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SEVEN DAYS'
BOOK.
- — -*
I.- -~
'^z ?^*H
^oC. ^^., ntt.
r
NEW ENQLANDEK
AND
YALE EEYIEW.
1887.
VOLUME XI. NEW SEEIES.
VOLUME XLVII, COMPLETE SEEIES.
lULUUB ABDIOTUS JU&ABE DT TESBA HAOISTBL
NEW HAVEN:
WILLIAM L. KINGSLET, PEOPRIETOR.
TUTTLB, XOBEHOUSB * TATLOB, FBINTEBS.
1887.
n^3.<ix.if
'. t )
CONTENTS OF VOLUME XI.
NUMBER L
AST. L The Sin of KaaaachiiaettB, Thos. B. Baoon, Berkeley, Oalif omuu 1
n. The Via Media in Bthics. Bikizo Nftkashima, New Hayen. 12
nL Goeae's Life of Sir Walter Baleigh.
Geo. F. Magoan, Grinnell, Iowa. 16
rV. Marginalia Zoeftd-a-na. Noah Porter. New Haven. 33
Y. Christianity and Modem Boonomica.
John B. Clark, Smith College, Northampton, Maaa. 50
UNIVERSITY TOPICS.
Prooeedinga of the Mathematical Club. J. Willard Gibba. 60
The Political Science Clnb of Yale Uniyersity. J. C. Schwab. 61
Prooeedinga of the Claaaical and Philological Society of Yale College.
Thomaa D. Seymour. 63
CURRENT LITERATURE.
Ibe Proyinoe of tiie Roman Empire from Casaar to Diocletian. By Theodore
Mommaen. 66
HiB Star in the Baat. By Leighton Parka. 68
Beallatic Philoaophy. By Jamea MoCoah, D.D., LL.D. 71
A Commentary on tiie Firat Epiatle to the Corinthiana. By Thomaa Chaa.
Bdward8,M.A. 73
Waifleld*8 liitrodnction to the Textual Criticism of the New Teatament. By
Bey. Beig. B. Warfleld, D.D. 74
Word Stadiea in the New Teatament By Marvin B. Vincent, D.D. 74
Life of Onr Lord in the Worda of the Eyangeliata. By Jamea P. Cadman, A.M. 76
The Barly Todora: Henry VLL, Henry Vin. By the Bey. C. B. Moberly, M.A. 77
The Book of Bevelation. By larael P. Warren, D.D. 77
Oritaoal and Ezegetioal Handbook to the Bevelation of John. By Frederick
DOaterdieok, D.D. 78
The Art Amateur. 79
NUMBER IL
Abt. L The American School of Claaaical Studiea at Athena.
T. D. Seymour, Yale Uniyeraity. 81
n. A Diadple of John. Caroline Hazard, Peacedale, B. L 92
HL The Hiatory of the Federal Convention of 1787, and of ita work.
J. Bandolph Tucker, Lexmgton, Va. 97
lY. Beoent Viewa of the Eighteenth Century.
L. J. Swinburne, Colorado Springe, Colorado. 147
SoctooftheMontiL
IV CONTENTS.
NUMBER in.
Abt. L Some Recent Books on Folk Lore.
Edward G. Bourne, Yale OoUege. 165
n. Professor Johnston's "Connecticut:" Some Thoughts on the His-
tory of a Commonwealth-Democracy.
John A. Porter, Washington, D. C. 172
HL A Christian Daily Paper.
0. A. Eingsbary, New York City. 182
rv. Eighteenth Century Poetry. Part IL
Louis Judson Swinburne, Colorado Springs, CoL 18&
y. The Snrviyal of the Filthiest.
Charles H. Owen, Hartford, Conn. 201
TL The Pastor and Doctrine.
Charles C. Starbuek, Andover, Mass. 212
UNIVERSITY TOPICS.
In Memoriam Henry C. Eingsley. Noah Porter, New Haven. 222
CURRENT LITERATURE.
Encyclopedia of Living Divines and Christian Workers of all Denominations
in Europe and America. By Philip Schaff and Samuel M. Jackson. 22t
The Story of Carthaga By Alfred J. Church. 228
Greed and Character. By H. 8. Holland. 230
Oonunentary on First Corinthians. By F. Godet 231
Hints on Writing and Speech-making. By Thomas Wentworth Higginson. 232
Selected Essays of Joseph Addisoa By C. T. Winchester. 232
NUMBER IV.
Abv. I. The Progress of New England Agriculture during the last Thirty
Years. Joseph B. Walker, Concord, N. H. 233
n. The English Bible and the English Language.
T. W. Hunt, Princeton, N. J. 24ft
m. Industrial Education. Edward J. Phelps, Chicago, HL 280
rv. Assent to Creeds. Henry C. Robinson, Hartford. 281
Y. State Confiscation of Unearned Increments. 295
NUMBER V.
AST. L Wordsworth as a Spiritual Teacher.
Henry M. Goodwin, Olivet, mch. 30»
XL Profit-Sharing as a Method of Remunerating Labor.
Frederick J. Kingsbury, Waterbury. 83a
IIL Patrick Henry. Walter Allen, New Haven. 84e
CONTENTS, V
UNIVBRSmr TOPICS.
The Bngliah Bible and the College Oamculum S. H. Lee, New Hayen. 360
CimRBNT LITBRATURB.
A Day in Capernaum. By Dr. Franz Delitssch. B*IB
The Hognenots and Henry of Navarre. By Henry M. Baird. 374
Proceedings of the American Society for Psychical Research. 3t5
Ite New Psychic Studies in their relation to Christian Thought. By Frank-
lin Johnson, D.D. 3tT
Geometrical Psychology, or The Science of Representation. By Louisa S.
Cook. 371
The Conception of the Infinite. By George S. Fullerton, A.M. 378
The Philosophy of Education. By Johann Elarl Friederick Rosenkrans. 37 8>
Greek Lexicon of the Roman and Byzantine Periods. By E. A. Sophocles. 37&
Tbe Art Amateur. 380
NUMBER VI.
Abt. L The American Board at Sprhigfleld.
Wm. W. Patton, Washingtoni D. C. 381
IL The Physician of To-day and of the Future.
B. P. Buffett, Jersey City, N. J. 390
HL Dr. Fnmess's »* Othello." Ernest Whitney, New Hayen. 412
lY. Perkins's France under Mazarin.
Theodore Bacon, Rochester, N. Y. 420
UNIVBRSITT TOPICa
Classical and Philological Society of Yale College. 430
The Mathematical Club. 441
The Political Science Club. 442
CURRENT LITERATURE.
History of the Christian Church. By G^eorge Park Fisher. 444
Fifteen Years in the Chapel of Yale College. By Noah Porter. 451
Palestine in the Time of Christ By Edmund Stapfer, D.D. 463
CorreepoDdencies of Faith and Views of Madame Guyon. By Rey. Henry
T. Cheever. 454
Brief Institutes of General History. By E. Beigamin Andrews, D.D., LI1.D. 45^
Natoral Law in the Business World. By Henry Wood. 467
Parish Problems. By Washington Gladden. 468
life of Samuel Taylor Coleridge. By Hall Caine. 460
Kanf 8 Philosophy of Law. By W. Hastie, B.D. 460
Fleming's Vocabulary of Philosophy. By Professor Calderwood. 460
IISTDEX.
hi ihia Index (he futmes of Oontribuiora ofArtidea are prinUd in Ikdios,
Adams (Brooks), The Emandpation
of Massachusetts. Reviewed.
l%Ofn(u R. Bacon^ - • - 1
Agriculture, The Progress of New
Englajid, during the last thirty
years. Joseph B. Walker. Art. 233
Alien (Walter), Prof. Tyler's life of
Patrick Henry. Reviewed, - 346
Amencan Board at Springfield. W.
W. PaUon. Article, - - -381
American School of Classical Stud-
ies at Athens. The. Thomas D,
Seymour, Article, - - - 81
Andrews (B. B.), Institutes of His-
tory. Noticed. O. P. FUher, 456
Art Amateur, The. Noticed, 79, 380, 466
Athens, The American School of
Classical Studies at. Thomas D,
Seymour, Article, - - - 81
Bacon {Theodore\ Perkins's France
under Mazarin. Reviewed, - 420
Bacon (T, R.), The Sin of Massachu-
setts. Article, - - - - 1
Baird (Henry M.), The Huguenots
and Henry of Navarre. Noticed, 3*74
Bible, The English, and the Eng-
lish Language, Article. T, W,
Hunt, 246
Bible, The English, and the College
Curriculum. 8, H, Lee, Art. 360
Bourne (Edward O,), Some Recent
Books on Folk Lore. Article, - 166
Bourne (Edward Q,)^ Mommsen's
Provinces of the Roman Empire.
Noticed, - . . - - 65
Bourne (Henry E.\ A Day in Ca-
pernaum, by Dr. Franz Delitzsch.
Noticed, 313
Brastou) (L. 0.), Fifteen Years in
the Chapel of Yale College, by
Noah Porter. Reviewed, - - 451
Brastow (L. 0.), Gladden's Parish
Problems. Noticed, - - - 468
Brasiow (L. 0,\ Natural Law in the
Business World, by Henry Wood.
Noticed, 46t
BuffeU (E. P,\ The Physician of
To-day and of the Future. Art 399
BuUoek (M, O.), Warren's Books of
Revelation. Noticed, - - 77
BuUock (M, Q.\ Handbook to the
Revelation of John. Noticed, - 78
Cadman's "Christ in the Gospels,"
noticed. Geo. B. Stevens. - 76
Caine (Hall), Life of Samuel Taylor
Coleridge. Noticed, - - - 469
Cheever (Henry T.), Corresponden-
cies of Faith. Noticed. Samuel
Harris, 464
Christianity and Modem Economics.
JohnR Clark. Article. - - 60
Church (A. J.) The Story of Car-
thage. Willabe HaskeU. Noticed, 228
Clark (John A), Christianity and
Modem Economics. Article, - 50
Connecticut: A Study of a Com-
monwealth-Democracy. Rev'd.
John A. Porter. - - . - 172
Convention of 1787, History of the
Federal. Article. J, Rando^h
Tuckery 97
Cook (L. S.), Geometrical Psychol-
ogy or the Science of Represen-
tation. Noticed, - - - 377
Creeds, Assent to. Henry C. Rob-
inson. Article, - / - - - 281
Delitzsch's. A Day in Capernaum.
Noticed. Henry E. Bourne,
Doctrine, The Pastor and. Charles
C, Starhuck, Article, - - 212
Dusterdieck's Hand-book to the Rev-
elation of John, Noticed. M. O.
Buflock, 78
Economics, Christianity and Mod-
ern. John B. Clark. Artide, - 50
Education, Industrial. Edward J.
Phelps. Article, - - - 267
Edwards (T. C), A Commentary on
the First Epistle to the Corin-
thians. Noticed. Geo. B. Sevens, 73
Eighteenth Century, Recent Views
of the. L. J, Swinburne. Art 147
Eighteenth Century Poetry. Part
II. L. J. Swinburne, Article, - 189
Ethics, The Via Media in, RikiM
Nakashima, Article, - -12
INDEX.
VU
TSedenJ Convention of 1787, The
Hifltoiy of the. J, Banda^h
Ikckar. Article, - - . 97
filthiest, the Surriva] of the.
Charle3 B, Owen. Article. - 201
fUher {O, P.), Andrews's Institutes
of Hlstoiy. Noticed, - - - 466
Kdier (George P.), History of the
Christian Church. Reviewed. L,
L. Paine, 444
Fleming's Vocabulary of Philoso-
phy. Noticed, - - - - 460
PoUc Lore, Some Becent Books on.
Edward G. Bourne. Article, - 165
yranoe under Mazarin, by James
Breck Perkins. Bevieweid. Theo-
dore BaooUj .... 420
Follerton (George S), The Concep-
tion of the Infinite. Noticed, - 378
Fumees's Othello. Reviewed. Er-
nest Whitney, - • - -412
GiMu {J. Willard), Proceedings of
the Mathematical Club, - - 60
Gladden (Washington), Parish Prob-
lems. Noticed. L. 0. Brastow, 468
€k)det on First Corinthians. Oeo.
B. Stevens. Noticed, • • - 231
Ooodwin {Henry if.), Wordsworth
as a Spiritual Teacher. Article, 309
Ooflse's Life of Sir Walter Raleigh.
Beviewed. Geo. F. Magoun, - 16
Greeley (C. D.), Realistic Phil-
osophy by James McCosh. Not^d. 7 1
Harris (Sanwdy, Cheever's Corre-
spondencies of Faith. Noticed, - 464
Haskea ( WiOabe), The story of Car-
thage. Bj A. J. Church. Not*d, 282
Haaard {Caroline), A Disciple of
John. Poem, - - - - 92
Henry (Patrick), Prol Tyler^s Life
of. Reviewed. Waiter Allen, - 346
Higginson (T. W.), Hints on Writing
and Speech Making. Noticed, - 232
Holland (H. S.), Creed and Charac-
ter. Geo. R Stevens. Noticed, 230
Hunt (T. W.\ The English Bible
and the English Language. Art 246
Industrial Education. Edward J.
Phe^. Article, • • -267
John, A Disciple of. Caroline Haz-
ard. Poem, - - - - 92
Johnson (Franklin), Psychic Stu-
dies. Noticed, < - - - 377
Johnston (Alexander), Connecticut,
A study of a Commonweallh-De-
mocracy. Reviewed. John A,
Porter, 172
Kant's Philosophy of Law. Not'd, 460
Kinffiibury (/. JI), Profit-sharing as
a method of remunerating labor.
Article, 333
Kingsbury (0. A.), A Christian
Daily Paper. Article, - - 182
Kingsley (Henry C), In Memoriam.
Noah Porter, - • - - 222
Labor, Profit-sharing as a method
of remunerating. F. J. Kingahwry.
Article, 333
Language, The English Bible and
the English. T. W. Hunt. Art., 246
Lee {S. H), The English Bible and
the College Curriculum. Article, 360
Locke-a-na, Marginalia. Noah Por-
ter. Article, - - - - 33
Magoun (Oeo. F.), Gosse's Life of
Sir Walter Raleigh. Reviewed, 16
Massachusetts, The Sin of. Tlumaa
R. Racon. Artide, - - - 1
Mathematical Club, Proceedings of
the. J. WiOard Gihba, • - 60
McCoah (James), Realistic Philoso-
phy. Noticed, a D. Greeley, 71
Moberly (C. E.), The Early Tudors.
Noticed, 77
Mommsen's Provinces of the Roman
Empire. Noticed. E. G.Roume. 66
Nakashima (Rikisso), The Yia Media
in Ethics. Artide, - - - 12
Othello, Dr. Fumess's. Reviewed.
Ernest Whitney, ... 412
Owen {Charles H.), The Survival of
the Filthiest. Article, - - 201
Paine {L. L.), History of the Chris-
tian Churdi, by George P. Fisher,
Reviewed, 444
Paper, A Christian Daily. 0. A.
Kingsbury. Article, - • - 182
Parks (L.), His Star in the East.
Noticed. S. R Platner, - - 68
Pastor and Doctrine, The. Charles
C. Starbuck Article, - - 212
Patton {W. W.), The American
Board at Springfield. Artide, - 381
Perkins (J. B.), France under Maza-
rin. Reviewed. Theodore Racon, 420
Phelps {Edward J.), Industrial Edu-
cation. Article, - - - 267
Philological and Classical Sodety
of Yale College, Proceedings of.
Thos. D. Seymour, - - - 63
Physidan of To-day and of the Fu-
ture, The. E. P. Ruffett. Art. - 399
Plainer {S. R.), His Star in the East
By L. Parks. Noticed, - - 68
Poetry, Eighteenth Century. Part
n. L. J. Swinburne. Artide, - 189
Political Sdence Club of Yale Uni-
versity. J. C. Schwab, - - 61
Porter {John A.), Professor John-
ston's '^Connecticut." Reviewed, 172
Porter {Noah), In Memoriam. Hen-
ry C. Kingsley, - - - - 222
TIU
INDEX.
Fmtffr {Nwkh). Marginalia Looke-
a-na. Article, - - - 33
Porter (Noah), Fifteen Years in the
Chapel of Yale Oollege. Re-
viewed. ^L. 0. BrastoWf • - 461
Profit-sharing as a method of re-
munerating labor. F. J. Kinga-
bury. Article, - - - 333
Psychical Research, Proceediogs of
the American Society for. Not'd, 375
Raleigh, Oosse's Life of Sir Walter.
Reviewed. Geo, /. Magounj - 16
Hobinaon (Henry C7.), . Assent to
Creeds. Article, • - - 281
Rosenkranz (J. K. P.), The Philoso-
phy of Education. Noticed, - 378
Schaff-Herzog Supplement, The.
George B. Stevens. Noticed, - 227
Schawl (J. C.\ The Political Sci-
ence Club of Yale University, - 61
Seymawr {Thoa. D.), The American
School of Classical Studies at
Athens. Article, - - - 81
Seyftumr {T?u>8. D.)^ Proceedings of
the Classical and Philological
Society of Yale College, - - 63
Springfield, The American Board at
W. W. Patton. Article, - - 381
Stapfer (Edmond), Palestine in the
time of Christ. Noticed. O. B.
Stevens^ 463
Starhuek {Charkf (7.), The Pastor
and Doctrine. Article, - - 212
State Confiscation of Unearned In-
crements. Article, - - - 295
Stevens {Geo. B.), Cadman's "Christ
in the Gospel.'* Noticed, - - 76
Stevens ( Geo. B.)^ Creed and Charac-
ter, by H. S. Holland. Noticed, 230
Stevens (Geo. J9.), Edwards on First
Corinthians. Noticed, - - 73
Stevens (Geo. B.\ Godet on First
Corinthians. Noticed, - - 231
Stevens (Geo. B.), The Schaff-Her-
zog Supplement Noticed, - 227
Stevens (Geo, B.), Sophdcles' Greek
Lexicon. Noticed, - - - 379
Stevens (Geo. B.\ Vincent's Word
Studies in the New Testament
Noticed, 74
Stevens (Geo. B.\ Warfield's Intro-
duction to the Textual Criticism
of the New Testament Noticed, 74
74
Stevens (G. JB.), Stapfer's Palestine.
Noticed, 453
Storer (F. H.), The Progress of New
England Agriculture during the
last Thirty Years. Joseph B.
Walker. Reviewed. - - 233
Smnbwme (L. J.\ Recent Views of
the Eij^hteent^ Century. Art., 147
Swinburne (L. •7'.), Eighteenth Cen-
tury Poetry, Part U. Article, - 189
Ikicker (./. Randolph), The History
of the Federd Convention of
1787, and of its work. Article, 97
Tyler (Moses Colt), Patrick Henry.
Walter Allen. Reviewed, - - 346
Vincent's Word Studies in the New
Testament Noticed. Geo. B.
Stevens^
WaUeer (Josq>h R), The Progress
of New England Agriculture dur-
ing the last Thirty Years. Art.,
Warfield's Introduction to the
Textual Criticisms of the New
Testament Noticed. George B.
Stevens^ . . . ^ .
Warren's Book of Revelation. No-
ticed. M. G. Btdlock,
Whitney (Ernest), Dr. Fumess's
OtheUo. Reviewed,
Winchester (C. T.), Selected Essays
of Joseph Addison. Noticed,
Wood (HeniyX Natural Law in the
Business Worid. Noticed. L.
0. BrastoWf - - - .
Wordsworth as a Spiritual Teacher.
Henry M. Goodwm. Article,
Yale College, The English Bible and
the College Curriculum. Article.
S. H. lAe, . - - .
Yale College, Proceedings of the
Classical and Philologi(»il Society
of. Thos. D. Seymow,
Yale College, Fifteen Years in the
Chapel of, by Noah Porter. Re-
viewed by L. 0. Brastow, - - 451
Yale University. In Memoriam
Henry C. Kingsley. Noah Porter, 222
Yale University, The Pohtical Sci-
ence Club of. J. C. Schwab,
Yale University. Proceedings of
the Mathematical Club. J. WO-
lard Gibbs, . - . -
233
74
77
412
232
467
309
360
68
- 61
60
:n
Biiigle Ho. 30 oenU. Tearly SubieriptioA tS.
NEW ENGLANDER
AND
YALE REVIEW
KULLIDS ADDICTCS JURAKE IX VBRBA MAeiSTRl.
JULY, 188T.
Abt. I. The Sin of Massachusetts, Tho8» R. Bacoriy Berkeley, California
n. The Via Media in Ethics, . . Rikizo Naka^himay New Haveti
Illi Gosse's Life of Sir Walter Raleigh, Cho, F, Magoun, Orinnell, lotva
IV. l^iarginalia iocfce-a-na, . . . Noah Porter^ Neiv Maiden
V. Christianity and Modem Economics,
John B, Clark, Smith College, Northampton, Mass,
University Topics.
Proceedings of the Mathematical Club, J, Willard Oibbs
The Political Science Club of Yale University, J, C. Schicab
Proceedings of the Classical and Philological Society of
Yale College, Thos, D. Seymour
Current Literature.
The Province of the Roman Empire from Caesar to Diocl^ian. By Theo.
Mommsen.—His Star in the East. By L. Parks.—Eealistic Philosophy, By
J. McCosh. — A Commentary on the First Epistle to the Corinthians. By T.
C. Edwards, — Warfield*s Introduction to the Textual Criticism of the New
Testament. By B. B. Warfield.— Word Studies in the New Testament. By
M. R. Vincent. — Life of our Lord in the Words of the Evangelists. By J. P.
Cadman.— The Early Tudors: Henry VII., Henry VIII. By C. E. Moberly.—
The Book of Revelation. By I. P. Warren.— Critical and Exegetical Hand-
book to the Revelation of John. By F. Diisterdieck.— The Art Amateur.—
Books of the Month.
. hS NEW HAVEK:
WILLIAM L. KIXGSLEY, PROPRIETOR.
^ Ttittle, Morehouse an4 Taylor, Printers, 871 State Street.
K^^ 1--^% FOR
' celebraterl DIETETIC PEEPARATION isprt^nte*! withl
the as^unuico that it la the BAFEST, nuet NTOKLY i
' PREPAKEDand reliable MEDICINAL FOOD that sci^yutiflc riee^jarcb ^
' can 3'ield. It baa acquired the reput:.tioii of being an aliment 1
J the stomach seldom, \1 ever, reject*, CONDITION NOT EXCEPTKli; ]
I and wltlle it iFOOld be tUfflculfc t^ cODcyh© of anything in food m<jFe
I miieioufl, or mure SOOTHING AND NOTJRISHIXG fla an ^diinoDt 1
\ for Invalida, and for the growth and protection of LhildrGo, ita /
I rare ftlEDIClNAL EXCELLENCE In Inanition, due to inal- /
^imiintion. Chronic, Gastric, and INTESTINAL DISEASK:-!sj
^:.^PECIALLY INCHOLERA. DVSENTERY, CHROMC j
^ DIAHKHCEA. and CHOi.EUA INFANTUM J HA}A BEKN
INCt)KTESTAIiLY PKUVEX i^oftcn io in^tajiLea of cog-
BuHt^tion ^>ver patleata whfjse jiigwstiye orijnma ^were
reduL'cd to tiijch a low mid acnaiUve cinidition ^
«^™^^thut the Imperial Gmiium waa th<i ^july tblu;^ ^
K^jB^^ the ^luliiflcb would tolCTftte, when Ufe
flc-emed dopefldfng on ita
ret^QtloiK
;^^i
ml
^^.:
' JUL 7 1},;:/
NEW ENGLANDER
AND
YALE EEYIEW.
No. CCVIII.
JULY, 1887.
Akhcle L— the sin of MASSACHUSETTS.
The MnanoipaUon of Massachusetts. By Brooks Adams.
Boston : Houghton, Mifflin & Co. 1887.
Mb, Bbooks Adams has written a book This book will,
I fear, cause unmixed delight to that very considerable and
increasing class of persons who are a little weary of hearing
the praises of the commonwealth of Massachusetts sounded by
ber sons. Every one is willing to acknowledge that Massachu-
setts is a very remarkable state, whose contributions to the
world's welfare have been considerable. The world is cor-
jrespondingly grateful, but it is a trifle tired of being informed,
in season and out of season, that salvation has come out of
Massachusetts only. It is therefore somewhat refreshing to
have a son of the most distinguished family of the state rise
up and tell us that the foundations of the commonwealth
were laid in iniquity, and that her career of shame was only
relieved by occasional honorable deeds on the part of individ-
uals down to the latter part of the last century. If Mr. Adams
VOL. XL 1
2 The Sin of Massachusetts. [Jiily?
or some other son of Massachusetts would only publish a sup-
plement to the book, which should contain an account of her
career during the subsequent time, constructed on the same
principles as the present volume, the people who are tired of
hearing of the glories of the state would be completely rested.
And while the weary public will thus be refreshed by Mr.
Adams' book, the more judicious will be grieved by the spec-
tacle of a bird fouling its own nest. But even the judicious,
if they have any knowledge of history, or of the methods of
history, cannot but be greatly entertained and diverted by the
antics of Mr. Adams. To see an Adams indulging in antics
is alone worth the price of the book, and no instructed reader
can close the volume without reflecting that Mr. Adams, has
inherited the somewhat crooked temper of his distinguished
grandfather, if he has not inherited all of his more admirable
qualities.
The book is difficult to classify. It hardly professes to be
historical, and no one who is in the least acquainted with the
methods of historical writing would think for an instant of
calling it a history. I may say, without fear of contradiction,
that it is not a poem. It is not a work of fiction, for the
events which are here recorded, are, for the most part, real,
events, about which there is no serious dispute. It is not an
essay in science, nor a philosophical treatise. Mr. Adams has .
gotten together some isolated notions of current science and
philosophy and has worked them for all they are worth ; and is
evidently of the opinion that he has a theory of things, but
few will be persuaded to share his opinion on this point, and
certainly the cultivation of his philosophy is only a secondary
aim of this work. As nearly as can be determined, the book
is a volume belonging to that very interesting sort of literature
known as "confessions.'' But it differs from such works in
being not the record of a life, but the confession'of sin such as
the devout Catholic pours into the ear of the priest And it
differs again from this, m the fact that it is not his own sins
that he undertakes to confess, but those of Massachusetts. He
cannot fail to convince the reader that he has assumed the office
which once belonged to the Hebrew high-priest, and has come
up, not indeed into the Holy of Holies, but into the office of a
<:
1887.] The Sin of MassachuseUs. 8
publishing house, to confess the sins of the whole people. He
seems indeed to have constituted himself a sort of conscience
for the state, and lays down its burden of guilt at the feet of
the public. We trust that Massachusetts will now feel better,
and will be able to sleep nights.
Unless it was the purpose of Mr. Adams to make a vicarious
confession of this sort, it is certainly difficult to guess what
may have been his aim. Why he should cherish a violent
animosity to the Puritan founders of New England does not
appear, but he pursues them very much in the spirit of a man
who has an hereditary feud, and proposes to finish it up by
annihilating all his enemies at one fell swoop. It is somewhat
grievous to see so much energy expended without effect, for
there can be no doubt that the Puritan fathers will come up
smiling for another round, if we may be permitted to use sudi
language concerning such very grave persons. I am not the
fiiBt, who, in speaking of Mr. Adams' book has found that his
language tended to light and somewhat flippant forms, for the
reading of the book is in itself a blow to seriousness, from
which it must take any reader some time to recover.
The contents of the book may be described in a very few
worda The facts which Mr. Adams has collected are not un-
familiar. Every student of the history of New England is
acquainted with them. The originality of the book consists in
the fact that these things are thus collected and put in a certain
order, without regard to other and very closely related things.
Mr. Adams has chosen to pick out all the examples of misgov-
ermnent in the early history of Massachusetts, and all the mis-
takes in policy which the enlightened eye of the modem stu-
dent sees to have been mistakes, and he has arranged these and
put them into a book. It must strike any reader of ordinary
intelligence with surprise to find the book so small. And
these things are presented as affording a true picture of the
Puritan commonwealtL Furthermore, wherever he comes
upon a disputed incident, he always seems to choose the most
discreditable version of it, and sets it forth without a hint that
his account is open to reasonable doubt. He also chooses for
his own ends, to ascribe to the leaders of the colony the worst
motives for their conduct that can be conceived. According
4 Tlie Sin of Massaohusetta. [July,
to his view, only the opponents of the Puritan rule could possi-
bly have been influenced by respectable motives. Greed of
power, selfishness, " refined malice," hatred of mankind, hy-
pocrisy, untruth, and kindred qualities were the prevailing
characteristics of that stock from which the Adamses and other
great men have sprung, and which the blind-eyed children of
Massachusetts have been wont to regard with so much reverence.
Mr. Adams has undertaken to show that the verdict of his-
tory concerning the New England Puritans is a mistaken one,
and he has attempted to do this, not by producing facts which
have been hitherto overlooked, but by re-arranging facts which
are perfectly well known. A reader who knew nothing of his-
tory except what was contained in Mr. Adams' book, and who
was so stupid as not to ask why the book is so fragmentary in
its character, must necessarily form from its perusal a very
imfavorable opinion of Massachusetts. But the general public
will not be afl!ected by it at all, except as regards Mr. Adams
himself. The verdict of history on this point has been made
up with uncommon care. The cool judgment of the world
has been reached in the face of the strongest prejudices, and
in spite of a real dislike for the Puritans themselves. So care-
ful has been the process that the result cannot be overthrown,
except by testimony which has not as yet been produced.
Even those who dislike the Puritans most are accustomed to
acknowledge that they were very excellent men, and that their
very faults contributed to the success of their wort And the
strongest admirers of the Puritans are ready to admit all that
Mr. Adams has proved against them in this volume. No one
at this date thinks of denying that they were narrow, bigoted,
and overbearing, that their political ideal was an impracticable
one, that their narrowness often led them into cruelty and
wrong, or that they were "bumptious" and disagreeable.
And one may admit all this, and yet not have a particle of
sympathy witii the view of Mr. Adams concerning them. For
admitting all this, one may yet retain the conviction that they
were men of uncommon sincerity and honesty of purpose, and
of very sturdy moral fibre, who, for the sake of their convic-
tions, and for the assertion of their rights, were willing to
suffer exile and loss. Such men are the ones who make epochs
1887.] The Sm of Massaohmetts. 6
of progrefis in human history, and who often bring about other
results and far better ones than they were themselves able to
conceive or understand, by simply acting up to such light as
they have. Persons of finer grain and less rugged moral
force, might have been more to Mr. Adams' taste, but such
persons would never have laid the foundations of the com-
monwealths of New England. The Puritans questionably
*' builded better than they knew," but it was because of their
intention to build just as well as they knew. Mr. Adams can
never persuade the public that the commonwealth of Massa-
chusetts was hatched out of a cockatrice's egg. The notion is
what Mr. Adams himself would call " unscientific."
It is singular that any man could give so much attention to
the early history of New England as Mr. Adams has done
without seeming to catch so much as a glimpse of the purposes
of the early Puritan settlers. He is evidently somewhat at a
loss to understand why these persons came hither, and alto-
gether at a loss to understand why they behaved as they did
after they got here, unless indeed it can all be accounted for
on the theory of " pure cussedness." Mr. Adams does indeed
say that the Puritans came to Massachusetts in '^ the hope, with
the aid of their divines, of founding a religious commonwealth
in the wilderness which should harmonize with their interpre-
tation of the Scriptures ;" but he seems to regard this hope as
in itself an offense, and the means which they used to make
their hope a reality, he regards as unrighteous, because it was
illegal. He makes a historic and legal survey of the nature of
charter grants by the crown, and finds that the use which the
Massachusetts Puritans made of their charter was illegal. He
might have saved himself the trouble. No one pretends that
they used their charter in a strictly legal manner. They were,
by the very character of the undertaking, revolutionists. They
came to this country for the express purpose of escaping from
the sort of government which oppressed theip in England.
They wanted to get rid of the law as they knew it, and when
they got three thousand miles away from the seat of British
government, they proceeded to establish a government of their
own, on such principles as seemed good to themselves. The
Massachusetts Puritans had a charter as a trading corporation.
6 The Sin of Masaachv^etts. [ Jiily?
They made dexterous use of it for furthering their own ends.
That the use which they made of it was not altogether legal
may be admitted at once, without prejudice to their case before
the tribunal of public opinion. The action of revolutionists is
never legal. That is the peculiarity of their situation, and
Mr. Adams understands this perfectly. Indeed the case of the
Puritans could hardly be better put than Mr. Adams himself
puts it when he comes to speak of the revolution of 17Y6.
With the change of a very few words, his language might be
applied to the Puritans of 1628 quite as well as to their progeny
in a later time. On page 317 he says :
The generation now living can read the history of the Revolution dis-
passionately, and to them it is growing clear that our ancestors were
technically in the wrong. For centuries Parliament had been theoreti-
caUy absolute ; therefore it might constitutionally tax the colonies, or
do whatsoever else with them it pleased. PracticaUy, however, it is
self-evident that the most perfect despotism must be limited by the ex-
tent to which subjects wiU obey, and this is a matter of habit; rebellions
therefore are usuaUy caused by the conservative instinct, represented by
thewiU of the sovereign, attempting to force obedience to the cus-
toms which a people have outgrown.
Now our ancestors of the Revolution were technically in the
wrong, as Mr. Adams says. And all revolutionists and reform-
ers are technically in the wrong. Their action is a violation
of law, and obedience to law is ordinarily one of the first
duties of man. And this fact seems to trouble Mr. Adams
very much when he considers the doings of the Puritan rev-
olutionists, although he gets over it easily enough when he
comes to the revolutionists of '76.
There can be no doubt that the early Puritan emigrants
came to tliis country with a perfectly fixed determination to
establish commonwealths which should afford them a protec-
tion from the oppression to which they had been subjected in
England. They proposed deliberately to settle in a place
where the English law could not control them. They were a
feeble folk, and they were ready to draw whatever aid and
protection they could from any quarter. If they could find
any such aid by a liberal interpretation of their charter, they
would do that ; but they meant to carry out their purpose at
any cost to themselves. This revolutionary intention was born
1887.] The Sin of MoBsacfimeUs. 7
of a powerful religious conviction. This fact Mr. Adams fails
to grasp. He says (page 7):
The number of clergymen among the emigrants to Massachusetts was
very large, and the character of the class who formed the colony was
influenced by them to an extraordinary degree. Many able pastors had
been deprived in England for non-conformity, and they had to choose
between silence or exile. To men of their temperament silence would
have been intolerable; and most must have depended upon their profes-
sion for support. America therefore, offered a convenient refuge. The
motives were less obvious which induced the leading laymen, some of
whom were of fortune and consequence at home, to face the hardships
of the wilderness. Persecution cannot be the explanation, for a gov-
ernment under which Hampden and Cromwell could live and be re-
turned to Parliament was not intolerable ; nor does it appear that any
of them had been severely dealt with. The wish of the Puritan party to
have a place of retreat, shoxild the worst befall, may have had its
weight with individuals, but probably the influence which swayed the
larger number was the personal ascendancy of their pastors, for that
ascendancy was complete.
Now this is Mr. Adams' explanation of the reasons why
these men left civilization and came to settle in the wilderness.
The ministers came, because they must have an opportunity to
talk, and because they were dependent on their profession for
their bread and butter. The laymen came because of the com-
plete ascendancy of the ministers over them : an ascendancy so
complete that it left them no room for the exercise of their
personal judgment, but compelled them to leave behind the
wealth and position which they possessed in their own land,
that they might deliver themselves over, bound hand and
foot, to these ministers who desired to make a living out of
them. This is a very astonishing theory. It does not seem to
have occurred to Mr. Adams that the silencing of the ministers
might be a very great grievance to the laymen, and that they
might think that the fact that they were not permitted to hear
the Gospel preached in the way which they believed to be
right was a sufficient reason for forsaking houses and lands and
honors. Indeed Mr. Adams proceeds throughout on the theory
that whatever religious conviction or bigotry or intolerance or
fervor there may have been, belonged exclusively to the clergy,
and that the laymen were, at worst or at best, only ignorant
and helpless instruments in the hands of their clerical leaders
8 Tfve Sin of Masaachusetta, [ J^Jj
and govemors. This is of conrBe nonsense. The laymen were
jnst as thoroughly imbued with religious conviction and zeal as
were the ministers. And they were men of gi*eat weight of
character, precisely of the same kind as those who fought the
battles of the commonwealth a few years later. The English
government at that time was intolerable for such men. Mr.
Adams is peculiarly unfortunate in his choice of an illustration.
Hampden and Cromwell could not live under such a govern-
ment They overthrew it And what was intolerable to these
men, was intolerable also to the Puritans of the emigration.
They could not overthrow the government, not having suffi-
cient strength ; and so they ran away to America and estab-
lished a government of their own. To set up such an explana-
tion as Mr. Adams sets up for the conduct of men who so
evidently were fired with a conviction of their own rights, and
with a powerful religious motive, is a somewhat remarkable and
not very decent proceeding. Their judgment, their good sense,
their reasonableness, may be doubted, but not their sincerity,
if sincerity can ever be proved by deeds.
The form of government which the Puritans set up on these
shores was that of an aristocratic republic. Democracy would
have been abhorrent to their souls had it been suggested to
them. They wanted the rule of the best As to who the best
were, they had no sort of doubt This aristocracy was to be
perpetuated, not by ordinary generation, but by regenera-
tion. Only those who were bom again could inherit political
power and privilege. It never entered into their plan that
drunkards, vagrants, libertines, paupers, atheists, unbelievers,
half -believers. Episcopalians, Baptists, Quakers, and Spiritualists
or witches (all of which classes were by them comprised in a
single category, as *• the wicked "), should have any political
power, or any part whatever in the government. What was
the use of coming across the ocean and into the wilderness to
get away from the rule of the devil, if he were still to be
present in politics by his recognized emissaries ? They wanted
the rule of the best, and so they would have no one taking
part in public affairs who was not a member of the church.
In the colonies of Massachusetts Bay and New Haven, there
was an express provision that no one should take 'part in the
1887.] The Sm of Massachusetts. 9
gOYemment who was not a church member ; in Plymouth and
Connecticut the same end was practically accomplished, al-
though there was, I believe, no esipress ordinance to that effect.
When the Puritans had thus established their governments,
they proceeded to defend them by all means in their power.
That these means were often futile and unfit, no one to-day
would think of denying. The earlier part of Mr. Adams' book
is mainly a re-statement of some of the cruel blunders and dis-
asterous follies which they committed in their heroic attempt
to defend from the incursions of evil the kingdom of heaven
on earth, which they fondly believed that they were founding.
Their sense of ownership in their colony, which Mr. Adams
considers so wicked because of its illegality, does not appear so
bad to most of the descendants of the men who were " tech-
nically wrong" in the American revolution.
The peculiar constitution of these Puritan governments
could not long endura The determining principle of the aris-
tocracy was not one which worked well in practical politics.
The line which separated the good from the evil, while it
seemed clear enough to the founders, was really quite an ar-
bitrary ona It was maintained indeed after the meaning had
lai^ly gone out of it. Those Puritan men, who, because of .
their high character and abilities led the colonies out of the
mother country, were remarkably well fitted to rule them. But
they erred in supposing that in the generations to come men of
that type would continue to be bound together into unity by any
ecclesiastical or political ties. The great change in the internal
constitution of the New England colonies was the encroach-
ment of the democratic principle upon the aristocratic constitu-
tion. The history of the change from aristocracy to democ-
racy is one of extraordinary interest, and I have a glimmering
suspicion that Mr. Adams thought that he was writing this
history, but he seems to have given ap the idea before he
finished the book, and well he might. This change to democ-
racy had to come. In changed circumstances, and after a trial,
the original plan became evidently absurd. The aristocracy of
church members ceased to be manifestly the best rulers, and,
through gradual modifications, the local governments became
almost pure democracies. This revolution was effected more
10 The Sin of MasadcJmsetta, [Jt^Jj
peacef ally and more gradually than any similar revolution of
which we have knowledge, although one would judge from
the account which Mr. Adams gives, that it was spasmodic and
explosive. It involved some pretty bitter struggles indeed, as
such political changes always must, but the assumption that
throughout these struggles all the clergy were on one side and
all decent people on the other, which Mr. Adams seems to
make, is overthrovm by information contained in his own book.
The clergy in New England have always been somewhat con-
servative as a body, and a large part of them were found with
many other good men on the conservative side in this struggle,
but many were found on the other side also from time to time,
and those who were conservatives were not necessarily men of
diabolical character.
Mr. Adams makes a great many gratuitous assumptions, but
the most remarkable of them all perhaps is to the effect that
"the orthodox New Englander was the vassal of his priest"
It is upon this remarkable assumption that Mr. Adams has
constructed his whole theory of New England history, which
his volume is apparently designed to illustrate. It is hopeless
to attempt to deal with such a method of thought as this. It
is useless to inform Mr. Adams that the orthodox New Eng-
lander was no man's vassal, but a sturdy, independent, enter-
prising man, who did his own thinking, and who built a state
in the woods by his energy and rugged determination. He
had a goodly store of able ministers because he wanted them.
This seems so strange a taste to Mr. Adams that he cannot be-
lieve in it, and so he sets up the theory that the people did not
have the ministers, but the ministers had the people, and that
they governed and oppressed them. It is useless to try to set
Mr. Adams right in this matter. Had he been capable of being
set right, his error would have been corrected by the course of
reading which he has been through in order to make this
book. This is selected as a sample of the assumptions which
Mr. Adams makes in order to explain things which are alto-
gether explicable upon obvious grounds, but which apparently
Mr. Adams cannot thus explain, because he cannot conceive
that there was any real good in the Puritan minister, or any
real worth and manhood in the Puritan layman.
1887.] The Sm of MassachuseUs, 11
It would be possible to point out, were it worth while, how,
at aknost every point, Mr. Adams has really misrepresented
things in the most deceitful of all ways. He has told the truth
in his historical statements, but he might as well have lied.
For he has wrenched events out of their places in history, and
set them forth without the relationship to other events, which
often puts another color upon them. For instance, the perse-
cution of Baptists was a very bad thing, but it is a thousand
times worse when it is related in isolated nakedness, as it is in
this book, than when it appears as a single event in that long
groping struggle for personal and religious liberty in which
these men were engaged.
Mr. Adams is evidently a student of Herbert Spencer. It is
to be hoped that he will continue his studies, and that when
he finds the following text, he will lay it to heart. " Not as
adventitious will the wise man regard the faith that is in him —
not as something which may be slighted and made subordinate
to calculations of policy, but as the supreme authority to which
all hLs actions should bend. The highest truth conceivable by
him he wiU fearlessly utter, and will endeavor to get embodied
in fact his purest idealisms, knowing that, let what may come
of it, he is thus playing his appointed part .in the world — know-
ing that if he can get done the thing he aims at — well ; if not
— well also, though not so well." If ever a man had a rever-
ence for the faith that was in him, and made all his actions
bend to it, it was the New England Puritan. And the calm
judgment of history, seeing his limitations, and his errors, and
his narrowness, and his faith, and his energy, says — " Well."
But a gentleman from Massachusetts jumps up and shouts, " It
isn't well ; it's bad ; very bad indeed." And the persons who
happen to hear him, conclude that there are Adamses and
Adamses.
12 The Via Media m Ethics. [July,
Article H.— THE VIA MEDIA IN ETHICS.*
No science is of so vital and universal interest as ethics. It
concerns every human being. And yet during the last two
and a half centuries no science has made such limited progress.
Even psychology has made greater advance. No careful stud-
ent of the history of ethics can fail to recognize the truth of
this unwelcome statement Such is the fact ; how can we ex-
plain it ?
1. A partial explanation of it is found in the fact that ethics
has not yet received a proper treatment. The scientific method
— the greatest of modem discoveries — ^has not been applied to
this science. To the scientific method we understand the fol-
lowing to be essential : Exact observation, careful experiment,
rational hypothesis, and the verification of the hypothesis. As
a result of this neglect, the line between the science of ethics,
and the metaphysics of that science has never been clearly
drawn ; the two are constantly confounded. In almost all the
other sciences this distinction has been made, and is realizing
abundant and valuable results. The physicist, at the outset,
takes certain things for granted — matter, force, time, and space.
The inquiry concerning the ultimate nature of these funda-
mental assumptions belongs not to the science of physics, but
to the metaphysics of physics. Why not do the same in ethics ?
It is urged that ethics does not so readily admit of this dis-
tinction. We are told that in the study of ethics it is difficult
not to become involved in the ultimate problems of philosophy ;
in ethical speculation we are constantly treading on the verge
of the abysses of metaphysics. The difficulty is real, but for
this very reason the demand for this distinction is the more
urgent. In this age of accurate knowledge nothing can be
caUed science which cannot stand the scrutinizing test of the
scientific method. Ethics, if it is to be a science, must be as
truly and as rigidly scientific as any other branch of human
* An Essay presented at the Anniversary Exercises of Yale Theolog-
ical Seminary, May, 1887.
1887.] The Via Media in Ethics. IS
learning. The scientific treatment of ethics is a demand of
the day, not simply for sake of a scientific investigation, but
also as a means of secoring a firmer and more satisfactory basis
for the solution of the practical ethical qnesions of the hour.
2. A brief survey of the history of modem ethics confirms onr
judgment Modem ethics, as a science independent of Chris-
tianity, has its starting point with Hobbe& All the ethical
theories which have been propounded since his day may be
briefly reduced to two opposing systems — Hedonism, egoistic
or universal, and Intuitionism, dogmatic or philosophical.
Hedonism may be defined as the ethical theory that explains
moral ideas and distinctions in terms of pleasure and pain.
The opposite theory, which is commonly designated as Intui-
tionism, teaches that '^ rightness is a quality belonging to actions
independently of their conduciveness to any ulterior end," and
that we have the power to recognize this quality of action.
Hobbes was a materialist in psychology, and a hedonist in
ethics. His famous Leviathan called out answers from many
moralists. Oudworth, with the Cambridge Platonists, was his
first antagonist from the standpoint of Intuitionism. These
conflicting schools have been always more or less apparent since
the days of these two leaders. The Utilitarian and Intuitional
schools of to-day are the lineal descendants of these types of
thought, though they are now greatly modified. Thus during
the last two and a half centuries the various schools of ethics
have been occupied with polemics, and have chiefly concentrated
their efforts upon a search for the true ground of virtue, as if
this were the only fundamental problem of ethics.
This is, however, far from being the case. Ethics deals not
with the effect of actions as the Hedonists teach ; nor with the
quality of actions as the Intuitionists maintain, but with the
cause of actions — ^the doer himself.
3. Although these rival ethical schools have thus sought the
mastery the one over the other, no critical and candid student of
the science can say that either of them is adequate to the real
problems of life and thought.
A defect common to them both is that the attempt is made to
account for the ethical by a single faculty of the human soul ;
at least each system emphasizes the one faculty of the soul to
14 The Via Media in Mhics. [J^ly,
the neglect of every other. To the Intnitionists, the intellect
is of prime importance ; to the Hedonifits the sensibility. But
the subject of ethics is the whole man, and not his intellect,
nor his sensibility alone. The will is also an essential element
of his nature, but where it has not been entirely overlooked, it
has occupied merely a subordinate position in the thought of
these schools. Hence the haze that overhangs all English ethi-
cal speculation. The most prominent contemporary writer on
ethics in England, Prof. Henry Sidgwick himself, is not en-
tirely guiltless of this oversight.
Again, the general tendency of Hedonism is psychological
while that of Intuitionism is metaphysical. Hedonism en-
deavors to find the basis of ethics in the sensibilities, and has a
strong psychological spirit, whether its psychology is correct or
not. Here is the strength of Hedonism ; its weakness is, that
it does not raise the question what this constitution of man im-
plies. On the other hand, the strength of Intuitionism is found
in its search for the ground and the objective significance of
the ethical. But its order of investigation has not been psy-
chological Here is its characteristic weaknesa Thus each is
weak where the other is strong.
This brief survey of the history of ethics, with its compari-
son of the different types of ethical speculation suggest to us
its real problems, and its true method. The problems of ethics
are-two fold : the psychological and the metaphysical. The one
aims to answer the question — How is the ethical possible ? In
other words, what are its Subjective and objective conditions ?
The other concerns itself with the question, What is the ulti-
mate ground of the principles which are assumed in its possi-
bility ? In other words, what is the ground, and what is the
significance of morality ?
The method of ethics should be the scientific method. For
ethics is a science, and should be treated as such. It ought not
to be confounded with either theology or metaphysics. This
does not imply, however, that ethics does not need metaphysics.
The assumptions involved in the possibility of the ethical neces-
sarily lead to metaphysics, and the ethical finds its ultimate in-
terpretation in God — ^the Absolute Good. Ethics without
metaphysics is a building without foundation. This is the
1887.] The Via Media in Ethics. 15
point which Intnitionism rightly emphajsizes. But the order
of investigatioii ought to begin with man's capacity for morality,
and not with Gk)d. It is the merit of Hedonism that it takes
this starting point
Thus the true ethical method is found in a judicious combi-
nation of the spirit of the two historic types of ethical theory.
Such are the problems, and such the method of ethics. The
brief review which we have given of both assures us that a
scientific treatment of ethics will bring a more satisfactory re-
sult than has yet been attained, and will ground ethics upon a
firmer basis than ever bef or6. Thus and thus only can ethics
be saved on the one hand from the stigma and the bondage of
a theological treatment, and on the other from becoming super-
ficial and Godlesa
RlKlZO NAKASmOCA.
16 Ooss^9 Life of Sir Walter BaleigL [July,
Abticlb m.— GOSSK'S life of Sm WALTER RALEIGH.*
It Ib eighteen years since the last new Lives of Raleigh ap-
peared in England — Edwards' and St. John's — ^both in the
same year, (London, 1868, 2 vols, each), and almost fifteen
since we reviewed them in the pages of the New Englander.^
A literary expert has now attempted the task of biography
again, — ^in smaller compass, — a more condensed story,— compar-
ing the new data and facts given by the biographers of 1868
with each other and with older ones, and adding others from
historical sources now first opened. To the student of Raleigh's
character and life two questions at once occur, on opfen-
ing Mr. Gosse's interesting volume : What new knowledge is
added to the old store, and what statements heretofore accepted
are exploded as untrustworthy ? What superiority, as a piece
of standard literary work, has this " Life " over others ? Refer-
ring to our former essay for a suflBicient sketch of this celebrated
man's career,:]: we propose to answer these two questions.
Mr. Gosse adds two new ways of spelling the family name,
to the fourteen we have hitherto noted, viz : Rawlyh, the form
used by the elder son Carew, and Rauleygh, the earliest form
used by Sir Walter.§ Their father employed still another. It
is spelled two other ways in a single deed, and once three ways
in another. Walter was then in his twenty-sixth year. " It is
amusing to find that the family had not decided how to spell
its nama"
At Oxford he seems, to Mr. Gosse, to have been a commoner
both at Oriel and at Christ ChurcL He must have left the
University in 1569, to have witnessed what followed the battle
of Jamac in France in May of that year, and joined the Hu-
* English Worthies, Edited by Andbew Lang, (12th volume), BcUeigh,
by Edmund Gosse, M.A., Trini^ CoUege, Cambridge Univ. New York,
Appleton. pp. V, 248.
t No. cxxi, October, 1873, pp. 660-688.
t Ibid, p. 664.
§ Oayley gives also the form Rale, which had escaped our notice, and
makes seventeen variations.
1887.] Go88^8 Life of Sir Walter Raleigh. 17
gnenot camp in October. He fought there, Mr. Gosse con-
dndes, until 1574 or 1575, and was in the Middle Temple in
1576. The Middlesex Records, one of the new authorities,
mentions two yeomen who broke the peace, Dea, 1577, as in
the service of " Walter Rawley, Esq. of the Court," with lodg-
ings at Islington. This is the first evidence yet found of his
being a courtier at the age of twenty-five. The story of the
plush cloak told by Fuller, Mr. Gosse discredits as an account
of his introduction to the Queen, but regards it as likely
enough to have been true of their later intimacy. All the biog-
raphers are as much "at sea," as to the order of his earliest voy-
ages with Sir Humphi'ey Gilbert, as the two half-brothers were
on the decks of their ships. Probably in 1578 they sailed
together a second time ; though Edwards places this event after
the orders of Council forbidding them to sail in 1579. Mr.
St. John's evidence of Raleigh's voyage to the West Indies
earlier seems to be unassailed.
The first authentic date Mr. Gosse has from Raleigh him-
self of any incident in his life is Feb. 22, 1580, in a letter
to Lord Burghley from Cork, Ireland, where he landed with a
hundred foot soldiers. He was sent to reinforce Sir Warham
Sentleger, an old personal friend, who was holding Cork vrith
forty men against a Catholic expedition. In Sept., Lord Grey
de Wilton, known to Raleigh's early literary circle, took com-
mand at Dublin with Edmund Spencer as his secretary. Fulke
Greville and other minor Elizabethan poets were then in Mun-
ster with the troops, to the entertainment, doubtless, of Spencer
and Raleigh. The Irish massacres they witnessed seem to the
new biographer " positively Japanese," and he furnishes more
evidence of the fierce part Raleigh took in them. He mentions
new instances, also, of his gallantry, daring, and brilliant
military skill. In 1581 Raleigh became acting Governor of
Munster, and afterward of Cork.
" It was at this time (August), or possibly a little earlier in
the year, that Raleigh made his romantic attack upon Castle
Bally-in-Harsh, the seat of Lord Roche. On the very same
evening that he received a hint from headquarters that the cap-
ture of this strongly fortified place was desirable, he set out
with ninety men on the adventure. His troops arrived at
VOL. XI. 3
18 Gosse^s Life of Sir Walter Baleigh. [J^Jy,
Harsh very early in the morning, but not so early but that the
townspeople, to the number of five hundred, had collected to
oppose his little force. He soon put them to flight, and then,
by a nimble trick, contrived to enter the castle itself, to seize
Lord and Lady Koche at their breakfast table, to slip out with
them and through the town unmolested, and to regain Cork
next day with the loss of only a single man."
That such a man, with his tall and brilliant person, his splen-
dor of dress, his plausible tongue, his Devonshire accent pleas-
ant to royal ears, and his romantic popular renown should suc-
ceed at such a court as that of Elizabeth was thoroughly natural
It has been questioned whether he was earlier a Protestant
soldier in the Netherlands — as Naunton says he was {F7'(igmenta
Begalia^ p. 48) — but that she sent him thither in 1582, with
the Due d'Alencon whose wooing had fared ill, in place of
the Earl of Leicester with whom she was just then angry, is
certain. He had been paid £200 for his Irish services the first
of February, and the last of March was back again and settled
at Court as the Queen's first favorite. Dates are henceforth
clear and certain. A little incident from the Middlesex Records
exemplifies Raleigh's habit of gorgeous court attire in those
days — " April 26, 1684, a gentleman named Hugh Rew stole at
Westminster and carried off Walter Raleigh's pearl hat-band
and another jewelled article of attire, valued together in money
of that time £118. The owner, with characteristic prompti-
tude, shut the thief up in Newgate, and made him disgorge."
For four years his place near the Queen was one of distinction
and royal confidence. Mr. Gosse credits him with the flexibil-
ity and foresight of a first rate courtier, but denies him, — ap-
parently because Elizabeth would never make him a Privy
Councillor,* but sought his advice in private — the name of
statesman. It was on her motion, however, that he entered
Parliament, where she knew that statesmanship was needed.
* A dozen years later she would have made him a Privy Councillor—
indeed he was just about to be sworn in— if Sir Robert Cecil's jealousy
had not prevented. Cecil suggested that if he became a member of Her
Majesty's Privy Council he must resign the office of Captain of her
Guard which he had long held, a sacrifice he well knew Raleigh would
not make. Mr. Gardiner pronounces the latter ''the man who had
more genius than all the Privy Council put together."
1887.] Gosse's Life of JSir Walter Raleigh. 19
Jugt before this she knighted him. Wealth greater than other
biographers had ascribed to him, Mr. Gosse shows now became
his. On the older authorities we reckoned the lands he acquired
in three Irish counties at twelve thousand acres : Mr. Gosse *
says "about forty thousand acres." Raleigh tried, ^dth no
great success, to make these fruitful by coloniziug from the
West of England, — reparation in part for the fearful slaughter
of former years in which he shared. One authentic record
Mr. Gosse has obtained of his securing vessels on the Norfolk
coast for defense against the Armada. He follows the ordinary
story of the expeditions Baleigh was sending meanwhile across
the Atlantic but he denies that Kaleigh ever set foot in Vir-
ginia. Some of these expeditions were of the nature of priva-
teering enterprises. He was always ready for them. A pic-
turesque passage is here worth quoting :
" It must be understood that Raleigh at this time maintained
at his own expense a small personal fleet for commercial and
privateering ends, and that he lent or leased these vessels, with
his own services, to the government, when additional naval
contributions were required. In the Domestic Correspondence^^
we meet with the names of the chief of these vessels, ^ The
Revenge/ soon afterwards so famous, * The Crane,' and ' The
Garland.' These ships were merchantmen* or men-of-war at
will, and their exploits were winked at or frowned upon at
court as circumstances dictated. Sometimes the hawk's eye of
Elizabeth would sound the hold of these pirates with incredible
acumen, as on that occasion when it is recorded that ^ a waist-
coat of carnation colour, curiously embroidered,' which was be-
ing brought home to adorn the person of the adventurer, was
seized by order of the Queen to form a stomacher for his royal
mistress. It would be difficult to say which of the illustrious
pair was the most solicitous of fine raiment. At other times
the whole prize had to be disgorged ; as in the case of that
bark of Olonne, laden with barley, which Raleigh had to restore
to the Treasury on July 21, 1589, after he had concluded a very
lucrative sale of the sama" When these ships of his sailed as
merchantmen, they brought new products to the soil of Ireland,
* New Englander for Oct., 1872, p. 669.
t Edited by Edward Edwards.
20 Gos8^% Life of Sir Walter Ealeigh. [July,
as when they captured and plundered on the high seas they
brought wealth to English marts. In this, again, this versatile
man of affairs seemed to make reparation for the ruthless
ferocity of his military career. He had meantime, with Lord
Burghley, advised the Queen to more leniency towards the
Irish chiefs. He rented property in Ireland besides the great
estates that became his, and improved it. Sir John Pope Hen-
nessy says :
" The richly perfumed yellow wall flowers that he brought
to Ireland from the Azores, and the Affane cherry, are still
found where he first planted them by the Blackwater. Some
cedars he brought to Cork are to this day growing at a place called
Tivoli. The four venerable yewtrees, whose branches have
grown and intenningled into a sort of summer house thatch,
are pointed out as having sheltered Raleigh when he first
smoked tobacco in his Youghal garden. A few steps further
on, where the town wall of the thirteenth century bounds the
garden of the Warden's house, is the famous spot where the
first Irish potato was planted by him. In that garden he gave
the tubers to the ancestor of the present Lord Southwell, by
whom they were spread throughout the province of Munster."
Of Raleigh's disgrace at Court, 1588-1592, after Essex
turned against him, and his marrying the Queen's maid of hon-
or, and how he was busied in those years, and what happened
to him, the new biographer gives the usual account. His sum-
mary and arrangement of facts is clear and excellent. After
the capture of the great Spanish carrack, the Madre derDios, by
the expedition that was chiefly Raleigh's, and his being sent
down to Devonshire from the Tower of London to prevent pil-
lage, the Queen recognized the marriage, and he was set at
liberty to sail for Guiana. Of this expedition Mr. Gosse gives
the most compact and satisfactory compiled narrative that we
have seen ; Raleigh's own accounts are largely used, of which he
says : " It is true that he relates marvellous and fabulous things,
but it is no less than just to distinguish very carefully between
what he repeats and what he reports. For the former we have
to take the evidence of his interpreters, who but dimly undeiv
stood what the Indians told them, and Raleigh cannot be held
personally responsible ; for the latter, the testimony of all later
1887.] Oo8%i% Life of Sir WaMer Raleigh, 21
explorers, especially Humboldt and Schomburgk, is that
Raleigh's narrative, where he does not fall into obvious and
easily intelligible error, is remarkably clear and simple, and full
of internal evidences of its genuineness."
This judgment agrees with that of the unknown editor of
" The Discovery of Guiana," in Constable's edition of 1820
i^The History of the Worlds vol. vi., pp. 110), viz : "notwith-
standing his belief in El Dorado^ and other traits of credulity,
it is impossible to peruse his narrative without respect for that
sagacity which, in an age but little skilled in such views, could
so clearly discern the advantages which England might derive
from establishing colonies upon the banks of the Orinoco."*
Mr. Gosse gives twenty-two pages out of his two hundred and
forty-eight to this first voyage to Guiana ; St. John, but thir-
teen out of six hundred and eighty-seven ; Edwards, thirty-
eight out of seven hundred and twenty-three — incorporating
accounts of the expeditions of others, — and Oayley (" to this
day the most interesting * Life,' as a literary production," Mr.
Gosse says with justice), twenty-six out of eight hundred and
ninety-two. The new biography also has twenty-two pages
appropriated to the attack on Cadiz to twenty seven in the
larger work of St. John, twenty- nine in Edwards's, and twenty-
two in that of Cayley, who embodies Raleigh's own letter on
the action, eleven pages — ^to which in Edwards's second volume
(" Letters ") seventeen pages are given. The latter author, how-
ever, narrates " The Islands' Voyage " in a separate chapter of
sixteen pages, as St John does in one of eight, while Cayley
and Gosse give to it only two or three pages. The latter does
ample justice to the knight's exploits of Cadiz and Fayal.
The events at Cadiz, he says, " were not merely a critical test
of the relative strength of Spain and England, closing in a
brilliant triumph (for England), but to Raleigh in particular
they were the climax of his life, the summit of his personal
prosperity and glory." Mr. St. John says of the 21st of June,
1596, that St. Barnabas Day is '' often the brightest in the
year," and that this day " was likewise the brightest of Ra-
* Constable's edition, before me, also contains the *' Considerations/'
*' Orders to the Commanders of the Fleet," and '' Apology for the last
Voyage."
22 Go88^8 Life of Sir Walter Raleigh. [July,
leigh's life." Edwards says : " The decline of Spain dates from
the day when Raleigh in The Wa/r Sprighty marshalled the way
into Cadiz harbor, passing " the wasps " of galleys with " a
blare of trumpets " and making straight for the two great gal-
leons, some of whose crews had heard Richard Grenville's
dying words in 1591." Tokens of this decline " occur on the
pages of Spanish history, in an unbroken series, during two
hundred and seventy years from the June of 1596." And
Spain has never recovered from Raleigh's attack.
From this climax of fame and influence all the biographers
note the steady change of fortune that went on for a score of
years and more till the mournful close of a gallant and brilliant
life. As the powers of the Great Queen waned, misunder-
standings and personal conflicts with those nearest her person,
like Essex and Cecil, multiplied. On his return from Gui-
ana he had thought " that coming from the West, with an
empire in his hand, as a gift for Elizabeth, the Queen would
take him into favor again, but he was mistaken." Little prize
money from Cadiz and Fayal ; his sorded mistress claimed all ;
large expenses in Guiana ; so stood his financial accounts. The
oflSces of Vice Chamberlain, Lord Deputy in Ireland, member
of the Privy Council were successively denied him, — so reads
the record of preferments sought. His chronic tendency to
rheumatism and consumption developed within a few years ;
his wound at Cadiz causing feebleness and pain — so ran the
story of his increasing bodily ailments. He left the great
town palace of the bishops of Durham, on the site of what is
now *' Adelphi Terrace," which he had leased from the Queen
in 1684, and retired to Sherborne in Dorsetshire, which she
had given him seven years later. Why he was called with
Lord Cobham, to assist Ostend while besieged by Cardinal
Albert, no one from Cayley down to Gosse, has been able to
telL There was need of him to grace the *' Royal Progress "
in 1601, and receive TuUy from France. He " must begin to
keep sheep betime," he said, if no high oflSce was open to him.
He strove to get out of the whirl of plot and peril that sur-
rounded Essex. If Cecil befriended him at all, it was only to
checkmate Essex. "Although now, and for the brief remain-
der of Elizabeth's life," says Mr Gosse, " he was nominally in
1887.] Goss^a Life of Sir Walter Raleigk 28
favor, the saturnine old woman had no longer any tenderness
for her Captain of the Gnard. There was no longer any
excuse for excluding from her presence so valuable a soldier,
and so wise a courtier, but her pulses had ceased to thrill at his
coming." At last she made him Governor of Jersey. "It
gave him once more the opportunity to cultivate his restless
energy, to fly hither and thither by sea and land, and to harry
the English Channel for Spaniards, as a terrier watches a hay-
stack for rats." He was Lord of St. Germain and judge in
civil causes. " He established for Jersey," says Edwards, " a
trade with New Foundland, which in aftertimes became very
fruitful" ; he undertook, says Gosse, " to register real property
according to a definite system, abolished the unpopular com-
pulsory service of the Corps de Oarde^ and lightened in many
directions the fiscal burdens which previous governors had laid
on the population. Ealeigh's beneficient rule in Jersey lasted
just three years." The year it began he was also in Corn-
wall, " improving the condition of the tin-workers and going
through his duties in the Stanneries Court of Lostwithiel.
We find him protecting private enterprise on Eoborough Down
against the borough of Plymouth, which desired to stop the
linworks, and the year closes with his activities on behalf of
' the establishment of good laws among tinners.' " Better busi-
ness thifi and safer than intriguing at London against Essex
and Cecil, or humoring the fierce moods of the Virgin Queen !
Edwards says very justly, " wherever he had any post of duty,
for how brief a time soever, he sowed the seed of some good
harvest or other for posterity to reap."
Of the rapid decline of this wonderful man when English
role fell from the strong hands of Elizabeth, into the weak and
perverse hands of James ; of his being stripped one by one of
all the offices long held which were wanted for royal favorites
and toadies ; of Essex's break with Kaleigh, Cecil, and the
Queen and of his death ; of Baleigh's reception of the Due de
Biron in the Queen's absence, and his growing intimacy with
Lord Cobham ; of the attempts of James VL of Scotland, to
enlist Kaleigh in his favor as to the succession ; of his last expe-
dition to Virginia, which never reached Virginia, but saw and
named Martha's Vineyard ; of his share in the Queen's Spanish
24 0088^ s lAfe of Sir Walter Baleigh. [Jnly,
and Irisli policy, and of the ignominy and woe he sufiered at
the hands of James and Cecil, Mr. Gosse gives the nsoal
account. Very truly he remarks: "If he" (Raleigh), "had
died in 1608, unattainted, in peace at Sherborne, it is a ques-
tion whether he would have attracted the notice of posterity
in any very general degree. To close students of the reign of
Elizabeth, he would be" what Mr. Gardiner has pronounced
him. " But he would not be to us all the embodiment of the
spirit of England in the great age of Elizabeth, the foremost
man of his time, the figure which takes the same place in the
field of action which Shakespeare takes in that of imagination,
and Bacon in that of thought. For this something more was
needed, the long torture of imprisonment, the final crown of
judicial martyrdom. The slow tragedy closing on Tower Hill
is the necessary complement to his greatness." The recital of
that tragedy occupies the last half of the new biographer^s
pages, a clear and well-ordered narrative, with no concealment
of weaknesses, no panegyric of great qualities disclosed, with
nothing added that is new, — a story whose deep and pathetic
interest forbids its ever growing old. The details of the trial at
Winchester, of the long term in the tower of London, the sec-
ond voyage to Guiana and the scene on the scaffold do not go
beyond those given by Edwards and St. John, but they are
well handled and presented with simplicity. If unpublished
documents shall ever add anything to our knowledge it will be
received with as much interest in the land of whose coloniza-
tion he was the " father," as in that in which he was bom.
For this, the agency of our countrymen in placing a memorial
of him on the wdls of the church in whose chancel Lady
Raleigh buried his body — St Margaret's, Westminster — ^is
ample security. His head, dissevered by the executioner's
axe, "is supposed now to rest in West Horsley Church,
Sussex."
The earliest of this extraordinary man's writings mentioned
in this volume is a paper of October, 1682, advising Elizabeth
to be less severe with Ireland, which was partly prepared by
Lord Burghley. Its title in the *^ Irish Correspondence" is The
Opinion of Mr. liwvoley. Five years and four months later
he was knighted. Half a dozen years later still, after he had
1887.] O'oss^s Life of Sir Walter Baleigh. 26
entered Parliament, hie noble elegy on his friend Sir Philip
Sidney was written. This is not iJie epitaph which f ormeriy
hung on a tablet from a pillar in St. Paul's Cathedral,* where
Sidney was buried, but a more finished production, as these
stanzas show.
'* England doth hold thy limbs, that bred the same ;
Flanders thy valour where it last was tried ;
The camp thy sorrow, where thy body died ;
Thy friends, thy want ; the world thy virtues' fame/'
" The heavens made haste, and stayed nor years nor time ;
The fruits of age grew ripe in thy first prime."
After mentioning his birth in Kent and education at Oxford—
*' Great gifts and wisdom rare employed thee thence.
To treat from kings with those more great than kings ;
Such hope men had to lay the highest things
On thy wise youth."
There are fifteen verses in all, forming " one o^ the finest of
the many poems which that sad event called forth. It blends the
passion of personal regret with the dignity of public grief, as
all great elegiacal poems should." Mr. George S. Hillard
printed it in the 5th volume of his edition of Spencer's Works
(Boston, 1839), with the elegies of Matthew Koydon, Lodo-
wick Bryskett, the Countess of Pembroke and Spenser (" As-
trophel "), but without a name, appending the note of Todd ;
" To the following poems I am unable to assign their authors ;
but no reader will imagine them the productions of Spenser."
Mr. Gofise says : " This elegy appeared with the rest in Aai/ro-
phel in 1595 " (Spenser's own publication), *'but it had already
been printed in 1593, in the Phcenix Nest^ and as early as
1591, Sir John Harington quotes it as Raleigh's." There
must have been those living who knew it was not his, if it was
not, including the real author. It has some of the spirit of
Raleigh's work, though hardly of his best. Philip Masterman
says of all these poems, " They possess no intensity of feeling,"
but names Bryskett's, " in iambic lines of three feet, without
* The epitaph, perhaps not written by Raleigh, began thus:
'' England, Netherlands, the heavens and the arts,
The soldier and the world have made six i)arts
Of the noble Sidney."
It was quite likely an imitation of Raleigh, but a poor one.
26 Go88^8 Life of Sir Walter Haleigh. [Jnly,
rhyme," as possessing " csonsiderably melody." HiUard fol-
lows him in saying: "They are none of them above medi-
ocrity."*
About this time the intimacy of Raleigh and Spenser began,
" the two men," Mr. Gosse observes, " in many respects the
most remarkable Englishmen of imagination then before the
notice of their country." "Dean Church has noticed that to
read Hooker's accountf of 'Raleigh's adventures with the Irish
chieftains, his challenges and single combats, his escapes at
fords and woods, is like reading bits of the Fairy Queen in
prose.' " How the poets came together in Ireland, was told in
these pages years ago,J but our author gives us something new
in respect to a poem of Raleigh's then alluded to by Spenser,
and long regarded as lost. Spenser's allusions are in his Colin
Clouds come home agaiuj 1595, and in his sonnet to Raleigh
prefixed to the J^aery Queene^ 1696. The " Shepherd of the
Ocean," as he calls Raleigh in Colin Cloutj delighted with
Spenser's piping one day, took his pipe in hand
"And played thereon, for well that skill he con'd,§
Himself as skillful in that art as any."
" His song was all a lamentable lay
Of great unkindness, and of usage hard,
Of Cynthia, the Ladie of the Sea,
Which from her presence, faultless him debarred,
And ever and anon, with singulf rife,|
He cryed out to make his undersong,
* Ah ! my love's queen, and goddess of my life,
Who shall me pity when thou doest me wrong V "
* Spenser's rank had been declared by William Webbe, in his ** Dis-
course of English Poetrie," 1686 (Asber's Beprints, 1870). " One, who if
not only, yet in my judgment, principally deserveth the title of the
rightest English Poet, that ever I read; that is, the Author of the
Sheepeheardes Kalender, intituled to the woorthy Gentleman Master
Philip Sidney, whether it was Master Sp. or what rare SchoUer in Pem-
brooke HaU soever," p. 85. In the lAfe and Times of Sidney, by S. M. D.
(Boston, 1858), Raleigh's sonnet is ascribed to Spenser, the author probably
knowing that the brother poet published it with his Astrophd, but not
that two others had printed it before.
t In his " Supply of the Irish Chronicles," a supplement to Holinshed.
t New Englander, for October, 1873, 669-671.
§**CJond,"knew.
I "Singiilfe rife," frequent sobs. Mr. Hillard ascribes the Queen's
unkindness to the Throckmorton incident, .but this did not happen till
after Raleigh and Spenser returned from Ireland to *' Cynthia's land."
1887.] 0(m^8 Life of Sir Walter Raleigh. "in
In the London Athenamm for 1886 (first two numbers),
Mr. Gosse gave his account of what he deems the discovery
of part of this lost lay, "Ealeigh's magnum opus of 1589,
quite con^derable enough to give us an idea of the extent and
character of the rest" He condenses the results in the vol-
ume before us (pp. 46-7).
** In 1870 Archdeacon Hannah printed what he described as
a * continuation of the lost poem, Cynthia^ from fragments in
Sir Walter's own hand among the Hatfield MSS. Dr. Han-
nah, however, misled by the character of the handwriting, by
some vague allusions in one of the fragments, to a prison cap-
tivity, and most of all, probably, by a difficulty in dates which
we can now for the first time explain, attributed these pieces
to 1603-1618, that is to say, to Raleigh's imprisonment in the
Tower. The second fragment, beginning 'My body in the
walls captived,' belongs, no doubt, to the later date. It is in a
totally distinct metre from the rest, and has nothing to do with
Oynthia^ The first fragment bears the stamp of much earlier
date, but this also can be no part of Raleigh's epic The long
passage then following, on the contrary is, I think, beyond
question a canto, almost complete, of the lost epic of 1589.
It is written in the four line heroic stanza adopted ten years
later by Sir John Davies for his Nosce teipsum, and most
familiar to us all in Grey's Churchyard Elegy. Moreover, it
is headed ' The Twenty-first and last Book of The Ocean to
Cynthia? Another note, in Raleigh's hand writing, styles the
poem, Ths Oceam^s Love to Cynthia^ and this was probably
the full name of it. Spenser's name for Raleigh, the Shep-
herd, or pastoral hero, of the Ocean, is therefore for the first
explained. This twenty-first book suffers from the fact that
stanzas, but apparently not very many, have dropped out, in
four places. With these losses, the canto still contains 130
stanzas, or 526 lines. Supposing the average length of the
twenty preceding books to have been the same, The Ocean^s
Love to Cynthia must have contained at least ten thousand
lines. Spenser, therefore, was not exaggerating, or using the
language of flattery towards a few elegies or a group of sonnets,
when he spoke of Cynthia as a poem of great importance.
As a matter of fact no poem of the like ambition had been
28 OosB^B Life of Sir Walter lialeigh, [Jtily,
written in England for a century past, and if it had been pub-
lished,^ it would, perhaps, have taken a place only second to its
immediate contemporary, "The Faery Queene." We hope
some day to see this long lost work and all he produced in
verse, gathered into a complete collection.
But an active life took his pen away from the service of poetry
till his destruction had been compassed and death was near.
His first publication was a tract in prose, 1591, describing the
fight of the " Revenge " with Spanish ships off the Azores, and
vindicating his captain, Grenville. Anonymously published,
Richard Hakluyt, eight years after was permitted to ascribe it
to Kaleigh. " It is written in a sane and manly style, and
marks the highest level reached by English narrative prose as
it existed before the waters were troubled by the fashion of
Euphues. Long entirely neglected, it has of late become tlie
best known of all its author's productions." In 1595, he sent
forth his Discovery of Guicma. " Two editions appeared in
1596, it was presently translated into Latin and published in
Germany, and, in short, gained a reputation throughout
Europe." Mr. Gosse says of it : — he has nothing better than
these critical remarks : —
" The Discovery possesses a value which is neither biograph-
ical nor geographical. It holds a very prominent place in the
prose literature of the age. During the five years which had
elapsed since Raleigh's last publication, English literature had
been undergoing a marvellous development, and he who read
everything and sympathized with every intellectual movement,
couJd not but be influenced by what had been written. During
these five years Marlowe's wonderful career had been wound
up like a melodrama. Shakespeare had come forward as a
poet. A new epoch in sound English prose had been inaug-
urated by Hooker's JEcclesiast/ical Polity, Bacon was circulat-
ing the earliest of his JEsaays. What these giants of our lan-
guage were doing for their own departments of prose and
verse, Raleigh did for the literature of travel. Among the
* "Yet till thou thy Poeme wilt make knowne," Spenser's sonnet
to Raleigh. The first sonnet to Spenser prefixed to the Faery Queene,
was ''that noble and justly celebrated sonnet which alone would jus-
tify Raleigh in taking a place among the English poets." Grosse, p. 49.
1887.] GosB^s Life of Sir Walter RaleigL 29
volnmes of navigations, voyages, and discoveries, which were
poured ont so freely in this part of the reign of Elizabeth,
most of them now only remembered because they were re-
printed in the collections of Hakluyt and Purchas, this book
of Kaleigh's takes easily the foremost position. In comparison
with the bluff and dull narratives of the other discoverers,
whose chief charm is their naiveUy the Discovery of Ghiia/na
has all the grace and fullness of deliberate composition, of fine
literary art, and as it was the first excellent piece of sustained
travelers' prose, so it remained long without a second in our
literature. About the same time Ealeigh drew up the very
remarkable paper, not printed till 1843,* entitled Of the Voy-
age in Ouiwna, " By this means (colonization, commerce, etc.)
infinite numbers of souls may be brought from their idolatry,
bloody sacrifice, ignorance, and incivility, to the worshipping
aright of the true God, and to civil conversation. It will stop
the mouths of the Roman Catholics, who vaunt of their great
adventures for the propagation of the GoiSpel; it will add
great increase of honor to Her Majesty's name upon earth to
all posterity; and in the end be rewarded with a starlight
splendency in the Heavens, which is reserved for them that
turn many unto righteousness."
All through these years his letters supply materials for his-
tory, when he did not finish it in treatises. In respect to his
naval expeditions against Spain, they are full and minute.
Now and then some tract for the government came from his
pen, like the Discav/rae touching Wa/r with Spain, ami of the
Protecting of the Netherlamde. It had no influence with
James. His principal industry was to be bestowed on his great
history. But once, when Cecil, then Earl of Salisbury, passed
away, his elasticity returned, and his keen appreciation of that
cold and selfish statesman set him upon the making of this
epigram (1612) :
''Here lies HobinaU our pastor whilere,
That once in a quarter our fleeces did shear ;
To please us, his cur he kept under clog,
And was ever after both shepherd and dog ;
*I suspect an error here. Edwards (i, 198) gives the same quotations
asGosae, but they are from the '* Considerations," etc. in Constable's
edition of 1820 (before me), vol. vi., p. 115 of Appendix.
80 Oo8s^8 Life of Sir Walter Baleigh. [July,
For oblation to Pan, his custom was thus,
He first gave a trifle, then offered up us ;
And through his false worship such power he did gain,
As kept him on the mountain, and us on the plain."
His Marriage Diecov/reeSy Prerogative of Pa/rliament, Cab-
inet Cowncily Discourse of War, Observations on Trade amd
Commerce^ were written in these years — the last of these per-
haps the first English argument for free trade. It disappeared,
^^ as BO many of Baleigh's manuscripts had disappeared before
it, and was only first published in the Remains of 1651." In
the copy of the Remains (1702) belonging to the writer are
also included The Sceptic^ Maxims of State, Advice to his Son,
and The Magnifcency amd OjpuLency of Cities^ but not The
Invention of Shipping, all of which must have been produced
in these years. The pamphlets touching his last voyage are
of melancholy interest, but show little of his power and skill.
One poem of some length, but little merit, addressed to the
Queen, Anne of Denmark, always his friend, was a desperate
plea for his life. The short poems written in view of imme-
diate death are too well known for quotation. One of this
character, which Mr. Gosse deems " the most extraordinary and
most brilliant " of all, The Pilgrvmage, he assigns to the time,
years before, when he expected to be put to death at Win-
chester. The publication of his writings — save the geographi-
cal ones issued by himself — seems to have been somewhat acci-
dental and largely posthumous. Ben Jonson brought the first
volume of the History through the press ; John Milton the
Cabinet Councils.*
On the whole Mr. Gosse's work must be pronounced a ser-
viceable one, compact, clear in ^'ecital, judicial to a good de-
gree, without any high merit, and noticeably wanting in the
glow one would expect such a life as Raleigh's would give to
the narrator and the narration. It has a steady -going, matter-
* On January 6, 1615, after the book (the History) had been selling
slowly, the King gave an order commanding the suppression of the
remainder of the edition giving as his reason that " it is too saucy in
censuring the acts of kings. It is said that some favored person at
Ck>urt pushed inquiry further, and extracted from the king the expla-
nation that the censure of Henry Viil. was the real cause of the suppres-
sion," p. 180. (See Raleigh's Preface, pp. xiv.-xvi.)
1887.] Ooss^s Life of Sir Walter Ealeigh. 81
of-fact air about it, and nothing of the brilliancy that would be
felt to mate well a career of such vicisBitudes and romance.
But only another Raleigh could do complete justice to Ealeigh.
It is certainly the best guide we have to the literature of the
subject, a bibliography of which, from another hand, is prom-
ised. And it is the fullest of the one volume biographies, thus
far, and probably will be till all the documents, public and
private, are accessible. But the remark with which we opened
the subject fourteen years ago in these pages is still true : " A
life of the most brilliant gentleman and most versatile genius
in English history during the reigns of Elizabeth and the first
James, which shall be worthy of taking the place of an English
classic, is yet a desideratum."
Let us close with one of Mr. Gosse's best pieces of literary
criticism, his apt and just observations upon the History of the
World.
" It was a folio of 1,354 pages, printed very closely, and if
reprinted now would till about thirty-five such volumes as are
devised for an ordinary modem novel. . . The book is bril-
liant almost without a rival in its best passages, but these are
comparatively few, and they are divided from one another by
tracts of pathless desert It is not fair to dwell upon
(its) eminent beauties without at the same time acknowledging
that the book almost wilfully deprives itself of legitimate value
and the true human interest by the remoteness of the period
which it describes, and by the tiresome pedantry of its method.
It is leisurely to the last excess. The first chapter, of seven
long sections, takes us but to the close of the Creation. We
cannot proceed without knowing what it is that Tostatus affirms
of the empyrean heavens, and whether, with Strabo, we may
dare assume that they are filled with angels. To hasten on-
wards would be impossible, so long as one of the errors of
Steuchius Eugubinus remains unconfuted ; and even then it is
well to pause until we know the opinions of Orpheus and
Zoroaster on the matter in hand. One whole chapter of four
sections is dedicated to the Tree of Knowledge of Good and
Evil, and the arguments of Goropius Becanus are minutely
tested and found wanting. Goropius Becanus, whom Ealeigh
is never tired of shutting between his critical teeth, was a
82 Go88^s Life of Sir Walter Raleigh. [July,
learned Jesuit of Antwerp, who proved that Adam and Eve
spoke Dutch in Paradise. It is not until he reaches the Patri-
archs that it begins to occur to the historian that at his present
rate of progress it will need forty folio volumes, and not four,
to complete his labor. From this point he hastens a little, as
the compilers of encyclopsBdias do when they have passed the
letter B."
" With all this, the History of the World is a charming and
delightful miscellany, if we do not accept it too seriously.
Often for a score of pages there will be something brilliant,
something memorable on every leaf, and there is not a chapter,
however arid, without its fine things somewhere. It is impossi-
ble to teU where Raleigh's pen will take fire. He is most ex-
quisite and fanciful where his subject is most unhopeful, and,
on the other hand, he is likely to disappoint us where we take
for granted that he will be fine. ... By far the most inter-
esting and readable part of the History is its preface, a book
in itself."
Georob F. Magoun.
1887.] Marginalia Locke-a-na. 88
AraicLB IV.-MARGINALIA ZOCKEA-TiiA.
A FEW months ago the Librarian of Tale College purchased
for the Library a valaable collection of miscellaneous pamphlets
in several volumes — treating of topics theological, political,
philosophical, and economical Such collections are always
more or less interesting. On the fly leaf of one of these
volumes, containing 41 pamphlets, the following memorandum
is written . " This very valuable collection of Tracts came from
the United Libraries of John Locke and his nephew Lord
ChaDcellor King." On examining the titles and matter of
these Tracts it was found that several of them consisted of a
aeries of critical strictures upon Locke's Essay on the Human
Understanding by the celebrated or rather the notorious
Thomas Burnet, 1635-1715, Master of the Charter-House and
aathor of the " Sacred Theory of the Earth." These comments
tre more or less pertinent and pointed and represent many of
the current criticisms of the times, upon Locke's doctrines, both
theological and philosophical. Of a series of three the first two
were written in 1697, seven years after the issue of the first
edition of the Essay and the third in 1699, L e., after the pub-
lication of the third edition. The first is written in a
deferential and courteous tone and urges a few of the current
philosophical and theological queries or objections which
oppressed most of Locke's critics and dissentients and which
were drawn out at some length by Stillingfleet, the one
antagonist of Locke who is now remembered by reason of the
fact that a summary of his strictures with Locke's replies has
till the present time been republished in every edition of the
Essay. To this brief essay of Burnet, the first of the Tracts
before ua, Locke made a brief and somewhat contemptuous re-
ply of two and a half pages, which was attached to his reply to
the Bishop of Worcester's answer to his first letter. Upon this
brief notice Burnet issued his Second Remarks with more
Bpirit and ability wifliout eliciting a word of response from
Locke. Two years afterwards, in 1699, he published his Third
VOL. XL 8
34 Ma/rginaliu LockecHia. [Jtily,
Bemarks of which the first paragraph indicates that he was
still smarting from the silence of the philosopher. He begins
thus:
" Sir : I have not yet received the favor of your answer to
my second letter or second remarks upon your Essay upon
Human Understanding. You ruffled over the first remarks in
a domineering answer without giving any satisfaction to their
contents but the second being more full and explicit, I was in
hopes you would have been more concerned to answer them
and to answer them more calmly and like a philosopher." But
notwithstanding this challenge he did not draw the fire of
Locke in a public reply. But he did move him so far that in
the solitude of his own study he filled the liberal margins of the
pamphlet with remarks and counter criticisms, in his own hand-
writing. For several reasons these are an interesting memorial
of the past. They are holographic from Locke's own hand as
is evident from the well known autograph of the author of
which there are several specimens in these pamphlets. They
are brief and pointed and spirited, expressing his positions in
brief statements which are often corrections of and antagonistic
to those of his critic. Now and then they are more clear and
explicit than the corresponding statements or reasonings of
the Essay, being Locke's explanations of his own meaning by
answering questions, the removal of objections, and the intro-
duction of 'distinctions, the necessity for which could be made
necessary only by the test of controversy. At all events we
have in these Marginalia Locke's exposition of his own treatise
in the solitude of his private thinking, with no thought of any
public audience or any tribunal other than that of his own re-
flective judgment. We fancy some of our readers will not be
uninterested to follow these comments of the often vexed
philosopher as he thinks aloud his not always patient thoughts,
and now and then indirectly answers the inquiry of the per-
plexed reader, as to what he actually did think, when what he
actually believed or intended to say, has long been a matter of
dispute or uncertainty. For the gratification of this class of
readers and the information of all of Locke's admirers and
critics we have copied these marginalia in text and conmient,
giving the latter always in Locke's own words, which some-
1887.] Marginalia Locke-Orna, 36
times display Locke's own feelings in an unmistakeable fashion,
and of the former as much as seemed necessary to explain the
commentary.
The first remark of Burnet's which elicits any comment from
Locke is in the continuation of the sentence already quoted
and is as follows : " Ton best know the reason of your silence,
but as it will be understood in several ways so it may be sub-
ject to that construction among others, that you could not
satisfy those objections or queries without exposing your prin-
ciples more than you had a mind they should be exposed."
Upon this Locke makes this brief comment
He 7* reads my books with a fair minde could not make such a con-
stnzction.
Upon Conscience Burnet writes: "Conscience you say is
nothing else but our own opinion of our own actions. But of
what sort of actions, I pray, in reference to what rule or dis-
tinction of our actions ? Whether good or evil or as profitable
or unprofitable or as perfect or imperfect." Locke retorts :
An ingenuous and fair reader cannot doubt but that I there meant
i)pinian of their morality.
Burnet reiterates, " But the question is, what laws those are
that we ought to obey, or how we can know them without rev-
elation, unless you take in natural conscience for a distinction
of good and evil or another idea of God than what you have
given TiB?^ Locke replies :
It is not oonscience j^ makes the distinction of good & evil conscience
only judging of an action by y* w«»^ it takes to be y« rule of good & evil,
acquits or condenms it.
The next comment of Burnet reads thus : " If they (the
Patriarchs) had no other guide to virtue and piety than your
idea of God and the Soul with an arbitrary difference of good
and evil, I wonder how they could attain to such a degree of
lighteonsness as would bear that eminent character from God
and his prophets. Upon this oc'casion also we may reflect
npon Natural Faith and the Nature of it." * * * Now
how shall a man in the state of Nature have just grounds of
this Faith if he have no other idea of God than that he is an
86 Marginalia Lock&Orna^ LJ^^Jj
All Powerful, All Knowing and Eternal Being ? How from
this can he prove that he will be a rewarder of those that seek ^
Him." Upon these remarks Locke comments somewhat
warmly.
This author makes great professions to write only for truths sake. I
think it does not very well agree with y* character to impute to me
what is not mine. For where is it I so much as mention much less
assert an arbitrary difference of good dt evil. Fair writers never fail to
quote the words that they would charge as blamable in themselves or
consequences. I desire he would quote the words from whence he
insinuates here as if I excluded out of the Idea of god all other Ideas but
eternity, omnipotence & omniscience. To judge of the fairness of our
Author in this point I desire the Reader to consider w* I say B. II, Chap,
cxxiii. § 83-85. And if he thinks y» I say B. IV, Chap, x, § 6 be not
true, y^ an eternal omnipotent omniscient being being once established
the other attributes of god cannot be made out I desire him to say so, &
then to make them out some other way.
(1.) This author blames my principles not for falshood, but deficiency,
because he cannot make out all & just soe much as he would by them.
If they are true I am glad, noe thing sure but truth will f oUow from
truth. If they will not serve this author's tume I should be glad he
would lay down such as would y^ we might see them. For truly I am
not at leisure to draw for ever7 one all those consequences from mine
w^^ he would have made out to him, and so fall to work for his satis-
faction as often as any one requires me to prove this or prove that from
my principles. For whose sake my essay was writ my epistle to the
reader tells. And if it has been acceptable to them I have my end. If
it has been of any use to others I am glad too. Those finding it deficient
will do wisely to seek how to supply themselves better ; but they will
do what neither becomes men nor Christians if they make sinister or
malitious interpretations of my not having enterd into all the particu-
lars they would have me when they cannot disprove y* truth of any-
thing I have handled.
The next remark which elicits a comment from Locke re-
spects the much vexed question concerning innate ideas, and first
of all as these are supposed to be given in practical principles.
Upon this point Burnet insists that those who hold to such
ideas and principles are misrepresented and misunderstood and
urges " If by principles you understand distinct knowledge that
is distinct ideas and distinct propositions, we do not hold dis-
tinct ideas in that sense, yet so yon seem to represent them and
their ideas, and yon call their characters fair characters, indeli-
ble characters, stampt, imprinted, engraven in the mind ; for
all those expressions yon use upon that occasion. Yon exagger-
1887.] Margmalm Looke-a-na, 37
' ate the matter and set the qaestion at what height yon
please, that you may have the fairer mark to shoot at." Upon
this Locke remarks :
Pray say plainly what is innate & imprinted & how far, & then it will
be seen how f ar y« & I disagree.
In this immediate connection Bnmet insists : '^ If you had
reflected upon that common distinction of knowledge as clear
or obscure, general or particular, distinct or indistinct, whereof
we have daily instances in the life of man you might have
represented more softly and conceived more easily those
natural impressions." " When a child feels the difference of
bitter and sweet he knows and understands that difference in
some kind or degree for it hath its consequences and becomes a
principle of action to him. Now whether you please to call
this principle knowledge or sense or instinct, or by any other
name, it still hath the effect of knowledge of some sort or
other and that before the child hath the name of Bitter or
Sweet, pleasant or unpleasant ; much less can he define what
either of them is." To all this Locke sharply retorts :
But has the child the Ideas of bitter & sweet innate. And has the
child y^ has y Ideas of bitter & sweet the Ideas of moral good & moral
evfl.
Very soon Burnet discusses the question of innate Moral
Ideas, and says : " Accordingly I understand by Natural con-
science a Natural Sagacity to distinguish Moral Good and Evil
or a different perception and sense of them, with a different
affection of the mind arising from it ; and this so immediate as
to prevent and anticipate all External Laws and all Ratiocin-
ation." To which Locke rejoins by the very question which
we should expect he would ask :
What is this affection of the minde from conscience antecedent to all
external laws & ratiocination ?
In continuing his argument Burnet says : *'Tou will not now
say I believe that if there was such a natural principle in the
soul of man, infants or young children would be able to distin-
guish moral good and evil. For you might as well expect that
in a seed there should be leaves, flowers and fruit, or that in
the rudiments of an embryo there should be all the parts and
38 Marginalia Locke-Orna. [J^ljj
members of a complete body distinctly represented, which in
continuance are fashioned and brought to perfection." To all
which Locke replies in a somewhat remarkable concession :
If moral Ideas or moral rules (w«^ are the moral principles I deny to
be innate) are innate, I say children must know them as well as men.
If by moral principles y° mean a faculty to iinde out in time the moral
difference of actions, besides y^ this is an improper way of speaking to
cal a power principles : I never denyd such a power to be innate, but y*
w«*^ I denyd was y* any Ideas or connection of Ideas was innate.
Burnet continues his argument as follows : " We are differ-
ently affected by their impressions, and so is a child before any
Keflection or Ratiocination ; though neither of us can give an
Idea of the affection we feel nor of the particular modification
and action of the Body wherein it arises.
" This shows us that there may be a power in the soul of
distinguishing one thing from another without Batiocination ;
and if in sensible qualities, why not also in Moral Relations
such as good and evil. True and False ? " Locke responds :
Such an inward distinguishing sensation antecedent to all sense or
supposition of an external moral rule should be proved, till then the
supposeing of it is but laying down a foundation for enthusiasme.
On the same page Burnet continues : "Now, if this account
of Natural Conscience or what you call Practical Principle,
be true, there are, in my opinion, in your third chapter, men-
tioned above, several defective reasonings or ill-grounded
suppositions." To which Locke responds :
I call not conscience practical principles. Produce the place where I
soe represent it. He who confounds the Judgm^ made with the Rule
or law upon w«^ it is made, as the Author doth here, may perhaps talk
soe.
Burnet reiterates in the same connection : " You say your-
self, I deny not that there are natural tendencies imprinted on
the minds of men, and that from the very first instances of
Sense and Perception there ^.re some things that are grateful
and others unwelcome to them, some things that they incline
into and others that they flie." Upon which Locke comments
as follows :
Men have a natural tendency to what delights, and from what pains
them. This universal observation has established past doubt. That the
soul has such a tendency to what is morally good, and from what is
evil has not fallen imder my observation, and therefore I cannot grant
it for as being.
1887.] Marginalia Locke-a-na. 89
Burnet perseveres in his tenacity: "Ton seem to make
account that if conscience was an innate principle, it should be
invisible and nnextinguishable, and commonly received without
doubt or question. Then to prove that it is not so, you bring
in several barbarous or semi-barbarous people as your witnesses,
Mengrelians and such other gentlemen, that are not of my
acquaintance." Locke rejoins :
This Author mistakes what I say, B. I. , G. HI, § 9, w«^ is y* moral rules
are not innate, for if they were they would be in all men ; and if they
were in y* minds of men they could not without all touch of con-
science be transgressed as many instances shew they are.
Burnet waxes somewhat warm when he writes on the same
topic : " In the meantime, Sir, as your plea is weak in my
opinion, so methinks, you have an ungrateful office, to rake up
all the dirt and filth you can from barbarous people to throw
in the face of human nature. This some will think an indig-
nity cast upon mankind and a piece of ingratitude to our
Maker." To which Locks replies no less warmly :
And ^what is it in those who give us such descriptions as are to be
found of the heathen world immersed in Idolatry and corruption.
Burnet proceeds in the same strain : " But seeing man is
made up of various principles and such as often interfere with
one another, what wonder is it to see some following this,
some that ; some better, some worse. There is a law of the
members as well as of the mind, and these are at war, and
sometimes one gets the victory, sometimes the other." Locke
corrects him thus :
The question is not what the event will be of several inclinations (for
y* is it w^^ the Author here cals principles) drawing several ways. But
whether y* law being present in y minds (as it must be if it be innate)
a man can transgresse it without judging himself guilty.
Bomet resumes thus : " But if you say further, that there
are not only rude and barbarous people but also civilized
nations that have had practices and customs contrary to what
are called the Lawp of Nature or Natural Conscience, etc.,
etc" — ^and Locke interrupts him suddenly by reminding him
that:
Conscience is not y« law of Nature, but judging by y* w«^ is taken to
bey* law.
40 Margmalia Loohe-orna. [Jnly»
Burnet also adds: ^^ Exorbitant practices against natural
conscience are no proof that there is no such principle.'' And
Locke responds :
Practice without touch of conscience shews y law transgressed not
to be in y« minde as a rule.
Burnet urges in the same breath : ^^ As on the other hand, it
is a strong proof of natural conscience as the Supreme Law, if
we find instances and actions, etc." — ^Locke interrupts him in
the middle of the sentence by remarking that.
Conscience is the judg, not y* law.
Burnet introduces with an air of triumphant confidence:
" As when a secret project was offered to the Athenians, how
they might make themselves the greatest people in Greece, the
motion was referred to Aristides, and he made the report to
the Senate * * * Never was proposed a more profitable pro-
ject nor a more dishonest." Locke is equally triumphant in
his reply :
Because Aristides and Fabricius owned the rule of right in those cases
of justice ergo y* Rule of not murdering, or preserving their children
was innate or owned in the minds of those who without remorse of
conscience broke it. A very good argum*.
Burnet urges again : " And if those rules (viz : of Virtue
and Honesty) be neglected more or less by men, or appear
little amongst some people, this is no good proof that there are
no such principles. As it is no sufficient argument that there
is no sun in the firmament because his light is obscured in
cloudy days or does not appear in foggy regions."
To this Locke replies :
This Author abounds in similes w<^ have y* ill-luck when brought
to y* paralel to be ag* him. As though the sun be in heaven yet those
y^ are in the darke who manifestly doe not guide their steps by it shew
that his light is not innate.
Burnet writes : " So I do not see any necessity of universal
consent or universal uniformity to declare a principle to be
natural" Locke's comment is :
What this Author has to say about Natural principles I know not.
That w«>> I deny is y^ practical principles or rules are innate.
1887.] Ma/rginaUa Locke-Or^aa, 41
Burnet proceeds to say : " Yet I think no man will deny the
flense of music to be natural to mankind without ratiocination.
So also for beauty." Locke says :
ProTe the distrngoiabing sense of virtue & vice to be natural to
mankinde before they have learnt y measures of virtue & vice from
aomething besides y* sense & you will have proved something.
Burnet writes : " I should be glad to know if you allow any
powers or principles to be innate in your sense of the word.
If yon allow none at all not their last mentioned nor so much
as willing or nilling this or that, the controversy will be chang-
ed ; and I desire to know what idea you can form of a soul or
spirit without any power or any action. I wish that may not
be the supposition that lies at the bottom of your philosophy,
that the soul of man is no distinct substance from God or the
body, but either a divine influence or the power of the body.
Locke's commei^ is :
This author to bring in a very well natured suggestion sticks not to
contradict himself for in ye foregoing period he questions whether I
allow any innate powers, and here he supposes I make the soule to be
iht power of the body, w*** power is certainly innate.
Again Burnet changes his front : " To proceed a little fur-
ther yon have an odd exception in your 12th paragraph to show
that the dictates of natural conscience are not truths because
they are not formed into propositions, etc." Upon this Locke
remarks :
As odd as it is, it is true, yt there is noe truth or falshood but in
a verbal or mental proposition.
Burnet proposes this question : " Do we not preserve our-
selves ; do we not make use of reason without the formality of
a law telling us it is our duty to do these things ?" To this
question Locke makes the f oUowing answer :
Tea, we may doe it without the formality of a law. But conscience
cannot acquit or condemn us for what we doe without a law telling us
it is our duty to doe or forbear.
After citing two passages, Burnet adds : " There were both
the sayings of heathens that had no other law than the law of
natnral conscience." To which Locke proposes the following :
That had noe other law but the law of nature to guid their conscience.
To express it right, soe it should be.
42 Ma7*ginalia Locke-Orna. [J^ly^
Burnet proceeds with his argument thus : " When you oflfer
a child bitter instead of sweet, he turns away his head and
makes grimaces when he has no law or duty prescribed nor any
logic than that which was bom with him or what he sucked
from the breast of his mother. Then as to punishments and
rewards, there is a presage of them from natural conscience and
they are furthermore deducible from the nature of God if you
allow him moral attributes as we do." Locke adds this com-
ment :
Shew such an aversion in children to all immorality as soon as they
are capable of moral actions and yt will be something to yr purpose.
Are Rewards and punishm^" deducible from the nature of god by any
one without Ratiotination. But tis without Ratiotination yt y° contend
Natural conscience works.
Burnet adds directly to the foregoing: "Indeed, in your
way, upon your idea of God and your uncertainty of the im-
mortality of the soul I do not see how possibly you can prove
future rewards and punishments without a revelation, nor con-
sequently give us a foundation for morality and natural
religion."
Upon this Locke is content with the following comment :
If y» doe not see how from my idea of Gk)d how I can prove future
rewards and punishm^* what ever be the cause of y want of sight in the
case I shall not examin. But if y" have another Idea of Gk>d than I have
and can prove the existence of such a Gk)d from other principles than
mine I shall thank y» for supplying this defect in my essay.
In the following paragraph Burnet urges that Locke's argu-
ment against a natural conscience would apply with equal force
against the Christian religion. " You say that it is impossible
that men should without shame or fear break a rule which they
could not know God had set up and would certainly punish the
breach of, which they must if they were innate. But in this
place which they must if they were Christians — to a degree to
make it a very ill bargain to the transgressor. Does not this
hit the Christians as well and as manifestly as those that share
natural conscience."
To this Locke replies :
Is it possible then yt men in whom the Gtospel is ye principle of
Action to break ye rules of it without shame or fear ?
It hits some yt are called not those yt realy are Christians.
1887.] Marginalia Loche-a-na. 43
. Bnrnet repeats his argument thus : " Tou instance in duels
and bloody wars, etc., among Christians. You might have ap-
plied all those things particularly to Christians, but still we
should have thought it no good proof that there is no Chris-
tian law no more than it is that there is no natural conscience."
To this Locke replies :
Doe y" prove that there is a natural conscience in y sense and the
question will be decided. But false or invidious consequences that reach
not the case will not doe it. They shew only ye good will not the good
cause of such a talker.
It is 1 think a good proof y* there is no Christian law setled in the
mind as a natural principle of action in those y* doe see without touch
of conscience w«^ is the case of those I mention.
Burnet continues his questions : " Do we not see men every
day, in spite of laws external or internal, divine or human, pursue
their lusts, passions and vicious inclinations? Though they
have not only the terrors of another life to keep them in awe
and order, but see before their eyes God's gibbets, whips, racks
and torturing engines, etc., eta" Upon which Locke breaks
out with the exclamation :
What ! whilst they have the terrors of those things as imavoidable
for that action before their eyes.
Burnet proceeds : " If all these united forces and restraints
cannot keep them from extravagant evils, can we think it
strange that the single principle of natural conscience should
be suppressed or suffocated by the stupidity or vices incident
to human nature." Whereupon Locke remarks :
Natural xx>nscience supposed an innate principle suffocated by ye
stupidity or vice is a pretty thing.
Burnet next remarks : " Tou call for a list of the laws or
principles of conscience and so the Papists do for a catalogue
of fundamentals." Upon which Locke writes :
Of those who say there are a set of fundamental propositions neces-
sary to be believed by every one for salvation it is reasonable to ask a
list of them. And of those who say there are innate laws of rules of
right or wrong tis reasonable to demand a Hst of them and he yt cannot
produce what he soe talks of tis plain folly.
Burnet proceeds : " As to the dictates or principles of natural
conscience (call them laws of nature or what you please) we
44 Marginalia LockerOrna. [J^tyj
say in general, they are for the distinction of good and evil."
Locke observes :
1. Conscience dictates not but acquits or condemns upon the dictates
of a superior power.
Burnet adds : " But the cases are innumerable as in other
cases of conscience wherein there may be occasions for their
exercise." Upon which Locke observes :
2. Though the objects be innumerable yt please or displease yet sense
can immediately upon the application of every one of them distin-
guish w^*" delights or w«^ offendes. Has conscienoe such a discerning
sense of moral good and evil in every action?
Burnet tries a more defiant attitude : '^ This minds one of
your dilemma in a following section which you propose as very
powerful or conclusive in these words. But concerning innate
principles I desire those men to say whether they can or can-
not by education and custom be blamed and blotted. If they
can we must find them clearest and most perspicuous nearest
the fountain in children and illiterate people who have received
least impression from foreign opinions. Let them take which
side they please they will certainly find it inconsistent with
visible matter of fact and daily observation.
The close you hear is in an high tone. But for trial of this
argument, let us use the same method which we did before ;
see then we put Christianity in the room of innate principles,
so put now in their place the power and principles of reason-
ing. So the sentence will read thus : " But concerning this
power and principle of reasoning I desire these men to say
whether it can or cannot be blurred or blotted out." All of
this Locke thus disposes of :
Natural powers may be improved by exercise and afterwards weakend
ag*" by neglect and soe aU the knowledg got by the exercise of those
powers. But innate Ideas or propositions imprinted on the mind I doe
not see how they can be improved or effaced.
Define Principle,
Burnet adds : " All men will distinguish between a power
and the actual and prevailing exercise of that power which may
be hindered by various circumstances, etc., etc. I see this
word innate is still a stumbling-stone ; and we must ask again
whether you allow any powers to be innate to mankind ? We
1887.] Marginalia LocJce-Orna. 45
say those forementioned powers are innate, but the exercise of
these more or less is conditional and depends upon the con-
dition of the body, culture, and other circumstances.'* These
remarks bring out from Locke a pointed reply and frank
explanation of his use of innate.
I think noe body but this Author who ever read my book could doubt
that I spoke only of innate Ideas, for my subject was the understanding
and not of innate powers and therefore there must be some very par-
ticular reason for our A — s soe understanding me if he does soe un-
derstand me.
At this point the discussion takes another turn and Burnet
proposes as a problem the possibility of Cogitant matter, which
he supposes Locke to have asserted. He urges, " You bring no
positive evidence of this possibility of cogitation in matter;
and I think it unconceivable according to our Faculties and
Conceptions that matter should be capable of cogitation as a
form of matter either innate or impressedP To which Locke
rejoins :
Can y then oonoeiye an unextended created substance? Can y» con-
odve an unextended & unsolid substance moving or moved by matter ?
Can y* conceive Ideas or thought produced by y« motion of matter?
The positive proofs of the one side & the other should be ballanced.
Burnet's first reason is : " That unity we find in our percep-
tions is such a unity as in my judgment is incompetent to
matter by reason of the division or distinction of its parts."
Fpon ^which Locke observes :
This argum^ of unity if it has any force in it supposes all our percep-
tions of sense to be made in a point w«^ cannot be unlesse all our nerves
tenninate in a point.
Burnet had also urged next : " Pray then tell us what part
of this body is that which you make the common percipient ;
or if that be too much, tell us how one part of the body may
or can be so." To which Locke had replied :
I make noe part of the body soe. But how any part of the body may
or can be soe I will undertake to tell when y** shall tell how any created
substance may or can be soe.
Burnet urges from the analogy of motion : " You say in a
system of matter, 'Tis impossible that any one particle should
either know its own, or the motive of any other particle, or the
46 Marginalia Locke^-^ia. [July,
whole know the motive of every particle. Put Cogitation now
in the place of Motion and the same argumentation holds
good." To which Locke rejoins :
'Twould be impossible if it were supposed to be in matter as matter.
But if god gives it to a certain systeme of matter soe disposed it is then
in that systeme.
Burnet prosecutes his argument in the same strain : ^^ I may
further add that not only the different perceptions that come
to the soul from different parts and motions of the body, but
also the different operations of the mind and understanding,
simple Apprehension, Judgement, Satiocination, must all lie
under the Prospect, Intuition and Connection of some one com-
mon Principle, and that must be a principle of such a perfect
unity and simplicity as the Body, any part of the body, or any
particle of matter is not capable of." To which Locke replies :
If an inability to explain how any system of matter can thinke be an
argu°*^ ag* a material soule, the inability to explain how body by motion
can affect an immaterial being will be an argui"^ ag< an immaterial
soule. But such arguers raise great trophies from the ignorance of
others, but think themselves safe in their own. When both sides are
equaly ignorant I think noe advantage can be made of it on either side.
Burnet next urges from the nature of Free- Will : " 'Twer an
odd thing to fancy that a piece of matter should have Free-
will and an absolute power like an emperor on his throne, to
command as his slaves about him all other parts of matter."
Locke replies :
All the same difficulties are ag^ the conceiving how an immaterial
created substance can begin, change or stop its own motion or thoughts,
or give any motion or determination to body. But where is it I have
said body has those powers? When y« have demonstrated humane
soules to be immaterial & explained how these powers are in them, j^
have s^ something ag^ me & shall finde me y glad convert. If arg^um^
from our shortsightednesse be good and y* any principles or systeme is
false because it removes not all difficulties, lay down y* & see whether
it will not be liable to as strong objections of defect, & as invidious
inf orency, if it be the way of lovers of truth to make them.
Burnet goes on to say : " You must fix this self-moving
Faculty to some one part of that system (for every part hath
not the power and free-will upon any supposition) and when
you have assigned that divine self-moving part or particle of
the body, we shall examine the power and capacities of it "
Locke rejoins in a similar strain :
1887.] Marginalia Locke-Orna. 4Y
T° too must fix y'self moveing substance to some part of the body, &
when y have assigned the part or particle of the body it is fixed to we
I shall examine its operations.
Burnet urges an argument from the nature of Free- Will as
follows : " If matter be capable of it, if it can deliberate, con-
sult, choose or refuse, then matter is capable of virtue and vice,
duty and religion. Merit and demerit, and also of punishment
and Reward, which hypothesis about the powers of matter as
to the Will, would furnish all our Rules in Moral Philosophy,
as the former the Understanding, all in Natural" Upon this
Locke comments :
That knowledg & will placed in a solid substance will more per-
vert 7* rules of moral philosophy than if placed in a substance void of
solidity remains to be proved.
