its compact, resistless phalanxes to bear upon all the physical and tangible causes of Man's degradation and suffering. Guided by Science, impelled by a lofty devotion to Human Good, sustained by the sympathies and supplies of the whole civilized world, let us hope to see the vast armaments of this new Chivalry advance to the draining of pestilent marshes by a single week's animated, arduous exertion—a triumph nobler than any Cannæ or Waterloo-the reclamation of swamps, deserts, and sterile regions, until Sahara shall rejoice once more in verdure and fragrance, the Campagna become a garden, and stately forests belt the vast, bare plains which stretch away from either declivity of the Rocky Mountains. Of the physical improvement, whether as regards fertility or accessibility, whereof the Earth is susceptible, we have begun to entertain some glimmering notion; but of the facility with which Science, Experience, and Combined Effort shall enable us to effect this improvement, no adequate idea has yet been formed. The true idea, once formed and disseminated, will but briefly precede the consummation.

Enough, for the occasion, of the definitive and the critical. Let us bestow a few moments in closing on some broader, more animating aspects of Life in the Nineteenth Century.

Say what we will and justly may of the incurable depravity of Man, as evinced in the universality of Sin and Crime, this world is better and more hopeful than it has been. The robber and the murderer still skulk and prowl among us, insulting the lone majesty of Night with revealments of their hideous presence, but Murder in the face of Day and Heaven-the wholesale butchery of Nations, the robbery of Cities and Provinces-is no longer perpetrated without shame or witnessed without indignant horror. The stifling to death of a few hundred Arabs in a cave, though shielded by the panoply of undoubted and relentless war, shocks the sensibilities of Christendom, and all apologies are instinctively rejected as adding sophistry to Crime. The world regards admiringly the protracted defence of their homes and hearths by the bold mountaineers of Caucasus, wishing them a triumphant deliverance from the toils of their mighty oppressor, and every blow well struck at the minions of his power thrills with rapture the general heart. For Poland, the unfortunate, betrayed, crushed and bleeding, the tears of the nations flow in rivers, and the fervent prayers of sympathizing, sorrowing millions ascend unceasingly to God. And even Ireland, for seven centuries the prey of Domestic treason and Foreign rapine, prostrate and trampled beneath the heel of a double tyranny of Sword and Creed, at last lifts her eyes in hope and mute supplication, and, discarding the gory weapons of ruffianism and murder, trusts her cause wholly to Humanity and to God-even her sublime but less imposing appeal begins to be heeded and felt; it melts the hard crust of sectarian prejudice and hatred-it touches the souls of the generous and manly-and the glad shout of Earth's enraptured millions shall hail the swiftly hastening hour of her emancipation.

Nor am I discouraged by the fact that Kings and Courts still plot against Liberty and Justice, or even that Nations, blinded by rapacity

or ambition, are led into the commission of gigantic crimes. I see also that these crimes, if not less atrocious than formerly, are less frequent, less unblushing, and require to be sugared o'er with sonorous, captivating phrases, indicating a devotion to Truth and Good. To steal provinces for the sake of stealing or of enjoying them would not pass uncensured now, as in the days of Xerxes, or Norman William, or Prussian Frederick. It must be styled tranquilizing a frontier, or putting an end to anarchy, or establishing justice, or extending the blessings of Freedom, or something of the sort. Hypocrisy, that homage paid by Vice to Virtue, at least testifies the existence of that virtue without which the homage would be vain. In a former age, civilized men unceremoniously robbed savages of their possessions for God's sake and kept them for their own. Now it is deemed meet and decorous to incur the expense of making some few of the intended victims thoroughly insensible from strong drink, and thus procuring what can afterward be pronounced their signatures to a treaty of cession, surrendering lands which they had no more right to sell away from their brethren and their children than to sell the waters and the sky. And, with all this formality and seeming, the operation is often deemed imperfect unless sanctified by the presence and active participation of some Christian divine. These little attentions to the unities and proprieties, which the thoughtless would pass unheeded or with a sneer of contempt, are indeed cheering signs of Human Progress. They demonstrate the existence of an awakening though still drugged and drowsy National and Universal Conscience. They irradiate by contrast the raven darkness, unabashed ferocity and unbridled lust of Man's earlier career. light they cast on the page of History heralds the dawn of a nobler and grander era, in which nations shall realize that for them no more than for individuals is there any possible escape from the inflexibility of God's Providence, which steadily puts aside all pretences, all shams, and looks intently into the impulse and essence of every action, awarding to each the exact and inexorable recompense of its merits. In the light of that era, Virtue will walk abroad unshielded by Force, unin debted to Opinion, winning all to obey her dictates if not from intrinsic love of her, then from love of happiness and themselves.

