imagination could divine. Is it, in short, general and the motive to industrial production is lost. force and refinement of mind? Behold how com- There can be no reasonable fear that the beautiful prehensive and how cautious is his glance over that in art or the transcendental in thought will oversensitive, quivering, ever-shifting sea of commer-whelm our faculty of making bargains; but there cial phenomena-so wide as to belt the globe, and so intimately connected that a jar in any part sends a thrill through the whole-and note with what subtle certainty of insight he penetrates beneath the seeming anarchy, and clutches the slippery and elusive, but unvarying laws. There is, indeed, a commercial genius, as well as a poetical and metaphysical genius-the faculties the same, the sentiments and the direction different. Wealth may be, if you please, often insolent and unfeeling; may scorn as visionary things more important than wealth; but still it is less frequently blundered into than artists and philosophers are inclined to believe.

is danger that the nation's worship of labors whose worth is measured by money will give a sordid character to its mightiest exertions of power, eliminate heroism from its motives, destroy all taste for lofty speculation, and all love for ideal beauty, and inflame individuals with a devouring self-seeking, corrupting the very core of the national life. The safety of the American from this gulf of selfishness and avarice is to be looked for, partly in the prodigious moral, mental, and benevolent agencies he has established all around him, and partly in that not unamiable vanity by which he is impelled, not only to make money, but to do something great or "smart" in his way of making it.

This living and restless mass of being which forms the organic body of American life-decent, orderly, respectable, intelligent, and productive— with Economics as the watchword of its onward movement, has, from the intensity of its practical direction, roused the diseased opposition of two

stance; namely, a class of violent reformers who scorn economics on the ground of morality, and a class of violent radicals who scorn economics on the ground of glory; and these are in irreconcilable enmity with each other, as well as in distempered

monly passing under the name of "Come-outers," have almost carried the principle of free-will and personal responsibility to the extent of converting themselves from individuals into individualisms, and they brand every man who consents to stay in a wicked community like ours as a participant in the guilt and profits of its sins. The Come-outer, when he thoroughly comes out, protests against the whole life of society, from certain abstract propositions condemning all its concrete laws, customs, morality, and religion, and strives to separate himself from the national mind, and live morally and mentally apart from it. But this last is a hopeless effort. To the community he is vitally bound, and he can no more escape from it than he can escape from the grasp of the earth's attraction should he leap into the air for the purpose of establishing himself away off in space. The earth would say to him, as she hauled him back, "If you dislike my forests, fell them; if my mountains trouble you, blast through them; plant in me what you will, and, climate permitting, it shall grow; but as for your leaving me, and speeding off into infinite space on a vagabond excursion round the sun on your own account, that you shall not do, so help me-gravitation!"