Bnmet procedes : " Neither do I see a capacity in any part
of the body for memory or Remembrance especially as to some
Ideaa Take what part you please to be cogitant or reminis-
cent. (I suppose it will be some part of the brain), all our
new acquired ideas must work some change in that part and
leave some marks there for a foundation of memory." Upon
which Locke offers a series of comments :
Y" doe suppose indeed. But can y° say y« see a capacity of
remembrance in an immaterial substance? Y° say, 1*^ Remarks, p. 9,
yu doe not understand how ye souUe if she he at any time without
thoughts what is it that produces the first thought agn, Y" may if you
please apply this & y* rest y have said to Remembrance & see whether
y understand memory better.
Burnet then takes up a more general strain: ^^To these
reflections upon the nature of our faculties and the powers of
matter it would not be fair nor satisfactory to give us a short
answer and tell us every thing is possible with Ood. 'Tis true
every thing that is possible is possible to Ood, but we must
also consider the capacities or incapacities of the subject.
Quiquid reoipit/wr redpitur ad mod/um recipientis. And
what you suppose possible may be supposed actual. PossibUi
posito in aetUj nihU sequitur aibsurdi. Pardon the old axioms
by which you are obliged to vindicate the actual existence of
• such powers and properties as we are treating of from absurd-
i ity and to make them intelligible if you would have them
/ ^ received." To which Locke rejoins with some spirit :
48 Marghialia Locke-Orna. [JiJly?
I would not have them received when ibiother hypothesis is produced
wherein there are not the like difficulties & things as remote from
humane conception. Produce such an one & y have me y grateful!
schoUer. But objections from ignorance & y weaknesse of humane
capacity does not this ; And such objections invidiously heard (as I
think it is clear y are) are not great marks that y ever seriously
thought of any such thing. Finding fault is an easy businesse & not
always of the most elevated understandings. You Presse me to a con-
test, ede ttia stake too, & then it will be seen whether y or my prin-
ciples are clearest & leave fewest difficulties to humane understanding
How do y know that they have not corporal marks in the brains ?
But if memory be in an immaterial substance, pray make me under-
stand how comes it that a disease blots out all y* is in y* past memory,
as I may call it, & yet leave a future memory, i. e., a power to retain
future perceptions.
Burnet turns again to a point previously discussed : " In
motion you properly so called besides the change of situation
there is a vw movenSj which is not the power of matter nor
any modification of it, but the power of a superior agent acting
on matter. In like manner if there was 9 vis cogitans in the
body or in any other matter, it would not be a power of matter
nor any modification of it any more than the via movens is."
Upon which Locke remarks :
When y have explained & helped us to conceive a Via movens in any
created substans y" will be a good objection ag* it in a solid substance.
Burnet proceeds : " We can distinctly conceive the mechan-
ical properties of matter and what results from them, but as
cogitation cannot be any of those nor an effect of them, so
neither can I any more conceive the power of Intellection or
Batiocination communicated to certain systems of matter, than
I can conceive penetration of dimensions communicated to cer-
tain parts or systems of matter, etc., etc" Upon this Locke
observes :
Pray tell us how y conceive cogitation in an unsolid created sub-
stance. It is as hard, I confess, to me to be conceived in an unsolid as
in a solid substance.
Burnet also urges: "If we grant puch arbitrary powers
whereof we have no idea or conception to be communicable
to matter, there will be no end of imputing powers to matter
according to every one's fancy or credibility." Locke very
briefly replies :
The objection is as good ag* finite immaterial substances.
\
V
1887.] Margmalia Locke-Orna, 49
Burnet expands his own views as follows : ^' As to the state
of that question. How far cogitation is communicable to
matter? we allow that a spirit may act and cogitate in matter
and be so imited to some systems of it that there may be a
reciprocation of actions and passions betwixt them according
to the laws of their union. But still all these cogitations are
the powers of the spirit, not of matter. Suppose involuntary
motion which proceeds from the Will. If that Will may be
power of matter, then it may have the power of motion or of
the determination of motion, and it seems easier to me, an
easier supposition to make vis movens communicable to matter
(which I think cannot be allowed), than a vis cogitcuns. If
they both be the powers of matter, Innate and Superadded,
God and matter are the whole of the Universe, without partic-
ular spirits or spiritual substances, permanent and distinct in
their individuation." To all this Locke replies at some length :
T" aUow here of suppoeitions as unconceivable and as unexplicable as
any thing in the thinking of matter. For, to use y way of argueing, 1"^
I desire y" will help me to conceive an unextended, unsolid, created
Bubstance, for y^ I suppose y* mean here by spirit. d° to conceive how
sach a substance acts & cogitates in a solid substance. 8*" to conceive
how it is united to some systems of matter. 4" to conceive how it can
act on or suffer from matter, &c. For to use your own words, << It
would not be fair nor satisfactory to give us a short answer and tell us
every thing is possible to god" and **If tve grant sttch arbitrary powers
of wch we have noe Idea nor eonceptiotir-there witt be no end of imputing
powers according to every one^s Fancy or Credulity,** According to w^
rule of y** all that is allowed beyond what we can conceive must goe
tar Fancy or Credulity. And therefore pray let us see that phylosiphie
of y* bounded by such rules as may keep us from unconceivable
suppositions.
The last utterance of Burnet which Locke deems worthy of
any comment is the general statement : '^ I have noted those
doctrines you see which chiefly relate to the soul of man and
found agreeable to or consequential upon the principles of the
Deists." Locke dismisses this as follows :
When y" have demonstrated the soule of man to be immaterial y
own hypothesis will be clear of these objections ag* mine, & I shaU
come over to y* & be clear too, if y know more than I can goe beyond
probability y* it is soe. All my accusations of Philosophical Deisme let
the fault of y^ be what y please fall upon yself & own hypothesis.
Noah Porter.
VOL. XI. 4
50 Christianity mid Modem Economics. [ Jiily,
Article V.— CHRISTIANITY AND MODERN
ECONOMICS.
It is the object of this paper to show that there is a uew
economic system, theoretical and practical, and that it stands
in a special relation .to Christian ethics. Economic science is
changing because practical methods of industry are doing so ;
theory waits upon practice. The change involves a scientific
recognition of moral forces in business life because the indus-
trial revolution is calling those forces into active exercise;
it is enabling and requiring the individual man to place his
business life on a higher moral level ; it is subjecting the gen-
eral process of distributing wealth to the control of the moral
forces of society ; it is calling on ethical agencies, the church,
the benevolent society, the school, and within scientiiic limits
carefully applied, the state, to take a part in guiding economic
development.
At a time when such interference was working mischief the
doctrine of laissez faire originated ; and economic science
spent its energy in warning philanthropic agencies, public and
private, to keep wholly out of the industrial field. Now that
moral agencies are clearly needed and are actively at work in
this domain, the science is obliged to change its attitude and to
formulate, if it can, the principles that should govern their
action. A divorcement of ethics and economics characterized
the theories of the past ; and it was based on apparent separa-
tion between them in practical life. The present movement is
restoring the union in theory and in practice. It is (I) enabling
the individual to call his moral nature into fuller action ; it
is (2) subjecting the division of wealth to moral arbitration ;
and it is (3) breaking down the barriers that barred the church,
the benevolent society, the school and the state from participa-
tion in economic affairs.
The science of i^olitical Economy has been traditionally
based on the assumption of unrestricted competition. This is
essentially a self-seeking process, and the science was, there-
1887.] ChrisHanity and Modem Economics. 61
fore, avowedly based on selfishness in the individual man. In
80 far as men were purely selfish their actions could be pre-
dicted, and laws of industry could be formulated. The first
eyil resulting from this method was a certain unreality in the
Bdence. It did not correspond with the facts of life. When
oompetition was at its worst the man of business never became
the morally dessicated creature that the scientific formula called
for. The second evil was practical ; it was a certain reaction
of the scientific tendency upon actual business methods^ It is
an ancient bit of humor that the theological doctrine of total
depravity is not one that is well adapted to become a practical
role of Ufa Economic theories have tended to make the law
of selfishness a practical rule. They have legitimized it, and
given the sanction of scientific approval to the baser impulses
that, in human nature, need no such assistance.
It is impossible that this system should have won the cur-
rency that it did but for the belief that it worked well in prac-
tice; and this belief actually prevailed. Harmony doctrines
were the order of the day. We were taught that the greed of
one man is an adequate check on that of another, and that
nniversal greed works out the highest attainable good of all.
^' Hands off, then, state, church, etc. Let selfishness have its
perfect work f ' such was the practical injunction. The system
was an apotheosis of greed. The ignoble character of this
theory, and the unreality of its basal assumptions long ago
attracted attention.
" Observe," said Mr. Kuskin, writing in 1862, *' I neither
impugn nor doubt the conclusions of the science if its terms are
accepted. I am simply uninterested in them, as I should be
in a science of gymnastics which assumed that men had no
skeletons. It might be shown, on that supposition, that it
would be advantageous to roll the students up in pellets, to
flatten them into cakes, or to stretch them into cables ; and
that when these results were effected, the reinsertion of the
skeleton would be attended with various inconveniences to
their constitution. The reasoning might be admirable, the
conclusions true, and the science deficient only in applicability.
Modem political economy stands on a precisely similar basis.
AflBuming, not that the human being has no skeleton, but that
52 ChHstiomity cmd Modem Economics, [Jnly,
it is all skeleton, it founds an ossifiant theory of progress on
this negation of a soul ; and having shown the utmost that can
be made of bones, and constructed a number of interesting
geometrical figures with death's heads and humeri, successfully
proves the inconvenience of the reappearance of a soul among
these corpuscular structures. I do not deny the truth of this
theory ; I simply deny its applicability to the present phase of
the world."
This language expresses the feeling of many who are im-
pressed by the dismalness of the traditional science, but do not
clearly see what is to be done about it The criticism is met
by the assertion that the economist studies man only in our
relation, in which he is in fact as selfish as the theory requires.
Outside of the market he may be full of benevolent impulses ;
but here, as economists, we have nothing to do with him.
We study him only as a buyer, a seller, and a getter of gain ;
and in these processes, though he be elsewhere a philanthropist,
he is selfish enough to justify any theory.
Ways however existed in which, even amid the competitions
of the market, the higher motives of men made themselves felt
in a manner to demand recognition. Of late the business
world has been revolutionized, and has come, in a more general
way, under the dominion of moral law. I shall try only to
state in this paper the moral significance of this revolution.
The essential facts concerning it are these : the period now
closing has been characterized by abnormal competition.
Carried to unnatural lengths this process produced a moral
distortion in men ; it impelled them, while actually engaged
in traffic, to take a lower moral plane than they would consent
to occupy in any other relation. It made them, in a sense,
morally dualistic, having one code of ethics for social and
family life, and another for the place of exchanges. The man
of business acquired the power to harden his nature that he
might make money, and soften it that he might properly use
it. He was Dr. Jekyl in the home, the drawing-room and the
church, and Mr. Hyde in the counting-house. Yet in his
worst estate he was never as merciless as the pure theory of
economics demanded. Competition was never an unrestrained
process ; the sense of right in men controlled the modes and
1887.] Christia/nity cmd Modem Economica. 53
f
limited the range of its operation. The market was indeed an
arena; but the contest that took place in it had its rules.
There were things which the gladiators might not do, and the
restraints multiplied with growing civilization. These limita-
tions made righteousness possible on the earth; greed, as
ecientifically licensed, never engulfed the moral forces of
aodety, nor wholly stifled the individual conscience. At its
worst the market was subject to the latent control of moral
law.
The industrial developments now taking place are making
this latent sovereignty more open and universal. The face of
the world is changing in a way that alarms the superficial ob-
Berver, but inspires him who sees deeply and clearly. It is
Christianity that is entering the industrial world, bringing, at
the outset, a sword, but in the end, peace and the possibility
of human brotherhood.
Unlike indeed are the apparent results and the real results
of the industrial revolution now in progress. The things
which are seen ^re strikes, lockouts, and class antagonism ;
those which are not seen are new principles of business life,
and the moderating of the cruder forms of self-seeking. The
new system has not yet assumed the definiteness of shape that
would make the nature of the transition fully apparent. The
surface phenomena are misleading, and seem to the superficial
view, to mean rather the unchaining of demons than the usher-
ing in of God's kingdom in the industrial world. Yet what
is occurring is, precisely speaking, a second uncloistering of
religion ; it is carrying the spiritual influence into secular
regions from which it was formerly debarred. Of this fact
there is no doubt. Look abroad and see whether religion is
not everywhere concerning itself with secular affairs. It is
only the Christianity that can be and will be practically applied
that is to retain the allegiance of the coming generation.
Economic changes are the occasion of the distinctively prac-
tical quality of the religion of the present and future. The
industrial revolution is removing a chief cause of the dual
morality of the men of the market. It is making it unneces-
sary to doff one's Christian character as a garment, in order to
succeed in business dealings. Every business man knows that
54 Chri8ti4inUy cmd Modem Economics. [J^ljj
competition sometimes forces him to be, to a degree, merciless.
'^I am a manufacturer," said a gentleman recently to me;
^^ can I pay my men what on the highest ground, is their just
proportion of the returns of social industry ? My margin of
profit is small, and I must pay for my materials at the same
rate as my competitors. If I give my workmen more than the
market rate for the kind of labor they perform, I shall go to
the wall in six months, and my men will then be idle." The
kind of labor that these particular workmen performed was of
the death-dealing sort ; it produced a disease that killed them
in a few years ; yet the competitions of the market fixed their
wages at a rate pitifully low and their employer could not help
it. Not only is it true that one well disposed manufacturer
cannot struggle against the competition of many bad ones, but
a large number of well meaning employers are sometimes placed
at the mercy of a single one of the baser sort They must
meet his prices or surrender their business to him ; and if they
accept his prices for their products they can pay only his rate
of wages.
In a recent monograph of American Economic Association,
Professor Henry C. Adams of Michigan and Cornell Univer-
sities, has placed this moral point of competition in a practical
light '^ Suppose that of ten manufacturers nine have a keen
appreciation of the evils that flow from protracted labor on
the part of women and children ; and were it in their power,
would gladly produce cottons without destroying family life*
and without setting in motion those forces that must ultimately
result in race-deterioration. But the tenth man has no such
apprehensions. The claims of family life, the rights of child-
hood, and the maintenence of social well-being are but words
to him. He measures success wholly by the rate of profit and
controls his business solely with a view to grand sales. . . .The
nine men will be forced to conform to the methods adopted by
the ona Their goods come into competition with his goods,
and we who purchase do not inquire under what condition
they were manufactured. In this manner it is that men of
the lowest character have it in their power to give the moral
tone to the entire business community."
Such, according to Professor Adams, is the action of old
1887.] GhrisUcmity and Modem Hbonamdcs. 66
time oompetition on the outward morality of the men who
engage in it. The moralist will, of course, perceive that the
forced reduction of their outward actions to uniformity does
Bot necessarily reduce their essential characters to a level. The
Dine men may reduce wages reluctantly and only at the last
moment, and may stand ready at the first opportunity to restore
them. They may possibly even keep them throughout the
process higher, by some very slight margin, than those paid by
their competitor. The point which interests us is the improb-
ability of their doing this. Their practice will react detrimen-
tally on their principles ; and this reaction will be exaggerated
if they happen to have been brought up in the economic
school which extols the social working of pure self-interest.
A change that shall temper the action of competition, and
at the same time make constant appeals to man's sense of jus-
tice will clearly act favorably on individual character. The era
of abnormal competition is in fact drawing toward its close. In-
dividualism of the extreme type has had its day. In its place
is appearing a tendency for which the term soUdwrism^ if there
were such a word, would be a fitting designation. Producing
agents heretofore independent are uniting and working collec-
tively.
The primary step in this movement toward consolidation
consists of that supplanting of little shops by great manufac-
tories which has been going on ever since the first applications
of steam as a motive power. Heat is cheaper than muscular
energy ; machines are quicker and more accurate than hand
labor ; and large establishments, by the mere fact of their size,
are more economical than small ones. They drive the small
ones to the wall and possess the field.
This stage of the consolidating process is marked by an
intensely active competition. It is, in fact, a Darwinian strug-
gle for existence that leads to the survival of the great estab-
lishments. There ensues, however, and is at the present day,
actually taking place, a secondary consolidation which reacts
on the competition itself. The few surviving establishments
that emerge from the struggle for existence are uniting their
fortunes in gigantic " pools " or " trusts," till it looks as though
every article of common use would soon be controlled by a
vast though extrarlegal corporation. Scores of staple articles,
66 CJvristicmity wnd Modem JEconomics. [J^ily?
from screws to steel rails, from spool silk to antliracite coal, are
controlled by associations that limit the supply and fix the
prices seemingly at their own pleasure. These monopolies are
more apparent than real ; a certain residual competition controls
the dealings of both manufacturing and transporting pools ;
but the fact of union and of nearly uniform prices is of untold
importance. In particular it places the market in a wholly
new attitude towards moral agencies. Single producers do not,
under the new regime, have the market under their control.
The soulless man of whom Professor Adams speaks can no
longer degrade a hundred better men to his own level In the
tempering of competition by union, and in fixed schedule
prices, the business man finds a partial escape from the inex-
orable law that developed in him a dual morality, and made it
harder than for a camel to pass through the needless eye, for a
man of the market to obey therein the laws of Christ's king-
dom.
This partial escape from the pressure that creates a special
and moral code for business relations is an immense gain from
recent developments. How far-reaching it may prove in the
end can only be appreciated by those who realize the blight that
personal morality has suffered, and who perceive of how vital
consequence it is that the Christian man should be enabled to
serve Ood while doing business, instead of feeling constrained
to devote himself to God and to mammon alternately. Yet
inasmuch as these effects are mainly inward and spiritual, they
come with less observation, and may to many seem less im-
portant than another effect of the same tendency to consolida-
tion to which I have referred.
The union of capital necessitates the union of labor. These
two consolidations radically change the method of adjusting
wages.
I am not guilty of supposing that I need here to offer an
argument for the rightfulness of the principle of labor union.
That is now regarded as nearly axiomatic. Few indeed are the
minds that cannot see that, as capital consolidates itself, labor
must do the same. Even if the impersonal thing called capital
were of exactly the same importance as the personal thing
called labor, there would be no equity in the division of pro-
ducts between them by a contest in which massed forces on the
1887.] Christiamty amd Modem Economics. 57
one side shonld contend with scattered forces on the other. If
& consolidated labor nnion were to dictate terms to a thousand
employers, isolated like the master workmen of mediasval times,
the conditions would be unfair to capital If a corporation
dictates terms to a thousand independent workmen, the condi-
tions are equally unfair. All argument, however, on this point
is made to be antiquated by the progress of events, which
affords object lessons everywhere, and which has, in fact, con-
verted the capitalist world itseK to a belief in the rightfulness
of the principle of labor union.
What forms a union may take, how it may be led, what it
may do, are questions wholly apart from that of the prin-
ciple of union itself. On these points there is much to be said.
Unions must be crude before they can be perfect ; they must
act unwisely before they can act wisely. JN^o more than any
other product of evolution can a trades union attain its second
stage before passing through the first. It happens to be in the
first stage in which at present we are studying them ; are we
blind enough to look no farther ?
The permanence of the fact of labor organization is nearly
as obvious as the justice of the principle on which it is based.
The unions have come to remain, and are certain to strengthen
and consolidate. They will learn by experience that their true
end is not belligerent, and will endeavor to perfect the new
system of distribution. Individual competition of the old
type is definitely abrogated. " Where two bosses are after one
man," said Bichard Cobden, wages rise ; where two men are
after one boss, wages fall." This rule was adapted to a busi-
ness system, in which little detached shops made goods each
for its local market. Consolidate the shops in the great cor-
porations, and you destroy the conditions in which the rule can
operate ; you suppress the competition on one side. Organize
the workman, and you balance the forces ; but you complete
the abrogation of the old rule. Thenceforward the adjustment
of wages will not be a question of man dealing with man, but
of masses of men dealing with other masses. Competition,
then, as a regulator, is in its old form abolished. In a greatly
modified shape, which it would be interesting to study, it is
reappearing ; but now it is the agent and assistant of another
r^nlator of a directly ethical character.
68 CfMrUticmity and Modem Economics. [July,
A free contract Ib one that is made between parties who are
not under any compulsion to deal with each other. If A
makes a bargain with B, knowing that C and D are equally
ready to treat with him, A, at least, is free ; and if B has a
similar alternative open to him, the contract is clear from all
compulsion. The wage contract was once made under condi-
tions like these, but it is so no longer. When a corporation
deals with a multitude of independent workmen, the corporar
tion is free, but the workmen are, practically, not so. The
open alternative is the test of economic liberty. In making
a bargain with a particular workman the employer has an alter-
native course open to him ; he can at any time find one work-
man in the open market. Kot without hardship and risk can
the man find another employer. The conditions of such a wage
contract are inequitable.
Keverse the position and you perpetuate the wrong, though
changing its direction. If a consolidated labor union could so
perfect its discipline as to deal collectively with a hundred sep-
arate employers, the open alternative, the door of essential
freedom, would exist only in the case of the workmen.
Equalize the conditions by completely organizing both labor
and capital, perfect both the pools and the affiliated labor unions,
and you close the alternative on both sides, and make adjust-
ment of the wage contract apparently a process of crude force.
The conditions that I have supposed are somewhat ideal ;
consolidation has nowhere gone to such actual lengths ; but the
adjustment of wages is effected under conditions which tend
toward this ideal, and, in some quarters, already approximate
it. Here the division of the product of industry is effected
by a contest between massed labor and massed capital. It
is not crude force only ; it is a crude appeal to equity. Every
great strike or lockout is, in modem times, an appeal to public
opinion. The old rule for strikes was that those made on a
rising market sometimes succeed ; while those against a falling
market always fail. It is now necessary to add that great
strikes, sustained by the public sense of right, often succeed ;
while those condemned by that sentiment usually fail.
Unconsciously and without our own volition, we have come*
under a crude system of quasi-arbitration. It remains to de-
1887.] Christianity amd Modem Economies. 59
yelope the system, and to avoid the loss and embitterment
inTolved in the present mode of obtaining a verdict. In a
fiense, arbitration is an accomplished fact, and it remains to
accept the results and perfect the tribunals. The moral forces
of society are at work in the industrial field ; — ^the exigency has
forced them into it ; — it remains to direct the manner of their
working.
What shall we do with the rising tide of labor organization }
Shall we command the sea to stand still, like Knut ; or scourge
it, like Xerxes ? Shall we seem to resist the irresistible ? Let
us rather refrain from this movement, and let it alone ; for if it
be of the wrath of men, it will come to naught ; but if it be a
part of the Divine order, we cannot stay it, though haply we
may be found fighting against eternal Providence.
While this movement cannot be stayed, it may be directed.
A labor union may, like blin^ Ajax, have more strength than
light, and may be easily decoyed into fatal directions, or guided
into safe onea Seldom indeed in history have crises occurred
in which the clear thought of an earnest man could be made to
count for as much as it may now do in influencing human destiny.
The Secretary of the Connecticut Valley Economic Associ-
ation lately made a tour in the Hocking Valley, where a
desperate effort was recently made to crush labor unions alto-
gether. He found that events had led employers to reverse this
policy ; they are now at work extending and perfecting the
organization of their men. All are rejoicing in the results
thus far gained. In this desolated region there is now peace
and a fair measure of prosperity. It is said that this outcome
has been hastened by the wise efforts of Dr. Washington
Gladden, and it is certain to be hastened, wherever similar
troubles prevail, by the " Applied Christianity " which he has
taught. The crisis is general, and the opportunity that is
opening for the school and the church, for men of study and
men of business, is correspondingly great. A ship freighted
with hnman destiny is driving before the wind, impelled
resistlessly and steered blindly. If there are principles gov-
erning the navigation of it, how carefully should they be
studied ! How earnestly should they be applied !
John B. Clark.
60 Prooeedmga of the MtUhematical Club. [ Juljr
UNIVERSITY TOPICS.
PROCEEDINGS OF THE MATHEMATICAL CLUB.
The MiUhematicaX Club was formed November 27, 1877, and
has now had eighty-three meetings. The following is the record
for the past year :
November 16, 1886. — Professor Gibbs explained a method of
oomputing elliptic orbits, based on a certain vector equation.
This equation had previously been the subject of discussion in
the MathematiccU Cluby and had been used by Professors Phillips
and Beebe in 1881 in the determination of the orbits of Swift's
comet. On this occasion a new method of solving the equation
was proposed.
November 30. — Professor Newton discussed some observations
which he had collected on the path of the meteor of September 6,
1886. This meteor, which fell at about 8:16 p. m., was visible over
all New England and a large part of New York State. Loud
detonations were heard in the southern part of New Hampshire.
The height at disappearance was about 20 miles, very nearly
vertically over Epsom, N. H. The course was about S. 26° E.
and the angle of the path with the horizon about 37^.
January 26, 1887. — Professor Gibbs showed how the vector
equation, considered in the meeting before the last, might be
applied to the computation of parabolic orbits, and in particular,
how far Olbers' method would be modified by its use.
March 16. — Professor Hastings gave an account of some exper-
iments which he had recently made to determine the degree of
accuracy of Huyghens' law of double refraction in Iceland spar.
The principle indices of refraction for the spectral line D, were
observed as well as the extraordinary index for an inclination of
about 37° to the crystalline axis. The value of this last index,
computed from the accepted law, differed from the observed
value by 2*6 units in the sixth place of decimals, the probable
error of observation being about three of these units.
1887.] Fale PoHHcal Science Club, 61
May 4. — Mr. E. F. Ayres gave some acconnt of the more recent
methods of treating the geometry of the triangle, based upon the
relations or the ortho-, in-, and circnm-centers, and the median,
sjnmiedian and Brocard points. Mr. I. Fisher gave some propo-
sitions relating to systems of tangent circles, and exhibited a
*^ Rowing Indicator" of his own invention for recording the work
done by a rower in actual practice by a series of indicator dia-
grams on a ribbon of paper. These diagrams show the character-
istic qualities, as well as the comparative efficiency of different
rowers and of different varieties of stroke.
J. WiLLABD GiBBS, See'y.
THE POLITICAL SCIENCE CLUB OF YALE
UNIVERSITY.
At the opening of the School of Political Science in the gradu-
ate department of Yale University last fall it was proposed to
form a Political Science Club. This club, resembling a German
Seminar^ and similar organizations in Johns Hopkins University
and Columbia College, was to supplement the regular work of
the graduate students in the lecture and recitation rooms. It was
intended to offer opportunities for original research in the lines of
History, Industrial, and Political Science, which opportunities
were, of course, to a large extent lacking in the ordinary work of
the department. Such work was very desirable and the benefit
derived by the members from the meetings during the past col-
lege year has been very satisfactory to the originators of the
Club. The Club was organized in October of last year, its mem-
bership comprising the Faculty and students of the School of
Political Science. Fortnightly meetings were held in one of the
college recitation rooms during term time, at which papers, pre-
pared by the pnembers, were read ; and these were always followed
by a general discussion of the subject, in which those present
joined. A sketch of the papers read will best describe the scope
of the work done by the Club. The subject of one paper was
The Fiscal System of Vermont, The various sources of revenue
were enumerated, the system of State taxation, the grand list,
and the method of assessing and levying State taxes were fully
discussed. The subject of another paper was the history of the
62 Yale Political Science OVuh. [J^ly>
personnel of the ITnited States Supreme Court The writer
examined the changes in the complexion of the federal Supreme
Bench since the adoption of the Constitution, as brought about by
Presidential appointments and their influence on the Court's de-
cisions. Special reference was made to the Jackson and Van Buren
appointments and the consequent decline of the Court's good
character. Two meetings of the Club were given to a thorough
discussion of Convict Labor and Industrial Schools. Then fol-
lowed a paper on the career of Ferdinand Lassalle, the first labor
agitator. Perhaps the most interesting and scholarly production
of the year was a history of the Granger movement. The study
of Railway Administration has proved a favorite one among the
graduate students. Two papers were read, as the result of indi-
vidual research in that direction ; one on the distinct interests of
Directors, Bond-holders, and Stock-holders of Railway Corpora-
tions ; the other on the relation between Railway Capitalization
and Rates. Ancient history was represented by an exhaustive
thesis on State control of Industry in the 4th century. A num-
ber of students in the Law School became interested in the work
of the Club, and one contributed an essay on Public Rights in
Private Property. Professor Sumner's lectures on the Constitu-
tional History of the United States were the best attended in the
graduate course of study and suggested several subjects for
special investigation. Such was the case with the paper on the
United States Supreme Court, and also with one on the Internal
Improvements of Ohio, and another on the changes in State Con-
stitutions of the Union. The last named paper treated particu-
larly of the tendency toward an elective judiciary and of changes
in legislation regarding suffrage.
The success of the Club during its first year's existence has
been very gratifying. The work of the members in preparing
their essays has been careful and exact, and all feel that, aside
from the direct advantages of the School of Political Science, they
have acquired great benefit not only from their individual re-
searches, but also from association and discussion with members
of the Faculty and their fellow-students. It is proposed to con-
continue the Club next fall on the same plan as heretofore.
J. G. Schwab.
1887.] Yale Claadcal and Philological Society. 68
PROCEEDINGS OF THE CLASSICAL AND PHILOLOG-
ICAL SOCIETY OF YALE COLLEGE.
Monday, November 29, 1886. — ^Professor Seymour presented a
eommnnication on Arch»o1ogy in Greece, speaking of the national
Behools of Archseology at Athens, of learned societies of the
Greeks; of the recent discoveries on the Athenian Acropolis, and
throughout Greece.
Monday, January lY, 1887.
Communications were offered as follows :
By Mr. Roberts on the Lesbian dialect, Mr. Castle on the
Thessalian dialect, Mr. Buck on the Boeotian dialect, while Mr.
Hunt discussed the characteristic differences and resemblances of
the various Aeolic dialects.
Monday, February 7, 1887. — Mr. Waters presented a paper on
Petronins, giving a somewhat detailed account of the Satyricon,
And pointing out the differences between the work of Petronius
and those of Lucilius, Horace, and Juvenal ; showing that the
Satyricon must not be included in the same category as the
MenippesB of Yarro. The grammatical peculiarities of Petronius
were briefly indicated, the detailed discussion of them being
reserved for another time.
Mr. Bourne presented the latest archseological arguments for
the European origin of the Indo-European family, based largely
on Penka's treatise, " die Herkunft der Arier ;" urging that the
original Indo-European type was tall, dolichocephalous, and
blonde, and that it seems to have spread from Scandinavia.
Monday, February 28. — Mr. Van Name spoke on the Romaniz-
ing of the Japanese language, giving a sketch of the Chinese
alphabet and of its introduction to Japan, and of the Japanese
syllabaries (Elatakana and Hiragana), He mentioned the indica-
tions of a movement to substitute the Roman characters for the
Chinese method of writing, and gave an account of the proposed
form of the Roman alphabet.
Professor Ripley read a paper on the Sources of Goethe's
Italienische Reise, calling attention to Goeth^^s principles of
style as shown in the changes of form from the original letters to
the published work.
64 Yale Classical and Philological Society. [ J^ly,
Monday, April 4. — Professor Knapp discussed prothetic £ in
certain Romance languages, with reference to the influence of the
old Celtic language.
The Secretary read extracts from recent Athenian journals,
giving accounts of the laying of the corner stone of the new
building of the American School of Classical Studies, and of
recent archsBological discoveries.
Monday, April 1 8. — Professor Peck criticised MtLller's edition
of Ennius, prefacing his criticism by remarks on the poet and his
works, on his latinity, on Ennius in the judgment of the ancients,
and on the time when his works disappeared. Mflller's edition
was pronounced valuable as taking cognizance of what has been
done since 1854, for the criticism and interpretation of Ennius,
but dissatisfaction was expressed with MtlUer's arbitrary treat-
ment of the text, and warning was given that the book must be
used with great caution.
Monday, May 9. — Professor Harper presented a paper on the
i!l-vowel in Semitic languages, discussing three points: (1) the
changes in Hebrew, Arabic and Assyrian, through which the
&-vowel has passed ; (2) the relative frequency of the &-vowel and
of those derived from it in those languages ; and (3) the «se and
force of this vowel, as compared with the 1 and tl-vowels.
Monday, June 6. — ^Dr. R. F. Harper presented a paper on the
Decipherment and Contents of the Assyrian Inscriptions.
Thomas D. Setmoub.
1887.] Ourrmt Ziteratm-e. 65
CURRENT LITERATURE.
Momicsen's Pboyincbs of thb Roman Empibb.* — No student
of history will regret that Mommsen decided to resume his history
of Rome, with a consideration of the political and social condi-
tion of the provinces during the first three centuries of the empire.
The immediate continuation of his earlier volumes would have
been welcome, and may still be hoped for ; but such a continua-
tion would not have.heen so valuable a contribution to existing
knowledge. The collapse of the Republic, and the establishment
of the Empire are well set forth in the Latin writers of the period,
who have been preserved, and these events have been studied
with zeal and intelligence by modern historians. But ancient and
modem writers alike looked to Rome oifrom Rome ; the provinces
as social aggregates, as growing or decaying communities, literary
or industrial centers received little attention. For a knowledge of
their condition we must resort to the by-ways of literature, the
provincial novel just making its appearance, 'the local, panegyric
private correspondence, coins and medals, public and private in-
scriptions, in short to every kind of ancient remains. These
sources, of course, have to be examined in writing any other por-
tion of the history of Rome, but in a view of the provinces these
collateral materials become our main reliance.
For utilizing such materials Mommsen is extraordinarily well
fitted ; one might almost say his life has been spent in the study
of them. At the age of twenty-six, in the year 1 843, with the
ud of the Berlin Academy of Sciences, he undertook an archsBO-
logical tear in France and Italy to investigate the Roman inscrip-
tions in those countries. Three yeai-s were spent at this. In 1851
he^pnblished his Corpus Inscriptionum NeapoUtanarum^ and the
next year his Inscriptionea JRegni Neapolitani Latinae, In the
great Corpus Inseriptionum Latinarum he has edited some seven
volumes, embracing the inscriptions found in Asia, the Greek prov-
^The Pruvinee of the Roman Empire from Oassar to DtocleHan. Bj Theodob
UoMMsaax; translated with the author^s sanction and additions hyWiLUAM P.
0IGK8OF, D.I)., LL.D., F]x)feB8or of Divinity in the Univendtj of Glasgow. 2
▼olfl., pp. xiv., 397, 396. New York : Charles Scribner*s Sons.
▼OL. XI. 5
66 Cwrrent Literat/ure. [J^dy,
inces in Europe, Illyricum, Cisalpine Gaul, and the southern hall
of Italy with Sicily and Sardinia.
After many years of such work, he combines the information
which he has gathered from the various sources we have indicated
into readable form, and produced a work of the greatest interest.
Briefly, we have studies of foundations, and studies of decay and
death ; we see Europe prepared for the reception and transforma-
tion of new peoples, and, on the other hand, we watch the decline
of ancient civilization.
Of these various pictures most English readers will turn to
those of Britain and Judea first. The essay on Britain strikes one
as disappointingly meagre, perhaps from patriotic feelings, but
too much attention seems to have been given to the wars in Brit-
ain, and too little to its social condition. English specialists have
complained that the work of their archsBologists has not been suffi-
ciently utilized. One of the most interesting points in this chap-
ter is a discussion of the reasons for the conquest of Britain.
Mommsen shows that it was undertaken as a political necessity ;
that the early emperors were unwilling to attempt it, yet regarded
it as necessary to complete the subjection of the Celtic peoples.
While unsubdued, Britain was a constant source of danger to
Gaul, and was connected with it rather than separated from it by
the channel.
In Gaul the development of the culture of the vine is the subject
of some interesting remarks. The winters in northern Gaul were
too cold for any but hardy varieties, and on the other hand the
Italians viewed with jealousy any extension of vine-growing in
Gaul. Consequently for the earlier centuries beer* was the com-
mon drink. The selfish hostility of the Italians was less favored
by the government under the emperors than under the Republic,
but we read that Domitian gave orders to destroy half the vines
in all the provinces.
*Th6 following is Mommseu's version of an epigram of Jtilian's on this " false
BaochuB:"
**Du, DionjBOB, von wo kommst du? Bei dem wirklichen BaochusI
Ich erkenne dich niche ; Zeus 8ohn kenn' ich alleln.
Jener duftet nach Nektar; du riechst nach dem Bocke. Die Kelten,
Benen die Rebe versagt, braueten dich aus dem Halm,
Scheuer- nicht Feuersohn, Erdkind, nicht Kind des Himmela,
Nut filur das Futtem gemacht, nicht fur den lieblichen Trunk."
The translator gives no version of this epigram, and makes its authorship ob*
acure by rendering " Sem " referring to Julian by *' this.''
1887.] Current Ziterature. 67
The discussion of the condition of Jadea holds the attention
velL Mommsen accepts the advanced views on the Old Testa-
ment, and Prof. Dickson inserts a cautionary remark. The Apoca-
lypse is utilized as a contemporary source, and is the sabject of a
long critical note. The parts of the work dealing with the Greek
provinces are exceedingly interesting. There is a very striking
and vivid description of Alexandria with its scholars and its mob
of hoodlums, an instructive comparison between Alexandria and
Antioch, and a singalarly happy and appreciative sketch of Plu-
tarch as a literary man of the best type in that age. As regards
the political relations between Rome and her Greek sabjects it b
interesting to see the influence of philhelleniam on the Romans.
They allowed the Greek cities a nominal independence, and ac-
cording to Mommsen far more latitude than was good for them.
Athens and Sparta, in recognition of their great past, enjoyed
especial privileges. The account of North Africa illustrates the
opposite inclination ; former possessions of the great enemy, Car-
thage were subjected to more than usual vexations.
It has been possible within the bounds of this notice to call
attention only to some of the chief features of these volumes, but
every page of them contains instruction. Students will wish that
the author had been more free with his references ; he quotes often
as follows: "a jurist of the third century," ''a novelist," "the
poet of Bordeaux," (Ansonius), references proper enough for the
general reader, but annoying to those who would like to know
exactly the sources of the information.
Prof. Dickson's translation is close, sometimes too close. It
gives one the idea that it was done rapidly by a person thor-
oughly familiar with German. The mistakes are few, but rough
expressions are not rare. For instance, LandeadiaUct is rendered
"land-dialect," instead of "local idiom," "vernacular." In the
opening sentence of chap. IIL the ordinary rendering of the word
Reich gives rise to an inexactness of expression in: "Like Spain
southern Gaul had already in the time of the republic become a
part of the Roman Empire," " Roman realm " would have been
much better. "Reich" is a somewhat puzzling word. Since for
centuries the " Deutsches Reich " was " the empire" Reich has
come to be regarded as the equivalent of empire, whereas its
equivalent is realm. Empire and kingdom are specific meanings
only, whose application must be tested by the facts. By trans- ^
lating ^ Reich " empire the editor of a well known Historical Atlas
68 Cv/rren/t IMerai/wre. [ J^y>
has filled his map with such names as '' Merovingian Empire,"
" Visigothic Empire," " Empire of the Vandals," " Ostrogothio
Empire," " Empire of Clovis," " Longobardian Empire," every
one of which is a direct stumbling block to the student, confus-
ing his mind, and obscuring one of the greatest facts in history.
In vol. I, p. 118, Rhine is found instead of Rhone in the sentence:
^* The flourishing condition of the two great emporia on the Rhine,
Aries and Lyons;" probably a mere error of the press. The
original edition lacks an index, which has been thoughtfully sup-
plied by the translator. It will always be a puzzle why such in-
dustrious scholars as the Germans so often stop just short of
making their efforts completely successful. No part of the labor
of making a good book brings forth so much fruit as that bestowed
upon the index, and without it the result of years 'of labor may be
almost useless for the average student.
These volumes are illustrated with eight maps by Professor
Kiepert. Externally these volumes are not very attractive looking.
Edward G. Bourne.
The Star in the East.* — The substance of this book is a
course of lectures delivered before the l-iowell Institute on *' Chris-
tianity and the Early Aryan Religions," but some changes have
naturally been made, especially in the last chapter. The author
thus defines his object : '' The purpose of this short study in the
early Aryan religions is to call attention to the witness that they
bear to man's need of the gospel, and to show that that need has
been answered, just in so far as any people, or rather individual,
was prepared to receive it." (p. 18). There seems to be another
motive also for the present publication, namely, to influence men
to adopt the author's theory of the best method of advancing
mission work.
The plan pursued in this book is to describe Yedaism, Brah-
manism, Buddhism, Hinduism, and Zoroastrianism, discuss their
philosophical ideas, and attempt to show that the perfect fulfill-
ment of these ideas is to be found in Christianity. The author
confesses that he is entirely unacquainted with the Aryan lan-
guages, and has obtained all his knowledge of the original texts
from translations. The description of these religious systems is on
the whole good, but the discussion of their philosophical theories
*Bm Star in (he EaaL A Study in the early Aryan Religions. By Lexohtok
Pabks. Houghton, Mifflin ft Go. 1S87.
1887.] Ourrent lAteroOmre. 69
has not always the merit of clearness. Still no one bat an an-
common master of logic and lacidity coald hope to unravel, in a
manner satisfactory to the average reader, the contradictions and
labyrinthine mazes of Hindu speculation. What is stated as fact
with respect to these religions, is generally in harmony with the
received opinion of Orientalists, but some exceptions must be
made. For example, on page 40 the author says that, '^ the most
careless reader of these (Vedic) hymns cannot fail to be struck
with the absence of anything like the fear of the gods.'' Possi-
bly this might be the conclusion of such a reader as is mentioned,
bat numerous passages may be cited, in which fear of the gods
is most distinctly noticed, as being felt by both animate and in-
animate creation. Compare Rig Veda 166.4,6; 85.8; 574.2;
where the Maruts are objects of fear : 302.5 ; 88.5 ; where Agni
is mentioned in the same way, and 509.2; 918.8; 313.10; 472.2;
where .Indra is referred to. It is quite true that the ancient
Hindus felt much more at home, so to speak, with their gods, than
many other peoples, but no religion can exist without the element
of fear. On page 28 the statement is made that '^ the Hindus be-
lieve that the original Veda was written by Brahma," which is
certainly a rather sweeping assertion, as no little discussion has
arisen among the Hindus themselves, as to whether the Veda was
ever inspired at all. On page 32 the author says of Indra that
he '' at first was God of gods.'' If this is intended to mean that
there was any idea in early Yedic times that Indra was lord over
the other gods, it is distinctly wrong. Indra is simply the most
conspicuous ; so far as really divine and godlike attributes are
concerned, Yaruna surpasses him. Moreover the exaltation of
Indra began at a later period, so that the words " at first " are
particularly out of place.
The mythological explanations are usually very fanciful, and
the author seems to feel obliged to clothe all ancient myths with
too great sublimity. Where the Soma-worship is described, the
author seems to have forgotten that Soma was nothing but an in-
toxicating beverage, and that to the simple Hindu mind the state
of intoxication was so wonderful and inspiring, that its cause was
considered divine. It seems much more reasonable and simple to
say that the Hindu idea of sacrifice was occasioned originally by
the fact that the early Aryan, having so low an estimate of divinity,
thought that the gods needed food as well as men, than to imag-
ine that he philosophized about the *' mutual dependence of each
70 Owrreni LUeratv/re. \?^Jy
life upon all other life/' the ^' unbroken ring of existence,'' and
perceived that *^ all energy must return upon itself." This sim-
pler view is more in harmony with our author's own reasoning,
when, in discussing Vedic morality, he says that their prayers
^' which at first might seem to show no feeling save that of selfish-
ness, are nevertheless more than that," for they pray " as men
who feel that they have a claim on the gods, as those who have
kept the faith in the midst of a perverse generation."
But in all this, the author's great purpose is plainly seen, which
is to make as much of an affiliation as possible between the
doctrines of these religions and those of Christianity, not to de-
preciate the latter, but to exalt the former. He regards each one
of the religions in question, as a '' revelation of the divine char-
acter to man," and plainly says in respect to Yedaism, that a man
who does not believe this, will find in the Rig Veda ^' nothing
but the weary repetition of extravagant epithets addressed to the
Dawn or to the Maruts, a confused mythology, and sometimea
gross sensuality." This is indeed the view of almost all Sanskrit
scholars, and it requires a vivid imagination to take any other.
The author then adds that this " same man might read the reve-
lation to Israel and fail to see the writing of the finger of God.'^
It is with the idea of this statement that we must take issue.
Quite recently what is called the science of Comparative Religion
has become fashionable, a science which practically considers all
religions as having the same origin, and asserts that they are all
subject to the process of evolution. Undoubtedly certain relig-
ious ideas and aspirations are inherent in the mind and heart of
man, and are everywhere manifested, but they can not be prop-
erly brought under the head of revelation. The great error of
this new science consists in overlooking the distinction between
religious systems which have been developed by the mind, and
that religion which has been directly revealed by God. The
former may be evolved, the latter never. Up to a certain point
the comparison of the external manifestations of all human culta
with revealed religion is proper and useful, but beyond that
point, there is so fundamental a difference that no real comparison
can be instituted. Mr. Parks takes the ground that all Aryan
religions, and by inference all possible religions, have been re-
vealed, and asserts that to deny this, is to deny " God's Father-
hood," and that " from him cometh down every good and perfect
gift." But God himself, by implication, in the Bible denies the
1887.] Current Ziterature. 71
right of any other religion to be called a divine revelation. Of
coorBe the author, in carrying his theory out, comes continually
to conclusions which we cannot admit. On page 83, he says,
"The divine life — delights in sacrifice. It was with this mind
that St. Peter wrote of Jesus, * He was the Lamb slain from the
ibundation of the world.' We can claim then as divine truth
the Brabmanic belief that creation was an act of sacrifice." Just
as truly can the ordinary belief of men that something can not be
obtained for nothing, which is the real idea of the Brahmanio
sacrifice, be considered as divine truth.
Mr. Park's admiration of Zoroastrianism is intense, but one re-
mark in his chapter on that religion makes one inclined to drop
the book in disgust On page 241 he says, '4t may be questioned
whether the resurrection of Jesus could have fonnd acceptance,
had not Zoroastrianism prepared a nidtM for that belief."
The two last chapters contain a plea for a return to the '* apos-
tolic " method and spirit of missions, by which our author appar-
ently means that we must teach all men that their old beliefs
really contain the basis of Christianity and only need to be
evolved a little more. The usual horror of dogmatism is ex-
pressed, which leads one to long for that glorious time when no
man shall have any dogmas of any kind, but shall calmly and
peacefully agree with everv one else.
This book is pleasant reading but does not carry conviction to
our mind.
Adalbert GoUege. S. B. Platner.
Rraubtio Philosophy.* — ^This work has received the highest
commendation from the religious and secular press. Therefore,
passing over the merits of the treatise, we shall endeavor to criti-
cise the author's fundamental position, which may be called
materialistic realism. Such statements will be selected from the
two volumes as are characteristic rather than exceptional.
The first volume opens with the assumption that Yankees are
practical, and therefore the American Philosophy should be Real-
ism. We think such a statement as the author makes in vol. ii.,
p. 202, refutes the above inference. " Truth is truth whether
we observe it or no." We may have an American Tariff or Mon-
roe Doctrine, but philosophy, if it deal with objective, eternal
truth, should be the same in America and Germany.
^BmUsUc Philosophy, By Jaxss MoCk>BH, D.D., LL.D., President of Prince-
ton College. New Tork : Charles Scribner's Sons.
72 Owrrent lAUra^mre. [J^ly>
The author evidently prefers, the dogmatic to the critical
method. He admits, for example, (on pages 5 and 6, vol. i.) that
there is reason for doubt as to what is perceived, directly, by the
senses ; but explains that we must resolutely hold that it is some-
thing external to the mind that is thus perceived. See also yoL
IL, pages 4, 29, 103, etc. Now that certain states of my mind are
produced by something not myself, is a metaphysical assumption
which may be valid. But it is altogether dogmatic and unfair to
state, on the basis of that assumption, that we know matter, as
extended, directly, (vol. iL, p. 29.) And it does not help Dr.
McCosh's Realism to postulate something extra-mental; for he
thereby cuts off all connection between the '^ space " or ^' thing "
and his mind. As T. H. Green has said, " How can energy and
extension be at the same time apart from consciousness and in it ?''
We do not think that he has annihilated Kant, either in his
treatment of the senses or of the categories. In vol L, p. 62, e. g..
Dr. McCosh says : *'In all these intuitive conceptions there can be
no mistakes." Still, on the same page, he admits mistakes in judg-
ments. And he does not seem to have considered the fact that
all perception involves judgment. Why should vibrations be
sensed as colors ?
Again he says, (p. 206, vol. ii.) : "I have the same evidence of
the existence of the thing appearing as I have of the appearance."
This is not true if " thing " is considered extra-mental. That I
refer a state of self-consciousness to myself as subject is a fact
universally admitted. That some extra-mental reality produced
that state may be true. But it does not rest on the *^ same evi-
dence." ''There can be no pledge for the truth of our thinking
that lies outside of all our thought."*
We do not see how Dr. McCosh can consistently speak of
Berkeley's idea of power as '' vague " when he himself tells us
that " a hammer comes in contact with a stone," (vol. ii., p. 107)
as if the statement were philosophically true.
Unless Dr. McCosh should drop his materialistic realism, and
go over to ideal-realism, it would be interesting to see him 'at-
tempt to refute, critically, Mr. Spencer's hypothesis (which the
Dr. heartily dislikes), — the evolution of mind from physical pow-
ers, (vol. ii., p. 277.) If the atoms are wholly outside of any
mind ; if they think nothing, feel nothing, know nothing, — how
can the assumption that one atom does anything at all in view of
* Lotze: GrundzUge der Logik, etc., S. 148. Leipzig, 1883.
1887.] Ou/rrent Literature. 73
what other atoms are doing, rid itself of self-contradiction ? Per-
haps Dr. McOosh's irony against Mr. Spencer recoils upon him-
self: '' Perhaps they had loving attachments to each other, per-
haps they had some morality, say a sense of justice," etc. (i., 182.)
We know the unity of consciousness directly ; but not, external
to mind, the unity of a bundle of atoms.
Clabxnce D. Gbbbley.
Edwabds on Fibst Cobinthians.* — ^The author presents his
treatise with the utmost modesty, alleging his remoteness from
any great literary center as an excuse for his lack of acquaintance
with '^the latest researches and speculations." However that
may be, he has what is far more important, good scholarship
of his own, independence of judgment, a sound historical and
critical sense and a reverent Christian spirit. He has not taken
up the epistle in merely scholastic methods, but in a way which is
at once scientific and practical. He pleads in the preface for a
fresh study of the New Testament as containing the principles
which alone can vitalize our religion and theology. He would not
handle the epistle before him in the manner or in the spirit of
controversy, but would try to draw from it, as from a living
spring, living truths of Christian thinking and Christian life. He
has constantly in mind the work of the Christian teacher. '^ To
determine the worth of a doctrine, we must ask, not whether it
can be argued about, but whether it can be preached." (p. 6).
Only a continuous use of such a work can thoroughly test its
merits in detail, but the examination of it upon a few points,
leaves the impression of its worth. The introduction contains
not only a discussion of the time, place and occasion of writing,
but a useful sketch of exegesis as applied to the epistle.
The commentary bears something of the form, as it includes the
substance, of exegetical lectures delivered in the theological class-
room. The textual and grammatical notes are sufficiently copious
to put the student in possession of the chief critical data, while
not oTerburdening the mind with a mass of learned material which
can have no use for any except the specialist. The stress is laid
upon the development of the doctrinal contents of the epistle.
Iliis end is well attained, and we predict for this work a perma-
nent place in the literature of New Testament study.
Gboboe B. Stevens.
*A C&mmentary on the First Epistle to the Oorinthiansj by Tho& Oha& Edwajbds,
IL A., Principal of the University College of WaleS) Aberystwyth. Second Ed.
A. C. Arnutrong ft Son. New York, 1886. pp. 491.
74 . Ourrent LUeratu/re, [July,
WaBFIBLD'S iKTBODUOnON TO THE TEXTUAL CbITICISM OF
THE New Testament.* — This is one of a series of handbooks
which is appearing under the name of " The Theological Educa-
tor,*' under the supervision of Rev. W. R. Niooll, M.A., editor
of the " Expositor." They are especially adapted to the needs of
theological students, but are popular in style and sufficiently
free from mere technical material to be available for intelligent
readers of the Bible generally.
We are gratified that Professor Warfield does not leave the
chair of New Testament criticism at Alleghany for that of
Doctrinal Theology at Princeton, without giving the theological
public some fruit of his diligent and successful labors in the field
of Textual Criticism. This, indeed, he had already done in his
thorough review of Westcott and Hort in the Presbyterian Review
for April, 1882, and in his valuable contribution to SchafTs '^ Com-
panion to the Greek Testament " on the *^ Geneological Method ^
of Textual Criticism, (pp. 208-224). But the little volume be-
fore us will render a yet wider and more important service. It
supplies precisely the handbook which teachers in this field can
place in the hands of their students, confident of its accuracy and
conformity to the latest and best sources of information.
These handbooks are issued in elegant form by Mr. Thos.
Whittaker, of New York, at 75 cents each. In the list of authors
thus far published. Dr. Warfield's is the only American name.
Geoeob B. Stevens.
Vincent's Wobd Studies ik the New Testament.! — Since
Archbishop Trench so forcibly taught us in his " Study of Words"
that words are ** fossil poetry " and " fossil history," we have
been content to think that they might be much else besides, and
have been firmly convinced of the dignity and value of their
study. Especially is this true of the words of the New Testa*
ment which employs a heathen tongue for the expression of its
peculiarly spiritual message and teaching. In the volume before
us (which is to be followed by another treating of the words in
the writings of Paul and John), Dr. Vincent has undertaken so to
* WcarfieiUCa Iniroduction to the 7}sxtaal OnUcism of Oie New TesiajMni^ b j Rbv.
Bbnj. B. Warfield, D.D., Prof, of Theology, Princeton, N. J. Thomas Whittaker,
2 and 3 Bible House, New York, 1887. pp. 225.
t Word Studies in (he New Testament By Mabyin R. Yuioent, D.D. Vol. L
The Synoptic Grospels, Acta of the Apostles, Epistles of Peter, James, and Jude.
New York : Oharlea Scribner's Sons, 1887. pp. 822 ; price $4.00.
1887.] Owrrefrd LUerabwre. 75
tet forth the shades of meaning and peculiar force connected with
the different words of the New Testament as to give to the Eng-
lish reader something of the better insight and clearer apprehen-
rion which come from a careful study of the original. The
work is neither a dictionary nor a commentary, but, in the
anther's own language, stands '* midway between," and seeks to
open *' the native force of the separate words of the New Testament
in their lexical sense, their etymology, their history, their inflec-
tion, and the peculiarities of their usage by different Evangelists
and Apostles." (Preface, p. 5.)
The book does not deal primarily with the Greek words,
although a careful knowledge of the original and a careful study
of critical authorities were necessary to the author and underlie
his work. The book is for students of the English Bible, as dis-
tinguished from professional students who are trained in the
Greek language. It is none the less true, however, that such stu-
dents might derive from it much valuable aid. The work
expressly disclaims any purpose or desire to take the place of the
Lexicon and Critical Commentary for the scholar who is furnished
wiUi the means of working the Greek text for himself. Its claim
is the modest one of explaining in as few words as possible the
force and point of words which a translation can but inadequately
preserve : which the ordinary reader can readily appreciate when
the critical student has sought them out and clearly presented
them.
It results, of course, from the effort to comment on the whole
dictionary of the New Testament, that many of the observations
are trivial. But this is a necessary incident of all detail-work.
Not all words in the New Testament have hidden and suggestive
meanings, and it were a fanciful or forced process which should
seek to make them appear so. Dr. Vincent, in the spirit of a true
scholar, has drawn out occult meanings only where they exists
and has nowhere evolved meanings from his own consciousness
while claiming to evolve them out of the text.
Although the work proceeds upon the basis of the older Eng-
lish version, the original Greek words, as well as those of the R.
v., are also given. The book will be a valuable help to Bible
study if those who need it will only use it. Many a preacher who
does not have time or inclination to do thorough work on his
Greek Testament would do well to go over a chapter a day with
the aid of this ''Word-Study." How many will have the
76 Cv/rrent Literatu/re. [JtJy,
patience to do it — for patience will be required, since it will not
be exciting work ? We have apprehensions. Bat we were re-
viewing the book, not its readers, or those who ought to be such.
We unhesitatingly pronounce it a painstaking, scholarly, and
valuable aid to the understanding of the ideas and truths of the
books of which it treats.
Oboboe B. Stevens.
Gadhan's "Chbist in the Gospels."* — This book presents
the entire Biblical material bearing on the life of Christ, in the
very words of the New Testament. This it does by following
the writer whose narrative is fullest in any given portion, indicat-
ing variations from his narrative by placing them in brackets in
small type. Thus the body of the text presents the fullest ac-
count obtainable from the gospels, while the variations of expres-
sion and detail are easily noted by reference to the bracketed
portions. By means of small figures, 1, 2, 8, etc., the compiler
indicates in each passage or fragment of a passage which author
he is here following — whether the first, second, third, or fourth
gospel. In questions oi chronology and harmony, Mr. Gadman
has followed the best authorities without introducing discussion
or notes on the subject. The full index and the highly interest-
ing map representing the journeys of Jesus, with the key for its
use, are features of the book of much interest and value.
It would be a highly useful book for any person who wished to
study the life and teaching of our Lord in order, as it places
before the student in compact form the full material for his study,
which he could collect and adjast for himself only by laborious
and often discouraging comparison of passages. We esteem it a
highly interesting and useful book ; interesting as showing how
well the total material of the gospels can be combined into a con-
tinuous history, and useful as saving the student the perplexing
preparatory work of harmonizing and adjusting the separate nar-
ratives— a labor which few Biblical readers have the patience or
skill to carry through.
Qeoboe B. Stevens.
* Or, Life of Our Lord in the Words of (he Eoangdists, American ReTifiion,
1881, with self -interpreting Scripture, map of Jesus' travels, and a Dictionarj
of proper names, bjr James P. Gadman, A.M., with an introduction bjr Rev. P. S.
Hbnson, D.D. Sixth edition. Chicago: Amer. Pub.^c. of Hebrew. 1886. pp.
1-380.
1887.] OurrerU Idterahire. 77
ThsEablt Tudobs.* — ^The useful series, ** Epochs of Modem
History,'' including this last addition now ofiers a fairly complete
presentation of the History of England, from the conquest to the
middle of the last century. Mr. Moberly's work is a careful com-
pilation from the best writers upon the period under considera-
tion. His range of view is wide, taking in the social, literary, and
industrial features of the period. His style is straightforward, and
Bometimes vivacious. The account of the Renaissance is intelli-
gent, and the expansive and stimulating effect of the discoveries of
antiquity and the New World upon men's minds is properly
appreciated. On page 242 the Utopia is spoken of as if written
in English, though the facts are correctly stated elsewhere. In
the preface, Ranke's "History of the Reformation in Germany"
is said to have been translated by Miss Austen. It should be Mrs.
Austin.
Warbbn's Book op RBVBi^ATioN.f — In this volume we have
an attempt at a popular exposition of the Apocalypse. Dr. War-
ren regards it as a series of " pictorial writings," for the interpre-
tation of which one must have the " key." This he finds in the
" €v rdx^i *' of the first verse, " Things which must shortly come
to pasa." The Apocalypse having been written about A. D.
68, we find the speedy fulfillment of some of its prophecies in
the destruction of Jerusalem and the woes that befell the Jews ;
all of which were symbolically foretold in the first eleven chap-
ters. The Parousia, following the " seventh trumpet," was the
second coming of oar Lord, for the establishment of his new king-
dom, the beginning of the judgment of the dead, and the access
of all mankind to God, through the mediation of Christ.
In the part beginning with Chapter xii.. Dr. Warren finds
imagery which symbolizes important events that were to follow
in secular and ecclesiastical history to the end of time. For
instance, the beast coming up from the sea, is the Roman Impe-
rator (£mperor), and the ^' second beast " is the Pontifex Maxi-
mua (Chief Priest). The Scarlet Woman is Rome. The thou-
sand years of the martyr's reign begins with the Conversion of
Constantine and ends with the rise of the Ottoman power — the
* The Sariy Tikdon : Henry VII,, Henry VIIL By the Rev. 0. B. Mobbblt,
ILA^ late a master in Rugby School. New York. Charles Scribner's Sons.
f Tlw Bo(atof ReueULtion; by Israel P. Wabrbn, D.D.
78 Cwrrent Liieratxire. [ J^Jj
" Gog and Magog " of Chapter xx. The entire exposition, which
Dr. Warren has given, is mainly like that of Professor Stuart,
and is well worthy of carefal study.
M. Q. BULLOOK.
Handbook to thb Retelation of John.* — This volume is
one of the most valuable of the " Meyers Commentary *' series,
published by Funk Sd Wagnalls. Good expositions of the '* Rev-
elation " are not so abundant that Bible students will not be glad
to own this volume. Dr. Dtisterdieck's well-known exegetical
skill will commend the work, whatever one may think as to cer-
tain of his ideas concerning the Apocalypse. For example, Dr.
Dflsterdeick rejects its commonly accepted Johannean Apostolic
authorship, though he gives it a " deutero-canonical " authority,
which he thinks is proven by its true prophetic character. He
attributes to the book an ethical rather than a magical inspira-
tion. It is highly poetic and its poesy stands in the same rela-
tion to the subject of the prophecy, as the rhetoric of Paul, or the
Apostle John, to the contents of their messages.
The time of its composition was previous to the destruction of
Jerusalem, and its author one John — ^not the Apostle — residing
probably at Ephesus. There is embraced in the vision of the
seer the anti-Christian Judaism, and the — ^if possible — more anti-
Christian heathenism, realized and symbolized in the Holy City —
full of iniquities and Rome drunk with the blood of martyrs.
Jerusalem is to be destroyed, her glory trodden under foot;
Rome, the great Harlot, must be judged ; Satan and the demoni-
acal powers be overthrown, and at the '' Parousia," the dead will
be raised and judged, and death and hell be cast into the lake of
fire. Dr. Dflsterdieck evidently does not find our modern rabbin-
ical millenarianism in the Apocalypse, for he holds that it is
^* incorrect to directly refer the particular visions of seals, trum-
pets, and vials, to particular events in secular, ecclesiastical or
governmental history, but regards the entire course of temporal
things as tending according to God's order to an eternal fulfill-
ment"
M. G. Bullock.
* Oritical and Exegetieai Handbook to the Bmftiatian of John; hj Fbiduiok
BtBTKBDnoK, D.D. TranaUted and edited by Henry E. Jacobs, D.D.
1887.] Owrrent Literature. 79
The Art Amatsub for Jane begins the seventeenth volume
with a new cover. It contains many attractive illustrations.
Three figure and drapery studies in two colors, a full-page por-
trait and a number of pen drawings accompany a biographical
account of Sir Frederick Leighton, President of the British
Royal Academy. There is a notice of the Paris Salon, with an
admirable two-page drawing of Ridgway Knight's picture, " In
October," together with reviews of the American Artists' and
Prize Fund Exhibitions and the new Seney Collection ; also an
amusing French account of the Morgan sale, and a timely article
on composite photographs. There is a suggestive '* talk " with
John La Farge on the re-decoration of the American ^* meeting
house."
Among the many practical working designs in the number for
July are a charming plate, printed in twelve colors, of " King-
fishers ;" an extra large lull-length decorative figure (Psyche) for
outline embroidery for a screen, or lor painting — the first of a
series of six ; a bold design of grapes for carving upon a buffet
panel ; china painting designs for a cream-pitcher (anemones) and
a fruit plate (cherries) ; a study of water-lilies and cat-tails, decora*
tions for a portiere and a fire-place facing, borders for repouss6
work, and a page of monograms in O. There are also ^^ hints on
landscape painting," a *^ talk " with William Hart, a lesson on
landscapes in china painting, '' Temporary Decorations of a Sea.
side Cottage," by Riordan, and suggestions for summer needle-
work. Price 35 cents, $4 a year. Montague Marks, publisher,
23 Union Square, New York.
80 Book8 of ike Month [July.
BBOBNT PUBLICATIONS.
FUtming H. ReveH, Chicago, New York.
Cairent DiscuBBions in Theology. B7 the ProfeBsors of Chicago Theological
Sezninarj. Vol. IV., 336 pp.
Charles Scnbner'a Sons, New Tark.
Agriculture in Some of its Relations with Chemistry. Bj F. H. Storer, S.B.
Vols. I., n., 529, 609 pp.
Epochs of Modem History— The Early Tudors. Henry Vn., Henry VIIL
By Rev. C. B. Moberly, M.A. 249 pp.
Lee A Shepardj Boston,
Moral Philosophy. A Series of Lectures by Andrew P. Peabody, D.D.
337 pp.
Natural Law in the Business World. By Henry Wood. 222 pp.
English Synonyms Discriminated By Richard Whately, D.D., Archbishop of
Dublin. New Edition. 179 pp.
Hints on Writing and Speech-Making. By Thomas Wentworth Higginson.
70 pp.
lordSf Howard & BMert, New York.
Principles of Art. Part L, Art in History; Part II., Art in Theory. By John
0. Van Dyke. 291 pp.
Ikmk A WagnaOs, Publishers^ New York.
The People's Bible. Discourses upon Holy Scripture. By Joseph Parker, D.D.
360 pp.
Houghton, Mifflin A Co., Boston,
American Commonwealths. New York : The Planting and the Growth of the
Empire State. By Ellis H. Roberts. ^ Vol I., II., 358, 768 pp.
Lamps and Paths. By Theodore T. Munger. 231 pp.
IHibner A Co., Ludgaie HiO, London,
The World as Will and Idea. By Arthur Schopenhauer. Translated firom the
Qerman by R. B. Haldane, M.A., and John Kemp, M.A. Vols. I., IL, IIL
Roberts Brothers, BosUm.
Cathedral Day& A Tour through Southern England. By Anna Bowman Dodd.
Illustrated by E. Eldon Deane. 390 pp.
Randolph A Co,, New York,
James Hannington, D.D., First Bishop of Eastern Equatorial Africa. A His-
tory of his Life and Work. 1847-1885. By E. C. Dawson, M.A. Oxon. 471pp.
PSYCHOLOGY.
PSYCHOLOGY. By Jambs McCobh, D.D„ LL.D., President of Princeton Col-
lege. I.— The Cogrnitive Powers, n.— The Motive PoweiB. 2 vols., l«mo, each $1.60.
The first volume contains an analysis of the operations of the senses, and of their
relation to the intellectual processes, and devotes considerable space to a discussion
of aense-peroeption, from the physloloerical side, accompanied by appropriate cuts.
The second volume continues the subject with a discussion of the power of the
CoDscienoe, Emotions, and Will.
** The book is written in a clear and simple style ; it breathes a sweet and winning
spirit ; and it is inspired by a noble purpose. In these respects it is a model of whai
a text-book should be."— Professor William DbW. Htdb, of Bowdoln College.
** I have read the book with much interest. It is what was to have been expected
from Uie ability and long experience of the author. The style is clear and simple ;
the matter is well distriblited ; it well covers the ground usually taught in such
text^books, and I am sure any teacher would find it a helpful guide in his classes."—
8. It, Caldwkll, late President of Vassar College.
XI/JSMBNTS Of JPHT8IOLOGICA.X, l^STCMOZOGT.
By Geobob T. Ladd, D.D., Professor of Mental and Moral Philosophy in Yale
University. With Numerous Illustrations. 1 vol., 8vo, $4.60.
^ In giving us something vastly more exact and complete on the physiological
side than those sorry writings of the Spencers, the Carpenters, the Maudsleys, and
the Lnyses, Prof. Ladd earns the warm erratitude of all English readers. His erudi-
tion, in shorts and his broad-mindedness are on a par with each other ; and his vol-
nine will proDably, for many years to come, be the standard work of reference on
the subject."— Prof . William Jambs, in The Nation.
^This work of Professor Ladd's contains in its six hundred and ninety-six pages
more information on this most Interesting branch of mind science than any similar
work in the English language. In its class it stands alone among American books.
No thorough student of psychology will rest satisfied until he owns a copy of this
work."— iTie School Jcumdl.
** It is infinitely the ripest treatise in our language in Its special field, and is a shin-
ing example ox ffood work in natural history, by a student who has received a
theological and philosophical education."— Boston BecLcon,
"-4. Work of Unique Importance for Bible Students.*^
WOBJ} STXTDIES IN THB NBW TESTAMENT,
By Mabvin E. Viwcbnt, D.D. Vol. 1.— The Synoptic Gospels, Acts of the Apos-
tlcB, and the Epistles of Peter, James and Jude. 1 Vol., 6vo, $4.00.
The purpose of the author is to enable the English reader and student to get at
the original force, meanincr and color of the siguificant words and phrases as used
bar the different writers. The plan of the work is simple, each chapter of the New
Testament under consideration having a heading, and the wora or phrase com-
mented upon being printed in full-face type, in the succeeding order of the verses.
•* Dr. Vincents ' Word Studies in the New Testament ' is a delicious book. As a
Greek scholar, a clear thinker, a logical reaaoner, a master in English, and a devout
53rmpathizer with the truths of revelation. Dr. Vincent is Just the man to interest
and edify the Church with such a work as this. Thousands will take delight in
harMllIng the gems which he has brought to view by his careful research and Judl-
cions discrimmation. There are few scholars who, to such a degree as Dr. Vincent,
mingle scholarly attainment with aptness to impart knowledge in attractive form.
All Btble-readers should enjoy and profit by these delightful * Word Studies.' "—Rev.
Howabd Cbosbt, D.D.
"Packed and piled with the golden sheaves of many years of thorough Bible re-
■eareh is this precious volume called ' Word Studies in the New Testament.' It is
not a oommentiary. It is not a dictionary. It is not a series of dry scraps on phi-
lology or lexicography. It is not a cyclopedia for lazy ministers to crib sermons
from. It is Just like no other work on the New Testament that we can find else-
where,and therefore it fills a niche that has hitherto been left empty."— Rev.
TMS01>0BB L. CUTLBB, D.D.
**■ My thanks for this scholarly and beautiful work. The Preface sets forth some
of the most essential truths and principles in translation and exposition. I have
become deeply interested in his method of dealing with the subject. He has done
In this work a great and useful service to the Church, and towafds a better knowl-
edge (on the part, especially, of those who know not Greek) of the meaning of Holy
Witt.^— Hkhbt Dbislrb, LL.D., Professor of Greek Language and Literature in
Columbia College.
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YALE REVIEW
NULUDS ASDICnrS jrSASB IN TSRBA XAOISTRI.
AXJGCrST, 1887.
Abt. L The American School of Classical Studies at Athens.
Thomas D, Seymour,
n. A Disciple of John. Caroline Hazard.
in. The History of the Federal Convention of 1787, and of its work.
t/l Eandolph Tucker,
IV. Recent Views of the Eighteenth Century.
Leuna J, Sufinbume.
^NEW HAVEN:
WILLIAM L. KINGSLEY, PROPRIETOR.
Tattle, HoretaoTue and Taylor, Printers, 871 State Street.
COVTEVTB OF THE AXraXTBT VTTHBEB.
Abt. I. The American School of ClasBlcal Studies at Athens.
T. D. Seymour, Tale Uniyersity. 81
n. A Disciple of JohD. Caroline Hazard, Peaoedale, R. I. 92
III. The History of the Federal Convention of IT 87, and of its work.
J. Randolph Tucker, Lexington, Va. 97
IV. Recent Views of the Eighteenth Century.
L. J. Swinhume, Colorado Springs, Colorado. 147
Books of the Month.
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NEW ENGLANDER
Aia>
TALE EEYIEW.
No. CCIX.
AUGUST, 1887.
AxncLE L— THE AMERICAN SCHOOL OF CLASSICAL
STUDIES AT ATHENS.
I AM often led to contrast my two visits to Athens : I went to
Greece in 1872 nnder favorable circamstances for those times ;
I was fresh from my studies in Germany where I had read
with special reference to my visit to classic lands ; I had spent
several months in Italy with careful study of the monuments
and museums. I was with a philological friend of more ex-
perience, the Director during the past year of our school at
Athen& We had good letters of advice and introduction, and
found pleasant friends, and met the prominent scholars of the
country. But, in spite of our former studies, everything
seemed strange or only half familiar to us. We lost much
time in securing our orientation ; oar memoranda of objects to
be more carefully examined proved incomplete and unsatisfao-
toiy, of course ; we were unable to obtain the books necessary
for any true study of the topography and ruins. In short,
with a fair preparation (as such things go), with good friends,
and the best of weather, — we found that so far as systematic
VOL. XL 6
82 American School of Classical Stvdies. [Aug->
study was concerned, much of our time was wasted. We
enjoyed the scenery, the air, the ruins, the acquaintance with
the people ; we gained a .better appreciation of some important
elements of ancient life ; we understood better than ever before
the political history of the Greeks, after seeing the boundaries
set by nature ; we were interested, we were roused, but we
were not instructed. My work would have been still more
dilettafite if I had been alone and unintroduced. I could find
no proper support and sympathy and guidance for my studies.
The work of the French school had been interrupted by war ;
the German Institute was not yet opened.
In the Spring of 1886 I was in Greece again, and had both
experience and observation of the privileges offered by the
American school. I learned more in five days than in my first
five weeks in 1872. This was not simply because I had been
in Attica before, nor because I had continued my studies, and
knew what I wanted to see, what statements I desired to verify
or correct, — but mainly because of the American school. One
can hardly estimate too highly the simple boon of using the
library of the school ; that I could refresh my memory each
morning concerning what I was to see during tiie day ; and at
evening study the learned discussions and elucidations of what
I had just seen. The very air of the school was redolent with
philological and archaeological ideas. Some of the members
were interested in epigraphy, others in topography, others in
architecture. I learned the latest views from enthusiastic
teachers, on the very spot where the evidence could be pre-
sented before my eyes. An afternoon devoted to the ruins of
the great Theatre, with a companion who has made a careful
study of the remains, is better than a dozen learned treatises
based mainly on obscure notices in the scholia from the old
grammarians. A morning spent in roaming among the foun-
dations cut in the rock of the old Cranaan city with a skillful
guide is worth more than many books. I do not see how any
member of the school, though making a specialty of some one
subject, can fail to absorb a great mass of theory and informa-
tion on the other subjects that his companions are studying.
"What one has learned from books or living scholars, the rest
will soon know.
1887.] Ameriean School of Claaaical Studies, 83
Bat this scholarly and Btimulating influence does not pro-
ceed solely from the community of studies of the Director and
students of our school ; it comes largely from sister organiza-
tions Professor Petersen, in charge of the German Institute,
was most outspoken last summer, when I met him in Berlin,
in his expressions of interest in the work of the American
school, and of his readiness to do his part in securing the most
hearty cooperation of the scholars of both nations in their
common studies. These are no mere fine phrases. It means
much for the members of our school to meet on friendly terms
with the German scholars who cluster around the German
Institute, to attend the gatherings at the institute, and to use
the German library. Dorpfeld, Petersen's associate in the
direction of the institute, though still a young man, is the
highest living authority on questions connected with Greek
architecture. He did important work at Olympia, during the
German excavations there, and has been Schliemann's adviser
in the more scientific of Schliemann's explorations. He has
done more than any one else to interpret the architectural
material found in the recent excavations on the Acropolis ; he
has disentangled the mass of ruins connected with the stage-
building of the theatre, and has formed a definite and rational
theory for their explanation ; he has used the data found by
Mr. Penrose in his diggings on the site of the temple of
Zeus Olympius, and has convinced Mr. Penrose himself that
the theatre was an octostyle, not a decastyle. This Dr. Dorp-
feld is not only one of the most genial of men, but is on the
best of terms with the American school. He has expounded
to its members his theory of the Pisistratean Acropolis, and of
the theatre; he has accompanied members of the school to
Elensis, to explain the five successive structures there, as
evidenced by the remains ; while some of the school enjoyed
his services as Cicerone for two days at Olympia, where every
stone is familiar to him.
The Greeks are more cordial to no nation than to the
Americans; they retain an almost sentimental affection for
our land, because of the sympathy and aid extended to them
in their time of need, during their war for independence, a
little more than half a century ago.
84 American School of Classical Studies. [Aug.,
The firitisb Bchool of ArchsBological and classical Studies at
Athens is our nearest neighbor, and its director, Mr. Penrose,
so well known for his work on the Principles of Athenian
Architecture, has been very fraternal in spirit. The English
were spurred to activity by our boldness in establishing a
school at Athens ; they had a permanent home before us, but
our school building, now nearly completed, is a half larger
than theirs, and much more convenient in its plan.
While preserving our own independence of work, in aim
and method, we have the untold advantage of association with
Germans, French, Greeks, and English, — all interested in the
same studies, fellow citizens of the republic of letters.
This Review has already (July, 1886) called attention to the
opportunities for archsBoIogical study at Athens in connection
with the American school. Perhaps some of the readers of
the Review will be interested in a sketch of the history of this
institution. The French were the first to establish a national
school at Athens ; and they have done good work in connec-
tion with it. They have conducted important excavations at
Delos and Delphi. At present, American scholars are perhaps
unconsciously inclined to depreciate the work of the French
school, because of our greater sympathy with German philo-
logy in general. The French school at Athens was established
in 1846. It is supported by the government. The Director
is a member of the French Institute, and one of the high func-
tionaries of State ; he is appointed for a term of six years,
but the appointment is generally renewed. The number of
students is limited to six, each appointed for three years ; the
first year is spent in Italy, in practical preparation for work in
Greece. The students are under almost military discipline.
Each must be a docteur es leUres or its equivalent ; he must
have passed a competitive examination on the Greek language
(ancient and modem), epigraphy, palaeography, archsBology,
history, and geography. This examination would be too
severe for most American students on leaving college, even
though the later years of the college course were given largely
to philology and archaeology. The student s salary is about
$760. The students are in residence at Athens during eight
months of the year ; for four months they may travel in Greek
1887.] American School of Classical Studies. 85
lands. They are not expected to retnm to Paris while they
are connected with the school. Each renders a report of his
work each year. Since 1877 the school has published a " Bul-
letin de correspondance hell^nique." Perhaps the reader will
find interest in extracts from the table of contents of the first
volume: "Inscription from Kalamata; Supplement to the chro-
nology of the Athenian archons after 01. 122; Inscription
from Melos ; Fragment of an Athenian decree ; Greek mir-
rors; Descriptive catalogue of the votive offerings to Aescula-
pius and Hygieia, found on the excavations on the south side
of the Acropolis ; Plan of the excavations near the Acropolis ;
Excavations at Dodona ; The Roman colony at Olbasa in Pisi-
dia ; Excavations at Delos ; Fragments of Panathenaic vases
found on the Acropolis," etc.
In the last century, the foundations of the scientific study of
ancient art and archaeology were laid by Winckelmann, a
Hyperborean at Rome. At the very beginning of this century
Wilhelm von Humboldt was sent to Rome as Prussian embas-
sador, and his house formed a gathering place for Thorwaldsen,
Ranch, A. W. Schlegel, Mme. de Stael, Zoega, and Welcker,
and Roman prelates, — for all who cared for art and antiquities.
Niebnhr and Bunsen came to Rome a little later, in 1816. In
Dec., 1828, at Bnnsen's invitation and at his house, while he
was Pnussian embassador at Rome, a little company of five
met and laid plans for the formation of the Society which has
become the " German Institute for Archaeological Correspon-
dence." This was formally founded on April 21, 1829. The
pope smiled graciously on the undertaking. Italian, French,
and English scholars united with the Germans.
The *' Istitnto di corrispondenza Archeologica," was inter-
national in character, but was then under the patronage of the
Prussian Crown Prince, afterward Frederick William IV. In
1874 this became an institution of the German government,
with its head at Berlin ; the Germans had been the controlling
spirits from the first, and the Prussian government since 1860
was the chief material supporter of the undertaking. Its aim
is to f oBter, invigorate, and regulate the intercourse between
the researches of the learned in archaeology and philology, and
the lands which were the original homes of art and science ;
86 American School of Classical Studies. [Aug.,
and to publish speedily and satisfactorily the monuments of
antiquity that are discovered.
The Institute has Secretaries at Rome and at Athens. These
are government oflScials, appointed by the Emperor on the
recommendation of the Governing Board, through the Prus-
sian Academy of Sciences. The Secretary at Athens holds
sessions once a fortnight during December and the early
months of the year; at these sessions papers are read by
German scholars resident in or visiting Athens, or sometimes
by scholars of other nationalities. The Secretary arranges also
for the periegesis of the ruins and museums, and for expedi-
tions to points of interest in the country. He also conducts
exercises in archseology and epigraphy for the German students.
The German students in Greece do not hold the same relation
to the Institute that the French students hold to their school
The Institute was not established primarily for the sake of the
students, but the students' scholarships were created because of
the opportunities offered by the Institute. In 1882, Welcker
urged that arrangements should be made in connection with
the Institute for the training of philological students. In 1834
Bunsen proposed a series of archaeological lectures before select
audiences {aduname private)^ and made the beginning with a
course on Roman topography. In the years immediately fol-
lowing, courses of lectures were given on the museums of
Rome, the Etruscan language, Roman and Attic topography,
painted vases, hieroglyphics, Egyptian art, the mythology of
art. About 1840, Braun began a so-called seminary for the
benefit of young German students ; but not until 1860 were
regular annual stipends given to two young Prussians that they
might visit Greece and Italy. The list of these stipendiaries
contains the names of many who have become famous scholars.
The German government now offers five traveling scholar-
ships each year " to give life to archseological studies, and to
quicken and instruct an intelligent view of ancient life, espec-
ially for those who are to teach in the universities and gym-
nasia," The recipient must be a Ph.D. of a German univer-
sity (not more than three years out of the university), and have
passed the examination pro facultate docendi with a certificate
permitting to teach the ancient languages in the upper classes
1887.] American School of Classical Studdes, 87
of the gymnasia. Each student is free to wor^ according to
his own judgment, only obliged to attend the stated meetings
of the Institute, if he is in Rome or Athens, and to help the
Secretaries if he is called to do so. He is not assigned either
to Greece or to Italy, but works where he pleases.
The Athens branch of the German Institute was established
in 1874, at the time of the reorganization of the Institute, and
when Ernst Curtius was negotiating the treaty for the excava-
tions at Olympia. Both the French and the Germans have
substantial buildings at Athens for their schools.
In 1878, Professor Jebb issued an appeal for the establish-
ment of an English school of archaeology at Athens and
Borne but the appeal met with no hearty and immediate
responfie. His article on " An English School of Archaeology
at Athens and Rome " in the Contemporary Review for Nov.,
1878, may be recommended for reading.
In 1881, the ArchsBological Institute of America appointed a
committee on the establishment of an American School of
Classical Studies at Athens. At the head of this committee
was Professor John Williams White, who has conducted the
interests of the enterprise most efficiently. In view of the
difficulty or impossibility of raising a sufficient sum to put the
school on a permanent footing, until the enterprise was shown
to be practicable and desirable, the committee secured the
cooperation of twelve prominent colleges of the country.
Friends of each college subscribed $250 per annum, towards
the expenses of the school, for a period of ten years. The
number of colleges associated in this work is now eighteen.
The Managing Committee has twenty-five members including
a representative of each of the associated colleges. This Man-
aging Committee has control of the school and of the use of
the funds contributed for its current expenses. The Directors
have been sent out on an annual appointment, without expense
to the school ; the colleges of which these scholars are profes-
sors have granted the year's leave of absence in the belief (first),
that the year's residence at Athens under such conditions
would be of great advantage to the professor and thus to the
coU^e itself ; and (second), that this was a true service to the
cause of education in our country. Professor Goodwin, of
88 Americcm School of GUusioal Stt^ies. [Aug.,
Harvard, was the first Director, opening the school on the first
of October, 1882. Seven students presented themselves, six
of whom remained through the school year, to June, 1888.
Professor Goodwin was succeeded by Professor Packard, of
Yale, and he by Professor Van Benschoten, of Wesleyan Uni-
versity. Professor Allen of Harvard was the fourth Director.
Professor D'Ooge, of Michigan University, has been in charge
of the school during the past year. Professor Merriam, of
Columbia, goes to Athens this fall as Director. The number
of students connected with the school as regular members dur-
ing the past year was seven. Two of these were Yale gradu-
ates pursuing studies for two years at Athens, — Mr. W. L.
Gushing, late Rector of the Hopkins Grammar School, and
Mr. J, M. Lewis, who died this Spring almost immediately
after reaching home, and whose untimely death we mourn as
a loss to philology of which he was a brilliant and promising
student. Besides these seven regular students, the school has
had three other American scholars connected with it for a time.
This number is as large as could reasonably be expected.
The utmost freedom of work is allowed to the students of
our school. Professor D'Ooge says in his last report : " Mr.
Gushing has devoted some time to completing the excavations
at Thoricus, and will present a final report upon these for publi-
cation. The studies of Mr. Lewis were purely philological.
The studies of the oflier members of the school have been gen-
eral rather than special, but have been particularly directed to
gaining an appreciative acquaintance with the remains of
ancient Greek life as a means of illustration in teaching. Of
the seven members of the school, all but one look forward to
the work of teaching the classics ; . and all have gained from
their studies and sojourn here a vivid appreciation of the old
Greek civilization that cannot fail to be a stimulus and con-
trolling element in all their work as instructors." " The gen-
eral work of the school has consisted of the following exer-
cises: During October and November the members of the
school visited and discussed the ruins in and about Athens,
there being usually two such walks and talks each week. From.
October to January, inclusive, there was a weekly reading of
parts of Pausanias, which led to many discussions and suggested
1887.] AfMrican School of ClasBxcal Studies, 89
themes for further study. This exercise was followed by the
reading of Hicks' Manual of EUstorical Inscriptions, for about
two months. Durin;; three months, evening readings were
held each week, each member of the school reading and inter-
preting a set portion of the Achamians and of the Oedijme
at OolomM.^^ ^^ During the entire season, until the beginning
of March, the school held a weekly session for giving and
hearing reports, under which term were embraced items of
archssological news, reviews of new books, and the discussion
of topics suggested by reading brief papers on set themes.
Among the topics thus presented were : ' The Literature of the
Curves of the Parthenon,' 'A Comparison of Fick's and
Christ's Theories of the Iliad,' 'The Representation in
Sculpture of the Personilication of Cities,' ' The site of Sip-
pins Chlonus^^ ' Some Modifications of the" Doric possibly due
to the Influence of the Ionic Order of Architecture,' * An In-
scription from the Asclepieum of Athens,' * The Decorations
of the Athena Parthenos of Phidias,' * A Review of Wagnon
on the Relation of Egyptian and Greek Sculpture,' ' An Ac-
count of the Excavations of the N'ecropolis at Myrina,' and
* Representations of Childhood and Immature Forms in Ancient
Art' Three public sessions have been held. At the first, Mr.
McMurtry read a carefully prepared paper on the present state
of the question of the site of the Pnyx, declaring himself in
favor of the traditional site as the true one. At this session
Mr. Joseph T. Clarke and Dr. A. Emerson gave a brief account
of their excavations at Crotona. Mr. Cashing presented his
report on the theatre at Thoricus at the second session, and the
Director discussed the theatre at Sicyon, so far as it had been
excavated. The third session was occupied with the reading
of Mr. Wright's paper on the ' Appreciation of Jffature exhib-
ited in some of the Greek Poets.' "
In addition to the studies of the individual members of the
school, under the general guidance of the Director, the school
conducted excavations last year at the theatre of Thoricus,
finding no treasure of art, inscriptions or metal, but bringing
to light interesting points in the construction of a rural theatre
of Attica. During this Spring, the school has conducted at
Sicyon excavations which will be continued in the autumn.
I
J
90 American School of Classical Studies. L^^.,
In connection with this school, also, Dr. Sterrett has made ex-
tensive explorations in Asia Minor, the results of which are
abont to be published in two volumes.
In 1884 the Greek government offered to the school a site
for a building on the slope of the Lycabettua This piece of
land is about an acre and a half in extent and is estimated to
be worth thirteen thousand dollars. The consummation of this
gift was delayed by political excitement and changes of minis-
try. But last Fall this lot of land was transferred to the Amer-
ican Minister, the Hon. Walker Feam (Yale, 1851), as agent of
the trustees. Friends of the school contributed $25,000 to
erect a suitable building. Plans were prepared under the direc-
tion of Professor Ware of Columbia College, most energetic in
his support of the school, and the building has gone up rapidly
this Spring, and is now roofed in. The air of Athens is so
marvellously clear and dry during the summer, that the build-
ing will be ready for use at the opening of the next school
year. The building contains rooms for the Director and his
family, a large library, and several chambers for members of
the school. The situation, next to the British School, (founded
last year, on essentially the same basis and principles as our
own), with a fine view of the mountains, city, and sea, is
attractive in many ways.
The present organization of the school, with an annual di-
rector, has been recognized from the first as a temporary expe-
dient, with some advantages but with an overbalancing weight
of obvious inconveniences. Most prominent among the ob-
jections to the present arrangement is the impossibility of con-
tinuity of work there; the annual Director needs much of the
year in order to accustom himself to the position.
In the Fall of 1886, Dr. Charles Waldstein was invited to
become the permanent Director of the school. He is recog-
nized as eminently fit for the position. He was a former stu-
dent of Columbia College, he graduated at Heidelberg, and is
at present Beader on Archaeology, and Keeper of the Fitz
William Museum, in Cambridge, England. He desires to be
connected with the scholarship of his native country, and has
accepted the invitation of the Managing Committee, on con-
dition that the endowment of $100,000 be secured before the
1887.] ^American School of Clasaicdl Studies. 91
beginniiig of the school year of 1888. Of this permanent
fund about $10,000 have been already secured. The friends
of the school are confident that, if its work is better known,
the fund will be raised, and certainly it is very desirable to
raise it in time to secure Dr. Waldstein. But the Managing
Committee does not intend to abandon at once the plan that
has worked so well of sending out American professors on an
annual appointment. The Committee desires that an ajssociate
to the permanent Director be sent to Athens in the same gen-
eral way in which the Directors have gone hitherto, and thus
combine the advantages of the temporary and permanent di-
rectorship&
The union of colleges in this work has been extremely pleas-
ant Philology has never known a more catholic, unselfish,
and harmonious undertaking. Students of any of the allied
colleges may enjoy the privileges of the school on the recom-
mendation of their classical instructors, and the same privi-
leges are granted to all others who are properly recommended.
The school itself has no scholarships, but the incumbent of the
Soldiers' Memorial Fellowship at Yale may be allowed to spend
his time at Athens in connection with this school, and for the
next year a special Athenian scholarship has been created by
an unnamed friend of learning and of Yale college.
While the school has no support from the government, like
the similar institutions of France and Germany, it may perhaps
depend safely on the wise liberality of our men of wealth and
culture. Greece seems, indeed, to be far away ; but we want
to bring ancient Greece to our doors, and this contact with the
land and air of Greece, this personal study of the monuments
and topography, seems to promise a better appreciation of
ancient life and history, and thus a better appreciation of the
literature of the ancient Greeks. No one can know Greece of
to-day without bettering his knowledge of Homer, Pindar,
Thucydides, and Theocritus.
Thomas D. Seymour.
A Disciple of John. lA^'f
Articlb IL— a disciple OF JOHN,
Wait here, my son ; beneath this olive tree
We'll rest awhile. Dost see far down the vale
The streak of silver where the Jordan winds
Among the grassy fields of j^non, fair
And clothed with living verdure, as of old
When John, my master, stood upon this plain f
And yonder, in the hazy distance, stands
Salim, the city of the purple hills.
It was in JSnon that the Baptist taught,
And cried to all the world Repent, repent !
Then from the towns and country round abouty
From near and far, in multitudes men came
Until it seemed the whole world came to him.
And there was one, thou know'st, he called the Lamb,
Who also was baptized of him, not here.
But lower down the Jordan's silver stream.
Then came men to my master, even John,
With strange reports of all the Lamb did do :
That men were healed, the blind restored to sight,
The lepers cleansed ; and yet he seemed, they said,
A simple man, who went from place to place
With few to follow, save some needy friends.
Then John called Ezra to him, wise and good,
His father's friend, the eldest of our band.
Good Ezra, said he, sore perplexed am I ;
I said, in truth, he is the Lamb of God,
But now some months are passed, and he delays
To tell the people that he is from God.
Now go, I pray thee, rise to-morrow morn.
Take with thee Uzal here, the lad thou lov'st.
And go to Jesus. When thou comest say:
John Baptist sent us unto thee to ask
Art thou Messias that should come, or look
We for another? Mark bis answer well.
Then swift return, and bring me word again.
1887.] A Disoiple of John.
So on the morrow forth we fared— 'twas then
I saw this olive first — and toward the north
We pushed onr way to lower Galilee.
That night we lay at Nain, and there we heard
-The wondrous story of the^ead man raised.
And all along the way, where'er we passed
We saw and heard of cures most marvelloas.
Aboat the sixth hour of the second day
We came to Jesus. Round him was a throng
Of halt, and lame, and blind, and dose at hand
A little group of lepers, ghastly white,
Stood waiting to be healed. Long stood we there.
At last good Ezra, for the day waxed old,
Pushed through the throng and stood at Jesus' side,
And gave the message even as John said.
And be made answer : Go, said he, and tell
The Baptist all that ye have seen ; the blind
Receive their sight, the lame are healed and walk,
The lepers cleansed, and to the poor is preached
The Gospel ; blest is he who shall not be
In me offended. So we took our way
Again toward John.
But as we fared along
The voice of Jesus ever called me back.
Most wondrous voice ; its like was ne'er before
Nor yet shall be. Not like my master John's,
For when he cried Repent, repent, the sound
In solemn verberations shook men's souls.
And chased the faintest shadows in their minds
And terrified and brought them to his feet.
Not BO the Lamb's voice. Hast thou heard the harp
Within the Temple, on the solemn feast ?
like to the deepest string, where strings are ten ;
Sustained, and strong, and soft, at once, its sound.
So was his voice ; and as the archer wings
His arrows to their mark, so flew his words.
To each they flew, as if each stood alone.
And talked with him as friend, in confidence
And eomprehension that was perfectness.
So as we left him, still my soul returned.
94 A IHscipU af John,. C-^^gv
Good Ezra, said I, pray thee say not nay.
But let me run back quickly to the Lamb.
I fain would hear again his voice, and see.
Perchance, more deeds as wondrous as before.
The sun is no^ yet set, and I am young
And swift of foot ; before night falls I will
O'ertake thy steps, I pray thee, let me go.
And he made answer : 60 my son, thy youth
Is in thy blood ; go thou and see, and hear.
For me, what I have seen to-day gives food
To meditate upon a thousand years.
So straightway I returned with joy. I heard
Him speaking still as I came near, and all
The throng was hushed in silence for to hear.
What went ye to the wilderness to see ?
A reed ? a reed that's shaken with the wind ?
What went ye to the wilderness to see ?
A man in goodly raiment ? they, behold,
In palaces of kings are surely found.
What went ye for to see ? A prophet ? Yea,
A prophet and much more. Of women bom,
Than John the Baptist is no greater one.
My glad heart filled with love to hear such praise.
To hear such witness fall from Jesus' lips I
Then full of joy, I turned again, and ran
And told good Ezra all I heard.
Full short
The journey back to our dear master, John ;
For each lived over in those weary leagues
The wonders of the few brief hours, and heard
Again that voice, whose words shall move the world.
And on the evening of the second day
We passed by Salim yonder, and we came
Unto this tree ; and here our master came
To meet us. Sore perplexed he seemed. His eyes
Set in the caverns of his brow looked wild.
Erect and gaunt was he, with raven hair,
And strong large-featured face, with wondrous eyes,
That saw as they saw not, or seeing, saw
1887.] A Disciple of John. 95
Strange sights, undreamt of by mere human gaze.
So stood he waiting while the sunset light
Made red a golden glory round his head.
Then Ezra told the message every word,
And told of all the wondrous deeds we saw.
Our master listened, as one thirsty drinks ;
The words sunk in his spirit ; and, at last,
Good Ezra said — and to the poor. He said,
Is preached the Gospel — then John raised his head,
And all his soul was in his eyes: My joy
Now therefore is fulfilled. He must increase,
And I must decrease. This my joy is now
Fulfilled. With solemn extasy he spoke ;
The setting sun shot up his golden beams
To heaven, while his mighty spirit rose
On soaring wings of t>raise to God's great throne :
This my joy now therefore is fulfilled.
Thou knowest all that afterwards befell*-
How John was taken, and by wicked hands
Beheaded ; how the Lamb became in truth
The very Lamb of God, a sacrifice
For us. Some thou knowest thought that he
Was John the Baptist, risen from the dead.
These eyes beheld him, yea these ears once more
Were blest in hearing him say. Peace. I thought
That with him John might rise and come again,
Since of all prophets none was more than he.
But John rose not ; and now these many years
I go from place to place, and preach the Lamb.
And often, lonely on some hill-top bare.
When starry night speaks peace unto my soul,
I ponder on that word that Jesus spake —
A prophet, yea and more. Of women born
Than John the Baptist is no greater one.
So often times I mused upon that word.
Than Moses greater ? who from Egypt led
The people through the wilderness, who spoke
With God, to whom the law was given, whose words
Shall last through time ? or than Elijah ? bold,
96 A Disciple of John. [Aug.,
Denouncing kings? He also cried Repent,
And stirred the nation with his mighty words,
And wondrous deeds. No wondrous deeds did John.
Or David ? king and prophet too, beloved
Of God, in whom the nations all are blessed,
Whose matchless songs the Lamb himself did sing.
E'en more than these ? methought, in thought perplexed.
And then there came this word to answer me :
He must increase, I must decrease ; my joy
Now therefore is fulfilled. Who else, before
Or since, could say that saying as said John ?
For Moses in the wilderness in wrath
Called forth the water, not in God's great name,
But in his own. And great Elijah hid
In mountain fastnesses, in self despair,
And thought that he alone was faithful still.
And David did the deed he knew was wrong.
And censured in another. In all these
The thing that was themselves, the acting will,
Intruded twixt themselves and God, and turned
Aside the bright rays of His righteousness.
He meant to light their paths with perfect light.
Till in the crises of their lives they scarce
Discerned their way, in their own shadows walked,
And in a mist of darkness lost their sight.
But John, my Master, had to this attained,
That to himself, himself did not exist.
He had, in truth, become a living Voice,
A Voice that spoke the words he heard of God.
He was not humble ; rather, I may say.
He was Humility itself; his life
Lost in the perfect Life of God, his joy
Fulfilled to know that Life on earth was come.
So oft I muse ; then all discouragement.
All grief, that men are deaf and will not hear,
All weariness, fall from me ; and I bless
My Master John who led me to the Lamb,
And try to say with him, in perfect faith :
This my joy, now therefore is fulfilled.
Cabounb Hazabd.
1887.] HiMary of the Federal OonverUion of 1787. 9T
Abhcle m.— the history op the federal CON-
VENTION OF 1787, AND OF ITS WORK.
Onb century has passed since the Federal convention met
in Philadelphia and proposed the Federal constitntion to the
states for their several assent and ratification. To the Amer-
ican lawyer the most important subject of study is the supreme
law of the land, the constitntion of the United States.
I invite your attention to the history of this convention and of
its work. In my labor to be brief, I trust I shall not be obscure.
The theme is too large for full discussion, and must be com-
pressed within condensed and comprehensive statements.
The history of free institutions before the Christian era is
not hopeful for their permanence and stability. This arose
from the fact that the nation was but an enlargement of the
patriarchy, which generated and perpetuated the Patria Potes-
tas of the family. The subordination to which the child was
bom made the paternal government to him the natural and
divinely constituted system, to which obedience was filial duty
and resistance akin to parricide. When we consider how
much we are slaves to things long established, and bound by
the law of prescription even in this age of free thought, it is
not hard to understand that, in ancient times, when ignorance
dominated the human mind, submission to despotism was es-
teemed a cardinal virtue, and treason to royal majesty the
most detestable crime.
It required a new principle to remove this pall of servitude
which hung over the human race. The germ of free institu-
tions is in the personal consciousness of the individual man,
that he is bom into this world as a creature of God, with
responsibility to Him for self use of his God-given powers,
and that to work out his personal destiny upon this personal
accountability to his Divine King, he needs to be free from
the constraints with which despotism would bind his body,
[In compliance with a special request, we give place in the New Eng-
kmder and Tale Review to the address of Hon. J. Randolph Tucker, of
Lexington^ Virginia, which was delivered at the Commencement of the
Tale Law School June 28, \^t. --Editor of the New Englander and Tale
Bemew.1
vou XI. 7
98 History of the Federal Convention of 1787. [Aug.,
miod, heart, and conscience. When the man has this idea
planted in his sonl, it becomes a moral force, which dreads trea-
son to the Almighty Sovereign more than all the threats of hu-
man authority, and makes resistance to tyrants obedience to God I
Christianity furnished, as no other form of philosophy or
religion has ever done, this impulsive motive to human con-
sciousness. It roused man from the torpor of insensibility as
to his true relations with God and his fellow-men to a quick-
ened conscience and a profound sense of his individual and
infinite responsibility ; and then to a brave self-assertion of hie
right to liberty, as essential to his duty to God in working out
his awful and sublime destiny.
This new inspiration for the human soul has made modem
civilization. All philosophic speculation, whether it bows with
religious reverence before the founder of the Christian system,
or rejects its divinity, must concede this ; and I assume it
without further discussion. The result of this new motive in
man under the inspiration of Christianity, makes the contrast
between the governments of ancient and modem times striking
and instractive.
Even in their republics, as signally in their monarchies, the
state (ttojUc) was everything, the man but a fraction of the mass.
Their republics transferred power from the one or the few to
the many, but the many were prone to overlook the rights of
the man in achieving the advancement of the state. Glory
for the nation was always preferred to the liberty of the man.
In modem times the man, in his deep consciousness of
personal duty and infinite destiny, has asserted liberty as his
right against all human authority. Ecclesiasticism was broken
before the revolt of the Reformation, and kings, on the block
or in exile, have yielded to the boldly asserted freedom of the
man ; and power has been claimed for the people in order to
this liberty of the man.
From this view, which I have no time to discuss fully, I
deduce this postulate, that the liberty of the man is not the
result of social compact, is not the concession to man from
society or from government, but is the gift of God to every
man ; liberty for self -use in order to the attainment of the ends
of his creation in the discharge of his duty to his Divine King.
1887.] Higtory of the Federal Gonvention of 1787. 99
This germ of all human freedom was implanted in European
Christendom and had more or less influence everywhere. But
its influence was felt most powerfully and produced more
favorable results in Great Britain than on the continent. This
was due to many causes. Her insular position put her chief
armaments not on the land but on the sea, where they could
not be used against popular liberty, but only for national
defence. The social elements in her population produced a
bitter conflict between the home Saxon and the Norman alien,
between the old institutions of the vanquished and the feudal
tyranny of the conqueror. The conflict of religious belief
between the people and their rulers, and in the forum between
the refinements of the priestly civilian and the rude, but free
principles of the common law> were also favorable to the
abridgment of despotic rule, and to the growth of popular
power. These conflicts, continued for centuries, finally have
evolved a constitutional monarchy, where the people have
controlling influence and the liberties of the man are better
conserved than anywhere else in the world, except in our own
country.
I must advert to the fundamental distinction between right
and power, to be observed in this discussion.
The personal right of the man to his liberty is asserted from
his deepest self-consciousness against the government which
may abridge or destroy it. For unless the man can control
the government, the selfishness of those who do control it will
be sure to direct its action against his right.
The man therefore will need political power to protect this
pereanal Tight. The hand that holds right and interest
should be the hand which wields political power.
Wed political power to personal right, and liberty will be
safe, and tyranny impossible Divorce them, and liberty dies ;
despotism survives, and tyranny must result.
Power must husband right. Eight needs power in its own
hand for self-protection. Intelligent self-government, when
thus secured, is the assurance of the liberty, order, and progress
of the human race. There must be intelligence to act wisely
in the use of this self-government ; for ignorance, armed with
this power against intelligence, will be impotent for self-
100 History of the Federal Convention of 1787. [Aug.,^
defence, and may be deluded into the nse of its weapon for
self-deetmction.
In British history self-right in the man has always claimed
political power. When disseized of his freehold of liberty, he
has made '^ continual claim/' and has thus barred the despot's
plea of prescription and won victory in his " Writ of Right."
Excuse me for pointing out two cardinal assertions of this
Man-Bight six centuries ago.
1st. In Magna Charta there is, as is known to every law stu-
dent, an assertion of personal liberty in its 29th chapter in
memorable words :
^^^o freeman shall be taken or imprisoned, or disseized of his
freehold or his liberties or free customs, or be outlawed or ex-
iled, or any otherwise destroyed, but by the lawful judgment
of his peers or by the law of the land."*
It went further. It declared that no private property should
be taken for public use but on just compensation, and that the
land, the home of the freeman, should not be seized for debt,
even a debt to the Crown, when goods sufiScient could be found
to discharge it. These rights of person, of property, and
of home were made sacred by the great charter.
Lord Coke, in commenting on this chapter, says, in respect
to the first clause, " taken or imprisoned," that " this hath the
first place, because the liberty of a man's person is more pre-
cious to him than all the rest which follow."t And is not
liberty more precious than all else ! For what is life without
liberty I Death is better than the degradation which follows
the loss of freedom !
But this not all. These personal rights thus asserted, and
guarded by jury trial and under judicial power, were further
protected by the 88th chapter of this great charter. The lan-
guage is explicit : " And we have granted unto them (that is
the people of the realm) on the other part, that neither we
nor our heirs shall procure or do anything whereby the liber-
ties in this charter contained shall be infringed or broken : and
if anything be procured by any person contrary to the pre-
mises, it ehaJl he had of no force or efect^^X
Magna Charta thus became, in the polity of England, the
*2 Inst. 45. 12 Inst. 46. t 2 Inst. 76.
1887.] HiOary of the Federal Convention of 1787. 101
fundamental and supreme law, and all laws contrary thereto
were by it declared to be of no force or eflEect. This is the germ
of onr American doctrine which makes all legislation and every
act void which is contrary to the constitution of the United
States. Thns in 1215, the fandamental personal rights of life,
liberty and property were secured by nnchangable law to all
the people of England.
2nd. Bnt these assertions of right were followed by the
daim of political power to secnre the right.
In the 34th year of Edwyd I. (A. D. 1306) for the first time
the Commons assembled in a separate body, as an independent
branch of Parliament Theretofore they had assembled with
the Nobility and Clergy, and been outvoted. Henceforth as
an independent body they gave assent to or withheld it from
I^islation, and especially in the enactment of tax laws, which
by the act ^' de tallagio concedendo " was declared by the Crown
to be in the Parliament By this great movement the people
asenmed j)ower to veto all proposed legislation by their inde-
p^dent action.
From this date, the political power was wedded to personal
right, and liberty was secured, and permanent despotism made
impossible. And out of this has come the dominating influence
of the House of Commons to-day in the British Government
Of course, no one will understand me as meaning, that Eng-
hfih liberty has been secure ever since Magna Charta. But
what I do mean to say is this, that as Magna Charta appealed
to Saxon Laws for the authority of its chapters, so in all after
history have British freemen appealed to Magna Charta for
their constitutional rights, and relied on the House of Commons
as their political power to uphold and defend them against the
prerogatives of hereditary authority. And adherence to their
constitution, as their hope of liberty, has given them a stable
government and well assured freedom. And I hold up this
great example to-day, to assure the young men of our country,
that our liberty can only be safe by our clinging to our great
eharter of freedom founded by our fathers one century ago.
Mr. Hallam in his Constitutional history of England declares
that at the beginning of the reign of Henry VII. (A. D. 1485)
five checks on royal power were firmly established. No tax
102 HUtory of the Federal ConvervUon of 1787. [Aug.,
but by consent of Commons: Ko law but by like consent:
No imprisonment but by warrant of judicial magistrate : No
trial but by jury ; and the complete responsibility of ministers
of the Crown to criminal and civil process, without exemption
because of the order of the Crown.
The most momentous event during the era of this reign
was the discovery of America. The 16th century which im-
mediately succeeded it, covers the monarchy of England under
the House of Tudor, and the rise and successful progress of the
Seformation in that kingdom. D^ite the arbitrary character
of Henry VIIL and his royal daughters, the spirit of popular
freedom ran high and its principles struck deep root into the
hearts of the Commons of England, and were asserted with
manly force in the Honse which represented them. This
spirit of civil liberty was intensified by religious enthusiasm.
The love of civil, and the fervid zeal for religious freedom,
combined to make the Hampdens and Cromwells of the suc-
ceeding century.
The 17th century opened with the end of the Tudor dynasty,
and the ascent to the throne of the fated House of Stuart.
By heredity this family imbibed the despotic sentiments of
their continental ancestry. It had no sympathy with, but
inherited antipathy to, dl the free institutions of England.
Alien in race, as in sentiment, the Stuarts were by inevitable
fate doomed to try the strength of the royal prerogative in its
deadly conflict with the freedom of the Anglo-Saxon people.
The comparative quiet in the reign of James I. was the calm
before the coming storm. Charles I., young, sincere, and brave,
was fitted to test the power of his prerogative, from which his
more timid father shrank.
Before the death of James, two colonies of English people
were planted in America ; the one at Jamestown in Virginia,
in May, 1607, the other at Plymouth Bock in Massachusetts, in
December, 1620. They brought with them the spirit of
British freedom, exalted in its courage by the bold temper
which inspires and is enhanced by adventurous enterprise. A
new continent, without fixed institutionfi, without king, nobil-
ity, or ecclesiastical authority, was open to the fresh- impress of
the sons of civilized life, who landed upon its shores. All the
1887.] History of the Federal Convention of 1787. 108
bonds of the old and established society of the mother coantrj
were loosened, and the colonial mind, free from the environ-
ment of ancient prejudices was prepared for an order of things
more natural and therefore more true. The scion of the an-
cient tree of liberty could better grow unchoked by the weeds
of privilege and prerogative, in the soil, and drinking in the
balmy air, of this virgin continent. As Lord Bacon has it,
"No tree is so good first set, as by transplanting."
Young and bold men — men tired of old habits, customs, and
thoughts, yearning to throw off the restraints of an ancient and
effete social order (as the religious reformation had shaken the
foundations of the ancient church), and to find full scope for
the enterprises of life, and to impress themselves upon a new
and unformed empire; these were the colonists that braved
the rock-bound coasts of New England, and plunged into the
untrodden wilderness of tide water Virginia. They panted to
be free, and could not be enslaved !
The history of each colony will show, that its people held
with a clear comprehension and vigorous grasp, all the funda-
mental principles of Magna Charta. A few facts will prove
thi&
In 1623, before James I. died, Virginia asserted her exclusive
power of taxation.* Massachusetts did the same in 1636 (the
very year that John Hampden resisted ship money) ; and so
with other colonies, f
My own State, Virginia, furnishes a striking illustration on
this point. When the Parliament of the Commonwealth of
England had absorbed all political power in the realm, a treaty
was made between it and the Colony of Virginia, dated March,
1651 — by which it was agreed, that the Virginia colonist was
as free as the English subject ; — that the Assembly of Virginia
should transact all her affairs ; that her people should have free
trade with all nations as the people of England had ; and that
taxes should not be imposed, nor forts be erected, nor garrisons
be maintained in Virginia, but by the consent of her Assem-
It is not surprising that Samuel Adams in May, 1764 and
♦ 1 Henn., Stat. L, 120. 1 1 Pitkin, 8^91.
