THERE has been a good deal of buzzing around the Easy Chair in relation to the tria' f Mr. Tyng before an ecclesiastical court, and for an ecclesiastical offense. It can not by any court for nobody contends that religion was in any manner involved. The Reverend Alfred Stubbs, D.D., and the Reverend Edward Boggs, D.D., who made the original complaint, are, we have no reason to doubt, pious and honest men; but they are surely not wise men. They have placed the whole subject of ecclesiastical discipline in an unpleasant light, and have therefore, probably very unwittingly, brought it into some contempt. The Reverend Dr. Stubbs and the Reverend Dr. Boggs must see that there may be laws which it is not wise always to enforce, and if it had occurred to them that this was one of them, they would have spared themselves much trouble and disagreeable notoriety and their religious denom feared the inevitable tragedy of slavery, magni- | the writer to her husband, and doubtful and alfied its patriarchal character, and repeated the most painful by the thought of the future. instances of kind treatment upon the part of masters. The English seem to seize upon this revelation of a stainless royal life with the eagerness of those who have found something good in it at least. But the book, like the photograph, must re-eous stretching be called a religious offenselentlessly dispel illusions. All the time the reader feels how much happier this little woman would be if she could only have a quiet cottage in some soft shade, and there worship her spouse and darn her children's stockings in love and peace. To pay enormous sums of money for the maintenance of this doting little wife as a great political figure-head; and to settle the bills of an extravagant and dissipated youth who shows no especial interest in public affairs, or aptitude for them, but who is conspicuously fond of the Garden Mabille in Paris; and to do all this while poverty widens and deepens, and tremendous questions threaten from every side-how about that? She is only part of the pageant indeed, but she is its crown; and when any part is ques-ination a certain inevitable scandal. Our distioned, every part is in danger. Thus when the great mass of the people in England vote, they will have their representatives in the House of Commons. But the action of the Commons may be paralyzed in the House of Lords. Then who are the House of Lords? Hereditary legislators. Why on earth should a few Englishmen be hereditary legislators, while the rest, who electerend Alfred Stubbs, D.D., or the Reverend to Parliament, are not? These questions are not now very remote. They are suppressed indeed by the feeling for an affectionate and faithful woman, whose great sorrow has made her very precious to the national heart. But they will not be suppressed if Prince Hal does not forswear Eastcheap and Jack Falstaff, and live very cleanly when he comes to the palace. They are the inevitable questions of an epoch of photographs and general suffrage and books by the Queen. Indeed it seems hardly possible that the English system and form of political society can endure the changes of the time. They must yield or break; yet when did a great system ever yield? We believe in the mortality of every body else, but we do not quite acknowledge our own. So every vast and ancient political organization has been violently changed. The Queen's grandfather struggled for the old prerogative. It was a struggle to push Niagara up the precipice. When he failed the consequences were inevitable. Indeed his effort was but an event in the development of the British story from Runnymede. He failed as Charles and James failed. The pageant which Mr. Bagshot describes begins to fade. This innocent book is not the work of the Governor of England, nor of one who has any power, or who in the least influences the Government. It is not the circle at Balmoral, or at Osborne, or at Windsor, that Mr. Robert Lowe cries out must be educated. It is "our masters" whom he would have taught. And the first lesson they will learn is that the governing power and authority reside in "a Committee of the House of Commons," which is elected by the representatives of the people. Such are the inevitable reflections as you turn the pleasant pages of this amiable book; reflections made pensive by the touching fidelity of tant friends may not know the simple facts of the story, which are that Mr. Tyng is an Episcopal clergyman in New York, and that being one Sunday in New Jersey he preached in a Methodist meeting-house, and prayed as Methodists pray, and read such hymns as they sing. This is what Mr. Tyng did. Now nobody, not even the Rev Edward Boggs, D.D., complain that Mr. Tyng preached, prayed, and sang. Their complaint is, that as an Episcopal clergyman he had agreed not to do certain things, and among them were preaching in other parishes except upon certain conditions, and that, consequently, he was technically guilty of a violation of the canon. The Easy Chair is not very familiar with ecclesiastical canons and usages, but this is probably true as stated. The general understanding was, that, as an Episcopal minister, he would not preach in the pulpits of dissenters. But even if this were so, was it worth while to insist upon it? Is there not some pertinent phrase about the letter that killeth? Waiving, for a