Western 1881-05: Vol 7 Iss 3

AP
2 Me.

1 @)\ a! ii! CE) a 1) <> | Pei 111 | om 1111

oon

New

|

:
|
|
|
|

CANES ERY Se
cm rom]
\ L) |

Ty) (e °
ILC

Published Bi-monthly, at the subscription price of
$2.00 per annum. Single number, 35 cents.

ryt i | <a i4ii bE) <a 111 | <a 1)

@ii| <am iii!

Admitted as second-class matter at the St. Louis P. 0.

Gi | «om SS Se ne Se =

|

}

WiA| TEC |H| ES

We invite particular attention to the
SuPeRIOR Quauity of our special lines of
Watches, adapted for GenTLEMEN’s wear;
they are named the Sranparp, GoopMAN
Kine, C. F. Marner, Ratroap, D. C.
JACCARD, AND Mermop, Jaccarp & Co.
The prices range in Pure Solid Suver
Cases from $15.00 upwards, and in Solid
Gop Cases from $35.00 upwards.

We guarantee these Watches excellent
timepieces, and for quality and low prices
to be unequalled in this market; and it will
afford us pleasure to show them to the

readers of the Western and their friends.

MERMOD, JACCARD & CO.,

Fourth and Locust. Fourth and Locust.,

ST. LOUIS, MO.

pas-A SpLenpip LINE OF SILK UMBRELLAS.“@8

W

|
|
ae

A|TiC\|HIE

THE WESTERN.

NEw SERIES. | May, 1881.

[Vou. VII. No. 3.

“THE RAISING OF LAZARUS,’’ BY SEBASTIAN DEL
PIOMBO.!

1. THE RESURRECTION AS A THEME FOR CHRISTIAN ART.

The conceptions of primitive peoples have always been,
and from the nature of the case could not but be, completely
identified with sensuous existence. Not only so, but, even
amidst the most favorable circumstances, the individual
mind must pass through a prolonged and severe process of
culture in order to gain freedom from and mastery over the
limitations inherent in the forms of thought pertaining to the
imaginative consciousness. Remembering this, we cannot
feel surprise that the religion possessing the profoundest
spiritual significance should be constrained to present its
infinitely rich gifts to man. under forms which appeal to his
imagination, so that thus he might be aroused to the struggle
which should lead to his becoming finally the conscious
possessor of those gifts in all their fulness. It is for this
very purpose of bringing its conceptions within the easy
grasp of the imagination that Religion has ever called in the
aid of Art to build symbols, to carve images, to portray on
canvas the secrets of the spiritual world, to thrill the soul

' This picture has been engraved by George T. Doo and also by Joannes
Vendramini. An excellent phototype reproduction of the latter is given in
Krell’s Classics of Painting. A good photograph is also to be had through the
book-stores.

Vol. 7—No. 3 “4

208 The Western.

with paradisiac harmonies and awaken thoughts of heaven
by the splendors of poetic imagery.

Thus, so soon as Christian doctrines became distinctly
formulated, Painting, the willing ** handmaid of Religion,”’
was assigned the task of giving expression to those doctrines
in life-like form and color. Inthe early period of Christian
art, few themes possessed so great fascination as that of the
Resurrection. Among the earliest representations of this
subject is one comprised in a wall-painting found in the
catacombs of St. Calyxtus.' A series of eight smaller pic-
tures surround a representation, in the central panel, of
Christ as Orpheus. The latter is, of course, consciously
represented in the style and spirit of the antique ; the story
of Orpheus charming the world with his music serving as
an appropriate symbol of Christ drawing all men to himself
through the beauty of his character and the consolations of
his doctrine. On the contrary, no prototype existed for a
representation of the Resurrection, and this ( one of the eight
smaller pictures referred to) is accordingly portrayed in the
simplest fashion. Lazarus is represented as a mummy in

an upright sarcophagus, from which the covering has been

removed. Christ, standing near, but possessing no attri-
butes to indicate his divine character, touches the entombed
figure with a wand. The picture is altogether conventional
and symbolic. It is a first rude attempt of an infantile
art.

With Giotto this art attained to a vigor nearly approach-
ing maturity. Giotto’s representation of the ** Raising of
Lazarus,’’ even judging from the wood-cut reproduction in
Woltman’s History of Painting,? was a work of much
dramatic power. It is a rich composition of nearly twenty
figures. The actual awakening has just taken place. Laz-
arus stands forth still wrapped in mummy-cloths, but sup-

1 Liibke’s History of Art. Trans. F. E. Bunnett. L, 309. (See wood-cut.)
2 Geschichte der Malerei, T., 429. Leipziy. 1829.

‘*The Raising of Lazarus.”’ 209

ported by one of the spectators (perhaps a disciple), who
turns toward Christ as if awaiting the command, ‘* Loose
him, and let him go.’’ The by-standers show in gesture
and countenance how deeply they are moved. The figure
of Christ is commanding, while the disciples near him, with
the air of composure but also of deepest attention, seem to
indicate a clearer insight into the power of their Master, and
hence less surprise at what has taken place. The precisely
similar attitude of the two sisters (prostrate at the feet of
Christ) is the least pleasing part.of the picture ; but this, as
Woltman suggests, had become so firmly fixed as an un-
varying feature in the traditional representation of the
subject that even Giotto did not venture upon a change.
The deepest significance of the picture is, however, that of
a physical miracle as proof of the divine power of Christ.
The by-standers believe because they see, but their seeing is
with the eyes of sense, and thus depends, so to speak, upon
the presence of physical light.

It was full two hundred years after the time of Giotto
that painting brought to the utmost completion its task of
portraying the conceptions of the Christian religion in forms
expressing the profoundest spiritual significance which it is
possible for this art to convey. In the midst of this period
of rich maturity was produced the masterly painting which
forms the central theme of the present essay. Every one
who bas given any attention to the art of the sixteenth cen-
tury is doubtless aware that this picture was produced in
rivalry with Raphael, who was then engaged upon his
‘+ Transfiguration of Christ.’’ Nor was it at all a secret, even
at the time, that the drawing of the ‘* Raising of Lazarus
wis largely by the hand of Michael Angelo. Thus it is evi-
dent that the conception — the real soul and inner content —
of the picture originated in the profoundest, most deeply
penetrating spirit of that era of great men. Sebastian del
Piombo, the ablest and most esteemed of the pupils of
Michael Angelo, was but intrusted with the execution of a

°°?

210 The Western.

design which the far mightier genius of his master had pro-
duced. Sebastian was sufficiently great as an artist to
enter fully into the spirit of the splendid design, and the
freedom and power with which he wrought it.out were as
if the very soul of the master had guided the hand of the
pupil in his work.

In comparison with this great work, Giotto’s representa-
tion of the same subject shows immaturity and lack of free-
dom, while on the other hand every succeeding treatment
of the theme seems weak and insignificant. Rubens’ ** Rais-
ing of Lazarus,’’! for example, is a reversion to and inten-
sification of the entirely materialistic view of the subject.
Whatever there may be in it worthy of praise, there is yet
(so far as it constitutes an attempt to portray a religious
conception) this in it to condemn: that it represents a
glad return to the goodliness of this life and a rejoicing on
the part of friends over the resuscitation of him whom they
had mourned as altogether dead. It is like a denial rather
than an assurance of immortality. So, too, Rembrandt’s

representation of this subject? fails to satisfy us. The ex-
cellent qualities in it are far from outweighing its defects.
The rudeness of the figures, the grotesqueness of their atti-
tudes, indeed the whole character of the picture (an etching ),
would seem to have for its aim the representation of the
magic of a wizard rather than the might of a divinely
spoken word. *

1 A wood-cut reproduction is given in Liibke’s History of Art, II., 390.

* Reproduced in fac simile in Charles Blanc’s ‘‘(Euvres de Rembrandt.”

* It was since this essay was handed to the editor of the Western that I saw
for the first time the work of M. Blanc just referred to, and found therein the
statement that “some one [M. Dumesnit Michelet, he tells us] has re-
marked that Christ appears in this print of Rembrandt like an enchanter.’’
To which M. Blanc himself adds, that ‘‘ Rembrandt has been able to represent
the miracle of Christ as the marvellous effect of asuperhuman magnetism, of a
sublime incantation.” And I would repeat, it is magic rather than Divinity
that is here represented. So high authority as Seymour Haden has, indeed,
denied the authenticity of this plate. But M. Blanc declares there can be no
doubt that it is Rembrandt’s work.

‘The Raising of Lazarus.”’ . 211

But from this point let us turn to the work which was
the joint product of the genius of Michael Angelo and the
technical skill of Sebastian, and attempt, in the light of
what has already been said, to translate into ordinary
language the thought which it seems to us to embody.

II. INTERPRETATION OF SEBASTIAN'S GREAT WORK.

The picture, taken as a whole, may be described as fol-
lows: The total view consists of an extended landscape,
having a remarkably high horizon line. Out of an in-
distinct background a stream winds through the centre of
the picture nearly to the foreground, then turns to the left
and disappears. In the middle distance an arched bridge
of strong masonry crosses the stream, the terminus to the
left leading to massive buildings, of which the most prom-
inent appears to be a temple partly in ruins. Behind these
a town stretches along the bank of the stream. Near the
opposite terminus of the bridge are other buildings, while
in the right-hand foreground stands a crumbling mass of
masonry, upon the sides of which moss and shrubs are
growing. From the top of this mass extends horizontally
to the right what, did the space of the picture permit its
full representation, would doubtless prove to be an over-
arching beam connecting with another support. Beneath
are steps leading upward and to the right through the
archway. Here, too, it would seem to be the intention
to depict the ruins of some ancient structure. The fore-
ground, finally, is literally filled with the thirty-eight
figures more or less directly connected with the central
object of interest in the picture.

Such is what we see of this work upon a superficial
view. But let us now consider the grouping of these
figures. Immediately in the foreground to the right is
Lazarus, sitting upon the sarcophagus from which he has
arisen, and, with the aid of two or three by-standers, free-

212 The Western.

ing himself from the entanglements of his grave-cloths.
Behind him, and under the archway already mentioned, are
those who have accompanied Mary and Martha to the
tomb. The sisters are near, Mary kneeling and looking
up to Christ; Martha behind Lazarus, with outstretched
hands and face averted. A little to the left, the figure of
Christ stands out prominently upon a stone slab (perhaps
the covering that has been removed from the tomb), his
left hand extended toward Lazarus, his right upraised.
About him are grouped the twelve disciples, in various atti-
tudes, and behind these to the extreme left are seven fig-
ures engaged in animated conversation and evidently giving
close attention to what is in progress before them.

Of the significance of the subordinate groups, or of the
individual figures, or, indeed, of the picture as a whole, little
appears to have been written. Of the figure of Lazarus, it
is true, many have expressed enthusiastic admiration. But
it has generally seemed sufficient to give unqualified praise
to its masterly drawing and to the life-like movement
which it expresses. In all that can be said in commenda-
tion of this figure we would heartily concur; but at the
same time we would not forget how easy it is for both artist
and critic to permit technique — which should certainly never
be undervalued — to outweigh and even wholly suppress the
deep spiritual significance which, in a real work of art,
technique is but a means to express. The greatest artist is
he who combines the finest technique as means with the
grandest conceptions as end and aim. Of technical skill we
undoubtedly have a most admirable example in the present
picture, and we may look with confidence to find in it a con-
ception that is truly noble and full of the richest spiritual
import. In considering the figure of Lazarus, every one
must be impressed with the appearance of sinewy strength.
It is the picture of the most manly vigor, and reminds one
strongly of the Adam in Michael Angelo’s own admirable
painting (** The Creation of Man’’) in the Sistine Chapel ;

‘“*The Raising of Lazarus.”’ 213

just as, in the outstretched magnetic hand and in the divinely
benevolent look of Christ we are reminded of those same
characteristics in the figure representing the Creator in the
just-mentioned work of Michael Angelo. If need were, we
might take the clew of interpretation from this very point of
similarity which we observe between these two pictures. In
the creation of Adam, man lies there prone upon the earth.
He is already complete as a physical being, — and as a physi-
cal being man is part and parcel of the processes of nature —
but he lacks thé spiritual quality of wonder; and only the
electric touch of the Divine Spirit can set the soul throb-
bing with eager desire to know. Primitive man looked up
drowsily, and thought he saw traces of God in the sky.’
Little by little, more and more, he longed to see God face
to face. Meanwhile the whirlwind passed by, and the earth
quaked, and fire raged ; but only after long generations of
progress did man awake to the fact that God is not in the
whirlwind, nor in the earthquake, nor in the fire, — that He
is not in any of the forces of nature, in any sense that can
satisfy the inner longings of man, — but rather that it is in
the ‘still small voice ’’ of the spirit that God is truly found,
and there alone that this longing is to attain its true and
abiding satisfaction. ‘*In Adam all died.’’ In the primi-
tive ages of the world the views of a future state were so
vague that with death all seemed ended. On the other
hand, all are to be made alive in Christ. It is the very
essence of the mission of Christ to awaken man to a full
consciousness of his own nature as a spiritual being, and
hence to a full appreciation of his destiny as involving his
own freedom and immortality. He that has been ‘* dead in
sin’’ so long that he may even have become an offence to

' The Sky-God was one of the earliest divinities of most, if not all races.
The ancient Hindus called him Dyaus; the Greeks and Romans, Zeus and
Jupiter; the old Germans, Zio, etc.— all different forms of the same name,
meaning Heaven-Father. See Max Miiller’s ‘Chips from a German Work-
shop,” IV., 210.

214 The Western.

others is to be awakened to the genuine life of the spirit.
The ‘‘letter’’ of the law of formal observances and of ex-
ternal purifications ‘* killeth ;’’ it puts reflective conscious-
ness to sleep, lulls the soul into a false sense of security, and
thus prevents the putting forth of effort for improvement.
On the contrary, ‘‘the spirit’’— the full consciousness both
of what man is ideally and of what he is really — brings by
this sharp contrast a sense of keenest pain, awakens a feel-
ing of insecurity, and arouses the individual to the most
intense and persistent struggle to attain to real purity and
substantial virtue. ‘* The spirit giveth life.’’

The Sadducees interpreted the doctrine of the resurrec-
tion literally, as a purely physical affair, and hence held it
in the utmost contempt as an arrant absurdity. Not dream-
ing that any other interpretation could be put upon it, they
went boldly to Christ and propounded to him «a complete
reductio ad absurdum against it. Judge of their astonish-
ment and confusion when, by a single sentence, He showed
them that the absurdity belonged to their interpretation.
‘¢ When they shall rise from the dead ’’ — when the immor-
tal shall be freed from the mortal, the spiritual from the
physical — ‘* they neither marry nor are given in marriage,
but are as the angels which are in heaven.’’ God is ** not
the God of the dead, but the God of the living.’’ Per-
manency of form in the physical — the unconscious — is not
to be desired. That which was of the earth returns to the
earth. The dead Abraham and Isaac and Jacob return to
the dust whence they came. Physical elements mingle with
physical elements, and there is no essential difference be-
tween them. But persistence of identity in the spiritual (the
conscious ) is not merely desirable: from the very nature of
the case it is inevitable. The living Abraham and Isaac
and Jacob return to God — continue in the never-ending
movement of approach toward God, which movement con-
sists in the realizing more and more perfectly the divine

ideal in their own parlootly deepening consciousness or spir-
c prrfus L

4

Shelley. 215

itual existence. It is to the conscious, the spiritual part
of His creation, that God appears truly as God. He is
the God of the living, of the conscious, reflecting world,
wherein He is recognized as the Creative, Cherishing, spir-
ituously Luminous One.

Add to this that the account of the raising of Lazarus ap-
pears only in the fourth gospel, — which, by whomever
written, is the most mystical, the most subtly reflective,
and the most artistic of the four — and it will be fairly evi-
dent that to pause with the mere physical interpretation of
this subject would be to fall back upon the untenable stand-
point of the Sadducees, and thus render ourselves worthy of
the same rebuke which Christ administered to them.

Wm. M. Bryant.

[To BE CONTINUED. ]

SHELLEY.

It has been a question with some philosophic thinkers
whether poetry, which is a mimetic art, can contain the high-
est wisdom. Plato sternly forbade its admission into his
ideal commonwealth. But while such a measure may seem
justifiable in case of a jesting Aristophanes, there can but be
reluctance in accepting the idea of excluding other poets,
whose writings contain not merely a nation’s history, but
the germs of its faith.

Plato is himself the most poetical of philosophers. As
Joubert says of him, ‘*‘ He loses himself in the void, but
one sees the play of his wings, one hears their rustle.’’

It may be correct to assert that deep truths are always
presented in plainest garb, and that the very deepest are im-
ageless ; but as religious inspiration is the real source of
power in true art, wherever this is present there can be lit-
tle doubt of the beneticial influence of ideas clothed in poetic
form ; where this is absent there may be glitter of orna-
ment, harmony of sound, but no sweet reason is present to

216 The Western.

woo the soul into lasting allegiance to truth. After all that
can be done by way of expressing in words the beauty of
the outward world, the soul of man and its destiny are most
fitting subjects for poetic rendition ; for, while poetry desti-
tute of psychological meaning may be surpassingly lovely,
its charm cannot be abiding.

Those poets whose faith has been most strong and health-
ful have best‘succeeded in gaining the love and admiration
of mankind ; for what we really desire is truth, and not de-
lusive appearances. ;

Shelley wrote to Godwin: ‘* I cannot but be conscious,
in much of what I write, of an absence of that tranquillity
which is the attribute and the accomplishment of power.”’
Whence was this unrest? Do not his writings bear the im-
press of doubt rather than faith? The latter power steadies
the soul and gives it strength ; the former tosses the weary
voyager into the fearful maelstrom of unceasing struggle.

Shelley had deep religious feeling, but had achieved no
standing-ground. His character was, in many respects, very
beautiful. He was so tender that he wished no living thing
to suffer pain, so sad that he looked upon the world as a
**hecatomb of broken hearts,’’ his sensibility so exquisite
that the first time he heard the poem of Christabel recited,
at a certain magnificent and terrible passage he suddenly
fainted. Yet this delicately organized being received little
sympathy from the world, because he dared express ideas
at variance with public opinion. Indeed, his sudden death,
which should have sent a thrill of pity to the hardest heart,
was brutally announced in a journal with the remark :
** Shelley will now know whether there is any hell or not.”’
How dejected the poor heart was, whose beatings were for-
ever stilled beneath the waves, may be imagined from these
lines : —

** Alas! I have nor hope, nor health,
Nor peace within, nor calm around,
Nor that content, surpassing wealth,
The sage in meditation found,
And walked with inward glory crowned.”

Shelley. 217

But if Shelley failed to see the significance of life, if the
marvels of the everlasting will were not made clear to him,
his doubt was honest, his heart pure and endowed with the
‘* potentialities of poetry.’’ His aerial fancy led him always
to ideal regions, crowded with evanescent images of beauty.
Like the ** Ladies’ Guitar ’’ he describes so uniquely, his
poems are filled with nature’s sights and sounds; yet he

turns from the ‘* yellow bee in the ivy bloom,”’ from ** shells
inlaid with crimson fire,’’ from delicate, sensitive plant and
‘*sphered dew,’’ radiant summer clouds and joyous sky-

lark, to cry out with lyric melancholy to the west wind : —
* © lift me as a wave, a leaf, a cloud!
I fall upon the thorns of life, I bleed!”

What is false in ** Queen Mab’’ may be excused on the
ground of its author’s immaturity ; for surely Alastor, that
‘*genius of solitude,’’ who saw ‘* the thrilling secrets of the
birth of time,’’ will cover all its defects as with a mantle of
woven moonlight or crystalline starlight. Nobly as Shelley
conceived the story of Beatrice Cenci, nothing he wrote sur-
passes his ** Prometheus Unbound.”’ It was a subject adapted
to the abstract quality of his imagination. He saw in it the
liberation of humanity from the mastership of the evil prin-
ciple. It was a topic to arouse his intense feeling, besides
being capable of much adornment. The poem abounds in
lyrics of surpassing beauty, so delicate in thought, so ethe-
real in expression, that —

“Sounds overflow the listener’s brain,
So sweet that joy is almost pain.”

The earth-spirits —‘* whose homes are the dim caves of
human thought’’— come gliding in, lending a strange,
shadowy charm to idealizations that properly belong to some
immaterial realm. Hunt justly describes his style as ‘* or-
phic and primeval ;’’ hence it is admirably fitted to such
topics as abound in the Prometheus — the forms of creation,
the spirits of planets, and metaphysical theories of the
nature of mind.

218 The Western.

While it requires study and penetration to grasp even
feebly the poet’s full meaning, readers of sensibility cannot
enjoy the humor of Hook’s lines : —

‘Shelley styles his new poem ‘ Prometheus Unbound,’
And ’tis like to remain so while time circles round;
For surely an age would be spent in the finding
A reader so weak as to pay for the binding.”

Grant that, as keys to philosophy, as schemes of the
universe, Shelley’s writings are inadequate, even futile, yet
it remains true that the poet grasped firmly a potent prin-
ciple of vital worth in subjective thinking, namely, that
‘*the ability to receive influence is the most exalted faculty
to which human nature can attain, while the exercise of an
arbitrary power centring in self is not only debasing, but is
an actual destrover of human faculty.”’

Though the genius of Shelley was decidedly subjective,
no descriptive poet has excelled his ** Cloud’? and ** Sky-
Lark,’’ while everywhere abound the most poetic of images,
the most artistic of pictures, such as the vision of the

‘* Hours,”’ in cars drawn by * rainbow-winged steeds,’” —

“Which trample the dim winds.”