% 1 Henn., Stat. 1., 868 at seq.
104 History of the Federal Oon/ventian of 1787. [Aug.,
Patrick Henry in May, 1765, denonnced taxation by Parlia-
ment in any Colony, without its consent, as tyranny and against
law. It was but a fresh assertion of a principle afi old as
Magna Charta, and the cornerstone of eyery Colonial Govern-
ment.
Nothing is more striking than ihiB personality which Anglo-
American liberty attaches to the right of property.
Property is a part of the man-right Attack upon property
is an assault on the man — and for this reason — his brain, his
physical and moral forces are all exerted in the transforma-
tion of natural objects into fitness for human use. The man
has expended these capacities, which are his own by Divine
gift, in the production of the thing which we call property.
It is a part of himself — a thing into which he has put a part
of himself — and to take it from him is to claim a right in that
part of himself, which has become a part of it Thus the
taking of property from a man has the badge of servitude in
it. To claim ownership in the fruit of his labor, is to claim
title to the laborer himself ; and his resistance to the seizure of
his property is only an assertion of his personal liberty as a
man.
It was a clear corollary from this principle that they who pay
should lay the taxes. This weds power with right. Thus
representation and taxation are correlatives. This is the cardi-
nal Canon of English and American liberty. It is the essence
of the right of property, that none shall tax or take it for pub-
lic use, but the owner, or those who have common interest with
him in the burden he bears and the public good to accrue from
the act. Power and Right must be and are thus combined.
The struggles of the English people during the 17th century
for Constitutional Monarchy resulted in its establishment in
1688-89. The Colonies were involved in this ; and succeeded
to all its benefits, as they sympathized in all its principles.
This brings me to the threshold of the American revolution.
Political principles are evolved from political experience.
As liberty finds its needs in its contest wiili power, it devises
means, and invents weapons of self-defence against the abuses
of Government The experiences of pre-Revolutionary Amer-
ican and English history had established certain well-defined
1887 ] Butory of the Federal Oanvention of 1787. 106
Canons of political seience which may be thus summarily
stated.
First — The freedom of the man from all yiolation of his
life, liberty, or property, except by his own consent or that of
those who have like right with him — ^that is, his peers.
Second — Taxation only by consent of himself and others
with like right through representation.
Third — The supremacy of certain fixed principles, to which
all government is subordinate. These principles, the settlement
of 1688-89 declared with memorable emphasis and in words
which echo— ch. 38 of Magna Oharta — ^that all the rights and
liberties thereby asserted and claimed were '^ the true, ancient,
and indubitable rights of the people of this kingdom."*
G^rge IJI, the first native bom British king of the House
of Hanover, ascended the throne in 1760. By a number of
acts of Parliament, stamp duties and other duties and taxes
were imposed upon the several Colonies, with a claim for Par-
liament to legislate for the Colonies " in all cases whatsoever."t
This bold claim of power summoned thirteen Colonies, here-
tofore separate bodies-politic under various forms of govern-
ment and each with its distinct relation to the parent kingdom,
to vindicate their menaced liberties by concerted councila
Nine of them in 1765 met and declared against the taxa-
tion of the Colonies " but by their respective legislatures.":!:
Several of the Colonies, if not all, did the same by separate
action.
But in May, 1774, the members of the Virginia House of
Bargessee,— dissolved for its bold and defiant tone, by Lord
Dunmore, the Governor and Vicegerent of George III., —
met and recommended that deputies be appointed ^' from the
several Colonies " to meet in '' General Congress at such place
aimually,^' etc, '^to deliberate on those general measures which
the anited interests of America may from time to time require."
Massachusetts, June 17, 1774, agreed to this " meeting of com-
mittees from the several Colonies to determine upon wise meas-
♦lWm,&M.8t., S, C. 8.
t4 Geo. m., ch. 15, 84 ; 6 Geo. III., ch. 25 ; 6 Geo. IH., ch. 52 ; 7 Geo.
m., ch. 41-46 ; 8 Geo. in., ch. 22 ; 12 Geo. m., ch. 24.
1 1 Pitkin, 442>6.
106 History of the Federal Convention of 1787. [Aug.,
ures to be recommended to all the colonies."* Other OolonieB
agreed and on the 5th day of September, 1774, the first Conti-
nental Congress of the several Colonies assembled at the Car*
penters' Hall in Philadelphia. John and Samuel Adams,
Boger Sherman, John Jay, Oeorge Washington, and Patrick
Henry, John and Edward Rutledge, with others, in all about
fifty members, were there in that first Congress of the young
commonwealths of America. Peyton Randolph, of Vii^nia,
was unanimously elected President. This consulting and ad-
vising bodyt on the 14th of October, 1774, made a declaration
of rights, which echoes the bold and defiant tone of the Bill
and Declaration of Rights by the Parliament in 1688-89, many
of the paragraphs of which are copied in the Declaration of
Congres&
An epitome of this authoritative declaration is all I can
present.
It declares the equal right of the Colonists with the native
subjects of England, to life, liberty, and property, which they
have ceded to no sovereign power the right to dispose of with-
out their consent They claim the common law as their herit-
age, and especially the right of jnry trial, and the right of pe-
tition for redress of grievances. They deny the power to keep
a standing army in any Colony without the consent of its
legislature.
^^ All and each of which, the aforesaid deputies, in behalf of
themselves and their constituents, do claim, demand, and insist
on as their indubitable rights and liberties ; which cannot be
legally taken from them, altered or abridged by any power
whatever, without their own consent by their representatives
in their several provincial legislatures."
I have purposely omitted the fourth resolution of the series
from this epitome because of its special importance.
It is in these words :
^'Beaolved 4, That the foundation of English Uberty, and of all free
government, is a right in the people to participate in their legislative
council; and as the EngUsh coloniBts are not represented, and from
their local and other circumstances, cannot properly be represented in
the British Parliament, they are entitled to a free and exclusive power
♦Amer. Arch., 4th series, vol. i, 860-1, 421-2.
t See their credentials, 1 Journal of Ck>ng., 4-10.
1887.] History of the Federal Convention of 1787. 107
of legislation in their several provincial legialaturea, where their right
of representation can alone be preserved, in all cases of taxation and
intemal polity, subject only to the negative of their sovereign, in such
manner as has been heretofore used and accustomed. But, from the
necessity of the case, and a regard to the mutual interest of both coun-
tries, we cheerfully consent to the operation of such acts of the British
Fluriiament, as are bonajide, restrained to the regulation of our external
commence, for the purpose of securing the commercial advantages of
the whole empire to the mother country, and the commercial benefits
of its respective members; excluding every idea of taxation intemal or
external, for raising a revenue on the subjects in America, without
their consent."
Several points of great importance must here be noted in
this firat declaration of rights by the Congress of the American
Colonies. All the rights asserted are claimed to be beyond any
power whatever except that of the legislature of each Colony.
Parliament, king, congress, any and every other power what-
ever was impotent to touch the rights of any Colony, which
were nnder the exclusive guardianship of its own legislature.
But this is made more clear by the 4th resolution. "A
free and exclusive power of legislation " is claimed for the
"several provincial legislatures, where their right o^ repre-
sentation can alone be preserved in all cases of taxation and
intemal polity." Intemal polity ! This is the first use of
these memorable words in our history. They mean domestic
and home concerns I But look further. This resolution con-
cedes to ^Parliament, " the regulation of external commerce,"
for the advantage of the whole, and for the benefit of the
different members of the empire.
This hifitoric distinction between extemal and intemal polity
lies at the root of our Federal Constitution.
But the resolution presents another idea of great conse-
quence. It asserts the need of political power for the people
to participate in their legislative council, as the foundation of
English liberty, and that the colonists are not represented in
the British Parliament, and " from their local and other ci/T"
cumstancesy cannot properly be represented " in it
In this phraseology we meet for the first time with the
modifications which a new experience demanded in the old
principle of representation.
In matters of intemal polity, they assert that their right of
108 History of the Federal Oon/omtian of 1787. [Aug.,
repreBentation can alone be preserved in their local legislatures,
and that they cannot be properly represented in Parliament.
In 1S06, as we have seen, the Commons withdrew from the
nobility and clergy, with whom they had sat in one body, that
in a separate body they might express an independent voice,
not to be suppressed by the votes of the majority, alien in
caste, and adverse in right They could not be properly repre-
sented in the one body. In like manner, had the Colonists
sent representatives to Parliament, they would have been pres-
ent only to be outvoted by the British majority— strangers
in interest and adverse in right. In form, they might have
been represented. In substance, their rights would have been
controlled by an alien and antagonistic majority. As to im-
perial affairs, it might be otherwise. As to internal i>olity,
colonial representation would have been a delusive snare, by
which the internal polity of the Colony would have been really
governed by aliens in fact and enemies in interest.
This Colonial representation in Parliament, by tradition, was
suggested in the beginning of the Revolution, by the British
Ministry, but was scouted as inadmissible by the sagacious
American statesmen.
Here then we meet this American idea, local legislatures for
local and internal polity, and for the general affairs of a com-
mon empire, a possible representation of all its parts in a com-
mon Parliament.
One other distinction we find here made, which we will
meet hereafter, between the power to regulate commerce, and
the power of taxation. The one was conceded to the British
Parliament as a power for an imperial purpose, the other was
wholly denied, as a reserved power to the colony over its
internal polity.
It is needless to trace the progress of the Eevolution during
the existence of the purely voluntary union between the States
and of the impotent government, whose powers were held at
the will of the States, and whose efforts must have failed but
for the patriotism of the people and the aid of our great
foreign ally.
The Articles of Confederation, proposed by the Continental
Congress in November, 1777, did not go into operation until
1887.] HUtary qf the Federal OanverUian qf 1787. 109
Maidi 1, 1781, when finally ratified by Maryland. From that
day we date the constitational union of the thirteen original
Statee.
The jealoney in each colony of any other government than
its own was begotten of the experience which had precipitated
the Revolution. Each Colony had substantially conceded, that
Parliament might properly legislate for the general welfare of
the empire of which each was a part. The Colony did not
even make a point of its representation in the Parliament, as
to matters which concerned the whole empire. As to these, it
was content that as the welfare of all was the interest of all,
the power might safely be vested in the general council, acting
for the general welfare of all and the common defence of each
and every part.
But when the local interests of each Colony, when its inter-
nal polity, its home rights were to be regulated, its people felt
that thefie interests and rights, and this internal polity could
only be safe when under the exclusive control of the political
power which represented the people of the colony, who held
these interests and rights and were concerned in this polity.
This was self-government. The admission of any other influ-
ence was to allow their rights to be controlled by aliens. This
ezclufiive power was wedded to the personal right. If any
alien to the right was to participate, j>ro tantOj it divorced
political power from personal right, destroyed real self -govern-
ment, and subjected personal and home right to the influence
and government of real aliens.
In vain did British sophistry plead that the English voter
was a fellow subject of the Colonist, and not an alien. The
Colonist replied ^^qttaid hoc: as to my home interest, my
home rif^ht, my internal polity, you know nothing and care
leas, your interest is not mine, nay, may be antagonistic to
mine, and to allow you an equal voice with me, or worse, a
major voice to mine in your Parliament, would be to give up
my personal liberty to the control of real aliens, and make my
condition a servitude to your masterhood.''
And hence, when some suggested colonial representation in
Parliament, the &thers answered that it was a delusion and a
aoare to subject internal polity to a Parliament of 500 mem-
110 History of the Federal Convention of 1787. [Aug.,
bers in which the Colonies would have 50 and England 450
votes I The hands which wield the power must be the hands
that hold the interest ; home rule is essential to home liberty,
and the safety of home rights, and the integrity of home
polity I The home rule they needed was a real, not a formal
representation, an absolute authority and not a barren sceptre.
If the political science wrought out by Anglo-American ex-
perience means anything, it means this : That liberty is only
safe in its own hands, and can only be preserved under self-
government Without this, liberty must die ; under it, liberty
will live, or can only perish by political suicide 1
I have dwelt thus long upon this point, because a thorough
comprehension of it is essential to the understanding of the
history we are examining.
We shall see the ear- marks of this principle in the articles of
confederation, in which it prevailed to such a degree as to
emasculate the government then created, and to endanger the
independence won by the patriotic valor of the people of the
states. These articles may be briefly summarized :
They constituted "a Confederacy between" the thirteen
States, styled "The United States of America," in which
"each state retained its sovereignty, freedom, and indepen-
dence, and every power, jurisdiction, and right, which is not
by this confederation expressly delegated to the United States
in Congress assembled." Each state in Congress had one vote,
and was bound to maintain its own delegate.*
Congress had power of peace and war ; to make treaties sub-
ject to the States' power to impose duties in certain cases ; to
build and equip navies ; to establish postal service ; to regulate
trade with Indians ; to coin money ; to borrow money ; to emit
bills of credit ; and to establish a judicial authority as to cap-
tures, piracy, and certain controversies between the states, and
some other less important powers.
The chief of these powers. Congress could only exercise on
a vote of nine states, a fraction over a two-thirds vote of a full
House. Under this, if the four smallest states objected, it
would require nine-tenths of the whole population to do any-
thing, and if nine of the smallest states voted for a measure, it
would pass by a minority of the whole population.
* Articles 1, 2, and 5.
1887J HUtory of the Federal ConverUion of 1787. Ill
This was a large delegation of political powers, bat those not
delegated were so essential to the efficient exercise of those
granted as' to make the government pitiably feeble lind impo-
tent. It conld not raise an army bat throngh a demand on the
states for their qaota of men, proportioned to its number of
white inhabitants. It could not levy a tax or duty of any kind.
It could ask the states for soldiers and for money to fill its
treasury, but could not enlist a soldier or raise a dollar except by
the voluntary act of the several states. It could not regulate
commerce with foreign nations or among the states. As it had
no original power, it could exercise only that which the states
delegated to it, and could only exercise these at the will of the
states, whose refusal it could not meet by coercion, or punish
by war. In consequence, again and again, its will was the vic-
tim of political paralysis. On the other hand, each of the
states had power to nullify the will of the Confederate govern-
ment, to regulate its own commerce with foreign nations and
with its sister states, to lay duties on imports and exports, to
coin money, to emit paper currency, and to impair the obliga-
tions of contract&
One feature of the system remains to be mentioned. It was
ratified by the legislatores of the states, and was binding on
none until all had ratified.
The constitutions of the states had been adopted by the
people of each in convention, by the sovereignty of the body-
politia The articles of Confederation were ratified by the
legislatures, which were the delegated agents of the sovereign
people of each state. And the question had been mooted,
whether the legislative act of ratification might not be annulled
by a repealing act of the same body. No act of the legis-
lature could avail against the constitution of the state, as the
latter was the supreme act of the sovereign to which any
legislative act was subordinate The supremacy of these con-
stitutions had been recognized in the state courts over all acts
of all departments of the government ; that is, the complete
subordination of the delegated to the delegating authority ; of
the government in all its acts to the constitution of the sover-
eign people.* #
* C. W. TB. Caton, 4 Call. R. 5 (1783), see also Kemper vs. Hawkins,
Va. cases. 1 Martiii, N. C. Rep., 48. 2 Dallas 808^10, 1, 2. 1 Bay, 252.
ICarbniy vs. Ifadison, 1 Cranch 187.
112 History of the Federal Convention of 1787. [Aug^
This may be regarded as the most splendid of the contribu-
tions to political science by American statesmanshipy and has
met with* high praise elsewhere by illustrious writers on goT-
emment.*
Let us now see how the evils experienced from the Confed-
eration ripened public opinion for the convention of 1787.
As early as Angast, 1780, before the final ratification of the
articles of Confederation, New England declared for a more
solid and permanent Union and for '^ a Congress competent
for the government of all those common and national affairs
which do not nor can come within the jurisdiction of the
particular states." These states with New York met at Hart-
ford in November, 1780, and proposed that Congress have
power to lay taxes and duties, in order to an independent
revenue, to pay the debt, etc. These proceedings were sent to
Congress, and Congress proprosed to the states, Feb. 3, 1781,
to vest Congress with power to lay a five per cent, duty on
certain imports.
In 1782, New York invited Congress to recommend to each
state to adopt a measure for a general convention, etc.
On the 18th of April, 1783, after peace was virtually
declared. Congress upon full debate and consideration, pro-
posed that the states should invest it with power to levy certain
rates of duties, for the sole purpose of paying principal and
interest of the public debt, and provide for a further revenue
to be furnished by the states on a fixed quota for twenty-five
years ; no state to be bound by its consent to this proposal until
all assented. The debt was estimated at $42,000,000.
Yiiginia (Dec 3, 1783), in her l^slature dechired unani-
mously in favor of giving Congress power to counteract foreign
restrictions on American commerce; which declaration was
sent to Congress and the states. This action by Yirginia was
no doubt due to the British order in council (July 2, 1783),
which restrained all commerce between American ports and
the British West Indies to British bottoma The same restric-
tions existed under acts of Parliament (the first of which as to
foreign trade, was passed as early as the reign of Eichard 11.),
* 8 Brougham Philosophy, 886-8. 1 De Tocqueville, Democracy in
America, C. 6.
1887.] HiHory of the Federal Convention of 1787. 113
d& to trade between Great Britain and the United States.
Congress (Apr. 80, 1784) thereupon proposed to the states to
give it power for fifteen years upon a vote of nine states to
counteract by prohibitory regulations these foreign restrictive
measures against American shipping.
Mr. Jefierson, whose report in 1783 in Congress, looked
rather to the freedom of navigation and commerce from all
restraints, and to many reforms in respect to commerce in time
of war (many of which he attributes to the suggestions of Dr.
Franklin), puts this subject in a very terse form in a letter of
Feb. 8, 1786, to Mr. Madison : " The politics of Europe," says
he, "render it indispensably necessary, that with respect to
every thing external, we be one nation only, firmly hooped
together. Interior government is what each state should keep
to itself."
And in a letter to the same, December 16, 1786, he says :
" To make us one nation as to foreign concerns, and keep us
distinct in domestic ones, gives the outline of the proper divis-
ion of power between the general and particular Governments."
And these views were consonant with the instructions drafted
by him for our foreign ambassadors in 1784, in which he, as
to treaties with foreign nations, described " the United States
as one nation."
The letters of John Adams, Hamilton, Madison, and others
of that period, are of like character — all showing the march of
public opinion towards a remedy for the felt evils of a lack of
Federal power to raise its own revenues — and towards counter-
vailing by legislation the political war of foreign nations on
our commerce and our navigation.
Perhaps the most influential, as it was a most powerful
statement of the need of a new Constitution, is found in the
letter of George Washington after peace was declared, but
before his resignation of his sword to the people for whose
indep^idence it had been drawn, and which he sheathed only
when their liberties were secured. It is dated in June, 1783.
He published it as " his legacy " to his country.
Varions proposals were made from time to time by the
States for the increase of Federal powers, but they came to
nothing except as means by which public opinion ripened into
action.
vol.. XI. 8
114 History of ths Federal Convention of 1787. [Aug,,
Under the broad and comprehensiye views of Waahington,
measures were projected between Maryland and Virginia for
uniting the waters of the James Eiver and of the Potomac
with those of the Ohio, and also for establishing common
regulations between those States for the commerce of the Po-
tomac and Chesapeake Bay.
In order to do this a meeting of Commissioners of those
States was arranged for March 28, 1786, at Mt. Vernon — the
home of Washington. The Commissioners met at that date,
and having perfected their scheme for mutual benefit afi to the
matters confided to them, the report of this joint commission
was laid before their respective legislatures. By way of enlarg-
ing the policy adopted between these two States, Madison
moved in the Virginia legislature for power to be given to Con-
gress over the trade of the Union. It met with opposition and
was laid over for a time. But Maryland, in announcing to
Virginia its adhesion to the compact agreed upon by the joint
commission, proposed that Commissioners from all the States
should meet in convention to regulate American commerce.
Mr. Madison, taking advantage of this, proposed the resolu-
tion (January 21, 1786), which really initiated the effective
movement for a Federal Convention.
It appointed Commissioners to meet others to be appointed
by all the other States, to take into consideration the trade of
the United States, and to report an act, which when unani-
mously ratified by all the States, will enable Congress to adopt
uniform regulations for the same. Other States acceded to this
proposal, and a convention met at Annapolis, September 11,
1786, of five States — ^New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania,
Delaware, and Virginia.
New Jersey, in her response to the overture of Virginia for
this Convention, had made an important addition to the pur-
poses of the Convention to be held at Annapolis, which seems
to have been suggested by another movement. Mr. Charles
Pinkney of South Carolina, as one of a committee sent by
Congress to the legislature of New Jersey, on the 13th of
March, 1786, had urged upon that body the calling of a con-
vention for " increasing the powers of the Federal Government
and rendering it more adequate for the ends for which it was
instituted."*
♦ Bancroft History C. U. S., 356-7.
1887.] EiMory of the Federal Convention of 1787. 115
New Jersey thereupon empowered her commissioners to the
convention at Annapolis to confer not only as to a uniform sys-
tem in commercial regulation but as to ^^ other important mat-
iere^^ * * so as to " enable the United States in Congress
assembled effectually to provide for the exigencies of the
Union."
This was an important advance upon the Virginia proposi-
tion, but as only five States attended at Annapolis, the Oonven-
tioD (September 14, 1786) adjourned after issuing an address,
drawn by Hamilton and signed by John Dickinson, its vener-
able president.
In that address, adverting to the suggestions of New Jersey,
the convention proposed to their constituent States to obtain
the concurrence of the other States to meet in Philadelphia on
the second Monday in May, 1787, to take into consideration and
devise further measures ^^to render the Constitution of the
Federal Government adequate to the exigencies of the Union,"
etc
Congress failed to act promptly upon this proposition, and
the movement halted. But early in November, 1786, Virginia,
on Madison's motion, unanimoudy passed the act for appoint-
mg commissioners to the Convention at Philadelphia, for the
purpoees named by the Annapolis convention, except that
the measures proposed ^' should be confirmed by the several
States," and not by their legislatures.
Other States followed in accord with this action, and Con-
gress on the 21st of February, 1787, basing its action on the
power of amendment of the Articles of Confederation pro-
vided for by them, declared it expedient in its opinion that the
Convention should be held '^ for the sole and express purpose
of revising " said Articles, &c.
A number of members met at the State house in Philadel-
phia on the 14th of May, 1787, but a majority of States not
being represented, they adjourned from day to day until the
25th of May, when nine States were present. Connecticut
appeared on the 29th, Maryland on the 2d of June, and New
flampehire not until July 23d. This made twelve States.
Rhode Island never attended ; New York never gave a vote in
the Convention after July 10th, though Mr. Hamilton was
116 History of the Federal Convention of 1787. [Aug.
present and signed the Constitution, but did not cast the vote
of the State, as the majority of the delegation, Yates and Lan-
sing, had withdrawn. There were never more than eleven
States present at any session — of whom six (counting Delaware),
were Southern, and five were Northern States.
The master minds of the New World were there, "Washing-
ton and Franklin, Hamilton and Madison, Mason and King,
Ellsworth and Rutledge, the Pinkneys and the Morrises, Ran-
dolph and Gerry, Roger Sherman and Luther Martin, William
Patterson and John Dickinson, Dr. Johnson and Davie, James
Wilson and Butler, Langdon and Williamson, Breerly and Blair,
Wythe and Gorham, Livingston and Read, Baldwin and Bed-
ford, and others.
They came together with a full sense of the political wants
of the era, and of the various remedies proposed ; impressed
with the need for enlarged power, but of the equally great
need of securing the liberty of the people of the States.
How shall a union of all be formed adequate to the defense
of each, and the well-being of the general interests, which will
yet conserve the internal policy, interests, and rights of the
separate States and the liberty of their people? How can
the diverse interests of the States, as units in this Federal
empire, be so represented in the distribution of political author-
ity, that power and liberty be not divorced ? What power
shall the States grant so as not to endanger the rights essential
to be reserved in order to the security of the liberty of the
people? Revolution had cut the cords which bound these
young Republics to the thoughts and political philosophy of the
old world. On the blank and unsoiled page of American
polity these men were to write the words and outline the chart
of Continental destiny, of which their posterity a century
afterwards would read the history !
To destroy the old system, to upheave the ancient founda-
tions had been a mighty but successful work. But to con-
struct a new political edifice on a solid corner stone of consti-
tutional wisdom, this was the herculean labor of our fathers a
hundred years ago.
They were too wise to attempt a new order of things. They
proposed to amend the old order and give it automatic efficiency ;
1887.] History of the Federal Convention of 1787. 117
to increase the f anctions of the old TTnion of States, but not
to change radically its organism, to lay its foundations upon the
will of sovereign peoples and not on the caprice of their ephem-
eral legislatures; to make the many one as to all matters
where their interests and relations and rights were one, but to
leave them separate and many, where polity, right, and interest
were many and distinct. To grant power to all as to a right in
which all had the same interest, was to wed power to right,
which is the security of liberty ; to reserve power to each as to
a right which was peculiar to itself, and as to which all others
were strangers, was to prevent the divorce of power from
right, which is the peril of freedom.
The first fact to which I call your attention is that this is a
convention of staieft. All votes are by states, and seven
etates make a quorum.
Two leading and rival schemes were presented to the con-
vention ; the one, the Virginia plan, really matured if not
originated by Madison, but introduced and advocated with
great ability, by Edmund Eandolph, May 29th, 1787 ; and the
other by Judge Patterson, of New Jersey, June 15th. Besides
these, a plan in form and fullness of detail more like the in-
strument finally adopted than any other, was proposed by
young Charles Pinkney, of South Carolina, on the same day
that Mr. Bandolph presented his proposition. Whether the
draft found in the Journal of the Federal Convention and in
Mr. Madison's debates, be precisely the same as that presented
by Mr. Pinkney may well be doubted.* It most have been
very much the same. Mr. Hamilton also suggested a plan
June 18th which was so radically centralizing and contrary to
the popidar views which prevailed of government in its fear
tures, that it was neither referred nor voted on. But the votes
of the convention were taken chiefly on the plans of Mr.
Randolph and Mr. Patterson.
The debate on the Patterson plan lasted three days, during
which Lansing and Patterson for and Wilson, Randolph,
Hamilton, and Madison against the scheme were heard.
The Patterson scheme involved two main propositions dis-
tinct from the Randolph, scheme, which had been reported
* See Appendix, No. 2, 8, Mad. Paper V.
118 History of the Federal Gon/vention of 1787. [Aug.,
June 13th, from the committee of the whole, to the conven-
tion. The Patterson plan proposed in substance :
1st. A single house of co-equal states, as under the confed-
eration, with power of custom duties and taxes by requisitions.
2d. To make in some respects the efficient operation of
federal acts dependent on state action, with a power of armed
coercion by the federal authority against recusant statea
The first of these gave the absolute control of the whole gov-
ernment as to taxation and other matters, to a majority of
states, which might be only one-fourth of the whole popula-
tion. This will be more properly considered hereafter.
The last gave to Congress the power to will but not the
power to execute its purposes, except through the states, and
with power to coerce them by armed forca This proposaf to
use force was strongly condemned, as being in fact war between
the states and thus destructive of the Union ; and when pro-
posed as part of the Virginia scheme, it had been postponed
by the unanimous vote of the convention.*
The Patterson plan was substantially rejected, June 19th, by
seven states to three (Massachusetts, Connecticut, Pennsyl-
vania, Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, and Georgia
against it and New York, New Jersey, and Delaware for it).
I will now consider the Virginia scheme.
Taking the census of 1790 as the measure of relative popu-
lation, the four largest states, Massachusetts, Virginia, Penn-
sylvania, and North Carolina would have had a dear majority
over the other nine, on a popular basis of representation. On
the basis of states, seven small states with about 1,000,000 of
population would have ruled the other six with nearly 3,000,000.
This state of things produced the first conflict in the con-
vention, and was provoked by one of the resolutions in the
Virginia scheme, which in the form they assumed under the ac-
tion of the committee of the whole, consisted of nineteen
resolutions.
The constitution of the legislative department was first
considered.
On June 20th, Ellsworth, of Connecticut, a Yale man,
moved to amend the first resolution, in which it was proposed,
*2 Madison Papers, 761.
1887.] EUt&ry of the Federal Cofwention of 178T. 119
^'That a national government be established," by striking out
the word ^'national," so that it would read ^Hhe govern-
ment of the United States ;" which passed unanimously.*
The seoond resolution '^ That the national legislature con-
sist of two branches," being amended by striking out the word
^national," passed.t The word '^ national " was subsequently
struck oat of the whole plan, wherever it occurred.
As long afi one house only was provided for, the conflict
(you will observe) between the basis of representation on the
states, or on population, was irreconcilable. This adoption of
the bi-cameral plan was therefore one step in the direction of
the final compromise.
The next step was to elect the first branch of the legislature
by the people, which did not necessarily involve the non-equal-
ity of the states in that brancL:|: It only meant, that the
people not the legislature of the state should be represented
in that branch.
The next step was to elect the second branch by the state
legislatures. This did not involve necessarily the question
of equality of the states ; but it involved the dependence of
the government of the United States on the co-existence of the
state legislatures. Both must exist; and the United States
government, must die, if the state legislatures ceased to be.
This pa8sed.§
The 6th resolution, giving to each branch the power of
originating acts, passed unamimously.f
The 6th was postponed to take up the 7th and 8th.
These presented the battle-ground. The 7th resolution de-
clared, that the right of sufib^e in the first branch should not
be according to the rule of the articles of confederation ; that
is, the equal votes of the states. The debate was opened on the
27th of June, by Luther Martin of Maryland, in favor of state
equality.
On the 28th of June (whose centennial anniversary we
* Jonmal of Fed. Conv., 188-9.
t Journal of Fed. Ck>nv., 14f. Ayes 7; Nays 8; N. Y., N. J. and Dela-
ware. Maryland divided.
X Journal of Fed. Conv., 141. Ayes, 9; Nays, N. J. Maryland divided.
§ Journal of Fed. Conv., 147. Ayes 9 ; Nays 2 ; Penn. and Va.
1 Journal of Fed. Conv., 168.
120 History of the Federal Conventimi of 1787. [Aug.,
celebrate tcniay) Mr. Martin continued his speech. Madison
followed in opposition to state equality, in the first branch. He
maintained that state equality as to taxation especially, would
give to seven states, with one fourth of the whole population,
power over three-fourths. He argued that under the articles
of confederation, nine states controlled Congress, not seven /
and that the large states protected themselves by their reserved
power to refuse to submit to any unjust action of a majority of
Congress ; a power they would no longer have under the Vir-
ginia plan proposed by Governor Randolph.
Roger Sherman struck the key-note. " The question is, how
the rights of the states may be most effectually guarded?"
Things had come to a crisis. Both parties spoke of main-
taining their respective positions without concession. Dr.
Franklin said he believed that "God governs in the
affairs of men !" He said if a sparrow does not fall without
God's notice, how can a government rise without His aid. He
believed, that " except the Lord build the house, they labor in
vain who build it !" He moved to open the daily sessions of
the convention with prayer for the Divine direction. Sherman
seconded it. It was feared by many, that such action would
alarm the public. The motion was not voted on.
On the next day (June 29th) the debate was opened by Dr.
Johnson, of Connecticut. He referred to what George Mason
had said on the 7th and 26th of June, and said, he " appears
to have looked to the bottom of this matter." Mason had said
that the state governments ought to have the power of self-
defence, as essential to the system, and this could be done by
allowing them to appoint the second branch, thus making them a
constituent part of the system. Dr. Johnson said : " In one
branch the people ought to be represented, in the other, the
States." Ellsworth "did not despair. He still trusted that
some good plan of government would be devised and adopted."
After further debate, the rule of equality for the first branch
was rejected. (Four states against six states and one divided.)
Ellsworth then proposed " that the rule of suffrage in the
second branch be the same with that established by the articles
of confederation " — that is the states to have equality of votes.
He sustained it in a speech of great force. He said the first
1887.] History of the Federal Convention of 1787. 121
branch being based on population would secure the large states
a^i^ainst the small His motion would secure the small against
the large states. He hoped for compromise on this middle-
ground. If not, except Massachusetts all the Kew England
states would reject the schema In a later speech, he said, all
that either party should desire was security against the power
of the other. His compromise secured this to both.
Madison and Wilson strongly opposed it. Dr. Franklin
quaintly said, '* When a broad table is to be made and the
edges of the planks do not fit, the joiner takes a little from
both, and makes a good joint."
In a later speech, Ellsworth said, that " he wanted domestic
happiness as well as general security. The national govern-
ment could not descend to the local objects on which this
depended. It could only embrace objects of a general nature.
It cannot know my wants or relieve my distress. I turn my
eyes therefore for the preservation of my rights to the state
governments on which my happiness depends, as a new born
infant depends on its mother for nourishment.*' The vote
was taken and Ellsworth's motion for state equality in the
second branch was lost by a tie vote.
A motion was made for a committee of one from each state
on the question. After warm debate it was carried (July 2,
1787), and an adjournment was agreed to until after the cele-
bration of the Fourth of July. The committee elected by bal-
lot was very favorable to the equal vote of the states. Dr.
Franklin in that committee moved for population as the
basis of representation in the first branch, with the power to
originate money, bills, and for the equality of states in the
second branch. This had been Boger Sherman's suggestion
on the 11th of June, when it was rejected by a vote of five
states to six states.
The vote was finally taken July 16th, and resulted in the
adoption of the compromise — ayes, Connecticut, New Jersey,
Delaware, Maryland, North Carolina, five states — ^nays, Penn-
sylvania, Virginia, South Carolina and Georgia, four states,
Maj^achusetts divided.
Thus this great conflict was settled finally. It protected a
majority of the whole population as to burdens and taxes from
122 History of the Federal Cofivention of 1787. [Aug.,
the rale of a minority, and protected the states as such from
the domination of a numerical majority. This conserved state
power by state representation, but so as to secure men in their
equal rights of property against an oligarchy through the ex-
clusive power of the small states over the large ones. This is
a splendid example of wedding power to right. Power in one
branch is given to population in order to the security of the
man in his personal liberty, and power to the states as such, in
the other branch for the security of the states as free common-
wealths. By requiring all law to have the assent of both
branches, the legislative department was founded on the phil-
osophic and practical principle of the '^ concurrent majorities "
of two conflicting authorities, in order to protect the right
represented by each, from the adverse action of the other.
This provision for the equal vote of the states, in the Senate
was clinched by the motion Sept. 15th, " that no state without
its consent shall be deprived of its equsl suffrage in the Senate,"
which was unanimously adopted.*
In connection with this vital question of the distribution of
political power, there arose another which it is necessary now
to consider. As to the first branch (House of BepresentativcB)
it had been agreed, that its members should " be elected by
the people of the several states," by a vote of nine states to
one, another being divided. Mr. Randolph's original proposal
had left this question open by proposing to base representation
on the quotas of contribution, or on the number of free inhabi-
tants, as should be deemed best in. various cases.
This had been changed to the ratio proposed by Congreee
under the articles of confederation, April 18th, 1788, for con-
tributions by the states to the federal treasury, that is on the
basis of all free persons and three-fifths of slaves, by a vote of
nine states to two. And it had been reported as a part of the
compromise proposed on the 5th of July, already referred to,
of which the equal vote of states in the Senate was a part.
To this there was added on the 9th of July, by a committee
to which that part of the compromise was referred, a distribu-
tion of representatives between the states at the outset of the
government, and a provision for changes proper to be there-
after made upon a periodical census.
* 8 Mad. papers 1602^.
1887.] History of the Federal Convention of 1T87. 128
George Mason (on the 11th of July) stated, that according
to the then population, the northern states would have a
majority in the first branch. But, he said, as this condition
might change, and the western states might be more populous
than the Atlantic states, this changed condition of population
should be provided for, by a census from time to time. Madi-
son said population was tending from the northern states to
the South and West.
The proposition for a periodical census for the reappor-
tionment of representation, passed six states to four states.
Whether slaves should be rated in representation, and whether
representation should be based on wealth or free population,
was then very fully discussed.
Mr. Gouvemeur Morris, on the 12th of July, moved that
direct taxation shall be in proportion to representation. This
brou^t the convention to the point that taxing and represent-
ing slaves should be in the same proportion, if it were true
that representation and taxation were correlatives, which
seemed to be conceded. After many votes and much debate,
the compromise was adopted, proportioning direct taxation to
representation and basing both on white population and three-
fifths of slaves, and requiring a census every ten years ; by a
vote of six states to two and two divided, Connecticut voting
for it. This matter had been much debated in the Congress of
the confederation, as well as in the convention, upon the point,
that if the basis of representation was numbers, all slaves as
men, should be counted, but if slaves were property and not
men, they should not be. Such debate was a play upon words,
and was put aside for a compromise on the basis of common
sense and justice.
These several propositions having been voted on, the whole
report including the organization of the two branches^ and the
origination of money bills in the first branch, came up for final
action on the 14th of July.
The battle was re-opened. Madison said, the true antagonism
in the nnion would not be between the large and small states,
but between the northern and southern states. He said,
^ The institution of slavery, and its consequences, formed the
line of discrimination." He said equality in the Senate gave
124 History of the Federal Convention of 178Y. [Aug.,
eight to the North and five to the South, and while in the
House, the North would outnumber the South, yet not in the
same degree, " and every day would tend to an equilibrium."
Mr. Madison counted Delaware as a northern state. If
counted with the South, the proportion in the Senate would be
seven northern and six southern states.
In truth it seems to have been the opinion of many mem-
bers North and South, that population would ultimately pre-
ponderate in the South, and that while the North would hold
the Senate, the South would ultimately hold the Housa It
was a great mistake.
On the 16th of July, the whole report as amended was
adopted. Connecticut, New Jersey, Delaware, Maryland,
North Carolina, 5 ayes — Pennsylvania, Virginia, South Caro-
lina and Georgia, 4 nays — Massachussetts divided.
It may be well now to follow the action of the convention
on this delicate question to its end. The committee of detail
to which was referred these Virginia resolutions as amended
and finally adopted by the convention, and the plans of Mr.
Charles Pinkney and Mr. Patterson, consisted of Messrs. Rut-
ledge, Randolph, Gorham, Ellsworth, and WiUon.
On the 6th of August they reported as Art. 7, Sections 4,
5 and 6, a prohibition of tax on exports — a prohibition of all
interference with the slave trade ; the requirement that capita-
tion taxes be in proportion to the census population ; arid the
requirement of a two-thirds vote to pass a navigation act.
The prohibition of tax on exports was voted on August SJlst
— 7 ayes, 4 nays. The question of slave trade was then
debated. Rutledge said that North and South Carolina and
Georgia would not give it up. Ellsworth said, "Let every
State import what it pleases ; the morality or wisdom of slavei^
are considerations belonging to the States themselves." " Let us
not intermeddle." Gouvemeur Morris wished the whole subject
committed, with the question of export tax and navigation.
*' These things," said he, " may form a bargain between the
northern and southern States." Sherman added, " It was
better to let the southern States import slaves, if they made it
a sine qua non^ than to part with them." Mason denounced
the slave trade with eloquent emphasis. The questions were
1887.] History of the Federal Convention of 1787. 125
referred to a committee of eleven. On the 24th of August
the report was made to the effect that the slave trade should
not be prohibited prior to 1800, but might be subject to duty ;
the capitation clause to remain ; and the clause requiring a
two-thirds vote on navigation laws to be stricken out. The
leport was called up on the 25th of August. General C. C.
Knkney proposed to insert 1808 for 1800, as the year of limi-
tation on the slave trade. Gorham (Massachusetts) seconded
the motion. It was carried, — New Hampshire, Massachusetts,
Connecticut, Maryland, North Carolina, South Carolina,
Georgia, 7 ayes ; New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Delaware, Vir-
ginia, 4 nay&
The capitation tax clause was agreed to nem, con. The navi-
gation clause was postponed, but was called up on the 29th of
August. Mr. Charles Pinkney renewed the proposition requir-
ing a two thirds vote for the regulation of commerce. General
C. C. Pinkney opposed it, in view of the liberal conduct of New
England on the slave trade question. Butler and Eutledge, of
South Carolina, did the same. The motion was rejected, —
ayes, 4 ; nays, 7. The* report striking out the clause requiring
a vote of two-thirds for a navigation act was then adopted 7iem.
con. Butler then moved at once the fugitive slave clause,
which was agreed to nem. eon.
This is the history of the reconciliation of the differences
between the large and small states, the free and slave states —
the agricultural and commercial states.
It may be interesting in a word to state the relations of the
etates as to these questions at that time. Taking the census
of 1790, the following facts are shown :
POPULATION.
New Hampshire 141,885
Massachusetts (Maine included) 475, 827
Rhode Island 68,825
Connecticut 287,946
New York 840,120
New Jersey 184,139
Pennsylyania 484,878
Northern States 1,882,616
126 History of ths Federal OonvenUon of 1787. [Aug.,
Delaware 60,090
Maryland 819,728
Virginia (including Kentucky) 821,887
North Carolina (including Tennessee) 429,442
South Carolina 249,078
Georgia * 82,548
Southern States 1,961,174
Total 8,848^
Vermont is omitted (85,425) because not one of the original
thirteen States. Counting it, the population of the northern
would be 1,968,040, and of the southern States 1,961,174, very
nearly equal. The south in numbers had a majority if Ver-
mont be not counted.
Kow see the effect of reducing the representation of slaves :
Total 8,848,789
Less two-flfths of 697,681 (slaves) *. 278,609
Leaving representative population 8,665,280
Of this total reduction of 278,509,
The south lost 262,980
The northlost 15,579
278,609
Total population of southern states 1,961,174
Less loss of slave representation 262,980
Representative population 1,698,244
Total population of northern states 1,882,616
Less loss of slave representation 16,579
Representative population 1,867,086
In actual representation as fixed by the constitution itself,
and until the first census, the north had 35, the south 30 rep-
resentatives ; the north having more than its due proportion.
One further remark is proper as to the question of slavery.
When the constitution was adopted by thirteen States, twelve
of them were and continued to be slave States until 1800 ;
eleven of them until 1840, and seven until 1850. So that
while the original northern states had but few slaves compara-
tively, the institution of slavery as such was allowed by law in
1887.] Hitiory qf the Federal Convention of 1787. 127
Khode Isl&nd, New Jersey, New York, Pennsylvania, and Con-
necticttt untU 1840, and in New Jersey until 1850. This ap-
pears by the census.*
I have thus far considered the adjustments of political power
according to the diverse interests in the Union. As Mr. Madi-
son sagaciously saw, the consequences of slave states in union
with non-slave states begat diverse forms of occupations and
industries, which gave rise to the other designation of them as
commercial and agricultural states. The bargain to which
Gouvemeur Morris referred was the one in which the northern
states secured to their majority in both houses the absolute
control of the commercial power as against the south, who
feared it ; and it must be confessed, whether for good or ill,
the monopoly of the interstate navigation, and advantages by
diBciimination in favor of our own shipping in foreign com-
merce, have been permanently secured to the American marine.
The consideration obtained by the south for this concession of
power to the north over conmierce has vanished amid the f ear-
fnl calamities of a strife, any reference to which may well be
omitted in this address, if both north and south have, as I
trust, from the storm of war made port in this centennial year
with our ship, the old Constitution, sound and seaworthy for
the centuries of voyage before us I
The frame of the legislative department having thus been
considered, I will now take note of that of the two others.
More difiSculty and less definite opinions were developed in
the convention as to the executive department than on any
other question. This arose from the obvious fact that in avoid-
ing hereditary monarchy, the convention was driven to devise
a new method for an elective executive of a republic.
Mr. Randolph's plan was to elect the executive for a term
of years by the legislature, with the condition of ineligibility.
This was attached to make the executive independent of those
who had elected him, or of any future legislature, to whose
will for re-election he might be tempted to be subservient.
The plan did not determine whether the executive should be
* By a custom, which prevailed until California was admitted in 1850,
the equilibrium between slave and free States was maintained in the
Senate in the admission of new States, by admitting a slave and free
state pari pa$9u.
128 History of the Federal Convention of 1787. [Aug.,
single or plural, but provided for a council of revision, com-
posed of some of the judiciary.
After full debate and against proposals made to elect by the
people, or by electors, it was unanimously decided to elect a
single executive by the legislature; and this was the plan
reported by the committee of detail, as late as August 6th.
Joint ballot was adopted as the mode of election by the leg-
islature. The small states divided on this question, and it was
carried by 7 states to 4. Separate ballots of the two houses
would have given great power to the smaller states, but Mr.
Madison persuasively said that even by joint ballot the largest
state would have an influence only as four to one of that of
the smallest, when the population was ten to one ; an obvious
result aUo in the electoral system, subsequently adopted, as in
the election by joint ballot of the two houses. The President
by either method is not elected by a numerical majority.
Nevada to-day casts more than one-twelfth of the electoral vote
of New York and has little more than one one-hundredth of
its population ; or electorally is nine times as influential as it is
numerically.
After much opposition to the plan, from time to time, it was
referred to a committee of eleven, from which Mr. Brearly
(N. J.), reported the electoral plan as late as September 4th,
which had been flrst suggested by Mr. Wilson (Pa.) If there
should be no election by a majority of all the electors for any
candidate, then the Senate was to elect from the five highest
candidates. Thus the electors, appointed as the state legisla-
tures should direct, combined the numerical strength of the
states with their co-equal strength as states, and in case of
failure thus to elect, the election was to be made in the Senate
by the co-equal states.
Great objection was made by Mason and others that the
Senate by this plan would choose the President nineteen times
in twenty, by so contriving to divide the electoral vote as to
produce the contingency on which the Senate was to elect. He
had not obviously anticipated the extra-constitutional, party
method of national conventions.
Finally after much debate on a suggestion of Mr. William-
son (N. C), Mr. Sherman moved to take the eventual choice of
1887.] History of the Federal Convention of 1787. 129
President from the Senate and give it to the house, each state,
however, having only one vote; the numerical force of the
people of each state to express the equal voice of the state in
the election. This was adopted September 6, ayes 10 ; nay,
Delaware.
A motion for the electors to meet in one body at the seat of
government was voted down. The electors were required to
meet in their respective states. This settled finally the execu-
tive department as in one person, elected by a majority of elec*
tors, or in default of such majority, by the representatives of
the people of the states voting as co-equal states.
A few words will suflSce as to the frame of the judiciary.
Mr. Bandolph's plan proposed their appointment by the
legislature, Mr. Patterson's by the executive, Mr. C. Pinkney's
by the Senate. All provided for the tenure of good behavior,
under which we have What is the anchor to our constitutional
system, an independent judiciary— -of whom the trite but noble
Horatian lines may aptly be quoted :
Non civium ardor prava jubentium,
Non Vultus instantis Tyranni,
Mente qoatit Solida I
This has saved us from what Chief Justice Marshall so
solemnly deprecated in the Virginia convention of 1829-80
for his mother commonwealth. That great jurist (he was a
a member of that constitutional convention), said : ** I have
always thought from my earliest youth till now, that the
greatest scourge an angry heaven can inflict upon an ungrate-
ful and Binning people was an ignorant, a corrupt, or a depend-
ent judiciary."*
After full consideration, the diverse propositions were recon-
ciled by giving the nomination of the judges to the President,
and the apx>ointment to him, by and with the advice and con-
sent of the Senate. By this the judiciary are nominated by
the President as the representative of numbers and states com-
bined, or eventually of numbers through states as equals ; and
are appointed by him with the advice and consent of a majority
vote of coequal states in the Senate.
* Debates of Virginia Convention, p. 619.
you XL 0
130 History of the Federal Convention of 1787. [Aug.,
This framework in its three departments of " the govern-
ment of the United States " (as it is called in the constitution
itself ")* ^^ adopted in convention by unanimous consent of
the states on the 17th of September, 1787.
It was ordained for " the United States of America" — (the
name which was given to the then confederacy, by the first of
the articles of confederation) by the people of the several
states in convention, and not by their legislatures, and was only
binding on such states as so ratified it in such conventions.
It was an act of ratification by the people, in whom the sov-
ereignty resides — the delegating authority — and not by the
legislatures, which are the delegated authority of the people of
the states through their state constitutions, and was therefore
an authoritative declaration of the supremacy of the constitu-
tion of the United States, " anything in the constitution or
laws of any state to the contrary notwithstanding."!
A question has been raised whether the government is na-
tional or federal, or partly both. The word " national " is no-
where found in the constitution, and was stricken out on Ells-
worth's motion nem, con,, as we have seen. To hang a consti-
tutional question on a word is not worthy of this discussion.
But the appeal may be made to the constitution itself as to its
real nature.
It is established by its clear language that the states in every
department of the federal government are the constituents
represented in it, and acting through it. This is clearly so as
to the Senate.
As to the House of Representatives the constitution declares
in clear language that its members shall be chosen ^' by the peo-
ple of the several states," and the voters shall be fixed by the
rules of suffrage for " the most numerous branch of the state
legislature." The people of the state choose through voters
authorized by themselves.
The members of the house must reside in the state where
♦ Art I, p. 8, Ch. 187.
f As to these points, I refer to the remarks of Mr. Mason. 2 Mad.
Papers, 1177 ; of Mr. Madison, Id., 1471-2 ; and vote for conventions of
several states ; ayes 10, noes 1 ; Id. 1476-1541. See also the ratification
of the conventions of the states in Journal of Fed. Convention ; also
Federalist, passim.
188T.] History of the Federal Convention of 1787. 131
chosen. Representation is apportioned "among the several
states." " Each state shall have at least one representative."
Until the first census " the state of New Hampshire shall be
entitled to choose three," etc. " When vacancies happen in
the representation from any state," the executive thereof, etc.
"Each state shall appoint in such manner as the legislature
thereof may direct, a number of electors equal to the whole
nnmber of Senators and Eepresentatives to which the state may
be entitled in the Congress." And in the election of Presi-
dent by the house, **the representation from each state has
one vote."
Each state is thus represented in each branch of Congress by
members proportioned to numbers in the house, and irrespec-
tive of numbers and as co-equals in the Senate ; but the states
sit in each, by their representatives and senators.
The President is elected by electors appointed by each state.
The lan^age of the constitution is : ** Each state shall appoint."
The electors so appointed represent the states as to numbers
and co^quality — ^and eventually states, as equals, may elect
the President.
The judiciary and all officers are appointed by President and
Senate. This makes the states the fountains of official power
on the bench and every where.
These departments so framed constitute the government of
the United States, a government of and for the union of repub-
lican commonwealths, by a combination of all for the good of
all, and the protection of each ; and leaving to each of them
''that immense mass of legislation which (Chief Justice Mar-
shall in Q-ibbons and Ogden said) embraces everything within
the territory of a state, not surrendered to the general govern-
ment, and which can be most advantageously exercised by the
states themselves."
1 think the philosophy of our wonderfully and profoundly
wise Federative system is in what I have already said. Power
and right are wedded, and never divorced. There are general
interests in which all the states in union have rights. All
must have power as to such, for the exclusion of anyone would
be pro tcmto to divorce its right from its power ; to admit all
is to wed the right of all to the power of all.
183 History of the Federal Convmtian of 1787. [Aug.,
Then there are the local interests of each state which require
to be under the exclusive power of each. That weds power
and right. To admit any other state to control these, is tp
give an alien power over home right, and is pro tanto to
divorce the right from power, and to give to a stranger power
over another's right, where he has none.
General power of all over general interests, and local power
of each over local interest& This is self-government. This
secures liberty and peace and prosperity !
In the distribution of powers between the government of
the United States and the states by this constitution, we will
see and admire the application of the simple and philosophic
principle of which I have spoken.
The union of the states began originally in 1774, in their
sense of weakness in separation and of strength in combina-
tion. The power to defend each from a foreign foe was at once
conceded, but the means to execute it was withheld. This im-
becility of organization under which will was powerless because
without means to effect its purpose, decided the convention to
give the means to fulfill the duty imposed.
The first power given was to lay and collect taxes, duties,
imposts and excises, with only a few limitations, to wit : No
tax on exports : Direct tax in proportion to census population,
and uniformity of duties, imposts and excises.
The war and peace power, to raise armies and navies and
make treaties, etc, was essential to the common defense.
This power, with the money power to support the armed
forces, which under the confederation had been paralyzed by
dependence on the states, was made independent by grant to
the United States, with the duty imposed of the protection of
each against invasion.^
These powers, including the treaty power, made the govern-
ment of the United States a fuU representative of each of
them, as to all foreign nations, and hence the like functions
were denied to the states, except as to taxation, which was co*
extensive, excluding any duties by the states for revenue on
imports and exports. This secured peace between the Union
and all the world, against the action of any one state, and
♦ C. U. S., Art. 4, § 4.
1887.] History of the Federal Commtion of 1787. 138
presented all the states to foreign nations as a nnited people.
The nationality of each was confided to the federal head, which
represents the combined nationality of all.
In the Virginia plan, a resolution amended and finally re-
ported favorably ajs a basis for action by the committee of de-
tail, proposed to give congress all the powers then vested in it
by the confederation, and " to legislate in all cases for the gen-
eral interest of the Union,'* and also wherein " the states are
separately incompetent," and in which " the harmony of the
United States might be interrupted by individual legislation."
This embodies the philosophic principle already stated — power
must co-exist with the rights to be subject to it.
It had been proposed in the Virginia plan to give to con-
gress the power of negative on all state laws, contravening in its
opinion the articles of union.
In debating this proposition on the 23d of August, John
Rutledge (S. C.) said; "If nothing else, this alone would
damn, and ought to damn, the constitution." Ellsworth and
Sherman of Connecticut, seconded this emphatic denuncia-
tion, by vigorous statements which embodied a solemn " amen"
to the Carolinian's protest. Its reference to a committee was
defeated, and it was then forever abandoned.
A more i)erfect union was proposed than the confederation,
in which an intercommunication of citizenship had been agreed
npon, with free intercourse, subject however to duties and
taxes, and the Uke. But free trade between the states and the
\ii\e to all privileges and immunities of citizenship in each
state for citizens of every state, were aimed at by this consti-
tution. Each state had its own regulations of interstate com-
merce, and with foreign nations, and they were grossly unjust
to their neighbors. Foreign nations were fighting our com-
merce and rights of navigation by restrictive measures, which
such men as Adams, Franklin, Jefferson, Hamilton, and Madi-
son wished to break down by retaliatory measures, so as to
enforce free trade in the interests of our whole Union. This
oould not be done under the confederation ; it was proposed to
be done under the constitution.
Now, when we regard a system of free intercourse, com-
merce, inter-citizenship, as involving also a uniform currency,
134 History of the Federal Convention of 1787. [Aug.,
the law of contracts, etc., we see how at once all these were
naturally embraced in the general interests to be regulated by
the government of the Union.
Hence, the regulation of foreign and interstate commerce, of
bankruptcy, of currency, of coinage of money, etc., of a postal
system, the patent and copyright laws, the government and
disposal of the territory of the Union — all these were granted
to the United States because they involved the rights of all,
to be controlled by the power of ail. It was equally proper to
deny the power to any state to impair these rights of all by its
separate action. And hence no state can coin money, emit
bills of credit, make a legal tender but of coin, pass attainders
or ex post facto laws, or impair the obligation of contracts. In
all of this, the power and right are properly wedded, and
never divorced — but the general right is under the power of
the general government. On the other hand, the autonomy
of the states is carefully secured. Their territory cannot be
severed but by their consent And even domestic disorders,
such as Shay's rebellion, cannot be interfered with by the
United States, unless the state applies for it, and then the
United States must protect it.
It is true that the United States is required to guarantee to
each state a republican form of government. That is a power
conferred by the people of each state to secure to them this
form of government, when force within its borders may law-
lessly subvert it. It is a duty to the state and its people
clothed with power, but not a power of intrusion on or against
the will of the people of a state.
In truth this is a Union of Republics, and by inter-compact
we have agreed it shall ever abide as the great Bepublic of
Republica
In comparing the articles of confederation with the constitu-
tion, there will be found to be no marked diflEerence in the
sum of legislative powers conferred except in two respects —
the power of taxation and the regulation of commerce, foreign
and interstate. The denial of powers to the states are in those
respects, wherein their exercise would impair the integrity of
the grants of like powers to Congress. The change was func-
tional, not organic.
1887.] HUtwy of the Federal Convention of 1787. 185
That sothing was intended to be done to impair the
autonomy of the states or to impair their being as such, is
manifest from many considerations to which I may briefly
refer. The coDstitntion is held binding between the ratifying
states as a subsisting compact between them — the states are
bound by special compacts for extradition of fugitives from
justice and from labor — ^the denial to Congress of exercising
powers over revenue or commerce so as to prefer one state to
another — the need of state consent to congressional power over
any place within its territory — the reserved state power over
the appointment of officers of militia — the necessary action by
each state in the organism of the executive and legislative
departments of the Union, and in the amendments of the con-
stitution— the recognition of treason as a crime against a state
— ^and the amendments adopted in the first decade, to which
reference will be made hereafter. Besides it may be added
that the government of the United States imports, ex vi ter-
mini, the coexistence of the Union with the states composing
it ; and the supreme court has said (Collector vs. Day),* " with-
out them the general government would disappear from the
family of nations." Not so, however, as to the states without
the Union ; for Mr. Hamilton quotes (9th No. of Federaliet)
from Montesquieu this remark as applicable to the Union :
" The confederacy may be dissolved, and the confederates pre-
serve their sovereignty."
And Mr. Hamilton in the 28th number, and Madison in the
40th number of the Federalist^ maintain that the states,
through their separate governments, are fully clothed with
powers to defend their liberties against the armed usurpations
of the federal government.
Other marked distinctions between the confederation and
the Union may be mentioned : the creation of two houses of
Congress instead of one — of the executive and judicial depart-
ments, with powers coordinate to those of Congress — and the
supremacy of the constitution aud laws of United States made
in pursuance thereof and of treaties, over all the constitutions
and laws of the several states, to be enforced through judicial
decision.
♦ 11 Wallace, 126.
136 History of the Federal Convention of 1787. [Aug.,
These changes produced important results, but must be in-
terpreted in connection with and with special reference to the
emphatic declaration of the 10th amendment of the constitu-
tion, proposed in the first Congress of 1789, before the govern-
ment was fidly in operation, and soon after the constitution
was ratified. That amendment is in these words :
" The powers not deUgaied to the United States by the con-
stitution, nor prohibited to the states, are reserved to the states
respectively or to the people."
I cannot forbear to quote the language of the Supreme
Court, since the war, as to the relations of the government of
the United States with the several states. In Texas va TVhite,*
Chief Justice Chase declares: "The constitution in all its
provisions looks to an indissoluble Union composed of inde-
structible states" (page 725.)
But the chief justice declared in the same case, that "the
separate and independent autonomy to the states," not only
was not lost " through their Union under the constitution,"
but " that the preservation of the states and the maintenance
of their governments are as much within the design and care
of the constitution as the preservation of the Union and the
maintenance of the national government." In Lane County
vs. Oregon,t the same court by Chief Justice Chase main-
tained " the independent authority of the states ;" and he added
with clear emphasis, that " to them nearly the whole charge
of interior regulation is committed or left ; to them and to the
people all powers not expressly delegated to the national
government are reserved." In Collector vs. Day,:|: the same
court decided that the power of Congress to lay and collect
taxes could not be exercised by laying a tax on the salary of
a state judge ; that this government could not touch his salary,
because it would abridge the absolute right of a state to use all
means in its discretion for its own government without any
interference with them by Congress. In the Slaughter-house
ca8e,§ Mr. Justice Miller, after speaking of the danger of dis-
union having given occasion for the late amendments of
the constitution, says : " But however pervading this senti-
ment, and however it may have contributed to the adoption
♦ 7 Wallace, 701. t 7 Wall., 76. % 11 WaU., 118. § 6 Wall., 36.
1887.] HisUyry of the Federal Cofwention of 1787. 137
of the amendments we have been considering, we do not
gee in those amendments any purpose to destroy the main
features of the general system. Under the pressure of all
the excited feeling growing out of the war our statesmen
have still believed that the existence of the states with
powers for domestic and local government, including the
regulation of civil rights, the rights of persons and property,
was essential to the perfect working of our complex form of
p)vemment, though they have thought proper to impose
additional limitations on the states and to confer additional
power on that of the nation.
" But whatever fluctuations may be seen in the history of
pubUe opinion on this subject . . . this court . . . has always
held with a steady and even hand the balance between state
and federal power,^' etc.
In United States vs. Cruikshanks,* decided in 1875, Chief
Justice Waite, a distinguished son of Connecticut, and an
alumnus of Yale, speaking for the whole court, said : " The
government of the United States is one of delegated powers
alone. Its authority is limited and defined by the constitu-
tion. All powers not granted to it by that instrument are *
reserved to the states or the people. No rights can be
acquired under the constitution or laws of the United States
except such as the government of the United States has the
authority to grant or secure. All that cannot be so granted or
secured are left under the protection of the states."
The force of the amendments proposed by the first Congress
consists in their being declaratory. They fix the interpretation
of this constitution — and were proposed, with a preamble which
stated that ** the conventions of a number of the states having
at the time of their adopting the constitution declared a desire,
in order to prevent misconstruction or abuse of its powers that
further declaratory and restrictive clauses should be added," etc.
These ten amendments and the eleventh may be regarded as
part of the work of the federal convention, having been
adopted so soon after its session,. and as an authoritative inter-
pretation by many of its members of the true character of the
constitution it proposed. They were substantially a bill of
* 92 United States Reports, 542.
138 History of the Federal Vonvention of 1787. [Aug.,
rights defining and construing the language of the constitution
itself. Indeed the ninth and eleventh amendments in terms ex-
clude a certain construction of the constitution. The eleventh
specially says : " The judicial power of the United States
shall not be construed" to extend to the suability **of
one of the United States by citizens of another state, or by
citizens or subjects of any foreign state." It had been
so construed in Chisholm vs. Georgia.* The states by this
amendment commanded that no such construction should be
made and therefore the Supreme Court obeyed this consti-
tutional order, and dismissed HoUingsworth vs. Virginiaf
The other amendments declare for the civil and religious
liberty of the citizens as against all the departments of the gov-
ernment, and in conjunction with those in the original constitu-
tion denying to the Congress as well as to the states the power
to pass ex poBt facto laws, or bills of attainder and to Congress
the power to suspend the privilege of habeas corpus^ makes
this great instrument a shield for the humblest man in his life,
liberty, and property agaipst sJl the powers of all governments.
The executive department is vested in the President alone,
except as to treaties and appointments to office. These the
President always shares with the Senate as to treaties, gener-
ally as to offices.
Congress raises armies and provides navies. The President
commands them in chief — ^but lest he should use the army
against liberty. Congress cannot appropropriate money for the
support of an army but for two years — herein copying the
principle of the English mutiny bill, which has the limitation for
one year only.
The veto power was much contested in the convention, but
was at last conferred on the President, subject to the re-passage
of the bill objected to by two-thirds of each house of Congress.
This executive check on legislative power is valuable as a de-
fense of the presidential office against invasion by Congress and
of the constitution against violation, and of the rights of the
people and states against abuses of power by Congress. By
requiring, in case of a veto, two-thirds of the states, and of
their whole population to concur in repassing the measure
* 2 Dallas, 419. t 8 DaUas, 878.
1887.] History of the Federal Convention of 1787. 139
objected to, it protects a minority of the people and of states,
against abuses of power by a bare majority of both — an evil
so apt to exist even under free institutions.
The dignity of the government of the United States m its
relations to foreign nations, and the execution of its laws, is
confided to the President.
It will thus be seen how important are the functions con-
fided to the states as such, through the Senate, in treaties with
foreign powers, and in the matter of official patronage.
The judicial department consists constitutionally of a Supreme
Court, but by law, also of such inferior courts as Congress may
establish. Its jurisdiction is as to such matters as preferably,
for the ends of justice, such courts can better administer than
the local courts of the states. To insure the supremacy of the
federal constitution under judicial power, all cases arising under
it, or under laws or treaties made by its authority, are vested
in the judiciary of the Union, and^all cases between parties, as
to any of whom state courts might have a bias or partiality, are
likewise confided for decision to the courts of the United
States. The only judicial functions which relate to the federal
government not confided to the courts, is that of impeachment
of public officers. In these cases of political offenses, the
House of Eepresentatives accuses, and the Senate tries. The
people charge the crime, and the states try the offender.
We thus have seen that this great convention by the consti-
tution proposed to and ratified by the states in their capacity
of separate bodies-politic, created a government with delegated
powers to legislate for the general interests of all, excluding
the internal polity of each, and with automatic authority to
execute its constitutional will, through the decision of an inde-
pendent judiciary.
It is due to the unquestioned merit and ability of Gouvemeur
Morrifi, to say that after all the details had been decided upon,
his mind and pen cast into the matchless form, in which it was
finally ratified, the work of the convention. The original
skeleton was due more to Mr. Charles Pinkney of South Caro-
lina, and in a better shape from the committee of detail to the
famous John Butledge of the same state. It was a remarkable
but merited tribute to this wise work of this great convention
140 History of the Federal Convention of 1787. [Aug.,
which was paid to it by that grand old man * of England,
who to-day struggles to adjust the domain of imperial au-
thority in its relations to local power and personal liberty in
Great Britain. He says : " As the British constitution is the
most subtile organization which has proceeded from progres-
sive history, so the American constitution is the most wonder-
ful work ever struck off at a given time by the brain and
purpose of man."
In looking at the history of the operation of this constitu-
tional system, we cannot be insensible to the fact that it left to
posterity problems which it failed to settle, and which have
resulted in calamities, it was perhaps not given to human wis-
dom to prevent. A union of states differing radically in in-
terests, from the existence in some of the institution of slavery,
for which neither that nor succeeding generations were rcBpon-
sible, produced an angry conflict of sentiment, which event-
uated in one of the most tremendous wars of modem times,
in which military genius and martial heroism for four years in
rival hosts contended for victory.
As a native and devoted son of Virginia, with convictions as
sincere as they were adverse to your own, I shall not obtrude a
vindication of her course in that unhappy strife before this
audience. It would be a violation of good taste, and would be
unnecessary to my theme.
The constitution gave to the South no adequate power to de-
fend her right, and slavery perished under the power of the
Union, and without the consent of the states where it existed.
Amendments to the constitution have been ratified by the
states, and have settled to-day, what was unsettled a century
ago, three constitutional principles :
1. Slavery can never exist in any of the United States.t
2. The constitutional right of a state to secede is forever
taken away by the 14th amendment.
3. The power ihxoxji^ suffrage, of the negro to defend his
right oi personal freedom is secured by the 16th amendment.
To these results, as parts of our constitutional system, I bow
without reservation, and yield to them the obedience due by a
citizen of Virginia to the supreme law of the land.
♦ Gladstone. f C. U. S., 18th Amendment.
1887.] History of the Federal Convention of 1787. 141
Joioing hands, and uniting hearte, we henceforth in this
federal UnioD, must labor to save the system in which we
are equally interested, from the dangers which surround it.
To some of these dangers you will allow me to allude, in clos*
]Dg this already too prolonged discussion :
First — ^Danger to Man-Right; to the right of the individ-
ual, by centralized power. This centralistic tendency in our
day iB two-fold ; social and political. Corporate combinations
of wealth and enterprise, valuable in themselves and important
and in some respects essential, and to be protected in their
vested rights, are filling all the avenues of social industry in
exclusive or injurious competition with individual energy and
personal right. These corporate bodies are the creatures of law
—and the law must take care they shall not invade the sanc-
tity of the rights of the free man.
Political centralization in the state and general government
shows itself in a too great tendency to control, regulate, and
direct the industry and enterprises of individual men.
It claims the name of '^ paternal government," the Patria
Potestafi of ancient despotism, and merging the man in the
mass, and directing the destiny of all, too often does, nay — in
the long run, must sacrifice the interests of the toiling, home-
staying many, to the grasp and greed of the few fawning
parasites, who crowd the lobby and swarm the corridors of
l^slative bodies. We must reform this altogether, or the
lobby influence of pampered monopolies at the center will eat
up the substance and crush out the liberties of the people in
their homes.
Paternity in government begets class legislation, and instead
of leaving each man to enjoy the fruits of his toil, pools the
earnings of society and fattens its favorite children in palaces
of splendor and starves its foundlings in hovels of squalor and
misery.
The world is governed too much. " Give man the maximum
of liberty, and government the minimum of power, consistent
with social order," is a sound canon of political science.
Second — The geographical unity of the republic enhanced
by steam and telegraph and telephone, begets a feeling of
pateinily for the federal government, and gives rise to schemes,
142 History of the Federal Convention of 1787. [Aug.,
corporate and otherwise, to be fostered by congressional action,
in the interest of seeming national benefit, but really and
chiefly of advantage to a favored few. A full treasury, kept
full for the purpose, is clamorously sought to be emptied into
the pockets of these parasites of power, and the veins of the
people are drained to fill those of the classes upon whom a
good and fatherly government lavishes its bounteous benefac-
tions.
Whether Congress has power to take the money of the mass,
to squander on its favorites, has come to be a question for the
ridicule of the scoffer ; and a faithful adherence to the con-
stitution is regarded as the pitiable drivel of the era in which
the constitution was adopted and unworthy of the statesman-
ship of a century later.
All of this is increased by the inherent evils of indirect taxa-
tion, to which Congress exclusively resorts. The taxpayer,
unconscious of the burdens it imposes, though suffering from
the evils it entails, holds his representative to a slack responsi-
bility for profuse expenditures, which seem only to add
splendor to the government by a process which narcotizes into
insensibility the people it impoverishes.
Taxation in this form puts extravagance beyond the reach of
public complaint, because it is indulged withont the popular
consciousness that it tithes the wages of labor to fill the coffers
of privilege.
Third — But indirect taxation has other fearful consequences,
as it is used for a revenue or for a collateral object.
If used for revenue — when the states are confined to direct
taxation — it makes all schemes that are effectuated through
money more popular, if exerted by means of federal than of
state taxation ; because of the latter the taxpayer is painfully
sensible, of the former he is entirely unconscious. The people
are thus by a delusion ensnared into a transfer of the reserved
powers of the states to the federal government, because men
think it costs them more for the state, than for Congress, to do
what it is the state's local duty to do. This is not a fanciful
picture, but a practical reality.
But when indirect taxation is used not for revenue only, but
to foster privileged interests ; when commerce is regulated by
1887.] History of the Federal Convention of 1787. 143
duties, not as it was designed by the fathers a century ago, to
force foreign nations into free trade with us and unrestricted
navigation laws, but to destory free commerce and to create
monopolies, it becomes a tax on one class to bestow bounties
on another, and realizes the consummation of all despotisms,
which have in all time fostered and fattened the favorite few
by exacting an exhausting tribute from the mass.
Fourth. — The war and its supposed necessities — ^the loose
methods of interpretation and practice, which come into use in
tronblouB times in every country ; the attractions to the masses
of a national government, with a splendor that rivab that of
other nations of the world, to which easy travel has led too
many of our people to aspire ; the luxury begotten of our
miraculous increase of wealth ; and the ignorance among our
young men of the true history of the constitution built by the
fathers, with their ideas and habits of primitive and republican
simplicity — all these conduce to an indifference to the necessity
of preserving in all its integrity the equilibrium between the
delegated and reserved authority — between the powers of cen-
tralism and the powers of the states.
fifth. — One other danger arises fram the perversion of the
frame of the executive department, and of its power of pat-
ronaga
It was designed that a select body of electors in each state
should separately indicate their choice for President, and then
m case of the states not being united in a majority of the elec-
tors on the same person, that the states through the house of
representatives should elect. National conventions of parti-
zans, however, now dictate the person to obedient electors, and
the eventual power of election by states is thus defeated. This
makes the choice of president by a numerical majority, not by
the independent voice of the several states through their elec-
tors, nor eventually by the states, with co-equal weight of suf-
frage. This has practically changed the elective system for
the presidency.
The cabal and intrigue, feared in the federal convention, from
an election by congress, are exaggerated in the corrupt combi-
nations of a national convention, composed largely of oflSce-
seekers, whose greed for the spoils too often is the sum of their
zealous patriotism.
144 History of the Federal Convention of 1787. [Aug.,
Then, the platform for the executive candidate centralizes
public sentiment as to pubUc measures, and practically controls
all action in both houses of congress, and the President thus
becomes the representative center of all opinion and the index
to all political action.
This system thus tends to centralize the government in the
executive, and to an elective monarchy.
And then, patronage is claimed of the President by the
spoilsmen who elevated him. Office-seeking makes a trade of
statesmanship, and the civil service becomes a corrupt system
of rewards and punishments for the friends and enemies of the
executive. These evils, connected with the executive office
and the patronage attached to it, call for the earnest efiorts of
patriotism to rescue the government from the rottenness of
corruption, more dangerous to liberty than the anarchy of dis-
union I
Sixth, — New states, in territorial condition the proteges of
congress, do not for years overcome their sense of subordina-
tion or rise to self-consciousness as the original fountains of
authority, out of which the old states delegated powers to the
federal government. The theoretic relation of constitutional
co-equality in this regard with the old states meets with prac-
tical doubt, if not denial in the self-consciousness of the new
states ; and this has done much to depress the reserved rights
of Connecticut and Virginia, instead of elevating the sense of
statehood in Nevada and Colorado.
Public sentiment must conform the practical to the constitu-
tional relation ; for as, had there been no states, it would have
been profound political wisdom to have constituted them as
the nuclei of local liberty, so having been instituted by the
beneficence of Divine Providence as the creators of our federal
system, it becomes the highest duty of patriotism to protect
with pious devotion these state organisms in all their rights, afi
the guardians appointed by heaven's wisdom to save liberty
from centralism. For let it never be forgotten, that when the
local right and peculiar interests of a state are withdrawn from
the exclusive control of the local state authority, they are sub-
jected to the domination of states alien, perhaps adverse, in
interest, which must beget misrule and abuse of power destruc-
188T.] History of the Federal Camention of 1787. 145
tive of liberty. It divorces power from right, instead of wed-
ding power to right. Despotism may live in splendor, but
freedom will perish in misery.
Our ship of state must be steered with steady helm between
the Scylla of anarchy and the Charybdis of centralism — disso-
lution and despotism. In medio tutissimus ibis! By the law
of our political life, the decree of our fathers in 1787, and of
all the American peoples in 1887, should be proclaimed as
fixed, final, and unalterable. — The states cannot destroy the
Union ; the Union must not destroy the states ; liberty and
Union, under this magna charta of the United States, must be
one and inseparable, now and forever 1
Mr. Madison, at the close of his invaluable reports of the
debates of this convention (which are at once evidence of his
industry, care, ability and patriotism) states that as the last
members were signing the constitution. Dr. Franklin, looking
at a painting of the sun behind the chair of the President, re-
marked on the difficulty in art of distinguishing a rising from
a setting sun. " My hopes and fears," said he " have so con-
flicted as to the issue of this convention, that I could not tell
whether that was a rising or a setting sun; but now I am
happy to know, '^ It is a rising sun /"
If, with this prediction a century ago, I may dare to speak
to day, for my native commonwealth, first in age, and second
to none in the glory of duty well and nobly done, whose pen
and sword, of well-matched might, declai'ed and led the way to
win American independence — for that dear Old Dominion,
whose Washington, Madison, Mason, and Kandolph, in council
with your Sherman, Ellsworth, and Johnson, united to construct
this federative republic by a solemn compact between thir-
teen commonwealths, who through a common peril had achieved
a common safety — I would in the venerable name of Virginia
adjure the old and the young men of Connecticut, these sons
of Yale, some with matured fame, and others aspirants for
life's honors, to join with the old and young men of my once
rich and powerful mother state, now rent in twain and wasted
and worn by the misfortunes of war, in one solemn vow, as
solenm as when the delegates of the two states, on the 17th of
September, 1787, signed the federal bond ; that we will defend
voi^ zi. 10
146 History of the Federal Conversion of 1787. [Aug.,
and uphold this constitution in all the integrity of its granted
powers, and in the full autonomy of the states composing the
Union, with our minds, our hearts, our lives — as our only assur-
ance of peace among the states and of peace with the world ;
as our guaranty of free thought, free conscience, free com-
merce, free men, and a free continent I And as the prophetic
eye of the Father of American Science greeted it in its rising,
on that memorable day, so, now in its zenith and power, let us
vow to perpetuate it, as the Hope of mankind in every clime
and to all generations, — bb the true and everlasting monument
of " Liberty enlightening the world 1"
J. BJlNDGLPB. Tuckeb.
1887.] Recent Views of the EigJdeeivth CenPary. 147
AwiCLE IV.— RECENT VIEWS OF THE EIGHTEENTH
CENTURY.
There are few things in modem literary history more aston-
ishing than the chorus of detraction which assailed the eigh-
teenth century at the opening of our own era. Yet it was not
the sudden unlooked-for onset it has so often been described.
The nuclei of antipathy to its prevailing modes of thought
and feeling began to appear towards the middle of its career, —
little separate, mostly unobserved centres of reaction dispersing
widely in evergrowing rings. Shred by shred the old Queen
Anne and Georgian life fell away or became transformed into
fresher growths. All through its last decades, particularly, we
stand not nnlike spectators at the lens of a microscope watch-
ing the gradual evolution, so perfectly have the recent studies
of the critics and men-of letters reflected it for us.
In recognizing the gradualness of the change, however, it is
important not to overlook its completeness. It was certainly a
revolution, but it arose and expanded according to the laws of
sequence, which are not apparently wholly uniform or trace-
able ; and it had its period of culmination — that period when
men turned upon its Alma Mater, the Goddess of Reason, and
spumed her with the'feet of newly roused scorn. We remem-
ber how Blake soared away from the arid regions of its art
into a world of weird and delicate phantasy of his own un-
assisted creation ; how Bums, walking afield, filled with the
blithe air of a new earth, broke into song such as had never
visited even the dreams of the Augustan poets. But these
twain wrought one song by dint of the inherent spontaneity of
their genius ; they went the whole length of revolt, but not
from conscious and systematic reflection. The movement of
action, of organized arraignment of the last century, and a
reasoned departure from its methods and aims, — ^the final mo-
ment of culmination — comes from the great romantic group in
which the new criticism originated. We have to remember
the unsparing judgment that Wordsworth brought against the
148 Becent Views of the Eighteenth Century, [Aug.,
eighteenth century poetry ; how judicially it was confirmed by
Coleridge, coupled with a lofty rejection of its religion and
metaphysics ; the derisive raillery of Keats and the droll gird-
ing of Lamb. Their reaction, however, was chiefly literary.
The full measure of invective, the final comprehensive word
of unreason and abuse remained to be uttered— and how
uttered ? by the most untamed of the modem apostles of cul-
ture Among all Carlyle's exhibitions of whimsicality I know
none more extraordinary, and, perhaps I should say, more pain-
ful, than his phrenzied diatribes against the eighteenth century.
The attacks of romantic poets and critics were aimed against a
single phase of its activity, and if severe and at times extrava-
gant, they were at least developed generally with care, after
patient analysis and with certain reservations. But the illus-
trious worshipper of heroes — nearly all of whom it is sig-
nificant, were the children of that unspeakable epoch — em-
braces the entire life and achievement of the century in the
thunderstorm of his wrath. " It is the age," growls old Teu-
felsdrockh, who is the type of the modem Truth-seeker, " it is
the age of prose, of lying, of sham, the peculiar era of cant."
'* The embodiment," Carlyle declares in his own person, " of
Frivolity, Formalism, and Commonplace, an effete world;
wherein Wonder, Greatness, Godhood, could not dwell" One
would have thought, after this, that the fountains of uttermost
disparagement were exhausted, but reinforcements sprung up
from an unexpected quarter. In religious sentiment Carlyle
and Newman, and Mill and Newman in logic, stand at the an-
tipodes of each other, yet it was by Newman and the Anglo-
Catholics that the next blow was strack, when discarding the
ultra-Protestantism of the last century, they expunged the
epoch of Wesley and Whitfield from the church calendar;
and by Mill that its force was carried on and employed to over-
turn the relicts of the old philosophy.
A more moderate and favorable estimate was in the mean-
time growing up and very slowly winning its way. Thackeray
was perhaps the first English raau-of-letters (Byron always
clung to the art of Pope and GifEord) who recoiled from the
critical position of the Lakists, the first to look back upon the
near past genially, with a smile for its defects and a keen and
1887.] Eecent Views of the Eighteenth Century. 149
even sympathetic appreciation of its excellences, many of
which at least, in its fiction, were cousin germane to his own.
And then came George Eliot and Mr. Fronde, the one with her
richly colored pictures of the midland rural life of the Georges'
time, and the other with his brilliant historic sketches and their
plea for the superiority of the last century over the present
one. This estimate was abundantly borne out and illustrated
subsequently by the historian Lecky, Leslie Stephens, Mrs.
Ohphant, Charles de Kemusat, and others. Still more recently,
however, a new school of criticism has appeared which, in de-
fending the eighteenth century from the calumnies of the
earUer writers, has left far behind the negative and objective
attitude of Thackeray and George Eliot. They have undertaken
to rehabilitate the preceding century, to set it in a new light,
to set forth its supremacy in many matters. Conspicuous in
this collective effort are the expository labors of the late Karl
Hillebrand, Frederick Harrison, and Mr. Edmund Gosse. To the
versatile German critic, whose exposition of the defects of the
Fopan classicality is the most penetrating and complete we
possess, the eighteenth century is the ^' most truly human and
fruitful of all the ages." In an admirable review of its char-
acter, he undertakes to show that '^ the political, religious, and
literary " development of England was never " in a more active,
and consequently in a more fruitful condition than during this
age of supposed torpor."* This comprehensive panegyric was
supported a few years later by the brilliant apostle of posi-
tivism. "In achievement," Mr. Harrison declares this much
decried epoch to have been, " the equal of any century since
the middle ages." "Of all eras," he says again, with his
trumpet tone, ''the richest, most various, most creative."
Above all, if we seek for its trait of distinction among other
times, it is emphatically " the humane age." These conclu-
sions, it is only just to say, are based on the results of recent
historic research, and particularly on the full and exact studies
of the eighteenth century life and literature which Mr. Lecky
and Leslie Stephens have given to the world. Taken collect-
ively, they constitute what may very fairly be termed a revolu-
tion in the manner of regarding the last century. The mis-
♦ The Contemporary, January, 1880.
160 Recent Views of the Eighteenth Century. [Aug.,
carriage of justice in the previous school of criticism is more
than atoned for by this new birth and reconstruction of opin-
ion. But if it metes out simple justice and not eulogy, if it is
a timely and deeply-needed reparation, it cannot notwithstand-
ing be extended to cover all departments of activity. The
reparative tendency took one step too far, and that in a single
direction to which 1 shall presently refer.
Every one who has followed the beaten path of historical
criticism will be perfectly willing to admit the general justice
of Karl Hillebrand and Mr. Harrison's views of the eighteenth
century. In science and in industry the age reached admirable
results, far surpassing the preceding century. But these have
their roots in the structure of the understanding. The acces-
sions it made to the growth of English prose, the admirable
perfection its best style attained in simplicity, directness, and
flexibility, have often been pointed out. It is impossible to
deny the greatness of the fiction it gave to the world in sucli
unrivalled profusion ; the modern novel and romance have no
doubt penetrated profounder depths and developed a far finer
and subtler art, but in their variety and freedom, in their
abundant humor, in their large and powerful picturing of
English life and manners, these old novelists easily command a
whole realm of their own creation. It was the period when
English literature was enriched with a succulent store of wit
and satire — the wit of Pope and Goldsmith, the satire of Swift
and Addison and Giflford. It is impossible not to be struck
with the invariable presence of taste, a taste for the morals, for
the didactic poetry, and philosophical tales of the day, a taste
for correctness, precision in expression, a taste for solid fact
and for satire, a taste polished and academic within its restricted
sphere. We know it finally, as an age alert and fruitful in
criticism. Few literary eras have been more so. The spirit of
inquiry and analysis was keen in both philosophy and scholar-
ship, exploring certain provinces of thought with great acumen,
organizing sciences, defining systems of belief.
When, however, we turn to this age so active in production
and criticism, and ask what the best minds thought and felt
about these things which are precious to us now, which form
an integral part of our mental and emotional life, the pure
1887.] Recent Views of the Eighteenth CenMry. 151
sources of delight and wisdom in poetry and art, — we at once
come against a body of conceptions that seem like those of
another world. I am speaking, of course, of only a single
branch of the fine arts and in only the most general terms at
that. What is necessary is to get at a clear notion of the nature
and scope of its poetry and also criticism.
We open the essays of Addison on the Pleasures of the
Imagination or read his exposition of Paradise Lost, which did so
much to make Milton known to that generation, and cannot
fail to see how lucid is his criticism, how grave and elegant,
and this notwithstanding the artificial tests brought to bear
from foreign literatures upon his own. Historically, his criti-
cal importance is great ; and M. Bel-Jame notices in an inter-
esting passage that he really inaugurated literary criticism for
the English.'^ His fine and delicate mind penetrated as far as
his perspective permitted, and discerned whatever beauty lay
within his range ; but how limited was that range, how bounded
that perspective ! When in a happy hour he rose so much
above his time as to discern the genuine charm of the ballad
of Chevy Chace^ which no maxim of his favorite Boileau could
approve, it was but to draw upon himself the scorn of all his
fellows, and call forth a stem rebuke from the great Dr. John-
son, who saw in that beautiful old ballad nothing but a " chill
and lifeless imbecility." Yet few had reflected more than
Johnson upon the nature and function of poetry. In the
analysis of the writings of most of his contemporaries, in the
domain of manners and practical life, his judgments were sin-
gularly acute and weighty, but as soon as he ventured into the
higher regions of the imagination, what blunders, what insen-
sibility, what narrow prejudices ! There is, perhaps, no more
striking example of the inevitable perverseness, the unavoid-
able imperfection of literary canons formed on alien or inferior
models ; for the canons of the critics were, as we shall see,
partly Latin and partly French. The same deficiencies reap-
pear in all the critics, in Berkley, Bentley, Pope, Steele, the
best minds of the age. They were rational clear and definite ;
their ideas have proportion and arrangement — the higher qual-
ities of prose writers ; but all these united were not sufScient
*Le Public et lea Hommes de Lettres, p. 811.
152 Recent Vietos of the Eighteenth Century. [Aug.,
to preserve them from what seem to us grotesque mistakes in
comparative criticism. We recall Johnson's estimate of Milton's
versification and of Shakespeare's sonnets, Addison's deliver-
ances on Tuscan poetry, Bentley's censure of Milton, the com-
mon depreciation of Chaucer, how uniformly Cowley is pre-
ferred to Milton, Pope to Gray, Akenside to Collins, how
invariably they mistook rhetoric and declamation for passion,
correctness for elegance, smoothness for grace, eloquence for
genius. These are isolated examples, but they indicate the
quality and direction of the best taste of the age, and help to
fix its memory for us.*
But this whole ground has been traversed so often, the
charge against the critical standards of the eighteenth century
has been made so complete and secure, that it is unnecessary to
linger over it. Of the poetry of the age, however, it seems
perhaps not irrevelent to venture a brief review, that the way
may be fully cleared for a juster estimate of its character and
historical place in English literature. Besides, the retrospec-
tion has a peculiar needfulness at a time when three of the
greatest poets of a succeeding era, simply on the arbitrary con-
sideration that they began their career within the limits of the
century, are being claimed as examples of its highest reach of
productiveness.
To sustain his thesis, Karl Hillebrand has to include Bums
in the rationalistic group; Mr. Harrison adds Blake and
Wordsworth. Not satisfied with this arbitrary grouping, he is
compelled by the exigency of his argument to identify prose
with poetry, a still very questionable canon of art. By any
other consideration, by organic relation, by natural aflSnity, it
is certain that Wordsworth, Coleridge, and Bums belong as
little in the quality of their genius to the eighteenth century
as they do to the seventeenth. Their temper, their aims, their
work were bora of a spirit most clearly opposite to that of the
last century, of a spirit that attained its height and fmition
only in our own time. This kind of classification indeed brings
us face to face with what seems in one case a contradiction
and in the other a pure misapprehension of historical develop-
* There is a very characteristic passage in Sir William Temple's esaaTS
on poetry, which indicates the range of picademic taste among men of
refinement. See his Works, vol. i., p. 147.
1887.] jRecent Views of the Eighteenth Cenlmry. 153
ment. No writer has remonstrated more forcibly tlian Mr.
Harrison against the superficial habit of fixing conventional
limits to organic phenomena, as if human life and literature
coald be parcelled out in little squares, like a chess-board, each
a liomogeneous unit, never overlapping with any other, or
suffering transpositions. Setting aside these minor marks of
partisanship, it is only fair to say that the estimate of the
German and English critics is in general, the result of disinter-
ested research, a calmer perspective and a more catholic tem-
per; but again, I must add, their plea covers too wide a field ;
it announces principles that will not hold entirely good in the
special question before us, namely, the contribution of the cen-
tury to the highest order of poetry. The nicest discrimination
is required in this debatable province, and it cannot be said to
have been exercised by either of them. The real problem is
inadequately stated ; its difficulties are not analyzed, and hardly
even presented with impartiality.
At this juncture happily we have the pleasure of encounter-
ing one of England's most skillful verse-men and accomplished
man-of-letters who comes te fill in the outline already indicated,
to supply all the necessary details, and to express with perspi-
cuity and brilliant effect the new ideas which have lately taken
form about the poetry of the eighteenth century, its value and
precise rank and mission in English literature. Mr. Edmund
Gosse's Inquiry into the Cavsee and Phenomena of the JRise
of Classical Poetry in England must be still fresh in most
readers' minds. It is a book full of scholarship and crammed
with curious facts, the trove of antiquarian research ; it sug-
gests also some novel lines of thought, and opens still others
even more novel ; but as a treatise on the origins of classical
poetry it has seemed te far better judges than the present
writer lamentably unsatisfactory. Mr. Gosse starts the great
question of causes, he states the difficulties lucidly ; he eludes
them in the end with clever ingenuity. His main contention
is that English classicism was native-bom and not the product
of French infiuence ; and here, in tracing the growth of the
distich and square-toed rhyme, Mr. Gosse opens a new vein
and makes a really valuable and original contribution to liter-
ary criticism.
154 Recent Views of the EigkteeniJi Century. [Aug.,
But this novel contention is accompanied by another far
more opposed to accepted canons and directly pertinent to the
subject of this paper. The collective body of eighteenth cen-
tury literature, according to Mr. Gosse's argument, shows not
a relapse, but a decided step in advance. In poetry especially,
Mr. Gosse says, " the classical movement was not, as has been
the habit to suppose, a meaningless and stupid decline into
dulness." " It was a reaction of common sense from barbar-
ism, a return to rule after license, an act of self-preservatioa
on the part of literature." It is not a period of mediocrity ;
on the contrary it is a period of advance, of reform, of perfec-
tion, " a necessary element in the progress of the human mind."
Again : " I hold that it was an absolute necessity, if English
poetry was to exist, that a period of consecutive severity and
attention to form should succeed the hysterical riot of the
Jacobeans. The classic movement supplied that basis of style,
in prose and verse, upon which all more recent literature has
been elevated, and if we have chosen to cover it up and forget
it, and to return in our poetical architecture to selected models
from earlier schools, it is none the less due to the labors of
Waller, Dryden, and Pope, that we have solid ground work
on which to support these brilliant fabrics of the imagination."
The lines I have quoted are a little vague, but if Mr. Gosse
by " all more recent literature " means literature from the time
of Wordsworth and Burns, the statement is a remarkable ona
Wordsworth, Coleridge, Shelley, Keats, Rosetti indebted for
their form to Waller, Dryden, and Pope ! The romantic
school founded on the models of the artificial, the naturalistic
on the urban school I Pursuing his line of thought, Mr. Gosse
sketches, with the light swift strokes of assured intimacy with
his subject, the decline of the Elizabethan drama. He paints
the great lassitude which came upon literature after the
ebullient passion of the Kenaissance, the emotional weariness
and craving for moderation which followed it. He shows,
what I have already indicated, how the magnificent Id equali-
ties of the older dramatists sank imperceptibly into the gro-
tesque of the Marinists, how with the expansion of genius,
verse became the occupation of the smaller wits, a culture for
the elect, full of conceits, riddles, and extravagances of language
1887.] jRecent Views of the Eighteenth Century. 165
and metaphor, all severed by a wide abyss from popular sym-
pathy and respect All these deficiencies of the romantic de-
cline are familiar enough to students, and there is no doubt
they imply, as Mr. Gosse holds, a condition of unhealth and
license in poetry, a veritable barbarism. At this moment the
classical reaction set in, and by the reforms it wrought, proved
its own rightfulness and needfulness. For the riot of un-
restrained fancy, it substituted common sense; out of confu-
sion it raised up logic and intelligence, and where all before
was dwarfed and pollarded fiction, it brought actuality. With
this rationalism of spirit came also precision of language, regu-
larity in metre, restraint in the use of imagery, correctness,
and finally elegance and perfection. This, if I understand Mr.
Gosse, was in sum the work of the classical school, and it is
this revolution which entitles it to the large claim he makes
for it of having found " the basis of style upon which all more
recent literature has been elevated."
It is a claim that demands serious attention, for it strikes at
the whole doctrine of former English criticism- Somewhere
there lurks beneath its plausible terms some knot or idiosyn-
crasy of opinion which, unfortunately, we have but a moment
to pick out and inspect. It is imperative to know, for instance,
if the vaunted advance is in the matter of metrical forms and
versification. If so, a large concession is to be made at the
outset to Mr. Gosse in one particular field of which he is a
recognized master, in the literature of the ode.
For no one has pointed out so clearly as he, how Gray and
Collins rescued the ode from the shapeless chaos of the Pin-
daric form of Cowley and from the grotesque uncouthness into
which it had sunk in the hand of Noris, of Bemerton, and the
matchless Orinda, and constructed for it an elaborate melodic
system rigid enough to be thoroughly in keeping with the
formalism of the eighteenth century. Not only did Gray and
Collins by their combined efforts give the deathblow to Cow-
ley's broken and irregular verse, but the chaster ode, designed
by Collins, has ever since, Mr. Gosse is at pains to assure us,
ruled in poetic art.* Nevertheless, it has not been universally
followed as a norm. Both Tennyson and Lowell have allowed
* Seventeenth Century Studies, p. 192.
166 Recent Views of the Eighteewth Century. [Aug.,
themselveB to depart form it, and among the modem lyrists
who have employed its severe harmonies — Shelley, Keats, and
Swinburne — ^the last returns for his models, not to the eigh-
teenth century lyrists, but directly to the fountain-head, the
intricate antiphonal system of the Greek poets. Besides this,
two other facts are to be noted. Gray and Collins are not the
only sources to which the modern ode is indebted. There was
Milton, the full influence of whose style in his unrivalled odes,
as Mr. Gosse confesses in another place, was not exercised until
Shelley began to writa Again, still in the confessional, he
constrains himself to acknowledge that with the romantic re-
vival, the serious ode became a less elaborate and sedate instru-
ment in the hands of a warmer generation of poets."* All
attempt to restrain it within the precise bounds of its tradi-
tions was abandoned, and the odes of "Wordsworth and Cole-
ridge are as absolutely irregular as Cowley's own. In Shel-
ley's Odeo to NajpleB^ the very meaning of the terminology is
forgotten, and Keats resolves his odes into a uniform series of
stanzas of melodic movement With these reservations, it is
no doubt true enough that Gray and Co^Uins are to be held the
sponsors, the one for the Aeolian, and the other for the Dorian
harmonies of this enthusiastic genre^ which gained so much by
the warmer and finer tones of later poets, but lost on the other
hand, through the mysterious notions of taste, the popularity
it had a hundred years ago.
But setting aside the three or four high and solemn odes, to
which Mr. Gosse would confine attention, and turning to proof
of some wider prevalence of the Old English and lyrical spirit,
what has the eighteenth century to offer us? Where are 'its
shorter songs, its bursts of melody, its ballads, all that goes to
make up the more popular anthology of a musical and poetic
people ? Congreve's songs hardly overlap the century. Mr.
Palgrave excludes them from his Golden Treasury^ as well as
Dryden's songs, some of which are fine and stirring, but are
only now beginning to be revived and appreciated again. But
both Congreve and Dryden had lived in the midst of the
tuneful period of the cavaliers, and inherited the traditions of
Herrick, Lovelace, and Suckling. There were none to follow
* English Odes, Introduction, p. 15.
1887.] Meceiit Views of the Eighteenth Centwry. 157
them who had heard the dashing and graceful rounds and
madrigals of that earlier time. Gay, Henry Carey, and Dur-
fey left behind them a host of songs, bnt they have not sur-
vived, to be known and liked except perhaps a single one in
the Beggar's Opera, and the Ballad of Blackreyed Susan^
because, to be plain, they had no substance in them, neither
good art nor any sweet or memorable sentiment. Prior prac-
tised the lighter measures with better success : his archness,
his wit, his ease and gayety of heart, have preserved a select
few of his erotic trifles from oblivion. There is no other
lyrist in that epoch with his brightness and flow of melody.
Ambrose Phillips has some prettily turned rhymes, like those
on Charlotte Pultenay, and we remember Cowper's Loss of the
Royal Oeorge^ and those insipidly inane lines on the solitude
of Alexander Selkirk, which as conveying any effect of soli-
tude are not to be compared with the brief pregnant moment
in Defoe's prose romance when Crusoe discovers the footprints
in the sand. There is indeed no more significant illustration
of the poverty of the contemporary lyricism than the involun-
tary concession Mr. Palgrave is constrained to make in incor-
porating such mediocre verse as Cowper's stanzas and Carey's
common street-ditty — Sally in our Alley, Neither should we
forget, in a different sphere from these last. Goldsmith's touch-
ing lines, with their suspicion of morbid sentiment : " When
lovely woman stoops to foUy," nor the musing softness of
Roger's Sleeping Beauty^ nor, best of all, Mrs. Barbauld's
" Life. I know not what thou art."
which, with its deep pathetic modem accent, refreshes the
senses in this desert of the third decade like the breath of the
evening breeze. And then, of still a different class, Carey's
national anthem, God Save the Queen, inspired music and
detestable rhyme, Thompson's Bule Britannia, floated down
to us only by the fine martial setting of Dr. Ame ; David Gar-
rick's salt-sea
'' Heart of oak are our ships
Hearts of oak are our men."
Charles Dibden's sea ballads and catches, Tom Bowling, Lovely
Nan^ etc., the solace of all sailors, with something of the wind
158 Recent Views of the Eighteenth Century. [Aug.,
and savor of the ocean in them, and the most English of all
the songs of the time, though they hardly merit a place in
literature.
This is a scanty fiorUegium for English literature, but I
dare say it includes nearly all the blossoms that would reward
us for the plucking and weaving. There are hardly as many
in the whole century as in the single song-books of earlier
times, in Queen Elizabeth's Virginal Book or Purcell's choir-
books for instance. Neither, with three or four exceptions, is
of their quality first-rate. One is forced to the conviction
that the conditions of lyricism were almost entirely lacking,
and the poets themselves for some occult reason deprived of
the power of feeling or making a true song, a short lyric, an
idyll. Sings Prior to Chloe JeaLoue :
*' Od*s life. Must one swear to the truth of a song ? **
The idea is absurd, and presently he makes a poetic confession,
which throws some light on his conception of this art, which
we may suppose not entirely restricted to himself.
" What I speak, my fair Chloe, and what I write, shows
The difference there is betwixt Nature and Art :
I court others in verse, but I love Thee in prose :
And they have my whimsies ; but thou hast my heart.*'
The utter absence of the gracefuUer forms of lyric verse re-
calls the most characteristic of the metrical forms of the last
century, the one instrument over all others in authority and
popularity; and here again Mr. Gosse seems to have much
reason on his side. In the era of Pope, all the distinctive and
finely graded emotions, the lyrical at times, the elegiac, and
commonly the satiric, were reduced to the rule and cramped
within the compass of the heroic couplet. The simple Greek
canon, based on an aesthetic instinct, which prescribes specific
forms for specific modes of feeling was entirely disregarded.
The natural effect was a lack of variety, of elasticity. The
very rigidity of the rhymed distichs no doubt assisted in ren-
dering feeling itself artificial, and yet it had to carry, as some
one has said, '' the utmost possible stretch of emotion of the
strict classicist." Are we, then, to look to the perfection
which it reached in this utmost possible stretch of emotion for
1887.] Recent Views of the Eighteenth Century. 159
the substantial evidence of formal progress? The answer to
this question is by no means simple. It has a double face.
To Mr. Gosse's implication that the heroic couplet contains
in its very perfection a proof of advance in literary form, it is
only fair to make a frank, though partial concession. Con-
trasted with the obscurity of diction and style, the corruption
of verse-forms when "Waller began to write, it shows an enor-
mous improvement ; and tracing the course of its growth
forward from that time, we see that its adoption and long
primacy was only an expression of its increasing sense and love
of clearness, order, and proportion. Whether Mr. Gosse has
not leaned a little too strongly on this point is for others to
decide, but at least it deserves recognition and further elucida-
tion. A grave doubt remains whether this gain, valuable as it
may have been, was not counter-balanced by certain excesses
and sacrifices ; by excess, meaning the extension of clearness,
order, and proportion into their extremes, prosaic statement,
absolute correctness, monotony ; and by sacrifice, the neglect
of the spiritual particle of poetry which seems uniformly to
accompany over attention to the form and finish of its body.
This somewhat reluctant affirmative to the first branch of the
query must be followed by a stout negation of the second.
Except for its indirect bearing upon literary style, in such
literary qualities as those just mentioned, how can the rhymed
pentameter verse be said to have formed the basis of modem
poetry ? It was despised and rejected of the whole romantic
school who open our century, Byron alone excepted. Its dic-
tion, its entire scope of effects, including antithesis, epigram,
complete epigrammatic couplets, its whole tonic scale delight-
ing in balance and seensaw, was almost as opposed to the free
verse-forms of the Eomantics as the Alexandrine metre was in
France.
But when we leave the heroic couplet, and come to the case
of blank verse, what is to be said for the theory of progress in
poetic form ? Blank verse, it is true, was considerably used in
the eighteenth century ; — it was used by Thompson, Young,
PhillipB, — ^by the Komantic Reactionaries, in other words, and
occasionally by a few other poeta But, what is of the first im-
portance, with Pope and the classical school, the dominant
160 RecerU Views of the Eighteenth Century, [Aug.,
school of the age, it had passed into complete disuse. This
most flexible vehicle of imaginative expression, whose sonorous
cadences in Milton had made the great hexameter sound to a
Grecian like Landor thin and tinkling, had come to be regarded
as barbarous and uncouth, " encumbering and encumbered " as
Johnson pronounced it. Its employment by Thompson and
Young was violently opposed as an innovation and derided as
a revolt against good taste. If the moderns are under any
obligations to the eighteenth century for their blank verse, it
is to the group of nascent Romantics represented by the two
last named poets, that is, to the very men who led the reaction
against the classical school. As a matter of fact, however,
there is little or nothing to prove any such an obligation.
Wordsworth thought his verse was modelled upon Thompson's
and Dyer's but at his best the structure and cadence of his
poetry is rather Shakspearean and Miltonic, and for the art of
the other brother-poets of the Romantic Revival, the origins
and models are so unquestionably to be sought for in the
Renaissance that it would be an impertinence to argue it.
Neither was it necessary to dissent from Mr. Gosse's position
that the wide free use of blank verse by the modems, taking
in all its breadth of harmony and intricacy of modulations,
goes far to show the finer aesthetic sense of the poets who em-
ployed it with success. The rhymed ten-syllabled verse is to
blank verse indeed something what the harpischord of the
eighteenth century was to the piano-forte. Compared to the
latter, the quaint keyed instrument was restricted in volume
and range The feeble base tones, the lack of pitch and sos-
tenuto, I have sometimes fancied, not unfairly analogous to the
deficiencies of contemporary verse. The modern piano-forte,
on the other hand, has some striking correspondences with
blank verse, — ^its wide scale and depth of vibration, its glow of
tone- color, its resources of modulation and expressive interpre-
tation. If some masters. Bach and Handel used the harpsi-
chord, or its less imperfect congener the clavier, so some of the
masters of verse, Chaucer, Dryden, Pope, have made a success-
ful medium of the rhymed pentameter, but in most instances
the greatest results have been achieved with instruments of a
grander and subtler power of emotional expression.
1887.] Recent Views of the Eighteenth Century, 161
Now, after such a bird's eye view of these forms of the
eighteenth centnry verse (massing together for the nonce
sonnet, song, and idyl), return to Mr. Gosse's dictum and apply
it severally to the different orders of composition. Where, one
is inclined to ask, is the boasted progress ? where is the founda-
tion of the style of the nineteenth century ? To have three
distinct modes of poetic expression virtually disappear, or
shown only to be ill-considered and ill-practiced, will seem to
some students to be a very dubious improvement. For con
sidering minor lyricism and sonneteering apart, and with it
tragedy and the idyl, in what respects, it may be asked, do any
of them, as represented in that age, form " a basis for the style
upon which all recent literature has been elevated?" The
historical facts are plain and clear. The sonnets of Words-
worth, Hartley Coleridge, Keats, Rossetti, owe absolutely noth-
ing to the eighteenth century, for it had no sonnet literature.
The imaginative drama of Byron, Browning, and Tennyson,
has its stylistic like its spiritual similitude, not in Rowe and
Savage, but in the great Elizabethan models. As for the
lyrical movement of the opening era, the exquisite outpouring
of Bums and Shelley, and the song-craft of the Victorian era,
it seems as far as possible removed, both in temper and versi-
fication, from the lifeless copies and meagre artificialities of
Prior and Goldsmith. And lastly the idyls of Tennyson are in
no whit nearer the jaded and satire-inspired pastorals of the
extreme Popeans.
With all these qualifications and objections it is nevertheless
possible to acquiesce in the main plea of this brilliant writer,
that in many respects the eighteenth century was a necessary
stage in the reconstruction of stylistic standards in English
poetry. But Mr. Gosse's whole book is aimed at the change
in form between Shakspeare and Pope, to the almost complete
neglect of the corresponding changes of poetic temper and
feeling. This concentration on a single point makes the
strength of his position, but it constitutes also its weakness.
It springs from the deplorable mistake of regarding poetry as
exclusively a formal art, and treating it entirely from an artistic
or technical, as opposed to a philosophical standpoint. It is a
decided coigne of vantage for technical criticism, but it ignores
VOL. XI. 11
162 Recent Views of the Eighteenth CenMvry. [Aug.,
the historic method, and is by just so much narrow and cir-
cumscribed in its views. To separate from the matter change
of structure from changes of sentiment, is to disregard the
national life of which the art of every period is only the
incomplete reflection, and to lose hold of "the ethic^ and
essential character " of its poetry.
Yet it is precisely this character that is of an importance
equal, at the very least, to form. "We must consider the
ethical and essential character of classical poetry," says an
Academy reviewer, " if we are to comprehend aright the rise
of the classical form." Any other procedure, certainly, would
scarcely conduct us to an adequate comprehension. Are we
to appraise poetry by its mechanism alone ? Is execution, fin-
ish, bookcraft to be the final test in the rating of its excel-
lences? Take the style of the mundane rhetorical poetry of
the eighteenth century at its best, applaud tlie sonorousness of
Dryden, the grace and symmetry of Pope, what did so perfect
an instrument accomplish towards the creation of a great and
free poetry ? To what ideals was it attuned ? What did this
new and exquisite gift of form express in the way of emotion
and thought?
I border perhaps on a worn topic, one beaten out to thin-
ness by the critics of preceding generations, but utterances like
these of Frederick Harrison and Mr. Gosse are stimulating.
They send us back in search of our old impressions, which
almost vanish away under the touch of their transforming rods,
to test them by these latter day standards, to revive them, if
necessary, at any rate to discover some point de repere from
which to proceed again with safety.
L. J. SWINBUBNE.
1887.] Notices of New Books, 163
BECBKT PUBUCATIONS.
G. P. Putnam's Sons, New York.
Told at Tuxedo. By A. M. Emory. 145 pp.
The Federal (Constitution - An Essay. By John F. Baker, LL.D. 126 pp.
Columbus, or the Hero of the New World. By D. S. Preston. 103 pp.
The Van Gelder Papers— And other sketches. Edited by J. T. I. 316 pp.
Henry Holt dk Co,, Kew York.
Sketci) of the History of Yale University. By Franklin Bowditch Dexter,
M.A. 108 pp.
I\mk dk Wagnaiia.
A day in Capernaum. By Dr. Franz Delitzsch— Translated by Rev. George H.
Schodde. 166 pp.
Environment A Story of Modern Society. By Florine Thayer MeCray.
404 pp.
Saratoga Chips and Carlsbad Wafers. By Nathan Shepard. Illustrated.
244 pp.
Methods of Church Work. Religious, social, and financial. By Rev. Sylvanus
Stall A.M. 304 pp.
The Life of Rev. George C. Haddock. By Frank C. Haddock. 541 pp.
Hints on Early Education and Nursery Discipline. 97 pp.
The Captain of the Janizaries. A Story of the times of Scanderbeg and the
Fall of Constantinople. By James M. Ludlow. 404 pp.
Thirty Thousand Thoughts. Being extracts covering a comprehensive circle of
Religious and Allied topics. Edited by the Rev. H. D. M. Spencer, M.A., Rev.
Joseph S. Bxell, M.A., Rev. Charles Neil, M.A. 609 pp.
Harper <fc Broihera.
Outlines of International Law. With an account of its origin and sources and
of its historical development. By Gtoorge B. Davis, U. S. A. 469 pp.
T. A T. Clark, Edinburgh,
Clark's Foreign Theological Library, New Series Vol. XXX. Godet on St.
Paul's first Epistle to the Corinthians. Vol. II. 493 pp.
Chautauqua Press, Boston.
A Memoir of Roger Ascham. By Samuel Johnson, LL.D. With an introduc-
tion by James H. Carlisle. 252 pp.
Oliver Goldsmith. A selection from his Works, with an Introduction. By E.
B. Hale. 287 pp.
Lee A Shepard, Boston,
Drones Honey. By Sophie May. 281 pp.
The Obelisk and its voices, or The Inner facings of the Washington Monument.
By Harry B. Carringlon, U. S. A.
C0HTSHT8 07 THE 8SPTEMBBB HITMBEB*
Abt. I. Some Recent Books on Folk Lore.
Edward G. Bourne, Tale College.^ 165
n. Professor Johnston^e "Connecticut:" Some Thoughts on the His-
tory of a Commonwealth-Democracy.
John A. Porter, Washington, P. C. 1*72
TIL A Christian Daily Paper.
Rot. 0. A. Kingsbury, New York City. 182
lY. Eighteenth Century Poetry. Part n.
Louis Judson Swinburne, Colorado Springs, Col. 189
v. The Suryiyal of the Filthiest.
Charles H. Owen, Hartford, Conn. 201
VI. The Pastor and Doctrine.
BoT. Charles C. Starbiick, Andover, ICass. 212
UNIVERSITY TOPICS.
In Memoriam Henry C. Kingsley. Dr. Noah Porter, New Hayen. 222
CURRENT LITERATURE.
