THOUGHTS FOR THE PEOPLE.

BY CARLOS D. STUART.

THE MISSION OF STEAM.

We live in a great age, surrounded by such wonderful things that old fashioned miracles are with us "small things and past." The mind of the world seems turned, and setting about a higher human destiny. Mehemet Ali allows a Christian chapel to lift its spire among Ottoman mosques; and the Pope, besides issuing business bulls for the construction of railway lines, offers the handsome reward of a thousand dollars to any man who will suggest the best route for a new road across the Alps. The clatter of car wheels already breaks upon the ear of the Vatican-the salt marshes of the Pontine tremble under the flight of frightened swineherds, and the depot-bells ring out and in the hurrying passengers for St. Peter's and the Capitoline hill. Who ever dreamed of such a racket and revolution? Where are the old monks with their croziers, that they do not rise against this new hissing steam monster-this devil incarnate against all solitudes, seclusions, penances and fasts? Could the magnificent Lorenzo, nodding in his Bucentaur, have fancied of such a thing-or Cosmo, eyeing the sea all covered with light-oared gondolas? Alack, for the spirit of trade, world-communion, Christianity, and glorious cheer that comes to us on this fire and water winged Mercury. Chinese walls, scimetar-guarded harems, Juggernauts, and wooden shoes crumble, dissolve, and fly into thin air, henceforth to be remembered as an old dream! There are coming to be no castes, bounds, or barriers on the earth. We have found the race-horse that leaps the highest dykes, and now to our lady-love Humanity, we can send or bear the latest and tenderest despatch. How the valleys are exalted, the mountains flee away, and the little hills skip like lambs. I should like to live in the next century, just to see what the end of all this is to be. What rare astonishment would fill an old lord of the middle ages, could he see a rail-train thundering by his rickety towers, snorting louder than a whole race of Saxon wild boars.

If I mistake not, our "condition of things" would astonish him more than any backward flight could us. We have almost all of us lived to see this most remarkable of revolutions-and if the world should stand till its scalp were as gray as a silver fox's, or its bald head needed a wig, there could happen none stranger. A wonderful, promising, hopeful, magnificent age! all over flecked with gladness and gold. Fulton's bones are scarcely crumbled in the ground, while his fire-steed has trampled the entire earth, oceans, lakes, rivers, and revo

lutionized, without blood, the aspect of the whole world. On running wheels-rolling wheels-whirling wheels, and by every species of hook, claw, spindle and gudgeon, it has pierced into the old conservative, groping, blind bowels of the past, and roused up the life, energy, faith and good-will of mankind. Oceans are converted to mill-ponds, China can toss a tea-cady into America, and a Birmingham "patent spoon" suffices to reach to Japan. There are short "popular routes" to St. Petersburg and Pekin; England pastures her sheep at the Cape of Good Hope for convenience, and a good hope it is; while the Sandwich Islands, "snug as a bug in a rug," are being fitted up for European and American pleasure excursions. Where is the desert of Arabia? Annihilated by steam! The salt pillars of Sodom are only a stone's throw from the "salt licks" of Ohio. Where is the Russian bear— that huge black bear that used to be heard growling along the Siberian waste, and among the snowy peaks of Ural? There is no such animal, it is dead, hide and hair, clean gone! Englishmen are yachting on the Neva, the emperor eats poached eggs at Buckingham palace. Jonathan is cutting up the icebergs, and building depots for them in Morocco and Ecuador. Business is brisk, money plenty, and only potatoes scarce. But the world is not going to live always on potatoes, we have only half lived as yet. While we fly over and under the earth, we shall dive more into it, and get more out of it than was ever dreamed of before. Without abusing health or limb, we shall by and by have a science of living as fast as we move. Everybody will have oranges, peaches, and figs on his table. There is earth enough, sun enough, seed enough, and steam enough to bring more than this to pass. And all the old hovels and mud houses must come down-nothing but neat cottages with spreading lawns, statues, fountains, and ivy-crowned eaves, can perfect the picture we have begun sketching in our age. The marshes must be drained, the bogs filled up, the woods trimmed into parks, then the world will grow affectionate, mannerly, and merciful, and we shall have our new garden of Eden and the Millennium. Lions will be either killed or tamed, and there will be no hydras, cougars, seaserpents, nor ugly land snakes to bite, frighten and annoy people, except in curious stuffed skins at the American and British museums. How fast we are getting rid of old monsters. Monsters of the forest, flood, state, church and naughty society-and all by steam. Men see that good things are to be had, and they relish the idea, they reach out after them. They care less for laborious bone-breaking chivalry, than easy, quiet, religious humanity. Humanity is the cry of steam. Commerce echoes it-science and art echo it-men's wants, tastes, and improved philosophies echo it, and it comes. Look at it! What a round, broadshouldered, laughing-faced, and arms-full-of-luxury fellow it is. The rich love it, the poor love it, the bond and free love it, and there gathers a regular Christmas shout as it rolls down the mountain side all wrapped in wool and fur, and through the valleys with wheat heads and luscious fruits. Half the scowls and wrinkles of the human race vanish at once, and the rest follow in fear and shame. The judge groans with the fulness of justice-the priest overruns with the gospel, the "sincere milk of the word"-the warriors fall to digging the ground with swords,

