NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW. No. CLXX VIII. JANUARY, 1858. ART. 1. 1. Die Staatshaushaltung der Athener. Von AuGusT BOECKH. 2te Ausgabe. Berlin: Bei G. Reimer. 1851. 2 vols. 8vo. pp. 792, 764. 2. The Public Economy of the Athenians, with Notes and a Copious Index. By AUGUSTUS BOECKII. Translated from the Second German Edition, by ANTHONY LAMB. Boston: Little, Brown, & Co. 1857. 8vo. pp. 826. WE hail the recent appearance of a translation of Boecklis Public Economy of the Athenians, from an American press, as a good and cheering omen. Not only do we congratulate ourselves and the scholars of our country on the addition thus made to the number of available books of reference in the department of Greek antiquities, but we feel no little pride and gratification that the demands of classical scholarship in our country are such as to warrant the publication by an American house of a work so profoundly and so technically learned as that of Boeckh. We may safely say, indeed, that this is by far the most important work of the kind in this department ever published in America, and its appearance places at the disposal of our scholars a large and varied amount of learning which xvas before not generally accessible. Nor are we at all inclined to view the selection from the vast stores of German erudition of this work on the Public Economy of Athens, for publication in one of our commercial VOL. LXXXVI. NO. 178. 1 2 THE PUBLIC ECONOMY OF ATHENS. [Jan. cities, as an offering of flattery to us as supposed worshippers of the almighty dollar, made in order to show us the kin- dred weakness of the ideal people of antiquity in regard to the equally almighty drachma; although we should be far from denying that the subject might teach an interesting and highly instructive lesson to our men of business and our finan- ciers, as well as to our professional scholars. We rather attribute the interest which has called for the translation of this book, and which will, we trust, often manifest itself in a similar manner, to a growing demand for works containing original investigations on subjects of study, as a substitute for the mere compends in general use. We are, it is to be hoped, corning to the conviction, that the knowledge derived at second hand is not true erudition, and that a man who should learn Smiths Dictionaries by heart would not by that means become a scholar. We arc by no means disposed to underrate the value of compendious books of reference for younger students, and for literary men in general; indeed, they are indispensable to all scholars as conveniences, and we protest only against the use of them as authorities by profes- sional scholars, who have no more right to depend upon such books exclusively or mainly in matters belonging to their own department of study, than a professed scientific man would have to rely upon dictionaries and encyclopa~dias for his knowledge of his own department of science. We believe that nothing has a stronger tendency to produce a pedantic and superficial scholarship, than the inculcation of the per- nicious doctrine, that the knowledge of a mass of results in his own science should be the great aim of the scholar, and that he can afford to disregard the slow processes of investi- gation. We see the effects of this doctrine in the many chi- merical attempts now made to teach the elements of the classic languages by improved patent processes, which profess to avoid the old-fashioned road that begins at the beginning. Did it never occur to these irregular practitioners in philology, that the very processes which their schemes avoid are in them- selves of hardly less value to the young student than are the grand results which are poured in such profusion and confu- sion from the mouths of their self-acting machines? It may 1858.1 THE PUBLIC ECONOMY OF ATHENS. 3 be said, indeed, of many of the questions discussed in the work before us, that the process of investigating them, with constant reference to the classic authorities, is of greater value to the student who follows it, and thus renders it his own, than the result of the investigation itself is when it is gained. We venture to make these prefatory remarks, as the work before us is pre-eminently one in which may be found the original investigations in regard to a great variety of subjects relating to the institutions of classic Athens, which every scholar should understand, but which are too frequently studied by means of concise statements of their results in classical dictionaries. The first edition of Boeckhs Staatshaushaltung der Athener was published in Berlin in 1817, in two volumes, dedicated to Niebuhr. It maintained its authority as a standard work of the highest rank in Germany, and appeared in an English trans- lation in two editions, in 1828 and 1842. The second edition of the original work, almost entirely re-written and much en- larged, was issued in 1851, and from the first volume of this Mr. Lamb has made the translation now published in Boston. The second volume of Boeckhs original work is occupied by the inscriptions referred to in the first, with copious interpreta- tions and remarks upon them. Among other valuable docu- ments, the tribute lists, or lists of the states belonging to the Athenian Confederacy, with the amount of tribute paid by each set against its name, are here published, occupying, with Boeckhs minute explanations and discussions, three hundred and seventy-eight pages of the original work. The skill and critical acuteness often displayed in restoring whole lines of the inscriptions, where only a few scattered letters are pre- served upon the monuments, and those in a condition which would rather perplex than assist an ordinary observer, are equalled only by the wonderful restorations of fishes made by naturalists from the inspection of single scales.* We regret that it was not possible to include these, and the remainder of the second volume, in the American translation; but we fully ap * The text of the original inscriptions, in the condition in which they stand npon the monuments, is given in a series of tables accompanying the German edition. 4 THE PTJBLTC ECONOMY OF ATHENS. [Jan. preciate the motives which doubtless influenced Mr. Lamb in deciding to confine his translation to the first volume. The work is divided into four books, of which the first is introductory, the second treats of the management of the finances and of the expenditures of the state, the third of the ordinary revenues, and the fourth of the extraordinary rev- enues. In chapters fourth and fifth of the first book, we have a most careful and circumstantial account of the process of find- ing the values in modern money of the various Greek coins in common use. This is of course done by weighing the most perfect specimens of ancient coins that are preserved, and comparing their weight with the actual weight of silver in some standard modern coin. Boeckh proceeds upon the principle, that no regular allowance is to be made for alloy in Attic coins, as the aim of the state was to coin pure silver, and the alloy was introduced by accident, never by design. Indeed, it happens not unfrequently that gold, instead of a baser metal, is detected as mixed with the silver in Attic coins. Boeckh states the values at which he arrives for the silver tal- ent, drachma, & c. in Prussian thalers. These, reduced to American money, give for the talent $ 1,026; for the mina, $ 17.10; for the drachma, 17.1 cents; and for the obolus, 2.85 cents. The most convenient estimates of these values for general use are that of the talent at $ 1,000, and that of the drachma at one sixth of a dollar, or an old New England shilling. This latter seems, practically at least, to be the value of the modern Athenian drachma. Indeed, it appears a mere waste of labor to attempt to employ any more ex- act calculations in reducing the Attic money to our own, as the error of one or two per cent which we may make in re- gard to alloy or seigniorage sinks into insignificance compared with the error of many hundred per cent which we must always make in applying the most exact estimates, from neg- lecting the immense difference in the money value of commod- ities between ancient times and our own; or, in other words, the important fact, that the precious metals themselves in an- cient Athens were worth many times their present value. We quote the following from Boeckh on the cheapness of commodities in ancient times. Speaking of Upper Italy and Lusitania, in the time of Polybius, he says 1858.] THE PUBLIC ECONOMY OF ATHENS. 5 Travellers were wont to agree with their hosts, not as elsewhere, upon the prices of single articles, but upon the sum which they should give for the supply of the wants of each individual guest. The hosts demanded commonly one half an as, or one fourth of an obolus, (more accurately only three sixteenths of an obolus, or not quite one half- cent,) and seldom went beyond this rate. In Lusitania, a kid of mod- erate size cost an obolus, a hare the same price, a lamb from three to four oboli; a sheep two, a draught-ox ten, a calf five drachmas. Such low prices as these are not applicable to Athens after the Persian wars. In the time of Solon, indeed, an ox was worth only five drachmas, a sheep one drachma, and the medimnus (nearly a bushel and a half) of grain the same. But gradually the prices increased fivefold; of sev- eral articles seven, ten, and twenty fold. pp. 86, 87. After an estimate of the relative values of grain and silver in different times, he adds This estimation, according to which the present prices of grain are three times as high as they were during the period of the most flour- ishing condition of Greece, appears to me the most probable. p. 87. It is important to bear in mind that the common annual rates of interest in Athens were from twelve to eighteen per cent. In regard to wages, which do not appear to have been much lower than they now are in most countries of Europe, we quote the following statements, the authority for which is found in Attic inscriptions. In Olymp. 93 (408 B.C.), a sawyer who sawed for a publi& build- ing received a drachma a day. A carpenter who worked on the same building received five oboli a day. The philosophers Menedemus and Asclepiades must have been excellent laborers in their youth, since they earned every night two drachmas each, as millers in a grain-mill. Persons in higher stations, or those who labored with the pen, were, according to genuine democratic principles, not better paid. The architect of the temple of Minerva Polias received no more than a stone-sawer or common laborer engaged upon the building, namely, a drachma daily. pp. 164, 1 65. From a general comparison of all the statements that are to be found, Boeckh derives his conclusion, that the value of money in classic Athens was about three times as great as it is in Europe at the present day. We add a quotation from Boeckhs chapter on the expenses 1* 6 THE PUBLIC ECONOMY OF ATHENS. [Jan. of living, in which the domestic economy of Socrates is dis- cussed. The poorest family of four adult persons, if they did not wish to live upon bread and water, needed, upon an average, about 120 thalers (~ 82.08) annually. Socrates did not have, as was falsely reported, two wives at the same time, but one after the other: IMyrto, who was poor when he married her, and who probably had no dowry, and Xan- thippe. He also had three children. He prosecuted no manual art after he had sacrificed the employment of his youth to the never-resting effort to acquire wisdom. His teaching procured him no income. According to Xenophon, he lived upon his property, which, if it should have found a good purchaser, might easily have brought, altogether, five minas; and he needed only a small addition from his friends. From this it has been inferred that living was extraordinarily cheap at Athens. It is evident, however, that Socrates with his family could not live upon the interest of so small an amount of property. For, however poor the house may have been, its value cannot be estimated at less than three minas. So that, without taking the furniture into consideration, the rest of his property, from which interest could be derived, could have amounted to but two minas, and the income from it, according to the common rate of interest, to only twenty-four drach- inns. With this he could not have procured even the amount of barley which was requisite for himself and his wife, to say nothing of the other necessaries of life, and of the support of his children We must believe that Xenophon intended to estimate the value of the entire property of Socrates at only five minas. But we are no more author- ized to consider his account as correct, than we are to reject it. The history of the ancient sages is so entangled and garnished with traditions, and the circumstances of their lives are so differently represented even by contemporary writers, that we can seldom find firm ground on which to stand Thus the well-informed Demetrius of Phalerum affirmed, in opposition to Xenophon, that Socrates had, beside his house, seventy minas at interest, in the possession of Crito But assuming that Xenophons account is perfectly correct, we must suppose that the mother of the young boys supported herself and both the children, either by labor or from her dowry, and that Lamprocles supported himself and that the famed economy of Socrates probably consisted, among other things, in this also, that he kept them at work. And then again, suppose that he always lived upon his twenty-four drachmas, with a small additional sum from his friends, yet no one could live as he did. It is true that he is said to have frequently offered sacrifices 1858.] THE PUBLIC ECONOMY OF ATHENS. 7 at home and upon the public altars. But they were, doubtless, only baked dough, shaped into the forms of animals, after the manner of the poor; properly bread, therefore, great part of which was at the same time eaten, and to which his family also contributed. He lived, in the strictest sense, upon bread and water, except when invited to entertain- ments at the tables of others, and could therefore be particularly glad, as he is said to have been, on account of the cheapness of barley, when four chomices (about half a peck) sold for an obolus (three cents). He wore no under garment; even his outside garment was poor, and the same one was worn both summer and winter. He generally went bare- footed, and his dress-sandals, which he occasionally wore, may have lasted him his lifetime. His walk for pleasure and exercise before his house served him instead of an opson for his meal. In short, no slave was so poorly maintained as was Socrates. The drachma which he gave Prodicus was certainly the largest sum ever spent by him at one time. And it may boldly be affirmed, without wishing to disparage his exalted genius, that, in respect to his indigence and a certain cyni- cism in his character, the representation of Aristophanes was not much exaggerated, but in the essential particulars was delineated from the life. pp. 156159. The question naturally arises, What was the Athenian state, with whose public economy we are concerned? We have a most satisfactory estimate of the population of Attica,* based upon the few definite statements that have been pre- served, from which it appears that the free population of Attica must have consisted of about 135,000 persons. We know from the census of Demetrius of Phalerum in 309 B. C., that there were then 21,000 citizens and 10,000 resident for- eigners. This agrees with a statement in an oration at- tributed to Demosthenes, that there were 20,000 citizens. Boeckh considers the number of citizens as two niuths of the whole free native population, thus making the whole number 90,000, to which must be added 45,000 for the resident foreigners with their families. To this we must add the slaves, whom Boeckh estimates, with great probability, at 365,000, arriving at 500,000 as the most reasonable general estimate of the entire population. This, it must be remem- bered, includes not only the inhabitants of the city of Athens * Book I. Chap. 7. 8 TILE PUBLIC ECONOMY OF ATHENS. [Jan. itself, but the whole population of Attica. It was the great and fatal defect in the ancient democracies, that they never conceived the idea of a state, in the proper sense of that word, their highest idea of a political organization always being that of a sovereign city with its circle of dependent allies or sub- jects. The amount of freedom and democracy of which such an organization was capable was limited to that which could be included within the organization of a city; all outside of it was unworthy a share in the political privileges of the metropolis. No idea of a representative government, by which a collection of free cities and towns could form a re- publican state, appears to have been developed or attempted in antiquity. The cily organization, however, was made to embrace much more than it does at the present day. Thus the limits of Athens were extended over the whole of Attica, a district including about a thousand English square miles, and the whole country was divided into one hundred and seventy-four demes or smaller districts, the members of each of which had the same political privileges at Athens, the same right to sit and vote in the public assembly, to be chosen by lot into the senate or to the office of archon, with citizens who lived under the shadow of the Acropolis itself. Thus Athens, in its wider sense, was coextensive with Attica. The originally independent towns and villages of Attica had, at an early period, joined the principal city, becoming incor- porated with it, and losing their own political existence. Here, however, the limits of the city of Athena were fixed, so that there could be no Athenian territory regarded in the same light with Attica, and no Athenian citizens residing elsewhere permanently with the same privileges as those of the metropolis. An only apparent exception to this can be found in the so- called cleruchiw, or colonies of Athenian citizens, sent out to hold possession of the land of a conquered people, which was divided among the new tenants by lot, whence the name. The political status of these colonists illustrates and confirms, rather than limits, the general remark made above. These cleruciti did not form either independent cities or cities by themselves subordinate to Athens; but they remained a part 1858.] THE PUBLIC ECONOMY OF ATHENS. 9 of the citizens of Athens itself, and each member retained his right as a citizen of Athens, and his place in his particular deme of Attica, which he might claim at any moment when he chose to return. In this important point the cleruchice differed from the other Athenian colonies. The latter formed cities for themselves, bound to their parent city by no ties stronger than those which held a son to his parents after he had left the paternal roof. Any violation of their filial duties was looked upon rather as ungrateful than illegal. They carried with them the sacred fire from the Prytaneum of Ath- ens, from which they kindled the new flame upon the altar of Athena in their new city. This flame, by which the very fire upon their altars should be, as it were, the child of that around which they had worshipped at home, is beautifully symbolical of the relation of the common Athenian colonies to the parent city. With the cleruchi, however, no sacred fire was transported from Athens; they looked to the original fire in the Prytaneum as still their own, and felt that the guardian goddess of Athens, enshrined upon her holy rock, still continued to spread her benign protection over them, even in their absence from home. In short, they were viewed simply as Athenians temporarily absent, as if they were upon a journey or serving in the army of the city, and their chil- dren, born in their foreign residence, immediately acquired all the rights of native Athenians. It is probable that Plato was born in IEgina, while his parents were living in that island as cleruchi, but he was none the less an Athenian citizen. So far, then, from forming an exception to the general principle, this singular system of colonization exhibits with peculiar clearness the grand idea at the foundation of the Athenian colonial system, that a citizen who left his home in Athens must either give up his allegiance to his native city, and trans~. fer it to the new one, as was the case in the so-called Athe- nian colonies, or else transfer his person without his allegiance to a new country, carrying with him the protection of Athens, as in the colonies called cleruchiw. All tends to show that Athens was a city, not a state, and that she could perform only those functions of a state which are equally adapted to the constitution of a city. As a city she first formed an 10 THE PUBLIC ECONOMY OF ATHENS. [Jan. alliance with the various members of the confederacy of IDelos, and afterwards gradually changed them, or allowed them to change themselves, from allies to subjects; as a city she carried on war with Greek and barbarian enemies; and as a city she finally yielded to that force of barbarism from with- out, which was directed with so much skill against the weak points of her constitution. The same experiment, upon a grander scale, was afterwards made in Italy, where another city, with no constitution adapted to a state composed of various communities, conceived the gigantic plan of swallow- ing up, first, the whole of Italy, and then the world. As long as Rome retained the name of republican, she presented the singular phenomenon of a city holding an immense empire in subjection by the strong bond of a merely metropolitan government; her citizens (though living a thousand miles distant from the Tiber), and her subjects, wherever resident, were citizens and subjects of the city Rome. This is a point which cannot be too closely kept in mind in forming our ideas of the democracies of antiquity. If Athens, or any of the other cities of Greece, could have taken a step beyond the idea of an independent city, and reached the higher con- ception of an independent but harmonious state, the whole course of history might have been changed, and we might, at least, have had a less early downfall of Grecian liberty to deplore. Athens, after her short but brilliant period of glory, fell like a withered leaf in the first wind that blew harshly upon her after the original vital energy of her citizens had deserted her. Rome was enabled to survive this loss of her primitive simplicity and virtue, and to proceed, in a manner impossible for Athens, with the solution of her grand prob- lem, the conquest of the world, froni the fact that an oligar- chical senate held the direction of her affairs, and ruled with little regard to the primitive constitution of the city, which had become obsolete amid the corruptions of the age. This, however, was but a temporary protection, and when it yielded to corruption and decay, nothing remained but the transfor- mation of the imperial city into a military monarchy. We will now endeavor to answer briefly the questions which more immediately concern us. What system of finan 1858.] THE PUBLIC ECONOMY OF ATHENS. 11 ces did this city of Athens have? what were its regular annual expenditures? and what were its ordinary and extraor- dinary means for meeting those expenses? For the details of the Athenian system of finance, apparently inferior in com- plexity to no system of modern times, we must refer the reader to Boeckhs minute exposition in the first nine chapters of his second book. We can here only allude to a few points, to show that great attention was paid to this department, and that men of the highest ability devoted themselves to it. The senate of five hundred held the general superintendence of the finances, acting, of course, as the agents of the sovereign people. To the senate all the officers of finance were ac- countable and subordinate. These officers were divided into three classes, collectors, treasurers who had charge of the various treasuries into which the money was distributed, and those who had charge of the accounts. One office in this number was especially important on its own account, as well as from the great names which give it dignity in history. This is that of the superintendent of the public revenues, who was chosen by vote of the people (not by lot, like most of the Athenian officers), and for a period of four years. As to his duties, Boeckh remarks The example of Lycurgus shows that all the money received and disbursed passed through his hands. Consequently he was the general receiver and superintendent of all the treasuries from which money was disbursed, or the general paymaster, who received all the money paid to the apodecta~ and appropriated by them for disbursement, and supplied the several treasuries with the same. The proceeds of the property tax, which, as money designed for military purposes, were without doubt immediately delivered to the treasury appropriated for these purposes, must be excepted, and originally also the tributes He paid the expenses which were necessary for the administration of government (& oiK~a-t~), that is, in time of peace, every regular expendi- ture.pp. 22~5, 226. Among the statesmen who held this office was Aristides, whose proverbial reputation for justice was, perhaps, based in no small degree upon his integrity as director of the finances. His ability in this department was abundantly shown in the assessment of the original tribute upon the members of the 12 TIlE PUBLIC ECONOMY OF ATHENS. [Jan. confederacy of Delos, at that time, it must be remembered, consisting of a body of allies, and not of an imperial city with her subjects. This was the office held by the statesman and orator Lycurgus, whose wise and prudent administration of the Athenian finances for twelve successive years, in the latter half of the fourth century before Christ, supported the sinking state, and placed it in a financial position which a few years earlier might, perhaps, have enabled it to withstand the Mace- donian conqueror. His administration formed an important era for Athens, from the energy which he displayed in erect- ing or completing various public buildings, among which may be mentioned the arsenal at the Pira~us and the noble theatre of Dionysus on the slope of the Athenian Acropolis. This latter building was begun a century and a half before, just after the fall of the old wooden theatre of Athens; and al- though it had been consecrated in its imperfect state by the masterpieces of LEschylus, Sophocles, Euripides, and Aris- tophanes, and although generation after generation of Athe- nians had beheld the combined triumphs of nature and art from that sacred spot, during periods of unexampled pros- perity, when the wealth of an empire was accumulating in the Parthenon above them, it was yet reserved for the enter- prise of Lycurgus to complete the edifice at that late period, when Athens was compelled to tremble for her independence, and even for her very existence. The great financier of the age of Demosthenes is by no means unworthy to stand by the side of Aristides; his character was marked by consci- entious probity and integrity, in no respect inferior to that which gained for his predecessor the epithet of the Just~ Like Socrates, he is said to have been often seen barefooted, although during his term of office money to the amount of 18,900 talents (nearly $ 20,000,000) had passed through his hands, and although his public services were worthy to be commemorated in the long and pompous decree passed by his grateful countrymen after his death. The latter part of the second book of Boeckhs work is oc- cupied with an estimate of the probable amount of the ordi- nary expenses of Athens, including all the expenses of the government except those arising from war, which of course 1858.] THE PUBLIC ECONOMY OF ATHENS. 13 might increase the sum to an indefinite amount. These regular expenses are reduced by Boeckh to the following heads Expenditures for public buildings, for the police, for the celebration of the public festivals, for distributions of money or grain to the peo- pie, for compensation for public services in time of peace, for the sup- port of the poor, for public rewards, for the procuring of weapons, ships, and cavalry in time of peace. p. 278. The first of these items must have been the most impor- tant, and at the same time from its nature the most variable. In the years during which such magnificent undertakings as the fortifications of the city and of the Pirreus, the three long walls from Athens to the sea, each four miles or more in length, or the splendid public buildings which met the eye in every part of Athens, were in progress, this item of expendi- ture must have greatly exceeded its average amount. It must not be supposed, however, that the enormous sums required for the erection of the temples and other edifices which crowned the Acropolis were all supplied from the revenues of the current years. This appears obviously impossible, when we think of the two thousand and twelve talents expended by Pericles in five years upon the Propykea alone, that magnifi- cent marble gateway of the citadel, the massive remains of which, with the fragments of solid columns, capitals, cornices, and elegantly carved ceilings of Pentelic marble strewing the ground in wild confusion, still form a most worthy entrance to the now ruined and desolate sanctuary of Athena, striking every beholder with awe and admiration. This, however, was but the gateway to the holy precinct itself. It may perhaps appear impious to enumerate the unrivalled works of classic art which once crowned this sacred hill, with a view to the Yankee question, how much they cost; but it is only in this view that they can claim our present attention. Fortunately, perhaps, for our classic reverence, the exact sum expended upon each building and statue is not known; but from the cost of the Propykea we may form an idea of the immense sums required for the completion of the Erechtheum, with its various temples united in one, and its gallery of Caryatides, those captive maidens who still patiently bear the burdens voL. Lxxxvi. NO. 178. 2 14 [Jan. THE PUBLIC ECONOMY OF ATHENS. which they bore so gracefully before the eyes of Demosthenes and Plato; or of the Parthenon, the peculiar home of the virgin goddess, in which she stood in ivory and gold, as rep- resented by the hand of Phidias. The treasures of art which were lavished upon these buildings can hardly be understood by us now, even when we behold them in their present deso- late grandeur, and stand upon the ground literally filled with fragments of their former ornaments, or see the mutilated re- mains of their splendor which give just celebrity to the mu- seum of ancient art in a modern capital. There can be no doubt, however, as Boeckh remarks, that the common esti- mate of the expense of these buildings, made by Colonel Leake and constantly repeated in guide-books, is much too low. Leake bases his estimate on the statement of Thucyd- ides, that thirty-seven hundred talents of the treasure in the Acropolis had been expended upon the buildings erected by Pericles, and upon the war against Potida~a down to that time. This, however, it is obvious, by no means excludes the appropriation of other funds besides those in the treasury to these purposes; and the well-attested statement given above, that the Propykea alone cost two thousand and twelve talents, places it almost beyond a doubt that the thirty-seven hun- dred talents mentioned by Thucydides refer only to the sum borrowed from the treasure in the Acropolis, to be added to that part of the large annual revenue which could be devoted to this object. The second item in the list of expenses, that for the police of Athens, was inconsiderable compared with the same in modern European cities. No police existed in ancient times, says Boeckh, except the police whose services are salutary, namely, that of the streets, and that of the market and of trade. The city watchmen, by a strange habit of the Athenians, were bought as they were needed, and not hired. These were the well-known Scythians, so called from the fact that they were barbarians, perhaps originally from Scythia, at first three hundred in number, and afterwards increased to a thousand or twelve hundred. They lived in tents on the Are- opagus, and at a still earlier date in the Agora. Boeckh esti- mates the annual expense of purchasing these public slaves 1858.] THE PUBLIC ECONOMY OF ATHENS. 15 at one talent and a half, and that of maintaining them at thirty-six talents. The third item, the celebration of the public festivals, was of course a most important one for Athens, whose pride it was, as one of its own orators could boast, that it presented a continual festival to all who visited it. The Athenian Demos, the old man of Pnyx, held his court and appeared in state on festal occasions with a magnificence which princes have rarely equalled. When we think of the frequent recurrence of such processions as that represented by Phidias upon the frieze of the Parthenon, for which, it is said, the cavalry of the state were maintained in time of peace, we may form some idea of a single department of the expenses which belong under this head. An important part of the cost of many of the festivals, especially of those in which a chorus of any kind appeared, was not borne directly by the public treasury, but was assumed by individuals. To this we shall recur in another place. When we speak of donations to the people of Athens, our chief attention is not- to be given, as in the case of Rome, to the distribution of grain to the populace, although this some- times occurred, but more especially to the distribution of the money called tlzeorica, aptly termed by Boeckh a can- cer of the public welfare. This payment of the theoricct, which in the time of Demosthenes had become an evil of the first magnitude, had its origin in a most remarkable institu- tion of the preceding century, which at the outset by no means threatened such fatal consequences to the state. When we read with delight the masterpieces of the Attic drama, and almost imagine ourselves amid the assembled populace of classic Athens, beholding the original performance of the Agamemnon, the Antigone, or the Medea, how seldom does it occur to us, that even this brilliant picture has its reverse side, which may be coolly examined as a matter of political economy, and must be so examined, if we wish to understand perfectly the full effect of the Attic drama upon the Attic life. We must first give up all ideas of the time and place of such performances which we have derived from modern theatres, and instead of an enclosed building in a crowded 16 THE PUBLIC ECONOMY OF ATHENS. [Jan. city, brilliantly lighted for an evening entertainment, with all the other accompaniments of a modern theatrical exhibition, we must think of the immense theatre of Dionysus on the southern slope of the Athenian Acropolis, where thousands of all classes sit through the greater part of the day at some Dionysiac festival, with the blue sky of Attica over their heads, and with the plain of Athens stretching before their eyes to the sea, where Pira~us with its fortifications holds their wooden walls, beyond which are the deep-blue waters of the Saronic Gulf (blue, as only Greek waters dare to be), en- closing Salamis and gina, and bounded by the black hills of the Argolic peninsula in the distance. Add to this the flowery hill Hymettus, cloud-capped Parnes, which Aris- tophanes dared to use as movable scenery in his comedy, and the dark rock of the Acropolis, crowned with the Parthenon, almost overhanging the vast assembly, and we have the scene amid which the Attic populace listened through hours and days to the Attic drama. Nor must the right of admission to this intellectual feast be restricted to those who could afford to purchase the privilege. The Attic drama was for the in- struction and entertainment of the people. It had originated in a solemn litany chanted in the worship of the god Diony- sus, and was still performed in a great measure as a religious service; the theatre was a temple of Dionysus, and admis- sion to its rites could no more be restricted than could the ac- cess to the temples of Zeus or Athena. Upon these princi- ples the drama was established, and continued until shortly after the appearance of ]Eschylus upon the stage. At about this time the old wooden theatre of Athens broke down dur- ing an exhibition, and several serious disorders had previously occurred from the immense throng of spectators, many of wh~m, not being citizens, had no right of admission. To ob- viate this difficulty, after the new stone theatre was opened in its imperfect state, a price of two oboli (six cents) was placed upon the seats by the state; but as the manifest injustice of excluding any Athenian from the theatre for the want of even two oboli became apparent, a most singular plan was soon introduced. This was to demand the admission fee of two oboli, but to pay that sum from the public treasury to 1858.] THE PUBLIC ECONOMY OF ATHENS. 17 any Athenian who claimed it. This arrangement was not so absurd as at first thought it may seem to be. It had the de- sired effect of making admission to the theatre practically free to every Athenian, while foreigners, and others whom it was in- tended to restrict, would be still subject to the payment of the fee. Above all, it probably insured greater order in the crowd of spectators. Especial care was taken not to pay the two oboli from the treasury to any person not entitled to them, as we see in the case of a citizen who was fined a talent for receiv- ing the two oboli for his absent son. Indeed, the theoretical absurdities in the system almost disappear, in comparison with the fatal difficulties which beset it in practice. This diobelict, or payment of the admission fee to the thea- tre from the public treasury, was the origin of the theorica. The manner in which it became so soon such a fatal disease in the political system of Athens, was simple and natural. The payment was of course intended to provide the poorer classes with seats at the theatre, and it is probable that the richer citizens at first did not claim it. Before the time of Demosthenes, however, it was regularly paid to nearly every citizen, to rich and poor alike; and it was viewed no longer as an act of justice to the poor, but rather as a means of ena- bling the people generally to celebrate the day by a better meal or by some additional luxury. Of course it was de- manded alike by those who wished to attend the theatre and by those who did not. This, however, was but a small part of the evil. Theorica were now paid, not only for the theat- rical exhibitions, but for all the Athenian festivals at which any game or procession was to be seen; and the original ob- ject of the payment was so far forgotten, that even ancient grammarians disputed as to the etymology of the name. It is doubtful whether the original sum of two oboli was ever increased, and Boeckhs investigations show that the reference to a drachma and other sums may all be explained without assuming such a change. He says: Unquestionably, therefore, the theoricon was very changeable. Since, however, two oboli are mentioned, both in relation to earlier as well as to later times, the higher rate seems to have had its origin in the cus- tom, already intimated, of doubling or increasing threefold the regu- 2* 18 THE PUBLIC ECONOMY OF ATHENS. [Jan. lar rate for festivals whose celebration continued several days; so that, for festivals whose celebration continued for three days, it became a drachma; for those whose celebration required two days, four oboli. The double or threefold diobelia may also soon afterwards have been paid even for one day. p. 309. We add Boeckhs estimate of the total annual amount of the theorica. If we estimate that eighteen thousand persons received the theori- con, and the number of those who received it could hardly have been less, the amount expended in the distribution of the single diobelia would have amounted to a talent. And since certainly it was paid for at least twenty-five to thirty days annually, we may estimate the lowest annual expenditure for it at twenty-five to thirty talents. It may, how- ever, in prosperous times, have easily amounted to double and threefold that sum. pp. 310, 311. This annual expenditure of thirty, or even of sixty or ninety talents, could not be called extravagant for the prosperous times when all the cities of the IEgean poured their wealth into the treasury of Athens. Indeed, there existed at this pe- riod a truly magnificent patronage of art and literature, to which we can hardly find a parallel. But we must remember, that a sum, which would not have been extravagant in the palmy days of Athenian supremacy, might be enough to ruin the state when her allies were disaffected or in revolt, or when a foreign conqueror was plotting with domestic traitors against her independence. In the next class of expenditures, those for public services in time of peace, one especially is worthy to be mentioned with the theorica, the compensation for attending the assem- blies of the people. With this, as Boeckh well remarks, the ruler paid himself. It was at first an obolus, and was after- wards increased to three oboli. If, with Boeckh, we estimate the average number of citizens in a public assembly at eight thousand, we find that the whole expense of the forty regular assemblies in each year, added to that of ten or twelve special meetings, would have been about thirty-five talents. The members of the senate of five hundred were paid a drachma for each days attendance, and the senate held a ses- sion every day except festival days. Their pay for three 1858.] THE PUBLIC ECONOMY OF ATHENS. 19 hundred days would amount to twenty-five talents. The six thousand citizens, who were chosen annually to sit as judges (or jurymen) in the Heliastic courts, received the same com- pensation which was paid for attending the public assembly, at first an obolus, afterwards three oboli. From this body of six thousand the judges were selected for each particular case, the usual number sitting on each trial being five hundred. We find, however, courts consisting of as small a number as two hundred, and in a few cases larger numbers; as one thou- sand, fifteen hundred, and even six thousand. Boeckh fob lows Aristophanes in estimating the total expense of these popular courts at one hundred and fifty talents annually. The compensation given for other public services was in- significant compared with those just named. We will men~ tion only the pay of ambassadors sent on special missions to foreign states, permanent embassies being unknown. Their compensation appears to have been given chiefly as mileage, and in regard to this item a valuable lesson might be learned by modern governments. Even the infamous false legation, which betrayed the liberties of Greece to Philip, becomes, in this light, an example of wise economy and prudence. The ten ambassadors are said by Demos- thenes to have received a thousand drachmas ($ 171) for travelling expenses, which is mentioned as an extraordinary sum. As the embassy was absent seventy days, this was less than twenty-five cents a day for each member. The provision made by the Athenians for the support of the poor and disabled must not be left unnoticed, as it was one of the institutions which distinguished Athens from the other cities of Greece. It is the boast of Isocrates, that, in the period of the citys greatest glory, no citizen was desti- tute of the necessaries of life, or was reduced, to the shame of the state, to beg of those whom he accosted. The dona- tion was small, but, if we consider the expense of subsistence at that time, the provision appears most creditable to Athens. One or two oboli daily were given to about five hundred persons, causing an annual expense of five or ten talents. As Athens kept no regular standing army of infantry in time of peace, the regular military expenses were compara 20 THE PUBLIC ECONOMY OF ATIIEN$. [Jan. tively slight, and consisted chiefly of the cost of building new triremes annually, and the maintenance of the cavalry. The cavalry were kept constantly exercised, both in order to secure greater efficiency in war, and because it was an important part of the parade in all the religious processions on festal days. Xenophons statement, that the Athenians expended nearly forty talents annually on the cavalry, even in time of peace, is accepted by Boeckh, and substantiated by a com- putation based upon one of the inscriptions copied in the second volume of the original work. We have now mentioned the principal regular expenses of the Athenian state, with the estimate of their amount made by Boeckh, wherever it was possible to make one. As to the sum total, he says The whole amount of the regular expenses, if of each only the lowest rate is assumed, could not have been less than four hundred talents annually. But if the building of large edifices, and the con- structing of great public works, extraordinary distributions of money, and heavy expenses for festivals, were added, a thousand talents may easily have been disbursed in a year, even without carrying on war, the costs of which are indeterminate. Four hundred talents, which are equivalent to about six hundred thousand thaler, or $ 410,400, were, in ancient times, equal to at least three times that amount at the present day, if the value of the precious metals be compared with that of the common necessaries of life. With this reference, then, that disburse- ment may be considered equivnlent to three times its amount. This is tolerably proportional to a population of five hundred thousand souls. pp. 350, 351. The expenses of war were of course uncertain; and as they were usually met in a great measure by an extraordinary tax, they cannot properly be included in any estimate of the regular expenses of the state. We refer all interested in the subject to Boeckhs learned and satisfactory investigation in the last four chapters of his second book. We quote a few statements as to the pay of the army and navy. The com- mon daily pay of a foot-soldier was four oboli (12 cents), of which half was paid as wages and half for subsistence. A century earlier, at the siege of Potickea, the Athenian heavy- armed soldiers were paid two drachmas (33 cents) a day, one 1858.] THE PUBLIC ECONOMY OF ATHENS. 21 for themselves and one for their servants. The pay of the cavalry was usually threefold that of the infantry, while that of the naval service appears to have differed little from that of the common soldiers on land. Having spoken of the principal expenses of the Athenian state, we must now glance at the revenues by which those expenses were annually met. The Athenians were strenu- ously opposed to direct taxation, and for meeting the ordinary expenses of each year, the so-called ordinary revenues usually sufficed. These are divided by Boeckh into~ the following four classes 1. Rents and duties, partly those raised from the public domains, including the mines, partly customs and excise duties, and some taxes on trades and persons, levied upon aliens and slaves. 2. Fines, to- gether with fees received in the administration of justice, and the pro- ceeds of confiscated property. 3. Tributes of the confederate or subject states and cities. 4. The ordinary public services. p. 405. Under the first head we will mention the item of principal importance, which most resembles our custom-house duties. This is the so-called fiftieth (7rczrrflKoor1~), an ad valorem duty of two per cent upon all imports and exports. This appears to have been intended as a source of revenue, and not at all as a protective duty. The latter, at least in our sense of the term, seems to have been nearly or quite unknown in the public economy of Athens; but abundant evidence of legis- lation for the protection of trade may be found in the chapter on Commerce, in the first book of the work before us. The fiftieth, like most of the Attic revenues, was not collected directly by officers of government, but farmed, that is, sold by auction to an individual or company. The regular duty of the fiftieth was wisely moderate. Another duty of ten per cent, levied by the Athenians during two short periods, amounting together to ten or twelve years, is worthy of comparison with the Sound Dues levied by Den- mark in our own times. The Athenians coolly built a custom- house on the Bosporus, defended it with thirty ships, and exacted a tax of ten per cent upon the cargo of every vessel that passed. Passing over the second item in the list, which is unusually 22 THE PUBLIC ECONOMY OF ATHENS. [Jan. fruitful in learned discussions, we come to the third and most important source of the Athenian revenues, the tributes of the allies and subjects of the city. After the expulsion of the Persian invaders from Greece in 479 B. C., when the various Hellenic states had taken breath from their well-fought con- flict for life and death, the unanimous voice of the victors demanded that the war should be renewed in a manner suited to their new position, which was now changed from the de- fensive to the offensive. The Great King was not merely to be shut out from Greece, and compelled to give up his arro- gant pretensions; he was also to be thoroughly humbled and made to atone for his insolence. To effect this, a union among the scattered fragments of the Hellenic race was necessary. The leadership by sea, which had been granted without dispute to Sparta while the common liberty was in peril, had since the restoration of peace been quite as quietly and naturally transferred from Sparta to her more worthy rival, Athens. In two years we find Athens at the head of the confederacy of Delos, the presiding city of a body of independent allies, all alike subject to the synod of Delos in matters pertaining to the war against Persia, which it was the object of the confederacy to wage. The transformation of this independent confederacy into the Athenian empire, which we find existing after another quarter of a century, the gradual subjugation of the allies, who one by one found it in- convenient to pay the assessments required for the common defence, and were reduced by the forces of the confederation, and the final transfer of the treasury from the temple of Apollo at Delos to the Parthenon at Athens, were steps ren- dered inevitable by the energy and enterprise of the presiding city opposed to the inactivity of most of her allies. In re- garding this important series of events, familiar as they are to every student of Greek history, one principal fact is to be kept continually in mind, which no one will now venture to dispute, since Mr. Grotes able and elaborate vindication, that, in each successive step in the change from a confederacy to an empire, Athens acted a perfectly consistent and honorable part, doing merely what her duties as the presiding city imposed upon her. She may have been harsh and cruel in her sub- 1858.] THE PUBLIC ECONOMY OF ATHENS. 