled with the facts of mod- ern progress and civilization. THE TRUTH OF FICTION. .0 suppose," says a distinguished American writer, ro^^ " that fiction could permanently appeal to so many classes of mind if it were only fiction, is to sup- pose an absurdity. Fiction is most powerful when it contains most truth ; and there is but little truth that we get so true as that which we find in fiction. So long as history is written by partisans, and science by theo- rists, and philosojDhy by hobby-riders, the faithful studies of human life, as we find them in the best nov- els, are the truest things we have ; and they cannot fail to continue to be the source of our favorite knowl- edge, our best amusements, and our finest inspirations." We have here an apotheosis of fiction, but the rea- sons for it are not good ; the argument is somewhat superficial, and the conclusions not at all satisfactory. It is hardly possible to trace the complex reasons that cause so many people to prefer the reading of fiction to any other sort of reading. However, we seriously doubt that people read novels principally for the truth they may contain, rather than for their effects upon the fancy, and for the amusement they afford in hours of leisure. According to this popular writer's theory a didactic novel, having for its object the demonstration and illus- tration of Truth, ought to be the one that would take the firmest hold upon those who delight in the reading of fiction ; it should have indisputable claims upon imme- diate and permanent popular favor. The records of our public libraries, and every-day observation, do not indorse this statement. The didactic, philosophical THE TRUTH OF FICTIO"Nr. 137 novel makes but a sorry showing, as to the number of admirers, compared to that of the average novels of the day, the writers of which seek to amuse only, and who furnish echoes and shadows principally, instead of original sounds and living substances. If " fiction is most powerful when it contains most truth," would not that potency have attained its per- fection if all the fiction were eliminated, and the pure truth only given ? In that case, would not fiction cease to be fiction ? If truth is stranger than fiction, as well as greater, why not give it the preference, and allow fiction to occupy its proper secondary place? The world would be indeed in a sorry plight were it compelled to rely upon the so-called " truth " of fiction for its stock of genuine truth. As a pleasing means, and in a subordinate way, fiction may be made useful in the illustration of a truth, but it can never take the place of truth — this would be confounding the means for the end. It should also be remembered that very finely spun, elaborated, and flow- ery fiction may become a source of positive evil, by burdening a truth with profuse ornamentation until it is almost hidden from sight ; occasionally we may catch a glimpse of the shimmering gem through the beauti- fully woven but bewilderingly complex language in which it is dressed, but the mind of the reader is too much occupied wifh unraveling the meshes of rhetoric to devote proper attention to the search for and appre- hension of the hidden truth. Hence the impression of truth upon the heart and the mind, when it is thus disguised and hampered, is necessarily faint and un- satisfactory. Thb argument of the writer to whom we allude is. 138 THE TRUTH OF FICTIOX. furthermore, weakened by the fact that it is not the outcome of an unbiased and disinterested mind, but is, in reality, the plea of a partisan in the cause of Fiction in novel form. He attempts to subordinate history, science, and philosophy, in thei-r most precious attribute — truth — to his beloved pet. His zeal inconsiderately hurries him into pronouncing anathema upon himself in his character as a popular novelist; moreover it causes him to forget that history, written by partisans, and science by theorists, and philosophy by hobby-riders, neither deserve nor receive lasting public favor; on the contrary, it is a fact that, in proportion to the extent they may deviate from truth and faithfulness, they will •receive punishment, finally, in the limbics fatuorum prepared for them from the beginning of literature. To this devoted panegyrist of Truth, and able advo- cate of Fiction and of studies of human life, we desire to suggest the fact that he has strangely overlooked the fountain-head of all truth — the Bible, in his enu- meration of the sources whence truth is best to be derived. Can it be possible that the unquestionably extensive range of his mental vision can be, in one direction, so completely obstructed by the gorgeous, cloud-built temjDle he has erected in honor of his fa- vorite goddess — Fiction, as to hinder him from seeing nothing beyond it, or above it, worthy even of mention in a discussion that involves our dearest and most important spiritual interests ? Would he find truth in its simplest, purest and divin- est form, and human life portrayed most minutely and faithfully; would he wish to know the sources of all knowledge; would he wish for that inspiration without whose fresh and quickening breath the thoughts and THE TRUTH OP FICTIOl^. 139 aspirations of men are but withered leaves, and their most ambitious efforts cold and ephemeral as the froth of the sea, we would direct him to the Bible. In that " Book of books " is embodied all that the human soul can conceive of the beauty and majesty of truth, and of the power of the knowledge that springs therefrom. Let him say, earnestly and devoutly, that " the truest things we have " are to be found there, and tliere alone, and not in the novel, in Fiction, to which he has given unmerited apotheosis. IMMORTAL. fHERE is a solemnly true and tenderly beautiful stanza in Stedman's fine poem, read by him at the unveiUng of Horace Greeley's memorial bust in Greenwood cemetery — it is this: The star may vauisli — but a ray, Sent forth, what mandate can recall ? The circling wave still keeps its way That marked a turret's seaward fall ; The least of music's uttered strains Is part of Nature's voice forever ; And aye beyond the grave remains The great, the good man's high endeavor. It is a solemn truth that the good only are the truly great. It is a tenderly beautiful thought that good deeds and noble purposes live, spread and flourish to the end of time. They partake of the immortality of the soul from whence they came; they are its divinest attributes. " Goodness," as Marlowe says, " is beauty in its best estate." Whatsoever is great and good is not only an immortal heritage of blessing to the possessor, but, in increas- ing measure, it blesses also all who come into contact with him. The diffusiveness of goodness is one of its most admirable qualities. Penetrating to the very core of life, coloring the character of nations, goodness becomes an irresistible power; genial and healthful as the sunlight, it vivifies the dormant virtue of the world, illumines with its serene effulgence the hearts and homes of men, and prepares a path of glory for coming ages. IMMORTAL. 