While more practical principles, with a simpler style, may
appear to most minds of greater excellence, yet, in the re-
public of letters there should be a sympathetic place for one
rudely jostled by the world, and therefore failing to see the
direct route in coming to ‘* many ways in the wanderings of
careful thought.’’ Occupied by the microcosm of his own
mind, and verifying the outward with spiritual life, his words
became like the ‘‘ signs of prisoners to each other,’’ and a
touch of extreme sadness lingers in histones. His sweetest
songs are those that tell of saddest thought.

B. P. Drury.

Jonathan Swift.

JONATHAN SWIFT.
[CONTINUED. ]

Severed now from his much-loved England and his liter-
ary friends there, his ambitious hopes tumbled over, we can
imagine how Swift must have fumed and raged. Where
was now the Scriblerus Club, where he used to be so brilliant,
launching with Pope and Arbuthnot and Bolingbroke the
weapons of wit? What had become of that power of his
that had moved the wheels of state? Both gone, not to re-
turn. So the Dean must try to be content thenceforward
with his deanery and Irish surroundings ; an attempt that

-

succeeded not too well. A misanthrope naturally, at least
with a natural tendency to misanthropy, the limitations forced
upon him by circumstances chafed and bruised him, and
made him, in. his fits of rage, swear eternal enmity to man-

kind. Yet we see breaking out from him, here and there,
gleams of sweet humanity. There were solaces for him
amid the bitternesses of life. Addison, his old friend, sep-
arated from him by political feeling, was for a time in Ire-
land, and they could gather up the broken links of friend-
ship. ‘Tickell too, and Sheridan, and others who could
admire, if they could not gauge his character, were about
him. So twice a week there was open table at the deanery,
where ‘* Stella’’ (she had followed the Dean to Ireland, as
we shall afterwards see) presided, though only in the charac-
ter of guest, and where the Dean established a dictatorship of
wit over all and sundry the frequenters of his house. There
was much writing of verses, of epistles (dog-Latin and
other kinds), of riddles, etc., the most of which is but of
slight interest to us. Swift’s attempts at poetry are, for
the most part, failures. Dryden’s prediction on seeing some
of Swift’s earlier verses — ‘* Cousin Swift, [Swift’s father
was Dryden’s cousin] you will never be a poet ’’ — was ful-

220) The Western.

filled. Swift’s verses are good, with scarcely a defect in the
metre, but his nature was not poetic. He persistently in-
voked the Muses, but the Nine were imperturbably quies-
cent, despite ull his appeals. His ** Cadenus and Vanessa’”’
is tolerable enough and pathetic enough, yet bearing little
mark of coming from one who had ‘* the vision and the facul-
ty divine.’” But Swift has fame enough without the poet’s
laurel, a fame that would have suffered nothing had all the
verses he penned been destroyed as soon as they were writ-
ten. No little fame had he already gained. But his popu-
larity with the Irish people kad not yet set in, for the man
who was to become the very idol of the Irish populace had
a.more bitter reception in 1714 than in the previous year,
when he entered on the deanery. The supporters of the
Hanoverian succession were scenting with keen nostril for
every tincture of Jacobitism, those connected with the Ox-
ford administration being especially open to suspicion, and
Swift was believed to have had a share in certain secret pro-
ceedings for securing the throne to the Pretender — a belief
utterly at variance with fact. But as time wore on, the
Dean wrought with might and main to procure for Ireland a
fair legislation, and the suspicions with which he had been
received fell to the ground. Passing over various minor
productions written in behalf of Ireland, we must notice
one effort of the Dean’s that contributed more than any-
thing to his popularity there. In 1723 one William Wood
obtained a patent from George I. for the coinage of £108,000
in half-pence and farthings, for the use of Ireland. The
patent appears to have been obtained in a surreptitious way,
by the influence of the Duchess of Kendal, and was passed
without consultation with the Lord Lieutenant or Privy
Council of Ireland. The Irish people believed that this
step implied a degradation to Ireland, and, besides, would
have the effect of sending gold and silver out of the coun-
try. Swift, entering into the Irish feeling, began a series of
letters, written as from an Irish tradesman, ‘*M. B., Drapier

Jonathan Swift. 221

>

in Dublin,’

in which he asserted the inferiority of the com-
position of the coin, and challenged the right of the Crown
to grant such a patent without consent of the Irish govern-
ment. Poor Wood was sadly belabored in these letters,
and held up to ridicule. It has been asserted that the Dean
was not moved, in this attack. by particular motives, but
that it was a mere explosion of rage against an enemy.

But no one has ever shown, so far as we know, any per-
sonal hatred of Wood on the part of Swift, or even per-
sonal knowledge, and Swift was evidently the exponent of
the universal Irish feeling, and the ‘* Drapier’s Letters’’
may take place beside his other productions whose aim was
the good of Ireland. These letters stirred more and more
the already disatfected Irish} people, and they would not
have the new coin. The printer of the ** Drapier’s Letters ”’
was imprisoned, but, notwithstanding the browbeating on
the part of the judge on the trial, got off, and Wood’s
scheme had to be abandoned.

Swift had a craving for fame that required a larger field
than Dublin, and we find him off again to England, in the
spring of 1726, doubtless with the MS. of ‘+ Gulliver’s
Travels ’’ in his pocket. And now there was a delightful
reunion with his old friends Pope, Arbuthnot, and Boling-
broke (by this time returned from exile), and the groves
ot Twickenham had the honor of sheltering the famous
‘* Drapier.’”” Again the dead hopes of church promotion
seemed to revive, for we have the Dean figuring at Leices-
ter House, where the Prince of Wales (afterwards George
Il.) and his wife, the Princess Caroline, kept a kind of sep-
urate court, and where Pope and others of Swift’s friends
were in great repute. But the illness of Stella recalled him
suddenly to Dublin, where he was welcomed, not with dog-
gerel verses by Jonathan Smedley this time, but with ring-
ing of bells, bonfires, and a triumphal procession from the
vessel to the deanery. In August of the same year (1726)
Motte, the publisher, received a manuscript, ‘* dropped at

222 The Western.

>

his house, in the dark, from a hackney coach,’’ which man-
uscript, on examination, was found to be ‘** The Travels of
Captain Lemuel Gulliver,”’
November, without the author’s name. Our space will not
admit of our giving an analytic criticism of this so famous
work, and we shall content ourselves with simply offering a
few remarks upon it. Both Swift and Sterne have each
been voted the successor of Rabelais, but in boldness of
stroke Swift alone has any pretension to be compared to
Rabelais. Sterne’s characters, Mr. Shandy, Uncle Toby,
Corporal Trim, nay, the whole of the interesting personages

and which was published in

in ** Tristram Shandy,’’ seem so petite, and march before
us with such a mincing step, that they impress us in no way
as Rabelais’ characters do. Pantagruel and Friar John,
both so full of hearty life, and even Panurge, with all his
craven-heartedness, are all drawn with a certain boldness of
outline that we never find in Sterne. But Swift does re-
semble Rabelais, not copying him in a slavish way, but
boldly drawing his own characters, though often applying
his satire much in the way Rabelais did. The principle on

which ‘** Gulliver's Travels’’ is constructed is beautifully

simple. The principle is so to mask the lesson to be taught
as to isolate the reader’s mind from prejudice and conven-
tional maxims, and, having made this preparation, to show,
by a sudden burst of light, social vices and follies in their
nakedness, bringing home the truth with tremendous power.
We need not take up the book expecting to find it a mirror
of humanilife. Swift’s aim was doubtless that of a misan-
thrope,' but we are not entitled to object to the book on

' It will be interesting to observe what Coleridge says of Swift: “In Swift’s
writings there is a false misanthropy grounded upon an exclusive contempla-
tion of the vices and follies of mankind, and this misanthropic tone is also dis-
figured or brutalized by his obtrusion of physical dirt and coarseness. I think
‘Gulliver’s Travels,’ the great work of Swift. In the voyages to Lilliput and
Brobdingnag he displays the littleness and moral contemptibility of human
nature; in that to the Houyhnhnms he represents the disgusting spectacle of

Jonathan Swift. 223

that ground. Let it be once recognized that Swift did not,
and was not by any law of morality compelled to praise the
excellences as well as satirize the wickedness of his fel-
lows, und the only question comes to be, Did he faithfully
portray vice and folly, or is the picture he draws a falsity ?
Heaven knows, we are in no need of hearing ourselves ex-
tolled. The province of the satirist does not lie in that, but
in our shortcomings and weaknesses, our forgetfulness of
our true place, our pride, our baseness. These need the
unsparing hand of the satirist to root them out. Nowhere
does Swift say, ** This is a picture of life;’? but every-
where, ** Behold these follies of mankind.’’ He had bitter-
ness and misanthropy in his composition. But let us take
him as such, and then we can understand the propriety and
the moral usefulness of **Gulliver’s Travels,’’ as well as
admire the transcendent skill of the writer. Satire is of
the noblest kind when it is general, and not the offspring of
personal pique; and, though we may laugh at the presenta-
tion of Sir Robert Walpole when, reduced to a stature of
six inches or thereby, he figures as Flimnap, Lord Treas-
urer to His Imperial Majesty the Emperor of Lilliput,
and gravely ** capers on the straight-rope ’’ for the diver-

sion of his master, we are reminded of Swift’s malignancy

of political feeling, a malignancy not at all beautiful. — It is
more pleasant and profitable to read of Baptist and Prot-
estant figuring as Big-Endians and Small-Endians, respec-
tively, and of the factions of Whig and Tory as High-heels
and Low-heels. Starting from the premisses of a people six
inches high, and of another people seventy feet high, the
production of Swift is rigidly logical (though, by the way, he
did not make a great figure in logic at Dublin University !).
And in the third and fourth parts of the Travels, in which
man with the understanding only, without the reason or the moral feeling, and
in his horse he gives the misanthropic ideal of man — that is, a being virtu-

ous from rule and duty, but untouched by the principle of love.’’ — [Coleridge’s
Lectures, Vol. IL, p. 83.

Vol. 7— No. 3 15

224 The Western.

the voyage to Laputa, etc., and the voyage to the Houyhn-
hnms are described, though the logic is not so evident, there
is no want of consistency. We are here reminded of
» Rabelais, and yet Swift is before us not as a mere copyist.

The mathematical niceties of the projectors in the grand
academy of Lagado, the capital of Laputa, with their at-
tempts to extract sunbeams out of cucumbers, which sun-
beams ** were to be put in phials bermetically sealed, and
let out to warm the air in raw, inclement summers,’’ and the
project to ‘*calcine ice into gunpowder,’’ etc., are a fine
satire upon scientific charlatanry. Swift evidently had no
love for mathematics, when he described the people of La-
puta as accustomed to express their ideas so much in lines
and .figures. ‘If they would, for example, praise the
beauty of a woman or any other animal, they describe it by
rhombs, circles, parallelograms, ellipses, and other geomet-
rical terms, or by words of art drawn from music.”’ This
satire is general enough, but we have here and there, as
throughout the whole of the Travels, the author’s own pre-
dilections and enmities of persons cropping out. Sir Isaac
Newton had not been forgiven for having approved of the
quality of Wood’s coin, an approval sufficient to make him
an enemy in Swift’s eyes; and the * flappers ’’’ by means of
which the philosophers of Laputa were wont to be drawn
from their frequent reveries are undoubtedly a satire upon
the eminent philosopher’s absence of mind. There is one
striking passage which recalls to us Swift’s contempt of
life! This is the account of the ‘* Struldbrugs,’’ or im-

! In his later years this contempt of life naturally increased, and, referring
to these years, his biographer, Roscoe, thus speaks: ‘“‘He was often heard to
offer up earnest prayers to God ‘to tuke him from the evil to come;’ and as
each lamented day of his birth came round, he would recur to his Bible in an
agony of spirit, and repeat the solemn and awfully grand adjurations of afflicted
Job. To put the climax to his sufferings, his passions, always of a violent
character, tended further to weaken and pervert his understanding; and that
he was himself perfectly conscious of the hopeless state of his health was
shown by his observation to a brother clergyman upon occasion of a narrow

Jonathan Swift. 225

mortals, of Luggnagg, whose immortality was so heavy a
burden to them. It is both interesting and sad to contrast
this contempt of life on the part of Swift with the fear
of death which haunted one other great luminary of
that century, Dr. Samuel Johnson: both feelings so mor-
bid, and so exactly opposite to each other. In the voyage
to the Houyhnhnoms we may see imaged the mad disap-
pointment, the burning sense of genius unrequited, that
galled the ambitious soul of Jonathan Swift. Indeed, had
he been a stronger man, more able to master himself, we
should perhaps have had no ** Gulliver’s Travels”’ at all.
But, disgusting as the ‘* Yahoos ’”’ appear to us, we must re-
member that mankind are not without disgusting traits that
need to be revealed, drawn in sharpest outline, to the end
that, seeing them, men may learn amendment. The Travels
are, us we have said, conceived quite from a misanthropical
point of view, yet written with exquisite skill, giving instruc-
tion of a deep kind; giving delight, too, by the ludicrous
situations in which ever and anon the adventurous Gulliver
finds himself. There are impurities and grossness, as in

the greater part of Swift’s writings, but these, weighed

against the excellences of the book, become of no great
account. And, with all the trenchancy and the bitter-
ness and the impurity, there is at least one gleam of
noble and pure humanity. The tender Glumdalclitch is
no object for the strokes of misanthropy, but a kind,
kind, careful nurse to her little Grildrig, her mannikin and
pet — so loving and afraid of danger to her charge, albeit
she is but nine years old and ‘not above forty feet
high, being little for her age!’’ Swift must have remem-
escape from death. They had been standing conversing immediately below a
large, heavy mirror, and had just removed when the cords that supported it
gave way, and it fell with great violence to the ground. His friend immedi-
ately uttered an ejaculation of gratitude for his providential escape, and

Swift’s reply was very remarkable: ‘ Had I been alone,’ he said, ‘I could have
wished I had not removed.’ ”’ — [Roscoe’s Life of Swift, p. 80.

.

226 The Western.

bered that though there was much wickedness and much
selfishness in the world, there was a Stella in it, devoted to
him heart’and soul, and loving and caring for him above all
measure, even as Glumdalclitch loved and cared for her
Grildrig.

The Travels created no little sensation, as we may easily
suppose, and the great question of the day was, ‘* Who is
the author?’’ Even Pope and the other members of the
literary coterie of which Swift was one do not seem to have
known for some time that Swift was the author, although
they did indeed suspect him. One remarkable testimony
to the book was paid by an Irish prelate (and he must have
been a genuine Hibernian), who remarked that there were
some things in the Travels he didn’t believe!' We saw
that the Dean had been suddenly recalled from England
when there in 1726, on account of Stella’s illness ; but, she
having somewhat recovered, back to England he must
go. Soin March, 1727, he paid the visit to England that
was to be his last; and we have him figuring at Leicester
House again, well received there as before. The Prince of
Wales was now his great hope in the matter of preferment,
that everlasting torment of Swift’s life, and, the Prince
coming to the throne as George II., in June, 1727, while
Swift was in England, there was surely to be no more de-
lay. Of course there would be a change of ministry, and
Walpole, his enemy, would be out of the way. But, alas
for Swift !j Walpole was reinstated by the new sovereign,
and the Dean’s hopes were once more dashed to the ground.
And that calamityycame not alone: his old disorder — gid-
diness and loss fof memory —came upon him, and, to

1 Another testimony to the verisimilitude of the Travels is furnished in the
following extract from a letter from Arbuthnot to Swift (November 8, 1726) :
“Gulliver is in everybody’s hands. Lord Scarborough, who is no inventor
of stories, told me<thatghe fell in company with a master of a ship, who told
him tha the was verySwellZacquainted with ‘Gulliver;’ but that the printer
had mistaken : that he lived in Wapping, and not in Rohithe. I lent the book
to an old gentleman, who{went immediately to his map to search for Lilli-
put.”

Jonathan Swift. 227

crown «all, tidings that his Stella was at death’s door.
Stunned by these accumulated miseries, he suddenly with-
drew from Twickenham, where he had been living with
Pope, and shut himself up in lodgings in London. Re-
maining there a month or two, he set out again for Ireland
in October, 1727.

We have hitherto refrained from noticing Swift’s conduct
in his love affair, thinking that a clearer view of that pain-
ful subject will be obtained when not interwoven with the
other incidents of his life. We shall therefore here make
a digression to consider this subject. It is strange that a
man like Swift, whose conduct was such as to give some
countenance to the assertion that he was incapable of lov-
ing, should have had such power of inspiring love in others.
Swift, the misanthrope, we may almost say the misogynist,
kindled a fierce flame of love in more than one female
bosom — love, we may believe, at first unsought, but love
that was grateful to a man’s vanity, and that came in time
to be the necessity of his life. But Swift was handsome in
his vouth; clever, too, and masterful, with a kind of dash
about him that would impress young and tender hearts.
Hence the roll of captives to his spell. First of all, there
was a pretty bar-maid at an inn in Leicester that seems to
have been so deeply smitten by the charms of the youthful
Jonathan as to have awakened his mother’s apprehen-
sions. Then we have ** Varina,’’ ‘* Sacharissa,’’ ‘* Stella,’’
** Vanessa’’—all swayed by this incomparable Adonis, who
seemed never at all assiduous in the duties of a lover, and
never to make the first advances. About ** Varina’’ (her

name was Miss Jane Waryng, sister of a college companion
of Swift’s) we have not much information. In whatever
way the affair with her originated, this much is certain: that
there was an understood engagement between them. But

‘*‘ Varina’’ seems to have been less impressed than the
others, and less constant ; for we find her, whatever may have
been the warmth of her passion at first, treating her lover

with disdain and coldness, and when, after four years

228 The Western.

(1696 — 1700) of waiting, Swift began to cool (it is to be
remembered that in the interim he made the acquaintance
of Esther Johnson), ‘* Varina’’ attacked him in a pressing
and categorical letter as to the change in his manner.
Whereupon our Adonis, not to be outdone, wrote as cate-
gorical a letter in answer, in which he laid down the con-
ditions on which he would marry her —a letter that was so
insulting as could only have been penned with a view to
terminate the affair. ‘+I shall be blessed,”’ says the letter,
‘*to have you in my arms, without regarding whether your
person be beautiful or your fortune large. Cleanliness in
the first and competency in the other is all I look for.’” A
strange ideal of a wife this! With this letter ‘* Varina’’
vanishes beyond our ken, and whether she found out a lover
with a more exalted idea of her ‘* person,’’ remains un-
known. ‘* Sacharissa’’ was a young lady (name unknown)
who, in a letter, signed under that name, addressed to Swift,
seems to have been dving of love for the ‘* divine, immortal
Swift,’’ as she calls him, whose ‘* god-like form ’”’ had _ kin-
dled a fierce flame within her. But she, too, vanishes.
Wm. R. Walker.

[To BE CONTINUED. ]

SONNET.

Oh, tell me not of beauties never dying,
That fill the soul with thoughts ineffable ;
Oh! sing no songs of lovers faintly sighing,
Whispering the words that only lovers tell :
For years ago the snows of winter fell
Upon my head, and now my hair is hoar
With age’s frost; so sing of these no more.
But let some bard sing of the happy days,
When we were children, laughing in our glee;
Or take thy harp and wake the stirring lays
Of olden time — those days of chivalry —
And I, entranced, will listen eagerly
Until each word upon my heart is brent —
No angel’s voice could give me such content.
B. JoRDAN.

State Universities.

THE STATE UNIVERSITIES OF THE NORTH-WESTERN
STATES.
[ConcLUDED.]

That public instruction tends to an enforced uniformity of
method, and to subject educational work to a drill increas-
ingly barren, seems, theoretically, to be an objection of some
force, and doubtless would be practically so in some com-
munities. In our American States, however, we are more
likely for the present to suffer from ill-advised and sporadic
effort than from an authoritative system. For the best de-
velopment, both tendencies must be recognized: that of
specialization and that of organization. ‘The former ten-
dency probably predominates in the United States, and we
have little to fear as yet from the opposite one. Enforced
uniformity is undoubtedly much the greater obstacle to
progress, and an early recognition of this fact will serve to
guard us against the danger.

An objection far more influential in the minds of a large
number of our best citizens than those derived from the
theory of the State is the feeling that higher education must
be directly united to religious. training. The sentiment
which underlies this objection is certainly one of weight.
Instruction destitute of moral force is destitute of value in
the commonwealth. We doubt, however, whether this sen-
timent is wisely directed in the case before us. é

This same religious feeling, when ill-directed, has done a
good deal to weaken the hold of primary instruction by the
State on the general mind. Indeed, this incipient work,
above other educational work, would seem especially to call
for the protection and guidance of religious principles.
If we look at the history of our public schools, we shall
find that the relation of their moral force to distinct relig-
ious instruction has been one almost wholly of theory and
not one of practice. The differences and difficulties which

230 The Western.

have excited the public mind have grown up outside the
school-room, and been brought to it by abstract principles.

Rarely, indeed, has it happened that any parent has had
any right to complain of any actual religious influence ex-
erted by a public instructor on his children, or of any
limitation put upon them in their religious convictions.
Neither, on the other hand, has it been found that, in con-
sequence of the religious freedom of our schools, teachers
have been immoral, or have neglected the morality of their
pupils.

On the whole, public schools have been as influential for
good as the social conditions of the communities in which
they have existed would give us any right to expect them

to be. If they have suffered in their moral force by the
exclusion of any one type of religious training, they have
gained more than they have lost by an appeal to more sim-
ple and fundamental principles, and by a much wider work
in the State.