Encyclopedia of Liying Diyines and Christian Workers of all Denominations
in Europe and America. By Philip Schaff and Samuel M. Jackson. 227
The Story of Carthage. By Alfred J. Church. 228
Creed and Character. By H. & Holland. 230
Commentary on First Corinthians. By F. Gk>det. 231
Hints on Writing and Speech-making. By Thomas Wentworth Higginson. 232
Selected Essays of Joseph Addisoa By G. T. Winchester. 232
BUSY PEOPLE
Who wish to keep up with the times will find ** Book Chat "
invaluable. It indexes the articles in the magazines of the
world each month under aui^ect^ and gives an outline of the plot,
scope, and character of every new book. Bright, novel, and
original ! Samples 10 cents, 11 per year.
BBENTANO BBOS., 5 Union Square, New York.
[The NEW E1I6LAHDER AND TALE REVIEW Is Indexed la BOOK CHAT.]
V
NEW ENGLANDER
AND
YALE EEYIE"W.
No. OCX.
SEPTEMBEE, 1887.
AmicLE L— SOME RECENT BOOKS ON FOLK LORE.
In the old Greek Readers of fifty years or more ago — ^like
the GrsQca Minora, Jacob's, Owen's, or Oolton's — ^whose agree-
able variety of fables, jests, dialogues, and spirited selections
from writers of higher grade has with doubtful wisdom been
made to give place to a regular amount of Anabasis, in those
old reminders of the past, now chiefly to be found on the top
shelves of ministers' libraries or in some literary junk shop,
often some of the most interesting pages were fi^lled with the
Asteia or jests of Hierocles. Little or nothing could be
learned by the curious reader about this Hierocles. It is
probably a mere name, and very likely a name having no
original connection with the jests. One who did not as a
child read this or some other ancient jest book can hardly
appreciate the mingled curiosity, surprise, and wonder of a
thoughtful boy in puzzling out of Greek, that most serious and
venerable tougue, the story he had heard told but yesterday
of old Mr. So-and-So, of his playmate's mother, who forbade
VOL. XL 12
166 Some Recent Books on Fclh Lore. [Sept.,
him to go swimming till lie had learnt how, or the Irish
boll of the last comic paper — ^in fact, almost all the Irish
bolls he had ever heard of. He had read old stories, he knew
old men who had favorite anecdotes and jests which had done
them faithful service for a lifetime, but to find such tales in
ancient Greek, to see that they were centuries old, that at
least forty generations of men had told them, laughed at them,
and perhaps thought them fresh, was an idea so new, so
strange, that he wavered between a sort of curious awe at
this unexpected evidence of the sameness of man in different
ages, and laughter at this, the greatest jest of alL
For the sake of a less favored generation, we will yield to
the temptation to quote a few of these jests :
A pedant* wanting to leam to swim was almost drowned. He then
vowed never to touch the water again unless he first learned to swim.
A pedant, wishing to train his horse not to eat, gave him no fodder,
and when the horse died of hunger, he said, " I have suffered a great
loss, for just when he learned not to eat, he up and died."
A pedant who was trying to sell his house took round a stone from it
as a specimen.
A pedant desiring to see if he looked well when asleep looked in this
glass with his eyes shut.
A pedant met another pedant and said, " I heard you were dead."
The other replied, " But you see me still alive." The pedant answered,
'* But I had sooner believe the man who told me than you."
A pedant learning that the crow lives above two hundred years
bought one to see.
One of a pair of twins had died. A pedant met the survivor and
asked him, '* Is it you that is dead or your brother?"
A pedant wishing to cross a river rode on to the ferry on horse-back.
When some one asked him why, he said he was in a hurry.
A student in laok of money sold off his books and wrote home,
"Congratulate me, father, for I am already getting my living by my
books."
A pedant's son, when he was sent by his father off to the wars,
promised to bring back the head of one of the enemy, but the pedant
replied, *' I hope to see you come back without a head, if only well and
happy."
* The word pedant is a translation of the Qreek word ScholoBtikoBi the
learned but unpractical man, corresponding to the German professor of
the Fliegende BlAtter. This type was, no doubt, common in Greece in
the Alexandrian age and later when the Greeks became learned. In
the earlier and unlearned age, these anecdotes, if current then, were
doubtless related of the Bosotians, as they are now of the Irish, though
the Irishman, to be sure, is anything but a Boeotian.
1887.] Some Recmt JSooka on Folk Lore. 167
A pedanfs friend wi^ote him to buy him some books while he was in
Greece, but he forgot to do it. When he met the friend later, he said,
"That letter you wrote about books, I never received."*
Surely the reader of these lines will be rare who has not
seen one or more of these venerable jests in the ^' f anny^' col-
mnn of his paper or heard them told of somebody at least once
a week since he was old enough to read or hear such things.
It has been with a similar feeling of curiosity and wonder
that in later years we have found that the nursery and fairy
tales of our childhood have been current for ages, and are still
related to the children of the most widely separated and
diverse races of men. Prompted, no doubt, by this feeling,
as well as by an interest in science, an increasing attention is
now devoted, to this branch of popular or ^^ Folk Lore" as it is
happily called.
The design of the present article is merely to call the
attention of such as may find an interest in this fascinating
study to some valuable helps which have recently appeared.
A beginning may properly be made with a production of
one of our own countrymen, the Italian Popular Tales of
l^omas Frederick Orancf This handsome volume is the
result of many years of labor in this field by a scholar whose
capacity and judgment have been honored by a foreign society
with the task of editing the Sermones of Jacques of Vitry, a
prelate of the thirteenth century, whose discourses are full of
these popular tales and incidents. Prof. Crane's work com-
prises a selection of Fairy Tales, Stories of Oriental Origin,
Leg^ids and Ghost Stories, Nursery Tales, Stories and Jests.
In each case the source of the tale is carefully indicated,
references are made to variants of which the most interesting
are quoted, while the notes convey other illustrative informa-
tion of value to the student Two useful bibliographies, one
of Italian collections, the other of general collections, as well
as a serviceable index, have been added.
For those interested in French Folk Lore, it may be re-
marked that Oosquin's tales of Lorraine, referred to by Prof.
* Whoever deairee to become further acquainted with these jests may
find a translation of them, eupiXMsed to be from the hand of Dr. John-
flon, in the Cfentleman*M Magazine for 1748, if my memory serves me.
t Houghton, Mifflin & Co. Boston. Price, $2.60.
168 Some Recent Books on Folk Lore. [Sept.,
Crane, as in Romama^ have since been published in two vol-
umes, with a most instructive introduction under the title of
Conies Popvlaires de Lorrcdne. Prof. Crane has done the
work of translation well, and the stories are readable, but we
doubt if they ever secure popular favor like Grimm's Tales.
They seem inferior to the German, or else they appeal to us
the less on account of their further remove in the kinship of
peoples.
Having mentioned Grimm's Tales, we desire to call attention
to the new edition in Bohn's Standard Library, in two vol-
umes with an introduction by Andrew Lang. This version,
which is very well done, is accompanied by a rendering of the
Grimms' notes and comments which are difficult to obtain in
the original. Next to these two comprehensive works, and in
some respects equal to them in interest and value to the ama-
teur FolMorist, may be mentioned Popvla/r Tales and Fictions :
their Migrations and Transformations^ by W. A. Clouston,
Blackwood, London. In two substantial volumes, this Oriental
scholar has collected the variations among different peoples of
the more common folktalea He first mentions the version
most familiar to English readers, then the more ordinary
European versions, and concludes with the more ancient
Oriental and generally Indian forms of the tale. An idea of
the contents of the work may be obtained from a few speci-
men titles. Invisible Caps amd Cloaks; Shoes of Swiftness ;
InexhoMsUble Purses^ etc.; The Demon Enclosed in a BotUe ;
Contracts with the Evil One; Ooldrprodu,omg Animals;
Litde Fairly. " Little Fairly " is the Irish tale of cunning
and good fortune as against brute strength and stupidity. The
essential outlines of the story are very well known from Ander-
sen's '^ Big Clans and Little Claus." Of this tale Mr. Clonston
gives two Irish versions, two Norse, one English, one Danish, ^
one Icelandic, refers to several German versions, two French
and four Gallic, besides several from the East.
This extensive list might easily be increased. In Euatherine
MacQuoid's " Pictures and Legends from Normany and Brit-
tany," a full and interesting Breton variant is given, which if
we recollect, is independent enough to deserve chronicling ;
though some of its features, especially one of the pot which
cooks without a fire, are very Uke those of the Sidlian UncU
1887.] Some Hsoent Books on Folk Zore. 169
Cctpricmo. In the Breton tale, the two characters are the
peasant and his load, while in the others they are two brothers,
neighbors, or a peajsant and some thieves. Evidently the frame
work of the story is fitted to an appropriate local body. One
cannot help thinking that the Breton peasants found no little
consolation for f eadal oppressions in rehearsing how one of
their number had harassed and outwitted his cruel lord till he
was finally tricked to his death. So in a community troubled
with robbers the same range of over-reaching tricks and the
same happy victories of the weaker over the stronger would be
told against the robbers. This adaptation of the main inci-
dents of a story to its audience may be noted at any time in
conversation by an observant person.
Mr. Clouston's volumes will prove very helpful to the stu-
dent of the transmission of tales. He furnishes material in
abundance, but is no strong advocate of any theory, though he
seems to incline to the view that these stories originated in
India and were transmitted to the west in the middle ages.
Ab an Orientalist such would be his natural leaning, but he
has frequent sarcasms for the Solar myth theory of their origin
in India, which is commonly held by philological Folklorists.
This view is now meeting strenuous opposition from a compar-
ative new theory, that of the Anthropologists, which is at
present most actively represented by Mr. Andrew Lang. In
his CusUyin and Myik* he expounds and illustrates the anthro-
pological theory in a most entertaining way. Indeed Mr. Lang
is so witty and vivacious, so Lucianic in his reasoning that we
suspect he has had hard work to challenge recognition as a
scientific investigator. This characteristic of his work makes
him a more effective critic of the Solar theory than advocate
of his own, although he presents that with much force. An
elaborate work on '* Myths, Oustom and Beligion " is soon to
appear from his hand, but meanwhile his views can best be
studied in " Custom and Myth," and his thorough introduction
to the edition of Grimm above mentioned. Mr. Lang also
writes frequently on the subject for the Saiturday Review^
where his articles may be easily recognized by one who knows
his touch.
The three chief theories of the origin and spread of Folk
* Harper & Bros., New York.
170 Some Recent Books on FdOc Lore. [Sept.,
tales are as follows : first, that they were invented in India in
early times to be later carried to ontside peoples by travelers
and pilgrims for the most part during the middle ages, and
then, to be spread over Europe by story books, sermons, etc.;
second, that the early Aryans dramatized as it were by their
lively imaginations the action of the forces and phenomena of
Nature. As time went on, and language changed, these old
names of the sun, moon, dawn, etc., became obsolete, and while
the earlier generations knew they were personifying nature,
the later ones interpreted the now forgotten names of the sun,
etc., as names of primitive heroes. Thus these myths, now
full grown became familiar to all Aryans, and spread with their
spread. The modem popular tales are the common people's
fragmentary remains of a former mythology of this kind.
This theory is advocated in Sir George Cox's " Mythology of
the Aryan Nations," and in his children's book, ^' Tales of
Ancient Greece." Prof. Max Miiller is perhaps the best
known champion of this theory among philologists.
The anthropological theory is that many of these Folk tales
with their stories of monsters, marriages with animals, animals
with magic powers, charms, witchcraft, cannibalism, and other
outlandish and even revolting features are an inheritance of
an immense past, of an earlier period in man's existence,
when the ancestors of modem Europeans were in a stage
of barbarism equal to that of the lowest savages of the
present day. These stories in their essential features reflect
the range of thought, fears, and beliefs of savage people, they
even embalm in a story form descriptions of their early cus-
toms. We have not space to outline or illustrate the arguments
for this theory but they can be found briefly but compactly
stated in Mr. Lang's introduction to Grimm and illustrated in
his Ckcetom amd Myth. One point, however, may be men-
tioned. While the advocates of the two first theories limit
their range of variants mostly to the Aryan peoples, the anthro-
pologists base their argument for a vastly earlier origin of these
stories upon their existence to-day among the most distant and
wildest savages. If a Bushman, absolutely without knowledge
of our stories or life, an ancient Greek and a German peasant all
tell the same tale, they must either all three have invented it or
have derived it from some common source. Now a story with
1887.] Some Beoetit Books on Folk Lore. 171
the BO-called ^^monstroufi" features it is hardly possible to imagine
would be inyented alike by three persons of such widely differ-
ent types and civilization. The anthropological theory is that
8Qch a tale was invented either separately or in one place in a
period of barbarism not unlike that of the Bushmen ; it has
staid with the Bushmen, with little modification ; with the
ancestors of the Greeks some of its crudities were pruned off
as they advanced in culture and as the stories grew into their
mythology, but some of them remained, e. g., the story of
Cronus and Uranus. With the peasant class, the most station-
ary of the families of men in a non-reading age, the fortune
of the stories was somewhat similar, though they became
&iry tales and the like, a popular rather than a literary
mytiiology. Such, in brief, is the basis of this later theory,
which in the writer's opinion is likely to gain more and more
assent.
Little space is left for the last book on our list, The His-
tory of the Forty Vesirsy or the Story of the Forty Moma and
Eves : written in Turkish by Sheykh-Zada. Done into Eng-
lish by E. J. W. Gibb. This well-known series of tales, of
some importance to the folklorist, has never been, as a whole,
translated into English before; so that Mr. Gibb's elegant
version is very welcome. Based upon an incident like that of
Joseph and Potipher's wife, the collection consists of the
stories told by the forty wise Yezirs every morning to deter
the king from executing his unjustly accused son, and of the
forty counteracting tales of his young wife, the son's step-
mo^er, told in the evening to nerve him to the execution.
The Yezirs relate the inconstancy and frailty of women, and
the queen, the treachery of sons and court favorites. There is
a great variety of amusing incident in the tales, though many
will find the medieeval contempt for women too prominent
and too much reiterated even if they are prepared for it and
used to it The dedication tells us that we owe this version to
the suggestion of Mr. Olouston. Mr. Gibb, while not devot-
ing particular pains to the matter, has called attention to strik-
ing parallels or variants of these stories in other countries.
The volume is handsomely gotten up and is published by
George Bedway, London.
Edwabd G. Boubnb.
172 Professor Johnston? a ^^Oonnectumt?^ [Sept,
Abtiole n.— professor JOHNSTON'S "CONNECTI-
CUT:" SOME THOUGHTS ON THE HISTORY OF A
COMMONWEALTH-DEMOCRACY.*
Op the latest contribution to the ^^ American Common-
wealth " series, it may be said, in epitome, that the field chosen
is an exceedingly frnitfol one and that the labors of the author
have secured a rich harvest. Professor Johnston writes of a
small State, but one whose history is full of interest, alike to
the scholar and the patriot. He is an accomplished historian
and has made his study from the modem stand-point, which
subordinates mere antiquarianism to the discovery of living
principles. The task is one requiring superior qualifications,
of trained skill in sifting masses of unrelated data, sound judg-
ment in weighing the conflicting testimony of specialists, and
a good flow of narrativa No one of these important elements
is lacking to detract from the completeness and value of the
present volume.
The story of the first settlement of Connecticut, dating from
1634-5, and the sufferings of the early colonists, is succinctly
told. The causes which led to the emigration are fairly sum-
marized. At the time of this exodus, the Massachusetts
colony, it will be recalled, embraced only a narrow strip of
country, near the sea-board, and included eight small towns,
of which Dorchester, Watertown, and Newton (Cambridge)
were the most recent additions. The "new-comers" showed
considerable independence — ^to the annoyance of the majority
— ^in managing their civil affairs ; but, as it seems to us, the
cardinal point of difference between them and their neighbors
was the proper relations of church and State. " Democracy,**
said Cotton, who represented the majority, " I do not conceive
that ever God did ordain as a fit government for church or
* Comiecticut: A Study of a Commonwealth-Deihocracy; by Alex-
ander Johnston, Professor of Jurisprudence and Political Economy in
Princeton College. Houghton, Mifflin & Co. Boston and New York.
1887.
1887.] ProfeMor Johnston's ''Conneoeicut:' 173
commonwealtL" From this view Thomas Hooker and Samnel
Stone, graduates of Cambridge, England, and who, as pastor
and teacher of Newtown, commanded great influence among
the minority, differed radically, even to withdrawal into a
wilderness, though one which was reported to be fertile.
To the character of the Sev. Thomas Hooker, the '^ strength
of the migration," a deserved tribute of high praise is paid.
He was, indeed, splendidly endowed by nature for a pioneer,
and as a controversialist he was equal to any of his contem-
poraries. Governor Winthrop, of Massachusetts had written
him, in regard to judicature by the body of the people. " The
best part is always the least and of that best part the wiser part
is always the lesser," And Hooker had answered, ^^ In matters
of greater consequence, which concern the common good, a
general council, chosen by all, I conceive, under favor, most
suitable to rule and most safe for relief of whole."
** It would not be difficult to say," remarks the editor, " from
these two letters, which of them held the seed from which
sprang the modem American Oommonwealth."
Hooker's sermon* preached at Hartford, May 31, 1639 (and
deciphered, after the lapse of so many years, from short-hand
characters, by that accomplished scholar Dr. J. H. Trumbull),
Prof. Johnston claims " is the first practical assertion of the
right of the people not only to choose, but to limit their rulers,
an assertion which lies at the foundation of the American sys-
tem. There is no reference to a ^ dread sovereign,' no reserva-
tion of deference due to any class, not even to the class to
which the speaker himself belonged. Each individual was to
exercise his rights, ' according to the blessed will and law of
God,' but he was to be responsible to God alone for his fulfill-
ment of the obligation. The whole contains the germ of the
idea of the commonwealth, and it was developed by his hearers
* In the abstract, or memorandum, he exhorts his hearers: "They
who have power to appoint officers and magistrates, it is in their power,
also to set the bounds and limitations of the power and i)eace unto
which they call them "—-giving as his reasons: 1. ** Because the founda-
tion of authority is laid, firstly, in the free consent of the people.
2. Because, by a free choice, the hearts of the people will be more in-
clined to the love of the persons chosen, and more ready to yield obedi-
ence. 8. Because that duty and engagement of the people."
174 Professor Joh/nstoris ^^ Connecticut^ [Sept.,
into the Constitntion of 1639. It was on the banks of the
Oonnecticnt, under the mighty preaching of Thomas Hooker
and in the constitution to which he gave life, if not form, that
we draw the iirst breath of that atmosphere which is now so
familiar to us. 2%e Mrthplace of American Democracy is
EwrtfordP
We come now to a subject which will be for many readers
the most interesting in the book ; which though ably, and we
believe, correctly treated, will not be likely to escape criticism
from some sources, viz : the rise and development of the Con-
necticut town system, especially as contrasted with the corres-
ponding system in vogue in the Colony of Massachusetts.
The first Connecticut legislative body, or ^^ corte," met, as is
well known, at Newtown (Hartford), on the 26th of April, 1636,
two magistrates from each of the original towns being present
to constitute the same, and as was the case with the Massa-
chusetts General Court at that time, assumed judicial as well
as legislative functiona But the very next year there were
present in the Connecticut " corte," besides the six magistrates,
nine '^ committees," or deputies, chosen equally by the citizens
of the three towns. The latter delegation in fact elected the
six magistrates and gave them the oath of office. This depart-
ure from, or rather, improvement upon the Massachusetts idea,
simple as it may seem, really was the beginning of a much
more democratic system than existed at that time, or subse-
quently, for several years in the older colony. In Connecticut
at first, as is well known, the affairs of town and church were
practically identical, the same meetings of citizens, held in the
church of course, sufficing to manage botL But the Connec-
ticut churches rejected the example of their Massachusetts
contemporaries in making church membership a requirement
for voting or office-holding. " The better blood of the [latter]
colony," Prof. Johnston says, "was determined to establish
a privileged class of some sort ; and the bulk of the freemen,
instinctively inclined to democracy, found it difficult to resist
the claims of blood, wealth, and influence, backed by the
pronounced support of the church." These three original
Connecticut towns had, on the contrary, left commonwealth
control behind them once for all when they seceded from the
1887.] Professor Johnston^ 9 ^^CotmecHcuV^ 176
older colony. " They had gone into the wilderness each the
only organized political power within its jurisdiction. Since
their prototypes, the little turns of the primeval German
forest, there had been no such examples of the perfect capacity
of the political cell, the * town,' for self-government."
The townnsystem of Massachusetts, in the opinion of Prof.
Johnston, was *^ subordinate to the colony, even after the real
bepnning of government." "In Connecticut," on the other
himd, " it was the town that created the commonwealth ; and
the consequent federative idea has steadily influenced the
colony and State alike. In Connecticut, the governing prin-
ciple, due to the original constitution of things rather than to
the policy of the commonwealth, has been that the town is the
residuary legatee of political power ; that it is the State which
18 called upon to make out a clear case for powers to which it
kys claim ; and that the towns have a prvmd facie case in
their favor wherever a doubt arises."
Holding these views, it is not to be wondered at that the
author regards the first constitution of Connecticut (adopted
Jan. 14, 1638-(9) as the first really democratic written consti-
tntion drawn and used on this continent ; for that document
provided a way by which the " deputies" of the various towns
could, if the Governor and " magistrates " refused to call them
together^ meet and organize a supreme legislature by them-
selves ; and, moreover, the right of sufib^ge was bestowed
unequivocally on all inhabitants who had been admitted by
the towns. Nor was any attempt made to define the powers
of the towns themselves. They were to choose their own
officers and manage their own affairs and have their annual
representation in the legislature of the commonwealth, tn
short, it is difficult to imagine a completer system of local self-
government, " of the people, by the people, and for the people,"
than was planned to prevail and did prevail in Connecticut,
throughout the eventful years of its early history.*
* For many purposes/' says the editor, of the New England town sys-
tem» " it can be better studied in Connecticut than in Massachusetts ;
for the town in Connecticut was ahnost as free as independency itself,
until near the charter, while in Massachusetts it was circumscribed in
the beginning by commonwealth power.
176 Professor Johnston! s ^^ConneciiciitJ^ [Sept.,
Undoubtedly the popular impression is that democracy pure
and simple was introduced to the new world in the compact
made by the voyagers of the Mayflower. " That instrument,"
insists Professor Johnston, ** was based on no political princi-
ple whatever, and began with a formal acknowledgment of
the King as the source of all authority. The fact is that this
celebrated document was no more than the * covenant' so com-
mon at this time in church, state, and partnership enterprises,
and had not a particle of political significance." ^' The intense-
ly democratic feeling subsequently developed in Massachusetts,"
he adds in explanation, ^^ has been reflected on her early history,
and has given it a light which never belonged to it"
Beyond question, it seems to us, Massachusetts freemen in
their early efforts to secure popular legislation, owed something
directly to the example of their Connecticut brethren- How
considerable that debt was the editor of this volume shows,
without intrenching on the fleld of Massachusetts historians or
belittling any of the achievements of the heroes of that state.
In reply to strictures, which have been made by able writers,
on the supposed indifference of Connecticut to the struggle of
Massachusetts to preserve her liberties free from curtailment by
the Stuart Crown, he states significantly : " Throughout this
period there was probably no great difference between the un-
derlying principles of the two colonies. . . . But the nvethods
of Massachusetts were peculiarly her own. There were strong
reasons, in the history, traditions, and consistent public teach-
ings of the colony, why she should pose as the pronounced
champion of colonial liberties. . . . The consistent policy of
Connecticut, on the other hand, was to avoid notoriety and
public attitudes; to secure her privileges without attracting
needless notice ; to act as intensely and vigorously as possible
when action seemed necessary and promising; but to say as
little as possible, yield as little as possible, and evade as much
as possible, when open resistance was evident folly. . . . The
period closed in 1691 with the loss of the original charter of
Massachusetts, and the imposition of a new and restricted
charter upon her, and the palpable and even conscious inability
of her public men to make good by action the position assumed
in the past The mortification of their defeat was aggravated
by the pronounced success of the Connecticut policy."
1887.] Professor Johnston's ''Connecticut 177
The New Haven (Quinnipiack) Colony, founded in 1688 by
John Davenport and Theophilus Eaton, is treated at less length
than Connecticut, because, for the student of constitutional
history it furnishes less valuable material These enterprising
men and their worthy associates, in settling on virgin soil,
promply abolished some of the aristocratic excrescencies of the
English common law. Even more directly than their neigh-
bors in Connecticut they professed their adherence to the
scriptures as the basis of their civil proceedings. But their
laudable efforts were destined never to be crowned with the
highest success. Schism appeared among them early ; some of
their laws, while admirable theoretically, were too severe for
ordinary humanity to live up to ; the limitation of the suffrage
to church members was an increasingly vexatious burden.
The attractive little Republic of New Haven won its pecu-
liar victories and saw its halcyon days ; but from the date when
its ambitious friends on the banks of "the long tidal river*'
inwardly resolved to gobble it, its fate was sealed and its strug-
gle for an individual existence, though brave to the end, was
pitiably weak.
Passing by, then, the invaluable service of the diplomatic
Winthrop in securing a charter from Charles II. (April 28d,
1662), as democratic as was ever granted by a king, and the
slow negotiation which finally resulted in the union of the
sister colonies (1665), we reach the record of the Commonwealth
from the Charter to the Revolution. This period — ^uneventful,
save for such exciting interruptions as King Phillip's War,
the Charter Oak incident, and the everlasting boundary dis-
pute with Massachusetts, Rhode Island,"^ and New York — is
summarized in the statement : '^ Every man in the common-
wealth had felt the maintenance of the commonwealth to be
his personal concern and had been willing not only to die for it,
but to live for it, work for it, and exercise the highest sort of
self-control for it. Out of this mass there had ever evolved
a class of representative men who were in the highest degree
capable of seeing and doing just what was needed."
*Bowen, the authority, quotes Rufus Ghoate assaying: "TheCom-
miaflioneTB might as well have decided that the line between the States
was bounded on the north by a bramble bush, on the south by a blue
jay, on the west by a hive of bees in swarming time, and on the east by
fi^e hundred foxes with fire-brands tied to their tails."
178 Professor JohnsUyrCs ^^ComiectioiU.^^ [Sept.,
A short chapter is devoted to the eccleeiastical affairs of the
commonwealth, though as the author feelingly remarks : ^^The
long-continued efforts in Connecticut to reconcile church and
state under a free town system gave rise to difficulties whose
history might fill volumes and task the learning of an expert
in church history." The Anti-Bevolutionary financial prob-
lems of Oonnecticut are, as they deserve to be, stated in detail,
reinforced by intelligent comment. It is worth noting how
familiar our ancestors were with the ^^ rag-money " question a
century and a quarter before it was so hotly agitated in Con-
gress. Yankee ingenuity proved important to prevent the
several issues from sinking to the lowest depths of depreciation
and it seems as if the moral ought to have carried some weight
with posterity.
As is evident from a study of the tables of population which
Bancroft gives for this period, and recalling the fact that all land
in the colony had been divided into the several townships by
1 762, an outlet was much needed for Connecticut men and enter-
prise. About 1768, her most notable attempt at colonization
was undertaken, viz : the organization of the Wyoming district
in Pennsylvania (claimed under the charter, which extended the
western boundaries of Connecticut to the Pacific Ocean), as
Westmoreland County of that State, and which was for several
years governed by Connecticut laws and represented in the
Connecticut legislature. On this interesting subject Prof.
Johnston writes with clearness and force : ^^ The sordid, grasp-
ing, long-leasing policy of the Penns, had never been able to
stand a moment before the oncoming wave of Connecticut
democracy, with its individual land-ownerships, its liberal local
government, and the personal incentive offered to individuals
by its town system. So far as the Penns were concerned, the
Connecticut town system simply swept over them, and hardly
thought of them while it went But for the Revolution, the
check occasioned by the massacre, and the appearance of pop-
ular government in place of that of the Penns, nothing could
have prevented the establishment of Connecticut's authority
over all the regions embraced in her western claims.''^
* Under the Confederation of 1781, PeniiBylvania demanded a Court
of Arbitration for the disputed territory. The decision was against
1887.] Profe98ar JohnHm^B 'WormecUcut:' 179
Oonnecticut's share in the straggles and victories of the
Sevolutionary "War is too well known to need enlarging upon :
the protest of the Oonnecticat assembly at the passage of the
Stamp Act by the English Parliament took the practical shape
of sending an agent to London to insist on the exclusive right
of the colonists to tax themselves ; on the passage, some years
later, of the Boston Port Bill, no colony contributed more
cheerfully and generously than Oonnecticut did for the
relief of Massachusetts. When the clash of arms came, the
little commonwealth was always and well represented in the
field.*
The towns, as was to be expected, took the measures of re-
sistance into their hands at the start, and in their individual
capacity ratified the patriotic declaration of the State Assembly
and the Continental Oongress. ^' There seems to have been
little attempt to shift burdens to the shoulders of others ; but
each town accepted its share as a necessary fact, and strained
every energy to meet it."
Professor Johnston's conclusion is that Connecticut was in the
best position of all the states to exercise a favorable infiuence on
the Constitutional Convention of 1787. ^^ It is hardly too much
to say " — ^we use his own words — " that the birth of the Constitu-
tion was merely the grafting of the Connecticut system on the
stock of the old Confederation." " The attitude of Oonnecti-
cat has been misrepresented," he goes on to say, ^^ as that of a
' small state,' intent only on obtaining every possible reserya-
tion of state sovereignty. Such a representation is grossly un-
fair. . . . Connecticut desired a sound and practical national
government and the path to it was marked out for her delegates
by their own commonwealth's development and history for one
Connectiout ; she was afterwards awarded the ** Western Reserve *' tract
of Ohio as a compensation. The court, sajB the editor, had secretly
agreed on two points beforehand : 1. To decide unanimously ; 2. Not
to g^ive any reasons for their decision, whatever it might be. This com-
pact was not known to the public when the case was settled.
^ Next to Massachusetts, Connecticut contributed the largest number
of troops in the War of the Bevolution ; to their quality Washington
paid high tribute of praise, as also to the unswerving support of the
legislature. The services of Trumbull and Putnam have not been for-
gotten, even among the many heroes who crowd that eventful epoch.
180 Professor JofmstorCs ^^ Connecticut.^^ [Sept.,
hundred and fifty years. . . . Her population gave her respect
in the eyes of the large states. Her democracy gave the small
states confidence in her."
The Connecticut delegation to that convention, composed of
Wm. Johnson, Roger Sherman, and Oliver Ellsworth, were able
men, fuU of enthusiasm for their great trust; with native
sagacity they held themselves in reserve till at the critical
moment they became recognized leaders of the debate. The
successful result of the negotiation in which they bore such a
prominent part belongs not merely to Connecticut, but to the
whole Union. In the language of the times, the " Virginia
Plan," and the " Jarsey Plan," gave way before the " cool, de-
liberate and persistently offered compromise " of the " Con-
necticut proposal."
With this climax of achievement we bring our review to a
close. The glorious record of the state in the Civil War and
its marvellous industrial prosperity — second to no community
of its size in the world — ^are matters of the present rather than
the past. The salient points which we have touched upon read
almost like a eulogy, but they are the work of a critical, un-
prejudiced observer, who has made a distinguished name for
himself in other fields of research. The glow of pardonable
pride with which every son of Connecticut will read this book
— and in what section of this broad land are they not now-a-
days to be found ? — ^will be due not to any ingenious exaggerar
tion on the part of the writer, but to the grand fund of indi-
viduality and patriotism which is woven into the history of the
old Commonwealth. Connecticut has not lacked able histori-
ans before this time — ^notably Trumbull and Hollister have
excelled in their respective fields; but no one of them has
handled the subject more scientifically, or produced what is
more likely to be practically useful to the present generation.
Professor Johnston modestly says, in closing his preface, that
he will consider his labor has been expended with good effect
if the public is thereby aroused to appreciation of Connecticut's
first constitution, the two hundred and fiftieth anniversary of
which will occur during the same year as the Centennial of the
Constitution of the Union. It is for us to add that such a
strong demonstration as he has made of the right of Con-
1887.] Professor Johnston^ a ^^ConnectiauitP 181
necticat to fill a very honorable place in the gronp of hietoric
" Commonwealths," so admirably treated in this series, is in
itself no xmworthy memorial of what is most noble in the
past history of the state and no small source of inspiration for
its future prosperity.
John Addison Pobteb.
VOL. zi. 18
182 A ChrisUcm Daih/ Paper. [Sept,
Article HI.— A CHRISTIAN DAILY PAPER.
Daily, except SnndayB I A Christicm daily rather than a
rdigiou8 daily. We have excellent religiouB papers, denomina-
tional and undenominational. They have a distinct sphere and
mission. They do not need to be dailies, for their work is
best done by the weekly issues. What is needed is a Christian
daily ^ and there is a fundamental difference between this and
the religious paper. The latter aims to set forth religious
truth. It gives information, to be sure ; it deals in poetry and
fiction ; it discusses social problems ; but its main aim is either
the propagation of general religious truth, or the support of
some denominational organization, or both. It is not at all
necessary for the present purpose to seek to determine whether
its sphere is broader or narrower than that of a really Christian
daily. It is enough that it is different.
Now this Christian daily ought to give its picture of the
daily doings of the world as those doings appear from the
Christian point of view. I would not go to this ideal daily
for Scripture selections to use in closet devotions. I can get
these better in the Bible itself, or in the specially prepared
books of devotion. I am supposed to have had my portion of
" daily food " before I open the morning newspaper. There
are other objects in view in perusing its columns. It was, I
believe, the late Dr. Brainerd, of Philadelphia, a great reader
of newspapers, who used to say as he opened his morning
journal : '' Now I will see how God is governing his world"
If he could say this of the ordinary paper, much more will it
be true of the Christian daily ; for while the great body of
facts to be recorded is essentially the same for all, the point of
view, the perspective and proportion, the explanation will be
different.
This ideal Christian daily wiU be really a weto^^paper. It
will teU the story of the world's happenings during the twenty-
four hours with fullness at least equal to that of its compeers.
If it is to occupy the rank that is proposed for it, it must do
1887.] A Ckriaticm Daily Paper. 183
this. People want information. We are growing in this
conntrj strangely like the ancient Athenians who spent their
time in nothing else " but either to hear or to tell some new
thing." So this ideal paper will have its news gatherers
abroad It will be a reporter; at any rate the work of the
reporter will be the basis of the work of the editor.
Of conrse the question at once arises, and it is a fundamental
one, what is news ? At least what sort of news is worth the
telling? Events are continually occurring about the telling of
which, and perhaps with detail, there is no question. Of these
matters— different every day, but always important — every one
ought to know, the larger number want to know. Concerning
these important things, in our own country and abroad, this
Ohristian daily ought to aim to set forth the exact truth, as
nearly as painstaking search can obtain it.
But there are other matters which are in doubt, for it is
obvious that no paper can undertake to publish everything.
Limitations of space, if nothing else, compel some form of
discrimination. Leaving detaib, however, to be determined
in accordance with practical experience, it would seem to be a
good general principle to aim at the inclusion of a large range
of occurrences, not trivialities, but whatever seems of real
importance. This would include reports of crimes; but it
need not include the details ; nor need it be that elaborate tell-
ing of the story that shall pander to a morbid curiosity or stir
and feed a prurient imagination. Such records need not be
conspicuous ; on the contrary they should be where they will
attract least attention. N'or need they occupy much space.
But these things are facts — grim and unpleasant, to be sure —
bnt still facts in the world's history, and therefore they should
be recorded. Otherwise we would be in danger of underesti-
mating the evil that is in the world, and as a consequence
would be by so much unfitted to meet that evil.
When we pass, however, from this region of facts, even
though the facts are often unpleasant, and come to the things
that employ the attention of the sporting world ; we are, so to
speak, among artificial happeninga For these things, certainly
beyond the barest statement of their occurrence, let the sport-
ing world turn to its own records.
184 A Christian Daily Paper, [Sept.,
The same general principle should govern in regard to
dramatic events. Let the dramatic world find the record of
the things it wants to know in other places than in the columns
of the Christian daily. Yet there might be cases where dram-
atic criticism or even description would be in order. This is
a vastly different thing, however, from theatrical gossip or the
scandal of the green-room.
In a word then, the ideal Christian daily would be abreast
of the foremost of its compeers as a gatherer of news worth
the telling. Indeed it would lead them in this particular, for
its perspective would be better. It would find many things to
record which the ordinary daily ignores, or to which it gives
but the most meagre space. It would have the sources of
information common to all the papers, and it would have its
private agents in different parts of our own and of foreign
land& It would spare no wise expense to present its readers
with a clear and accurate transcript of what is occurring in all
the nations of the world. It would emphasize many things —
matters of religious interest, church doings, philanthropic
effort, etc. — which the ordinary papers ignore or put into an
obscure and narrow comer.
It would be mainly in its editorial department that the
Christian character of this ideal daily would be manifest.
Even here it would not be blazoned, but simply so inwrought
into the nature that it could not be ignored. The true Chris-
tian man finds occasions when it becomes him to make confes-
sion of his faith, but in general he does not need to be con-
stantly proclaiming the fact that he is a Christian. His
actions, the tone of his conversation, his whole life, ought to
indicate that fact ; but he ought not to sound a trumpet before
him as the hypocrites do, when he prays, or when he gives
alms, or in any other transactions of his life. So there ought
to be no need for this ideal daily to keep asserting its Christian
character and aims. That would be simply to disgust men,
and to lead them to suspect the real character of the journal
In this ideal paper, taking its key from the editorial depart-
ment, the whole tone should be Christian. Everything should
be looked at from a Christian point of view. The object of
the ordinary paper is to make money. That is the paramount
1887.] A Christian Daily jPqper. 185
eonsideration to which everything else must yield. So much
of morality as can be afforded consistently with this will be
welcome. The tone will be as high as pecuniary interest will
permit, but money first, is the rule. In too many cases, as a
distinguished journalist lately charged upon the London papers
in connection with a notorious scandal, ^Hhe counting-house
has become the editorial-room." Hence even when there is no
conscious perversion of truth, there must of necessity be an
unconscious coloring, a subtle force at work determining the
way in which a matter shall be presented, and the way in
which a thing is put often makes all the difference in the
world. Money blinds the eyes. It does not take a large coin,
if held close enough, to shut out the sight of the sun.
In even the best of our dailies, as things are now, there is
too often the sneer, more or less open, at religion. Orthodoxy
is at a discount. Eveiy point possible is made against evangel-
icalism. When, as sometimes happens, these things are not
possible, there is a patronizing tone adopted — ^the journal from
its lofty height condescends to speak in supercilious praise of
the little that merits its approbation.
As is natural, moreover, the ordinary daily does not recog-
nize, Bs they ought to be recognized, the Christian forces that
are at work in the world. Its discussions are of things that
too often are really of secondary importance. Presbyterian
General Assembly, Congregational Council, Methodist Confer-
ence, Episcopal Convention, will receive but scant attention,
unless perchance there is some unorthodox movement on foot,
or something occurs against which the world's laugh can be
leveled.
A Christian daily, however, would give their due promi-
nence to movements in the religious world, and so doing, would
impress upon the community their importance. Men in
general need to know that Christ's church is at work in a
multitude of ways. They ought to have the columns of their
daily paper give them information of this character and inter-
pret its meaning, instead of leading them to think that life is
little else than a series of crimes, made more lurid by accidents
or relieved a little by sports and play-house performances. The
Christian tone of the ideal daily would insure a better propor-
186 A Christian DaXby Paper. [Sept,
tioned presentation of facts, and the emphasis would be upon
that which is good in itself and whose tendencies are uplifting.
Being Christian this ideal daily would be thoroughly inde-
pendent though not neutral in the various matters that came
within its purview. It would have no connection with any
religious denomination as such. It would aim to do every-
thing in its power to further the interests of the whole church
of God. It would not meddle officiously with the aflEairs of
any denomination or any church. It is conceivable, however,
that it might afford a platform for the discussion of questions
or the statement of facts which denominational organs and
other interested parties are sometimes inclined to suppress.
But it would be careful how it did even this. One of the
evils of the daily press as we have it now is its recklessness.
It seems to care but little oftentimes for the truth of its state-'
ments, especially as concerns public men, or men lifted even
for only a little while into prominence. A lie will travel a
league while truth is putting on its boots. The ideal Chris-
tian daily will not utter the lie ; but if by any means it is
betrayed into a mistaken statement, particularly concerning a
man's character, it will make its correction at least as promi-
nent as the original statement.
As this Christian daily will be independent as concerns
ecclesiastical affairs, so will it be in political. It will doubtless
give its influence in favor of a party, but it will not be bound
by the bands of any. And yet it would be no more neutral
in political than in religious matters. It would come to be a
power because it would tell the truth and the whole truth ;
and the whole truth and nothing but the truth is the last
thing one expects from a thoroughly partizan journal. A
really independent political paper, telling the truth concerning
things, would exert an immense power even in the political
world.
This is a hasty outline of the principles that would underlie
a Christian daily paper. A word may be said in regard to two
or three supplementary details. In form the paper should be
of manageable size, and it should not use too small type. The
supplements and quadruple sheets are more of a nuisance than
anything eke. Minute type is out of place, unless for what
1887.] A Chri^tiom Da4J/y Pamper. 187
may be necessary in the report of crimes. Sensational head-
lines should be avoided, and the paper shonld adhere to the
" Queen's English " rather than adopt reporters' colloquialisms.
Its advertisements should be those that pass ^ somewhat rigid
censorship. Its literary reviews should be impartial, not influ-
enced by the advertising patronage of the various publishing
houses. It might aim to give from time to time articles of
permanent value, useful to be preserved for reference. It
could easily obviate the assumed necessity of Sunday labor in
the preparation of the Monday paper, if in no other way, by
observing the old New England custom of ceasing work on
Saturday evening, say at 6 o'clock, and not resuming it till the
same hour on Sunday evening. Such a paper should employ
men with some ecclesiastical knowledge to report ecclesiastical
proceedings, that the laughable mistakes of the present average
reporter might be avoided. Finally, it would take no favors
in the way of passes and free tickets, that it might be entirely
free from even the suspicion of favoritism.
Is such a paper a mere ideal ? The answer, of course, must
be that it is only this at present. But there is no good reason
apparent, after all has been said, why it should not be made
a reality and a success. Only it ought not to be started as
an experiment, nor ought it to attempt to stand on a meagre
financial basis. No such paper can succeed if it makes its
appeal to charity. It may be that good men ought to patron-
ize a *^ temperance " eating house because it is such. But the
average good man will go where he can get good food well
served, rather than put up with the contrary in an establish-
ment that trades on its principles. This Christian daily must
be so good that the leading men of the community, as well as
others, men of the world as well as Ohristian men cannot
afford not to take it,
To make it such, money is needed — a good deal of money !
It ought to be able to command a capital of not less than half
a million dollars, and of a million dollars if necessary. In no
long time it would be found, as some of us believe, a paying
investment. Perhaps such a paper would not make money as
fast as some of the journals that are not particularly scrupu-
lous, or that cater to the passions of men. But it would make
188 A Christia/n Daily Paper. [Sept,
money. Men of the world wonld be ready to buy a paper
which they could depend upon to tell the truth without fear
or favor. Not only Ohrietian people but moral people would
desire to have a journal that they could safely introduce into
their homes. There would be a demand for such a paper, and
it would not be long in making its way to a large circulation.
It would tend to tone up the whole newspaper press, the best
part of it at any rate, relegating the remainder to the reading
of the already vicious and depraved.
But where shall the money come from to start and, for a
time, sustain the Daihf Truth Teller t There are Christian
millionaires who could easily undertake such an enterprize.
There is hardly any way in which the same amount of money
might be put to uses that, in the long run at any rate, would
produce better results. If one man could not be found to
take the burden and risk of the enterprize, a small company
of such men might undertake it. Where is this man % Where
are these men?
O. A. KmosBUBT.
1887.] EighteerUh Cmtu/ry Poetry. 189
Abticlb IV.— eighteenth CENTURY POETRY.
Pabt IL
In approaching the spirit of the eighteenth century — ^in
trying to get at a just and precise estimate of its scope and
essence, and to approach it from a side which has at least to a
certain extent the merit of freshness — let us for the moment
abandon generalities and betake ourselves to something more
tangible and at the same time more interesting. It is the
business of a truly great and pure poetry, how often it has
been said, to embody the profound and delicate emotions of
human life. Love, religion, the feeling for natural beauty,
pity, sorrow, these are some of the themes we expect to find
in the poets, and find disclosed and exalted in images of beauty
and power. Let us, then, put this touchstone to the poets of
the century ; let us see in what mood, with what success, and
for what purpose they handled the deep things of nature and
mind.
Take religion. When Locke founded his scheme of Utilitarian
morality, which was afterwards systematized by Bentham, and
when he reduced belief to common sense maxims, leading the
way to the scepticism of Hume and Gibbon, the character of
religion was regulated for the entire epoch. This created one
source of influence, and the other came from the Christian
apologists like Beattie and Warburton. The two-fold and
antagonistic interpretations of faith and dogma can easily be
traced in the poets who handled those themes. " Heaven,"
exclaims the excellent Beattie, ^' is not the element of poeta"
The truth of the aphorism is fully demonstrated in his poem
of the Mmsirdy which is written all over with the dry didac-
ticism of the same author's Essay on Moral Truth. " I will
tell you in veiy few words,'' Pope wrote Atterbury, when the
latter was urging him to become an Anglican, " what my poli-
tics and religion are. In politics I wish to preserve the repose
of my conscience, with whatever church I be united." But
toleration like this is dangerously near to indifference, and
190 Eighteenth Ceniwry Poetry. [Sept.,
Pope the poet is as negative, or else as cooly calculating as
Pope the letter writer. True, he had jumped with the fash-
ions of his time, and in his verse donned at will the garb of the
deist or the free-thinker. If back of the warm-hearted Beattie
you discern the shadow of the combative Warburton, back of
Pope it is the figure and ideas of St. John. What is the first
epistle of the Essay on Man but Bolingbroke epigrammat-
ized? What is the Universal Prayer but the echo of the
grand old medieval Pater t To catch the true accent of Chris-
tianity this supreme poet of the century must refurbish the
dying words of the Emperor Adrian, or burrow in the love-
letters of the famous pair of monkish chronicla But run over
the smooth rhetorical couplets into which Pope packed the con-
ventional passion of Eloise and Abelard, and ask yourself if
M. Taine is not right when he said that to these artificers of
the eighteenth century, the nature of the child, the saint, the
lover, were effectually hidden. It is so through all this poetry.
Moral discursions, axioms, precepts meet you eveiy where, little
sermons admirably turned and versified, bombastic afflatus in
the face of unrealized emotion and colorless ideas. If none of
the Popean group reached the point of treating their maker
like St. Louis in Voltaire's Henriade^ with a threatening and
cavalier air, what is almost as bad tiiey take the deity under
their protection, and either mechanize the divine conception
or lead you confidentially into its deepest secrets.
What was lacking, if not imagination, capacity to apprehend
the subtle admixture of feeling involved in the Christian faith %
A mythology, no doubt, a culture which could animate and
inspire. Even the richer sensuous forms of Christianity, which
moved the lyrical poets of the seventeenth century to the
glimpses of the divine order of beauty, were non-existent for
them, and perhaps if they had existed, they would have been
imperceptible. Something more important still, however, was
gone from them. " Little was left," says Karl Hillebrand, " of
either the mysticism or the superstition of Christianity." Here
we penetrate the secret of their inadequacy, for this is tanta-
mount to saying that the poetic element of the religion had
perished. The poets were insensible to its spiritual content,
its mingled aesthetic and historic value for the imagination.
1887.] Eightemth Cmtmy Poet/ry. 191
Contrast their standpoint and treatment with those of the
seventeenth and nineteenth centuries, and you will see how
far removed they are from the moods of reverence, contempla-
tion, and silence. I say nothing of the more positive manifes-
tation of a Catholic spirit, the tender longings, the aspirations,
the sense of awe and mystery, which clothes the older and
modem poets in a garment of flame. From such uplifted and
winged moods, they were divorced by temper and limitations
of time and art. In place of imagination we have a cold
formal predication, and instead of the visions and pictures,
which a free art ought to give, there is, as Leslie Stephen puts
it, only "a system of deductions and corollaries." Take it
altogether, I doubt if there is in English literature a period so
hopeless for the poetic spirit in which there enters any con-
ficiousness of divine things.
To the classical poet there was something in the sublime and
more stupendous aspects of nature so barbarous, so forbidding,
60 fearful (monstrum horrendum I) that he could only shudder
and avert his eyes. The writers and poets of the last century
shared his disposition in a remarkable degree. Mountainous
heights and vast solitudes filled them with almost as much
aversion as they did their Augustan models. The ^^ Horrid
Alp " of which Evelyn speaks, was indeed hardly known to
the race which has since ascended its highest peaks and ex-
plored its most inaccessible passes. ^^ The pastime of climbing
the mountains and reviewing the glaciers," Gibbon wrote from
Lausanne in 1755, '^had not yet been introduced by foreign
travellers who seek the sublime beauties of nature." One of
the earliest of English travellers in Switzerland, the delight-
ful letter-writer Howels, had nothing to say for the mountains
save that they seemed to him '* excrescences " on the face of
nature, and Addison declared they filled him with an " agree-
able horror," forming as they did **one of the most irregular
and misshapen scenes in the world." That they were irregular
was an adequate ground of dislike to a taste that prized so
highly the beauty of measure and proportion. At times,
doubtless, this general depreciation of mountain scenery was
the product of pure apprehension, begotten of the perils and
discomforts of travel. The " fearful crags and tracts " of great
192 Eighteenth CerUury Poetry. [Sept.,
elevation '^ caased the heart of the most valiant man to melt
within him," says Berkeley. The feeling, however, was noth-
ing new ; the sense of the dreadfnlness of Alpine peak and
precipice runs back to medieval times. German and French
chronicles during the crusades are full of it The reflection
only confirms what is so often averred of the comparatively
recent birth of the finer moods of delight in impressive natural
scenery. The transition of the profounder modem feeling
made its way very slowly. In France, the school of description
appeared about the middle of the century ; but Delille and
Saint Lambert only developed the vein which Bousseau, fol-
lowing Thompson, had opened there. ''^ Before Bousseau even,
though of so impalpable a sentiment it is hard to fix an initial
date, Thompson and Gray must be counted among the first
romantic lovers of nature for her own sake. Gray's letters
from Switzerland (1739) contained perhaps the earliest indica-
tion of the modem enthusiasm among English writers.t But
it is sufficient to indicate merely, this distaste of the eighteenth
century poets for the larger aspects of wild nature, it has been
so fully and so often analyzed. To account for the love of
mountain scenery, however, has puzzled the most acute of land-
scape psychologists, " 1 have vainly tried in the fifth volume
of the Modem Pamtera^^ said Mr. Buskin in a recent lecture,
^^to explain the love of mountains, which distinguishes the
school (Turner and the Pre-Baphelites). The more I analyzed,
the less I understood the mysterious pleasure of land being up
and down ; and the less able was I, to deny the claims of those
who preferred it level ; and so my only course was to assure
those recusant and ignoble persons they were perfectly wrong ;
that the mountain glory was a moral axiom ; and the love of
it, a heavenly gift.":J:
* Laeretee : le DixhuUieme Siede, Tome iii., p. 828.
t The qualification is necessary. It would be hard to find any expres-
sions of modem nature-worship more ardent than those of Petrarch, or
more genial and appreciative than those of Montaigne in his recently
published letters. The student of natural feeling in literature should go
back to them as the precursors of the sentimental nature-lovers.
t The graphic arts of the eighteenth century showed an equal indif-
ference to moimtain scenery. But a good deal of public interest was
excited by the appearance of the fourth volume of De Laussun's great
1887.] Eighteenth Centwry Poetry. 198
This aversioii to great natural forces extended to the sea,
that sea, which the old English mariners had wedded with a
ring more truly than ever the Venetians had done. The
hardihood of the ancient Anglo-Saxon stock, the glory of its
seamen, and the boisterous element they loved, had found its
robust similitudes in the earliest English poetry. It appears
in the lay of Beowulf, the oldest English epoa^ and in the most
vivid and characteristic manner ; the conflict of men with the
stormy seas, the mystery, the gloom, and terror of their aspects,
are painted in bold and rough strokes. There is nothing in
eighteenth century poetry like the feeling which permeates
the glorious sea-piece of the seventeenth century, the Tempest,
or like the images of the sea's might and splendor that are
scattered through its dramatists.
In the poets of Queen Anne and the Georges' time, the
echoes of any such sentiment are faint and infrequent The
spell of their Latin prototypes is upon them here also. The
sea disquieted and baffled them, and they let it alone, for the
most part, content to stand remote, with no overpowering im-
pulsion, such as came later among the poets to interrogate the
unknown and untraveled wastes of the deep, to explore all the
secrets of its moods, from stormful triumphs to ultimate
hushed repose.
By way of contrast, it may be said that the eighteenth cen-
tury poets enjoyed and exquisitely described the kind of land-
scape congenial to their disposition. The critics who charge
them with a total want of sensibility for natural beauty, must
work. Voyage dans les Alpes, which was publiBhed in 1796, with many
laige plate engravings executed by the beet living talent. Alluding to
tfiese points, Mr. Hamerton says,— and I copy the entire passage as
coriously Bigniflcant,— " They really do express the most perfect moim-
taia knowledge which had been attained up to the end of the seven-
teenth century. They really give evidence of much deeper moimtain
love than any which had been attained by the old masters; but compare
them with the incipient work of Turner's, done in the first year of the
socoeeding century, and what are they? Nothing but old maps in
which depictive outlines surroimd spaces piled with emptiness. Turner's
drawings of the Alps, even the early ones, are as much beyond the
engravings which the learned and admirable De Laussune approved and
published, as Qreek figure-sculpture was beyond Qothic."-— Hamerton's
Life of Turner, p. 108.
194 Eigkte&n/th CerUv/ry Poet/ry. [Sept.,
reason strangely of human natore. They are separated from
ns quite far enough without increasing it by the diflEerence in
the mode and quality of their enjoyment, and in the stereo-
typed form of its expression. Just as the Elizabethans loved
especially the minute details of country life, brooks, flowers
and the small creatures of the woods and fields ; and modem
poets, the larger, more perplexing and elemental natural forms,
cloud and sea, sunlight and vapor, and mountains ; so the last
century had its peculiar preferences. The advance since then
in power and subtlety of interpretation certainly is very
marked ; it is clearly towards a greater fineness of perception,
an increase of interest in and observation of the ways of nature,
and a wider scope of emotional pleasure. Yet the eighteenth
century, lacking. as it was in the highest imaginative suscepti-
bility, had its special phrases of sensation at the sight of land-
scape which disclose a genuine if limited sympathy. It was
the budding time of purely descriptive poetry. As in France,
in proportion as the custom of exclusive town-living broke up,
a livelier consciousness of nature in its cultivated and refined
aspects began to awaken and reflect itself in literature. Pure
savageness lost little of its repellancy, the gregariousness of
manners made solitude unendurable. Solitude indeed was
still, as with Pamell, " the nurse of woe." It was the tranquil
and habitable scenes of country life, they found most pleasure
in ; the need of human association which Mr. Buskin declares
so imperative for a sincere appreciation of landscape was far
more imperative then than it is apparently now; it favored
the garden walk, the orchard, shorn meadows and shady nooks,
lanes lined with hawthorn hedges and sweet briar roses, woods
vocal with the mavis and the merle, the smiling valleys thick
with homesteads, and divided by its winding brook, nature
well combed and smoothed and trimmed by man's handcraft
and for man's uses. Carried to excess, this taste was fatal to
any great poetry. Then came the inevitable moment when all
nature assumed an artificial dress, degenerated into a ^' counter-
feit Arcadia." In the typical verse of the age, false nymphs
and shepherd swains, — the thin disguise of fine ladies and
gentlemen of the drawing-room, — as little real as Dresden
china manikin, take possession of the scene and ^^ caper in
1887.] Mg/Ueenth OerUury Poetry. 195
flowering vales," amid " sighing zephyrs," to the pastoral pip-
ings of a fictitions Pan. The unreality of it all, its suspi-
ciously operatic tone, its substantial vapidity, excite now only
a half-humorous, half-resentful amazement. In Goldsmith, in
Gray, and Cowper there is of course a much freer and nobler
mood in the presence of nature. The poet of AvAut^ and the
Traveller is touched by the sadness of ruin and desolation.
His is the note of gentle regret and melancholy ; more brood-
ing and picturesque, Cowper comes nearer to the Victorian
poets in his play of light fancies and delicate transitions of
mood. It is the distinct merit of this group to have brought
to the spirit of their performances a greater truthfulness, sim-
plicity, aud seriousness than any others of their times. But
even with these the most naturalistic poets of that age, the
conception aud treatment of nature is far removed from that
which was bom of a more matured romanticism and became
the very breath of modem poetry. It was, as I have said, the
budding time ; it had too much of the merit, as Landor said,
of a pocket handkerchief that smeUs of roses; the final and
complete flower bloomed only in the songs of Shelley, the
idylB of Tennyson, and the sonnets and ballads of Bossetti.
No subject has haunted and preoccupied our modem poets
more than woman and womanhood. In the eighteenth cen-
tury, the poets, as a rule, handled the delicate theme with an
insensibility aud grossness which gives us a shock of surprise
and astonishment as we turn over the pages. It is difficult to
exaggerate the lowness of tone which marks nearly everything
the Queen Anne classicists say about women. They wrote of
her with respect only by happy inspiration, and rarely ever
with deep feeling and subtle perception. A single passage in
Swift, an allusion in Pope, however genuine, a brief couplet or
ballad now and then, can ill hide the extreme poverty of sen-
timent or bratality of spirit which marks the habitual tone of
their writing ! The spurious gallantry of contemporary man-
ners exhibited themselves in extemal forms of devotion, carry-
ing in themselves a sort of contempt which in the court-society
of Queen Anne and the Georges, destroyed the finer sensations
and made sincere feeling or elevated belief and homage ridicu-
lous. From Pope's cynical and rakish air down to the /S^eo-
196 Eighteenth Century Poet/ry, , [Sept,
tataf^8 amiable and complacent irony, there are but so many
steps in degree. When their mood was neither cynical nor
patronizing it was purely conventional, as with Prior who,
having dipped overmuch in Gallic song, cultivated a light and
wanton vein, which has a strangely foreign air in its sturdy
English dress. Among the lesser verse-makers, this frivolity
of accent was unfailing. It flowed gayly into little songs and
amorets and fables, in the manner of Horace or Martial, always
slight and playful, sometimes tender in sentiment and elegant
in form, and again barbed with malice and satire. The temper
of the Eoman decadence was never better caught in English
literature ; Catullus and Petronius never had their graces and
libertinism, their little flowers and knots of lovensongs, more
deliciously imitated, more ingeniously engrafted on a stubborn
stock. It is the social poet at play, weaving pretty conceits
for pretty and f rail women : " drcv/m, flose^dos ooewpatur!'^
In this light vein some of the eighteenth century lyrists yield
still a certain kind of amusement. They know how to touch
and pass with a graceful stroke or two, the delicate toying of
light-of-loves, the coynesses, the coquetting, the half playful
regrets, and sportive racy episodes of a town-living and not
over-virtuous society.
« On my left hand, my Horace, a nymph on my right,"
sings Prior. The fop, the wit, the man of fashion Isivows in
the strain his notion of felicity. In the same vein. Gay,
Tickell, Matthew Green, and Armstrong, write of the tender
passion ; it is always the
" Coquette's April-weather face."
which starts their muse,
<* While soft Tibullus pours his tender heart.*'
Along with the epigram, these jets of song are perhaps the
most juicy productions within the whole range of the eighteenth
century poetry ; their frank and careless melody, their little
spirit of real fun and harmless malice, their tone of half -jaded,
half-afl^ected simplicity, their very flippancy, give them what-
ever measure of truth and pithiness belongs to a polite and
thoroughly corrupt society, the old society of the cofiee-house
1887.] Eightemth Cmtwry Poetflry. 197
and theatre of Will's and Garrick's day. And yet let us not
deceive onrselyes. The unending invocations to Jove Stator
and Apollo, to Time and Cythaiian Tresses, and the mock ardors
lavished on my lady's black eyebrow and ivory hair, on Phyllis
and Damon, and the Celias and Belindas, — ^these things fall
upon the ear with a cloying and monotonous sound. There is
something spurious in it all, something vapid and ineffectual ;
it betrays such a frigid constitution, it opens such abysses of
fatal superficiality. We wait in vain for the note of serious-
ness, the breath of true and sincere feeling, the contagious
thrills of Ijric passion. When it attempted a higher strain, in-
deed, even in erotic poetry, the eighteenth century falls pitiably
below that of any other period of EngUsh literature. The
poets seem to have discerned neither the heroic, the passionate,
nor the tender nature and poteucies of womanhood ; they failed
equally in the strong and redundant sensuousness of the best
amorous poetry. The beat of their verse is too calculated, its
stream too thin and shallow to stir the slowest pulse. How far
are we from the warm, varying colored mood of imaginative
brooding over these profound themes which came before and
after in English poetry ; before, in that half-chivalric half ten-
der devotion, in which Elizabethan poetry is so rich aud so
oonceitful, — for about the head of love, those elder poets have
set a golden aureole, and touched his lips with a coal of fire ;
aud after, in the rich spirit of modem romance, the sentiment
that gave birth to St. Agnei Eoe^ Man^goftet^ A Dreamh of Fcm
Wamen^ and the House of Life — the grand uplifted mood of
that poetry which touches to transfigure with a sacred awe the
beautiful mystery of love aud womanhood. It would almost
seem as if the eighteenth century poets had never been moved
save in rare instances by the sweetness of the ideal conception ;
and left wholly unpenetrated the awfuUer deeps Of passion.
The joyous heights, the devious and pathetic ways, the desola-
tion of the secret regions of the soul remained unimaged and
apart from them. Whensoever they happened on the portals
of the inner temple they shuddered and fled away, and a voice
of light and mocking laughter echoes behind them.
In this mode of treating profound and delicate emotion, we
eatch once more the echo of the Gallic spirit, a spirit whose
vou zi. 14
198 EigfUeewth Century Poetry. [Sept.,
lightness and levity, I must add, was confirmed by certain Irish
influences that effected English literature at the time. It is
perhaps a momentary appearance of another Celtic vein of a
less serious kind. The Irish element was never, in point of
fact, so prominent in English literature. The brilliant group
of poets and orators, which included Swift, Goldsmith, Sheri-
dan, and Burke, left a certain influence of their social traits.
It is stamped unmistakably in She Stoops to Conquer and the
School f(yr Scandal, There are signs of it in the wit of the
great Dean, terrible as was its bitterest side, and even the
stately and lofty interest of Burke had its Celtic turn — ^the
splendid impetuosity and expansiveness so truly native to the
Irish branch of the Celtic race. But it is not best to push these
resemblances too far. The Celtic note seems to have entered
letters more through French than Irish influence, as I hope to
show later on. Equally remarkable is the absence from this
body of poetry of that graver Germanic spirit, which lies at
the base of the English genius — ^the passion for the infinite,
the unattainable, the sense of the inner world, and the power
of being greatly moved by great things. In the handling of
the great passions it is eradicated, and with singular effectual-
ness — ^f or a prolonged period.
I hazard these remarks on the deficiencies in eighteenth
century poetry with no intention of distributing censure, but
simply to aid myself in forming a clear idea of its limitations,
and affirm the main impressions they leave upon the mind. If
these reflections have led to a series of negations, it was because
the poetry of that age does really fall short, judged by any
high standard of a great and free poetry, such as English poetry
in the Benaissance. It falls far short in the essential requisites
of a great and free poetry in poetic imagination, in spirituality
of conception, in seriousness, in diversity and flexibility of
form. Neither does such a view necessarily imply, what
might be concluded from certain expressions used, that imagi-
nation had perished in the last century. To entertain this
for a moment would be manifestly absurd. But the imaginar
tion of the age was certainly not of a strictly poetical quality
or mould. It had run into other currents than the poetic ; it
expressed itself in other forms. Instinctively following the
1887.] Eighteenth Centwry Foet/ry. 199
drift of the age, it sought in prose its outward form, and its
unrivalled strength and richness comes out in the realistic art
of fiction, the novel of manners, and in eloquence and wit and
satire. The old English robustness, the old English homeliness,
and vitality are there in all their fullness. The imagination
that informs the masterpieces of eighteenth century prose, is an
imagination with peculiar power of its own. It is in Defoe,
Fielding, and Sterne, producing the broad and vigorous pictures
of life and manners in which they remain unsurpassed ; it fer-
ments in the great brain of the gloomy satirist who created
OtiUiver^a Travels ; it built up in homely and vivid allegory
the visions of him who walked through the valley of the
shadow of death; it was the stufi that still keeps alive the
broken imagery of Chatham and the supurb invective of Burke.
It is only when the eighteenth century type of imagination is
studied in these masterpieces that we arrive at the proper esti-
mate both of its limitations and its merits. If we realize, on
the one hand, its deplorable shortcomings in the highest poeti-
cal quality, it is impossible not to recognize and relish its keen-
ness and brightness, its ingenuity, its compactness, its versatility,
and rhetorical splendor. In poetry they fail, in Bacon's felici-
tous phrase, ^^ to accommodate the show of things to the desire of
of the mind.'' They accommodated them to such desires as they
had, which wanted freedom, elasticity, elevation, or, to apply Mr.
Arnold's test, their criticism of life, is incomplete, because it is
the criticism of the understanding alone, of common sense unin-
spired and untouched by that awe which transfigures the com-
mon and shapes it into beautiful forms. Their art is the
picturing of apparent phenomena ; and hence that inner world
of the poet, and the artist which reveals itself in all eastern
poetry, and in the truest English song and drama, is securely
hidden away from the representative poets. They did not see
their object, as Wordsworth says, " steadily and with clear
eyes." They seldom ever ascended the heights and looked
abroad in largeness of knowledge and with the poet's stirring
of the soul' upon the long reaches and devious windings of
human life and emotion. Without the profound modem rev-
erence of womanhood, without its earnestness, faith or its sad
persistent sincerity in unbelief, without its depth of feeh'ng for
200 EigJUemth Cmt/wry Poetry. [Sept,
nature, her secretB of repose and consolation, a great and free
poetry waB all bat impossible by any law of growth or artistic
creation. The finer poetic moods, passion, exaltation, the an-
guish bom of nnappeased desire or doubt, the compassion in-
herent in minds that have lived and suffered, even the height-
ened style of a great poetry, the qualities of magic and sug-
gestiyeness, true lyricism and strikingly enough, tragedy, —
these impulses lying deep in the heart of the best romantic
poetry, and blossoming forth into forms of beauty and power
were all, in the last century, measurably unfelt and inactive.
They did not, at any rate, find embodiment in its poetry. The
spiritual content is that of the age, and in that content both
the true, antique, and romantic temper have no part or visible
influence. In all these deficiencies the poets were simply nour-
ished and conditioned by their time and atmosphere ; and the
time was unfavorable, a hard, thin stratum of common sense,
a low level of emotion and morals.
Louis Judson Swinburne.
1887.] The Survival of the FUthiesL 201
Abticlb v.— the survival OF THE FILTHIEST.
In Bome alleged scienceB^ two absolutely diBsentient theories
of especial prominence are held by various disciples, believers,
speculators, concerning the origin of man, that is of the genua
homo as at present existing. These two rival doctrines may
be briefly stated to be the theory of deterioration or fall, and
the theory of development. The former is to the effect that
men have descended in both senses from demi-gods, sons of
Ood, the perfect man made in the image of God. The latter,
to the effect that man has developed from and through a
series of earlier and less complex or perfect forms of living, is
probably held by most special scientists : at least the enthusiasm
with which the '^ungodliness and spiritual pride" of science
is mentioned in some highly respected places would indicate
a claim, or a concession, that the majority of alleged specialists
hold the latter doctrine.
From the heat with which the discussions on this topic have
been waged, as well as from the apparent irreconcilability of
the two theories, is exhibited the hopelessness of an attempt to
dull the edge of antipathy with which one of these doctrines
is attacked by the partisans of the other.
For the purposes of this paper certainly it will be assumed
that there is a ''last ditch" in the fortifications of each of the
belligerents, and as either theory is of equal utility to the con-
clusions herein attempted, the belligerents and their belliger-
ency are mentioned in the main for the purpose of giving an
a fortiori conclusion to any evidence taken from theuL For
if, after all the antagonism of t^e chosen polemic exponents of
two so adverse schools, in which almost every scholar on either
side has taken part, there remains any single truth acknowl-
edged or generally conceded, that truth must be readily ad-
mitted to be a well established one ; and a postulate of either
faction which at this date remains postulated, must be honored
with the recognition of an exceedingly respectable, fit, and
surviving postulate.
202 The Survival of the Filthiest. [Sept.,
But if out of the belligerency could be extracted an element
of peace, one color of the rainbow (or spectrum) of reconcilia-
tion, what rose color should tinge that element t
By good fortune there is an element of agreement Both
sides believe in change (one for the better indeed, the other for
the worse), and a change from belligerency is a change to peace.
There had been changes before man. Neither Darwin nor
the Pope dispute that proposition. Proceeding on safe ground,
and using impartially, so far as practicable, the terminology of
either side, let us say that, when man appeared, he appeared in
a garden, in a fertile or alluvial spot, that it became known to
him that tillage was desirable, that there was fruit for him to
eat and water by him, of the river of life— or of living water.
Let us say that prior to his time there had been notable
changes, before which there had been no garden, perhaps no
water, no desirable drinking or swimming water, not for men :
that the waters had covered the face of the earth, that the
earth waB without form and void ; or that there was a chaos, a
nebula perhaps, and mephitic gases, and oolitic bedfellows,
and Jurassic horrors, and no fruit, and bad weather, such
weather and company as a shark or a snake could not live in ;
nor an Icthyoaaniros Acadicmus^ which is Latin and Greek
for a compromise between a snake and a shark. The name
was originally a compromise of quite a spirited difference of
opinion between Agajssiz and Marsh. It will be conceded that
there was a time when it was not fit for man to be out. To
one inured to the balmy ways of a New England May the con-
cession will be easy. It will even seem that the time was not
quite so remote as some very wise men have claimed, and
Moses' weather record might not seem incredible to Vennor.
It will be conceded that the garden or fertile spot could be
improved or kept fertile only by tillage; that tillage was
requisite to the maintenance and increase of the favorable con-
ditions by which early and later man was surrounded. Per-
haps it is not too much to assume that fertile or alluvial land
is commonest not on bleak mountain tops or frigid slopes, but
in river valleys and low lying plains, and that its condition
must considerably depend on what washes down from more
elevated places.
1887.] The Survival of the Filthiest 203
Given, then, for a starting point in anthropology, a man in
a garden, and granted the desirability of tillage, cannot all the
belligerents be expected to concede that much may depend on
the manner of the tilling, that whether scientifically or pious-
ly, agriculture has been given a prime place in the economy of
man's nature and mission, and that what he is to be, will de-
pend very much on what sort of tillage he devotes himself to.
And as man is an *'end unto himself" according to the
philosopher, or " his chief end is to glorify God " according to
the catechism (and which is very much the same thing accord-
ing to St. Paul, who says " Ye are the temple of God "), it
may not be presuming to assume that the development of the
man is to be a more important result of the tillage, than the
development of the garden ; and in so much as the crop is to
feed the gardener and clothe him (subject always to the en-
larged sense in which the house builder and the artist exchange
their commodities for his crop), it can be fairly taken for a sur-
viving postulate that man is himself the main object, final
cause, or rcUio essendi of the tillage ; and that this is so, not
merely in the narrower sense of the exercise suiting him or
the dignity of labor or the hunt being more attractive than
the game, but in the directer and larger sense that man is him-
self the chief crop.
How long ought to stand the reply of the old farmer among
the granite boulders of his unfruitful acres ? " What can we
raise here ? We raise men." It has been the boast of more
than one century in many a barren tract in the eastern and
middle states, not to be forgotten while the memoiy of war
lasts or the presage of triumph in peace or war is possible, not
to be forgotten in however base an estimate of commonwealth
or confusion of material prosperity, " We raise men."
The early conditions in which tillage was enjoined are not
to be ignored if we are not to be unjust to the Mosaic school.
Nothing had occurred at the date of the injunction which had
suggested clothing. The trees of the garden furnished all the
edibles required, also the costumes of ^the day as soon as any
came in use. The object of the tillage, for all record evidence
to the contrary, was wholly subjective, — ^wholly for the sake
of the man and his development. In view of the Winter
204 The Survival of the Filthiest [Sept.,
Nelifl pear and the Tyson, it will not do to say wholly
for the sake of the original man, bnt for his sake and that
of his successor, who was to eat the Winter Nelis and the
Tyson, and for the sake of the later Eves who, having eaten
the Famense, would wonder at a woman's having been tempted
by a primsBval appla Whether then by reason of his being
his own producer, middle man, and consumer, unplagned
by ^strikes or questions whether honest socialistic principle
could keep him favorable to a division of capital after a week^s
wages had gone to bank deposit, or by reason of the dignity of
his employment, or otherwise, man was to be and is the chief
crop ; though as the great means to the end of surviving and
developing manhood, and the home of the generations to come,
the soil is itself sacred. Each owes certain duties to the
land, to the Winter Kelis and the Fameuse of the future;
or as one may say ^' The earth is the Lord's and the fullness
thereof." Henry George does not deny that, he confirms.
He thinks the garden so important that the general govern-
ment ought to assume the care of it. Judging from the suc-
cess with which Uncle Sam has managed his farm, especially
the timber, there would be a difference of opinion about that.
It is the object of this paper to exhibit how directly proper
or improper tillage affects the well being of man, not alone
through the quality of the supplies he is to consume in one gen-
eration or another, but in its immediate effect in other ways
upon the bodily and mental characteristics of the race.
A progressive woman has asserted that men are what their
wives make them. Another has insisted that they are what
their mothers make them. Emerson regarded them the result
of ancestral traits. A great physician boasted of the enduring
livers and stomachs of a family as the gift of his calomel.
Draper had no doubt that men are what the weather makes
them ; and so far have we seen this to be true that it is certain
even the existence of man is possible only within closely de-
fined conditions of climate. Of course it is quite equally cer-
tain that man is greatly modified and limited in development
by a narrower range of climatic conditions than that within
which his existence is merely possible.
Daniel Wilson, commenting on the physical characteristics
1887. J The Survival of the Filthiest. 206
of the natiye tribes of Canada,^ after comparing the art in
ivoiy carving of the Tarratins on Fraser river, and that of
the Haidas.and Eskimos, contrasts the finely developed skulls
of the Cro-Magnon caye men with the Eskimo sknll to the
tatter's serious disadvantage, and finds Malte Bronn, Bobert-
son, Humboldt, Morton, Meigs, Gliddon, and Agassiz all con-
curring ^* in excepting from the assumed American race pecul-
iar to this continent the Polar tribe or Eskimos," and through-
out the discussion of the question by each of these authorities,
runs the common assumption that climate and conditions of
life affect the permanent ethnological and physical develop-
ment even to the shape of the skull, and that this develop-
ment may certainly be downward as well as upward.
Latham says of the Eskimo, '^ physically he is a Mongol or
Asiatic, philologically he is an American, at least in respect to
the principles on which his speech is constructed." But with
the yerdict not proven as to the origin of the Eskimo, Wilson
adds (Ibid., p. 564), *^ to the geologist who fully realizes all that
IB implied in the slow retreat of the paleolithic race of the
valley of the Y^r^, over submerged continents since engulfed
in the Atlantic, and through changing glacial and subglacial
agee to their latest home on the verge of the pole, the time may
sofilce for any amount of change in the physical characteristics
of the race." This is perhaps the extreme case in change of
racial qualities by gradual acclimatization, the possibility not
being contemplated of the survival of a race at once chimging
from one set of conditions to its opposite. In his last letter
from Palestine, recommending the submergence of the entire
valley of the Jordan to create an inland sea whereon the navies
of England might check the advance of Bussia to seaboard and
commerce, Chinese Gordon, a few months before his death,
illustrated his subKme devotion to the development of white
Christianity, by the concession, " these are fertile lands, but
white men cannot live on them."
Professor Virchow, the eminent pathologist of Strasbui^, at
a recent congress of German naturalists and physicians, recog-
nizing changes of climate as essential to pathological inquiry,
*ProceedmgB of the American Association for the Advancement of
Sdoice. Montreal, August, 1882, p. 649.
206 The Survwal of the Filthiest [Sept.,
said, '^the southern nations have a greater power of adaptation
than the northerners. Those white races which cannot become
acclimatized without great loss may be called vulnerable, and
the regions of the globe which are opened to them are very
limited. North America is one of these favorable regions.
Acclimatization, however, is not brought about without con-
siderable change in the mental life and characteristics of the
peopla The further south we go, the lower does the repro-
ductive power of the colony become, until in a few generations
sterility is more and more prevalent. The special cause of this
degeneration has been regarded by physicians as a lack of the
formation of blood, a general anoemia. This explanation is
however not final ; and a further cause, such as the presence of
micro-organisms in the water is to be looked for. The great
prevalence of liver diseases is such cases offers a valuable
clew.*"
Professor William H. Brewer, of Tale University, testified
to a legislative committee concerning a river recently ponded
in wide shoals, contaminated by sewage and decaying vege-
tation,— ^the circumstances attended by definite cases of inter-
mittent fever in ninety per cent, of the population residing
within a mile of the banks : " In time you can breed a race of
men who can live in such a place, but you will not want them."
Dr. 0. W. Chamberlain, the late invaluable Secretary of the
Connecticut State Board of Health, testified to the same com-
mittee : " Where there is an accumulation of decaying matter,
animal or vegetable, whether there be a spontaneous generation
of disease germs or not, the seeds or contagion of zymotic
diseases take firmer root and readier. From the debilitated and
depleted vitality of the adjoining people, or the increased
facilities for the propagation of the contagious virus and seed
element of disease or from both, it remains the practical truth
clearly established, that zymotic diseases prevail with more fre-
quency, severity, fatality, and with more inconvenient sequela.
It is also true that the diminished vitality of a population
in such a neighborhood is met and counteracted by physicians
with stimulants, and by the major part of the faculty with
alcoholic stimulants. The prevailing opinion is that alcoholic
♦Science, vol. vii. No. 159, p. 169.
1887.] The Survival of the Filthiest 207
stimnlants are advisable under such circumstances, in connection
with other stimulants. The majority is made up by including
the prof essionial advice of doctors in the old countries who have
studied such conditions for many generations. Whether their
advice to use alcoholic stimulants is under such circumstances
correct or not, it remains true than an average population so
circumstanced, especially a laboring population, to whom each
day's working energy is a serious item, will betake itself
lai^ly to alcoholic stimulant. That is the natural result."
One is forcibly reminded of Charles Kingsley's half pro-
phetic verdict, now more than a quarter of a century old, ^' the
chief cause of drunkenness is dirt," and one is led to inquire
whether total abstinence should devote itself first to the ex-
clusion and obliteration of an antidote or to the application of
the logical adage, '^ to get rid of an effect remove the cause."
The legends of the Upas were founded in fact. An approx-
imate realization is possible of the satiric imaginings of Swift,
and a materialization of something like his Yahoos and Struld-
bmgs.
If under color of public benefit, a riparian proprietor is sub-
ject to have one city pour excretions down on him and another
dam it back on him, what better off is he than was Gulliver
under the trees the Yahoos climbed ?
Kecalling the boasted culture of our civilization, if the word
culture stiU bears any suggestion of its root, let us inquire how
it harmonizes with the conceded original idea of tillage in con-
nection with man's existence and well being. Even for the
benefit of the immediate vegetable crop, tillage is not confined
to digging, ploughing, weeding, harrowing, in any way stirring
the soil. It has become a science. As reported in the pro-
ceedings of the American Association for the Advancement of
Science, Montreal, August, 1882, p. 515, J. T. Burrill, of
Champagne, Illinois, found bacteria in the cells of apparently
healthy plants and says, ''It became manifest to me that
bacteria cause diseases in plants, especially such as we call blight
in the jpesr tree, apple tree, etc." He found " swarms of bac-
teria of the genus micrococci of Cohn, constituting a true
ecntagi/wm viwmfi in the serum from the poison of Khus
toxicodendron," so apparently suggesting a solution of the
Ths Survival of the Filthiest. [Sept.,
problem why poiBon ivy BometimeB poisons and sometimes does
not.
Professor Manly Miles, of Amherst, the well known scientist,
in a prirate letter, says : ^' I am now satisfied that microbes
are not only the cause of many of the diseases of animals, bnt
that they are also responsible for some at least of the diseases
of plants, among which I will mention pear-blight, and yellows
in peaches."
Tyndall's "Floating Matter in the Air," and Pasteur's
" Studies of Fermentation," emphasize this evidence. For the
immediate benefit of the vegetable crop from the vine to the
goblet, something of the contagion of original sin is to be
avoided, the gardener must look to his tilling in the destruction
of the causes of disease and in the care with which he selects
the stock he is to feed. For th6 benefit of the immediate
vegetable crop also and to secure the permanent and increasing
fertility of the soil, elements of fertility are to be added. To
keep the earth a garden, to make it a Ixetter garden, than which
in its higher sense there is no loftier ambition of man, to de-
velop the prickly pear into the Josephine de Malines, animal
refuse must be utilized to supply and improve upon the exhaus-
tion of vegetable growth.
The utilitarian question " how to get rid of animal refuse "
is met by the utilitarian answer " waste not" The most val-
uable new contribution to the material of healing, as reported
from our hospitals, is a saving from the waste of woolen miUs,
which by compulsion of law was enforced on the mills at the
old Scotch cathedral town of Jedburgh. Tillage challenging
the right of the hillsides to injure the fertile alluvials, offers
the means of disposal of the poisons. As truly as " a weed is
a plant out of place " filth is fertilizer or material out of place.
It is no answer to this proposition that sewer farms have not
paid.* Neither have sewers paid — in the same sense of imme-
diate money returns— and it is the object of this paper, not to
incite criticism of individual action, but to induce in some
measure the enlistment of wealth, energy, brains to the finding
a better way ; for in the grander sense of tillage, that in which,
by divine or scientific edict, we are all set in the earth to till
* Later reports show that they have paid in money.
1887.] The Survival of the Filthiest. 209
ity in Tiew of the limitations on the development of man, his
powers of acclimatization, at home or abroad, his dependence
on the climate which in great measure he makes, even if he
does not carry it with him, as in some degree he certainly does,
tilling comes to be a scientific preservation and improvement
of dimate, a maintaining and developing of that balance be-
tween wet and dry, hot and cold, vegetable growth and animal
decay, animal growth and vegetable destrnction, by which new
life springing out of all death makes always a fresh, vigorous,
new earth; in which life should become from age to age
fresher, more vigorous, more unconfined ; for bodies less sub-
ject to ills and pains, minds less trammeled by unsound bodies,
soil more fertile and tillable, water sweeter, air purer, grass
greener, forests grander.
No girl ever kept an aquarium for a week who ought not to
know that in that microcosm the balance must be kept between
animal and vegetable life; that otherwise comes decay and
death, beauty gives place to loathsome ruin, that the one un-
pardonable sin is dirt ; and that to destroy our forests, smother
our grasses, foul our air, pollute our waters and rob our soil is
to commit slovenly suicide and to destroy the garden of God.
From divergent observers on all sides the evidence converges
throngh one focus. Dirt tends to cause not merely disease and
death, but the deterioration of the raoe. See ^' Hygiene and
Public Health," edited by Albert H. Buck, M.D.; New York,
William Wood & Co., 1879. I. Henricourt, Com^tea rend/us^
1885, p. 1027. Soienoej June 12, 1885, pp. 481-2.
Flint and Niemeyer, standard, working authorities, give
among the sequela of intermittent fevers, '^ lardaceous liver."
One who knows the returned East India uncle of the later
English literature, can easily realize how a single generation
oould transform the restless energy of the New Englander,
" the daring Yankee wit " of Brownell's sea fighters, into the
over corpulent, spiced and stimulated irascibility, indolence and
selfish cowardice of Thackeray's Joe Selden ; and imagining a
a race of such, inbred by a survival of such as could endure, —
not most work, mental or physical, but most alternate heat and
cold, damp and miasm of decay, from generation to generation
of increasing bloat and jaundice, sloth and decrepitude, — could
210 The Survival of the FiUhtest. [Sept.,
well say with Professor Brewer, ** Ton can breed a race of men
who can live in snch a place, but you will not want them.'*
More pitiable already than decimated families is the reiter-
ated complaint of jnst snch farmers as he who used to boast
" We raise men," " So long as this damb ague is on me I don't
seem to feel any ambition ;" and if one who has felt the limi-
tations put upon his energy by the shakes or a spell of Chicka-
hominy fever, will imagine the geometrical ratio in which the
causes may increase in the increasing slovenly ways of a race
of Joe Seldens, that race constantly deteriorating and the worse
race and the worse conditions constantly reacting each on the
other for the production of decay in both, he may get to imag-
ine a race in which no one is left to raise a protest, no court to
admit proof of public hurt or destruction, no government to
forbid it, and so it would come to behoove any, who believed
the race of men can deteriorate by reason of untoward circum-
stances, and that the survivals would be of the fittest to endure
zymotic pestilence and indecent surroundings, to prepare him-
self and his family for the Yahoo struggle, climb the mountain,
preempt the seaboard, shut off his fellows, monopolize the
highest tree of the Yahoo forest ; or take the other side of the
dilemma, train himself and his progeny to habits of uncleanli-
ness, rival and envy the gutter-snipe, and go into training under
the new unhygienic conditions for the fungoid crown and the
survival of the filthiest. That is what none of us expects to
see, of course.
Already the seaboard and the mountains are greatly pre-
empted, and except for fresh air funds and similar charities, to
the average laborer and his family their immediate native air is
their sole reliance. They must drink of the waters of their
own wells and aqueducts. But although our princes of manu-
facture and merchandise continue to crowd our cities and large
towns under our present mistaken notions of material pros-
perity, without realizing that on the health and vitality of a
surrounding population of perhaps financial dependents, the
health and vitality of their own children and children's children
depends, more than that, their physical, mental, moral, race pro-
clivities and characteristics, the charity which begins at home
will stimulate some day " the daring Yankee wit," which is not
1887.] Ths Survival of the FiUhiest. 211
yet lost, to snch use of modem Bcience in the microscopic battles
of bacteria, in new overflows and filterings and economies, in
new chemical resolvents, in new fashions of bmlding and settle-
ment, rendered possible by rapid transit and electric commnnica-
tion, as will divert fresh air funds to bringing fresh air and
water into homes instead of sufferers out of them, will found
fewer hospitals, almshouses, churches, missionary stations —
because there will be need of fewer, since the largest need
of them shall be anticipated by making the land pure and its
people clean, and full of the appreciation that cleanliness is
next to Godliness, especially this land and this people, with
whom and in whose liberty, all lands and all peoples are being
made free — ^and where least of all, politically, geographically
(according to Virchow), or ethnologically, can the earth afford
to witness a survival of the filthiest.
Ghablbs H. Owen.
212 The Pastor cmd Doctrine. [Sept,
Aeticle VI.— the pastor AND DOCTRINK
How FAR fihonld the preaching of the pastor be doctrinal ?
What is doctrine? In the New Testament, doctrine is
teaching. All teaching is doctrine, and all doctrine is teach-
ing. There is but one word for the two English words.
Therefore, where, as in Mark i. 27, the old version reads,
^* What new doctrine is this ? " the Revision justly translates,
" What is this ? a new teaching ? "
In the Bible sense, therefore, all teaching respecting the
Kingdom of God, in the man or in the world, on earth or in
heaven, is doctrine, whether respecting its King, its theatre,
its principles, its laws, its facts, its characters, its workings, its
dangers, its temptations, its duties, its promises, its progress,
or its consummation. Our modem distinction into doctrinal
and practical is wholly unbiblical.
Stated, therefore, agreeably to the New Testament, the
question would be this : Ought the pastor mainly to teach, or
to exhort ?
The distinction between pastors and teachers is, as we
know, clearly made, though not drawn out at length, in the
New Testament We cannot, therefore, exactly define it.
But we are safe in saying that the ministrations of the teacher
must have inclined rather to the theoretical foundation, and of
the pastor to the practical appropriation, of Christian trutL
The distinction then appears to be not into doctrinal and prac-
tical, in our modem sense, but into theoretical and practical,
the difference lying not in the subjects treated, but the more
abstract or more living way of treating them.
It may be objected that another distinction is possible be-
tween teacher and pastor, namely, between preaching and the
cure of souls, in private intercourse. But this is not the only
way in which the pastor was to feed or guide. The pastor
was the shepherd. And as trath is the food of souls, and
truth that which guides them, all communication of truth
with a direct view to these two ends, whether given in public
1887.] The Pastor a/nd Doctrine. 213
or in private, would be pastoral. The distinction, then, be-
tween pastor and teacher would be that between the man who
leads to the pasture and the man who provides the pasture.
Still it may well be that this would largely coincide with the
distinction between the less and the more specialized form of
public and private ministration respectively.
One thing is certain : no knowledge which is not gathered
and communicated with a fixed view that it shall ultimately
issue in practice is worthily pursued or communicated. It
has been truly said that knowledge is incipient life. When
it has been thoroughly appropriated and has wrought its due
effect upon the being, the soul then reaches forward for new
nutriment. Bjiowledge which is not meant to guide hardly
deserves the name of knowledge. There ai'e, indeed, many
men whose business it is to gather up and provisionally sys-
tematize large masses of facts, which are not as yet seen to be
very distinctly practical But such systems of expectant facts,
material or mental, however extensive, hardly deserve the
supreme name of knowledge until they are thoroughly melted
into the main current of thought and become a guiding force
of human life. And that this is so appears more and more
from the instinct of Christian or Anti-christian intent, which
meets you in inquiries the most remote, from the exploration
of an ant's nest to inquiries into the origin of the stellar
universe.
The Christian church, assuredly, is an institute thoroughly
practical, whose aim it is to raise human life and human be-
ings from the lowest earth to the highest heaven, and for
which all things else are instrumental to this one great end. Her
teachers, therefore, even though gathered into schools, and
removed from the public congregation, have no right to di-
vorce their instruction from practice. If even the positivist
Comte deplored the evil effect of knowledge severed from
love, how much more those whose fundamental belief it is
that all objects of knowledge are the expression of Wisdom
realizing the Supreme Love ! The earthly emotion of curi-
osity must be held in solution in the supernatural emotion of
adoration, or the teacher ceases to be Christian. And if even
the professor of theology is bound to a practical and living
VOL. XI. 15
214 The Pastor cmd Doctrine, [Sept,
spirit of teaching, much more the minister of the congrega-
tion, even though he shonld be the teacher rather than the
pastor. He may be regarded as intermediate between the pro-
fessor and the pastor. But as he is distinctly mentioned among
the ministers with which Christ has endowed his Church, it is
plain that he is needed in the congregation.
But even in the early Church, where every larger congrega-
tion had a body of presbyters, of various gifts, who were all
pastors, whether they were all teachers or not, it may be
questioned whether the distinction is not rather into two sides
of one office than into two offices. At all events, the bulk of
our congregations are not likely to have two formally distin-
guished guides, one a pastor and one a teacher. The same
man must be both, so far as they are to have either. Then for
us the question practically reduces itself to this: How far
should the pastor be a teacher, and how far an applier of
teaching previously given ? That is, as stated at the begin-
ning, How far should he teach, and how far exhort ?
But even as thus reduced, the question has still an unde-
fined element : What is exhortation f We know what exhor-
tation may be. Exhortation may be merely bellowing. We
must not forget that under the mantle of nominal adherence
to the Church, there still lurks in Christendom the various
forms, not of heathenism merely, but of the lowest grades of
heathenism. What we are so fond of applying to the Church
of Rome is by no means utterly inapplicable to ourselves,
namely, that, compared with the ideal set before us, the best
of our Christianity is as yet but little better than a baptized
paganism, though it is to be hoped that it is making rapid
progress out of these marshy and poisonous lowlands. Southey
told profound truth in saying that before the Wesleys, the
English peasantry had been Catholics and were Protestants, but
had never been Christians. And much as Methodism has
done to lift them into heavenly places in Christ, it has not yet
wholly overcome the old heathenism. Nay, the mighty spirit-
ual impulse which converted so many to Christ stirred into
activity many germs of low, boisterous, unhuman heathenism,
which, without it, might have remained quiescent. And
many well-meaning, but undiscriminating people came to as-
1 887.] Tke Pastor a/nd Doctrine. 216
flociate this inevitable shadow of a great Chrifltiin work with
the work itself, until they imagined that there could not be a
tme work of God without those animal cries and wild stir-
rings of the material nature, worthy only of the priests of
Baal, with which the true followers of the Wesleys have so
long had to contend, in much weariness of spirit, until at last
they are slowly but steadily gaining the mastery over them.
A consequence of this has been, that to many minds the word
exhortation, so highly honored in the New Testament, where
it ranges all the way from admonition to consolation, has come to
mean only a shallow, noisy outpouring of vague impressions never
digested into thought, having no reasonable sequence or order,
proceeding from no well-apprehended truth, and leading to no
worthy issue in life, a mere stirring of blind feelings into
a blind tumult, ending where it had begun, and leaving the
being more turbid after every agitation. Not in such a way
did the mild and majestic Barnabas gain his name, which, in
strictest meaning, signifies rather, Son of Exhortation.
No ! True exhortation never leaves the bounds of thought,
and of strict thought, and clearly apprehended truth. The
moment it does, it sinks towards the inarticulate ignobleness of
the brutes. It may, indeed, be encircled by a wide aureola of
emotions reaching on towards the unsounded depths of infin-
ity, of heavenly divinings, where distinct vision fails. But it
is always poised on a regulating nucleus of distinctly appre-
hended truth, of which all its more nebulous utterances are
but the rarefied expansion.
Therefore, as the distinction between teaching and exhortation
is assuredly not the distinction between thought without feel-
ing, and feeling without thought, what is it ? We may define
teaching as thought thoroughly propelled by feeling, and ex-
hortation as feeling perfectly held in course by thought. And
as objects nearest us usually stir feeling the most, and objects
farthest from us stir it the least, that preaching which is ani-
mated by the mere familiar knowledge may be called practical,
and that preaching which dweUs on objects more remote, and
therefore less immediately affecting the feelings, may be called
doctrinaL In this way we have come aroimd to our familiar
modem distinction between doctrinal and practical, which
216 I%e Pmtor and Dod/rine. [Sept.,
thus, though unbiblical, appears to be not anti-biblical. There-
fore, there is no reason why we may not use it if we find it
convenient.
How far, then, should the pastor preach on the more famil-
iar and concrete aspects, and how far on the less familiar and
more abstract aspects of spiritual truth ? The question answers
itself. Men and women in general will be sure to read the news-
paper more than the treatise, and men and women in general
will listen more attentively to preaching which is within easy
reach of their minds. Therefore, the practical in preaching
should largely predominate over the barely doctrinal.
But note a profoundly important limitation. All soil has
once been rock All rock which furnishes soil has come down
from the distant mountains. And these mountains have risen
from the depths of the globe. So all spiritual truth, even the
most familiar, bearing most immediately on some homely
duty, has its ultimate meaning, that which makes it Christian,
in the underlying principles of the Divine Kingdom, in the
bosom of God himself. Otherwise it is mere utilitarian Con-
fucianism. Confucianism, or at least Franklinism, is, in its
place, wholesome and beneficent ; but its place is not in the
Christian pulpit. Therefore, the pastor, at least, is bound to
range largely, both in thought and experience, among the
strength of the hills. His mind must be the channel, the
mountain-river descending to the plain, which brings down the
deep-lying and high-lying rock of abstract and lofty truth
to be comminuted for fruitful, every-day use. As Archbishop
Trench remarks, if the higher levels of theological thought
are neglected, the inevitable issue at length is, that people
get tired of hearing shallow commonplaces repeated over and
over, and the whole state of the Church languishes.
Indeed, if we call that practical which sheets the feelings,
and through them the acts, and that doctrinal which lies
behind the practical, offering material which practical preach-
ing is to work up into use, it is plain that the line of division
will not be a hard and fast one, but will run in all manner of
ways, and not infrequently double on itself, according to the
variety of mood or treatment on the part of the preacher, or
the variety of character, culture, or circumstances of the con-
1887.] The Pastor and DocPrme. 217
gregation. In an admirable article writtep for the Independ-
ent by Prof. George P. Fisher, he calls attention to the fact
that one of the most glowingly practical chapters of the whole
Bible, the 2d of Philippians, is a profoundly doctrinal setting-
forth of the Incarnation, issuing in such an energy of appeal
to the heart and life as no shallower theme would have suffi-
cient momentum to set home.
It is plain, then, that the only absolutely fixed principle
r^ulating the choice of themes for the pulpit is Horace's dic-
tum : " Would you that I should weep, you must first grieve
yourself." That which thoroughly takes hold of you can
hardly fail to take hold of your hearers. For even if a man
is profoundly moved by some purely domestic grief or joy,
the infection spreads to others. And we know that the most
powerful sermons on any theme are those which are most sur-
charged with the personal experience of the preacher, just so
far generalized as to appeal to the identical susceptibilities in
the people.
Therefore, whatever takes thoroughly hold of a man, and
sets hifi soul on fire, is likely to have a like effect upon his
hearers, whether it be the infinite perfections of the Godhead,
the glories of the Kingdom of Christ, or the helpless tender-
ness of an orphan child at his own door. He might appeal
for help to the last in so lifeless a way that it would be as
tedious as some antiquated catechism ; and again, he might
lift his hearers, by the contagiousness of sympathy, into en-
raptured contemplation of the very ground and essence of the
Divine being. If he fails in this latter, the cause will prob-
ably lie rather in his own incapacity to rise, than in the in-
capacity of human souls to be upborne. It is true, that the
lesser souls cannot lift the greater, but the greater can lift the
lesser. The wren cannot lift the eagle, but the eagle can lift
the wren. And naturalists begin to say, what the people have
long said, that the smaller birds sometimes make long voyages,
far beyond their own strength, helped by the strong pinions
of the larger.
We may, therefore, consider a congregation as representing
so much spiritual vis inertia^ gravitating downwards to the
clods, which is to be lifted up towards heaven. That amount
218 The Pastor a/nd Doctrine. [Sept.,
of spiritnal energy^ counteracting spiritual gravitation, with
which the preacher's soul is at any given time capable of
being infused by the Divine Spirit, measures the height to
which the congregation is at that time capable of being up-
borne. The result is a compound between his spiritual
strength and their spiritual heaviness. If the margin of
strength is small (and a sympathetic soul will be apt to meas-
ure it pretty accurately), the preacher must be content with
a lowly flight, hovering just so far above sheer utilitarianism
as to make his hearers feel that they are listening to a Christian
messenger and a Ohristian message. If the margin is greater,
the flight will be higher, and just so much higher as that is
greater.
Let it not be thought strange that one human soul should be
capable of bearing a whole multitude far up towards heaven.
If the congregation were a dead weight, it would be inexpli-
cable, but it is not. Let one of Charles Wesley's noblest hymns
be sympathetically sung, and you may note the fact, however
you may explain it. Besides, the human soul is capable of
receiving the indwelling power of God, I will not say to an in-
finite measure, but to a measure beyond all wonted fact or con-
ception. This capacity is the ground of the Incarnation, in
which a truly human soul, in a truly human body, has been
found capable of receiving the fullness of the Godhead, in such
a measure into absolute union as enables the Divine Man thence
resulting to bear the weight of a world's administration. If
the Head can do this, what limit can we set to the lesser meas-
ures in which his members may receive of his fullness?
Therefore, as in the epistles of Paul, so in preaching gener-
ally, the most rapturous flights of contemplation, the most
powerful appeals drawn from the very depths of experience,
and from the heights of truth, are found to be the richest in
practical results, to furnish the deepest alluvium for a growth
of heavenly-mindedness, overcoming the world and condescend-
ing to all humbleness of daily duty. Dr. Chalmers, as is known,
found that the most continuous and explicit moral teaching
gave but a barren result, until he had yielded his soul to the
great truth of redemption, and applied these mighty motives
to the enforcement of duty. Then the fruits of practical
righteousness began to spring up magnificently.
1887.] The rastar and Doctrme. 219
Thifi kind of doctrinal preaching is not likely to be known
as doctrinal, becanse its grandly practical issue is at once ap-
parent . Doctrinal is a name that is largely reserved for preach-
ing which is purely doctrinal, that is, which is not properly
preaching at all. This sort of preaching, or rather of public
instruction, it is doubtless a pastor's duty to avoid as much as
he can.
As much as he can. No ideal can be fully carried out
There are various facts, and principles, which are needed as a
basis of practical results, but which do not always admit of
being immediately wrought over into practice. These must
be laid before a people at some time. They ought to be dis-
cussed in classes, and other ways apart from preaching. But
ficantness of time and of public interest sometimes, drives them
into the pulpit. Besides, it is not given to many minds to fuse
thought and feeling so absolutely into one as it was given to
Paul. Even ApoUos, whom I take to have been the author of
the epistle to the Hebrews, shows a certain predominance of
thought over feeling. And the epistle of James, on the other
hand, crowded and crammed with gems of practical admoni-
tion, lies somewhat lightly on the underlying basis of doctrine.
We common men, therefore to whom is granted only some
drops of the Spirit, almost choked in the rubbish of Rabbin-
ical definitions and prepossessions, cannot be expected to
have worked our instructions clear of all ore. We must
therefore be content, if we would give our people knowl-
edge, to give it sometimes rather heavily lumbered up with
incongruous or at least imessential admixtures. Let our people
geek relief from this in the Bible, and also in the PUgri/m^s
Progress^ which Dr. Arnold rightly pronounces to contain
the pure gold of scripture, unemcumbered with the rubbish of
the theologians.
How far is the pastor bound to keep within the generally ac-
credited limit of doctrine ? This is too broad a subject to be
treated at the end of a brief essay. But we will spend a few
words on it.
First. The pastor has no right to vent mere floating notions
of his own. He is not set apart to be the apostle of shallow
fantasy, of self-will, and self-conceit, but the apostle of Christ
The PdstoT and Doctrine. LSept.,
Second. He iB Bet apart to be the minister of Christ in the
church. His individual consciousness, therefore, is supposed
to be manfully, but modestly, subordinated to her general con-
sciousness. He is not to diverge from her unless he has first
consorted with her, and known the contents and grounds of
her doctrines. Otherwise how can he know that he is not
teaching ia some raw schismatic form, inadequate and errone-
ous, that for which ample provision is already made in her well-
grounded formularies i
This obligation rests upon the general obligation of every
man not to dissent from a school of thought to which he pro-
fesses to adhere, until he has mastered it. We have no right
to dissent unless we thoroughly know from what we dissent.
Otherwise we are not martyrs, but mushrooms, that spring up
in a night and perish in a night, but are capable meanwhiles of
poisoning a great many people.
Third. We are in like manner, though less stringently,
bound by the consent of the particular body to which we be-
long. For the more local a body of doctrine is, the less weight
it carries. And, as the laws of a state are ipso facto null and
void when they contradict the laws of the Union, so local
eddies of Christian thought, crystallized in little knots of
churches, do not amount to much. Anybody who gives him-
self up slavishly to these, is miserably dwarfed. Factiousness,
and fractiousness, and pertness, and insidiousness, and a love of
having personal adherents are all detestable ; and modesty, and
brotherly deference, and love of peace, are most Christian.
But no pastor has a right to allow himself to be driven by the
appeal to the odiousness of the former vices, or to the loveli-
ness of the latter virtues, into a mere comer of the church.
We are bound as occasion serves to enlarge and correct provin-
cialism by oecumenicity.
Fourth. As the church is greater than the sect, so Christ
is greater than the churcL With Christ included the church
is certainly infallible ; with Christ left out, the church is cer-
tainly fallible. An appeal therefore always lies from the church
to the New Testament, and above all to the Gospels. This ap-
pears self-evident, and yet we have known a Presbytery to
refuse such an appeal, imitating the Council of Constance in
1887.] The Pastor cmd Doctrine. 221
trying John Hubs. And we have known an Association, in
declaring certain articles an obligatory basis in the trial of a
minister, to refuse an amendment saving the same right of ap-
peal to the Scripture,
The conclusion therefore is : The pastor if a true pastor, is
not a retailer of his private views, though he is not to preach
anything except after it has become a part of his personal con-
viction. He is not to diverge from the symbols of doctrine
familiar to his people except where he can distinctly show that
the general course of Christian thought is against them. He is
not at liberty to diverge again from oecumenical consent, ex-
cept where he can plainly prove that it has misapprehended
apostolic testimony. But at each step he is never to acknowl-
edge that the lower can control his teaching where the higher
supports it Christ's charter runs everywhere in Christ's
Church, and extinguishes all lesser ones that vary from it.
Chables C. Stabbuck.
222 Hmry C. Eingsley. [Sept,
UNIVERSITY TOPICS.
IN MEMORIAM. HENRY C. KINGSLEY.
Tbeasubbb of Yalb Collbgb 1862-1886.
Hbnby Coit Kjnoslby was the second son of Professor James
Luce Kingsley and Lydia Coit Kingsley. He was born in New
Haven, December 11, 1815. His father was born in Scotland,
Conn., August 28th, 1778, and died in New Haven, August
dlst, 1852. His mother was born in Norwich, Conn., August
25th, 1789, and died December 2d, 1861. His father was a
Tutor and Professor in Yale College from 1801 till his death in
1852. He was distinguished as a scholar, critic, and historian,
was sensitive and modest to excess, yet conspuciously kindly,
sagacious, and just. Few scholars in our country of his time were
more eminent than he, and few better deserved the honor which
they received. There are few men to whom Yale College owes
as much as it does to him. Many of the traits of the father were
conspicuous in the son. His mother was more than usually culti-
vated for her time. She was ardently interested in literature and
in every form of benevolent and religious activity, and impressed
herself strongly upon her children and the community.
Mr. Kingsley began his classical studies at the Hopkins Gram-
mar School in New Haven under Robert McEwen (Yale, 1827), but
finished his preparation for college at the Boston Latin School,
then one of the most famous schools in the country, residing as a
"child of the house" in the family of Hon. Jeremiah Evarts,
a friend of his father's. As a boy, he was what he became
as a man, more than usually quiet and retiring, yet always
playful and kind. He entered Yale College in 1830, and gradua-
ted with honor in 1834. He was an excellent and well-drilled
scholar. He was universally liked and confided in, though reti-
cent and shy. He made fast friends for life among his classmates
of such men as Dr. William I. Budington, Hon. Eleazar K. Foster,
Rev. John R. Keep, Gov. William T. Minor, and Professor Na-
1887.] Hwmj C. Kingsley.
than P. Seymour. After gradaating, he acted as private tutor
for a few months, and then entered the Yale Law School, where
be finished his studies under Judges Daggett and Hitchcock.
After passing the winter of 1836 and 1887 in Columbus, Ohio, in
the law office of Messrs. Wilcox (Tale, 1821) and Andrews (Yale,
1830), be was admitted to the bar of that State in December,
1837, and established hinself in Cleveland, in connection with his
elder brother Geerge (Yale, 1832), who had previously opened an
office in that city. He remained associated with him till the sud-
den lamented death of his brother in 1 842. He very early took a
high position in his profession and secured the confidence of the
public as a financial agent and manager, which he retained till he
transferred his residence to New Haven.
In 1843, he became a member of the First Presbyterian Church,
in Cleveland. As that church was full to overflowing, he soon
proposed and urged the formation of another church, and some-
what unexpectedly found himself an active leader in the organiza-
tion of the ** Second Church " and the erection of its house of
worship. This was in 1844, when he had been a resident of
Cleveland less than seven years.
In 1854, he had been elected a director of the Cleveland and
Pittsburg Railway. The company was then seriously embar-
rassed, and in 1857 became insolvent at a time of very general
distress and disaster. He was urged to take charge of its
finances, and consented to act as its receiver, which he continued
to do from 1857 till 1866, and as the result of his care and skill
it regained in 1862 the position of a sound dividend-paying
company.
Id 1862, after the death of Edward C. Herrick, he was elected
treasurer of Yale College, and continued in this office till his
death. At the time of his election he held in his hands the offer
of two very lucrative positions, but he put both aside for the
post which was made attractive and almost sacred by its associa-
tion with his father and his early home. The writer will never
forget an interview with Mr. Kingsley in respect to the decision
of this question, when Professor Thacher was present, at which
he expressed his feelings with respect to the responsibilities and
attractions of the office. It need not be said that he discharged
its manifold and trying duties in the spirit of exemplary faith-
fulness and of ardent personal devotion, and that he made the
interests of the institution in all its departments emphatically his
224 Henry C. Eingaley. [Sept.,
owD. Some of his friends have expressed surprise that he should
be willing to accept and retain an office of which the emoluments
were so small and the details so minute and sometimes vexatious,
but they could not understand the light under which he regarded
its duties and its interests. It deserves to be noticed that with
the immense enlargement of the resources of the college and its
expansion into a University during the twenty-five years of his
administration, the duties and responsibilities of the office were
enormously increased, and in the discharge of all these duties he
exhibited a financial skill and an administrative ability to which
the most emphatic testimony has been given. In 1885, a member
of the Corporation, reviewing his report to that body for the year
1883-4, makes the following comment upon the sagacity and
wisdom of his loans and purchases of stocks. He says that the
fact that the income for the year was at a rate a little larger
than 6-24 per cent, shows most conclusively the soundness of
his investments. It has also been said that not one of his invest-
ments for the college which he personally controlled suffered loss
under his management, and that during the various periods of
financial stress, such securities were never permanently impaired
in value.
Besides discharging the duties of his office, he also filled many
public and private trusts with remarkable ability and conspicuous
fidelity, being distinguished for the acuteness and rapidity of his
judgment, the singular fairness and comprehensiveness with which
he estimated the merits of all questions, and the promptness and
force with which he passed from decision to action.
He was a man of few words ; at times he seemed abrupt in his
utterances, but he was a man of many thoughts, and the posi-
tiveness with which he expressed himself was the result of the
habits of clear and rapid thinking, to which he had been schooled
from his childhood. Naturally shy and reserved, he did not
often obtrude his opinions till they were asked for, but when his
opinion was required he showed that, while others had been dis-
cussing, he had not been idle in his thinking. Naturally ardent
in temperament and positive in his convictions, he had disciplined
himself to more than usual taciturnity as the outgrowth of the
singular shyness or reserve, which was native to the man.
Though warm in his affections and tender in his sympathies, the
force of neither was suspected, even by many who seemed to
know him well, till on some rare occasion his feelings broke forth
1887.] Henry C. Kingsley, 225
in a fervid flame. A chronic invalid for all his active life, he
expended the surplus energies which are so lavishly wasted by
many, in a constant strife with bodily discomfort and nervous
unrest, but never complaining, rather seeming always on the alert
with his powers ready for action, and yet equally ready to dis-
miss a subject when it was disposed of.
During all his life Mr. Kingsley used his pen with great readi-
ness, and as a writer was distinguished by conciseness, directness,
and force; especially, whenever he appeared in the rdle of a
controversialist or a critic his ability was conspicuous. In 1841-
1842, he published in Cleveland a series of papers in opposition
to ''free banking" which, as was thought at the time, had an
influence in shaping the policy which was finally adopted by the
Ohio Legislature. After his return to New Haven, he was a
frequent contributor to the pages of the New Englander^ writing
on a great variety of subjects. The volume of that magazine
published in the last year of his life contained six communica-
tions from his pen ; one of which appeared in print only after he
had been disabled by the accident which caused his death.