141 Greatness, not based upon virtue, is unsubstantial; such greatness is "like a cloud in th' airy bounds, Which some base vapors have congealed above ; It brawls with Vulcan, thund'ring forth huge sounds, Yet melts and falls there whence it first did move." It may rise and glitter for a generation, for a cen- tury, for a thousand years, but there is no warmth in its distant rays, no fructifying element in its garish light. Many may admire it because of its brilliancy, none, however, will love it for the good it has done, or will ever be able to do. It is the symbol of selfish endeavor, not the beacon-light by wliich the hearts of men steer over the ocean of hfe, to the shores of the eternally True and the divinely Beautiful; therefore its orb shall gradually vanish from the sight of the gener- ations of man, to become a scarcely noticed speck in the skies of histor}^, sought by the curious, perhaps, when they wish "to point a moral or adorn a tale." The fair imagery, the chaste metaphor of Stedman's lines portray, on the other hand, that greatness which gives man a place nearer heaven; the greatness that is built upon goodness; the character-structure whose architect is Virtue, and whose graceful proportions are adorned with every attribute of an exalted manhood and womanhood. Good greatness is, indeed, a star whose ray cannot be recalled when once its light has beamed forth, at the fiat of Jehovah, to illumine the universe. It is a circling wave in the unfathomable sea of life, indicating its cause by illimitable effects; circle upon circle, in luminous succession, the rippling waters shimmer along the surface of being, from the shores of time to the shores of eternity; the last, faint 142 IMMORTAL. tremor in the tide may, long ago, have passed beyond the scope of our vision, but it shall never pass out of the reach of God's all-seeing eye; nor shall the music of our metaphorical wave ever cease to thrill the listen- ing heart of humanity. It shall speak eloquent!}'' of the gentle hand that first gave it force and motion, lonor after that hand has turned to dust in an undistin- guishable grave. If, according to the poet's genial optimism, the least of uttered tones becomes an appreciable part of Nature's music, of that music which the stars sing so majestically in their celestial choir, and the Avinds breathe so lovingly to the bashful flowers, and which is to man medicine for the wounded soul, how immeasur- ably more pertinent becomes the figure when applied to " the still, small voice " that comes from the great, loving heart of him who ministers to the wants of his fellow-men, and promotes the high aspirations of hu- manity — from any one whose aim in life is to do good, and whose days are filled with the light and sweetness of love, truth and mercy! Ah! gladder music than this no angel has ever sung; grander harmony has never been heard this side of Heaven! Goodness speaks in a language intelligible to all the world; it is an Order whose mystic grip is the grasp of an honest hand; its signs need no other interpretation than the glance of a free and sympa- thetic eye; it demands, primarily, a frank, guileless and Christ-like heart. It has the power of transmuting itself into the gold and silver of charity and good-na- ture, and to make these a common currency among men. Under the figure of music it becomes a syno- nym of something sweeter and purer even 4 than IMMORTAL. 143 Nature's music, for, in the compass of its melody, g'oodness leaves no room for disturbing discords; there are no plaintive under-tones that tell of pain and of the mutability of earthly things — on the contrary, it is a soothful, a blissful psalm, winged like an eagle to bear the spirit God-ward in exalting praise; quickening the emotions, and inspiring the soul with superhuman im- pulses, and glorifying life with the light of immor- tality. Not only be^^ond the grave does the good man, great in holy deeds and liigh endeavors, receive* the reward reserved for him from the foundation of the w^orld, and promised him as a divine legacy in the Word of God, but on this side, also, is he honored and recompensed. In the grateful hearts of living men, in the reverence of successive generations, his monument is erected, and it shall stand in pristine beauty and in unimpaired solidity, w^hen empires and thrones shall have passed away forever, when Fame shall have forgot- ten their trophies, and History shall search in vain for their records. Good deeds, in their very essence, are immortal — they are the offspring of Truth, and Truth is God. MACAULAY ON DEMOCRACY. §OME years ago Lord Macaulay wrote a series of letters to Hon. Henry S. Randall, author of " The Life of Jefferson," in which the eminent historian, scholar and statesman, discussed the Jeffersonian doc- trine of government, and stated, at length, his opinion of the political prospects of the United States. Events, happening in more recent years, have served to 'revive public interest in these letters. The follow- ing extract from one of them is especially worthy of earnest perusal. Macaulay says: " I am certain that I never wrote a line, and that I never, in Parliament, in conversation, or even' on the hustings — a place where it is the fashion to court the populace — uttered a word indicating an opinion that the supreme authority in a State ought to be intrusted to the majority of citizens told by the head; in other words, to the poorest and most ignorant part of soci- ety. I have long been convinced that institutions purely democratic must, sooner or later, destroy liberty or civilization, or both. What happened lately in France is an example. In 1848 a pure democracy was established there. During a short time there was rea- son to expect a general spoliation, a national bank- ruptcy, a new partition of the soil, a maximum of prices, a ruinous load of taxation laid on the rich for the purpose of supporting the poor in idleness. Such a system would, in twenty years, have made France as poor and barbarous as the France of the Carlovingians. Happily the danger was averted. You may think that your country enjoys an exemption from these evils. MACAULAY ON DEMOCRACY. 145 Your fate I believe to be certain, though it is deferred by a physical cause. As long as you have a boundless extent of fertile and unoccupied land, your laboring population will be far more at ease than the laboring population of the Old World, and while that is the case the Jefferson politics may continue to exist with- out causing any fatal calamity. " But the time will come when New England will be as thickly peojoled as Old England. Wages will be as low, and will fluctuate as much, with you as with us. You will have your Manchesters and Birminghams, and in those Manchesters and Birminghams hundreds of thousands of artisans will assuredly be sometimes out of work. Then your institutions will be fairly brought to the test. Distress everywhere makes the laborer mutinous and discontented, and inclines him to listen with eagerness to agitators who tell him that it is a monstrous iniquity that one man should have a million while another cannot get a full meal. In bad years- there is plenty of grumbling here, and sometimes a little rioting. But it matters little. For here the suf- ferers are not the rulers. The supreme power is in the hands of a class, numerous indeed, but select; of an educated class; of a class which is, and knows itself to be, deeply interested in the security of property and the