23 sequent treatment of her subjects in particular instances, but this does not affect the question as to the justice of the origi- nal acquisition of her supremacy. Her position, in this respect, was not unlike that of our own federal government in regard to the States of our Union. As a revolt or an attempt to secede from the Federal Union would be met by the force of the whole confederacy, so the revolts of the members of the confederacy of Delos were met, not by the force of Athens alone, but by the united force of the whole alliance, acting merely under the direction of Athens. The refusal of Naxos to acknowledge her allegiance and to pay her tribute was as much an act of nullification as was ever dreamed of in our own republic. It was through no injustice of Athens that the indolent islanders preferred paying tribute to serving in person, and agreed to pay fixed annual sums of money to Athens in return for the entire or partial relief which she af- forded them from personal service; nor can we blame Athens if she encouraged this natural tendency, knowing how bene- ficial its results would be to her own power and influence. The first assessment of tribute amounted to four hundred and sixty talents annually. As this was made by Aristides himself, we may take for granted that it was done with the proverbial justice which guided all his actions, and that it was an impartial assessment upon the allies of the sum re- quired for the common defence of the confederacy and for the common war against Persia. Under Pericles the tribute was increased to six hundred talents, which, however, does not involve the necessity of any change in the assessment made by Aristides. The additional hundred and forty talents were probably the result of the purchases of exemption from per- sonal service on the part of allies, mentioned by Thucydides, which were in two respects beneficial to Athens, both in adding to the tribute and in giving her an immense naval superiority to her allies. The transfer of the treasury from Delos to Athens is said to have been made on the motion of the Samians, and was probably rather a measure of pre- caution, adopted for the safety of the increasing treasure, than a coup d%~tat on the part of Pericles, as it is sometimes viewed. After the death of Pericles, during the Pelopon 24 THE PUBLIC ECONOMY OF ATHENS. [Jan. nesian war, the tributes were greatly increased, so as really to be oppressive and exorbitant; and after the peace of Nicias (422 B. C.) we find them doubled, and amounting to twelve hundred talents. Of the tributes at this period we have the most authentic information in the original tribute lists, which were engraved on marble, and set up in the Acropolis of Athens, where they have been recently discov- ered under the ruins which cover the hill. These interesting and valuable monuments, the original records of the great Athenian confederacy, now stand exposed to view in the left or northern wing of the Propykea, in the ruins of the very room which once contained the paintings of Polygnotus. We have previously alluded to the important place which these inscrip- tions, and their restoration and interpretation, hold in the sec- ond volume of Boeckhs original work. At the fatal close of the Peloponnesian war, Athens was, of course, stripped both of subjects and of tribute, and her revenues from this source never again reached their former importance. The new Athenian confederacy, established in 378 B. C., was but a feeble imi- tation of that under which Athens had attained such a height of power and glory a century before. The changed relation of the presiding city to the allies since the times of Aristides and Pericles, the shock which the alliance received in the social war, and the growing power of Philip, all combined to render the position of Athens, in respect to her annual reve- nues, critical and unstable in the extreme. The few notices that we have of the amount of the tributes at this period show that it was small and fluctuating. It is therefore the more honorable to Lycurgus that he undertook the direction of the shattered finances of Athens at this critical season, and raised them by his wise management to such a degree of prosperity, that it seemed for a short period as if the glorious days of the preceding century were about to return to Athens. Her long-neglected public buildings were finished, and her annual revenues (not tributes) were raised to twelve hundred talents. Lycurgus, as Boeckh remarks, is almost the only man whom antiquity presents to us in the character of a genuine financier. From the tributes collected during the age of Pericles was 1858.] THE PUBLIC ECONOMY OF ATHENS. 25 accumulated the celebrated public treasure which was pre- served in the Parthenon. It began with the sum originally brought from IDelos, which Boeckh estimates at eighteen hundred talents, and was increased to nine thousand seven hundred talents of coined silver, or nearly ten millions of dol- lars. A large part if not the whole of this was considered as the consecrated treasure of the virgin goddess in whose temple it was deposited. To this consecrated treasure belonged the thousand talents which were set aside at the beginning of the Peloponnesian war, to be sacredly reserved in connection with a hundred ships, until they should be needed to repel a direct attack upon the city by sea. It was a noble idea, and one which shows that the Greek religion was not all an empty and unfelt pageant, to dedicate even the treasures of the state to its guardian goddess, so that the Athenian might feel that the fair personification of wisdom which he had en- shrined in the noblest temple ever reared by human hands, and had represented so beautifully in ivory and gold, was really possessed of the means of protecting the city which lay at her feet, and that from her must come the aid which ~rould save the state in its greatest peril. Money could be bor- rowed, as it seems, from this treasure for the use of the state, but it was always taken as a loan; and so exact were the Athenians in their respect for the property of the goddess, that at first they not only replaced the sums borrowed, but also paid a small monthly interest of one tenth of one per cent for the time the money had been kept from the sacred treasury. Even the consecrated money, however, could be used freely to adorn the sacred precinct of Athena, and it was the singu- lar glory of Pericles to employ these princely treasures upon those works of art which were alone enough to make his name and age immortal. We have alluded to the sums ex- pended upon the Propykea; we may mention here the chrys- elephantine statue of Athena, whose golden ornaments were valued at four hundred talents, and could be removed and replaced at pleasure. In the calamitous period near the end * See the accounts kept in regard to such loans, some of which are given in the German edition of Boeckli, Vol. II. p. 145. VOL. Lxxxvi. NO. 178. 3 26 THE PUBLIC ECONOMY OF ATHENS. [Jan. of the Peloponnesian war, when the Sicilian expedition had broken the strength of Athens, and the allies were in revolt, and when even the reserved fund of a thousand talents was employed in the name of the goddess to defend the city, no further attempt was made to maintain the sacred deposit; it was impossible to refund the sums borrowed, and with the fall of Athens the history of the treasure of the Parthenon was closed. In enumerating the ordinary revenues of Athens, we men- tioned as the fourth class the ordinary public services (XEL- TOvp7tat E~/KvKXtoL). These liturgi~ form a most important point of distinction between the Athenian public economy and our own. They were services performed by the richer citizens for the state at their own expense, in order to relieve the public treasury of certain burdens. They were truly democratic, and belong to that class of Athenian institutions which assume the obligation of the richer citizens to bear a much larger proportion of the public expenses than their amount of property would strictly impose upon them. Of the ordinary liturgime, the most important was the choregia, which may serve as an example. This was the duty of pro- viding and training the chorus for the various dramatic exhi- bitions, and for other festivals where a chorus was required. The choregi were appointed by the ten tribes for each year, and a poet who wished to exhibit a drama at any festival had one of these choregi allotted to him by the archon, upon proper application, if his piece was duly approved. It was then the duty of the choregus to pay for the training of the chorus by a competent teacher, and to support it during the time for which it was obliged to serve. He also paid whatever price was necessary to obtain the various singers, dancers, and musicians. We find that the expense of the choregia in different instances varied from three hundred to three thousand drachmas ($50 to $ 500), according to the nature of the chorus, and the magnificence of the festival. Although this was the most important of the ordinary litur- gime, it was by no means the only one. The gymnasiarchia, or duty of bearing the expenses of all gymnastic exhibitions, and the duty of occasionally feasting the tribe to which one 1858.] THE PUBLIC ECONOMY OF ATHENS. 27 belonged, at an expense of two or three oboli (6 to 9 cents) for each guest, were imposed upon citizens in the same way. The trierarchy, too, which was nominally an extraordinary service, was yet regular enough to be an important part of the expenses of a wealthy Athenian, and was imposed in the same manner. We have an account of one citizen who ex- pended in these public services nearly $ 11,000 in nine years. It would be most unjust, however, to look upon this expendi- ture in the same light in which it would be viewed at the pres- ent day. We must consider the public spirit on this subject in Athens, that made the performance of these services a highly honorable privilege, in which each citizens ambition was roused to equal or to eclipse his neighbor. The obligation to perform them was a distinction rather coveted than avoided, and most of the richer citizens exceeded in liberality the strict requisitions of the law, as was the case with the indiVidual just mentioned. No one could be called upon to perform any such service, unless he had property to the amount of three talents, although poorer citizens sometimes volunteered. Em- ulation was excited by the fact, that whenever any prize was won, as in the dramatic contests, the citizens who bore the liturgia, as well as the tribe which appointed them, were named as victors. Again, we must take into account that all these services relieved the public treasury, and consequently diminished or obviated the necessity for direct taxation, which would have drawn nearly the same sums from the same per- sons in a much less agreeable manner. We cannot wonder that a rich Athenian preferred occasionally to pay the expense of a chorus, and perhaps have his name proclaimed as victor in connection with that of LEsehylus or Sophocles, and in- scribed with honor upon a tripod, rather than to have a similar amount extorted from him in small annual taxes, in which he would take no interest, and for which he would receive no meed of glory. Boeckh calls attention also to the considera. tion, that the high rate of interest in Athens allowed a man to expend a large amount in thisway, and still have a larger income remaining than the same property would now yield. For example, $ 16,000 at 12 per cent, (which Boeckh assnmes for illustration in the case mentioned above,) would allow the 28 THE PUBLIC ECONOMY OF ATHENS. [Jan. possessor to bear even the burden of $ 11,000 in nine years, and still have remaining more than four per cent annually; and this, we are informed, was four times as much as he was required by law to pay. If a citizen felt that he was un- justly burdened with a liturgia, he had the right to call upon any one whom he thought better able than himself to bear the burden, or for any other reason under greater obligation to receive it, and offer him the alternative of assuming the duty or exchanging property with him. This right of anti- dosis was one of those peculiar inventions of the Athenians, made to balance the defects which were constantly liable to appear in the working of their somewhat cumbrous demo- cratic system. It was, of course, a great protection to the poorer class of men of property, but it became in itselT, in some cases, an instrument of injustice, as Demosthenes learn& l in his youth by sad experience at the hands of his unprincipled guardians and their friends. We have now spoken of the ordinary revenues of Athens, which were regularly available to meet the ordinary expenses. As to their total amount, we have various accounts, which give the means of forming a general estimate. Xenop-hon reckons them, at the beginning of the Peloponnesian war, at a thousand talents; Aristophanes, somewhat later, at two thou- sand. After the recovery of Athens from her losses in the war, they appear to have been small and uncertain, until they were raised by Lycurgus to twelve hundred talents. This is of course exclusive of all the sums paid for personal services, which only saved money to the treasury without directly en- riching it. These ordinary revenues, with the assistance received from the liturgia~, were usually sufficient to cover the regular ex- penditures in times of prosperity. As the expenses of war were uncertain, and often excessive, producing sudden and immediate demands for large sums of money, it was ne- cessary to have extraordinary means for meeting such emer- gencies. This was effected partly by a special liturgia, the trierarchy, by which the state was relieved of a large portion of the expense of fitting out the naval forces, and partly by resort, in cases of necessity, to a direct tax on property. 1858.] TILE PUBLIC ECONOMY OF ATHENS. 29 To gain a clear idea of the Athenian system of trierarchy, and to see the single principle that was at its foundation through all its various modifications, we must glance at the origin of the Athenian navy, and at the original use of the word trierarch. We shall see that this word, which in its etymological meaning, as found in the earlier historians, denoted the commander of a ship of war, and afterwards, in the language of the orators, was applied to one who merely paid the expenses of fitting out such a ship, suffered no vio- lent change in its signification; and it will be found, we think, that the change which the naval system of Athens underwent between the time of Thucydides and that of De- mosthenes, was merely a part of that radical change which made the Athenians of the age of Demosthenes a different race, in many important respects, from the contemporaries of Pericles, or the sturdy heroes who fought at Marathon and Salamis. There were four different systems of trierarchy, corresponding to four periods in history. The first existed before 412 B. C.; the second, from 412 to 358 B. C.; the third, from 358 to 340 B. C.; and the fourth after 340 B. C. The first and second systems were modifications of the same plan, or rather they were both expedients for supplying the utter want of sys- tem; the third was that of the symmoriw, and the fourth was that proposed by Demosthenes in his great trierarchic reform. In all these systems the fundamental principle was the same, namely, that the state always furnished the hull of the ship with the masts, and, after the time of the Peloponnesian war, also a great part of the material for spars and rigging.* The state also paid the wages of the crew, and supplied them either with provisions or with money to obtain them. It was the duty of the trierarch to pay all the expenses of rigging and fitting out the ship, either using the rigging furnished by the state from the public storehouses in the Pira~us, when this was given, or, as was the case in the earlier times, providing all the material at his own expense. It seems to have been 3* See Boeckhs Urkunden neber dos Seewesen des Attiseken Staates, p. 194. This work was intended by its author to form a third volume of his Staatskauskaltung der Athener. 30 THE PUBLIC ECONOMY OF ATHENS. [Jan. the duty of the trierarch to collect the crew who were to be paid by the state, compelling them to embark by force, or even by bribes, if necessary, and to keep them together until the end of the year, often filling any vacancies that might occur from desertion at his own expense. He had also to keep his ship in good repair during the year, and to restore her at the end of his trierarchy, together with all the other public property connected with her, which he held in trust as an agent of the state. Finally, the trierarch was obliged to com- mand the ship in person, or to provide a substitute. From this duty he received his title, which remained unchanged through all the forms of the trierarchy. The last-mentioned duty of the trierarch is especially to be kept in mind in dis- tinguishing between the earlier and the later systems, as one important feature of the latter was the appointment of substi- tutes, who took command of the ships, while the so-called tri- erarchs remained quietly at home, and only paid the expenses. The origin of the Athenian naval system (not to speak of the Trojan war and Menestheus) must be sought in the old constitution of Solon, which divided each of the four Ionic tribes of Attica into thirds, and each third into four naucraria~ (all together forty-eight), each one of which latter divisions seems to have been under obligation to equip a single ship when the state required it. The number was raised to fifty under the constitution of Cleisthenes, to cor- respond with the new division of the people into ten tribes. This provision sufficed for all exigencies, before Athens be- came a naval power of the first class, which was not until the time of Themistocles and the second Persian war. In the critical period when the invasion of Xerxes was threaten- ing, and all Greece was in alarm, when the wisest of Delphic oracles had declared that wooden walls alone must protect the city of Pallas, and when Athens was in still more press- ing need of ships, in order to finish the protracted war with A~gina, in which she had been far from victorious, Themis- tocles laid the foundation of the Athenian navy, by per- suading the people to forego the pleasure which they were anticipating from the division of the proceeds of the silver mines at Laurium, and to apply the money thus saved 1858.] TIlE PUBLIC ECONOMY OF ATHENS. 31 (amounting to one or two hundred talents) to the building of ships of war. Polya~nus, in a remarkable passage, states that the building of these ships, as well as their whole equip- ment, was undertaken by a hundred rich citizens, who re- ceived from the state a talent for each ship. These men must have been the trierarchs of the ships thus built, and they probably had the duty of commanding them in person. If this interpretation of the imperfect but authentic account is correct, we have an early instance of a trierarchy under the first system. In regard to the principles of this first system, (besides the rules stated above,) we know only that the trie- rarchs were chosen annually from the richest class of citizens, according to some principle of rotation, subject to the direc- tion of the board of ten generals, who always managed the affairs of the trierarchy. Under this system the fleets were raised during the prosperous period of the Athenian empire, including those sent upon the Sicilian expedition, and upon other expeditions in the earlier part of the Peloponnesian war. At some time during the Pelopounesian war, as the whole expense of fitting out a ship pressed heavily upon a single individual, the custom was introduced of dividing the burden between two, who thus became joint trierarchs of the same ship for the same year, each commanding the ship for six months. This was the second form of the trierarchy, which involved no further modification of the first than has just been stated. As the earliest traces of such a change are found about 412 B. C. (when the other liturgim were first divided in the same way), this date is assumed as that of its introduction. It is obvious that this did not interfere with the operation of the previous system, in cases where the trierarchs preferred to bear the burden alone; and, in fact, the two systems continued to exist together until the reform in 358 B. C. Several years before the last date we find traces of a gradual modification, which constituted an essential part of the two succeeding systems. Since the time of Pericles a great change had come upon the Athenian citizen. Instead of being the high- spirited warrior, who thought it a disgrace to employ hirelings to fight the battles of his country, he had become a mere quiet and domestic citizen, to whom a regular performance of the 32 THE PUBLIC ECONOMY OF ATHENS. [Jan. duties required by the daily routine of life in Athens was more congenial than active service in the field. The heliastic obo- lus was dearer to him than the glory of a victorious cam- paign. The places in the army and navy, which citizens were once proud to fill, were abandoned to mercenaries, often of the vilest class, who fought only for their wages, and deserted to the enemy if he offered them larger pay. It could not be expected that this fatal evil should be confined to the ranks, and not extend to the higher officers. Indeed, just at the time when we should expect to find it, we begin to have instances of trierarchs who let out their trierarchies to con- tractors, paying a stipulated sum, for which the contractor was to assume all the labor and responsibilities of the trie- rarchy, including the command of the ship during the year, the real trierarch remaining at home, with the title of com- mander of a ship which perhaps he had never seen. The first instance of this which is mentioned happens to be that of the trierarchy imposed upon the young Demosthenes in 364 B. C., by Thrasylochus, which he assumed in order to avoid exchanging property and dropping his lawsuit with his guardians. It is not strange that the young orator, at the age of eighteen, availed himself of this expedient to evade personal performance of a duty so basely imposed upon him; and he merely paid twenty mina~ ($ 333), which relieved him of all further responsibility, the case being one of joint trie- rarchy under the second system, and the whole amount being forty mina~. We see, however, from this case, that the right of serving by proxy was recognized, as this could not have been the first instance. Indeed, we find the same Thrasylo- chus, three years later, letting out to a contractor a trie- rarchy of his own. This, however, it must be confessed, was not at first regarded as honorable, and in case of serious accident or loss, the state made the original trierarchs liable to a prosecution for desertion of their post (XetwoTc~tov). Dc- mosthenes ~ mentions a case in which a number of trierarchs who had let out their trierarchies were in the greatest danger of being condemned to death, on account of a naval defeat * Demosthenes on the Crown of the Trierarchy, p. 1230. 1858.] THE PUBLIC ECONOMY OF ATHENS. 33 sustained by their ships in their absence. This essential modification, which probably soon became the rule, rendered the first and second systems of trierarchy less and less efficient for supplying the wants of the state, especially in sudden emergencies. The principles upon which the trierarchs were appointed in each case appear to have been somewhat unset- tled, much being undoubtedly left to the discretion of the board of generals, and more to the public spirit of the indi- vidual citizens, which in some cases impelled those to assume the duty of the trierarchy whose fortunes were not sufficient to impose it upon them legally. The result was soon appar- ent in the wretched condition of the Athenian navy, which was yearly becoming less and less equal to the emergencies of the state. At last the matter was brought to a crisis in 358 B. C., when the Athenian expedition to Eub& ~a occurred, which was made in order to liberate that island from the dominion of the Thebans. Then the supply of ships actually failed, and the state was obliged to depend upon the enthusiasm of the citi- zens generally. Voluntary trierarchs here appear for the first time, and Demosthenes himself was among them. The ex- pedition was successful, and took its place among the exploits of past time which were always on the lips of the orators; but Athens learned from it a useful lesson in naval affairs, and immediately reformed her system of trierarchy. The result was the introduction of the third system, known as the sys- tem of symmoriw, which continued in use until Demosthenes introduced his own reform in 340 B. C. By this plan, a body of twelve hundred, consisting of the richest citizens, was established, upon which all the burden of the trierarchy was imposed. This body (called UVVTEXE~, or partners) was divided into twenty symmories (o-v,ap~opiam) of sixty men, and each symmory was subdivided into four companies (o-vvrcXELaL) of fifteen men; so that the whole body of twelve hundred consisted of eighty companies. Each of these com- panies supported a single ship, dividing the expense equally among its fifteen members. This provided eighty ships, and the system was designed for the supply of that number annu- ally, the individual members of each company now paying 34 THE PUBLIC ECONOMY OF ATHENS. [Jan. one fifteenth of the expenses of a ship annually, instead of bearing the whole expense once in fifteen years. As the sym- mory had a corporate existence, with the power of managing its own affairs in many respects, it could subdivide itself into ten, twelve, or even a larger number of companies, if neces- sary, to provide for raising two hundred, two hundred and forty, or more ships, if the state required them. Before the system was abandoned, sixteen seems to have been the usual number for supplying a single ship, involving an increase in the whole number of partners to twelve hundred and eighty, or some similar change. The three hundred richest were dis- tinguished as leaders of the symmories, and upon them was imposed the additional burden of advancing the money for the trierarchy to their poorer brethren, when the necessities of the state required an immediate supply of ships. In this sys- tem we find adopted as an essential part the principle of com- manding the ship by proxy, which had crept into the earlier systems as an unauthorized irregularity. As each ship had now fifteen trierarchs, it is obvious that not even the nominal duty of commanding~ it belonged to any one of the number. The whole trierarchy was regularly let to a contractor, whose duties included a provision for the command of the ship. Thus was the signification of the name trierarch gradually changed, in conformity to the great change which all Athens underwent during the same period. The third system of trierarchy seems to have soon been encumbered with difficulties, and to have failed in securing all the advantages expected from its operation. Only four years after its introduction, we find Demosthenes, in his first speech delivered before the public assembly, proposing a de- tailed scheme in amendment of the system of symmorles. His proposal, however, seems to have produced no effect. This proposal in his Oration on the Symmories, delivered in 354 B. C., must not be confounded with the great reform which he actually effected fourteen years later, about which no special oration is preserved, but which is described in the Oration on the Crown. It was made to obviate the rapidly increasing evils and abuses which had crept into the system of symmories. Among these was one by which the three 1858.1 THE PUBLIC ECONOMY OF ATHENS. 35 hundred leaders were in the habit of converting their duty of advancing the money for the trierarchy into a means of avoid- ing the whole burden themselves. They let out the trierar- chy to a contractor, for the smallest sum possible (usually a talent), making their own terms and advancing the money, but afterwards assessing the whole expense upon their poorer brethren, allowing nothing for their own share. The whole system, too, rested upon an unsound foundation. It assessed the same amount upon every member of the body of twelve hundred, without regard to the great differences in wealth. Demosthenes, in 340 B. C., proposed and carried a law which abandoned this unjust principle altogether, and placed the trierarchy upon the only proper basis, that of property. The symmories and other divisions were abolished, and the princi- ple was introduced that a certain amount of taxable property, whether it was in the hands of one man or of ten men, should subject the possessor or possessors to a certain share of the burden of the trierarchy; in other words, the trierarchy was placed upon the same footing with the direct property tax. The plan of Demosthenes was to impose the expense of a single ship annually upon every ten talents of taxable prop. erty in the state; each of those who had that amount fur- nishing one ship by himself, and those whose taxable property amounted to less joining together in clubs until the proper amount was reached, when the whole club supported a ship, as the old companies had done. Those who were rated higher than ten talents were subject to still higher duties in the same proportion, so that some were obliged to furnish three triremes and a tender. More than this, however, no single citizen could be called upon to do. This reform was effected by Demosthenes against an almost unprecedented opposition on the part of the richer citizens, especially those who had been among the three hundred leaders of symmories. Bribes of immense amount are said to have been offered in vain, to stay the progress of the reform, but Demosthenes was not the man to be approached in that way. And they could * For an explanation of the term taxable property, which, with the richest class, amonuted to one fifth of their actual property, see helow, in onr remarks on the property tax. 36 THE PUBLIC ECONOMY OF ATHENS. [Jan. well afford to offer bribes to avert so threatening an invasion of their privileged abuses, as may be seen by comparing the new system with the system of symmories. Demosthenes tells us that persons who previously paid only the sixteenth part of the expense of a single ship, now became sole trie- rarchs of two. This reform was one of the greatest triumphs achieved by Demosthenes during his career as a statesman, and one which would have brought incalculable advantages to his country if it had been effected sooner. But the law was passed only two years before the fatal battle of Cha,ronea. It will be seen that the trierarchy under its fourth form was placed upon the same footing with the direct tax upon prop- erty. Indeed, it seems to have lost the character of a litur- gia in every essential point: it was now not confined to the richest class, but was probably extended to every one who was liable to direct taxes, and conformed entirely to the prin- ciple which Demosthenes himself lays down in regard to di- rect taxes as opposed to the liturgi~e, that they are taxes upon the property, and not upon the person. This is a point which we have never seen noticed in regard to the trierarchic reform of Demosthenes. Indeed, we can discern no reason why the trierarchy, under this form, should be classed among the li- turgi~e. We would even go so far as to maintain, that the principles of antidosis (or exchange of property) could have no application to it in this form, except so far as they ap- plied even to the property tax itself; that is, so far as antido- sis would be allowed in the case of all persons who claimed a right to be taxed in a lower class and at a lower rate than they were. The cases of antidosis, in regard to the earlier forms of the trierarchy, were more numerous than those in regard to any other liturgia. In all cases it is to be noticed as an important point, that, where property was exchanged in this way, all lawsuits then pending with regard to such proper- tywere transferred also, which would have been the case in the antidosis offered to Demosthenes as mentioned above, where the only object of Thrasylochus was to terminate the suit pending against the guardians of Demosthenes. It is equally important to notice, that no lawsuits xvhich did not directly af feet the value of one of the estates in question could be trans 1858.] THE PUBLIC ECONOMY OF ATHENS. 37 ferred by antidosis, and of course no public prosecution could be thus transferred. When all other means of obtaining revenue failed, the Athenians had recourse to the most unpopular of all meas- ures, direct taxation. This way of meeting the expenses was opposed to the spirit of the Athenians, on the same principle by \Vhich the personal services were so well suited to their temper. They paid their money in taxes, without receiving any credit or glory in return. A trierarch was personally in- terested in his own ship, and a naval victory gained by an Athenian fleet reflected renown upon those whose ships were engaged in the battle, especially in the early times, when the trierarchs commanded their ships in person; but what glory was gained in return for all the money they paid to the tax- collector, for which their names were not even mentioned with gratitude? Even in the assessment of the property tax, we see the democratic principle which is so conspicuous in other parts of the Athenian economy. During the period when it most frequently occurred, the tax was assessed, not upon the whole property of the state, but upon a certain percentage of it, which was much higher for the richer classes than for the poorer. We know that the richest citizens paid a tax upon twenty per cent of their property; the poorest, as Boeckh supposes, paid the same rate of tax upon only eight per cent of their whole property. A tax of five per cent upon all the taxable capital of Athens would thus be an actual tax of one per cent for the richest class, but a tax of only four tenths of one per cent for the poorest. An ignorance of this principle has sometimes caused a singular mistake, by which classic authors are supposed to estimate the whole property of Athens at less than six thousand talents, which would be absurdly small. This, however, is only the taxable capital (the i-/,w~p. ALa), upon which the property tax (or Ew~opcr) was assessed. It was of course between eight and twenty per cent of the whole, so that the whole property of Attica must have been valued at thirty or forty thousand talents, at the lowest esti~ mate. * See Boeckh, Book IV. Chap. IV., where the mistake, into which even Poly- bins fell, is clearly explained. VOL. LXXXVI. NO. 178. 4 38 [Jan. THE PUBLIC ECONOMY OF ATHENS. The property taxes paid under the system just mentioned, which was introduced in the archonship of Nausinicus (378 B. C.), were usually very small, one of those mentioned being a tax of one per cent on the taxable capitaF, and another amounting to only one sixth of one per cent. A third, of which Boeckh speaks at some length, as the tax imposed under Nausinicus himself, must, if levied, have been a tax of five per cent, amounting to three hundred talents. But with a full consciousness of the great difficulty of the question, and of the impossibility of arriving at any sure conclusion upon the subject, we must venture to join those who dissent from Boeckh upon this point, and to disbelieve the existence of any such excessive tax as that here supposed. It is in- deed difficult to believe that the new system of taxation then introduced would have been inaugurated by the immediate assessment, in a single year, of a tax which for the richest class would have amounted to one per cent upon their whole property. This, too, it must be remembered, would have been in addition to all the indirect taxes and personal services which usually supplied the public treasury. Mr. Grote, in his History of Greece (Vol. X. p. 158, note), with that practical common sense which amid all his learning so eminently distin- guishes his great work, decides this point against Boeckh with- out assigning his reasons, except those drawn from the interpre- tation of the passage in IDemosthenes (in Androt., p.6O8), which is the supposed authority for this large assessment. When Demosthenes speaks of T~L~ ELO-/JOpOS T6L9 hr~ NaVOtVIKOV as amounting to three hundred talents, it is indeed much more natural to understand the total amount of all the taxes levied during the fourteen years front the time of Nausinicus to the time at which he was speaking, than to suppose, with Boeckh, that a single tax levied in the year of Nausinicus himself is meant. It seems to us that this view of the case admits of strong proof by arguments drawn from sources entirely inde- pendent of either the sense of the passage or the probabilities of the case; but our space will not allow us to argue the point at length. We will merely adduce a single considera- tion. In a subsequent passage of the oration cited, Demos- thenes speaks of the trifling amount of this very tax in certain 1858.] 39 THE PUBLIC ECONOMY OF ATHENS. cases in which Androtion had collected it by force, after it had been a long time in arrears. He says that Androtion collected seven talents in small sums, none of which, as he believes, exceeded a mina. Among others, however, he men- tions the case of two persons, Leptines and Callicrates, from whom were collected thirty-four drachmas and a little more than seventy drachmas respectively. Bnt these two men were of trierarchic rank, that is, they were rich enough to be subject to the burden of the trierarchy, and Boeckh himself refers to them in that capacity. This, however, presup- poses a fortune of at least three talents, which, if taxed at the rate supposed, would yield one hundred and eighty drachmas. How, then, could they have been subject to so small a tax as was collected by Androtion, unless we suppose that a succession of small taxes is referred to, some one or two of which may have been left unpaid? It seems absurd to suppose that men of property like these would allow a few drachmas of a large tax assessed many years before to remain unpaid, when the chief part had beeu paid long before. All difficulty vanishes, however, as soon as we suppose that no such heavy tax was assessed, and that these paltry sums belonged to smaller taxes, like the two others mentioned above. We have dwelt upon this subject especially, to meet the common but erroneous idea, that the assessment of heavy direct taxes was not infrequent in Athens. We take leave of the work before us, fully aware of the impossibility of doing justice in an essay like the present to even the principal points of interest and importance in a sub- ject so extensive, and satisfied if we shall be the means of calling attention to the rich and varied stores of learning which the publication of Boeckhs Public Economy of Athens has placed at the disposal of our scholars. 40 THE PROFESSION OF SCHOOLMASTER. [Jan. ART. II. 1. School Days at Rugby. By an Old Boy. Bos- ton: Ticknor and Fields. 1857. 2. Twentieth Annual Report of the Board of Education, to- gether with the Twentieth Annual Report of the Secretary of the Board. Boston. 1857. OF the books which have been reprinted during the past year, there is none more unscrupulously English than the one of which the title is placed at the head of this article. There is a full and healthy flavor in its style, smacking of the breezy upland and sunshine and open fields, a luxuriance of good spirits, a manly manner of thinking straightforward, an ab- sence of all cant and sentimentality, a tone as loud and cheery as a hunting-song, and withal an almost aggrav~iting inde- pendence and self-satisfaction, qualities refreshing to the soul in these days of spasmodic poetry, illicit dramas, and eccle- siastical novels. There is not a twinge of indigestion in it. The stormy contests of the play-ground, where the passions of the man are first awakened in the mind of the boy; the tyranny of fagging, not the last nor the only relic of savage ages which has held place in English schools; the inevitable and constant battle levied between master and pupil; the other warfare, which is carried on by the boy, within his own breast, between the temptations that easily beset him and the loyalty which he owes to the dear old home; his first consciousness of ambition; his first intuition of the serious purpose qf liv- ing, all this, and more, is told by many vivid and graphic pictures of the life led at an English foundation school; and standing above or behind all the scenes, suggested rather than described, appears the serene figure of that great and good teacher, Dr. Arnold. Reading this book is like watching some limpid, self-confident, brawling mountain-torrent, that runs sparkling over moss and shingle, and yet there is some- thing in it greater than is seen at first, of genuine nobility and manliness of soul, and, in the closing chapters, of unex- pected pathos and tenderness, in reference to that undiscover- able futurity in which life ends. Jt has cost the world ages of experience to earn an appre

