By the twanging, And the clanging, How the danger ebbs and flows; Yet the ear distinctly tells, In the jangling, And the wrangling, How the danger sinks and swells, By the sinking or the swelling in the anger of the bells, — Of the bells, To the sobbing of the bells; As he knells, knells, knells, In a happy Runic rhyme, To the rolling of the bells, - To the tolling of the bells, Of the bells, bells, bells, bells, Bells, bells, bells, To the moaning and the groaning of the bells. GREELEY. 1811-1873. HORACE GREELEY, the greatest of American journalists, and eminent as a writer of pure and vigorous English, was born in Amherst, New Hampshire, in 1811 and died in 1872. He was the son of a poor farmer, and was in every sense "a self-made man." Pure in mind, honest and upright to such an extent that he was called by many an eccentric man, he made his way, by his own unaided efforts, from poverty to well-deserved fame as a writer and philosopher. His style is better in certain respects than that of any of his contemporary writers. It is terse and masculine, so evenly balanced and nicely constructed, so simple and yet so graceful that it is equally admired by the uneducated farmer and the fastidious literary critic. Mr. Greeley will always be best known as the founder and first editor of the New York Tribune, but his collected writings will hold a place in standard American literature. The best known of these are: Recollections of a Busy Life, What I know of Farming, and The American Conflict, a history of the late civil war. -- THE EDITOR. It only remains to me to speak more especially of my own vocation, - the Editor's, which bears much the same relation to the Author's that the Bellows-blower's bears to the Organist's, the Player's to the Dramatist's. The Editor, from the absolute necessity of the case, cannot speak deliberately; he must write to-day of to-day's incidents and aspects, though these may be completely overlaid and transformed by the incidents and aspects of to-morrow. He must write and strive in the full consciousness that whatever honor or distinction he may acquire must perish with the generation that bestowed them. No other public teacher lives so wholly in the present as the Editor; and the noblest affirmations of unpopular truth- the most self-sacrificing defiance of a base and selfish Public Sentiment that regards only the most sordid ends, and values every utterance solely as it tends to preserve quiet and contentment, while the dollars fall jingling into the merchant's drawer, the land-jobber's vault, and the miser's bag can but be noted in their day, and with their day forgotten. It is his cue to utter silken and smooth sayings, -to condemn Vice so as not to interfere with the pleasures or alarm the consciences of the vicious, - to commend and glorify Labor without attempting to expose or repress any of the gainful contrivances by which Labor is plundered and degraded. Thus sidling dexterously between somewhere and nowhere, the Able Editor of the Nineteenth Century may glide through life respectable and in good case, and lie down to his long rest with the non-achievements of his life embla zoned on the very whitest marble, surmounting and glorifying his dust. There is a different and sterner path, I know not whether there be any now qualified to tread it, - I am not sure that even one has ever followed it implicitly, in view of the certain meagerness of its temporal rewards and the haste wherewith any fame acquired in a sphere so thoroughly ephemeral as the Editor's must be shrouded by the dark waters of oblivion. This path demands an ear ever open to the plaints of the wronged and the suffering, though they can never repay advocacy, and those who mainly support newspapers will be annoyed and often exposed by it; a heart as sensitive to oppression and degradation in the next street as if they were practiced in Brazil or Japan; a pen as ready to expose and reprove the crimes whereby wealth is amassed and luxury enjoyed in our own country at this hour, as if they had only been committed by Turks or Pagans in Asia some centuries ago. Such an Editor, could one be found or trained, need not expect to lead an easy, indolent, or wholly joyous life, - to be blessed by Archbishops or followed by the approving shouts of ascendant majorities: but he might find some recompense for their loss in the calm verdict of an approving conscience; and the tears of the despised and the friendless, preserved from utter despair by his efforts and remonstrances, might freshen for a season the daisies that bloomed above his grave. THE REFORMER. AND, indeed, though the life of the Reformer may seem rugged and arduous, it were hard to say considerately that any other were worth living at all. Who can thoughtfully affirm that the career of the conquering, desolating, subjugating warrior, — of the devotee of Gold, or Pomp, or Sensual Joys; the monarch in his purple, the Miser by his chest, the wassailer over his bowl, - is not a libel on Humanity and an offense against God? But the earnest, unselfish Reformer, -born into a state of darkness, evil, and suffering, and honestly striving to replace these by light and purity and happiness, — he may fall and die, as so many have done before him, but he cannot fail. His vindication shall gleam from the walls of his hovel, his dungeon, his tomb; it shall shine in the radiant eyes of uncorrupted Childhood, and fall in blessings from the lips of high-hearted, generous Youth. As the untimely death of the good is our strongest moral assurance of the Resurrection, so the life wearily worn out in doubtful and perilous conflict with Wrong and Woe is our most conclusive evidence that Wrong and Woe shall yet vanish forever. Luther, dying amid the agonizing tears and wild consternation of all Protestant Germany, Columbus, borne in regal pomp to his grave by the satellites of the royal miscreant whose ingratitude and perfidy had broken his mighty heart,* these teach us, at least, that all true greatness is ripened and tempered and proved in life-long struggle against vicious beliefs, traditions, practices, institutions; and that not to have been a Reformer is not to have truly lived. Life is a bubble which any breath may dissolve; Wealth or Power a snow-flake, melting momently into the treacherous deep across whose waves we are floated on to our unseen destiny: but to have lived so that one less orphan is called to choose between starvation and infamy, to have lived so that some eyes of those whom Fame shall never know are brightened and others suffused at the name of the beloved one, so that the few who knew him truly shall recognize him as a bright, warm, cheering presence, which was here for a season and left the world no worse for his stay in it, - - this surely is to have really lived, — and not wholly in vain. AGRICULTURE. Is agriculture a repulsive pursuit? That what has been called farming has repelled many of the youth of our day, I perceive; and I glory in the fact. An American boy, who has received a fair common-school education and has an active, inquiring mind, does not willingly consent merely to drive oxen and hold the plow forever. He will do these with alacrity, if they come in his way; he will not accept them as the be-all and the end-all of his career. He will not sit down in a rude, slovenly, naked home, devoid of flowers, and trees, and books, and periodicals, and intelligent, inspiring, refining conversation, and there plod through a life of drudgery as hopeless and cheerless as any mule's. He has needs, and hopes, and aspirations, which this life does not and ought not to satisfy. This might have served his progenitor in the ninth century; but this is the nineteenth, and the young American knows it. He needs to feel the intellectual life of the period flowing freely * See note, page 98. |