maintenance of order. Accordingly the malcontents are firmly yet gently restrained. The bad time is got over without robbing the wealthy to relieve the indi- gent. The springs of national prosperity soon begin to flow again — work is plentiful, wages rise, and all is tranquillity and cheerfulness. I have seen England pass, three or four times, through such critical seasons as I have described^ 146 MACAULAY ON DEMOCRACY. " Through such seasons the United States will have to pass in the course of the next century, if not in this. I seriously apprehend that you will, in some such season of adversity as I have described, do things w^hich will prevent prosperity from returning; that you will act like people who should, in a year of scarcity, de- vour all the seed-corn, and thus make the next year not one of scarcity, but of absolute famine. There will be, I fear, spoliation. The spohation will increase the distress. The distress will produce fresh spoliation. There is nothing to stop you. Your Constitution is all sail and no anchor. As I said before, when a soci- ety has entered upon the downward progress, either civilization or liberty must perish. Either some Caesar or Napoleon will seize the reins of government with a strong hand, or your Republic will be as fearfully plun- dered and laid waste by barbarians in the twentieth century, as the Roman empire was in the fifth, with this difference, that the Huns and Vandals who ravaged the Roman Empire came from without, and that your Huns and Vandals will have been engendered within your own country, and by your own institutions." This is a frightful picture, drawn by the hand of a master in word-painting; but, without a doubt, it is exaggerated. We recoil w^ith horror from its lurid outlines, and the woe and desolation it suggests to the mind through the eyes of the imagination; but, in our heart, we deny that the description is applicable to us, and we must refuse to accept the great historian's opinion as a true prophecy of our Republic's impend- ing and unavoidable doom. Our denial and refusal rest upon the following grounds: We question Macaulay's ability to form a correct MACAULAY ON DEMOCRACY. 147 opinion of the American people. What he knew about us was acquired by reading and hearsay. He had no practical knowledge of our political or social institutions. He made no special study of our people from actual observation. He could not familiarize him- self with the tone and spirit of the American public. He could not thoroughly comprehend our peculiar ne- cessities nor the peculiar means adopted by us to meet these necessities — the material, moral and political forces, by the application of which our country has grown great in all the essentials and proper attributes of a powerful and illustrious republic. Macaulay's opinion of our people, and of our system of government, has the defect common to the opinion of aristocratic foreigners on this subject. With little love for what they are pleased to call " the populace," they make this epithet synonymous with ignorance and poverty. To this class of critics the melodramatic in- cidents of French revolutions, and the burlesque repub- licanism of that inconstant people, in the theatrical exhibitions of it in 1830 and 1848, afford an easy solu- tion of the value of democratic principles, and France is made the supreme model of a State where sovereign power rests in the hands of the people. If the normal condition of France in this respect could consistently be considered the normal condition of the United States; if the people of that country, in all important respects, were similar to our people, then the conclusions which Macaulay draws from his prem- ises, would be just; we, with him, would doubt the stability of democratic government, and seriously ap- prehend results quite as disastrous as any which have served to make France so unenviably famous in recenti 148 MACAULAY ON DEMOCRACY. political history. But there is no similarity whatever. The condition of France would be necessary before the usual results of that condition could.be experienced in this country; but to suppose such a thing is to imagine a transposition of countries, and a complete metamor- phosis of their respective populations. It is unnecessary to dwell upon the many character- istics in which the American people differ from the people he holds up to us as an example, and upon whose character and political condition he rests his belief that Democracy and the destruction of liberty and civilization are synonymous terms. However, we will touch upon three elements which, combined, offer insurmountable obstacles to the success of Communis- tic vagaries in this country, and which will preserve the United States from the evil effects of French " pure " Democracy, so-called. These elements are Religion — the influence of the pulpit, the religious training of the masses through an open Bible in free churches; an ele- ment immeasurably potent in promoting and conserving the moral and social interests of a people. In the next place there is the general intelligence of our people: Six millions of children in the common schools regulated by a system superior to any other in the world; books in every household; public libraries in every city, town and village; and, chief over all other literary agencies, our Press, religious and secular — "the voice of the people " — guide, counselor, champion ; free as the air, and, like light, diffused everywhere and penetrating all things; visiting from day to day, and week to week, almost every home in this broad land; explaining to the humblest citizens the schemes of the mightiest and the plans of the wisest; causing every man to feel that he MACAULAY ON DEMOCRACY. 149 is a citizen, intimately concerned with the geneiul affairs of his country, and, to the extent of his individ- uahty, a judge and arbiter of its destiny; on the one hand he is taught, by this more than kingly power, the truths of the gospel, and learns to respect the man- dates of an enlightened Christianity; on the other hand rich and poor, old and young, are kept informed of passing events, and the minutest incidents in the political, commercial, social and literary worlds, come under the eye, and are intelligently commented upon. Another very important element is the isolated situation of our country. It is free from all entangling alliances; it is backed by the limitless resources of a mighty hemisphere; it labors untrammeled in develop- ing science, commerce and the arts; it is untainted by the proximity of corrupt governments, and the in- fluences of discordant nationalities, and, therefore, happily exempted from the ruinous effects, internal and external, which have so often deprived France, and her neighbors, of the opportunity of fairly testing the manhood of true Democracy, even if it were possible for these, especially for chronically implacable France, to appreciate a free, stable, constitutional government, when the whirligig of time gives them opportunity for securing such a government. Our liberty and our civilization can never be imperiled by forces engen- dered in despotism, or that grow out of conditions of general ignorance, superstition, and incontinence of character, such as are exemplified by the countries