40 THE PROFESSION OF SCHOOLMASTER. [Jan. ART. II. 1. School Days at Rugby. By an Old Boy. Bos- ton: Ticknor and Fields. 1857. 2. Twentieth Annual Report of the Board of Education, to- gether with the Twentieth Annual Report of the Secretary of the Board. Boston. 1857. OF the books which have been reprinted during the past year, there is none more unscrupulously English than the one of which the title is placed at the head of this article. There is a full and healthy flavor in its style, smacking of the breezy upland and sunshine and open fields, a luxuriance of good spirits, a manly manner of thinking straightforward, an ab- sence of all cant and sentimentality, a tone as loud and cheery as a hunting-song, and withal an almost aggrav~iting inde- pendence and self-satisfaction, qualities refreshing to the soul in these days of spasmodic poetry, illicit dramas, and eccle- siastical novels. There is not a twinge of indigestion in it. The stormy contests of the play-ground, where the passions of the man are first awakened in the mind of the boy; the tyranny of fagging, not the last nor the only relic of savage ages which has held place in English schools; the inevitable and constant battle levied between master and pupil; the other warfare, which is carried on by the boy, within his own breast, between the temptations that easily beset him and the loyalty which he owes to the dear old home; his first consciousness of ambition; his first intuition of the serious purpose qf liv- ing, all this, and more, is told by many vivid and graphic pictures of the life led at an English foundation school; and standing above or behind all the scenes, suggested rather than described, appears the serene figure of that great and good teacher, Dr. Arnold. Reading this book is like watching some limpid, self-confident, brawling mountain-torrent, that runs sparkling over moss and shingle, and yet there is some- thing in it greater than is seen at first, of genuine nobility and manliness of soul, and, in the closing chapters, of unex- pected pathos and tenderness, in reference to that undiscover- able futurity in which life ends. Jt has cost the world ages of experience to earn an appre 1858.] THE PROFESSION OF SCHOOLMASTER. 41 ciation of the position and character of woman, and we have not y~t attained to a knowledge of the true position, require- ments, and character of the child. One reason for this igno- rance may be due to the fact, that the study of the condition of childhood requires the mind to turn back upon itself, and observe its own motions, a mental process contrary to the habits of nature, and which has made the secrets of the mind far less attractive to most persons than the secrets of a patented machine for the hatching of chickens. Look at the manifold different systems of education. One might suppose that the mind of the child was made for curious experiments, to find by what variety of place, or by what clipping and coaxing, it might be brought to assume a certain style of growth, without ever being suffered to put forth the laws of its own nature. We cannot but look upon that class of beings stigmatized by the term boys with some lively touch of pity. Particularly when transplanted from the soil where they were born, and placed under foreign influences, are they deserving of this humane sentiment. Would any man who has passed a moderately comfortable life be willing to live over the decade between his fifth and fifteenth year? Does any one feel a response in his heart to that lyrical wish, now popularized by the street-organ, to be a boy again? The truth is, that the boy, as regards his conception of his own nature and its due education, is in advance of his age. He is not under- stood, or misunderstood. We arrogantly put him into that class which Sir William Blackstone denominates ferw naturce, and base our plans for his improvement upon the assumption of his total depravity. He has ambition which burns out in disappointment; he has dreams of heroism and love which he dares not confide to another; he has keen sensibilities which his elders do not forbear to taunt or to disregard; he has an un- derstanding of matters whereof he is assumed to be absurdly ignorant; he has aching doubts about life and death which he knows not where to satisfy. Often, like one who wanders in the dark, his undeveloped reason and half-knowledge fail to guide him through the night into which his more mature fancy hurries him, and he stumbles over chasms, or starts at those awful phantoms of the brain which the firmness of riper 4* 42 TIIE~ PROFESSION OF SCHOOLMASTER. [Jan. intellect cannot at all times exorcise. The loneliness of night, the mystery of the heavens, the sadness of good-by, fill his imagination and grasp his whole soul with a power which lessens as he advances in years. Like young Albano, in Jean Pauls delectable romance of Titan, he has to restrain and hide within himself all his emotions, his longings, his precious thoughts, for fear of some stern father or some domesticated Diogenes; or, if he ventures to unbosom himself to an im- agined friend of his own age, asking only for the bread of sympathy which his heart craves, it is but to find himself possessed of the scorpion of treachery and neglect, and per- haps, at last, he flies to the beauty of some amiable girl, whom his ardent enthusiasm clothes with every grace and ~every virtue, who smiles upon him, and comprehends him no more than he comprehends the ocean. The English form of education in those ancient schools, which the charity of benefactors, long since become dust, has founded and carried on, has much to be revered, and some features which are utterly repulsive. We see with admiration its conservatism, its thoroughness, its devotion to the wholesome Latin grammar. We visit, almost with envy, the ancient cloisters, coeval with Elizabeth and the first Henry, the Gothic arches, stained lights, panels of old oak, ~and spacious, high-windowed halls, where learning has pre- sided for ages, and the dearest associations have grown with the moss and twined with the ivy over their weather-streaked walls. Yet, when we know the idle customs which have ~been perpetuated with them, their adherence to precedent and form, their slow improvement, the feudal manners which prevail in the great schools of England, we turn with some complacency from pictured windows and arches and panels, to the windy, old common-school house of New England, with its raw master and shivering scholars, its bare walls, pine seats, and broken panes, its irregularities and constant changes, and mark, with some pride, what a noble instituti,on it has become, how progressive, how democratic in its infin- ences, how strong in promise for the future, how capable of leading forth a young nation in the paths of intellectual liberty, enlightened j udgment, and political freedom. 1858.] THE PROFESSION OF SCHOOLMASTER. 43 It appears in the records of the town of Boston, that in the year 1635 it was agreed upon by the people, that brother Philemon Pormont shall be entreated to become schoolmaster, for the teaching and nurturing of children with us. This order, which we have the best reason to suppose was fully carried into effect, is the earliest written evidence of the planting of the common-school system of New England. Fifteen years after the Mayflower, emerging from the mists of the Atlantic, had dipped anchor in the waves of Plymouth harbor; five years after Shawmut, or Trimountain, already become a great town in the estimation of the colonists at Plymouth and Salem, had merged its double name in the one which has made the blessed memory of John Cotton green and fragrant for ever; while the vast disputed territory towards the east, subsequently called the District of Maine, was all un- explored, its coasts beginning to witness, in miniature, those combats and reprisals between the two greatest nations of the world, which were afterwards projected over the entire conti- nent of Europe; only a few years before Gorges had estab- lished his romantic feudal court at Agamenticus, of which some curious records are preserved in the State library at Au- gusta, a court, a magnificent array of councillors, marshals, and deputies, with only one element of a state lacking, people to be governed; while the magistrates of Massachusetts Bay were engaged in their perilous contest with the freedom of conscience, which, represented in the person of Roger Wil- liams, was driven out, first to Salem, and then, through the terrible snows of those early winters, across the wilderness, to the city which well deserved the grateful name of Providence; while in the world beyond the sea, fondly called the Old, Charles was striving to bind to his will those men of steel, Hampden and Sidney, until, like steel, they shivered in his grasp, and, recoiling, cut him at the throat; when the sandy hills of the Massachusetts, beaten by the melancholy east winds of spring, scarcely gave back in the harvest the foreign corn with many anxious misgivings intrusted to their keep- ing, and Nature did not spare her frowns upon the Puritan; while, to him who contrasted the pleasant lands of Lincoln, and the goodly heritage abandoned there, with the grim for- 44 THE PROFESSION OF SCHOOLMASTER. [Jan. ests of New England, the familiar customs of the native vil- lage and common household ways dear as blood to the heart with the tumultuous life, the privations and weary homesickness of the emigrant, it would seem as if the ex- periment of colonization must fail, miserably and irretriev- ably ; in this gloomy day of small things was originated an institution which is the peculiar glory of New England, the Common School. It is a significant fact, and worthy of all honor, that, while the right hand of the Puritan clung to a narrow and appalling creed, his left hand was earnestly sowing those seeds of lib- eral ideas which were to come up in the brighter future, a gracious harvest of free thought, free speech, and free gov- ernment. It is true, that, before the date above alluded to, charity schools had been founded in London, where youths of fair promise and of good family connections might receive an education as the gift of some pious benefactor, who, fol- lowing the advice of the poet for the gaining of immortality, endow a college, or a cat, or stimulated by more no- ble motives, had consecrated his wealth to feed the lamp of the poor scholar. The two universities of the kingdom held out liberal hands to such as were willing to take their favors with humility. But the difference was in this; the education of the children of the Puritan originated with the people, and was paid for by them. In the deep wilderness, a college was rising before the wigwam of the red man had disappeared from the banks of the Charles, established and sustained by the voluntary contributions, not of the dead, but of the living, who brought from its oaken chest the silver that had been hoarded against dire necessity, the tankard, the ancient punch-bowl, few and precious heirlooms. All that re- mained to testify to them of a forsaken ancestry they gave to the cause of sound learning, of Christ and the Church. Honor to him who had no plate to bestow, but who bequeathed his flock of sheep to Harvard College; for the children of a re- mote generation are still clothed with their wool. There is no portion of the annals of our country xvhich has better claim to a special history than that which illustrates the progress of education, from the first vote to establish a 1858.J THE PROFESSION OF SCHOOLMASTER. 45 free school, in 1635, through the various reforms which have been adopted, and the many new methods and the thousand alluring graces given to the acquisition of knowledge. At length, the venerable taskmistress, whose features were once cruel, harsh, and repulsive, ruled with lines of rigor and threats of pain, has assumed a playful expression, and challenges the youthful spirit to study as captivatingly as if it were a game at ball. Nearly all of the recent improvements and new meth- ods in teaching are the growth of our own soil. Appropriate to a history of education would be an account of that primi- tive fountain of letters in the Colonies, the Winter School, with its interesting varieties; of the Academy, where the study of Latin was first cared for; of the College, where sometimes, as at Dartmouth, the red man sat upon the same bench with his pale brother, and taught his rude mouth to shape the hic hwc hoc; of the Normal School, where the teacher is qualified for his profession; of tJ~Le Farm School, where the pupil has first to be untaught. The care and ingenuity which have been expended in achieving perfection in the arrangement of the school-room, and in the school furniture, so as to insure sufficient air, light, and space to the scholar; the improvements in the mechani- cal apparatus of teaching, as well as in the text-books; the changes in discipline and modes of punishment, from that barbarous age when it was supposed that the rod, the dark closet, and public disgrace would improve the temper and stimulate a thirst for knowledge, to the present time, when, happily, a medal, a ribbon, a mere cipher of approbation, has almost driven the name of punishment from our schools; the large economy of time and labor secured by the systematized employment of both, and by the gradation of scl{ools and classes; the gradual and favorable alteration in the relations of master and scholar; and, lastly, the improvement in the master himself, from the Ichabod Cranes of former days, who worked on the farm and boarded round, to the thoroughly educated men who now stand at the head of the principal schools in New England ; all these facts, incidents, and con- ditions, could not fail to illustrate very favorably the peculiar advantages that have flowed from the Puritan spirit, which, 46 THE PROFESSION OF SCHOOLMASTER. [Jan. in recoiling from the Catholic Church, succeeded surely, though indirectly, in making knowledge and independence of mind catholic and common. We propose to confine our remarks to a very narrow branch of the subject of education, and to take a brief view of that important element of society, the Schoolmaster. An interesting volume has been written, in contents lim- ited enough to be read through on a winters day, entitled Lives of Good Wives. Every library contains among the dusty titles of the topmost shelf Roscocs Eminent Shoe- makers. Surely no schoolboy has failed to be caught nibbling at the tempting library-cake stuffed with the Lives of Cele- brated Highwaymen. Somewhere among good wives, shoe- makers, and highwaymen there ought to be a niche for the statues of representative schoolmasters. Whatever the condition of the society in which he moves, the schoolmaster always preserves his peculiar character. He is as inevitable as that mythical person, the stage uncle, who, with a change in costume to suit the generation, has figured in the drama from time immemorial, the stern incorporation of tyranny and unreason, a rock in the smooth course of love through the first scenes, and usually coming out in the last a generous though gruff benefactor, who melts to the use of an India handkerchief as he bestows all his vast wealth on the leading lovers of the piece, saying, Bless ye me, chil- dren, as the curtain falls. The schoolmaster, likewise, pos- sesses certain qualities of temperament and manner, which cling to him from generation to generation, and which make him stand forth, a quaint figure in alto rilievo, above the plane of the people upon whom his character impinges. There has been no Fielding as yet to draw the shadows and fine lines, the oddities and the simple graces, of the Parson Adams of schoolmasters. Dealing exclusively with the next generation, the master is apt to appear like a stranger among the men of to-day. He was an Israelite without guile, the poet Coleridge would say of his father, who was for many years head-master of the Kings School at Ottery. John Coleridge was very well in the dead languages, but in the ways of the world he 1858.J TIlE PROFESSION OF SCHOOLMASTER. 47 never ceased to be the youngest of pupils. With his sim- plicity the master often unites an amusing bombast. More than any other professional man he finds it difficult to shun the cant of business. He cannot easily sink the shop. He likes to come in on didactic stilts. He will treat his con- temporaries as if they were his pupils, and announce some bald fact of forgotten history as it had been sent by tele- graph. Possessed of some business capital in the shape of statistics and small information upon topics of entirely gen- eral interest, such as the names of the ruling potentates of the little German states, the date of Marlboroughs last battle, the latitude, climate, religion, and productions of the Hebrides or the Barbary States, he will sometimes quite over- whelm his modest auditor by a volley of intelligence, and leave him stunned with chagrin at his own comparative ignorance. He will interrupt even the festive scene, by putting some pro- found question, like that which Mr. Baps propounds to Sii Barnet Skettles in the novel: What are you going to do with your raw materials when they come into your ports in return for your drain of gold? Charles Lamb, whose school experi- ence was none of the happiest, found an illustration of this peculiarity of the schoolmaster in a staid-looking gentleman about the wrong side of thirty, whom he fell in with on the top of a stage-coach in the vicinity of London. After putting the taciturn Lamb through a cross-examination, answering his own questions, and displaying a perfect compendium of useful information, the schoolmaster began to discuss the cotton trade, and when the poor hearer ventured some slow remark upon the India market, and was surprised to find how eloquent he was becoming upon the subject of cotton, the master stopped him short to inquire first, whether he had ever made any exact calculation as to the value of the rental of all the retail shops in the city of London. In modern times there are twd teachers who stand promi- nently forth, each in his own country, as the originator of a popular, a democratic form of instruction, and who have each done much to make education less of a luxury and more of a necessity. In the Middle Age, the priest was the only repre- sentative of the schoolmaster. Of the few appreciable bless- 48 THE PROFESSION OF SCHOOLMASTER. [Jan. ings for which we have to thank the Romish Church, one is that it rescued the wandering wrecks of literature from the deluge of barbarism which Attila and his successors rolled down over the civilization of the South. The recluse of the cowl and rosary, whose shaven crown was bowed for years over the work of transcribing a single illuminated page, had his uses. The vestal flame of letters, feebly tended by him, was kept still alight in the schools of the convent. The monk taught, not only theology, but the elements of rhetoric and the mathematics, and the monastery, that warmed many a wayfarer in those unsettled times, and fed him on the bread of its refectory, doled out some morsels of broken knowledge also. The monks life was like the palimpsest which he pre- served. Often under the story of his daily career, his puerile labor, his hypocrisy, his drunkenness, his sensuality, is read the dim inscription of a simple piety, a pure devotion, a sweet charity. The monkish schools changed with the for- tunes of their teachers. The Reformation came, and most of them passed, with all their rich endowments, into those great Protestant universities, which stand like inexpugnable fortresses in the domain of letters, and hold in reserve the forces of learning, their regiments of folios extending far back into the twilight of antiquity. ~Te specify first a name which shines in the early dawn of popular education in Europe. It is remarkable that, although numberless military heroes have been furnished to the world by noble families, most of the great philanthropists and discoverers have sprung from the lowest of the people. Thus Sir Richard Arkwright, whose inventive genius is at the foundation of the cities of Lawrence and Manchester, was the thirteenth son of very humble parents; himself a barber, and a poor one. The origin and career of Henry Pestalozzi afford also a striking illustration of the rule. In the place wher9 he was born, one of those little hamlets upon which the white hills of Switzerland look dimly down, the poor were thoroughly poor. He had himself drunk the bitter cup of penury, and had experienced, with the sensitiveness of his fine nature, the wants and wrongs of the people. Far above their heads the Alps loomed out of the blue air, like steps 1868.] THE PROFESSION OF SCHOOLMASTER. 49 ascending to the heavens; Nature, like some blindly working Genius, appeared to have exhausted herself in wild fancies; but the minds of those who dwelt beneath were dwarfs. The career of Pestalozzi seems to have been originated by one of those accidents to which the imagination delights to refer the inception of important events. As the fall of an apple gave Newton his first hint of the theory of gravitation; as the quivering leg of a dead frog brought Galvani upon the discovery of that mysterious fluid which bears his name; as the eloquent letter of Alexander Hamilton, when a youth of twenty-three years, is said to have initiated the plan of the convention which prepared our national Constitution; and as, at the sight of the delicate framework of the leaf of the Victoria reo~ia, the first Crystal Palace sprang into existence in the brain of Joseph Paxton, so, likewise, the first plan of popular education in Europe may be referred for its begin- ning to an idle moment spent by Henry Pestalozzi in reading one of the novels of Jean Jacques IRoussean. He responded, from his own experience, to the vague suggestion of the au- thor, that there was much that was amiss in the structure of society; he longed, with the ardent hope of a most pure philanthropy, to do his part in bringing about a change for the better; and as he was no dreamer, both his convictions and his emotions united in prompting him to begin that work, to which he devoted the whole of his long life. He started with the belief that education ought not to be, as it had been, the exclusive privilege of the wealthy and the noble, but that it was a right which society was bound to secure to every one, however poor the government or the in- dividual might be. He conceived that there had existed a radical error in the mode of teaching; that children were crammed with rules and formulas without being taught any- thin o.; that they were made to go round and over a subject without understanding it; that they merely stripped the husks from the kernel, without ever enjoying the ripe fruit. A mov- ing spectacle it must have been, that first school of Pestalozzi, that crowd of little paupers, children whose lives had been spent in begging through the streets, in whom impudence had taken the place of childishness, faces pale with frequent. vOL. Lxxxvi. NO. 178. 5 50 TIlE PROFESSION OF SCHOOLMASTER. [Jan. famishing or wrinkled and sharpened with premature depravity, some so timid that not a word could be drawn from them, all of them covered with the badge of poverty, rags and un- cleanliness. These wretches were for the first time made conscious of their own minds, and furnished with reasons for the belief that there is a God in the world to be worshipped more than self, and a happiness beyond that of having bread enough. The master was a feeble, stammering man; his head drooped below his shoulders; his face was wrinkled, his whole appearance ridiculously ugly. A story is told of his visit to a watering-place where his wife was staying, at the time when his fame was at its height. Some of the fashionable people, seeing the unknown man come straddling up the walk, called out to the poor wife to come and see the horrible mon- ster who was approaching. The monster was well-nigh as needy as his scholars. He owned a scanty farm, upon which he hoped the children would earn their daily bread. He had no school apparatus, not even a book of instruction. But he was willing to live like a mendicant himself, in order that he might teach mendicants to live like men. Pestalozzis manner of teaching was wholly different from the method then used. One chief cause of his success was the talent the almost divine faculty, which he possessed in a marvellous degree of winning the affections of children. They called him father, and it was not a mere name. It does not appear from Pestalozzis various treatises upon edu- cation, that he had made great acquirements in knowledge, or that he had ever composed into a system the ideas which suc- cessively drifted into his mind. He had no eloquence with which to trumpet his promised reforms. Bnt surely, in the purity of his benevolence, in whiteness of soul, in Christian humility and the pride of sublime purpose, none have ever ex- celled him. He did not profess to teach a religion, yet he breathed into his children, even in The dreary intercourse of daily life, the best monitions of Christian morals. He did not teach them arithmetic, the dull machinery of question and answer, and tables learne~l by rote; he seemed to make reality of ab- stract things; he placed numbers in their hands, and made 1858.] THE PROFESSION OF SCHOOLMASTER. 51 them see and touch the unit, and the process of adding and subtracting. He did not teach geography, the names of dots and colored patches upon a map; he led his pupils forth to the mountain and the stream, and set the shapes of land and sea, the configuration of the earth, the motion of the rivers, before their eyes. Wherever he found a subject wor- thy of attention, he made his pupils learn the thing itself, be- fore he taught thCm names. Pestalozzi had every difficulty to struggle against, and he met with varying fortune. He received some aid from the lid- vetic government; but at the time when he lived, the shock of the French Revolution had been felt in the Swiss Cantons not less than in Italy, and poverty had paralyzed the strength of nations as well as of individuals. The issue of his work was as unhappy as it was undeserved. When the tide of his success was at the flood, and his reputation was abroad over Europe, all went well with him. Teachers, hearing of his wonderful exploits in instruction, and of the new and grow- ing popularity of his ideas of education, came from remote parts of the continent to sit at his feet, and to be qualified by his example. His wife co-operated with him, and cheered him through the weary drudgery of his labors, as only a woman can. Friends, some high in rank, delighted to do him honor. Strangers made long journeys to see in his school the hundreds of little faces, shining with intelligence, as with the reflected light of their teachers beautiful spirit. He had some admirers who would fain have worshipped him as a supernatural being. The meanest peasant knew that kind face, and doffed his cap as the master went by. But, unfor- tunately, Pestalozzi displayed unusual claims to be considered a man of genius, in being singularly deficient in financial prudence. He was no manager. His pecuniary means were soon exhausted, and he became a bankrupt. Then all went wrong with him. The fate which awaited him was one of peculiar misfortune. Deserted by those friends in whom he had confided most, misrepresented, and even calumniated, by some who had been his assistants, and whom he had looked upon as his successors to carry into fulfilment the cherished plans of his life, the old man spent his last years in wretched- 32 THE PROFESSION OF SCHOOLMASTER. [Jan. ness; wandering about the garden where the faithful wife, his early love, lay buried; wandering, in the desolation of his mind, over the graves of buried hopes and ruined projects, a broken heart, a shadow of loneliness and sorrow. We pass by many distinguished names of schoolmasters, with whom it would be delightful to pause ; Roger Ascham, the renowned penman, who was fortunate enough to be born in season to instruct Elizabeth to form her sovereign pot- hooks; Camden, the schoolmaster of Ben Jonson; the ter- rific Busby, whose rod had scored the back of almost every one of those great London wits who flourished in the open~ ing of the eighteenth century; and we pause only to recall the familiar face of the veritable Yankee schoolmaster. About the time when Philemon Pormont was entreated to become schoolmaster at Boston, Ezekiel Cheever, the educated son of a London linen-draper, came over to settle in Connecti- cut. His name is identified with all the early education of New England. He was a godly man, and had no idea of spoiling a child by flying in the face of Solomons precept, and sparing the rod. In those days, the master was an absolute sovereign. Besides inculcating the four rules of arithmetic, and up to the rule of three, he was a Cato of morals and manners. Woe to the young scoffer who jested and carried himself irreverently in meeting. The tything- man might point his long pole at the offender, but if the mas- ter saw him, what a reckoning was to come on Monday morn- ing! Mr. Barnard, in his sketch of Cheevers life, has given some verses, written by an English master of that day, which illustrate this relation of the teacher to the taught. We copy two of them. My child and scholar, take good heed unto the words that here are set, And see thou do accordingly, or else he sure thou shalt be beat. If broken hosd or shod you go, or slovenly in your array, Without a girdle, or untrust, then you and I must have a fray. The fame of Ezekiel Cheever twines handsomely round ~fr 1858.] THE PROFESSION OF SCHOOLMASTER. 53 the pillars of the Puritan commonwealth. Teaching first at New Haven, afterwards at Jpswich, and then at Charlestown, he changed the field of his labors a third time, and, after a period of active life as long as is ordinarily allotted to man, he started afresh at Boston, and never ceased until he died at the age of ninety-four years; having left off teachino~ said Cotton Mather, only when mortality took him off. Sub- sisting at New Haven upon twenty pounds a year, and such occasional assistance as the straightened means of the parents of his pupils might afford; at Jpswich, whose Free School he made famous throughout the Colonies, living on a farm; often exercised in mind as to the collecting of his poor wages, whereupon he would resort in meek petition to the magis- trates; now tormented by the cold, wind-shaken tenement, always deficient in window-glass, in which he wrought out his vocation; again troubled by new masters, who would move into the neighborhood and decoy off his pupils, the good man found leisure, between the tillage of the mind and the reclaiming of his stumpy acres, to compile a Latin Acci- dence, the merit whereof, as a text-book, has brought it down close to our own day, it having been used in the schools of New England for more than a hundred and fifty years. Cotton Mather was a pupil under Cheever, and upon the decease of the master, the minister preached one of those good long sermons in which he most delighted, devout rhap- sodies, which appear to our unsanctified eyes a mass of dog- matism, fervor, and italics. He also wrought out some verses upon the character and life of his venerable mas- ter, in which (among other sedate jests) he says the veteran never declined to the pra~ter-perfect tense, though he clung to the skirts of life Till Times scythe, waiting for him, rusty grew. The poetry is all bad, but the feeling which prompted it was exemplary. Some portions of the discourse, wherever the minister let himself down to the man, are quite worthy of his subject. Alluding to the character of Cheever, he remarked that hewould say very much in a Little. Out of the School he was One Antiqua Fide, priscis moribus, A Christian of the 5* 54 THE PROFESSION OF SChOOLMASTER. [Jan. Old Fashion, An Old New English Christian. There is a touch of simple pathos in the introduction to the sermon, where, having recounted Cheevers long life and labors, . a painful, faithful, laborious schoolmaster for seventy years, the minister says: He enjoyed the singular favor of Heaven, that, though he had usefully spent his life among children, yet he was not become twice a child. With these two masters teaching was no mere pastime. Jt was not with them, as with the keepers of most of our country schools, a kind of half-way house, at which the stu- dent puts up for a day, on the road to his profession, to econ- omize strength enough to leave it for ever. With them it was no temporary expedient. It was the study, the business, the enthusiasm of a lifetime. They raised the drudgery of teach- ing from the level of dead routine into which it had fallen, and gave it new vitality. They rescued it from the hands of the taskmaster, and placed it among those humane arts which justify the most careful efforts of the statesman and the scholar. Yet each how unlike the other! Pestalozzi, by the magnetism of a sympathetic spirit, drew to him hundreds of young hearts that had perished in outer darkness but for him. Cheever, not by intuition, but by force of rough and persever- ing work, erected free schools in every colony of New Eng- land. Such were these true philanthropists; and who shall say that the wave of good influence which circled out from their point of contact with the world has subsided yet, or may not still be executing their benign purposes upon lives which have passed with theirs beyond the stars? If Pestalozzi was the man of genius in teaching, Cheever was the man of hard labor. One was a theorist, and the other a practitioner. How many of those whom the popular voice styles great, how many who lie canonized in the spacious temples of his- tory, generals, philosophers, martyrs, if weighed for the good they have done in the same balance with these, would spring up lighter than air! The profession of teaching has sometimes been described as the merest machine-work, tending to keep the mind puerile, as a stationary engine, a constant exhaustion of patience, strength, and devotion, which no one can fully recompense, 1858.] THE PROFESSION OF SCHOOLMASTER. 55 and which the beneficiaries never think of feeling grateful for. It is said that the boy cannot look upon his teacher but as his natural enemy, sometimes brought to capitulation, sometimes at truce and parley, still his foe; the relations between mas- ter and scholar being such that there can be no friendship be- tween them; and, as the boy broadens into the man, all his memories of his master aching with the thrashings which he received at his hands. A cloud of witnesses might be sum- moned to refute this calumny. They would start from the library shelves, where in eloquent silence lie entombed the lives of men who by their own exertions, toiling late and long, have climbed to eminence, and speak and testify that they owed the first impulse in their honorable career, the first stings of an ambition which bore them above reverses, and taught them that the duties of life are worth more than life, to some casual hint, some whisper of praise, or kind flattery by a good schoolmaster of their youth, who sowed in quick soil that precious seed, which blossomed in their recollections even after their heads were white with lifes autumn, and ripened a hundred fold. There is hardly a book of biography which does not contain some grateful recognition of the teacher. The testimonyis as certain as it is unanimous. We read how Cicero, amidst the storm and stress of the Roman republic, stood up to twine the laurels of his elo- quence round the injured head of the poet Archias, his early master, stirring in the breast of the street rabble a momentary reverence for good letters and the fair humanities, whereof his aged teacher was his representative, and bearing on the swell and dash of his great rhetoric the name of that humble man, else long forgotten, down to our time, as drift and kelp are whirled along the tides of the ocean quite round the world. No one can read the biography of the American Cicero with- out admiring the letter, simple in language, but golden with remembrance and affection, which, in the last year of his life, Daniel Webster wrote to Master Tappan. Not long since, at the Academy in Exeter was gathered an assembly of some of the most honored statesmen and scholars of this country around their venerable schoolmaster, a veteran, whose spring of life was spent, to declare from the very place where 66 THE PROFESSION OF SCHOOLMASTER. [Jan. he had taught them, and with such feeling as rarely finds ex- pression, their precious obligations to him, and to embrace him with a warmth of regard such as half a century of crowded life had left all unchilled. It was my great good fortune, writes Thomas Jefferson, and what probably fixed the destinies of my life, that Dr. William Small of Scotland was then Professor of Mathe- matics [at William and Mary College]; a man profound in most of the useful branches of science, with a happy talent of communication, correct and gentlemanly manners, and an enlarged and liberal mind. What a monument has William Wordsworth erected to the memory of his teacher, when, after visiting his grave in Lancashire, he thus inscribed him in his last poem: I turned aside To seek the ground where, mid a throng of graves, An honored teacher of my youth was laid. He loved the Poets, ~tnd, if now alive, Would have loved me, as one not destitute Of promise, nor belying the kind hope That he had formed, when I, at his command, Began to spia with toil my earliest songs. The school reminiscences of Coleridge were not the sun- niest; yet one may see something of tenderness in that pious ejaculation which he is said to have uttered upon hearing that James Boyer, the master of Christs Hospital, was on his death-bed, wherein he devoutly hoped that cherubs whose forms could not reproach him with the lashings which he had given might waft him to bliss. We read the strong and glori- ous English of Ben Jonson with the more admiration, because it is almost unspotted from the ribaldry of his age. His lines are often slow and ponderous with the weight of his classical learning, and round some of his fantastic pageants the very air seems misty with graceful, dreamy shapes from the an- cient world which he adored. This friend of Shakespeare, the actor, did not fail to acknowledge the source from which he drank his first inspiration of classical learning : Camden! most reverend head, to whom I owe All that I am in arts, all that I know. 1858.] THE PROFESSION OF SCHOOLMASTER. 57 But biography is overflowing with these instances. In prose and in verse, in the deliberate record of a dutiful gratitude, in those published letters which often, better than public achievements, permit an inlook upon the secret and private life of the writer, everywhere appears the same unvaried tes- timony. They who early in life acquire a love for letters are apt to regard literary fame as the most enviable possession which life can give. But that splendor of renown which so fascinates the imagination, how often has it come, if at all, too late to benefit him who is distinguished by it, arriving after the desponding heart is cold alike to honor and disgrace, glimmer- ing after the great hope of life has set, the mockery of a re- ward, the ignis fatuus above a grave! Could there be a literary life more successful than Goethes? As a dramatist, no one, since Shakespeare, has excelled him in the power of expressing human nature. As a philosopher, he stands close to Leibnitz. In anatomy, his name ranks with Harveys. To compare his lyrics of passion and tenderness with Moores is to undervalue them. He was a novelist of such extraordinary skill, that his fictions take a distinct place in the mind as soon as read, and no length of time can overcome their imperceptible influence. They opened new mines into humanity. The perusal of them is a time to date from. As on the first sight of the ocean after a long inland residence, a throng of varied emotions, the memory of things past, pathos, grandeur, ideal beauty, come into the mind from his pages, with the sudden and startling reality of that mys- terious recollection of a previous existence, which makes life seem only a sleep and a forgetting. He had lived through a large experience; in his heart was some love for man, if not for individuals; he was not without strong self-will and pas- sion; he observed, he remembered everything. Why call him a god, only to make his defects of nature the more dark? He was a man, with all the virtuous tendencies, and not quite all the vices, but with the senses and brain, of a giant. Yet were not the insufficiency of success like his in all that constitutes real happiness, the void that lay deep under the cultivated surface of his life, the chaos of problems not 58 THE PROFESSION OF SCHOOLMASTER. [Jan. worked out, ambition ungratified, glimpses of light, lead- ing into darkness, plans and purposes, once begun, then overcome by the weeds of long neglect, were they not all grasped and wreaked upon those two words the last he uttered which came like a moral to the fable of his life, when, though the western sun smote him in the face, he leaned back in his seat, and, seeming to write in the air, mur- mured,, More light! The grave of public neglect has but lately closed over an eminent man of our own country, who is thought to have resembled Goethe in the massive features of his face, but who was like him in nothing else, save in the apparent suc- cess of his life. The biography of William Wirt has been depicted in colors of much beauty by the pen of a genial friend. As an advocate, he was invariably successful at the bar. By his own talents alone he rose to the companionship of Pinkney, Jefferson, and the other great sons of the Mother of Presidents. His eloquence had thrilled even Massachu- setts. As the biographer of Patrick Henry, he was the most popular author of the day; as an essayist, he was likened to Addison and Steele. He had no weakness of constitution, nor lack of physical strength, to make the severest labor, or the long protracted tension of patience, memory, nerve, and voice, difficult for him. His kind and hearty appreciation of life, his keen enjoyment of all that is best worth having in the world, as honor, love, obedience, troops of friends,kept flowing out in the many letters, sparkling with wit, which he wrote to his friends. Nevertheless, a shade of melancholy droops over his later years, as if he had not realized that which he had spent his life in pursuit of; a tone of despond- ency appears in his intercourse with those who were dearest to him, a half-escaping sigh of dissatisfaction with all that he had achieved of fame and honor. Thus true it is that the highest prizes of life are not the happiest. Where is the life of the successful man which may not be employed, in some application, to point a melancholy moral? The reward which the quiet profession of teaching brings is better than literary fame in that which makes life useful, quiet, 1858.] THE PROFESSION OF SCHOOLMASTER. 59 and consistent with its own purposes and ends. If the long and singularly happy lives of those who have followed the profession of teaching, most of whom have outlived their pupils, are to be ascribed to any constant cause, the longevity which is peculiarly theirs may be reasonably attributed to the serenity of conscience, the true satisfaction, which waits upon high duties well discharged. We look forward with hope to the time when teaching will be a distinct profession, requiring the same course of studious preparation as law or medicine. The importance of the teachers labors cannot be exaggerated. He wields the future success and character of the man. The work which others perform may be seen and calculated, but who can reach so far, even in imagination, as to touch the completion of that structure which has its foundation in the mind of a child? It was the first impulse which gave motion and shape and direction to the universe, and sent the earth and the stars to spin and wheel uninjured through their orbits of eternal space. It is the first influence, in the beginning, it may be, only a grain of sand hidden -in the bosom of the earth, which imparts strength and beauty to the hundred years of the oak, or fore- dooms it to a distorted or a feeble maturity. It is the first impulse, likewise, which shapes and sentences the ever.during mind. I hold that every man is a debtor to his profession,~~ said Webster; and surely no one has so much power to dig- nify his office as the teacher. If the next century witnesses as vast achievements in the arts of imparting knowledge as the last has, if text-books and methods, the railways and tele- graphs of mental communication and wealth, go on improv- ing and extending, perhaps the same amount of knowledge may be accessible in weeks which it now requires months of labor to attain. This promise for the future rests with the teacher. Whatever is to be the hereafter of our country, what- ever the calamities which party warfare may engender, we cannot fail to be secure in the homes of our principles and liberty, so long as the common school, the peaceful glory of New England, is perpetuated, and the work of the school- master is honorable and honored. 60 REFORMATORY INSTITUTIONS [Jan. ART. JJJ. 1. An Account of the Reformatory Institution for Juvenile Offenders at lulettray, in France, from the Pamphlet of M. AUGUSTUS CodHIN, LL. ID., and an Introduction by Rev. G. H. HAMILTON~ M. A., Chaplain to Durham County Gaol. London. 1853. 2. Annual Report (First) of the Trustees of the State Indus- trial School for Girls at Lancaster, tog-ether with the Annual Reports of the Officers of the Institution. Boston. 1857. 3. Social Statics, or the Conditions essential to Human Happi- ness specified, and the first of them developed. By HERBERT SPENCER. London. 1851. 4. Crime, its Amount, Causes, and Remedies. By F. D. HILL~ Barrister at Law, late Inspector of Prisons. London. 1853. WHEN Jeremy Bentham wrote his noted treatise on the Theory of Punishments, neither he nor the world for which he wrote had as yet conceived the idea of any extended sys- tem by which crime and its punishment should be alike an- ticipated, and the necessity for jails, prisons, gibbets, and other stern institutions of like nature, be gradually, though effectively, lessened. He wrote for his readers no doubt wise- ly and well, and later in life carried out his theory in a system of penitentiaries which was approved by the good and ab- horred by the bad; yet it was still a severe system of punish- ment for criminals, with no thought of correction, of reforma- tion, or of prevention, but only of expiation, and that of the severest sort. But since Benthams day, the ever-active heart of philanthropy, aided by the brains of philosophers, and the figures of statisticians, has devised a class of establishments differing from jails and prisons in not having punishment for their sole object; from almshouses and asylums in not mak- ing bodily sustenance their aim; and from schools, inasmuch as intellectual education is for the most part only subsidiary, but yet combining in themselves, and directing towards their most imperative end, all the good intentions and influences of these three great social agencies. These establishments, though existing under many diversities of form, and really varying materially in design and management, still possess so

60 REFORMATORY INSTITUTIONS [Jan. ART. JJJ. 1. An Account of the Reformatory Institution for Juvenile Offenders at lulettray, in France, from the Pamphlet of M. AUGUSTUS CodHIN, LL. ID., and an Introduction by Rev. G. H. HAMILTON~ M. A., Chaplain to Durham County Gaol. London. 1853. 2. Annual Report (First) of the Trustees of the State Indus- trial School for Girls at Lancaster, tog-ether with the Annual Reports of the Officers of the Institution. Boston. 1857. 3. Social Statics, or the Conditions essential to Human Happi- ness specified, and the first of them developed. By HERBERT SPENCER. London. 1851. 4. Crime, its Amount, Causes, and Remedies. By F. D. HILL~ Barrister at Law, late Inspector of Prisons. London. 1853. WHEN Jeremy Bentham wrote his noted treatise on the Theory of Punishments, neither he nor the world for which he wrote had as yet conceived the idea of any extended sys- tem by which crime and its punishment should be alike an- ticipated, and the necessity for jails, prisons, gibbets, and other stern institutions of like nature, be gradually, though effectively, lessened. He wrote for his readers no doubt wise- ly and well, and later in life carried out his theory in a system of penitentiaries which was approved by the good and ab- horred by the bad; yet it was still a severe system of punish- ment for criminals, with no thought of correction, of reforma- tion, or of prevention, but only of expiation, and that of the severest sort. But since Benthams day, the ever-active heart of philanthropy, aided by the brains of philosophers, and the figures of statisticians, has devised a class of establishments differing from jails and prisons in not having punishment for their sole object; from almshouses and asylums in not mak- ing bodily sustenance their aim; and from schools, inasmuch as intellectual education is for the most part only subsidiary, but yet combining in themselves, and directing towards their most imperative end, all the good intentions and influences of these three great social agencies. These establishments, though existing under many diversities of form, and really varying materially in design and management, still possess so 1858.1 AT HOME AND ABROAD. 61 much in common, both of positive and negative qualities, that they may appropriately enough be classed together, at least for all purposes of discussion, under the name of Re- formatory Institutions. Houses of Industry, Houses of Ref- uge, Houses of Reformation, Reform Schools, Industrial Schools, Farm Schools, under whichever of these or of other names they may appear, they still unite in the one great object of reform instead of punishment, and in nearly every instance are specially intended for the reception of that class with which reform is always most hopeful, namely, the young, whom continual association has habituated to wretchedness and crime from their birth, and to whose eyes has never been presented the dignity of virtue or the beauty of an honorable life. Whether considered as a matter of humanity, or merely of political economy, it will scarcely be contended that to ignore the dangers which surround the young in the lower classes of large cities, and to pay no attention to them until great crimes have succeeded to lesser offences, and reform is hopeless, is the wise course for any Christian community in the nineteenth century. And however much opinions may differ as to the final penalty to be inflicted when the last step in the long career of crime has been taken, (a point which we do not now intend to discuss,) the course in the beginning is so obvious, the means so ready to our hands, and the natural passion in all races for experiments in solving social problems so general, that we can only wonder that the great thinker above referred to, who devoted all his maturer years to the contemplation of kindred themes, should not in his medita- tions have strnck on this idea of prevention and reform. The quarter of a century since his death has seen a rapid progress in this as in many other forms of charity, and it may perhaps be said that the problem is solved, and the solution accepted and approved by the general voice of mankind. In our own country, as might be expected when the case in question concerns institutions, we have done much. In- deed, the first establishment of the kind, it is believed, was undertaken by the city of Boston in 1826, under the name of the House of Reformation, and its success, as exhibited by its annual reports, has induced imitations of and improvements VOL. LXXXVI. NO. 178. 6 62 REFORMATORY INSTITUTIONS [Jan. upon it throughout and beyond the Northern States, until now they number nearly as follows: in Massachusetts, four; in New York, two; in Pennsylvania, two; and in Maine, Con- necticut, Rhode Island, Ohio, Illinois, Maryland, Missouri, and Louisiana, one each. The State of Indiana has three in the process of erection; and a commission appointed by the New Hampshire Legislature has perfected its designs and com- menced the buildings for a similar enterprise at Manchester. Truly, we in America have just reason for pride in the rapid- ity with which good institutions are multiplied over our coun- try. But it is surprising, that, out of this score of houses of refuge and reformation which are, or will shortly be, in full operation among us, there are but two (with the exception of those expressly maintained as penal institutions) which provide in the smallest degree for the protection of those who, of all unfortunates, are dying for want of a refuge, the girls of the perishing classes in large communities. It is their cry which rings loudest up to Heaven, their need which is most pressing, their danger which is most imminent and terrible; and yet, two years ago, nay, even one year ago, of all these great charities, not one stretched out its hand to help and protect these sufferers. In Massachusetts, the need has been supplied by the establishment at Lancaster of the State Industrial School for Girls, which, designed on a plan essen- tially similar to that of the Reform School for Boys at West- borough, and established half by legislative appropriation and half by voluntary contribution, commenced operations in August of last year, and of which the trustees and offi- cers have lately presented the first Annual Report. From the tone of conscious success and of satisfaction which runs through this document, it may be gathered that the institu- tion is no longer an experiment, but has established its own reputation, and its obvious right to the approbation and sup- port of the Commonwealth. That the support already grant- ed is not regretted by the government, is evinced by the fol- lowing extract from His Excellency the Governors last annual Address to the Legislature. The neglected children of other commonwealths may have reason to bless our State for the organization of this noble charity. Thus far 1858.] AT HOME AND ABROAD. 63 the system adopted works admirably, and gives promise of the most happy results. Not one inmate has been received, who would not in all human probability have been ruined, had not the State interposed its parental protection, and not one that does not give promise of be- coming, under its family training, an instance and witness of its success. Some misapprehension exists as to the appropriate subjects for this school. They should not be hardened criminals, nor children of im- paired or idiotic minds, nor confirmed invalids whose care is some- what onerous to their parents. There are other and fitter institutions for all these; and the success and widest good of this school will de- pend on placing under its ministration only those whose unformed hab- its, intellectual activity, and physical powers will enable them to reap the greatest benefits from its influences. I would especially impress on the various commissioners appointed to admit pupils the deep respon- sibility resting upon them. To a great degree they hold the success or failure of the institution in their keeping. It is believed that the full number of inmates that can be accom- modated in the three houses will be admitted in a few months, and after witnessing the anticipated result of the existing system, it is hoped that the noble generosity of some of our philanthropic citizens will link their names with this beneficent charity by providing for the erection of further buildings, for many of which there is ample room upon the beautiful farm, which private individuals have already co-operated with the government in purchasing. And unfortunately there are children within our borders who are the proper objects, and sufficient in num- bers to occupy such extended accommodations. The first Report of the officers and trustees of this institu- tion forms an extremely interesting document of nearly one hundred pages, and gives a full account of the establishment of the school, of its opening, its progress for the first year of its organization, and the method of its government. After dis- posing of these topics, the Superintendent introduces, as an appendix to his own Report, a Comprehensive View of the more prominent European Preventive Institutions, with a Brief Account of their Success, in connection with which he goes into a very thorough examination of the cost which govern- ments necessarily incur in carrying out the system of punish- ments after the prevailing fashion, and the immense saving which a general application of the reformatory principle to penitentiary institutions might be expected to effect. 