and cannon-balls are run into clock-weights. Everybody wants a clock. Connecticut dances with circular saws, lathes, and furnaces to supply the demand. Yes, everybody wants a clock, to know and note the precious time. Minutes, hours and days are not heavy as of old, they are the all-glorious heritage of man on earth. They serve him to eat, drink, and be merry; to lift his softest silk handkerchief to wipe the least tear from a human eye; to exalt himself with looking upon nature, great, beautiful nature-brilliant with suns and glimmering stars, sea waves and river waves, fruits and flowers-odorous with sweet-smelling spices, soft with ambrosial gales, and glorified by faces made in the image of the benign, beautiful, and blessed God! Is this an allegory— can we have all this? Why can we not make all the earth a garden, just as easily as a man makes a little patch of it into a garden? What was Paradise but a fruit-field, until man eat of the forbidden tree, and finding his eyes opened to a knowledge of strength-departed from his estate, smote his brother, and hedging himself behind walls for a defence against those he had outraged, sacrificed his beautiful Eden. Flowers could not grow on his castle walls under the heavy feet of fighting men; fruits would not ripen in the moat and trench. Man was turned out of Paradise because he abandoned it, and most righteously and naturally has he found thorns and thistles, and been a vagabond on the earth ever since. The generous dews and reviving suns fall and glow as in the beginning, the ground returns answer with abundant fat things, to the spade-pressure, and Eden waits for re-occupancy upon the will of man. Has he not tried his way in wildernesses and robber caves long enough? and why, then, with his new Steam ally and convictions, may he not carry our allegory out? What means that prayer, "Thy kingdom come, and Thy will be done on earth"-only to be mocked at, or did that teacher who "spake as never man spake," behold beyond our times the descending kingdom once more established on earth? Was, and is that prayer uttered with sublime faith-or is it a solemn delusion? My belief and aspirations stand by its utterance in faith. I see the Millennium no cheat to the true, active spirit of man. Christ's life diffused into universal example accomplishes all, and more than human heart has conceived. Already wings of angels rustle on the breeze, and songs of "peace on earth and good will unto men," tremble into glorious anthems, fit for the once uncorrupted world. There was some excuse for the Infidel against God in the barbarous days, but where is the Infidel against God and Humanity to-day? God and Humanity-this has even become the cry of the Fathers of Inquisitions. Shall we not hail and accept it, and fling it abroad as fast as lips can utter, or Steam bear it? Wonderful age, there is no resisting its spirit! Kings and lords, statesmen and churchmen might as well, if they had the will, oppose arms of flesh against the fiery bolts of the thunder-cloud, as stand up before the progress of our times. Humanity, like a snowball gathered on the highest Alp, rolls, widens, and with ever-increasing irresistible force, dashes down the mountains of age, guilt, error, oppression, injustice and wrong, leaving a sun-bright sky above the ruins of the past world, that serves only to heighten, by remembrance, the splendor of advancing eras.

LABOR.