Macaulay relies upon to prove the worthlessness of Democracy. Macaulay insists that the vastness and fertility of our country are the temporary barriers that interpose 150 MACAULAY ON DEMOCRACY. themselves between us and our eventual ruin; the calamity is absolutely certain, however; it is inexorable destiny. Our dreadful fate is sealed, irrevocably! He places no value whatever upon the moral causes, to which we have alluded, and which, in our opinion, are far more potent than the combined physical causes he speaks of, for permanently protecting and conserving the prosperity of our democratic institutions. In the vivid description of the coming discontent and mutiny among our artisans and laboring classes, Macaulay takes for his pattern the chronically unsatis- factory condition of those classes in Europe. He ignores completely the differences that charac- terize these classes, the European and the American; the superior intelligence of the American artisan or laborer, his greater advantages, social, financial and political; his hardihood, and ready adaptation to his surroundings; his deeply rooted love for and clear ap- preciation of the benefits of a free and law-consecrated government, whose privileges are enjoyed in common, and which he desires to see perpetuated for his own sake, and for the sake of his posterity. Macaulay's imagina- tion transports from the shores of the Old World to those of the New, the ghostly specter of Agrarianism. Having transformed it by the aid of fancy and sophistry into a living American citizen, he stuffs him into a blouse, puts a red cap on his head, and a torch into his hand, and beholds him hanging our rich men to the first convenient lamp-post to the tune of ga ira, and, generally speaking, cutting the throats of Liberty and Civilization with all the frenzy and devilish dexterity of the sans culotte of Robespierre's and Marat's time. On this side of the Atlantic, the world has advanced MACAULAY ON DEMOCRACY. 151 too far to make such retrogression to the dominion of barbarism possible. The conservative forces of England, bf which Macaulay boasts, are also present in the United States, although they are more widely diffused, and thereby benefited, because not centered in a para- mount class, as is the case in England, having a vast and almost impassable chasm between the superior and the inferior and subordinated classes. We have seen sea- sons of great adversity, but the vigorous manhood of our country has been more than a match for these evils, and has overcome them all. From all of these adverse events golden wisdom has been gained by our people, and the future will not fail to profit by the experience of the past. No matter how viciously liberty and civilization may be assailed, the repellant power of justice, truth and wisdom, will be sufficient to repel the assault. The common sense of the American people will predomi- nate. The machinations of the enemies of liberty and right will be frustrated. The right of a people to self- government is a divine and imperishable right. To believe that it will evef* cease to exist, is to believe that the world is retrograding, and that, gradually, every ves- tige of modern civilization will be obliterated by anarchy, and lost in the black chaos of barbarism. No such destiny is to be read in the motto-stars of the American republic; through every cloud that may tem- porarily obscure them, the beautiful legend, '^ Esto Perpetual''^ shall continue to shine with steadfast splendor. RELIGION AND SCIENCE. fT is alleged that there is an irreconcilable antago- nism between Science and Religion ; that only a forced and superficial, not a natural and legitimate, union of the two is possible ; that each stands upon opposite ground ; that in our day they are rivals and foes, instead of being friends and co-laborers in a com- mon cause. Upon these points much has been said and written, and the unprofitable w^ar of words and clash of pens knows no abatement. We feel constrained to place briefly our own opinion upon record : There is no antagonism between true Religion and true Science. There is no conflict between them, and there can not be. God's revelation of himself in man and in nature is in absolute harmony with his equally divine spiritual revelation of himself in the Bible. True Science is the dutiful, humble handmaid of Religion, ever ready and willing to acknowledge her allegiance, and to serve her divine mistress; anxious to proclaim the heavenly origin of her employer, and to reveal her charms, so far as a servant may be permitted to unveil them, to the eyes, and to explain them to the understand- ing, of humanity. Science serves herself best by serving God, and is entitled to praise and respect only when she proves her right to intimate relationship with Divinity by guard- ing, with sensitive affection, the claims of the Supreme Being upon the love and reverence of men; and when she sternly rejects false teachings, and anathematizes those who usurp her place and counterfeit her noble speech. RELIGION AND SCIENCE. 153 Genuine Science has never found anything, nor demonstrated anything, nor ventured an opinion upon anything, that did not demonstrate to the unbiased conscience of mankind the truthfulness of the divinely inspired Scriptures. Every atom of the material uni- verse is vitalized by the omnipresent spirit of the Creator. Go where we will His footsteps appear, and the unspeakable effulgence of His glory beams upon our wondering eyes. The voice of the sea tells of His almightiness, and it holds enshrined forever in its bosom the indubitable proofs of His existence; the storms beat their iron wings against the rocks, and the attrition reveals the hieroglyphics of His omniscience ; the dew- drop, as it globes itself upon the point of a blade of grass, proclaims His infinite power, and the majesty thereof, with an eloquence as emphatic as that of the brilliant sphere which His hand holds suspended amid the rival splendors of the heavens; the great, profound heart of Earth throbs for Him only, and her face blushes with reverential love at His presence; the blos- soming valleys, the harvest-bearing fields, that smile in the exuberance of their gladness, teach His truths; the hoary mountains rise to do Him honor ; the skies are uncurtained by invisible hands, and through the silvery shadows that envelop them, toe may gain dim glimpses of the unportrayable face of Almighty Love, and a faint idea of the ineffable beauty of His celestial handiwork. " The heavens declare the glory of God ; and the firm- ament showeth His handiwork. Day unto day uttereth speech, and night unto night showeth knowledge. There is no speech or language where their voice is not heard." But more sublimely even than nature manifests Him to our senses. He has condescended to reveal Himself 154 RELIGION AND SCIENCE. to our souls through the Bible. Stone-blind, indeed, must be the heart that cannot see His presence in every line of it, and His holy, all-quickening spirit on every page. In nature. He speaks to us through the necessarily inadequate medium of soulless matter; in His book we meet Him face to face; He talks as a father to his child; we hear every tone and modulation of His voice; when He stretches forth His hand we feel it resting