Moral influences in our schools’ have been derived, and
always must be derived, from the persuasive force of moral
convictions, which are the deposit in the general mind of all
religious and all human experience. Any effort to root
morality in one or another faith, to the exclusion of the re-
mainder will tend to weakness quite as much as to strength.
The general and fundamental quality of moral truth cannot
be too constantly recognized in public instruction,

If we were tu lay aside the sharpness and blindness of
theory, and look at the facts as they exist in State univer-
sities and in sectarian colleges, we should find the relation
of theory and experience much the same as in our common
school. The current objections have not grown out of facts,
but out of theories conceiving facts. The convictions of
morality, the notions of good citizenship, are no less opera-
tive in the one set of institutions than in the other. The
religious and moral life of the community pervades the one
class of colleges as it pervades the other. The practical

State Universities. 231

and theoretical difficulties of a virtuous life press the stu-
dents in ‘the one place very much as they do in the other.
If a student occasionally suffers by looseness of opinion on
the part of an instructor, he is liable also to suffer by rigidity
of view. Neither will it be found that these two dangers
are ultogether divided between the two systems. Each
danger will appear in both classes of institutions. All
the questions, practical and theoretical, of a moral
and religious life are upon us. We cannot escape them.
Our sons cannot escape them. These questions, on the
whole, are met as safely and answered as soundly in
the open air as in any enclosure we choose to set up.
The State university will have less of any one pronounced
religious sentiment, will have more of unbelief, because its
students are taken promiscuously from all classes. In
these particulars, however, it only represents the commu-
nity in which young men are to work. It brings precisely
the same questions and the same dangers, with something
more than ordinary conditions for a just conclusion. The
freedom and the intelligence present are certainly forces
favorable to truth and favorable to well-advised zeal. In
correctness of deportment and in the daily force of moral
principles, the students of the institutions do not contrast
unfavorably with those of other colleges. Nor does the in-
struction of these State institutions cover less completely the
fundamental moral principles of our lives. There is no legiti-
mate influence which a good man may not exert and does not
exert in these universities. Nor are professors chosen to their
several chairs without careful reference to character. The
one limitation put upon every man, of a complete respect to
the intellectual liberty of all about him. we cannot regard
as an unfavorable one. If State universities are fairly
judged by the tone of instruction, and by its practical re-
sults on the character of the students, they do not, if I am
to judge by my own experience in both classes of institu-
tions, suffer disparagement in contrast with colleges resting
on a denominational basis.

232 The Western.

That these universities owe something of their soundness
to the standard maintained by private colleges is very plain.
Higher education in these North-Western States cannot well
dispense with colleges that devote themselves unreservedly
to a religious, and yet to a liberal education — colleges like
Carlton College in Minnesota, Beloit College in Wisconsin,
and Olivet College in Michigan. The relation of the State
university to public morality is a question that must receive
a primarily practical answer, and that answer seems to be
far more favorable than the apprehension of religionists
would lead them to expect. It would be quite possible for
churches each to give aid to students related to them, and to
exercise a large measure of watchfulness over them, and yet to
avail themselves of the extended advantages of State institu-
tions. If any church, as the Episcopal Church, were to
erect a hall at the seat of a university, those boarding at the
hall might attend any or all the university classes, and yet
receive such further instruction as those having the hall in
charge might judge best. A hall with a home character and a
liberal spirit could reach its students at once more advan-
tageously and closely than an ordinary denominational col-
lege. The churches would thus save three-quarters of their
habitual expenditure, and, if the experiment were ordered
with wisdom, have the promise of better results.

But the practical man, as well as the theorist and relig-
ionist, has his objections to a State university. They are
directed to the difficulty of securing suitable guidance by a
well-constructed ruling board. The State university is
thought of and spoken of as ‘‘ the foot-ball of politicians.”’

This objection, like the objections that have gone before
it, touches a real trouble in the history of public education.
Yet this is a difficulty that bears on our entire social polity,
is easily exaggerated, and can be removed only by quietly
and patiently pressing onward. It is a difficulty that in-
heres in the weakness of society, and can only be overcome
by growth. To turn aside at any point from self-govern-

State Universities. 233

ment, because self-government involves so much failure and
so many mistakes, is to live by unsatisfactory makeshifts,
and to have all ultimate measures of improvement still be-
fore us. Those who cannot guide themselves cannot be
secure of good guidance, and have never found it for any
considerable period. In the early history of State univer-
sities their endowments by the general government were

squandered, mismanaged, and made the occasion of personal
profits. That time has gone by, and their funds are now
not only honestly administered, but the States have taken
upon themselves the burdens of growth. The boards of
administration discharge their duties with discrimination
and conscientiousness. The two serious abatements to com-
plete success are, first, that these boards are not constituted
with sole reference to the fitness of the members to fulfil
their duties, to their knowledge of educational affairs, and
their interest in them. An entire State furnishes compara-
tively few men who ure able to guide a university, and these
few are not carefully sought for. Men who are before the
public in politics, some of them well fitted and some of them
poorly fitted for their work, slide into these boards, as into
other positions of influence in education, and so the most
varied and best ability is not exclusively secured for this
highest and most delicate service in the State. Yet the evil
is not so great, measured on its practical side, as one might
easily be led to expect. Most persons who constitute these
boards take pride in the question, and strive to meet its
demands. As the States improve, these boards will im-
prove, and this joint improvement is of the most valuable
and permanent order.

The second branch of this difficulty is, that boards of re-
gents are disposed to assume a too exclusive control of the
institutions under them, to the oversight of the proper influ-
ence of the president and faculty of the university. There
is no surer way of degrading instruction than that of de-
grading its instruments. The powers of school boards, like

234 The Western.

those of a parent, if well ordered, must be largely sleeping
powers. These boards must make way for talent in instruc-
tors, and give it that broad field which it covets. To re-
press and smother the teacher is to repress and smother
the school. At this point State universities suffer more or
less in comparison with Eastern colleges. The chief battle
of a president is to secure and retain the needful conditions
of leadership in the institution over which he presides. The
experience, ability, and enthusiasm only half avail in its de-
velopment through the perpetual obstruction they meet with
in a government that is, after all, outside and remote. The
board, present only a few days in the year, and whose mem-
bers are habitually occupied with other things, is poorly
prepared to plan for and guide a university. When such a
board brings a suspicious and irritable sense of power to the
government of the institution, the president and professors,
its proper guides, find the most difficult part of their work
in placating, coaxing, and restraining the authority over
them. To these unfortunate conditions is often added a
conviction, carefully nourished, that instructors are, in finan-
cial affairs, mere children, from whom the expenditure of
money is to be cautiously withheld. Whatever may be the
foundation in facts for such an opinion, both the facts and
the opinion are unfortunate. No men by knowledge, by
experience, by interest, are so fitted to shape a university
as its faculty, and no men can have any controlling influence
over a university who are not consulted in the expenditure
of its funds. These are the sinews of war, and to govern
them is to settle all issues.

Nor is the perpetual disparagement which a faculty suffer
from an outside government, that applies its checks much at
random, the least among the consequent evils.

The conditions of successful work must be giyen before
we can look for the work itself. The freedom of the in-
structor is of the utmost moment as nourishing that spirit
which is to be the life of the university. The great diffi-

State Universities. 235

culty in securing men of talent as instructors is that the
work of instruction offers so little of a career. Shall the
lawyer, the banker, the farmer, have each their own field of
unrestrained activity, and shall the teacher be guided,
checked, and crossed in his purposes by any and all of them?

While we are disposed to lay considerable emphasis on
the evils which arise from the too extended control of a
ruling board, changeable in its members, but very partially
informed of the facts before them for action, often alien in
spirit to the highest interests of education and jealous of
authority, we yet look upon the difficulty as remediable,
and as one which, after all, hampers more or less all effort
of the same order in every college. The proper relations of
faculty, president, and ruling board have not been well
defined, and can never be practically reached without abun-
dance of wisdom and good will on all sides. They are
often, therefore, entangled. State institutions are just be-
ginning to learn to run, and the incident friction will disap-
pear as they acquire their lesson.

Speaking as a participant, my opinion is that for the good
of a State university more influence in its affairs should be
granted to its president than is usually conceded, especially
in the larger institutions. If the president is fully aware of
the opinions of the faculty, and is as regardful of them as
he should be, he becomes the recognized voice of the in-
terior sentiment of the university ; and if he is also in full
counsel and participation in all action that affects its inter-
ests, he is prepared to become the pivotal point in its man-
ugement and growth. Nor can this unity of work be se-
cured in any other way. Official weakness in the president
means intrigue among the professors, each striving to secure
those ends by private means which are not embraced in a
firm general policy, but are left subject to an outside guid-
ance as empirical and changeable as the impressions of those
who constitute it. In the University of Michigan the presi-
dent has not the nomination of the faculty, and in the Uni-

236 The Western.

versity of Wisconsin he is not # member of the board of
regents, and in both institutions he is correspondingly crip-
pled in his work. The president thus remains the centre at
which all the pressure of revolution is developed, and vet
has comparatively little power to adjust and harmonize the
movement.

Many colleges have shown more or less of incomplete-

ness and error in their government. If a college is to be
vigorous and progressive, always full of young blood, and
yet guided by large and safe counsel, it needs to be able to
command and unite all the resources of influence found in
its ruling board, in its faculty, and in its alumni. Those
upon whom advice and counsel most immediately devolve
are the faculty. The faculty is made up of men devoted to
higher education, whose business and whose interest it is to
understand the demands and the methods of their work.
If these men fall out of the counsels of a college, the result
is greatly to their disparagement and greatly to the loss of
the institution. In most Eastern colleges the president is
too exclusively the voice of the college. In State universi-
ties neither the president nor the faculty can easily secure
or maintain the influence which the highest welfare of the
institution would assign them. An inevitable result is that
purely educational interests suffer somewhat in their col-
lision with secondary interests, and intrigue finds many
open doors of entrance. If a legitimate method is not pro-
vided, or is not sufficient for the attainment of needed or
desired results, a hundred ways of indirection will be re-
sorted to. That the proclivity to intrigue—a most serious
evil, wherever it is found —is somewhat greater in public
than in private institutions, is hardly to be doubted. But
nothing is to be despaired of. While private discomfort may
be considerable, the university in its instructional work may
still move forward, and remedy the evils of method by its
own progress.

The students of an institution are” its chief justification.

State Universities. 237

The students of the State universities have their own char-
acteristics. They come from all classes, all nationalities,
all faiths, and so serve to neutralize any tendency in any
one of these directions. A thoroughly democratic admix-
ture is the prevailing impression. Those who wish a type
of any sort find offence in this; those who like a popular
kingdom, whose members are gathered from the north and
south, from the east and west, have their desire perfectly
met.

The students are more uniformly in earnest in their work
than in older institutions. Many of them are self-support-
ing. They are tough and patient under hardship. Few,
indeed, are found in these universities simply because they
are sent there. Almost all colleges are democratic, but
none more so than these universities. Western colleges are
as vet comparatively little troubled with that lower third of
a class which, in Eastern colleges, is, in reference to any pur-
pose of knowledge, so inert and refractory.

The very general poverty of the students concurs in this
result. They often reduce the annual expenditure of their
college course to $200, and even a less sum, while $250 or
$300 puts a student quite at ease.

Judged by the points of practical morality which touch
most nearly and peculiarly the life of 4 student, the mem-
bers of a State university are in no way inferior to those of
the best-ordered Eastern colleges. In the respect which
they pay to the personal rights of their fellow-students, in
their regard for the property of the institution, and for the
quiet and good order of the community in which they are

found, — points distinctively of college morality, — they

give occasion for a very favorable opinion.

The distinguishing feature of these universities is their
close and general union to the people of the State to which
they belong. They strive to reach and lay hold of the
entire community through the general school-system ; they

238 The Western.

keep pace with the community ; they pursue no ideals in over-
sight of this fundamental and universal connection. Their
virtues and their defects grow out of this fact. They develop
a hard-working, sturdy spirit, » muscle and a grip not easily
encountered in actual life ; while the select and literary cul-
ture which a few find in the atmosphere of Harvard comes
but slowly in State universities.

If we were to weigh class with class in Eastern and
Western institutions, the strength and stamina of these
students would be conspicuous. If we were to weigh select
persons, one with another, then the age and refinement of
the several communities represented would become distinct
elements in the problem.

Those who love the fruits of growth will cling to the
East ; those who love growth itself will delight in the West.
The State universities of the North-West, scattered along
the upper affluents of the Mississippi, promise to be impor-
tant factors in determining the type of civilization which is
to occupy this great valley, than which none on the earth’s

surface has more commanding conditions of extent, fertil-
ity, salubrity, fortunateness of position, and fortunateness
of occupation.

Joun Bascom.

THE STUDENT’S ROOM.

I have a quaint and cosy love
For little rooms;
Wee windows, curtained for those rich, rare glooms
That decorous dreams approve ;
Wee walls; a hearth-fire red and small ;
Perchance, a ticking clock, nor loud, nor tall;
And a dark, time-stained ceiling over all.
But rude and huge one thing must be, —
An arm-chair, much impressed by me!
Pav Pastnor.

Francesca Evelyn: an Idyl of New Italy. 239

FRANCESCA EVELYN: AN IDYL OF NEW ITALY.
Cuaprer VIII.

The vessel in which Dr. Page had sailed lay at anchor
off the Italian shore of the Mediterranean, being detained
in its course by contrary winds. Dr. Page had gone on
shore, but there was very little of interest or pleasure in the
little town, full of beggars and unpleasant smells and dilap-
idated buildings. The burning sun beat down with most
intense heat and glare upon the market square as he passed,
and the light was reflected with double fervor by the hot
stones and the sparkling waves beside the stone wharf.

He had drawn his hat over his brow, and an unaccus-
tomed shadow rested in the kindly brown eyes and on the
firm lips. But the people turned to look at him as his
quick step went by. The women and children smiled when
he stooped to lift up an audacious infant playing under the
wagon-wheels, and the bright-faced peasant woman who
received him looked with grateful admiration at the ‘‘ kind
signor.’’ Even the barterers and venders of small wares in
close shops glanced after him with unmercenary interest,
und the dogs that cowered into the street-corners as they
heard a coming footstep, or snapped and snarled after a
receding one, looked up with a friendly wag of the tail
into his sun-browned, genial face. For the world hungers
for love, and every semblance of kindness in a human pres-
ence will draw all hearts of man and beast toward it, as
light attracts all eyes by its soft shining.

Presently his step lagged a little from its quick pace, and
an abstraction fell across his countenance like a passing
cloud, until, as he turned into a narrow street, his attention
was caught by a few words from two women behind him.
They were both dressed in a tawdry, faded, weather-beaten
kind of finery, but the face of one had a youthful bloom

that almost brightened her old clothes into some show of
Vol. 7— No. 3 16

240 The Western.

newness, while the features of the other seemed as incred-
ulous of any freshness or brightness as her garb. Dr. Page
fancied he saw in the abundance of her carelessly knotted
hair, and her eyes, hardened though they seemed by some
experience worse than pain, something that had once been
beautiful, but was now only pitiable.

‘* Then Tonio will lose his place?’’ she said.

** Yes,’ replied the younger woman, with a pretty, plain-
tive, provincial accent ; ‘*‘ but what would you have? His
poor father, who gave him life, is dying — yet what will
become of Tonio if he is dismissed, I know not.’’

‘* Maestro Riccolini is enraged,’’ interrupted the other,
with a tone that was almost taunting. ‘‘ He swears it is
the third time that Tonio has stayed away, and to-morrow
is the grand day.”’

‘* Ah, my poor Tonio,”’ said the girl, wringing her hands.
** But surely his father’s angels will watch over him.”’

‘* The crowd will miss the trapeze,”’ said .the other, with
a harsh smile. ‘* They like it because of the danger. They
care not what risks we run.”’

The girl did not reply, but her soft dark eyes filled with
tears, and she drew a quick, fluttering sigh.

A thought flashed through the mind of their listener ; he
remembered that his ship might be detained here several
days, and turning quickly to the speakers behind him,
said : —

‘* Suppose some one takes Tonio’s place to-morrow, —I,
for instance, — would not that do as well?’”’

‘* You, signor !’’ exclaimed the girl, with a bright, incred-
ulous smile. ‘‘ But it is very dangerous,’’ she added,
shaking her head.

The other woman pushed her sharply with her elbow.
** You little fool, let the stranger try,’’ she muttered in an
undertone.

‘*Tonio says he is almost afraid himself, at times,’’ said
the girl again, looking earnestly into his face.

Francesca Evelyn: an Idyl of New Italy. 241

‘* Maestro Riccolo Riccolini— is not that it?’’ glancing
at a flaming placard fastened upon the walls — ‘ is not likely
to risk being shamed bya poor performer. Suppose we let
him decide.”’

The girl still hesitated.

‘* Courage,’’ he said, in a bright tone. ‘* Come, take me
to him, and I will show you what I can do.’’

‘* Here is the place, just across the street,’’ interrupted
the other, who had been looking on scornfully ; ‘* and there
is no danger, if the signor knows —’’

Just then the musicians near the entrance, who were
practising for the next day, struck up the provincial air
which Dr. Page had heard in the garden at Bel Orto, so
tender in its chiding, so passionate in its regret and desire,
with such a sigh through its soft minor.

He lifted his hands suddenly with a gesture of pain.
‘* Stop them,”’ he said, with «n intonation of distress. ‘If
they play that, I shall fail.”’

The women spoke to them and they changed the air. As
the three went in, the elder woman accosted the Maestro
Riccolo Riccolini, an insolent, black-browed man who
lounged against the wall, and spoke to him in a cringing
whisper for a few minutes. At the end of the colloquy he
came up, with a mingled expression of curiosity and defer-
ence.

‘*If the signor will show us what he can do,’’ he said,
‘** we will gladly excuse Tonio for a day.”

The other groups of men and women in tawdry clothes
like the first, and with a battered look about their faces,
began to stir and gather near the trapeze with incredulous
smiles and whispers.

Dr. Page seized the rope with a light hand. He had
ascended dizzier heights; he had cut away broken masts
when the whistling winds and flashing lightning warred
around him and the sudden blasts tore at his hands and
feet as if to dash him to the waves below. This seemed a

242 The Western.

trifle, and he laughed as he swung himself carelessly up to
the hanging loops and threw down the rope.

‘* He will do,’’ said Maestro Riccolini, with a critic’s as-
sumption of superior insight, and lounged more compla-
cently than ever against the wall.

Hand over hand, upward, downward, first by his feet,
and then by his teeth only, so fur as the spectators could
see, he hung suspended or sprang from place to place in
the high air with a grace and swiftness that seemed to coun-
terfeit flying. One could scarcely see what support he had,
or how he regained a hold in such rapid evolutions.

Those below applauded vociferously when the Maestro
gave the signal, and even a few stragglers peeping through
a narrow aperture forgot themselves and cried, ‘* Bravo,
bravo !”’

Maestro Riccolini himself seemed to expand visibly in the
fulness of his complaisance. He waved his hand with a
grandiloquent air to Dr. Page as he descended, and, placing
one hand on his heart, exclaimed, ‘* This is not training,
it is not talent: it is genius, most honored signor !’’

Dr. Page smiled with a slightly satirical air. It had hap-
pened to him in the course of an eventful life to do many
heroic deeds, many requiring a quick and subtile intellect
and a generous soul, but he had never won such a raptur-
ous applause as now for a sleight-of-hand, a tour de force,
which any trained trickster could surpass.

‘* Life’s chances are odd,’’ he thought to himself, with a
sigh.

The next day the crowd was immense. The romantic
story of the kind stranger who wanted to give poor Tonio
a day longer beside his dying father had been spread
abroad, with manifold variations and additions, through the
petty town, and people crowded from far and wide to see
him. The excitement of the crowd, which had flagged con-
spicuously through the first performance, became intense
when heappeared. They admired his symmetrical form, his

Francesca Evelyn: an Idyl of New Italy. 248

athletic limbs and light movements, his bright face, with its
fresh coloring; but when he ascended the trapeze their
delight knew no bounds. At every movement in the air,
every swift evolution and rapid change, they applauded in
ecstatic wonder.

But all at once the music, which had been playing in wild
gayety, struck up the provincial air, so great a favorite
among the peasants of this region. As its tender minor,
haunted by passionate memories, smote upon the air, he
visibly grew paler ; his breath came quicker and shorter; he
loosed his hold and fell.

It was a moment to the multitude. who looked on, but it
seemed an immeasurable age to him, through which he fell
and fell. A darkness — sickening, uncertain— came be-
fore his eyes; and like a kaleidescope, in which the pieces
of glass cross and intersect each other, so the real and im-
aginary scenes passed before his sight. In that one instant
of breathless time he saw, or seemed to see, each gaping,
staring face in the immense crowd below; through « torn
place in the canvas he saw a small vessel, a felucca, change
its course and veer in the sudden gale of wind ; he noticed
the flapping of the white sail, and saw also on the stone
wharf a horse held by a boy, which champed its bit and
tossed its spirited head. Across all these came faces he had
never seen, surrounding him in mid-air, crossing, recross-
ing, beckoning and smiling to him; old voices called his
name low and soft.

But the music changed into a waltz. Swiftly, as before
a breeze that swept all these fantasies away, his conscious-
ness returned ; he caught the last loop as he passed it in
falling, and with one deep-drawn breath had gone up again
far overhead before the crowd had finished their last shout
of applause.

When it was over, and he had resumed his own dress, the
girl for whom he had done it came to him with a face aglow
with thanks and admiration. He noticed then for the first

244 The Western.

time that she was pretty, with eyes that seemed to allure all
the light of the sunshine into their sparkle, and the floating
shadows of the air into their graver looks.