64 REFORMATORY INSTITUTIONS [Jan. In reading the detailed accounts of the condition of the in- mates of this new home at the time when they are first pre- sented for admission, of their ignorance, of the destitution of moral light in which they seem to have been born and bred, and of their utter incapacity to comprehend the reason why they are received here and cared for so kindly and attentively, the first impression is of the timeliness of the aid; for it re- veals that apathy of the moral faculties which only precedes their extinction. It shows these unfortunates surrendering themselves hopelessly to the darkness that is coming upon them, without a thought of the contrast between what they are and what they might be. And it shows, too, that in every instance there is a spark yet unquenched, a light still burning, though dimly amid the darkness, which, with proper care, may be expanded into the steady flame of reason and virtue that lights the human soul on its way through the world. Per- haps the next impression which the reader receives is of the truth which has been so often maintained and illustrated, namely, that, of all the evil and perversity of human life, it is impossible to judge how much is to be ascribed to the indi- vidual, and how much to society. After the examples cited from the Superintendents actual experience, extending over a period of but little more than three months, it seems impossi- ble to exaggerate the influence of association and custom. Take the following as an every-day instance of the rapidity with which a change in character we had almost said in nature follows a corresponding change in association and treatment. Striking results could hardly be expected in so short a period; yet, gentlemen, you have seen a wonderful change in the appearance, hab- its, and moral character of some of our inmates. One of your number will recollect the remark he made when two squalid little girls were brought into the Superintendents office. You have two hard cases this time. They were submitted to the double purification of fire and water, the ragged, vermin-infested garments to the former, the occu- pants of them to the latter. In a few weeks the hard cases could not be designated by the gentlemen among the happy faces of the work- room; two of our most promising and attractive girls answer to the names which these little outcasts bore. They came from an atmos- phere of pollution and a home of sin, their parents criminals, them- 1858.] AT HOME AND ABROAD. 65 selves unlettered little vagabonds. They were obstinate and morose at first, but now they are earnestly learning; their very faces seem to have brightened up with intelligence; the gypsy blood which burned in their veins has lost its fever, and there are no more peaceful or happy children in our home. You dont know what a nice home we have, said one of them to the officer that brought her, who visited the school again with another girl. I ye got a new dress, we have a good mother, we dont say wicked words ~ Of the mode of discipline adopted in the treatment of re- fractory children, an idea may be gained from the following extract. Two sisters came to the school, good-looking American girls. They had been permitted to run nearly wild; the father worked daily in a neighboring city, and the stepmother could not, or did not, control them, although exceedingly liberal in the application of blows. The youngest girl wandered in the streets, picked up old iron upon the wharves to sell for the smaller articles that she needed. They were perfectly lawless. In a few days they became so sour and impertinent, so obstinate in refusing work, that it seemed impossible to live in the house with them. The chaplain of the Westborough school visited us, and attended prayers in the morning. At the close of the devotions, both girls came to him and asked him, bursting into tears together as they made the inquiry, if he knew their brother, who is an inmate of the school. It at once occurred to me that the key to their ref- ormation had been discovered. In a day or two, both girls being shut up for ill-behavior, in different rooms, the older one cried aloud in her passion, and the younger, unable to restrain her feelings, burst through a window to reach her sister, without any regard to the consequences of the act upon herself. The matron sent for me, and the course to be pursued was too distinctly indicated by Providence to be overlooked. I first went to the older sister. You love L., do you not? Yes, sir, she answered, melting at once, quite thrown off her guard by the unexpected character of the question. You wish to have her a good girl, do you not? Yes, sir. Do you not think we are doing all we can to have her one? Yes, sir. Do you not think that if you do wrong, and become so obstinate and angry, it has a bad effect upon her? Yes, sir. Can we save L. if you do not help us? No, sir. Will you try from to-day to help us, if we will continue to do all we can? Yes, sir. She was, for the first time, utterly subdued. The love she had for her sister was the strongest affection in her heart, and she was true to her word. I went to L. and introduced very much 6* 66 REFORMATORY INSTITUTIONS [Jan. the same line of questionings, with the same result. A new and sob emn idea was received by both sisters, that the salvation of the other depended in a good degree upon herself. From that time there ap- peared a noticeable change in their whole appearance and habit; their countenances brightened up, and they entered, particularly the younger, without questioning, upon their portion of the house-work, becoming both a comfort and a material aid to the Matron. What a noble work is here begun! What a satisfaction to the heart of the Superintendent and Matron, and all who have a part in it, must come from such transformations as that just detailed! What an incentive to the enthusiastic continuance of effort! What a confidence in human nature, however depressed or degraded; what a reliance on the irre- sistible sway of love, and kindness, and forbearance, over all the powers of darkness which seek dominion in the souls of these children! Truly, The deepest ice that ever froze Can only oer the surface close; The living stream runs quick below, It flows, and cannot cease to flow. With one more extract we will take our leave of this in- teresting and instructive Report. The Superintendent thus describes the arrival and condition of The First Inmate. August 29th. In the one oclock train from Boston, on the second day after the opening of the school, an officer appeared, bringing the first recipient of this thoughtful charity of the State. J. M. S, of Haverhill, a girl of thirteen, delicate in ap- pearance, poorly clad (her mother having retained her best clothing for her own use), with a pleasant face, having been guilty of petty thiev- ing, and been charged with vagrancy and idleness, became a child of the State. She has been thoroughly estranged from her mother; her father has been, dead for three years. The repulsion between the mother and daughter seems to have been mutual. If J s account of the matter is correct, she bade her mother Good by when she left her, and her mothers response was, Good riddance. The girl, al- though but thirteen, had been for some time placed out at service; she had fallen into families of questionable character, had chosen improper associates, and was in the high road to ruin. The deputy sheriff had for more than a year had his eye upon her, as a suitable object for the training of an institution like ours. He had waited impatiently for its 1858.1 AT HOME AND ABROAD. 67 completion, and within fifteen minutes after he had read the proclama- tion of the Governor, announcing its opening, he presented himself to the judge of probate, with the proper testimony to secure her admis- sion. Having been for a number of years without restraint or cultiva- tion, J will require incessant care, patience, kindness, and moral influence on the part of the matrons. This institution, as we have said, is the first which has ex- tended its timely aid in behalf of the unhappy multitude of imperilled girls. It is only just to observe, in this connection, that its example has been promptly followed by the State of New Hampshire, whose projected House of Reformation, at Manchester, makes provision for girls as well as for boys, in the proportion of about one to six. In accounting for the numerical disparity, it must be remembered that the state of society which furnishes the objects for this charity exists, for the most part, though not exclusively, in large communities; and as New Hampshire has no cities of great magnitude, her provision is undoubtedly ample, at least for the present. The Boston Houses of Industry and Reformation are now combined in one institution. Its usefulness is found to increase with age, and the various additions and improve- ments it has received from time to time have all been war- ranted by the results which it continues to effect. The re- ports of its directors are issued in May of each year, accom- panied by various tabular statements of the expenditures and receipts, the employments of the inmates, the products of their labor on the farm or otherwise, and the admissions, commit- tals, and discharges for the year. From the report issued in May, 1856, it appears that, during the preceding year, the South Boston department received by committals from the various courts 121 boys, and by return, 3, which, with the number remaining at the commencement of the year, made up a total of 238 inmates, of whom 76 were discharged by the courts, apprenticed, or otherwise dismissed, leaving 162 remaining; while at Deer Island, which is much the larger of the two departments, the number of admissions was 231, of committals 1264, and of births 3, which, added to 305 re- maining at the commencement of the year, made up a total of 1803. Of these, 1439 were discharged during the year, 68 REFORMATORY INSTITUTIONS [Jan. and 33 died; leaving at its close a total of 331 inmates, 161 boys, and 170 girls. With these details may be shown the workings of the Boylston Asylum, also located at South Boston, and in immediate connection with the two institu- tions above noticed. To this asylum the courts committed 36, and the directors admitted 60, which with 103 who began the year made 199; of these, 104 were discharged or deserted, leaving 95, of whom 19 were females. These may perhaps be taken as fair representatives of this class of institutions at home. Our chief object is to give a brief account of the manner in which they are managed in other countries than ours. The two European institutions of reform whose reputation is the most widely extended, are probably those at Hamburg, in the North of Germany, and at Mettray, in France. One would think that, if difference in government and society could exercise any material influence in varying the character of the charitable institutions of two countries, that influence would be nowhere more strongly ex- erted, or the difference more strikingly exhibited, than in the comparison of these two examples. The character of the French government is sufficiently well known, and needs no exposition. That of Hamburg may not be so generally com- prehended, and a brief summary of its forms may therefore not be altogether out of place. Hamburg is the largest and the most important of the four cities which, out of seventy- two, constitute by their union all that remains of the once great and powerful Hanseatic League. It is essentially a free city and a free port, and comprises within itself and some in-~ considerable suburbs the entire population of the state, un- encumbered by provinces or dependencies. The number of its inhabitants at the close of the year 1855 was 164,145. Its government is republican, but of a form quite remarkable among republics, and until latterly was composed of so com- plicated and confused a system of law-making and law-rati- fying bodies, that it is difficult to understand how any legis- lation could have been legally matured. A conviction of this difficulty would seem to have forced itself upon the minds of the burghers of Hamburg; for in 1848, the government, actuat- ed either by some such conviction, or by a reluctance to remain 1858.] AT HOME AND ABROAD. 69 quiet when all the rest of Europe was boiling with popular and governmental agitation, decreed the convocation of a constituent assembly for revising the constitution; and this assembly, by the aid of a commission of nine members elected from the senate and the people, finally relieved the state of many of the burdensome forms which had previous- ly encumbered its action and progress. That valuable little repository, the Almanach de Gotha for the year 1851, gives the following account of the result of their deliberations, which terminated in 1849. According to the articles of the revised constitution, the senate is composed of fifteen members, of whom seven must have studied law and finance, while six out of the remaining eight must represent the commercial interest. Four burgomasters and four syndics, the former elected for life, are associated with the senate, and any vacancy in their body is filled as follows. The senate nominates three of its members, the citizens (bourgeoisie) nominate four of their number. These seven designate to the senate four candidates, of whom two are presented by the senate to the people, who choose one of them. The general assem- bly (Cemeinhalle) is composed of 192 members, of whom one half are chosen from all the inhabitants of Hamburg uader its jurisdiction, aged twenty-five years and upwards, and paying taxes on their income. Of the other half, 48 are landholders (fonciers), elected by the propri- etors whose estates are valued at 3,000 marks above their debts, and 48 represent the courts of law, the various branches of commerce and manufactures, the educational establishments, and the more important departments of the administration, particularly the finances. This last body of 48 is nominated by the various authorities. The Gemein- halle names from its own body the civil committee of twenty members, who in cases of emergency assist the senate in the performance of its duties. The senate also names from itself, by secret ballot, a first and second burgomaster to preside over its sittings for the term of one year, no officer thus chosen being allowed to receive more than one re-elec- tion. From this account we should infer that there still remains sufficient complication for a government whose responsibility is limited by a population of less than two hundred thousand. It is easy to perceive, however, that, under this crowd of legis- lators, the smallness of the state and population to be gov- erned is an inestimable advantage; for to apply these same 70 REFORMATORY INSTITUTIONS [Jan. forms to the administration of a country like our own, would be to multiply contentions and disputes until legislation be- came impossible. But in Hamburg these evil results are so slightly developed as to be nearly inappreciable, and the con- tentment evinced by the people with the government as now simplified, and the attention they pay to the establishment and maintenance of various charitable institutions, each a model in its way, may be taken as sufficient proof that the general prosperity is not materially hindered by all these details of governmental machinery which we have enumer- ated. Of these institutions, only one falls within our prov- ince, namely, the Bauhe Ilaus. It is a colony, pleasantly planted among the fresh fields and meadows in the beautiful suburbs of the town, and about three miles from it. You reach it by smooth roads, well kept and cared for, lined with green hedges, and strewn with home- like residences, with here and there an old Dutch-gabled grange, with the traditional stork standing by its nest upon the heavy thatched roof. The landscape, if it has not the glow of an Italian plain, is at least free from the manifest evils which swarm on that beautiful soil; and the air of com- fort, taste, and thriving industry, the cleanly-dressed peasants who meet you on the road, and the well-tilled and productive fields on either hand, make ample amends for the absence of that lnxuriance which is so often the companion of decay. It is in such a neighborhood that the Rauhe Haus is established. It has about forty acres of land, all under careful cultivation. The commencement of this noted institution was marked by a simplicity, and an apparent unconsciousness of its ulti- mate growth, which offer a striking contrast to most of the charities of later days. As long ago as 1833, Mr. J. II. Wichern,* a young candidate of Hamburg, residing in the suburban village of Horn, becoming deeply impressed with the increasing wretchedness of a large portion of the juvenile population of the neighboring city, endeavored to do what he could to alleviate it by taking into his own family three boys, of the most unpromising appearance and habits, and teaching * An interesting sketch of the life of Mr. Wichern may be fonnd in the American Journal of Education for March of the last year. 1858.] AT HOME AND ABROAD. 71 them to consider his house their home. They were employed in the daily labors of the small farm, instructed during a portion of the day in various simple branches of study, and controlled by a moral discipline based alike on kindness and on justice. Finding the results of this first experiment all that he could desire, and more than he dared to expect at the outset, he gradually increased the number of boys to twelve, and with this larger number was still rewarded with the same success. He then laid the matter before a meeting of influ- ential citizens of Hamburg, who had given him encourage- ment from the beginning, and declared his determination, with proper support, to extend his accommodations, to secure all necessary assistants and coadjutors in thu work, and, con- sidering his enterprise an experiment no longer, to endeavor to organize it into an institution. His appeals were readily responded to, and an administrative council was formed, composed of syndics, senators, and professors. Continued support and encouragement were promised to Mr. Wichern, who was appointed Superintendent; he secured a small corps of able and willing assistants, and the work has gone steadily on to this day. In the beginning Mr. Wichern discovered that the few were more easily governed than the many, and that in the first cottage where the experiment was inaugurated, the difficulty increased greatly as he increased the number of his protc~g~s beyond twelve. This fact, then, he made the basis of his future extensions, and the family system was estab- lished, which, as opposed to the method heretofore employed in our country, of gathering hundreds of vicious and neglected children within the walls of one enormous structure, has been the theme of so much discussion. Thus all the houses that rose one by one, and grouped themselves around the original Rough House (which gave its name to the institution), were in the form of cottages, adapted each to the accommodation of one family, simply designed and constructed, and for the most part built by the boys themselves. We had the pleasure of visiting the Rough House in the summer of 1855, with an introductory note to Mr. Wichern; and in his absence we were very courteously received by one of his assistant officers, who with the kindest attention con- 72 REFORMATORY INSTITUTIONS [Jan. ducted us over every portion of the establishment. At that time the number of buildings had increased to more than twenty, including about a dozen family cottages, a chapel, a school-house, shops for joiners, tailors, and shoemakers, a bakery, a printing-office and a bindery, (in all of which the boys are regularly employed,) besides the necessary farm buildings, and a residence for the Superintendent and his family. Pleasant garden-plats intervene among the houses. These are cultivated by the boys in their hours of leisure, each boy having his own little flower-bed, and being encour- aged in a sort of friendly competition with his associates as to the evidence which it shall exhibit of his taste and care. A sufficient number of boys is always reserved for the farm labors, after which, and during the season when little work is required on the grounds, the boys are allowed to choose their own vocations from the list above given. Beside these occu- pations, a portion of each day is devoted to the business of education, both with the boys and with the girls, of whom there are perhaps twenty or upwards (their number never ex- ceeding one fifth that of the boys), and who for the rest per- form the domestic offices of the establishment, in the neatest and most acceptable manner, under the direction of a matron. The children sleep and eat in families, each family occupy- ing a cottage by itself, and preserving as far as possible all the relations of a family, without connection with any other. At the head of each family of boys is a Brother, who sleeps in the same room with them, presides at their table, superin- tends their labors on the farm or in the shops, and exercises a general care and supervision over them. These brothers form a class who have been sufficiently long in the institution to have gained the confidence of its officers, and to be qualified for the duty of overlooking others, and who, after receiving here a respectable education, devote their lives to duties of a similar nature, as city missionaries, keepers of prisons, teach- ers, or in whatever sphere of benevolent action they may find open to them. The two families of girls have each a Sister, who holds the same relation towards them that the brothers hold to the boys. The greater portion of the materials needed for the kitchen 1858.] AT HOME AND ABROAD. 73 are raised on the farm; the furniture of the houses is made in the joiners shop; the literature of the institution is issued from its printing-office ; and, altogether, the establishment bears very much the character of an independent and self- sustaining community. The inmates are mostly from ten to twenty-one years of age, and remain for about five years. When they leave the colony, they do not altogether depart from its care; for a certain watchfulness is maintained over them, and a constant though silent influence exerted, which shields them when they are unaware of any protection but their past experience. MTithin, the system of discipline is gentle, though firm; the conduct of boys and girls is generally satisfactory; and a desertion is a thing almost unheard of~ though there are no walls or bars. Everything gives assur- ance of prosperity, usefulness, and content, and there was but one detail of the economy to which we could object as injudicious. This is the formation of a separate class of boys derived from better families than the rest, but whose unruly habits previously to entering the Rauhe Haus rendered them fit subjects for its discipline. They sleep in better beds, wear better clothes, eat better food, and are in all respects elevated above their companions, forming a kind of aristocracy quite at variance with the character and design of the institution. This, however, is at the worst but a trifling blemish, and does not at all interfere with the good effects of the Rauhe Haus, whose beneficial results may be imagined from the fact, that, of all the recipients of its charities who have left it at the expiration of their terms, it is known that at least ninety per cent have continued good members of society. Some three months later we visited the Agricultnral Col- ony of Mettray, on the Loire, six miles from the city of Tours. Mettray is somewhat younger than the Rough House, and may be said to have originated in the observations of a com- mission, which left France in 1837 for the purpose of study- ing the penitentiaries of the United States. To the most active member of this commission, M. de Metz, is to be as- cribed the establishment of the colony, which followed close upon his return from America, in 1839. The Count de Courteilles made the offer of an estate belonging to him, near voL. Lxxxvi. NO. 178. 7 74 REFORMATORY INSTITUTIONS [Jan. Tours, which was gratefully accepted, and the managers pro- ceeded to erect the necessary buildings. The family system was adopted, as at Hamburg, though in a modified form, the family divisions being larger. Here they allowed fifty .boys for each family, and their buildings were constructed in con- formity with this arrangement. They are all alike, each three stories in height, and measuring twenty feet by forty. The first five were built in less than six months from the com- mencement of the enterprise. This number has now increased to ten, and the houses are arranged on two sides of a spacious square, of which the chapel occupies a third, and two build- ings of a different character the fourth. Between these two last-mentioned buildings is the gate of entrance. Other build- ings, reqnired for an institution of this magnitude, (for the colony in 1855 numbered six hundred and sixty boys,) such as a school-house, work-houses, and, lastly, a prison, are situated in symmetrical order around the church, the prison communi- cating with a portion of it in such manner that the prison- ers cnn, without leaving their confinement, hear the services and see the officiating priest. The objects of this institution are essentially the same with those of the Rough House, and the arrangement and method of the colony were in part copied from those of its German predecessor; and yet there are some points of contrast. In the first place, the boys are all taken from the various prisons of the country, and are therefore considered as under an obli- gation to do penance, and entitled to as little enjoyment from their colonial life as possible. Thus the whole course of their daily experience and duties is more austere than at Hamburg. They rise very early, and work very long, with comparatively little recreation. They have no pleasant garden spots to cul- tivate; they sleep in hammocks; they eat meat only three times a week (and this with nine or ten hours of hard work per day, and for boys of ten to twenty years, is little less than barbarous); they must not talk, either at their work or in their rooms. All this is very different from the mild discipline of the Rough House. The following list of the punishments to which offenders are subjected at Mettray seems also to show either a more refractory class of boys under the care of the 1858.] AT HOME AND ABROAD. 75 institution, or a less kindly and parental feeling in those who make its laws, than is found at Hamburg. 1. Effacing the name from the table of honor; 2. Placing the boy under re- straint; 3. Hard labor; 4. Black bread and water; 5. Con- finement in a lighted cell; 6. Confinement in a dark cell; 7. Return to the central prison. It does not appear that, with this ascending scale of punishments, the discipline is more successfully enforced, or order more effectually preserved, than at the Rough House. It is here that we are led to notice the effect of the govern- ment on institutions. It seems perfectly natural to refer this harshness of discipline, this sternness of authority and com- mand, which cannot fail to be recognized as penetrating even to the smallest detail in the regulations of Mettray, to the pre- vailing trait of the French government, military, despotic, almost autocratic command. It is a trait which has extended in France from the government to the people, and is detected in the ordinary transactions of life. No one can travel a league by railroad, or even mount a diligence, without expe- riencing its influence. It governs the construction of steam- boats, which on the smoothest rivers or lakes are fashioned and commanded like men-of-war. It prevails in theatres, in museums, in manufactories, and in churches. Such being the case, it is not strange that it should display itself in the gov- ernment of an institution which, reformatory though it be, is also to a certain extent regarded as penal. It is not strange that the boys should be assembled in the morning by the blast of the trumpet, and pass under a military review before marching off to breakfast to the beat of the drum; or that they should be at every hour, by day or night, sleeping or wak- ing, subjected to the rigid surveillance of an officer, open superintendence by day, and at night a secret espionage from behind a blind which conceals a recess in the sleeping-room. It is not strange, but it is nevertheless unsatisfactory to an American observer. It may, however, be partially justified by the fact, that, though Mettray is styled an agricultural colony, and though three fifths of the actual inmates are employed in agricultural labors, yet, on their departure, a comparatively large proportion of them enter the army and navy; rather 76 REFORMATORY INSTITUTIONS [Jan. more than one fourth of the eight hundred and fifty-six pupils who have left Mettray being now engaged in one or the other of those branches of the public service, and similar results being anticipated in the future by the rigid observance of mil- itary forms in all things. This method is amusingly illus- trated by the mancnuvres which are gone through at bed-time in each house. The same room serves for a living, dining, and sleeping room, and the hammocks are suspended at one end against two opposite walls, and at the other fastened to two lines of posts running down the centre of the room. The head of the family takes his position at one end of the room, and summons the boys to their hammocks by a clap of the hands. At the second clap each boy dislodges one end of his hammock, and at the third he springs with it to the hook which is to receive it, and there fixes it ; a fourth clap brings each boy into position by the side of his hammock, and at the fifth he springs into it, and his military duties are over for the day. Any predisposition to enter the navy which may discover itself among the boys is encouraged by regular train- ing in a sort of skeleton ship planted in the ground, and fit- ted with masts, yards, and rigging. As at Hamburg, the care of the institution is not wholly lost to the pupil when he leaves the colony. A watchful eye is kept over his conduct, and any signal instance of success in his career is acknowledged, and rewarded by a public an- nouncement to the inmates who remain. Thus, when in the late battles in the Crimea some of the glory was found to be due to soldiers who had once been pupils at Mettray, the dec- orations they received were sent home to the parent colony, and hung upon the walls of the house in which they lived when there. The emulous enthusiasm which such testimoni- als would awaken in these young Frenchmen may be readily imagined. The success or good behavior of those who leave Mettray is estimated as bearing about the same proportion as at the Rough House, somewhat less than ten per cent having relapsed into vicious lives. This, after all, is the great test, and with a result so gratifying one may overlook the defects, and content himself with admiring the self-sacrifice and devo- tion of the two French gentlemen who devised this benevo- lent enterprise, and carried it so successfully into execution. 1858.] AT HOME AND ABROAD. 77 If we examine the institutions of Hamburg and Mettray, with a view to discover the principle which lies at the root of their usefulness and success, which enables the superintendents so easily to preserve order by day and by night, which throws around these simple roofs and walls, and over these little patches of grass or flowers, an air of contentment and of happiness, which removes from the minds of the overseers all fear of desertion, and from those of the pupils all desire of escape, we shall find it in that wise regulation so early adopted by Mr. Wichern, which we have before mentioned as the Fam- ily System. Essentially the same at both these great institu- tions, it overbalances in each all the minor deficiencies and errors, and at once brings them into harmony within them- selves and with each other. It is this principle which A uner- icans, in looking across the water for aid in forming similar establishments at home, should most thoroughly impress upon themselves. This is the lesson we have to learn,that it is not by creating an imposing institution, locating it in an edi- fice of palatial size and massive front, and inaugurating its operation by speech and procession and display, that the true inspiration can be gained which shall lend to the charity all its usefulness and efficiency. Four or five hundred vagrant boys, taken from the foulness of their early life in the streets, gathered promiscuously together under one great roof, and subjected daily to some sort of mechanical discipline and in- struction, are not therefore necessarily reformed, or in any likelihood of being reformed. All this is done in almshouses, for a different end. All this is done in jails, for an end still more remote. For reform, more is needed. But such in our land is the passion for immediate effect, such the impatience of anything like humility in our institutions, that, until the establishment of the Industrial School for Girls at Lancaster, the gregarious system above alluded to enjoyed a full monop- oly of the great institutions of charity, whether reform schools, almshouses, or hospitals. If a reform school was to be built for five hundred boys, the commissioners never asked what was to be the system on which the institution was to be con- ducted. That the building was to be palatial was determined at the outset, and the daily duties of the inmates were to be 7* 78 REFORMATORY INSTITUTIONS [Jan. gregariously performed. Thus has arisen a cloud of estab- lishments among us, of which, perhaps, the State School at Westborou gh may be taken as a favorable example. Much dissatisfaction is expressed in regard to the practical working of the Westborough School; and this, not from any doubt as to the watchfulness of its government in general, or the efficiency of its officers individually; but from a reasonable doubt whether, under any government, a multitude of boys could be indiscrim- inately brought together beneath one roof, and as one family, eating in crowds, sleeping in crowds, working in crowds, with no more than the general superintendence that is possible under such circumstances, and manifest as the result of such aggre- gation the genuine reform, in character, manners, and tenden- cies, which it is the aim of the institution to promote and ad- vance. The contrast between this system and the family system, as practised at Hamburg and Mettray, is too striking. The necessary superiority of the latter as a means of reform is too obvious to need any elaborate demonstration. Nothing more than the most cursory examination is necessary to con- vince any one of it, and we are glad that the trustees who were appointed to give to the Lancaster School its organiza- tion were led so promptly to the adoption of this beneficent system of families and homes. We have no doubt that, as it is the first American institution in which a similar organiza- tion has had trial, so its success will be such as to leave no question in any mind as to the wisdom which has led to its establishment among us. Here we might leave the subject. But we cannot refrain from briefly alluding to the manner in which the spirit of contradiction has manifested itself since the interest in the reformatory institutions has become so general. One would hardly think that any man, in reviewing the history and ob- serving the effects of the more prominent of these chari- ties, would be drawn, on the one hand, to the conviction that the men by whose devotion and labor they were first estab- lished, and have been since maintained, were no better than sentimental, unpractical visionaries; or, on the other, to the idea that xvhatever efforts are to be made towards the refor- mation of criminals are to be conducted entirely by individuals, 1858.] AT HOME AND ABROAD. 79 who are on no account to be aided by State action. Yet both these notions have found place in the minds of many men in our own country and in England, though the enunci- ation of them has been chiefly confined to the latter country. The leader of that body of cavillers who have nothing but their ridicule for such men as Howard, XVilberforce, Clarkson, or Granville Sharp, and for such women as Elizabeth Fry and Miss Dix, who execrate all kindness to criminals, who scoff at all attempts at reform, who would substitute the prison for thee reform school, the gallows for the prison, and extermina- tion for punishment, is undoubtedly Mr. Carlyle, the grotesque savageness of whose railing has made his writings on this topic very widely known on both sides of the ocean. His views and feelings towards the criminal classes are poured forth with a peculiarly concentrated fervor, which leaves no doubt of their sincerity, in that one of his series of Latter- Day Pamphlets published in March, 1850, under the title of Modern Prisons. The following extract is by no means an unfair specimen of the temper and character of the essay, which certainly seems more like the ravings of a man wild with rage, than the calm reflections of a philosopher. If I had a commonwealth to reform or govern, certainly it should not be the Devils regiments of the line that I would first of all concen- trate my attention on. With them I should be apt to make rather brief work; to them one would try to apply the besom, try to sweep them with some rapidity into the dust-bin, and well out of ones road, I should rather say. Fill your threshing-floor with docks, ragweeds, mugworths, and ply your flail upon them, that is not the method to obtain sacks of wheat. Away, you! begone swiftly, ye regiments of the line; in the name of God and his poor struggling servants, sore put to it to live in these bad days, I mean to rid myself of you with some de- gree of brevity. To feed you in palaces, to hire captains and school- masters and the choicest spiritual and material artificers to expend their industries on you! No, by the Eternal! I have quite other work for that class of artists, seven and twenty millions of neglected mortals who have not yet quite declared for the Devil. Mark it, my diabolic friends, I mean to lay leather on the backs of you, collars round the necks of you, and will teach you after the manner of the gods, that this world is not your inheritance, nor glad to see you in it. You, ye diabolic canaille, what has a governor much to do with you ~ 80 REFORMATORY INSTITUTIONS [Jan. Who are you, ye thriftless sweepings of creation, that we must for ever be pestered with you ? Revenge, my friends, revenge, and the nat~iral hatred of scoundrels, and the ineradicable tendency to revanc~4er ones self upon them, and pay them what they have merited, this is for evermore intrinsically a correct and even a divine feeling in the mind of every man. It is certainly a relief to turn from this species of philoso- phy, which does not call for any reasoning wherewith to meet its attacks, to that of another class of men, who, holding strong doubts of the advisableness or utility of reformatory institutions in general, have no doubt whatever as to the in- competency of governments to assume the charge of them. The views of this class have been set forth with ability and fairness in The Economist, a weekly London journal, and also in a work published some years since by Mr. Herbert Spencer, entitled, Social Statics. In this work, he does not treat especially of reformatory institutions; but in a chapter on National Education, the whole course of his argument is applicable equally to intellectual and moral education. Start- ing from the premises that the government of a state is insti- tuted solely to protect the rights of the citizens, and that every citizen has an equal right with every other, he arrives at the following conclusion Inasmuch as the taking away by government of more of a mans property than is needful for maintaining his rights is an infringement of his rights, and therefore a reversal of the governments function towards him; and inasmuch as the taking away of his property to educate his own or other peoples children is not needful for the main- taining of his rights, the taking away of his property for such a pur- pose is wrong. He thus, by pure reasoning, and not from any motive of expediency or utility, deduces the wrongfulness of all gov- ernmental interference in establishing schools, churches, alms- houses, hospitals, or any other institution, not expressly and directly serving to the protection of the absolute rights of the citizen. Had we time or space, it would be at least interesting to inquire whether this same protection does not call for the establishment of some of these institutions, so sweepingly excluded from all governmental aid by Mr. Spen 1858.] AT 110MB AND ABROAD. 81 cer s reasoning, and whether, taking it for granted that a cer- tain degree of protection is afforded by prisons, a still more assured protection would not be gained by a class of institu- tions whose influence should be successfully exerted towards removing the necessity for prisons. Mr. Spencer apparently anticipates this inquiry by a general scepticism as to the in- fluence or effectiveness of reformatory establishments. The expectation that crime may presently be cured, whether by state education, or the silent system, or the separate system, or any other system, is one of those Utopianisms fallen into by people who pride themselves on being practical. Crime is incurable, save by that gradual process of adaptation to the social state which humanity ~is undergoing. Crime is the continual breaking out of the old unadapted nature, the index of a character unfitted to its conditions, and only as fast as the unfitness diminishes can crime diminish. To hope for some prompt method of putting down crime, is, in reality, to hope for some prompt method of putting down all evils, laws, governments, taxation, poverty, caste, and the rest; for they and crime have the same root. Reforming mens conduct without reforming their natures is impossible; and to expect that their natures may be reformed other- wise than by the forces which are slowly civilizing us, is visionary It is not by humanly-devised agencies, good as these may be in their way, but it is by the never-ceasing action of circumstances upon men by the constant pressure of their new conditions upon them that the required change is mainly effected. We should substitute characters for natures in the last sentence but one of the above, and should then say that so comprehensive an assumption may well be denied until it is proved, even in the absence of direct evidence to the contrary; but when that evidence exists, as we conceive it to exist, in the successful operation and undoubted usefulness of such institutions as those at Hamburg and Mettray in Europe, in the satisfactory workings of so youthful an enterprise as that at Lancaster at home, and in the success of many other establishments of which these are the types, it seems a wilful blindness to reiterate the proposition, that in the unaided, natural operation of the forces~which are slowly civilizing us, lies the only hope of diminishing crime or increasing virtue. Even admitting this, it might be asked, What are these forces, 82 REFORMATORY INSTITUTIONS. [Jan. if they are not human forces? What is to civilize the world, if not the men to whom it is given? Aide-toi, et le ciel taidera, is the old proverb of the French; and if all the earnest souls and vigorous minds of the world are to lie down and wait for some mysterious and indefinite forces to work out the salvation which they were put here to work out for themselves and their kind, we may look for a rapid retrogression in the ages that are to come, in place of the steady advance which the centuries have witnessed heretofore. And although the progress and developement of human character and life in the mass may be mainly independent of the conditions of individual morality, and the reputation of the race is undisturbed by one murder or a series of murders, still it is difficult to see how this admission lessens our obligation to provide diligently for such improvement as we may hope to effect in the classes whose influence is admitted to be evil, even while their power is believed to be small; for the power of an evil example is at least as great as that of a good ex- ample, and by removing the former we give larger scope and opportunity to the latter. But in the mean time it behooves us to take all possible care that whatever institutions we establish, whether private or public, educational, reformatory, or penal, should never be allowed to degenerate into mere mechanical action, but that underlying all action, all discipline, all forms, pervading the whole conduct and daily existence of the school, the refuge, the prison, should be found the life-giving soul of a strong, earnest, sincere, and hopeful purpose. No enthusiasm can be misplaced, no energy misapplied, in educating and reforming those unfortunate beings whom misery and want have degrad- ed into error, vice, and crime. It is time that the once terrible word Utopianism~ should be laid aside, or used more gen- erously than in discouraging this noblest aim of philanthropy. Nothing in institutions is ever so perfect that study and care cannot improve it. There is never a time when, having taken into our hands the work of reform, and carried it forward till the public are satisfied, we are at liberty to sit down and fold our arms and be content to leave it to its own tendencies. As the age advances, so do the demands upon us continually VENICE. 83 1858.J multiply; and we may be sure that, so long as the perishing classes and the dangerous classes form a portion, however small, of the population of large cities, the enthusiasm of be~ nevolence, the energy of charity, will never be forced to con- tent itself with copying the efforts of dead generations. ART. IV. 1. Histoire de la R~publique de Venise. Par P. IDARU~ de PAcad6mie Fran9aise. Deuxi6me 6dition. Paris: Firmin Didot Pare et Pus. 1821. 8 vols. Gros 8vo. 2. Histoire des R~publiques Italieni~es du ]Vlioyen Age. Par J. C. L. SIMONDE DE SIsMoND:. Paris: Firmin Didot Fr~res. Nouvelle 6dition. 1840. 10 vols. Svo. 3. Bus/cms Stones of Venice. London: Smith, Elder, & Co. 1851 53 3 vols. Royal 8vo. 4. Lady iJiontagues Letters. 5. Travels in Italy, Spain, and Portugal. By the Author of Vathek (BEG KEORD). New York: Wiley and Putnam. 1845. 6. Fragments of Italy and the Rhineland. By the Rev. F. H. WHITE. London. 1851. l2mo. 7. Venice, the City of the Sea. By EDMUND FLAGG. New York. 1849. 2 vols. l2mo. 8. Random Sketches, and Notes of European Travel. By REV. JOHN E. EDWARDS, A. M. New York: Harper and Brothers. 1857. OF the works enumerated above, the two most important are by French writers. Mr. Ruskins noble volum~es relate almost exclusively to the architecture of ancient Venice; but nothing worthy of that famous city, of an historical nature, has appeared in the English language. Lady Montague has drawn a few vivid pictures of it, as it existed during the eighteenth century, in her Letters, which we read with delight to-day; and the author of Vathek also charms us by descrip- tions of his brief sojourn there while a Doge yet existed. With these exceptions, although thousands of intelligent trav- ellers have visited the City of the Sea, scarce one, with the