Among his contributions to the New Miglander may be men-
tioned two articles in 1858 and 1859 in criticism of the manage-
ment of the American Tract Society. In 1860, he wrote an
article on the " late Rebellion in Spain," of some of the exciting
scenes of which he had been an eye-witness. In 1870, he wrote
a critical examination of Professor Huxley's " Physical Basis of
Life." But he was chiefly interested in the discussion of econom-
ical questions ; and, in the year succeeding the civil war, he gave
much attention to the discussion of the questions connected with
the public debt.
We hardly need say that he was admirably fitted to assume
the duties of the office which he filled in Yale College for twenty-
four years, and that it will not be easy to find a man who will
discharge its manifold and various duties so well. For fifteen
years the writer of these lines has been intimately associated with
him as a witness and to some extent as an associate in these
duties. During all these years scarcely an hour has elapsed,
during the office hours which were common to both, in which
some words have not passed between them which were more or
less characteristic of the man. Upon all these words simplicity
and godly sincerity have been distinctly stamped, and every one
has had the ring of honesty and truth. Those who have sought
226 Henry V. Kmgaley. [Sept.,
to criticize his acts or bis methods have invariably acknowledged
his ability, thoroughness, and his honesty. Those who have
found fault with his caution have not infrequently confessed that
his foresight was directed by true financial wisdom. Those who
have become acquainted with the enormous amount of petty
details which are incident to such an office when satisfactorily
administered, have confessed their astonishment that a man of
such extraordinary capacity for great enterprises should concern
himself with transactions so minute. All without exception who
have had dealings with him have felt the force of his honest and
outspoken manhood, and not a few have discerned the sweet
reasonableness of his character and aims.
It scarcely need be said that Mr. Kingsley loved the college
for which he labored so assiduously and sacrificed so much, and
that to care and sacrifice for it had become the passion of his
life. This passion was the product of high principle and loyal
devotion to duty — of Christian principle animated by Christian
faith. In the church of which he was a member there were few
whose faith was more firm, whose patience was more exemplary,
whose benevolence was more willing, more generous, and more
modest, and whose zeal for the kingdom, of Christ was more
sustained. He was loyal to its communion, loyal to its pastor,
loyal to its missionary enterprises and its domestic charities, and
above all, loyal to Christ as the hope and rest of his own soul.
But, perhaps, most conspicuous of all was his patience under
manifold bodily infirmities, such as consume the life and waste
the energies and mar the usefulness of ordinary men, but which
in his case were a constant discipline '^ to the peace of God which
passeth understanding" and a blessed foretaste and preparation
for the rest which remaineth for the people of God.
Noah Porter.
1887.] Current ZitercUure. 227
CURRENT LITERATURE.
Thb Schaff-Hbrzog Supplbmbnt.*— This is a work of great
practical usefulness for theologians and ministers. It supplies
exactly the information concerning living Divines and Professors
which students so often want and cannot find. Dr. Schaff has
bad peculiar facilities in preparing the work from his exten-
sive acquaintance with theologians in America and Europe. We
have examined it very carefully and tested its accuracy at a good
many points, and can confidently pronounce it remarkably com-
plete, exact and trustworthy. It was almost inevitable that there
should be mistakes in the book, but our surprise has been to find
so few. These will doubtless be corrected in a second edition.
We call attention to the following errors : Under the notice of
J. Q. W. Herrmann (p. 97) the date 1774 should be 1874. In the
notice of Professor J. T. Hyde (p. 107), Beloit College is assigned
to Michigan instead of Wisconsin. Under the name of John P.
Newman we read: "D.D., Rochester Seminary, N. Y., 1864,"
which should be : " D.D., University of Rochester, N. Y., 1863."
" These be trifles," but they mar the perfection of the book.
There are also omissions of names and data for which we natu-
rally look, but we remember that such a work must stop some-
where and the author attempts a task peculiarly difficult and
delicate. We commend the book most cordially as attaining with
eminent success the purpose announced in the circular of the
publishers, to secure *' the greatest possible accuracy and com-
pleteness, as well as strict impartiality, in the desire to make
a useful and reliable book of reference for readers of all denomi-
national and theological schools."
Qeobob B. Stevens.
* Bncydopedia of Living Divines and OhrisHan Workers of all DenominatianB in
Europe a/nd AmerieOy being a Supplement to Sehajf-Hentog Bncydopedia of BeUgious
Ibumledge, edited by Rev. Philip Sghaff, D.D., LL.D. and Rev. Samxtbl 1L
Jaodov, M.A. Fcink t Wagnalls, New York, 1887. pp. 271. Prices: Oloth,
$3.00; Sheep, $5.00 ; Morocco, $7.00.
228 Ov/rrent LUerai/are, [Sept.,
•
Thk Story of Gabthaqs* — ^Is told in an attractive volume,
with a little over forty illustrations, among which are maps of
northern and southern Italy and of the peninsula of Carthage. On
the blank leaves and covers are two maps. That at the end of
the book is a ground plan of the Carthaginian peninsula. That
at the beginning is shaded to show the Empire of Carthage in
its glory, when it included all Sardinia, together with southern
Spain and western Sicily, besides a tract on the northern coast of
Africa. This map would give the Empire an extent nearly or
quite equal to three-fourths of modern Spain. If, however, all the
dependencies of Carthage were reckoned, it would be much more
extensive than this.
The work is divided into four parts, according the usual division
of Carthaginian history into three periods. Parti, (pp. 1-18),
*' Legend and Early History '^ tells of the foundation of the city
in 860 B. C. and its early growth, giving the story of Dido, as
handed down by tradition, and as adapted and popularized by
Virgil.
Part II. (pp. 19-91), *' Carthage and Greece," takes up the story
at about the usually assigned limit, the battle of Himera, 480
B. C. and brings it down to the beginning of the First Punic
War, 264 B. C. After recounting the early operations of the
Carthaginians in Sicily, it gives three chapters to their dealings
with Dionysius, a short chapter to the career of Timoleon, whose
story is well worth reading in the pages of Grote and Plutarch,
and a longer one to that of Agathocles.
Part III. (pp. 93-126), is devoted to "The Internal History of
Carthage," its Discoverers, its Constitution and Religion, and its
Revenue and Trade. The story of Hanno's Atlantic voyage is told
in full, with notes identifying the places mentioned. Here we find
the earliest mention of the gorilla in connection with a place identi-
fied by our authors with Sherboro Island and Sound a little south
of Sierra Leone. Carthage had chief magistrates called Kings, but
of limited power and elected apparently for life out of certain
leading families. It had also a Senate in two parts, one of a
himdred members, which is compared " to the cabinet or ministry "
* Tht Story of Gar(hage; by Alfred J. Church, M.A., Professor of Latin in
University College^ London, author of *' Stories from Homer," etc. With the
collaboration of Arthur Gilman, M.A., author of " The Story of Rome," *' His-
tory of the American People," etc New York and London : G. P. Putnam's
Sons. The Ejiickerbocker Press, 1886, pp. zx, 309.
1887.] Current Literature. 229
in America or England, the other to the '* Congress or Parlia-
ment." The former ^^ was a remarkably unchanging body. It
followed one line of policy we may say for centaries, with extraor-
dinary consistency. . . . There were no regular changes of gov-
emmenty no passing of power such as we see in the United
States from Republicans to Democrats. . . ." There was a gen-
eral assembly of which we know little.
Aristotle says that the offices of the State were unpaid (though
they must have brought some opportunities for money-making),
and that the highest offices were put up for sale, with the unfor-
tunate result that several might be held by one man. The popu-
lation of the city when taken by the Romans, was 700,000.
The supreme deity was Baal Hammon or Moloch, "horrid
kingy" infamous for the human sacrifices which disfigure Carthagin-
ian history. The second in rank, Melcart, was of more winsome
character, not represented in human form nor worshipped so far
as we know, with bloody sacrifices. '^ His splendid temple at
Tyre was one of the most famous in the world."
The revenue of Carthage was in part derived from tribute.
Thus Leptis, near the lesser Syrtes, paid a talent per diem, nearly
$450,000 annually. The customs duties were so heavy that under
Hannibal's management, after the second Punic War, "it was no
longer necessary to tax individuals." Carthage possessed mines
in Spain and Corsica. The richest of these near New Carthage,
yielded the Romans in the time of Polybius (204-122 B. C.)
about £2000 per day. There was also a lucrative trade with
Africa and with Europe. It is interesting to find that even then
negroes were preferred for slavey.
The <^ leather money " of Carthage is thus described in a quota-
tion from an ancient author. "In a small piece of leather a sub-
stance is wrapped of the size of a piece of four drachmas (about 3b.);
but what the substance is no one knows except the maker. After
this it is sealed and issued for circulation." Our author adds,
^ This unknown substance was probably an alloy of metal, of
which the ingredients were a state secret; and the seal was a
state mark. We have, in fact, here a clumsy kind of bank note."
Part IV., " Carthage and Rome" (pp. 127-301) recounts the
struggles of the queen cities ddwn to the fall of Carthage in 146
B. C. The story is too familiar to call for any review in this
place. The authors' style and their views of Hannibal and his
operations may be shown at once by an example or two. Thus of
VOL* XI. xa
230 Cy/rrent Lvteratwre, [Sept.,
his failure to march upon Rome after the battle of Cannte (p.
223) : '^ Bat one is disposed to believe that so skillful a general,
one, too, who was not wanting in boldness (for what could be bolder
than his whole march into Italy ?) knew what could and what
could not be done better than anybody else. . . ." With this
compare Bosworth Smith's decision of the same question (Carth-
age and the Carthaginians, p. 263) : ^' But perhaps the best and
the all-sufficing answer to those who say that Hannibal ought to
have advanced on Rome is the simple fact that Hannibal himself,
the foremost general of all time and statesman as well as general,
did not attempt it Or this, ^' His military skill is beyond doubt
In that, it is probable, he has never been surpassed," (p. 270),
with this : '* the foremost man of his race and his time, perhaps
the mightiest military genius of any race and of any time — one
with whom, in this particular, it were scant justice to compare
either Alexander or Cassar. . . ." (Smith, p. 191).
The work before us has on pp. xi., xii., a table of Carthaginian
chronology. Each of the four parts, except the third, is prefaced
by a statement of the original authorities from which its facts
have been drawn. We find no list of modem works on the sub-
ject, except the reference in the preface to the works of Heeren,
Orote, Arnold, Mommsen, Bosworth Smith, Perrot, and Chipiez,
and Capes's Livy. The authors' treatment of the questions which
grow out of the possible mixture of fiction with fact is unobtru-
sive and discreet. Altogether the work may be welcomed as a
valuable addition to our historical literature.
WiLLABB HaSKKTiL.
Cbbbd akd Chabactbb.* — It seems that there are still a good
many people who are willing to read as well as hear sermons.
The sermons that win the attention of the reading public of
to-day are almost wholly of a practical character. Better say
perhaps of an ethical character. The volume before us has met
with much success and has won words of hearty commendation
from those whose estimate of the demands of modem preaching
IS worthy of respect. They have a certain advantage in their
unity. They group about a central thought, and there is an
order in their development. They have, therefore, something of
the effect of a methodical discussion of a single theme. They
^Oretd and Chofraeter, SermoDS by the Rev. H. S. Holland, M. A., Oanoo of
St Paul's. Nqw Yoris: Oharlea Scribner's Sons, 1887.
1887.] Ourrent Ziteratnre, 281
are fresh in thoaght, interesting in style, novel in treatment^ and
earnest in spirit. There is a tone of reality abont them. It is
good to be able to welcome such atterances from the Church of
England. Like most modern sermons, however, the form is
greatly subordinated to the substance. The style is too diffuse.
One wearies of so much iteration and expansion. However we
pardon everything to a man who has something large and noble
to say and who says it with such earnestness of purpose.
GoDBT ON FiBST CoBiNTHiANS.* — All studcuts of the Ncw
Testament who would use this work, are already familiar with
Godet's works on Luke, John, and Romans. Any detailed notice
is, therefore, rendered unnecessary. This commentary which
covers eight chapters of the epistle, is marked by the same char-
acteristics which distinguish the author's other works. The most
noteworthy of these are, deep reverence for the truths handled,
keen spiritual insight, and an earnest effort to set the contents of
Scripture into close relation with the Christian life of to-day.
We esteem Godet second to no other commentator when the
whole purpose and general uses of the interpreter's work are con-
sidered. He does not equal Meyer in critical acumen ; nor Weiss
in the nicer refinements of exegesis ; nor EUicott in subtlety of
analysis, but he is superior to any of these in expounding the
spiritual content of Scripture. Godet is an able scholar and
critic, but does not throw textual and grammatical criticism into
the foreground. We do not think him so reliable in this field as
Meyer or Weiss ; particularly is he open to criticism for his per-
sistent adherence to many readings which rest upon the authority
of the TeoBtus Seceptus instead of upon that of recent textual
scholarship.
The purpose which Godet has set before himself in his com-
mentaries we believe to be the true purpose of such works. This
is, preeminently, interpretation. The resources of critical scholar-
ship should be the means to this end. This is noticeably the case
in the commentary on this practical Epistle of Paul which deals
00 largely with vexing questions of principle and conduct. The
venerable author merits the thanks of all Biblical students that he
is still pushing forward his exegetical labors and so honorably mer-
iting the blessing of those who *^ still bring forth fruit in old age."
Geobqb B. Stevens.
* CommaUary on First Corinthians ; by F. Godbt, Professor at Neuchatel. Vol.
1. T. ft T. Clark : Edinburgh, pp. 428. G. Scribner's Sons. New York.
Owrrent LUeratv/re, [Sept
Hints on Wbiting and Spbbch-Makimg.* — ^This is one of the
Hand-book Series. Its contents, consisting of two short chapters,
originally appeared as magazine articles. Col. Higginson always
speaks with good jupgment and taste upon literary qnestious, and
these hints are of value to the literary novice, as coming from a
man who has had considerable experience in the matter of which
he speaks.
SsLBCTED EssATB OF JosEPH Addison. — ^Thcsc ^'readings*'
are selections from Addison^s essays and are designed for the
pupils of the Chautauqua School. The volume itself is one of the
Chautauqua Library Series. The selections seem to be made
with good judgment, being taken from those essays with which
the reading public has become most familiar and which are sup-
posed to illustrate most worthily the excellences of Addison's
style. They illustrate the literary virtue of simplicity, and are a
good antidote for literary pomposity.
* Ri^in on Writing and Speech-Making. By Thomas Wentwokth HiaeiNBON.
Boston : Lee t Shepard, Publishers. New York: Charles T. Dillingham, 1887.
f Selected Esaaya of Joseph Addison^ with an Introduction by 0. T. Wihohbstbb,
Professor of English Literature in Wesleyan University. Boston: Chautauqua
Press, 117 Franklin Street, 1886.
A Volame of Verse by Robert Louis Stevenson.
VNJDEBWOOJD8.
Antlior's EdlttoB. 1 vol. 13mo. gilt top, $1^ PMsageB that everyhody remembers In blB romances
and that wonderfhl UtUe book, "A Child's Garden of Verses,** haye already established Mr. Btevenson
in the minds of a mnltltnde of his readers as a poet in the highest meaning of that mnch-misnsed word,
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NUUinS ASDICTUS JCRAKB IN TERBA UAGISTRI.
OCTOBER, 1887.
Akt. I. The Progress of New England Agriculture dur-
ing the last Thirty Years. . . . Joseph B. Walker
n. The English Bible and the English Language. T. W, Hunt
in. Industrial Education. .... Edward J. Fhdpa
IV. Assent to Creeds. .... Henry C. Robinson
V. State Confiscation of Unearned Increments.
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NEW ENGLANDER
AND
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No. CCXI.
OOTOBEE, 1887.
AimcLB L— THE PROGRESS OF NEW ENGLAND
AGRICULTURE DURING THE LAST THIRTY
TEARS.
AgricuUure in Same of its Helations with Chemistry. By F.
H. Stober, S.B., A.M., Professor of Agricultural Chemistry
in Harvard University. 2 vols. 8vo. New York : Charles
Scribner's Sons, 1887.
Thb farmers of the country will hail with great satisfaction
'ProfeBSor Storer's two volumes on "Agriculture in some of its
Belations with Chemistry," which has been recently issued
from the press of Charles Scribner^s Sons. Until recently
they have suffered, more even than they were aware, for the
want of an accurate and scientific agricultural literature. Such
88 they have had has been largely the work of European
authors. Many of the best modem treatises upon subjects re-
lating to farming have been written in foreign tongues, and
even i^hen originally in English, or translated into it from the
G«Tinan. or French, they have but partially met the wants
voii. XI. 17
234 Progress of New England Agriculture. [Oct.,
of American readers. To be of greatest advantage to these the
author mnst know them and their snrroundings better than a
foreigner usually does or can.
The American farmer prefers to learn from an American
teacher. Professor Storer addresses his own countrymen, and
they more willingly listen because of this relationship. Such
works as this and those of Professor Johnson are a Godsend,
and will be valued more and more in successive yeara If, in-
deed, a generation hence, the experiment stations recently pro-
vided for by Congress, shall, by careful experimentation,
greatly broaden the present limits of agricultural science, none
doubtless will rejoice more heartily than these gentlemen, or
more willingly accept the supersedure of their works.
Professor Storer's two volumes embrace a wide range of sub-
jects. He has viewed them from the standpoint of a chemist,
but the reader will find that he is more than a chemist. The
first contains eighteen chapters. The two first treat of the
general relations of soil and air to plants, and of the atmos-
phere as a source of plant food. The next two take up the re-
lations of water to the soil, and its circulation through it. In
the fifth and sixth he discourses upon tillage. The remaining
twelve, together with the first ten, perhaps with more pro-
priety it may be said of the first fifteen, of the second volume,
are devoted to the great subject of fertilization in its diflEerent
branches. The remainder of this volume treats of the dispos-
ing of farms, the growth of crops, barley, oats, hay, and
pastures.
These subjects are scientifically treated, and in language as
little technical as accuracy of statement will allow. It is sufii-
ciently popular to be easily understood by intelligent readers.
The work is a most valuable contribution to the agricultural
literature of the country.
Thirty years ago, a visitor to the agricultural towns of New
England was likely, and in some sections quite sure, to find in
progress a rapid diminution of population, accompanied by
what was still more to be regretted, a deterioration of its quality.
He was also quite certain to discover a lessened productiveness
of the soil; bams once too small to house the crops which
they were built to shelter, of capacities far beyond existing re-
1887.] ProgrMs of New Etiglcmd Agriculture. 285
qnirements ; herds and flocks of diminished numbers and not
unfrequentlj absent altogether ; much good land not fanned
at all, and very little in such a manner as to secure maximum
crops ; the large streams shrunk in volume by the removal of
heavy forests, and brooks formerly perennial absent for the
greater part of the year ; the timber supply fearfully lessened,
and the forest area much increased ; school districts needing
consolidation partly because the natural increase of population
had largely failed ; the price of labor enhanced by its scar-
city, and farming rendered unattractive by the decaying
strength and rude ways of most who pursued it. In short,
agriculture had not kept itself abreast the time. '^ The farm-
ing ? the farming?" said Horace Greeley, in 1872, to a friend
sitting beside him in a IN'ew Hampshire railroad car, and ob-
serving the fields through which they were passing, " What do
I think of the farming ? Where ? I see no farming." The
Bting of the great journalist's report was in the truth of it.
About 1860, thoughtful farmers of New England saw the
low condition of its agriculture, and in alarm and despondency
exclaimed, "What shall we do to be saved?" And to these
come a response, as clear as a clarion at early dawn, " Bepent
of your agricultural sins and bring forth fruits meet for re-
pentance." It was the voice of God, and those who have since
heeded it, have been saved from the ruin which indolence and
stupidity always engender.
Not far from this time, New England took a new departure
in farming. Then — some a little earlier and some a little
later — new forces appeared, forces of great and lasting power
which, for convenience may be designated intellectual and
physical. To some of these attention is called, not only as the
causes of new prosperity, but, taken in the order of their mani-
festations, as marks in the progress of a new agricultural de-
velopment.
Among the first of these, perhaps the very first, in import-
ance if not in time, was the advent of —
1. The New Colleges of Agriculi/wre cmd the Mechanic
Arts. — In 1862, without their asking for or even desiring them,
the Congress of the United States gave to each loyal State and
Territory the foundation of a College of Agrictdture and the
286 ProgreM of New Englcmd AgricuUure. [Oct.,
Mechanic Art& The countiy needed them but was not then
ready to receive them. They were obliged, therefore, to strag-
gle on into active being as best they could. iThere were no
agricultural professors prepared to man them and direct their
work. There were no text books for the use of their students.
There was no well-defined conception on the part of any one
of the precise products these were expected to yield. The
two necessities first mentioned have been measurably met. The
last, as yet but imperfectly determined, is assuming a shape
more and more definite year by year.
These colleges are less than twenty-five years old. It is yet
too early to forecast their future. All things considered, they
may be said to have accomplished as much as their friends could
have reasonably anticipated. They are furnishing a good gen-
eral and agricultural education to such as resort to them at a
very reasonable expense.
2. The Boards of AgricuU/wre. — In most or all of the New
England States, Boards of Agriculture have been organized.
These have rendered important service to the cause which they
were intended to aid, by diflEusing among the farmers important
agricultural information mainly by means of meetings for the
discussion of farm topics, the results of which have been annu-
ally published as reports of the several boards. Many of these
volumes are very valuable contributions to the agricultural lit-
erature of the country. Some are worthy of places beside
the reports of the Eoyal Agricultural Society.
3. The Patrons of Hueba/ndry, — ^A more recent organization
than either of the foregoing has found a home in New Eng-
land, and is proving eflSicient in the intellectual improvement of
the farmer, the value of which is asserted upon less personal
knowledge, but in full confidence. Allusion is to State
Granges of the Patrons of Husbandry. These are the insti-
tutions of the farmers, by the farmers, for the farmers. They
have been established in various sections of New England for
a dozen or fifteen years. One of their important aims is the
promotion of the social culture of their members. The farm-
ers have never been a gregarious class. They have lived mostly
in sparsely located families, mingling but little even with each
other. Too many of them rarely go from home except it be
1887.] Progress of New Englcmd Agricuttmre. 287
to meeting and to mill They have lacked, consequently, the
BtimiilQB of aasociation with others of a like calling. They have
realized less than any other class the power of combination or
the weakness of isolation. The Orange is teaching them these,
and they are learning their anited strength. Large numbers
of the members of the state legislatures — ^in some a majori-
ty— are farmers. These, if so disposed, could dictate the legis-
lation of their respective states. But, without organization,
they have not a tithe of the power possessed by the less num-
erous bodies of representatives of other industries. That the
life of this organization may be vigorous there is reason to
anticipate. That- it will prove a power for good there seems
to be little reason to doubt.
4. Agricultural Fai/rs. — Still another power demands recog-
nition, which may properly enough be called intellectual, inas-
much as it affords object lessons of great value to great num-
bers. Reference is to the agricultural fairs held all over NTew
England each autumn. In their improved character these do
not date beyond the limits of this paper. Thirty years ago
even the managers of these had but vague ideas of the charac-
teristics of the various breeds of cattle entered for exhibition,
and a herd book was as illegible to them as a Hebrew Bible,
and its lore as unfamiliar as the Pandects of Justinian. But
woe now to the exhibitor who seeks to enter a grade animal as
a thoroughbred. Shame and derision would cover any man
who, at this day, should claim, as did a popular agricultural
author at an early fair of the New England Agricultural So-
ciety, that the wrinkles on a merino sheep were the result of
shearing. The day or two spent upon the fair ground are
often to the observing farmer the most profitable of his whole
year. He then and there imbibes, unconsciously perhaps, im-
portant facts and ideas which are afterwards effective in further-
ing his prosperity.
But, let us turn for a moment to some of the mechanical
agencies which have appeared during the last thirty years to
aid the uplift of New England farming. The earliest to which
attention will be invited, and the most important, perhaps, is :
1. The Mowing Machine. — McOormick's reaper astonished
the world at the London Exposition in 1861, and the mowing-
238 Progress of New Englcmd Agriculture. [Oct.,
machine grew out of it Boon after. The latter made its first
appearance in New England about 1855. In other sections of
the country it may have been present a little earlier, but
not muck It has proved a great value to the farmer, as one
good machine will cut as much grass as six or seven men. In-
deed, machines have already been constructed, and are in use
among us, which are capable, under favorable circumstance of
mowing twenty acres a day.
The mowing machine has not only aided in the solution of
the labor question, but, by imperatively demanding the re-
moval of stumps, fixed rocks and stone heaps, as well as the
filling up of holes and wet places, has led to the material im-
provement of hundreds of farms.
2. 7%6 Steel or Chilled Iron Plow. — The advent of steel and
chilled iron plows is more recent than that of the mowing
machine. Thirty years ago many farmers were just relinquishing
their wooden mouldboard plows and hitching to new ones of cast
iron. The latter were a great improvement upon the former, the
draft of which, in deep plowing, required half the teams of a
neighborhood. The iron plow was of easier draft and did bet-
ter work. It was satisfactory until better ones presented them-
selves made of steel or chiUed iron. When a farmer saw with
his own eyes, upon his own land, an Olliver chilled iron plow
doing precisely the same work by a draft of eight hundred
pounds, to do which a cast iron plow required eleven hundred
hundred and fifty, he very wisely abandoned the latter and
procured the former.
But soon after the Olliver came the sulky plow, suggesting
by its appearance a pretty poor cross of a devil's darning
needle upon a one-sided grasshopper, full of brag and very
saucy. Its looks were not prepossessing, but a half dozen
years experience has shown that, riding comfortably upon one
of these drawn by three good horses harnessed abreast, a single
man will invert two acres of tough sod land, to the depth of
eight inches and a half, in a single day ; and, if need be, two
acres and a half. Indeed, the improvement in plows within
the last fifteen years has reduced the cost of heavy plowing
more than fifty per cent.
1887.1 Progress of New EngUmd Agri&ulPure. 239
3. The Improved Harrow. — ^Kindred remarks may be made
of the improved harrows which have been introduced during
the period under consideration. The farmer who has walked
beside or behind an old-fashioned spike-toothed harrow from
breakfast to supper, day after day, will hail these as gifts from
above. Pulverization of the soil is second in importance only
to its fertilization. To a certain extent it is fertilization, as it
secures admission to its bosom of air, heat, moisture, carbonic
acid, etc., which render assimilable the plant food locked up
therein. Improved harrows, like the " Acme," the " Disk,"
and others of like character, upon which the workman rides
forth over his field like a warrior in his chariot, have justly re-
manded to disuse those of earlier periods as they do better
work with greater comfort and at less expense.
4. Whed Horse Rakes, — The modem horse rake has
changed hay raking from hard work to pleasant recreation, en-
abling the proprietor of a hay field to superintend his work
while, at the same time, contributing to it his own full share.
With a spry stepping horse and such a rake he gathers into
windrows in a part of the afternoon the morning's mowing of
two machines or of a dozen men, enjoying the while a pleasant
and refreshing ride.
5. The Hay Tedder, — Within the last twenty years the
farmer has made profitable acquaintance with the hay tedder,
which hastens the drying of the hay crop and thereby reduces
the cost of its harvesting.
6. The Ma/nv/re Spreader, — ^At a date quite recent, the
manure spreader has come to render comparatively light one
of the hardest and most disagreeable works of the farm.
While it may not have yet realized its highest promise it has
lessened by one-half and more the labor and cost of spreading
manure upon land, performing at once the double work of
pulverizing the materials applied and of scattering them
rapidly over the surface with an evenness unattainable by the
dung-fork or shovel.
XJx>on terminating here a list which might be greatly ex-
tended, it may be said that these six implements alone have
reduced the cost of the farm operations to which they apply
more than fifty per cent. What improved machinery is to the
240 Progress of New England Agriculture. [Oct,
manufacturer, what reduced grades and steel rails are to trans-
portation, what better processes are to the miner; increased
knowledge and better implements are to the farmer. To
ignore these renders profitable farming impossible, and agri-
cultural bankruptcy inevitable.
It may be said in reply to such as ask if these agencies have
improved materially the general farming of New England, that
it is too early yet to expect full results, as they are but a part of
the foundation support of a new agricultural structure, and,
like all foundations, they are mostly below the surface and
make little show. Yet, some parts of the superstructure be-
ginning to rise upon them are as clearly in sight as the head
lands which mark the New England coast or the mountains
which guard its western border.
For instances of this fact, compare the dairying of to-day
with that of 1850, or even of 1875. Intelligent dairying is
now an exact science, and managed under rules as precise as
many which prevail in the laboratory. Indeed, a well con-
ducted creamery is a laboratory. How largely, during the pe-
riod under consideration, has been diffused a correct knowledge
of the composition and offices of fertilizers and how generally is
the farmer learning to supplemeiit home supplies by the phos-
phates, nitrates and potash salts of commerce ! Compare the
splendid specimens of Short Horn, Devon, Hereford, Jersey,
and Dutch cattle, to be seen at any of the large autumnal fairs,
with the unimproved descendants of the importations of two
hundred and fifty years ago, and now known as native stock.
Since the war, has been introduced the old South European
system of preserving green fodder for winter use by burying it
in the ground, and the French terms " Silo " and " Endlage "
have been incorporated into our language without the change
of a single letter. Very largely has brute power been substi-
tuted for human, and the great truth partially adopted which
was taught twenty years ago by that devoted apostle of agri-
culture, the late ex-Alderman Mecchi, of Tip Tree Hall —
" Never use a man when you can use a horse, for a horse^s labor
is cheaper and more reliable ; never use a horse when you can
use a steam engine, for the engine can be kept at half the ex-
pense and vdll last twice as long." During the last thirty
1887.] Progress of New Englcmd AgricviU/wte, 241
years many New England fanners have experimentally found
that stagnant water will enter drain tiles when properly laid, and
that by its removal worthless swamps may be converted to fertile
fields, greatly to the increase of their scanty acreage and the
annnal income of their farms. An agricultural literature has
made its appearance more extensive and better by far than any
which has preceded it. To this the volumes of Dr. Storer are
a valuable contribution. The intelligent farmer can now lay
aside as obsolete his copies of La Livre de la Ferme, Morton's
Cyclopedia, Stephen's Book of the Farm, and other works of
high excellence in their day, since better ones covering the
same ground are now within his reach. Able agricultural pro-
fessors have taken the chairs awaiting them. The new col-
leges of agriculture and the mechanic arts bear upon their rolls
the names of hundreds of students, a good proportion of whom
have taken the agricultural courses of study of their respective
institutions. During the last decade the depopulation of the
agricultural towns has been arrested and the number showing
leasening populations during that of 1860-70, has been reduced
from eight hundred and eighty-nine to seven hundred and
sixty-six.
To show the decline and rally of population the following
tables have been compiled from the United States Census
returns :
A TABiiB Showino the Depopulation op New Enolaiu) Towns Dub-
INO the thbee Decades, 1850-60, 1860-70. and 1870-80 :
1850-^0.
Whole No. of No. LosinsrPopu- Percentages
Statks. Towns. latlon. ofLoslner
Towns.
Maine 873 146 80
New Hampshire 201 05 47
Vermont 247 188 68
Massachusetts 881 111 88
Rhodelsland 84 5 15
Connecticut 166 58 84
1^ 642 37 av.
242 Progress of New Englcmd AgritnMwre. [Oct.
1860-70.
* Whole No. of No. LoBin^ Popu- Percentages
Statks. Towns. lation. of Losing'
Towns.
Maine 680 810 65
New Hampehire 281 168 78
Vermont 248 148 60
Massaohusetts 885 168 48
Rhodelsland 87 16 48
Connecticut 167 75 45
1.608 "s^ "54 av.
1870-SO,
Maine 538 280 68
New Hampshire 286 126 68
Vermont 282 187 50
Massachusetts 840 186 40
Rhodelsland 86 0 26
Connecticut 167 70 47
1,680 766 46 av.
A TABLE SHOWINO IN PARALLEL OOLUMNB THE PEBOENTAaES OF
TOWNS LOSING IN POPULATION DXIBINO THE LAST THBEE DB0ADB8 :
Statsb. 18W-0O. 1800-70. 18TO-80.
Maine 80 65 68
New Hampshire 47 78 68
Vermont 58 50 50
Massachusetts 88 48 40
Rhodelsland 15 48 26
Connecticut 84 46 47
Facts like the above indicate an agricultural progress during
the last thirty years as marked as it is cheering. It surpasses
in amount all we shall find, if, taking the year 1850 as a start-
ing point, we travel back to the days of the Pilgrim Fathers,
or, farther still to those of the crusades.
The depopulation indicated by the above tables is indeed
real, but very largely temporary. The back flow has already
commenced, as these very clearly show.
This decline of population may be attributed to several
causes. The late war with the South was one. Emigration
was another. A third may be found in a preference by many
for other pursuits. The first was inevitable, but no longer
1887.] ProgreBS of New Englcmd Agrioidim'e. 243
exista The others were results of poor husbandry, and might
have been avoided had the fanners possessed the exquisite
enterprise and the requisite knowledge. TV hat might have
been may be. Banish poor farming from New England and
agricultural prosperity will take its place just as surely as
atmospheric air wiU fill a vacuum when the opportunity
occurs.
It is still claimed that the boys and girls upon the farms are
forsaking the calling of their fathers. If this be so, as it doubt-
less is to some extent, it argues enterprise on their part. Its
only preventive is to make agriculture as attractive as other
pursuits. To do this it must be made as profitable. Avocar
tions are attractive in proportion as they are remunerative.
Men do business to make money. Success in farming comes
from the good tillage of good-sized areas. A peanut stand may
yield a man a frugal living, but it will not make him rich,
although his margin of profit be large. The doggerel whine so
often heard,
'* A little farm well tilled,
A little wife well willed,"
is a mean half heresy which may satisfy a narrow mind, but an
enterprising New England husbandman, worthy of his blood
and of generous soul, wants a good-sized wife and a good-sized
farm ; with fruitf ulness within doors and f ruitf ulness without.
There has often been a desire in the hearts of enterprising
persons to perpetuate their families. Men are not jealous of
their ancestors, nor of their descendants. The ambition is a
natural one, and commendable. But humiliating as the fact
may be, a family will not stand upon nothing, and the only
lasting foundation upon which it can be sustained is landed
estate. Experience has indubitably demonstrated the truth of
this remark. Personal property from its very nature is in-
secure and affords an unsafe basis. Land is the only one yet
discovered which can be trusted.
The most signal example, perhaps, of the continuance of
families through many centuries, is to be found in the noble
houses of England. Take from these their landed support and
one-half of them would disappear in less than a century ; while
eventually the other half would share their fate. We do not
244 Progrus of New JEngUmd AfricuUvre. [Oct.,
applaud the English aristocracy. It began in robbery and has
been continued upon unequal privilegee. Yet, from the Nor-
man invasion to the present day, it has been permanent.
We do, however, admire that better nobility of which our
own land affords numerous examples.* Allusion is to families
existing in all the dlder parts of the country founded in early
colonial days by immigrant ancestors who came into honest
possession of landed estates, which have continued in the
ownership of their descendants, and been tilled by fairly re-
quited labor ever since. The owner of such an estate can say
with justifiable pride, as his eye sweeps over his paternal acres,
"These low grounds, formerly worthless, but now the best
upon my farm, were drained and made productive by my
father. From these upland fields, as docile now to the plow
as the meadows, my grandfather removed the rocks and piled
them in their division walls, every stone of which is a monu-
ment to his industry. When my first Anglo-American ances-
tor built by yonder brook his log cabin, the surface of this
estate was covered by primeval forests. His stalwart arm,
then his sole dependence, bared to the sun the ground we now
stand upon. The little clearing gave him bread. Since en-
larged it has supported his descendants. We have never been
rich, but have always had enough and something to spare to
neighbors less fortunate than ourselves. Little have we besides
these acres. We have paid honest wages to those who have
labored with and for us. This farm, that little school house at
the cross roads, and the white spired church on yonder hill
have made us what we ara It is our ambition to serve well
God and our generation, and transmit to our children a better
inheritance than we received from our ancestors." Can one
conceive of a higher nobility than one composed of such men.
A nation made of such material would be invincible, " and the
gates of hell could not prevail against it." Said the late head
of an old Massachusetts family to a young man just starting in
life, and asking his advice, *^ Buy land and keep it."
• The writer of this paper can easily' coimt a dozen farmers in Con-
cord, N. H., who are now living upon farms which have been in their
f amiliee ever since they were cleared from the forest by their first Con-
cord ancestors, more than one hundred and fifty years ago.
1887.] ProgresB of New England Affrictdture. 246
Whenever the mass of ISew England farmerB, rising to the
level of their opportunities and availing themselves of the
advantages which modem science and mechanical ingenuity
are offering to them — as many of their number are already
doing — shall pursue their business with the devotion given to
other pursuits, agriculture will become fairly remunerative and
the familiar lines of the Latin poet,
« O fortunatos nimiilm, sua si bona norint,
Agricolas ! quibus ipsa procul discordibus armis,
Fundit humo facilem victum justissima tellus,"
will apply to them in a sense loftier far than any by him con-
ceived.*
* Since this article was written, the Boston Daily Advertiser of the
9th of September inst., has published an able article headed ''An Agri-
cultural Beaction," a portion of which we quote : ''A Vermont town
clerk has just received a letter from an Iowa farmer, inquiring if farms
may be bought in the officiars town. The western man intends to sell
out and settle in Vermont, believing that he can thereby have a larger
and surer income This authentic instance of a looking to
New England for good agricultural results may fairly be taken as a
token that the rush for the West is one day to be succeeded by a re-
action Recent observations in certain hill towns in western
Massachusetts showed that the tide had turned. An appreciable
degree of reoccupation where there had been deserted homesteads was
noted. The worst, it was evident, had been faced. Land given over
as scarcely worth cultivating was receiving more generous treatment."
Joseph B. Walkbb.
246 EtigUah Bible cmd English La/nquage. [Oct.,
Article IL— THE ENGLISH BIBLE AND THE ENGLISH
LANGUAGE.
The two greatest treasures in the possession of any Christian
nation are the Bible in the vernacular and the vernacular itself.
Though it is true, as Archbishop Trench has stated,* " that a
language is more and mightier in every way than any one of
the works composed in it," this advantage in favor of the lan-
guage is reduced to a minimum if not indeed rendered doubtful,
when we come to compare it with its expresssion in the Holy
Scriptures Of no nation of modem times is this assertion
truer than of English-speaking peoples. Germany excepted,
there is no civilized country where the Bible and the language
alike have done more for the best interests of the population,
and more in which the mutual relations of these two great
educational and moral agencies have been closer and more
marked. Among the English, as elsewhere, no sooner did
Christianity enter and obtain a foothold than the necessity was
felt of having the Word of God translated into the home-
speech. It was so in the days of Ulfilas, Bishop of the Goths.
As soon as his countrymen along the Black Sea became con-
verts to Christianity, in the early part of the fourth century,
it was their earnest desire to possess the Bible in their own
tongue. To this work the learned and holy bishop was compe-
tent and inclined. About 860, A. D., he completed the trans-
lation of the New Testament from the original Greek and a
portion of the Old Testament from the Septuagint version into
the Moeso-Gothic. It was in a true sense about the first written
example of a Germanic language.
It was thus with the old Syriac, Latin, Armenian, and Slav-
onic versions, all of them being prepared at the demand of the
people, upon the introduction of Christianity. It was so in the
case of the Old Saxon metrical version of the continental
tribes — the Heliand of the ninth century, in which the un-
known author, at the supposed request of Louis, the Pious ^
* Trench's StwdLy of Words, p. 39.
1887.] Engldsh Bible cmd EngUah Language. 247
sought to paraphrase in verse the sacred work for the use of the
people. This was prepared after that a rude form of Chris-
tian faith had been brought to them by the agency of Charle-
magne and his followers.
Precisely thus the English Bible finds its historical origin on
English soil just after Gregory of Borne sent forth Augustine,
A. D. 597, to carry Christianity to Kent. Shortly before this,
Ethelbert, King of Kent, by his marriage with Bertha, a Prank-
ish Christian queen, had become favorably disposed to the new
doctrine and worship, so that he received the Bomish mission-
aries with kindness, in the province of Canterbury. Intellectual
and literary activity was at once awakened. Schools were
established and worship observed. Among the books and
treasures sent to Canterbury by Gregory, the most valuable by
far were two copies of the gospels in the Latin language, one
of which is still in the library of Corpus Christi, Cambridge,
and the other, in the Bodleian, Oxford. The people were now
more than eager for the vernacular scriptures. The establish-
ment of Christianity had made this need imperative, and it was
on the basis of the Oxford copy of the Latin Gospels — the
Vetue Itdlica — ^that the first copies of the Scriptures were pre-
pared in the native language and circulated throughout the
center and north of England. Hence, as early as the eighth
century, A D., Bede, of Durham, and Boniface, of Devon-
shire, were engaged, respectively, in the further translation of
the Bible and in preaching the gospel to the kindred tribes be-
yond the sea. The contemporaneous history of the English
Bible, and the English language may be said to have begun at
this early period, and has so continued with but little deviation
to the Westminster version of our day. It will be our pleasing
purpose in the discussion before us to trace this progressive his-
tory as it moves along the successive centuries, and thus to
evince the large indebtedness of our English speech to our
English Bible.
L— English Vbrsions and Translations of the Bible.
As to the exact date of the earliest translations of the Bible
into English, tradition and history are so mingled that it is quite
impossible to be accurate. As Bosworth suggests, the translators
248 EngUah Bible cmd English Language. [Oct.,
and translatioDfi are alike a matter of doubt. It is, however,
safe to say that leaving out of view the discorsive work that
was done by unknown scholars and copyists in the seventh
centary, a more specific work of translation began about the
eighth century in the persons of Aldhelm, Guthlac, Egbert, and
Bede. This was continued in the ninth and tenth centuries
by Alfred and Aelfric We learn authoritatively from Cuth-
bert, a pupil of Bede's, that his venerable teacher, who died in
785, A. D., was closing his translation of St. John's Gospel into
English, as his life was ending. This, in all probability, was
but the last of a series of gospel versions, inasmuch as we know
that in the line of commentary work Bede gave special study
to the four evangelists. In fact, other translations of the gos-
pels may have existed before this. It is well authenticated,
indeed, that in the early part of the same century (706) a trans-
lation of the Gospels was made by Egbert, as also of the Psalms,
by Aldhelm. In the two following centuries, Alfred, and
Aelfrie, the Grammarian, carried on the same useful work.
The illustrious king is supposed to have prepared a partial ver-
sion of the Psalms and Gospela Aelfrie, who died in 1006,
completed the translation of the Heptateuch — the first seven
books of the Bible, together with a portion of Job. He is thus
mentioned by Morley ''as the first man who translated into
English prose any considerable portion of the Bible."* In
addition to this prose rendering, it is not to be forgotten that
as far back as the middle of the seventh century the para-
phrase of Caedmon gives us a metrical version of a large
portion of the Christian scriptures, the poem, as now extant,
containing substantial parts of Genesis, Exodus, Daniel and
of The Life of Christ.
Thus early was the Word of God vemacularized. As soon,
in fact, as the English nation and church began their existence ;
as soon as education entered and the English people started on
their great work of evangelization, their bible was accessible
in their own tongue. It at once began to exercise its influence
in the native language in all those beneficent forms in which it
is still at work. It is most suggestive to note that the two great
agencies started historically together at the call of Christianity.
* Morley's English Writen, vol. L, part I.
1887.] English Bible <md English Lomguage. 249
Fragmentary and tentative as many of their first versions are,
80 that there is now extant of that time bnt little save the
Gospels, Pentateuch, and Psalms, what does remain is all the
more valuable and is quite enough to establish that connection
of dose dependence of which we are speaking. Imperfect as
these translations are, there is no subsequent period in which
the secular and the inspired are so intimately blended. With
Bede and Aelfrie, English was eminently biblical. All the lead-
ing authors of the time were holy men. Homilies, Christian
biographies, and church histories were the staple form of prose
production. Where actual bible translation was not done, they
did the very next thing to it, in furnishing complete paraphrases
of the Bible for the schoob and the common people. In these
first English times (449-1066) the language was in a marked
degree the medium of scripture and scriptural ideas. '^ In the
latent spirit of this," writes Morley, " will be found the soul of
all that is Saxon in our literature. The Bible was the main
book in the language and controlled the character of all other
books."*
In what may be called the second or intermediate period of
our language and our versions (1066-1550), attention should be
called, as before, to the translations in metre. The most
prominent of these is. The Ormubwnh (1216), by Orm. It is a
metrical paraphrase of those portions of the gospeb arranged
for the respective days of church service, and as the author
states in various forms, is designed to secure practical religious
ends. What is known as the Surtees Metrical Psalter, proba-
bly, belongs to the early part of the fourteenth century. About
1340, Bichard Bollede Hampole translated the Psalter and Job
into Northumbrian English to give to those people the same
privileges that the people of Kent had earlier received in prose
versions. As to these prose versions, we notice a prose Psalter
by William of Shoreham as early as 1327, prepared especially
for the Englishmen of Kent. Of the English Bible of John
of Trevisa, to which Caxton refers and which is placed at 1880,
no reliable record is found. This tradition is perchance the
origin of Sir Thomas More's belief that the Bible was rendered
complete into English long before the time of Wycliffa
^Morley's English Writers, vol. i., part I., p. 299.
VOL. XI. 18
250 EngUsh Bible and English Language, [Oct,
The first translation of the entire Bible into English is that
of Wiclif , assisted by Nicholas de Hereford. It was based on
the Vulgate, and issued (N. T.) in 1380. As it was prepared
nearly a century before the introduction of printing into Eng-
land (1474) it was circulated in manuscript only, as the ver-
sions preceding it had been, and was not finally committed to
print till several centuries later (N. T. 1731, O. T. 1850). For
about a century and a half, however, up to the time of the
next and greater version (1525), it was the Bible of England
and the basis of English. Its revision by Purvey in 1388 was
a revision only, and made a good translation a better ona
Connected, as Wiclif was, with the university of Oxford for
nearly half a century, and versed, as he was, in the divinities,
no one was better qualified to do that great initial work that
was then needed, to embody the Scriptures permanently in the
English tongue, and through them to open the way for the
English Reformation. English education as well as Protestant
English Christianity owes him a debt that can never be repaid.
His work was philological and literary as well as biblical and
moral.* Although in a council at Oxford, in 1408, it was
decreed " that no . man hereafter read any such book now
lately composed in the time of John Wiclif or since," this first
great version could not be thus suppressed. The Lollards
were persecuted and scattered but the Bible remained, and
Foxe was able to write " that in 1520 great multitudes tasted
and followed the sweetness of God's Holy Word."t
In 1525-32 appeared Tyndale's Version, containing the New
Testament with the Pentateuch and historical books of the
Old Testament As the first printed English translation it
stands conspicuously superior to all that had preceded it.
From the additional fact, that it was not based on the Vulgate
as was Wiclif 8, but on the original text of the Hebrew and
Greek, it was commended with increasing emphasis to the
biblical student and reader. It is eminently natural, therefore^
to hold with the great majority of Christian scholars that the
history of our present English Bible practically begins with.
Tyndale's. It has been accepted as the basis of all later ver-
♦ See Dr. Storrs on Wiclif.
t Westcott's History of the English Bible, pp. 17, 18, 20.
1887.] English Bible and English Language, 251
dons, and gathers in its preparation new interest from the cir-
cnmstance that Lnther was at work at about the same period
(1532-34) on that translation of the Scriptures into German
which marks the settlement of standard German prose. The
simplicity of Tyndale's Bible is a sufficient confirmation of his
prophecy, that the plough-boys of England would know more
of the "Word of God than the Pope himself did. Its plain^
concise, and telling English is just what * might have been
expected from a man of his learning, character, and spirit
Versed as he was in the original tongues of the Bible, and
thoroughly devoted to the needs of the common people of
England, he succeeded alike in his fidelity to the ancient text
and in preparing a version for the use of all classes of the
country. He was especially careful to reject the "ink-horn
phrases'^ of the schoolmen and the schools. His method is
natural, facile, terse, and vigorous, and affords the best example
extant of the precise status of the English tongue at that par-
ticular stage of its historic development. It became substan-
tially the basis of that later and still better version which for
more than two centuries and a half has been accepted on all
sides as the best prose specimen of standard English, while it
is through this version that Tyndale's translation becomes
vitally connected with the Westminster Version of the present
era. Following Tyndale in this intervening period between
First and Modem English, are three or four versions simply
needing mention. Coverdale's translation (1535), from the
Dutch (German), and Latin, completed what Tyndale had left
incomplete at his death. It was, in a true sense, the first
entire printed English Bible.
Matthew's or Roger's Version (1537), was based on the two
preceding, and revised by Tavemer's in 1539. It is supposed
to have been the first version in English that was formally
sanctioned by royal authority, — the first really authorized ver-
sion.
Cranmer's or the Great Bible, (1539-40), was on to 1568 the
accepted Bible of the English church, and especially notable as
the version from which most of the Scriptures of the English
Prayer-Book were taken. From this time, the preparation of
English versions ceased for a while. Not only so, but new
252 MigUsh Bible a/iid English Lomguage. [Oct.,
animosity seemed to arise from royal and subordinate sources
looking to the prohibition and permanent suspension of such
endeavors. The accession of Edward YI. however, changed the
condition of things ; Bible work was resumed, so that at the
close of the short reign of Bloody Mary, hostile as she was to
the Protestant Scriptures, other versions were in preparation,
and a new and wider era was opened both for the Bible and
the language. In this Middle English Period, therefore, as in
the First, the connection of these translations with the pro-'
gressive development of English speech is everywhere visible.
In fine, the main work was either in Scripture itself or along
the lines of scriptural teaching. Whatever the literary ex-
pression of the language in prose and poetry may have been
or whatever the separate study of the language on purely
secular methods, the Word of God in English was the book by
way of distinction and was engaging the best thought of the
time.*
In the Modem English Period (1550-188-), three or four
new versions appear.
The Genevan version (1557-60), was prepared by Protestant
refugees in the city of Geneva. It was based on Tyndale's
translation, was far less costly and bulky than the Great Folio
Bible, and in connection with the version that followed it, was
the Bible of England for more than half a century. It is of
special biblical interest in that it was the first translation using
verses and notes, and of special philological interest as being
the first in which the old black letter type was abandoned
for the common Koman type of modem time. In this partic-
ular, it clearly marks the introduction of the modern English
Bible and modern Bible-English. It might be called the
Bible of the Presbyterians, as most of the Genevan refugees
from the Marian persecutions were of that order, and as the
occasion of its preparation was partly found in a protest
against the extreme Anglicanism of Oranmer's version pre-
ceding it It was notable for its homely diction and so
commended itself to the middle classes of the people as to
hold its ground far into the reign of James.
* For 8i)ecimens of the texts of these earlier versions, the reader may
be referred to Mombert's Hand-Book of English Versions,
1887.] English Bible wnd English Lcmguage. 253
The Bishop's Bible of 1568 was made on the basis of Cran-
mer^s and under the supervision of Archbishop Parker.
Most of the scholars at work upon it were bishops of the
English church. It is sometimes called ''The Translation of
the Church of England." "Whatever its merits, it never super-
seded the Genevan version. It is supposed that its circulation
was scarcely one-fourth that of its competitors, while it was
largely due to the unseemly contest for supremacy between
• these two versions — the Presbyterian and the Anglican — that
the preparation of the great version of 1611 was suggested and
hastened.
King James' version (1607-11), may be said to have origin-
ated in a conference at Hampton Court between the King and
certain others, Presbyterians and Episcopalians — with reference
to promoting ecclesiastical unity in the kingdom. It was sug-
gested by Dr. Rainolds of Oxford that such a version be
prepared, based on the Bishop's Bible of 1568 ; it was thus
connected, through Cranmer's, Matthew's, and Coverdale's ver-
sions, with that of Tyndale, so that it may be said to rest on
that foundation.
" We never thought," said the translators, " that we should
need to make a new translation, nor yet to make of a bad one
a good one ; but to make a good one better, or, out of many
good ones, one principal good one, not to be excepted against."*
Of this translation, little need be said. Though the Genevan
version continued to be prized and used, this superior one
soon succeeded in disj)lacing it. Nearly all of those engaged
in its preparation were university men, so that its scholarly
character is of the first order, while its eminently English
spirit has ever elicited the highest praise. As a version, it has
had no superior in any language ; of its literary and linguistic
merits, Protestants and Eomanists, Christian and unchristian
alike speak.
The best example extant of Elizabethan English, it is more
than remarkable that through the inevitable changes of such a
composite language as the English, it has held its linguistic
place as no secular work of that date has held it, and in so far
as its English is concerned, has no approximate rival Mr.
* Translator's Preface, King James' Version.
264 EngUsh Bible and English Lcmguage. [Oct.,
Froude is bat one of millionB aa he speaks of " its peculiar
genius and Saxon simplicity."*
" Who will say," writes Faber {DvhUn Review^ 1863), that
the marvelous English of the Protestant Bible is not one of
the strongholds of heresy [Protestantism] in this country!"
Bomanists at the Eeformation and since have been keen-
sighted enoiigh to see that the " heresy " of the Protestants is
immediately imbedded in the English of the Protestant Bible.
It is on this account that Pope Leo XIII. would close if he
could, the evangelical schools and churches at Eome. It was
in fact by reason of the increasing circulation of these Protest-
ant Scriptures that Romish scholars deemed it necessary to pre-
pare what is known as, the Rheims-Douay Version of 1682,
"for the more speedy abolishing of a number of false and
impious translations put forth by sundry sects."t It was not
the Bible but the Bible in English that they desired to abolish.
The latest revision of the Scriptures (N. T. 1881, O. T.
1885) is based, as we know, on this Authorized Version of 1611,
as this in turn looks back to Tyndale and back to Wiclif, so
that it may be suffered to mark the highest result of scholar-
ship and practical adaptation to popular needs. As to whether
the English of this version is equal or superior to that of the
preceding, is a question that may judiciously rest until the
full revision has been longer before us. It is in point here to
add, that even in this modem period the metrical renderings
of Csedmon and Orm are continued in the paraphrases of
Longfellow and of Coles.
In our discussion of the relatioDS of the English Bible to
the English language we are now at a point, where, in the
light of the brief survey already made of the various vernacular
versions, we may state a fact of prime importance, that the
historical development of the English Bible as a book has
been from the beginning substantially parallel with that of the
English language. ''The history of our Bible," as Dr.
Westcott remarks, "is a type of the history of our church, and
both histories have suffered the same fate."^ So as to our Bible
♦ Froude'B History of England^ III., 84.
t Preface to Rhemish Text.
X Preface to Westcott's History of the English Bible,
1887.] EngUih Bible and English I/mguage. 255
and onr speech. They have been historically correspondent.
They have " suflEered the same fate," prosperous and adverse,
and this to sach a marked degree that the record of the one is
essentially embodied in that of the other.
** It is a noteworthy circumstance,^'* writes Mr. Marsh, " in the
history of the literature of Protestant countries, that in every
one of them the creation or revival of a national literature has
coincided with a translation of the Scriptures into the vemac*
ular, which has been remarkable, both as an accurate repre-
sentative of the original text and as an exhibition of the best
power of expression possessed by the language of that stage of
its development." This closeness of progressive expansion is
clearly seen in each of the three periods we have examined.
Of the five or six most prominent authors of First English,
nearly every one was more or less engaged in developing the
language through its application to Scripture, while such a
writer as Cynewulf, in his poem on Christ, verges as closely
as possible on specific biblical paraphrase. The Saxon Bible
was thus not only a church book for certain days and cere-
monies, but was the book of the home, the school, and the
shop, the people's hand-book of their vernacular.
So in the Middle English era on to the time of Elizabeth,
Shoreham, Orm, and Hampole had done their initial work prior
to Wiclif, who, with his manuscript Bible containing over
ninety-five per cent, of native English, did more to maintain
and diffuse the language in its purity than all other agencies
combined. "It is a version," says Shepherd, "entitled to
special consideration in a history that treats of the origin and
formation of the English tongue."t
After the invention of printing and the work of Caxton, the
golden age of English versions began with Tyndale and others,
reaching the high-water mark just at the time when the Eng-
lish language on its secular side was freeing itself from the
fetters of the old inflectional system, and preparing for its great
mission among the nations. The English Bible was there most
opportunely to guide and measure that ever enlarging growth
which it was assuming, and which, had it not been there, might
* Marsh's English Lang, and Lit, p. 844.
t Shepherd's History of the Eng. Lan,, p. 84.
256 English Bible and EngUah Language. [Oct.,
have become an Anglo-Latin dialect of the Bomish churchy
or a conf osed compoand of earlier and later English. So as to
the modem period from the Genevan version to King James,
when the work of bible translation seemed to rest conjointly
with the establishment of the language substantially in its
present standard forms. Whatever may be the differences of
phraseology, idiom, and structure between what is known as
Elizabethan English, and the English of to-day, it is conceded
by all scholars that modem English as such began at that date,
and was most purely expressed in the version of 1611. Not
only did this version mark the highest point reached in the use
of theological and religious English, but practically so in
the use of common English. It expressed the sum total
of those different elements of good that existed in the
language as the result of its successive centuries of develop-
ment, and added to them all the new element of Christian
liberty. In the revision of the Scriptures now nearly com-
pleted, there is seen but another confirmation of the fact — ^that
the growth of the Bible as a book is coterminous with that of
the language. Though during the intervening two hundred
and seventy years (1611-1881) this historical parallelism has
been at times intermpted, as in the days of the Stuarts, still the
correspondence has not been altogether lost, but providentially
or otherwise, there has been a harmony of procession here quite
without precedent in any other sphere. In fine, the necessities
of a spoken language in constant process of change, demand
such occasional revisions in order to keep abreast of the secular
growth of the vernacular and to guard it. Hence it is, that the
Scriptures are a philological factor in a language as no merely
literary production can possibly be. Hence it is, that the Eng-
lish Bible in every new revision of it may be viewed as marking
the limit up to which the language has come at the date of such
revision. There is here, on the one hand, a convenient test of
the purely philological progress of our language, and also a
test of the success of those scholars who engage in the difGicalt
and delicate work of scriptural revision. The language and
the Bible act and react upon each other as great educational
agents. Linguistically, they are the two great cooperative fac-
tors in modern progress. They cannot exist and act separately.
1887.] English Bible omd English Language. 2S7
The English language is what it is, and will be what it will be
mainly by reason of its vital relation to the English Scriptures.
It is now in place to call attention to some of those special
forms of indebtedness under which the English language
rests to the English Bible.
1. As to Diction and Yocabulary. What may be called the
verbal purify of English, is founded on the vernacular bible as
on nothing else. This is seen to be true in all the historical eras
mentioned. It was so in the earliest days of the partial Saxon
versions, when, for the very purpose of preserving the language
from the corrupting influence of foreign tongues, the Scriptures
were translate into it. It was this very object that Aelfric
had in view when in the preparation of manuals for the schools
he was especially careful to translate a portion of the Bible for
daily use. In what are known as the Wicklif versions of Scrip-
ture, we are told '^that they exerted a decided influence in
developing that particular dialect of English — the East-mid-
land— which became the literary form of the language ; that
they tended to prepare the way for Chaucer, who was person-
ally indebted to these translations for much of the wealth and
beauty of his diction."* When we come to the sixteenth cen-
tury and to the practical completion of Bible versions in the
seventeenth, this debt of our diction to our Bible is all the
more striking. Elizabethan English, as a period of the lan-
guage by itself, is enough to confirm this. It was right at the
height and under the central influence of these versions that
this form of English was developed. It was saturated with
Bible teaching and spirit. Special emphasis is to be given to
the fact that a distinctive religious diction was then established,
from which no material departure has since been made. What-
ever the changes in the strictly secular speech have been, this
devotional phraseology then formed has remained substantially
the same.
When it is remembered that the version of King James, as
that of Tyndale, has, as a mere fact of numerical estimate, over
ninety-five per cent, of native words, and that, as the Bible, it
has a circulation accorded to no work of merely human origin,
someideamay be formed of the indebtedness of our vocabulary
* Shepherd's History of Eng, Lang,^ p. 86.
258 English Bihle and English Language. [Oct,
to thifi printed Word of God. Quite apart from that specially bib-
lical phraseology which it has inwrought into the very heart
of our common speech, there are a thousand forms of general
influence which flow from it to purify the native tongue. The
surpematural character of our Bible aside, the English element
in it is the best specimen extant of plain, idiomatic and trench-
ant English. Merely as a book among books, it has gathered
up and embodied in its verbal forms more of the pith and
marrow of the vernacular than any other book has done. Hence
it is, that there is no other channel through which a natural
English diction is to be so fully and safely perpetuated. Elim-
inate the Bible merely as a manual of verbal usage from the
books that guide and govern us, and we remove at once the
main safeguard of the purity and popularity of the languaga
Irrespective of the specifically moral aspects of the question,
there is here a strong philological argument for the preserva-
tion of our Bible in its present position of authority among us.
2. As to Structure. George P. Marsh, in his admirable disser-
tations on our language, seems never weary of calling the atten-
tion of the student to this point and insisting upon its great
importance in any comprehensive study either of the Scriptures
or of the speech. After dwelling at length upon the grammat-
ical framework of English, he devotes a separate chapter to the
English Bible simply in its linguistic relations to the vernacular.
The argument, of course, is, that the relation is such as to make
the language a constant debtor. Here again, the progress of the
language is coterminous with that of the versions of Scripture.
In earliest English times under the old inflectional system, the
structure was synthetic and inflexible. It was so both inside
and outside of the Bible. In the transitional period under
Wiclif and Tyndale, the inflections were breaking away, so that
to whatever use the language was applied, there was greater pli-
ancy of form and syntactical arrangement. There was a good
degree of that flexibility belonging to a tongue analytic in its
structure. When, in the time of King James, the inflectional sys-
temhad wholly disappeared, the English Bible most decidedly of
all books embodied and expressed that increasing freedom of
adjustment which was the result of so great a linguistic change.
The English of the Bible was now supple and elastic in a sense
1887.] English Bible cmd EngUah Lan>guage, 269
unknown and impoesible before. There was the utter absence
of that rigidity which attends grammatical prescriptions. Bible
English became, as Mr. White would say, " Grammarless Eng-
lish," in the sense that it was liberated from the bondage of form-
alism and traditional statutes. There are two special elements
of structure which our Bible have confirmed in our language.
They are simplicity and strength. Each of these may be said
to luive existed in marked degree from the very beginning of
Bible versions in the days of Egbert and Bede. If First Eng-
lish is notable for anything of excellence, it is for the presence
of clearness and vigor. Nothing in the line of connected
human speech could be more direct and true than the original
Saxon in which our ancestors wrote and into which they ren-
dered the Scriptures from the Latin. The element of simplic-
ity of structure may be said to be secured by the monosyllabic
character of the earliest English. The verbal and syllabic
brevity is noteworthy while the quality of strength is a neces-
sary consequence of that old Teutonic vigor of spirit lying
back of all external expression. Prominent, however, as these
two phases of structure are in strictly secular English, they are
still more marked in religious English, and, most of all, in the
Bible versiona Bunyan and Baxter were more notable for
these qualities than were such secular authors as Temple and
Clarendon, but not so conspicuous for them as was King
James' version. No Engh'sh philologist studying the lan-
guage from the scientific side only can possibly account for
its marvelous possession of these qualities at the present day.
Had it not been for the conservative influence of these suc-
cessive versions, English would have been far more complex
than it is and, to that degree, less forcible. In answering the
question, as to what has been the main safeguard of the lan-
guage at these pdints, the impartial mind must turn to the Scrip-
tares in English. There is nothing inherent in the English
speech fully to explain it. There is nothing inherent in the
English people fully to account for it. No study of merely
historical and philosophical phenomena will satisfy. These
are but partial solutions. The great bulwark against ever in-
creasing complexity from foreign influence has been the Bible,
BO that, at this day, more than fourteen centuries since the Saxons
260 English Bible and EngUsh Lcmguage, [Oct,
landed in Britain, the speech maintains its substantial character
and bids fair to do so in the future. It has lost little or noth-
ing of value. This principle holds, to some extent, in the
Bibles of all nations relative to their respective tongues. Most
especially is this true of the Danes and Germans, but. in no
case as marked as in the English. Macaulay asserts, that had not
the English been victorious at Crecy and Agincourt, they would
have become a dependency of France. Had it not been for
the English Bible, the simplicity and strength of our speech
would have been excessively corrupted by foreign agencies^
if not indeed, obliged to yield entirely to such agencies.
3. As to Spirit. There is an inner life within every lan-
guage characteristic and active in proportion to the excellence
of the language. This in English is potent and pervasive and
is mainly of biblical origin. Says a modem author in speaking
of the English Bible : " This for four hundred years has given
the language, words, phrases, sentiments, figures and eloquence
to all classes. It has been the source of the motives, acts, liter-
ature, and studies. It has filled the memory, stirred the feel-
ings, and roused the ideas which are ruling the world."* Mr.
Brookes, in his " Theology of the English Poets," has called
attention to that distinctively moral element in our language
which every deserving mind must have somewhat noticed.
Its main source has been the English Scriptures pervading in
their spirit every phase of English intellectual life. Writers
have called attention to the ethics of our language and have
done rightly in referring it mainly to the same source. We
speak of the genius of our speech as Teutonic and Saxon. More
than this, it is ethical and sober. It is not surprising that even
so partial a critic of English as Mr. Taine is obliged to digress
at frequent intervals along the line of his narrative to note this
significant fact as to the scriptural spirit of our language. " I
have before me," he says, " one of those old square folios [Tyn-
dale.] Hence have sprung much of the English language and half
of the English manners. To this day, the country is biblical. It
was these big books which transformed Shakespeare's England.
Never has a people been so deeply imbued by a foreign book ;
has let it penetrate so far into its manners and writings, its
* EduoaiUm, May-June, 1883.
1887.] English Bible cmd English Lomguage. 261
imaginationB and its langaage."^ This is a testimony from the
side of French materialism as to the relation of the English
Bible to the inner spirit of our language and nothing more
oould be desired. This influence is ingrained. It has so be-
come a part of our yemacnlar that no line of demarcation
can be safely drawn between the secular and the scriptural.
Enongh has been said to show that the historical development
of English speech has run parallel to that of our English Bible,
that the language in its vocabulary, structure, and spirit is what
it is in purity, simplicity, strength, and ethical character mainly
because of its biblical basis and elements. Whatever our debt
may be to our standard English writers or to the English Prayer-
book of early Elizabethan days, our greatest indebtedness is to
that long succession of English versions of God's Word which
b^an with Bede and ends in Victorian days. We read in our
studies as to the origin of language that some have traced it to
the gods, regarding it as a divine gift or continuous miracla
The Brahmins so conceived it Plato viewed it as inspired
from above. At the other extreme, we are told that language is
purely material and earthly ; that it has no higher source than
in the imitation of the cries of animals. Between these two
extremes of superstition and infidelity, there lies the safeguard
of language-origin in the divine-human element. It is the
gift of God for man's development and use — a divine ability to
be himianly applied. There is a spiritual element in all speech,
rising in its expression, as man rises in the scale of moral being.
It is one of the factors in Max Muller's large influence in mod-
em philology that he has seen fit to assume this high ground.
He goes so far as to say that the science of language is due to
Christianity and that its most valuable materials in every age
have been the translations of the Scriptures. It is at this point
that the subject before us assumes new interest. ' Whatever the
sapematural or spiritual element in any speech may be, it finds
its best expression in the sacred books of that language. What-
ever this element in English may be, its home is the English
Bible, from which as a spiritual centre issue those influences
which are to hold the language loyally to its high origin
and to be a constant protest against undue secularization.
* Taine's Eng. LUerature, p. 176.
262 English Bible and Engliah Lcmguage. [Oct.,
The attitude of modem English philology to the Bible as an
English-Language book must in all justice be a deferential one.
The effort to reduce such a speech to a purely physiological
basis so as to make its study merely that of the vocal organs, is
as unscientific as it is immoral. In the face of the history of
our Bible and our tongue, such a procedure must be condemned.
Essential factors cannot thus be omitted. It has been the
pleasant duty of such English scholars as Miiller, Bosworth,
Angus, and Marsh to emphasize this inter-dependence. It is a
matter of no small moment that while in many of the schools
of modem Europe, the current philosophy of materialism has
succeeded in controlling the study of language, English phi-
lology is still studied by the great body of English scholars as
biblical and ethical in its groundwork.
From this fruitful topic, as discussed, two or three su^es-
tions of interest arise :
1. English and American literature, as they stand related to
the English Bible, may justly be expected to be biblical in
basis and spirit. The student who for the first time approaches
these literatures, should approach them with such an expecta-
tion. Such an element is to be sought as naturally in Eng-
lish letters as its absence is to be anticipated in French and
Spanish letters. English literature is written in a language
saturated with Bible terms, Bible ideas and sentiments, and
must partake of such characteristics. Nor are we to be dis-
appointed. Despite the immoral excesses of the Restoration
Period, and the skeptical teachings of later times, the underly-
ing tone has been evangelic and healthful. No school of
merely literary criticism, at the present day, can rationally
ignore this element. Though we are told that literature
" should teach nothing and believe in nothing,"* this book of
books has been so impressed upon the national speech, and life,
that when our writers have written they have voluntarily, or per-
force, taught something and believed in something distinctively
germane to morality. It is true that the language of our Bible
is not meant to be, and is not the strictly literary language of
English. It is a sacred dialect, covering an area of its own.
Nevertheless, its literary influence is a potent one, so that no
* SJiakeepearianaf Feb., 1885.
1887.] English Bible and English Language. 268
writer, from Bacon to Oarlyle, has failed to feel the force and
restraint of it. The best of our authors have been the first to
acknowledge and utilize it. It is only in the face of history^
and with the same promise of failure, that some of our existing
schools of letters are aiming to ignore it. He who now writes
on " Literature and Dogma," must also write on — God and The
Bible. They must be conjointly viewed by the English critic.
In a former article {Pres. Hev,^ July, '81) we have shown the
presence of this scriptural element in our earliest literature,
from Bede to Bacon. " Shakespeare and the Bible," said Dr.
Sharp, "have made me Archbishop of York."* Who can
compute the influence of the English Bible of Elizabethan
times upon England's greatest dramatist ! A recent writer —
in the nineteenth century — has written ably on the Bible and
Elizabethan poets. In Shakespeare, most of aU, is this influ-
ence visible. "He treats the Scriptures," says the writer,
" as if they belonged to him. He is steeped in the language
and spirit of the Bible."t All students of English are familiar
with the results reached in this direction by Bishop Words-
worth, in his suggestive volume, Shakespeare and The Bible^
where the contents of a separate treatise are required to con-
tain the large variety of references which the illustrious poet
makes to the English Bible. Dr. Wordsworth writes, of " more
than five hundred and fifty biblical allusions, and not one of
his thirty-seven plays is without a scriptural reference." It is,
indeed, difficult to explain, in the light of such facts, how the
poet's religious beliefs could have been any other than evan-
gelical. A recent article {Pres, Pev.^ July, '84) on the Re-
ligious Beliefs of Shakespeare fully substantiates this view.
The dramatist's writings, containing as they do, eighty-five per
cent, of English words, are a striking testimony to the influ-
ence of the Elizabethan versions. So, to a marked degree,
this biblical bias of English authorship is noticeable all along
the line of development, in prose and poetry ; in fiction and
journalism ; in song and satire, there is this same pervading
presence of the " big book " to which the cynical Frenchman
refers. That vast body of distinctively religious literature
♦ Education, May, June, 1882.
t Quoted in Shakespeariana, Feb., 1885.
264 English Bible amd English Lcmguage, [Oct.,
which is found in English in the form of sacred poetry and of
moral and devotional treatises, is based directly on the English
Bible, while in the broader domain of secnlar letters, from
Spenser to Tennyson, English literary art has been pnrified and
sweetened by the same holy influence.
2. The Common Speech of England and America may justly
be expected to be of a comparatively high ethical and verbal
order, to be pure and vigorous in proportion to the circulation
of the Scriptures among the masses. There may be said to ex-
ist in these countries three distinct forms of the language, the
biblical or religious, the literary and professional, and the popu-
lar. In the conjoint action of these forms, the literary will re-
fine the popular just to the degree in which the standard
authors become current and influential In a still higher sense,
it is the function and natural effect of the biblical to refine and
strengthen popular English, and this it will do to the degree
in which it has currency and acceptance. As Mr. Marsh has
stated : ** We have had from the very dawn of our literature
a sacred and a profane dialect ; the one native, idiomatic, and
permanent ; the other, composite, irregular, and conventional,"*
to which, it may be added, that from the very beginning this
sacred dialect has been more and more modifying the secular
dialect, the folk speech, until among the middle classes of Eng-
lish-speaking countries its force is widely and deeply felt. No
nation, Germany excepted, has felt such an uplifting infiuenoe
more pervasively. It is a matter of no small moment and sur-
prise that despite the large number of influences making
directly toward the corruption of the common speech, popular
English is as good as it is. Were it not for the counter agency
of the lower forms of American and English journalism, it
would be far better than it now is. Next to the influence of
the English Bible on colloquial and industrial diction is that of
the press. There is danger at times, lest the latter supersede
the former. A more distinctive ethical element in modem
journalism would be a blessing to the language, as well as to
the morals of the people. The English of the Bible is not
strictly the popular English of the shop and market and street,
still its effect upon such uses of the language is so vital and
* History of English Language,
1887.] English Bible and English I/mguage. 286
eonstant as to make it incumbent on every lover of the ver-
nacalar to bring the Bible to bear upon it in all its phases and
functions. English philological societies could do no better
work in behalf of the native tongue, in its general use, than to
encourage the efforts of English Bible societies to scatter the
Scriptures broadcast over the land. In America, especially,
where by excessive immigration the Bibles of various languages
are brought to counteract in a measure the influence of the
English Bible, it is especially important that the Word of God
in the vernacular should find a place in every household. If
this be so, no serious alarm need be felt as to the purity and
perpetuity of the common speech. The ''profane dialect"
would become scripturalized.
3. The Protestant pulpit of England and America may just-
ly be expected to present an exceptionally high type of English
speech and style. It is with this " big book," and with this
" good book" that the clergy have specially to do in the secret
meditations of the study and in the public administration of
religion. By daily contact with it as a book, they would
naturally become imbued with its teachings and spirit so as to
avoid "big swelling words" in their preference for "great
plainness of speech." In a sense applicable to no other class of
men their professional and daily language should be conspicu-
ously clean and clear, and cogent, because steeped in Bible in-
fluences. They may thus be presumed to be an accepted
standard in the use of the vernacular to all other professions,
and to the public to whom they minister. Certainly, no body
of men are in a more favorable and responsible position rela-
tive to the use of their native tongue. Through the medium
of their academic, collegiate, and theological training they have
learned the distinctively literary use of English. By their
oflScial and personal relations to the public, they must perforce
learn the language of every day life, while, in addition to all this,
they enjoy the peculiar advantages arising from the ministry
of that Word, whose sacred dialect becomes their common
speech. The clerical profession, as any other technical pro-
fession— legal or medical — has a special vocabulary of its own,
with this remarkable anomaly, however, that the Bible as the
basis of that vocabulary has a larger element of idiomatic
VOL. XL 19
English Bihle cmd English LangiMge, [Oct.,
language in it, and a more pronounced native character than
the popular speech itself. Such a fact must be telling in its
influence.
Kor is it aside from the truth to assert, that our Protestant
English pulpit has, in the main, illustrated and is illustrating
such an order of English. The list of English preachers from
old Hugh Latimer on to Jeremy Taylor and Smith and Henry,
and Eobert Hall, and on to such American names as Mason,
Nott, Summerfield, and Edwards would substantiate such an
assertion. It is gratifying, both in a professional and philologi-
cal point of view, to note that no better English is spoken or
written at the present day than that in use by the educated
clergy of England and America. In accounting for this result
the English Bible may be assigned the first place. So potent,
indeed, is this influence, that many an illiterate evangelist, with
whom the only text-book is the Bible, has by the sheer educar
tion of the Bible itself as a book developed a plain, terse and
copious vocabulary.
In every course of theological, literary, and linguistic study,
as in every discussion of the popular speech, there should be
included a thorough study of the Christian Scriptures in their
manifold influence on the vernacular. The Bible is the book of
all books.
The English Bible is the book of all English books. What-
ever may be true of merely technical terms, the vernacular of
the English peoples is the language whose best expression is
. found in the English Bible versions. The best elements of
our literary and our daily diction are from this sacred source,
and here, as nowhere else, lie the solid basis and the best
guarantee of the permanence of historical English.
It is mainly by reason of the influence of this English Bible
that the language which we love has become the accepted lan-
guage, the world over, of modem progress, of Protestant Chris-
tianity, and of the rights of man.
T. W. HUMT.
1887.] Indttstrial Education. 267
Abticlb ni.— industrial education.
The idea of indastrial education comes gtrangely enough
from a semi-barbarous nation. Bussia started in a scientific
manner to attend to the development of her internal resources
by sending commissioners to study the systems of technological
education of Western Europe. These men searched Europe
for ideas. These ideas they carried to Eussia, and in Eussia
one sees all European technological education epitomized. The
whole plan of the new education in Eussia may be seen in the
two schools of technology at Moscow and St. Petersburg.
At Moscow, for the first three years of thirty-two weeks
each, the boys are in school fifty-five hours a week. Of these
fifty-five hours they spend during the first three years fourteen
hours, and during the second three years ten and one-half hours
in a workshop. They see good work done by skiUed mechanics,
and they are taught to do good work themselves. The same is
true to a great extent at St. Petersburg. In Chemnitz, a Saxon
town of ninety thousand inhabitants, technical education is
conducted pardy by the state and partly by corporations. The
Eoyal Foremen school there proposes to give to future millers,
dyers, tanners, and to young men who propose to become fore-
men or managers in weaving and spinning mills, or in machine
building establishments, the opportunity of obtaining the theo-
retical knowledge for their future career.
At the Eoyal Building school in Dresden, which has a two
years' course, those who can only learn the essentials of build-
ing receive a good training and become expert and intelligent
carpenters. France takes the lead in attempting to provide
some substitute for the almost extinct apprenticeship system.
The first trade schools in France were established in 1872 and
1873. Since then they have had many imitators. In 1886,
out of one hundred and seventy-four primary schools in the
city of Paris, ninety-five were provided with workshops. In
!France, Belgium, Austria, Holland, Sweden, and Finland, the
workshop is a part of the school building. The International
268 Industridl Educoition. [Oct.,
Congress on Commercial and Technological education, recently
held at Bordeaux, unanimously agreed that it was desirable that
manual work should be rendered obligatory, in primary schools
of all grades. The Royal Commission on Education of Eng-
land has issued recently a circular to school managers asking :
"Would you commend the introduction into your school of
practical instruction in any of the industries of the district,
or in the use of tools for working in wood or iron, or for girls
in the domestic duties of home !"
The facts above mentioned have been cited to show roughly
that the idea of industrial training has been very rapidly assum-
ing shape in the minds of European educators. The economic
situation in our own country is so different from that of Europe
that of course the question here must be considered irrespective
of what has been done elsewhere.
Industrial labor presents a problem which is at present in-
soluble, i. e., industrial education is yet in its infancy ; it has
had time to develop none but the most meagre results. Years
must elapse before definite figures as regards actual results can
be produced to an extent sufSciently large to possess statis-
ticsd value. It is, however, possible to comprehend pretty
clearly the present drift of things. For purposes of conven-
ience industrial schools will be divided into four classes.
First, the schools of applied science and technology ; second,
the so-called trade schools; third, manual training schools;
fourth, public schools into the regular curriculum, of which
manual training has been incorporated.
With the schools of applied science and technology it is not
proposed to deal at length. Their object is to investigate the
material resources of the country. They fit for professions,
engineers, architects, geologists, chemists, metallurgists, and
specialists of various other types.
To the so-called trade schools only so much mention will be
given as will show that they have not been overlooked. A
trade school, according to General Walker, is a school whose
object it is to train actual workers in industry for what it is pre-
sumed will be their own individual work in life. Schools in
France, HoUand, and Switzerland, pursue this method. But,
accepting the definition as above given, there is, so far as I
1887.] Industrial Ed/ucation. 269
have been able to dlBCover, in the United States no example of
a trade school which is supported at state expense. The only
schools of any kind, supported by private endowment or other-
wise, which set out to teach trades, are certain evening schools
in New York City. Of course this statement must be qualified
by omitting under it law, medical, engineering, and normal
schools. These are supported by the state in numerous cases.
There must be omitted also West Point, Annapolis, and the
Agricultural schools, many of which, like that at Manhattan,
Kansas, have an extended course of manual training. The
"Worcester Free School has received more or less aid from the
state. The question of supporting at public expense a trade
school ought not to be a difficult one for American education-
ists to solve. Such a school would be perfectly contrary to the
genius of American institutions. The state's duty is to teach
only such branches of knowledge as will promote public wel-
fare. It has never been demonstrated that the education of
children for especial trades will beneficially affect the majority
of tax-payers. Taxes are not yet low enough to justify the
state in calling upon Peter to aid in educating Paul's children
for a special trade.
A trade school supported by private endowment is more
defensible ; but it is questionable if the time has yet come for
it in America. In the large cities of Europe the choice of the
young must be curtailed. Space is limited. Population is
dense. This situation, however lamentable, must be accepted.
It is the part of wisdom to prepare the children of many for-
eign coxmtries for the work which they will, by necessity, be
called upon to perform. But the situation in this country is
so different that any argument in support of trade schools,
deduced from their apparent success in France, must be falla-
cious. A trade school, pure and simple, even supported by pri-
vate endowment, is in the United States an experiment the
wisdom of which is problematical for three reasons.
There is reason in the complaint of skilled laborers that
their wages will be reduced by the increase, due to trade schools,
of the number of workers in especial trades. It is claimed, and
with some show of justice, that men who have had education in
their trade given them should not be placed upon an equality
270 Indvstrial Education. [Oct.,
with men who by their own toil have obtained that education
for themselves. In the one case the ability possessed by the
trade worker represents effort and self-denial on the part of
some one else. In the other case whatever power the man
has, has been paid for by his own individual exertion.
Agaiuj it is questionable whether men who are educated by
private endowment are as good a class of workers as are the
men who have paid for what they have obtained. The situa-
tion is very analogous to that suggested by the private endow-
ment of theological and legal schools. There can be little
doubt that certain law and divinity schools graduate men who
are not fit for the work lawyers and clergymen should do.
So with trade schools, the fact that education for a trade can be
had for nothing tends to attract men who are not fitted for
skilled laborers, and who would not attempt to enter the ranks
of skilled labor if it cost them any thing to do so. They do it
because it is the easiest thing to do, not because it is the best.
Finally, economists tell us that, at a given stage of the arts,
natural laws tend to establish in a country's industrial situation
an equilibrium as regards the pursuits of men. Just so many
individuals can for instance make hats, so many can make
shoes. If now trade schools augment each year the number of
hat makers or of shoe makers, an artificial, arbitrary factor has
been introduced into the industrial situation, a factor which is
regulated by men's whims rather than by economic laws. The
effect will be to disturb a natural equilibrium and to substitute
a second equilibrium which is unnatural, and hence a source of
pain to a portion of the world's population.
Of the manual training schools, the best example is
furnished by the Workingman's School of New York City,
established in 1879. It is conducted under the auspices
of the United Belief Workers of the Society for Ethical
Culture. This is a private charity. In its curriculum it
covers the years covered by an ordinary grammar school.
The course is eight years. Manual education begins in the
first year with the children of seven years of age. They work
first on clay and the exercises are very simple. Small pieces
of clay are cut out into geometrical forma Upon the surfaces of
the pieces are carved other geometrical forms. Thus are
1887.] Industrial Education. 271
learned concretely many fundamental principles of geometry.
For the first two years clay work occupies two hours a week.
Then the child takes up pasteboard and constructs and analyzes
and studies the properties of solids. After this he takes hold of
wood. The chisel and saw are employed in the production of
geometric forms, to ascertain the mathematical truths which
those forms illustrate. The scholars learn the use of the lathe.
Later they are taught the properties of iron, how to make vari-
ous things of metal These exercises represent only the
mechanical side of manual education. The artistic is cultivated
simultaneously by freehand drawing, and modeling in clay.
All this goes on side by side with the regular studies of the
common school system. Natural history is taught, beginning
with objects with which children are most familiar and ending
in a systematic course of laboratory instruction. The girls are
taught to cut and sew, to cook, and to design. Elementary
instruction is given to both sexes in regard to duties con-
nected with physical, intellectual, and emotional life. This
school receives quite extended and favorable mention in the
report of the Royal Commissioners of England on Technical
instruction, although the commissioners expressly state in clos-
ing : " The benefits of this bold and enlightened movement
can not be measured yet. Out of it may come suggestions by
which the public school systems may be vastly improved in the
direction of training more efficiently the youth of the country
for any and all industrial pursuits."
The Manual Training School at St. Louis differs from the
one just mentioned in that it aims to provide a course of man-
ual instruction which occupies to the New York school very
much the same position that the New England High School
curriculum does to that of the Grammar School. Its object is
instruction in mathematics, drawing, and the English branches
of a High School course, and instruction and practice in the
use of tools. The tool instruction includes carpentry, wood-
tmning, pattern-making, iron-clipping and filing, forge-work,
brazing and soldering, the use of machine shop tools, and
such other instruction of a similar character as may be deemed
advisable from time to time. The course is three years. The
school is supported by private endowment
272 Industrial Ed/ucaiion. [Oct.,
The requirements for admission are a knowledge of arith-
metic, common school geography, spelling, penmanship and
English composition. There are five parallel courses. Three
are wholly intellectual and two are both intellectual and man-
ual. Of the last two one is a course in penmanship, free-
hand and mechanical drawing, and the other a course of tool
instruction, as previously mentioned. Each pupil has daily one
hour of drawing and two hours of shop practice. All the shop
work is disciplinary. Special trades are not taught nor are
articles manufactured for sale. The only thing to be put upon
the market seems to be the boy. The primary object of this
school, then, is the acquirement of skill in the use of tools and
materials. Without teaching any one £rade it teaches the
mechanical principles of all trades.
Having now described two typical manual training schools,
various questions as regards the effectiveness of the system
may be discussed.
Let us go back some distance and note a few of the changes
which years have made in the industrial^situation. It will per-
haps become apparent that new conditions must be met by
new methods. A century, or even a half century ago, a lad's
physical and intellectual education were much more closely
allied than they are to-day. A boy went to school for a por-
tion of the year, and the rest of the time he worked with his
hands about his father's house and on his father's farm. He
did not form one set of habits to the exclusion of another set.
His education was comparatively symmetrical. Population
was scattered and the large cities few ; the system of
apprenticeship was in vogue. The lad's master taught him all
parts of his trade. He was in a measure responsible for his
pupil's education. It was a time when men made things with
their hands. The watchmaker and the carpenter toiled over
their work. They, did it all themselves, and each man's work
when it was done exemplified his own individuality. It was a
part of him. With the years came facilitated transportation
and the crowding together of many people upon small space.
Greater demand led to greater supply. This necessitated the
introduction of new machinery and division of labor. Handi-
craft and the apprenticeship system have become well nigh ex-
1887.] Industrial ^ch^ation. 2Y8
tinct. The lad who endeavors to learn a trade in a shop is
taught to do one thing only ; he is kept at that. The question
has become, not how can the apprentice learn most from his
master and do most for himself, but how can the employee
earn most for his employer.' The industrial situation has un-
dei^ne almost a revolution and the present tendency is to
make men machines. To combat this altered condition of things
the manual training school was created.
Probably the most satisfactory method of action will be to
select the New York school as a typical one, and examine some
of the claims of its advocates. A good many advantages
claimed for it must, I think, be fanciful, others sentimental
and impractical. But the central idea, upon which institutions
of its character rest, must stand unchallenged — that as economic
conditions change so must educational preparations for indus-
trial life be changed.
The salient feature in this school is what the director calls
" the creative method?^ By this he would have us understand
not that education be made subservient to industrial success,
but that the acquisition of industrial skill shall be a means of
promoting the general welfare of the pupil. That is, by foster-
ing industrial skill to fit the pupil for industrial pursuits in
later lifa There are three lines of argument by which this
creative method is supported :
First, it is claimed that the intellect is trained in the follow-
ing ways. By a study of geometry the pupil's conception of
certain fundamental geometrical relations is made more dis-
tinct and clear. By fostering a more intimate relation between
technical work and drawing, pupils will be given a clearer un-
derstanding of the elementary facts of mechanics. The techni-
cal work will be a gymnastilf of the eye and hand, the preferred
messengers for carrying out the intention of the mind.
Secondly, it is maintained that the taste is developed and re-
fined. The production of beautiful things will tend to heighten
an appreciation of what is beautiful. The work done is thus a
means of cultivating a sense of beauty and harmony.
Thirdly, it is insisted that the formation of character is aided.
By making an article absolutely accurate and perfect a true
idea of accuracy and perfection is attained. The things made
274 Industfrial Edv,cati6n. [Oct.,
have no valae other than that which lies in the fact that they
are perfectly executed.
It does not appear clear that the claim that the taste is re-
fined by industrial training amounts to much. Do not our
mechanics need an appreciation of the useful rather than of the
be^iutiful ? The questions which most of the pupils in our in-
dustrial schools will be called upon to meet are questions of
hard facts, dollars and cents. A keen appreciation of harmony,
and a sense of the beautiful are very good things if opportuni-
ties for cultivating them present themselves, but the point is
that they are not of supreme importance to men who must
live upon the product of their industry.
The third claim, that the creative method aids in forming
the character, rests also upon questionable ground& It has
never been proved that education, mechanical or intellectual,
necessarily affects the conscience. Manual training is no safe-
guard against vice. There is no necessary connection between
the education of the brain and hand, and that of the conscience.
It may, of course, happen in some cases that men's characters
are strengthened by education purely mechanical, or intellec-
tual, but there are many cases in which no such good result
ensues. The view held by some enthusiasts, that industrial
education affects the character beneficially, ought not to re-
main unchallenged.
Of course, the claim that advantage results from the intrinsic
virtue in abstract accuracy and perfection must be regarded as
a merit of the ordinary public school system quite as much as
of that of the industrial school. A lesson in arithmetic per-
fectly learned, an English sentence, expressed, speUed, and
punctuated with absolute accuracy, can be held up as stand-
ards of perfection quite us truly as can a design in wood or clay,
drawn and executed with precision.
It must appear that the chief strength of the Manual Training
School lies in its central idea : that it endeavors to impart such
general industrial skill to a lad as will aid him in the life which
he will be likely to lead. A great deal of education is wrong
because it is misdirected. It seems often to be considered that
lads should be taught in school things which they will not be
likely to learn in later life. The very opposite statement is the
1887.] Ind/ustrial Education. 275
truer one. Is not, therefore, the idea of making the pupil a
thorough master of fundamental, geometrical and mechanical
principles, of teachiog him, clearly and simply, drawing and
mechanical work, of encouraging in him a respect for the
dignity of labor, in short, of imparting to him power on which
he may draw in the future, material with which he may build
in the future — ^is not aU this an idea of eminent wisdom ?
One of the results of the present system of education is a
feeling that the material world is gross, that soiled hands are a
reproach, that labor is sordid. Boys are educated away from their
work The result is that there are bookkeepers, clerks, copyists
in inordinate numbers, but always a demand for skilled labor.
Any one who has ever visited one of our so-called New Eng-
land school " exhibitions," where is shown the handiwork of
the boys and girls, must have been struck with the number of
useless things which appear. The main idea seems to be to do
only such work as is of a delicate, gentle nature. Anything
which requires a perspiring forehead, soiled hands or clothing,
seems to be carefully eschewed. For the prevalence of such a
false notion the public school system must be held in a measure
responsible, because it has until very recently made its educa-
tion unsymmetrical. It has developed one set of habits to the
exclusion of others. It has aimed to develop only the intel-
lectual side of the character. The value of the manual train-
ing school as a counteracting influence to this harmful tendency
should be given careful consideration. There is some truth
also in the claim that a youth's sphere of occupation will be
widened by industrial training for the simple reason that his
equipment is just so much greater. Hence his chance of
material success is likely to be increased.
But however successful the experiment of manual training
may prove in an institution supported by private endowment,
the question of incorporating it into the public school is one of
a very different natnre. Very grave difficulties present them-
selves.
To enumerate all the experiments attempted would be im-
possible. It may be well for present purposes to examine the
operations which have been conducted in Boston, New Haven,
and Baltimore, as representative cities. There is a manual train-
276 Ind/ustrial Education. [Oct,
ing school in New Haven. Boys selected from the public schools
of the city are given two hours a week, each, of carpentering
in classes of about twenty. A room, roughly speaking, seventy
feet by thirty, has been fitted up with about thirty carpenters'
benches. The sessions are from ten until twelve in the morning,
and from two until four in the afternoon. The exercises are
designed apparently to give the boys a knowledge of the ele-
ments of carpentering. With regard to the result of the ex-
periment the director of the school could not give much tangi-
ble information. The superintendent of schools, however,
stated that he was greatly encouraged by the effect on individual
boys. The superintendent of schools of Boston, in his report
dated March, 1885, says that two hundred boys, from different
grammar schools, have been under instruction in carpentry two
hours a week since September, 1884. He declares that the boys
are enthusiastic in their work, and that he believes that the ex-
periment has gone far enough to prove that work of this kind can
be joined tb the ordinary grammar school work with good effect.
Moreover, he says that the manual training practicable in school
rooms seems to be limited to the kind of work which can be
done at a bench with hand tools, and, while he is more than
gratified with the progress thus far made, he deems it important
to remember that a fully equipped manual training school wiU
find its proper place in the school system, not in the Grammar
school, but above it and side by side with the High school.
In Baltimore we have the first, and as yet, so far as I have
been informed, the only instance of a fully equipped manual
training school supported by public taxation. The school went
into operation January 15, 1884, with an appropriation of $7,000
for that year. The cost of the school, which had about one
hundred and fifty pupils, exceeded the apropriation by about
$4,000. In 1885 an appropriation of $15,000 was asked
for, but it was expected that the number of pupils would
be increased. The object of the school is as follows : In-
struction and practice in the use of tools, and such instruction
as may be deemed necessary in mathematics, drawings, and
the English branches of a high school course.
First year. — Arithmetic, algebra, geometry, English lan-
guage, history, physics, physiology, free hand and mechanical
1887.] InduBtrial Education. 277
drawing. Shopwork — Carpentry, wood carving, wood turning,
pattern making, proper care and use of tools.
Second yea/r, — ^Algebra, plane geometry, physics, mechanics,
history, literature, geometrical and mechanical drawing. Shop-
work — ^forging, welding, tempering, soldering, brazing.
Third year. — Geometry, plane trigonometry, book-keeping,
literature, political economy, civil government, mechanics,
chemistry, machine and architectural drawing. Machine Shop-
work — Fittings, turning, drilling, planing, study of machinery,
including the management and care of steam engines and
boilers.
. Throughout the course about one hour per day will be given
to drawing and about two hours per day to shopwork, and the
remainder of the time will be devoted to study and recitation.
Before graduation each student will be required to construct a
machine from drawings and patterns made by himself.
The report of the director shows that the total number of
students in school during the scholastic year ending November
20, 1885, was 187, eleven of whom were the children of non-
residents. A number of them, however, left during the year
for the purpose of accepting desirable positions offered to them,
and the enrollment was reduced to 120 at the end of the year.
Baltimore, it will be seen, presents a case where the system
has been highly developed. The majority of experiments in
other cities are very analogous to the ones which have been de-
scribed. The wisdom and success of most of them may be
seriously questioned. In discussing them I wish to go back to
the central idea, which has been previously quoted, upon which
alone the introduction of manual training seems to be justified,
viz: as a part of the general education of the pupil with
reference to the fuller and more symmetrical development of
all his faculties. It goes without saying that whatever is worth
doing at all is worth doing thoroughly. What is likely to be
the eflEect of such fragmentary instruction as pupils are receiv-
ing in cities like Boston and New Haven ? It does not appear
dear that any thing beyond a general knowledge of the elemen-
tary principles of a single trade will be imparted. That general
industrial skill and a comprehension of mechanical principles
are obtained, that perceptions are sharpened, or conceptions
278 Ind/ustrial EducaMon. [Oct.,
elevated, seems very problematical. The difficulty seems to be
that, though the direction in which educationists have moved
seems to be the right one, they have traveled such a short dis-
tance that they have accomplished very little. Moreover,
the situation as presented at Boston and New Haven suggests a
very interesting line of thought, viz. : "Why should the boys
be taught the work of the carpenter and not that of the machin-
ist or the mason ? "We are told that the saw and hammer are
fundamental tools. So are a wrench and a trowel. "Why may
not the tax-paying mason wonder that his boy is not taught the
elements of his father's calling ? Moreover, will not such a
narrow line of instruction result in giving lads a bias in favor
of an individual trade ? "Will not youngsters, who are taught
the principles of the carpenter's trade, be likely to become car-
penters? Reflection must convince us, I think, that, if the
public school system is to have manual training at all, it must
have a great deal of it, in a large number of directions,
thoroughly taught.
Granting this, the question at once presents itself : what diffi-
culties are to be overcome in the accomplishment of the de-
sired result ?
They are so many and so grave that it may be questioned ser-
iously whether the time has yet come to attempt the experi-
ment in the public schools.
In the first place, exactly what shall be the curriculum ? This
question can only be answered by observation and delay, by
waiting until institutions which are supported by private
funds have furnished figures and results. Probably any
coarse which educationists could now determine upon would
require change in important particulars. The best thought of
teachiug and supervisory force must be applied to the problem.
Moreover, although it is not yet clear what the curriculum
should be, it is from the circumstances of the case tolerably cer-
tain that it must be such as to necessitate considerable reorgan-
ization in the present school system. The question thus of
how to find requisite time assumes importance. If consider-
able manual training be added to the public school some im-
portant features of present education must be eliminated from it.
Delay and observation alone can answer what can best be
1887.1 Industrial EdnicaUon. 279
spared. The fact ought not however to be overlooked that
mannal trainiiig tends nnquestionably to relieve monotony and
tedium. The Superintendent of Boston schools thinks that a
boy will do all his regular studies well, and a little shop work
too, in the time usually given to the former. Mr. Swire Smith,
a member of the late Commission of Technical instruction in
England, states that the half time children of the town of Keigh-
ley numbering from 1500 to 2000, although they receive less than
14 hours per week and are required to attend the factory for
28 hours per week in addition, yet obtain at the examination
a higher percentage of passes than the average of children
throughout the country.
Again, of suitable instructors there is now, and for some time
must be, an evident lack. Of course, careful search and ade-
quate payment will call out the few who are qualified to train
others. The Normal schools will provide such men and women
as they can, but it still remains an obstacle of no mean impor-
tance that there is such a lack of efficient teachers and that the
difficulty of supplying the deficiency is so great.
"With regard to the question of expense estimates differ very
widely. The late Dr. Charles O. Thompson, whose work upon
technical education has received the highest praise, estimated
that to run a shop of the kind desired for 200 boys would cost
$8000 a year, and he adds $1000 more for wear and tear
upon machinery. The original cost of the tools and machinery,
including the engine, he places at not less than $5000. Ad-
ding the interest on this sum and the cost of the necessary
building to the cost of equipments, and we are, he declares,
obliged to set down the annual cost of shops alone at $1000
a year. This expense he thinks rightly is too large if results
are purely problematical.
Moreover, most of the writers and speakers who have advoca-
ted manual training for boys in the public schools have signally
omitted any equal provision for the girla Before any system
can command popular approval it must be shown that it will
offer equal advantages to both sexes.
I should like to close with four general statements pertinent
to the subject in hand.
First, it will appear clear after consideration that all that
280 Industrial Education. [Oct.,
can be said at present in the shape of an answer to the prob-
lem is to state simply, that a complete and thorough manual
training school, combined with a high school course, and sup-
ported by private endowment, is the wisest thing at present.
Observation, delay, and experience must, and doubtless will,
work out a more complete and satisfactory solution to the ques-
tion.
Secondly, a good many enthusiastic critics of the present pub-
lic school system ascribe, do they not, defects to it for which it is
in no wise responsible ? "We should never forget that the fail-
ure of the present system of education to provide good men and
good women is often due, not to the imperfection of the sys-
tem, but to the inevitable weakness of humanity. " There is
little security against thriftlessness and vice which does not
rest upon character." Is it just to lay the blame upon the shoul-
ders of the public school which should rest upon humanity itself ?
Thirdly, too much emphasis can hardly be laid upon the ne-
cessity of great personal power in a teacher. Is it not true that
teacher as well as pupil merits some of the criticism which the
public school system itself has received ?
Finally, the supporters of manual training should always keep
before them the fact that, unless great care is exerted, the ten-
dency of the system may easily become socialistic. No power
on earth can furnish children with the influence which the
home life and the church life ought to exert upon them, and
no system of education can teach the lesson which can only be
learned before the fireside and at the altar.
Edward Phelps.
1887.] ABsent to Oreeda. 281
Article IV.— ASSENT TO CREEDS.
Men are properly sensitive to the obligations of tmste. An
assumption of dnties, raised by appointment, challenges the
conscience and honor of the person who assumes them. When
one undertakes to fill a position which involves the manage-
ment of an estate or power for the benefit of another, it is with
the understanding that the beneficiary is the absolute owner of
the results, and the judgment seat of equity is always open to
the prayers and complaints of a beneficiary whose rights have
been abused. The judicial keepers of public conscience will
even make search to find the true beneficiaries, when the
object of bounty is vaguely described. One who assumes a
trust duty, by his act of accepting it, consents to a surrender
of his individual views as to the wisdom or unwisdom ,of the
grant, charter, deed, or set of circumstances which have
created the position. If the trust is a public office, he finds its
terms in public law ; and responsibility for the law is on its
authors, and not on him. The sheriff may be called to act as
hangman, although he thinks that capital punishment is a bar-
barism, and no stain of blood can be found on his hands after
they have pulled away the block and sent a fellow creature
into a premature eternity, even if that fellow creature be Oxey
Cherry, the colored girl, aged eleven, whom a court in Soutli
Carolina recently sentenced to be hanged. If one accepts a
position as testamentary trustee under the will of a friend,
whose wish he could not refuse, he must deliver over the in-
come, as required by the will, to the son whose use of the
money is universally bad, and who makes every dollar a feeder
to vice ; and the responsibility is upon the testator and the
beneficiary. A trustee may resign his trust; otherwise, he
must fulfill it
These general principles are elementary, and may not be con-
troverted, and they apply as well to gifts, grants, and invest-
VOL.XI. 20
282 Asseni to Creeds. [Oct.,
ments for ecclesiastical and theological purposes as to other
things.
Assuming these principles, many persons are disposed at
once to condemn all advances in thought within religious
bodies with a history and traditions, and all instruction in
theological seminaries, which differs from any part of the
seminary creed to which the instructor has made subscription.
Let him sing in tune with the organ which was originally set
up, say they, and with all its pipes, no matter if they are wind-
broken and wheezy. That is the musical standard here, and if
he cannot sing to it let him step down from the gallery and
cross the highway to some other. If the creed is objectionable,
do not subscribe to it ; but if a man does subscribe to it, let
him stick to it, and teach in conformity with all its statements ;
no matter if he believes that what is true and just and merciful
in it is antagonized and rendered powerless by other statements
which bristle with unbelievable rigors.
Is this style of criticism, so freely made alike by men who
hold many or all religious opinions in contempt, and by others
who hold the religious notions of other centuries in supersti-
tious awe, sound ? We submit that this kind of inference is
not sound, but is formed from superficial reasoning.
It must be conceded that the courts have, with substantial
uniformity, reflected the moral sense of communities in care-
fully enforcing trusts for religious purposes according to in-
dicated limitations, whether doctrinal or otherwise, and, in
cases of doubt, have even resorted to the views of a donor to
ascertain the meaning of his words. It must also be remem-
bered that, regarding the matter historically, there have been
ages when theology has been enveloped, not in the reverent
regard to which it is entitled, but in clouds of mystery and
superstition. A charter, raised by human thought and written
by human hands in the vernacular, if it but related to re-
ligious doctrine, has been considered as more sacred than even
a national constitution ; the one utterly beyond handling, like
a sacred ark ; the other open to search, and study, and criticism ;
the one to be touched only vrith closed eyes, the key turned on
all activities of reason, and in the dismal-swamp atmosphere of
a mental condition called, in terrible insult to a noble word,
1887.] Assent to Creeds. 288
faith ; the other open to reason, and conscience, and tme faith,
and reverence, and the absolute demands of truth ; the one in-
capable of interpretation, excepting by prelates and councils,
convened periodically and usually in the heat of some burning
heresy, which is possibly to be " to-morrow's common sense " ;
the other always open to examination by a living judiciary,
representatives of present views of truth and real wisdom
which is always waiting for light.
This fact, growing out of human timidity, weakness, and
wickedness, as well as out of the temporary limitation of man's
spiritual being to the tenancy of a material body, and its ills,
and aches, and dreams, is by no means yet dead in organized
Christianity, although the Divine founder of Christianity was
constantly shocking and rebuking it, not only by His omissions
and silences, but by His life of word and deed
There have always been two methods of construing things
written or spoken, be they constitutions, charters, public
statutes, wills, deeds, contracts, symbols, creeds, or statementa
One method is broad, catholic, liberal. It reaches the underly-
ing principles of the instrument. It notes relations. It does
not destroy the dial because the shadows which were written on
its west side in the morning are missing at noon, and have
even gone over to the east in the afternoon. It notes fallibility
in everything human, and sees that all human utterances are
more or less imbued with inconsistency, want of harmony, and
imperfection. But it still trusts human nature and human
achievement and the Divine inspirations in man. It sees spots
on the sun, but continues to plant, relying upon the source of
heat, and to open its eyes for vision, relying upon the source of
light. The other method is strict, narrow, literal, petty, sticks
always in the bark, yellows in dust, and glories in punctuation
and syntax. It sees things only by the light whidb struggles
in through a single window. Universal light makes it blind.
At night its torch must still be a tallow dip. Electricity would
be impious. The former method contemplates systems, is
comparative, analogical, feels outward facts and forces of
which all things are more or less resultants. To it the moon is
a satellite of a moving planet, that planet a single member of a
0olar system, and that system an integral part of a universe,
884 Assent to Creeds. [Oct,
each with relationB and changing relations to the rest To the
other the moon is ever only itself, a cold, blackened, worn out,
uninhabitable lump of matter, answerable only to some laws of
chemistry and philosophy, which are supposed to be unchange-
able. But the moon itself is too far away for the latter
method. While the former finds daily and nightly use for the
telescope, the eye of the latter is always at the microscope.
The broad physician studies the whole physical system of
man and searches the universe for analogies, and treats his
patients constitutionally ; the narrow one feeds his own hobby ;
sees in each patient a disordered liver, if that is his specialty,
and indulges only in local treatment. The strict construction-
ist in our Lord's time swore by the temple and said his oath was
nothing; but bowed in reverence before his oath if he had
only sworn by the gold within it. Shylock was a strict con-
structionist, and Portia gave his philosophy homoeopathic treat-
ment by fighting the fire of his strict construction with the fire
of her own. The diflEerence was that Shylock believed in
his strict method of construction, while Portia redeemed hers
by the broad charity and decency which inspired it. The
Pharisees were strict constructionists, they were scrupulously
particular to tithe cheap herbs, and were immaculate in their
vestments. And, whoever else, in the progress of the world's
history have disappeared through an indefinite failure of issue,
these strict constructionists have never lacked for lineal
descendants in the governments, and churches, and theological
schools of the world.
Here, then, it is submitted, is the proper solution of the
Andover controversy, of the American Board question, and of
the continually recurring dispute as to whether men, like
Stanley, and Beecher, and Swing, are bound to come out of
their several religious communions, which are loved by them,
because they cannot accept all which has been included in the
doctrines and traditions of these churche&
If a medical school, founded upon the philosophy of Gkilen
and Abemethy has no room for the use of anaesthetics, or of
such homoeopathic, hydropathic, and mind-cure remedies as ex-
perience demonstrates to be good, because these methods are
outside of and even intrinsically different from the original
1887.] Assent to Creeds. 285
scope of the philosophy of Galen and Abemethy, although the
general system of medical science remains unchanged, or, if
religious creeds in seminaries or churches are fetiches, from
which even the dost cannot be removed, then the critics of
Prof. Smyth, and Mr. Beecher, and Dr. Hopkins are right.
And what a mess they would make of it ! According to their
rules of strict construction, no one can believe in the Scriptures
unless he supposes with some of its authors that the world is
flat and the firmament solid ; that lunatics and epileptics are
possessed wilh intelligent devils ; that our Lord intended to
come back to earth in the life-time of the apostles and set up
a visible kingdom. Nobody can accept Luther, or Pascal, or
Wesley, or Newman, or Maurice as teachers without allegiance
to the many mistakes of each of these great and good men.
The world would be tied, as to an anchor, to the "letter"
which kills, and prevented from inbreathing the Spirit which
gives life. Col. Ingersoll's audiences would be multiplied by
an hundred, and his wit, which is largely aimed at windmills,
would be greeted with increased applause.
Lord Eldon, whose religious fervor was warmer when he sat
on the bench passing upon a question of ecclesiastical privilege
than when he sat in a pew at an offertory, and of whom Miss
Martineau said that " it is fortunate for the noted ones of his-
tory that there is a wide difference between admiration and
contempt," in the leading case of Attorney General vs. Pear-
sail, 3 Merrivale, 363, was required to construe a trust deed,
under which a house had been erected " for the service and
worship of God." In his opinion he elaborately argued and
concluded that, because any other view of the Godhead than
the Trinitarian view was heresy by the law of England, and
because any one giving expression to the Unitarian view was
punishable for heresy in court at the time the deed was made,
the trust was therefore necessarily for Trinitarian worship.
His Lordship's reasoning was characteristic of his mind, which
trembled at every reform, and saw in it a downfall of Eng-
land.
The argument of this article claims :
1. That a liberal construction of instruments is wiser and
better than a strict ona
286 Assent to Creeds. [Oct^
8. That creeds and Bymbols afford no exception to this rale.
8. That reasonable b'bertj of construction should be allowed
to the undertaker of a trust.
(And incidentally) 4. That the limitation of the use of
property to the propagation of unalterable opinion is an offen-
sive form of entail and against public policy.
I. That a liberal construction is better than a strict one.
This principle is favored by the wisdom of jurisprudence
and statesmanship. If we look at public law, be it organic or
statutory, the uniform drift of enlightened authority is to
broad construction. The exceptions are chiefly found in
criminal and penal enactments which are strictly construed.
But the strictness in these latter cases is, like Portia's, bom of
love and tenderness, and was a necessary result of the in-
humanity of ancient criminal law. Under that law the courts
wisely and mercifully limited the rigors of punishment (often
excessive and brutal, there being more than two hundred
capital crimes in England at the close of the last century), and
of penalty, and of forfeiture, to such offenders as clearly vio-
lated both letter and spirit of the enactment As criminal law
is now fast becoming Christianized, the strong tendency of the
courts is to relax the rule of strictness in expounding it.