‘* But I should have failed,’’ he said to her enthusiastic
expressions of gratitude, ‘‘*had you not stopped the
music.”’

‘* Ah, signor! I was so frightened; you turned so pale
as you fell!’’ Then, with a half-timid air, she asked in an
undertone, ‘* It was, then, bewitched? The song had a spell,
perhaps? ’’

He smiled, and looked down again into the soft, wistful,
wondering eyes that were fixed so earnestly upon his face.
They were the eyes once seen in a dream — to which one
can easily speak because so sympathetic.

** Yes,’’ he answered slowly; ‘‘the spell of remem-
brance.’’

The face changed quickly, for she understood that he
alluded to some hidden pain, and she murmured softly :

*‘Ah, yes. When one remembers, it is as if one were
far away in another land. I myself, when I remember Fio-
rillo, —the hills and sea, — where my father lived ;’’ then,
noticing the expression of his face, and clasping her hands
quickly, ‘‘ You, you too know Fiorillo! ”’

‘* T have been there,’’ he said.

The older woman with whom he first saw the young girl
had joined them, and laughed derisively at the girl’s tone.
‘*T have more reason to curse than to bless the place where
I was born,”’ she said. .

Dr. Page turned around to her with pity in his eyes.
He was a physician by nature, and whenever there was a
wound unhealed, a pain uncared-for, a trouble, something
distorted or out of place, there he found his work. It was
not so much courage that had prompted many a deed of
daring and self-sacrifice, as the feeling that, whether hard
or easy, it was his life work, and he was there to do it; un-

Francesca Evelyn: an Idyl of New Italy. 245

conscious, too, for the most part, that many differed from
him in that.

He did not speak, however, in this case, for he perceived
that it would be useless; but the woman had caught the
swift look of pity, and was softened by it.

‘¢ But, for all that, Signor Doctor,’’ she muttered to her-
self, with a shrug, ‘*‘ there are some incurables in the hos-
pital on this earth that you cannot cure.”’

She smiled bitterly and walked away, without vouchsafing
any reply to the friendly greeting he gave her as he, too,
departed.

When he reached the wharf his vessel was no longer in
sight.

‘¢ The wind changed,’’ said an old fisherman, noticing his
look of amazement and dismay, ‘‘ and the ship set sail four
hours since. The signor cannot overtake her now.”’

Against the whole horizon he could not see a sail, only
one or two feluccas tacking slowly for the shore. He was,
indeed, too late.

CHapTerR IX.

THE RETURN.

He was still standing there with a grave face, looking into
the distance, where the light had begun to’grow dim under
the shadow of a rising cloud, when he was startled by a
light touch on hisarm. It was a peasant woman.

‘¢ Signor,’’ she said, ‘‘ I have before seen you at Fiorillo ;
though, of course, you do not remember me. Were you
there lately? ”’

‘¢ In the last month,’’ he answered.

‘¢ Then you can, perhaps, give me tidings of some I knew
there ;’’ and Teresa — for it was she — hesitated.

He waited, and she began again slowly.

‘* Not of the peasant people,’’ — and she moved her thin

fingers nervously ; ‘‘ of a stranger, a blind English offi-

246 The Western.

cer —is he living?’’ seeing, as he suddenly shrunk back,
and winced at the question, that he knew of whom she
spoke.
' He paused, then replied, as if he would gladly put the
subject out of hearing and remembrance : —

** Yes, he lives, and is, I suppose, happy, as he is prob-
ably already married to his cousin.”’

‘¢ Signora Francesca, from England? ’”’

** You have seen her; she is young, beautiful, and noble.
You can judge whether he needs pity from any one.”’

‘« No,’’ she answered, with sudden and rapid vehemence,
‘** T cannot believe ; not though these eves should see it, and
these ears hear the marriage-vows. She does not love him.
She passed him on the street, the shore; lived and was
joyous and gay close beside him, and did not recognize
him.”’

** You are fanciful,’’ he said, with a half-sick attempt to
smile. ‘* We mistake sometimes.’’
She glanced at him with a questioning look, then said

suddenly : —

‘*Look! I have no love for my fellow-creatures often,
but I will tell you the truth, and it shall make you happy
once more, for I have seen you with the signora ; and, par-
don me, I think you care for her. She may pity her cousin,
but she does not love him. She refused him before, and if
you are jealous of him ’’ — with a sudden softening of the
face —‘‘ it might as well be of the dead! ”’

A sudden convulsive sobbing shook her whole frame.
Then she looked up again.

‘*T saw him, I myself, this summer, and the hand of
death was upon him. He cannot cause any one pain long.’’

It is easy for an impulsive and generous nature to over-
sweep at one bound all foregone conclusions or regrets.
Already the sunshine began to break through the darkness
in his mind; forgiveness, love, pity, rapid self-reproach,

Francesca Evelyn: an Idyl of New Italy. 247

and an eager desire to see Francesca again and be forgiven,
crowded into his heart and flushed his cheek.

‘¢T will return,’’ he said, in a low tone, looking with
compassion on the woman, who still wept, but with a silent
hopelessness, more pitiful than her first burst of sorrow.
‘* You have done more for me than I can ever thank you
for. But is there no token, no word of remembrance I can
carry for you?”’

‘* No,” she said, ** nothing; it would be useless.’’ She
drew her ragged shawl closely around her, and walked
away with bowed head, her footsteps echoing with ghostly
distinctness along the lonely wharf, already dark in the
coming storm.

In the meanwhile Francesca waited with weary patience.
So long as George Elliott had lived, there had been con-
tinual demand for sympathy and help that had left little
leisure for pain, —had even blinded her consciousness of
it, — and so her care and untiring service had been blessed
to her, and comforted her sorrow. Now a day never came
that she did not miss the pathetic eyes that caught no glim-
mer of any earthly sun or moon in their wistful depths,
the thin hands that moved so restlessly towards the sun-
shine, the weak voice saying continually, ‘‘Are you tired
now, dear Frank? ”’

For there is nothing so desolate as the sense of loss when
a familiar life slips suddenly into a darkness which we can-
not touch or measure, when we look up to miss the accus-
tomed face against the white pillow, or listen for the usual
step on the stair that will come no more forever !

So Francesca drooped visibly. Her father had returned
home for a few weeks to attend to the business of his Eng-
lish estate, and Ursula began to wonder at the long silence
of her adopted brother, and looked so grave that it went to
Francesca’s heart. Only Maurice’s faithful solicitude and
watchfulness filled up the long days for her, sometimes with
a pleasure, as a rare painting or some lovely effect of sea

248 The Western.

and sky to be seen, but most often with a duty, such as
visiting the sick and poor; for he was quick to see that this
did her more real good, and carried her thoughts into more
healthful channels.

At last, one day, as she sat in the balcony, her white
hands folded in her lap, looking listlessly at the onyx ring
still upon her finger, he came to her with a look on his
homely and dark features which a saint might have worn
from whom the shadow. of his martyrdom had not yet fallen,
and said, in a tone which trembled slightly : —

‘* Francesca, can you bear a great joy?’”’

The rich, pure face, with its dark eyes, unspeakably
lovely in the dawn of joyful wonder, looked up with a mute
sign of assent.

He placed a letter in her hands. She broke the seal
eagerly and read.

** He has been detained on the way by an accident, but
he is well, and to-morrow he will be here!’’ she exclaimed,
joyously. ‘I must tell Ursula,’’ and, rising hastily, she
did not see the look on his face of suppressed feeling.

Presently she came back and stood softly by him, look-
ing across the terraced garden ground to the distant English
cemetery on the hill, where a white shaft rose through the
dark foliage, and said, low, as if she were answering some
thought, unexpressed in words : —

‘* Your brother said that he would be glad with us, and I
feel that he is glad — now.”’

Do we think the dead come near us when we name
them, that we, earthly men and women, speak of them so
low, as children hush their riot and play and are still for
awhile in the presence of those who are grown up and un-
familiar?

He did not answer at first. The woman whom George
Elliott wronged forgave him utterly; Francesca and Dr.
Page remembered him with kindliest pity and love, while
in Mr. Evelyn’s mind no thought of him remained that was

Francesca Evelyn: an Idyl of New Italy. 249

not an affectionate remembrance of the innocent, light-
hearted boy in the old English homestead. But it had been
long before Maurice forgave him fully, perbaps because he
had never seen him since he went away in the cruel pride
of his thoughtless youth, and did not realize the gradual
changes which time and suffering were making; perhaps
also because he persuaded himself that it was an impersonal
and unselfish resentment of wrong-doing. Yet he thought
of him very gently at the last, and every day that came
after his brother’s death seemed to bring some new remorse-
ful tenderness, and a deeper insight born of love.

Francesca’s words touched him with a vivid feeling, half
pain, half joy, as he seemed to see the contrast between his
own heart and the words of the dead brother he had judged
so coldly. But a rare sweetness was in his eyes as he re-
plied : —

**T believe it. I feel sure that it is given to some who
have gone away, to see us, at least at times, and rejoice in
our joy, until we almost feel that Heaven and earth are
one.’’

The next day was hot, even beyond the usual degree. The
noon seemed to linger long into the evening in a white heat
and heavy languor that brooded in the air. Such a day
may sometimes be experienced in the burning East, but is
rare in the homes of the white races. The long, slanting
shadows of the Persian blinds upon the floors seemed only
to mark more distinctly the glaring light elsewhere. Not a
breath of wind blew, not a sail moved on the waters, not a
leaf stirred on the trees. There was the fullest silence of
intense noontide in earth and sky. The deep purple figs,
over-ripe, dropped in the long grass without asound. Only
now and then a sudden footstep startled its hearers, as it
fell on the hot stones beyond the garden terraces.

Francesca began to feel as if a slow fever burned in her
veins. In the evening, as the early moon began to rise
and the shadows lay along the paths, she could stand the

250 The Western.

stillness no longer. She had ceased to expect Dr. Page on
that day, and she asked her old nurse to walk with her.

‘*T feel as if I could not breathe in-doors,’’ she said.
The old woman looked at her wistfully, but was silent.
Unconsciously they walked towards the grotto, drawn by
the cool sound of the sea waves along the shore. All
along the hill paths they still heard them faintly, like the
far-off echoes of waters. When they reached the place,
they saw the fountain of verdure glistening with its many
leaves in the fresh dews and the white moonshine. The
fountain of water shone in a mist of spray, and seemed to
thrill the quiet night with the pulsations of its continuous
falling, throbbing through all its dripping and splattering
waves. The moonlight fell in a shower of soft splendor,
broken only by the floating shadows of the long sprays.
The serene peace of the place and the hour soon began to
fill the eyes of the young girl as she listened to the water,
and held her fingers in the cool spray.

‘*Hush!’’ said old Liza, though no one spoke, ‘I
hear ’’ — yes, there was a light, swift step on the ascending
path —a voice humming a darcarole to itself, as if too full
of secret gladness either to be wholly silent or to sing
aloud — and a well-known figure appeared. But a sudden
sense of unreality struck cold to Francesca’s heart, and she
hid her face in her nurse’s arms, as if afraid of seeing it van-
ish again out of sight. This feeling soon departed under the
influence of his genial mood, and so completely, after the
first entreaty for pardon, did he succeed in banishing all
painful remembrances from her mind, that when they
reached the garden gate it already seemed as if all the
dreariness of the past winter had fallen aside like a disused
garment.

‘*T had a fancy I should meet you at the grotto,’’ he
said, when they parted that night; ‘‘ 1 could not imagine
you anywhere else, and had been dreaming of it all day.’’

Francesca Evelyn: an Idyl of New Italy. 251

‘¢ We thought you would come sooner,”’ said Francesca,
blushing.

‘¢ Yes, but we were delayed two hours beyond the time.
i was very impatient then; but, after all, it brought the
fulfilment of my dream.”’

They were married soon after the Evelyns’ return. They
intended to go to England at once, but Fiorillo held a
claim for them as the place where they first saw each other,
against which they struggled in vain, day after day. It
was so pleasant for them to invest all the well-known
places with the bloom of their new joy. But at length
the last night came. They walked together on the terrace
in the soft summer night, and the sounds of their footsteps
on the paved walk and their voices in the air came and
went as they passed. It was a night rich with color.
Purple mists swelled softly up, ‘‘ like transparent ocean-
tides,’ through all the valleys, and lay along the hill-
slopes, while the moon shone like a luminous peace. The
white doves that had flown at sunset about the garden-
walls, over which the blooming almond-boughs fell like
a flowery moonlight, had long ago gone to their nests in
the old belfry-tower; but the bats flew in hushed and
mysterious circles through the fragrant air like fleeting
shadows.

Light after light glimmered in the huts below; the fire-
flies glittered and gleamed among the dark orange-leaves
and sparkled in the long grass underneath. The dusky air
above the terraces was heavy with the sweetness of the
oleander and the myrtle, and the nightingale’s song,
sounding from some hidden thicket of blooms, filled the
soul of night with its rich and clear melody. The stars
shone with a liquid, tremulous red lustre, as if hung low in
the sky, and against the purple darkness rose the marble
statue in distinct and pure outlines, lifting up a still white
hand as if in benediction on a kneeling world.

252 The Western.

‘* Friend,” said Ursula Page, coming out to Maurice
Elliott as he sat in the lower balcony, ‘‘these married
lovers will never grow tired. Dost thou not think they
will walk until dawn? ”’

He lifted his hand with a gentle gesture of silence.

‘* Listen, the bells are about to ring! ”’

Slowly, with a full, throbbing sound, rang out the great
midnight bell of thé central tower, and afterwards, farther
off and far on, out into the green country beyond, rang
other and smaller bells, vibrating with a sweet tremor to
the ears of the silent listeners.

Maurice smiled from a heart full of peace, for his joy —
the joy of one soul in the blessedness of others — breathed
through his soul at last the airs and lights of Paradise.
Strong in renunciation, he beheld by faith another country
and household, where each should be gathered to his own,
and was content to endure until the end.

The luminous shadow and the shadowy splendor of the
lovely night gathered themselves around the two who walked
together as if in another garden of Eden, and their love
and delight seemed the living soul of its world of fragrance
and freshness and glimmering color.

‘*For male and female created He them.”’

E. F. Mossy.

RENUNCIATION.

Humiliation sat within my heart.

I shuddered with death’s infinite heart-pain,

And all my soul hung on one flower of hope,
Which, like a trembling tear, it feared would fall.
One thought I found within its petal’s fold,

One thought within its quivering petals shaped,
This: ‘‘ With Renunciation as a guide,

Hereafter ye shall see God face to face.”’

Napoleon Bonaparte.

NAPOLEON BONAPARTE.

[ConTINvUED. ]

He then turned his attention to Prussia, whom he treated
with a harshness altogether out of proportion to her faults.
That nation deserves sympathy only because of the extreme
severity of her punishment. She had endeavored, without
meurring the risks of an alliance with either of the com-
batants, to gain all the benefits of victory. While she was
secretly bargaining with France for Hanover as the price of
an alliance, she was at the same time carrying on nego-
tiations with Austria and Russia to secure a large price for
the transfer of her favor to the coalition. Throughout the
wars of the Revolution she had maintained a profitable
neutrality, and this policy she endeavored to continue even
at the sacrifice of her faith. Her truckling, however, did
not escape the keen eye of Napoleon. He clearly per-
ceived that at the first disaster she would turn against him.
He did not propose that Prussia should gain any new ter-
ritory at the expense of French blood, when she was in
reality his secret enemy. But he had enemies enough on
his hands, and he endeavored by every means to quiet the
clamors of Prussia for the violation of her territory —a
violation, however, the enormity of which was greatly ex-
aggerated, since that territory lay so directly in the track
of French and Austrian wars that custom had sanctioned
its invasion. ;

After Austerlitz, Prussia became suddenly appeased for
this insult ; while Napoleon, on the other hand, desired that
she should take reparation for her outraged promise. He
moreover demanded explanations for a great many things —
explanations that were difficult or impossible to be given.
The Prussian court was placed in a humiliating position.
This position, which was simply the result of a shuffling
policy, was ascribed by the nation to its French party.

254 The Western.

The war fever which had been stirred up during the cam-
paign of Ulm now began to burn. The influence of the
queen, who was bitterly hostile to France, the promises of
Russia, and this growing sentiment of hostility brought
about a change of ministry in favor of war. Napoleon, it
was said, had never yet encountered the soldiers of the
great Frederick. He had only conquered Austrians and
Russians, but the Prussian armies had conquered these and
the French also. When Prussia was only half her present
size she had alone sustained a war against a great coalition,
of which France was a member. Thus they talked, and
soon believed that they had only to declare war in order to
triumph. Napoleon permitted this fever to rage. He occa-
sionally uttered some word or did some act that increased
its heat. Hostilities were not long delayed. The Prussian
king rushed forward with his army and invaded the soil of
Saxony, where he took a strong position among the moun-
tains. Napoleon treated this as a declaration of war.

And then followed a repetition of the campaign of Aus-
terlitz. The French generals dreaded the possibilities of
the Prussian soldiery ; the Prussians felt confident of vic-
tory: but the result soon settled all doubts. Napoleon dis-
played that rapidity of movement which had characterized
his campaign of the previous autumn. He dealt one of his
tremendous blows at Jena,—a battle that might more
appropriately be called Auerstidt, in consequence of the
magnificent conduct of Davoust at that place, —and the
organization of the confident Prussian army was com-
pletely broken. Without permitting a breathing-spell of an
instant, he pressed after the fugitives in a merciless pursuit.
Within thirty days from the beginning of hostilities the
Prussian army was destroyed or captured almost to the last
man. Napoleon had established his headquarters at Berlin,
and the entire monarchy, with the exception of a small
tract upon the eastern borders, was in the possession of the
French. The war still continued with Russia. In mid-

Napoleon Bonaparte. 255

winter was fought the battle of Eylau, one of the most
bloody of even that age, which was of little advantage to
Napoleon, since the impassable condition of the roads ren-
dered any pursuit of the enemy impossible. This battle
was succeeded by a dreary period of inactivity, during
which the mud prevented any general movement of the
French, but did not protect them from the barbarous incur-
sions of the Cossacks. When the spring opened, however,
Napoleon took the field, and by a masterly series of ma-
neeuvres compelled the enemy to fight at Friedland, where
he hurled®almost the entire Russian army into the Alle, and
terminated the war by one of his most brilliant victories.

There is a cause which began to develop in this cam-
paign, and which was finally responsible in a large degree
for Napoleon’s downfall, and that is the working of moral
forces among the French themselves. This nation was
exhausted and weary of war at the beginning of the consul-
ate, but while the war was waged to defend their territory
from invasion the French fought with bravery and patriot-
ism. Bonaparte had, however, by his generalship and ad-
ministration, put an end to the war, had secured to France
more than ber former greatness, and his countrymen then
desired, under his powerful arm, to enjoy the prosperity and
the quiet of peace. Their brief repose was broken by the
campaign against Austria, but here they were easily led to
believe that that nation was responsible for the breach of
the peace, and the magnificence of the achievements of the
army called out a genuine enthusiasm. But in regard to
the cause of the war with Prussia they were not so credu-
lous. They believed that this war might have been evaded
by a little sincere negotiation, and, as they already had
enough of glory, they regarded the repeated conscriptions
with anxiety and alarm. The bulletins of the grand army
were greeted in the theatres with silence or with hired
cheers. When it is remembered that the losses in the
imperial wars before the treaty of Tilsit were insignificant

Vol. 7—No. 3 7

256 The Western.

when compared with the losses of Napoleon’s subsequent
wars, — the interminable contest in Spain, the campaign of
Wagram, and the invasion of Russia, —the demoralizing
: effect of these terrible struggles upon the hearts of the
French can scarcely be estimated. And after the over-
whelming disasters of Russia had turned the tide, and he
stood for the first time upon the defensive, with his army
drawn up about Dresden against all the rest of Europe,
required at last by fortune to display the resources which
his magnificent genius still had in reserve, it was this cause
rather than the number and valor of the enemy that over-
threw him. The faces of his generals were pallid and their
hearts crushed at thought of those stupendous tragedies
which they had witnessed. His soldiers, the last dregs of
exhausted France and of her allies, were wearied out with
the prospect of endless war, and, while they displayed
courage, they did not fight as men would fight for their
country. His genius burned more brilliantly than ever,
and, had his men possessed the spirit of the men of Auster-
litz, he would probably have been successful in spite of the
greater numbers of the enemy. But for every victory that
he won his marshals suffered three disasters. And when
in the next year, upon the soil of France, he threw his
army upon the rear of the allies, preparatory to making one
final effort, this cause led Marmont to unbar the gates of
Paris. :

Another of Napoleon’s most destructive faults dates from
this period, and that is his prohibition of British goods from
the continent. Regarded simply from its relation to Eng-
land, this act was one of profound policy. That country
was beyond the reach of his armies. She experienced few
of the ordinary evils of war, while she made it a pretext
for the most rigid tyranny upon the ocean. Her manufac-
turers still thrived, her commerce increased, and her enor-
mous fleets enabled her to make a sally now upon this coast
and now upon that, and afforded her armies a ready means

Napoleon Bonaparte. 257

of retreat at the first approach of disaster. This policy of
Napoleon’s, however, would injure or destroy at once her
manufacturing and her commerce. It was perpetrating a
tyranny upon the land as a reprisal for her tyranny upon
the sea. But there was this vast difference between the
effects of the two systems: England’s conduct upon the
sea did not oppress her own people; it was greatly profit-
able to them. It only selfishly appropriated the high seas,
the common heritage of the whole world, to herself; and
while she thus incurred the hostility of other nations, whom
she robbed of their rights, these nations, however powerful
upon the land, were unable to inflict any damage upon her.
The policy of England, therefore, was a source of strength
and profit.