But though we can thus trace the same radical mental energy in industrial as in artistical labors, the force and durability of a nation's mind still demand not only diversity in its industrial occupations, but a diversity in the direction of the mind itself, which shall answer to the various sentiments and capacities of the soul. It is in this compre-classes on the vanishing extremes of its solid subhension that most nations fail, their activity being narrowed by the dominion of one impulse and tendency, which leads them to the summit of some special excellence, and then surely precipitates them into decay and ruin. Such narrowness is the death of mind, and national exclusiveness is national su-antagonism to the nation. The first class, comicide. Thus the genius and capital of Italy were disproportionately directed to the fine arts; its wealth is now, accordingly, too much in palaces and cathedrals, in pictures and statues; and its worship of beauty, and disdain of the practical, have resulted in an idle and impoverished people, without persistency, without energy, without even artistical creativeness, and the easy prey of insolent French and Austrian arms and diplomacy. Such a country can not be made free by introducing acres of rant on the rights of man, but by establishing commerce, manufactures, and a living industry. Again, the higher philosophy of Germany has been directed too exclusively to abstract speculation, altogether removed from actual life; and the reason is not to be sought in the assertion that the German mind lacks solidity, but in the fact that an arbitrary government has heretofore refused all freedom to German thought, unless it were exercised in a region above the earth and beyond politics, and there it may be the chartered libertine of chaos or atheism. By thus denying citizenship to the thinker, the State has made him licentious in speculation. He may theorize matter out of existence, Christ out of the Scriptures, and God out of the universe, and the government nods in the very sleepiness of toleration; but the moment It is needless to say that the Come-outer, in his he doubts the wisdom of some brazen and nonsensi-zeal for abstract morality, glories in a heroic indifcal lie embodied in a law, or whispers aught against ference to consequences, and conscientious blindthe meanest official underling, he does it with the ness to the mutual relations of rights and duties. dungeon or the scaffold staring him in the face; and Intrenched in some passionate proposition, he exthe grim headsman reminds him that he lives hibits a perfect mastery of that logic of anarchy by under a paternal government, where he is free to which single virtues, detached from their relations, blaspheme God, but not to insult the House of are pushed into fanaticism and foam into vices. Hapsburg. Now, as the German's metaphysics Virtue consists in the harmony of virtues; but, have been vitiated by his lack of political rights, divorcing moral insight from moral sentiment, he and as the Italian's exclusive devotion to art has ignores the complexity of the world's practical afextinguished even the energy by which art is pro- fairs, and would go, in the spirit of Schiller's zealot, duced, so there is danger that our extreme practi"Right onward like the lightning and cal and political turn will vulgarize and debase our national mind to that low point where the energy

The cannon ball, opening with murderous crash
His way to blast and ruin,"

Indeed, he sometimes brings to mind the story of that wise man who, when he desired to make a cup of tea, could hit upon no happier contrivance for boiling the kettle than by placing it in the kitchen and setting his house on fire. Again, he is sometimes raised to such a height of feverish indignation as to mistake his raptures of moral rage for prophetic fury, and anticipates the stern, sure, silent march of avenging laws with a blast that splits the brazen throats of denunciation's hundred trumpets. In view of the evils of the world he seems hungry for a fire from heaven to smite and consume iniquity. His prayer seems continually to be, "O Lord, why so slow?" and though this discontent may be termed by some admiring enthusiasts a divine impatience, it appears to be rather an impatience with Divinity. It is the exact opposite of that sublime repose in the purposes of Providence expressed by the philosophical historian, that "God moves through history as the giants of Homer through space: he takes a step-and ages have rolled away!"

Doubtless, in this class of extreme social protestants a class whose peculiarities we have doubtless heightened, in attempting to individualize its ideal-there is much talent, much disinterestedness, much unflinching courage, and if they would make a modest contribution of these to the nation's moral life, they and society would both be gainers; but they are "self-withdrawn into such a wondrous depth" of hostile seclusion, that they are only visible in their occasional incursions, or when they encamp in the community during Anniversary Week. They are not, in fact, more narrow, more ridden by their one idea of morals, than many of our practical men, who are ridden by their one idea of money; but their extravagance of phrase, almost annihilating, as it does, the meaning of words considered as signs of things, prevents their influencing the people they attack; and after beginning with a resounding promise to reform the world, they too often end in a desperate emulation among themselves to bear off the palm in vehemence of execration, launched against all those organized institutions by which society is protected from the worst consequences of its worldliness, selfishness, sensuality, and crime.

in the faces of our shrewd and prudent worldlings, scare them much more than the hottest and heartiest invectives of the reformers. We bear, it seems, with bland composure the charge of being robbers and murderers, tyrants and liberticides; but our blood runs cold at the vision of a bomb descending into Boston or New York, or the awful calamity involved in the idea of United States sixes going below par!