Let us look at the constitution of the United States. It is
the men who have given it a broad and liberal construction,
such as Washington, Hamilton, and Webster among statesmen,
and Marshall and Story among jurists, who are deservedly held
in highest honor. That greatest of American orators, but one-
sided statesman, Wendell Phillips, gave the constitution a
strict construction. Hence he refused to take the freeman's
oath so long as slavery was recognized by it. What if all
Americans who hated slavery had followed his example I By
any human standard of judgment, we should to-day be no
nation at all, nor have a country, but the land would be oc-
cupied by a collection of inharmonious and warring sovereign-
ties. The Supreme Court of the United States, in a very
recent case, £x-parte Tarborough, 110 U. S., 651, has said,
with no dissenting voice, that the implications of the constitu-
tion are as much a part of the instrument as its express words.
1887.] Assent to Creeds. 287
This case is in complete harmony with ail the earlier decisionB
of that tribunal, which are in favor of a broad construction of
the constitution.
In construing statutes, so far do the courts go in protecting
the current welfare of the community that they convert,
almost at judicial will, words which conflict with present
public welfare and progress from apparent mandates into harm-
less* and insignificant directions. The same liberal policy is
uniformly exercised by enlightened courts in construing char-
ters and by-laws formed under them. In civil jurisprudence
the law of warranty perhaps retains as sharply as any the im-
portance of strict construction ; but the Supreme Court of the
United States in several recent cases, as National Bank vs. Ins.
Co., 96 U. S., 633, and Mowlor vs. Ins. Co., Ill U. S., 335,
has treated the breach of single items of warranty as unim-
portant in the presence of a compliance with the general pro-
visions of the contract. They say that to sustain the strictness
of warranty contended for, " a contract to that effect must be
so clear as to exclude any other conclusion." Mowlor case, p.
341.
Even greater liberality is extended to the construction of
deeds, wills, and instruments creating trusts for charitable pur-
posea In wills, it is uniformly held that a general intent
overrides all particular intents. In a Connecticut case, passed
upon by the Supreme Court at "Washington — Stanley vs. Colt,
6 Wall, 119 — ^the testator had given lands to trustees for an
ecclesiastical society. The will provided that the land might
be leased, but should not be sold. Circumstances (of no un-
usual nature) made it for the interest of the society that the
land should be sold. The legislature of Connecticut, which
has, in addition to its legislative, certain judicial powers of an
equitable nature, authorized a sale of the land. The Federal
Court sustained the law and ruled that " when lapse of time
and changes in conditions of the property have made such a
proceeding prudent and beneficial to the charity," a Court of
Chancery might order a sale despite the limitations of the will.
It would be interesting to trace the history of the doctrine of
cy pres, whereby dispositions of property are deflected from
their exact orighial purpose to something akin to it. In Eng-
288 Assent to Creeds. [Oct.,
land, where royal prerogative found a repreeentative in a chan-
cellor it has been carried to a great and absurd extent, as by
diverting funds given to establish a Jewish synagogue to the
treasury of a foundling hospital. But under the general
principles of equity, English and American courts have, over
and over again, preserved the general purpose of charity, at the
expense of reversioners, when particular intents have become
impracticable. Thus the court retained a fund for '^ kindred
purposes," and so thwarted the claims of reversioners, when the
only expressed purpose of the gift was to promote the freedom
of slaves in an English colony, from which slavery had been
abolished at the time of the decision. Indeed, a strict construc-
tionist finds no favor in the tribunals of to-day, be they of
jurisprudence, philosophy, or history, or, I venture to add, of
science.
In our definition of broad construction we desire emphati-
cally to include all such changes as are required to carry out the
principal purpose of an instrument, even if the changes in-
volve the defeat of minor provisions, and also a fair adjusta-
bility to the necessities and best wisdom of the present time.
II. A creed, like other instruments, is to be liberally con-
strued.
The idea that the institute of a theological seminary, or the
creed of an association of men, is to somehow take on manners
of strict construction, which are not to be applied to other in-
struments, is founded upon the fallacy, once current, but now
exploded, and always at open war with our Lord's teaching,
that man is made for creeds, and churches, and sabbaths, and
chancels, and liturgies, and confessionals, and decrees of coun-
cils, and utterances of pontiffs ; whereas all these things are made
for man. It stands on no other basis. It consists in supersti-
tion, which dishonors things entitled to reverence, by its
idolatry of them. Nothing is in true honor which is out of
place, even if it is located above the stars. And as long as
articles of belief are expressions of human thought they must
be interpreted according to the laws of interpreting human
thought. To that task conscience, and reverence, and prayer,
and inspiration are sincerely invited, but these factors of power
1887.] Assent to Greeds. 289
are the patent right of no one man or body of men. They are
gifts as free as light to all the children of men, ofid his-
torically the interpretation, which after ages have accepted, has
often come in as a shaft of light, to some pure, single-eyed
sonl, when the acclaims of conncil and convocation have been
quite different.
And are we not constantly treating all written statements in
jnst this way ?
Take a supreme exampla The utterances of our Lord are
to His disciples the very trutL How many of these followers
give a petty construction to his words ? How many, when a
thief takes away their coats, give consent to an abstraction of
their cloaks also} Perhaps Count Tolstoi, in his unique
diagnosis of our Lord's philosophy may be an exception, but
the common sense of Christendom takes a truer, because more
liberal, sense of the lesson of His words.
Take the nearest approach that we have to a universal creed,
the so-called apostles' creed. How many of the millions who so
often repeat it and chant it. express the precise meaning of its
compilers? How many believe in the "earth" and "heaven,"
of which the Almighty Father is the " maker," in the exact
sense in which the authors believed it ? How many in the
literal " sitting on the right hand of God," in the " descent
into hell," in " the resurrection of the flesh" (the original form
of that addition to the creed), as the authors believed } Lan-
guage is elastic. Let us thank God for it. And ideas are
elastic too. Let us be thankful for that. Take the " resurrec-
tion of the flesh" of the creed. Under that phrase (in its
terms at war with scripture and reason), is contained a truth
of supreme importance, perhaps the most distinctive truth of
Christianity, the immortality of the individual. But a belief
in the accident of man's occupancy of a body of resurrected
flesh is of no more consequence to the great fact of personal
immortality, than a belief in the presence or absence of Lord
Mansfield's wig is important to a belief in Lord Mansfield, or
in Mr. Gladstone's axe to a belief in Mr. Gladstone.
Let us pass now from a general creed to the particular creed
of one or two great communions. Take the Roman Catholic
church, a communion supposed to be even unduly subservient
890 Assent to Creeds. [Oct.,
to authority. Here we have the creed of Pins V., suppoeed to
be the creed of all Boman Catholics. It is required that the
confessor '^ confess and retain the same entire and inviolate."
How many intelligent members of the Boman communion be-
lieve, according to that creed, that " out of it no one can be
saved ?" That personal salvation is for no one who fails to ap-
prehend as that symbol does ; '^ that the use of indulgences is
wholesome "; and ^^ that the relics of saints reigning together
with Christ are to be had in veneration ;" and that all the
metaphysical statements in the decrees of the Council of Trent,
many of which are as incomprehensible to millions of the faith-
ful as the propositions of La PlaceJ must be " believed " on pain
of eternal loss ? Does any sane person suppose that such is the
belief of Dr. Newman, or of the present pure and scholarly
Pope of Rome ?
Take the Articles of Religion and the Prayer-book of the
Church of England Their source and authorship may be
found in the Bible, the older uses, the Augsburgh and West-
minster confessions. Archbishops Cranmer and Parker, Bishops
Ridley and Jewell, Henry the Eighth, Elizabeth, John Knox,
Beza, and sundry convocations of the Bngh'sh church. Their
authority over the English clergy rests in the decree of the de-
vout and learned parliament of 1571. Subscription to them
was then required, and was honored by the convocation of
1603. The demands of a more intelligent century required
the abolition of subscription, which was accomplished by the
Clerical Subscription act of 1866. That wholesome statute
substituted for subscription an " assent " (a word whose broad
meaning was well understood by the law-makers) to the articles
and the Prayer-book.
I beg to ask any intelligent reader of religious literature,
how many of the clergy of that great and noble church of Eng-
land have given exact and literal intellectual adherence to the
thirty-nine articles in their original meaning ?
The clergy of England, too, were required until 1866 to
signify explicit allegiance to the Prayer-book, and since 1866
to " assent " to it Until sometime in Queen Anne's reign
there was a prescribed service to accompany the "King's
touch," given to relieve suflEerers from diseases. That heavenly-
1887.] Assent to Greeds. 291
minded man and holy vehicle of Divine interposition, Charles
the Second, is said to have treated with his touch one hundred
thousand sufferers. Does anybody suppose that through the
centuries of the observance of that accompanying church ser-
vice, there were no sincere doubters, who failed to yield that
cordial assent to the ceremony, that a strict constructionist
would require ? If not, why did it disappear from the ritual
in the days of good Queen Anne ? And in the Prayer-book of
to-day, does any one suppose that the living clergy of England,
in their Ash-Wednesday use of the Prayer-book, heartily assent
to the horrors of the commination service, or in their more
frequent use of this book, to the damnations found in the
Athanasian creed, in the original meaning of those terrible
denunciations ? And does every member of the English clergy
believe in the baptismal " regeneration," as declared by the
ancient o£3ces, and as understood in the earliest years of the
Prayer-book ?
Recurring for a moment to the " Articles," do all the loyal
clergymen of England accept them in a literal way, and as
originally conceived? That "the Son, .... the very and
eternal God, . . , . was crucified, dead and buried to reconcile
Sis Father to us /" That "Christ did truly rise with flesh,
bones, and all things appertaining to the perfection of man's
nature, wherewith He ascended into Hea/oen a/nd there
siUethV^ That "the godly consideration of predestination
and our election in Christ is full of sweet, pleasant and un-
speakable comfort?" That the homilies are of the sacred char-
acter described in Art. XXXV. ? And is an English clergy-
man who avoids the commination service, and who believes
in the everlasting love of God, which, in His divine Son sought,
at supreme cost, to reconcile His children to their Father, un-
faithful to his trust because these things happen to remain to
disfigure the beauty and mar the symmetry of the services and
symbols of the church? It might well be asked here how
many of the thousand faithful and covenant-keeping husbands
who have entered into the vows of matrimony according to the
ritual of the American Episcopal church, have in fact felt con-
strained by those obligations to treat their wives as " endowed
with all their worldly goods."
292 Assent to Greeds. [Oct,
I have endeavored, by illnstration from our Lord's words,
from the Apostles' creed, from the distinctive creed of the
Boman Catholic church, and from the Articles of Keligion and
Prayer-book of the established church in England, to show
that a broad and liberal construction is given to things which
touch our purely religious side.
That such a principle of construction should be applied to
the Andover creed and to the "election of missionaries by
the "American Board" (by church councils, and not by a
clerical officer of the corporation, whose only reason for being
is that it represents its constituency the whole sisterhood of
churches) this article contends.
It is not, however, its purpose to make application of these
principles to the one or the other. Dr. Smyth's relations to
the Andover creed have abeady been passed upon by a board,
with or without lawful authority. And this board, with
greater prudence than courage, " skipped " his associate pro-
fessors in the result. The opinion was divided, and has failed
to create profound conviction in the mind of the community.
The case is on its way to a competent and impartial tribunal.
K the visitors had lawful power to make a judgment large
enough to be appealed from, the main question will be decided
in a way to satisfy the people, whatever that decision may be.
The' creed is certainly pretty savory of must and mildew,
and it may be that the learned court will adjudge, after con-
ceding liberality of construction to it, and disclaiming all strict
constructions of individual clauses, and admitting the fallibility
of phrase and even of thought in stating a great principle,
that still Prof. Smyth has run directly athwart its genius and
general inspirations. But that the court, in arriving at that con-
clusion, will do so by giving the symbol breadth of construc-
tion, there can be no doubt. It is not too much to assume that
the Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts will try to get at
the meaning of this institute and the significance of a subscrip-
tion to it, as they would if the instrument were a deed or a
charter of a bank.
The history of the origin of creeds, whether constructed by
councils, parliaments, or individuals, shows the continued
presence of human nature as it is, with all its characteristics,
1887.] Assent to Creeds.
its virtues, its partisanship, its prepossessions, and its fondness
for personal power.
in. Our third proposition, which insists that an individual
assuming a trust has a right, within terms of reason, of per-
sonal interpretation of the trust instrument, is almost too clear
for controversy.
The religious communion, which supports Andover and the
American Board, has never hesitated to defend even with the
sword the right of individual construction of what it deemed
to be, or at least to contain "the word of God." Will it place
a scholastic creed above the sacred Scriptures ? And here it is
to be noticed that Prof. Smyth and his associates, men of the
highest character and scholarship, without hesitation and re-
serve, profess their general assent to the Andover creed.
IV. Our subject leads up to an incidental one of importance,
but which cannot here be discussed at length. All these asso-
ciations hold property and are supported by its use. If an in-
strument which conveys property is based upon an unalterable
philosophical statement, with no concession to the superiority
of thought over language, of general intent over particular in-
tent, with no room in it for fallibility or mistake, with no con-
cession to changes of opinion or circumstances, with no elastic-
ity or adjustability to thought, then it is submitted that such
an instrument introduces into political economy and juris-
prudence a system of entail and perpetuity which is absolutely
unendurable and against public policy. A man may not limit
the use of his estate according to the natural line of descent
beyond a second generation. And yet it is asked that he may
perpetuate title to his property if he only puts in motion the
loins of his mind. An entail to natural issue still keeps pro-
perty in the -hands of living men, and yet that is offensive to
good law. An entail to unchangeable thought opens proba-
bilities of chaining it to death. Would the community endure
the entailment of property to propagating the Ptolemaic
theory of the universe, or the eighteenth century philosophy
of witchcraft ? Such limitations are offensive to human pro-
gress, and courts and legislatures would properly make an end
Assent to Oreeds. [Oct.,
of such a trust, if they had ta resort (as Spence says the judges
in the time of Edward lY. did to enable a tenant to convert
his fee tail into a fee simple), ** to their pretorian authority."
How many of the readers of this magazine have read the
Andover Creed? Before coming to any conclusion we would
recommend them to do so. It may be that this symbol is so
intrinsically and hopelessly iron-cast and iron-bound that new
gleams of truth may never enter it ; that it was made only for
a past generation and for the supremacy of a philosophy in
decadence ; that there is room in Andover halls only for the
belief, fixed and positive, that Sakya Muni, and Socrates, and
Plato, who died before the advent, and Marcus Aurclius and
Felix Mendelssohn and Moses Montefiore, who died in the
Christian era, and who by reason of their environment and
prepossessions failed to see in our Lord all that we see in Him,
but who all on the earth conmaenced an eternal life of holy
character, must, after death, be forever shut out from their
own place and " plunged with devils into the lake that bumeth
with fire and brimstone forever and ever," in the language of
that creed. It may be that the noble old oak at Andover must
be girdled by the inflexible belt of its own charter. Such a
result would be a national calamity, and it would turn Andover
Hill into a Sinaitic peninsular, with little hope that some fu-
ture Tischendorf will bring it into communion with life by
discovering a treaapre in its ancient parchments.
Henry C. Bobinson.
1887.] State Confiscation of Unea^med Increments, 296
Armclb v.— state confiscation OF UNEARNED
INCREMENTS.
If I remember rightly, Mr. Mill's famous phrase is always
of the singular number. The only unearned increment known
to him in the whole range of production, or at least the only
one of which he takes account, is the unearned increment of
land. The wages of labor and the profits of capital are the
equivalent of work done, of abstinence endured or of risks
taken ; but the rent of land is the equivalent of nothing at all.
It is the excess of production over the cost of cultivation on the
least fertile or the least accessible lands actually contributing
to the supply of a given market at a given time ; and ^^ emer-
ges " entirely without an effort, a self-denial or a venture on
the part of the fortunate owner.
It has always seemed to me an extremely curious thing that
Ricardo's theory should have been fiercely disputed, and finally
accepted, as if there were nothing else of the sort to be found
among the phenomena known to political economy. ^With a
single exception to be noted farther on, I am not aware that
any writer has attempted to generalize what is perhaps the
most celebrated formula of the science. I speak with the
hesitation becoming a reader who makes no pretence to having
read everything, but within the range of my reading the doc-
trine remains very nearly where Ricardo left it. The practi-
cal effect is, that, so far as pure theory influences public opinion
and political action, a particular class is selected for invidious
distinction, and held up to something very like odium, as the
possessors, and the only possessors, of wealth which does not
belong to them. There are men who toil not, neither do they
spin, who beget nothing, create nothing, give nothing, yet are
growing rich, and daily richer, because everybody else is work-
ing for them ; the monstrous drones of the hive who fatten
among the fierce competitions of industry, and in virtue of
theuL It is, of course, all right if the facts are so ; the sooner
the iniquity of rents is made clear the better for all concerned.
296 State Confiscation of Unearned Increments, [Oct,
But coBBidering the amount of inflammable and explosive
material there is in every modem society, and how fast it is
accumulating, there can at least be no harm in asking whether,
after all, political economy is sure of its facts.
Mr. Mill, at any rate, has no doubt about the matter, and,
with that tranquillity of abstract speculation, which was so
characteristic of him, has no fear of the consequences. That
rent is an unearned increment and practically the only one, is
for him not so much demonstrable as axiomatic. Therefore,
he concludes ; let us turn to and tax the receiver of rents, if
need be, up to the full amount of them. The Physiocrats,
whom everybody refers to, apparently without having taken
the trouble to understand them, had said precisely the same
thing before ; but for precisely the opposite reason. In their
thinking the landowner, so far from being the drone of the
hive, is the producer of all the honey. It is from the annual
yield of his lands that the agricultural class is supported to be-
gin with, and then from the surplus left (the " net-product ")
that the manufacturing and trading classes are supported. If
now you tax the agricultural class you simply increase by so
much the cost of production ; and if you tax the " sterile "
classes you simply diminish by so much the amount of con-
sumption. In either case yon attack the net-product which is
the wealth of the land-owner. No tax can be laid anywhere
between production and consumption which is not ultimately
a tax on him. Simple justice and common sense prescribe,
therefore, that the revenue of the State should be raised by the
direct and exclusive taxation of the land-owner. But for Mr.
Mill, and much more for the truculent little Mills of our day,
the taxation of rents is a penal measure, the chastisement of an
idler for idling, the confiscation to the State of ill-gotten
wealth ; as it is coming to be put of *^ stolen goods."
" Suppose," says Mr. Mill, that there is a kind of income
which constantly tends to increase without any exertion or
sacrifice on the part of the owner, these owners constituting a
class in the community whom the natural course of things pro-
gressively enriches, consistently with complete passiveness on
their part. In such a case there would be no violation of the
principles on which private property is founded, if the State
1887.] State Confiscation of Unearned Inorements, 297
ahould appropriate this increase of wealth, or any part of it,
as it arises. This wonld not properly be taking anything from
anybody ; it would merely be applying an accession of wealth,
created by circumstances, to the benefit of society, instead of
allowing it to become an unearned appendage to the riches of
a particular class.
" Now this is actually the case with the rent The ordinary
progress of a society which increases in wealth, is at all times
tending to augment the income of landlords . . . independ-
ently of any trouble or outlay incurred by themselves. They
grow richer, as it were, in their sleep, without working, risk-
ing, or economizing."
" Some people ask : But why single out land ? Does not
all property rise in value with the increase of prosperity ? I
answer. No. All other property fluctuates in value ; now up,
now down. I defy any one to show any kind of property, not
partaking of the soil, and sufficiently important to be worth
considering, which tends steadily upward, without anything
being done by the owners to give it increased value. So far
from it thfit the other of the two kinds of property that yield
income, namely, capital, instead of increasing, actually dimin-
ishes in value as society advances. The poorer the country, or
the further back we go in history, the higher we find the inter-
est of money to be. Land alone — ^using land as a general term
for the whole material of the earth — has the privilege of
steadily rising in value from natural causes ; and the reason is
that land is strictly limited in quantity ; the supply does not
increase to meet the constant increase of demand ..."
As I have intimated, it is not the purpose of this paper to
discuss the justice of the proposed confiscation, but only to in-
quire whether all the facts have been taken into account. I
may remark, however, in passing, that before we dispossess the
actual owner of anything we are bound to show not only that
he has not earned the possession, but also that somebody else
has ; it is not enough to take the stolen goods from the thief,
we must hand them over to the man they were stolen from.
We seize the rents of the landlord because he has done nothing
to produce them. Who, then, has ? Circumstances, says Mr.
Mill, in his large, abstract way. But rents cannot well be
VOL. XL 21
298 State Corifiacation of Uneanmed Increments. [Oct,
handed over to "circumetances" ; they muflt be handed over
to persons, and the persons indicated are the State, that is, the
body-politic or the whole population acting collectively. Have
all the individuals composing the State assisted in earning the
stolen rents? Or only some of them? And if only some,
which ones ? " Public utility " and " the benefit of society "
are exceeding fine phrases, and perfectly appropriate, when it
is a question of ordinary taxation ; but they are out of place
when it comes to evicting a man found in possession of wealth
he has not earned, for in this case we are bound to produce
the man who earned them. This, and not the mere act of con-
fiscation, which is one of the simplest of State functions, is the
pleasant little problem furnished by Mr. Mill to future govern-
ments. We really ought not to make the State, t. «., every-
body, a receiver of stolen goods.
But the question here is, whether the doctrine of Bicardo,
on which the proposal is based, does not cover a good deal
more ground than was at first supposed ; whether it is land
only that yields an unearned increment, and the landlord alone
for whose culpable riches a rightful owner must be found.
I. Let it be admitted that Mr. Mill's contrast between land
and capital expresses the facts; that the rate of interest is
steadily declining because the augmenting volume of capital
tends to wider difhision, while the rate of rents is steadily ris-
ing because the fixed quantity of land tends to closer concen-
tration. Still, when we remember that capital is the joint pro-
duct of land and labor, it is not unreasonable to suggest that
what Mr. Mill says of one of the factors of the product, land,
is possibly also true of the other, labor. It is, to be sure, im-
plied in his statement that wages are falling along with rents,
and for the same reason that labor is not a fixed quantity, like
land, but, as population multiplies, is constantly augmenting,
like capital ; and, therefore, cannot be permanently monopo-
lized in such a way as to produce unearned increment& Admit-
ting the assimilation (between labor and capital) as we admitted
the contrast (between capital and land), it is still possible to
dispute the conclusion. To make the issue perfectly clear, I
affirm that labor, however it may increase to the detriment of
wages, is monopolized exactly after the fashion of land, that is,
so as to produce unearned increments.
1887.] Si€Ue Confiscation of Unearned Increments. 299
For, after all, oat of what do these peculiar monopolies
arise f Kot in the least out of the fact that the quantity of
land — '^ using land as a general term for the whole material of
the earth" — ^is fixed beforehand and cannot be increased to
meet the increasing need of it. Most obviously, and in the
very terms of the definition itself, they arise out of diflEerences
in the quality of land, and would arise exactly as they do now,
were the whole material of the earth a hundred or a thousand
times, or indefinitely greater than it actually is. Would the
Ricardian theory cease to be true were the earth as large as
Jupiter or the sun ? If not, then I submit that the theory ap-
plies to labor, whether fixed or changing in quantity, if only
labor, like land, is of various quality as regards production. If
one class of laborers is more productive than the others (as one
kind of soil is more productive), and if the increasing demand
of the market brings into activity the less productive classes,
then the former will at once possess a monopoly and begin to
receive unearned increments ; that is, increments not due to
their superiority (although measured by it), for that remains
what it was before, but due to the change in the economic
situation, or, as Mr. Mill says, to " circumstances.'^ If any-
body ovmed these laborers and hired them out to an employer,
as land is owned and rented to the farmer, he would receive a
rent for them, and, in ^'the ordinary progress of a society
which increases in wealth," he would grow richer without
'^ working, risking or economizing."
We need not go for an illustration a step beyond the
hypothetical case always given in any statement of Ricardo's
theory. I wiU borrow what is necessary to the argument from
the only one I happen to have at hand, as it puts the matter in
a very lucid and comprehensive way.
Let us imagine a village community, isolated from all others,
and residing at the centre of a circular tract of land divided
into four sectors equal in extent but so diflEering in fertility*
that one piece will, with so many days of labor in the year,
yield 24 bushels of wheat to the acre, while the second will
* Aa the village is at the centre we may neglect the differences in
accessibility to the market, which must ordinarily be allowed for as
differences in fertility are.
300 State Confiscation of Unearned Increments. [Oct.,
yield, with the same amount of labor, but 22 bushels ; the third
but 20, and the fourth but 18. Now suppose that at a given
time the whole demand of the community for wheat is exactly
met by the yield of the whole twenty-four bushel tract. In
this case the product will no more (and no less) than suffice to
replace the whole cost of production, and no rent will arise.
But now what will happen if the population increases to such
an extent that the whole of the twenty-four bushel tract will
no longer raise all the wheat required for its subsistence ? Cul-
tivation will be driven down to the twenty-two bushel tract,
and rent will at once emerge, as compensation for the use of
the twenty-four bushel tract. What will be the amount of it?
The difference between the crops to be grown on the two soils,
with the same application of labor, i, «., two bushels. In like
manner, if cultivation descends to the twenty bushel tract, the
twenty-two bushel tract will bear a rent of two, the twenty-
four bushel tract, of four bushels. And so, finally, when it
reaches the tract of least fertility. In general, the rent of any
piece of land is determined by the excess of its annual yield
over that of the least productive land actually contributing to
the supply of the same market, under equal applications of
lc^>or amd capital.*
The italics are mine, for at this point the argument comes in.
Let us modify the supposition to the extent of supposing that
when the whole of the twenty-four bushel tract, and no more,
is required to meet the demand of the community, the whole
available force of skilled agricultural labor is required to culti-
vate it. If, now, the demand increases, cultivation will be
driven down, not only to the soil of inferior fertility, but to the
labor of inferior skill. According to the hypothesis, the best
soil remaining at the disposition of the community yields 22
bushels to the acre, to the 24 bushels of the other tract, under
equal applications of labor and capital Evidently if an in-
ferior, i. d., a less productive kind of labor is applied, it will
yield, not 22 bushels, but perhaps only 21, or 20, or even less,
and the excess over this yielded by the twenty-four bushel tract,
will not be 2, but 8 or 4 bushels, or more, as the case may be.
It is of course conceivable that the whole of this excess will go
* Political Economy, by Francis A. Walker. American Science Series.
1887.] State ConJUcation of Unea/imed Inoremeivta, 301
to the landlord as rent, but, in the conditions supposed, it will
not go to him long. The skilled laborers in his employ will be
swift to learn that the unearned increment is as much occa-
sioned by their superior skill as by the superior fertility of his
land, and their share of it will be taken out as an unearned in-
crement of wages.
Now in what way would it be pertinent to say in answer to
this, that land — taMng land as a general term for the whole
material of the earth — is strictly limited in quantity ? It is
perfectly true ; but the only conclusion to be drawn is that the
population which can be supported upon the earth, and, con-
sequently, the labor that can be supplied by the population,
and the capital that can be accumulated by it, are also strictly
limited, for the very reason that land is. As nobody can
lengthen the diameter of the globe, there are limits which can-
not be passed, to land, labor, and capital alike. Evidently what
concerns us here is not the prospective bounds which must ulti-
mately arrest the progress of the race, but the roite at which
lands, as yet unoccupied, can be brought under cultivation to
meet the rising demand for them. Now this rate is strictly
limited too ; but by what is it limited ? By the lack of land ?
No, for it is part of the theory that when our village com-
munity, or the whole human race at its present stage of pro-
gress, outgrows the yield of its most fertile lands, other lands,
less fertile, are waiting for cultivation. The rate at which un-
occupied lands can be occupied is limited by the rate at which
the actual population can provide labor to cultivate them.
Put the population of the village at 5,000, at the moment
when the twenty-four bushel tract ceases to suflSce for its sub-
sistence. How fast can the other tracts be set to growing
wheat ? As fast as laborers can be found to grow it. In the
conditions assumed in any application of the theory, what is
strictly limited is the available supply of labor ; not the land,
which depends for cultivation, not the population, which de-
pends for subsistence, upon the labor which can be supplied.
I do not draw the conclusion, for which something might be
said — ^a good deal more than could be said with confidence
when Mr. Mill wrote — that monopolies and unearned incre-
ments are to be looked for in the compensation of labor rather
802 State OonjUcabion of Unearned Inoremente. [Oct.,
than in that of land ; but that the distinctionB relied on by Mr.
Mill are either unreal or irrelevant; and that in the matter
under discussion, land and labor are about in the same case.
The Theory, then, covers labor as well as land, if it be true
that there are differences, natural or acquired, and not to be
overcome, in the qitality of labor, as there are in the quality
of land. We know that there are ; wherever men are gathered
for production there will be found, in every variety of bodily
and mental aptitudes, laborers whose capability, as related to
production, is exactly what the fertility of certain soils is. In
both cases the superior productiveness will be monopolized,
for the extremely simple reason that it is incommunicable;
and in the same circumstances, that is, ^' in the ordinary pro-
gress of a society which increases in wealth," it will yield, in
one case as in the other, an unearned increment.
I will take in illustration an instance with which I happen
to be familiar, the manufacturing industries of the city of
Geneva in Switzerland, and in particular the manufacture of
watches, with which nearly all the others are closely associated.
In the course of the last century, and with increasing rapidity
of late years, the division of labor has been carried almost to
its extreme limit, with the consequence that very minute
differences in the ability of different laborers are brought to
light, exactly as differences in the fertility of soils are by the
product turned out. Gradually with the stricter organization
of the industry there has grown up a sort of hierarchy, a classi-
fication of artisans according to relative merit, from the regleur^
who gives the last touches to the completed instrument, down
to the workman who manipulates a component part in the
rough. Now, suppose that the demand for the product in-
creases in the market of Geneva, and that to meet it an inferior
quality of labor is required ; is it not clear that the capacity to
produce a better kind or a larger amount of watches (like the
ability to produce a better kind or a larger amount of wheat)
will yield an increment, measured, as before, by the superiority
of producing power, but due to change in the situation f Take,
for example, the regleur^ whose aptitudes, often inherited from
generations of patient labor, are probably to be found nowhere
out of western Switzerland, and are rare there ; what is there
1887.] SUUe CanfiacaMon of Unearned Increments. 303
to prevent his monopoly of skill from acquiring all the value of
the most fertile soil contributing to the market for wheat, and
acquiring it in the same form, as an unearned increment?
As I remarked above, the presence of the law regulating
rents, in the sphere of wages, has not entirely escaped notice.
My reference was to what I suppose, although I have just come
upon it, is now the well-known identification of the profits of
the entrepreneur with the rent of the land-owners, in the
Political Economy of President Walker.* President Walker
happens to be an authority who is aware that economic science
was not bom with Adam Smith, and has not been confined to
English and American writers. It is, of course, his business
to be familiar with the continental literature of the subject,
but, what is a good deal rarer, he has made use of it. The
imported word is sufficient proof of the origin of his bold
distinction between the entryprenev/r and the capitalist, with
its consequence, the distinction between profits and interest.
In the actual conditions of society the distinction is largely
ideal and abstract, but, granting the standard assumption of the
science, it is not to be refuted. The entrepreneur^ or employer
of labor and capital, is a man with special and incommunicable
aptitudes for the conduct of business enterprises ; he monopo-
lizes a productive power for which, in every progressive society,
there is sure to be an increasing demand. It results that his
profits bear the two distinctive notes of rent ; they include an
unearned increment, and they are not an element in the price
of the product. It is not necessary to reproduce the demon-
stration here. I will only say that when the writer classes
profits with rent to the exclusion of wages, as well as interest,
I think we may venture to differ with him. In what particular,
so far as this argument is concerned, does the entrepreneur
differ from the regleur of my illustration ? He is simply, so
far as I can see, a more intellectaal and daring kind of laborer,
to whom wider opportunities are offered and larger capital
entrusted than to the ordinary laborer ; and what is true of his
profits is, in its measure and so far as the organization of in-
dustry permits, true of the compensation of superior skill
everywhere.
• Part IV, chap. 4.
304: Stdte Confiscation of TJnea/med Increments. [Oct,
If all this is so, I suppose that I am bound to suggest some
explanation of the anomaly that while the Law has passed oat
of rational controversy in the matter of land, so little attention
has been given to it in the matter of labor. I find an explana-
tion in a well-known peculiarity of labor, which does not
a£Eect the amount of wages, but does most profoundly disturb
their distribution. Land, although practically unlimited in
quantity, so far as the actual or impending necessities of the
race are concerned, is always a fixture ; it cannot be broken
up into parcels and transported hither and thither where the
necessity is greatest. But labor — taking labor as a general
term for the aggregate of laborers — although limited in quan-
tity at the moment of any given demand for it, is divisible
into a multitude of units, each fitted for locomotion in any
direction and to any distance desired. It results that the units
may be intermingled in the same branch of production, without
regard to dificerences in their quality as agents of production.
"Wherever this occurs — and it occurs everywhere in agriculture,
manufactures, or trade, to the extent that industrial organiza-
tion is incomplete— superior ability is lost in the multitude
and confusion ; and the classification of laborers according to
relative productiveness, unlike that of soUb, which takes care of
itself, becomes difficult or impossible. Ordinarily wages are
paid, not by the piece, as they are, for example, at Gteneva, but
by the day of so many hours ; and the rate is fixed for good
and bad alike, not by competition, but by custom, or by com-
binations of the employers, or by the tyranny of trades-unions.
It does not follow from this that no unearned increments arise ;
I hold that they arise everywhere, in wages as in rents, when
the conditions assumed by the theory exist. What follows is,
that the increments, after they arise, are divided between the
employers and the employees, so that the action of the law
disappears in the interminable complexity of final distribution.
But if the tendency of things is toward that perfect organi-
zation of industry and that perfect freedom of competition
which are the ideal of the economist, then more and more will
the disturbing effects of custom, violence, and fraud disappear,
and every individual force engaged in production will tell for
all it is worth. In that event it seems to me certain that unless
1887.] State Confisodtion of JJnea/med Increments. 305
the State interferes to avert monopolieB and unearned incre-
mentSj they will no more be averted for labor than for land.
On the whole I incline to the opinion that the State will do
well to postpone its interference to the era of the realized
ideal. If it confiscates anybody's unearned increments it must
everybody's, and in the present condition of affairs the incre-
ments of wages will be an uncommonly hard thing to get at
and dispose of.
Finally, then, is there, in the matter under consideration, no
fundamental difiference whatever between land and labor?
Why, yes, there is — one, which most of us find to be funda-
mental enough. Land, and the laborer on it, or anywhere, are
both instruments of production, and both, in the same circum-
stances, will become occasions of unearned increments. But
while one of the instruments wears out in forty or fifty years,
the other wears for ages. If the ^^ State" thinks it can do
anything to redress this deplorable inequality, by all means let
it try ; only, if it is thinking of doing this by punishing the
land-owner, we may observe that nature has already attended
to Uicut^ for he too, like the laborer under him, must leave his
rents and go the way of all the earth. Bents are accumulated,
as wages are, by the instrument of production, but not by the
owner of them beyond the term of his life. If it be insisted
further that the owner can hequeath his rents, and so provide
for their continuous accumulation, I reply. No, he can't — ^not
ftitare rents; he can only bequeath the instrument which
occasions them. What you are proposing is the confiscation of
the land itself, a matter with which I have no concern hera
II. Nobody, says Prof. Fawcett, will ever be perfectly at
home in political economy who has not fathomed the mystery
of capital. The warning is issued rather ruefully, as if the
Professor had not quite fathomed it himself. Who has ? The
truth is that, ever since Adam Smith imposed his definition
upon the science, a sort of fog has drifted in after it, that
sometimes seems a little too thick for the most expert naviga-
tor. Capital, in the definition, is as sharply distinguished from
land and labor as either is from the other, and the term is con-
stantly in use as if its full meaning were perfectly settled, and
all its boundaries and bearings exactly determined. But when
VOL. XL 22
806 State ConfiacaHon of Unearned Increments, [Oct,
we get down to its real functions we find it shading off into
both land and labor by such insensible gradations that it is
nearly impossible to tell where one ends and the other begins
It has remained from its first appearance a sort of *^ undistrib-
uted middle," which vitiates the most careful calculations by
letting in implications nobody suspects. Mr. Mill was, by
common consent, the first logician and the first economist of
his day, but in the passage already quoted he appears to have
gone ashore in shoal water, as if he had never been at sea
before in his life. I defy any one, he says, to show any kind
of property, not partaking of the soil, which tends steadily
upward, without anything being done by the owners to give it
increased value. So far from it that the other of the two
kinds which yield income, namely, capital, instead of increas-
ing, actually diminishes in value as society advances. The
poorer the country, or the further back we go in history, the
higher we find the interest of money to be.
Now when we say that rents are rising, what is implied!
Plainly that the land-owner is growing richer, and that in two
ways, by the accumulation of his rents, and by the appreciation
of his land. This is the gravamen of his offence, that being
an idler he continually gets richer. But what is the implica-
tion when we say that interest is falling, or, as Mr. Mill puts
it, that capital is diminishing in value ? That the capitalist is
growing poorer f So far from it that the very reason (and the
very reason assigned by Mr. Mill) why interest is falling is, that
capital is growing more abundant, t. «., that the capitalist is
getting richer. Interest is going down, cries Mr. Mill, in his
wrath with the landlord and his commiseration for the capi-
talist. So it is ; but what of it if the principal is going up !
The Vanderbilt property began with, say $1,000 yielding 10
per cent.; to-day it is perhaps $150,000,000 yielding 8 per
cent Fancy the astonishment of a Minnesota farmer, if told
that he is in possession of riches that do not belong to him
because he has done nothing to earn them, while the Yander-
bilts are the toiling victims of falling interest and shrinking
values. He will feel that he is juggled ; and he is.
Not, of course, in the intention of Mr. Mill, who was the
most loyal of men. The fact seems to be that he was so pre-
1887.] State Confiscation of Uhea/med Increments. 307
occupied with the function of capital as one of the three factors
of production, and with the striking contrast between its de-
clining profits and the rise in rents, that he quite forgot to take
into account its peculiar origin. Capital is not the gift of
nature, like land, or even labor ; it is itself, in its origin, the
joint product of land and labor. More specifically, it is savings
what is spared from previous production for future in vestment ;
as the Physiocrats would have said if they had ever heard about
it, the net product after consumption has been provided for.
In other words, it is made up of those very rents, profits, and
wages, whose morality we have been inquiring into,^2ti« the in-
terest on capital already saved and invested. The fact itself,
that interest is steadily declining, indicates that capital is
steadily accumulating, and, therefore likely to abound in un-
earned increments. All are agreed that rent is one ; President
Walker says that profits are another ; it would seem that wages
are a third. I venture to add, finally, that interest, in spite of
its steady decline, may be a fourth.
Let us suppose, as before, that to meet an increased demand
of our village community, cultivation descends from the twenty
four to the twenty-two bushel tract; and that the labor applied
to both is of uniform quality. Cultivation is not only the ap-
plication of labor to land, but also of the tools of labor, i. e.j
of capital. Buildings must be erected, appliances of various
sorts gathered, ditches, fences, and roads must be constructed.
It may easily be that the value of the capital required will
equal or exceed the value of the land itself. It can be obtained
only in one of two ways ; either it must be withdrawn from
previous investments, where it is earning the current rate of in-
terest, or created outright by savings from current consumption.
Either process, as we know, is a costly one, and the cost, which
previous investments escape, must be a charge upon the new
tract put under cultivation, and provided for by the product of
this tract, which is 22 bushels per acre. Practically, will not
this charge lower the yield to 21 or 20 bushels, or more, as the
case may be ; and raise the surplus of the twenty-four bushel
tract to 3, or 4 bushels, or more ? If yes, then a portion only
of this surplus will be compensation for the use of the land,
and the remainder will be compensation for the use of the
308 State Confiscation of Unearned Increments. [Oct.,
capital invested on it. And both alike are unearned incre-
ments.
I will again leave the reader to carry the application as far as
he chooses. But H is necessary to point out that, as labor ex-
ceeds land in the matter of divisibility and mobility, so, to a
far greater degree, does capital exceed labor. It is, as much as
anything else, a strictly limited quantity, at the instant of any
new demand upon it ; but, since the universal adoption of a
medium of exchange, it m^y be promptly transformed and
transferred, in almost any amount, to the point of greatest
demand. To this extent it is destitute of those insurmountable
natural differences in qiudi^, which characterize both land and
labor, and which afford the basis of a permanent monopoly. If
one form of investment is found to yield an ii^terest above the
average rate, capital will be drawn into it from other forms
until the average is restored ; and, conversely, if it yields an in-
terest below the average. Thus, to use the familiar figure,
capital, as compared with either of the other factors of produc-
tion, has the homogeneity and mobility of a fluid, and ever
tends to a level, or mean rate of earnings ; a rate which is so
far from being an abstraction of science that it has actual ex-
pression in what is known as the current rate of interest
But its fluidity is not perfect, and will never be until the
economic ideal of society is reached. Time is always occupied
in its flow, and a hundred obstacles may get in its way. In
spite of the tendency to equable diffusion and a uniformly de-
clining rate of intei-est, it may be immobilized in highly profit-
able forms, and become a monopoly, like the superior qualities
of land and labor.
To sum up : it appears, according to the remark of Whately
as quoted by Walker, that rent is only one species of an ex-
tensive genus ; that the law made famous by Ricardo is present
over the whole field of production ; but that its action is more
or less obscured by perturbing influences everywhere. The
conclusion is, that if the State is to confiscate unearned incre-
ments, it is "in," as the phrase goes, for a remarkably large
undertaking.
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NEW ENGLANDER
AND
YALE KEVIEW.
No. CCXII.
NOVEMBEE, 1887.
Abticlb L— WORDSWORTH AS A SPIRITUAL
TEACHER
The visitor to the English Lakes, however he may be
channed with the crystal beauty of Windermere in its setting
of emerald mountains, or with the picturesque pikes and tarns
that repose in their lonely grandeur amidst this paradisaic
region, will, if he be a lover of poetry as well as of nature, not
linger long in these outer courts and beautiful gates of the
temple, but penetrate at once to the inner shrine, the lovely
vale and village of Grasmere, the home and final resting-place
of Wordsworth. As he enters the rude, old church with its
massive square tower, in which the poet was wont to worship,
or stands beside his grave in the green churchyard in the
shadow of the enclosing mountains, he feels that a mighty
presence is somehow diffused around him ; a spirit, other than
the physical forms he beholds, is silently and serenely dwelling
within or beside them, and shedding a conscious and benignant
influence. Whether this be the spirit of the poet, or of that
!Nature which he loved and with which he communed so deeply^
VOL. XL 28
810 Wordsworth as a Spirittud Teacher. [Nov.,
and more than all other poets has revealed to mankind as a
real presence, or a blending of both, as the spirit of the prophets
was blended with the divine Spirit in their utterances, we need
not stay to answer.
The outward symbols and memorials of this presence are in
singular keeping with the character of the poet. A plain, un-
sculptured slab inscribed with the simple name of William
Wordsworth, and scarcely distinguished from those of the
humble dalesmen among whom he lived and died, marks the
spot where he sleeps beside his sister, wife and children.
What need of other monument for him who has written his
name and impressed his genius on these everlasting hills, and
all which they enclose of lake and stream and forest, almost on
every rock and tree and humblest flower that blows. As the
visitor to St. Paul's Cathedral, crowded with the monuments
of England's noblest dead, sees above the entrance the name of
the builder, Christopher Wren, with the words, " Si monumeti-
i/wm qtueriSj circumspicej^^ so the visitor to the grave of Words-
worth needs but to look around him to see his monument in
this vast cathedral frame of nature — of which this lovely vale
of Grasmere is a side-chapel or Poets' Comer — its mountain
domes, its lofty forest aisles and columned arches through
which organ music rolls, and thousand-voiced anthems rise in
ceaseless harmony of praise and worship.
The poet is not indeed the builder, but he is the truest in-
terpreter of nature. Like the devout astronomer, he *• thinks
God's thoughts after him," and next after the divine architect,
his spirit and genius lives in all the beauty he has made more
beautiful by shedding over it the consecrating radiance of im-
' agination. Nowhere is this marvellous and new-creating power
of genius, this power to invest natural scenes with a charm not
borrowed from the eye, more felt than in presence of this
humble grave, these guardian mountains and these lovely lakes.
A spirit emanating from the poet's mind is present and is felt
in all this region, as indeed the genius lod ; a light more
lustrous and unfading than that of setting suns illimiines these
hills,—
<' The light that never was on sea or land,
The consecration and the poet's dream.'*
1887.] Wordsworth as a Spiritual Teacher. 811
We do not propose in this essay to discuss the question
whether Wordsworth was a great poet, or to estimate his rank
and altitude on the poetic mountain. This, like similar dis-
putes respecting Pope and some other poets, depends on one's
idea and definition of poetry, and wherein its highest excellence
consists. Moreover, this question is in our day fast disappear-
ing from the region of theory and debate, and losing itself in
the clearer one of established fact or settled consent. The
verdict of the best modern critics coincides with the consensus
of all true-seeing and deep-feeling minds, that in Wordsworth,
as in few other poets to such a degree, is found that which
answers to the deepest and subtlest, as well as the most univer-
sal feelings and intuitions of the human soul ; that for poetic
insight into the life and soul of things, imagination that not
only sees serenely, but bodies forth clearly and harmoniously,
the forms of things unknown and inconceivable to the under-
standing, and a fresh and vital sympathy with all that lives, he
has vindicated his high claim and already taken his place in the
" choir of ever-enduring men," among the world's great poets.
That he has not the marvellous dramatic and Protean genius
of Shakespeare, nor the sustained strength and sublimity of
Milton, nor the fiery intensity of Dante, nor the etherial melody
and ideality of Shelley, nor the lyric sweetness and passionate-
ness of Bums, hut the artistic luxuriousness of Keats or Tenny-
son, is no disparagement to this claim, for one star differeth
from another star in glory ; nor even that he is sometimes
prosaic and commonplace, for the inspiration of the Bible is not
always alike and equal. But if we may apply to poets the test
which Coleridge applies to the Scriptures— fdlowing for diflEer-
ence in the kind of inspiration — there is more in Wordsworth
thAtJlnds us in the best and deepest part of our nature than in
most other poets. What this is, and wherein consists the
special divine gift and mission of Wordsworth, we shall en-
deavor briefly to show.
That it does not consist in what are commonly considered, at
first sight, as poetic gifts, is evident from the slow and tardy
recognition of his genius. His poetry, unlike the early pro-
ductions of Shakespeare and Milton, or even of Burns and
Byron, did not take the popular ear or the cultured mind with
312 Wordsworth as a Spirittud Teacher, [Nov.,
delight. The ridicule it encountered in the Edinburgh and
other reviews is a familiar story, suggesting the reception
which the Jewish Apostle encountered among the Grecian
critics and literati of his day, " What next will this babbler
say ?" May we not add that the final triumph which his poetry
has achieved, not only in reversing, but in regenerating and re-
moulding the poetic maxims and opinions of his day, suggests
also that greater triumph which Christianity itself has wrought
over the most cultured thought and civilization of the heathen
world. It is not implied by this that the canons of criticism, or
the true principles and laws of poetry as poetry, and as exempli-
fied in the great classic poets, have been reversed or modified, any
more than the truths of philosophy and art elaborated by the
Greeks are superseded by Christianity ; but what was once the
supreme test of excellence, viz : the form^ has become sub-
ordinate to the spirit that underlies the form and is manifested
through it. The Gospel narratives considered as literary pro-
ductions, are of little worth. Even the discourses and letters
of Paul, measured by the classic models of Demosthenes and
Cicero, would almost merit the criticism of his opponents —
" his letters are weak and his speech contemptible." And even
his doctrine, in the estimation of the Grecian philosophers, was
* foolishness.' But the divine truth and sublime spiritual reali-
ties revealed through these simple forms have proved mightier
than all the philosophy and art and rhetoric of the |most cul-
tured people on earth. So the poetry of Wordsworth, simple
as is its form, and almost puerile in some of its minor strains, has
yet in it, to the discerning mind, something superior to form,
which subordinates and holds in subjection the delight of mere
rhythm and sensuous imagery, in the greater revelation of
spiritual truth and beauty.
This great revolution in the realm of poetry, the subordina-
tion and subsidence of mere form, and the emergence and
exaltation of spirit, is due chiefly to Wordsworth, although it
had its beginnings before him, notably in Cowper, in the
reaction from the formalism and shallow artificiality of the
school of Pope ; and its latest result is seen in the poetry of
Robert Browning. This regeneration of poetry and its en-
duement with a divine spirit and life, is one outcome of the
1887 ] Word^oHh as a Spiritual Teacher. 318
new Renaissance, not Pagan bnt Christian, which is working
in this nineteenth century, which has penetrated all literature
and art, is working a ferment in science and philosophy and
theology, and even social life, and is destined to make all things
new. It repudiates the false and shallow maxim, derived from
heathenism, 'Art for art's sake,' and adopts the Christian
maxim, Art for truth! s sake and the blessing of mankind.
It is then as a spiritual tea^her^ a revealer of truths not
obvious to the senses, or seductive to the imagination, but lying
deepest in the soul of man, and in outward nature as the reve-
lation of a divine soul or spirit, that we conceive Wordsworth's
mission as poet to consist.
We anticipate an objection or remonstrance here, growing
out of the common notion that poetry exists for delight, and
not for truth or instruction ; that its function is to serve as a
play or recreation of the mind, which is inconsistent with
serious study or profound meditation. Imagination, the poetic
or creative faculty, has to do, it is said, with the unreal and the
visionary, not with truth and reality. Poetry, according to
Lord Bacon, is a "submitting of the shows of things to the
desires of the mind," therefore, is the opposite of truth, which
is a conformity of thought to things or realities. It is claimed,
moreover, that didactic poetry is not true poetry ; that when
the Muse dons the philosophic gown she ceases to be the Muse
of Poesy: albeit this objection ignores the meaning of the
word amusement^ whose etymology implies not the presence
but the absence of the muses, and is in contradiction to the
sentiment of Milton, —
" How charming is divine philosophy 1
Not harsh and crabbed as dull fools suppose,
But musical as is Apollo's lute:'' —
showing the profound alliance between poetry and philosophy
— of the divine sort.
We do not deem it necessary to show at length the partial
truth and essential fallacy of this objection, but a few thoughts
concerning the true oflBce and function of poetry may be in
place as preliminary to our subject. And here we assume the
bold and confident position that the real province of poetry is
truth and not fiction, in the sense of unreality. So far as it
departs from truth in its spirit or essential meaning, it is not
814 Ward&worth as a Spiritual Tea^Jver. [Nov.,
poetry in the highest and truest sense. We might verify this
by the well-known fact that the hfghest and profonndest utter-
ances of the Bible are poetic utterances ; that the best produc-
tions of the world's literature in all ages, those which contain
the greatest thoughts and awaken the deepest and most per-
manent response in the human soul, have come to us in the
form of poetry ; that the greatest poets have been among the
profonndest thinkers, and the greatest philosophers have been
essentially poets ; and finally, that the primitive and true con-
ception of the poet or bard was that of an inspired seer, vaiea
or prophet, a revealer of things beyond the ken of ordinary
mortal& Again, the poetic faculty of imagination is essentially
a truth-discerning and truth-depicting faculty. It is preemi-
nently the eye of the poet, "the vision and the faculty
divine," by which he discerns things hidden from sense and
reason in its ordinary workings. It is the pioneer and torch of
reason, which she sends on before to explore the way and
guide her footsteps; or rather, it is reason itself kindled to
its intensest glow, and lighting up the universe with its pene-
trating luster. This view is confirmed by the poets themselves.
Coleridge defines imagination as the esemplastic power, which
moulds or frames into one the formless and chaotic elements
of thought and feeling, and so is in the truest sense a creative
faculty. It is not less a seeing or discerning power, involving
a rational discernment of the truth or idea to be embodied in
form. It is thus distinguished from fancy^ which is only a
modification or combination of images already in the memory,
according to a law of casual association or outward resemblance.
Talf ourd observes, " There are vast and eternal realities in our
nature, which reason proves to exist, which sensibility feels
after and finds, and which imagination beholds in clear and
solemn vision, and pictures with a force and vividness which
assures their existence even to ungifted mortals. Its objects
are the true, the universal and the lasting. Like the telescope,
it not only magnifies intellectual objects, it brings them nearer
to us. Of all the intellectual powers it is the most unerring.**
And Wordsworth himself calls it, in the Prelude,
" But another name for absolute power
And clearest insight, amplitude of mind,
And Reason in her most exalted mood."
1887.] Wordsworth as a Spiritual Teacher. 815
In hie preface to his Poems, he calls poetry the " breath and
finer spirit of all knowledge ; the impassioned expression which
is in the countenance of all science." As the human counte-
nance has expressions and spiritual meanings which are beyond
physiology to explain, but which a vital soul in sympathy with
the soul behind it can read and interpret, — so the poet, through
the subtle all-discerning power of imagination, and a soul in
sympathy with the soul and spirit of natm^e, penetrates her
shows and symbols and interprets them for other men. He
also uses them as language to express his own thought, submitting
the shows of things to his own sovereign mind, as the master, as
weD as minister and interpreter of nature. Herein we see the
difference between the truth of poetry and the truth of science.
The latter respects the nature and constitution of things, and
is addressed to the understanding; the former respects the
meaning of things, and is addressed to the imagination, and
through this to the soul, or feeling intellect Science analyzes
and dissects, that she may learn how a thing is made and put
together ; poetry studies with reverent eye the life and soul of
things, that she may learn their innermost divine secret, and
their relationship to the life and soul of man. The imagina-
tion aims to possess itself of the life of whatever thing it deals
with, while the scientific faculty ignores and kills the life by
its dissecting^ and analyzing processes, and deals only with the
dead matter that is left. The truth of poetry is not the truth
of science, but it may be only the more really and profoundly
true. Its outward form, or the imagery in which it is clothed,
contradicts the scientific fact, as this fact itself, or the truth of
science, often contradicts the sensible appearance — as when we
say the sun rises and sets : and poetry deals with things as they
seem and not as they are. But the truth of poetry is within
ai^d behind its form, and is not measured by it. Poetry is the
highest form of Art; and art seeks to convey truth not in
logical propositions, or by physical analysis, but by expression.
Hence the antithesis of poetry, as Coleridge has shown, is not
prose t)ut science. The scientific spirit, so far as it dominates
thought, is destructive to poetry and to all true art, because it
deals wholly with the outward fact, while the latter aims to
express the ideal and the spiritual.
816 Wordsworth as a Spiritual Teacher. [Nov.,
Furthermore, the end of poetry is not, as is often said, pleasure
or delight merely. Hedonism in art is as false and pernicious
as it is in ethics. But it is tiruth in the form of hea/uty and life,
which always gives delight to a sound and healthful mind. As
a righteous man does right not for the reward of pleasure or
profit it will afford him, but for righteousness' sake, and from
the love of moral excellence, which is inseparable from joy and
is itself blessedness, so the true poet sings not to give hiinself
or others pleasure, but to express his love of truth and beauty.
This, too, disposer of the current notion that didactic poetry
is not true poetry ; that the poet or artist must not be conscious
of any moral aim or purpose in his work ; that art exists and
should be practiced for art's sake, irrespective of its subject or
its moral tendency — a maxim adopted by the materialistic and
"fleshly" schools, but condemned by every sound principle
, whether of art or morality. This principle carried out would
deprive the world of the very best productions of art and
poetry ; the masterpieces of Baphael and Michael Angelo, the
many-hued allegory of Spenser, the divine poems of
Dante and Milton, and even the best dramas of Shakes-
peare; all of which are pervaded by a moral aim and pur-
pose, not obtrusively put forth in didactic form, but hidden
within them and distilled from them as their inmost spirit, as
the dew is distilled from the atmosphere, or the aroma from
the flowers. The lessons of truth and wisdom taught by the
great poets are like the moral lessons of Nature within and
behind its physical laws, which the scientist and artist of the
modem degenerate school ignores, but which the greatest and
best poets have always recognized, without which they would
not be true either to nature, or art, or the human soul.
How Wordsworth himself regarded his poetic mission, and
the spirit in which he entered upon and pursued it, is well
known to all readers of his poetry, especially of his autobio-
graphical poem, 2^e Prelude, This was not as a recreation,
to amuse his leisure hours, but as a life calling and ministry, to
which he was set apart and consecrated. He viewed himself
as called and endowed of God for this high mission, to declare
to the world those high truths and inspired thoughts which
had .come to him in his solitary walks among the mountains ;
J 887.] Wordsworth as a Spiritual Teacher. 817
and he devoted himself to this work with a rare perseverance,
a highnsonled enthusiasm and unswerving faith, which neither
poverty nor obliquy nor sneering criticism could for a moment
flhake. Probably no other poet save Milton has ever enter-
tained so high and sacred an idea of his calling as poet, or pur-
sued it with a more serene and lofty and independent spirit.
To a friend who wrote him a letter of sympathy on occasion
of a severe criticism of his poems, he replied : " Trouble not
yourself upon their present reception ; of what moment is that
compared with what I trust is their destiny % — ^to console the
afflicted ; to add sunshine to the daylight by making the happy
happier ; to teach the young and gracious of every age to see,
to think, and feel, and therefore to become more actively and
securely virtuous ; — this is their office, which I trust they will
faithfully perform long after we (that is, all that is mortal of
us) are mouldering in our graves."
Such a sublime confidence is itself a prophecy and guaranty
of that which it believes.
Let us now look at some of the truths or lessons by which
Wordsworth fulfilled his high mission as a Spiritual Teacher.
And first, he proclaimed as no other poet has done the savored*
ness and dignity of common things. The immense value and
far reaching scope of this truth cannot be over-estimated,
especially in an age marked by the decay of reverence, and
when the tendency of thought is strongly in the direction of
mere secularism and atheistic materialism.
The doctrine of Plato, that everything is the product and
embodiment of a divine idea, was the great conservative prin-
ciple and breakwater against the flood of atheism in the high
tide of Grecian thought and speculation. It afforded a rock
on which philosophy could find a solid and religious basis, and
opened an infinite realm for art and poetry by disclosing an
ideal world behind and within the world of sense ; and so it
imparted a divine worth and meaning to the world. But the
Christian doctrine of God as Spirit, as not only the Creator
and Father, but the indwelling soul of all things — ^not in a
pantheistic, but a personal sense — added a new value and sig-
nificance to nature, which theology has but very partially
appropriated, which modem science blindly and persistently
818 Wordswor^ as a SpirUtMl Teacher. [Nov.^
ignores, and which poetrj has obscnrelj felt without perceiving,
until Wordsworth gave it voice and clear expression. All read-
ers of his poetry must acknowledge this, that underneath the
plainest and homeliest exterior, whether in nature or human
life, he has discovered and disclosed a soul of beauty, an ideal
excellence and glory which not only makes it a fit subject of
poetry, but enables us to look on all things and all men with
new eyes. Whatever be the subject he treats, whether a
mountain tarn or a mountain daisy, a Highland girl or a Cum-
berland beggar, he sees in it what no other eyes have seen
before, but which once disclosed can never be forgotten.
This he does not by investing them with an ideal glory pro-
jected from his own imagination, but by uncovering the glory
and beauty that already lay unseen and disguised by a coarse
and common exterior. Other poets have selected what is
grand or beautiful to all eyes, or have seized on some striking
character, or romantic incident, or tragic event, and made it
the subject of poetry ; but Wordsworth finds in the most com-
mon and unnoticed objects and the most familiar facts of
every-day life a world of poetry which needs but to be set
forth simply and truly, by the same faculty that discerns it, to
stir the deepest fountains of feeling and delight. What affects
us most deeply in the tragic drama or the romantic ballad ia
not the outward fact or circumstance, still less the rank or con-
dition of the actor or sufferer, but that common nature whose
moral grandeur or beauty in doing or suffering finds expression
through these ; and this same human nature, with its loves and
joys and sorrows, is found everywhere, and therefore the
elements of poetry are everywhere. The beauty of the
daisy or the celandine is part of the same beauty that blushes
in the evening sky, or sleeps in the mountain lake ; a looking
forth through these tender eyes of the same heart and soul of
Nature. Wordsworth saw and felt this, and so to him every-
thing is full of poetry because full of truth and beauty. This
enlargement of the field of poetry to embrace all things
endowed with life, is a service to literature like that which
Newton rendered to science when he enlarged the domain of
the physical law of gravitation to embrace the universe.
But this sense and revelation of the sacred worth and dignity
1887.] Wordsworth as a Spiritual Teacher. 819
of common thitigs has its root in something deeper than a mere
poetic conception ; it reaches down to the inmost ground and
reality of all created things, viz: their relation to God, in
whom they live and have their being, and of whose thought
they are the expression. It is the dwine — the Christian
synonym for the ideal — that alone gives sacredness and dig-
nity to things. This alone imparts beauty (which is essen-
tially a spiritual attribute) to the flowers or the landscape, and
sublimity to mountains, and awakens the emotions of reverence^
awe, love, faith and joy, in the human heart. Strip the world
and humanity of its divine element, as materialistic science is
seeking to do, and nothing would be left for poetry or art, for
love and reverence and "the joy of elevated thoughts," any
more than for faith or religion.
What, let us now ask, has Wordsworth seen and disclosed in
Ji^€Uure which other poets have not? He has looked more
deeply and thoughtfully into her countenance, and read there
deeper and more spiritual meanings. He has leaned his ear
more intently, and listened more reverently and with a calmer
and wiser mind, to her many voices, and so has caught the
finer strains and the deep, almost inaudible undertones of her
many-chorded harmony. This reading by the poet of the
spiritual meanings of nature implies the presence of a Mind or
Spirit in nature, whose thought and feeling is expressed in the
creation. To deny this is to deny the possibility of poetry and
even of science ; for science is the reading of God's thoughts
in nature, those laws or truths of reason whose counterparts
exist in our own mind. Hence Kepler, on the discovery of
these laws exclaimed in pious enthusiasm, " O, God 1 I think
thy thoughts after Thee."
But truths of science and laws of reason are not the only
thoughts in nature, any more than they are in us. Beauty
and lo^(e and joy are laws of mind as well as mathematical
order, and these too are expressed in what is called the ' face '
of nature. This face, no more than the human countenance,
is no mere combination of forms and colors and utilities, but
it has meanings and expressions too subtle to be apprehended
or understood by the scientific faculty, which only a deep feel-
ing soul can read, and which it is the province of the poet and
820 Wordsworth as a Spiritual Teacher. [Nov.,
the artifit to feel and interpret. It is more than a fancied re-
semblance, or even a true analogy, when we speak of the smUe
of a dewy landscape lighted ap with sunrise, or the frown that
darkens a mountain's brow when a cloud rests upon it, or of
the joy and love expressed in a full-blown rose, which makes
this flower the natural and chosen symbol of such affections.
It is the recognition of a reality within what we call Nature
which is the spirit of its forms, and is as true and spiritual as
that we are conscious of in ourselves. When Wordsworth, in
one of his finest sonnets, describes the deep peace of a summer
evening :
'' It is a beauteous evening, calm and free ;
The holy air is quiet as a nun,
Breathless with adoration ; the broad sun
Is sinking down in his tranquility :
The gentleness of heaven is on the sea," etc.
Or when in the Excursion he describes the effect of sunrise
beheld from a mountain's summit :
" The clouds were touched,
And in their silent faces did he read
Unutterable love."
It is not the transfer of his own emotions to natural objects,
but the recognition in nature of a spirit kindred to his own
and awakening in him kindred divine emotions ; just as the
philosopher or scientist recognizes in the laws of nature a
reason or logos kindred to that which interprets them. It is
the ^ peace of God ' which passeth the understanding of the
scientist, and the love of God which passeth all mere knowl-
edge— a self conscious peace and love which is expressed in the
breathless air, the reposing ocean, and the silent faces of the
clouds, and which the poet feels and gives utterance to.
Wordsworth thus recognized a soul in Nature, with which
the soul in man may commune, as well as a designing %nd con-
structing mind — a jmeuma as well as a logos — ^and to inter-
pret this spiritual revelation was his mission as poet, as the
interpretation of the latter is the mission of the scientist, or
natural philosopher.
Wordsworth is thus a realistic poet in distinction from a
mere sentimental dreamer or creator of fictions woven by
1887.] Wordsworth as a Spiritual Teach&r. 321
fancy out of his own inner consciousness, with no correspond-
ing reality in the world of things ; in distinction also from
those who deal only with outward facts, or the mere surface of
life and nature. Bealism, in its true and highest sense is the
recognition of those realities which lie within and behind out-
ward facts or phenomena, and which only a spiritual eye and a
feeling soul can discern. The revelation of these inner and
spiritual things, whether found in man or nature, is the true
province of the poet and artist Wordsworth early recognized
and accepted this mission. As he declares in the Prelude :
" Of these, said I, shall be my song, of these.
If future years mature me for the task,
WiU I record the praises, mftlring verse
Deal boldly with subatanticd things, my theme,
No other than the very heart of man."
With this mind and soul in Nature, this spirit within and
behind its visible forms, the mind and spirit of Wordsworth
has held earnest and deep communion. His sympathy with
this spirit and his power to read and interpret its teachings,
even the most subtle and mystic meanings is probably greater
than that of any other poet. Other poets have been admitted
to the outer court of nature, and worshiped within the temple ;
he, as high priest, has entered the inmost sanctuary. Others,
like Bums and Byron, have found in nature a reflex of their own
tender sentiment or turbulent passion; Wordsworth has found
truth and beauty unveiled, before which his soul has stood
entranced in breathless awe and holy contemplation. The
result of this appears in many of his best poems of nature, in
which we may trace a growing sense of this communion, or a
progressive revelation of this spiritual presence in nature.
Readers famiKar with his poetry will recall the descriptive
poems entitled " Nutting," and " Influence of Natural Objects
in Awakening the Imagination in Boyhood and Early Youth,"
That noblest and profoundest of all " On Revisiting *Tintem
Abbey," marks the maturity of this intercourse, and is the
utterance of a mind that has communed long and intimately
with nature and learned the secret of her calm joy and patient,
restful working. It may seem superfluous to quote from a
poem which is, or should be, so familiar to persons of taste and
822 Wbrcbworth as a Spiritual Teacher. [Nov.,
education ; yet we are tempted to cite one or two passagea for
the sake of those who may not have read, or have forgotten
them, and who need jnst such restoratives to heart and brain
as the poet here describes, and which nature still ofiEers to all
that are weary and heavy-laden.
" Though absent long,
These forms of beauty have not been to me
As is a landscape to a blind man's eye ;
But oft in lonely rooms, and 'mid the din
Of towns and cities, I have owed to them
In hours of weariness sensations sweet,
Felt in the blood, and felt along the heart,
And passing even into my purer mind
With tranquil restoration. * * Nor less I trust.
To them I may have owed another gift
Of aspect more sublime : that blessed mood
In which the burthen of the mystery
Of all this unintelligible world
Is lightened ; that serene and blessed mood
In which the affections gently lead us on.
Until, the breath of this corporeal frame
And even the motions of our human blood
Almost suspended, we are laid asleep
In body, and become a living soul ;
While with an eye made quiet by the power
Of harmony and the deep power of joy
We see into the life of things."
What this life is and whence derived, he tells us in words
that are a key to Wordsworth's conception of Nature :
'' And I have felt
A Presence that disturbs me with the joy
Of elevated thoughts ; a sense sublime
Of something far more deeply interfused.
Whose dwelling is the light of setting suns.
And the round ocean, and the living air.
And the blue sky, and in the mind of man ;
A motion and a spirit, that impels
All thinking things, all objects of all thought,
And rolls through all thinics."
The influence of Kature in moulding the mind and character
through communion with its forms, is here explained. It \b
not the influence of mere material objects, of mute, insensate
things, which could only materialize and harden, but of a
spiritual presence and power kindred to that of man and
1887.] Wiyrdvmorth as a SpirUtud Teacher. 828
addressing it through these natural objects. The symbolism of
nature, or that wonderful analogy and correspondence between
the physical and the spiritual world, on which all language is
based, but which baffles all science to understand, here also
finds partial explanation. It is not, as Prof. Drummond asserts,
the presence and working of '^]Natural Law in the Spiritual
World," which is a confounding of the two, and a contradic-
tion in terms as well as a falsity in fact, for spirit gives law to
nature, not nature to spirit ; but it is the manifestation and ex-
pression of spiritual realities in material forms, as thought is
expressed or revealed in words, or as the soul is manifested in
the body. The seen is the veil and symbol of the unseen, the
material, of the spiritual. The beauty that is seen and felt in
nature, but which is no part or attribute of matter, and which
no natural law can explain, is the spiritual streaming through
and glorifying the natural; it is the golden fringe on the
edges of the cloud, betokening a world of light and glory
beyond it. With such a view of nature as Wordsworth enter-
tains, as no mere material and mechanical system, but a living
organism penetrated throughout with soul and spirit, with
which the spirit of man may commune as with a great, ever^
present companion and teacher, it is hardly a personification
when he says toward the close of the same poena :
" This prayer I make.
Knowing that Nature never did betray
The heart that loved her. 'Tis her privilege
Through all the years of this our life to lead
From joy to joy ; for she can so inform •
The mind that is within us, so impress
With quietness and beauty, and so feed
With lofty thoughts, that neither evil tongues.
Bash judgments, nor the sneers of selfish men,
Nor greetings where no kindness is, nor aU
The dreary intercourse of daily life
Shall e'er prevail against us, or disturb
Our cheerful faith, that all which we behold
Is full of blessings."
But it is his poems of Humanity that reveal perhaps the
Ughest truth and disclose his prof oundest thought. Here his
special mission as a spiritual teacher is specially fulfilled.
Here the distinctive principle of his poetry, the central truth
824 Wordsworth as a Spvritual Teacher. [Nov.,
he was commissioned to reveal, viz : the sacredness and dignity
of common things, is chiefly illustrated. Whatever be his
theme, whether the prattle of a child by its cottage door, the
soDg of a Highland girl, the talk of two farmers by the way-
side, the discourse of a wandering peddler, or those domestic
joys and sorrows that come to all, he impresses you with the
inherent worth and sacredness of humanity, and the divine
beauty there is in those common natural affections and humble
charities we are so apt to despise or disregard. As he so
beautifully says :
'* The primal virtues shine aloft, like stars ;
The humble charities that soothe and bless,
Lie scattered at the feet of man, like flowera."
Other poets have sung the former, and soared like Milton
among the stars ; it was his chosen mission to sing the latter, to
be the poet of the humble wayside flowers of humanity, and
disclose their divine and heavenly beauty. It was the praise
of a celebrated ancient author that " he touched nothing which
he did not adorn." It is the glory of Wordsworth that he
touched nothing which he did not ennoble and sanctify. And
what greater praise, what diviner work, can any man achieve
than this ? Next to that of the Redeemer of the world, and
akin to it in its spirit and results, I know of none so grand and
enduring. That he became such a poet, that he was able to
see this divine beauty in humanity, was not the result merely
of poetic insight, but of a profound philosophy. He had
studied not only human nature, in his practical intercourse
with men of humble life, but the human sovl in the light of
his own reflective consciousness and of Christian truth ; and he
saw in it, what our wise scientists cannot see or even conceive,
a grandeur of origin, of being and of destiny which made him
tremble ; compared with which this material universe is but
a shadow, the mere reflection of its glory.
His own conception of the nature and grandeur of his theme
is given in the introduction to the Excursion, in words of ^won-
derful power and suggestiveness :
" Of Truth, of Grandeur, Beauty, Love and Hope,
And melancholy Fear subdued by Faith ;
Of blessed consdlation in distress ;
1887.] Wordsworth as a SpwUmal Teacher. 825
Of moral strength, and intellectual power,
Of joy in widest commonalty spread ;
Of the individual mind that keeps her own
Inyiolate retirement, subject there
To conscience only and the law supreme
Of that intelligence which governs all ;
I sing : ' fit audience let me find, though few.'
So prayed, more gaining than he asked, the Bard,
Holiest of men. Urania, I shall need
Thy guidance, or a greater Muse, if such
Descend to earth, or dwell in highest heaven,
For I must tread on shadowy ground, must sink
Deep— and aloft ascending breathe in worlds
To which the heaven of heavens is but a veil.
♦ * * ♦ Not Chaos, not
The darkest pit of lowest Erebus,
Nor aught of blinder vacancy, scooped out
By help of dreams, can breed such fear and awe
As fall upon us often when we look
Into our minds — ^into the mind of man —
My haunt, and the main region of my song."
TluB may seem extravagant to those who have never
descended by reflection into the depths of their own spiritual
being ; and such will find little delight or even meaning in
some of his poetry. But his high calling as a spiritnal teacher
is none the less to be fulfilled :
— " and by words
Which speak of nothing more than what we are,
Would I arouse the sensual from their sleep
Of death, and win the vacant and the vain
To noble raptures, while my voice proclaims
How exquisitely the individual mind
♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ to the external world
Is fitted, and how exquisitely too,
(Theme this but little heard of among men)
The external world is fitted to the mind ;
And the crea^iow— by no lower name
Can it be called— which they with blended might
Accomplish : such is our high arg^ument."
He who could write thus, with such ideas of the human
soul and its relation to the universe, has little to fear from the
reproach sometimes cast upon his poetry, of being childish in
its simplicity. Ko prof ounder philosophy or deeper wisdom
was ever taught by sage or seer than that which underlies some
VOL. XL 24
826 Wordaworth as a Spiritual Teacher. [Nov.,
of his very simplest poems ; pellucid as a well, but soundless as
the sea, reminding us of some of those utterances of the Great
Teacher, which a child can understand, but which an archangel
cannot fathom. Sometimes this philosophy shoots up from
some lowly subject into Alpine peaks of glittering and massive
splendor; as in the celebrated Ode on the "Intimations of
of Immortality from the Recollections of Early Childhood."
This ode, says Emerson, " marks the highest limit which the
tide of poetic inspiration has reached in England within this
century, or, indeed, since the days of Milton."
Many, doubtless, regard this poem, as it was pronounced
when first published, an unmeaning rhapsody ; but those of
profoundest thought and deepest and tenderest sensibility will
thank Qt)d for it, as for a new revelation. The subject is one
of the most mysterious in this our mysterious being, yet the most
fascinating to a thoughtful mind — the early dawn of conscious-
ness in childhood, and the source of those first ideas or obscure
intimations of the infinite and eternal, which cannot come from
things of sense, which precede them in order of being if not of
time, and which, like the crimson glow of sunrise on the clouds,
must come from a world beyond the world. These mysterious
visitings and morning gleams —
— '' those obstinate questionings
Of sense and outward things,
Fallings from us, vanishings,
Blank misgivings of a creature
Moving about in worlds not realized,
High instincts, before which our mortal nature
Did tremble, like a guilty thing surprised," —
— these foregleams of immortality which in most men are for-
gotten with their cradles and childhood dreams, linger in poetic
and refiective souls and shed a supernal radiance on the world
and all their after life, giving a ^' splendor to the grass and a
glory to the flower," which gradually fades, like a gorgeous
sunrise, into the light of common day.
The charge is sometimes made that Wordsworth in this Ode
teaches the Platonic doctrine of preexistence. This may be
allowed in the sense that all things preexist in their causes,
and the human soul has its cause and origin in God, and not
1887.] Wordsworth as a SpirittLol Teacher. 827
in nature; but in the sense of a conscious preexistence, the
charge can only be made by those who ignore the distinction
between poetry and philosophy strictly such, or between the
substance of a truth or doctrine and the form or symbol in
which it is conveyed. It may be questioned, indeed, whether
Plato himself meant to teach this doctrine as ordinarily under-
stood, or whether its form is not a parable founded on the
analogy, rather than identity, between our innate knowledge
of certain primary truths, and that which we call reminiscenca
Be this as it may, the sublime truth here taught, of the soul's
true origin and destiny, its divine and celestial outfit, as it
" Cometh from afar ;" for
** Not in entire forgetfulness,
And not in utter nakedness,
But trailing cloudB of glory do we come
From God who is our home ;"—
this high and true doctrine, accordant both with Scripture
and divine philosophy, is one which cannot be too deeply pon-
dered in these days of shallow empiricism and atheistic materi-
alism. Immortality, which from a mere scientific stand-point,
on the basis of natural law, is a dream or a delusion, is here
seen to be but a return, with larger experience and expanded
powers, to the country from whence we set out
" Hence in a season of calm weather,
Though inland far we be,
Our souls have sight of that immortal sea
Which brought us hither,
Can in a moment travel thither.
And see the children sport upon the shore,
And hear the mighty waters rolling evermore."
The man who has bathed his soul in the ocean waves of this
immortal Ode, has received a spiritual baptism that will effect-
ually save him from materialism and atheism ; and he will be
little likely to turn to the muddy slime of Darwinism to find
the origin of man's being.
With such faith in the immortality and sacred dignity of
man, we may expect Wordsworth to be a teacher of reverence —
that lesson most needed to be learned in our times ; for rever-
ence with us has become a lost and almost forgotten virtua
828 Wordsworth as a Spiritual Teacher. [Nov.,
Reverence for the Pagt, whose wisdom is not wholly superseded
by the science of to-day ; reverence for Nature, who is somewhat
older than we, and has some secrets and laws we have not yet
discovered ; reverence for Beanty, as the seal set by God on
the perfection of his works ; above all, reverence for Humanity
in its lowest and humblest forms, as possessing even in its
degradation the image of God; reverence for those human
affections that sweeten and sanctify our life ; — this is the spirit
that breathes from every page, and almost every line, of
Wordsworth. Take a single example from the many that
might be cited :
" Elnow that pride
Howe'er disguised in its own majesty,
Is littleness; that he who feels contempt
For any living thing hath faculties
Which he hath never used, that thought with him
Is in its infancy. * * * Be wiser, thou !
Instructed that true knowledge leads to love.
True dignity abides with him alone
Who in the silent hour of inward thought
Can still suspect, and still revere himself,
In lowliness of heart.'*
The high moral tone of his poetry is felt like an invigorating
breeze blowing from his own mountains, in contrast with the
heated and often miasmatic air that breathes from some of our
modem poets. There is one poem that combines and concen-
trates this moral tone with a force and beauty that is without
a parallel in literature, viz : his immortal Ode to Duty^ which
Mr. Hutton has pronounced ^' one of the sublimest poems of
our language." We scarcely know of a more healthful tonic
for a young person to take, with which to brace his moral
nature, as well as to enrich his memory. This is one of the
last subjects which a mere sentimental poet would think of
treating. We are apt to think of Duty as a stem taskmaster,
whose countenance is anything but fair, and whose menacing
rod is a thing of terror and not of beauty. In the conception
of the poet, this "Stern Daughter of the V"oice of God" is
transformed into a benignant and celestial power, the friend
and helper of man, who brings strength and victory and peace,
and so trae freedom, who
1887.] Wordsworth as a Spiritual Teacher. 829
" From yain temptations doth set free,
And calms the weary strife of frail humanity.''
The Bablimest strain is reached when the poet transfers, in the
transport of imagination, the law of moral to physical natures,
and contemplates the same law and bond of Datj as holding
the spheres in their orbits, and so " preserving the stars from
wrong," as keeping the heavens themselves fresh and strong
by its inspiring might.
" Stem Lawgiver! Yet thou dost wear
The Godhead's most benignant grace,
Nor know we anything so fair
As is the smile upon thy face.
Flowers laugh before thee on their beds,
And fragrance in thy footing treads.
Thou dost preserve the stars from wrong,
And the most ancient heavens through thee are fresh and strong."
It has sometimes been objected to Wordsworth's poetry, that
while it is full of natural religion it is lacking in the Christian
and evangelical spirit, at least in the distinctive troths of the
Christian faitL He has also been accused of pantheism in his
views of God and Nature. But the student of his writings
will find that the God whom he recognized as breathing
through the natural universe, and whose presence he felt as
" something far more deeply interfused," was to him no mere
diflfused essence without personality or love, but the Father of
all, never for a moment lost in his own works, but an indwelling
Spirit, kindred to his own, and with whom he held spiritual
communion. His pantheism is that of the inspired writers
who conceived of God as the immanent life and moving power
of all things, '* in whom we live and move and have our being."
If he makes Nature the medium of his communion with God,
rather than those theological conceptions and phrases in which
religious thought and feeling is more wont to be expressed, it
is because it is a more real language, one, too, sanctioned by
such poets and holy men as Moses and David in their sublime
odes and psalms, which are full of the glory and presence of
God in nature. That Wordsworth did find in nature a medium
of real and immediate communion with God, we have proof in
many passages of his poetry. Lovers o^ Wordsworth wiU
recall that fine passage in the " Excursion," already alluded to,
830 Wordsworth as a JSpirittuzl Teacher. [Nov.,
descriptive of sanrise as seen from a mountaiii summit, where
the sublime spectacle awakens emotions that rise into the highest
rapture of religious ecstasy.
" In such access of mind, in such high hour
Of visitation from the living Gkxi,
Thought was not ; in enjoyment it expired.
No thanks he breathed, he proffered no request ;
Rapt into still communion that transcends
The imperfect offices of prayer and praise.
His mind was a thanksgiving to the Power
That made him ; it was blessedness and love."
At the same time, we do not find in his poetry the distinc-
tive teachings and truths of Christianity, for Nature does not
teach these trutha The religion of Nature is no equivalent
of Christianity, and can be no true substitute for it Although
the God revealed in Nature and in Christ is the same being,
Nature is no Gospel ; it does not reveal the love of God in a
way to lead to repentance and reconciliation. This Christian-
ity alone does through the incarnation and the cross. Yet to
one already reconciled and brought into union with God
through Christ, Nature presents a revelation, and a medium of
communion and of worship which is even needful for the
health and growth of the soul, and the perfection of its re-
ligious as well as intellectual culture. The defect of this is
seen in the too exclusively scholastic type of religion and theol-
ogy which prevails ; in the rationalism that pervades even our
most orthodox interpretations of Christian doctrine ; and in the
almost total divorce which exists between the teachings of the
pulpit and those of Nature, while in the discourses of the
Great Teacher the natural and the spiritual were constantly
blended. We need less of logic and more of poetry, or poetic
insight, in our religious conceptions. A little more of this re-
ligion of Nature, such as may be learned from Wordsworth,
combined with that of the church and the prayer-meeting,
would enlarge and enrich not only our theology but our whole
religious life, and especially our charity^ our reverence and our
sympathy with aU that lives. As Coleridge has beautifully
said:
** He prayeth best who loveth best
All thingps both great and small ;
For the dear God who loveth us
He made and loveth all."
1887.] Wardeworth as a Spiritual Teacher. 331
We feel, in conclnding this brief tribute, that we have very
imperfectly rendered account of the many lessons of spiritual
truth and wisdom learned years ago by the study of this great
poet. What these have been to us in the formative period of
thought and character, the help, delight, inspiration and solace
they have afforded in after years, cannot be communicated.
Most of these lessons are too deep and subtle to be conveyed
in words, but must be learned at the feet of this great Teacher
by long and intimate communion with his spirit, even as he
himself learned them by communion with the heart and spirit
of Nature ; by reverently listening to those voices with which
she speaks not to the ear, but to the soul and spirit of man.
We would earnestly entreat the young, whose intellectual
and moral tastes are in the process of formation, not only to
read, but to study, and become familiar with this great intellec-
tual and moral poet, who has been fitly styled, ' Friend of the
wise and Teacher of the good.' " The careful and reverential
study of Wordsworth," it has been truly said, " is in itself a
moral and intellectual education of a very high order." We
know of no better antidote to counteract the shallow and cor-
rupting sensationalism and materialism of the day, by awaken*
ing reflection, reverence and faith ; by opening those nether
springs within the soul whence issues all that is noble and pure
and worthy in human life and human character. A mind
filled with such treasures of thought and sentiment as Words-
worth brings, an imagination chastened and purified by such
imagery as he presents, and a communion with Nature such as
he alone of all poets holds and teaches, will be the surest safe-
guard against moral corruption and intellectual prostitution,
and will tend in these days of unbelief to keep alive and to
strengthen our faith in God and humanity.
As a spiritual teacher, then, we think we have shown that
Wordsworth has not transcended, but fulfilled the true end of
poetry, which is identical with that of the prophet — ^to be first
of all the seer^ and then the revealer in language befitting their
dignity, of moral and spiritual truth, ideal and divine realities,
of things unseen and eternal. As one of the latest and best of
English critics has said : " In the world of Nature, to be a re-
vealer of things hidden, the sanctifier of things common, the
382 Wordsworth as a Spiritual Teacher. pfov.,
interpreter of new and nnsnspected relations, the opener of
another sense in men ; in the moral world to be the teacher of
tmths hitherto neglected or unobserved, the awakener of men's
hearts to the solemnities that encompass them, deepening onr
reverence for the essential soul, apart from accident and cir-
cumstance, making us feel more truly, more tenderly, more
profoundly, lifting the thoughts upward through the shows of
time to that which is permanent and eternal, and bringing
down on the transitory things of eye and ear some shadow of
the eternal, till we
'' Feel through all this fleshly dress
Bright shoots of eyerlastingness " —
this is the office which he will not cease to fulfil, as long as the
English language lasts."
Henby M. OooDwm .
1887.] ProJUrShaHng. 338
Akitcle II.— profit-sharing AS A METHOD OF
REMUNERATING LABOR.
SOME LIMITATIONS TO BE CONSIDERED.
Cooperation and profit-fiharing are the two expedients
by which it is now most often proposed to avoid undesirable
antagonism between the employer and the employed, or, as it
is commonly phrased, between Capital and Labor.
Cooperation, although by no means the panacea which its
more ardent advocates would have us believe, has this much in
its favor, that when it is properly organized it is a legitimate
and logical method of conducting business enterprizes. It is
then simply the contribution of the small savings of persons of
moderate means to a fund which forms the capital for a busi-
ness undertaking, in the prosecution of which the contributors
may or may not be themselves employed If the business is
one of production, as manufacturing, the contributors to the
capital are expected to be the employees of their own establish-
ment. U the business is one of distribution, as in the case of
cooperative stores, they are not- employees, but are expected to
be purchasers. In the one case, in addition to such ordinary
wages as their skill entitles them to receive, they also receive
a share of such profits as may result, proportioned to the
amount of their contribution to capital. In the other case
they expect to reap their advantage partly in the form of
profits on their investment, and partly in the way of pur-
chases of what they need, at prices somewhat lower than
the prevailing market rates. The only question then of im-
portance to be considered in regard to cooperation is, can
the contributors a£Eord to take the risks of the business?
And the success of the undertaking depends on the ability of
the management, and on the chances which attach to all busi-
ness enterprises, and is subject in all respects to ordinary
business law&
I know of no better etample of a legal provision for
true cooperation than the Joint Stock law of Connecticut
334 ProjiirSha/ring as a Method [Nov.,
which was framed with special reference to men of moderate
means, the shares being allowed (and by the law as originally
framed, required) to be but $26 each. Under this law coopera-
tive enterprises have been conducted in Connecticut for fifty
years and with as much success as they can expect to attain
under any circumstancea In England, where the idea a few
years since was a novel one, some experiments having met
with rather marked success, the people were led to believe that
they had at length discovered the philosopher's stone, and a
glamour was thrown over the whole subject which has been re-
flected on this side of the Atlantic, and has bewildered the
vision of many good but inexperienced people who did not
appreciate that they had long had at their own doors, and
in active operation, a legalized system combining all the
advantages of this new-found English scheme.
Profitrsharing proposes to pay the laborer by giving him :
first, a stipulated fixed sum as wages, and second, a proportion
of the profits of the business in which his employer is engaged
in addition to his fixed wages.
The advantages of this system are supposed to be : 1. That
the laborer will be better paid. 2. That being interested in,
and partly dependent on, the pecuniary success of the business
about which he is employed, hQ will therefore be a better and
more faithful workman. 3. That on this account his employer
can afford to pay him more. 4. That, as anything which he
gets beyond his fixed wages is paid out of profits and in pro-
portion to profits, therefore his employer can well afford this
extra compensation. 5. That it cultivates friendly relations
between the employer and the employed. 6. That it increases
industry and stimulates self-respect in the workingmen.
The first thing we note is that the scheme is based on the
assumption that the workingman is now underpaid. We will
not therefore discuss this question, but, admitting the assump-
tion, the inquiry is whether this is the best way, or, at any rate,
a fairly good way, to raise the standard of wages.
The second point is, that, being interested in the pecxmiary
success of the business, the employee will be a better and more
faithful workman. This is one of the strong points with the
advocates of the system, and, a priori^ seems sensible and
1887,] of Remunerating Labor. 385
reasonable. It is a matter not susceptible of demonstration,
and in regard to which we cannot resort to statistics. I can
only say that from my experience and from my knowledge of
the experience of others, I have not much confidence in the
theory that because the workman has this small pecuniary in-
terest in the result he will therefore be a better workman. The
connection in his mind seems to be too indirect, if not too
slight, to produce any such result. A workman of any energy
and ambition is far more likely to be influenced by a desire for
success and a sense of success in the immediate result of his
work ; a good tool ; a well-finished product ; a successful
manipulation of any kind, which shows at once for itself ; and
a word of praise, a feeling of loyalty, or the eBprit du corps of
his class will go much farther in stimulating and in com-
pensating effort than any feeling that his daily work will at the
year's end slightly enhance his wages. Even small stock-
holders in a corporation have not been found to be, on that
account, any more desirable as workmen, or to have the suc-
cess of the business any more at heart. A right to grumble
and find fault or an endeavor to use their position in some in-
direct way, for their advantage is far more likely to be the re-
sult. Workmen as a rule when well treated, and especially
American workmen, I have found to be a faithful and loyal set
of people. And with them I have no fault to find. But I wish
to put the thing precisely as it is, neither exaggerate nor set
down aught in malice, and the result of my observation is that
I would not give one penny more for a man as a workman
simply because he had a slight pecuniary interest in the profit
accruing to me, as the result of his labors.
There is an enthusiasm and an interest which may be aroused
among any organized body of men, by a leader or a manager
who has a genius for it, that is of the greatest possible value in
any enterprise the success of which depends upon the combined
effort of numbers, whether it be storming a fortress or run-
ning a factory. The basis of this is very largely that power
of sympathy which we call magnetism, combined with a cer-
tain will power, which makes a man a leader. And the man of
enthusiastic temperament and ready sympathy who would
try profit sharing as an experiment would also be likely to be
336 ProJU-Shcurvng as a Method [Nov.,
a man who would have this sort of power, and would be led to
attribute reeultfl to his profit-sharing scheme which were really
wholly due to other causes. To my mind this accounts largely
for those rose-colored reports which we occasionally get of the
success of experiments of this kind.
As to the pecuniary advantage to be derived by the work-
man himself. The reasoning in favor of the value of the plan
in this respect seems usually to proceed on the assumption that
all business undertakings are profitable. We know, when
brought face to face with this statement, that it is not so. But
the extent to which it is not so, and the importance of it to this
subject, is I fancy very much lost sight of, or greatly disregarded
as an element to be considered in judging the value of this
method of remuneration.
A few statistics bearing on the subject may not be amiss.
There are in the State of Connecticut twenty-three or twenty-
four railroads. Now if we except a few that for reasons of
policy have been leased by stronger roads, there are not more
than four or five that are paying dividends to holders of the
original stock. Now profit-sharing on the other nineteen, or say
four-fifths of the whole, as a method of getting workman's
wages would have been a very poor investment for the workman.
Again, when in 1880, the joint stock law of Connecticut was
revised, twelve hundred corporations were wiped out of exist-
ence at one time, because they had utterly failed to answer the
hopes of their projectors, and had ceased to do business. How
many non-corporate experiments showing failures of a similar
sort this may represent we have no means to determine ; but
the corporate ones must be only a small portion of the whola
K I remember rightly the commercial reports give us an
average of about two hundred failures for each week in the
year ; and these are bankruptcies where the business has come
to an end, and are probably only a tithe of those that struggle on
in a precarious existence without profit, waiting for something
to turn up to save them from bankruptcy. Can the laborer
wisely aflEord to take these risks ? K any one says we do not
mean that the laborer shall get any less regular wages, but shall
receive an addition thereto by sharing in the profits, that
reasoning seems to me fallacious. For while I do not put full
1887.] of Remunerating Labor. 837
faith in laAeaesrfaAre^ and think it worth while to make an
effort that every man shonld get his just due, yet, the fact re-
mains that, on the whole, supply and demand and competitiou
will regulate the price of all things, labor included, no matter
how you may try to measure it. And again, I regard the
moral influence of a system whose tendency is to make the re-
muneration irregular and uncertain, as it must be under this
system, as very bad. If the workman succeeds in getting for
a time extra pay he will be very sure to gauge his expenses by
his hopes and will form habits of expenditure that can only be
shaken ofi by pain and self-denial, and will be much more
likely not to be shaken ofi at all. It seems to me that what
the workman needs above all things for his moral and financial
good is a definite price and a certainty of getting it.
Suppose you are hiring a workman. He says, what wages
do you offer ? Ton say, $50 a month, and such a proportion of
net profits. He very naturally asks, what will that be ? Well,
last year it was 3 per cent, on wages ; year before 10 per cent.
Year before that, nothing. Can't tell till the year is through.
Tou take your chance with the rest of us. Now, if he is a
sensible man, and has had a Uttle experience, he will say,
^'Add 5 per cent, to the wages and say nothing about the
profits." This makes the wages a fixed sum and we come back
to the old method.
In these days of excitement, when walking delegates infest
the earth and men's heads are turned on the labor question,
employers will fall in with popular whims to avoid strikes and
other troubles, and by adopting profitnaharing or other popular
devices, may succeed in doing so to their advantage ; but these
are temporary expedients and are not founded in business
laws.
It may be said that experiments of this sort have been suc-
cessful. Doubtless this is so; but before measuring their
value, as determining principles, we must endeavor to eliminate
the personal equation. I once knew a school teacher, a man of
remarkable success in his profession. His influence over his
scholars and under-teachers was almost unbounded. ^^ There is
but one rule here," he used to say to them, '^ and that one is
not a rule but an exception. It is this : In this school there
388 ProfiirSha^rvag as a Method [Nov.,
are no rules." Another favorite remark was : " We use text
books here because they help to measure our work and keep
us together, and thej save some trouble, and besides, it is the
fashion. But I hope no one puts much confidence in them.
They are full of mistakes, and you have to be all the while on
the watch."
Now that man's personal influence was so great and the
atmosphere of neatness and order which he induced so pervad-
ing that the pupils and under-teachers would pick up chance
scraps of paper from the school room floor and put them in
their pockets lest he should see them, or because they had
themselves become unable to endure any infraction of the gen-
eral order which prevailed. But who would recommend this
system, or lack of system, for general adoption, or how many
teachers if they tried could make it work successfully ? It
might be an inspiration or a suggestion of value, but not a
method.
The case of that very worthy Frenchman, Edmond Leclaire,
which has been so often quoted to show the beneflt of profit
sharing, is a perfect illustration of mistaking the power of per-
sonal influence for the effect of a system. This was the case of
a man prosecuting a business very simple in its nature, giving
up his life with enthusiasm to a mingling of sentiment, business,
philanthropy, and charity, able to impress his own will and
methods on all about him, a sort of benevolent business despot
who amused his people by letting them play at self-govern-
ment while he really held the reins. A man so actuated, and
so acting, could work out results highly praiseworthy in many
respects, but of no value what ever as permanent and universal
methods of business administration.
It is a most excellent thing to induce workmen to practice
economy, to learn temperance and to cultivate thrift ; to have
libraries and burial clubs and night schools and savings banks,
and debating societies and private theatricals and church sup-
pers ; but that whole subject belongs to the domain of philan-
thropy or Christianity, or sociology, and has only a loose and
indefinite relation to questions of work and wages.
If the plan of profit-sharing has the merit which some have
supposed, it is destined to become general, or it should be ; and
1887.] of Remimerating Labor. 839
we niTiBt try to look at it as it would be if it were imiversal and
legal and compulsory, at least to this extent, that when the
workman was to receive a share of profit as a part of his wages
he should have the power to enforce the demand. This must
be a necessary part of the scheme, otherwise the profit-sharing
becomes mere almsgiving. A Christmas turkey presented to
a workmen at the end of a profitable year is a very excellent
thing but it is not profit-sharing ; and yet I think many people
regard the two as being precisely the same in principle. Now,
suppose the plan of profit-sharing to be universal, and it simply
comes to this, that it is an attempt to raise the wages of the
country by a method which introduces an element having an
interest strongly antagonistic to that of the business itself. The
prime interest of the one being strength, permanency and
growth, while the interest of the other is to abstract each year
the largest possible portion of earnings. It may be said that this
is always virtually the relative position of employer and em-
ployed ; but here, when as I am supposing, the system has been
legalized, we have an interest coupled with a power ; an element
of annoyance, disturbance and positive danger ; a lever for the
demagogue, an opportunity for the business rival, a harvest ripe
for the sickle of the pettifogger. And, so far as the workman is
concerned, it offers him a remuneration not according to his
industry or his ability or his deserts, but according to the suc-
cess in business of the person or corporation which employs
him ; a condition of things as it seems to me likely to be fatal
to all our old fashioned notions of loyalty and to place both
workman and wages on a speculative basia
When, too, this method of remuneration becomes general it
becomes by universal law subject to the same conflicts, com-
petitions, fluctuations and diminutions that attach to the pres-
ent system of wages, and in obedience to these laws the amount
paid as wages, as a whole, will settle down upon the same scale
of proportion to production as would obtain under the ordinary
method.
There is considerable difficulty in treating this question
satisfactorily in the form of an essay. This grows out of the
fact that the objections to the scheme are largely, in fact,
mainly, of a practical character, and have to do with matters of
840 ProJU'Shourmg as a Method [Nov.,
detail in business management Sentiment and rhetoric are
pleasing to our ears, while arithmetic, bookkeeping, legal prob-
lems and the investigations of the minute details of business
generally are dry and wearisome, and in short, make us tired
Yet in order to understand the probable effect of the applica-
tion of any untried system we must imagine so far as is possible
all the situations which will grow out of it and endeavor to
anticipate their arithmetical, financial, and legal results.
In a small way, where very few parties are concerned and
the nature of the business is simple, profitnsharing may be
adopted with success. As for instance in the common case of
raising crops on shares. Here there can be no deterioration of
plant, and in fact the capitalist really agrees to receive part of
the product as a rent.
It is not very infrequent to employ a salesman or other agent
where an interest in profits constitutes a part of his compensa-
tion, and these cases are cited as a proof of the practicability of
profitHsharing. It is, however, usual in such cases to fix by
contract some arbitrary method of estimating profits which
relieves the subject of some of its embarrassments, and even
then it is not free from difficulty and is usually only adopted
to avoid a strike or something akin to it, or to reward special
skill.
Humanly speaking, it is impossible to lay down a rule for
the estimation of profits in a complicated manufacturiug busi-
ness which would be likely to be accepted by those who were
endeavoring to carry on and build up the business and also by
those who, without having any other interest, looked to a par-
ticipation in the profits as a method of payment for their labor.
So long as the parties interested in the business all have the
same kind of interest, that is as stockholders or partners, each
in proportion to his investment, differences may be waived and
difficulties bridged over and a certain amount of patience and
hopefulness exercised, in the feeling that all are sharing alike,
but so soon as you introduce this foreign elemeiit by which the
workman regards the profit as a fund in part belonging to him,
you lay the foundation for infinite trouble. It is not altogether
easy to explain exhaustively in general terms why this should
be so, especially to persons who have had no experience in the
1887.] of Remv/aeroiting Labor. 841
conduct of complicated business, but I think I would feel
pretty sure. of assent to my proposition from any one who had.
Let us take the case of a woolen mill working on goods
designed for spring garments. It has a capital of $200,000,
$100,000 is invested in plant. It can produce $400,000 worth
of goods in a year, and must do so to work profitably. These
goods must all be sold within a few weeks time in the fall.
During all the rest of the year the mill is running and accumu-
lating the goods. The commission merchant or selling agent in
the city has stored the goods in a warehouse and the labor and
material have been paid for by drawing drafts against the goods
which are accepted by the agent and discounted by banks. The
fiscal year of the mill ends in July. Eight or nine months' pro-
duction are on hand. Now, no one can tell at what price these
goods will sell or even whether they may not have to be car-
ried over to another season, with a heavy interest account run-
ning against them. The mill manager will make up its
accounts, putting in these goods at such a price as he thinks
prudent, perhaps at cost, perhaps at the price he thinks they
will bring. This is merely for the purpose of accounting.
The risk is not over yet, and any assumed profit is speculative,
but so long as no dividends are paid from these earnings and
only stockholders are interested, no one is wronged. But now
by the terms of the bargain the workmen are absolutely
entitled in law to their proportion of these profits. They
have finished their year's labor and they want their reward.
Here is material for difference of opinion, for litigation, for
ruin.
This is only one sample from an endless variety. Take
another. A mill takes out an old engine — only worth its
weight for old iron when once out — say $300, and puts in a
new one costing $10,000. This was a necessity, because the
old one was wearing out and in danger of giving out. Yet it
has run the mill. The new one can do no mora The earning
power is no greater. Common business sense says, charge this
new engine to repairs. This is what would ordinarily be done ;
but that will take $10,000, or at least $9,700, out of profit
account for that year. The workman says, is it right that I
should pay with my wages of this year for a new engine which
VOL. XL. ^ 25
842 Profit-Sharing as a Method [Nov.,
will last for eight or ten years ? And, viewed from his stand-
point, he hafi reason in his question. Yet it is doubtful whether
from the manager's point of view a single penny of that cost
should appear in profit He cannot afford to pay his stock-
holder nor his workmen for the privilege of putting in a new
engine, for he knows that system of bookkeeping would end in
grief.
Every manufacturer understands that when he builds his
plant and when he buys or makes a new tool or machine, he to
a large extent sinks the cost of what he thus invests. Except
for the one purpose for which it is designed it is almost, and in
many instances entirely, worthless. Any failure of success
therefore involves substantially the loss of all that he hafi in-
vested. He makes allowance for this, and his earliest profits
under sound management will be used to make good that risk
by charging off a liberal portion of his investment to profit and .
loss.
This is the usual course in a new business and the course
dictated by prudence. But this would be in direct opposition
to the interest of the profitrsharing workman.
Suppose again that on the last day of the year an establish-
ment is destroyed by fire. It is insured for three quarters of
its value, but the one quarter loss more than wipes out all the
profit of the year. What are the rights of the workman?
Then there is the question of allowance for bad debts and con-
tingent losses, and many others of a similar nature. But I
think I have said enough to indicate where the trouble lies.
The special instances every one of experience can furnish
for himself.
That there is something fascinating in the idea that the
laborer shall share in the profits of his work is not to be
denied. That there are cases where it can be safely done is
also true ; but that as a general method of regulating wages,
or a safe, successful, or satisfactory plan of general application
to the conduct of business, it has any considerable merit, seems
to me chimerical.
We all know how much there is in the " art of putting
things." We sometimes get an altogether new and unexpected
light by a slight variation in the form of statement. The SuL
1887.] of RemwMToiing Lahor. 848
tan in the story beheaded the unfortunate vizier who inter-
preted his dream to mean that he should die before his eons,
while he rewarded with gifts him who interpreted it that his
sons should flourish in splendor after he had gone to his rest.
Let us try a little change of statement in the profit-sharing
problem. Suppose instead of saying that the workman shall
have his wages and a portion of the profit, we say, he shall
have his wages unless there is a loss, in which case he shall
suffer a proportionate deduction. How many subscribers
would you find to that theory. You see the hardship of it at
onca And yet, if there is any such thing as a wage fund or a
point towards which the price of labor gravitates, what else is
this scheme of profit sharing, put it how you will, than that the
workman's wages, maximum and minimum, depend on the
success of the business. The raisan cPetre of profit-sharing is
that in some way the workman should get higher « wages bo-
cause they are rightfally his; because he earns them. The
added portion is as much his by right as the fixed portion;
otherwise it is charity. And the operation of natural laws in
case of the general adoption of any such plan would so regulate
prices that in the cost of living the increment would be
reckoned with the original sum as a part of the wages due ; and
yet profitHsharing proposes that he shall lose a part of this, his
lawful due, unless his employer so manages his business as to
make enough to pay him in full out of a portion of the profits.
No body of workingmen could safely take the risks of such a
system, nor would they when they once saw clearly where it
led.
The practical difficulty in the application of profitHsharing to
anything more than a very limited number of business opera-
tions consists in the fact that it introduces two sets of people,
both interested in the profits, but whose interests are of a very
diverse nature. Only one party is interested in the preserva-
tion of the capital Only one party is interested in such a way
that it can afford to submit to any present deprivation for the
sake of future advantage, or at any rate will be likely to see
the advantage of such submission. Yet this is frequently a
matter of vital importance. And because their interests are
diverse, one party will naturally be jealous and suspicious of
844 ProJU-SJiarhig <w a Method [Nov.,
the other, and discord will ensue. So long as the workman is
earning more than his neighbors he will be pleased and happ j.
If he receives less, which in any general application of the
theory must frequently happen, he will be discontented. And
it must never be lost sight of in all considerations of this sort
that only a moderate proportion of business undertakings are
successful.
I began with admitting the assumption, for the purpose of
the present paper, that our workingmen were underpaid.
Whether this is true or not is an interesting and important
question, but wholly aside from the one herein discussed, which
is simply whether profit-sharing is a practicable and desirable
method of increasing wages. When, however, one reads the
elaborate statistics of Mr. Edward Atkinson, showing that a
day's work will buy more to-day than almost ever before in the
history of the world, in which I believe his conclusions to be
correct, although his methods have been criticized ; when one
notes the lavish extravagance in dress of our shop-girls and
domestic servants; when we remember that patches, those
homely evidences of domestic thrift, are now a matter of his-
tory, and that our laboring people have bought their clothing
ready made and thrown it aside when it needed mending until
the use of the needle is almost a lost art among them ; when
we see every species of amusement supported by funds drawn
from the working people, and when we further reflect that a
large majority of the great capitalists of to-day were twenty
and twenty-five years ago working for less wages per diem than
the common day laborer is earning to-day ; and, furthermore,
when we find that complaints of wages do not come from the
industrious and prudent class but from the lazy and shiftless,
have we not reason to suspect that there are other factors
besides the amount of wages in the problem of success. Our
working people see and desire and envy the result, but they
wish to get it without the exertion and self-denial by which it
has been achieved. They want the chestnuts of success, but
they have no notion of burning their fingers at the fire of exer-
tion.
The problem with the workman or workwoman of to-day
seems very largely to be how to render the least possible ser-
vice and get the greatest possible pay.
1887.] of Remv/nerating Labor. 846
I saw not long ago three men take hold of a bench of some
weight to move it. It did not stir. They looked at each
other. It was too much. They laughed. "Did ye lift?"
says one. " Not a hap'orth," says the other. " Nayther did
I," says the third. " Now, let's lift," says one. So they lifted
and the bench was moved. This is modem labor. On the
other hand I look back to the early days of manufacturing in
New England, and I am old enough to remember before the
times had changed, when our workmen and workwomen were
our native bom population. When the manufacturer, if his
credit was good enough, frequently borrowed his capital from
the man whom he hired as a workman, who preferred his fixed
day's wages to the risks of business, but was very glad that
some one else was willing to take that risk and to give him em-
ployment and interest for his money. When strikes and strik-
ers would have been scouted with contempt, when the work-
man was a man, or a woman* as the case might be, who had his
own plans for the present and the future, who lived in his own
house and knew what to do with his money. He had read in
Poor Bichard's Almanac, " Spend one penny less each day than
thy clear gains," and he saw the point of it. Where are these
men now? They and their sons are the capitalists and
financiers and bankers and merchants and clergymen and pro-
fessors and lawyers and doctors of to-day, and the women are
their wives and mothers. And what had they that the present
generation of laborers lack ? Only three things, and they are
these : Industry, Honesty, Thrift.
FBBDERICK J. KmOSBUBT.
846 Patflriok Henry. [Nov.,
Abticle in.— PATRICK HENRY.
Patrick Henry. By Moses Coit Tyleb. American States-
men Seriea 12mo., pp. 897. Boston and New York :
Honghton, Mifflin & Co.
While the name Patrick Henry is one of the best known
of the names of those who were conspicuous in the epoch of
the birth of the nation, the man Patrick Henry is one of the
leafit known. No boy who gets a fair common school educa-
tion fails to become acquainted with the speech which carries
this bright glory from generation to generation, and every
one keeps through life the conviction that his place is in the
front rank of our patriots and orators. How many learn any-
thing more o^ him, even so much as the salient facts that he
was the author of the Virginia resolutions of 1765 which first
embodied in authoritative expression the under-current of popu-
lar sentiment in the colonies regarding the motive of the Stamp
Act ; that he was six times chosen Oovemor of Virginia ; that he
was a lawyer of such standing that he was offered by Wash-
ington the place of Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of
the United States ; that the same discriminating judge of men
earnestly besought him to accept the position of Secretary of
State in his cabinet; that President John Adams appointed
him one of the three Envoys Extraordinary and Ministers Pleni-
potentiary to the French Republic " with full powers to discuss
and settle, by a treaty, all controversies between the United
States and France," at a critical juncture when wisdom and dis-
cretion of the highest order were requisite % Besides those who
for some reason have made a special study of the events of the
time in which he lived, very few, we venture to think, of the
vast number of admirers of Patrick Henry's great speech can
tell so much of his career. And the number is still fewer of
those who can give any full account of the course and incidents
of his life, the quality of his genius and the traits of his char-
acter.
1887.] Patrick Hmry. 347
The information of most Americans on this subject is sum-
med up in the knowledge, scant in its scope, but inefiaceably
impressed, that he was an eloquent patriot of Virginia who
made one tremendous incendiary speech in behalf of armed
resistance to Great Britain's aggressions on the rights of the
colonies. The man who exclaimed: ^^ I know not what course
others may take, but as for me, give me liberty or give me
death 1" has a place in the admiration of all youth quite as
high as that of him who wrote " We hold these truths to be
self-evident that all men are created equal, that they are en-
dowed by their Greater with certain unalienable Bights, that
among these are life. Liberty, and the pursuit of Happines&"
It is not difficult to account for the prevalent lack of infor-
mation concerning Patrick Henry. In the first place the theatre
of his action was the State of Virginia. He was a member of
the first Oontinental Oongress in 1774, and of the second in
1776 ; but almost immediately after the adjournment of the
latter he was appointed by the Virginia Convention Com-
mander-in-Chief of the military forces of the fetate, and on
the 29th of June, 1776, six days before the signing of the Dec-
laration of Independence, he was chosen the first Oovernor of
Virginia, in which office he served three years. At the end of
that period he was again elected to the Congress, but declined
the duty, and afterwards could never be induced to engage in the
public service away from Virginia. Thus it happened that he
had but brief part in the great a£Eairs which made the conti-
nental congress illustrious, nor ever had an office in the national
service, although he might have had the highest in either the
legislative or judicial department, and a place near the highest
in the executive department. His fame therefore obtains no
conspicuousness or extension on account of a pedestal of high
office. That it extended during his life beyond the confines
of the commonwealth in which he was born is due solely
to the power and brilliancy of a genius that attracted attention
from afar. In many respects his position and circumstances
were analogous to those of the men who were Governors of
States during the war of the rebellion, several of whom per-
formed their part in a manner demonstrating their posses-
sion of the highest qualities of statesmanship, and an ardor of
848 Patrick Hmry. [Nov.,
devotion to the common caose not inferior to that shown on
any broader field of national affairs. The ^^ war governors''
have been almost a distinct order among onr public men ever
since. Most of them have had under the national government
careers of honorable service ; but John A. Andrew, in respect
of the limitations of his public service, and its quality also,
resembles the eloquent Virginian of the earlier crisis of Amer-
ican patriotism.