On the other hand, Napoleon’s policy operated most in-
juriously upon his own ‘subjects, and especially upon his
allies. It was his prime fault, most conspicuously illus-
trated in this instance, that he disregarded, or could not
understand, the workings and effects of public opinion.

The manufactures of England were so varied, and many
of them so peculiar to her alone, that he could not banish
them without depriving his people of many of the luxuries,
and even some of the necessaries of life. Subjects strongly
attached to their ruler, as Napoleon’s subjects undoubtedly
were to him, might cheerfully consent to undergo such in-
conveniences and privations for a limited time. But after
years of endurance, and with that endurance multiplied wars
instead of peace, which was the proposed end, these re-
straints became peculiarly irksome. Thus his allies, of
whom there were many millions, who had been attracted to
their allegiance by his glory and by the belief that one who
had arisen from the lowest to the highest station would not
prove an oppressor, became strongly impressed with a sense
of his tyranny. It was this feeling that induced the Saxons
to march out of his ranks to those of the enemy in the
terrible battle of Leipsic, the Bavarians to make that des-

258 The Western.

perate effort to cut off his retreat, and in fact it was this
feeling that transformed all of his eastern allies into his
most bitterfenemies. It was this policy that was the chief
and immediate cause of his fatal campaign against Russia.
He had made [Alexander his firm friend and ally, and, al-
though the Russian nobles were hostile to the French
Empire, the authority of that prince, united with moderate
demands on the part of Napoleon, would have made the
two nationsjallies as well as their sovereigns. The attempt
to exclude British goods from Russia, joined to the spirit of
the nobles, produced a disaffection that the czar could not
control, and Napoleon’s unwise demand forthe enforcement
of his policy, after it had shown itself to be so odious to
the Russian people, was followed by a refusal and subse-
quently by war.

Another serious error of Napoleon’s appeared during the
period betweenfAusterlitz and Tilsit, and developed with
fatal rapidity — his policy of appropriating some kingdoms
and of forming others out of seattered material, that he
might distributejthrones to those who were hound to him by
ties of blood orfmarriage. In a short space of time he had
under his control nearly a half-score of thrones. It is not
strange that{,this course should have alarmed the reigning
families of Europe for their crowns. These vassal king-
doms which Napoleon reared became in some cases sources
of weakness, and in one conspicuous instance he was in-
volved in the most deplorable consequences.

The condition of Spain before Napoleon seized that king-
dom for his brother was utterly wretched. The throne was
occupied by an imbecile, whose highest and almost only
mental attainment was a knowledge of horses. His faithless
queen prevailed in all matters over the weak mind of her
husband, and she in turn was controlled by the wishes of
an effeminate and selfish favorite, who thus became the real
ruler of Spain. The docks and great naval establishments
were fast falling into decay, the army was small and undis-

Napoleon Bonaparte. 259

ciplined, the few ships that survived Trafalgar were rotten
and old-fashioned, the treasury was unable to meet the
current expenses of the government, the poor and lawless
class among the people was rapidly becoming larger, and
the heir to the throne had been arrested, through the con-
trivance of his unnatural mother, for a conspiracy to rob his
father of his life and throne. This desperate condition of
affuirs demanded intervention and an introduction of the
most rigorous reforms. But the simple interference by 9
ruler of Napoleon’s strength was all that was required or
indeed warranted. The Spaniards, however degenerate in
other respects, retained at least their ancient pride, and
were the last people to submit to a ruler who not only
possessed no legal title to their throne, but who also was
without royal blood. The coronation of Joseph Bonaparte
aroused all their ancestral prejudices and caused a civil
war of the most stubborn character. A small division of
English soldiers, commanded by an admirable general,
formed a nucleus about which the insurgents rallied and
soon acquired discipline and courage. Napoleon committed
a serious error, not only in causing this war, but also in its
conduct. Absorbed in his vast dreams against Austria,
Russia, and Constantinople, he seemed to regard this
struggle with contempt. He would put an end to the
Spanish war, he said, in Moscow ; and thus he Intrusted that
war to the inefficiency and discords of his marshals. Once,
indeed, in an early stage of the war, when Joseph had heen
driven out of Madrid, he crossed the Pyrenees, restored bis
brother in a brief campaign of twenty days, overthrew the
insurgent armies, and sent the English flying to their ships.
But, with this one exception, his only interference consisted
in occasionally sending plans from Paris and in disgracing
his marshals. With one-fifth of the soldiers that he lost in
Russia, together with those already in Spain, he could have
crushed out all opposition. The marshals were unsuccessful
for a variety of reasons. In the first place, the English and
insurgents were excellently commanded. The Duke of

260 The Western.

Wellington displayed great caution, vigilance, firmness, and
an admirable judgment. Nevertheless, if his victories are
studied, it will be seen that he did not exhibit a generalship
one whit higher than that of Moreau, except in the im-
portant quality of energy, in which he was by far the
superior of the Frenchman. The marshals, on the other
hand, accustomed as they were to act under Napoleon’s eye,
had become unfitted to assume the responsibility of a sepa-
rate command.’ As each one was unwilling to be made a
subordinate, or to contribute to the glory of any of his fellow-
marshals, the most unfortunate dissensions arose, which
Joseph did not possess the authority to restrain. Massena,
however, was an exception in generalship, but not in mis-
fortune, to the marshals who fought in Spain. He conceived
a plan of a campaign which deserved success ; but after he
had thrown himself into a position of danger, in reliance
upon the coéperation of the other marshals, their aid was
withheld from him until he had lost a battle which he could
have won. During his celebrated retreat he exhibited
a skill equal to any displayed upon either side during the
Spanish wars ; but, for his ill-success, Napoleon crowned him
with disgrace. This noble old hero, who had gained for
France nearly as large a share of legitimate glory as had
Napoleon, who had protected her territory from invasion at
Zurich, who had made the victory of Marengo possible by
his heroism at Genoa, who had saved the army from de-
struction at Essling, to whom had always been allotted those
tasks that required the heroism of despair —this old hero
was sacrificed to the injustice and to the unnatural policy of
his master. Thus the Spanish wars were protracted, and
caused a loss to Napoleon’s armies, by disease, by desertions,
and by battle, of two hundred thousands of his best soldiers.
These men, even after the tremendous losses of Russia,
would have been more than sufficient to decide the campaign
of Dresden in his favor.
S. W. McCatt.

[TO BE CONTINUED. ]

Kant’s Critic of Pure Reason.

KANT’S CRITIC OF PURE REASON.

[TRANSLATED FROM KARL ROSENKRANZ’S “NEUE STUDIEN.’”’]

It. is impossible to form a correct representation of
Kant’s philosophy without comprehending the Critic of
Pure Reason, for all his earlier works strive towards it
unconsciously, all his later works point back to it con-
sciously. It formulated the problems that were to employ
German philosophy during the next ten years. It changed
the whole terminology of German speculation, and its man-
ner of treating science —the tone that it struck — became
the model of numerous imitations. It legitimated the re-
jection of metaphysical inquiry, and the pressing forward
from the theoretical to the practical, the leading back of
religion to morality.

Its general division into an elementary doctrine and a
doctrine of method, Kant borrowed from the compend
upon which he based his oral instruction. Its universal
problem he summed up in the formula: How are synthetic
judgments a priori possible? He called those judgments
analytical in which the predicate of the subject is drawn
from it immediately through analysis; those synthetic,
in which the predicate is first united with the subject
through mediation as a new determination. Synthetic
judgments a posteriori, therefore empirical, are easily ex-
plained ; but synthetic judgments a priori, where the pred-
icate of the subject cannot be received from intuition
(Anschanung), are more difficult to comprehend. The
pure concepts of the understanding can only relate to a
content given through intuition; knowledge is transcen-
dental if it proceeds in this consciousness; it is transcen-
dent if it passes beyond the limits drawn for it through the
relation of the immanent concept to intuition. In these
presuppositions lie the strength and the weakness of the
Critic of Reason.

262 The Western.

In the Transcendental sthetic, Kant examined the
sensuous conditions of knowledge. All sensation as a
sensuous process is in space and time; but space and time
in and for themselves cannot be perceived, and therefore
cannot be objects of intuition. Consequently, Kant con-
cluded, coexistence and succession are a priori pure forms
of intuition.

This was his first counter-thrust against sensualism and
scepticism. Intuition can only contain the finite and acci-
dental ; therefore universality and necessity of knowledge
are only possible through logical determinations which are
independent of intuition. Transcendental logic thus de-
velops on one side the abstract forms of thinking (the
Transcendental Analytic); on the other, the contradiction
into which they fall when applied to a content not given
through intuition (the Dialectic).

The Analytic finds the concepts of the pure understanding
in the functions of thinking, in the judgment forms of quan-
tity, quality, relation, and modality. Each of these cate-
gories is itself divided trichotomously: quantity into the
universal, particular, and singular judgment; quality into
the affirmative, negative, and infinite ; relation into the cat-
egorical, hypothetical, and disjunctive; modality into, the
problematic, assertory, and apodeictical. These are the
original concepts without which it is impossible to pass
judgment, because they first establish universality and neces-
sity. As independent of all intuition, they are the a priori
concepts with which we prescribe laws to the world; be-
cause, as logical, they are at the same time ontological, dis-
solving metaphysical ontology into logic. Quantity con-
tains the concepts of unity, plurality, and totality ; quality
that of reality, negation, and limitation; relation, that of
substantiality, causality, and reciprocity; modality, that of
possibility, existence, and necessity. The categories were
the seeond counter-thrust against the acceptance of sensual-
ism and scepticism.

Kant’s Critic of Pure Reason. 263

Whatever we think, we must think in the categories.
Experience is only possible because the faculty of imagina-
tion reproduces the representations grasped by the perceiv-
ing apprehension. To thisreproduction is added recognition
through the apperception of self-consciousness in the con-
tinuity of the Ego, which accompanies all actions of the
soul as a moment of identical intelligence. The concept of
the Ego was the third counter-thrust against sensualism and
scepticism, which Kant, nevertheless, did not follow out to
its consequences. He permitted the ‘‘ I think’’ to disap-
pear in the «I will.’’

Two elements, according to Kant, constitute real knowl-
edge: intuition and concept. Intuitions without concepts
are blind ; concepts without intuitions are void. A synthe-
sis, uniting the affections of the receptivity of the mind
with the functions of the spontaneity of the understanding,
exists as original in the Ego, since the Ego is an object for
us without being an object of sensuous intuition. It can
neither be felt, nor seen, nor heard; neither the outer sense
of sight nor the inner one of hearing can reach it, since,
without being a category, it is 1 pure concept. As simple
oneness it effects the synthesis of intuitions and concepts.
It grasps and unites them in itself.

But there would still exist a dualism between the multi-
plicity of intuitions and the simplicity of the concepts of the
understanding, if there did not exist a schematism of the
a priori categories, through which, as through a hidden art
in the depths of the soul, the sensuous element of intuition
and the abstract one of concept are so blended together
that we have neither the copy of a given object nor an idea,
but a schema, which mediates real knowledge in its neces-
sary universality — as when, for instance, we represent a tri-
angle, a dog, etc., in general. This psychological, mystical
doctrine of the schema, that can neither be explained
through the sensibility nor understanding, was Kant’s fourth
counter-thrust against sensualism and scepticism. The

264 The Western.

sehematism of the concepts of the understanding places
quantity through the time-series in number ; quality, through
the content of time in sensation ; relation, through the order
of time in substance as permanence ; in causality, through
the vicissitude of accidents as change ; in reciprocity, through
mutual action, as the coexistence of activity and passivity ;
in modality, finally, through the comprehension in time of
all possible quantities. Possibility, therefore, appears in
modality as that which happens at some time or other;
reality, as that which happens at a definite time ; necessity,
as that which happens at every time.

Kant now established, according to the categories, a sys-
tematic order of all the synthetic principles of the pure under
standing. Quantity produces axioms of intuitions, for all
intuitions are extensive quantities ; and in all sensations the
real, which is an object of sensation, has a degree —is an
intensive quantity. Quality produces anticipations of per-
ception, because, after acquaintance with an object, we know
beforehand how it will affect our senses. Relation produces
, analogies of experience, viz.: from substance, the inherence
therein of accidental determinations; from causality, the
consistency of effect from a cause; from community, the
composition of reciprocity. The three analogies are thus
the principle of permanénce, of production, and of com-
munity. Modality is represented, finally, in the postulates of
empirical thinking: that that is possible which agrees with
the formal conditions of experience ; real, which agrees with
the real conditions of experience ; necessary, which is iden-
tical with the universal conditions of experience. There is
in the world no accident, no fate, no leap, no vacuum.

All objects for us are either phenomena or noumena: phe-
nomena as appearances which we empirically comprehend
through the mediation of the senses, or noumena as con-
cepts of the understanding which designate to us the thing
per se, but which are only limiting concepts, because we are
not able to recognize what the thing per se is, on account of

Kant’s Critic of Pure Reason. 265

the opposition between the sensuous and intelligible world.
In an appendix on the amphiboly of the pure forms of re-
flection, Kant therefore taught that, before one judges, one
must consider where an object belongs —whether it is a
merely empirical or a transcendental object. This logic of
reflection contains the determinations of identity or differ-
ence, agreement and opposition, internal and external, mat-
ter and form.

The concept of thing per se facilitated for Kant the tran-
sition to the second part uf the Transcendental Logic, the
Dialectic, as the logic of mere appearance, because it has to
treat of the relation between the reason and the concepts of
the understanding, and discover why the latter seem sufficient
for the comprehension of the former. Kant had shown in
the Transcendental M¥sthetic that space and time are
a priori forms of intuition ; in the Transcendental Analytic,
that the categories, upon which the functions of judg-
ment rest, are @ priori concepts of the pure understanding ;
that the Ego is a synthetic apperception a priori; that the
function of the schema is a mystical product of the faculty
of imagination. With all these determinations he had torn
himself loose from Locke and Hume only to fall back finally
into the dualism of phenomenon and thing per se. But
here again he reacts powerfully against sensualism and scep-
ticism, for he suddenly assures us that we possess near the
understanding, which only extends to the finite, to intui-
tions, a faculty of the unconditioned reason, whose object
is the idea as unconditioned, to which nothing corresponds
in the world of the senses. But, if it would not fall into
extravagance, it must not forget that for the reality of cog-
nition it is dependent on the facts of intuition and the cate-
gories of the understanding. Our knowledge contains an
unavoidable element of mere appearance in so far as we do
not consider that we possess only the finite forms of under-
standing for the infinite content of reason, through whose
uncritical application error necessarily arises, which the

266 The Western.

Dialectic of pure reason undertakes to discover. Meta-
physics before Kant had included ontology, cosmology,
pneumatology, and rational theology. Ontology had been
transmuted by Kant into logic, and there consequently re-
mained only the ideas of the world, of the soul, and of God.
These three he tried very subtilely to derive from the moments
of the category of relation by transferring the categorical,
the hypothetical, and the disjunctive syllogism, as the basis
of the concepts of substantiality, causality, and reciprocity,
to the concepts of the soul, the world, and God. The
syllogism of psychology is categorical, on account of the
unity of the being of the soul; the syllogism of cosmology
hypothetical, on account of the presupposition of the com-
pleteness of phenomena; the syllogism of theology dis-
junctive, on account of the absoluteness of the existence
of God. The false syllogisms made here Kant called the
paralogisms of psychology, the antinomies of cosmology,
and the ideal syllogism of theology. In them knowledge
becomes transcendent.

In the paralogisms of psychology, Kant found that the
unity of the soul is always presupposed for the different
predicates given to it of substantiality, personality, and
ideality. According to quantity, the soul is the subject of
all its predicates, consequently as inhering in no other sub-
ject, substance ; according to quality, the soul, as not con-
sisting of real parts, is an ideal whole, consequently imma-
terial and simple; according to relation, it is numerically
identical, therefore personal ; according to modality, it is
related to all possible objects in space, therefore ideal.
But all these predicates are surreptitiously derived from the
concept of the unity of the synthetic appreciation of all self-
consciousness.

In the antinomies of the cosmological ideas, Kant exam-
ined the complete composition of the given wholes of all
phenomena, the division of a given whole in the phenome-
non (the division of matter), the origin of a phenomenon

Kant’s Critic of Pure Reason. 267

in general, the dependence therein of the existence of the
changeable. The two first problems refer to the mechani-
cally unconditioned, the two last to the dynamically uncon-
ditioned. Kant represented each problem in an antithesis
by affirming the opposite determinations of the same world-
concept as alike probable, producing at that time through
this parallelism a wholly incredible effect. He called this
comparison a sceptical method, which must be distinguished
from scepticism ; the proof, nevertheless, he only drew in-
directly (apagogically) from the impossibility of the oppo-
site. Has the world a beginning in space and time, or does
it exist from eternity? Do only simple substances exist as
atoms, or is every substance composite? Does everything
happen merely according to natural causality, or is there a
causality through freedom? Does there exist in the world,
as part of it, or as its cause outside of it, an absolutely nec-
essary Being, or not? According to Kant, each of these
questions can be answered with equal right in the affirma-
tive. We cannot know, therefore, how we ought to decide.
The interest of reason in the contradiction rests on the nec-
essary despair in which it sees itself placed through the
equal weight of the grounds that support as well the thesis
as the antithesis. It is just as impossible for the under-
standing to solve this contradiction as it is for reason not to
demand the thinking of the unconditioned. Kant therefore
finds the key to the solution of the antinomies in transcen-
dental idealism, namely, in this: that we can make of the
reason no canonical or constitutive, but only a regulative
use, when we recognize its limits. The totality of phenom-
ena can never become an object of intuition, and the cate-
gories cannot be applied to anything save a finite content.
Reason, therefore, decides not in the objective sense that it
is able to know the absolute totality of the synthesis of all
objects, but only in the subjective sense, since it follows
the series of representations to the point where they become
indefinite. The Regressus in infinitum as objective causal-

268 The Western.

ity must be distinguished, according to Kant, from the
Regressus in indefinitum.

The third syllogism, the ideal syllogism of the pure
reason, as the Prototypon Transcendentale, extends to the.
unity of the conditions of all possible experience. This
unity is the object of speculative theology, which under-
takes to prove the existence of God, ontologically, cosmo-
logically, and physico-theologically. Kant sought to show
that from the latter proof, which proceeds from the fact
of design in the world, one may prove a world-architect,
but not a world-creator, and that this proof is only a
wider development of the cosmological, which is again
based on the ontological. Of the ontological, Kant
affirmed that it contains in its predicate no real determi-
nation of the subject, for existence adds nothing new to
the concept of the subject. A hundred dollars, for in-
stance, as a concept or empirical existence, are neither
more nor less than a hundred dollars, yet in the context of
experience it makes a vast difference whether I possess a
hundred dollars actually or possibly. According to Kant,
the ontological proof places existence first in the concept
of God as one of its realities in order to extract it after-
ward, and thus prove that God is the ens realissimum, the
conceptus realitatum omnium. Kant believed that he had
destroyed with the ontological proof the others also, and
his contemporaries admired this superficial argumentation
as a masterpiece of modern sagacity. His hundred-dollar
comparison was uncommonly successful, but a hundred
dollars as a wholly accidental existence are not to be com-
pared with an idea whose nature it is to transcend neces-
sarily the limits of experience. Thus the possession, or not,
of a hundred dollars is for the individual absolutely acci-
dental, but the concept of the reality of God is wholly
inseparable frem that of His possibility, for the Absolute
is not to be thought as not existing.

God is therefore, according to Kant, not even a hypoth-
esis, but only a thought to be recommended for the prac-

Kant’s Critic of Pure Reason. 269

tical use of humanity, because it is a schema permitted by
the syllogism of analogy, which allows the hypostasizing
and personifying of the thought of God as a popular ap-
proach to the Ideal of reason. From theoretical grounds
we are not able to prove the necessity of the immortality
of the soul, freedom of will, and the existence of God,
but from’ practical grounds we may believe therein for the
benefit of morality.

This was the Critic of Reason! In its content, it began
with the external intuition of space and time, and ended
with the idea of God. In its course, it raised itself psy-
chologically from esthetic receptivity through the spon-
taneity of the understanding to the absoluteness of reason.
In its result, it annihilated the possibility of the knowing
of ideas, but sanctioned belief in them in the interest of
morality. All these thoughts would nevertheless have
made but little impression, because they belonged to the
time in general. The Kénigsberg philosopher stood no
higher therein than the enlightenment ( Aufklérung) of that
period, but was separated in form from their commonplaces
by his genial style. This gradual rising from the lower to
the higher ; this ever potent return of the same elements of
intuition and concept; these categories fruitfully corrobo-
rating themselves in ever new applications ; this conclusion
with a result in order to cancel it immediately ; this cir-
cumspection and keenness in the analysis of concepts ; this
amplitude in their synthesis ; this scrupulousness of exam-
ination, and yet this serenity of tone; this holding fast
of the one theme, and at the same time this. presageful
touching of all sciences —no, such a book had not yet
appeared. One might reject its content, but could not
escape its enchantment. Without a knowledge of it, Ger-
man philosophy since then cannot be understood, and
nearly all the other nations have translated it into their
languages.

Exvuen M. MrrcHetu.

The Western.

LOST.

I lost, somewhere along the road
*Twixt by-gone years and now,

A child, with winsome, thoughtful face,
And deeply thoughtful brow.

She took with her, nor brought them back,
A lisping, childish voice ;

A laugh that, rippling, seemed to say:
“Be free! be glad! rejoice!”

She took two gems, half hid beneath
Soft curls of golden brown:

So beautiful, so bright were they,
They seemed a regal crown.