Manifest Destiny is, of course, a tempestuouslyfurious patriot, whose speech-ever under a high pressure of bombast—is plentifully bedizened with metaphors of his country's stars and stripes, and rapturous anticipations of the rascal's "good time coming." Among other satanic felicities he has one, conned out of the devil's prayer-book, called, "Our country, right or wrong!" a stupid fallacy at the best, when we consider that the activity of every nation is bounded by inexorable moral laws as by walls of fire, to pass which is to be withered up and consumed; but especially fallacious from his lips, when we reflect that, practically, he inverts the maxim, and really means, "Our country, wrong or right, with a decided preference for the former." Spite of all professions, we must doubt the fidelity of that sailor who, in a hurricane, shows his devotion to his ship by assisting her tendency downward; and, on the same principle, we may doubt Mr. Manifest Destiny's all-for-glory, nothing-for-money, patriotism.

The fallacy, indeed, of the fatalistic scheme, as applied to nations, is the same as when applied to individuals; and its doctrine of inevitable tendencies comes from considering mind as a blind force, not as an intelligent, responsible, self-directing energy. A plastic, fluid, impressible national mind, like the American, receives a new impulse and direction for every grand sentiment, every great thought, every heroic act, every honest life, contributed to it; and that philosophy which screams out to reasonable citizens, "The tendency of the nation is toward the edge of the bottomless pit, therefore patriotically assist the movement," is the insane climax of the non sequitur in political logic. Why, we can shield ourselves from such a conclusion, with no better reasoning than that employed by the grave-digger in Hamlet, in discuss

here stands the man: if the man go to the water and drown himself, it is-will he, nil he-he goes; but if the water come to him, and drown him, he drowns not himself: argal, he that is not guilty of his own death, shortens not his own life." We may be sure that no nation, which goes not to the fire, will ever have the fire come to it. Heaven is liberal of its blessings and benignities, but it practices a rigid economy in dispensing its smiting curses, and lets loose its reluctant angels of calamity and death only as they are drawn down by the impious prayers of folly and crime!

As the class of persons to which we have just re-ing the question of suicide: "Here lies the water; ferred push the principle of individualism to the extent of forswearing allegiance to the community, so there is another class, on the opposite extreme, who carry the doctrine of a Providence in human affairs to a fatalistic conclusion, which they are pleased to call Manifest Destiny; a doctrine which baptizes robbery and murder as providential phenomena what kind and condescending patrons of Providence these blackguards are, to be sure of inherent national tendencies; considers national sins simply as necessary events in the nation's progress to glory; and by treating every direction given to the public mind as inevitable, is sure to inflame and pamper the worst. This dogma-the coinage of rogues, who find it very convenient to call man's guilt by the name of God's providencemostly obtains on the southern frontier of our country, where the settlers, amidst their forests and swamps, have a delectable view of the land flowing with milk and honey, which destiny manifestly intends they shall occupy, on the clearest principles of the argumentation of rapine. It must be admitted that this class of our fellow-sinners and citizens, by holding up endless war and hectic glory

If the too exclusive direction of the American mind to industrial production has not been much checked by the two antagonistic extremes of radicalism its money-ocracy has provoked, and for whose excesses it is to a great degree responsible, we must look for a healthier opposition to it in the various classes of moderate dissentients and reformers, who are not so much disgusted with the community as to lose all power of influencing it, and who are steadily infusing into their own and the national character loftier ideas and more liberalizing tastes. Our churches, collegiate institu

}

tions, and numerous societies established for moral | Board," and "Lines on the Sudden Fall of Reading and benevolent ends, are connected with the na- Stock," would we not be giving stimulants where tional mind, and at the same time are inspired by it would be better to give even morphine or chloroinfluences apart from it; but still, we must admit form? It is from this fact, that the ideal and rothat, just in proportion as the nation's life circu-mantic are elements of thought to be introduced lates through them, is their tendency to temporize from abroad into the American mind, that we have with Mammon. The Church, for instance, exer- not a strictly national literature, and that so many cises a vast and beneficent influence in spreading of the clumsy attempts at purely American poetry moral and religious ideas; but do we not often and romance remind one of the fraternizing Frenchhear sermons in which industrial prosperity is un- man, who rushed up to a ragged Indian in New Orconsciously baptized with great pomp of sacred leans, clasped him to his breast, and joyously exrhetoric? and prayers, in which railroads and man- claimed that he had at last found the true native ufactories hold a place among Divine favors alto- American-the real red republican! gether different from the estimate in which they are held above? Do we, mad as we all are after riches, hear often enough from the pulpit the spirit of those words in which Dean Swift, in his epitaph on the affluent and profligate Colonel Chartres, announces the small esteem of wealth in the eyes of God, from the fact of his thus lavishing it upon the meanest and basest of his creatures?