Furthermore, it has been the misfortune of Patrick Henry
that he has not, until now, been presented to the apprehension
of the generations succeeding his own in a clear light. He
was himself singularly indifferent regarding his fame, so far as
it depended upon the painstaking care public men often take
to preserve and transmit to those who come after them the
material for a just understanding of their acts. He seems to
have been one of those who are content to do their work from
day to day without taking thought of the duty of perpetuating
by their own care a true record of their part in affairs. His am-
bition does not appear to have been affected with distrust or
jealousy. He shows no talent for insidious plotting in his own
behalf, no habit of detraction. He died when Jefferson was in
the mid course of his honors, and if he had any suspicion of that
great man's industry in backbiting, of which there is now a sorry
accumulation of evidence, doubtless he regarded it with defiant
contempt, trusting in the friends who appreciated and loved him
to save his memory from harm. Conscious — he must have been
conscious — of his extraordinary power and success in oratory,
there is no evidence of an effort on his part to preserve any
more enduring record of his triumphs than is furnished by the
meagre journals of assemblies of which he was a member, and
the reports of entranced listeners. And so it happens that of
the speeches of the most Demosthenic of American orators
there is extant scarcely a fragment, perhaps not a line, which
he wrote down either before or after their delivery.
One result of his indifference has been that all biographical
attempts, until Professor Tyler undertook the task, have been
pervaded by an uncertain and shadowy quality which left the
reader much in doubt whether they were more akin to history
or to myth. Mr. Wirts' Life of Henry had the advantages
1887.] Patrick Hmry. 849
and the difladvantages of being written, while many who were
his active contemporaries in public life were still alive to
give whatever information their recollection or their interest
might prompt There can be no question of Mr. Wirt's dili-
gence or of his serious purpose to do justice, — no more ques-
tion of these, than of the obvious fine writing with which in the
paucity of definite and trustworthy information, parts of
the work are padded out. How grossly he was misled in some
cases, misled to the prejudice of his hero as well as of the
truth, misled by those who ought to have known better and
upon whose report he was justified in relying. Professor Tyler
shows by indubitable proofs ; but not in any wanton disparage-
ment of Mr. Wirt's work, of which he says : "Anyone who
will take the trouble to ascertain the enormous disadvantages
under which Mr. Wirt wrote, and which, as we now know,
gave him great discouragement, will be inclined to applaud him
for making so good a book, rather than to blame him for not
making a better one." Yet this was the first and the last
authority in literature entitled to serious consideration as an
account of Patrick Henry's character and career which his
countrymen have had hitherto; and it was written seventy
years ago. KecoUecting what has been done in the interval
for the fame of Henry's great contemporaries, for Washing-
ton, Jefferson, and Madison, for John Adams and Samuel
Adams, not to mention others, it is not strange that the
popular notions regarding him who was their worthy compeer,
have become somewhat vague and dim.
If there has been long waiting for a just record, it is a com-
pensating satisfaction to know that at last the work has been
done in a fit and adequate manner. Professor Tyler has ex-
plored with patient industry, the accessible sources of knowl-
edge. Not only has he searched the mass of published matter
relating to the epoch of the revolution, but he has been gener-
ously assisted by the possessors of yet unprinted material con-
cerning those times, and especially by the descendants of Pat-
rick Henry. The information he has thus gathered is more than
merely additional to what was known before. It reveals new
conditions and features, confirms some opinions that were only
conjectures and overturns judgments that were believed to
850 Patriek Hewry. [Nov.^
be founded on ample evidence. One closes the book with
assurance that now he knows what sort of a man Patrick Heniy
wafl, and what is better, with assurance that whatever mysteiy
or errors regarding him may have existed hitherto, he appears
not inferior or weaker, but worthier and more heroic in the
clearer light. The fuller truth brings no mortification for bia
admirers.
One just method of measuring great men is by what they
actually achieve, not for themselves in the way of place or
honors, but for their country and mankind, by wisdom and
weight of influence. Let this test be applied to Patrick Henry's
statesmanship.
In May, 1765, he was chosen a member of the House of Bur-
gesses,— as the colonial legislative body of Virginia was called,.
— for the county of Louisa, to fill a vacancy. When he took
his seat is not known. The first mention of his presence in the
journal of the body is on the 20th of May. He had been in Wil-
liamsburg, then the capital, but twice previously, once five yeara
before when he went .to be examined for admission to the bar^
and once earlier in the same session to argue an election case.
He was a country lawyer with only a local practice, and
could have known personally but few of his associates. It
was in this same month that a copy of the Stamp Act waa
received in Virginia, and on the 29th of May, which was the
29th anniversary of his birthday, the House of Burgesses went
into committee of the whole to consider what must be done.
Whether the accustomed leaders of the body, many of them
veterans and used to undisputed sway, had any definite pur-
pose or plan does not appear. But as soon as the house was in
committee this rustic novice in statecraft, without having con-
sulted them, rose and offered a series of resolutions which he
had written on the blank leaf of a law book, resolutions so
defiant and uncompromising that their character, even more
than the audacity of their author in presuming to offer them,
shocked the sense of propriety of the group who expected to
formulate and direct the action to be taken. Upon these reso-
lutions there was a terrific debate protracted through two days,
characterized, in the language of Jefferson, who listened in the
lobby, by "torrents of sublime eloquence from Mr. Henry,"
1887.] Patrick Henry. 351
and in which nearly every one of the veteran leaders of public
opinion in Virginia opposed the new member with all their
power and all tJieir art The result was the passage of five of
the resolutions. On the afternoon of that day Mr. Henry
mounted his horse and started for home. On the next day the
old leaders reasserted their influence sufficiently to rescind
one of the resolutions regarded as most dangerous; but the
report of their passage was already on its way to the other col-
onies. These were the famous Virginia Resolutions, which
greatly influenced the course of all the other colonies with
reference to the Stamp Act
From that date to the day of his death Patrick Henry, when-
ever he chose to do it, exercised a stronger influence in Vir-
ginia than any other citizen, and the occasions were rare when
he did not bear down all opposition, no matter by what com-
bination it was supported ; nor was he other than first in his
own party in any contest. There was scarcely an important
conference had, or action taken, by the patriots of Virginia,
from the time when he burst upon their astonished apprehen-
sion as a natural leader of men, in which he did not have a
leading part. His counsel in deliberation about what ought
to be done was not less highly esteemed than his advocacy of
what had been agreed upon. In 1774 George Mason, who was
a participant in the anxious conferences of the patriots at the
time when the House of Burgesses was dissolved by the royal
governor, wrote in a letter to Martin Cockbum : " He is by
far the most powerful speaker I ever heard. . . . But his elo-
quence is the smallest part of his merit. He is, in my opinion,
the first man upon this continent, as well in abilities as in
public virtues."
The notion has obtained that in the continental congresses of
which he was a member he did not figure as a man of capacity
except in debate. This is due to misrepresentations of his
conduct and standing by Mr. Wirt in his book, and Mr. Wirt's
information was obtained directly from JeflEerson. But JeflEer-
son's opinion was not that of John Adams, who in a letter to
Jefferson, written long after the occasion, said that ^^ in the con-
gress of 1774 there was not one member except Patrick Henry
who appeared . . . sensible of the precipice, or rather the pin-
352 Patrick Henry. [Nov.,
nacle, on which we stood, and had candor and courage enough to
acknowledge it." The testimony of others and the jonmals of
the body make it plain that Jefferson did less than justice to
Henry in this particular. The list of important committees on
which he served in either congress supplies convincing evidence
that his associates regarded him as an eminently wise and prac-
tical man of affairs upon whom the severest drudgery of legisla-
tive business could safely be imposed. It always has been the
the case, and probably it always will be the case, that men who
have not the gift of eloquence are apt to comfort themselves with
a notion that in other respects they are superior to the orator.
Undoubtedly there are men whose only conspicuous usefulness
is that of rhetorical declamation, as there are men whose use-
fulness is most conspicuous in closet councils, or in writing
novels, or in making money, or in posing in drawing rooms ;
but some are intrusted with more than one talent, and know
how to use all they have with advantage and honor. That
Henry was merely an inspired rhetorician is a notion that may
be consigned to the limbo where repose the notions that Crom-
well was merely an ambitious hypocrite, and Washington a
mediocre general and statesman who accompUshed slowly and
weakly things that were more honorable than difficult.
It was in the interval between the first and second congresses
that Henry made his famous speech in support of his own
resolutions for arming the Virginia militia. The second
revolutionary convention of Virginia met on the 20th of
March, 1776, and on the 23d Patrick Henry introduced the
resolutions. They encountered a determined opposition, for
what reason it has never been certainly discovered. The pre-
tence that they were considered premature, when other colonies
had already taken a similar course, and the congress had almost
explicitly recommended it, does not seem adequata In view
of all the circumstances. Professor Tyler's inference, from an
analysis of the situation, that the motive of the opposition was
a combination of hostility on the part of older politicians to
Henry's assumed leadership, and alarm at his manifest purpose
to place Virginia in the attitude of abjuring all hope of a
peaceful solution of existing difficulties, is not unreason-
able. What he may have said when he brought forward the
1887.] Pat/rich Emry. 368
resolutions is not known. The memorable speech was made
in reply to those who opposed them, a formidable number, and
decided their fate. Patrick Henry was chairman of the com-
mittee appointed in accordance with the resolutions to prepare
a plan for organizing the militia, and among his associates were
George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, and Bichard Henry
Lee. They reported on the following day, the 24th, and their
report was adopted on the 25th. On the 27th the Convention
adjourned. The next we hear of the orator he is Captain
Henry, marching at the head of a large body of the Virginia
militia to demand from Governor Dunmore the restitution
of a quantity of powder that had been taken away from a
colonial storehouse by him. The powder was not returned, but
the Governor made haste to pay Captain Henry a satisfactory
price for it This affair happened not long after the Lexington
affair in Massachusetts, and, although bloodless, it served the
same purpose of precluding hope of a peaceable settlement
with the mother country.
Thus it is clear that from the beginning Patrick Henry was
a man of deeds, an originator of policies, an organizer of
designs, a leader in action, a practical statesman, not merely an
advocate and debater. What Jefferson said to Webster fifty
years afterward : " After all, it must be allowed that he was
our leader in the measures of the revolution in Virginia, and
in that respect more is due to him than to any other person.
He left us all behind," is much juster than the information he
furnished to Mr. Wirt. It was natural that such a leader
should be chosen the first Governor of Virginia under the con-
stitution he had an important part in framing. This office he
held by successive elections for three years, the first three years
of the war, and as long as the constitution permitted it to be
held by one person without an interval. There is abundant
testimony to his efficiency as an executive and administrative
officer, not the least important being the constant confidence
and reliance of Washington; but a specific consideration of
this period must be omitted hera
One action of his, coming within the scope of the test now
being applied, should be brought into view if many others are
passed by. This is his opposition to the adoption of the con-
864 Patrick Henry. [Nov.,
fitdtntion of the UDited States, afl framed by the convention of
1787. It is unneceesary to discass his motives. There can be
no question that they were patriotic and honorable. Professor
Tyler's consideration of this matter is candid and satisfying.
He feared, as many others then feared, that the scope of pow-
ers lodged by that instrument in the national authority in-
volved peril to liberty and to the rights of the people because,
in the first place, there was no definite and express enunciation
and reservation of rights, and, in the second place, recent
notorious incidents indicated a disposition on the part of the
Northern and more powerful section to yield to a foreign power
control of the navigation of the Mississippi Biver, which was
considered an oppressive and unjustifiable sacrifice of vital in-
terests of the Southern people. Upon Patrick Henry devolved
the leadership of the opposition in the convention. The debate
lasted twenty-three days, and on each of eighteen days Henry
made at least one speech, and on some days two and threa At
the organization of the convention the friends of the constitu-
tion counted on a majority of 50 votes in a total of 170. At the
end of the debate the constitution was adopted by a ma-
jority of but 10 votes, and this result was obtained only in
connection with an express assertion of the understanding of
Virginia that the State retained every power not expressly
granted, and the passage of a resolution promising to recom-
mend amendments to Congress. As soon as this action was
accomplished Henry organized a campaign to elect members
of Congress committed to favor a revision of the instrument.
It must suffice to say that to the agitation which he prosecuted
in Virginia and stimulated throughout the union is probably
due the incorporation in the constitution of the ten amend-
ments sometimes called " the constitution of 1789." The ex-
perience of a century has vindicated the wisdom of these ex-
press affirmations of State and individual rights^ and likewise
the sagacious statesmanship of those who insisted that such
guarantees were essential for the public safety.
Another proper test of the greatness of a public man and
the substantial quality of his infiuence is a consideration of the
opposition he encounters. He who succeeds by the default or
incapacity of opposition establishes no firm title to the possession
1887.] Patrioh Hewry. 856
of transcendent power. Patrick Henry's triumphs were the
rewards of conqnering in hard battle opponents capable of con-
tending on equal terms with the ablest in the land. There
was no dearth of great men in Virginia when he maintained
among them a confessed supremacy. In the House of Bur-
^gesses upon which he precipitated the resolutions on the Stamp
Act, were Landon Carter, Bichard Henry Lee, George Wythe,
Edmund Pendleton, Benjamin Harrison, Bichard Bland, ajid
Peyton Bandolph, the latter the King's attorney-general in the
eolony. Three of these names appear among the signatures to
the Declaration of Independence, and all were at the earlier
date distinguished and experienced in public life. Not one of
them was privy to Henry's intention, and so far as is known
none of them supported, while most, if not all, were actively
hostile to, the resolutions when presented. George Johnson,
member for Fairfax, alone is mentioned by Jefferson as Henry's
supporter in the debate.
When, in the second Virginia convention, he introduced his
resolutions looking to an immediate arming of the militia, and
was met with determined opposition by able leaders of opin-
ion, he was not the obscure country Jawyer with whom they
contended ten years previous. He was as well known, and
had as secure a place in public esteem as any among them, but
nevertheless they challenged his leadership and were over-
thrown in a battle which in parliamentary annals was as brilliant
and decisive as Austerlitz in the annals of war.
And when he essayed to prevent the ratification by Virginia
of the constitution of '87, he encountered tremendous odds.
James Madison, whose solid judgment and luminous reasoning
made him formidable in any assembly, with the fresh distinc-
tion of his ascendant influence in the congress of sages by
whom the constitution was framed, was pitted against him,
and Madison was powerfully aided by the brilliant John Mar-
49hall, afterwards the great Chief Justice. Almost every emi-
nently able man in Virginia, Washington and Jefferson ex-
cepted, was in the convention, and most of them ranged on
Madison's side. Jefferson, who sympathized in large degree with
Henry's convictions, but, notwithstanding, favored adoption
as a present policy, was in France. Washington, although
366 Patrick Henry. [Nov.,
not a member of the convention, exerted his great infiaence
zealously and diligently in behalf of ratification. Against this
array of forces Henry, barely more than a third of the conven-
tion siding with him at the beginning, made his fight How
nearly alone he made it, is shown by the fact that in the official
report of the debate his speeches occupy nearly a quarter of all
the space. He did not succeed in preventing adoption, but he
effected that the victory — the fortunate victory — of the constitu-
tion was by a narrow margin, and so conditioned as to secure
subsequently the essential modifications he desired to secure in
advance. So far as the struggle affords a criterion of the
relative power of the contestants, the palm must be awarded
to Patrick Henry. George Ticknor Curtis, in his " History of
the Origin, Formation and Adoption of the Constitution of the
United States," says : ^^ There has been, I am aware, a modem
scepticism concerning Patrick Henry's abilities, but I cannot
share it. . . . The manner in which he carried on the opposi-
tion to the constitution in the convention of Virginia, for
nearly a whole month, shows that he possessed other powers
besides those of great natural eloquence."
Henry's hostility to the Constitution was in no factious
temper, nor did it arise from essential hostility to the idea of
Union. He believed in a Union and desired it; but it was
not in his nature to welcome a form of Union which seemed to
leave undefined and unsecured the rights, in vindication of
which so much had been ventured and endured. Probably no
debate over the Constitution which has since been had, ex-
ceeded in intensity of feeling and differences of profound con-
viction that of the Virginia Convention over its adoption.
The culmination of the great controversy concerning slavery
in the election of Abraham Lincoln hardly could have seemed
more disastrous to the defeated party than did the adoption of
the Constitution to Henry and his party. But with what a
different spirit from that of the Southern leaders in 1860 he
fronted the grievous fact! Just before the vote was taken
when the party of victory were trembling lest, through the
desperation of this mighty tribune, their triumph might bring
the woe of a civil war as its consequence, he spoke magnani-
mous and majestic words : ^' I beg pardon of this house for
1887.] Pa(/nok Henry. 357
having taken ap more time than came to my share, and I thank
them for the patient and. polite attention with which I have
been heard. If I shall be in the minority, I shall have those
painful sensations which arise from a conviction of being over-
powered in a good cause. Yet I will be a peaceable citizen.
My head, my hand, and my heart shall be at liberty to retrieve
the loss of liberty, and remove the defects of that system in a
constitutional way. I wish not to go to violence, but will wait
with hopes that the spirit which predominated in the revo-
lution is not yet gone, nor the cause of those who are attached to
the revolution yet lost. I shall therefore patiently wait in ex-
pectation of seeing that government changed so as to be com-
patible with the safety, liberty, and happiness of the people."
iTor should it be forgotten that after the adoption of the
amendments of '89, he ceased utterly from any designs of hos-
tility and from disparagementa From his retreat in Virginia
he watched with dignified and hopeful interest, and with con-
stantly growing confidence, the operation and development of
the new government under Washington's guiding hand. When
Jefferson waa covertly preparing and openly encouraging em-
barrassments that imperiled success, and when, afterwards, he
was secretly intriguing in behalf of that destructive interpre-
tation of the Constitution embodied in the Virginia and Ken-
tucky resolutions of 1798, sowing the seeds of frightful strife,
dragon's teeth which ultimately sprang up armed men, Patrick
Henry was giving loyal support to the administration and the
Union in unwavering fidelity to his expressed intention. To
him Washington earnestly appealed, representing the necessity,
in the condition of public affairs, that he should re-enter public
life in order to withstand and thwart the machination of the
Jeffersonian party. " Your weight of character and influence
in the house of representatives," wrote Washington, referring
to the Virginia legislature, '* would be a bulwark against such
dangerous sentiments as are delivered there at present" It
was in the same letter, and referring to the same conduct, that
Washington wrote that expression of profound prescience, the
full significance of which we have since profoundly learned :
'^ When measures are systematically and pertinaciously pursued,
which must eventually dissolve the (Jnion or produce coercion."
VOL. XL 26
358 Pa^riok Henry. [Nov.,
In this fecundation and laying of the baneful egg of secession,
Henry had no share. On the contrary, in the last speech of his
life, made in response to Washington's impressive appeal, and
offering himself, an old man worn and suffering, as one willing to
yield his remnant of life to his country's service, he maintained
^'that the State had quitted the sphere in which she had been
placed by the Constitution, and, in daring to pronounce upon
the validity of federal laws had gone out of her jurisdiction in
a manner not warranted by any authority, and in the highest
degree alarming to every considerate man ; that such opposi-
tion on the part of Virginia to the acts of the general govern-
ment must beget their enforcement by military power, and this
would probably produce civil war."
In considering whether Patrick Henry possessed the quali-
ties which place him in the rank of statesmen or was only an
eloquent orator on the themes of statesmanship, it deserves
to be remarked that he made little use of his extraordinary
power of speech, except in the argument of cases at law
or the grander argument of the cause of liberty, indepen*
dence and public rights. He possessed and exercised his gift
in strict subservience to his duties, something that the mere
orator is hardly capable of doing. There is not in the en-
tire record of his life, as known to us, an incident which
suggests that he ever made a speech for display of his
power, or on any topic not an immediate urgent question
of serious consequence, in which there were other matters at
stake than his own glory or advantage. He had no need to
cultivate what is called stump-speaking, for he seems never to
have desired any position as much as it was desired that he
would accept it, unless his temporary military ambition may
be considered an exception. "Whoever was against him, the
great body of the people of Virginia always were his admirers
and never weary of showing their devotion. When he was
not engaged in public duty or in the practice of his profession,
he lived at a distance from the centers of public opinion and
activity, remaining in remote seclusion for years together, cul-
tivating his farm and enjoying the quiet pleasures of domestic
life with serene contentment, and without sign of longing for
the arenas of conflict, where he never appeared but to be
1887.] Patrick Henry.
recognized as a leader and to augment his glory. Merely to
court fame and feed the passion of ambition, he showed no
more desire for opportunities to exercise his power over assem-
blies than Washington showed to exercise his talent for war.
When the exigent call of duty had been satisfied, and the victory
won, Freedom's sword of deliverance and Freedom's voice of
thunder rested and rejoiced.
Of many phases of Patrick Henry's life and work, nothing
is here said. No attempt is made to give a comprehensive
view of the man, but simply to suggest, while calling attention
to this fresh and valuable biography, some of his substantial
and entirely valid, but almost forgotten, claims to be regarded
and honored as a sound, sagacious, and accomplished statesman,
endowed with extraordinary constructive and executive talents,
which were exercised in a way that has made his permanent
mark upon the organic fabric of our institutions, as well as an
orator of marvelous power over the passions and sentiments of
men. It should not be presumed from the one sidedness of
this presentation of a many-sided man that Professor Tyler's
work has a similar quality. His method is large and just ;
his narrative is strong, full, engaging, and felicitous. It was a
wanted service to the truth of history which he undertook,
and he has produced an adequate, admirable picture, in which
all the features of his subject are revealed with that combina-
tion of sincerity, appreciation and skill which makes a portrait
to be itself the satisfying evidence of its fidelity.
Walter Allkn.
860 English Bible cmd College Ourrieulum^ [Nov.,
UNIVERSITY TOPICS.
THE ENGLISH BIBLE AND THE COLLEGE
CURBICTTLUM.
It is the aim of the College to give a liberal edncation. A lib-
eral education implies a disciplined mind — a mind energetic in its
varied activity, freed from all prepossessions having no basis in
reason, hospitable towards all trath, and largely intelligent con-
cerning the life of mankind and the order of nature. To secure
such education the college provides courses of study in several
literatures, in mathematics, philosophy, history, politics, econom-
ics and in the different branches of natural science. That these
studies are adapted to the end sought is evident from their nature
and from experience.
The English Bible is the supreme book of the English speaking
world, the most potent formative factor of modem civilization
having literary form, and the inspiration of that intellectual life
which creates and patronizes colleges. It is held in high esteem
in all institutions of learning and in great degree moulds the
philosophy taught in them, yet strange to say, is in very few of
them taken up and studied — really studied — as are Plato, Cicero,
and Horace. Doubtless the revelation it contains has gained for it
its preeminence, and reverence for that has obscured the fact that
this book, taken all in all, is the greatest intellectual production
of all ages, and as such, is fitted to render high service in the lib-
eral training of the human mind. Sir William Jones, the master
of twenty-four languages and familiar with all the great litera-
tures, was not an enthusiast, when he wrote, ^'Theological in-
quiries form no part of my present subject ; but I cannot refrain
from adding, that the collection of tracts which we call from their
excellence the Scriptures, contain — ^independently of their divine
origin — more true sublimity, more exquisite beauty, purer moral-
ity, more important history, and finer strains, both of poetry and
1887.] English Bible cmd College Cki/rrioulum. 361
eloqaeDce, than oonld be collected within the same compass, from
all other books that have ever been composed in any age or any
idiom." If this be half true, the Bible has adaptations unto intel-
lectual training, the same in kind as the major part of the pre-
scribed course of college study, mathematics and natural sciences
aside, and has them in an extraordinary degree. It is accordingly
the purpose of this article to indicate some of these adaptations and
to show that the English Bible should be, by reason of them ac-
corded a place in the curriculum of every institution of liberal
learning.
In deference to a general sentiment, it may be well to premise,
that the chief use of the Bible is to develop and foster, through
the revelation which it contains, the religious life of men. But
this is not a good reason why its secondary and very important
uses should be set aside. It is a mistaken reverence which fears
thskt the glory of the revelation will be obscured by a larger
knowledge of the vehicle conveying it. Thorough, scholarly, ex-
haustive study of the Bible can only tend to confirm its truth and
exalt its authority. There is no greater error than that '' ignor-
ance is the mother of devotion."
L If a liberal education implies, as above suggested, a large intel-
ligence, the college should give its students an intelligent concep-
tion of what the Bible is, or a conception worthy of an educated
man. This involves intimate acquaintance with its contents, a
knowledge of the origin and aim of the different books, and a ra-
tional theory of the scope and significance of the whole. In fact,
the average graduate is without accurate and detailed knowledge
of the contents of the Bible and has only a boy's notion of the
nature of it. He has studied it little since he lefl the Sunday
school at fifteen. He has advanced intellectually in all directions
more than in this. College students are a picked company, com-
ing from the best families and Sunday schools in the land, yet
though always familiar with the Bible, it is the one thing on
which they have expended no intellectual energy, and of which
their knowledge is only an impenetrable haze. A professor of
English Literature in one of our largest colleges tells of flooring
ten members of the junior class in succession, upon a line of Dryden
in which allusion was made to the touching words of Isaac, blind,
perplexed, troubled and appealing for honest dealing, " the voice
is Jacob's voice, but the hands are the hands of Esau." Not one
of them knew of the incident. This ignorance is constantly dis-
862 JSngUah Bible a/nd College Curruyulvm. [Nov.,
played in classes of English Literature all over the land. The
humiliating facts concerning stadents entering theological semi-
naries— and they are the more intelligent presumably — are too
familiar to be repeated here.
As to the stmcture and nature of the Bible, there is even less
known. A lawyer of good standing, a graduate, a leading mem-
ber of a Christian church, said nothing annoyed him more than
to have his children come home with passages of old testament
narrative and history for their Sunday school lessons. Such a re-
mark is possible only from dense ignorance of the relations of the
Old Testament to the New. Another lawyer tells how his confi-
dence in the Bible was well nigh destroyed, when told, years after
graduation, that the authors of the different books had their
special aims, and that the books retain their human characteristics.
To him, as to many, inspiration has made mere automata of the
writers, and the book was a fetich. For want of an intellectual
view of the Bible, he came near losing his Bible altogether. These
cases are typical of a large number. The fitness of things de-
mands that there be an end of such ignorance. The community
has rights worthy of respect. The Bible is held in too high
esteem and society has in it too important a stake, to tolerate its
disparagement by the ignorant and childish notions of men, who be-
cause they are supposed to be educated, have influence. Decency
demands that intellectual men have an intellectual view of the
Bible, and that college graduates have knowledge worthy of a
college. ' Many come to feel this keenly. A ^prominent banker
says, that when twenty-five years after graduation, he discovered
what the Bible really is, he felt like denouncing his alma mater
for neglect, and recommending the establishment of a qhair of the
English Bible, even if the Latin professorship should have to be
abolished. This is only saying that it is more important that the
college give young men a just view of the Bible than of the ora-
tions of Cicero.
U. The Bible is adapted to the work of college training be-
cause it contains history of unsurpassed value. The study of
history, the study of events in their causal order, especially those
events that have most largely contributed to human progress, ia
admitted to be essential to a liberal education. By this standard
the Bible justly claims a leading place. Comparison of ancient
literature shows that this book contains the traditions and records
of the rise and expansion of the human race in their purest and
1887.] English Bible and CoUege Curriculum. 368
most rational form. After these we find the story of the most
unique, and in some respects, the most remarkable nation of all
ages. The Greek stands for philosophy, the Roman for law, and
the Jew for religion. Is not the last entitled to equal consideration
with the others ? The value of the supremacy of moral ideas in
the national life is the lesson of Jewish history. Can anything
be more vital to men who are to have a part in shaping the social
order of our time than intimate acquaintance with such a his-
tory ? The rise and growth, the decline and dispersion of the
nation, the more influential causes, the striking experiences, the
great crises, the distinguished men aud their services, these offer
a rich mine for inquiry and are a store of wisdom for all times.
The puerile notion that this history because primitive, is infantile,
should be dissipated.
Bible history is especially important because it relates to
the introduction of ChriBtianity. The claims of Christianity
upon men are not here under discussion, but it is here as an his-
toric force, and how it got into the world and gained such ascend-
ency is a question of deep intellectual interest It can be
answered only by learning how a nation was developed appar-
ently for the purpose of introducing the new religion, and with a
strange consciousness of that purpose. From this point ot view,
the people becomes one of intense and romantic interest, and of
universal importance. Of equal interest is the process of estab-
lishing the institutions in which the great religion incorporated
itself.
All this is of commanding importance because the movement
inaugurating Christianity was world-wide. The invasion of the
Roman empire by the northern barbarians, the founding of colo-
nies on the shores of this continent, were only national in their
immediate scope. What shall be said of a movement which starts
and goes forward with the astounding purpose, openly avowed,
to extend over and change the face of the whole world ? Is any
history more important for the educated man ?
Further, it has claims because it is the key to all modern his-
tory. The historical student looks into the causes of things. No
one can account for the world as it is without a study of this one
great book. It has created Christendom out of barbarians.
The nations that subjugated Rome were conquered by this book.
It was a formative force of modern national life. It was the vic-
tor in the Lutheran reformation. It made its way through the
364 English Bible and CoUege Ourrieulum. [Nov.,
EDglish revolation to supremacy in the Anglo-Saxon world. It is
still reaching out to shape the rest of the nations. How can an
educated man afford to be ignorant of it ?
It is not too much to ask that an educated man shall have a
just view of the nature of Christianity. Religion is a great fact
in human life and history. There are many religions in the
world and some adequate knowledge of them, and of their com-
parative value, belongs to an intelligent man. Christianity, as
the foremost of them, demands the chief attention. It can be
understood only when studied in its historical development and
relations. In this lies another reason for the investigation of this
history. Many seem to think Christianity to be a system of dog-
mas, others that it is a body of precepts. In truth a Person is
waited for and appears, unfolding in word and deed his character
and aims, until his helpful relations to men are fully set forth in
living and wonderful facts. This done a new life is in the world
and men are uplifted with new hopes and aims. So Christianity
is an historic power to bring men into alliance with God. Only
in its concrete relations and working will men see clearly its
nature — see that while other religions are a law, this is a redemp-
tion. It is a weighty reason for the study of the history of the
Bible, that by it alone can educated men get a clear insight
into the nature of Christianity or an adequate view of its power.
As a matter of training, what history, and in what direction can
any history, be pursued more intellectually broadening and
enriching than this ?
IIL The Bible has important relations to the prescribed studies
of the college course in philosophy, ethics, and political science.
Though it does not deal abstractly with principles, it has a phi-
losophy of surpassing dignity, which no student can wisely ignore.
At bottom, the fundamental questions of philosophy and theology
are the same. The subject matter of both is God, man and the
universe in their relations. According to Scripture, God is per-
sonal, spintual, benevolent; in relation to the world, creator, right-
eous and supreme ruler; man is also spiritual and immortal,
related to God in unavoidable intimacy, accountable to him and
redeemable from sin unto a blessed divine fellowship; the uni-
verse is a realm for the beneficent activities and blessed experi-
ences of spiritual beings. These simple and majestic answers to
philosophical inquiries are brought forth in the Bible in the histor-
ical relations of living persons, in such a way as to make for
1887.] EnglUh Bible cmd College Cy/rrioyJAJf/in. 366
tbem a cogent argument. A soand philosophy finds in a studied
Bible a powerful ally.
The ethics of the Scriptures are such that the instructor in
moral science can not pass them by. Where can be found such
lofty moral ideals ? There are no subtle discussions but the pro-
found inquiry into the nature of virtue seems to be satisfied in the
comprehensive law, ''Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all
thy heart and thy neighbor as thyself.'' In the various applica-
tions of this principle appears the whole round of human duty.
For a clear statement of duties can anything compare with the
ten commandments, the book of Proverbs, and the Sermon on the
Mount ? Tet the distinguishing feature of Biblical ethics is the
luminous interpretation put upon doctrine and precept in the life
and death of Jesus Christ. The law of love is not left to private
construction but to the example of the cross, " That ye love one
another as I have loved you." In degree of disinterestedness,
this goes far beyond the common understanding of the golden
rule. The scope too of the love required is so widened as to in-
clude enemies as well as friends. The teachings of Jesus enforced
by his life are unique, in that he puts the emphasis so weightily
upon duty to Gk)d, sets up a new standard of greatness, even
childlikenesB of character, and exalts the virtues concerned in
enduring evil, rather than those of a more forceful nature which,
like bravery, easily ally themselves with personal pride. It would
seem that the study of ethics required for a liberal training would be
incomplete without a clear knowledge of thene teachings. They
are recognized more or less in most systems of college instruction,
but it may be doubted whether they can be mastered adequately
except by their study in concrete form in the Bible itself.
The science of government is one of the subjects of college
instruction. In its pursuit no one can well ignore the institutions
of Moses. No man ever did for his people so varied, comprehen-
sive and lasting a work as did he. He was their great deliverer
and leader, their prophet and law-giver. The commonwealth
which he founded endured nearly a thousand years. Compar-
atively limited in territory and population, it held its own against
the mighty empires in the East and South with amazing spirit
and success. No nation ever evinced a more passionate patriot-
ism or made more heroic sacrifices for their country. Moses adopted
political principles of universal application, but made such adap-
tations to the peculiar conditions of his own people as secured
366 Miglish Bible and College Ourricuhmi, [Nov.^
unity of spirit and fostered an intelligent interest in the public
welfare. Though the form of government changedy generally the
popular voice found ready expression and regard, and individual
rights were thoroughly protected. Statesmen have found these
institutions a most valuable study, whatever form of government
they have had to establish or administer. They are best under-
stood from their actual working in Bible history.
IV. The Bible should have a place in the college curriculum
because of its extraordinary quality and influence as a literary
classic. Thus far we have treated the Bible as a source of knowl-
edge. Literature proper embodies not merely knowledge but the
results of it. It expresses, in forms more or less artistic, the
thoughts and sentiments of the human soul in view of its knowl-
edge and experience. It is fitted to awaken sympathy, stimulate
thought, and shape conduct according to its own tenor. The
study of literature is therefore one of the chief means of liberal
training. Here is a reason for the study of Latin and Greek as
well as for the establishment of chairs of English Literature in
our colleges. The study of English Literature puts a young
man into possession of the best thoughts, and into sympathy with
the best tendencies of his time and so brings him into accord
with his generation that he can influence it for good.
There are several reasons why the Bible is of exceptional value
here. Its compositions are written from the highest point of view*
They are an outlook upon the world from the Divine center.
The Divine is always seen mingling in and controlling affairs.
Again, the minds that write are in an exalted state of feeling and
thought. " Holy men spake as they were moved by the Holy
Ghost.*' And again the book is the joint product of the Semitic
and English mind.
That it is of Semitic origin gives it a peculiar claim. The
few may study the Assyrian and Arabic, but the only access of
most men to Semitic literature is in the Bible. And this is not
unimportant. The ignoring of the Eastern nations an d their litera-
tures, which has obtained for centuries, is amazing. Yet it can be
accounted for. After those races failed to gain supremacy in
Europe, they passed away. They were hated and disparaged by
their victorious enemies. To flatter the pride of his own people,
Herodotus gave the Assyrian group of peoples very small stand-
ing place in his history. Greek and Roman alike fostered their
own ignorance of the Semitic. Since the revival of learning in
1887.] English Bible and College Owrri(yulwm. 867
the Middle Ages, universities have been dominated by Greek and
Roman influence, and have transmitted Greek and Roman preju-
dices. Those two peoples among the ancients have monopolized
the word classic. But we are discovering their injustice. Mon-
uments and libraries have been unearthed in the Euphrates valley,
and a literature is coming to light, having especially important
relations to the Bible and of permanent value. Scholars are
turning their eyes eastward with unanimous eagerness and ex-
pectancy.
Now the study of the Bible as a Semitic book has the same
liberalizing influence as does so-called classical study. An Amer-
ican boy inherits certain elementary notions of life, of man, of
society, and government. These peculiar ideas difference him
from the rest of mankind and make him an American. But as such
he is not an ideal man. He needs to be broadened and to take
in more of human nature. When he studies the Greek literature,
he imbibes the Greek conceptions and Greek spirit and is so far
forth a Greek. His mind is carried beyond the limits of his
American horizon, and he is liberalized. When from the Latin
literature the Roman life and spirit are absorbed he is widened
again. He is grown into a larger than the American type. Why
now should not the Semitic literature be resorted to for a similar
extension of the American boy's intellectual territory ? The as-
sumption that the Semitic is inferior must in all candor be denied.
In all that makes literature great no collection of books in the
Greek tongue can be made comparable to the Bible. We have
Sir William Jones as authority for that. The Bible is the choice
literature of a whole group of nations. The Semitic mind is here
in all its distinctive peculiarities and power. The student flnds
here modes of conception and thought, of feeling and expression,
more unlike his own than in the Latin and Greek, and for that
reason more broadly liberalizing. He is led forth into a wholly
new world. The Bible should be studied because it is a Semitic
classia
But turning from this, it should be studied because it is an
English classic. Paradoxical as it may seem in view of what is
above said, the Bible is the most thoroughly English book that
we have. It embodies the characteristics of English life and
thought more completely than any other. This for the reason
that it has moulded English life and thought more than any
other.
868 English Bible amd College Curri<yuJ/am. [Nov.,
In the increasing attention given to the English literatare,
where can better models of any important variety of haman com-
position be found than in the Bible. The stories which so charm
the mind of childhood are worthy of study to ascertain the secret
of their power. Who can tell anything better than the oldest
book in the world tells the story of Joseph ? The chapter recount-
ing the incidents of Isaac's courtship has a fine delicacy, a graphic
dignity, which the author of Miles Standish's courtship never
attained. Its power is worth searching after. There is Judah's
plea for Benjamin ; how eloquent with filial and fraternal tender-
ness. How freely and impressively is narrated the history of
Abraham's jourueyings, and especially the story of his tender
and reverent burial of Sarah. It was Goethe who pronounced the
book of Ruth unequalled among idyllic compositions. For the
forensic mind where are such arguments as in the pleadings
of many of the prophets and in the epistles and discourses of
Paul ? There too, are the parables of our Lord, in their per-
fection of structure and simplicity, in their vividness and pro-
fundity altogether unapproached, illustrating the most effective
methods of appealing to, and enlightening, the human mind«
These may not be imitated, yet the union of profound insight
with simplicity is a mighty protest against metaphysical obscur-
ity and excessive elaboration in discourse. Contrast the conver-
sations of Jesus with those of Socrates, the dialogue of the
PhsBdo with, interview of our Lord with the woman of Samaria.
It is not contrast but similarity one finds between Ahab and
Jezebel on the one hand, and Macbeth and his Lady on the other.
The mourning of Andromache over Hector is a choice passage in
the Iliad ; how much more eloquent with grief the lament of David
over Jonathan. The appeal of Macduff over his murdered family
is not so overwhelming in pathos as the inconsolableness of David
over the fall of his worst enemy, his rebellious son Absalont
Byron has immortal lines upon the desolation of ancient Rome,
** the Niobe of nations," but for sorrowing utterance turn to the
Lamentations of Jeremiah :
" How doth the city sit solitary, that was full of i>eople :
How is she become a widow !
She that was great among the nations, and princess among the prov-
inces,
How is she become tributary !
She weepth sore in the night and &er tears are on her cheeks :"
1887J EngUah Bible and College Ourrionhtm. 369
The loftiest poetry in the world is the poetry of the Bible.
Its general theme is God, His charaoter. His dealings with men in
broad and nnirersal aspects, His distribution of good and evil, and
the various experience of men beneath His redemptive care. A
sense of the Divine and Eternal is in all of it. Hence the deeper
and grander sentiments of human nature are nowhere else so
powerfully portrayed. The triumphant songs of Miriam and
Deborah have a thrilling power not attained by the Marseillaise.
Of Job, a sublime philosophical poem, Carlyle says, 'Hhere is
nothing written I think, in the Bible or out of it, of equal lite-
rary merit." The best hymns of Watts and Wesley are tame
compared with the psalms of David and his successors. The
passion of the prophets is too intense and high for anything but
the most majestic poetry. Such are the third chapter of Hab-
bakuk, the last half of Isaiah, many brief passages in the minor
prophets and the visions of the Apocalypse of John. It is waste
of time to argue that these are as worthy of study and as profit-
able for literary purposes as the poems of Homer and Virgil.
This literature should be studied for its excellent English. The
admirable article by Mr. T. W. Hunt, in the last issue of this peri-
odical, suggests many important points, and may well be read
again upon this branch of the subject. The process by which
our English Bible has been brought, through successive versions
to its present perfection, has gone on parallel with English history
since the eighth century. Our version therefore is not the product
of a single generation, but a growth that has gathered to itself
the riches in forms of speech of many minds, and many genera-
tions of men. In Shakespeare the student finds the language of
the dramatist's time, and that of the Bible, is often commended
as being of the same important era. But it is more, it has the
English of all English time. It is conceded that to know Eng-
lish one should study it in the different periods of its develop-
ment ; but he who studies the language of the Bible is face to
face with the riches of all the periods. In times of the greatest
intellectual activity, scholars have wrought upon the book and
sought to make it intelligible to the common people. The facile
nature of the original tongues, the elevation of the subject mat-
ter, the quality of the men, their practical purpose, have conspired
to give us an English altogether superb. The subject of thought
has compelled gravity and dignity ; the stress of the times has
promoted vigor and intensity ;* the scholarship of the translators
370 English Bible cmd College Ourriculum. [No^.,
has insured parity, while their aim to reach the people has obliged
olearnesB and simplicity. Hence, if a man would know his own
tongue in its best estate, if he would learn to command it in the
best manner, let him give his days and nights to the English
Bible.
Not only for practical advantages must the book be studied,
but for a scientific understanding of the nature and growth of
the language as a whole. It holds a causal relation to the speech
as it is. It has been the most influential factor in bringing the
language to its present state of development. Successive transla-
tions have been the most widely read productions of their time.
They have accustomed the people to good English and led them
to use it. They have done much to secure fixity for the better ele-
ments of the language and to resist downward tendencies. This
indebtedness of the language to the English Bible is the main
point of the article already alluded to. It is suggested here to
show that there can be no thorough study of the English lan-
guage in college or anywhere, unless due account is made of the
Bible as a causative force upon that language.
What is here said of the speech may also be said of the style
of the biblical writings. Different writers have differences of
style, but the same causes have operated to ennoble and perfect
the style of each. Professor Phelps teaches that style should
have the seven qualities of purity, precision, individuality,
energy, perspicuity, elegance and naturalness. In the narratives
and discourses, in the arguments and poetry of the scriptures,
there are few passages in which these qualities may not be found
in good and generally in high degree, and incident to the theme
and the ardor of the writer there is prevalent a fullness and
breadth of style, a loftiness and freedom impossible in other lit-
erature. For the formation of his literary style the student can
consult no book so advantageously as his Bible.
To appreciate English literature in general, to understand its
development, the student needs a familiar acquaintance with the
Bible. Modes of English thought, its tone and feeling, prevul-
ing conceptions of life and duty, of joy and sorrow, of good and
evil, are inspired by the Bible. Biblical fact and expression are
the common possession of writers and readers, of speakers and
their hearers, and so easily become the ground and medium of a
mutual understanding. Bible facts and stories are thus the basis
of metaphors and allusions innumerable. Mr« Hunt quotes Bishop
1887.] English Bible and College Oiuirrwulmn. 871
Wordsworth as finding in Shakespeare '' five hundred and fifty
biblical allusions, and not one of his thirty-seven plays is without
scriptural reference." Like the painters and musical composers of
immortal fame^ the great poets as Milton, Dante, Tasso, Elop-
stock, find their themes in Scripture, while a large part of the
poetry of second yet important rank, finds its inspiration in bibli-
cal truths. Tennyson, Longfellow, Bryant and Whittier can be
understood in their best moods only by the student of the Bible.
In truth, so broad and fundamental is the relation of the Bible
to human life and literature, so potent is it over the minds of
men that the study of it is needed to give basis and unity to all
our study. That which is so widely educational upon the popular
mind must be understood in its various bearings by the educated
man, and that which is so helpful to the general mind will be found
more so to the mind under special training.
The effects to be expected from such study of the Scriptures in
college may be inferred in some measure from single familiar in-
stances. The wonderful speeches which Louis Kossuth delivered
through this country in 1849, in behalf of Hungary, were remark-
able in nothing more than in their English. The secret of the fact
was that when sent to an Austrian prison, he asked for and ob-
tained for his companionship an English Bible and a copy of Shakes-
peare. The most majestic prose to be found among the produc-
tions of American statesmen is in the speeches of Daniel Webster.
It is full of biblical allusion and pervaded by a biblical tone. In
early boyhood he committed large portions of the Bible to heart.
He acquired considerable local fame for reciting them. While he
was a mere lad, farmers would stop their teams on the road to listen
to him by the half hour. In later life, he illustrated the justness of
another lawyer's view, who- accounted for a Bible being found
among his law books, saying, *' I read Paul's epistle to the Ro-
mans that I may know how to convince the understanding of men,
.and the Psalms of David that I may be able to move their hearts."
This article has not to do with the religious use of the Bible,
but one incidental result of this study will be to allay youthful
skepticism. To a young man who has enjoyed ten years of in-
tellectual training and growth, notions of his childhood seem of
little worth. If he have no other than a boy's conception of the
Bible, the book has slight hold upon his respect. Unless he be
held by a vital religious life, he easily infers that such a book as
iie thinks the Bible to be, is unworthy of the confidence of a
872 English Bible and CoUege Ourriculmm. [Nov.,
rational mind. Ignorance of the Bible is one occasion of doubt.
Large intelligent study of it is an effective remedy for doubt.
Many things, by themselves perplexing, are made clear and force-
ful when seen in their historic connection. One who sees the book
in its parts and in its unity, who gets a proper idea of the growth
and relations of it, is compelled to accord to it profound respect and
confidence.
But for this end, the study of the Bible must be thorough, schol-
arly and exhaustive. The opinion of President Jordan, of Indiana
State University, has a good basis in fact: '*I do not think that
the results have been valuable from such work as conducted in
most of the Western colleges which have tried it ; but the causes
of failure are obvious." Ordinary methods of teaching the Bible
must be superseded by such as shall make all ordinary knowledge
of it seem elementary, and shall impose hard work upon the
student. Familiar as he may be with the surface, he should be
made to find every day, as much that is novel as well as important,
in the Bible lesson, as in his Plato. Such work will both com-
mand his respect and enlist his interest.
The value of the views presented in this article are likely to be
tested by experience. Indeed, in some measure they have been
not only tested but confirmed. From the foundation of Wellesl^
college, there have been required two lessons a week in the Bible
throughout the entire course. The conception of the work has
not been that of the ordinary Bible class, but the scholarly treat-
ment of the book as literature and history. And it is safe to say
that the graduates of no institution in the land are so well versed
in the Bible as the graduates of Wellesley. The work has been
done with increasing thoroughness and with growing satisfaction
with the results. Tale and Amherst have this year introduced
the Bible as an elective. The Inductive Bible Studies published
in the Old Testament /Student^ are made the basis of instruction,
and students are finding the work exacting and richly remuner^
ative.
The public mind is doubtless favorable to the movement to put
the Bible into all colleges. The approving public will do well to
remember that to establish a new course of instruction requires
money and men.
8. H.LEB.
188T.] Current Idteratwre. 373
CURRENT LITERATURE.
A Day in Capernaum.* — In this little book of one hundred
and sixty-six pages, Dr. Franz Delitzsch, one of the most eminent
Old Testament scholars of Germany, has sought to sketch, in a
realistic manner^ a day of our Lord's ministry in Capernaum.
He takes as his groundwork several events, which, without doing
violence to the narratives given in the Synoptic Gospels, may be
represented as having occurred in so short a period of time. To
reproduce these events with something of the vividness of life, he
uses the methods known to the historical novelist. He endeavors
to make us familiar with the Sea of Galilee, with the hills along
its shores, and with Capernaum, as they appeared to the group
of disciples who dwelt with Jesus in the house of Simon's wife's
mother. In the streets of the city mingle Jews and Galileans.
We may listen to their remarks about the wonder-working
prophet who is a sojourner amongst them, or we may observe
their manner of dress and their quaint customs. Nor is this all.
The writer assumes the difficult task of rehearsing to us the con-
versations of those who live in Simon's house, and of describing
the feelings which the various events of the day awaken in their
minds. It is therefore easy to see that the different parts of the
book may be of unequal value. Those portions which represent
the results of Prof. Delitzsch's studies into the history and archae-
ology of the New Testament times undoubtedly render much
clearer the surroundings of Christ's Galilean ministry. But
when we leave the domain of fact and enter that of fiction, the
case is different. One might venture to assert, without running
the risk of being esteemed narrow-minded, that the life of Jesus
\s not within the province of the novelist. No imaginary words
*A Day in Capernaum. By Dr. Franz Dblitzsoh, Professor in the Uni-
versity of Leipzig. Translated from the third German edition by Rev. 6. H.
Sohodde, Ph.D., Professor in Capital University, Columbus, Ohio. New York :
Funk k Wagnalls, 1887.
VOL. n. 37
874 Owrre/rd Literaifu/re, [Nov.,
or fancied experiences of his can farnish valnable criteria for
solving the problem of his being ; nor can they form the ground-
work upon which faith can be built. Even when they are, as in
this book, the creation of a devout and gifted mind, they seem
weak and artificial, if compared with the narratives contained in
the Gospels.
The comment which Jesus is said to make upon Andrew's allu-
sion to a sunset viewed from the hill on which Nazareth was built
is in point here. It is as follows : " You are right, Andrew, . . .
I, too, can never forget that hill ; it has become for me what
Sinai was for Moses." This remark betrays the man of intro-
spection, who is watching the changing moods of his own feelings,
and who is a sentimentalist in religion. (A sentimental Lord
would be a poor Saviour for this self-conscious generation.)
Even the interview between Jesus and his mother cannot be
regarded as entirely free from this same weakness. The artificial-
ity of some of the remarks ascribed to Jesus appears in the question
he addresses to Mary : *' Does the city upon the hill continue to be
white without and dark within ?" Notwithstanding these de-
fects, however, the book will leave a distinct and helpful impres-
sion upon the mind of the careful reader, and will throw light
upon many pages of New Testament history. The translation
is well made, although in one or two words, like " reverence-
inspiring," there seems to be a tendency to construct compounds
after the analogy of the German.
Henby E. Bourne.
Pbop. Baibd's Huguenots.* — Nearly forty years ago, Macau-
lay told Sir James Stephen as he was entering upon the duties
of the professorship of modem history at Cambridge, that of all
the periods of French history, that of the " Wars of Religion "
was the richest and least exhausted. That this rich field has
been occupied by an American scholar — and occupied at once
with such learning and candor as to discourage rivalry— cannot
fail to be a source of pride to all of Prof. Baird's fellow-country-
men. When his "Rise of the Huguenots" appeared, it was
immediately granted a place near, if not beside, those remarkable
contributions of the last generation of American writers to the
illustration of European history.
*The Huffuenots and Henry of Navcurre. 'Bj Hknbt M. Baikd, Profeesor in the
tJniyeruty of the City of New York. New York : Charles Scribner^s Sons.
1887.] Current LUeratwe. 376
If Prof. Baird's work Bometimes lacks the fire and brilliance of
the '' Rise of the Datch Repablic," it is superior to it in impar-
tiality. Bat Prof. Baird's impartiality is not that of indifference.
He so thoroughly believes in the righteousness of the cause, whose
historian he is, that he feels he can be perfectly fair and just to the
other side. And he is so. He not only gives prominence to any
excuses that may be urged for the Catholic party, but, what is a
greater test of fairness, he does not omit the excesses of the
reforming party.
His work is based upon careful study of both the original au-
thorities and the most valuable special works of modem scholars.
In fact, his preface and notes may serve as a most useful guide
to the best sources of information upon the whole time of the
Reformation in France. This period of French history is so in-
volved that it is almost hopeless to try to get any clear idea of it
from brief accounts. Prof. Baird, while not going excessively
into detail, has arranged his facts with clearness, and discussed
them most instructively.
These volumes open with a brief explanatory introduction, and
then take up the main narrative with the accession of Henry HI.
in 1574. The first volume covers the ground to 1588, and the
second continues the story to the death of Henry lY ., the leading
figure in the work. Prof. Baird has a sober and qualified admi-
ration for the great Henry — an admiration which grows warm
over his finer qualities, but which neither palliates nor conceals
his moral defects. The characters of the other leaders in this
struggle are also portrayed with vigor and insight. In awarding
these volumes the high praise they deserve by reason of their
learning, impartiality, and interest as well as of the importance
of the struggle which they illustrate, we must express the hope
that Prof. Baird may be enabled to continue his work, with the
History of Revocation of the Edict of Nantes, which he proposes.
Recent Books on Psychology and Philosophy.
Pbocebdings of the American Society fob Psychical Rs-
SBABCH.* — The American Society for Psychical Research is nearly
three years younger than the British, and the difference in the
amount of work the two societies have done and published is
•Vol. 1, No. 1, July 1885, and vol 1, No. 2, July, 1886. DamreU k Upham,
Boston,
376 CwrrerU Lderatwre, [Nov.,
greater than the difference in their ages. Perhaps the wider
spread of interest in, and leisure for, snch studies in the older
country, the greater willingness to incur the criticism of adverse
or sceptical opinion, and the support, which the British society
secures but the American for the most part lacks, of men of large
influence in political and ecclesiastical circles, may account in part
for this difference. It has been even suggested that the number of
'^ sensitives," that is, of those who have a special susceptibility to
what is known as thought-transference, and other extraordinary
and mysterious influences, may be greater in England than here.
Our experience, however, has scarcely as yet gone fiir enough to
warrant such a conclusion. We note in this connection that while
the tone of the American report of proceedings in 1885 is almost
wholly negative and sceptical as to the existence of such phenom-
ena as the British society describes with great detail, the tone of
the report for 1886 is more positive. The earlier report, for exam-
ple, ends with the conclusion that thought-transference is not at all
ordinary, or that '^ thoughts, such as have been made the subject
of our experiments, are not likely to be transferred between two
individuals taken at random." But the later report contains sev-
eral quite remarkable cases of success in the '^ card-test," and in
drawing copies of diagrams by thought-transference. Of some of
these cases the verdict is that they '* seem to confirm the accuracy
of the results arrived at by the English Society of Psychical
Research."
Perhaps the most valuable paper, on the whole, in these pro-
ceedings is the mathematical paper in which the doctrine of
probabilities is applied to the card-test, and other similar tests,
and the existence of a so-called ^' number-habit," or preferred
order of guessing at numbers or of writing down numbers, is
brought out.
The brief paper of Professor James on hypnotism shows those
qualities of candor and acuteness, and that thorough training in
physiological and psychological studies, which characterize all the
work of this investigator. We sincerely hope that he may be
able to prosecute these studies further. It is worthy of note also
that he concludes with reference to one medium who " showed a
most startling intimacy " with the affairs of a certain family, that
she was '' honest," and her trance genuine.
The American Society for Psychical Research certainly deserves
a wider support, especially in the form of contributions needed
for securing continuous and thorough investigation.
1887.] Cv/rrmt Literature, 377
Psychic Studies.* — This little volume must certainly be re-
garded as somewhat premature, for it undertakes to show how
the researches of the British Society for Psychical Research may
be reconciled with the biblical view of miracles, prophecy, angelic
appearances, demons, etc. But these researches, although very
promising and of intense interest to students of psychology, can
scarcely as yet be said to have yielded any assured results calling
for such reconciliation. Most of the views proposed by the vol-
ume, however, are moderate and eminently sensible ; and if fur-
ther inquiry should elicit definite information respecting these
mysterious phenomena with which *^ psychic studies " attempt to
deal, we may perhaps look to its author for assistance in pointing
out the relation of such phenomena to those recorded in the
Bible.
Oeombtbical PsTCHOLooT.f — ^This book is a serious and
elaborate attempt to represent the most abstruse psychological
and philosophical truths by curves, spirals, and other forms of
geometrical symbolism. The author has spent years of study in
perfecting a system of such symbolical representation. That it
is an ingenious, laborious, and interesting piece of work we do
not question ; nor are we disposed to deny the possibility of its
stirring and defining certain thoughts in those minds that are
peculiarly inclined and trained to run in the lines of the sublime
science of geometry. Nevertheless, that is true of this attempt,
which must always be true of all similar attempts ; in order to be
intelligible and communicable to the majority of thinkers the
symbolism must itself be interpreted into words. Instead, then,
of diminishing the chances of being misunderstood or of being un-
intelligible, this so-called *' geometrical psychology" increases
them. A double interpretation becomes necessary ; first of the
geometrical symbols into words, and then of the words into con-
ceptions. In all psychological and philosophical studies space-
forms are of little independent value as modes of expression ;
mathematical demonstration can never take the place of verbal
exposition and argument.
* The New Peychic Studies in iheir rekUion to ChritHan Tkoughi. By Franklin
Johnson, D.D. Funk k Wagnalls, New York, 1887.
f Oeorryetirical Psychology or The Science of BepresenUdion, An Abstract of the
Theories and Diagrams of B. W. Beits. Bj Lottisa S. Cook. London, George
Bedway, 1887.
378 Currerd IMerabwre. [Nov.,
The Conception of the iNPnnTE.* — In this small volume the
author attempts an analysis of these two problems, or rather parts
of one problem : Can we in any way mentally represent the In-
finite? and, What is the nature of this mental representation?
The answer to the first question is in the affirmative, and is given
in part as the result of a critical exposition of the fallacies which
have entered into the negative answers of Kant, Hamilton, and
Mill. These thinkers have all erred, according to Professor
Fullerton, in regarding the infinite as a '' quantitative concep-
tion,'^ or rather a successive synthesis of mental images of quan-
tity that are necessarily incapable of ever bringing the infinite
before the mind as a whole. But the view advocated by this vol-
ume is that the infinite is a '* strictly qualitative " conception or
general notion, the marks of which are '' unlimited possibility of
quantity.''
The analysis of the book is acute and interesting ; and the dis-
tinction between the ability to image the infinite as a quantitative
whole by a successive synthesis and the ability to form some sort
of a conception to which the word corresponds, is undoubtedly
valid. But after all, the analysis which Professor Fullerton accom-
plishes, if its correctness be accepted, brings us around again to the
difficulties from which it took its start. For in this conception of
the '' unlimited possibility of quantity" we know what the mark of
** quantity " is, what the mark of " possibility " is, and so what is
a ''possibility of quantity." But what is an unlimited possibility
of quantity ? To answer this question is, indeed, the rub ; for the
infinity of the concept — that is, its characteristic quality — as Pro-
fessor Fullerton has defined it, lies in this word, ** unlimited."
Now if we try to image the " unlimited possibility," etc., we have
the vain attempt at an unending synthesis. But if we regard
this unlimitedness as itself a concept, it is equivalent to the very
concept from which we set out, namely, to the concept of the In-
finite. For are not t^nlimited and mfinite one and the same term ?
The Philosophy op Education, f — ^This book is one of great
interest, and well deserving of the careful study of every teacher
* The Conception of the Infiniie^ and the Solution of the Mathematical ADtinomiea :
A Study in Psychological Analysis, by Gbo&qb S. Fullbbton, A.M., Adjunct
Professor of Philosophy in the University of Pennsylvania. J. 6. Lippincott
Company, 1887.
f The Philosophy of Education, By Johann Karl Fribdebick Rosenb3akc,
translated from the German by Anna 0. Brackett. New York. D. Appleton k Co.
1887.
1887.] Cwrrent Ziterature. 879
who desires to understand the foundations and meaning of his
art. It has the distinction of being the only work on the philoso-
phy of education by a really philosophical mind, as distinguished
from works on the theory and practice of teaching. Although
less than three hundred pages in extent it furnishes a wonderfully
complete treatment of its subject ; of this any one who will take
pains even to read the epitome contained in the preface of the edi-
tor, Dr. Wm. T. Harris, or to glance over the table of contents, will
be amply convinced. The key-note is struck firmly in the first
sentence of the first chapter (p. 19): " The nature of education is
determined by the nature of mind — that it can develop what it is
in itself only by its own activity." . . . Again: ''Education is
the influencing of man by man, and it has for its end to lead him
to actualize himself through his own efforts."
This book, although treating of the philosophy of education, is
far from dull; it abounds in suggestions of great helpfulness to
the practice of teaching. For example, on the preparation and
use of text-books, Rosenkranz has very stimulating and sugges-
tive remarks. " If we are indebted," says he, " to life for our
perceptions, we must chiefly thank books for our understanding of
our perceptions" (p. 121). "The recorded wisdom of the human
race is preserved in books, and hence the chief province of the
school is to endow the pupil with power to use books profitably
through life so that he may perpetually draw from that reservoir
of wisdom and interpret his own life."
Miscellaneous.
Sophocles' Greek Lexicon.* — ^There are few more interest-
ing literary phenomena than the persistence of the Greek lan-
guage. Through revolutions, invasions, and long periods of
oppression, this noble language has still survived. Greece fell
before the Roman arms, but her language lived on, and has
now outlived the Roman's tongue by many centuries. One
might compare the language of classic Greece to those famous
works of Greek genius, which time and war had thrown down,
marred, broken and buried in the soil. They are brought
forth at length and are examined. The features are disfigured,
parts of the form are lost, but the outline yet remains. They
* Greek Lexicon of (he Boman and Byzantine Periods^ (from B.C. 146 to A. D.
1100). By E. A. SOPHOOLES. Memorial Edition. Chas. Scribner's Sons, New
York. $10 net.
380 Owrrent LUerat/wre. [Nov.,
still bear the evidences of the skill which shaped them. They
are still beautiful and precious. So it is with the language of
Greece. The finished syntax is broken down, the classic forms
have been modified, and the vocabulary corrupted from many
sources; but it is the Greek language still. Classic Greek does
not survive in the modern merely in the sense in which Anglo-
Saxon survives in English, or Latin in French and Italian.
To trace the transitions of the Greek language from the clas-
sical period until now is an interesting and difficult task. It was
in this field that the late Professor Sophocles, himself a native
Greek, pursued his special studies so long and so successfully.
He has placed before us in this Lexicon the results of a wide and
intimate knowledge of the Post-classical and Mediaeval Greek.
It is a work which only specialists in Greek philology will be
likely to use; but a work covering so completely and so exclu-
sively a field of its own, as to entitle it to strong commendation.
It has been before the public for more than fifteen years, but ia
now re-issued in a superb memorial edition, under the supervision
of Professor Dr. Thayer, of Harvard University.
The Introduction contains a valuable sketch of the periods of
transition through which the Greek language has passed with
lists of the principal authors belonging to each.
Gbobge B. Stbvbns.
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NEW ENGLANDER
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No. CCXIII.
DECEMBER 1887.
Abticlb L— the AMERICAN BOARD AT SPRING-
FIELD.
When Pyrrlmfiliad won a battle over the Romans, near Hera-
clea, and was congratulated npon it, the historians tell us, that
he replied : " One more such victory and I am undone I" And
he followed it up by sending an ambassador to Rome, and pro-
posing peace. It has occurred to many, that history repeated
itself in this respect at Springfield, Mass., at the annual meet-
ing of the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign
Missions, held October 4:th to 8th ult., when the " conserva-
tives " outvoted the " liberals." The numerical victory, in our
opinion, did not represent the moral victory. And so it struck
the more sober minded of the conservatives themselves. Thus
Rev. Dr. Edward N. Packard, Assistant Secretary of the meet-
ing, in a subsequent communication to the JV. Y. Independent^
remarks, that " one could not properly use the word victory in
regard to the results reached at the Springfield meeting, even
if he were the most stalwart cx)nservative ;" that "the utter-
ances at Springfield will add force to the new movement, and
VOL. XL 28
382 The American Boa/rd at Springfidd. [Dec.,
make work harder in our chnrcheB ;" that the speech of Dr.
Walker ^^ was an immense concession for a master in Israel to
make, and will have great influence in strengthening the Kew
Departure;" and that "aside from all votes taken, on the
liberal side there was a manifest advance since last year, what-
ever be the local issue in the Board" And he candidly adds :
^' If I were a Kew Departure man, I should take courage from
the Springfield meeting,"
The facts which justify such a view are easy to state. After
the decision at Des Moines had been under discussion an en-
tire year, in the periodicals, the newspapers, the ministers*
meetings, and the Associations, the minority vote of the staid,
sober-minded, experienced men, who compose the corporate
membership of the Board, given at a place equally favorable to
both parties, instead of being decreased, rose from 13 at Des
Moines to 66 at Springfield! And this result was secured in
the face of the greatest disadvantages In every Society the
administration, that is, the managing Committee and Secre-
taries, usually and deservedly carry an immense preponderance
of influence ; so that seldom is it possible to overrule their action,
or even to array a strong minority vote against them. Never
before in the history of the American Board have the Pruden-
tial Committee and the Secretaries found such a formidable
opposition among the corporate members, after a year of delib-
erate discussion. And this too, when they received the un-
broken support of the Congregational religious papers, re-in-
forced by the Independent^ which circulates throughout our
denomination ; so that it was difficult for the minority to gain
more than an occasional hearing. Add to this the heavy loss
sustained by the minority in the death of Dr. Mark Hopkins,
President of the Board for the last thirty years, and of
Alpheus Hardy, Esq., for twenty-nine years Chairman of the
Prudential Committee ; both of whom, if spared to be present,
would have powerfully antagonized the conservative policy,
and would no doubt have still further increased the minority
vote. We know, from an hour's private conversation with Dr.
Hopkins, a few weeks only before his lamented death, how
strongly he felt upon this subject, and how anxiously he de-
sired that wiser counsels might prevail, when the Board should
188Y.] The American Boa/rd at Springfield. 888
assemble at Springfield. It will be remembered, that his last
public act was to publish a remonstrance against the position
of the Prudential Committee.
But, besides this significant increase of the minority vote,
there came out the noticeable weight of character of the men
who cast it — a fact which opened the eyes of not a few in that
vast assembly, and made a deep impression upon the majority
itself. The ambassador of Pyrrhus reported, on his return,
that every Eoman citizen seemed a king I And here it was
found, that the opposition to the policy of intolerance came not
from hot-headed youngsters, and not from men of small intelli-
gence and obscure position, but from some of the ablest, most
renowned and most venerable members of the Board. When
a minority of corporate members, nearly sixty strong, takes its
stand in the meetings of the Board, and embraces such ministers
and laymen as Porter, Harris, Fisher, Carter, Smyth, Walker,
Parker, Buckham, Seelye. Buckingham, Gordon, Merriman,
McKenzie, Vose, Jenkins, Whittlesey, Shipman, Eddy, Angell,
Fairchild, Fairbanks, Emerson, Hazard, and others who might
be named, it is more than a tempest in a tea-pot that is threat-
ened. These men know what the issue is, act from deliberate
thought, and have the courage and the persistence of their con-
victions. And the influence of this fact is augmented, when it
appears that in them, in the Senior Secretary, Dr. Clark, and
in numerous Honorary Members of the Board who agree with
them, is represented the position of three of the four theologi-
cal seminaries of New England, of all of our colleges (male and
female) except Dartmouth (possibly Middlebury may also be
an exception), and of the leading pastors of such cities as Boston,
Hartford, and New Haven. Add to this, again, that the strength
of antagonism was sufficient to lead fifty-six corporate members
to so extreme a measure as to withhold their votes for President
from so eminent a man as Eev. Eichard S. Storrs, D.D., be-
cause of his identification with the conservative policy, and
forty-four to do the same with reference to the re-election of
Dr. Alden, as the Home Secretary, and the case will seem to be
serious indeed. It is no matter of wonder, that Dr. Storrs, re-
membering that the President has always heretofore been
nnanimously chosen, wanted " a few weeks " to consider whether
884 The American Bowrd at Springfidd. [Dec.,
to accept the result of such an election ; and that he intimated,
Pyrrhus-like, the desirableness of peace ; that it would be well
to seek for some basis upon which to restore cooperation and
harmony, a result of which, he said, that he did not wholly
despair. His letter of acceptance, since published, makes a
suggestion to that effect
If now we add the influence of the debate, especially as par-
ticipated in by Drs. Fisher and Walker, whose reputation for
ability and orthodoxy cannot be assailed, and who squarely
advocated the sending forth of missionaries who favored the
" Andover hypothesis," as well as of those who rejected it, the
moral effect of the meeting will be seen to have varied consid-
erably from the numerical result of the corporate votes. The
meeting was highly educatory of popular sentiment. The im-
pression left upon the public mind was far more favorable to
the minority-position, than was the case a year since. A stage
of progress was made, and the future, inevitable, liberal result
was brought a twelve-month nearer.
The difficulty is not a new one. Conservative men have
previously made the vain attempt to " prevent a future " in our
Congregational policy. Their temporary successes always de-
ceived and disappointed them, when they fought against a
policy of liberal comprehension. Fifty years ago, they sought
to rule out the hypotheses of Drs. Taylor and Fitch, which they
called the " New Haven heresies ;" and they needlessly created
division and established an opposition theological seminary. The
controversy soon died out, and some years later they were
negotiating for union, to see if the scandal of two seminaries in
the little State of Connecticut could not be removed ! They
ruled out the Oberlin brethren, as long as possible, from
missionary service and from the denominational fellowship, and
tried in vain, at the ordination of the present writer, to extort a
pledge, that he would not admit Mr. Finney (who was preach-
ing in the neighborhood) to his pulpit ; this on the accusation
of Perfectionism. But one day they attended a national con-
vention of the Congregational churches held at Oberlin, which
by a unanimous rising vote, invited the once obnoxious and
still unrepentant Mr Finney to address the body on the subject
of the baptism of the Holy Spirit. And they heard the
1887.] The Americcm Board at Springfield. 385
Moderator, Dr. Budington, pronounce it " the grave of buried
prejudicea" They made similar ecclesiastical and religious
newspaper war upon Dr. Bushnell, and succeeded in getting
such abundant utterances in his condemnation that they thought
they had carried the denomination. But they have lived to see
our Councils everywhere accept, as a matter of liberty, the men
who favor the Bushnell theology, and to find Dr. Bushnell re-
garded as one of the illustrious names in our theological history.
They similarly assailed Professor Park, who in those days was
an advocate of an improved theology ; charging him with false
doctrine and with varying from the Andover creed But these
accusations have long since ceased to be heard, and Professor
Park has come to be regarded as the expounder of orthodoxy.
They denounced, as a departure from the time-honored Congre-
gational doctrinal basis, the effort to make our denominational
fellowship simply evangelical, and in our ministry as well as
our lay-membership to ignore the distinction between Calvinism
and Arminianism. They even denied, at first, that the consti-
tution of our Triennial Convention took that position. But the
discussions of a few months sufficed to decide the case against
them, and no one has even mooted the question for the last
fifteen years ! They are now repeating a similar process, and
congratulating themselves on their success 1 It will be seen
once more where they come out, and how quietly, one of these
days, they will accept the situation ! It is a great pity, that
many thoroughly good men have so little of the quality of the
" seer." They do not read aright " the signs of the times," as
manifest in the trend of grand truths drawn from the word of
God, in the movings of the Divine Spirit through the universal
church, and in the instructive events of Providence. They do
not perceive that "the stars in their courses fight against"
them, but resist progress, till the inevitable has come 1
If anything further were needed to show the superficial charac-
ter of the conservative victory at Springfield, it may be found
in the continuous efforts made ever since in the Independent
and other conservative quarters, to explain and defend the ac-
tion taken. They have set some of their ablest workmen to
threshing vigorously the old straw. They have labored hard to
reassure themselves of the result, by mutual congratulation and
386 Ths American Boa/rd at Springfield. [Dec.,
pnblic exnltation, based on the corporate vote. Bat much of
it has seemed like talking to keep up conrage, and to con-
ceal the real serionsness of the situation, and Dr. Pentecost him-
self announced in the Independent^ ^^ that the churches and the
Christian public generally have not reached the end of this
discussion," and that ^' we all foresee and anticipate an exten-
sive future debate on this question."
Let us now consider the questions on which there was a division
of opinion in the American Board. There were two such ques-
tions ; one of method, and one of principle ; and these need to
be carefully distinguished.
The question of method came up first, and was connected
with a special report of the Prudential Committee, in response
to a resolution adopted the year previous at Des Moines, di-
recting the committee " to consider, in difficult cases, turning
upon doctrinal views of candidates for missionary service, the
expediency of calling a Council of the churches." It will
hardly be believed, but so it is, that to the discussion of this
exact point, the committee devoted less than nine lines out
of the tliree hundred and sixty-eight lines of their report ! After
admitting that, in the resolution referred to them, " only one
class of candidates is named ; difficult cases turning upon doc-
trinal views," and spending eight lines upon it, in order to
make the insignificant objection of "invidious publicity"
(which surely has eminently characterized the natural result
of their own course, in its world-wide notoriety) they ingen-
iously shift the discussion to the question, whether it would be
expedient to have a council called to pass upon the doctrinal
soundness of all missionary candidates, and to make the actual
appointment to service under the Board. It was easy to
show that this would be cumbersome and unnecessary, as well
as inapplicable to occasional Presbyterian candidates, and in-
consistent with the responsibility ot the committee and the
Board. Hence there was little opposition to that judgment,
which was affirmed by a vote of 110 to 19 ; two-thirds of the
liberals voting with the conservatives, as the writer himself did.
It was thus no test vote between the parties, though ignorantly
rejoiced over by many, as if it were. But while the practical
conclusion as to the inexpediency of the council method, as a
1887.] The American Board at Sj^rmgfidd. 88T
sabetitute for the responsible action of the Prudential Commit-
tee, in the appointment of missionaries, met with slight dis-
sent, decided and just objection was taken to the numerous de-
preciatory utterances respecting councils themselves scattered
through the report. These were precisely such as Presbyteri-
ans, especially at the West, have been accustomed for years to
offer against councils, as the characteristic feature of Congre-
gationalism ; charging that they are small, local, temporary,
brief, irresponsible, not representative of the whole body of the
churches, and often, or at least occasionally, reaching undesira-
ble conclusions. Against the tenor of such accusations, the
writer and others felt bound to protest strongly, on the spot,
as unbecoming on the part of the Prudential Committee of a
Board originated and now sustained by the Congregational
churches (no Presbyterian churchesy as such, at present contribu-
ting to it, and but few individuals) ; accusations, too, made in the
face of the fact that, under this seemingly weak ecclesiasticism,
we have attained to such noble results in ministers, churches,
and benevolent action. Not a few, after listening to the report,
quoted the proverb : ^^ It is an evil bird that fouls its own
nest!"
But the most singular thing in this ex^nnection remains yet
to be mentioned. Amid the multiplied, ingenious and plausi-
ble reasons given for not employing councils to judge of the
doctrinal qualifications of missionary candidates, the Pruden-
tial Committee did not even mention, what there is ground
for believing to be their principal objection 1 Shall we say
that they did not dare to mention it, though it could be read
everywhere between the lines ? It was this : they could not
trust councils to decide as they wished to have them decide I
They had reason to believe, that a truly representative council
would not have hesitated in the case of the return of Bev. Mr.
Hume, and would not have refused to pass favorably upon the
young men whom they rejected. And yet they profess to
represent the actual faith and wishes of our Congregational
churches ; and are charging the minority with proposing action
contrary thereto I This does not strike many of us as being
consistent ; to bring forward ancient creeds and to ignore mod-
em ones, disregarding also the caneensus of opinion found in
888 The American Board at Springfield. [Dec.,
the continual action of Congregational associations and coun-
cils, all over the country, as they license and ordain candidates
who hold the very views treated with intolerance by the Board !
The other question before the Board was one of principle, in
two respects which run into each other, doctrinal and ecclesias-
tical ; and these again must be carefully distinguished, in order
to do justice to all concerned.
The doctrinal issue may best be introduced by a historical
anecdote. Early in the eighth century, when Northern Europe
was missionary ground, Wulfram went to convert the heathen
of Friesland, and had a famous interview with Badbod, king
of the country, whom he sought to convince, and through
whom he hoped to reach the entire nation. The king listened
attentively to the arguments in behalf of Christianity as the
only true religion, and of Christ as the only Saviour, and then
said to Wulfram : '' If all this be so, if my gods are no gods,
and my religion is a lie, and man can only be saved through
Jesus Christ, then what has become of my forefathers, who
died knowing nothing of this new religion ?" Wulfram, being
an orthodox theologian of that day, promptly answered,
that they had all gone to hell, as such sinners deserved to do.
" Very well," said the grim old king, " I will not separate from
my forefathers ; I will share their fate, whatever it may be."
Opinions will differ as to the wisdom and as to the truthful-
ness of Wulf ram's assertion ; but it cost Christianity, for many
years, the conversion of that nation. Every missionary is lia-
ble to meet this same most natural and most reasonable in-
quiry ; and he must be prepared with a satisfactory answer, or
he will repel, at the very outset, those whom he wishes to
win. It will thus be seen, that the question as to the salva-
bility of the heathen, who have lived and died without any
knowledge of the gospel, is not a mere matter of speculative
theology, to be discussed with other abstractions in theological
lecture rooms, but is of a very practical nature to the mission-
ary and to those whom he addresses. His opposers and his
converts will press it upon him almost daily. What now shall
he say ? What shall those who send him out instruct, or per-
mit him to say ? We do not propose to discuss, at this time, what
he ought to say, but only the liberty of choice in his answer,
which the Board grants or refuses.
1887.] The Americcm Board at Springfield. 389
Five different hypotheses of probation for the heathen have
been brought forward by the various theologians; four of
which the American Board allows to be propounded by its mis-
sionaries, but interdicts the fifth. The curious fact in the case
is, that no one of these five is directly affirmed in Scripture,
which does not contain the word " probation," or any synony-
mous word, in Greek or English. They are suppositions, which
■ are thought, by thctee who favor them respectively, not indeed
to be dogmatically asserted, but to be warranted by the impli-
cations of Bible language, where that is not only quoted, but is
explained, and is set in its relations by a careful exegetical
argument Our friend, Mr. Henry L. Bowen, who is the enter-
prising and successful publisher of the Independent^ a most
skillful organizer of a Fourth of July celebration, and, as we
know from happy experience, a most royal entertainer of
guests, thought that any theory on this subject ought to be
capable of demonstration by a naked quotation of Scriptural
texts ; and he insisted on this idea in a famous correspondence
printed in his paper. It was enough to make every living
theological professor leap from his chair, and the dead ones
turn in their graves. For, such a claim would set aside half
the theology of Christendom; which depends not on naked
texts, but on a '^ Biblical argument." Imagine a Baptist calling
on Mr. Bowen simply to name the texts in the New Testa-
ment, without argument, which clearly and specifically teach
infant baptism ! What would Mr. Bowen do ? Or suppose
him required to prove by naked texts the salvation of all who
die in infancy, and to show consequently, either that they, half
the human race, never have a probation, or that they have it
successfully in the next life ! And because he could not pro-
duce a single text, which directly and unequivocally teaches
either of these doctrines, think how his antagonists, using his
own principles, would twit him with this inability, and with
his proposal, in place of texts, to ofier *^ a Biblical argument !"
Theologians well know, that there never was a greater farce
than in the publication of that correspondence. The five
hypotheses referred to we give as follows, for description sim-
ply, and not for argument in behalf of any one of them.
1. The probation of the heathen was prior to hvrth^ and was
890 The American Board at Springfield. [Dec,
had in the person of Adam, their constituted representative.
They utterly failed in it, and are carrying oat that failure in
their earthly Uvea The salvation of Christ was only provided
for the elect ; and if any of the heathen do not learn of Christ's
death, it shows that they are among the reprobate, for whom
He did not die. Kot a few missionaries have gone to the
heathen with tliis theory in their minds and on their lips.
They were reputed to be orthodox, and no man protested
against their being sent ; while those who sent them held to this
theory of Augustine and Calvin, and thought it was the
gospel I
2. The probation of the heathen is a legal probation of
worksy in this life. Either Christ did not die at all for those
who remain unevangelized at death, or if He did, they can
not have the benefit of His death, from not having had Him
offered to them ; and so they are left to be judged by the law
of works, as if He had not died for them, and as sinners are
condemned by it to eternal death This leaves absolutely no
hope for them, and was the theory largely adopted by those
who in former days founded the American Board and other
missionary societies, and was relied on as furnishing the chief
and necessary motive for missionary effort No one can be
saved, said they, without the preached gospel ; therefore send
it to the perishing millions of heathen. This is the appeal
found in the reports, the sermons, the addresses and the publi-
cations, and was supposed to be justified by the language of
Paul in the first three chapters of Romans ; and this view is
distinctly affirmed in the Westminster Confession and Saybrook
Platform.
3. The probation of the heathen is an evangelical probation^
in this life. Though they are sinners, they may, in conse-
quence of the atonement, be forgiven, for Christ's sake, even if
they die without having heard of Him ; provided, they peni-
tently avail themselves of such light as they have from nature.
Having this initial right spirit, it is to be presumed that they
would accept Christ if He were offered ; and this is taken as an
implied faith in Him. This view (advocated by this writer
thirty years ago in the Bibliotheca Sacra^ and then regarded
by most of his brethren as so liberal as to be almost heretical)
1887.] The Arnerica/n, Bowrd at Springfield. 891
was set forth in the sermon preached before the Board by Bey«
Dr. Withrow last year at Des Moines. On this ground it has
become common to admit of late, that a few unevangelized
heathen might be saved ; but the preacher there claimed — ^not
thinking how it might " cut the missionary nerve" — that great
multitudes would thus be saved. On this theory, once con-
sidered new and dangerous, the conservative majority of the
Board probably stand (as do most of the liberal minority)^
although it is a wide departure from the old Presbyterian and
Congregational standards, and from the faith on which the
Board was established and its funds were given. Mark that
fact I But such plain departure, being participated in by the
Prudential Committee itself, has not occasioned the rejection
of any candidate I
4. Ths probation after breath theory, as it has humorously
been termed; or the idea attributed to Mr. Joseph Cooke{
the ever vigilant guardian of orthodoxy, that perhaps, at the
very instant of death, just as the soul is leaving the body, when
it is unconscious of terrestrial affairs, Christ may be made
known to the unevangelized heathen, giving them the oppor-
tunity of accepting Him. This reminds one of the epitaph on
the ungodly man who died instantly, by a fall from his horse ;
which runs thus :
" Between the saddle and the ground,
He mercy sought and mercy found."
It comes perilously close to the idea of probation in the next
life, being parted from it but a few seconds, if at all I It has
not yet been decided to be unsafe to send out missionaries who
teach, without any texts to sustain it, this extreme view, or
this theory of salvation in extremis ; contrary as it is to the
views of those who established the Board, and of the mass of
its supporters.
5. Lastly comes the hypothesis that the probation of the
unevangelized heathen may continue after death long enough
for Christ to be offered to them, and accepted or rejected.
This is popularly called " the Andover hypothesis," although
held by large numbers of evangelical Christians in Great Britain
392 The American Board at Springfield. . [Dec.,
and on the Continent, who are actively engaged in missionaiy
operations.*
Now none of these five theories is free from objection, on
the ground of reason or of Scripture. Pastors at home and
missionaries abroad must choose, as best they can, between
them. The minority at Springfield did not advocate the fifth
or Andover theory, and in fact but few of them believe it ;
though Dr. Pentecost grossly insulted them, and without any
subsequent apology, by stating that, notwithstanding their dis-
claimers, he thought liat they did believe it " thoroughly and
utterly." This was the worst utterance of the whole excited
meeting, in which Christian courtesy and charity wonderfully
prevailed ; and it was not surprising that Dr. Fisher exclaimed,
as he heard the words: "Why, he must mean that we
all are liars"! The minority did not propose that the
Board should in any way endorse the Andover view.
They made no theological argument in its behalf, though
the majority made a long one against it. When a mission-
ary is sent out, not because of some peculiar view, but
* A standard work of an eminent scholar is Kurtz's Sacred History,
to which Dr. J. Addison Alexander used constantly to refer his students
as authority. In 1854 it was translated into English, and published by
Smith, English & Ck>., Philadelphia. In Section 195, Observation, will
be found these words :
" When the circumstance Is considered, that the srospel must be preached to all
men, before the end can come, a question arises concerning the condition in this
respect of the many millions of pagans who have died without obtaining any knowl-
edge of Christ. Before a Scriptural answer to this question can be given, it is neces-
sary that two preliminary points should be admitted as firmly established : Urst,
that God will have all men to be saved (1 Tim. ii. 14, 2 Peter, iii. 19) ; and seoondlyi
that out of Christ there is no salvation, either in heaven or on earth (Acts iv. 2), 'for
he is the propitiation for our sins ; and not for oun only, but also for the sins of the
whole world * (l John, ii. 8). Now, if it is equally clear and certain, that man can
appropriate this salvation to himself by faith alone, and that faith comes by the
preaching of the word (Rom. x, 13, etc.), it seems to follow necessarily that the gos-
pel will yet be preached in Hades (% 156, Obs. 1) to those who, without any fault of
their own, obtained no knowledge of Christ in this life, in order that they too may
adopt or reject that gospel. But the truth cannot be overlooked, that the mind of
Ood is not controlled by the inferences which the human mind may draw, and that
he can easily cause these pagans to ripen according to their own decision, either for
the Judgment of life or the Judgment of condemnation. Still, if we are informed
(1 Pet. iii. 19, 20) that, after Christ descended Into hell, he preached to the unbeliev^
Ing spirits in prison, and if the same Apostle immediately adds (I Pet. iv. 6) that the
gospel was preached also to them that are dead, that both the dead and the living
might be Judged, the inference above seems to be Justified in express terms. And it
does not in the least degree diminish the great importance and neoesBlty of Mis-
sions, nor impair the obligation of Christendom to sustain them."
1887.] The American Board at Sprmgfield. 393
in spite of it, and because he is so good and able a man, that is
no endorsement of his peculiarity of belief. The Board toler-
ates in its officers and missionaries many exegetical and theo-
logical views, which it does not adopt or endorse, and which
seem to many of us erroneous and pemiciou& It has sent out
missionaries irrespective of their belief as to limited atonement
or general atonement, and as to the sinner's ability or inability
to repent ; irrespective of their pre-millennial or post-millen-
nial theories of the Second Advent; irrespective of their
Arminian or Calvinistic creeds. The minority only contended
for liberty in behalf of the missionary ; that when he met the
heathen objection which confronted Wulfram, he might not be
shut up to any one of the theories named, but be free to offer
that which best commended itself to his judgment, or to reject
them all and confess total ignorance, without being called on
positively to deny the fifth or any other theory, if he preferred
so to do. So argued the minority report presented by Prof.
Fisher, and such were his resolutions. President Seelye's sub-
stitute for the majority report also took this ground, " declining
to give specific instructions in respect of doctrinal questions,"
but instructing the Committee ^^to guard the soundness of
faith and efficiency of service of its missionaries and to keep
the unity of the churches whose servants we are." But this
was rejected by a vote of 88 to 51, which was the nearest to a
test vote of the parties, on this point, of any taken. Then was
passed the intolerant action of the majority, reaffirming, as if
the Board were a Church Court, the doctrinal deliverance
made at Des Moines, and directing its application by the Pru-
dential Committee to the cases of missionary candidates, so as
to exclude those who held to the fifth view mentioned above.
This leads us to the remaining question of principle, that
purely ecclesiastical ; which pertains to the willingness or un-
willingness of the Board to ascertain what the present faith of
our churches is, as to positive affirmation and as to Christian
tolerance, " by their actual usages," as Prof. Fisher's minority
report put it. The Prudential Committee refuse so to do, and
this seems the secret of their antagonism to councils, which ex-
press the present views of the ministers and churches. This
is the reason that they decline candidates who fully assent
894 The AmeriocMi Board cU Sprvrvgfidd. [Dec-,
to the yarioas ecumenical creeds of ChriBtendom ; to the creed
of the Evangelical Alliance ; to the summary of belief set forth
by the National Congregational Council at Boston, in 1865 ;
and to the latest Confession of our faith, presented to the
churches by the recent Creed Commission selected from all parts
of the land and all our schools of theologic thought, by a Com-
mittee of our Triennial Council. Secretary Alden was a mem-
ber of that Commission (as was this writer), and in that able
body he found himself in a final minority of 3 to 21. He tried
in vain to introduce into the creed a clause which should con-
tradict and exclude the Andover hypothesis. We were meet-
ing in Dr. Taylor's church, New York city, and on calling for
a copy of his church -creed, behold there was not a line in it
contradictory of that hypothesis ; and the same was found to be
true of the creeds of vast numbers of our churches, which are
wholly silent on tliat subject. Dr. Alden thus learned that the
Andover hypothesis, though not contained in it, was yet not con-
tradictory of the faith of our churches, as expressed in many of
their creeds and as re-affirmed by their Creed Commission, and
was therefore entitled to tolerance (not endorsement) by our
Board of Missions. Yet Dr. Alden sent to candidates his own
creed rejected by the Commission, and he quoted to them
other creeds of local churches, and insisted that the Committee
were only obeying the will of the churches, and protecting their
faith, by requiring certain positive statements denying that
Christ might be offered to the heathen after death. And the
Committee rely not on the Triennial Convention, nor any body
in which the churches as such are represented, but on the ma-
jority vote of a Board which is a close, self -perpetuating corpora-
tion, not representative of churches, or even of the donors to its
own treasury. What the minority claim is, that the Board, so
long as it is our missionary agency, shall be just as liberal and
tolerant as are the Congregational churches ; and that the actual
policy of these is to be learned through the recent general con-
fessions and the consensus furnished by the action of Councils
and Associations throughoat the land, in licensing candidates,
and in ordaining and installing ministers. As a matter of fact,
these have licensed, ordained and installed men favoring the
Andover hypothesis, and even some of the very candidates re-
1887.] The American Board at Springfield. 895
jected by the Prudential Committee of the Board. Hence Dr.
Fisher offered the following resolution : " The missionaries of
this Board shall have the same right of private judgment in the
interpretation of God's Word, and the same freedom of thought
and of speech, as are enjoyed by their ministerial brethren in
this country. In the exercise of their rights they should have
constant and careful regard to the work of their associates, and
to the harmony and eflfectiveness of the missions in which they
labor." It might have been supposed that this would be unani-
mously adopted ; but it was voted down by fifty-two majority !
How, after such a vote, a Secretary of the Board can have the
face to appear before a self-respecting body of students in a
theological seminary, and urge them to become the Board's
missionaries, on condition of such intellectual and spiritual
bondage, and on terms of such inequality with pastors at home,
we do not see. It is positively known, that scores of young men
and women, of high character and rare qualifications, have
already refused, on this very account, to oflfer themselves as
missionaries. The minority claim that the whole spirit and
practice of Congregationalism is in favor of a large evangeli-
cal liberty on disputed and doubtful points ; a liberty which
rises above attachment or opposition to any school or party.
And for justification of this policy they refer to the Master's
own example ; for in the gospel of Mark we read : " And John
answered (or addressed) him, saying : Master, we saw one cast-
ing out devils in thy name, and he followeth not us ; and we
forbade him, because he followeth not us. But Jesus said,
Forbid him not ; for there is no man who shall do a miracle in
my name, that can lightly speak evil of me ; for he that is not
against us is on our part." This is a case in which we prefer
to be with Jesus in the minority, rather than with the apostles
in the majority 1 Yet their majority was twelve to one ! Can
it be credited, that this Master, who uttered such a reproof, and
who made a heretical Samaritan, instead of an orthodox Jew,
the hero of his famous parable, would have us, in our day, for-
bid a devoted missionary to cast out the devils of heathen-
ism, because, while he accepts every truth of the gospel for
which we contend, and which we have stated in our latest
creeds, he adds the supposition or hope, that the souls whom
tS96 The Americcm Board at Springfield. [Dec ,
ChriBt is finally to judge will previously have had Christ offered
to him, before or after death ! He may be entirely in error,
in entertaining such a hypothesis ; but shall that debar him
from preaching Christ to the benighted pagans ? Why should
it, when to the living, whom he addresses, he can make every
appeal which would be made by any of us ? And in speaking
of a missionary appeal, it is a significant fact, that the excellent
discourse before the Board at Springfield, by that firm conser-
vative, Dr. Noble of Chicago, contained not a sentence which
could not have been uttered by one of the minority, or even by
an Andover Professor ! In the whole array of motives for carry-
ing on the missionary enterprise with holy zeal, he did not in-
clude one inconsistent with the Andover hypothesis. And yet
we must not send out a missionary, who could accept that
missionary sermon in its entirety, unless he would add, what the
preacher did not, a denial of Andover peculiarities 1 Think of
debarring a man, on so slender a ground of difference, from
carrying the gospel to the living pagans in Africa or India, in
China or Japan ! And we do debar him, so far as we are con-
cerned, as a denomination, if the only agency we have for
foreign missionary work refuses to send him. It is not as when,
on the home field, a local church declines to call a man to be its
pastor, or a local council declines to settle him over that church,
leaving 4000 other Congregational churches to call him, if any-
one of them should please. There are indeed various missions
of the Board, which would call these rejected candidates, if they
might. But not a single mission or mission church on the
foreign field can act in the matter. The Prudential Committee,
at Boston, stands between the whole heathen world and these
young men, so far forth as the Congregational churches are con-
cerned ; assuming by its own close corporation to represent
them, although declining to accept their action made according to
their established usages. This adoption of a standard different
from any which the churches have authorized, raises a grave
ecclesiastical question for the Congregational churches to con-
sider ; for it plainly and practically touches the question of
their fellowship. The Board indeed disclaims being one of our
Congregational benevolent societies. But how can it do that,
when no other churches support it, and when, for sixteen years,
1887.] The American Board at Springfidd, 397
it has sent one of its Secretaries to sit in onr Triennial Council,
under § 4, of Article II. of the Constitution, to wit : " Such
Congregational general societies for Christian work and the
faculties of such theological seminaries as may be recognized
by this Council, may be represented by one delegate each, such
representatives having the right of discussion only." It is too
late to back down from its virtual denominational position, to
serve a purposa To do so is to bring on a controversy as to the
way in which we shall succeed in having a Congregational
foreign missionary society; whether by remodeling the American
Board, or by organizing a new Society. But it would be the
action of the conservative majority, which would bring on the
controversy. Already many of them are favoring some modi-
fication of the Board, to avoid this serious objection.
And now what shall be done by those dissatisfied with the
action of the Board at Springfield } Some of the majority are
urging us to leave it, and to organize a new Society on our own
principles ; and here and there a man of the minority may be
inclined to act upon that advice. But the writer, judging from a
membership of twenty years and an observation of the Board
for over forty years, sees no suflScient reason, at present, for
taking such a step. It would involve great and unwise expendi-
tures of money and labor, to create and operate a new agency,
and it would carry bitter controversy into everyone of our 4000
churches. Nor is such a step probably necessary to the ultimate
triumph of the liberal policy. The meeting at Springfield
did but increase its strength, and every day will add to the
number of its defenders. We must not be in too great haste.
Good men, confronted with new questions, must have time to
adjust their thoughts, to rectify their mistakes, and to modify
their methods. The American Board has changed its policy on
other disputed questions ; notably on that of slavery. It will
do so again ; either by giving new directions to its Committee,
or more probably in the practical way which such bodies have,
of allowing the present new and unfortunate policy to fall into
" innocuous desuetude." The Board will be brought back to its
old methods for which we contend. Never before has it
assumed to decide theological controversies among its own con-
stituents, and it will not long continue in so perilous a patL
398 The American Board at Springfield, [Dec.,
Our churches will not divide, and the Board will not be
wrecked, although for a time there will be earnest discussion.
Time, argument, prayer and providential events will bring
everything right ; for they are true Christian men, equally de-
voted to the missionary cause, who are having this honest dif-
ference of judgment ; and the Spirit of God will lead them
eventually into " the truth as It is in Jesus," whatever that may
prove to be. Surely, when we think of the savagery and cruelty
of heathenism, of its moral abominations, of its utter impotency
for good in life and its despair in death, of the dishonor which
it heaps on God, and its ignorance of his love for this lost world
as revealed in Jesus Christ, and remember our Redeemer's last
command, to " go into all the world and preach the gospel to
every creature," we have motives enough for missionary eflfort,
without touching the disputed point over which this contro-
versy has been waged. And so let us close up the ranks, and
move unitedly to the battle-field against '*the powers of dark-
ness," led by Him, who " hath on his vesture and on his thigh
a name written, king of kings and lord of LORDa" And
then will the vision of John in Patmos prove itself true:
" After this I beheld, and lo, a great multitude, which no man
could number, of all nations, and kindreds and people and
tongues, stood before the throne and before the Lamb, clothed
with white robes and palms in their hand, and cried with a
loud voice, saying. Salvation to our God, who sitteth upon
the throne and unto the Lambl" Amen.
Wm. W. Patton.
1887-] The Physicicm of To-day wad of the Future, 399
Article IL— THE PHYSICIAN OF TO-DAY AND OF
THE FUTURE.
Probably the point of time when the graduate in medicine
has the greatest confidence in the efficiency of drugs in the
cure of disease and in his own ability to use them successfully,
is when he receives his diploma and before he has met his first
patient. Probably, also, the time when he has the least faith
in the healing power of medicine is when at the end of a long
and a so-called successful practice he looks backward and con-
siders the question; — not how many patients have recovered
under his treatment, — ^but how many lives have been saved by
the administration of medicine, which, without it — would have
been lost. Experience has taught the old physician that the
number is small in comparison with that which he had been
led to anticipate when younger. The recent graduate com-
mences practice with the confidence and expectation appro-
priate to youth ; he often retires from it with the cynicism and
disappointment of old age. The popular belief in the efficacy
of drugs in which at first he shares, the instruction of medical
teachers and authors, the great variety of drugs at his disposal,,
at the beginning of his career inspire him with the hope of
positive and possibly magnificent result& He meets his first
patient, and with judicious care selects the drug which his text
books assign as the remedy for the disease. He administers
the dose and in direct violation of theoretical rules his patient
dies. He meets his second with confidence diminished, and
now to his surprise the patient recovera He continues hia
career and gradually experience forces upon him the unwel-
come conviction that, in spite of remedies a certain number of
his patients will inevitably recover, and a certain number will
as inevitably die, and that the result in either case seems to be
but little dependent upon the medicine administered. Years
of practice lead him at last to the unsatisfactory conclusion that
the drug administered does not play the important part in
the cure of disease which his patients imagine — ^as he once did
400 ITie Physician of To-day and of the Fuira/re. [Dec.,
also — and he finally becomes convinced that the restorative
power of nature, or some other inherent agency, effects the
cure which is ascribed to his own skill, and that a lack of snch
recuperative energy causes the unfortunate results for which
he is sometimes unjustly held responsible.
It becomes a question of interest whether the physician is
correct in the conclusion to which experience seems to have
driven him, whether his patients are wrong in their unques-
tioning faith in the efficacy of drugs, to what abuses the popu-
lar error has led, and what should be the aim of the physician
of the future.
Without professing that a mathematical or even a logical
demonstration of the fact can be absolutely made, the asser-
tion is ventured nevertheless that the effect of drugs simply
in the cure of disease long has been and still is greatly over-
estimated.
Those who have the best opportunity for observation should
be called upon for their evidence.
It is likely that the intelligent, observing, and honest phy-
sician, if questioned, will admit that in the majority of diseases
the medicine used, if it does any good at all, is a non-essential
adjuvant simply in the recovery of the patient, and that it is
doubtful whether the list of mortality would be materially in-
•creased if the physician should abandon all so-called curative
drugs, while continuing to use the same means to support and
strengthen his patient, and to secure due attention to the rules
of hygeine. He discovers early in his practice that he is aided
by a most important principle, the " vis medicatrix naturse,"
whose tendency is to sustain the patient and expel the invad-
ing disease. He notices that in every ailment this agent essays
to effect a cure and generally succeeds even when the medi-
cine which is supposed to be the important instrumentality,
by some chance happens to be withheld long enough to permit the
experiment. The more experienced he becomes, the more
ready is he to assist rather than to interfere with nature's in-
dications, and the more convinced is he that many, if not most
diseases are " self limiting." The physician, and the layman
also, cannot fail to notice that the savage contrives to maintain
his health or to recover from ailments which come, and to reach
1887.] The Physician of To-day and of the Future. 401
a longevity almost equal to that of his civilized neighbor. If
the doctor is not ready to admit that the few herbs at the red-
skin's disposal are equal in potency to the multitudinous drugs
to which he himself has access, he will be obliged to confess
that some other agency than the drug cures the Indian of the
forest and the citizen of the metropolis alike. He knows also
that if to skill in the administration of drugs and not to nature
is to be given the credit of curing disease, then where drugs are
the most constantly and scientifically prescribed there should be
the least sickness, the most speedy recovery, the most stalwart
frames, and the longest lives. In cities should be found men
of muscle and endurance ; in the forest, puny, pale-faced, in-
tellectual-looking, cadaveric men and women, victims of the
various forms of nervous debility. The doctor of to-day knows
that such is not the fact, and with prudent sagacity he advises
his patients to discard, for a time at least, pills and pilules, and
to seek in boat and ball and bicycle clnbs, or in mountain
climbing, that health which they cannot obtain by saturation
with the drugs of a city pharmacy.
The doctor is led to distrust the popular estimate of the value
of medication when he observes the success of quackery in gen-
eral, and how little is the difference in the apparent success of
the skillful physician and the charlatan. If drugs are so im-
portant, then the greatest disparity should be seen in the re-
sults of their use when prescribed by the scientist and by the
quack. As great a difference should be noticable in the success
in practice of the highly and moderately educated physician,
as would be observed in the professions of divinity or law
under similar conditions. Such, however, is probably not the
case. The scientific physician can hardly fail to be recognized
as such, but the fact will not be brought to light by his suc-
cess in the administration of drugs. The most impudent and
presuming charlatan will often obtain pecuniary success at least
which the scientist in medicine cannot hope for. Surely,
argues the thoughtful physician, if success in practice depends
upon a skillful administration of drugs, and it should be so if
drugs are the important element in the cure of disease, then
superior skill should secure the largest patronage. But the
most ignorant pill-maker will obtain testimonials from senators
402 Ths Physicia/fi of Today and of the Future, [Dec.,
and divines vouching for the efficacy of his pill in ailments of
the greatest variety and diversity. This would hardly occur
if there were a very perceptible difference in the results of the
pill-treatment and some more scientific method. The infer-
ence which will be drawn from the success of the charlatan is
not so much the value of his particular drug as the worthless-
ness of all.
The physician is perhaps better qualified than the layman to
judge of the abilities of his brethren in the profession. He
notices with discomfort that the most thoroughly educated are
not always those who are the most successful in obtaining a
a large and lucrative practice. He notices that the popularity
of a practitioner depends on almost any other circumstance
than his mere skill in prescribing, which should be the only
important element if drugs are so essential as they have been
supposed. But in the medical, of all other professions, minor
circumstances have their weight in determining success. The
personal appearance, the pleasing address, the portly and im-
posing form, the skill in adopting the amount of " palaver " to
the receptive faculties of the patient, often have as much to do
with the physician's popularity as his profound knowledge of
of therapeutics.
The observing and perhaps skeptical doctor notices the great
variety of remedies recommended in his text-books for almost
every disease. He finds in his " National Dispensatory " the
catalogue of more than eighteen thousand preparations of
drugs placed at his disposal, with the uses and nature of all of
which his patients kindly presume him to be familiar. He
finds that when any disease is intractable the list of remedies
will be great, when incurable possibly the ^^reatest. At first
he may be delighted with the number of weapons placed in his
hands, but as he grows older he learns to look with suspicion
on the lengthy list and becomes doubtful whenever he finds
great latitude given to select and experiment for himself. He
is led to infer from the great variety of drugs before him, not
the efficacy of any, but rather the inefficiency of all. He is
disconcerted also with the many changes taking place in his
pharmacopoeia. He finds the list of drugs swelling with great
rapidity, and to keep pace with the advance in medical science
1887.] The Physician of To-day and of the Future. 403
he muBt study the bulletins of new remedies, somewhat as he
consults the daily newspaper for the variation in stocks. So
rapid is the presumed progress in medicine that he feels in-
clined to question in the morning as he awakes, whether dur-
ing the night he may not have been left behind the age.
Means and methods of practice also which he formerly learned
to rely upon, and which were in fact the only legitimate ones
a decade of years ago, he now uses with a secret misgiving lest
some tyro in medical authorship may already have pronounced
them antiquated.
The physician is especially bewildered and led to question
the value of medication when he observes the great variety of
systems of practice each pronouncing the others absolutely use-
less or positively harmful, yet all apparently successful in the
treatment of disease, and all having enthusiastic and intelligent
advocates. The war which is being waged at the present day,
of doses, either infinitely too large or infinitesimally too small,
erects two most puzzling horns of a dilemma. Either both
large and small are alike asef ul and effective in the cure of dis-
ease, or both are alike in a great measure useless and ineffec-
tive. The latter alternative is the one very frequently ac-
cepted by the skeptical medical scientist of the present age.
But it is not necessary that we should rely entirely upon the
testimony of the experienced physician for our evidence.
Keasons which are plain to the layman as well, show the proba-
bility that drugs obtain more credit than they deserve. The
wish may be the father of the thought, in this case, as in many
others. We all expect to indulge in an occasional violation of
the known laws of health. We wish to believe that an anti-
dote is at hand to avert the deserved penalty, and therefore we
do so believe. We would be glad to be confident that for
every ailment to which human flesh is heir nature has some-
where stored away the appropriate remedy, and therefore we
so believe upon uncertain evidence and slight foundation of
fact. Faith will be strong when faith and desire coincide, and
the number of those who worship at the shrines of the faith
curers, the movement-curers and charlatans of every descrip-
tion, attest, not the willingness only but even the desire of the
public to be deceived.
404 The Physician of To-day cmd of the Future. [Dec.,
The very mystery which surroands disease and which is at-
tached to the action of drugs increases the probability that their
curative effect may be over-estimated. We naturally exagger-
ate that which we cannot fairly comprehend. The weird and
marvelous effects of certain poisons upon the human organism
lead to the hope that they may have equal powers as curative
agents, to those which they often have, as destructive ; — that be-
cause they can kill they can also cure. In our present state of
knowledge disease is mysterious, its cause often unknown ; the
action of drugs is also mysterious, and the popular tendency is
to associate the two with the hope that by some agency equally
mysterious and incomprehensible, the drug may produce an
effect eradicating the disease. This hope is strengthened a
hundred fold by the comparatively few cases where the drug
does positively and unmistakably produce the desired result.
When such accidents are about as frequent as the drawing of a
prize in a lottery, the effect of a lottery upon the mind will be
produced ; prizes will be expected in opposition to all the laws
of chance.
It is a popular belief even countenanced by some so called
medical works that diseases are not subject to laws which may
yet be known, but that they are the result of mere chance or a
blind fate, imposed, as if by some evil demon by way of pun-
ishment upon a suffering race. It is a popular fancy also that
every disease has its specific antidote, if only it could be dis-
covered and applied. As the chemist when some poisonous
irrespirable gas has escaped in his laboratory can set free an-
other which will absorb or neutralize the villainous vapor, so
it is thought by many that the victim of diphtheria or tuber-
culosis has only to select the remedy specially made for the
particular disease, and for which the disease itself was specially
designed, and then a chemical combination and transformation
will occur in the intestinal laboratory of the patient, cancelling
the disease like an account in a ledger, or expelling and ex-
purgating it from the human economy as an evil spirit of old
was driven from one possessed of a devil.
There is a class of weeping philosophers, medical as well as
otherwise, who believe that man was made to mourn over a
long list of unavoidable diseases. His woes commence with
1887.] The Physician of To^Uiy amd of the Future. 405
the protrusion of the first infant tooth, then in childhood must
follow in proper order, mumps, measles, whooping-cough^
scarlet-fever, and unless Jenner had lived, the disfiguring
small-pox. If he survives these ills and their treatment, man-
hood opens before him fresh fields in which to conquer or be
conquered, and if he arrives at his second childhood it is ex-
pected that some disease that can be dignified with a name
shall assist old age in ushering him into a new existence. It
never seems to have occurred to the philosophers aforesaid that
by a circumspect walk and conversation man may avoid disease
even as he does the county jail and whipping post, and that
under certain circumstances disease may even be a crime. The
idea has not yet presented itself to them that the normal con-
dition of the human race is perfect health. They forget that
the human animal as well as his brother of the jungle, like the
^' wonderful one-hoss shay," was designed to run his allotted
time without repairs or the need thereof, and then by the
natural process and progress of decay and disintegration, with-
out the aid of doctors or drugs, to pass out of his present ex-
istence into the next without commotion and almost without
consciousness of the event. They can hardly believe that
nature, presuming that her laws would be conscientiously
obeyed, has provided no curative poisons to avert the punish-
ment for their violation. Had she done so, they ought to infer
that she would not have maliciously hidden them away so that
the search of thousands of years has failed to bring them all to
the light, while she has so benevolently placed every other
good gift vnthin easy reach.
If there is reason to believe that too much importance has
been attached to the administration of drugs, by both patient
and physieian, in the past, and if failure in the future seems
likely to follow the search for a specific antidote for each par-
ticular disease, the serious question will next arise in the mind
of the medical practitioner whether he can be as useful in the
future as he was supposed to be in the past ; and if so, in what
direction he shall now turn his energies.
It is likely that the doctor will ever be, as he always has
been, an important and indispensable factor in society. If he
cannot accomplish the semi-miraculous cures which his patients
406 The Physician of Tchday and of the Future. [Dec,
hope for, he can and has already accomplished much in other
directions, in which he may justly expect to accomplish more
in the future. If he has not discovered the long expected
universal panacea, the specific for every disease, as he certainly
has for some, he nevertheless has accomplished important re-
sults in his attempts to diminish the amount of human suffering.
In this direction he may still bend his energies. Life is hardly
desirable to the victim of pain which cannot be alleviated.
Anodynes have blessed the human race from the earliest dawn
of medicine. Although to relieve pain may not cure the dis-
ease, possibly may not even shorten it, yet the effect is the
same upon the mind of the patient. This very circumstance
may have tended to produce the over-estimation of drugs as
curative agents. The anodynes, pernicious as may have been
their effects when improperly used, may even have added to
the average longevity of the race by saving from desperation
and by taking away the temptation to self-destruction which
acute suffering might produce without them. The-comf ort and
happiness and prolongation of life which has resulted from the
discovery of aneesthesia should not be surrendered even to
secure all that which can be claimed for drugs in the way of
cure. The mental as well as physical agony which has been
removed from the race by the assurance that the surgeon's
knife can hereafter be painless, cannot be well appreciated.