They say “she is not lost to me,”
The child I loved of old;

But she is lost, and lost for aye—
Her laugh, her curls of gold.

True, a maiden stands, to-day,
Beside me as I write,

But this one has a woman’s face,
And locks ag dark as night.

Her brow is broad, and thoughtful, too:
But faint time-lines are there;
She has my lost child’s winsomeness :
Her face is just as fair;

But ah! at times I longing look,
Into her eyes, and say:
“Oh, give me back the care-free child
I lost on life’s highway!”
J. E. Jonzs.

LOGIC FOR LIFE.

It is no disparagement of logic to recognize its limitations
in dealing with the practical questions of life. If reasoning
is conclusive, its premises must be simple and clear. Social
facts are of the most complex and mixed character, and
logic is able to move freely among them only by means of

Logie for Life. 271

suppositions so restricted as to exclude a large share of the
factors involved. It traces the tendencies of simple forces,
but cannot settle in any given case the precise degree in
which they will be modified or thwarted by other forces.
To live, therefore, and live well, is much more than the
fulfilment of a logical process. So thoroughly is this fact
recognized in politics that every one distinguishes easily
between the duties of a statesman and of a publicist, and
understands readily that the theories of the one, however
correct, can only find slow and hesitating application to the
other.

The same statement is equally applicable to the religious
world, though the relations of logic and life have not there
been as closely discerned. Theology, which traces the
logical dependencies of religious truths, has been thought
to be of much more immediate and practical import than
it really is.

Religious action is controlled or modified by a great
variety of popular convictions and prejudices and customs,
and yields very slowly, therefore, to the force of a creed.

A creed is much less powerful for good and more harm-
less for evil than the logician is likely to regard it. Many
a theologian, in thus working away at a creed, has suffered
the larger share of life to flow by unaffected.

A creed is most interesting and usually most powerful at
the moment of crystallization, but, once crystallized, it be-
comes increasingly dead.

We need to remember this general fact in the practical
questions of the day. On the whole, was it not a foolish
crusade to try to insert a formal recognition of God in the
Constitution of the United States? Is the logical force
which we may assign to such an insertion likely to express
its practical force? Are not events sure to flow on quite for-
getful of our new logical terms? The nation és, ina certain
measure, a religious nation.. To a limited degree its action
is governed by religious truths. These facts will not be es-

Vol. 7—No. 3 18

272 The Western.

sentially modified by an express declaration. Nor are we
to suppose that God stands with us, as a people, on cere-
mony, and is to be propitiated or put off by a few words of
recognition in our Constitution. The only question of
moment is, What are the religious facts in the life of the
nation, and how can we improve them?

In another practical question, logic is running away with
life. It is said, and well said, that religion is the basis of a
complete and sound education ; and, this granted, the con-
clusion is made to follow that those particular things by us
associated with religion must appear in our public schools,
or those schools are worse than worthless. The reading of
the Bible five minutes in the morning may be made to stand
for the complete religious factor, and if this is, in any con-
tingency, denied, the entire school-work may be subverted
in our affections. This view forgets that the religious life of
a community is in no way contained in or expressed by a
prescribed reading, under given circumstances, of the Scrip-
tures, desirable as this reading may be. If such a reading is
affirmed to be of the very essence and substance of religion,
the assertion only shows how hopelessly religion itself has
already sunk from its true position.

A truly religious school, and a very desirable one, can be
ordered, if need be, without any such reading. While,
therefore, I would seek to defend the liberty of each school
in this matter, I would not unwisely say that the very ex-
istence of public education, under our first principle,— the
necessity of religious training,— depends upon this or upon
any single circumstance.

Again we unfurl our flag, inscribed ‘* Religion and Educa-
tion,’’ and proceed to show the logical incompatibility of our
first principle with State universities, because some truths
‘ which we have identified with religion cannot be taught in
them. In all this we forget the force of the practical facts
of life. As a fact, the State university, like the community
to which it belongs, is permeated with the common religious

"22 Deaf Mutes and their Education. 273

life, and the truths of religion do find in many ways discus-
sion and enforcement in the university. The young man in
the university is morally as safe as, or safer than the young
man in the community. If one were forgetful of theories
and cognizant only of facts, he would see very little differ-
ence between the State institution and the average college
in religious instruction, except as it is found in a few en-
forced religious services — services which almost all admit
to be of doubtful religious value. Nothing hinders our
pouring our best religious life into our public institutions,
provided we bring it as life, and not as logic. The fact that,
religion must be first rid of all bias, and must be presented
as pure, practical truth, with full respect of every man’s
freedom, is no objection to the conditions involved, but a
commendation of them rather. No purity, no magnanimity,
nor any excellence‘of life, is out of order in a State institu-
tion. In such a life is religion in its most concrete, actual,
and powerful form.

I trust the Christian world will cease to strive, at this
point of public education, to rule out life with logic, and
will be content to bring to the common growth the best
conditions of which it is here and now capable. An honest
disposition to do this faithfully and laboriously is worth
more religiously than any creed, as a creed, that was ever
framed ; than any church, as an organization merely, that
was ever formed. To assert this is simply to give again the
very essence of the Gospel. Joun Bascom.

DEAF MUTES AND THEIR EDUCATION.

People can at a glance see that a blind man is blind, a
cripple a cripple, and so on; but among a crowd of people
it would be utterly impossible to distinguish a deaf-mute
from a hearing person. Thus it is that individuals, espe-

274 The Western.

cially in large cities, daily pass deaf-mutes on the thorough-
fares without in the least suspecting them to be so. It is
only when seer expressing themselves in the silent language
of signs, or when writing to some one in making known
their wants, that they are immediately recognized as persons
bereft of hearing. This class of human beings comprises
a large portion of our population, the latest statistical com-
putation giving one mute in every twelve hundred inhabi-
tants. The entire deaf-mute population of the world,
therefore, approximates a million, of which at least fifty
thousand exist in the United States. The average school
curriculum allowed a mute by the various State schools for
the deaf and dumb is eight years. Considering the child’s
loss of hearing, and consequent slowness of perception and
mental development, this is generally accepted as too brief
a course. Children in the full enjoyment of all their senses
obtain their first knowledge of language by hearing those
around them speak, and their steps up the hill of learning
are thereby greatly facilitated and hastened; but those
whom Heaven saw fit to deny the most important of all
senses are forced to depend upon their own exertions and
make their own way, often grappling with ideas to thein
difficult of comprehension.

There is much difference between a deaf-mute and a
semi-mute. The first is one born deaf and dumb, or one
who lost his hearing and speech at an early age; the second
is one who could hear and speak for a number of years and
subsequently became deaf, but still articulates to a greater
or less extent. By far the greater ratio of mutes are included
in the first order; in fact, more than one-half of them.
Semi-mutes, owing to their preacquisition of language pre-
vious to their loss of hearing, generally meet with no great
difficulty in understanding the English language and the
natural sciences. With congenitals —i.e., those born deaf
and dumb— it is different. The task of teaching deaf-
mutes is a most exhaustive and tiresome one, and naturally

Deaf Mutes and their Education. 275

calls for a vast amount of patience. Objects are shown
them, and the children are taught to make the proper sign
for each ; then they are told to bring this and that object
by its own peculiar sign, and, this done, they are taught to
write the names of the objects. Thev gradually learn to
write a variety of word-objects, which, as time progresses,
are formed into sentences. When they are sufficiently well
advanced in composition and general knowledge of common
things, books sre given them, which they study and write
out like oral children. At this stage of progress questions
put to the pupils are either written or spelt on the fingers,
and answers are given in like manner. Like hearing chil-
dren of our public schools, the same discrepancy in the
progress of pupils exists among the school children of si-
lence.

A fair percentage of semi-mutes are tolerably good talk-
ers, despite their total deafness. Some are so adept at
reading the lips of people addressing them as to defy de-
tection of the loss of hearing. Such cases are, of course,
found only among intelligent semi-mutes, and especially
semi-mute ladies, who, for the most part, articulate plainly
and quite distinctly. The reason but few semi-mutes of
the masculine gender can rival their sisters in the use of
their tongue lies in the fact that the girls are at home with
the family or associated with personal friends all the time,
and their vocal organs are brought into requisition just so
long as there is some one around them that is familiar with
their voice. Articulation —a mere accomplishment in the
matter of deaf-mute education —is taught a limited num-
ber of pupils.in the State schools for the deaf and dumb,
while the sign language is universally and constantly em-
ployed. There are so few semi-mutes in a school for
mutes — and not many congenitals can be taught to articu-
late with any real success — that the art of teaching mutes
articulation is necessarily limited to a select few. Many
drop articulation after leaving school, so that the time spent
in teaching them to lisp a few words is wasted.

276 The Western.

There is a National Deaf-Mute College at Washington,
D. C., where those who believe in a college education can
get the same if they crave for it. A number of mutes go
there yearly. All the branches of a regular college are
there taught, and degrees are conferred upon graduates.
It is presided over by Mr. Edward M. Gallaudet, son of the
lamented and beloved Rev. Thomas H. Gallaudet, the
founder of deaf-mute instruction in America. A consider-
able number of mutes compete successfully with their hear-
ing brethren, both in a literary and a business point. There
are mutes to-day occupying positions of responsibility and
honor, among which are two professors in the National
College, about half a dozen editors and publishers of news-
papers, a good many teachers, several principals of mute
schools, three preachers, half a dozen clerks in the gov-
ernment offices, and others are clerks elsewhere. Besides
this, there are deaf-mute authors, poets, lawyers, and busi-
ness men.

A wrong impression has long prevailed among the public

in regard to deaf-mutes and their schools. Institutions for
the education of the deaf and dumb are nothing more or
less than schools, and such are no more ‘‘asylums’’ than
are the public schools. They are educational establish-
ments, and for educational purposes — only this and nothing
more. How unjust and unreasonable, therefore, to term
such ‘‘ asylums’? —a misnomer for which all intelligent
and respectable mutes and their friends cherish an uncon-
querable hatred. It would appear that the word ‘ institu-
tion ’’ is calculated to mislead the public, on which account
all places where children of silence receive an education
should go under no other name but that of ‘* schools.’’
J. E. GALLAGHER.

Mirage.

MIRAGE.

Can it be? (My God, the pain!)
The turn of the r, the cross of the ¢,
Hers, Queen Mab’s! Has she come again
Over the years to me?

The years, how many! Nay, no need

To reckon them up. What do they tell?
They only mock. New days recede

And the old come in on the swell

Of this mighty wave. But what within
This spacious cover? Another hand,

And that, cut clear by engraver’s pen,
Easy to understand.

“She has the honor — Madame mtre —
Her daughter Mabel — to the Count —
Married’’! Well, no need to stare,
It comés to the same amount.

Madame la Comtesse, I wish you joy!
I send you my blessing, over the sea.
It is burned quite clear of all alloy;
It shall come to you dross-free.

Madame la Comtesse, do you hear?
I send you my blessing — nothing more.

Would you know the old fellow, so gray and queer,
Staring at library door?

Would I know the Countess? Maybe not.
No need to query. But I knew

One who can never be forgot.
*Tis with her I have to do.

But how does it come that you have thought
Of me in the hour of your nuptial pride?
The old school-master should be forgot
At your noble bridegroom’s side.

Tossing over the fathomless sea

Comes there a mirage from the shore,
Of another you, and another me,

Of days forever o’er?

The Western.

The very same that comes to me
Sitting here, from my door of glass,

Over the books? Naught else I see
But the school-room, after class.

Empty of all save two alone,
Master and pupil. Stripling he,
Fair and farthingless, naught his own
Save his very fresh A. B.

Very grave indeed they stand
At the window. Yonder in the West
A great blush brightens. In his hand
Her Virgil lies at rest.

Yet something keeps her lingering here.

Is she naughty? Perhaps, for on her cheek,
Pale, but luminous, lies a tear, —

And not a word they speak.

Reverent bends the master there, —
Never a word of blame has he, —

Touching the splendid back-thrown hair,
Incedo regina, she!

Strange! the Lesson which keeps her there
Is, ah, so easy! ah, so sweet!

Yet never finished! All his care
Still leaves it incomplete.

Little Queen Mab, you are out of school
But have you forgot, in the world of men,
The Lessun, and its Golden Rule,
We taught each other then?

Madame la Comtesse, fare you well!
Naught must be said between us two

(Little Queen Mab will never tell)
Save the word of words, adieu!

Ay, @ Dieu! Where else, O heart,

With the freight of this wave that whelmeth thee?
To God, with the anguish and the smart

Of Love’s long mystery!

The Island of Manisees.

THE ISLAND OF MANISEES.

Leagues north as fly the gull and auk,
Point Judith watcheth with eye of hawk,
Leagues south thy beacon flames, Montauk!

— * * * * * * *
Circled by waters that never freeze,

Beaten by billow and swept by breeze,
Lieth the island of Manisees,

Set at the mouth of the sound to hold
The cvast-lights up on its turret old,
Yellow with moss and sea-fog mould.
WHITTIER.

It was a fine September morning when the steamer Mon-
vhansett left her dock at New Bedford with a party of sight-
seers, bound on a voyage of some sixty miles to ‘‘ the good
island known as Block,’’ or, as runs its softer Indian name,
Manisees. From our comfortable seats upon the upper
deck we enjoyed the view of the pleasant shores and islands
of the Acushnet, whose sparkling waters were crowded with
craft of many kiud. The great packet-ship bound for far
Fayal, the huge, four-masted coasting schooner, with a
steam-engine to aid in hoisting sail and in loading and
unloading the superb steam yacht, and the puffing little
Nonquitt tug-boat, the whalers lying at their docks, the
countless yachts and other sailing-vessels made a lively
scene, and on our outward way we saw the smoky pennons
of the steamers that plied between Boston and more south-
ern ports and the whitening sails of unnumbered coasters.
Passing Clarke’s Point, where a fort of solid masonry
guards the entrance to the river, we enterred Buzzard’s Bay
and bent our course toward the south-west. Strangely
mingling Biblical and English with Indian names, we point
to Padanaram, to Nonquitt, a little cluster of cottages with
its one hotel, to Westport, to Leviston and Seaconnet.
We run close to the light-boat on the ‘*‘ Hen and Chick-

280 The Western.

ens’’ ledge, and stop for « minute, as the boats salute each
other, to toss on board bundles of papers and books, that
may serve to while away the keeper’s lonely hours. Then
we wonder at the ‘‘ Groaning Buoy,’’ that, when the wind ?
draws through it as it rises upon the waves, utters a pro-
longed and dismal wail, a warning to mariners that seems
to feel itself hopeless of success. To our left we have
passed the long line of the Elizabeth Islands, that shut
in the entrance to the Bay, and we are soon upon the
waters of the Vineyard Sound. We point to Penekese,
famous for Professor Agassiz’ summer school, and recall a
pleasant visit there and the kindly welcome from the great
savant who has passed away. Yet another island, rejoic-
ing in the melodious name of Cutlyhunk, is noted as having
once been the abiding place of the English sailor Barthole-
mew Gosnold, who landed here in the summer of 1602.
Within this island there is a little lake, and within that lake,
close to its low shore, is a tiny islet on which the bold nav-
igator built him a house, whereof the foundations, ‘+ they
say,’’ yet remain. The lake and the islet I have seen. As
for the house, doubtless its stone remains yet rest beneath
the mass of weeds and shrubs that overgrow the spot.

Still beyond the Elizabeth group we see Martha’s Vine-
yard, with its queer cottage-city, its shining cliff; Gay-
Head, bright with yellow and rosy hues; and yet beyond,
lying low on the waters, Noman’s Land, the haunt of fisher-
men.

And now on our right glitter the spires of Newport, and
the Ocean House is distinctly seen in the clear air; Narra-
gansett Pier is past, and Point Judith, terror of sea-sick
sufferers, already begins to assert her power, and to cause
many of our number to rejoice that Block Island, goal of
our voyaging, lies not far before us. Nearly four hours
have passed since leaving New Bedford, and our little party
have found time to recall some things which history and
tradition tell of the place and its neighborhood. Seen by

The Island of Manisees. 281

Verrazzani in 1524, the island of Manisees, as it was called
from its Indian owner, was first explored by the Dutch
sailor Adrian Block, who came thither in 1614, in his
vessel, the Unrest, and has given it his name. The Indians
who belonged to the Narragansett tribe were, however, left
undisturbed in their possession, until, some twenty years
later, they were foolish and unlucky enough to involve
themselves in trouble with the colonists of Massachusetts
Bay, through the murder of a Boston trader, Oldham by
name, who went there to trade with the natives and was
killed for the sake of his clothes. The Massachusetts gov-
ernor determined to avenge his death, and stout John Endi-
cott was sent to conquer the place and bring it under
English rule. After some hard fighting the little band of
white men won the day, and the savages paid dearly for
their treacherous deed. On this expedition Endicott was
accompanied by a Captain Underhill, a noted Indian-fighter,
who, in his haste to be off to the wars, forgot, like the
Douglas at Otterbourne,

‘*His helmet good,
That should protect his brain.’’

More happy than the Scottish warrior, our doughty
champion had a wife at hand to see that her soldier went
properly armed and equipped, and who insisted, though
against his will, that he should take his casque with him.
Thanks to this protection, the Indian arrows glanced harm-
lessly aside, and the grateful husband thus records his
thankfulness for wifely service: ‘* Let no one despise the
advice and counsel of his wife, though she be a woman !”’

Two years later the island of Manisses is recorded to have
sent three men to Massachusetts Bay, bearing with them
ten fathoms of wampum, a tenth of the tribute it was com-
pelled to pay annually as a token of subjection. In 1658
its ownership was transferred to several individuals, of
whom Endicott was one, and in 1660 these sold out their

282 The Western.

interest to sixteen men who determined to go there as set-
tlers. They landed at a place still called Cow Cove, in
memory of the adventurous animal, useful, but to some
alarming, which effected a landing there by boldly swimming
to the shore. In 1672 yet another transfer placed Manisees
within the jurisdiction of Rhode Island, which is some
twelve miles distant.

The island has seen its share of fighting from Indian
days on. Its early lords were often engaged in warfare with
the Pequots and Mohegans of the mainland, and «a great
war-party of the latter tribe, having made a raid upon
Manisees, met with a terrible fate. Driven to the point at
the eastern end of the island, where the beetling cliff rises
for some one hundred and seventy feet above the sea, with
the broken ledges at its base, cooped up among the rocks,
with the awful abyss behind, and a pitiless foe before, they
perished miserably, like the Athenians in the stone-quarries
of Syracuse. During the colonial days French attacks were
frequent, and the colonists suffered greatly ; the pirates who
infested those waters also made the place their abode, and
here the celebrated Captain Kidd,

** As he sailed, as he sailed,”

was wont to come, and here he buried a portion of that
treasure which he seems to have scattered so lavishly along
the northern Atlantic coast, and which here, as elsewhere,
has been diligently and vainly sought for.

During the Revolution the island was a great resort for
Tory refugees from the mainland, and the legend of the
‘¢ Harbor Boys’”’ tells us that one dark and stormy night
a boat-load of desperate men endeavored to effect a landing
at a harbor at the western end of the island. Above the
howling of the storm could be heard the voice of the leader
shouting to his men as thev strove to reach the shore, but
it was all in vain; they went down beneath the waves, and
still, when tempests are raging over the seas, you may hear

The Island of Manisees. 283

the voices of the ghostly seamen who struggle hopelessly
toward a friendly haven.

In the war of 1812 the island was declared a neutral
ground, and the British sailors respected the harmless
people, who found kind treatment and a ready market on
board their ships, and who paid many a tribute to their
kindness and generosity.

Not history only, but legend, lends an interest to this quiet
spot, and the famous Palatine light forms a subject of dis-
cussion. This is a strange phenomenon which has been often
noted: a light that appears at various points between Point
Judith and Montauk, and that shoots upward into the sem-
blance of a great ship, with all its masts and yards, one
blaze of fire. Since science has not yet explained its origin,
let us see what tradition has to tell, and learn how hidden
crimes reveal themselves to the gaze of men. More than a
century ago, says the legend, the Palatine, a ship with many
wealthy immigrants on hoard, was lured by false lights to her
destruction upon the rocks of Block Island, where nearly
all on board were basely murdered for their riches. Another
version of the story is that most of them were murdered by
the crew, who shared their spoils with the wreckers, and
put on shore two or three women whose lives they had
spared ; that all left the ship except one rich lady who re-
fused to do so, and then, according to both stories, the Pal-
atine was set on fire and burned.

The murderers believed themselves safe, but ins the
anniversary of the awful deed came round, lo! before their
awe-struck eyes appeared the vision of the flaming ship
drifting up and down the coast, and it is said that one of the
guilty band, in drunken frenzy, raved of the crime, and saw
again the agonized face and heard the pitiful pleading of a
woman whose hands he had cut off as she clung convulsively
to the edge of the boat in which he sat.

The present day, which has rehabilitated so many names

284 The Western.

and pronounced so many villains less black than they have
been painted, has not neglected the Block Island wreckers,
and pronounces the whole story a baseless fabrication.
Filled with alarm lest we should discover the robber-chiefs
of the Rhineland with their poetic wickedness to have been
only over-vigorous custom-house officers, and the ‘* moss-
trooping Scots’’ of the Border to have been noted for the
scrupulous care with which they paid the English yeomen
for their ‘‘lifted’’ cattle, we determine that when sight-
seeing one should believe all legends, whether false or true,
and leave all justice, save poetic, to be meted out on one’s
return. One legend provokes another, and one of our
number relates that a far-away ancestor of her own more
than a hundred years ago was one of a little crowd who
gathered upon the shore at Newport to watch a great ship
that was seen early one morning entering the harbor with
all sails set. So well was she steered that, although none rec-
ognized the ship, all declared that her helmsman must know
the channel well. But on and on she came straight upon the
land, and under full sail, directly upon Easton’s Beach. The
wondering gazers hurried on board, but not a soul was
there. A cat was the only living thing; the only sound was
the ticking of the clock upon the wallof the cabin, where
the breakfast-table was ready spread. The whole ship was
in perfect order, there were no signs of disturbance any-
where, «and whence she came and whither her crew had gone
no one ever knew.