Perhaps the fairest and least flattering expression of our whole national life may be found in our politics; for in limited monarchies and in democracies it is in politics that all that there is in the public mind of servility, stupidity, ferocity, and unreasoning prejudice is sure to come glaringly out; and certainly our politics will compare favorably with those of Greece and Rome, of France and England, in respect either to intelligence or morality. In no country is the government more narrowly watched; in no country do large parties, bound together by an interest, more readily fall apart on a principle: and when we consider that, in practical politics, force and passion, not reason and judgment, are predominant-that men vote with a storm of excitement hurrying them on-this fact indicates that the minor moralities have to a great extent become instincts with the people. It would be impossible to give here even a scanty view of this political expression of our national mind, with its sectional contests, its struggles of freedom with slavery, its war of abstract philoso

ities, and no less impassioned immoralities; but, perhaps, a few remarks on three great statesmen, who are marked by unmistakable local and national traits, and who were genuine products of American life, may not be out of place even here. We refer to Webster, Clay, and Calhoun. These, though "dead, yet speak;" and we shall allude to them as if they still occupied bodily that position in our politics which they unquestionably occupy mentally. Such men can only die with the movements they originated.

Our theology is closer to the public mind, both to act and to be acted upon, than our literature. Indeed, if we take the representative men of those classes whose productions, ethical, poetical, and artistical, we call American literature and art, we shall find that the national life is not so much their inspiration as it is the object they would inspire. Channing and Allston, for instance, have a purified delicacy and refinement of nature, a constant reference to the universal in morals and taste, and a want of ruddy and robust strength, indicating that they have not risen genially out of the national mind, and betraying, in all their words and colors, that surrounding influences were hostile rather than sustaining to their genius. Their works, ac-phies on concrete interests, its impassioned moralcordingly, have neither the exclusiveness nor the raciness and gusto characteristic of genius which is national. The same principle applies to our postical literature, which worships Beauty, but not beautiful America. If you observe the long line of the English poets, Chaucer, Shakspeare, Ben Jonson, Dryden, Pope, Byron, with hardly the exceptions of Spenser and Milton, you will find that, however heaven-high some of them are in elevation, they all rest on the solid base of English character; idealize, realize, or satirize English history, customs, or scenery, English modes of thought and Of these three eminences of our politics, of late forms of society, English manners or want of man-years, Webster may be called the most comprehenners, English life and English men-are full, in short, of English blood. But our most eminent poets-Dana, Emerson, Bryant, Longfellow, Lowell-are more or less idealists, from the necessity of their position. Though they may represent the woods and streams of American nature, they commonly avoid the passions and thoughts of American human nature. The "haunt and main region of their song" is man rather than men; humanity in its simple elements, rather than complex combinations; and their mission is to stand somewhat apart from the rushing stream of American industrial life, and, assimilating new elements from other literatures, or directly from visible nature, to pour into that stream, as rills into a river, thoughtfulness, and melody, and beauty. Their productions being thus contributions to the national mind, rather than offsprings of it, are contemplative rather than lyrical, didactic rather than dramatic. And is it not better that it should be so? If our economics were sung as well as lived; if, instead of "The Humble Bee," and "Thanatopsis," and the "Psalm of Life," we had "Odes to the Brokers'