upon our hearts; there is no missing or broken link, no impassable gulf, between us. What right, therefore, have we to entertain any doubt of Him in any way, or not to give absolute and unques- tioning allegiance to His sovereignty, when He has condescended to reveal Himself to His creatures through the medium of the Sacred Scriptures; when genuine Science, devoutly investigating the mysteries of nature, reverently acknowledges the supremacy and incontestable truth of His revelations in those manifestations of His being also; and when won- der, admiration, and an awe that is utterly unable to express itself, are the emotions that exclusively oc- cupy the soul when we contemplate the eternal evi- dences of His truth, wisdom, and power ? Should we not rely as implicitly on God's exposition of Himself in the one case as in the other ? Is not spirit greater than matter? Is it not egregious folly, then, is it not arrant blasphemy to pervert or to deny the truths of the statements made in the Scriptures by holy men under the direct inspiration of Heaven ? Whosoever does this, places mere human opinion above divinely indorsed Truth, and the creature above the Creator. It is not worth while to pay attention to the vaga- RELIGION AND SCIENCE. 155 ries of pseudo-scientists. Let them float their bubbles as they please; they do no harm. To give charlatans of this sort audience, is to give them the coveted op- portunity tor a display of their gaudy word-mongery, and to show off their clap-trap methods of sophistry, the end of whieh is a manifestation of their own men- tal barrenness, and an exposition, altogether superflu- ous, of the hollow cant of skepticism and materialism. Faith is all-sufficient to the Christian. It is to him an anchor that never drags, because it holds to the Rock of Ages. It is a ship made fast by an inde- structible chain to the shore of Eternity. It is a sun that never sets. It is a star that shines steadfastly, and with a glory that increases as the gloom of the night grows apace. Christian faith may be reviled, denounced, hissed at, spurned, cursed, crucified — never- theless, it continues to be what it is, unchangeably. It is divine, consequently it is immortal. Its beauty is brightened by contrast. The weakness of folly only demonstrates its omnipotence more fully. Opposition emboldens it; error vindicates it; time deepens, widens, exalts it; eternity crowns it. POT-POURRI. " i^JT is a high, solemn, and ahnost an awful thought," c^ says Carlyle, " for every indi vidua?, that his earthly influence, which has a commencement here, will never, through all ages, were he the meanest of us all, have an end." Almost an awful thought ! It is an awful thought — for it contains the idea of Eternity, and what is more inconceivably awful than Eternity ? And yet men act, every day of their lives, as if there were no Eternity, no Hereafter to this transient Now, and that the influence of their existence is bounded by the narrow confines of our mortality. Every individual's influence, be he of mean or noble grade, rich or poor, is at all times exerted for good or for evil, directly or indirectly, by the spoken precept or the silent yet no less eloquent teaching of personal example. This influence gathers drop by drop, rill by rill it trickles down the secluded or public paths of life, until it becomes, finally, an irresistible current, upon whose tide we and others drift and are borne — whence ? Ah ! right here we touch upon and shrink from the idea of the eternal; here is the awful barrier before which the soul must pause, reflect, tremble, hope ! What a blissful thought it is that our influence, our life, our aspirations, have been like a bright and songful stream, flowing through the sunny lands of Peace and Memory. The barrier that excludes us, for the present, from the great Beyond, will have no terror for us. On the other side shines the sun of everlast- POT-POURRI. 157 ing Truth, and we feel that the hand of eternal Love will be stretched forth to greet our coming. On the contrary, how awful is the thought that the baneful influences of our life have formed themselves into a river of Death, whose waves are gall, whose course is marked by the blight of its poisoned waters, and whose voice is the dirge of eternal woe ! Some blatant demagogues maintain that " Labor should be disenthralled from capital." This is pestif- erous nonsense. Labor and capital cannot be sepa- rated. They must live and die together. Each has its appropriate sphere to fill. They are interdependent. It is their discord that must be prevented. Both should be disenthralled from envy and clashing inter- ests, an enthrallment continually made more perplexing and burdensome by malcontents and demagogues, in- spired by base and selfish purposes. They should rather be taught to know how essentially their inter- ests are in common. Labor should be emancipated from ignorance, and capital restrained from its ten- dency to tyranny. " Those who trust us," says George Eliot, " educate us ; " and it is likewise true that we educate those who trust us. The confidence and the simple faith which meet and embrace us, without the shadow of a doubt even, give to character an impressibility as sensitive to the force of impressions as the surface of a mirror is to the light of the sun. In course of time such hearts become so thoroughly imbued with the color of our own thoughts, and the peculiarities that characterize our own disposition, 158 POT-POURRI. that their individual identity is scarcely perceptible. They reflect and perpetuate the workings and moods of our own soul intuitively and without conscious effort. Therefore, how important it is that we should be worthy of such a trust — a trust that educates re- ciprocally, and whose effects, strange and wonderful as they are even in this life, who can conceive in the illimitable life that awaits us beyond the boundary of the grave ? " The every-day cares and duties which men call drudgery," says Longfellow, "are the weights and counterpoises of the clock of time, giving its pendu- lum a true vibration, and its hands a regular motion, and when they cease to hang upon the wheels, the pen- dulum no longer swings, the hands no longer move, the clock stands still." This is as true as it is beauti- ful. Every duty of our daily life, though looked upon as "drudgery," can be made to yield pleasure, or at least, can be robbed of its unpleasant features, by a willing and cheerful spirit. The great central idea which should give strength and momentum to every heart, " doing good," will hallow every means, no mat- ter how humble or irksome, necessary to the attain- ment of that end. The constantly varying moods of the mind color our occupations, and we often look upon a certain task as drudgery, which at another time, and under other circumstances, would be but a pleasing employment. Habit will step in as the great pacificator of our vexed feelings, and patience, " The soul of peace, Of all the virtues the nearest kin to heaven," POT-POURRI. 