Nor were the marvels all of by-gone days, since one had
a tale to tell of a New Bedford whaler found a few years
ago on a far-off coast, drifting helplessly about with none
on board to guide. The work-basket of the captain’s wife
stood upon the cabin-table, and by it lay the unfinished gar-
ment begun by her busy fingers. All was in perfect order,
but the ship was empty and the boats were gone. The belief
was that the ship must have been drifting upon « rocky shore

The Island of Manisees. 285

and that the crew took to their boats; that a sudden
change of wind blew her off to safety, while her human
freight was left to perish miserably and unknown.

We are at the end of our voyage ere our stories are all
finished ; we pass the breakwater that the government has
built to protect the harbor, and are soon lying at the pier.
A lady once told me that when she had been in Newport
thirty years ago she had sometimes made the trip to Block
Island, and that passengers on landing were met by women
and children who rushed into the water with extended hands
to beg for pennies. No picturesque beggars greeted our
arrival, but a crowd of rival drivers and hotel-agents deaf-
ened us by their shouts as each recommended some special
inn, of which there are some six or seven, large and small,
all said to be well kept. Dinner being secondary to sight-
seeing with us just then, we quickly secured a large covered
beach-wagon drawn by a pair of stout horses, and were soon
on our way to Beacon Hill, at the eastern end of the island,
about three miles fromthe landing. And what a charming
drive it was! The surface of the island is undulating in every
direction, as if a sea, swelling in short, confused, and cross-
ing waves, had suddenly hardened into dry land, so that we
had indeed an up-and-down-hill way of it. But every ascent
was a fresh delight in the glorious sea view that lay spread
out before us, and every descent recalled us to a new and
more lively appreciation of the roadside beauty. The white
flowers of the wild carrot mingled prettily with the green
grass ; everywhere flamed the yellow glory of the golden-
rod, while patches of purple gerardia glowed with the splen-
did coloring that only the salt air can give. A long, hard
pull brought us to the summit of Beacon Hill. Turning
inland, we saw the hilly surface of the island, with its flowery
covering, divided by walls built of stones, everywhere so
abundant, and looking like a vast chess-board spread out at
our feet. For a moment we wonder whether we have

286 The Western.

passed with Alice ‘* through the looking-glass,’’ and look
to see the inventive White Knight or the Anglo-Saxon mes-
sengers come upthe hill, and fancy the sea-gulls’ cries to be
the wailing of the White Queen over sorrows yet to come.
We turn our gaze and see the breakers dashing upon the
long white beach and against the rocky ways. The sea is
sparkling with light and glowing in green and azure hues.
The driver points out Point Judith to the north-east and
Montauk to the south, while Watch Hill ,rises between.
We wish it were night, that perchance we might hear the
shouts of the harbor boys, or see the weird spectacle of the
blazing Palatine drift over the darkening seas, and yet,
after all, we would hardly take these ghostly possibilities
in exchange for the magical beauties of that splendid noon-
day. Sea and sky and field combine with the soft, delicious
air to enchant our senses, till we scarcely knew if we are
really on the earth or in some ‘ sunny isle of Eden,’’ some
vale of Avalon, where fairies dwell.

The voice of the driver recalls us to every-day life and
its commonplaces, as he informs us that time is flying and
our dinner waits. So down the long hill we wind, lamenting,
like Lord Ullin, over the joys we needs must lose. We turn
aside from the road by which we came, and skirt along the
low shore of a large lake, one of some hundred, we are told,
that are to be found upon the island. This, the largest,
covers a surface of about one thotisand acres, and lies close
to the sea, being separated from it by a wall of rock, which
could be broken through without much difficulty, thereby
affording a harbor where a fleet might safely ride at
anchor. The waves of the mimic sea sparkle like diamonds.
Great cliffs of clayey soil rise by the roadside, which, as else-
where, is bright with flowers. We are enraptured at the
sight, when the driver completes our happiness by making a
sharp turn from the way and driving over wet sand, beach-
grass, and pebbly shore straight to the very edge of the sea
itself. The great white-crested waves thunder upon the

The Island of Manisees. 287

shore ; the gulls whirl screaming above our heads; the salt
breath of the ocean is borne to us upon the breeze. We
pass a most picturesque group of common occurrence here,
where sea-weed is precious as a fertilizer, and where the
entire beach is divided into ** claims,’’ like the gold-fields
of the West. Two men in rough garments and huge boots,
that seem almost capable of seven-league strides, have just

been loading a cart with the wealth which the beautiful sea
so freely cast at their feet. The two-wheeled cartis rudely
made of rough boards, and is drawn by two strong oxen,
almost black of hue, who stand patient and quiet on the wet
sand while the waters ripple about their feet. The heaped-
up sea-weed hangs dripping over its sides and the long
brown ribbons of kelp, with their crimped and fluted edges,
trail down upon the sand. It is hard to leave so much
beauty behind us, but it is beyond dispute that the sail, the
drive, and the air have made us most unpoetically hungry,
and when we are safely deposited at the door of the Ocean
View Hotel we are quite in the mood: to enjoy the excellent
dinner which is there provided for @s.

The light-houses, with their towering cliffs and superb
lights, we are compelled to leave unvisited, and we long in
vain for the mysterious chasms of the interior of the island
and the glories of the surf upon its southern shore. The
whistle of the Monohansett warns us not to linger, and we
walk down the little pier with great reluctance and set forth
upon our homeward voyage. We fancy wé can sympathize
with early explorers; that we enter into the feelings of
Columbus and the Cabots; that charmed as we were the
Dutch Block and the English Gosnold when their little ships
came first into these then lonely waters, unfurrowed as vet
by white men’s keels, and when no friendly sails glittered in
the sunlight. Point Judith treats her departing even more
inhospitably than her coming guests, and the long ocean
swell drives many unfortunates to seek shelter for their
woes in the depths of the cabin; but we are proof against

Vol. 7—No. 3 19

288 The Western.

this peril of the sea, and find only pleasure in this touch of
the deep seas.

We then can enjoy our homeward voyage, and while re-
calling the pleasures of the day that is past can snatch those
of the present hour. We see the cliffs of Gay Head glow
more brightly under ‘‘ the western waves of ebbing day ;”’
we hear the ‘* Groaning Buoy ”’ wail a dolorous salute in
honor of our safe return, which is evidently something
quite unléoked-for, and we wish we had more newspapers
for the keeper of the lonely light-boat. We pass the
islands now and speed over the bay; the fortresses on
Clarke’s Point and the Fairhaven shore suffer us to go by
unchallenged, and ere long we are safely landed at the
wharf, enraptured with the pleasures of our voyage of dis-
covery. Annie WALL.

Current Notes.

CURRENT NOTES.

Pustic education has finally attracted the attention of those who
seem to ‘‘ draw upon their imagination for their facts, and upon
their memory for their wit.’”, Many who because of their social
standing command attention have indulged in mistaking their
hypotheses for fundamental truths, and their off-hand suggestions
as an excellent substitute for any study of a problem of consider-
able complexity. It is uniformly assumed by these writers that the
public schools are charity schools and not community schools, and
this assumption determines the improvements suggested ; improve-
ments which uniformly contemplate the compulsory ‘ sticking of
the shoemaker to his last.’” In a recent number of the New
England Journal of Education we are informed that Charles Francis
Adams, Richard Grant White, Gail Hamilton, and others, are mis-
taken about there being any reasonable cause for complaint about
the intellectual work of the public schools ; it is the morals of the
public schools that need criticism. To be ‘sure, the writer is
not known as a sufficient authority, but perhaps this makes no dif-
ference. Now it may be possible that all the men and women who
support, patronize, and conduct the public schools of Boston, and
of Massachusetts in general, may be blinded by their zeal,.and
unobservant of defects so glaring that the casual visitor, or the
writer who can comprehend his problem without personal obser-
vation, cannot fail to see them. It may be that the reputation of
Massachusetts people for intelligence, correctness of conduct, and
general ability has no solid foundation, but has been ‘* worked up.’’
It may be that only the pupils of the private schools earn reputa-
tion for the State and that the ignorant, immoral, and thriftless
products of the public schools shine only by borrowed light. All
these things may be, and some one of them must be, in order to lend
any significance to these various ‘‘ criticisms by friends of the
schools,’’ for should they all be untrue the elaborate structures
built upon these assumptions must tumble by their own weight.
For our own part, we have no reason to believe any of these to be
facts; we have no reason not to suppose that the schools of Mas-
sachusetts, while not perfect, are yet more perfect than any other

290 The Western.

public institution. Years of study of educational institutions, and
of educational means, together with a personal education gained
wholly in leading private schools, and in Eastern colleges, entitle
us to protest (humbly) against such methods of settling important
social questions. Granting the variety of aims that may be sug-
gested for elementary education, we suggest that the one most
susceptible of justification is the gaining possession of one’s
mental faculties together with the idea that one is to use these
faculties when trained in the way most congenial and most pro-
ductive. We veuture to hint that any well-regulated course of
study finds its justification in promoting such ends; that any rea-
sonable discipline vindicates itself by producing such mental habits
as will insure these ends; and we dare say that any one who will
reflect upon his own career will be satisfied that the accumulation
of valuable facts is one of the least results of school education,
private even more than public. Any test that would be accepted
by a scientific investigator may be applied to our schools as a
whole, and it will yield but one result, while to the crude specula-
tions of men, eminent perhaps in other directions, no reasonable
institution can be expected to conform.

Earty in May the Museum of Fine Arts is to be formally
opened. Mr. Wayman Crow has passed a long life in bestowing
intelligent benefactions, but none of them are so striking as this
museum. Under the able direction of Prof. Ives, the value of the
museum to St. Louis and country tributary thereto can hardly be
overestimated, and it seems to us that few events have had greater
significance than the provision of a permanent stimulus to the art-
feeling of the city.

In the death of George Eliot the literary world has suffered a
loss whose magnitude it is not yet qualified toestimate. ‘That the
writer of ‘‘ Romola,’’ ‘*‘ Adam Bede,’’ ‘* Daniel Deronda,’’ and
** Middlemarch ’’ was the ablest and best instructed woman that
has appeared among English authors, no one will doubt; that
George Eliot has a permanent place in the history of nineteenth
century literature seems beyond question; but that her success as
a raconteur is less than that of many a minor writer is, we presume,
easily susceptible of proof. However, George Eliot’s life was not
incomplete, although unfinished, and she needs no monument other
than that which she herself has erected. With the criticism upon

Current Notes. 291

her private life we have no sympathy, for, unlike Godwin, she in-
dulged in no attempts at propagandism and her literary work in no
way offends against the most conventional views of life. Having
attained fame and wealth, and having accomplished work well
worth the doing, surely she might claim for herself that privacy
which others Secure by their obscurity.

THE present political situation of America and England is calcu-
lated to draw out the best of the New York Nation, and conse-
quently its columns are uniformly of. interest. Gladstone’s posi-
tion in regard both to the Boers and to the Irish is well calculated
to awaken the most genuine admiration of all; but to those
whose acquaintance with political history is extensive the novelty
and remarkableness of his standing ground is marked: to those
who without understanding the necessity for the ordinary political
devices still believe that the polished trickster is not the flower of
the political plant, Mr. Gladstone’s success is a matter for quiet
exultation.

Dr. N. J. Morrison, as president of Drury College, has issued
a memorial chronicle of the visit of the National Congregational
Council, and, a review of the aims and results of the college being
necessarily a part of any public ceremony, we are enabled to see
the extent and value of the work done by Dr. Morrison and his
colleagues. These results are in themselves of interest to those
who wish well to all educational enterprises, but our reason for
special mention is the interest that such educational institutions
should have for all who intelligently seek the healthy development
of their native or adopted States. Missouri has been misrepre-
sented largely because her people have not had control of the
recognized organs of public opinion, and because her people have
been too much engaged in the pursuits of peaceful industry to care
about the more striking but somewhat doubtful rewards of political
eminence. It has become so much a principle of politics to disre-
gard means, if the end be attained, that men have not hesitated to
asperse the State to which they owe all their success, and they have
found nothing so cheap as success attained by ministering to ante-
bellum prejudices in regard to Missouri as a slave State. Institu-
tions like Drury College, the State University at Columbia, Wash-
ington University, and several other colleges, not only serve their
direct educational purpose, but in all ways correct opinion abroad

292 The Western.

and strengthen the best of home interests. Missouri has, through
the action of the Legislature just adjourned, made provision for its
educational interests which ought to vindicate her from the easily
received charges of voluntary barbarism. Fortunately, however,
we do not depend upon the groundless opinions of our neighbors,
and as such institutions as Drury College continue their work, those
who conduct them may feel assured that the harvest is evidently
ripening, even if the neighbors do not care to be convinced.

Pror. AtpHevus Hyatt, one of our most successful and earnest
students of the natural sciences, announces through a circular that
he will conduct a ‘*Sea-side Laboratory’’ at Annisquam. The
term will extend from June 5th to September 15th, and the mini-
mum of attendance is fixed at two weeks. The tuition fees are $3
for two weeks or less, and $1 per week for periods exceeding one
month. We recommend all teachers interested in natural sciences
to avail themselves of an opportunity which we know to be at once
valuable and rare.

A Sr. Louis public scarcely needs to be told that the lectures
which Mr. Wm. T. Harris has been delivering at the Washington
University have been profoundly interesting. Indeed, Mr. Harris
makes any subject profound, because he always begins at the
centre of the universe for an explanation of things. The lectures
on Hegel have been the finest interpretation of the great philoso-
phers, for, alas! we all need an interpreter, a sort of Moses to go
up to the mountain and report the divine vision to us who stand
below. The lecture on Hegel’s idea of art and literature was
received with a quiet enthusiasm. Mr. Harris said that the
French translator, Benard, who had no real comprehension of
Hegel’s philosophy, was sure that the Aésthetics would live as an
immortal contribution toart. Beginning at the beginning, Hegel’s
idea is that the soul, the reason, the divine in man, is conscious
of itself, and conscious of external objects — that is, of nature.
Being conscious, the soul thus recognizes in nature its own reflec-
tion — that which has the form of the eternal. With this expla-
nation, we have a rational beginning for all art. With the first
recognition that external phenomena in some way reflect the
divine nature of man, we have the awakening of the soul. Art
makes use of these natural forms to express that which is more
than natural; it uses those phenomena which seem most to bear

Current Notes. .293

the image of the eternal. Mr. Harris then said something about
sun-myths and the whole class of interpretation which contents
itself with pursuing the myths of early literatures and religions
hack to the rise and setting of the sun, the change of seasons,
and innumerable other aspects of nature. If all art and_litera-
ture could be reduced to a sun-myth, how cheap would they
become. But it is this recognition of the form divine in nature
which is the only explanation which explains. ‘That man finds in
changes of day and night and of seasons something which pro-
foundly reminds him of the mystery of his own life —this is the
reason why all savage nations use these forms in their early art
and literature. Mr. Harris then gave Hegel’s classification of
art, based on absolute distinctions of the content. It seems need-
less to give these here in detail, because the Asthetics has been
so well translated into English by Mr. W. M. Bryant. Still, if
our readers can fill this skeleton with life, perhaps it may be well
to give the merest outline. Mr. Harris gave three forms of Rea-
son: Repetition, symmetry, and harmony. Repetition is mechani-
cal, and has only the element of similiarity. Symmetry has like-
ness with the added element difference — as, for instance, where
the parts of a design balance, but do not- repeat each other.
Harmony is an internal likeness with external difference ; hence is
a higher form than mere repetition or than symmetry. Art he
divided into architecture, sculpture, painting, music, and poetry,
in the order of their independence of matter as the material of
expression. There are three periods of art: the symbolic, which
is found in all Eastern art, and may be assigned to Asia; classic
art, which belongs preéminently to Greece; and romantic, or
Christian art. In symbolic art, the meaning struggles to find
expression in matter, but is unable to disclose itself completely ;
hence it deals in mysteries and riddles. Classic art finds com-
plete expression in harmony and symmetry, and announces free-
dom through its mastery of matter. Romantic art is the culmi-
nation ; it aspires beyond nature ; the soul no longer finds adequate
expression in matter; romantic art points to religion, which is
higher than art. We do not think that we have been able to do
more than barely suggest what Mr. Harris told us of Hegel; but
perhaps even so meagre a report will have a value to those who
were so unfortunate as not to hear for themselves.

294 The Western.

Tuomas CaRty_e, after a life of eighty-six years, has just closed
his career, and, while he had exceeded his three-score years and
ten, many were rendered serious by the announcement of his
death. While Carlyle’s position during our civil war alienated
many of his warm admirers; while his later work has not been so
acceptable as his earlier; while it is impossible not to perceive at
a glance Carlyle’s imperfections as a stylist: yet few of the many
able literary men contemporary with Carlyle have produced effects
so permanent and so healthful. It has been said that Scott’s
poetry would make a very coward fearless. Surely it will not be
denied that acquaintance with Car!yle’s work must permanently
strengthen repulsion towards the false and base, and attraction
to the true and ennobling. Certainly Carlyle’s most significant
memorial will prove to be the influence stamped upon our times
by his work, and whose effects are strongest and most evident in
the United States.

Tae Fesruary Nortn American Review is of more than
usual interest. Gen. Grant as a writer for the magazines would
necessarily command attention, but his article upon ‘* the Nicara-
gua Canal,’’ while devoid of literary grace, is noticeably in good
taste and forcibly written. Oliver Wendell Holmes, under the
title ** The Pulpit and the Pew,’’ writes an article which seems to
have for its object the emphasizing of the enfranchisement of the
laity. Judge Tourgee, having ‘‘ waked [or slept] and found him-
self famous,”’ is not at all inclined to lose any honor through sloth,
and, having become the accepted exponent of the Southern feel-
ing and of the judicial statesmanship of the East, sets forth the
present situation under the significant title of ‘‘Aaron’s Rod in
Politics.’’ James Freeman Clarke, in a somewhat extended arti-
cle, amuses himself by turning the tables upon those who question
the authorship of Shakespeare, and humorously inquires, ‘* Did
Shakespeare write Bacon’s Works?’’ Walt Whitman discusses
‘** The Poetry of the Future,’’ and claims that *‘ Democracy waits
the coming of its bards in silence and in twilight.’’

Tae Catrnoric Wortp For Fesruary contains an article by
Rev. Isaac T. Hecker, ‘‘ Catholics and Protestants Agreeing on
the School Question.’’ There is every reason why those who are
interested in public schools should read such articles that they
may fairly understand the positions of those who differ with them.

Book Reviews.

BOOK REVIEWS.

Tae Durizs op Women. By Frances Power Cosse. Boston: George H.
Ellis, 141 Franklin Street. 1881.

Miss Frances Power Cobbe became known to the world twenty
or more years ago as the writer of a book called ‘‘ Intuitive
Morals,’’ which was declared by eminent authority to be the
ablest ethical treatise in the English language. This praise is
not exclusive. As Miss Cobbe states in her introduction to
‘** Intuitive Morals,’’ her book only popularizes the ‘‘ Grundle-
gung der Sitten’’ of Kant, of whom she is an enthusiastic dis-
ciple, and therefore may easily be set above the work of Paley,
or even Adam Smith, or any other previous English writer upon
Morals. The positivists, of course, will dissent from the judg-
ment.

Though Miss Cobbe cannot be regarded as an originator, it is
only fair to say that ‘‘ Intuitive Morals’’ did the greatest credit
to its young writer. When one thinks of a girl scarcely beyond
her teens wandering in such bristling thickets of uncouth verbiage
as those must encounter who would hunt down the thoughts of the
abstruse German, the image of some hapless Spenserian heroine
suggests itself: —

“Each trembling leafe and whistling wind she heares,
As, ghastly long, her hair on end doth reare.”’

Miss Cobbe’s type, however, is not the feeble Una, needing the
guardianship of the lion and the Red-cross Knight, but vigorous
Britomart, whose enchanted lance is adequate to all encounters,
even in the ‘* grieseliest’’ tangles. Her book showed wide ac-
quaintance with the literature of ethics of all times and lands;
better than all, a fine power of independent judgment, which was
not at all trammelled by the weight of her accumulated erudition.

In the interval since the appearance of ‘‘ Intuitive Morals ’”’
Miss Cobbe’s pen has been varionsly busy. Topics light and
grave have occupied her, and she has found energy to work
aggressively in other ways in behalf of various reforms. Of late
years she has been the head and front of the anti-vivisection

296 The Western.

movement, where her course, if extravagant, has been at any
rate full of whole-hearted humanity, and has had the countenance
of many of the best and ablest men in England. Now that Har-
riet Martineau and George Eliot are gone, we believe there is no
woman in England whose title is better to the first place among
British female writers. :

In ** Duties of Women ’’ we remark at once the straightforward
vigor with which Miss Cobbe’s ideas are presented. Her purpose
is too earnest to admit of finical grace. There are, however,
elegance, perfect clearness, a prevailing cheerfulness sometimes
rising into pleasant humor, with now and then an outburst of
scorn. At the beginning she declares that there is not one code
of duties for men and another for women — thrusting indignantly
at the Miltonic Eve: —

“God is thy law — thou mine.
He for God only —she for God in him.”