VENICE. 83 1858.J multiply; and we may be sure that, so long as the perishing classes and the dangerous classes form a portion, however small, of the population of large cities, the enthusiasm of be~ nevolence, the energy of charity, will never be forced to con- tent itself with copying the efforts of dead generations. ART. IV. 1. Histoire de la R~publique de Venise. Par P. IDARU~ de PAcad6mie Fran9aise. Deuxi6me 6dition. Paris: Firmin Didot Pare et Pus. 1821. 8 vols. Gros 8vo. 2. Histoire des R~publiques Italieni~es du ]Vlioyen Age. Par J. C. L. SIMONDE DE SIsMoND:. Paris: Firmin Didot Fr~res. Nouvelle 6dition. 1840. 10 vols. Svo. 3. Bus/cms Stones of Venice. London: Smith, Elder, & Co. 1851 53 3 vols. Royal 8vo. 4. Lady iJiontagues Letters. 5. Travels in Italy, Spain, and Portugal. By the Author of Vathek (BEG KEORD). New York: Wiley and Putnam. 1845. 6. Fragments of Italy and the Rhineland. By the Rev. F. H. WHITE. London. 1851. l2mo. 7. Venice, the City of the Sea. By EDMUND FLAGG. New York. 1849. 2 vols. l2mo. 8. Random Sketches, and Notes of European Travel. By REV. JOHN E. EDWARDS, A. M. New York: Harper and Brothers. 1857. OF the works enumerated above, the two most important are by French writers. Mr. Ruskins noble volum~es relate almost exclusively to the architecture of ancient Venice; but nothing worthy of that famous city, of an historical nature, has appeared in the English language. Lady Montague has drawn a few vivid pictures of it, as it existed during the eighteenth century, in her Letters, which we read with delight to-day; and the author of Vathek also charms us by descrip- tions of his brief sojourn there while a Doge yet existed. With these exceptions, although thousands of intelligent trav- ellers have visited the City of the Sea, scarce one, with the 84 VENICE. [Jan. exception of Byron, has left a record of enduring value. Mr. Whites book, in this respect, is the best we have seen. Much of it is evidently written for effect; but it contains many pas- sages of rare poetic beauty and power. Mr. Flaggs volumes, chiefly relating to the revolt against Austrian despotism, in 1848, afford much interesting information concerning ancient Venice, but in the most tawdry and flashy manner. Of such commonplace Random Sketches as Mr. Edwardss we have at all times a superabundance. And merely remarking of the great work of Sismondi, that Venice comprises but a lim- ited portion of his Italian republics, we assert that the scholar desiring the most accurate as well as the most extend- ed converse with her annals, must for the present seek it in the pages of Daru. Sixty years ago, the commander-in-chief of the French army in Italy pronounced the Venetian republic a thing of the past. A state which for fourteen hundred years had maintained its independence, its unique institutions, its dread- ed code, jealous policy, and hereditary aristocracy, was by the treaty of Campo Formio suddenly stricken prostrate, and in supine helplessness incorporated with the Austrian empire. The soldiers of France poured into the city, which never be- fore had resounded with the tramp of victorious enemies; and when they left it, bearing with them some of the choicest of its works of art to decorate Paris, Venice xvas no longer a power on earth. The Doge, the Senate, the Council of Ten, the terrible inquisition of state, all were swept away. But as the very desolation of a ruin invests it with mournful inter- est, thus the fall of Venice has created for her a feeling likely to endure with her existence. True, her high spirit is at rest, And all those days of glory gone, ~ Then the worlds waters, east and west, Beneath her white-winged commerce shone; When with her countless barks she went To meet the Orient Empires might, And her Justiniani sent Their hundred heroes to that fight. Yet, from every part of the civilized world, the stranger comes to muse amidst the scenes of her ancient fame. Even 1858.1 VENICE. 85 the most practical minds confess with delight the influence of her spirit, and we would here endeavor to present some me- morials of her departed grandeur. No sooner does one touch upon the enchanted ground of Venetian story, than his attention is called to the long dura- tion of that mysterious power, which for fourteen centuries was a marvel to the nations, and still remained defiant of change, while other cities rose and perished, and even mighty empires came into existence, and knew centuries of splendor before crumbling to decay. A brief glance at the history of Europe and America will at once indicate the magnitude of the changes Venice witnessed, herself unchanged, burning through long ages of storm and darkness like a beacon-tower above the Adriatic, and not more affected by the rise and fall of kingdoms and principalities than by the waves of her own sea rippling to her feet. The name of Venice is of very remote origin, and it was formerly designated as Venetia Prima and Secunda, a dis- tinction being made between the mainlands lying along the head of the Adriatic, and the mass of lagoons and small islands bordering the coast. Its principal city was Aquilcia, although it could boast of fifty others, rich and flourishing. Nothing is known with absolute certainty concerning the ori- gin of the Venetians who became so celebrated; but they have been traced by various writers to several European na- tions, and by some have even been supposed of Asiatic origin. The most widely accepted tradition, although perhaps as er- roneous as any other, narrates that about the year 450 of the Christian era, when Italy was overrun by the myrmidons of Attila, the people of Aquileia and the adjacent country fled from the savage fury of the finns. Having no hope of peace in the future, they took refuge in that cluster of little islands in the Venetian Gulf, which had from time immemorial been occupied by a small body of people engaged in fishing and. maritime pursuits. Without any safe communication with their country, now the prey of barbaric hordes, these forlorn exiles beheld around them nothing but the sea; they oxvned nothing but the few articles which they had snatched from their ruined homes. Dire necessity drove them to the waters, vOL. Lxxxvi. NO. 178. 8 86 VENICE. [Jan. at first solely to obtain subsistence from their depths, and in a short time they joined to this hard toil the making of salt from them by the aid of the sun. In these employments the founders of Venice passed their lives, happy in poverty and secure from danger, but without the most remote conception that they had laid the corner-stone of an empire destined for a thousand years to sway the genius of Europe, and to draw to its renowned city pilgrims from every part of the world, gathered to look with wonder upon its riches and delights, far surpassing in gorgeous reality the wildest fables of Ara- bian romance. Thus springing into existence, as the Northern invader trampled out the last sparks of the Western Empire, she saw that once mighty power succeeded in later ages by that of Charlemagne. In the very capital of Rome itself, she beheld the priesthood emerging from obscurity, usurping the temporal throne of the C~esars, by spiritual rule carrying terror and dis- may to the hearts of princes, and crowning or humbling kings and emperors ~by the mere will of the pontiff, whom, until Martin Luther braved the thunders of the Vatican, Venice alone consistently opposed. It will be well to keep in mind the important fact, that in all her history, though she professed great devotion to the Catholic faith, though her island city teemed with splendid churches and religious establishments, the Supreme Pontiff was never suffered to interfere with her state policy, and that his dreaded anathemas often broke harmless over her impregnable lagoons. She saw, too, the Eastern Empire of Constantine sinking into inevitable decay, yielding in the thirteenth century to her own arms allied with those of France, and txvo hundred and eighty years afterwards becoming the prize of the Turkish warrior, Mahomet IL, who tore the cross from her Christian altars, and, as the sign of his own infidel faith triumphing over the holy shrines of Constantinople, adopted the crescent, from all antiquity the symbol of Byzantium. She beheld in the lapse of ages the power of England extending from a little island over domin- ions on which the sun never sets, and Austria, Russia, and Prussia rising from the fiefs of petty dukes and czars, to gov- ern the destinies of Modern Europe. She was witness to that 1858.] VENICE. 87 long struggle between the states of Holland and the tyranny of Spain, in which Liberty triumphed at last, after eighty years of bloody strife. In the New World she saw the states founded by Cortez and Pizarro on the ruin of the Aztecs of Mexico and the Incas of Peru, and beheld these realms over- shadowed in later days by a republic in North America more majestic than all of them. She witnessed the foundation of American independence before her own was subverted, and it was not until after the overthrow of the ancient Bourbon dynasty of France that her fate was sealed. From that kingdom, which she had so often aided with her blood and treasure in war, advanced the young chieftain, then but at the outset of a career which was to place him high above all modern conquerors, in the same rank with the two most renowned generals of antiquity, but, despite the florid pane- gyric of his reverend biographer, as a despot and a destroyer. At his stern bidding Venice finally fell, after fourteen cen- turies of strength, of riches, of splendor, of mystery, and of crime, and Luigi Manini, last of her long line of one hundred and twenty-two doges, sank helpless beneath the iron front of Napoleon Bonaparte. With the exception of Rome alone, no single city has an equal fascination with Venice. The sister arts of painting and architecture have rendered her familiar to the most careless observer; for the marble creations of Palladio, and builders far older than he, reproduced in the paintings of Canaletti, Stanfield, and Turner, have been multiplied by engraving until they are almost as well known to us as to their long-buried proprietors; and so imbued is the place with the very spirit of poetry, that the verse of Byron might serve as the sentiment of every breast She to me Was as a fairy city of the heart, Rising like water-columns from the sea, Of joy the sojourn, and of wealth the mart; And Otway, Radcliffe, Sculler, Shakespeares art Had stamped her image in me. Let us picture to ourselves the wanderer who for the first time approaches the City of the Sea. It is a bright summers 88 VENICE. [Jan. day, and he glides over the bosom of the Adriatic, his glance eagerly turned towards the vessels prow, to hail the spot which he has yearned for years to behold. At length he dimly descries on the far horizon faint, cloud-like outlines of domes and towers, which soon become distinctly defined against the sky, and enlarge and multiply, until here and there some mass of building, some lofty campanile or glitter- ing cupola, assumes the very shape with which the gazer has long been familiar, from the engraving hanging in his own chamber in his American home. And now his eye is caught by a central group. Close by that soaring tower, whose top- most point is lost in the blue heavens, he marks a cluster of Saracenic domes, rich with gilding, but wearing the look of venerable age, and beneath them an open space decorated with a long line of light porticos, and, in perfect contrast with them, a huge, solemn, sombre pile, which he knows at once as the palace of the Doges. The city seems to float over the waves, nearer and nearer, to meet him, and he sees more distinctly in the waters the long, reflected lines of palaces, churches, and bridges. The dark, gliding forms silently flit- ting hither and thither are those gondolas suggestive of love, and mystery, and the inquisition of state. The granite columns before him on the pier, surmounted by the statues of St. Theodore and the winged lion, are too real to be doubted any longer, and the Western pilgrim, rousing himself at length from the trance which the first sight of Venice had created, wakes, not to a dull reality and a disappointment, but to a full sense of that romance with which all things are im- bued beneath the shadow of St. Marks. Still as he lingers in the place, as he day by day explores its recesses, its golden saloons, its historic palaces and churches, its dark, dreary tor- ture-chambers, as he floats about the endless intricate canals, now winding with a gentle and broad sweep between piles of architectural magnificence lighted by a bright sun on high, and now plunging suddenly into a labyrinth of passages narrow and of unbroken gloom, huge walls of masonry seem- ing about to entomb him, and their ponderous projecting roofs almost shutting out the heavens, there is ever that mystery in the creation, the being of Venice, he would in 1858.] VENICE. 89 vain account for. For, unlike other cities, she is solely of the waters, where lie her dominions, the prize and proof of her power. The Adriatic, indeed, is no longer wedded to her as in days of old, when the IDoge went forth to renew the espou- sals as he cast the golden ring into the waves; but in those waves lies the secret of the ancient glory of Venice, and at length the seekers quest is granted, while he listens to the wondrous tale as it comes whispered by the sea. In a very few years after their desertion of the mainland, the Venetians began to exercise an important influence on the trade and commerce of the Adriatic. Before them spread the gulf, on whose waters they felt able to cope with any enemy, and behind them was a natural barrier in the intricate shallows of the coast, which few knew how to thread, and which indeed were so often to prove the best friend of Venice, as to earn the title of the impregnable lagoon. Gibbon says, At the extremity of the gulf, where the Adriatic feebly imitates the tides of the ocean, near a hundred small islands are separated by shallow water from the continent, an dpro- tected from the waves by several long slips of land, which admit the entrance of vessels through some secret and narrow channels. Thus hemmed in on all sides, the Venetians found that their situation could easily be defended, and set- tling first upon the chief of the islands, called Isola di IRialto, an ancient port of Padna, they gradually extended their limits until the little archipelago was connected by canals and bridges, and unique Venice sat supreme upon the waters. The earliest patron saint of the republic was St. Theodore; but about A. D. 830, the translation of the body of St. Mark from Alexandria gave to the Queen of the Adriatic a large portion of that celebrity which she has ever since retained. This revered name has for more than a thousand years been so completely identified with Venice, that it would be in vain to dwell upon her greatness without alluding to the Evange- list. The legends tell us, that, in the early part of the ninth century, a number of merchants trading to Alexandria (at that time still enjoying much of the commerce which had made her the most celebrated port of the ancient world) obtained possession of the body of St. Mark by a pious stratagem. 8* 90 VENICE. [Jan. They learned that sacrilegious hands were about to destroy the church in which the body was buried, in order that the superb marbles with which the edifice was adorned might be used in the construction of a palace. The fame of the mira- cles wrought at the saints shrine had for centuries made it a chosen spot of pious worship; and these shrewd merchants, very Shylocks as they were, and exacting in trade all things nominated in the bond, doubtless knew that it would be a good investment to transport the relics to their own city, and thus to draw after them much of the trade which had left its golden footprints in Alexandria. An agreement was made with the monks having the body in custody, and by their aid the remains of a female, Santa Claudia, were substituted for the invaluable bones of St. Mark. The fraud came very near being discovered; for the odor of sanctity was so powerful that a sweet scent filled the church, and the worshippers has- tened to it in great alarm, fearing that some evil might have befallen the object of their adoration. They were relieved, however, when they beheld the body wrapped in the familiar cerements, not aware that they had been cut open behind, so that no signs of the theft were visible. The precious prize, meanwhile, was on its way to the vessel; and the better to avoid all suspicion, it was placed in a basket covered over with joints of pork, the special abomination in the nostrils of devout Mussulmans, and the sailors bearing the burden con- tinually shouted the name of the vile animal which the fol- lowers of Mahomet are forbidden to touch, until the gauntlet of the streets was run, the body of the saint safe on board the ship, and, to elude search, hidden in a sail which was ele- vated to one of the yards. Thus safely removed from rec- reant Alexandria, the saint displayed his gratitude during the voyage by appearing in person and warning the crew to pre- pare for an approaching tempest; and when Venice at length xvas reached, his remains were deposited with every pompous ceremonial in the chapel bearing his name. His emblem, the winged lion, was thenceforth stamped upon the coinage, and emblazoned on the banner of the republic; and long as she preserved her independence, her citizens, in peace or war, in merriment or in alarm, rallied at the cry of Viva San Marco! 1858.] VENICE. 91 For hundreds of years afterwards, the chapel in which the bones of the saint were laid was enriched by the lavish gifts of the state and of private individuals; and its architecture, of no one style, displays examples of the Greek, the iRoman, the Gothic, the Byzantine, the Saracenic, until now it strikes the beholder as a grand and dreamy structure of immense proportions, golden with old mosaics, redolent of perfumes, dim with the smoke of incense, costly in treasures of precious stones and metals glittering through iron bars, holy with bod- ies of defunct saints, rainbow-hued with windows of stained glass, dark with carved woods and colored marbles, obscure in its vast heights and lengthened distances, shining with sil- ver lamps and winking lights, unreal, fantastic, solemn, incon- ceivable throughout. Under the patronage of St. Mark, Venice made rapid ad- vances in her career of glory. Engaged as she was in almost constant wars, it would avail little to inflict upon the reader a dry detail of battles and sieges, or to chronicle her continuous quarrels with neighboring states, with Genoa, Pisa, Padua, Milan, and Naples, as well as her more fearful struggles with the Ottoman power. Within the limits of this article we must notice her commercial celebrity, her dark and weird des- potism, her arts, sciences, and literature; and, lest we should dwell too long upon the absorbing story of her historic grand- eur, must be content with a few of her many great achieve- ments. Before the tenth century, Venice had risen to a position of recognized power, and had already become the arbitress in many national disputes, as well as in feuds of lesser impor- tance. The part she bore in the dissensions between Pope Alexander III. and the Emperor Frederick Barbarossa was not the least remarkable event in her annals. On the death of Adrian IV., in 1159, the whole Christian world was scan- dalized by the sight of two rivals for the papal tiara, each claiming to be the legitimate successor of St. Peter, each anathematizing all who should give aid and counsel or swear allegiance to the other. Victor IV., who succeeded in maintaining his authority, had but two votes besides his own in the College of Cardinals; but he was supported in 92 VENICE. [Jan. his usurpation by the arms of the Emperor, while the other candidate, Alexander III., who was certainly the legitimate pontiff if the suffrages of the Sacred College could make him such, was driven from. Rome, was hunted like a wild beast from city to city, and for nearly twenty years was a fugitive with a price set upon his head. We find Venice in the first instance allied with the Emperor, because she had reason to believe that her commercial interests would be thus promoted; but finally she espoused the cause of Alexander, who landed at Venice a wretched fugitive, passed his first night in the open air, sleeping on the steps of one of the churches, and was discovered by the Doge Ziani, employed as a menial in the kitchen of a monastery. His pretensions were recognized by the Venetian Senate, and an embassy was at once despatched to Frederick, demanding his allegiance to the rightful Pope. Barbarossa haughtily replied, that it was his right to demand, and that he claimed from Venice a fugitive and an enemy; further, that he would enforce his claim by arms, nor cease until he had planted his victorious eagles on the gates of St. Mark. There was no alternative but war, and it was instantly declared. Sixty.five galleys furnished by Pisa, Genoa, and Ancona, admirably equipped, manned by the forces of the Emperor, and commanded by his own son, Otho, met off the coast of Istria a far inferior force, hastily despatched, and led by the Doge. In a contest which lasted for six hours, fifty of the Emperors galleys were captured and sunk, and Otho was made prisoner by the Doge, who returned in triumph to the city. This so effectually decided the cause of Alexander III., that the Emperor, defeated also at other points, was obliged to make the greatest concessions, even to the acknowledgment of his claims as rightful Pope. So thoroughly humbled, in- deed, was Barbarossa, that he volunteered to come to Venice and prostrate himself at the feet of his foe. He landed at St. Marks Place, and thence was escorted by the IDoge, the senate, and the grand officers of state, into the church, where, robed in the richest vestments of the pontifical office, his brow crowned by the papal tiara, and surrounded by the full pomp of the Roniish Church, sat Alexander, triumphant at last after twenty years of humiliation and wrong. As the Emperor 1858.] VENICE. 93 drew near, he bared his head, and knelt before the Pope that he might kiss his sacred feet, while Alexander, uttering aloud the words of the Psalmist, Thou shalt tread upon the lion and the adder, the yonng lion and the dragon shalt thou trample un- der feet, pressed his foot firmly on the neck of the Emperor. The indignant monarch resented this degradation, and said, It is not to you, it is to St. Peter. Without a moments hesitation, the haughty ecclesiastic again trod upon Frederick, and answered, It is both to me and to St. Peter. The spot on which this memorable scene took place is still marked by a block of red marble inserted in the pave- ment of the church; and in connection with the event may be here mentioned that ceremony of the espousal of the Adriatic, which was observed in Venice as one of the most gorgeous of her pageants. When the Doge Ziani returned victorious with the captive Otho, he was met by Alexander, who, in token of his gratitude, presented him with a golden ring, saying as he offered it: Take this ring, and with it take on my authority the sea as your subject. Every year, on the return of this happy day, you and your successors shall make known to all posterity that the right of conquest has subjugated the Adriatic to Venice, as a spouse to her husband. Six hundred years went by, and still, on the annual return of the Feast of the Ascension, the Doge, at- tended by all the magnificos of his court, swept out to sea in the Bucentaur, a large galley blazing with gold, not unlike in shape to the imperial quinquireme of the Roman emperors, and cheered by the festive voices of the people, blending with strains of music, he dropped into the waves of the Adriatic the ring of espousal, repeating, as it fell, the words, Dc- sponsamus te, mare, in signum yen perpetuique dominii. Venice was pre-eminently a naval power, as noted for the superiority of her marine over her land forces as England is at the present day. From very early times the Venetians knew how to construct huge war-galleys, which, besides their rowers and sailors, carried each two hundred soldiers; and such an exalted idea had this maritime people of the power of their great ships of war, that he who took command of one of them was obliged by oath not to refuse combat even with 94 VENICE. [Jan. twenty-five sail of the enemys vessels. The great fleets, which were manned by from twenty to forty thousand men, when Venice was at the height of its power, were always commanded by natives of the state; the singular policy of the government confiding its land forces to the generalship of strangers who had entered the service of the oligarchy, but excluding them from its marine. The army, always considered as an inferior branch of the service, was principally composed of mercenaries, Swiss, or the troops of needy German and Italian princes. A for- midable body of light cavalry was at one period fostered by the republic, consisting of Albanians, who had been trained in frequent wars with the Turks. Admirably mounted and equipped, they were for the time the finest horsemen in Europe, fighting with Turkish ferocity, seeking and giving no quarter in battle, and receiving a ducat for each head of the enemy they could produce. Dependent, therefore, on her navy to sustain and increase her power, Venice spared no pains to bring it to perfection. Nothing to this day gives the stranger a deeper impression of her naval renown, than an inspection of the great Arsenal, which was in the Middle Age one of the wonders of Europe. It is of vast extent, several miles in circuit, and combines the fortress with the navy-yard. In the time of the great mari- time wars of the republic, this establishment numbered six- teen thousand workmen; but in the last days of her inde- pendence their number had dwindled to a few hundreds. In this complete storehouse were kept in reserve immense col- lections of every single piece which could enter into the composition of a vessel. Here were to be seen founderies directed for several generations by the family of Alberghetti, who had invented a machine for boring cannon; here were ropewalks, where the finest cables known were manufactured. Workshops of every kind, eleven large halls filled with weap- ons and arms of defence, all in order for instant service, and depositories of the choicest timber and other materials, fur- nished to the government the means of arming or refitting a fleet with singular quickness. It was in this arsenal that the republic gave to Henry III. of Prance a feast far more VENICE. 95 1858.] splendid than could have then been served by any monarch in Europe; and, as an evidence of its resources, while he sat at the banquet, a galley was constructed before him in less than two hours, or, to speak with more accuracy, all the parts of the vessel were put together, and she xvas launched, in that short space of time. Thus supported by powerful arma- ments, the commercial marine penetrated to every part of the Mediterranean, and in the course of centuries establishing relations with the European, Asiatic, and African powers, added incalculably to the wealth, glory, and magnificence of Venice. Though continually tempted by the brilliancy of one or another historic triumph, we mnst pass over all of lesser note to touch upon the Crusades, especially the Fourth, so mem- orable in the annals of the republic, from her share in the capture of Constantinople. Looking back through the mists of six or eight centuries, it is almost impossible to obtain a clear conception of those great movements which convulsed Europe in the Middle Age. Of the passion for fame, the love of adventure, the lust of wealth, and the zeal of bigotry, history has taught us by individual examples; but of the vast upheaval of the masses, the enthusiasm burning in the lowli- est heart, which impelled all ages, all ranks, to abandon edu- cation, arts, commerce, agriculture, and in stupendous armies to rush on to the East, eager to pour upon the countless myriads of turbaned infidels, as ocean billows in opposing currents meet in fury to be riven in foam, of this simulta- neous and terrific onset, mere description fails to convey an adequate idea. The chronicler and the poet love to dwell upon the memory of that time, on its splendid pageants and bloody conflicts, to-day the cross radiant and triumphant, to- morrow trampled into the dust, as the Moslem seized the Holy Sepulchre; on the spirits which roused the fervor of Christendom, Peter the Hermit, and the pontiffs Urban II. and Innocent III.; on its warriors, Godfrey of Bouillon and the illustrious Courtenays; on its kings, Philip Augustus and the saintly Louis of France, Englands Cceur de Lion, and that foeman worthy of Richards steel, the magnanimous Saladin. Amidst all this wild excitement, for a time Venice 96 VENICE. [Jan. stood coldly cautious, and unwilling to take part in the rash enterprise. This policy is to be attributed solely to her com- mercial relations with Comnenus, the Greek Emperor of Con- stantinople, whose ire was excited by beholding the hosts of Christendom marching through his dominions into Palestine, as on a common highway. He looked with distrust and dread on the presence of the Crusaders, and manifested no interest in their holy purposes, a fatal indifference, which a century later, in the Fourth Crusade, cost his successor the inheritance of the imperial capital. So invaluable were the privileges of trade afforded to the Venetians by the Grecian monarch, that they were finally forced into joining the Crusades only by the danger they incurred of having their long-cherished prerog- atives taken from them by other warlike powers. They were the last, therefore, to obey the spirit which led so many nations to the East, and when they did furnish their con- tingent to the European league, they took care generally to be indemnified beforehand, and also to evade the great incon- veniences endured by less politic nations. While the fleets of Venice, therefore, struck terror into the regions bordering the eastern shores of the Mediterranean, an enthusiasm at least equal to that displayed by her warriors for the recovery of the Holy Sepulchre was shown by her merchants for in- creasing their already vast commerce, and attracting the trade of the whole world to their sea-girt capital. We cannot here narrate the triumphs of the republic in the earlier Cru- sades, nor the victories of the Doge Dominico Michieli over the Saracens in the naval battle of the Bay of Jaffa, at Tyre, and at Ascalon, nor his vengeance on the Greek Emperor, so memorable that his tomb was inscribed, Terror Gr~coruni jacet hic. But dnring the Fourth Crusade, when the Vene- tian arms, combined with those of France, were diverted from the real object of these religious wars by the course of the usurping master of the Eastern Empire, her power and splen- dor were a thousandfold increased, and the capture of Con- stantinople will ever be marked as one of the proudest chapters in the annals of Venice. The Fourth Crusade, set on foot by Pope Innocent III., was eagerly embraced by the barons of France, who sought the 1858.] VENICE. 97 aid of the republic. The envoys chosen by the barons to re- pair to her capital reached it in. safety, and at once laid their proposition before the Doge. On the ground that no other nation had the ships or the strength of Venice, they implored her aid in transporting troops, and besought her to join with them in avenging the shame of their Redeemer. On what conditions do you demand this ? asked the iDoge. On any conditions which you may choose to impose, hum- bly replied the ambassadors. The Doge then rejoined, that they must wait eight days for an answer from the Council, as the matter was of momentous consequence, and required careful deliberation. At the end of that time the envoys were informed that ships could be furnished by the state to trans- port twenty thousand foot-soldiers, four thousand five hun- dred knights, and nine thousand esquires, as well as four thousand five hundred horses. The engagement was to con- tinue in force for one year; and for this aid the barons were to pay 85,000 marks, equal to 170,000, or $ 850,000, which, considering that the value of money was then four or five times its present standard, may be deemed an enormous sum, exemplifying the Venetian spirit of commercial speculation. This money was to be paid down before the expedition set sail; but when the time of embarkation arrived, many of the crusaders had gone to other ports, many had already impov- erished themselves, and upwards of one third of the stipulat- ed price was wanting. The leaders of the enterprise gener- ously gave up to the Doge their rich gold and silver plate, and even their costly vestments, to make up the deficiency. Still the deficit was large, and the expedition was about to be aban- doned, when it xvas determined to raise the sum to its full extent by an outrageous act of conquest, which illustrates equally the barbarity of the age and the iniquitous counsels already ruling the policy of Venice. Zara, on the Adriatic, a dependency of the king of Hun- gary, had refused to join the league, although the king of Hungary himself had assumed the cross; and it was coolly proposed by the powers of Venice to the French barons that this city should be taken and pillaged. The sophistry brought to bear upon them was, that Zara deserved vengeance as much VOL. LXXXVI. NO. 178. 9 98 VENICE. [Jan. as the infidel, because she was in direct rebellion against the cause of Christ. After some demur, and even against the remonstrance of the Pope, evil advice prevailed; Zara was besieged,and, in spite of an obstinate resistance, carried by storm, and sacked. The booty, which more than supplied the deficiency, was equally divided betxveen the French and the Venetians, and at length the great expedition, numbering up- wards of five hundred sail, departed. It was led by the Doge in person, Henry IDandolo, more than ninety-five years of age, and almost blind, but still preserving the vigor and fire of youth. The fleet, touching at several points in the Mediter- ranean, and gathering strength as it approached Constantino- ple, at length came in sight of the renowned city. At this day, even the most fervid imagination can scarce serve one in his ideal restoration of the capital of the Eastern Empire. Unrivalled in its situation, even now, when for four centuries the Turkish power has been treading out the memorials of Roman and Grecian art, Constantinople, with its domes and minarets, its seraglios, kiosks, and groves rising above the waters, presents to the approaching stranger a scene of en- chantment. What then must it have been nearly three hun- dred years before its capture by Mahomet II., when to the monuments of Constantine and his successors were added all the later creations of the voluptuous Greeks, who had deserted their own severe and classic standard for the luxurious types of Oriental life? The invaders were perhaps for the first time now aware of the magnitude of their enterprise; and, in the words of one of them, Geoffrey de Villehardonin, When they contemplat- ed the lofty walls and goodly towers that enclosed it around, the gay palaces and glittering churches that seemed innumer- able, the immense dimensions of the city, denoting it as the queen of the earth, they could hardly believe their senses; nor was there any man, however bold, whose heart did not trem- ble within him. This was no marvel, for never since the cre- ation of the \VOrld had such an enterprise been attempted by such a handful of men. The city was defended by immense fortifications, by deep fosses and strong walls, by massive chains stretched across the harbor, and by four hundred and 1858.J VENICE. 99 seventy-eight towers, in a circumference of eighteen miles. But nothing could withstand the ceaseless and savage attacks of the invaders, who employed with consummate skill every engine of destruction then known to military men. The aged IDoge led and animated his countrymen, and, displaying the banner of St. Mark, was the first to touch the shore. After the city had been twice besieg~d, and fired in numerous places, after the usurper Alexius had fled, the young and rightful heir been treacherously murdered, and the Patriarch of Constantinople driven into exile, the conquerors took pos- session of the place, and, judged by the horrible transactions which ensued, were as unworthy of such a prize as the base people whom they had supplanted. It would be wearisome and disgusting to repeat a hundredth part of the frightful scenes of the capture of Constantinople. The amount of spoil seized by the invaders would appear almost fabulous and besides the pillaged treasures of gold, silver, inestimable gems, tapestries, silks, and furs, art and literature suffered immense losses, the barbaric spirit of the age prompting a rude soldiery to destroy what they knew not how to value. Thus perished priceless libraries, almost rivalling the famous collection of Alexandria. Thus were lost for ever to the world the works of many celebrated authors of antiquity. Thus noble statues in marble and bronze were bro.ken to atoms and melted; and the homes of the living and the sanctuaries of the dead were alike despoiled. But all this was amply re- deemed, in the estimation of the spoilers, by the vast quan- tity of saintly relics scattered thenceforth over Europe. A library might perish by fire, but an arm of St. Gregory was far more to be prized; and what were pictures and gems, carv- ings and statues, in comparison with part of the head of John the Baptist, or with a vial containing the blood of our Say- iour, which had flowed from a statue pierced by the Jews at Berytus? Venice was especially enriched by the choicest of these relics, including a part of the true cross, with several of its nails, and a prickle from the crown of thorns. The capture of Constantinople made Dandolo the greatest of the Doges; but in the following year, in the theatre of his renown, death quenched that haughty spirit, and his ashes 100 VENICE. [Jan. found repose beneath the dome of St. Sophia. More endur- ing memorials of his prowess during the famous siege than anj relics are the bronze horses which, for six centuries, standing over the portal of St. Marks, have been regarded as the Palladium of Venice. They are four in number, of an- cient Greek workmanship, attributed to Lysippus. It is said that they were brought from Alexandria by Augustus Caesar, after the downfall of Antony, and set up on a triumphal arch in Rome; and that succeeding emperors, Nero, Domitian, and Trajan, placed them on their own arches. Constantine or Theodosius transferred them to the Eastern capital, where they remained until seized by the Venetians in the year 1204, and they have ever since been under the protection of St. Mark, with the exception of some seventeen years when they held a conspicuous place among the trophies with which Na- poleon enriched Paris. They were finally restored to Venice in 181~, when the treasures of art collected by the conqueror were returned to their rightful owners. We can devote no further space to the conquests, by sea and land, which in the course of centuries added to the dig- nity of the republic. Some few of her provinces those lying along the shores of the Adriatic she preserved even to the moment of her own destruction; but most of them, and those of which she had the greatest reason to be proud, were wrung one by one from her grasp during the last two centuries of her independent existence. Besides Constanti- nople, Cyprus, Candia, Corfu, Cephalonia, and many smaller islands of the Grecian Archipelago, as well as the Morea, with its adjacent island of Negropont, once were hers, embraced in her secret policy, her laws, and her inquisition of state; and even now the traveller in some of the islands we have named will occasionally find in stone, moss-grown and crumbling, the winged lion of Venice, the token to her citizen, as he looked and trembled, that her viewless but all-seeing power still tracked his footsteps. Those three lofty fiagstaffs before the church of St. Mark, which all who have ever visited the spot remember so well, now bearing only the hated Austrian ensign, once upheld the superb banner of the republic and the standards of her three chief possessions, Cyprus, Candia, and the Morea. 1858.] VENICE. 101 The severe lot which in the first instance exiled the Vene- tians to the midst of the waves proved in course of time of sig- nal benefit. Obliged continually to go abroad, even for the ne- cessaries of life, they soon became used to the perils of the sea, and gradually noted the points where they could make their purchases and exchanges to the best advantage. The sefre- quent excursions made them thoroughly acquainted with both shores of the Adriatic, and before many years it was seen that the new city, easy of defence, and placed almost on the limit which then separated Europe and Asia, would rise, through the industry of its people, to be the principal mart of the Western world. Situated near the head of the Adriatic and the mouth of the Po, it was the natural recipient of the wool- lens, silks, oil, and other products, which Italy furnished to Hungary and Germany. In like manner, all that the North drew from the Levant, Africa, and Spain had to pass through Venice, for c oastwise traffic to France, Flanders, or England, by way of the Straits of Gibraltar, and thence along the Atlantic coast, involving what was then considered a very long and dangerous voyage. Such terror was inspired by the ocean, that the grossly ignorant people of the North of Europe dared not steer boldly forth to seek the products of the Medi- terranean. Of the dwellers on the shores of this sea, Venice took the lead in maritime enterprise; and thus we find her mo- nopolizing their entire carrying-trade. She exercised almost ab- solute sway over the navigation of the Po, the Brenta, and the Adige, which, close together, pour their waters into the basin of the lagoons. The first Doge of Venice, Paul Anafesto, made a treaty with Luitprand, king of the Lombards, by which he secured for his people valuable privileges, to the exclusion of all others. Whatever branch of trade or commerce could minister to the prosperity of the republic was carefully guard- ed and fostered. From the rude and simple efforts of the founders of Venice in their manufacture of salt, this article, in the course of centuries, yielded incalculable revenues to the state. She obtained charge of nearly all the salt deposito- ries of the coast; endeavored to prevent her neighbors from working theirs profitably; secured the right of importing all the fossil salts of Germany and Croatia; forced one of the 9* 102 VENICE. [Jan. kings of Hungary to close his own mines, and controlled nearly all the salt derived from Sicily, the coasts of Africa, the Black Sea, and from so remote a point as Astrakhan on the Caspian. When one reflects on the influence which travel, commerce, competition, and the influx of strangers must necessarily have had on the manners of this people, he will readily perceive that the Venetians were already a polished nation, while other states, which nature did not seem to have placed in an inferior rank, were still in a condition of semi-bar- barism. We learn from the history of Charlemagne, that his courtiers were astonished at the fair of Pavia on beholding the rich stuffs of silk and cloth of gold, the pearls and jew- els, which the Venetian merchants offered for sale. At this period all the cities of France, Germany, and England were mere clusters of dwellings, without architectural beauty, and the nobility of these countries, shut up in their gloomy strong- holds, knew little more of luxury and art than the humblest citizens. But rude as these nations were, the Venetians were no less anxious to cultivate trade with them than with the more luxurious Orientals. Owing to the disorders of war, imperfection in public administration, and the independent tyranny of the petty princes, as well as the powerful monarchs of Europe, the dangers of the Western commercial routes were eveu greater than the Eastern. It was more necessary to travel by caravans and with an armed escort in Europe than in Asia. Black mail was levied more frequently in Christen- dom than among the infidels; for the feudal barons, not con- tent with the establishment of heavy tolls, scoured the coun~ try to pillage rich travellers. Every pass leading through a mountainous defile was guarded by a castle, the lord of which must be conciliated. This was the origin of a custom kept up for a long time by the Venetian merchants, who carried with them troops of musicians, mountebanks, buffoons, and curious animals, to amuse the rude nobles through whose lands they wished to find passage. With the nations of the East their commercial relations were continually extended, and though the spirit of the age required that traffic with the infidel should be sanctioned by 1858.1 VENJOE. 103 the papal authority, they did not hesitate, spite of the contra- diction, to head their treaties with the words, In the name of our Lord and of Mahomet. In connection with the history of their Oriental commerce, we may take note of the numer- ons changes which the course of centuries made in the vari- ous channels of trade, so that the Venetians were more than twenty times forced to alter their routes of travel, in order to maintain uninterrupted intercourse with the nations of Asia. Sometimes the productions of the East were received by way of the Euphrates or the Red Sea, and thence by the Medi- terranean were distributed over the shores of Europe. Some- times the merchandise of India ascended the Indus, from its banks made a passage of some days on camels, and was afterwards embarked on the Oxus, which bore it to the shores of the Caspian Sea. From this sea it entered the Volga, and ascended it to a point where a bend in the river brings it with- in about eighteen miles of the Don, the ancient Tanais; then the traders, descending the Don with their wares, entered Lake Ma~otis, the present Sea of Azov, made purchases of grain, hides, and furs in the Tauric peninsula, now so well known as the Crimea, thence traversed the Black Sea to Constanti- nople, and thence sailed for Venice. There is no doubt that Venetian enterprise penetrated far into the interior of Africa, and formed establishments at many points not now easily accessible. Many of the rich families of Venice derived their wealth from trade with Barca, Tunis, Tangier, and other cities of the Barbary States. These cities were not then, as they have been in later times, haunts of robbers and pirates, but opulent places, filled with an indus- trious and skilful people. The ships of Venice brought from them, during the seventh and eighth centuries, corn, woollen stuffs, dye-woods, gums, perfumes, ivory, gold-dust, cloths, silks, and cotton goods; also slaves, which they sold to the Moors in Spain. The traffic in slaves for several centuries was eagerly pursued. Not only were the negroes of Africa objects of barter and sale, but the Eastern fleets dealt largely in the beautiful females of Georgia and Circassia, who were sold in Egypt for Mohammedan harems. Numerous great fleets annually left the capital, to return 104 VENIOE. [Jan. laden with the productions of the whole known world. Of these, one was sent to the shores of Greece and to Constanti- nople. Another proceeded to the Black Sea, where it sep- arated into two squadrons, one of which was directed to Sinope and Trebizond, on the southern shore, to purchase the productions of Asia brought into the Euxine by the river Phasis. The other, going to the north, and entering the Sea of Azov, penetrated the Don, making enormous purchases of its fish, and of articles from the farthest Orient, which had been brought by Tartar caravans to the shores of the Caspian, and thence by~ the Volga were delivered to Russian traders who navigated the Don. But greatest of all the squadrons yearly fitted out by Venice was that destined for the remote ports of Northern Europe, and styled the fleet of Flanders. Every vessel on this route was manned by at least two hundred sailors. The fleet touched first at the Neapolitan ports and those of Sicily, where, among other articles which found a sale in the West, the Venetians supplied their ships with sugar. This, now considered almost a necessary of life, was then a luxury, honey being chiefly used for sweetening food and liquors. Again the squadron set sail, and coasted along the Barbary shores, pausing at Tripoli, Tunis, Algiers, Oran, and Tangier, furnishing the inhabitants of these cities with the staples and manufactures of Europe, and receiving from them in return all the productions of the African interior, brought down to the coast in expectation of the periodical return of the Venetians. On entering the Atlantic, the fleet turned first to the south, and, skirting the coast of Morocco, supplied its people with iron, copper, arms, cloths, and a thousand other articles. Then it took its direction along the western shores of Europe, entered the ports of Binges and Antwerp in Flanders, and made exchanges with the Hanse towns, as well as purchases of cloth and woollens in England to stimulate the manufacturers of the republic. The articles disposed of in these Western ports consisted principally of the spices, drugs, and aromatics of the Levant, as well as sugar, which the Venetian fleets supplied to the whole of England until the end of the thirteenth century. At length the ships, being loaded with all the products of Flanders and England 1858.] VENICE. 105 required in the South of Europe, again turned their prows towards the Straits of Gibraltar, touching at the ports of France, Spain, and Portugal, and finally those of the entire coast of Italy, before anchoring at Venice, after being absent a whole year. In maritime discovery the Venetians did not lack enter- prise, although far excelled in this respect by the Portuguese. One of the earliest oceanic voyagers was a noble Venetian, named Da Mosto, who, having several times explored the coasts of Morocco to their southern limits, at length boldly steered into an unknown sea, and, in 1455, crossed the equi- noctial line, advancing eleven degrees beyond it, nearly to the latitude of St. Helena. To this navigator is ascribed the dis- covery of the Cape de Verde Islands. If one could believe all that the historians of Venice claim for her, her navigators must have made many of the most important discoveries, not only of territory, but of science. They contend for the first knowledge of the mariners compass, and of the variation of the magnetic needle. The compass, however, was not in- vented at Venice, and indeed, like many other things in every.day use, has survived the memory of its inventor; but there is a tradition, which to us has much of the air of truth, that the virtue of the loadstone was made known in Europe by Marco Polo, who brought it from China about the year 1260. Certain it is that the Chinese understood its use centuries before its introduction in the West, and it is not likely to have escaped the attention of so sagacious a traveller as the careful and indefatigable Venetian. Connected with the subject of geographical research, we may mention the story of a monk called Brother Mauro, living in a convent on one of the islands of the lagoon, who is said to have been accustomed to construct maps of the world, of which his knowledge was for his age very profound and accurate ; that he was in the habit of furnishing charts for voyagers, and that Alfonso IV., king of Portugal, sent to him for one in 1459. From this chart, the legend continues, the Portuguese derived their idea of the passage to the Indies by the way of the Cape of Good Hope, which memorable discovery, the death-blow to the Venetian monopoly of trade, 106 VENICE. [Jan. was made some forty years afterwards by Vasco de Gama. We are inclined to believe, however, that, if these maps had been made before the new route to the Indies was known to the Venetians, it could not have escaped the notice of those lynx-eyed traders, and that their cupidity would have braved all the terrors of the Cape of Storms. It was from their ambassador at Lisbon that they first received advice of this memorable discovery; and they exhausted every artifice to destroy the Portuguese settlements in the East, and after- wards to share with them the benefits of the new commerce. In neither effort were they successful. The Pope had drawn a line on the map of the world, beyond which all that might be discovered should belong to the Portuguese. Armed with this title, they would yield nothing and share nothing, and finally the Venetians, failing in their efforts to control the spices arriving in Lisbon, had no revenge but to exempt from duty all those coming by way of Egypt, and to subject the freights of Portuguese ships to enormous customs. We must devote a brief space to those manufactures of Venice for which she was so celebrated, before adverting to the causes which deprived her of the monopoly of trade, and left her vast dockyards silent and deserted. Hers was the glory of emerging fir~t from the pall of the Middle Age, and from a very remote period her industry was exercised in the construction of ships, great hydraulic works, dikes, bridges, and buildings reared on piles, demanding a knowledge of me- chanics, mathematics, and metallurgy. In the ninth century, one of her Doges sent as a present to the Emperor of Con- stantinople twelve large bells, of casting superior to any in Byzantium. The Venetian artisans also became celebrated for the finest kinds of gold and silver ware, and, among other articles, for chains of an extreme tenuity, which were highly prized in Europe, and are to this day made and sold on the Rialto. During one of the tonrngments of Venice in the fifteenth century, her gold and silver smiths, to the number of three hundred and fifty, took part in the spectacle. Her silk manufactures rose to great importance. It is known that cocoons were carried to Constantinople by monks from the interior of Asia, and these monks understood the art of color- VENICE. 