The doctor of the past has made great advances in the
diagnosis and in the investigation of the causes of disease. To
determine accurately the nature, the cause, and the location of
the malady which affects the patient is the first and most im*
portant step toward its removal in the present, and its preven-
tion in the future. To accomplish this, tests the knowledge
and skill of the physician far more than does the ifrescribing
the supposed remedy. The certainty with which the precise
nature, cause, and probable result of any particular form of
disease can now be determined by the various methods of in-
vestigation, by chemical analysis, by auscultation, percussion,
and other manipulations, ought to give this branch of medicine
at least a place as one of the exact sciences* The profession of
medicine would be no unimportant one, even if the doctor
could do nothing more than inform his patients of the nature
1887.] The Physicimi of To^ay cmd of the Futrire. 40Y
and tlie cause, of the harmlessneBs or the danger, and of the
probable duration and result of their various ailments. Even
to accomplish so much, the services of the physician would be
in great demand.
In the domain of medicine, in this country at least, is in-
cluded the sargical field. There, rather than in the administra-
tion of drugs, results are tangible, positive, and unmistakable.
Much that the surgeon accomplishes is open to view, and can
be estimated by the public as well as by the patient at its true
value. By his interference and aid many lives are made en-
durable which otherwise would have been a burden. What
implicit confidence both patient and the public have
learned to place in the surgeon's knowledge and skill is shown
by the daily performance of operations when risk of life is
great, but where even when a fatal result may occur few
coroners or juries would brave public opinion by calling in
question the propriety of the operation, although both surgeon
and coroner well understand that a strict interpretation of the
letter of the law might expose the unsuccessful operator to
the risk of severe pimishment. In the field of surgery, rather
than of medicine proper, and especially of American surgery,
have great advances been made within the last quarter of a
century. Aided by instruments newly devised, by stethoscope,
laryngoscope, ophthalmoscope and speculum, emboldened by
ansesthetics, guarded by antiseptics, the tyro even in surgery
boldly, and his fathers would have said, recklessly enters with
impunity cavities of the body long considered sacred from in-
trusion so great were the supposed risks of interference.
Organs are removed, the ablation of which, not many years
ago, would have been deemed unjustifiable even to prevent the
certain approach of death. In surgery then especially may the
doctor be proud of recent advances and hope for greater in the
future.
The physician of the past, even though in some respects his
efforts may have been misdirected, does not lack for much
on which to congratulate himself. In striving for even better
results in the future it might be well for him to aim to be a
" doctor" rather than a " physician," one able and willing to
teach rather than a dispenser of physic. Let him educate his
408 The Physician of To-day and of the Futv/re, [Dec,
patients so that they will understaiid the laws of health, and so
that they will not venture to violate them with the understand-
ing that the physician can be held responsible if the punish-
ment for such violation shall not be averted. If he really
believes that in many cases where he has been accustomed to
prescribe medicine, the patient would recover under similar
hygienic conditions, as well without as with it, let him earn
the gratitude of the invalid by convincing him of the fact.
He will thus elevate himself above the level of the nurse and
the quack who can and do prescribe as successfully as himself
where medicine is unnecessary, and in the comparatively few
cases where the issue of the disease must depend upon the
careful selection of the remedy, his superior skill and knowl-
edge will become more strikingly manifest. If he believes
that the search of the last three thousand years for a universal
panacea, or at least for some particular antidote for each par-
ticular human ill, has been unsuccessful, he ought by this time
to become convinced that his elBForts have been misdirected,
and turn them at last in some new direction.
In determining what this direction shall be he will be aided
by noticing in what direction he has been most successful and
progressive in the past. He will find that it has not been so
much in the discovery of antidotes for disease after it has made
its attack, as in the discovery of methods and means of pre-
venting its invasion. The discovery of vaccination by Jenner
removed a scourge, to explain the magnitude of which those
who have lived and died in the slums of London must rise
from their graves. The good results which the happy thought
of one bright intellect has thus accomplished might well
stimulate the doctor of the future to see what he can accom-
plish in a similar direction. Even now such attempts are be-
ing made.
Perhaps the doctor of the future may look for his greatest
success in the attempt to discover and thoroughly investigate
the laws and rules for the promotion of health and the pre-
vention of disease. To accomplish the latter, he must search
out and destroy the hidden cause, the morbific agent whatever
it may be, before it has gained a foothold in the human sys-
tem, or he must so elevate and renovate that system that the
1887.] Ths PhyHcian of To-day cmd of the Future. 409
noxionfi germ cannot find a lodgment there. Heretofore he has
played the part of the fireman who stands ready to extinguish
the flames after they have invaded the combustible tenement ;
hereafter he may endeavor to have the stmctore made and
kept fire-proof. The doctor who in the past has striven with
unreliable agents to destroy the disease after it became en-
trenched is certainly worthy of gratitude ; the doctor of the
future, however, who shall prevent its entrance, will be the
greater benefactor. It is a hopeful sign that the antiquated
medical aphorism, *^ An ounce of prevention is worth a pound
of cure," so long preached, is now beginning to be practiced.
The disposition is not so strong now as formerly to look upon
disease as inevitable and to wait for its approach fully de-
veloped, but to meet it in its infancy, or better still, to destroy
the ovum or germ before its incubation. Instead of regarding
the cause of disease as a spiritual intangible essence, it is now
believed that on the field of the microscope this cause can often
be watched in the progress of its development in the shape of
parasitic germs, and that it can even there be met with its anti-
dote or germicide before it has reached its destination in the
life current of the human victim. If Koch, as he supposes,
has actually discovered the germ, the ovum, the microbe, the
bacillus, or the what-not, which when hatched out and propa-
gated will produce that scourge of the human race tubercular
consumption, and if in addition he can, as he thinks he has
done, discover the germicide which will destroy the infant in
its cradle or the embryo undeveloped, he has done more to pro-
long human life than can the livers of all the codfish near the
banks of Newfoundland. If he or others succeed, as they hope
to do, in isolating and destroying the parasitic germ which,
when it enters the human system causes the Asiatic cholera,
they will do more to save life than can all of the opiates and
astringents of the pharmacopoeia. If Lister, by antiseptic
gauze and vapor, can succeed in excluding or destroying the
floating germs in the atmosphere which he supposes to be
hovering over every open wound ready to inoculate and poison
the blood, he will have increased the average duration of life
more by preventing disease than have the new drugs of this
century by curing it.
410 The Physician of Today a/ad of the Future. [Dec.,
Id these and similar new directions will very likely be made
the progress in future, not in medicine as popularly understood,
but in the methods of prolonging life and averting its destruc-
tion. Perhaps it would even be an advantage in the future, if
all attempts to find specifics for the cure of disease after its in-
vasion, should be abandoned in the effort to find its causes and
prevention. If the search has been continued since the time
of Solomon, who believed that " a medicine doeth good," with
but meagre results, it should stimulate the desire to find new
methods to accomplish a still more desirable end.
In that millennial day which all hope is approaching, when
knowledge shall be so universal that sewer gas shall be un-
known, when physicians shall no longer exist as prescribers for
ills which may be averted, but rather as teachers or professors
of the science of health preservation, in the absence of facts to
guide us, we may be permitted to exercise the imagination and
suppose that a central bureau connected with others at the
various points of the compass has been established. Anxious
communities maybe forewarned and perhaps forearmed against
the approach, not of the hot and cold waves of summer and
winter, but of zymotic or malarial laden breezes from some un-
healthy region or clime. By timely notice and judicious quar-
antining contagious and infectious diseases may be eradicated,
and scarlet fever, diphtheria and their .congeners like the ibis or
the dodo may become extinct from a lack of an ovum for incuba-
tion. Far away in some distant wilderness, or in the basin of
some great salt lake the wise congress, now so honored — because
no longer dispensing the ineffectual dose — ^that their advice
becomes the law of the land, may establish a grand lazar house
where can be assembled the voluntary victims of every species
of a depraved appetite, when by a careful inspection segrega-
tion and exclusion the leprosy of modem civilization may be
forced to die from starvation and inanition. On the other
hand, in some sunny clime perhaps upon some healthful island
of the southern sea, in pleasant invalid resorts and homes amid
congenial surroundings, may be congregated those upon whom
the hectic flush has placed the stamp of death and possibly
tubercular disease might be deprived of food furnished by
heredity. By judicious advice the youth of this golden era
1887.] The Physician of To^y cmd of the Fuh^re. 411
might be so gaided in their matrimonial aspirations that the
age of athletics wonld be revived by their numerous progeny,
and the law of good if not of natural selection would leave its
imprint upon the human, as it is now made to do upon the
lower animal. The truth may then be taught that the stooping
shoulder, the angular and attenuated frame are not the neces-
sary physical type of the scholar, that brain and brawn are not
incompatible, and muscular may be so combined with mental
training that the nervous diseases which follow the attempts to
cultivate the intellectual at the expense of the physical shall be
brought to an end.
To those who call these the vagaries of an insane imagina-
tion the answer may be given that precisely the same charge
would have been made before the discovery of anaesthesia had
such a possibility been suggested. It may be said, finally, in
view of the nature of progress already made, that progress will
likely continue in the same or similar directions in the future.
In view of the failure to find universally curative agents in the
past, we may expect similar failure in the future, and desirable
as may be the cure of the disease we may with propriety direct
our efforts to its prevention which is still more desirable, and
instead of the unsatisfactory task of teaching how to admin-
ister medicine we may weU assume the role of teaching how
not to administer it
E. P. BUFPETT.
412 Dr. Fumess^s Othello. Pec.,
Abticlb III.— dr. FURNESS'S "OTHELLO."
A New YarioTwm Edition of Shakeepeare^ edited by Horacb
Howard Furness. Vol. VL Othello. Philadelphia:
J. B. Lippincott Co.
" Humph 1 There is not much money in that for the pub-
lisher, but a deal of glory for the editor, let me tell you," was
Mr. Joshua Lippincott's comment on the proposition to edit
a New Variorum, made by Mr. Furness, years ago. He spoke
a great deal of truth. The work is now a chief glory of
American Shaksperian scholarship. But only a publisher who
occasionally saw something better than money-making in his
business would unite with a man, like Agassiz, " too busy to
make money," to produce a work involving such a vast amount
of financially unprofitable labor. For instance, in preparing
Othello the texts of forty-flix chief editions have been com-
pared, word for word, twice over^ and every difference of con-
sequence carefully recorded, with the name of its suggestor.
So we have all the important editions in one. Perhaps the in-
calculable value of such work is not appreciated generally ; but
all readers of the dramatist must feel sincerest gratitude for the
winnowing of such a library of notes and commentaries as one
of Shakspere's plays calls forth. In the Appendix, quotations
are made from nearly two hundred works, to say nothing of
the numbers read without such reward. The book, then, is
better than a Shakesperian library, for its particular purpose.
It is the habit of some to oppose such editions, on the
ground that notes and comments so copious merely appeal to
the passive powers of the mind, and lead us away from the
main consideration. Particularly editions with so-called " sign-
post criticisms" have been held up to ridicule by those who
would think it impious or puerile to speak of anything but
the geology of Alexander's Athos. But is it not a general
experience that studying such editions is like ploughing deep
and sowing good seed ? There is the opportunity of raising a
1887.] Dr. Fv/meBis Othello. 413
huge crop of weeds, but in sach a field, common sense is
trained to tell the dilfference between wheat and tares. And
often what seems a weed to one may prove moly to another if
it is rightly cultivated. There is no disguising the fact, that
even in the exposition of Shakspere, the ancients have stolen
some of our best thoughts. Why not profit by what has been
done, and so begin where the ancients have left off? Rowe's
note of nigh two hunared years ago or Rolfe's note of yester-
day ought to stimulate as good and original thought as you
could obtain without them.
It is with Shakspere and one important class of his com-
mentators as it is with painters and their subject The orig-
inal landscape is best, but the more familiar and dear it is to
you, the more you covet the painter's interpretation. One
artist may shed a sunset glory upon it ; another may reveal it
as through a moonlight atmosphere ; still another may lend it
a light which probably never was on sea or land. Or Buskin
may excel all with a mere word painting. One or all may
seem true or false to you : the landscape is still the same, yet
not the same. The old tree was there, but you had not
noticed it particularly before ; and now you think of it, why
did not the artist see the possibilities in that bit of meadow at
the side ? It's well to look through another's eyes occasionally,
when we get too nearnsighted or too far sighted.
" For, don't you zaark ? we're made so that we love
First when we see them painted, things we have passed
Perhaps a himdred times nor cared to see;
And so they are better, painted— better to us,
Which is the same thing. Art was given for that;
Gk>d uses us to help each other so.
Lending our minds out."
It is interesting to notice what progress has been made in
Shaksperian work since the last great Variorum in 1821. The
Othello then contained little more than the ordinary school
editions of to-day. And it seems as though about everything
valuable in Shaksperiana dated from the time of its publica-
tion. There is pleasure, too, in contrasting the work of Dr.
Fumess with somewhat similar tasks undertaken in the lively
old days when a pen was not only mightier than a sword, but
VOL. XI. 80
414 Dr. FuTvusia OtheOo. [Dec.,
a good deal sharper in a fencing-bout, and when the chief aim
of Shaksperian scholars often seemed to be the discomfitnre of
rivals, and their inspiration was hatred of one another, rather
than love for Shakspere. Dr. Fumess is the most modest of
editors, and one continually wishes^for more of his individual
opinions. But we are told that when Mr. Lippincott made
the remark quoted at the beginning of this paper, the young
editor "registered a vow before high heaven, to beware of
presumption, and in his work especially, to take heed how he
pushed forward his own opinions."
The latest volume of the New Yarioum is in some respects
the most interesting. Wordsworth classed Othello with " Pla-
to's records of the last scenes in the career of Socrates, and
Izaak Walton's Life of George Herbert^^ as "the most pa-
thetic of human compositions ; " and Macaulay ranked it as
" perhaps the greatest work in the world." Besides the inter-
est inspired by the play itself, the work of the editor, though
it seemed about perfect before, is much better than in pre-
vious volumea Instead of a new-made text, the reading of
the First Folio is taken for the standard throughout ; even
obvious misprints are carefully reproduced. More attention
is paid to " stage-business " than in former editions ; and so far
as they may aid appreciation, the gestures, emphasis, positions,
and by-plays of the different actors are given as fully as possi-
ble. At III : iii, 375, where lago has just obtained possession
of the coveted handkerchief, we have seen an actor illustrate
the lines, —
'* Trifles light as air
Are to the jealous confirmations strong
As proofs of holy writ,"
in a manner worthy the recognition of the Variorum. There
was a quick glimpse of malevolent scheming in the way he
tossed and quickly clutched the filmy trifle.
The latest volume of the New Variorum is the more read-
able because many more notes are given at the bottom of the
page to which they relate, instead of in the back part, as in
former volumes. One might still wish that there were more
references under the text to the longer illustrative comments
in the Appendix ; and we wish that the Appendix itself were
1887.] Dr. Fumes^a OtheOo. 415
occasionally annotated ; bnt it is di£Scalt to snggest any needed
improvements in work so nearly perfect
On p. 86 a note quoted from Ellacombe leaves the impres-
sion that the word " carat " is derived from the word " Carob."
Skeat, in his Etymological Dictionary, shows that the words
are cognate only. On p. 102 is a misprint : the reference to
the Faerie Queene should be I : xi, 271. On p. 130, in the
first line of the notes, " 84 '^ should be " 83." On p. 235 the
reference to Abbott's Shakesperian Grammar should be 515a.
On p. 108, we think an explanation of the peculiar meaning
of " Freeze," line 150, would be more valuable than, for in-
stance the seemingly unnecessary note on " fond," just below.
On p. 116, 1. 259, the general reader can hardly be expected
to understand accurately the note, '^divsU. Another charac-
teristic fling at Othello's color." There is probably an allusion
to the customary representation of the Prince of Darkness in
the miracle plays, and a note on this point would have been in
place earlier in the play, at I : i, 99. Amid such wealth • of
comment one may be disappointed at finding a few passages
which must give us pause, left without a suggestion. But if
now and then one misses a favorite note, generally a little
reflection will show that " in these cases we still have judg-
ment here," and judgment rare among editors.
Crucial passages are exhaustively treated. The editor has
very Satisfactorily umpired a struggle between the critics and
" the green-eyed monster," which is prolonged through nearly
five pages of fine print. An equal amount of space is given
to discussing the identity of '* a fellow almost damned in a fair
wife." In conclusion the editor mocks the meat he has fed on
with : " I merely re-echo Dr. Johnson's words : * This is one
of the passages which must,* for the present, be resigned to
corruption and obscurity. I have nothing that I can, with
any approach to confidence, propose.' " To one who has read
the discussion, wherein forty odd critics give forty odder ex-
planations, there is a fine Shaksperian irony in the use of the
words " corruption and obscurity." It is a little strange that
none of the commentators quoted have made any attempt to
identify the " fellow " with Othello. It seems to be taken for
granted that if lago is not meant, then it must be Cassio.
416 Dr. Fumess'a Othello. [Dec,
Here is the passage as in the Folio. lago is speaking of
Othello: —
" Three Great-ones of the Cittie,
(In personal! suite to make me his Lieutenant)
OfF-capt to him: and by the faith of man
I know my price, I am worth no worsse a place.
But he (as loving his own owne pride, and purposes)
Evades them, with a bumbast circumstance.
Horribly stufft with Epithites of warre,
Non-suites my Mediators. For certes, sales he,
I have already chose my OfBlcer. And what was he?
For-sooth, a great Arithmatician,
One Michaell Cassio, a Florentine,
(A Fellow almost damn'd in a f aire wife)
That never set a Squadron in the Field,
Nor the deuision of a Battaile knowes
More than a Spinster. Vnlesse the Bookish Theoricke:
Wherein the Tongued Consuls can propose
As Masterly as he. Meere pratle (without practise)
Is all his Souldiership. But he (Sir) had th' election;
And I (of whom his eies had seene the proofe
At Rhodes, at Cipi-us, and on others groimds
Christened and Heathen) must be be-leed, and calm'd
By Debitor and Creditor. This Counter-caster,
He (in good time) must his Lieutenant be.*'
The certain facts are that the shrewd, scheming, intellectoal,
experienced lago deserved the position far more than Cassio,
and his friendship with the Moor must have led him to ex-
pect it. But Michael Cassio was an old friend of Desdemona's
the one who deserved most from both Othello and his wife,
and as messenger " went between them very oft" and " came
a-wooing" with Othello. If Cassio hinted to Desdemona that
he would like to be a Lieutenant what would be the result ?
The third scene of the third act shows us. After Cassio's an-
worthiness has been proved and he is in disgrace, and at a
time when a good lieutenant should not be selected hap-haz-
ard, Desdemona's entreaty that he be restored to his position
is answered with " I will deny thee nothing." But when Cas-
sio was first appointed, since Othello had been living a life of
peace " for some nine moons," and anticipated a continuation of
such life, as his marriage shows, it would not seem such a great
risk if " in good time" Cassio should be given the easy pod-
tion. Now from lago's point gf view when speaking above,
1887.] Dr. Fumesa's Othdlo. 417
Othello's " occupation" was everything to him.' So he should
have the best officers obtainable. If at Desdemona's request
he is persuaded to risk everything with aiioh a lieutenant,
surely he is a fellow almost damned by his fair wife's influence
over him. The line then may well be a parenthetical com-
ment on Othello. As we are treating nothing but the impres-
sion lago seeks to give, we have nothing to do with actual reasons
for Cassio's appointment. The best editors cannot understand
the line as referring to lago or Cassio. As no explanation like
the above has ever been offered we humbly submit it for the
consideration of the next Variorum editor.
In Othello's account of his courtship before the senators I
iii. 181, the Folio reads :
" My Storie being done,
She gave me for my paines a world of kisses.'*
In Elizabethan script the words " sighs" and " kisses" with the
long double s (^) resembled one another. "• The notes on the
passage are :
Pope: Sighs is evidently the true reading. The lady had been for-
ward indeed, to give him a world of kisses upon the bare recital of his
story, nor does it agree with the following lines. [And yet we must
remember that kissing in Elizabeth^s time was not as significant as it is
now. See the openness with which in 11. i. Cassio kisses Emilia.— Ed.]
Apparently the editor would offer some defence for retention
of the Folio reading here, but for once his defence does not
seem a good one, as a reference to the passage in II. i shows.
There Cassio meets Deademona and Emilia who have just
landed after a long voyage. Pretty certainly Cassio was more
intimately acquainted with Desdemona than with Emilia, and
Desdemona is most friendly to him on all occasions. Then,
in defence of the Folio, he should greet her as he does Emilia,
with a kiss. But there is most marked difference in his man-
ner toward the one and the other. Coleridge asks us to " note
the exquisite circumstance of Cassio's kissing lago's wife, as if it
ought to be impossible that the dullest auditor should not feel
Cassio's religious love of Desdemona's purity." And Cassio's
kissing Emilia once is very different from Desdemona's giving
*^ a world of kisses" to a new acquaintance in payment for
some interesting stories.
418 Dr. Fwmes^B Othello. [Dec.,
In a note on II : i, 182, the editor asks :
" Ought not Roderigo to be disguised? Did not lago tell him to defeat
his favor with a usurped beard ? It seems almost impossible to suppose
that Cassio had never met in Venice, Desdemona's assiduous wooer
Roderigo, and yet see line 297 of this scene, where lago tells Roderigo
that Cassio does not know him. Can this refer to anything else than
to his ' defeated favour ' ? "
Apparently it does, for Cassio himself declares in V : i, 129,
in answer to the queistion what malice was between him and
Roderigo.' " None in the world, nor do I know the man."
And the dialogue immediately preceding this speech is of
such a nature that, had he known Roderigo in Venice, there
could be no misunderstanding now The fact that Roderigo
was Desdemona's assiduous wooer does not seem important
here, for the manner of his wooing, by proxy, indicates an ab-
sence of intimacy at her father's house, where he might meet
Cassio. And, too, Brabantio's behavior shows that his wel-
come there was worn out before the beginning of Cassio's
intimacy. Furthermore Roderigo was not the kind of man
Desdemona would meet oftener than was absolutely necessary.
There is difficulty in determining the place of the second
scene of the fourth act. It seems to be an apartment in
Othello's castle; there is only one objection to thisw In
Malone's words :
" Boderigo enters and discom*ses with lago, which decisively ascertains
the scene not to be* in Othello's house; for Roderigo, who had given the
first intelligence to Brabantio of his daughter's flight, and had shortly
afterward drawn his sword on Othello and his partisans, certaiuly
would not take the liberty of walking into his house at pleasure."
But this is just what Roderigo came to Cyprus for, we might
say ; and his presence in Othello's house is pretty well ex-
plained by lines 228, 229, of the same scene. Plainly he has
come with a firm determination to '* to make himself known to
Desdemona," and it is with difficulty that lago changes this
purpose. Roderigo was not like other men. Moreover if
there was something desperate in his actions at this point it
would not be strange.
From the notes on IV: 1, 259, one first gets the impression
that we are to believe that Othello is called home because of
1887.] Dr. Fv/me8a*s Othello. 419
insufficiency. A little farther on, in line 295, Lodovico, the
bearer of the recall, speaks of him as *' the noble Moor yrhom
onr fall senate call idl in all sufficient" It seems as though
the chief value of these words was in their contradiction of ike
idea of insufficiency. May not Othello's own misgiving fall
shrewdly to the purpose ? In IV: 2, 53 Desdemona says :
'• If haply you my father do suspect
An instrument in this your calling back,
Lay not your blame on me."
In the critical extracts in the appendix the villainy* of lago
of course receives much attention. There is one feature of it
however, which is not noted and which has been missed or
slighted by every comnientator. The singular influence which
Koderigo imconsciously exerts upon lago, has never been
shown. Having once began to dupe.Eoderigo, he can not get
rid of him when he would, and so must continue to "expend
time with such a snipe," even after " sport and profit" are no
longer Ids rewards. So Roderigo unwittingly now leads and
now pushes him into deeper villainy and more desperate and
bloody action. There is material for an interesting essay in a
study of this.
In fact one cannot read long in a volume of the New Vari-
orium without seeing opportunities for many an essay of pleas-
ing power and originality, so frequent are the undeveloped
suggestions. And if any amateur Shakesperian club wishes to
stack well, in spite of Richard Gi-ant White's advice to ignore
all notes at first, we advise it to begin with Dr. Fumess's
."Othello." Then any unwarranted attack of the cacoetAea
scrihendi will pass away agreeably and harmlessly in the dis-
'cussions at the club meetings.
Ebnest WmrNKY.
420 Perkimfs France under Maza/rm. [Dec.,
Abticlb IV.— PERKINS'S FRANCE UNDER MAZARIN.
France under Mazarin / with a Review of the Administration
of Richelieu, By James Breck Perkins. New York and
London : G. P. Putnam's Sons. 1886. 12 vols. 8vo.
To review a grave and solid work of historical literature at
a time when it is passing into its third edition is to invite the
reproach of the "Edinburgh" critic, of having disqualified
one's self from impartial judgment by first reading the book.
To this charge, if it be alleored against us, we must simply
plead guilty. "We have read every word of these handsome
volumes, even with something like the studious diligence which
they deserve. The public verdict already rendered by the
somewhat unusual sale which the work has so soon commanded,
we do not presume either to confirm or to overrule. We shall
attempt, however, to give to those readens of Th^ New-Eng-
hmder^ who have not yet acquainted themselves with the book,
some reasons why it should be commended to their immediate
attention as a contribution to French history in the English
language of permanent and substantial value.
Perhaps, however, we may be permitted in doing this to re-
verse a course of comment which we have heretofore observed
as so ordinary in book reviews as to have become normal if not
obligatory. It is usual, and perhaps logical, to begin at the in-
side and move thence outwardly ; to give some account first of
the matter of the book, then to describe the manner of it, and
at last commend or condemn the external material form with
which the printer and binder have clothed it. What we have
to say in disparagement of these volumes concerns so little the
substantial character of the work that, if we are to show omv
selves ill natured at all, we prefer to have done with it at the
outset, and pass speedily to considering the merits, both solid
and brilliant, which some conspicuous external defects disfigure
or obscure.
In the interest then, of pure eesthetics, as well as of the eye-
1887.] PerJciru?8 Fra/nce wnder Mazarm. 421
sight of readers, we protest against a mannerism of the printing
office which has first shown itself within a score of years ; which
is as much justified by reason or taste as would be a revived
whim for hoop-skirts or periwigs; and which at best should at-
tain to no higher dignity of use than in an occasional pamphlet
or a montlily magazine. These very handsome volumes, with
their grave yet attractive exterior of smooth blue muslin and
gilded upper edges, are printed, nevertheless, although upon
thick *Maid" paper, with the type which the printer calls
" antique," and which is in fact the revival of a form of letters
which advancing civilization had evolved out of existence a
century ago. The round-bodied, full-faced characters with
which the best American and English type-founders of a genera-
tion since, wedding utility to beauty, had perfected the work of
presenting the spoken language to the eye, have been displaced
by a set of spindle-legged, narrow-featured, misshapen figures,
studiously unsymmetrical, whose single claim to respect is that
they are different from something else. It is too bad that a work
of the solid and enduring value of the one before us should
carry to another generation the impression that typographical
art in 1886 had made dismal retrogression since 1850. It is no
less deplorable that the reader of 1887 should turn from these
volumes to the pages of Parkman's or Palfrey's histories, or of
any other from the University Press or that of John Wilson
and Son, with some such sensation as if a piece of smoked glass
or of muslin through which he had been trying to read had
been taken away. Eye-sight goes soon enough in most men's
lives. The wise men are agreed that the mediaeval characters
in which the Germans choose to do their reading are the cause of
half the spectacles between the Ehine and the Vistula. We stand,
therefore, upon solid ground in denouncing as public enemies
those xmgainly letters which put unnecessary strain upon the
organs of sight, while oflfending against the canons of good
taste, which cannot be at variance with those of good sense.
Nor can we feel sure, passing the objection to the choice of
type, that both the author and the printer have done their full
duty to the public in getting his writing into print It is true
that in the text there are some stumbling blocks in the form of
foreign names, and that in the notes there are more in the form
422 Perhirufs Fra/nce under Mazarvn. [Dea,
of titles and quotations, Italian as well as French. The errors,
however, obviously of the press alone, which bristle through
the volumes, and which, however frequent in the foreign
passages and names, are by no means confined to them, disfigure
inexcusably and sometimes very seriously a work entitled to far
better treatment. We have not attempted to note them all ; and
to specify all that we have noted would not be profitable. The
French accents, it may be safely said by way of generalization,
are sadly apt to be omitted or misplaced ; and this is an error
the less pardonable because it is one for which the proof-reader
was bound to be especially on the watch. We cannot but be
grateful, however, to author or printer who sulBEers us to read
of the States-General of 1614 that " the cashiers asked that the
regulations of commerce should be remodeled," (i 56) consider-
ing the natural interest of financial officers in such a subject ;
but it was undoubtedly the cahiera which set forth such a de-
mand.
So when we read that the war " now waged from the Baltic
to the Straits " (i. 449), and on the same page read of a war
"actually waging for some years before," we may safely
attribute the eccentricity to the carelessness of the corrector
rather than to a slip of the writer's pen. The same page, how-
ever, presents some such curious topographical complications as
cannot with justice be laid to the charge of the proof-reader
alone. " The villages of the Eglantine " may indeed have been
those of the Engadine when written. But we can by no exer-
cise of fancy relieve the author of responsibility for describing
" the slopes of the Pyrenees descending through . . . Catalonia
to the plains of Languedoc."
If the book were not so good as it is, we might not demand
of the author the fine exactness which is so constantly wanting
to make it better than it is. For some reason, however, which
we are at a loss to discover, whether a haste of composition
which has left no time to be coiTcct, or an impatience of re-
straint by prevalent laws of speech, or an indiflEerence to the
finer elegances which come of care and polish, it results that
small errors of the most obvious and avoidable kind sometimes
mislead, but far oftener oflEend. To quote all that we have
marked in the margins of our copy would be to make this arti-
1887.] Perkina'^s France under Mazarin. 428
cle look like a spelliDg-book or a page of errata. Some of
them, however, we are bound to mention, of which many may
already have been set right since the first edition, and others
may meet a like fate in the issues which are yet to follow.
" Sully's name," we are told, " as is well known, was the
Baron of Rosni " (i, 27, note). Now Sully's " name " was not
that, any more than it was " the Duke of Sully " — any more
than it could be said that " Castlereagh's name was the Marquis
of Londonderry." The Viscount Castlereagh was undoubtedly
also Marquis of Londonderry ; but his '* name " was simply
Eobert Stewart And although the Duke of Sully was also
Baron of Bosni, the only name he ever had was Maximilien de
B^thune.
There is, indeed, an eccentricity in Mr. Perkins's dealings
with the proper names which come in his way that cannot be
explained upon the hypothesis of any imaginable method. A
non-Catholic historian of the Froude may be pardoned for not
having his Old Testament so well at command as the Cardinal
against whom the Froude arose, and so for translating Mazarin's
complaint of the ladies " who cause us every day more confus-
ion than ever there was in Bahel^'* as if he had written " Baby-
lon " (ii. 69), which would have been far from a significant
comparison. But there is a readiness to accept without inquiry
whatever form of name offers itself in the document for the
moment before the author's eye, which falls little short of what
the law-writers call "gross" or "culpable negligence." Mr.
Perkins concedes this, at least, to our American usage, that he
tells us always of Vienna, never of " Wien," and of Cologne
rather than " Koln." H, therefore, he writes of Brunswick as
" Braunschweig " (i. 153, 450), or of Nuremberg as " Numberg "
(i. 166), it is not from a rigid purism insisting that the people
of a country are the best authority for its names, but simply be-
cause the book he was reading from was German, and he did
not trouble himself to consider the English form of the names.
There are many of his readers who will think twice before they
will recognize Goldsmith's "lazy Scheldt" in "the Escaut"
(i. 339), although they may be aided by finding Antwerp and
not "An vers" in the following line. To transfer from the
French narrative which he was using, the name of " Pausil-
424 Perkin^a France under Mazarin. [Dec,
lippe," is a slip which would be more tolerable if the line above
had spoken of " St. Janvier/' and not, as it does, of " St. Ghen-
naro " (i. 378). Nor can we quite approve of restoring even
her own French name to one who became an English queen and
mother of two English kings, and who is as little known to
English speaking folk by any un-English name as would be the
first Norman king by his name of Guillaume. Yet the wife of
Charles I. is never mentioned except as " Henriette Marie " (it
289, etc.). But the most curious instance, perhaps, of the loose
inexactitude of which we complain is in mentioning a certain
body of Spanish troops, " commanded by Saint Croix,'* (i. 238).
The gender of the adjective would itself attract notice, but in-
quiry might stop there but for the nationality mentioned. It
is evident that the French writer before Mr. Perkins, after the
prevalent French manner, had translated into his own language
the name of the Marshal "de Santa Craz," and that our
author neither turned it back into its original, retained it fully
in French, nor put it, as he might, completely into English as
"Holy Cross."
Coming to the superficial faults of mere English expression,
which we have found to be both more frequent and more offen-
sive than can easily be excused in one who shows himself con-
stantly so capable of both vigorous and elegant use of his native
tongue, we should deem them hardly worth criticizing were the
work generally less admirable than it is. It is, indeed, so good
that there whs no excuse for not making it better. The author
of the passages which we shall quote has no right, as one less
brilliant or less skillful with words might have, to fall into such
common-place errors as to write: ** there has been such ex-
cesses" (i. 45); "the Majesty Letter, by which was given ♦ *
rights nearly equal " (i. 147) ; " the two men whom it was be-
lieved would enjoy " (i. 255, etc.). It might be a mere inadver-
tence which should bring him to speak of Richelieu's " star " as
" in the ascendancy " (i. 220), but that will not account for his
finding such a preterit as "pled" for the verb "to plead"
(i. 243), or adopting in repeated use such an abomination as
" illy " (i. 404, et passim). The clumsy and unnecessary double
pluperfect — "the part of prudence * * would have been to
have waited" (L 219) — is unhappily to be found sometimes in
1887.] Perking 8 Frcmce under Mazarin. 425
more exact writers than Mr. Perkins ; but it is only in grotesque
dialogue that one expects usually to meet with "aggravate"
in the sense of " irritate " or " exasperate " (ii. 293, 406). It is
a curious perversion of a word from its natural use to speak of
the " assault " of a town which continued for ten days (ii. 78) ;
and it may perhaps be called mere hyperbole to say that " there
was no money on hand " for ordinary expenses, " and' still less
to meet the demands of the army " (ii. 250).
There are, besides, whole classes of faults which may be
brought together as newspaper neologisms, American colloqui-
alisms, or the individual usages of the writer, without attribut-
ing them expressly to any one of those categories. A writer
of French history in almost any age is compelled, for example,
to make frequent mention of a close relation of the sexes un-
sanctified by the conjugal tie. Nor is the English language
utterly bare of phrases by which to characterize the gentler of
the parties to such a relation. No extreme diligence or pro-
fundity of research, indeed, would be needed to disclose an
opulence of resource such as would have provided a distinct
equivalent at least for every chapter of this work, if not quite
for every page, without yet exhausting the wealth of ancient
and modem English nomenclature. To Mr. Perkins, however,
his language not only yields for this purpose nothing better
than the weak and thin phrase " lady-love," but it seems to
yield him nothing else ; and so we have " lady-love " here, and
"lady-love" there, from the beginning to the end of the book,
until it really serves as a moral deterrent from reading the pas-
sages, alas I all too frequent and too entertaining, which touch
upon the cogent force of the sexual instinct in French politics.
Neither can we pardon the excessive overwork which is im-
posed upon the good English verb " to claim," by exercising it
in its degraded American application. To pretend, to allege,
to maintain, to accuse — all these good words, if not more, are
replaced by this substitute which never was made for their
work. "It was claimed that pirates" had committed great
robberies (i. 109) ; " it was claimed " that the king was neglect-
ed (i. 77) ; and thus throughout. The wording of a treaty is
called its " verbiage " (ii. 134, note). When " courtesans " are
spoken of (i. 418), it is by no means as a synonym for " lady-
426 PerMrufs France under Mazarin. [Dec,
loves," for evidently courtiers are meant. And when we have
mentioned that the plumes of the Gallic emblem are called
" rooster's feathers " (ii. 17) ; that the Duke of Guise is said to
have " interviewed " the authorities of Naples (i. 364) ; that in
the Paris which already knew the Hotel RambouiUet the
cabarets are called ^' saloons " (i. 58), we have given instances
enough— so many, in fact, as to convey too unfavorable an im-
pression— of the faults we criticize.
The errors, however, which we have now at so great length
specified and complained of, are errors of external form and
expression alone. From substantial errors of statement or of
judgment the whole work is singularly free. But for these
frequent but superficial faults even ungenerous criticism would
be ready to accept the work as the mature product of a profes-
sional student of French history. It is indeed true that the
leisure of many years has been devoted by Mr. Perkins almost
exclusively to the diligent study of the seventeenth and eigh-
teenth centuries in France ; that an occasional episode has been
described by him in the periodical press with admirable vigor and
lucidity ; and that the special preparation for these volumes in-
volved many months of residence in Paris, with incessant labor
and research in the National Library, among not only the in-
numerable publications of the period in question, but its
treasures of unpublished manuscripts as well. It could hardly
be guessed, however, by a stranger who knew of him only by
his book, that he is a lawyer in extensive and successful prac-
tice, and that while still a young man he has been able to steal
from so exacting a profession the time required for so large, so
solid, and so brilliant a work as this. It would not have been
strange if there had crept into it graver and more numerous
mistakes, besides such as we have pointed out, than close
scrutiny can in fact detect. A moment's reflection would have
saved him from selecting the "accounts" of an American
Secretary of the Treasury as an illustration of anything (ii. 337).
And it is perhaps a striking evidence of the small part which
feudal principles now play in the New York law of real estate,
that a lawyer of high standing in that Commonwealth is abso-
lutely unaware of the meaning of the phrase "heir-apparent ;"
for again and again he misuses those words, in such connection
1887.] Perking s France under Maza/rin. i27
as itself makes the error conspicuous. Upon the unexpected
birth of a son to Anne of Austria, the Duke of Orleans, it is
said, " ceased to be the heir-apparent" (i. 201, 209 ; and so ii.
318, 219). Now what constitutes an heir-apparent is that he
can by no circumstance cease to be such except by his own
death, or by coming into his inheritance. If his inheritance is
less certain than this, he is nothing more than heir-presumptive ;
and this is what Gaston of Orleans was until the " God-given "
came between him and the crown.
We should have been glad if the author had spared now and
again a moment from the swift movement of his narrative for
a fuller explanation of matters which may be clear and familiar
to him, but which no one who reads French history for instruc-
tion can reasonably be supposed to know. With the gradual
extinction of the constitutional rights of the Parliaments, and
especially of the Parliament of Paris, which was going on under
the two great Cardinals, the use of the " bed of justice " was
perhaps more frequent than ever before, when kings were too
weak to dare it, or ever after, when kings were too strong to
need it. Something more, therefore, might well have been
said in elucidation of this curious phi*ase, which contains in it-
self no suggestion of its origin or meaning, than that "the
throne on which the king sat " had its back and sides " made
of bolsters and it was called a bed " (i. 388, note). The primi-
tive meaning of lit {Iect/U8) was quite as much " couch " for sit-
ting or reclining — a seat covered with a canopy — as " bed."
When therefore this padded sofa, like the English " woolsack "
except that it was to be occupied by the king's person instead
of the king's chancellor, was set up in the Parliament, the
maxim that in the king's presence all inferior functions, which
depended upon him, were suspended {adveniente principe cessat
magistratua) took effect ; his simple command made the law
(gtcod pHncipi placuit legis hahet vigorem\ and his servants,
the judges, had but to register and declare it
Thus too, the threat of the Cardinal de Retz that he would,
in a certain case, " don the Isabel scarf " (ii. 155) conveys cer-
tainly but little meaning to the fairly intelligent reader. There
is nothing to tell him, what he could hardly guess without being
told, that " Isabel " is a color ; that the scarf of that color was
428 Ferkin^B France v/nder Mazwrin. [Dec,
the distinctive badge of the partisans of " Monsieur le Prince ;"
and that the color was a tawny yellow. Far less could he con-
ceive of the delicately romantic tale which joined the name to
the color : how half a century before the Froude, the Arch-
Duchess Isabel, daughter of Philip II. of Spain, and governor
of the Low Countries, resolved early in the three years' siege of
Ostende, never, until her husband should be victorious, to
change her most intimate raiment ; and that when success at last
had crowned his elSorts, her heroic constancy was commemora-
ted by giving her name to the rich tint by that time pervading
her apparel.
We have probably shown that it is easier than it ought to be
to find faults in this brilliant yet substantial work If it is not,
however, far easier to present its merits in a review, it is be-
cause the limits of a review forbid the largeness of quotation
necessary to do so fairly. That the faculty of clear, forcible,
compact yet graceful speech belongs to Mr. Perkins in no com-
mon measure we shall have no trouble in showing by such ex-
amples as may be conveniently selected. Sustained narrative,
however; philosophic insight, and broad and comprehensive
understanding of a period, an institution, or a character ; all
these we cannot prove by excerpts to be disclosed by the history
we have in hand. The reader who doubts our judgment must
read for himself ; so shall he be convinced, and rejoice that he
has doubted.
Of the general plan and the actual execution of the work,
except in such details as we have so profusely criticized, little
but what is good can be said. No complete or fairly intelligi-
ble account of the eighteen years of Mazarin's administration
could ever be given that should exclude its relation with the
government of France by his greater predecessor. The disciple
could be but half understood without some knowledge of the
master. A rapid and vigorous sketch, therefore, outlines the
condition of the kingdom at the moment when the dagger of
Jacques C16ment brought an end to the house of Yalois, and
when returning peace and prosperity, under the apostacy of
Henry and the administrative genius of Sally, were bringing
internal wealth and happiness, and establishing the foreign in-
fluence of the monarchy. This compact yet lucid story pre-
1887.] P&rkm^B Frcmce under Maza/rm. 429
pares the reader for a somewhat fuller account of the wretched
minority of Louis XIII. and the profligate regency of Mary de*
Medici, and a description of the summoning and the session of
the States-General in 1614, of their gradual rise and develop-
ment, and of their inherent defects and weaknesses, which seem
to us to be among the best summaries to be found of this inter-
esting institution.
Passing rapidly, but with eflfective graphic force, through the
whole administration of Richelieu, the accession of Mazarin to
power, at the very height of the Thirty Tears' War, introduces
a much greater fullness of narrative, with no diminution, how-
ever, of energy and vivacity. We do not know where, indeed,
in English history a more complete and intelligent account is to
be found of the rise and the constitution of the French judicial
system, of the various provincial Parliaments, and especially of
the Parliament of Paris, which struggled so long, and often so
nobly, to establish itself into a check and a regulator of absolute
despotism, than in the chapters recounting the prolonged con-
flict which, at the moment when the Treaty of Westphalia was
restoring peace to Europe, was opening in France the petty war
of the Fronde. It may serve to give some idea of the method
and the manner of the author if we present a few passages from
this admirable account.
" In France, as in other countries, the tendency was to increase the
number and influence of those who sat in such courts as the king's offi-
cers. Alike from their own disinclination and from the greater activity
of the royal officials, those holding their places simply from their feudal
position constantly took less interest and less part in the decisions of the
court. A similar change affected the courts of the feudal lords. The
transfer of power from untutored nobles to learned clerks became a
necessity by the development of the law. However well fitted to pass
upon some question of the chase, to adjudge the delinquency of a villein
failing to pay his feudal dues, to adjust the quarrels of the chief equerry
with the chief huntsman, the nobles found themselves alike perplexed
and bored when complicated questions came before them, to be decided
by still more complicated rules of law. Once th6 judgment of God, the
test of hot ploughshares and boiling water, had been appealed to for the
decision of embarrassing questions of fact, and the duties of a jury had
been imposed upon the Almighty. But such modes of determining the
right and exposing the wrong fell into disuse, and with the increasing
study and influence of the civil law came the necessity of having clerks
learned in it, to act as advisers to the court. The advisers and assistants
VOL. XI. 31
430 Perhi/Mfs Frcmce under Mazariru [Dec.,
in time became judges. They exchanged the bombazine for the ermine.
To hear prolix dificussions of Latin texts which they could not under-
stand, containing rules of law which they could not comprehend, was
repugnant to gentlemen who did not wish to exchange their swords for
inkstands. It was not pleasant for a gentleman longing for the chase
or the tournament to listen to a tedious and confusing trial, only to be-
come in his decision the mouth-piece of some black-gowned student of
Bologna, who did not know the first rules of venery, and who was
ignorant alike of the art of the troubadour and the weight of a coat of
mail. A tendency to substitute clerks as judges in the place of nobles
was encouraged by kings who, like Philip Augustus, St. Louis, and
Philip the Fair, sought the extension of a centralized royal authority.
Alike from their studies and their desire for promotion, the legists were
eager to lay down rules which increased the authority of the king ; and
the principles of Roman law. established under the empire, were the
grounds for claining powers for the kings like those of the emperors **
(1. 880-1).
" The judiciary thus established with a permanent power soon be-
came, to a large extent, an hereditary body. Such a result, unusual in
judicial history and unwholesome in its effects, was due to the fact, so
sharply disting^uishing the French from the English courts, that the judi-
cial offices became objects of open barter and sale : sold by the govern-
ment in its financial needs, and bought by whoever was willing to pay
the highest price. Under Louis XXL the sale of judicial offices began to
be a recognized source of income. Such sales, made at first with some
concealment and much remonstrance, were extended during the reign
of Francis I. That monarch, surrounded in his own day and in history
by a false glamour of an expiring chivalry and a dawning renaissance,
worked evil in almost every branch of the French government. As the
sale was open, so the purchaser was not deemed infamous. The prices
paid, which are said not to have exceeded 80,000 livres, show that the
places had not yet become of great value. It was easy to establish offices
for which there was a ready demand, and the constant creation of new
judgeships, which necessarily lessened the profits of those already exist-
ing, was a perpetual grievance to the Parliament, and was one of the
causes of the troubles of the Fronde " (i. 883-4).
*< Though the first, the Parliament of Paris was not the only one of
these great bodies. Parliaments were from time to time established at
Toulouse, Grenoble, Bordeaux, Dijon, Rouen, Aix, Pan, Rennes, and
Metz. Each of these was the supreme court in the territory for which
it was created. The Parliament of Paris was the oldest and of the great-
est dignity, but it had no appellate jurisdiction over the other Parlia-
ments.
" Not only was there no single court of ultimate review, but there
was no uniform law which prevailed over all France, as did the com-
mon law over England. Different systeme of jurisprudence prevailed
in different provinces. There were the countries of the * droit 6crit,* in
which the civil law was recognized, and the countries ' des codtumes,'
1887.] PerkiniB Frounce under Mazarin. 431
where local usages and customs had grown hito a local system of law,
which was administered by the courts. What was legal in Normandy
might be criminal in Provence. The litigant entitled to recover at
Rennes might be non-suited at Aix. Breakfasting at Nimes, a guiltless
man, when he reached Aries for dinner he might find himself subject
to the penalties of the law. Not until the French Revolution was there
a uniform law for Frenchmen of every rank and residence *' (i. 885-6).
We cannot help regretting, as we read these vivid descrip-
tions of institutions and pictnresque narratives of events, that
the entire history is so exclusively what it professes to be, a
history of France during the government of the two cardinals,
that it makes little eflfort to give a simultaneous view of the
operation in other nations of the forces and tendencies which
showed themselves in the brief and contemptible uprising of
the Fronde, in the mercenary rebellions of the great nobles, in
the steady consolidation of the royal despotism, the steady sup-
pression of local and provincial liberties, the ultimate extinction
of the great Protestant communion. There are, indeed, by no
means wanting allusions to contemporaneous events in England
and the Low Countries. The story of the rise of the Parlia-
ment, from which we have quoted, suggests instructive com»
parisons with the English institution the same in name, yet so
different in character and in f ortxme. We shall give other ex-
amples of the illustration of French occurrences by the side-
light of English events, so felicitous and so effective as to add
surprise to our regret that they are so few. For there is after
all little in all the book to remind the reader that within the
years covered by the two cardinals' administration the contest
of the English Parliament against the Crown began, passed
through its long stage of legal disputation, its fierce and bloody
war, and culminated in the deposition and execution of the
monarch ; that still within that period an English Republic waa
established, completed a glorious if brief existence, and gave
way to a monarchy of powers so limited that a Bourbon king
would have thought himself in like case to be rather serving
than reigning ; and that precisely in these forty years England
was laying in the wilderness the immovable foundations of a
power which was shortly to surpass both France and England
in the elements of national greatness. Neither entertainment
nor instruction might be wantuig in a comparison of Cond4 with
432 Perhimfs Frcmce under JUazarin, [Dea,
Cromwell, of Laud with Richelien, of Retz with Baxter, of the
Ironsides with the wearers of the Isabel scarf, of Pym and
Hampden with — whom? Yet if many such opportunities for
rhetorical effect or of collateral illustration are neglected, it is
not for want of capacity in the author to make profitable use of
them. There is admirable effectiveness, for example, in this
comparison of the French and English ways of raising constitu-
tional questions. A decree of the Council had established a
new impost on all provisions entering Paris, and this decree had
been registered by the Court of Aids.
** It was now claimed that for it to grant registration to such an edict
as this was to usurp the powers of the Parliament. Had France resem-
bled England, such a question would have been settled by a proceeding
trivial in appearance, but really of great importance. Some farmer
would have refused to pay the tax of a few sous on a bushel of turnips
which he had brought to Paris for sale. The collector would have
seized them for the duty, and a suit against him for a smaU amount
would have raised the question whether the verificaticm of the Ck>urt of
Aids was of any avail, and could justify the collection of the impost*
It would have been argued at length by learned counsel, and the decision
of the highest court would have set the matter at rest. But in France
great constitutional suits have been rare. Apart from differences in
procedure and temperament, the supremacy of the courts of law, even
within their own jurisdiction, was not sure to be respected. The king's
council might assume to annul the decision of the Parliament on a mat-
ter which was of political importance, or at an early stage of the case it
might be taken from the process of the ordinary courts to be passed upon
by some tribimal believed to be more tractable. While the courts pro-
tested against such encroachments, the authority of the king was so
vague, its excesses were so little restrained by defined boundaries, that
such acts did not receive the universal condemnation that would make
them dangerous and of no avail '* (i. 818).
It is interesting, too, to find indications here and there that
the fierce light and heat in which the English Republic was
founded were at least seen and felt in France. Just six weeks
after Charles's head fell at Whitehall, on the 13th of March,
1649, it was observed that in a raging Paris mob in front of the
palace of the Parliament cries of *' A Republic " were set up
(ii. 29). And it was while the English Protectorate was at the
summit of its power and glory that a complete scheme for a re-
publican government for south-western France was taken into
consideration by Condf, with almost universal suffrage, with
1887.] Perking 8 Frcmce wader Mazcurin. 438
freedom of conscience and of trade, trial by jnry, and an almost
American Bill of Eights (ii. 241-2).
Nor can we deny ourselves the pleasure, at the risk of omit-
ting other passages which we desire to quote, of reproducing
part of the paragraphs in which Mr. Perkins compares the fail-
ure of the Huguenots with the triumph of the English Puri-
tans.
'*The Huguenots had much in common with the Puritans. Their
creed was largely the same ; they professed the same Calvinistic tenets;
they favored the same strict and formal morality ; they eschewed the
love of pleasure and worldly amusements ; they suffered oppression
from a dominant church, whose members they regarded as the
servants of mammon and far removed from the pure truths of Gk)d.
They sought to be relieved from the Scarlet Woman, to be preserved
from episcopacy, prelacy, and papacy. They took up arms against a
government which they believed was disregarding earthly laws and
persecuting Gk)d's saints.
<* Tet the Huguenot party ended in failure and the Puritan party at-
tained unto victory. Not only in the brief rule of Cromwell, but in the
subsequent history of England, Puritan principles won the day. The
established church, indeed, still holds to its stately ceremonial and its
ancient service. Its bishops still proclaim their apostolic succession. A
peer in lawn sleeves sits in the bishop's chair at St. Paul's ; a dean with
surplice and stole preaches at Westminster Abbey ; but England has be-
come Puritan. The principles of Milton have triumphed over those of
Laud. The Englishman of to-day wears a Puritan dress ; his Sunday is
the Puritan Sunday ; his morals are Puritan ; his political rights are
those for which the Puritans fought. The clergy of the established
church, in aU but manners and external address, are a Puritan clergy.
The man who berates the Roundheads and believes he would have died
for the Royal Martyr has become, in aU but name, one of those who
brought Charles to the block" (i. 90-91).
The review of the twelve years' negotiations which ended a
war of thirty years in the treaty of Westphalia is one of the
most compact and effective chapters in the book ; the summary
with which it closes is as follows :
''As beginning an era of toleration and of religious tranquility; as
the end of a century of relentless warfare over religion, the Peace of
Westphalia seemed to usher in an epoch of comparative peace and good-
wiU. But its effects upon the political life of Germany was far less
beneficial. The establishment of the power and separate rights of a
multitude of petty sovereigns meant that Germany's opportunity to be*
come a nation was gone. Tyrannical and selfish as were the ambitions
484 PerkiniB France under Mazarm, [Dec.,
and purposes of Ferdinand n., his political views were wiser than those
of his opponents. Had Ferdinand gained supreme power he might,
perhaps, have succeeded in extirpating Protestantism in Germany, and
that would have been the greatest evil the land could have suffered ; but
apart from that danger, if Germany must suffer from despotism it was
far better for her development that she should have one despot than
that she should have three hundred. For Richelieu to check the power
of Austria and neutralize the strength of the Empire was wise accord-
ing to lus light. For Germany itself this result was long fatal to its
progress. In a country already depopulated by thirty years of war, a
horde of little princes ruling over petty principalities restrained, and
checked, and choked all national growth. For a hundred years Ger-
many could hardly claim to have a history, either political or intellect-
ual. Nor did any universal well-being atone for the lack of more stirring
achievement. There was no fowl in the pot ; there was no fresh thought
in the brain ; there was only a princelet aping Louis XIV. , and a peasant
starving on half a black loaf. Austria was perhaps a less dangerous
factor in European politics than she might have become, but this advan-
tage was dearly bought by retarding the growth of the nation" (L 481^-3).
We shall make no attempt either to outline the author's nar-
rative of the whole course of the Fronde, or to offer a taste of
itB quality by extracts from it ; for neither outlines nor ex-
tracts could give a just impression of the merit of his work.
The two full chapters, however, in which he presents, at the
close of the continuous narrative, a picture of the social condi-
tion of the people and the methods of administration during the
period which it covers, while every line of them would repay
perusal apart from the rest of the work, invite quotation. We
do not at this moment recall any similar conspectus which may
be so fitly, or with so small disparagement, compared with the
famous third chapter of Macaulay. One minute account, in-
deed, of almost photographic exactness, conveys a more dis-
tinct impression of what was wrought by war throughout French
territory during these years than any general statement could
do ; and only the exigencies of space prevent our reproducing
the whole of it. A notary of the little town of Marie, near
Laon in north-eastern France, kept a dry statistical record
of what happened there from 1636 to 1666. For at least
twenty consecutive years of this time there was not one but
brought with it the burning of houses, the murder of citizens,
the violation of women, the pillaging of goods, the trampling
and wasting of crops. Nor were other towns in the diocese
better off.
1887.] Perkin^s Frcmce tmder Maza/rin. 435
<' At Montcomet, where there were three hundred families, seven
hundred persons had died. Neither laborers could be found, nor horses
nor oxen, for working the fields. Seventy houses had been burned at
Marjot out of one hundred and ten. Men and women who had been
mutilated were numerous in the diocese. For almost a year many had
eaten only roots and spoiled fruit. Some had occasionally obtained
bread so bad that hardly a dog would eat it. Some were found in caves
in which they had taken refuge. In the faubourgs of Saint Quentin the
houses had been burned. Twenty-five mud huts had been put up, and
in each of them the missionaries found two or three sick, and in one of
them ten. Two women and eight children were lying on the ground in
one hut entirely without clothes. Of the cures of the diocese, eighty
had died and one hundred had been forced to leave. During the winter
it was said that every day as many as two hundred persons died of
hunger in the provinces of Picardy and Champagne " (ii. 400).
" The year 1662 brought no change. * * There was no longer much
in the diocese to plunder. Of three hundred parishes it was said that
one hundred and fifty had been abandoned. * * Those who had been
worth 60,000 livres were now without bread. Nothing but straw to
sleep on was left for most of the inhabitants of the country. There
were six hundred orphans under twelve in the small city of Laon. * ♦
In 1660, it was said that not only here, but in all Picardy, Champagne,
and Lorraine, it was rare to find a house where there was sufScient
bread, that a bed covering was seldom seen, that the well and the sick
slept on straw, and had only their rags to cover them " (ii. 401-3).
We pass over still more abhorrent details of the wretchedness
into which half a century of uncontrolled and profligate mis-
government had brought a people which was, at the death of
Henry IV., probably the happiest in Europe, to quote the clos-
ing paragraph of the chapter in which they are contained :
" The French peasant and laborer of to-day, if we compare him with
his ancestor two centuries ago, eats a larger loaf of better bread ; his
house is lighter, larger, and drier ; he has more salt and sugar with his
food ; he does not fear that he will be imprisoned for taxes, or that the
landlord will whip his son or the collector insult his daughter ; he
occasionally has meat for his dinner ; he has his voice in the choice of
the representative who shall fix the amount he must pay the govern-
ment ; he drinks more wine, of a better quality ; and he smokes bis pipe
with contentment, as he surveys the piece of land that is his own. The
sufferings of the past were so sharp that years have not softened their
remembrance, and he indulges in no repinings for the '' good old times,*'
and as he considers the difference in his lot he is equally thankful for
the industrial improvement of this century, and for the social revolution
of seventeen hundred and eighty-niae " (ii. 40d-410).
We have already so nearly approached, if we have not ex-
ceeded, the limits allowed to this article that we most omit many
436 Perhi/n^s France tmder Mazarin. p)ec.,
passages noted for quotation, which might more fully illustrate
the author's closeness of observation and energy and felicity of
of expression. Those which follow must be limited to but a
few lines each.
In 1655 was concluded the treaty of Westminster between
France and the English Commonwealth, after long negotiations
which
'* well illuBtrate Mazarin's character. He showed much humility and
some lack of dignity in his endeavors to obtain Cromwell's alliance. He
was resolved he would take no offence at what England did ; he aban-
doned the Stuarts ; when he was smitten on one cheek he turned the
other to be smitten, but at last he obtained what he desired, and that
which he desired was what France needed. If Mazarin had been punc-
tilouB and eager to take offence, his historical pose would at times seem
more heroic, but he might have driven England into a Spanish alliance,
and the great war which forever established France's superiority might
have been ended with disaster and disgrace, with Calais ceded to Eng-
land, Alsace to Spain, and Guienne to the Prince of Conde as an inde-
pendent sovereign " (ii. 297).
In the electoral contest which followed the death of the
emperor Ferdinand III.:
'' Saxony was wholly in the interests of Austria. The present elector
resembled his father in his great consumption of liquor. He combined
with this much zeal for the Lutheran faith : to call a man a Calvinist
was his bitterest term of reproach, and his piety was such that on the
days when he received the conmiunion he never got drunk in the morn-
ing. But the French succeeded in obtaining the favor of the electors of
Mayence and Cologne. The Archbishop of Mayence was the leading
spirit in the college and a man of large ability. He lived well, but
without excess. His dinners began at noon, but were always ended by
six. He never exceeded his six pints of wine at a meal, and he had
strength given him to take that amount without affecting the gravity
and decorum befitting an archbishop " (ii. 314).
In 1622 the Marshal Duke of Lesdiguieres, apostatizing at
eighty to the Catholic church, " turned from the benediction of
the archbishop to receive the sword of the constable.
** No other dignity in the world has been held by such a succession of
great soldiers as the office of Constable of France. The constable was
originally a mere officer of the stables, but his power had increased by
the suppression of the office of Grand Seneschal, and by the time of
Philip Augustus he exercised control over all the military forces of the
crown. He was the general-in-chief of the army and the highest military
authority in the kingdom. The constables had for four centuries been
leaders in the wars of France, and they had experienced strange and
1887.] Perhim^s Frcmce vmder Maaarin. 437
varied fortunes. The office had been bestowed on the son of Simon de
Montf ort, and he for this honor had granted to the king of France his
rights over those vast domains which had been given his father for his
pious conquests. It had been bestowed on Raoul de Nesle, who fell at
Ck>urtrai, where the French nobility suffered their first defeat from
Flemish boors ; on Bertrand de [du] Guesclin, the last of the great war-
liors, whose deeds were sung with those of the paladins of Charlemagne;
on Glisson, the victor of Boosebeck ; on Armagnac, whose name has a
bloody preeminence among the leaders of the fierce soldiery who rav-
aged France during the English wars ; on Buchan, whose Scotch valor
and fidelity gained him this great trust among a foreign people ; on
Richemont, the companion of Joan Dare ; on Saint Pol, the ally of
Charles the Bold, the betrayed and the victim of Louis XI. ; on the Duke
of Bourbon, who won the battle of Pavia against his sovereign, and led
his soldiers to that sack of Rome which made the ravages of Gtonseric
and Alaric seem mild ; on Anne of Montmorenci, a prominent actor in
every great event in France from the battle of Pavia against Charles
V. to that of St. Denis against Coligni; on his son, the compan-
ion of Henry IV. in his youth, and the trusted adviser of his age. Its
holders had won victories in Spain, Portugal, Italy, Germany, and
Flanders ; they had defeated the English ; they had led armies against
the Saracens in Palestine, the Albigenses in Languedoc, and the Hugue-
nots in France ; they had fallen by the hand of the Paynim, of the
Flemish, the Italians, and the French ; on the field of battle, and at the
block of the executioner.
'' The sword borne by such men had been bestowed on Luines, the
hero of an assassination, who could not drill a company of infantry ; it
was now given to the hero of many battles, and the great office was to
expire in the hands of a great soldier. The power of the office was in-
consistent with the monarchical tendencies of Richelieu, and it was
abolished by an edict of Louis XHI." (i. 94^).
The epigrammatic pun^ncy which appears in some of the
passages already quoted is still more conspicuous in others.
The pompous ceremonial with which Louis XIII. publicly put
himself and his kingdom under the special protection of the
Virgin Mary is thus referred to : " This curious manifestation
of piety, more to be expected in the twelfth than in the seven-
teenth century, attracted but little attention. The religions
feeling of the mass of the French was not sujBSciently strong to
be affected by it, and had not become snfSciently sceptical to
jest about it. They had drifted away from St. Louis and had
not reached Voltaire " (i. 202). At the close of the Fronde,
Madame de Longueville was "allowed to retire. She was
wearied of the disappointments of love and politics, and she
desired a life of religious penance. From Bordeaux she re-
joined her aunt, the widow of Montmorenci, in the convent of
438 Perkm^s France vmder Mazarm. [Dec.,
the Yiffltation. The next year, wishing Btill more to do penance
for her past sins, she returned to her husband in Normandy,
and lived with him until his death " (ii. 244). When Cardinal
de Betz was at odds with the government, his Port Boyal
friends " bade him follow the examples of the holy bishops who
remained concealed in deserts and caverns in times of persecu-
tion. He so far imitated them that his whereabouts were often
unknovm for considerable periods. Unfortunately the imitation
was not complete. His follower says that he grew fond of
wandering obscurely from tavern to tavern, and that while he
compared his lot to that of the holy anchorites, he found con-
solation in the society of rope-dancers and ballet-girls. An
archbishop posing as Athanasius and caressing Phyllis in a hos-
telry was the sight presented to the faithful " (ii. 277). The
first president, Belli^vre, led the Parliament in a struggle
against Mazarin which resulted in an amicable adjustment.
The next summer, Mazarin sent him 800,000 Iwres^ " to reward
him for his discreet conduct in quieting the opposition of his
associates. The president was singularly fortunate in this matter.
He preserved the good will of the Parliament for his apparent
zeal in its behalf ; he obtained the favor of the government and
a great sum of money ; and he haB gone into history as the
liberty-loving judge, who dared to plead for the interests of the
state to the very face of a booted and enraged monarch" (ii. 282).
If we were to stop here, without another word of com-
ment upon this book, we should pay it at least the compli-
ment of imitation. The chapter upon Port Eloyal with which
the volumes close, admirable and interesting as it certainly is,
has nevertheless no organic relation to the structure of the
work. It is a wholly independent essay, upon a subject belong-
ing to the period indeed, but seeming to be appended to an
already completed work. But of this, and of the work to
which it is annexed, and which, like the appended chapter, with
an admirable artlessness simply stops when it has done, we
may say that it supplies a conspicuous deficiency in French
history as it is written in our language, and supplies it so well
that many a reader will receive from it his first impression of
the fascinations which surround the history of that brilliant
and passionate people, from its dawn until now.
Theodobb Bacon.
1887.] Olassieal and Philological Society. 439
UNIVERSITY TOPICS.
CLASSICAL AND PHILOLOGICAL SOCIETY OF
YALE COLLEGE.
Oct. 31, 1887, Mr. W. L. Cushing preseoted a communication on
Thb Gbebk Thsatbb at Thobicus.
This Theatre is situated at the base of a hill about two miles
north of Lanriam, near a Tillage named Therik6.
The allusions of classical writers to the deme of Thoricus are
scanty. Herodotus and Thucydides, each refer to it once, but
only as a geographical point. In the speeches of Demosthenes
the name Thoricus occurs as the home of certain witnesses, and
by others it is several times referred to without description. The
only definite historical allusions are by Xenophon who speaks of
the building of a military wall at Thoricus during the Pelopon-
nesian war and by the geographer Mela, who writes : '' Thoricus
et Brauronia, olim urbes, jam tantum nomina."
In legends it is named as one of the twelve Attic cities in the
time of Cecrops, as the home of Cephalus, and as the place where
Dionysus first landed in Attica.
In the present century many travelers have visited and de-
scribed the theatre, but their accounts are conflicting. Eighteen
months ago excavations were undertaken under the direction of
members of the American School of Classical Studies at Athens,
with funds voted by the Managing Committee of that School.
The purposes of the excavations were to examine the unique
form of the surrounding wall which describes a curve resembling
that of a sickle, to examine also an abutment which contains a
so-called Tiryns arch; and to discover if possible something
which would throw light on the relations between orchestra and
stage in Greek theatres.
The excavations were begun in the spring of 1886, interrupted
during the summer, and finished in the fall of the same year.
The peculiar form of the outside wall was found to be caused by
an inferior inner wall, the existence of which was not before
440 Classical and Philological Society. [Dec.,
known or suspected ; this inner wall marks the original limits of
the theatre, which was at a later time enlarged by means of the
outer wall. The effort to make the new wall parallel with the
old one resulted in this irregular curve. The want of symmetry
in the first made wall was due to the poverty of the people who
built it, for they made use of a natural hollow in the hillside, and
made no effort to shape it according to the geometrical rules
which governed the construction of all other Greek theatres
now known to us. Poverty of means and perhaps of taste, must
explain also the use of unhewn slabs for seats, and the irregu-
larity of the two flights of steps by which access was gained to
the auditorium from below.
The two abutments at the rear served as means of approach to
the highest tiers of seats. The Tiryns arch was designed as a
passage way for those spectators who approached from Thoricus
on the southwest and were obliged to ascend the second abut-
ment. These were prevented from passing around the first
abutment by the steep ledges of the hill here and by the situation
of the Necropolis in the rear of the theatre.
No signs of foundations for a stage or scene structure were dis«
covered, from which it may be inferred that this theatre was
designed only for the production of simple choral dances and for
the other sports of the rustic worship of Dionysus.
The orchestra floor was of earth. At the west end of the
orchestra the ruined foundations of a small temple were brought
to light. Sufficient remains were found to show that this was an
Ionic temple in antis. Its situation, facing the east and the
orchestra, is significant.
The art remains are few and unimportant.
A peculiar cutting in the rock at the east end of the orchestra,
forming a perpendicular wall 50 feet long, seems to have had no
connection with the purpose of the theatre. It is probably much
older than the theatre.
The time of construction of the main wall, as determined by
comparing it with other walls of the same workmanship, the
builders of which are known, was probably the 4th century, B. C.
Nov. 14, Dr. T. D. Goodell, of Hartford, presented a communi-
cation on
Ancibnt Stone-Sawing at Tibyns and Mtcenab.
The paper referred to the controversy between Mr. W. J. Still-
1887.] The Maikmiatical Club. 441
man and Messrs. DOrpfeld &» Schliemann, which turned largely
on the date of the invention of stone-sawing, and on the question
as to whether the marks of such sawing at Mycenae and Tiryns
were prehistoric or not. By description of these marks and the
situations in which they are found it was shown that they were
prehistoric. A fragment of breccia from Mycenae on which such
marks may be seen was exhibited to the Society. The literary
tradition was briefly recapitulated and shown to go back to about
600 B. C, while the monuments are several centuries older. The
method of work in those early ages was essentially the same as
that in use to-day. So far as we yet have evidence on the sub-
ject, the art of stone-sawing was learned by the Greeks from the
Egyptians, where alone traces have been found of such work of
an equally early period.
The Secretary read extracts from a recent letter from Athens,
giving an account of a visit to the ancient site of Icaria, and of
the ruins there.
THE MATHEMATICAL CLUB.
Tuesday, Oct. 18, Mr. E. H. Moore, Jr., presented a communis
cation
On Tbianolbs in a Plane having Multiply Pebspkotivb
Relations.
Two triangles, ABC, DEF, are in perspective when for a certain
correspondence of the vertices the lines joining corresponding
vertices (say AD, BE, CF) meet in a point, the center of perspec-
tive. There are six correspondences of the vertices of the two
triangles, depending on the six ways the letters D, E, F may be
paired with A, B, C respectively. These may be divided into
two cyclic sets, AD, BE, CF ; AE, BF, CD; AF, BD, CE, and
AD, BF, CE; AF, BE, CD; AE, BD, CF, such that by any
cyclic interchange of the letters DEF the members of each set are
permuted in and do not leave that set. Two correspondences of
the vertices are called cyclic or non-cyclic with each other accord-
ing as they belong to the same or different sets.
Two triangles may be singly perspective. They may be doubly
perspective, but if the two correspondences of the vertices are cyclic
with each other, then they are in perspective also according to the
442 The Politiml Science Club. pec,
third oorrespondence of that set. In this last case the three centere
of perspective, say 6, H, I, are vertices of a triangle triply perspeo-
tive with each of the original triangles, the three centers being
in each case the three vertices of the other original triangle, the
three triangles thus playing equivalent r61es. The two (and so
the three) triangles may be in perspective in still a fourth
way, necessarily non-cyclic with the others. If the triangles
could be in perspective in still a fifth way, the fourth and fifth
correspondences would be necessarily cyclic with each other and
so the triangles would be in perspective also according to the
third correspondence of that second set. Then (calling the three
new centers of perspective, ELM) of the four triangles, ABC,
DEF, 6HI, ELM, any two would be sextuply perspective, the
centers, being the six vertices of the other two triangles, the four
triangles thus playing equivalent r61es. This case however can-
not occur with real triangles, but has its only interpretation with
so-called imaginary triangles.
THE POLITICAL SCIENCE CLUB.
October 28th Mr. Frederick W. Moore read a paper on
The CHA.BTBB OF Nbw London, Conn.
New London was one of the five Connecticut cities incor-
porated in 1784, and its early charter history was typical of
that of the others. The first charters were not provided for by
the constitution but were given by the legislature and conse-
quently did not completely supplant the town governments, as
was the case in Massachusetts: they were rather supplemen-
tary. Charter developcment in the state has been chiefly in the
line of encroachments on the functions of the town. By the re-
vised charter of New London, adopted in 1874, all town duties
and rights, not guaranteed by the constitution, are made the
duties and rights of the city. There is now one treasury, one
assessment, one election of local officers. The standard of criti-
cism by which the charters of Brooklyn and Philadelphia are
judged, it was contended, was not applicable to a small city
which was reasonably well governed. Great population and
wealth and proportionately greater taxes and political activity
1887.] The PdUticdl Science Club. 448
have broken down in the former city a charter Bystem which is
still sufficient for New London.
At the meeting of the club on Nov. 18, a paper was read by
Mr. A. Coit, on The English Villein and his saccessor the Agri-
cultural Laborer. The general unfavorableness of English legis-
lation to the agricultural class was shown by reference to such
acts as that of 1563 by which the enforcement of a seven-years
apprenticeship for artisans still farther overcrowded the supply of
farm laborers. The issue of debased currency begun by Henry
YUL in 1643, was noticed as an illustration of the tendency of
such measures to affect the wages class quicker than other classes.
Daring the discussion which followed the reading of the paper,
Thorold Rogers's statement, that the laborer in the early part of
this century was inferior in condition to the laborer of the six-
teenth century, was interpreted to mean that the absolute condi-
tion of the latter was not better but merely that his position
relative to the possibilities of life at the time was better than the
former's.
444 OurretU lAUrabwe. [Dea,
CURRENT LITERATURE.
Pbof. Fibhbb's History of the Ohbibtiak Chuboh.* — The
historical writings of Prof. Fisher are the ripe fruits of life-long
studies, and as successive volumes appear, they call increasingly
for the grateful recognition of a wide circle of students and
readers. The volume just published, entitled ^' History of the
Christian Church," is a worthy succession of the '* Outlines of
Universal History," which appeared two years since ; and the two
together form the most complete summary of historical facts, in
so small a compass, with which we are acquainted.
This last work especially supplies a real and growing want.
There is a large and rapidly increasing number, not merely of
special students, but of educated persons generally, who are de-
sirous of access to a historical work which shall give a reliable
and thorough knowledge of the history of Christianity in its re-
lations to political history, and also to the history of religious doc-
trine and life, from Christ's days to the present. There are elab-
orate histories which deal with the earlier stages of church devel-
opment ; and the recent researches which have made our age an
epoch in historical discovery, have brought out many mono-
graphs. But a single volume gathering up the results cf these
researches and discoveries, and presenting a comprehensive sur-
vey of the whole history of Christianity in all its aspects so as to
meet the needs of the various classes of intelligent readers, has
hitherto been wanting.
For such a task Prof. Fisher has a special fitness. He combines
with a wide and accurate scholarship and a sure historical judg-
ment, a singularly clear and felicitous style. The ^' History of
the Christian Church " exhibits these qualities at their best.
Prof. Fisher's previous writings, involving the widest historical
researches, have all contributed their stores to make this new
work a complete treasure house of historical learning. His keen
* Sigtory of (he Christian Church, By Gborgb Pabk Fibhbb, Titus Street,
ProfesBor of Eoclesiastical History in Yale UniyerBity. Witti Maps. New York;
Ghaa. Soribner'a Sons, 1887.
1887.] Owrrent LUer<xtu/re. 445
and discriminating insight easily detects the cine to all the mazes
of theological controversy and doctrine, and makes him a safe
and clear guide, and knowledge and judgment are supplemented
by a literary art which invests the whole narrative with color and
life. There is not a dull page in the book ; and there are not a
few passages which give pictures of persons and events, of rare
literary beauty.
The book as a whole is a marvel of condensation. No fact of
importance is neglected. No mooted question, if of vital conse-
quence, is avoided. The latest results of research are included.
It has been impossible of course in a single volume to enter into
details concerning many points, but there is scarcely a subject in
the whole vast field of Christian annals as to which the inquirer
will not find the cardinal facts stated, or a problem in dispute on
which the author has not given his judgment, if a judgment is
possible with present light.
The Catholicity and candor which have marked Prof. Fisher's
previous writings are equally eminent in this volume. In his
judgments of theologians, and in his analyses and summaries of
their theological views, there is no trace of personal bias. We
are inclined to regard this as perhaps the most remarkable fea-
ture of the book. How difficult of attainment such a dispassion-
ate and unbiased temper is in historical writing, especially in trac-
ing the great controversies whose echoes are heard even down to
present times, all students of Church History know only too
well. That Prof. Fisher has succeeded perfectly we will not as-
sert. But we have searched in vain for any indication of the au-
thor's own theological opinions. So careful has he been in this
regard, that he has even abstained, as a rule, from any criticism
upon the views, whether orthodox or heretical, which he is ex-
pounding. The aim of the work is not controversial or even crit-
ical, but historical, and the author rarely forgets it. The only
striking exception that now occurs to us, is connected with the
account of English Deism and of Hume's argument against mir-
acles. The inconsistency in the Deistic position and the false as-
sumptions of Hume are stated with critical clearness and power
that give a foretaste of what a critical history of doctrine from
Prof. Fisher's hand would be.
In his historical principles and general method, Prof. Fisher
reminds us of Neander, the influence of whose large and free and
yet profoundly evangelical spirit has been so deeply felt in the
VOL. XI. 88
446 Ourrent LUerabwre. [Dec.,
new school of church histories. No stadcDt of Neander can re-
sist the charm of his catholic and spiritual conception of the na-
ture of Christianity, and of the tolerant and calm temper with
which he surveys all the changing fortunes of the church. But
even Neander at times reveals his own leanings and prepossessions
with a childlike frankness. For his great history was written
with a double purpose — not only to present the facts of Christian
history in their true relations, and so to rescue them from parti-
zan assumptions and conclusions, but also to bring out in broad
relief, in opposition to the false Christian philosophy of his day,
the real character of Christ's kingdom on earth. Hence, in
spite of the grand spirit of tolerance and comprehension which
characterizes the work, a decided dogmatic tendency pervades it.
There is a subtle vein of Christian philosophy that gives flavor
to every page. And it was this positive element quite as much
as its remarkable learning that won for it so extraordinary an in-
fluence.
Prof. Fisher shows himself an apt pupil in Neander's school
The same catholic and irenic temper which makes the personal-
ity of the elder historian so lovable has fallen as a mantle upon
the disciple. But we look in vain in Prof. Fisher's book for any
philosophy of Christianity. Himself a philosopher by nature, he
has laid aside for the time his philosopher's cloak. How reso-
lutely he schooled himself to his task, hiding his own philosoph-
ical and theological tendencies, those who knew him best can
best realize.
Prof. Fisher divides Church History into three principal eras —
ancient, mediaeval, and modern — the ancient extending over the
first eight centuries, the mediaeval beginning with Charlemagne
and closing with the outbreak of the Protestant Reformation,
which introduces the modem era. It is worthy of note that
more than half of the book is devoted to the modern era. This
period, embracing the Rise and Progress of Protestantism, its
history in the various Prote8tant countries, its conflicts with the
Papacy and vrith different form of infidelity, and the more recent
missionary and philanthropic movements, is fully treated. The
religious history of our own country receives special attention —
a chapter being devoted to a '' historical sketch of religious de-
nominations in the United States." Two of the best chapters in
the volume are the last two— one being a rwumh of recent de-
velopments in doctrine, the other an account of Christian piety
1887.] (Jurrent Literatv/re. 447
and philanthrophy. How thoroughly the history is brought
down to date is seen in the fact that the chapter on doctrine closes
with an allusion to the volume entitled "Progressive Orthodoxy,"
published last year, and the chapter on religious life with a refer-
ence to the hymn by Dr. Ray Palmer, ^' My faith looks up to
Thee."
It is impossible in the limits of a brief notice to give any
adeqnate description of the contents of a book so full of weighty
matter. Instead of attempting it, we are inclined to let the book
speak for itself through a few extracts, selected quite at random,
assuring our readers that similar extracts might be taken from
almost every page. On the Rise of the New Testament Canon :
Jesus wrote nothing. The disciples whom he trained were not selec-
ted with reference to qualifications for literary composition. To this
sort of work they would not be naturally inclined. The writings of the
apostles, Paul included, were supplementary to their oral teaching.
They were called out by emergencies, Uke the troubles in the Church at
Corinth or Paul's inability at the time to visit Rome. They were gener-
ally sent by messengers, who were to add to them oral conmiunications.
There was no thought of compiling these letters or the gospels into a
volume. At the outset, the saored '* Scriptures," the writings cited as
such, were the books of the Old Testament. With them the words of
the Lord were quoted as of divine authority. As early as a.d. 150, as
we learn from Justin Martyr, the gospels included in the canon were
read in the Christian assemblies on Sunday. But the apostles were
always regarded as specially chosen for their work and as specially in-
spired. When heretical sects arose, and especially when they began to
circulate forged apostolic writings, there was a new interest awakened
in the collection and preservation of the genuine writings of the apostles.
By them the orthodox traditional creed could be fortified against the
perversion and misrepresentation by which they were assailed. The
heretics were always in the field with canons of their own framing.
Marcion made a collection with a view to support his eccentric opinions.
The churches proceeded to join with the four Gospels, whose authority
as records of the life and teaching of Christ had before become estab-
lished, the other writings of apostolic authorship. These collections
were not, at the beginning, uniform in their contents. Certain books
were known in one place that were not known in another. Certain
books might be deemed genuine by some, but be doubted by others. A
landmark in the progress of the formation of the canon is furnished by
the oldest versions. The Syrian translation, or the Peshito, and the Old
Latin translation, which was in use in North Africa, date from the
closing part of the second century. The Peshito omits the Second and
Third Epistles of John, the Second Epistle of Peter, Jude, and the
Apocalypse. The Old Latin omits the Epistle of James and the Second
Epistle of Peter, and at first the Epistle to the Hebrews. Such variations
448 Owrrent Literature. [P^^y
continaed to exist until the end of this period. A little later, Eusebiufl,
writing about 825, enumerates seven writings now in the New Testa-
ment which were not uniTersally received. He calls them Antilego-
mena. These disputed books were the Epistles of James and Jude, the
Second Epistle of Peter, the Second and Third of John, the Epistle to
the Hebrews, and the Apocalypse. Several books not embraced in our
canon were held in special reverence, and were often read in the
churches. These were the Epistles of Clement of Rome and Bamabus,
and the Shepherd of Hermas. At length the line was distinctly drawn
which excluded these, as being of lower rank, from the list of canonical
writings.
Comparison of Erasmus and Luther :
But Erasmus belonged to the age of preparation. The splendid work
that he did then must not be disparaged on account of his shortcomings
in later life. How diverse the two men were in their natural qualities
is indicated by their portraits. The fine, sharply cut features of Eras-
mus, as depicted by Holbein, show us the critic, whose weapon in con-
flict is the keen-edged rapier. The rugged face of Luther, as seen on
the canvas of Cranach, befits one who has been called ** the modem
Hercules,*' who cleansed the Augean stables, and who carried into bat-
tle the club of his fabled prototype.
Luther's last days and relations to Melanchthon :
While the time for the momentous struggle was rapidly drawing near,
Luther died (February 18, 1546). His last days were full of weariness
and suffering. He took dark views of the frivolity and wickedness of
the times, but his sublime faith in God and his assurance of the final
victory of the truth never left him. His dogmatism became more bois-
terous in the battles which he waged, and in the days of ill-health and
advancing age. During the latter years of his life his relations with
Melanchthon were partially clouded with theological differences. Mel-
anchthon modified his doctrine of predestination, and gradually came to
believe that the will has a co-ordinate agency in conversion. On the
subject of the Sacrament, likewise, he was inclined to hold the view
midway between Luther and Zwingli, which Calvin advocated — ^that
Christ is really received in the Lord's Supper, but spiritually, and by the
believer alone. Although Melanchthon lived in daily fear that these
changes of opinion would provoke an outburst of the reformer's passion-
ate nature, he never lost his respect and regard for Luther as a devout
and heroic man, endowed with noble qualities of heart and mind. Nor
did Luther ever cease to love his younger associate. No one will ques-
tion that Luther, notwithstanding his faults and defects, has been a
great power in the history of the world. No one doubts that he was a
bom leader of men. The originality of thought and virility of expres-
sion ; the insight into the deep things of the spirit ; the vein of humor
that mingles itself, unbidden, with the most profound and serious re-
flection, the play of imagination — ^these qualities, which charaoterLEe
the utterances of Luther, constitute an unfailing charm.
1887.] Ourrent Literature. 449
The bitterness of Protestant divisions :
The bitter spirit in which theological debates were carried forward
in Germany in this period may be inferred from the circumstance that
on a sheet of paper which Melanchthon left on his table, a few dayB be-
fore his death, were written several reasons why he was less reluctant
to die, and that one of them was the prospect of escaping from the fury
of theologians — ** rabie theologorum.^^ A half-century after he died, the
leading theologian at Wittenberg was so enraged at hearing him re-
ferred to by a student as an authority for some doctrinal statement that,
before the eyes of all, he tore his portrait from the wall and trampled
on it.
The preaching of Whitefield :
Whitefield's preaching impressed all minds. It moved Benjamin
Franklin, a pattern of coolness and prudence, to empty his pockets of
the coin which they contained, for the benefit of the orphan house in
Georgia, although he had not approved of the object for which the col-
lection was taken. It was admired by a cold-blooded philosopher like
Hume, and equally by men of the world, such as Bolingbroke and
Chesterfield. Jonathan Edwards, as he listened to him, wept through
the entire sermon. Thirteen times Whitefield crossed the Atlantic.
He finally ended his days at Newburyport. On the evening before his
death, from the stairs which led to the bed-chamber, to a throng which
had come to the door of the house, out of a desire to hear him, he
preached until the wick of the candle which he held in his hand burned
out.
On recent new tendencies in Eschatology :
Within evangelical bodies, modifications of belief on the subject of
the future state of the wicked have won more or less acceptance. In
England, the doctrine of the eternity of future punishment was rejec-
ted by the eminent Baptist author, John Foster, and, on similar grounds,
by an honored Congregational minister, Thomas Binney (1798-1874). It
was called in question by F. D. Maurice and some other divines of the
Anglican Church. In Germany, in Great Britain, and in the United
States, the doctrine of the ultimate extinction of the very being of such
as persevere in impenitence, as the natural effect of sin on the spiritual
nature, has had its adherents. In Germany, one of its advocates was
the celebrated theologian, Bichard Rothe. The explicit hope of a final
restoration to holiness of all who depart from this life in a state of im-
penitence has been cherished by some. Neander and some other lead-
ing German theologians of the liberal evangelical school have expressed
themselves as doubtful on this point. Julius MtUler held that the argu-
ments for such a belief— which was adopted by Schleiermacher — are
insufficient. He points out the frequent connection in which restora-
tionism is made to stand with a pantheistic theory of the necessary
evolution of good out of evil. Domer denies that such a consummation
can be an object of confident expectation. Especially among German
450 Current JJUeriUure. pOec,,
theologians of this sohool, the opinion has come to prevail that in an
intermediate state the gospel will be taught to the heathen who have
not heard it within the bounds of this life, and have, therefore, never
rejected its offers of mercy. This was the belief of MUller, Tholuck a
distinguished teacher of theology and commentator, and of other Grer-
man teachers and writers. By MQller it is set forth in conjunction with
a doctrine respecting the nature and development of character in gen-
eral, and of sinful character in particular. Character is built up by the
exercise of free-will, and tends to permanence. As character, under
the influence of the motives that address the soul, moves onward to the
final stage, it meets with turning-points where a radical change may
take place ; but a reversal of its bent becomes less and less practicable.
At last obduracy cuts off hope. This hopeless bondage to evil follows
upon the willful rejection of God's redeeming love. The one unpar-
donable sin is that of resistance to the Holy Spirit. No other or higher
agency exists for the recovery of the will from its slavery. Domer, in
his ** System of Theology," has expounded this conception. He holds
distinctly that the final test, where the alternative of right choice is ob-
duracy, is possible only when the gospel is explicitly revealed, and Qod
is manifested in the light of a merciful Saviour. That there will be a
"probation" in the next world for the heathen who die without a
knowledge of the gospel, has been suggested as a plausible hypothesis,
or as a probable truth, by a number of theological writers in England
and America.
A work with so comprehensive a scope, compressed into a single
volume even of nearly seven hundred pages, must necessarily have
its limitations. These are most conspicuous in the chapters on
doctrine. Here Prof. Fisber has exerted his powers of con-
densed statement to the utmost. For example, the account given
of the great theological controversies of tbe fourth and fiflh cen-
turies,— including the Arian, the Christological, and the Pelagian,
— the most fruitful theological period in the history of Christian-
ity,— is confined to twenty pages. A single page is all that is
allowed for a summary of the theology of Augustine, the most iu-
fluential theologian, after St. Paul, of Christendom. The meagre-
ness of this sketch is the more tantalizing from the fact that Prof.
Fisher's gifts as a historian are nowhere more conspicuously dis-
played than in his summaries of Christian doctrine ; as the two
more extended chapters on modern theology bear witness. How
would all students of theology have rejoiced to get from such a
masterhand a full survey of the theological positions and doctrines
of the great Fathers and Hereziarchs of the Nicene and Post-
Nicene age, Athanasius, Fusebius of Csesarea, Arius, Theodore of
Mofsuestia, Nestorius, Cyril, Theodoret, Augustine, PelagiusI
1887.] Ov/rrenl LUeraiure. 451
We feel impelled, in the interest of theological science, to urge
Prof. Fisher once more to take up his pen, and to write a com-
plete critical history of the development of Christian doctrine, — a
work that would fitly crown his historical labors.
Another suggestion has occurred to us. Prof. Fisher has seen
fit to dispense with all references to historical authorities. Consid-
ering the object of the book, this omission is perhaps wise. Most
readers would not have the means at hand of examining and veri-
fying such references, and they are ready to accept Prof. Fisher's
own statements as authoritative. But there is a class, and quite
a large one, for whom a full list of references would be of great
value. There is still needed for our theological schools a text-
book adapted to the present conditions of historical study. This
new volume goes far toward supplying such a want. But the
brevity of its theological chapters and the absence of references
to authorities are serious drawbacks. A small volume, as an
appendix, which shall contain ample references concerning all im-
portant facts and theological statements given in the History
would be a boon to all technical students. And if such a volume
on doctrine as has been suggested above could be added, the
apparatus for historical instruction would be well nigh complete.
But beggars must not be chosers. We are grateful for the
book already published, and we know not how we can better
testify to its stimulating and appetising quality than by expressing
our desire for another.
L. L. Paine.
Bangor Theological Seminary.
Dr. Portkb's New Volume of Sbbmonb.* — The students,
patrons, and friends of Yale University will welcome with pride
this notable volume of discourses by Ex-President Porter. The
Christian public at large too may well be grateful for it as pre-
senting in a most weighty and wealthy manner the claims of
Christianity upon the rational and moral allegiance of men.
Nothing of equal significance and value, in the form of apologetic
preaching, has for many years been issued from the American
press. There is a certain unity of thought and feeling that binds
all these manly discourses together. If, at the outset. Dr. Porter
had planned to present, in as comprehensive and varied a manner
as possible, the one grand theme of the claims of Christianity,
^Fifteen Tears in the Chapel of Tale College. By Noah Pobtbb, 1871-1886.
New York : Charles Scribner's Sons, 1888.
462 OwrrmJt Ziterature. [Dec.,
upon the allegiance of young men, selecting each year bis partic-
ular topic with reference to its place in the whole series of dis-
courses, he would scarcely have accomplished the object more
effectually than it has been accomplished without the slightest
indication of any such purpose. The discourses in their unity,
and yet their individual independence, indicate the hold which
the themes discussed have taken of the mind and heart of the
author. The work here accomplished is one for which he has
peculiar fitness and it is done with the devotion and the strength
of an earnest moral purpose. The pervasive thought of the
discourses is the value of religion in developing the character and
directing the life of educated men, and there is in the discussion
a certain suggestion of lofty confidence, a certain air of manly
assurance, as of one who has measured his strength with the
difficulties presented by modern criticism, which is reassuring.
There is a tone of valiancy and of Christian chivalry about it all
which is bracing. It is good to get into such an atmosphere. It
is a tonic to our faith. We are made to feel afresh the suffi-
ciency of Christianity to satisfy all the highest needs of educated
men and the insufficiency of all culture independently of it. Pres.
Porter has entered deeply into the spirit of the time in which we
live and in which he has borne so honorable a part. He under-
stands it both on its good and bad sides, and it is no one-sided or
perverted report we get of it He has a noble scorn for all its
sentimentalism and pretentiousness and arrogance. But he
knows what the critical spirit of the age has wrought, and he is
as unsparing of the pretentiousness of a false and arrogant ortho-
doxy as he is of a heartless and godless culture. A critical and
somewhat polemical tone pervades the discourses but it is only
incidental and it only serves to make the positive advocacy of
the large and noble claims of Christianity the more effective.
His grasp is wide and his penetration is subtle. The remarkable
versatility of Pres. Porter appears here at great advantage. Not
only his familiar acquaintance with philosophy, ethics, and the-
ology, and a measurable acquaintance with the physical and social
sciences, but his familiarity with general literature is manifest here
in the large and easy and suggestive manner in which the results of
years of careful investigation and a singularly versatile capacity,
are brought to bear upon his discussions. Nor should the liter-
ary quality of the discourses be lost sight o£ There is a steady,
strong, massy movement in bis sentences, that bespeaks the pres-
1887.] Owrmt LUerafmre. 453
enoe of a mind robust in its native mould, and always kept
girded for action. The freedom and swing of the sentences, their
stately stride as of a procession are suggestive not only of facility
of utterance, but an easy and thorough mastery of the subject
discussed. There are also notable passages of genuine eloquence
worthy of lasting remembrance, and touches of grace upon a
ground-work of solid strength which bear witness to the existence
of a delicate sensibility, and the refinement of aesthetic culture.
Lewis O. Brastow.
Stapvbb's Palbstins.* — This is not a work, as the title might
lead one to suppose, upon the land of Palestine, but upon the
people, customs, literature, ideas and institutions of Palestine in
the time of Christ. The material of the work is arranged under
two headings : I. Social Life ; 11. The Religious Life. An idea
of its scope can be gained from a few titles of chapters: The
Home Life; The Dwellings; Clothing; Literature and the Arts;
The Schools; The Synagogue; The Temple; The Essenes. The
book belongs to that department of literature which the Ger-
mans call JVeuteatamentliche Zeitgeschic/Ue. It is a valuable
contribution to this department, more vivacious than Hausrath
and more popular and interesting than Schtlrer, if not so orignal
and erudite. The author writes, as the French are so much
accustomed to do, in a clear and lively style. He is reverent and
deeply sympathetic with his subject. A good sample alike of his
style, spirit and opinions, may be gained from the following
sentences from the Introduction (pp. 26, 27) *' How striking the
contrast between the Gospel and the Talmuds ! To think that
these two books were both produced in Palestine at about the
same period, is utterly bewildering to the imagination. We are
told sometimes that Christianity is the natural outcome of the
Judaism of the day ; that most of the Gospel maxims had been
spoken before the Christian era and that the * noble and gentle
Hillel was the elder brother of Jesus.' There is absolutely no
confirmation in history of such statements. ♦ ♦ ♦ The Gospel
was a shining light breaking out suddenly in the midst of the dark-
ness. It was directly opposed to the thoughts and opinions of
the age. So far from being prepared by its environment, it was
* Paleaiine in the Time of Chrigt. By Ebkoxd Stapfsb, DJ>., Prof, in the
Protestant Theological Faculty of Paris. Trans, by Annie Harwood Holmden.
A. C. Armstrong & Son. New York. pp. 627.
464 Cv/rrent lAUttaimre. [Dec,
itself a startling and complete reaction against it. The contrast
is absolute between the teaching of Jesus and that of the Scribes^
Jesus was the gift of God to men. He came from God and God
' delivered him up ' for men. This is the impartial, scientific, un-
biassed result of studies to which we have devoted long and
careful attention, and we bless God for having put it into our
hearts to undertake a work which has so built up our own faith.'*
It is easy to find points in such a work upon which to differ
with the author. We think him incorrect in supposing that John,
18 : 31 — " It is not lawful for us to put any one to death " — was
merely **a flattery of the Governor" (p. 102), and that the
Roman power had not really taken away the power of inflicting
capital penalties from the Sanhedrin. On other disputed points
again, we find peculiar satisfaction. In speaking of tbe Synagogue
service as the type of Christian public worship he shows that it
had neither the over-wrought formality of Romanism, nor was it
^Hhe bald service of Calvinism and Protestant puritanism. The
liturgy is simple, but efiicient. The people take part in the
service. The reading of the Holy Scripture occupies the place
due to it The sermon is regarded as important, but is not too
lengthy and is not made too prominent, etc.'*
The work will well repay frequent consultation and study. It
is sufficiently scientific to be of value to the scholar and suffi-
ciently popular to be of use as a hand-book of reference for Bibli-
cal students generally.
Gbobob B. Stevens.
CoBRESPONDBNCiBS OF Faith.* — The dcsigu of this volume is
to present faith in Christ as not only the condition of justification
but also the vital principle of all Christian character. The First
Part is entitled Correspondencies of Faith. The discussion of
this topic is illustrated by several " unmeant correspondencies be-
tween experimental writers upon religion.*' Part Second is " a
Survey of the experience and writings of Madame Guyon." It is
founded on her Biography by Professor Thomas C. Upham. Mr.
Cbeever divides her life into five periods and gives a brief history
and criticism of each, interpreting its significance with reference
to his theme. The Third Part is entitled "The Mental Disci-
* Cofrresp<mdeinci/t^ oflhUh and Views of Madamt Guycn: being a devout study
of the Unifying Power and Place of Faith in the Theology and Church of the
Future. By Rev. Hsxtbt T. Ghbbvbr. London : Elliott Stock, 1887. pp. zviii
and 278.
1887.] Owrrent IMeratwre. 455
pline of Holiness by Faith ;" it inolades, in connection with a pre-
sentation of the author's own views, an examination of Professor
Upham's " Life of Faith." The style of writing is pleasing ; the
book is rich in illustration and exemplification, and it will be read
with interest. It insists on the fact and privilege of the Chris-
tian's immediate communion with the living God as distinguished
from dealing with abstract doctrine concerning him ; on the
power of Christian life as distinguished from speculative thought.
It emphasizes the better elements of that type of piety known as
mysticism, and calls attention to them as needing development in
this busy and practical age. It is fitted to the present time to
lead Christians to consider the possibility of a purer, stronger,
more harmonious and complete Christian character, a closer
union and a larger catholicity, a greater spiritual energy and effi-
ciency in advancing Christ's kingdom, through a stronger faith, a
more intimate communion with God and a larger reception of ^* all
the fulness of God." But it must be borne in mind that mysti-
cism by itself in all its forms leads to a one-sided development of
Christian character. It tends to magnify ^' the inner light " above
the Bible, to quietism rather than to active energy in advancing
Christ's kingdom, to " other-worldliness " rather than to earnest
interest in the actual lives of men. The author distinguishes in-
terest in theological doctrine from love to God and immediate
communion with him. But Professor XTpham says of a certain
type of piety : " Men love visions more than they love holiness."
And one of the subtle tendencies of mysticism is to substitute the
love of the person's own holiness for the love of the living God
and of living men. It tends to concentrate his attention and ener-
gies on his own *' frames and exercises ;" on seeking for himself
the peace which passeth all understanding, the rapture into
heavenly places with Christ, instead of self-f orgetfulness in serv-
ing and saving men in the spirit of our Lord, who left heaven
itself that, in the thickest conflict with the powers of darkness, he
might seek and save the lost.
The author calls attention to the fact that in his Life of Madame
Quyon, Professor Upham, in translating her writings, wrote what
she meant rather than what she said. A biographer who writes
on this principle can hardly avoid interpreting his own thought
into the words translated instead of translating them according
to their actual meaning. This should always be borne in mind
when reading the Professor's Life of Madame Guyon.
Samuel Habbis.
456 Oiurrent LUer(x(/ure. fDec,
Pbofsssob Anbbbws's iNSTiruTSB OF HiSTOBT.* — ^The author
of this able work deBoribes it as a summary view of ** the rationale
of History/' as "a precipitate rather than an outline." After an
introductory chapter on ** The Study of History," (which includes
a discussion of the nature of historical studies and the philosophy
of History,) the great eras, the main topics— such as ^'The Old
East," " The Classical Period," " The Demolition of Rome," « The
MedisBval Roman Empire of the West," etc. — are taken up con-
secutively. A kind of "spinal cord" is run though the whole
framework of universal history, by presenting condensed observa-
tions, with selected facts of capital importance. It is like a series
of electric lamps placed at intervals on a long street, the right
points being chosen for illnmination, so that the traveler need
not err or stumble. Excellent bibliographical pages are inter-
spersed. The book is designed as a guide and assistant for both
teachers and students. The remarks of the Author are a fresh
and vigorous commentary on the progress of events. His learn-
ing is ample; and, altogether, the work is one of remarkable
merit.
Geoboe p. Fisheb.
Thb Abt Amatbub for December contains a colored plate of
••Pansies," studies of "Holly and Mistletoe," and "China As-
ters," and a page of timely and useful suggestions for Christmas
decoration. The other designs include an extra size classic figure
(Hero) — the third of a series of six panels for painting or outline
embroidery; an arrangement of "Orange Lillies" for a vase or
embroidery, a fish-plate decoration — one of a set of six ; a large
and bold design of blackberry (vines and fruit) for wood carving ;
three musical cupids for tapestry painting, a fine pomegranate
altar-frontal design and superfrontal design with full directions
for treatment, and some pleasing diaper motives for curtain
embroidery. Specially notable features are an excellent drawing
of Knaus's " Holy Family " in the Catharine Wolfe collection,
four studies of children by Lobrichon, and two pages of studies
of furniture and interior decoration for the ordinary home. There
are valuable practical articles on still-life painting (dead game)
and flower painting in oils, tapestry painting and artistic picture
framing. The collector receives particular attention in a new
department called ^ The Cabinet," which includes a fully illus-
* Brief InstihUea of Otnaral History, By E. Bekjamin Andrews, D.D., I1L.D.,
Professor of History in Brown Uniyersity.
1887.] Ourrent LU&rabwre. 467
trated article on Japanese '' Snuff Bottles," a curious account of
*' Collecting in China," and numerous interesting notes. The
Metropolitan Museum Exhibition, art in Boston, Mrs. Wheeler^s
show of embroideries, and other current topics receive notice. A
special illustrated series of articles on the furnishing and decora-
tion of the average country house is announced to begin with the
January number. Price 36 cents. Montague Marks, publisher,
23 Union Square, New York.
Natural Law in the Business World.* — ^To those who are
getting tired of the noisy rant of the labor reformers a word of
sense from a practical and benevolent business man upon some
of the questions in discussion can not fail to be welcome. Such a
word comes to us in this little volume and such a man we may
judge is the author. In a life of practical observation and expe-
rience he has been profoundly impressed by the prevalence of law
in the business world. It is not a mere theory with him. It is
matter of observation. He undertakes no careful statement of
the nature or the limitations of this law. He calls it natural, but
by this he would probably be understood as suggesting nothing
more than that it is practically invariable, and that it is impossi-
ble in the long run to evade its working by any artificial contri-
vances. It is not a law, however, which excludes the ethical
freedom of men in their social and industrial relations. He recog-
nizes the fact that there is abundant opportunity in the working
of economic laws for application of the law of love. But he very
wisely objects to the substitution of sentiment for business sense.
It is this sort of talk that misguided workmen need to hear. It
is no unfriendly utterance. It is that of an honest friend who
would show them that they will never win prosperity in defiance
of economic laws. He shows the workman that he must rely
more upon himsell One of the great evils of the labor combina-
tions is that they result in forming in a workman a habit of de-
pendence on others. He brings to the workman's remembrance
that very old but perpetually forgotten fact that it is the training
of the man that is needed, not change of financial condition
merely. He forcibly reminds us that what is called in the cant
parlance of modem agitators '* labor" is something more than
muscular effort. The man who works with his brain is worthy of
* Nafuiral Law in the Bunneaa World, Bj Henst Wood. Boston : Lee k
Shepard, Publishera. New York : Chas. T. DiUmghaxn. 1887.
468 CwrrevU IMeraimre. [Dec.,
just as mach sympathy as the man who uses his muscle. He dig-
nifies and honors labor, while the agitators in fact dishonor and
despise it. There are sensible words on the natural and necessary
inequalities of life, on the unequal distribution of wealth, on
economic legislation, and other practical questions. There are
also words of counsel to men of wealth and employers of labor.
If the contents of these sixteen too short chapters could be ex-
panded and presented illustratively and simply to all the work-
ingmen's associations of this country, and they would have the
good sense to heed their wisdom, a new and brighter day would
open before them. We are re-impressed with the necessity that
some practical measure be set on foot to secure to workingmen
this sort of instruction.
Lewis O. Brastow.
Parish Peoblkms.* — The conception of this work was a happy
hit, and the execution of it is eminently successful. We have
here a collection of essays upon some of the most important and
practical problems of church life. They are short and are writ-
ten in simple and popular style. They cover a great variety of
topics, many of which are not discussed in the most comprehen-
sive treatises on practical or pastoral theology. Dr. Washington
Gladden is the editor and he himself furnishes a larger number of
the essays than any one of the twenty-four contributors whose
cooperation he has secured. These essays of his are upon topics
with which he is very familiar and in connection with which he
has had large experience and he discusses them with his usual
breadth of view, discriminating judgment and clearness and felicity
of statement. The work is an enlargement upon and modification
of a work planned by Mrs. Professor Lawrence some years ago,
and some of the most interesting papers are from her hand. All
who have furnished contributions to the volume are persons well
known in our churches and all of them are in a sort recognized
authorities in the subjects on which they speak, and many of them
are specialists and experts. The papers upon Parish Business,
Parish Buildings, the People at Work, the Sunday School and
Worship, may be mentioned as of special value for the reason
that all or most of them are from the hands of those who are
generally recognized as thoroughly familiar with the subjects of
* Pariah Problems. HintR and Helps for the People of the Church. Edited hy
Washington Gladden. New York: The Century Compaoj.
1887.] Owrrmt LUerabwe. 469
which they treat. In fact they may be called specialists. It is
rare that so much valuable material of this sort and' in so attrac-
tive form is found within such limits. The good sense, the large-
mindedness and large-heartedness manifested here are worthy of
all praise. Topics are here discussed which especially demand
the attention of the churches. If copies of this work could be
sent in large numbers into all our parishes they would prove a
blessing. If men of wealth would devote a small surplus to the
sending of it to missionary churches they would be doing good
missionary service. Every parish library, every Sunday school
library, every young pastor's library especially, and every theologi-
cal student's library might well find a place for it. Dr. Gladden
has made the church, the parish, and the pastor his debtors, and
merits the reward of successful enterprise.
Lewis O. Bbastow.
Books on Pstcholoqy and Philosophy.
Life of Colbridob.* — ^This short biography makes no attempt
to trace the development of Coleridge's philosophical opinions, or
to state the influences under which they were formed. Much
less does it aim to vindicate his place in the ranks of the poets and
philosophers of his generation. It is more of the nature of a
memoir, giving the domestic life of the man, his relations with
his friends, his struggles to earn a livelihood, his personal suc-
cesses and defeats. It is compiled from "table-talk, letters,
diaries, memoirs, reminiscences, magazine articles, newspaper re-
ports, and a few documents whichr have not hitherto been em-
ployed by any biographer of Coleridge." Its aim is to vindi-
cate him against the gravest charges to which his character has
been subjected, such as the charges of gross self-indulgence,
ingratitude, inexcusable neglect of his family and friends,
complete waste of time and opportunity, etc. In this aim
it succeeds, meaaurdbly. More and more, as we thoroughly
know this man, we incline to pity and excuse him ; and in this we
agree with the author of this memoir. But to a certain extent we
disagree; because we pity the family and friends of Coleridge for
what they had to endure through him, and excuse them for their
* L^fe of Samud Taylor Coleridge. By Hall Oaiks, London. Walter Soott,
1887.
460 Owrrent LUeraifure. (l)ec.
freqaent miBanderatanding of his feelings and oondnot. The
book is certainly a very readable one, and afiords a distinot
thongh not large contribation to the literature of the subjeot.
Eantb' Philosophy of Law, translated from the German by
W. Hastie, B.D., has been published by T. & T. Clark, of Edin-
burgh, 1887. The Rechislehre oi the immortal philosopher was
his last great work in the field of pure philosophy. It is translated
for the first time — strange as this may seem — into English ; and
so far as appears from an hasty examination, the translation is
well done. It is offered to readers of English as a response to the
saying of Sir Henry Sumner Maine : *' But next to a new History
of Law, what we most require is a new Philosophy of Law.** It
is to be hoped that the translation will help toward some such
recognition of the importance and value of this work of Kant in
this country and in England, as it long since obtained in Gtermany
and France.
Flbming'b Yooabulabt of Phelosopht has just been issued
in a fourth edition ^' revised and largely reconstructed," by Pro-
fessor CjLLDSBWOOD. It Will bc fouud much improved as com-
pared with the earlier editions, and a valuable help to beginners
in the study of philosophy. New York : Scribner & Welf ord,
1887.
LITTELL'S LIYmO AGE.
1| TN 1888 THK LIVING AGE enters upon its forty-fifth year, haying
^ X met with constant commendation and success.
A WEEKLY MAGAZINE, it gives fifty-two nnmbers of sixty-four
pages each, or more than Three and a Quarter Thousand double-
column octavo pages of reading-matter yearly. It presents in an inexpen-
sive form, considering its great amount of matter, with freshness, owing
to its weekly issue, and with a completeness nowhere else attempted,
The best Essays, Reviews, Criticisms, Serial and Short Stories, Sketches of Travel and
Discovery, Poetrv, Scientific, Biographical, Historical, and Political Information,
from the entire tKxiy of Foreign Periodical Literature, and from the pens of
Tlie ablest and most cultivated Intellects, in every department of Literature,
Bcience, Politics, and Art, find expression in the Periodical Literature of Europe, and
especially of Great Britain.
Tlie Living Age, forming four large volumes a year, furnishes from the great
and generally inaccessible mass of this literature, the only compilation that, while within
the reach of all, is satisfactory in the COMPLETENESS with which it embraces whatever
is of immediate interest, or of solid, permanent value.
It is therefore indispensable to every one who wishes to keep pace with the
events or intellectual progress of the time, or to cultivate in himself or his family general
intelligence and literary taste.
*' We have thought that It was Impossible to Improve
upon this grand publication, vet it does seem to grow
better each year. . We regard It as tbe most marvel-
lous publication of the tune. . Nowhere else can be
found such a comprehensive and perfect view of the
best literature ana thought of our times. . It is unap-
{troachable by any other publication of its kind, and
B in Itself a complete library of current literature,
while ail the leading topics of the day are touched
and discussed by the best pens of the age. . No induce-
ment could prevail upon those who have once become
familiar with It to do without its regular visits.'* —
Christian at Work^ New York.
" By reading it one can keep abreast of the current
thought upon all literary and public matters. 1 1 maln>
tains Its leading position in spite of the multitude of
aspirants for public favor. . A grand repository of the
literature of the age."— /few - r&rk Observer.
** Such a publication exhausts our superlatives. .
There Is nothing noteworthy in science, art, literature,
biography, philosophy, or religion, that cannot be
found in It. . It contains nearly all the good literature
of the time.'*— The Churchman, New York.
*' The more valuable to a man the longer he takes It.
He comes to feel that he cannot live without it."—
New- York BvangelUt.
" To have Thb Litino Aob Is to hold tbe keys of
the entire world of thought, of scientific investigation,
psychological research, critical note, of poetry and ro-
mance.'*—Am/or Evening Traveller.
" Fiction , biography, science, criticism, history, poet-
ry, art. and. In the broader sense, politics, enter into
its scope, and are represented in its pages. . Nearly the
whole world of authors and writers appear in It In their
best moods. . The readers miss very little that is Im-
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