159 will sweeten every toil. We should always consider what we are laboring for, and whether our purposes are honest and commendable. Having this knowledge, we are proof against the " stings and arrows of out- rageous fortune," and can always cheerfully answer " here," when Duty calls the roll. Every drunkard was a sober man once, and his ruin is a history. To look upon him, however, as he wallows with the swine in a gutter, and scarcely resembling a human being, it is hard to believe that he can have ever been a sober man. It would seem that a thousand years are necessary to bring a human being down to this level of debasement, and that the average length of life is insufficient for the monstrous development of such a horror. Yet there is the awful fact ! Oh, the terrible antithesis of such a life ! Oh, the immeasura- ble extent of the woe! Oh, the Dead Sea of misery, that lies between the black and desolate shore of such a creature's Present and the green and smiling shore of the distant Might-have-been ! The mind cannot grasp the length, the height, the depth of such a thought ! The heart can never fathom the pathos of it! God help these fallen angels of light, once created in His image. What a blood-besmeared, insatiable monster Rum is! A reviewer, commenting on the official record of homi- cides that occurred during one year, in the United States, and the compilation of which occupied six great columns in solid agate type, suggestively says: " Inspection also shows that rum, using the word in its derived sense as standing for the whole class of al- coholic stimulants, is responsible for more homicides 160 POT-POURRI. than any other one cause. There were two homicides on the first day of the year attributed by the compiler to rum, and the list ends as it began, with a death that came about in a drunken quarrel. Between the first day of the year and the last, the reader will find the' tracks of rum at least every week and sometimes every day, for days in succession. It is noteworthy that, during the three summer months, when the number of homicides was greatest, there were only twenty-three killings that are directly attributed to drinking. There were a great many quarrels which resulted fatally to one or both of the parties, but it is not alleged of most of them that rum was at the bottom. It is not improb- able that closer examination would have disclosed the fact that there had been drinking." Rum is the sateless vampire that sucks the life-blood of our people; it is the monstrous agency that drags thousands upon thousands into the jaws of hell; it is the fire-brand that sets our social fabric on fire; it is the demon destroyer of peace and happiness; the cruel subverter of law and order; the deadliest foe of vir- tue and honor; the Gorgon that is not a myth, (would to God that it were!) with the snake's head of Medusa, at whose glance hearts are turned to stone, murder bares his arm, and strong men shrivel into insanity and succumb to a miserable and hopeless death. And still the ruin grows. Page after page is added to this history of Satan; every word an annihilated soul; every sentence punctuated with murder; every chapter lurid with the flames of hell; every book the wail of a dying nation ! A drop of water fell out of a cloud into the sea. "Alas ! " it exclaimed, despondingly, " what an insig- POT-POURRI. 161 nificant creature I am in this vast waste of waters; my existence is of no concern to the universe; I am almost nothing; I am the very least of the works of God ! " By some mysterious process the drop of water found its way into the interior of a shell, where it lay a long time, undergoing a very wonderful change, until, by slow degrees, it ripened into a pearl. In due time the shell, with its precious contents, was found by a diver, and the pearl, after many remarkable vicissitudes, is now the most beautiful and the costliest gem in the crown of the Persian monarch. How aptly this tender fable of the East illustrates the power of " little things ! " It teaches us to look with loving regard even upon the apparent trifles of God's universe. We do not know the mighty force, the glorious beauty contained in atoms. Nothing can be properly considered insignificant in nature. A par- ticle of matter, in its crude form, may seem to be alto- gether valueless, but it may become an agent for the generation of a living thought, which shall ascend, note by note, the majestic diapason of Nature, until it shall blend, at last, with the full harmony of the Eter- nal Mind. The ultimate power of a rain-drop even, is beyond the scope of human comprehension, and its tiny orb holds mysteries not less wonderful than those of the resplendent spheres of heaven which are — " Forever singing as they shine, The hand that made us is divine." *The treasure which a man carries in his mind, can never be taken from him. It is an inexhaustible mine, from which he can delve precious things in the bright- 11 162 POT-POURRI. est as well as in the darkest hours of his life. It is true that the poverty of our garments, and the lack of that exterior gloss by which the superficial eye of the world estimates, in a large measure, the value of char- acter, are conditions that operate, apparently, unfavora- bly upon our material interests; but this is temporary. The tranquil beams of a cultivated mind, the glow of an earnest heart, the serene beauty of a pure spirit, will shine through every adverse circumstance, and will secure in due course of time, from intelligent men, hon- orable recognition. The richest legacy that parents can leave to their children is an honest name; the surest riches with which they can endow them is the wealth of a thorough education — a trained intellect, sanctified to godly uses by the chastening and ennobling spirit of Christianity. " 'Tis the mind that makes the body rich And as the sun breaks through the darkest cloud So honor peereth in the meanest habit." Emilio Castelar, the Spanish patriot, statesman and author, is a man of unique genius and great literary power. He possesses the passion, the fire, the pictur- esque, artistic mind of the South, and the fervid imag- ination that burns like a cloudless July sun. In his critical work he lacks cool, calm, evenly balanced power; his judgment is carried away by the flood of impulse; he becomes a special pleader for his favorite, and ceases to be a dispassionate relaterof facts, a grave, unbiased historian. In his brilliant book " Life of Lord Byron and Other Sketches," his opinion of Byron is condensed in the following fiery lines: " Poet ! mighty poet ! men knew not the impossibil- POT-POURRI. 