moment, the question of ecclesiastical canons, what is the great object of preaching? Every body would answer, in whatever form the reply might be uttered-to save souls; in other words, to make men better, and therefore happier. Beside this are not the other considerations unimportant? Granting, as we cheerfully do, that forms, and times, and methods have an undoubted value-yet, is it not of comparatively small importance, when you have settled that the great object of preaching is the moral and religious improvement of men, whether you preach from a platform, or from a pulpit, or from a cart, or from a barrel-head; whether you preach in a marvelous cathedral, in a highly-furnished and elaborate modern church, or in a barn, or in the open air; whether you stand facing the north or south, or east or west; whether you wear leather with George Fox, or lawn with an English Bishop, or plain black broadcloth with a dissenter; whether you wear a white cravat, or a black cravat, or an open collar or bands; and whether you preach with or without notes? Now we are confident that the Reverend Alfred Stubbs, D.D., and the Reverend Edward Boggs, D.D., would acknowledge with the ut-lasting gates!" The Vatican choir within remost readiness that the important point was the sponds, and the exquisite and inspiring music sincerity or the effect of the preaching, and not rolls, and resounds, and reanswers, in strophe the peculiar attitude or costume of the preacher. and anti-strophe. At length the great door They would say that the place was comparative- swings open, and the most splendid pageant ly unimportant, because they would remember upon which modern eyes can gaze enters the that one of the prayers in the service-book of magnificent temple. A scarlet cloud of carditheir church recalls the promise that where two nals and priests of every degree, clad in shining or three are gathered together the Father is in and various robes, from every quarter of the the midst of them. But they would probably globe, moves slowly in. Perhaps the Greek Paremind the Easy Chair that Mr. Tyng had triarch is there, with his flowing dark beard, archosen to make sundry promises, and that he had rayed in velvet, upon his head a golden crown. not kept them. Would they also think the Easy And high above the heads of all, borne in his Chair jesuitical if he suggested that it is very throne upon men's shoulders, and the huge flaeasy to imagine Mr. Tyng as choosing to regard bella carried beside him, sits the Pope, triplythe intent rather than the literal form of his prom-crowned, with his jeweled fingers raising, imise? He did not design to cast obloquy upon any parting the benediction. In him and in the church or to injure any person. There was an church the ages mingle, and every kind of assoopportunity opened to him to call sinners to re- ciation fascinates and bewilders as we gaze. pentance; and believing that his supreme obliga- as he stands before the high altar of St. Peter's, tion to his Church and to its Head was to do and the vast throng kneels in silence as he elethat, he did not hesitate to improve the oppor- vates the host, there rises irresistibly in the imtunity. agination the figure of Him who had not where to lay his head, and whose kingdom is a spiritual kingdom. ter. Yet Suppose that he had found himself without any garment more clerical than a mixed morning coat and a colored cravat, should he refuse to Or, again, when we read that the Reverend preach because he had not gown and bands? In Alfred Stubbs, D.D., and the Reverend EdSwift's day and Sterne's a wig was part of the ward Boggs, D.D., have charged Mr. Tyng with clerical costume, should Swift have been ecclesi- preaching without a surplice and praying without astically arraigned because he had omitted the a book, why is it that the impatient imagination wig? The Reverend Alfred Stubbs, D.D., and recurs to the pageant in St. Peter's, and to the the Reverend Edward Boggs, D.D., have made idolatry of Jerusalem, and beholds upon the the same kind of mistake they would have made shore of Galilee the teacher who banned the had they summoned the Reverend Dean to ap- Scribes and Pharisees and declared his kingdom pear and answer for the absence of his wig. The to be not of this world? Do Dr. Stubbs and world could only have done then what it is do- Dr. Boggs really think that it is worth while to ing now, laughed quietly at the spectacle. No- refine upon surplices and bands? Shall good body complains that Mr. Tyng did not exhort men, devoted by profession, and, we will believe, eloquently, and pray fervently, and sing sweetly by an intense vocation, to preaching the glad -but only that he did not do those things as the tidings, to raising the down-trodden, to comfortReverend Alfred Stubbs, D.D., and the Reverending the broken-hearted, to binding up the wounds Edward Boggs, D.D., do them. of the stricken and soothing the suffering and It is strange when we read such stories to weary; shall good men, in a world where the think of the life and teachings of the Great Mas-good fight demands every energy of every solIn the Church of the Holy Sepulchre at dier, where temptation is so alluring, where the Jerusalem the young Easy Chair saw the peas-way slopes so swiftly and so smoothly downants from the lower Danube prostrating them- ward, where the one great necessity is constant