sive statesman, Clay the most accomplished politician, and Calhoun the nimblest and the most tenacious sectional partisan. Webster, on the first view, seems a kind of Roman-Englishman-a sort of cross between Cincinnatus and Burke-but, examined more closely, he is found to be a natural elevation in the progress of American life, a man such as New Hampshire bore him, and such as Winthrop and Standish, Washington and Jay, Hamilton and Madison, had made him; a man who drew the nutriment of character altogether from American influences; and, especially, a man representing the iron of the national character as distinguished from its quicksilver. The principal wealth of New Hampshire is great men and water-power; but instead of keeping them to herself, she squanders them on Massachusetts, and Webster was one of these free gifts.

If we compare Webster with Calhoun, we shall find in both the same firm mental grasp of principles, the same oversight of the means of popularity, and the same ungraceful and almost sullen selfassertion, at periods when policy would have dic

tated a more facile accommodativeness.

Their intellects, though both in some degree entangled by local interests and opinions, have inherent differences, visible at a glance. Webster's mind has more massiveness than Calhoun's, is richer in culture and variety of faculty, and is gifted with a wider sweep of argumentation; but it is not so completely compacted with character, and has, accordingly, less inflexible and untiring persistence toward an object. Both are comparatively unimpressible, but Webster's understanding recognizes and includes facts which his imagination may refuse to assimilate; while Calhoun arrogantly ignores every thing which contradicts his favorite opinions, and would be a great reasoner did he not so often take paradoxes for his premises. The mind of Webster, weighty, solid, and capacious, looks before and after; by its insight reads principles in events, by its foresight reads events in principles; and, arching gloriously over all the phenomena of a widely-complex subject of contemplation, views things, not singly, but in their multitudinous relations; yet the very comprehension of his vision makes him somewhat timid, and his moderation, accordingly, lacks the crowning grace of moral audacity. Calhoun has audacity, but lacks comprehensiveness.

like Napoleon at Wagram, only to direct a tremendous blow at the centre; to overthrow Webster, like Napoleon at Borodino, the whole line must be routed.

In the style of the two men we have, perhaps, the best expression of their character; for style, it has been well said, "is the measure of power-as the waves of the sea answer to the winds that call them up." Webster's style varies with the moods of his mind-short, crisp, biting, in sarcasm; luminous and even in statement; rigid, condensed, massive in argumentation; lofty and resounding in feeling; fierce, hot, direct, overwhelming, in passion. Calhoun's has the uniform vigor and clear precision of a spoken essay.

Clay-the love of American economics, as Webster was the pride-had all those captivating personal qualities which attract men's admiration, at the same time that they enforce their respect; and was especially gifted with that flexibility-that prompt, intuitive, heart-winning grace-which his great contemporaries lacked. The secret of his influence must not be sought in his printed speeches. We never go to them, as we go to Webster's and Calhoun's, for political philosophy and vehement logic. But if Webster as an orator was inductive, and convinced the reason, and Calhoun deductive, and dazzled the reason, Clay was most assuredly seductive, and carried the votes. The nature of Clay, without being deficient in force, was plastic and fluid, readily accommodating itself to the mement's exigency, and more solicitous to compre

elements of political thought. His faculties and passions seem all to have united in one power of personal impressiveness, and that personality once penetrated a whole party, bound together discordant interests and antipathies, made itself felt as inspiration equally in Maine and Louisiana, concentrated in itself the enthusiasm of sense for principles, and of sensibility for men; and these, the qualities of a powerful political leader, who makes all the demagogues work for him, without being himself a demagogue, indicated his possession of something, at least, of that