163 ity of having grand qualities without having also great defects. They know not that all extraordinary virtue, all surpassing merit, is born of a disproportion between human faculties. They know not that the perfect sense of hearing has a relation with the imperfect sense of vision; and, at times, the perfection of imag- ination with the imperfection of conscience." Nothing can be more illogical. Are great virtues impossible unless they grow out of great vices ? Is Discord the parent of Harmony ? Cannot perfection exist unless it is counterbalanced by imperfection ? Our idea of true greatness embraces an evenly bal- anced character, great in all its parts, and moving grandly forward toward the accomplishment of some great end, the embodiment of serene and lofty harmony. Great crimes may be overshadowed by greater genius, but the fact is nevertheless deplorable that genius should condescend to degrade itself by becoming the blind tool of infamy. Where genius is guilty of this, the result is an extension of the area of crime, and an augmentation of evil. " Be noble-minded," says Schiller, " our own heart, and not other men's opinions of us, forms our true honor." That is to say, if in the sight of God we feel that our heart is all right, we need not fear the criti- cism of men, nor be anxious concerning their opinion as to our motives and actions. Many a noble thing is done of which the world is ignorant. Many a noble mind shines, unperceived by the eye of the world, behind the screen of casual cir- cumstance, as the sun shines behind the passing cloud; yet its influence for good is felt, notwithstanding the 164 ' POT-POUERI. fact that the source of this beneficence is unkn.own. Be good, be right, be true, and you will necessarily be noble- minded. Thus you will be brought into direct com- munication with God and the Holy Spirit. From these will come the blessing you seek, and the only honors worth striving for; having these you can serenely and safely forego the unstable honor of men's opinions. Lord Macaulay considered it "the first rule of all writing — that rule to which every other is subordinate — that the words used by the writer shall be such as most fully and precisely convey his meaning to the great body of his readers." Simplicity, perspicuity, directness, are the chief charms of good writing and speaking. No matter how beautiful the words of a speaker or writer may be in themselves, if the order of their arrangement is per- plexing, they will confuse the perception of hearers or readers, and lose one-half of their power. All the grand operations of nature are simple, and the forces of the mind attain their fullest development by the exercise of the same principle. We should be able to follow a speaker or a writer in the sublimest flights of oratory, or the most brilliant essays of dic- tion, without weariness; the height he attains should not make him dizzy, and obscure him in clouds of vague and abstruse words; he should bear us up on the wings of the eagle, the sweep of whose pinions is as strong and rhythmic near the sun as it is when he leaves his mountain eyrie. The grand and majestic things in nature are broad, elemental, and impress themselves with direct force upon the soul; the sky, the mountains, the ocean, affect us with wonder and POT-POURRI. 165 excite the profoundest emotions of our hearts by their simple beauty, and the sense of illimitable power ex- pressed without effort. So should it be in writing and speaking. Nature should be our standard. All true art is simple — to depart from this rule is to lose sight of the fundamental principle of Eloquence. What is it that men lack most ? It is not talent, but purpose; not learned theory, but intelligent appli- cation; not complicated machinery, but practical, straightforward work; not means to achieve, but the iron will to labor. Possessing these, success will fol- low. A good purpose must sanctify talent. Theory is useless, unless it is tested by application. Where will is, the power of achievement is very apt to be; a deter- mined will can create the necessary power out of its own forces. There is so much wasted talent in our day. Men re- fuse to confine their gifts and energies to legitimate channels; they attempt great things spasmodically, and spurn the broad and safe high-roads to success for the wilderness paths of the novel and the quicksands of the sensational and the inexplicable. Stern purpose, loyal devotion, a clear understanding of the end to be attained; resolute application, hard work, and a cheerful, consecrated spirit, will overcome almost every obstacle. Without these qualities talent is but of little use to its possessor; it is a flower fated to " waste its sweetness on the desert air." Epictetus maintained that the substance of philoso- phy is contained in the two words, " sustain," and "abstain." The words are simple, indeed,, and yet 166 POT-POURRI. they give us the master-key to the treasure-house of Philosophy. " Sustain " the true, the good, the beau- tiful, wheresoever they appear, in character, in art, in nature. Sustain every effort that is made for the amelioration of human sorrow, for the promotion of knowledge, for the increase and recognition of moral excellence, and the consequent increase of human hap- piness. Sustain honesty, merit, humility, perseverance in the right, good purposes, good achievements, good government. Sustain the purity and dignity of your soul against all odds; sustain honorable temporal rela- tions with your fellow-men; sustain your religious faith and your paramount spiritual relations to your Creator. "Abstain " from base indulgences, from obscenity in deed and thought; abstain from falsehood, from in- temperance, from uncharitableness, from envy, from slander, from mercenary trickery; abstain from every vice that degrades the soul, and soils and humiliates your manhood or your womanhood. Abstain from the selfish and gloomy moods which cloud the eternal sunshine of Heaven, and prevent the eyes of your heart from seeing the goodness of God, His loving kindness to every creature, or which are cal- culated to obscure your perception of the beauty and harmony of nature. The constant practice of the meaning of these two little words will make you a Christian philosopher. A prominent writer, whose name has frequently ap- peared in the AtlcDitic, takes occasion to say: "Per- haps it is well for all of us that we should live mostly on the surfaces of things, and should play with life, to. avoid taking it too hard." POT-POURRI. 167 This, to use no harsher term (though it deserves a stronger epithet), is a foolish sentiment. The person who " plays with life," plays with the most precious of all things, and runs the risk of ruining himself for time and eternity. That any thinking man can look upon life as a plaything, is a source of astonishment to us, and presupposes a condition of soul beyond our comprehension. Yet this flippancy is the great evil that permeates our society as a whole, bringing thou- sands to a wretched end. Life is a very serious matter, even in this world, and inconceivably serious when we reflect, even for one moment, upon its inseparable connection with eternity. *' Living mostly on the surface, and playing with life, to avoid taking it too hard," is an unmanly, a cowardly sen- timent. It is a debasement of the high, spiritual stand- ard which men, endowed with immortal souls, should set up for themselves. It is the voluptuary's creed; it is the wordling's shibboleth; it is a false, heathenish quibble, unworthy of this Christian age. It should be ex- punged from the vocabulary of all who wish to serve God and do their duty as honest men and women should do. A recent writer endeavors to palliate the extraordi- nary lapses of some men and women of genius from the accepted standard of morality, by the following sentiment: " Genius, in all time, has seemed to assume the right to be a law unto itself, and we have in this case another instance of the difficulty of holding exceptionally gifted natures to the conventionalities that are the welcome safeguard of less daring souls." It should be remembered that much is required of 