The

But this, though an effective defence against wrong-doing, can never be the true impulse to a life of active, positive goodness. That virtue which is based on a conviction of the advantage of virtue as a business investment will naturally waste too much time in calculating chances, to be of great value as a practical incitement to deeds. We need a loftier Ideal to nerve us for heroic lives. Only on forgetfulness of Self, or rather on a consciousness that we are all but motes in the beam whose sun is God, drops in the rivulet whose ocean is Humanity, can our souls be moulded into conformity with the loftiest ideal of our race. To know and feel our nothingness without regretting it; to deem fame, riches, personal happiness, but shadows of which Human Good is the substance-to welcome Pain, Privation, Ignominy, so that the sphere of Human Knowledge, the empire of Virtue, be thereby extended such is the soul's temper in which the Heroes of the Coming Age shall be cast. To realize profoundly that the individual is nothing, the uni

versal every thing to feel nothing a calamity whereby the sum of human virtue or happiness is increased, this is the truest wisdom. When the stately monuments of mightiest conquerors shall have become shapeless and forgotten ruins, the humble graves of Earth's Howards and Frys shall still be freshened by the tears of fondly admiring millions, and the proudest epitaph shall be the simple entreaty,

'Write me as one who loved his fellow-men.'

Say not that I thus condemn and would annihilate Ambition. The love of approbation, of esteem, of true glory, is a noble incentive, and should be cherished to the end. But the ambition which points the way to fame over torn limbs and bleeding hearts--which joys in the Tartarean smoke of the battle-field and the desolating tramp of the war-horse-that ambition is worthy only of archangel ruined.' To make one conqueror's reputation, at least one hundred thousand bounding, joyous, sentient beings must be transformed into writhing and hideous fragments-must perish untimely by deaths of agony and horror, leaving half a million widows and orphans to bewail their loss in anguish and destitution. This is too mighty, too awful a price to be paid for the fame of any hero, from Nimrod to Wellington. True fame demands no such sacrifices of others; it requires us to be reckless of the outward well-being of but one. It exacts no hecatomb of victims for each triumphal pile; for the more who covet and seek it the easier and more abundant is the success of each and all. With souls of the celestial temper, each human life might be a triumph, which angels would lean from the skies delighted to witness and admire.

And, beyond doubt, the loftiest ambition possible to us finds its fruition in perfect, simple Manhood. A robber may be a great warrior; a pirate an admiral; a dunce a king; a slimy intriguer a President; but to be a thorough and true Man, that is an aspiration which repels all accident or seeming. And let us not fear that such are too common to be distinguished or famous. Could there appear among us a realization of the full ideal of Manhood-no mere general, or statesman, or devotee, but a complete and genuine Man-he need not walk naked or in fantastic garb to gather all eyes upon him. The very office-seekers would forget for a moment their fawning and prowling, their coaxing and slandering, to gather eagerly, though awed, around him to inquire from what planet he had descended. No merman or centaur, giraffe or chimpanzee, mastodon or megalosaurus, ever excited half the curiosity which would be awakened and requited by the presence among us of a whole and complete Man. And to form this character, inadequate as have been all past approaches to it by unaided human energy, the elements are visibly preparing. Men are becoming slowly but sensibly averse to whatever erects barriers between them and cuts them into fragments and particles of Manhood. The priest in his surplice, the militaire in his regimentals, the duke under his coronet, all begin to feel rather uneasy and shame-faced if confronted with a throng of irreverent citizens, hurrying to and fro, intent on their various errands. Among a corps, a bevy of his own order, the farce may still be played by each with decorous propriety, but apart from these it palls and becomes a

LIFE THE IDEAL AND THE ACTUAL.

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heaviness. Day by day it is more and more clearly felt that the world is outgrowing the dolls and rattles of its childhood, and more and more disdains to be treated childishly. Direct, earnest speech, with useful deeds evincing lofty purpose-these are more and more insisted on, and whatever lacks them is quietly left to perish. An undeserved popularity, a sham celebrity, may still be got up by due incantations; but, frailer than the spider's gossamer, the first breath resolves them into their essential nothingness. Gas to gas they mingle with the blue surrounding ether, and neither its serenity nor its purity is visibly affected by the infusion.