selves before what was called the spot upon Cal-warfare with real wrong and the encroaching vary where the cross was planted. They knelt and touched the ground with their foreheads, and rose and knelt, and rose again and knelt, with a kind of idiotic fervor and pertinacity which rivaled the dance of the dervishes of another faith or the tenacity of Stylites upon his column. Around them as they performed these genuflexions, and scattered all through the church to preserve order, were the soldiers of the Pacha, Turkish troops, the followers of Mohammed, who smiled superior at these curious movements droll antics of the Christian dogs, as they supposed them to be. Not far away, beyond the city walls, rose the Mount of Olives, silvery sad with a few trees, and at its foot the Garden of Gethsemane. How hard it was again to associate the scene in the Church of the Sepulchre with the sublime life and words that hallowed the landscape! kingdom of darkness-tell us, Alfred Stubbs, D.D., and the Rev. Dr. Boggs-shall good men fall to quarreling about their clothes, and to solemnly perorating about the offense of reading one good hymn instead of another? THE man who poisons a spring in the meadow from which flows the stream whose water is drunk by the dwellers upon the shore, is a villain so extraordinary and his guilt is so black that even the ferocity of war refuses to acknowledge him and forbids his practices. Yet his guilt is not greater than that of those who trade upon the moral ruin of men and women. The name of liberty was the excuse of many of the most fearful crimes in France, and the freedom of the press is prostituted here as the name was there. It is impossible to conceive of the heart of a man who will publish such papers as are issued in Or again, in Rome, on the great feast of the this city, the sole object of which is to pander to year, when travelers from all the world are gath- passions which need no excitement. There are ered in St. Peter's, the sound of the Papal choir wretched fellows who haunt the wharves, the is heard, softened by distance, chanting outside railroad stations, and the ferry-landings, who the great door, "Lift up your heads, ye ever-steal up to you, and, at a convenient moment, when they suppose nobody to be looking, whisper: "Have a book, Mister?" and lift a corner of paper to reveal the character of the book they offer. There is no depth of degradation lower than that, and indignation is almost lost in wonder and pity. 66 But the evil has been growing of late much more truculent, and has excited very general attention. It is no longer the skulking vagabond who whispers and winks, but it is the paper openly exposed for sale upon otherwise respectable news-stands and at all the stations, which stares you boldly in the face and says, Come, buy me!" All the skill of the wood-engraver is pressed into the service, and the vice is as flaunting as sometimes in its living forms upon the street. The father with his wife or daughter, the young man with his sweet-heart, the boy and his sister stopping to buy a paper are confronted with the pictures in these papers tacked up as advertisements. Have the newsmen no generous sense of honor? Have they no wives, daughters, sisters, or sweet-hearts? Have they no children whom they would train as steadily as possible? Is an honest man not ashamed to make money by pandering to pruriency? Suppose you do sell newspapers and magazines for a living. It is as honorable a business as managing the Hudson and Harlem and Central railroads. It is as useful as speculating in stocks and betting upon gold. There is no degradation in any business until the man himself degrades it, and when you sell a paper of the kind that every traveler has recently seen upon your stand, what are you but the fellow with the hang-dog air who waits to show the traveler upon the sly his abominable wares? Public taste, you may say, demands it, and although you may deplore the taste you can not correct it. That is not true. You help to correct it by refusing to gratify its mean desires. There is a great sale of certain books, is there? There is an astonishing demand for a literature which would disgrace Sodom, is there? And you can not Pharisaically affect to be better than the public demand? Well, now, Mr. Newsman, are not the Appletons, and the Harpers, and Scribner, and Putnam tolerably fair merchants in their way? Is not the making and selling of books and periodicals their business? Do they not of necessity aim to gratify the public taste? If they do not can they hope to succeed? But do they make or sell these books of which there is such an astonishing sale? Do they manufacture this literature for which there is such a prodigious demand? And why not? Simply because their business is to gratify an innocent and noble public taste, not to prostitute themselves into rascals by degrading it and outraging public decency. And why should you not do what they do in this matter? You are not a great publisher, indeed, and do not command great capital. You must sell an illustrated paper to one man and a daily to another, and a magazine to this one and a dime novel to that one. But look at it, as you stand by your own wares and glance your eyes through this new Number of Harper-your business is a good, clean business, as much as theirs, unless you defile it; and if you defile