I see the man who scorns honest labor. Who clothes him with fine linen, and bids him fare sumptuously every day? On his back is the fleece of the peasant's sheep, sheared by the peasant's strong hand, whitened in the clear flow of the mountain stream, and spun by hands, if not as white, more true and stainless than the crowned queen's! Not a rag of all that curiously wrought, colored and fashioned gear, which defends him from the keen frost, the scorch of summer, and gives him grace in the eye of beauty-not a single rag is there, but rises up in judgment and gives him back scorn for scorn. Fool and drone! He has mistaken the true altitude of man-the heart-beat of the great universe itself. Annul that labor which he scorns, and he stands amid these elements of nature nude as when born. The polished hide which has felt the busy touch of many hands, over which eyes have tired and hearts grown faint, crumbles from his shiftless feet-the bright fair cloth in its thousand forms vanishes from his shrinking limbs-and the great inheritance of brick and mortar, and broad fruitful lands, sprung from the brain of genius and the hand of toil, and bequeathed to that miserable belier of humanity by hard honest thrift, fly back into their wilderness being, and the proud fool-occupant stands possessionless and alone! Who now will minister to his wants, who kindle even on the rudest cabin-hearth a fire to stay the pitiless finger of the storm? All-charitable nature moulds not herself into palaces and ingots, and slaves rise not at the beck of imperious will. Ah, thou man who scornest labor, look around and see that there is yet some dignity and beauty in toil. That she has compassed some oceans, bridged rivers, delved in mines, and founded empires and practical religions in defiance of thy taunt. Her giant will is busied with loftier thought than scorning thee as thou deservest! Let her reproof and thy scourge be that thou art contemned by God and man. By God, who scorned not to build for himself a universe, and clothe himself about with angels and hovering gloriesby man, proud of his power to exalt the image, and imitate the example of God.

ANALYSIS OF WEALTH.

Gold has been defined as "the sweat of the poor, and the blood of the brave." It is not necessarily wealth. Thousands who have coffers laden with it are among the most miserable. Wealth depends not upon the quantity but the quality of our possession. Its intrinsic character is measured by the variety of human tastes. Kingdoms for some, mines for others, books, excitement, and solitude form the goals of differing desires. Power, fame, and even obscurity are sought with the same enthusiasm as wealth. Money is valueless beyond its application to our wants-our necessities. What was gold or pearls to the man famishing in the desert-only a glittering mockery. Hunger asked for fruit, thirst for a clear spring-and for these, which were wasting in thousands of valleys, the dying traveller would have given all the gold in the world. Wealth, true wealth, is that possession which satisfies the heart. Palaces and lands may still leave a man miserable. To be satisfied in one's self-to feel no aching nor void—to sleep peacefully, and wake without

pain, regret, or remorse, such is wealth. Content and health are a prouder inheritance than belongs to kings. With these the hardest pillow becomes soft, the roughest way smooth, the darkest future bright, and their possessor stands up a man, than whom God has made none nobler-free from the canker that follows power and fame, and independent of the exigencies which make and may shiver crowns. Money, beyond self-wants, may be desirable; the misfortunes and necessities of our fellows often cast them upon us, and means to relieve them add as keenly to our joy as theirs. For the promotion of the good, the beautiful, and the true, gold, goods, and lands, are a heritage from heaven; but when wrapped in a napkin, and bound on the heart, they congeal human sympathies, and blast human life.

INFLUENCE OF WOMAN.

Deprived of an equal voice in the government and councils of nations, and of the chances to reveal heroism and physical power on the battlefield, Woman has exercised but a partial influence over the fate of mankind. In savage, barbarous and semi-civilized epochs, she has been scarcely more than a creature to bring forth the progeny and bear the burdens of the world. Drudging and bowed down in the wigwam of the savage-following the trails of armies to kindle camp-fires and prepare the food of the warrior-tilling the fields of her little more civilized task-master, or ministering from slave-marts to the passions of pandering man, as all Asia reveals her.

What has woman been but a trampled flower, still beautiful in its ruin -plucked and cast by the moment its odor has produced satiety. How unlike that glorious being who, in the garden of Eden, was given to man to solace and beguile him—to fill the spaces of solitude with the beatitude of heaven. Her weakness, innocence, and confiding nature were then, what they should ever have remained, the elements of transcendent strength. In that fair and tremulous beauty, which was as heaven itself, lived the angels who forsook the earth when woman descended from her primitive being. Step by step was the fall accelerated, until in ages but just gone, nothing but tears were left to assert the humanity of her race. Woman is only inferior to man in gross physical power-in all the fine and heroic sentiments she is his equal, if not superior, and generations, in whatever age of darkness or light, take their hue and shape from the impress of her power. If she be trampled and debased, so will be her children-if she be pure and beautiful in heart and life, her progeny will be the same. In whatever condition, her original nature has never been fully obscured. Gleams of the heroic and heavenly have shot out from the darkness-Spartan and Roman mothers have answered for the sex-and even the wilderness has not wanted lofty specimens of the true woman among the savages of our race. Give woman the place of companionship which God gave her, let her be the counsellor and friend of man, and the scale of our civilization will never droop on the side of humanity.

VOL. II.-8