Yes, a brighter day dawns for us, sinning and suffering children of Adam. Wiser in its very follies, less cruel and wanton even in its crimes, our Race visibly progresses toward a nobler and happier realization of its capacities and powers. Compared century with century, this progress is not so palpable, since what is an age to individuals is but a moment in the lifetime of the Race; but, viewed on a larger scale, the advance becomes cheeringly evident. Washington is a nobler exponent of Humanity than Epaminondas or Scipio; La Fayette eclipses Phocion; and Burke has a larger nature, a more universal genius than Cicero. Wonderful as are the works of Homer, they bespeak the splendid barbarian, the thoroughly developed physical, animal man; but their range of imagination, of thought, is infinitely lower and narrower than Shakspeare's; the man they depict is infinitely poorer and more dwarfed than Goethe's, and I dare add even Byron's. Compare Achilles with Hamlet or Harold; the first is the more perfect of his kind, but of a nature how infinitely grosser and less exalted! To him the stars are noteworthy but as battle-lanterns-they enable him to thrust the spear with deadlier aim to the heart of his enemy. To Harold the bare presence of the stars, so wildly, spiritually bright,' would recall the nothingness of terrestrial aims and struggles-their searching glances would instantly rebuke and dethrone the fell appetite for slaughter, so that, throwing away the loathsome implements of human butchery, he would stand gazing intently into their serene deeps, regardless of the proximity, forgetful of the existence, of a foe. Say, if you will, that the former is more natural, I care not; in the universe of Mind there is scope and call for more than the natural-for the spiritual and celestial also. Never are we so truly human as when we most daringly transcend all the vulgar limitations of Humanity; and thus Hamlet, who, viewed with disparaging coldness and skepticism, is the most erratic and improbable creation of the brain, is instinctively recognised by all awakened souls as a veritable man and a brother. His unfamiliarity at first blush accused our deficiencies, not his-was caused by his combining more of the elements of our common nature than we had been accustomed to see embodied and developed in any one man. Had we but known ourselves, Hamlet had never seemed to us a stranger. The ages of darkness-of unconscious wandering from the path of Right and Good-of that 'ignorance' which we are told God winked at' in its earlier and more excusable manifestations-are rapidly passing away. That generation is not yet all departed which witnessed the rise,

progress, and termination of the struggle regarding the rightfulness and legitimacy of the African Slave-Trade. Commencing in the attacks of a few obscure fanatics on the usages, maxims, gains and respectability of the commercial aristocracy and sea-faring chivalry of nearly all Christendom, it has already become a struggle between nearly all that same Christendom converted, and a few abhorred, hunted, skulking pirates. Can any man rationally doubt that the discussion of Slavery itself, which had a similar beginning, is destined to run a like career, to a like termination? The fact that the latter is the more strongly entrenched in the interest, convenience, custom and seeming necessity of the superior caste, may somewhat protract the struggle; yet on the other hand the contest already past, the victory already gained in a kindred encounter, immeasurably diminish the difficulties and must abridge the duration of this. Men have learned and tested the applicability of moral laws to general and public as well as individual and private relations— to the acts of communities as well as of persons. Can any suppose that the application of this principle is to cease with the initial case which has established its efficacy and value? Far from it. We see it now operating upon rulers and nations, to restrain the most ambitious and blood-thirsty from War by a power far more dreaded than that of hostile bayonets. We see it operating at home in the Temperance agitation of our time, and especially that regarding the rightfulness of the traffic in Intoxicating Liquors. What is this but the Slave-Trade question over again?—varied in form, it is true, but differing nothing in substance. The essence of either controversy regards the right of any part or member of the Human Family to promote or countenance for private gain any practice or business whereby others are naturally degraded, impoverished, enslaved, or made wretched. Once determine that this right does not exist in any one case, and the principle instantly and naturally confronts other cases, and insists that these also shall be tested by its standard.

Let not the sensual hope, let the good never fear, that the vitality of this principle can be exhausted while moral evil or avoidable suffering shall linger on the face of the earth. The Reforms which have not yet begun to be prominent, are vaster and nobler than any which have thus far been favored with the smiles, or even the frowns, of coteries and clubrooms. The world drowsily opens its eyes and yawns assent to the truth that the direct enslavement of Man is rebellion against Him who in His wisdom has endowed us with faculties and desires, with the development, use, and healthful satisfaction whereof the inevitable conditions of Slavery are incompatible. That perfect obedience which God requires can rarely be comprehended, and still more rarely rendered, by him who is born, lives and dies the absolute chattel and convenience of another. And this truth condemns not the chattel relation only, but all relations in which Service degenerates into Servitude. Wherever one human being exists mainly for the convenience and advantage of another, or of others, there the elemental purpose, the essential economy of Providence is defied, and, for the moment, subverted. Wherever one requires of others more service than he willingly renders in turn, requiting it not with his own but the fruits of others' exertion, there is a principle