107 1858.] ing them, reeling off the delicate thread, and working it into silken stuffs. The next earliest artisans in this fabric on the continent of Europe were established at Corinth, Thebes, and Athens by the Emperor Justinian, and these manufactories continued to flourish down to the thirteenth century, when dissension in the Greek Empire made Venice mistress of several places in the Morca, and she drew away many of the silk-workers to her own capital. About the same time the tyranny of one of the princes of Lucca drove from his king- dom upwards of nine hundred families, som e thirty of whom, seeking an asylum at Venice, were kindly treated, and had an especial quarter of the city assigned for their looms. In many instances, and with many branches of trade, this wise policy redounded to the honor and interest of Venice, as in later times Holland was enriched by the immigration of skilful workers driven out of the Spanish dominions by the savage bigotry of Philip II. and his successors. Cotton goods, threads, soaps, wax tapers, arms of many varieties and of the finest temper, and dressed and gilded leather, were among the Venetian exports. On the island of Murano, near the capi- tal, vast workshops arose for manufacturing glass of a quality long unapproached elsewhere, and of which the rarest fabrics were made by processes now lost to the world. 1-lere were produced, according to tradition, those magic goblets which detected poison and shivered at its contact, truth-telling monitors, nowhere more precious than in Venice. Glass supplanted the use of metal mirrors, which were the only ones known in Europe prior to the fifteenth century. Every imaginable article in glass might be found at Mnrano, from costly table services to gaudy beads to please the fancy of savages in the remote xvilds of Africa, so that the poor negress and the proudest monarch were alike tributary to Venetian skill. It is related of the Emperor Frederick III., that, on the occasion of his visit to Venice in 1453, and dur- ing his reception at the ducal palace, a service of the most precious glass of Murano was placed on a table before him, intended as a present from the state. The royal clown made a signal to his court jester, who instantly, as if by accident, pushed against the table and overthrew it, and the 108 VENICE. [Jan. costly ware was scattered in fragments. Instead of apology or excuse, Frederick only coarsely exclaimed, that had the service been of silver it won]d not have been broken. We have now traced the commercial career of Venice, from her foundation until she became the first maritime power on earth. Snddenly, in the early part of the seventeenth century, her decline began. Other nations of Europe engaged in com- merce, and ceased to look exclusively to Venice for supplies. The merchandise of Asia no longer flowed towards the Adriatic, arid finally the arts which contribute to the per- fection of industry made progress in other states, while Ven- ice remained stationary. What were the causes of these disastrous results? The first was the final extinction of the Eastern Empire and the capture of Constantinople by Ma- homet II. in 1453, owing to which the Venetians were gradu- ally driven from every foothold in his realm. Secondly, the indignities practised by the Turks on European merchants put an end to Eastern voyages in the Mediterranean. Thirdly, the tyrannical abuse of power exercised by the Emperor Charles V. and his son Philip II., which grew out of their jealousy of the republic, was influential to its injury. Fourth- ly, it suffered by the loss of the Morea, and the islands of Cy- prus and Candia. But that which struck the most fatal blow at the commercial renown of Venice was the discovery of the passage to the Indies by the Cape of Good Hope. To these wounds may be added the injury done to her ports by the gradual increase of the sands of the lagoon; the weakening of her military marine; the progress of French and German civilization; the piratical tendencies of the Barbary States, which sank as Europe rose; and last, but not least, the al- most ceaseless wars of the Turks against Christendom, dur- ing which the Venetians, step by step, lost their privileges, their intercourse with the Levant, and at length nearly all their trade, and quite all their influence. It is not within our plan to enter into a full detail of the Venetian government. Its office of Doge was an elective dignity, in the early days of the republic one of absolute poxver, but in the course of centuries continually restricted, until the incumbent became little more than a state puppet. 1858.] VENICE. 109 The sovereignty was vested in the Grand Council, the legislative power in the Senate, the executive and judicial authority in va- rious bodies of forty officials each, and the police in the Council of Ten. The patricians alone governed in Venice. The re- union of all the nobles formed the Grand Council, and from this body the Doge, the senators, the ministers, the members of the tribunals, the chiefs of police, and the whole personnel of the civil and military administration, were chosen. Almost all the offices were temporary, and a continual rotation made the same men run the entire circle of the government. In order to the better centralization of power, it was decreed that all the patricians should constantly reside in the capitaL The chief historical interest centres in the terrible despot- ism which for so many centuries brooded like an evil and malignant spirit over the lagoon, and which forms one of the most singular problems in modern history. This fearful power was vested in the Council of Ten, established as a vigilance committee, on account of the terror which a formidable con- spiracy had caused in the state at the commencement of the fourteenth century. The Doge and ten other patricians, in- creased at a later period to sixteen, who must have reached at least forty years of age, were clothed with an authority irre- sponsible, without appeal, and illimitable. They had jurisdic- tion over all criminal affairs in which the safety of the state was interested, over all accusations implicating patricians or ecele- siastics, over all crimes committed within the limits of the la- goon, on board of vessels or in gondolas, at maskings or at the theatre; and whatever offences came under their cognizance were punished with the most summary and unrelenting ven- geance. One example will serve for illustration. A young noble of the celebrated Moncenigo family one day in the thea- tre made an assault on another patrician family, wounding one of the Foscarini with a pistol. By instant flight he escaped the fate that awaited him; but no solicitations, even from the in- jured party, could in the least soften the rigor of his sentence. He was condemned to death for contumacy, his whole prop- erty was confiscated, a reward proclaimed for any one who should deliver him up, dead or alive, and at the same time a threat of the galleys to every one who in pursuit of him should VOL. LXXXVI. NO. 178. 10 110 VENICE. [Jan. display the least negligence. All the relations of the condemned, and all subjects of the state, were forbidden to see him, to speak to him, to write to him, to furnish or cause to be furnished to him any assistance, under pain of being stripped of all their property, and of condemnation to the galleys for ten years with their feet in irons, while a fine of two thousand ducats was to be paid by any person who should speak in his favor; and finally, the sentence was solemnly declared irrevocable. When this Council received a denunciation, one of its three Presi- dents deliberated on the charges, weighed the testimony, ar- rested the suspected person, interrogated him, and made him write down his answers. This information obtained, the offi- cial gave account of it to the two other judges, and the three deliberated whether the affair should be brought before the Council of ten. If they decided in the negative, the accused was set free; but in case of an affirmative, the three Presi- dents became his accusers without ceasing to be his judges. rihe prisoner had neither the aid of counsel, nor the consola- tion of seeing his friends; nor was he ever confronted with witnesses; the rank of the culprit availed him nothing, and the judges could cause him to be hanged with a veil over his face, or secretly drowned in the canal, or strangled in prison, according as they deemed it proper to satisfy or stifle the public curiosity. This body of seventeen judges, finding itself too numer- ous to act with all the mystery and promptitude which the exigency of every case demanded, had created from the midst of itself, in the middle of the fifteenth century, a commis- sion more redoubtable; namely, the tribunal of the Inqui- sition of State, known and feared as the Council of Three. The Council of Ten made the choice of these inquisitors, but the choice was a mystery. One knew that this terrible inagistracy existed, without knowing to whom it was confided. One read its sentences, but they were signed only by a secre- tary. One beheld executions; they had been ordered by in- visible justice. One knew himself, in every relation of life, expos~d and subject to secret spies. Amidst the tender ties of friendship, or the blandishments of pleasure, one never for- got that he might in an instant find himself in the presence 1858.] VENICE. 111 of these fearful judges, who never laid aside their character of inquisitors. There were no apparent forms in connection with this dread power, the inquisitors being sub to no rule but that their sentences should be unanimous. For the rest, the place of their sittings, their methods of investigation, their sifting of testimony, their tortures, the mystery or publicity of their sentences, all forms of proceeding, which left no trace behind, were entirely abandoned to the reinless will of the judges. There was no chamber so secret, even in the. inner- most recesses of the palace of the Doge, that it could not be penetrated by the inquisitors at any moment of day or night. There was no society so elevated but that it was beset by spies, and from the lions mouths of bronze at the ducal pal- ace, and at the corners of the streets, which received the de- nunciations of cowardly eaves-droppers, to the homes of the great and the hotels of ambassadors, everywhere were noted down the actions, the words, almost the very thoughts, of the man of rank and the humblest menial. All the functionaries of the state served the triumvirs, not only without repugnance, but with perfect fidelity, and even with fanaticism; and their orders, which were generally obscure billets in a very few words, of which the recipient was not permitted to retain a copy, became laws from which none dared swerve in the least particular. The Piombi, as the little cells beneath the leads of the Doges palace were called, Where burning suns Day after day beat unrelentingly, Turning all things to dnst, aud scorching up The brain, till reason lied, and the wild yell And wilder laugh burst out on every side, Answering each other as in mockery, and the Pozzi, or wells, the damp, cold dungeons built under the canal which washed the palace wall, and into which daylight and warmth never entered, these fearful hiding- places were the silent depositories of the mysterious vengeance of the Inquisition of State. The arrest was arbitrary, the detention undefined, the accusers utterly unknown, the trial a dread ordeal; nay, the very form of discharge from prisov had in it something of ferocious menace. What dost thou 112 VENICE. [Jan. here? Begone! was the curt formula by which the jailor apprised the prisoner of his acquittal, as he swung open his dungeon door. One historical fact illustrates the terrible sway of this tribunal, the fact that it delegated its powers, and by a simple commission invested its agent wherever he might be with absolute authority, absolving him from all re- sponsibility. In this manner the tribunal of state presented itself everywhere in the provinces, as swift, as secret, as re- morseless as in the capital itself. It employed thousands of spies, who infested all public places. There was not a church, nor a home of domestic purity, nor a saloon frequented by the public courtesans, where observers were not placed to render account of everything that passed. These spies were drawn from all ranks and all professions, nobles, citizens, ecelesias- tics, and Jews. No secret divulged was safe for an instant; the wife was a spy upon her husband, the son upon the father. A citizen who fell under suspicion was constantly followed by at least two spies, who were never to lose sight of him. The houses of the ambassadors and those who frequented them were watched with sleepless care. Four spies, person- ally unknown to one another, were maintained in each hotel of a foreign minister. Did an ambassador solicit pardon for a banished Venetian, the grace was usually accorded; but the exile was informed, at the moment of his recall, that he was thenceforth a spy upon his benefactor. If an ambassa- dor wished to hire a mansion, the owner of it was obliged at once to inform the Inquisition of State; and if a patrician occupied a contiguous abode, he was obliged to vacate it in order to divest himself of suspicion, and also that his house might be occupied by spies under the orders of the Council of Three. There are still extant in manuscript some of the records and edicts of the Inquisition of State, which are characterized by frightful naivet~. One of these manuscripts is in Paris, in the Bibliotbique du Roi, where it was examined by Daru, who gives extracts from it. These documents are no forgeries, but may be relied upon as perfectly authentic. Among other reg- ulations, all of the most fearful character, the statutes pre- scribed, that, if a noble revealed to the tribunal any overtures 1858.] VENICE. 113 which had been made to him, he was instructed to feign an interest in the proposals in order to lead on the tempter, who, when he had fairly committed himself, was to be secretly seized and drowned; provided always, said the statute, that he was neither an ambassador himself, nor a secretary of legation, but a person of whom it would be safe to say that he was not remembered. If a criminal of some impor- tance took refuge in the palace of a foreign minister, the stat- ute ordained his assassination in secret by a hired bravo. Did a foreign priest speak of the pretensions of the court of Rome to jurisdiction over the republic, or a workman from the arsenal pass into the service of another government, secret agents in each case were employed to murder the offender. The patrician who suffered himself to utter one s~ Ilable against the state, as cruel or tyrannical, although he might serve it well, was twice reprimanded, and for the third offence drowned as incorrigible. Blind, dumb obedience was exact- ed from every Venetian, in the spirit of that clause in the constitution of the Jesuits, Et sibi quisque persuadeat, quod qui sub obedientia vivunt, se fern ac regi per snperiores suos sinere debent, perinde ac cadavera essent. Instances might be adduced without end; but it1is enough to add, that the vigilance and severity of the tribunal extended to the members of the Council of Ten, to the IDoge, and evento the inquisitors themselves; that it proceeded against culprits of such high condition with the most profound secrecy, and that, in case of condemnation, the favorite mode of death was by poison. With these facts in mind, we scarcely need doubt Bishop Burnets statement, that in Venice there was actually maintained a Poisoner-General, employed by the inquisition to despatch secretly those whose death in public might create disturbance. Can one imagine a more frightfnl state of soci- ety than this, where treachery and death ever lurked in the perfume of the rose and the sparkle of the wine? Such adepts were there in toxicology, that in many cases their art was so exquisite as to defy all vigilance and care, and to baffle even the most subtile chemical tests. Morning, noon, and night the victim breathed a very atmosphere of poisons ; poisons in his bread, in his meat, in his drink; in the luscious 10* 114 VENICE. [Jan. fruits upon his table; in the ring with which his pretended friend might clasp his finger, the least scratch from which infused its deadly venom into his life-blood; in the blade which struck home to his bosom, or the blade which di- vided a morsel at the board; in the sleeping draught quaffed on retiring to a rest which knew no waking; in the very pil- low of fragrant herbs which the hands of supposed affection prepared for the invalid, that he might sleep too well. And it was the custom of Venice, whenever her ambassador to Constantinople set out on his mission, that he should be sup- plied, for bribery and for murder, with a chest of sequins and a casket of poisons. But with all its dread despotism, the government never for- got the amusements of the people. It perfectly understood the genius of the masses, gregarious, petulant, craving excite- ment, and having more regard for pleasure than for conces- sions to their turbulence. Venice was one of the gayest and most splendid cities in the world, a city of mirth and music, of ball, fete, and carnival, and as renowned for its delights of love and masking as for its mystery and crime. It was the most dissolute capital in Europe, and attracted thus, even as Paris does now, in quest of mere pleasure and excitement, a vast throng of rich nobles and fascinating adventurers, moun- tebanks, actors, singers, artists, sculptors, poets, scholars, men of science, as well as of gamblers, assassins, and courtesans. Seven theatres, and all the nameless attractions of a loose metropolis, drew an immense concourse of strangers; and during three or four months of the year Venice was not less remarkable for the character of its population than for its singular situation. Besides the religious ceremonies, of which the return was very frequent, political anniversaries were cele- brated with great pomp, above all others that of the espousal of the Adriatic on Ascension day. Nearly all the periodical f~tes were ennobled by historic triumphs, in which they had their origin. Some bore in their observances reference to local traditions, while others assumed the form of brilliant tournaments in the Place of St. Mark, or of naval combats, in which the Venetian sailors displayed their skill in seaman- ship. In all of these the use of the mask, which seems to 1858.J VENICE. 115 have been habitual in Venice, added to the peculiarity of the scene, while lending infinite license to folly, mystery, love, and crime. By its use, when mingling in public amuse- ments or at the gaming-tables, all appeared to be equal; and at the festivals in the ducal palace even the papal nuncio attended in mask, and looked on at these balls of ceremony while the nobles danced. Abroad, thousands upon thousands of gondolas, all alike of black, funereal aspect, their occupants shrouded from view by sable drapery, glided along the canals without a sound. In the multitude of masks, one could dis- tinguish no person. Society, business, pleasure, all seemed equally mysterious. From feeble efforts for mere self-preservation we have now traced the people of the lagoons, as they gradually extended their dominions and increased their marine, until the sails of their fleets whitened every sea, and from the rude and frozen North, the luxurious East, and the burning sands of Africa, all the productions of the known world were poured into their treasuries in exhaustless profusion. For the frail and un- sightly structures of her early days, the sea-girt city, in the course of centuries, was adorned with countless shrines, pal- aces, theatres, and private dwellings, on which the genius of architecture had bestowed such forms of stately grandeur as graced imperial Rome, such airy carvings and traceries and arabesque fretwork (not to omit the numerous slender and soaring campaniles) as recalled to the mind of the Oriental wanderer the marble courts of Persian seraglios and the mina- rets of Hindostan; while the sight of temple domes, gilded and surmounted by the sacred cross, assured the Western pilgrim of the prevalence of the true faith. To each, to all, unless visited by the dread vengeance of the councils, Venice ever presented a scene of varied delight, and from the Doge upon the gilded Bucentaur to the unlettered sea-boy on the giddy mast, every one looked with rapture upon the pageant, floating apparently on the waters, its towers and arches in the changing hues of sunset invested with celestial radiance, and of such seemingly unreal substance that the gazer almost feared to see them melt from his vision, like the mirage of the desert, or those enchanted cities of the Arabian tales, which were one moment 116 VENICE. [Jan. displayed to the wanderer in sparkling splendor, and the next vanished into air. In architecture, Venice especially gloried, and even now, fallen and decayed as she is, enough remains of her early monuments to attest their pristine magnificence. For models the Venetians could study in Verona and the adjacent cities the edifices of the ancient Romans, and the desires of wealthy patricians were gratified in rearing piles of noble buildings, in emulation of Augustus Caesar, who found Rome of brick and left it of marble. A multitude of beautiful churches bore witness alike to the wealth and the taste of their founders. The ancient palaces of marble, often gilded, and of a style less European than Asiatic, recalled the conquests which the families of their possessors had made of old in the East; while by the side of these monuments of the national renown rose miracles of modern art, many of them the exquisite cre- ations of Palladio. The famous chronicler, Philippe de Co- mines, went as ambassador to Venice in 1495. The contrast of its gay scenes with the rude and gloomy aspect of Paris in his day, struck him with astonishment. He describes it as the most triumphant city he had ever seen, and the grand canal, winding nearly the entire length of the place, as the finest avenue in the world. He dwells with delight on the archi- tecture before him, on those grand fa9ades, not only en- riched by elaborate carvings and stately columns, but many of them glowing with brilliant colors from the slabs of ser- pentine or precious porphyry with which their marble fronts were inlaid. Much of this is changed, has yielded to decay, and perhaps the enthusiastic Frenchman, if now placed in Venice, would scarce recognize the Adriatic queen of the fifteenth century; but still for the pilgrim there is much to charm, much to stir the hearts deep chords, as he floats into this wondrous city, Steering in, And gliding op her streets, as in a dream, So smoothly, silently, by many a dome, ~Iosque-like, and many a stately portico, The statues ranged along an azure sky; By many a pile in more than Eastern pride, Of old the residence of merchant kings; 1858.3 VENICE. 117 The fronts of some, though time has shattered them, Still glowing with the richest hues of art, As though the wealth within them had run oer. In one of these superb abodes there were living, within a few years, two venerable ladies, the last of an illustrious race, the line of Foscari, not only made famous by historic deeds, but ennobled by the poetic genius of Byron. Time had indeed wrought changes in the fortunes of their house, and they, its last representatives, after centuries of pride, power, and wealth, no longer floated on a smiling sea, but were left by the ebbing tide like weeds upon the strand. Without one single friend or relative to aid or counsel them in their distress, theirs was, in truth, a melancholy fate. With- out the troops of retainers, once proud to wear the badge of the Poscari, they could not now afford to pay for the ser- vices of a single menial. As age crept upon them, and their means grew more and more scanty, they had parted sloxvly with picture after picture, valued heirlooms, in order to procure their daily bread, until at length those gorgeous sa- loons, nearly stripped of furniture, gave back dreary echoes to the sound of their trembling footfall. Still more sad than even this was it, that their retirement should be intruded upon by the callous stranger, and that a survey of those lofty halls, adorned with frescos and gilding, those marble corridors and stately staircases, should claim the paltry piece of coin, for charitys sake left in the palm of these daughters of IDoges, who of yore had feasted kings. Could there be a more strik- ing instance of the vanity of human possessions, of the fash- ion of this world that passeth away, or a more significant type of Venice, its magnificence and its fall? We have long lingered in the City of the Sea, beguiled by its fascinating and unique associations; and although we in- tended to speak of many events and characters quite as worthy of commemoration as those already named, much must be left untold, at least for the present. We wished to sketch the figures of some of those famous ambassadors who served the state so well, the keenest observers, the most astute diploma- tists of Europe; and to dwell at greater length on the warriors who, for centuries, sustained the terror of the Venetian arms, 118 VENICE. [Jan. either as Doges, like Carlo Zeno, or soldiers of fortune, such as the great and noble Captain Carmagnuola. We could devote pages solely to the Ottoman conflicts, to the naval battle of Lepanto, the siege of Candia, or to wars of defence like that of Chiozza, and those which grew from the League of Carnbrai. The amours and flight of Bianca Capello, the abdication of Catharine Cornaro, the beautiful queen of Cy- prus, who bestowed her island kingdom upon Venice, the tragic woes of the Foscari, the treason of Marino Faliero, all these fascinate the student. We behold Galileo honora- bly received by the Doge and Senate, explaining to them his experiments with the pendulum. Of Italian poets, two of the greatest are for ever associated with Venice, Petrarch by the litany of St. Marks, and Tasso by the chant of the gondolier. Learned prelates, scholars, and printers like Aldus Manutius, Vindelin of Spires, and Nicholas Janson, rise before us. We still can look upon the glorious paintings of the Venetian school, the works of the Bellinis, Bassatio, Sebastiano del Piombo, whose picture of Lazarus called forth from the tomb, now in the National Gallery of London, was expressly de- signed to compete with the Transfiguration of Raphael; of Giorgione, whose portraits tell of voluptuous Venice in her palmy days; of Tintoretto, and Paul Veronese, and Titian, whose brush fell from his hand only when, at the age of ninety- nine, he was smitten by the plague, leaving unnumbered works to Europe, and, richest of all, those painted for Charles V. and Philip II., now regarded as the choicest art-treasures of Spain. With these we could long hold converse, but our pilgrimage to this ancient city draws to a close, while for the last time we tread the pavement of St. Marks, as scenes of historic triumph and marshalled ranks of illustrious characters throng upon the imagination through the dun perspective aisles of fourteen hundred years. As we stand beneath the portico of the venerable church, and ponder on the past, the Austrian ensign seems to sink into the dust, and from the three great flagstaffs again float the standards of Cyprus, Candia, and the Morca. The bronze horses, burnished anew, shine as they shone in the eyes of the old Venetians on that day when they were first erected here, VENICE. 119 1858.] proud trophies from Byzantium. The enormous square fills with figures, whose very names thrill upon the feelings as when a suddeu burst of martial music sounds. There is blind old Dandolo, conqueror of Constantinople; there by his side, steel-clad Crusaders of the best blood of France; long lines of mighty iDoges, the Priuli, the Contarini, the Morosini, and attendant crowds of noble councillors and astute statesmen, eloquent advocates and famous warriors, victorious over the Pisans and Genoese, the Barbary Moors and the Ottoman Sultans. The place is filled with expectant thousands, watch- ing to see the Emperor Barbarossa prostrate himself at the feet of the Pope. Now again the scene is changed, and a ruagnifi- cent tournament, one only of the marriage revels of Francis Foscari, is witnessed by thirty thousand spectators; and yet once more, Henry III., coming from Poland to mount the throne of France, is welcomed by the Doge and the Senate, drawn up in state in the vast enclosure, which, five hundred and eighty feet long by a width of half its length, has, on this occasion, by the means of an awning stretched from the balustrades of opposite palaces, been metamorphosed into an immense saloon, sparkling with artificial stars, and spread with the richest carpets of the East. Here wander with musing steps Sansovino and Palladio, to revisit their noble architectural creations; here are Tasso and Petrarch, crowned with im- mortal laurels; here Paul Veronese and Tintoretto pause to look upon a sketch which Titian bears. Of innumerable ce- lebrities moving hither and thither, one of a later age has a peculiar fascination, glittering as she did for years in Venice; nor as long as sprightly letters charm shall be forgotten that eccentric but brilliant woman, that petticoat Junius, Lady Mary Wortley Montagu. These are not all. Quite as real are the creatures of the poets fancy. Othello has but just passed by to plead his cause before the potent, grave, and reverend signiors, assembled in council ; yonder mask, in the grave dress of a learned doctor, may be Portia, although Bassanio, standing near, does not penetrate her disguise. Shy- lock has quitted the Rialto in despair, to seek in vain for Jessica, who with an unthrift love did run from Venice As far as Belmont. [Jan. 120 IRELAND, PAST AND PRESENT. The golden Bucentaur is again waiting at the steps of the Piazzetta, that the Doge and the magnificos of his court may embark. But the dreamers reverie is broken; the pageants of the past have vanished; from the distant mainland a war- like din announces the conquering march of Napoleon Bona- parte, and over the watery waste of the Lagoon, impregnable no longer, sounds the doom of Venice in the harsh roll of his battle-drums. Here we bid farewell to the Queen of the Adriatic. Fallen, but majestic still, she yet has, for lovers of her romantic story, an unparalleled fascination, so happily de- scribed by that poet who more than any other, with the exception of Tasso, has entwined his name with the mem- ories of Venice : Perchance even dearer in her day of woe, Than when she was a boast, a marvel, and a show. ART. V. 1. The Census of Ireland for 1851. Parts V. and VI. General Report, and Tables of Deaths. Presented to both Houses of Parliament. Dublin. 1856. 2. History of the Irish Poor-Laws in Connection with the Con- dition of the People. By SIR GEORGE NIcHoLs, K. C. B. London. 1856. 3. The Irish Church. Speech of EDWARD MIALL, EsQ., Member for 1{ochdale, delivered in the House of Commons, May 22, 1856. London: Eflingham Wilson. FOR centuries it has been the habit with writers in the interest of the British government to treat the condition of Ireland as an abstruse problem, regarding the poverty and sufferings of the people as almost impenetrable mysteries. It is otherwise, however, when anything~appears that can be called an improvement. If a cause is assigned for Irish mis- ery, it is sure to be connected in some manner with the people themselves the blame is theirs, and theirs only, if blame there be. Either they have brought their misfortunes on them- selves directly, by their bad conduct, their imprudence, their

[Jan. 120 IRELAND, PAST AND PRESENT. The golden Bucentaur is again waiting at the steps of the Piazzetta, that the Doge and the magnificos of his court may embark. But the dreamers reverie is broken; the pageants of the past have vanished; from the distant mainland a war- like din announces the conquering march of Napoleon Bona- parte, and over the watery waste of the Lagoon, impregnable no longer, sounds the doom of Venice in the harsh roll of his battle-drums. Here we bid farewell to the Queen of the Adriatic. Fallen, but majestic still, she yet has, for lovers of her romantic story, an unparalleled fascination, so happily de- scribed by that poet who more than any other, with the exception of Tasso, has entwined his name with the mem- ories of Venice : Perchance even dearer in her day of woe, Than when she was a boast, a marvel, and a show. ART. V. 1. The Census of Ireland for 1851. Parts V. and VI. General Report, and Tables of Deaths. Presented to both Houses of Parliament. Dublin. 1856. 2. History of the Irish Poor-Laws in Connection with the Con- dition of the People. By SIR GEORGE NIcHoLs, K. C. B. London. 1856. 3. The Irish Church. Speech of EDWARD MIALL, EsQ., Member for 1{ochdale, delivered in the House of Commons, May 22, 1856. London: Eflingham Wilson. FOR centuries it has been the habit with writers in the interest of the British government to treat the condition of Ireland as an abstruse problem, regarding the poverty and sufferings of the people as almost impenetrable mysteries. It is otherwise, however, when anything~appears that can be called an improvement. If a cause is assigned for Irish mis- ery, it is sure to be connected in some manner with the people themselves the blame is theirs, and theirs only, if blame there be. Either they have brought their misfortunes on them- selves directly, by their bad conduct, their imprudence, their 1858.] IRELAND, PAST AND PRESENT. 121 indolence, or all together; otherwise the hand of a mysterious. Providence is to be traced in all that has befallen them. But if there is the slightest amelioration in their condition; if the smallest gleam penetrates the gloom in which they are shrouded; if they cease to suffer, or have an interval of ease; if they are not hungry and naked to-day as they were yester- day, let no one think that the credit is their own. It was, forsooth, the last act of Parliament, the last concession of a wise and paternal government, that brought about the change. If Irishmen attempt to tell their own story, and trace effects to their causes, they do so at their peril. The chances are ten to one that they will be prosecuted for sedition, and fined or imprisoned, or both; or if they escape, perchance, the action of the law, when it is not convenient to have packed juries, it is, perhaps, only to be ruined by different means. It is noto- rious, on the other hand, that the government bribes the Irish press whenever it can. The case of the Dublin World, whose proprietor, Mr. Birch, was salaried by Lord Clarendon, then Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, is still familiar to all. Papers bought up in this manner will of course say whatever is re- quired. They will call black white, or white black, according as they are directed. They will give glowing accounts of the progress made under the excellent administration which furnishes the cash. These accounts are copied by the Times and Globe as the spirit of the Irish press; as conclusive evidence that all the Irish need under British rule is to exert themselves, in order to be as happy and prosperous as their neighbors. If a Frenchman or a German writes a book on Ireland, he is seldom translated; or if he gets a hearing in the English language, his statements are attributed to prejudice, envy, or ignorance, for the simple reason, that, in giving a fair account of what he has seen, he has imputed the blame of it to England; that is, he has told at least a portion of the truth as to the real character of English domination in Ireland. From these facts it will not be difficult to comprehend how it is that the grievances under which the Irish people still labor are so little understood in this country. Our object in the present article is to give our readers as fair an idea as possible of the case as it stands, between Eng- VOL. LXXXVI. NO. 178. . 11 122 IRELAND, PAST AND PRESENT. [Jan. land and Ireland, in the belief that the American people have an interest in the question scarcely second to that which is felt by the English themselves. In undertaking this task, we would gladly draw a veil over the past, partly because it is painful to contemplate the sufferings which the Irish people have endured for nearly five centuries, and partly because we have no wish to revive the memory of the dark catalogue of cruel wrongs which England has inflicted on Ireland. We would gladly confine ourselves to whatever is cheering and hopeful in the present condition of the country; but in speak- ing of improvement it is necessary to give some idea of its elements, and of the extent to \vhich it has been carried; and this cannot be done without reference to the past. In com- paring the present of Ireland with its recent past, the philan- thropist has much reason for gratification; but compared with almost any other people in Christendom, the Irish have still a hard lot; in short, their prosperity and happiness consist in little more than in not being hungry and cold, or in any immediate danger of dying of starvation, as their neighbors and kindred did during the famine by hundreds of thousands. There is no parallel in the annals of oppression for the pe- nal laws of Ireland, so justly described by Burke as a horri- ble and impious system of servitude; and many of these laws had been in operation long before the Reformation, before any such excuse as that~ founded in our own times on religious prejudices could have been adduced. So far back as the time of Henry III., it was made a crime for the Irish to have schools.* The famous statute of Kilkenny was passed in 1361, in the reign of Edward III. In this curious docu- ment it was declared that fostering and intermarriage with the natives should be regarded as high treason, and punished accordingly; and that any person of English descent who should assume an Irish name, speak the Irish language, or adopt the laws, customs, or dress of the natives, should forfeit his lands or be irnprisoned.t Subsequently, in the twenty- eighth year of the reign of Henry VIII., a law was passed restraining the Irish from having themselves shorn or shaven * Thierrys Conquest of England by the Normans, Vol. II. p. 321 et seq. t Goodrichs History of All Nations, Vol. IL p. 954. 1858.] IRELAND, PAST AND PRESENT. 123 above the ears, and from wearing coulins (long locks) on their heads, or hair on their upper lips, and prescribing for them a particular kind of rude dress, so that they should not presume under heavy penalties to dress like the English.* We refer especially to these laws, not that they were by any means the worst or most oppressive of their class, but because they indi- cate the principle on which England has always acted to- wards Ireland, divide et imperci. Nothing provoked the king more than to find that, much as the Anglo-Normans de- spised the Anglo-Saxons at home, they readily intermarried with the Irish, and assimilated themselves with them in every respect, often discarding their own names and adopting Irish names in their stead. His Majesty saw that it was of the first importance for his purposes, not only that no such friend- ly feeling should be cultivated between the English in Ireland and the native Irish, but that both should be made to hate each other as cordially as possible. Since the law prohibiting intermarriage and fostering~ was not sufficient for this, it became necessary to set a mark of degradation on the na- tives; hence the ukase in reference to the beard, hair, and clothing. How well these efforts succeeded in their object, is attested by different historians. After the Reformation it did not require so much effort to keep the indigenous and the English inhabitants of Ireland in mutual enmity. Sectarian animosity now proved a most useful auxiliary to British rule for the hatred of race had already grown too feeble. Hitherto the English inhabitants of Ireland had been taught to hate the natives as an antagonistic, inferior race; now they were taught to hate them as believers in a false creed. The title wild Irish was not sufficiently repulsive, till reinforced by the still more obnoxious stigma attached to the term Pa- pist. This was accordingly adopted; and among the first fruits of the Reformation for Ireland was a new set of penal laws against the Irish Papists. In reference to these laws Secretary Hutchinson wrote, in his Account of Ireland, in 1773 The Papists incur penalties for foreign education, yet are not al * Walkers Historical Memoirs of Irish Bards, p. 134. 124 IRELAND, PAST AND PRESENT. [Jan. lowed education at home; they cannot be physicians, lawyers, soldiers. If they become traders and mechanics, they scarcely enjoy the rights of citizens. If farmers, they shall not improve, being discouraged by short limitation of tenure; and yet there is complaint of the dulness and la- ziness of a people whose spirit is restrained from exertion, and whose industry has no reward to excite it. It was made a capital offence for the Irish to have schools or schoolmasters. If a schoolmaster was convicted of having taught, or attempted to teach, any Irish person, young or old, the punishment for the first offence was transportation; ~ and if he ever returned from penal servitude, and repeated the crime, the penalty was death. Yet the people thus treated were abused for not being intelligent and enlightened. Irish commerce was also placed under severe restrictions. Strafford wrote to his master, Charles I., in July, 1636, as follows: I have discouraged the clothing trade of Ireland, and will discour- age it, in regard it would trench not only on the clothing trade of Eng- land, so as if the Irish should manufacture their own wool, which grows in very great quantities, we (the English) should not only lose the profit we made now by indraping their goods, but his Majesty lose extremely by his customs. And in conclusion it might be feared they might beat us out of the trade itself by underselling us, which they were able to do. However willing Charles I. was to act upon these sugges- tions, he lost his head before he was able to do so. But what he had not been spared to begin was fully accomplished by Charles II. before Ireland had time to recover even partially from the ravages of Cromwells war4 Charles II. procured the passage of three acts against Irish commerce ; one pro- hibiting the exportation of Irish wool to England, another prohibiting the exportation thither of Irish cattle, and the third forbidding all Irish trade with the colonies; and, after having added an act or two of his own, William III., of glo- rious, pious, and immortal memory, had a fleet of war- vessels stationed on the coast of Ireland for the sole purpose * IDe Rebus Hibernicis, Vol. II. pp. 366 371. General Dcsgrigny, who accom- panied Lauzun to Ireland in 1690, wrote to the French Minister of War as fob lows: La politique des Anglois a dtd de tenir ces peuples cy come des esclaves, et si has quil no leur estoit permis dapprendre is lire et is ~crire. t Macaulays History of England, Vol. II. p. 38 et seq. 1858.J IRELAND, PAST AND PRESENT. 125 of seizing as pirates all Irish vessels found attempting to trade with any foreign nation. None have been more earnest in their denunciations of this iniquitous, cruel system than Englishmen. From the time of Spenser and Raleigh to the present, some of Englands greatest intellects have always been ready to plead the cause of Ireland against her oppressors. In short, no injustice has been inflicted upon her without a protest from the other side of the Channel. It has long been the fashion to speak of the so-called Act of Union, which deprived Ireland of her native legislature, as a measure to which the Irish themselves were a consenting party. It can easily be shown, from English testi- mony alone, how little truth there is in this statement. Thus, in 1800, Lord Grey spoke as follows, in the English Parlia- ment, in a debate on the Union Bill If the Parliament of Ireland had been left to itself; unintimidated, untempted, unawed, it would without hesitation have rejected the reso- lutions (Articles of Union). One hundred and twenty out of its three hundred members strenuously opposed this Union, having among them two thirds of the country members, and the representative of Dublin, and of nearly all the places which are to send members to the Imperial Parliament. The majority of one hundred and sixteen were placemen, several of them generals on the staff; without a foot of land in Ireland. All persons holding office under government, if they hesitated to vote with the minister, were instantly dismissed. Even this step was inef- fectual, and other arts were resorted to which I cannot name in this place Twenty-seven of the thirty-two counties of Ireland peti- tioned against the measure. Dublin and almost every other town in Ireland did the same, and despite every effort of government, the num- ber of petitioners against, to that of petitioners in favor, was as seven hundred to one Could a nation in more direct terms express its disapprobation of a political measure, than Ireland has of this Legisla- tive Union? With the exception of Lord Castlereagh, there was not a single man of any eminence who was connected with the Irish Parliament, or had taken any part in Irish politics, that did not oppose the Act of Union to the utmost of his ability. The noble efforts of Orattan and Curran, especially of the former, in defence of the Irish Parliament, are familiar to all 11* 126 IRELAND, PAST AND PRESENT. [Jan. who are acquainted with British literature; and those of Bushe, Saurin, and Plunkett were scarcely less zealous and enero~etic. France, said Lord Plunkett, in all the unrestrained excesses that anarchy and atheism have given birth to, has not committed a more insidious act against her enemy than is now attempted by the professed champion of civilized Europe against Ireland, a friend and ally, even in the hour of her calamity and distress. At a moment when the country is filled with British troops, whilst the Habeas Corpus Act is suspended, while trials by court-martial are carrying on in all parts of the kingdom, while the people are made to believe that they have no right to meet and deliberate, at the moment when we are dis- tracted by internal dissensions, dissensions kept alive as the pretext of our subjugation and the instrument of our future thraldom, such is the time in which the Union is proposed! But all was in vain. It was subsequently admitted by Lord Castlereagh that he had expended a million and a half sterling in bribery, in order to accomplish this job. Not con- tent with betraying his country, and proving at all times its worst enemy, he availed himself of every means at his com- mand to induce others to do the same. And the measure brought about by agencies like these is what has since been so pompously called the Treaty of Union between Great Britain and Ireland! a treaty which we are told is irrevo- cable, one which, like the laws of the Medes and Per- sians, altereth not. Our readers are aware that this miscalled Union still exists, that Ireland has had no legislature of her own since the year 1800. Does it require a Grey, a Grattan, or a Plunkett to prove that this is a just cause of complaint on the part of the Irish people? Does it require any argument to satisfy any intelligent mind that it is injurious to Ireland to depend on the British Parliament for her local laws? If no other injury had been entailed on her by the Union but the encour- agement it has given to absenteeism, would not this be sufficient? Of course ten landlords and moneyed men now go to London to spend their money for one who did so while there was a Parliament in Dublin, not to mention the Irish members of the two Houses. Those who have property, so 1858.J IRELAND, PAST AND PRESENT. 