it you are just as guilty as they would be if they did the same thing. You are a man, and your own boyhood is not far behind you; or you are still a young man, just making your own way. Look at that boy coming. See the clear eye, the sensitive cheek, the frank look. You know him through and through, for you have been a boy. Young, inexperienced, in a sense at your mercy, what will you do with him? How can you go home without remorse, how can you look in your wife's face, how can you fall honestly asleep if you have sold that boy a paper or a book which can have but one effect, and is intended to have but one? If a traveler's heedless feet were unconsciously slipping down the fiery mouth of Etna and you pushed him on, you would be a murderer. But if you had pushed his soul downward, God have mercy upon yours! Many trades succeed, but only honest trade prospers upon every side. The reform in this matter can be helped by regulations of companies at railroad and ferry stations, but the great reform will be achieved by the refusal of the newsmen to sell. There will still be an immense demand, you say. Very well, let a certain kind of merchant satisfy the demand. When you honest men sweep this stuff off your stands, those upon which it remains will be as odious and despised as the skulkers with the concealed package under their arms; and when you have confined the sale to a certain class of newsdealers, you will drive it back again into its old, miserable, sneaking ways, and have so diminished its baleful influence. Mr. Shear, the wellknown news-agent upon some of the chief railroads out of New York, is understood to have forbidden the sale of this literature by all his subordinates. Those who do not should be presented by the Grand Jury as nuisances. But whatever Grand Juries or newsmen may do, let all parents form themselves into a vast Children's Aid Society; and remembering themselves save, if possible, the newer selves who succeed them. Ir is pleasant to know that the Lyceum, as it is popularly called, or the lecture system, shows no sign of decline or failure. What seemed an experiment, a fashion, a freak, a lion-hunting, has become an institution. The Lyceum platform, according to Mr. Wendell Phillips, and he knows if any man, is the freest arena in the country. It is the least hampered by sectarian or other bonds, and yet no one familiar with the Lyceum will question in general its deep moral influence and elevating power. Its great service is in moulding public opinion, which finally governs the country; and it is heartily hated, denounced, and ridiculed by those who think ignorance is a very safe and useful thing for the people, and the minstrels an unobjectionable relaxation. Nor will this Easy Chair, nor any lover of sweet sounds, deny the pleasure that may often be found in the banjo and the bones, while he must, in mere honesty, question the humor of the performance. A clown may be very funny in the ring, but after all it is not very funny fun. The Lyceum does not tend to banish the music of the minstrels, but only to wipe the burnt cork off their faces and relieve their tongues of the necessity of talking a lingo which means nothing, and the fun of which greatly resembles the clown's fun. The Lyceum, indeed, naturally follows the Common School. When every body reads a newspaper, and has a general interest in the world beyond the village-when the popular | Besides, as most of the speakers are liberals, and mind is really active-the banjo and the bones inclined to take the same general view of public are not wholly satisfactory, and when the end- topics, there was possibly a monotony in the man has joked his joke there still remains an ear strain which it was desirable to change. and a mind for a different kind of attraction. So far as an Easy Chair can learn the public is not fickle, and still clings to its first Lyceum loves. Moreover, its taste is singularly catholic, and does not demand that one favorite shall echo another, but that each shall be himself. The independence of the platform having been thoroughly secured-committees no longer waiting upon the lecturer at his hotel to beg him to omit any strong passages, "because we have a very miscellaneous audience, and as we depend upon the patronage of all, we must seek to gratify all"— this banjo and bones philosophy having ceased to be applied to the platform, and every man being welcomed to say what he thinks in his own way, the necessity of the protest has disappeared, and the lectures have been perhaps less purely political during the last season than for some years. The significant truth, however, is that the Lyceum has become a permanent institution. In every community those who are hostile to it are the same persons who are constantly opposed to all generous and elevating influences. Those who protest against the politics of the Lyceum are not satisfied if their own politics are represented, but insist that no political subjects shall be discussed upon the platform; while the Lyceum itself finds that it is very hard to find a generally attractive lecturer-which is, of course, an essential pointwho is not also of the political views which the objectors denounce. This point, however, is now settled; and it is pleasant to reflect that the influence of an institution which is brought to bear every winter upon tens of thousands