In brief terms she lays a deep Kantian foundation for the prac-
tical discussion she proposes, referring to her elaborate treatise for
details. She deals a masculine blow at the ‘ utilitarian ’’ mor-
alists. Men are to do right because bidden by an everlasting

law, — the welfare and happiness of other men being an incident,
not the final cause. Her three divisions of duty are: First, Re-
ligious ; second, Personal; third, Social. The first division she
does not touch, because difference of sex does not affect the
application of its rules. ‘To personal duties she gives but one
chapter, because here again, for the most part, the considerations
that can be presented apply to male and female alike. ‘To social
duties, on the other hand, four of the six lectures are devoted,
because the requirements for the two sexes in many cases differ,
as man and woman stand together in the family, in society, and
the State.

Miss Cobbe’s allegiance to the ‘*‘ categorical imperative ’’ causes
her boldly to take positions which the school of Herbert Spencer
would often condemn. Personal duty, although disposed of in a
single lecture, is to be set above social duty. The purpose of life
is the perfecting of individual character. Where, then, in any
case, a collision arises, the observing of some rule of personal duty
bringing to pass harm to others, the rule must still be inflexibly
observed. Judith does wrong, who sacrifices her chastity to Hol-

Book Reviews. 297

ofernes that she may find opportunity to rid her country of an
oppressor. So, too, the mother in ** Les Miserables’’ who com-
mits the same sin for money to feed her starving children. No
good to society will justify a lie. In fact, Miss Cobbe would
declare uncompromisingly that the abstract justice must be done,
though the heavens fell, to the destruction of the world.

As the lectures proceed, the high abstract ground of the intro-
duction is abandoned. In particular, in the lectures relating to
social duty we have the homeliest every-day themes discussed in
the most matter-of-fact way. For the most part, it is capital
doctrine, admirably put, though now and then one will find the
eye-brows lifting, — as, for instance, at the defence of the phrase
** Not at home,’’ as used by ladies denying themselves to callers : —

‘** The cordial spirit of English society long ago established the
conventional phrase of ‘Not at home,’ as if courteously to imply
that even in our homes we should never shut the door on our
friends; and this old-fashioned formula has for a century, I
should imagine, been understood by everybody to signify pre-
cisely the same as if we said, ‘ Does not receive.’ What, then,
has the question of veracity to do with the matter? Words, it
cannot too often be repeated, have no absolute meaning, only the
meaning we agree to attach to them and in which we know they
will be understood. If we use words literally exact. but con-
veying, as we know, a false impression, we incur the guilt of a
lie, — often of a peculiarly base kind of a lie. If, on the con-
trary, we use a conventional phrase, not exactly or literally de-
scribing the fact, but conveying, as we know, a true impression,
we shall incur no guilt, we have told no lie.’’

How forcible Miss Cobbe’s championship of the rights of the
lower animals is, the following correct and pathetic passage will
show : —

‘* The poor house-dog, perhaps some loving-hearted little Skye
or noble old mastiff, or retriever, condemned for life to the penal-
ties which we should think too severe for the worst of malefactors ;
chained up by the neck through all the long, bright summer days,
under a burning sun, with its water-trough unfilled for days, or
through the winter’s frost in some dark, sunless corner, freezing
with cold and in agonies of rheumatism for want of straw or the
chance of warming itself at a fire or by a run in the snow! And

298 The Western.

all this is a reward for the poor brute’s fidelity! His longing to
bound over the fresh grass, expressed so affectingly by his leaps
and bounds when we approach his miserable dungeon, is not
merely a longing for his natural pleasure, but for that which is
indispensable to his health — namely, exercise and the power to
eat grass; and, if refused, he very soon falls into disease; his
beautiful coat becomes mangy and red ; he is irritable and becomes
revolting to everybody, and the nurse cries to the children, who
were his only friends and visitors, ‘Don’t go near that dog!’ I
say it deliberately, the mistress of a house in whose yard a dog is
thus kept is guilty of a very great sin; and till she has taken care
that the dog has his daily exercise and water, and that the cat and
the fowls and every other sentient creature under her roof are well
and kindly treated, she may as well, for shame’s sake, give up
thinking she is fulfilling her duties by reading prayers and sub-
scribing to missions.’’

Miss Cobbe’s concluding lecture has for its subject ** Woman as a
Citizen of the State.’’ She is too bold and strong not to demand
for her sex a place side by side with man as regards duties and
privileges, but we find in her treatment of the topic only the
courageous, uncompromising assertion of a just claim — nothing
extreme or unreasonable. She asserts for women the possession of
administrative and governing power, and bases the claim upon his-
tory giving in the opening pages an interesting résumé of facts.
The obligations and privileges of citizenship are not for all women,
and here occurs the following well-put passage : —

‘* So immense are the claims on a mother — physical claims on
her bodily and brain vigor, and moral claims on her heart and
thoughts — that she cannot, I believe, meet them all and find any
large margin beyond for other cares and work. She serves the
community in the best and highest way it is possible to do, by giv-
ing birth to healthy children, whose physical strength has not been
defrauded, and to whose moral and mental nurture she can give the
whole of her thoughts. That is her function, public and private
at once — the profession which she has adopted. No higher can be
found; and, in my judgment, it is a misfortune to all concerned
when a woman, under such circumstances, is either driven by
poverty, or lured by any generous ambition, to add to that great
‘ Profession of a Matron’ any other systematic work, either as
bread-winner to the family, or as a philanthropist or politician.’’

Book Reviews. 299

The tone of the lectures will be sufficiently indicated by these
selections. They are the work of a strong, wise, great-hearted
woman, and, though addressed to an English audience, are just as
appropriate to the woman of America. The book is sure to work
great good. J. K. Hosmer.
Tue Spe.i-Bounp Fippter. A Norse Romance. By Kristorrer Janson.

Translated by AuBEeR Forestier. Chicago: S.C. Griggs & Co. 1880.

Norway, as we are informed by Prof. Rasmus B. Anderson,
who furnishes the introduction to this story, is resolutely at work
in developing its own language and literature. Kristoffer Janson,
now thirty-nine years of age, is, perhaps, the most eminent in
literature of Norway’s sons. In his own country he is known
as poet, dramatist, and novelist, and ** The Spell-Bound Fiddler ”’
will introduce many readers and students to Norwegian national
life. Prof. Anderson is an American representative of the Scan-
dinavians, and is well-known through his ‘*‘ Norse Mythology,”’
‘*The Younger Edda,’’ and other works which proclaim the earnest
and successful student. We commend ‘* The Spell-Bound Fid-
dler’’ to the attention of our readers. Eprror.

SHAKESPEARE. A Critical Study of his Mind and Art. Epwarp Downsn,
LL.D. New York: Harper & Brothers. 1881.

We are sincerely glad that the public appreciate Prof. Dowden’s
work sufficiently to justify an American house in issuing an edi-
tion, and we are equally pleased to observe that Prof. Dowden
appreciates the fact that this will make his work better known to
the American public, even if he cannot avoid the reflection that
his pecuniary return is not very direct. Prof. Dowden represents
a new school of criticism, and to our mind it is one of high rank
and value. His excellence as a student of Shakespeare has been
illustrated in his various works which Belong to Shakespeariana,
and which have all found hearty welcome, even with the review-
ers. ‘To those who may not know the general character of the
work, a few words from the preface will be acceptable: ‘* The
attempt made in this volume to connect the study of Shakespeare’s
works with an inquiry after the personality of the writer, and to
observe, as far as is possible, in its several stages, the growth of
his intellect and character from youth to full maturity, distin-
guishes the work from the greater number of preceding criticisms
of Shakespeare.’’ The work is now furnished at so small a price

300 The Western.

that it should be owned by every reader of the great dramatist,
for no one can fail to find Prof. Dowden full of suggestiveness.
Epiror.

PLouGHED UnpDER. New York: Fords, Howard & Hulbert. 1881.

Under this title the anonymous author presents in story form
the wrongs which have been perpetrated against the red man —
wrongs most undeniable, even if they be wrongs neither suscep-
tible of remedy nor likely to find any correction. ‘The book is
true to its own aim, and exhibits knowledge and power. It sug-
gests a means whereby an inexpensive justice might be done the
remnant of the once powerful tribes and inay ultimately exercise
an influence beyond that of the novelist. EpIror.
Tue Youncer Eppa. By Rasmus B. ANDERSON. Chicago: S. C. Griggs

& Co. 1880.

In his preface Prof. Anderson states that ‘* the present volume
contains all of ‘The Younger Edda’ that can possibly be of any
importance to English readers. In fact, it gives more than has
ever before been presented in any translation into English, Ger-
man, or any of the modern Scandinavan tongues.’’ Heretofore
any knowledge of ‘‘ The Younger Edda’’ has been attainable only
through Mallet’s ‘* Northern Antiquities,’” and Prof. Anderson, a
competent judge, pronounces this presentation defective. Prof.
Anderson’s reputation for careful work is such that the many
who have discovered the significance of the Edda literature will
welcome this product of the author’s industry. At the present
time in St. Louis, an interest has been excited by the lectures of
Dr. W. T. Harris, and those who have had his direction will be

glad to know that through Prof. Anderson’s translation they will
have an opportunity for prosecuting the work which they have
begun. Epiror.

Tue Scrence oF Minp. By Jonun Bascom. New York: G. P. Putnam’s
Sons. 1881.

Dr. Bascom seems to be an indefatigable worker, for, in addi-
tion to his onerous duties in connection with the University of
Wisconsin, he publishes book after book in a way that might well
lay to rest the idea that freedom from the ordinary cares of life
is either an essential condition or even a favorable condition of
authorship. But, to our mind, the most noticeable feature about
Dr. Bascom’s works is that they are evidently written from mo-

Book Reviews. 301

tives far higher than that of personal aggrandizement. They
impress the reader strongly with the idea (somewhat Western, we
admit) that the work to be done is so great in amount and so
imperative in its nature; that those willing and even partially
qualified to do such work are, in a new country, necessarily so
few; that those who can appreciate the necessity, and who are
even partially qualified to minister to it, must do what they may
for the interests which do not directly bear a moneyed value.
Of course such a combination of daily labor, and a further use of
one’s resting-time for the beginning and fostering of enterprises
spiritually valuable, may seem very crude to those in the East,
who simply refer such matters to men of large means and elegant
leisure; of course any adaptation of one’s work to the audience
directly addressed will give abundant opportunity for formal
criticism; of course the idea that it is better to get valuable
work done, although the methods may be crude, than to use
approved methods and’ fail of the result, is ridiculous to those
who are in position to fitly and tastefully manage their enterprises,
literary or other; but the choice seems to lie between the ridicule
of those who should, from their own claims, be too clear-sighted
to not distinguish the man from his garb, and the neglect of work
valid in itself and imperative in its necessity. A distinguished
editor of Shakespeare, upon finding a Western girl not ignorant
of the existence of the great dramatist, inquired, ** What do they
want of Shakespeare out West?’’ This question arises frequently
in the minds of our relatives at the East, and is another of the
many illustrations of the graceful courtesies and profound intel-
ligence sometimes to be met with in what is satirically called
‘* The Republic of Letters.’’

This apparent digression has direct reference to Dr. Bascom’s
book if, as we believe,.he fairly represents the excellences and
defects of Western scholarship. With the fullest of Eastern
training, with the profoundest respect for what the proper author-

ities indorse, Dr. Bascom, we assume, has not drivelled away his
mental power in such a search after style as should place him
beyond reproach, but which would also deprive him of the audi-
ence which he wished most directly to affect, because to them
necessarily ‘* the getting of something done’’ was of more imme-
diate moment than elegance of manner. Passing by the style,

302 The Western.

the most careless reader of Dr. Bascom’s works would feel that
the author was an honest, earnest, capable student of his subject;
a student wise enough to acquaint himself with the progress of
the world, and brave enough to express views which he believed
would prove helpful to others; too intent upon his work as a
moral duty to think much of himself except as responsible for
his efforts. Such a situation is Western, and, like the Puritanism
of which it is an outgrowth, it offers points of view that are
ridiculous to those who have developed so far as to replace an
honest earnestness by an elegance of culture which regards all
ends but personal success as equally indifferent. But while we
may freely admit that it hurts one to find how much of the
teachings of ‘the world are practically ‘* bunkum ”’ or artists’ ma-
terial, those who, through youth, inexperience, or incapacity for
belief, take life seriously, have, after all, a support which does
much to make them forget the jeers and gibes of their judges.
We have given our reasons for identifving the book with the
author. Any one who has read one of Dr. Bascom’s works will
know the stand-point from which he studies mental philosophy.

Epiror.

An EncycLopepiA OF THE EVIDENCES. vy J. W. Monser.

John Burns. 1880.

By the evidences is to be understood the testimony which dis-
tineuished men have borne to the truth of such religious subjects
as God. Creation. Design, Science and Religion, Miracles, Provi-
dence. Moral Evil, Man, The Bible, Infidelity, Ch ist and Chris-
tianity, Immortality and the Resurrection, Retribution. |The
object of the author is to at once strengthen and liberalize the
popular sentiment; his method, as has been suggested, is bringing
together the varied statements of different thinkers. Upon such
a subject us lnmortality, for example. the witnesses cited are
Jowett. Gibbon, Blackie, Westcott, Christlieb, Horne, Errett,
Joseph Cook, Boardinan, Goldwin Smith, Boune, Alger, Carpen-
ter, Sir Humphrey Davy, Emerson, Addison, Sherlock.

Mr. Monser has certainly vindicated his claim upon public
attention, and we can see no reason why, in a State in which, as

in most Southern States, there continues a popular interest in

religious topics, Mr. Monser should not receive both elements of

Book Reviews. 303

a successful author’s reward: the satisfaction of ministering to
a want really felt, and of receiving a material return for his
labor. Epiror.
THE BEAUTIFUL AND THE SUBLIME. An Analysis of these Emotions and a

Determination of the Objectivity of Beauty. By Joun Srernrort Kep-

NEY. New York: G: P. Putnam’s Sons. 1880.

It is by no means a common fault that the very deliberation
with which a book is prepared should be carried to the extent of
actually lessening the effectiveness of the work as a whole. And
yet we can scarcely doubt that such is the case with the book
before us. The author seems to have so long entertained and so
frequently revolved in his own mind the thought here presented,
that its very familiarity to him has led him to presume too far
upon the ease with which it is to be seized by other minds. We
believe this to be the explanation of the extreme condensation of
statement bordering more than once upon obscurity, for which
the work is remarkable.

Nevertheless, few books of the time contain thought that will
so well compensate the earnest student for the trouble of over-
coming such difficulties of style as are here found.

We will attempt to indicate as briefly as possible the funda-
mental conceptions of the work. The author recognizes the ne-
cessity of setting out from presuppositions. And yet he plainly
indicates that he considers it possible to set forth in complete
form a philosophy of the world as a whole, which philosophy shall
account for all its presuppositions. We believe, also, from the
general tone of his work, that the author looks to the absolutely
Rational or Spiritual as the ultimate substance and cause of the
world. The ultimate philosophy is, then, a universal Logic which
presents the fundamental forms or modes of the infinite, divine
Thought or Reason that forms the world and is the world. For
in that Thought and through that Thought all things move and
have their being.

We need not, therefore, be startled when the author tells us
that ‘* physical perfection ’’ is included as an element in ‘* every
ideal of the perfect life.’
mode

>

For the physical is after all only a
and that the lowest, though an essential mode—of the

spiritual. The total universe is a totality only by including all —
the lowest as well as the highest — of its phases.

But again thought, emotion,-and will are also essential ele-
Vol. 7—No. 3 20

304 The Western.

ments in every ideal of the perfect life; and such ideal can only
be realized through the harmonious union and blending of these
elements. But the author includes emotion and will under the
one designation of the moral element. Thus *‘ the three elements
of our humanity ’’ are: the physical, the intellectual, and the moral.

Now it is the destiny of spirit (as Hegel has finely said) to
struggle upward out of nature into spirituality. But this is not
to announce an essential antagonism between nature and spirit.
On the contrary, ‘‘nature’’ is but the unconscious mode of spirit ;
and, in struggling up out of nature, spirit only arises out of its

state of unconsciousness, wherein it has been dominated by physi-

cal forces, into the state of complete consciousness, wherein it, in
turn, dominates the forces of nature and puts them to its own
uses. The higher the grade of consciousness, the more perfect
the power to wield the forces pertaining to the realm of the uncon-
scious. But again, this intensified consciousness involves the
heightening of all the qualities or modes of the spirit. Increase
in the vigor and subtlety of thought (at least in the ideally unfold-
ing spirit) must go hand in hand with growing refinement of the
emotional nature and with continuously added strength of will. In
other words, there will be ever greater capacity to form lofty ideals,
greater delight in contemplating them, and greater power to real-
ize them. Thus, through the evolution of its own powers, the
spirit approximates more and more nearly to the character of a
creator — becomes more and more like the universal, divine Mind.

Such are the fundamental characteristics and destiny (or ideal)
ef humanity, and it is only for a being like man that the Beau-
tiful and Sublime can exist. It will be impossible here to trace
out the analysis of these phases of the spiritual world as given in
the book under consideration, though the central point in each
may be briefly stated. Beauty is the product of the free, unob-
structed play of the spirit in the realization of a legitimate ideal.
Such product is a genuine creation of the spirit, and charms by its
completeness. The sublime, on the contrary, is realized when a
lofty ideal is struggling toward its realization in the midst of vast
opposing forces. ‘The product of such struggle is sublime in that
it bears the marks of the struggle. The ideal, though mighty,
has not been able to perfectly unfold itself into reality; and the
contemplation of the vast, rugged, imperfect product awakens the
emotion of the Sublime along with the conception of the conflict

Book Reviews. 305

through which the realization of the ideal was thus far achieved.
But the more nearly the ideal is achieved the more nearly does the
product approximate to the beautiful; just as, on the contrary,
the vaster the forces in play in the perfect products of the beauti-
ful, the more do those products involve also the element of the
sublime. And this proves equally true at whatever stage of the
spirit’s activity the elements of the sublime and the beautiful
may make their appearance.

The sublime, as here defined, opens up the way to the explana-
tion of evil as the obstructive and destructive forces that oppose
the realization of all legitimate ideals. Indeed, Dr. Kedney goes
so far as to say that ‘‘in the human world, as well as in nature,
while the creative and regulative forces are for the most part
beautiful, the destructive forces are sublime; and sublime just
in proportion as they woo, and yet task imagination to live in
them.’’ ‘To this we are compelled to add that the evil as being
destructive is the irrational (even the anti-rational), and that the
sublifme is a lofty element of the truly spiritual and rational. So
far, therefore, from considering the destructive forces as sublime,
we are unable to regard the sublime as other than that grandly
elevated, intensely serious mode which is assumed by constructive

force, physical or spiritual, engaged in the realization of a legiti-
mate ideal in spite of all obstruction.

We must also take exception to Dr. Kedney’s claim that the
physical is an essential element of the beautiful and the sublime
as such. To art, indeed, the physical or sensuous element is
indispensable. But art itself cannot exhaust or express all that
is beautiful and sublime in the world. Beyond the realm of the
picturable extends the infinite realm of pure thought, which,
nevertheless, is richer in content than is the realm of art; and the
truth that is unpicturable is none the less charged with the
elements of beauty and sublimity than is the truth that appeals to
the sensuous imagination. ‘The harmonies of the infinite Logic
of the world are no less charming to him who has learned to
appreciate them than are the grandest harmonies of the great
composers to the most finely trained musical ear. And after
reading Dr. Kedney’s book we appeal confidently to his own
experience in confirmation of what we say.

But we must not extend this notice further. We commend Dr.
Kedney’s book to all really serious students of philosophy and
art. Wm. M. Bryant.

306 The Western.

Tue JouRNAL oF EpvucaTION comes to us once a month from
London, and as it gives the current educational news it should
have an interest for all who have educational libraries.

Epucation, No. 4, contains among other contributions a paper
by B. G. Lovejoy upon ** Richard Grant White vs. The Public
Schools,’’ and one by William Jolly, of Scotland, upon ‘*Real Edu-
cation. ”’

Pror. B. F. Tween, one of the best known educational men of
the East, has published in pamphlet form ‘* A Reply to Richard
Grant White.’’

Our Home anv Scrence Gossip is the title of an excellent enter-
prise published at Rockford, Ills., and supplied at the small price
of one dollar per annum. We recommend it to all who desire to
know the most interesting and popular on dits in literature, science,
and art.

ANNUAL STATEMENTS OF THE ‘TRADE AND ComMERCE OF St.
Louis FOR THE YEAR 1880. Mr. George H. Morgan, the secre-
tary of the Merchants’ Exchange, has gradually rendered his

annual reports so complete that they have a permanent value be-

yond their immediate purpose and possess interest for any student

of business movements. Mr. Morgan presents not merely the
movements on ’Change, but a general review of all branches of
business; for example, among other tables appear: I. Amount
of Real Estate and Personal Property assesssed in St. Louis.
II. Building Permits issued for Five Years. II. Aggregate
Statements of the twenty-five Banks. IV. Clearing-house State-
ment. V. Meteorological Statement. VI. Comparative Table of
Seasons. VII. Transactions at the Custom-house. VIII. Clas-
sification of Commodities imported directly. IX. Business of the
St. Louis Post-office. X. Fire Record. XI. Navigation.
The same influences are illustrated by the fluctuations of busi-
ness as appear in other forms of human effort, and hence such ex-
haustive statements as Mr. Morgan’s reports have a very great
value to the student of social science.

Tue Iniustratep Screntiric News, a record of the sciences
and their applications in the arts and industries, is published in
New York at $1.50 a year and is at once attractive and valuable.