127 far from residing permanently in Ireland, seldom visit it, but leave their tenants to the tender mercies of their agents; whose only care is to collect rents for their employers and make money for themselves. If, to this continual drain on the country by those who are induced to spend its money out of it, the revenue annually paid into the British exchequer is added, a revenue of not less than $36,000,000, the total will give those who think that Ireland has no longer any just cause for complaint some faint idea of the extent of their error, and they will be able to appreciate the bitter truth of Priors remarks in his Inquiry into the Condition of Ire- land, in 1729. We are at no loss to point out the sources of our misfortune ; no country labors under so wasteful a drain of its treasure as Ireland, without the least value returned. There is not in history an instance of any one country paying so large a yearly tribute to another. p. 46. Vie are told that Ireland is represented in the British Par- liament, and can therefore control her own affairs. This is a mockery. How could one hundred and five members, even if united, control anything in a house composed of six hundred and fifty-eight? Still less can they do so when nearly, if not quite, half of them are placemen, men who are ready to support the government in any measure it may propose, no matter how surely it may tend to injure the Irish people pe- cuniarily, or to circumscribe their liberties. Hence it is that on any pretext, hoxvever insignificant, the Habeas Corpus Act may be suspended in Ireland, as it so frequently is. The Union, indeed, cannot be regarded as the worst evil of which the Irish have had reason to complain. But would it not be sufficient by itself to account for the famine, when considered in connection with the impoverished condition of the people resulting from previous penal laws,that condition xvhich forced them to depend on the potato as almost their only food? Whenever the story of Ireland has been truly told, whether in the sixteenth, seventeenth, eighteenth, or nineteenth cen- tury, it is still the same, still one of sorrow and suffering, 128 IRELAND, PAST AND PRESENT. [Jan. always mournful, except, we are glad to add, at the present time. Indeed, so much alike are the accounts given at in- tervals of half a century, by tourists from different nations, English, French, American, German, of the wretched con- dition of the Irish, that one would almost think they had all visited the same scenes of desolation together. And the same gloomy similarity is to be found in descriptions by Irishmen, whether satirists, orators, historians, or poets. However much Swift, Grattan, Bushe, Burke, Goldsmith, and Moore differ in almost everything else, all concur as to Irelands unparalleled wrongs and sorrows. So striking, indeed, is the resemblance between the pictures which they have drawn at different times, that to be familiar with one is almost to know all. Had not Dean Swift been deeply impressed with a sense of the oppression under which the Irish labored in his day, he would not, as he did, have risked his life, as well as his highest worldly prospects, in their defence by his famous Drapiers Letters. A more bitter satire on a government scarcely exists in any language than his Modest Proposal, although some have pretended to take his proposition in re- gard to eating Irish infants in its literal sense, and have accordingly censured him for his brutality, & c. Nor are they the less disposed to do so from the. fact that he qual- ified his Proposal as follows I desire the reader will observe that I calculate my remedy for this one individual kingdom of Ireland; and for no other that ever was, is, or I think ever can be on earth. Swifts Works, Vol. IV. p. 305. In his Short View of the State of Ireland, written in 1727, Swift says: The conveniency of ports and havens which nature hath bestowed so liberally on this kingdom, is of no more use to us than a beautiful prospect to a man shut up in a dungeon Ireland is the only kingdom I ever heard or read of, either in ancient or modern story, which was denied the liberty of exporting their native commodities and manufactures whenever they pleased, except to countries at war with their own prince or state; yet this privilege, by the superiority of mere power, is refused us in the most momentous parts 9f commerce; besides an Act of Navigation to which we never consented, pinned 1858.] IRELAND, PAST AND PRESENT. 129 down upon us, and rigorously executed, and a thousand other unex- ampled circumstances as grievous as they are invidious to mention. Thus we are in the condition of patients who have physic sent them by doctors nt a distance, strangers to their constitution and the nature of their disease; and thus we are forced to pay five hundred per cent to decide our properties; in all which we have likewise the honor to be distinguished from the whole race of mankind No strangers from other countries make this a part of their travels, where they can expect to see nothing but scenes of misery and desolation. If we do flourish, it must be against every law of nature and reason, like the thorn at Glastonbury, which blossoms in the midst of winter. Swifts Works, Vol. X. p. 305 et seq. In a kindred vein of indignant invective is the following passage from Juniuss celebrated Letter to the King: The people of Ireland have been uniformly plundered and op- pressed. In return they give you every day fresh marks of their resentment. They despise the miserable governor you have sent them, because he is the creature of Lord Bute; nor is it from any natural confusion in their ideas that they are so ready to confound the original of a king with the disgraceful representation of him. If we come down to our own times, the picture is essen- tially the same. Political changes there have been, it is true, new acts of Parliament for the benefit (?) of Ireland, new concessions. But when we examine them, we find them hollow; or, if sometimes otherwise, they are either re- pealed, or counteracted by supplementary laws. As for the disabilities under which the Roman Catholics labored until 1829, and which have not been entirely removed to the present day, they did not originate in any real hatred to Romanism, but simply in a desire to keep Protestants and Catholics divided, so that both could be the more easily trampled upon. It would be the height of credulity to think that the same Christian government which avowedly protect- ed,if it did not openly encourage, Braminism and Buddhism, was influenced in its persecution of the Irish Catholics by mere conscientious scruples against Popery. This was placed in a clear light by Lord Byron, in April, 1812, when, in a speech in the House of Lords, on the Catholic Claims, he said: 130 IRELAND, PAST AND PRESENT. [Jan. It is singular, indeed, to observe the difference between our foreign and domestic policy; if Catholic Spain, faithful Portugal, or the no less Catholic and faithful king of the one Sicily (of which, by the by, you have lately deprived him), stand in need of succor, away goes a fleet and an army, an ambassador and a subsidy, sometimes to fight pretty hardly, generally to negotiate very badly, and always to pay very dearly, for our Popish allies. But let four millions of fellow- subjects pray for relief, who fight and pay and lubor in your behalf, they must be treated as aliens, and although their fathers house has many mansions, there is no resting-place for them. Allow me to ask, are you not fighting for the emancipation of Ferdinand the Seventh, who certainly is a fool, and consequently, in all probability, a bigot; and have you more regard for a foreign sovereign than your own fellow- subjects, who are not fools, for they know your interest better than you know your own, who are not bigots, for they return you good for evil, but who are in worse durance than the prison of an usurper, inasmuch as the fetters of the mind are more galling than those of the body?Byrons Works, (New York, 1834,) p. 282. We have not yet reached the famine; still the wail of Irish woe and misery is heard on every side. There is no traveller in the country, except such as have been sent thither by government, for its own purposes, to tell, not what Ireland is, but what it ought to be with all its unsurpassed natural ad- vantages, who does not repeat, with little alteration, the sad tale of his predecessors. Kohl, the distinguished German traveller, who visited Ireland a short time before the late famine, and who devoted much attention to the condition and prospects of the people, relates his experience as follows A French author, Beaumont, who had seen the Irish peasant in his cabin and the North American Indian in his wigwam, has assured us that the savage is better provided for than the poor man in Ireland. Indeed, the question may be raised whether in the whole world a nation is to be found that is subjected to such physical privations as the peas- antry in some parts of Ireland. This fact cannot be placed in too strong a light; for if it can once be shown that the wretchedness of the Irish population is without a parallel example on the globe, surely every friend of humanity will feel himself called on to reflect whether means may not be found for remedying an evil of so astounding a magnitude There are nations of slaves, but they have by long custom been made unconscious of the yoke of slavery. This is not the 1858.] IRELAND, PAST AND PRESENT. 131 case with the Irish, who have a strong feeling of liberty within them, and are fully sensible of the weight of the yoke they have to bear. Wj7lat are the remedies which England has been in the habit of applying to this state of things? Of course there could be no real remedies, as long as the causes which pro- duced it were still in operation. To attempt aught of the kind would be something like putting a hand into ones pocket to rob him of his money, and giving him at the same time advice how to get rich like other people, adding some expressions of pity after the victim was left penniless, or of astonishment that he should be in such needy circumstances in so fertile a country. The policy of sending commissioners, once in three or four years, to examine into the causes of Irish misery, has generally been nothing more honest than this. The commissioners would travel about Ireland in their carriages, make certain formal inquiries, return to London, present a report to their employers, get their pay, and this would gen- erally be the last of their mission. The Devon Commission examined witnesses in all parts of Ireland two years prior to the late famine. The evidence thus collected was published in several large volumes. The Commission fully admitted that the condition of Ireland was wretched to the last degree, and made certain suggestions on the subject of amelioration. But this was all. As for good, it effected none worthy of the name; in the opinion of not a few, it did harm. Yet Ireland had to pay all the expense, as she had to pay the money ex- pended by Lord Gastlereagh, in 1800, in bribing members of Parliament to betray her! The members of the Devon Com- mission had scarcely pocketed their hire, when the people of Ireland began to die of starvation by hundreds. The writer of this paper, having been resident in the country during the whole progress of the famine, can bear testimony, that no lan- guage could describe, much less exaggerate, the heart-rending scenes to be witnessed almost daily throughout the island, in town and country, from the beginning to the end of that melancholy period. It is sickening to think of those scenes even now; and no one that beheld them can ever forget them. Suffice it to say, that at least a million and a half of the people died of hunger and its concomitants, in the years 132 IRELAND, PAST AND PRESENT. [Jan. 1846 1848. The Census Commissioners say in their Report, that, had the population of Ireland increased up to 1851 in the same proportion as that of England and Wales, it would have numbered in that year 9,018,799; whereas the actual population amounted only to 6,552,385, exhibiting a deficit of two millions and a half. Much has been said about the generosity evinced by the British government in its efforts to relieve the starving Irish; but when we come to examine the facts, we readily see with how little reason. We find that America, which was three thousand miles distant from the sufferers, was much more prompt and cordial in affording them relief. In the middle of 1846 the loss sustained by Ireland in the destruction of the potato was estimated at no less a sum than 16,000,000; and to make up for this loss and help to save the people from ex- tinction, the British Parliament was induced, with consider- able difficulty, to give about a million and a half. The loss sustained the next year was three times as great, and the in- crease in the ratio of deaths by starvation was still greater; but the Imperial Parliament thought itself quite liberal when, after much hesitation and discussion, it voted eight millions, little more than the sum wrung from Ireland in one year, in the shape of revenue alone.* The total sum advanced for the purpose of Irish relief during the whole famine, including what was expended for public works, did not exceed, accord- ing to the official reports, which were not likely to omit any * The salary of the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland is 20,000. Until recently the salary of the Chief Secretary for Ireland was 5,000; it is now 3,000. The salary of the Under Secretary is 2,000; that of the Lord Chancellor, 8,000. Thus the Lord Lieutenant of the poorest country in Christendom has four times as large a salary as the President of the United States! Seeing that His Excel- lencys office is a mere sinecure, one would think that he might have dispensed with half the sum during the famine, hut he drew every penny as usual; and we douht whether he contributed as much for the relief of the starving Irish as the Sultan of Turkey, who generously gave $ 5,000 out of his private purse. When Count Lauzun went to Ireland, in 1690, as general of the small French army sent by Louis XIV. to aid James II. against William III., James offered to pay him in French gold the same salary that the Lord Lieutenant had then, 10000 a year, as commander-ia-chief of the Irish army; but he generously refused to fill his coffers with the money extorted from so wretched a people. See Macaulays History of England, Vol. II. p. 156. 1858.] IRELAND, PAST AND PRESENT. 133 important item in the account, 10,700,000, less than two years Irish revenue; and nearly three millions of this have already been repaid. Such was the munificence of the Brit- ish government to Ireland when its assistance was most needed. It was otherwise, indeed, with the British people, as will be seen from the following statement, which we copy from the Census Report, premising that we are sure the United States sent much more money than is here accounted for. When the potato failure of autumn, 1846, became known, the So- ciety of Friends, in London, opened a subscription; and the British Association for the Relief of Extreme Distress in Ireland and the High- lands of Scotland was formed on the 6th of January, 1847. A queens letter was issued with the same object, and the 24th of March was ap- pointed by proclamation for religious observances, in behalf of ourselves and our brethren who, in many parts of the United Kingdom, are suffer- ing extreme famine and sickness. The remotest stations in India, the most recent settlements in Canada, contributed, and 625 was subscribed by British residents in Mexico. The sum collected under the queens letter was 171,533; by the British Association, 263,251. Five sixths of these sums were sent to Ireland, the other one sixth to the Highlands of Scotland. The National Club in London collected 17,930. The General Relief Committee for all Ireland col- lected (in Ireland) upwards of 50,000, independent of 10,000 in cash, and an equal value in food sent them from the sum raised by the queens letter. British North America sent . . . . . . 12,463 United States . . . . . . ~. . . 5,852 British India . . . . . . . . 5.674 Cape of Good Hope . . . . . . . . 2,900 Australia . . . . . . . . . 2,282 Ireland herself (independent of local subscriptions) . . 9,888 The Society of Friends . . . . . . 168,009 of which 108,651 us spent on food, and 5,000 to 10,000 was the value of clothes sent from America and England. The Ladies Relief Association for Ireland raised . 11,465 South America, 772; the Military, 386 . . . 1,158 Scotland, France, Germany, Italy, Belgium, Gibraltar, the Channel, West Indian, and Jonian Islands . . . 2,168 Irish Relief Association, including 17,782 from En~land; 152 from Ireland; France 1,390; Italy 2,708; voL. Lxxxvi. NO. 178. 12 134 IRELAND, PAST AND PRESENT. [Jan. British America 2,821; United States 847; India 5,947; West Indies 1,043; Australia 2,314; and 508 from Military, Pensioners, and Constabulary . 42,000 Census Report, Vol. V. pp. 286 288. The little that Ireland received from the British government arrived tardily, and a large proportion of it went into the pockets of government employ6s. The whole amount, how- ever, which was raised by Parliamentary enactments, and by private subscriptions at home and abroad, as indicated by the above statement, was very considerable; but so universal was the suffering among the humbler classes there being nearly, if not quite, three millions of people in a state of utter desti- tution in July, 1847 that it seemed a mere pittance. The miserable cottiers and day-laborers were the first victims. Private benevolence certainly did its best to save them, that was all they had to depend on for nearly six months; but the benevolent themselves, few of whom had ever been rich, were impoverished in the mean time, so that, before the government relief came, incredible numbers had perished. The small farmers made every possible effort to remain indepen- dent, selling everything that could be sold, even to their very beds and clothes, in order to procure a scanty allowance of food just sufficient to sustain nature for themselves and their families. But these efforts could last but for a time. As for work, there was none to be had; so that when every article for which a loaf of bread could be procured was gone, including the little trinkets which their women had worn in their better days, they had only to sit down and die; for they had already become walking spectres, with their bones protruding through the skin. Often whole families died in this manner; first the parents, who would give the last morsel to their children rather than eat it themselves; then the eldest of the children, who would pursue the same self-deny- ing course toward their younger and hitherto more feeble brothers and sisters. Sometimes father, mother, and children were found dead together in one anothers arms on a little straw, their only bed, with their cabin door closed, and their bodies in different stages of decomposition. Many died in this manner rather than make it known to their neighbors that 1858.] IRELAND, PAST AND PRESENT. 135 they were hungry; others sank on the road-side while on their way to some relief depot to seek a single meal for their chil- dren, or while collecting wild herbs in the fields for the same purpose; and it was no uncommon thing to see the infant child still clinging to the breast of a lifeless mother. But the picture is too painful to dwell upon. In spite of this unheard-of suffering, some still pretend to wonder that the population should have been diminished to the extent of two and a half millions, whereas the real wonder would be if the diminution had not been immense. But no writer in the interest of the British government will tell us that, while the people were thus starving, and running away from their na- tive land, as if from an enemy that gave no quarter, there was abundance of food in the country; plenty of wheat and oats, flour and meal, beef and mutton, the products of its own soil. But these were for the rich, not for the poor, whose sole resource was the potato, which being now blighted, there was nothing left for them but charity or death.* Having thus taken a rapid glance at the past of Ireland, omitting not a few real grievances so as to leave some reason- able space for the consideration of her present, we now pro- ceed to examine the grounds on which it is stated that the country has become prosperous since the famine, and that the people have no longer any just reason to complain. Here also we must necessarily be brief. XXTe may remark, in pass- ing, that none who are familiar with the incontrovertible facts already given will blame the Irish peasantry, those from whom our own Irish immigrant population is chiefly recruited, however great their faults, for being what they are. Ought we not rather to remember the blighting, de- moralizing influences to which they have been subjected on their native soil from time immemorial, such influences to the shame of British civilization be it told as those of hunger and ignorance, the two prime brutalizers of the human race? Could the Irish peasant, in his rags, without any food save the worst, and with little even of that, and without the means of earning it, philosophize like some of our modern * The ships hearing charity to Ireland were sure to he met hy other ships carry- ing away large cargoes of flour and meal. 136 IRELAND, PAST AND PRESENT. [Jan. philanthropists, well might he reply to those who reproach him with laziness and want of resolution, Wait till, like me, your hopes are blighted, till Sorrow and shame are handmaids of your cabin, Famine and poverty your guests at table, Despair your bedfellow, then rise, hot not From sleep, and judge! The Irish workiugman is certainly not lazy, as all who have observed him in his native land will bear willing testi- inony. No other man will work so cheap, or so long, or so hard, rather than be idle, or in order to procure food for his family. To an American it might seem incredible, but it is literally true, that many an Irishman has worked almost the whole year for sixpence a day, living on his own food, his wife or daughter taking to him his frugal repast over a dis- tance of perhaps two or three miles; and eveu this sixpence he would not get in cash, but would only be credited for it in his rent. Right glad he would be, however, to have the priv- ilege of earning it. Before the appointed hour for going to work in the morning, during the long days of summer, he would devote an hour or two to his own little plot of perhaps half an acre of ground; in the evening, on his return, he would work for an hour or two more. Then in the autumn he would cross the Channel to England as a deck passenger, earn what he could there at gathering in the harvest, living on the coarsest food, and generally sleeping in the field, or barn, at night; then hasten home to his expectant wife and chil- dren with whatever little money he was able to save, often not more than a few shillings, to work again as cheerfully as ever for sixpence a day.* * We do not mean, by anything we have said on this subject, to justify the con- duct of which the lower order of the Irish in this country are too frequently guilty, their intemperance, their bloody conflicts with one another, and the too active, over- bearing part, not to call it by a worse name, which they take in our elections. These are grave faults; and it is not at all strange that they excite prejudices against them among those who do not understand their history. Owing to the re- strictions on Irish commerce which rendered wheat, barley, and oats almost drugs in the market, while the heavy English tax on whiskey caused the latter to be very dear, illicit distillation early hecame prevalent; and the illicit article being sold cheap, it is not difficult to understand how easy it was for a people so sociable as the Irish, and always smarting under wrongs, to become addicted to its use. The 1858.] IRELAND, PAST AND PRESENT. 137 But this was before the famine. Now, the ease is altered. The laborers daily wages now are three or four times as large as formerly. But why? Because competition in the labor market is not one fourth as great as before the famine; in other words, because three fourths of the laborers died of hun- ger, or left the country to seek a home elsewhere. Yet the increase of wages is one of the principal facts now adduced as proof that Ireland is prosperous at last! 4ccording to this principle, would it not have been a good and righteous pro- ceeding to have brought out all the artillery in the kingdom in the early part of 1846, before the famine commenced, and to have mowed down about a million and a half of the peo- ple with grape-shot, causing as many more to seek safety in flight? ~We are told that, if there is a decrease in the Irish population, there is an increase in Irish cattle, sheep, and other live stock; as if the sheep and cows of a nation, and not the well-being and well-doing of its people, constituted its wealth. This theory is not new, however, with the British government in its treatment of Ireland. It is as old as the time of Swift, who more than a century ago wrote as follows cause of the faction fights on our railroads is to be traced to the efforts of the Brit- ish government to keep different portions of the people divided against each other. Hence the signification of Fardowners and Corkonians. It is the hatred thus caused that Moore so feelingly regrets in one of his Irish melodies, that on the Battle of the Boyne. Alas for her who sits and mourns, Een now, beside that river! Unwearied still the Fiend returns, And stored is still his quiver. When will this end, ye Powers of Good ~ She weeping asks for ever; But only hears, from out that flood, The Demon answer, Never! Nor is it more difficult to find at least extenuating circumstances for their vio- lent and often lawless conduct at our elections. In the first place, it is a novelty to them to have the privilege of voting. When they have it, they think they ought to exercise it to the fullest extent, as if to make amends for the disabilities under which they had labored at home. Our demagogues avail themselves of these weaknesses for their own purposes, and do their best to perpetuate them. Add to this the fact that our Irish immigrant population belong in general to that class of their countrymen who had not the means of obtaining even the rudiments of edu- cation, and it will be admitted that, upon the whole, the poor Irish are no worse than almost any other people would have been under similar influences. 12 * 138 IRELAND, PAST AND PRESENT. [Jan. The good of it is [having a profusion of sheep and cattle], that the more sheep we have, the fewer human creatures are left to wear the wool or eat the flesh. Ajax was mad when he mistook a flock of sheep for his enemies; but we shall never be sober until we have the same way of thinking. Swifts Works, Vol. X. p. 320. Much stress is laid by government commissioners on the diminished number of small farms, and the corresponding in- crease of large grazing farms. The meaning of this is, that the poor cottiers have been put out of the way by oppression and famine, to make room for those who will raise cattle for the English market, and may at the same time add to their own importance without the fear of being annoyed by the dispossessed occupants. It is, however, but the old way of doing justice to Ireland, the same heartless policy so do- quently denounced by Goldsmith. Yet count our gains. This wealth is but a name That leaves our useful products still the same. Not so Ihe loss. The man of wealth and pride Takes up a space that many poor supplied; Space for his lake, his parks extended bounds, Space for his horses, equipage, and hounds; While, scourged by famine from the smiling land, The mournful peasant leads his humble band; And while he sinks, without one arm to save, The country blooms a garden and a grave. This is, doubtless, the sort of improvement to which the Census Commissioners allude, when, in closing their volumi- iious Report, they use the following language In conclusion, we feel it will be gratifying to your Excellency to find that, although the population has been diminished in so remarkable ~x manner by famine, disease, and emigration, and has been since de- creasing, the results of the Irish census are on the whole sATIsFAO- rouv. (!) In recapitulating, in another part of their Report, the numer- ous causes which combined to produce the excellent results that are now rendering Ireland so happy, the same gentlemen inform her Majesty and her Parliament that no doubt the diminution of the people had also its effect! There is no man in Ireland who has exerted himself more for the last quarter 1858.] IRELAND, PAST AND PRESENT. 189 of a century, in and out of Parliament, as the champion of tenant right, and as the friend of the people generally, than Mr. Sharman Crawford; and it may be added, that there are few, if any, who understand the interests of Ireland so well. his views on this new source of Irish prosperity may be learned by an extract which we subjoin from a let- ter of his, published in the Dublin Freemans Journal, Octo- ber 15, 1856, in reply to the statements of the Census Com- missioners But I can never feel assured of national improvement till I see it accompanied with some evidence of revival of Irelands exhausted population In place of this, I fear the exterminating and con- solidating system is largely operating. It is the fashionable doctrine to call this improvement; but the extermination of human beings, and the substitution of brute animals for the human race, on the soil of Ire- land, is not an improvement grateful to my mind I confess I have an apprehension of the undue extension of the grazing system, which in Ireland can only coexist with a reduced or exterminated popu- lation, thus impairing the national resources for every purpose which requires the application of human power. We might fill whole pages with the opinions of English- men to the same effect; but the fact is self-evident, and one which it requires little skill in political economy to understand perfectly. Real good has been done to Ireland, however, since the famine; and far from ignoring this, or refusing to give credit where credit is due, we are glad to place the fact in bold relief. The good we refer to is not a result of the Irish Poor Laws, the distorted History of which forms a portion of the text of our article, and of which we shall presently have a word to say, but of what is called the Irish Encumbered Estates Act. The main object of this measure was to enable landlords to dispose of their mortgaged estates, without hav- ing recourse to the tardy, expensive, and vexatious process of the Court of Chancery; and to enable creditors to recover what was due to them, or as much of it as possible, without incurring the enormous charges without which there was no hope under the old system. The estates of large numbers of extensive proprietors used to remain mortgaged, often from generation to generation, doing comparatively little good 140 IRELAND, PAST AND PRESENT. [Jan. either to debtor or to creditor. Of course such a state of things entailed much injury on the people generally; combining pow- erfully, as it did, with the other various evils against which the country had to contend, to retard improvement, to cause in- dustry to languish, and to bring about a general bankruptcy. The Encumbered Estates Act, by instituting a new court in Dublin called the Court of Claims, which has the power of selling the encumbered property promptly to the highest bid- ders, with little expense to the proprietors or mortgagees, has afforded an easy and excellent remedy for at least one evil which had long been felt in Ireland. From the statistics of the new court recently published, we learn that from the 25th of October, 1849, to the 25th of May, 1857, 4,109 petitions for the sale, partition, and exchange of laud had been presented to the commissioners. Of these, 1,195 originated with the embarrassed owners, and 2,914 with the creditors. On the whole, 3,197 orders for sale were given, and the property was promptly sold in 11,123 lots to 7,216 purchasers, of whom 6,902 were Irish, the remainder English, Scotch, and foreign- ers. The estates already sold have brought 20,194,201, of which amount, immense when we consider the poverty of the country, 18,000,000 has been distributed to the parties in- terested. Even from this brief summary of the results, so far as yet known, of the operation of the Encumbered Estates Act, it is evident that it has proved a benefit to the country. But will its beneficial influence be permanent? or is it suffi- cient to render the country prosperous under its present cir- cumstances? With whatever hesitation and doubt the former question may be answered, our reply to the latter is a decided negative. The act is good enough in itself; but there are too many bad acts, and too many deep-rooted evils, to counteract its effects. It does not prevent Ireland from being drawn after the chariot-wheels of England as usual; it does not exempt the people from having to pay out of their poverty an enormous sum annually into the British treasury, for which they receive nothing in return; it does not relieve them from the incubus of a State Church, which all the world condemns as a cruel imposition ; in a word, it does not in any way interfere with the so-called Treaty of 1858.J IRELAND, PAST AND PRESENT. 141 Union, which leaves Ireland at the mercy of the English Parliament. But the remedial measures which England regards as casting all others in the shade, scarcely excepting the En- cumbered Estates Act, are the Irish Poor Laws. These laws were to put an end, at once and for ever, to death by starva- tion in Ireland, and to produce various other excellent results too numerous to mention. But what are the facts? As a portion of the answer to this question, we quote an extract from the general remarks of the Census Commissioners in their Report, with reference to the main causes of the diminu- tion of the population In the Irish returns made in 1841, only 117 deaths were registered from starvation for the ten years prior to that period; but from thence, according to the registration made in 1851, deaths from this cause began notably to increase,from 187 in 1842, to 316 in 1845. After that period deaths attributed to starvation increased rapidly, so as to amount to 2,041 for the year 1846; in 1847 they reached ~he great height of 6,058, and in the following years, 1848 and 1849, taken together, they amounted to 9,395. In 1850 there were even more than in 1846; and during the first quarter of, 1851 as many as 652 deaths attributed to starvation were recorded. The total deaths returned to us under the head of starvation amounted to 21,770, the sexes being in the propor- tion of 706 females to 100 males. The Census of Ireland for 1851, General Report, Part VI. In order to understand this, it is only necessary to bear in mind, that 1842 was the first year of the operation of the Poor Laws in Ireland. Thus it is admitted, that for the ten years preceding the introduction of the Poor Laws (1842) the total number of deaths from starvation was only one hundred and seventeen, less than twelve a year on an average; but during the first year of the operation of those laws one hundred and eighty-seven died of starvation; and from thence, to use the Commissioners own words, deaths from this cause began notably to increase. What a melancholy commentary on the sort of benefits rendered to Ireland by the sister kingdom! And no one, surely, will accuse the Commissioners of having represented the case as worse than it was. The Poor Laws, indeed, involve a large ex 142 IRELAND, PAST AND PRESENT. [Jan. penditure.* But it is the expenditure of Irish money, money raised by heavy taxes on the people. Before the in- troduction of the Poor Laws, mendicancy had to depend on voluntary alms, and the amount annually contributed in this manner was estimated at from 700,000 to 800,000. This was given cheerfully, and there was no expense in- curred in its distribution. But the building of workhouses alone, under the government system, cost 1,420,780. rllhese houses are to be seen now iu all parts of the country; and they are much more like fortresses or prisons, than asylums for the relief of the destitute. Those who have seen these gloomy piles, with their numerous cells and small, grated windows, their strong iron gates, their rules and regulations, which may not inaptly be called a penal code, and the miserable ra- tions doled out to their inmates, cau hardly be surprised that nothing short of absolute hunger itself will induce the poor to enter them. Hence it is that the beggars have been as nu- merous as ever since they were built. The people give alms as before; their burden in this way has been lightened but little if any; and they have to pay the Poor Law tax beside. The truth is, in brief that a very large proportion, if not the greater part, of the money thus levied, goes into the pockets of the well-paid officials of government, from the wealthy Poor Law Commissioners downward. Thus, prior to 1842, the beggars alone had to be sustained; now, a whole army of commissioners, superintendents, guardians, clerks, and func- tionaries of every name, are to be sustained with them, a circumstance which, in our mind, sufficiently explains why it is that deaths from starvation, far from diminishing, notably increased, after the Poor Laws came into operation. Such are the remedial measures upon which, according to the organs of the British government, Ireland is to flourish in future, in spite of all the heavy burdens she has to bear. True, they have cost England nothing. If she advanced money for building the workhouses, she was to be repaid with interest. The measures by which she would lose, which would lessen her revenue, or make the landlords disaffected, Even in 1851, three years after the famine, the amount was 1,166,954, nearly $ 6,000,000. Britisli Almanac, 1854. 18~8.] IRELAND, PAST AND PRESENT. 143 she takes good care not to grant. For a whole century the Irish people have been petitioning, almost incessantly, for tenant right, that is, the simple and natural right on the part of the tenant to some compensation from his landlord, on the expiration of his lease, for improvements made on his farm, in case of his ejectment, his voluntary removal, or an increase of rent on account of these very improvements. What injustice can be greater, than to charge a tenant for improvements which he has made himself, or what can discourage a tenant more? There can be no alternative opinion as to this. Even the government commissioners themselves have recognized the evil, and have recommended the granting of tenant right. In the Report of the Devon Commission, published in 1847, the subject is referred to as follows The importance and absolute necessity of securing to the occupier some distinct mode of remuneration is obvious The master evil, poverty, proceeds from the fact of occupiers withholding the in- vestment of capital and labor from the ample and profitable field for it that lies within their reach, this withholding being attributable to a reasonable disinclination to invest labor or capital on the property of others, without security for remuneration for the investment. p. 15~i et seq. It is now ten years since this recommendation xvas made to the British government by its own commissioners. In the mean time the subject has occupied the attention of all friends of Ireland in the British Islands; large meetings have been held at short intervals in all parts of the country; and hun- dreds of petitions have been presented to the Imperial Parlia- ment earnestly praying for the required remedy. But all in vain. It might be dangerous to the loyalty of the Irish land- lords to prevent them from oppressing their tenantry, from robbing them of the fruits of their labor. Yet if the landlord were compelled by law to allow his tenant a fair remunera- tion for all improvements made on his farm, or precluded from ejecting him from his holding when a higher rent than he paid was offered for it, at the expiration of the lease, a prime source of distrust on oue side, and jealousy, if not hatred, on the other, between the upper and lower classes, would be removed. 144 IRELAND, PAST AND PRESENT. [Jan. There are still greater objections to any effectual legislation against absenteeism. In the first place, if landlords were induced to remain at home to encourage their tenants, there would, as in the case just mentioned, be danger that the two classes would grow too familiar, in fact, become attached to each other; and then, too, the large amount of Irish money no~v spent in England by absentee landlords would be spent in Ireland, a result which those who have the power wuuld much rather obstruct than further, however strong their pro- testations to the contrary. But the grossest injustice of all is the State Church. Some excuse may be found on the part of England for every other grievance under which Ireland labors at the present; but for this there is none. The best and most conscientious friends of religion throughout Christendom are well known to be opposed to any connection between the State and the Church under any circumstances, convinced that the latter should be independent of the former, and left to the voluntary support of the people, as in the United States. There is some reason, however, in endowing a Church which is that of the majority of the people, as in England and Scotland. But in Ireland the case is the reverse of this. Here five sixths of the people are Catholics, while the Episcopal Protestants form but a mere fraction, scarcely numbering 600,000. This small mi- nority possess the chief wealth of the country; while the poverty of the large majority is proverbial. Yet the latter have to maintan the Church of the former in splendor, and to support their own at the same time. If the State Church were at all likely to convert the Catholics to Ptotestantism, those who enforce its support might pretend that the end justifies the means. But there is not the least hope of any such result. This is universally acknowledged. Nay, it is well knoN -n th6 t its effect has always been the reverse; that its tendency has ever been, not only to excite the prejudices of the people agc inst the Church itself, but also against all who belong to it. Nor is this strange; for in the minds of the people it is associated only with tithes, tithe-proctors, sheriffs, bailiffs, military, police, riot, and bloodshed. This seems strong language to apply to the influence of a Christian 1858.] IRELAND, PAST AND PRESENT. 145 Church; but it is far too feeble to give any adequate idea of the reality. True, it does not now cause so much bloodshed as formerly. The well-paid rector does not now seize upon the poor mans pot, or upon the widows bed, for his tithes. He has not to call on the military to enforce his dues at the bayonets point. The scenes thus caused were a scandal to the civilized world; so that a change was imperatively needed in order to approximate, if only in appearance, to the spirit of the age. The change consisted in enabling the land- lord to add the tithes, or tithe-rent charge, to his own rent; thus causing the odions tax to be paid to him, instead of pay- ing it in the first instance to the rector, or his proctor, as formerly. For the sake of public decency, it was well to make this arrangement; but now, as before, the poor have to pay for the religious instruction of the rich; or rather, they have to maintain what is little better than an immense bribery-fund, to enable the British government to reward its supporters with rich sinecures. In order to satisfy our readers that our remarks, harsh as they seem, do no injustice to the Established Church in Ireland, we now proceed to adduce authorities to sustain them, and in doing so we shall confine ourselves exclusively to the testimony of Protestants, gen- erally members of the same Church, English and Scotch as \~Tell as Irish. The late Mr. Hume described the Establishment, in one of his Parliamentary speeches in favor of its abolition, as the blood-besmeared Church of Ratheormack; Mr. Roebuck characterized it in the same place as the gre~itest ecclesias- tical enormity in Europe; and Mr. (now Baron) Macaulay, as the most utterly absurd and indefensible of all the institu- tions now existing in the civilized world. From a work re- cently published in England, called The Black Book, on the English aristocratic system, a work quoted by Goodrich in his History of all Nations, we subjoin one or two extracts on the same subject. From another Parliamentary return, it is proved, as stated in the House of Commons by Captain Osborne, that eleven Irish state bishops left behind them amassed wealth to the amount of nine million three hundred and seventy-five thousand dollars, accumulated within a period voL. Lxxxvi. NO. 178. 13 146 IRELAND, PAST AND PRESENT. [Jan. of from forty to fifty years! The following is the list extracted from the Parliamentary return Probates of TVills of Irish Bishops. Stopford, Bishop of Cork . Percy, Bishop of Dromore . Cleaver, Bishop of Ferns . Bernard, Bishop of Limerick . Knox, Bishop of Killaloe . Fowler, Bishop of Dublin Beresford, Bishop of Tuam Hawkins, Bishop of Raphoe Stuart, Bishop of Armagh Porter, Bishop of Clogher . Agar, Bishop of Cashel . Making a total of . $ 125,000 200,000 250,000 300,000 500,000 750,000 1,250,000 1,250,000 1,500,000 1,250,000 2,000,000 $ 9,375,000 How great, indeed, must have been the privations of the Apostolic Bishop of Cashel, through which he could have saved two million dol- lars, in a single life, from the tribute levied on the poorest, worst fed, and worst clad of all the nations on the face of the earth! How much charity and Christian virtue must the prelates of Dublin, Tuam, Ar- magh, and Clogher have exercised, to enable them to hoard up fortunes of from $700,000 to $ 1,500,000 apiece! And these are the bishops of the Church of Ireland for which we are now keeping up an army in that country of thirty-four thousand soldiers, besides an army of police to mount guard over its safety It will be observed, that the amount of hard cash divided by the Irish bishops amounts to $755,638 annually; but this represents only a small portion of their actual gains! For there must also be added the rents and profits from six hundred and seventy thousand acres of land And next, as to the work done by the parsons. Of the 2,384 par- ishes, 155 have no church, and not a single Protestant inhabitant; and 895 parishes have under fifty Protestant Episcopalians inhabiting them, including men, women, and children. They are not on that account, however, relieved from their payments to the Church, which are still compulsorily enacted. Of 1,385 benifices, there are 233 with under fifty Protestants ia each. Of the 300 dignities and prebends, seventy- five have no duties whatever to perform; and eighty-six others are mere sinecures. The Dean of Raphoe receives $7,455, the Precentor of Lismore $ 2,240, the Archdeacon of Meath $3,655, without any du 1858.] IRELAND, PAST AND PRESENT. 147 , ,, ties whatever to perform, there being no Protestant souls to cure. Vol. II. pp. 996, 997. Such is a portion of the picture drawn in 1843, three years before the famine, by an Englishman and a Protestant, of the State Church in Ireland, a picture the dark and repulsive features of which are not in the least exaggerated. Passing over a period of twelve years, we now come to see what were the opinions entertained regarding the same Church one year ago; and which, with too much reason, are entertained at the present day. On the 27th of May, 1856, Mr. Edward Miall, the rep- resentative of Rochdale, England, delivered a speech in the House of Commons in favor of the impartial disendowment of all sects in Ireland. From this speech we make a brief extract. After some preliminary remarks in reference to the pretended contentment and prosperity of the Irish, Mr. Miall says: Why, sir, the man who walks among explosive materials with a naked candle in his hand, has as good a right to reckon on complete security, as we have to calculate upon permanent tranquillity in Ireland under our present ecclesiastical policy. It is true that, of late, unusual care on the part of the executive, whether Whig or Conservative, coupled with an unprecedented combination of peculiar circumstances affecting the social condition of Ireland, has produced an unwonted calm. But it would be but poor statesmanship to mistake a temporary lull of agitation for settled popular contentment The problem which your policy attempted to solve was, how to transfer from Roman Catholic to Protestant hands the ownership of the soil in Ireland, together with all political influence, all social distinc- tions, all the ordinary powers of achieving gain, all the potentialities of civilization, comfort, and affluence. The agencies chiefly relied upon in solving this problem were arbitrary laws, wholesale confiscation, cold steel, and gunpowder. And what are the staple materials which make up the history of that period? Robbery by the civil power, and retali- ation by the outraged people, tyranny without limit,followed by insur- rections without pity, desperate sieges and hideous massacres, a country laid waste, a population alternating between the extremes of rage and terror, a priesthood hunted up like noxious vermin, a whole race crushed beneath a heavier doom than slavery. Sir, seldom indeed has a bloodier drama been acted upon Gods earth. You 148 IRELAND, PAST AND PRESENT. [Jan. cannot read it even at this time without feeling your blood curdle in your veins Let us see what were the tender mercies of that policy to Catholics. They may be read in the Irish statute-book from 1690 to 1790. Well, look first at the disadvantageous position in which Irish Roman Catho- lics were placed by law as respects the offices and ministration of their own Church. Their higher ecelesiastics were sentenced to perpetual exile, and large rewards offered for their discovery within the king- dom. Their parochial priests were compelled to register themselves as a kind of ticket-of-leave functionaries, to give heavy bail that they would not go beyond the limits of their respective counties, and to engage that they would never exercise their functions out of their own parishes. They were forbidden to assume any ecclesiastical title, and to wear any professional dress, to erect any steeple, to toll any bell, or officiate in any graveyard How were the Roman Catholics treated in regard to education? Every Catholic school was closed, every Catholic schoolmaster subject to transportation ftr life, with the penalty of death in case of his return iNo child of Catholic parents could be sent abroad for education without a special license; and lest the act should be evaded, any magistrate might, at any mo- ment, demand that the child should be produced State necessity may be pleaded in excuse of the original perpetration of this political crime (the Irish Law Church), but it cannot be accepted as a justifica- tion of it. Nor can it be said, as it may of some crimes, that time has transmuted its results into a blessing. The original vice remains. The great bulk of the people of Ireland, the peasantry, the poor, for whom, if for any, a Church Establishment should be maintained, are not even, after the lapse of three centuries, benefited by the spiritual teaching and offices of your Establishment. It is still maintained for the Saxon rather than the Cdt, for the gentry rather than the humbler classes, for the well-to-do minority rather than the helpless majority. Such a system as this is at once the offspring of tyranny and the badge of conquest. Nothing on earth can justify it. We may dis- guise it as we will, but in the eyes of man and of Cod it is not the less a crime. This gives a fair idea of the Irish Established Church as it is at the present day. Yet we are gravely told, that the Irish have no longer any reason to complain. But we have still a word to say, parenthetically, in reference to the manner in which the revenues of this pampered Establishment are ex- pended. The work done by the clergy is but little, consider- 1857.] IRELAND, PAST AND PRESENT. 