of the most intelligent people of the country is steadily liberal and humane. Monthly Record of Current Events. UNITED STATES. UR Record closes on the 3d of March. of interest are the corre-Grunt spondence between General Grant and the President; the attempted removal of Mr. Stanton, and appointment of General Lorenzo Thomas as Secretary of War; and the subsequent formal impeachment of President Johnson.. On the 4th of February, in compliance with a resolution of the House, Mr. Stanton transmitted a copy of this correspondence, stating also that he himself had not had any correspondence with the President since the 12th of August, and that since his resumption of the duties of Secretary of War he had performed them without any personal or written communication with the President, had issued no orders in the name of the President, and had received no orders from him. On the 24th of January General Grant wrote to the President for a repetition in writing of a verbal order given five days before, by which he was directed "to disregard the orders of the Hon. E. M. Stanton as Secretary of War until he knew from the President himself that they were his orders." To this request a message was at once returned which left General Grant in doubt as to the intentions of the President. Accordingly on the 28th he wrote to the President at some length, repeating the request for a written order and stating that he should suspend action upon the verbal order. "I am compelled,' he wrote, 66. to ask these instructions in writing in consequence of the many gross misrepresentations affecting my personal honor circulated through the press for the last fortnight, purporting to come from the President, of conversations which occurred either with the President privately in his office or in Cabinet meeting." General Grant then goes on to give what he considers "the facts in the case," substantially as follows: After he had assumed the duties of Secretary of War ad interim, the President desired his opinion as to the course which Mr. Stanton would have to pursue to regain possession of his office, in case the Senate should not concur in the suspension. have to appeal to the courts to reinstate him; adding, however, that should he change his view on this point he would inform the President. Subsequently, after closely examining the terms of the Tenure-of-Office Bill, he came to the conclusion that he could not, without violating the law, refuse to vacate the office of Secretary of War the moment Mr. Stanton was reinstated by the Senate, even though the President should, which he did not do, order him to remain. He therefore notified the President of the decision to which he had come on this point. The President urged in reply that as Mr. Stanton had been suspended, and General Grant appointed under authority granted by the Constitution, and not under any Act of Congress, Grant could not be governed by the Act. Grant rejoined that the law, whether constitutional or not, was binding upon him until set aside by the proper tribunal. So matters stood for some days, until Mr. Stanton, with whom General Grant had held no communication, reassumed the duties of his office, when Grant, who no longer considered himself to be Secretary of War, was requested by the President to attend a Cabinet meeting on the 14th of January. At this meeting the President declared that Grant had promised either to hold on to the office of Secretary of War until displaced by the courts, or to resign so as to leave the President free to fill the office. Grant did not then admit that he had made any such promise, and in this letter he positively denies having done so; but says that in order to soften the evident contradiction he said, "The President may have understood me the way he said: that I had promised to resign if I did not resist the reinstatement." The President gives a very different account of what transpired on these occasions. Meanwhile on the 29th he returned the request of Grant for a written order, with the following in- conference of the 14th, and they concurred in the dorsement: "As requested in this communication, General Grant is instructed, in writing, not to obey any order from the War Department, assumed to be issued by the direction of the President, unless such order is known by the General commanding the armies of the United States to have been authorized by the Executive." To this General Grant on the following day replied: "I am informed by the Secretary of War that he has not received from the Executive any order or instructions limiting or impairing his authority to issue orders to the army, as has heretofore been his practice under the law and customs of the Department. While his authority to the War Department is not countermanded, it will be satisfactory evidence to me that any orders issued from the War Department by direction of the President are authorized by the Exec utive." To this, and to the letter of General Grant of the 28th, the President on the 31st of January replied at length. He states that the distinct understanding between himself and General Grant was, that in case the latter should not prefer to become a party in the controversy, or should come to the conclusion that it was his duty to surrender the Department to Mr. Stanton, should the Senate decide in his favor, he would, before the Senate