As Webster's mind, from its enlargement of view, has an instinctive intellectual conscientiousness, the processes of his reasoning are principally inductive, rising from facts to principles; while Calhoun's are principally deductive, descending from principles to facts. Now deduction is doubt-hend all the elements of party power than all the less a sublime exercise of logical genius, provided the principle be reached-as it is reached by Webster, when he uses the process-by induction; for it gives the mind power to divine the future, and converts prophecy into a science. Thus, from the deductive law of gravitation we can predict the appearance of stellar phenomena thousands of years hence. Edmund Burke is the greatest of European statesmen, in virtue of his discovery and application of deductive laws applicable to society and government. But the mischief of Calhoun's deductive method is, that, by nature or position, his understanding is controlled by his will; and, consequently, his principles are often arbitrarily or capriciously chosen, do not rise out of the nature of things, but out of the nature of Mr. Calhoun; and therefore it is frequently true of him, what Macaulay untruly declares of Burke, that "he chooses his position like a fanatic, and defends it like a philosopher"-as Clay chooses his like a tactician, and defends it like a fanatic.

If we carefully study the speeches of Webster and Calhoun, in one of those great Congressional battles where they were fairly pitted against each other, we shall find that Webster's mind darts beneath the smooth and rapid stream of his opponent's deductive argument at a certain point-fastens fatally on some phrase, or fact, or admission, in which the fallacy lurks-and then devotes his reply to a searching analysis and logical overthrow of that, without heeding the rest. Calhoun, of course, has the ready rejoinder that the thing demolished is twisted out of its relations; and then, with admirable control of his face, proceeds to dip into Webster's inductive argument, to extract some fact or principle which is indissolubly related to what goes before and comes after, and thus really misrepresents the reasoning he seemingly answers. To overthrow Calhoun you have,

"Mystery of commanding;
That birth-hour gift, that art-Napoleon,
Of winning, fettering, wielding, moulding, banding
The hearts of millions, till they move as one."

But the fact that Clay never reached the object of his ambition, proves that he was not a perfect specimen of the kind of character to which he belonged; and his personality-swift, fusing, potent as it was-alert, compromising, supple as it wasstill was not under thoroughly wise direction; and a sense of honor morbidly quick, and a resentment of slight nervously egotistic, sometimes urged our most accomplished politician into impolitic acts, which leveled the labors of years.

Perhaps the best test even of a man's intellect is the way he demeans himself when he is enraged; and in this Webster was pre-eminent above all orators, while Calhoun was apt to lose his balance, and become petty and passionate, and Clay to exhibit a kind of glorious recklessness. Most of the faults of Webster proceeded from his comprehension of understanding not being ever accompanied by a corresponding impetus from sentiment and character; and some of his orations are therefore animpassioned statements and arguments, which, however much they claim our assent as logicians, do not stir, and thrill, and move us as men. Com

corded, from cannibals all the way down to dandies. We have our share of New Zealand and our share of Almacks; but in viewing a national mind we must fasten on the strongest elements and the average humanity. Looked at from this lib

well the tests of prudence, moderation, and benevolence; a little less confidently those of veracity, steadfastness, and justice; and considerably less those of beauty, heroism, and self-devotion.

ing from but one portion of his own nature, they | of civilization which history or tradition has retouch only one portion of the nature of others, and wield no dominion over the will. Such was his celebrated speech on the Slavery question, which so many found difficult to answer, and impossible to accept. Not so was it when passion and sentiment penetrated his understanding; for, in Web-eral point, American life would bear comparatively ster, passion was a fire which fused intellect and character into one tremendous personal force, and then burst out that resistless eloquence in which words have the might and meaning of things-that true mental electricity, not seen in dazzling, zigzag flashes-not heard in a grand, reverberating peal over the head-but, mingling the qualities of light and sound, the blue bright flame startles and stings the eye at the moment the sharp crash pierces and stuns the ear. No brow smitten by that bolt, though the brow of a Titan, could ever afterward lift itself above the crowd without being marked by its enduring scar; and it was well that a great, and not easily moved nature, abundantly tried by all that frets and teases the temper, should thus have borne within himself such a terrible instrument of avenging justice, when meanness pre-limitations; and that, continually enriched by new sumed too far on the moderation of that large intellect, when insolence goaded too sharply that sullen fortitude!