168 POT-POURRI. him to whom much is given, and that people of genius have no license to sin. Their neglect of the " conven- tionalities " of society does little harm, but they must conform to its moralities. No amount of genius will excuse licentiousness. God is no respecter of persons. People endowed with genius are especially responsible to the Divine Dispenser of all good gifts, for the proper use of their genius. Genius is a great, an ab- solute power — it can be made an angel of blessing or a demon of destruction. Great and fearful, indeed, is the responsibility of men and women of genius ! A sturdy and wise old Norse king, being asked what his religion was, answered: "Ask my wife. Our women are nearer to God than we are." In Bestowing this well-merited compliment on women, the sententious Norseman probably failed to feel the force of the cen- sure upon his own sex, which his words contain. There is not the slightest reason for any difference in the relationship of men and women to the Divine Author of all. There will be no discrimination on ac- count of sex in the day of judgment. Each soul will be judged upon its own merits or demerits by the all- embracing and invariable standard of God's law. It is as much the man's duty to be a Christian as it is the woman's; they are equally responsible, and are bound by the same divine obligations. No family can enjoy complete peace and harmony where there is lack of unison, in deed or in spirit, in the religious work and aspirations of the husband and wife. If the man, by nature, is more sinful than the woman, his reasoning powers are greater, and his will is stronger — why can he not exercise these qualities to POT-POUKKI. 169 their full capacity and, by making a greater effort, place himself, in this important respect, by the side of his wife, the so-called " weaker vessel ? " Why should the shining crown of Christian virtues and graces be reserved for the brow of man's helpmeet, when its luster is equally becoming to the brow of the husband and master, and was intended to be so ? Wherever there is disparity between the moral and religious status of husband and wife, domestic felicity has but precarious and brief existence. The poet, by the clairvoyance of his inspiration, discov- ers far more readily than persons less gifted, the well- springs of human feeling. By the aid of his marvel- ous inner consciousness he traces the subtle connections of cause and effect; hence he becomes a divinelv in- spired oracle. He is empowered to promulgate great truths; and by a touch of his golden wand he dis- solves many of the errors and superstitions that still darken the mind of the age. Tennyson, interpreting the secret causes of religious persecution, says in his Queen 3IaTy: When men are tossed On tides of strant^e opinion, and not sure i Of their own selves, they are wroth with their own selves And thence with others. Then, who lights the faggot? Not the fall faith, no, bat the lurkmg doubt. It is customary to consider persons, moved by " holy wrath" to burn heretics, sincere in their motives; but, according to the poet's interpretation, they are not moved by their faith as much as they are by the fear that the " heretics' " opinion may, after all, be the true one, and all their own tenets false. 170 POT-POURRI. Richelieu's remark, '' there is no such word as fail," is certainly true in principle, though not always literally true. Men may fail in accomplishing U wicked object. They are chagrined at the failure which, in its result, becomes a benefit to others. But the men whose attempts at wickedness were frustrated never fail in one thing, that is — in diminishing their own happiness; they are assured of the approbation of their master, Satan. The man whose aims are lofty, whose desires are worthy and commendable, may also fail to see them accomplished. He may never secure a tangible result; in men's eyes he is, as the saying goes, " a failure " — but, what an inexhaustible source of good this man's apparent failures may be to himself and to the world, after all! How tlie Beautiful may blossom from the dust of his despair! How the harps of the angels may be resounding in his praise in the temples of the skies, though the dull ear of our humanity is unable to hear the heavenly peans! Who shall distinguish truly between failures and successes in tliis probationary life ? Plow many a so-called Failure here may meet our wondering gaze in the eternal Beyond a sun-bright, crowned Success! "As for my plan of not sparing myself," said Freder- ick the Great, " I confess it the same as before. The more one nurses one's self the more feeble and delicate does the body become. My trade requires toil and activity, and both my body and my mind must adapt themselves to their duty. It is not necessary that I should live, hut it is necessary that I should act. I have always found mj'^self the better for this method. How- POT-I'OUKKI, 171 ever, I do not prescribe it for any one else, and am con- tent to practice it myself." No character in history is so remarkably unique, so intensely peculiar, as the old war-king of Prussia. In spite of many blemishes which darken his Ufe, and the fact that he was guilty of many acts that provoke our execration, his life and character are a fruitful study to those who find, in the dissection of human nature, con- stant employment, for the critical faculty of the mind. There is practical wisdom in the old hero's motto : " It is not necessary that I should live, but it is necessary that I should act." It is action that makes us worthy of life. Life without action is a contradiction. The value of life consists in the opportunities afforded for action. He that avails himself of these opportunities, and by the healthy exercise of his faculties makes him- self constantly the author of good and noble actions, reaps the full harvest of his existence, and establishes his claim to earthly eminence and an immortal reward hereafter. How saddening is the remembrance of our lost days! How dark the shadow they throw upon the meditations of our hearts! Even the lono-est life is but as a laub- ble upon the stream, or as an echo dying among the hills. What can be more precious than our days? They contain the power that can fit the soul for its higher life of immortality beyond the grave, the bliss- ful consummation of every holy ideal; they contain, also, the power that shall hurl us from the walls of Heaven into the abyss prepared from the beginning of the world for the fallen angels and the ministers of Darkness. 172 POT-POURRI. O, most precious days! How we should cherish them, and hug them closely to our hearts, and make them yield for us the divine harvest of love — but how fear- fully we neglect them, how prodigally we waste them! How many a heavenly deed we might have done by using but one lost day well, and yet, ask your own con- science, and it will tell you, remorsefully, that you have lost hundreds of these precious jewels! A¥ell has the poet expressed the sacred regret we feel for a " lost day:" Who 's seen my day? 'Tis gone away, Nor left a trace In any place. If I could only find Its footfall in some mind — Some spirits' waters stirred By wand of deed or word — I should not stand at shadowy eve And for my day so grieve and grieve.