acted, resign the Secretaryship so that the President might appoint a successor. Mr. Johnson avers that General Grant for days well knew that it was the purpose of the President to appoint some other person as Secretary of War ad interim unless this understanding had been reached. General Grant, the President says, was to have given his final decision on Monday January 13, but failed to do so; instead of which on the next day he sent in an official notification that in consequence of the action of the Senate his functions as Secretary had ceased. The President further avers that even had there been no positive promise General Grant must have known that it was his purpose, in case their views did not accord, to fill the place by another appointment. The President then goes on to give his version of what took place at the Cabinet meeting of January 14: My recollection," he says, "is diametrically the reverse of your narration." He avers that at this meeting General Grant admitted (1.) That he had agreed either to hold on to the post until the Courts otherwise decided, or to resign before the Senate had taken action; (2.) That on the 11th he reaffirmed this decision; (3.) That on the same day he agreed to another conference to be held on the 13th, but did not appear, having been engaged in a conference with General Sherman, and "many little matters. The President says that he had read his own statement of what took place at this meeting to the members of the Cabinet who were present, and that they all agreed to its accuracy. He adds that on the next day (January 15) General Grant, calling upon him, declared that a report, published in the National Intelligencer, of what had taken place at this meeting had done him much injustice; the President replied that he had not then read this report; subsequently, as he wrote, he read this report, and "found that the statement of the understanding between us was substantially correct;" adding, moreover, that he had "caused it to be read to four of the five members of the Cabinet who were present at our accuracy of the statements respecting our conversation upon that occasion.' To this General Grant replied on the 3d of February. He had, he said, read the President's letter, and compared it with this newspaper article and another one in another paper, purporting to be based upon the statements of the President and his Cabinet, and found the letter to be "only a reiteration, only somewhat more in detail, of the many and gross misrepresentations" contained in these newspaper articles, to rectify which was the design of his own letter of the 28th of January, "the correctness of which," he said, "I reassert, any thing of yours in reply to it to the contrary notwithstanding." He was greatly surprised that "the Cabinet officers should so greatly misunderstand the facts in the matter as to suffer their names to be made the basis of charges in the newspaper articles, or to agree to the accuracy, as you affirm they do, of your account of what occurred at that meeting. You know," continues General Grant, “that we parted on Saturday, the 11th ult., without any promise on my part, either express or implied, that I would hold on to the office of Secretary of War ad interim against the action of the Senate, or, declining to do so myself, would surrender it to you before such action was had; or that I would see you at any fixed time on the subject.' General Grant goes on to say, in substance, that his performance of the promises alleged by the President to have been made, would have involved a violation of law; that the President must have known that his greatest objection to the removal of Mr. Stanton was the fear that some one would be appointed in his stead who would oppose the operation of the reconstruction laws; and that to prevent this he had accepted the office of Secretary of War ad interim. General Grant gives some further details, to the general purport that he, with General Sherman, had agreed to advise Mr. Stanton to put an end to the difficulty by resigning, in which case the President would be urged to nominate as Secretary of War Governor Cox, of Ohio; that an interview with Mr. Stanton had convinced him that such advice would be useless; and that after the interval of a fortnight he would not then advise Mr. Stanton to resign, "lest the same danger I apprehended from his first removal might follow." General Grant concludes this letter by affirming that the course which the President desired it to be understood that he had agreed to follow was "in violation of the law, and that without orders from you; while the course I did pursue, and which I never doubted you fully understood, was in accordance with law, and not in disobedience to any orders of my superior." He added that "when my honor as a soldier and integrity as a man have been so violently assailed, pardon me for saying that I can but regard this whole matter from beginning to end as an attempt to involve me in the resistance of law, for which you hesitated to assume the responsibility in orders, and thus to destroy my character before the country. I am in a measure confirmed in this conclusion by your recent orders directing me to disobey orders from the Secretary of War, my superior and your subordinate." The foregoing comprises the substance of this correspondence as it existed at the time when its |