But it is not so much in the present as in the future that we have the grandest vision of the American mind. We have seen that its organic substance, as distinguished from the unassimilated elements in contact or conflict with it, is solidly and productively practical; and as it is a sleepless energy, resisting, persisting, and impressible, we may hope that it will transmute into itself the best life of other national minds, without having its individuality overwhelmed; that it will be strong and beautiful with their virtues and accomplishments, without being weak with their vices and

and various mental life, it will result in being a comprehensive national mind, harmoniously combining characteristics caught from all nations-so that Greece might in it recognize beauty, and Rome will, and Germany earnestness, and Italy art, and France vivacity, and Ireland impulse, and England tenacity. It is in this contemplation of

delight-a mind worthy of the broad continent it is to over-arch-a mind too sound at the core for ignorance to stupefy, or avarice to harden, or lust of power to consume-a mind full in the line of the historical progress of the race, holding wide relations with all communities and all times, listening to every word of cheer or warning muttered from dead or thundered from living lips, and moving down the solemn pathway of the ages, an image of just, intelligent, beneficent Power!

The three great statesmen to which we have referred, taken together, cover three all-important elements in every powerful national mind-resistance, persistence, and impressibility; and each, by representing at the same time some engrossing in-America as a conquering Mind that we should most dustrial interest, indicates that practical direction of the national energies to which we have all along referred. In this region of industry the nation has been grandly creative; and by establishing the maxim that the production of wealth is a matter secondary to its distribution, it promises to be as grandly beneficent. But, perhaps, in the art and science of government it has been more creative and more beneficent than in the province of industry. The elements of order and radicalism it embosoms are in a healthy rather than destructive conflict, so that we may hope that even the problem of Slavery will be settled without any widespread ruin and devastation. The mischief of radicalism in other countries is, that it commences reformation by abjuring law; accordingly, it opposes political power on the principles of anarchy, and wields it on the principles of despotism. Here the toughest problem in the science of government has been practically solved, by the expedient of legalizing resistance; and thus, by providing legal inlets and outlets for insurrection and revolution, we reap the benefits of rebellion, and avoid its appalling evils. A nation which has done this can afford to bear some taunts on its vices and defects, especially as its sensitive vanity impels it to appropriate the truth contained in every sarcasm under which it winces.

It now remains to ask how a national mind like the American, with its powers generally directed by its sentiments to commerce, industrial production, law, and politics-which are the most lucrative occupations-and but relatively directed to reforms which are the most unprofitable-how it appears when tested by those virtues which are the conditions of a nation's durable strength? The question is not one of particulars, because, in every social system, no matter how far advanced in humane culture, there will always be individuals and small classes representing the vices of every grade

Ε

Editor's Easy Chair.

WE in America had scarcely buried our foremost

practical statesman, England had barely turned from the grave of her brilliant wit and satirist, when the note of national bereavement was caught up and prolonged in the universal sorrow with which the French people followed to his last home the most popular of poets. The death of Béranger revives all the souvenirs of all the changing fortunes of France during its last fourscore years of change. He was one of the rarest products of that strange convulsive epoch so prodigal of great geniuses. The metaphorical sea of Time, like the veritable ocean on which we gaze from Newport or Nahant, often sends to the shore, with its burden of wreck and destruction, some gem of its own most fanciful creation. The same dismal wave which broke over France in the horrors of Revolution and the Reign of Terror, bore into being this bright child of song, with all his overflowing wit and humor and genial human sympathies, like a gleam of sunlight on the crest of some storm-lashed breaker just poised for the final desolating sweep. Nature, in Béranger, epitomized the French character in its sunniest type, and avenged herself for such grand deformities as Danton, Robespierre, and their colossal colleagues. He was revolutionary and democratic by instinct; but he had no thirst for blood or plunder,