149 ing the number that are supposed to do it; but it is a heavy burden on the few who really do it, not on those who enjoy the fat benefices, but on their miserable curates. While the rector, who has two, three, or four parishes, is squandering his money in England, or on the Continent, attending levees at Dublin Castle when he happens to be in Ireland, or dining and carousing with the military officers of the nearest garrison, his curate is obliged to preach every Sunday in perhaps two parishes; at least once a month to visit his Protestant parish- ioners, who, though few, are generally far asunder; some- times to visit Roman Catholics with the view of converting them; to keep a horse, and a servant to attend him; to sup- port, it may be, a large family, and dress like a gentleman, all for seventy-five pounds a year. We know how incredible this may well seem; but it is too true. Is it any wonder, then, that the curates of the Establishment are proverbially poor, often in a state bordering on destitution? And if they happen to be ill, they have, out of their wretched pittance, to pay for a substitute. The London Times of September 8, 1856, contained a leading article in reference to this state of things, from which we quote a brief extract, in order to convince our readers that we do not at all exaggerate the privations under which the curates labor, or the heartless cruelty of those who receive the profits of their labors. That such a position, and a bearing in harmony wit/i it, are only too general, there is abundant evidence. We have lately an instance in the demeanor of an English incumbent in Ireland to his unfortunate curate, doing the duty of a large parish for 80 a year and a few sur- plice-fees. No sooner was the unfortunate gentleman laid up with an illness arising from the insalubrity of his parish, than he received a virtual dismissal. The cost for supplying the poor mans place was, of course, to be deducted from his pittance, and would inevitably soon eat it up. The generosity of the public has interposed between this curate and his employer, but the pecuniary figures of the case, the certain con- sequences of illness, and the summary nature of the ejectment, are common to thousands of cases. Such are the scanty pittance, the pre- carious tenure, the impending calamities, and the social position of several thousand men, who are humorously told to bask in the splendors of a wealthy Establishment, and to rejoice in the light of golden canons and episcopal millionnaires. 13 ~ 150 IRELAND, PAST AND PRESENT. [Jan. The truth is, that the great majority of those who pocket the revenues of the Irish Church are clergymen only in name. They are generally the younger sons of the nobility, for whom ordination is obtained to qualify them for rich sinecures. Sometimes the nobility have the benefices in their own hands, own them as they own any other sort of property; so that, if they have not younger sons who need them, they sell them to the highest bidder, like any other commodity of commerce. As for the bishops, they do little more than write their pastoral letters, (or get some curate to write them, which is frequently the case,) and sign receipts for their enormous salaries. Let us see, in passing, what these salaries are. The net revenues of the two archbishops and ten bishops, as given in a return presented to the House of Lords, in 1854, which is quoted in the Encyclop~dia Britannica, article Ireland, are as follows Archbishop of Armagh, 14,664 9s. 2d.; Archbishop of Dub- lin, 7,636 18s. 3d.; Bishop of Meath, 3,764 is. 1~d.; Bishop of Perry, 8,061 3s. 8~d.; Bishop of Down, 3,658 17s. SAd.; Bishop of Kilmore, 6,607 12s. 3d.; Bishop of Tuam, 3,898 7s. 7~d.; Bishop of Ossory, 3,874 16s. 1~d.; Bishopof Cashel, 4,691 us. 6~d.; Bishop of Cork, 2,310 us. 7~d.; Bishop of Killaloc, 3,310 iSs. 6~d.; Bishop of Limerick, 3,987 17s. 1~d.; making a total for the archbishops and bishops alone, for one year, of 66,437 is. 6~d., nearly one third of a million of dollars. Is it strange that the apostolic men who are the recipients of these princely annuities should, when so disposed, hoard up millions for their posterity? But \xThat might seem strange is, that they do not evince the least inclination to forward the interests of the unfortunate people who have to pay this money; but that, on the contrary, they are found, almost invariably, arrayed, both in and out of Parliament, against every liberal measure designed to benefit Ireland. As members of the House of Lords, spiritual peers, the Irish, on whose poverty they prey like vultures, find them their most uncompromising enemies. They oppose even the trifling grants made in recent years for the education of the masses, desiring to have all under their own control, their pretext for this being that the non-sectarian schools are ex 1858.] IPJThAND, PAST AND PKESENT. 151 posed to Popish influences; and, as a matter of course, they are supported in their opposition by the great majority of the rich clergy. There is, however, no great difficulty in under- standing all this. In the first place, they are anxious to dis- play their grateful loyalty to the government that placed them in such lucrative positions. And then, again, it is their interest to proselytize as much as possible. Not that they care much whether their proselytes are genuine or spurious, as long as they have names of converts to figure in the Par- liamentary returns, and show what progress the Establish- ment is making. The curates, who, in general, would serve the people, be- cause they live among them and know their virtues as well as their failings, have not the power to do so. They are, in fact, oppressed themselves. Let their talents and piety be what they may, let their zeal as ministers of the Gospel be ever so great, let them exert themselves in the cause of religion, no matter to what extent, curates they will live and die, except they happen to have powerful friends, that is, professional politicians who support the government of the day, to procure them livings, or except they can raise the hard cash to purchase them. But poor as the curates are, there are no small number of them who share their little with the desti- tute. We have known a curate, who had a wife and five children to support on 75 a year, to tear the carpet off his floor, as well as to take the food from his scantily supplied table, for the relief of the cold and hungry; and this we men- tion only as an illustrative instance, one out of many sim- ilar cases. But this is the one redeeming feature, if such it may be called, of which the Jrish Established Church can boast. It is proper, at all events, for religions sake, to draw the distinction between the poor, pious curate, and the pam- pered, exacting pluralist; for it is a distinction between the minister of the Gospel, properly so called, and the heartless Churchman, who is the servant of Mammon rather than of God; and it shows that there is still a village preacher of whom it can be said, But in his duty prompt at every call, He watched and wept, he prayed and felt for all. 52 IRELAND, PAST AND PRESENT. [Jan. Thus we have not found it necessary to have recourse either to Romish or Presbyterian testimony to show that the Irish Church is the Caspar Hauser of institutions, nothing better than a huge bribing machine, a monster which the people are compelled to support in splendor out of their pov- erty, at an expense of five millions of dollars, for their own enslavement. In this rapid glance at the present condition of Ireland, while glad to recognize all the good that has been done by the British government for the country since the famine, we have had to pass over several real grievances under which the people continue to labor; but have we not at the same time adduced sufficient evidence to show what a hideous mockery it is to pretend that the Irish are, or can be, either prosperous or happy, while they have to bear so many cruel burdens for the sole benefit of England, while they have to submit to what- ever laws, no matter how unequal and oppressive, the British Parliament, for its own purposes, chooses to make for them, and to taxation without representation? Much stress is laid on the fact that the Irish are not dis- posed to insurrection; but can this be strange, in view of the constant efforts which are made to keep them divided against one another? How can a poor, disorganized people, without munitions of war, or money, be expected to rebel, successfully, against an ever-vigilant power like England, a nation so vastly stronger, numerically and otherwise, than themselves, even though all should act together? If they sometimes make the attempt, however, notwithstanding the overwhelm- ing odds against them, it only shows that they have been goaded on to reckless despair, knowing well, as they do, the horrible butcheries, and the nameless cruelties of all kinds, of which they, and their wives and daughters, are sure to be the victims if they fail. As for such effort at insurrection as has been made since the famine, it is no criterion by which to judge of the national will on the subject. A people almost exhausted by famine, whose spirit hunger and misery had deadened within them, cannot be supposed to have had much appetency for the horrors of war. On the contrary, they shrink from them; for they had sunk into a state of apathy from 1858.] ANATOMICAL ARCHITECTURE. 153 which they have not yet wholly recovered. But England ought to take warning, even from that feeble, irresolute, not to say ludicrous attempt, especially now, since she has re- ceived such a terrible lesson from India, rather than turn it into ridicule, or exult so triumphantly in its failure. She ought to bear in mind now, if never before, that the tem- pest threatens before it breaks, that houses creak before they fall, Tempestas minatur antequam, Crepant a~dificia antequam corruant. ART. VI. Principes d Ost6~ologie Gompar~e, ou~ Recherches sur lArchetype et les Homologies do~ Squelette Vert~br~. Par RICHARD OWEN. Paris. 1856. 8vo. pp. 440. FROM the night of early history there have come down in single words visions of wonderful greatness, the fragments seemiugly of another world, mysteriously vast, and after all little else to us than mere words without definite ideas. Of their true history, of their epoch, or of their locality, we know nothing sure, and at times their very existence as former real- ities has been doubted. Among such words are Babel, Nm- eveh, and Troy; but a few years ago wholly unknown, yet a part of all our history, and associated with scenes of violence, might, and glory, magnificent as the clouds of heaven, and like them obscuring all that lies beyond. If these faint glimpses of the past may raise such deep interest, we can appreciate the excitement of Eastern discovery, where the ex- plorer even hopes to find the spell by which to raise from the dust around him the ghosts of those older than Samuel, and to bid them speak. But as it is with the traveller, when after long search the ancient city itself stands before him, alone amid the sand-hills, and perfect in its record of former life and greatness, so is it with the student of the human body when contemplating for the first time the vast edifice of compara- tive anatomy. The fragments and half-inscriptions of special dissection have, with all their addition to our real knowledge,

1858.] ANATOMICAL ARCHITECTURE. 153 which they have not yet wholly recovered. But England ought to take warning, even from that feeble, irresolute, not to say ludicrous attempt, especially now, since she has re- ceived such a terrible lesson from India, rather than turn it into ridicule, or exult so triumphantly in its failure. She ought to bear in mind now, if never before, that the tem- pest threatens before it breaks, that houses creak before they fall, Tempestas minatur antequam, Crepant a~dificia antequam corruant. ART. VI. Principes d Ost6~ologie Gompar~e, ou~ Recherches sur lArchetype et les Homologies do~ Squelette Vert~br~. Par RICHARD OWEN. Paris. 1856. 8vo. pp. 440. FROM the night of early history there have come down in single words visions of wonderful greatness, the fragments seemiugly of another world, mysteriously vast, and after all little else to us than mere words without definite ideas. Of their true history, of their epoch, or of their locality, we know nothing sure, and at times their very existence as former real- ities has been doubted. Among such words are Babel, Nm- eveh, and Troy; but a few years ago wholly unknown, yet a part of all our history, and associated with scenes of violence, might, and glory, magnificent as the clouds of heaven, and like them obscuring all that lies beyond. If these faint glimpses of the past may raise such deep interest, we can appreciate the excitement of Eastern discovery, where the ex- plorer even hopes to find the spell by which to raise from the dust around him the ghosts of those older than Samuel, and to bid them speak. But as it is with the traveller, when after long search the ancient city itself stands before him, alone amid the sand-hills, and perfect in its record of former life and greatness, so is it with the student of the human body when contemplating for the first time the vast edifice of compara- tive anatomy. The fragments and half-inscriptions of special dissection have, with all their addition to our real knowledge, 154 [Jan. ANATOMICAL ARCHITECTURE. but stimulated the search for the temple of which they are mere blocks. As architecture expresses ideas of a nobler sort than the mere power shown in its massiveness, so the highest thoughts in anatomy arise from the consideration of intellect expressed in its forms and in the principles of their being. These deeper meanings constitute what we may call the poetry of anatomy. It may be difficult, and perhaps is impossible, to make these principles of anatomy stand clearly by them- selves in the mind of the popular reader, in their full propor- tions of strength and beauty, and divested of their common associations; but it is not here that we apprehend the great- est difficulty. The language of architecture is so far com- mon, that when the vast blocks of stone are measured, and the pillars d~scribed, we all form to ourselves some idea of Palace bright, Bastioned with pyramids of glowing gold, And touched with shade of bronz~d obelisk, Arches and domes, and fiery galleries. But the anatomist knows as yet no common language, and any degree of explanation seems to the general reader the material of dry, and perchance disgusting study. And as in the one case the description, however vivid, raises in the reader but a faint and limited emotion, compared with that the trav- eller experiences when looking up from his watch-fire to the stars whose light has fallen in those empty streets since man and beast were there thousands of years ago; such, and even greater, is the difference between the emotions with which the philosophical anatomist and the general scholar view that foundation of form, the skeleton. To carry out our illustration, let us consider, in these foun- dation-stones of being, their material, and the conditions under which they must be put together. Man builds of wood, clay, brick, or stone, as he would have less or greater firmness and permanence of structure; but the body is built of one mate- rial, which, like the genii of Eastern fable, takes upon itself each nature in succession. The hard, white bone was once soft tissue, that could in many a freakish knot have twined~; and the Nature that so tenderly placed these ozier wands 1858.J ANATOMICAL ARCHITECTURE. 156 Framed a spell when the work was done, And changed the willow wreaths to stone. But more than this, if we could look within the growing body, we should see that, while the cartilaginous pillars and domes of life are hardening here and there under that magic spell, they are also rapidly developing in size, and thus lifting the edifice into grander and more perfect proportions, as though man should cut in miniature what should thence expand into an ever greater magnitude for finish and adornment. It is the triumph of the painters eye and skill, that, working on a large surface, he can so far carry the whole design in his mind as to complete each individual part in entire symmetry. But Na- ture draws the beautiful outline on a small scale, and then, while it grows, from moment to moment reconstructs the d~- tails in harmony and with microscopic nicety. In her won- derful art, too, she often seems to court difficulty by making the first outlines wholly different from the finished piece, and to stretch the canvas where human painters would erase and begin anew. As man, so Nature has built for land, for sea, and for the air; and though of this one material, bone, with a far more certain tenure. Think of a hnman being drifting away in a storm, his frail seat hung by a few threads to the silk globe above him, suddenly finding himself, as the clouds clear away, far over the ocean, and the valve-string by the swelling of the globe swung out beyond his reach. Imagine the awe with which, as he attempts to climb round the network, he sees that his struggles are pushing the globe slowly out of those threads. Then turn to some mountain-top, where, as you cling to the cliff and look down on lakes as little flecks of silver light, and forests with their mighty roar as an ocean stranded below, a shadow flits over you, and a mighty rush of the air that makes your heart beat quick, and the eagle you had seen an hour ago sailing above passes downward, is lost in the distance, and then comes slowly back with his prey to his eyrie. Thus for air, no less than on sea and land, Nature has been the safest architect. It has been said that a geological map of any country will at once indicate the style of architecture which must prevail 156 ANATOMICAL ARCHITECTURE. [Jan. there, and that the climate will indicate each detail of mould- ing and decoration. Nor is this wholly absurd; for it simply means that man builds in harmony with the nature of things around him, at least so long as he builds from necessity alone. Thus it is plain that a country abounding in coarse rock will encourage a very different style from that which furnishes fine and easily cut stones; for in the one case, fragments of un- manageable forms would necessitate a rustic rudeness, while in the other large shafts and blocks would rise in polished symmetry. Thus, again, a humid climate introduces the con- cave moulding, or dripstone; while clear and brilliant skies bring out the convex style for color and show. Equally does Nature reverence her own laws of mechanics and physics, when she constructs living houses. Man builds the ship, for passing through a dense fluid, of the shape that will the most easily divide it and throw it back; while on land, in the rail- car, he disregards the resistance of the lighter atmosphere; but in all this he was preceded by the hand which formed the darting fish and the broad-chested horse. If then there is this harmony, a perfect apprehension of the laws that govern forms would enable us to assert the condi- tions of any previously unknown figure. Thus, it is easy to see that the wide rampart is meant to resist outward pressure, whether it be that of a beating sea or of the iron hail~~ and a slight inspection will show for which of these purposes it is designed. And so anatomists find that the habits of an animal are indicated in its structure, exactly in proportion to their comprehension of that structure, and of the great laws of Nature to which it is subject. Yet so varied and natural are these adaptions, that they were hardly noticed till comparison in the hands of Cuvier brought out distinctly the variations of a type under different conditions, and thus laid a sure basis for the science of paleontology. What is it that moves the animal? Every one who has looked through a microscope at a little stagnant water will remember seeing single cells that floated about apparently at will, now contracting, now lengthening, or perhaps suddenly shrinking away from the approach of other atoms. And he may remember the surprise with which he heard that those 1858.1 ANATOMICAL ARCHITECTURE. 157 cells were plants. But if he continues his examination, he will gradually see that some show more choice and free-will than others, and these he finally sets down as animals governed each by its own little spirit of instinct or reason. Now when he comes to inspect the muscle that moves the body, he finds it made up of thousands of these little cells joined end to end, and harnessed in traces composed of thin membranous tubes, millions of which are put together to serve the tyrant man. But how does man govern these pigmy trains? From the head thin white reins pass down to each of them, and as they work iu the dark caverns of the body, lengthening and contracting in the glossy tubes through which they can dimly see their fellow-gnomes rushing to and fro, they are thus held in the leash of obedience, at least for a time; though when we die, they are free in grand carnival till they starve, and sometimes they break out in open rebellion against their liv- ing lord. But since each cell can contract very little of itself, the longer their train, the greater is the amount of their mo- tion; and the larger their mass, the more powerful their force. Thus if each cell could contract the thousandth part of an inch, it would take a thousand in line to move the end one inch. Yet their mass is not altogether as a body of men pulling, for careful examination has shown that they can be tired, and as one row drops oil another begins to work; thus in a steady pull alternating through the whole set. In pro- portion to their thickness they must have breadth of stand- ing-room, and thus from their mark on the bone we can judge of their power, and from the length of the bone of their veloci- ty.. And as a slight motion at the hinge of a door will give great speed beyond, so the muscles are crowded nearer the j~ints in the antelope than in the camel, and in the hinder legs of the horse than in those of the ox. Thus, again, we see that the several members agree in their structure with the whole, and also that all these peculiarities of fabric are mere harmonies with the plainest mechanical laws, yet so hidden beneath their simplicity that only the tokens of variation from one condition to another have given us some few of their chords. But beyond this, as physical and chemical laws are now as VOL. LXXXVI. NO. 178. 14 158 ANATOMICAL ARCHITECTURE. [Jan. they were ever, from the marvel it has become the truism of science, that the anatomist is able in the light of such princi- ples as he can evolve from present beings to build again from one single fragment the forms that lived ages ago. Thus, for example, let us consider the last or nail-bearing bone of the middle finger. We can judge at once whether it was part of a fin, a wing, or a hand. Supposing we find it neither fin nor wing, we can then carry the determination further, and from the mark left by the nail ascertain whether it was part of a true hand, or of the scratching palm of the dog or bear, or of the tearing and springing paw of the lion or tiger, or of the long and hoofed foot of the horse or deer. A similar ex- amination soon ascertains its nature in every other particular. Again, when we see the broad tail of the fish placed verti- cally, and that of the whale horizontally, we know that, as it s the chief instrument of progression in both, and exerts its power from side to side of its plane, therefore the first can have but comparatively slender capacity of diving, and is lim- ited to a narroxv range of ascent and descent; while the latter has this capacity in excess. Hence it follows that, as in the rediscovered city, the vases, mirrors, paintings, and all the nameless appliances of civilized life, show by their perfection and evident use the customs of a forgotten nation, so may the shapes and apparent fitnesses of the bones indicate the habits of the former life that clothed them, and even the physical condition of the world in which they had their sphere of activity. What an immense volume is thus opened to the imagination, those only can tell who have travelled over con- tinents to unfold but a few leaves of geology in history, each with its million-voiced story of life. Says one who visited the excavations of Mr. Layard at Nineveh, after describing his journey over the plains at sun- set, when the sky was glowing pure and cloudless with the last light of day, while the dark shadow of the great mound lay on the plain, and from the evening mist rose faintly the bleating of sheep and lowing of cattle as they returned from pasture: It was of course with no little excitement that I suddenly found myself in the magnificent abode of the old Assyrian kings, where it 1858.] ANATOMICAL ARCHITECTURE. 159 needed not the slightest effort of imagination to conjure up visions of their long-departed power and greatness. The walls themselves were crowded with phantoms of the past, unfolding in vivid representation deeds of peace and war, of personal history and national welfare. My mind was overpowered by the contemplation of so many strange ob- jects; and some of them, the portly forms of kings and viziers, were so lifelike, and carved in such flue relieg that they might almost be imagined to be stepping from the walls to question the rash intruder on their privacy. Then mingled with them were other monstrous shapes, the colossal forms of winged lions, and bulls with gigantic human faces; and all these figures, the idols of a religion long since dead and buried like themselves, seemed actually in the twilight to be raising their desecrated heads from the sleep of centuries. It is thus that three thousand years lie buried a few feet below the soil. Yet after all, Nature alone is ancient, and man is but a modern invention. Let us now visit a buried city of another kind. As the traveller passes over the open, monotonous prairie, where in the distance the dark range of the Black Hills barely edges the horizon, he suddenly comes to the brink of a valley that looks as if it had sunk away from the world about him, leaving over it thousands of lofty colum- nar masses. Says one: As it appeared in the distance, never before did I see anything that so resembled a large city; and so complete was this deception, that I could point out the public buildings by their domes and large roofs, and with them were rows of palaces great in proportions and number. Indeed, the thought frequently occurred to me as we rode along, that we were approaching a city of palaces, with everything upon the grandest scale, and fitted for giants who might have ruled the huge ani- mals whose remains are there still, rather than the pygmies that now inhabit the earth. Again and again, as from different positions this re- gion was visible, thoughts of an immense city would arise in my mind, and I could almost fancy that its din and bustle were occasionally borne upon the wind to my ear. But on descending into the valley, and threading its vast labyrinth, the castellated forms vanish, and on every side appears bleak and barren desolation. Yet not wholly so. As we view the sides of one of those fancied walls, layers of pink and white clay are seen, and here and there a bone protrudes, telling of life as once there, a life that needs long and careful study to show what its 160 ANATOMICAL ARCHITEOTUR~. [Jan. world was. The little examination that has as yet been made tells, however, a marvellous story. The animals that seem to have been most numerous were enormous swine, not unlike our present tapirs, that swain and fed in a peat- marsh; and with them were immense turtles, some of which, as they now stand in their mail, like the Skeleton in Armor, are supposed to weigh a ton. What great, ungainly forms their contemporaries were, we can perhaps imagine when we find the row of teeth along one jaw five feet in length, and remember that there must have been a correspondingly long and heavy body to balance this determination to the head. Here again, as in viewing ancient temples, if we knew how long it took to lay one stone upon another, we might form some idea of the time the whole was in building, so we might study to the same purpose these strata of clay. When we think of the slow filling up of our ponds, of adding layer on layer till three hundred feet are thus built up, and remem- ber that this great mass of more than ninety miles in length and thirty in breadth, like the Pyramids of Egypt, is one vast sepulchre of a race now wholly dead, we shall appreciate in some measure the true history of life. And yet this is but one very modern edifice, reared on the ruins of older and vaster buildings, which were themselves preceded by many a greater temple and longer reign. As the reader inspired by the Muse of History can picture to himself the deeds and scenes of the past, so also does the anatomist conjure up the aspects of other days, when viewing these monuments of life. The animals of the present time, with their land and forest homes, wax dim, as in the magic lantern; but, before quite vanishing, they come back again in gigantic and grotesque shapes. Thus, the elephant re- appears in the mastodon; the elk, in that gigantic fossil whose horns measure twenty feet; the sloth, of less than human size, in the megatherion, whose mere width exceeds mans stature. These again vanish, and are succeeded by forms more strange, till, as in a nightmare, aifrighted fancy weaves a cloud-veil for those vanished ages, and would fain believe the then world, as too terrible for view, wrapped in perpetual 1868.] ANATOMICAL ARCHITECTURE. 161 night. And when with this change of animal life the changes of vegetable growth are associated, and the two bound to- gether by the vast movements of the Earths crust, which, rising and falling like some living breast, thus nourishes her children, then the scientific dreamer brings before him grand- eur which imagination cannot transcend. We have now seen the bones in columns, walls, and roofs, rising like enchantment from the ground, while the muscles, verifying the myth of Briarens, reach out their hundred arms from windows and doors to give the edifice motion. And so far we have traced harmonies which man can not only appre- ciate, but use as the key to greater mysteries; for when with this key we wander amid the shadows of the temple of Na- ture, we come upon a figure, meaning something, no doubt, as all figures do, yet which seems to bear the inscription of Isis: No one shall lift my veil. Anatomists find that wher- ever bone has been used, there the body is built about a cen- tral pillar of blocks, called Vertebrre; that is, if we find a frag- ment of bone, however small, from the simple fact that it is bone, we can conclude one important point of its structure, namely, that it was no part of an animal like the lobster, crab, beetle, or worm, the cuttle-fish, snail, or oyster, the star- fish or sea-urchin. Bone, in fact, forms the support of the body only in that great natural group called Vertebrates. Now, why is this? The worm and the snake seem much alike; the fish lives in the same element with the sea-nettle, and the fly and the bird might seem as one, if their desti- nation alone planned their forms. And yet snake, fish, and bird are of one structure, while worm and fly are of another. Again, among these bone-animals we find two great groups, equally arbitrary and incomprehensible in their division, the viviparous and the oviparous. In the former, we find on the shoulder-blade a high ridge called the spine, and in the neck we find seven of the vertebra~. And this last is the more re- markable, when we consider that mans neck of only six inches in length, the giraffes of as many feet, the rats, the elephants, and the whales, all maintain this identity. What mean these facts, apparently transcending adaptation to fol- low an idea? 14 162 ANATOMICAL ARCHITECTURE. [Jan. In the case we have already referred to, the position of the tail in aquatic animals, we find another illustration of the fact that the groups of vertebrates are distinguished by characteristicst which are not merely mechanical adaptations. The tail seems in the first group, or the Mammalia, whenever they are fitted to move in the water, to be flattened out hori- zontally; but in the egg-born group, to be always placed verti- cally. Now, we have already shown that the former structure is well fitted to the habits of the whale, which passes through so great variations of depth; and it might seem as if the fol- lowing such an idea in the formation of an animal would de- termine that only the Mammalia could occupy great ranges of aquatic depth. But we find in a fossil reptile a powerful tail placed as the egg-born should have it, and yet a power of div- ing secured by a full development of broad paddles in the hind and fore legs. And thus it is ever with Nature, that her seeming limitation only shows the infinity of her resources. Any one who has ever looked at the skeletons in an anatom- ical museum, or even at the vertebra~ of a fish, a bird, and a sheep or ox, will remember that they seem to be alike only in that they are made of bone, and of separate pieces. What a confusion lies here! The little hourglass-like blocks of a cod- fish, curiously and ,beautifully carved, with the deep hollows on each end where the sands of life seem to have run; the rough lumps from the neck of a hen, with their spines and ridges; the cubes of the sheep, with a few broad blades on each side, what can be more dissimilar? Does it not seem as though they who built these forms, wise though they were, took each his own type, one a Gothic pillar, another a Gre- cian, to form the centres of their separate works. But be that as it may, they all agree in having a head at the end of the spinal column, much like the capitals of our human archi- tects. And though these seem to coincide no more in bone than in stone, yet we can find some groups that are evidently by the same designer. Since the bones were once cartilage, we might expect to find in the young skull before it is ossified the outlines of the bones that are to be. But when we examine, we see only a dome of cartilage, with here and there a little white 1858.] ANATOMICAL ARChITECTURE. 163 spot of bone-crystal; and as we gaze upon the blank un- formed chaos, we feel much as the child would when looking first into the dome of night, where the numberless stars only amaze and perplex him. Yet as we watch again and again in that night of anatomy, we find these stars of bone shoot- ing out little filaments like freezing water, till, covering the whole, they emerge to light as individual bones. Thus, as the child by long observation of the stars traces a system in the movements of apparent confusion, so do we come to an order amid this labyrinth. And as the savage who has learned the stars plunges boldly into unknown forests, and pursues their guidance over mountains, so does the anato- mist, following the stars of growth, find his way amid the mystery of creation, where he seems almost to Touch Gods right hand in that darkness. How much this observed development has done to clear up anatomical difficulties may easily be seen, when we know that in the fully formed skull we find in some cases one bone where in others we find two, and this not only in unlike ani- mals, but in those of the same group. And when the sepa- rate stars of ossification have been mapped out and compared, and we find two uniting to form one bone in one skull, and re- maining distinct as two bones in another, we see then the unity that grows up into variety, just as we find the stars for ever the same by night, while the light of evening and morning blends them together, leaving but here and there one distinct orb. And as with the capital, so with the pillar, both Grecian and Gothic are at bottom the same. How different then the view of the skeleton to the common mind and to the philosopher! To the one death grins foully in the rattling bones, while to the other thoughts of sublime mystery haunt the ruins. Who can tell why bone should be restricted to one peculiar pattern, or a particular number and form to any single group? Man may apprehend the symbols and ideas of dead nations, since the human mind originated them; but it must be a mind akin to that of the Creator that can determine point for point why this creation is as it is. And here, if sublimity lies in the region of the visible and yet 164 TILE FINANCIAL CRISIS. [Jan. immeasurable, there surely is sublimity when, in tracing these hieroglyphs of His inscription, we come suddenly upon a thought readable, but too deep for comprehension, yet which we may hope to reach in other realms of being, since we are made in the image of His own immortality. ART. VII. Currency or Money; its Nature and Uses, and the Effects of the Circulation of Bank-Notes for Currency. By a Merchant of Boston. Boston: Little, Brown, & Co. 185g. 8vo. pp. 112. Tins pamphlet, anonymous on its title-page, bears affixed to its Preface the initials S. H., which, it is well known, designate Samuel Hooper, whose experience as a merchant, financier, and legislator might give weight to his opinions, were they not sustained by reasonings in themselves satisfac- tory. Had the work fallen into our hands when it first ap- peared, we should have promptly noticed it. We did not know of its existence till the forecast shadow, which it an- nounced as already lowering over the seeming prosperity of our mercantile estate, had become apparent and portentous to every eye. It is a searching analysis of the basis of our currency, the elements of its value, the causes of its fluctu- ation, and the effects of that fluctuation on the course of trade, the profits of capital, and the wages of industry. It announces, indeed, only such truths as have become axioms in political economy among its French expositors; but it has been our unenviable distinction on this side of the Atlantic, that our legislators, bankers, and merchants have demeaned themselves as if the science of finance were still wholly em- pirical, and they the pioneers in its test-experiments. Our last number appearbd during the most disastrous paroxysm of alarm and distress that has as yet marked the monetary history of our nation. The panic has now sub- sided, leaving us in an entirely altered condition, with crip- pled industry, diminished prices, and a contracted currency.

164 TILE FINANCIAL CRISIS. [Jan. immeasurable, there surely is sublimity when, in tracing these hieroglyphs of His inscription, we come suddenly upon a thought readable, but too deep for comprehension, yet which we may hope to reach in other realms of being, since we are made in the image of His own immortality. ART. VII. Currency or Money; its Nature and Uses, and the Effects of the Circulation of Bank-Notes for Currency. By a Merchant of Boston. Boston: Little, Brown, & Co. 185g. 8vo. pp. 112. Tins pamphlet, anonymous on its title-page, bears affixed to its Preface the initials S. H., which, it is well known, designate Samuel Hooper, whose experience as a merchant, financier, and legislator might give weight to his opinions, were they not sustained by reasonings in themselves satisfac- tory. Had the work fallen into our hands when it first ap- peared, we should have promptly noticed it. We did not know of its existence till the forecast shadow, which it an- nounced as already lowering over the seeming prosperity of our mercantile estate, had become apparent and portentous to every eye. It is a searching analysis of the basis of our currency, the elements of its value, the causes of its fluctu- ation, and the effects of that fluctuation on the course of trade, the profits of capital, and the wages of industry. It announces, indeed, only such truths as have become axioms in political economy among its French expositors; but it has been our unenviable distinction on this side of the Atlantic, that our legislators, bankers, and merchants have demeaned themselves as if the science of finance were still wholly em- pirical, and they the pioneers in its test-experiments. Our last number appearbd during the most disastrous paroxysm of alarm and distress that has as yet marked the monetary history of our nation. The panic has now sub- sided, leaving us in an entirely altered condition, with crip- pled industry, diminished prices, and a contracted currency. 1858.] THE FINANCIAL CRISIS. 165 The storm struck us with topsails and studding-sails spread fearlessly to the wind; the ship, thrown on her beam-ends, has righted with the loss of all her top-hamper, and now what canvas remains is close reefed, and she feels her cautious way with lead and line. Before the damage is repaired, and the weather-beaten craft takes the open sea again, it may be well to inquire into the causes, proximate and remote, of our late calamitous experience, and to gather from the past ad- monitions that may be serviceable in the future. Credit, as its name imports, is an intellectual creation. It is belief attended by corresponding action; and as with re- gard to everything else, so as to monetary affairs, belief may be well founded, inadequately founded, or baseless. If well founded, it can suffer no shock; if otherwise, its permanence depends on the creditors ignorance or heedlessness. Property is the sole basis of credit; and the indebtedness which an individual may safely incur is measured by the convertible value of his property. In certain conditions of the public mind, one may exceed this measure, and may obtain credit on an inflated estimate of his property, or on the anticipated profits of his business. When money is abundant, and the average rate of profits high, the lenders credit or belief read- ily attaches itself to imaginary values or to gains yet to accrue, and a man may, even for a series of years, owe much more than he owns, without having his solvency called in question. But when money becomes scarce, its owner, being then able to choose among borrowers, scrufinizes the con- dition of his debtors, and easily takes alarm, if there be one whose present means are insufficient to meet his obligations. And, in like manner, when business is paralyzed, or its profits impaired, creditors who have depended in part on those profits for their reimbursement, regard their debts as insecure, and urge ~m settlement at the earliest moment. A single con spicu- ous failure has a similar effect upon the whole class of credit- ors, and may thus be the proximate cause of a series of sus- pensions and failures extending through a whole country, and continuing till it has involved all whose indebtedness exceeds the convertible value of their property. Within the last few years there has been in our country a 166 TIlE FINANCIAL CRISIS. [Jan. combination of causes tending to expand the credit of indi- viduals and corporations beyond its actual basis. In part the influx of gold from California, and in part the inordinate issue of a paper currency, by diminishing the value of money, have caused the rapid expansion of estimated values for almost every description of property, and thus have made the anticipation of still larger values a ground of credit. With brief intervals of depression, the average rate of freights has been high, and the mere carrying trade has in some instances been sufficiently lucrative nearly to reimburse the cost of a ship by the profits of a single year. Most departments of commerce have yielded a large percentage of revenue. The seeming, though in almost every instance unreal, prosperity of our older railways, has given a stimulus to enterprise in the construction of new routes of travel; and railway corpora- tions have been enabled, by the prestige of dividends that were never earned, to obtain loans to an incredible amount, and often on an incredibly slender basis of actual property and potential income. Meanwhile the large returns accruing from almost every species of investment have tempted mer- chants and business men to become borrowers on a larger scale than was needed for their several departments of busi- ness. The man who has been possessed of a sufficient work- ing capital has been tempted to invest it in stocks, and to rely on loans or long credits for the means of conducting his own operations. The importer has speculated in Western city lots, and discounted the notes of the jobbers to meet his obligations in the foreign market. The jobber has bought railroad bonds under par with his funds in hand, and, as his notes came to maturity, has paid them with the paper of his customers. And the retail dealer, buying on eight months credit, and thus realizing the proceeds of his sales before they became due, has gone with them into the stock market, and resorted to loans when his notes reached maturity. Thus the summer of 18~7 found the whole mercantile com- munity, though apparently prosperous, with an amount of indebtedness, mutual, to banks and to capitalists, exceeding to a degree before unprecedented the aggregate convertible value of the property in hand. Much of this property, too, had 1858.] TIlE FINANCIAL CRISIS. 167 begun to decline in its reputed value. Real estate in the new cities of the West had fallen in the market. Almost every description of railroad property had become depreciated; in numerous instances, the original stock of railways had grown worthless; third and second mortgages could hardly have been exchanged for an equivalent amount of blank paper; and even first mortgages were below par. Manufactured goods had been produced and imported to such an extent as to exceed the highest possible demand of the season, and thus to threaten a general reduction of prices. There were thus accumulated all the materials for a universal panic. At this juncture occurred the failure of the Ohio Life and Trust Company, an institution which had stood high in the public confidence, and had extensive connections in all our great cities. Its suspension at any other period might have affected only those who held its obligations, or were interested in it as depositors or stockholders. But the credits of the country xvere an inverted pyramid, and needed but a touch for them to topple and fall. Creditors became alarmed, and saw ample reason for alarm. Loans were called in on maturity; exten- sions and new loans were refused. Prices still falling, and threatening still further decline, the assets of the indebted class were dwindling in the prospect, and could no longer sustain credit. The reduction of the amount of credits be- came therefore inevitable; and the measure of that reduction was the difference between the expanded and reputed values of property, with its anticipated profits, in a season of general confidence, and the convertible values of that same property on a reduced scale and with no anticipation of profit. To this latter standard, or near it, we may trust that the disasters of the last five months have reduced the mutual indebtedness of our business community; and if so, we may anticipate the speedy revival of commercial and manufacturing enter- prise, on a safer basis, with more prudent counsels, and with a more healthful activity. We have thus given, in the simplest form, what seems to us the genesis and theory of the recent convulsion in our mercantile world. But behind this expansion of credit, which could not but be followed by a ruinous contraction, there lies [Jan. 168 THE FINANCIAL CRISIS. a cause which, unless removed, must produce in our future, at no distant intervals, vicissitudes similar in kind, but of severity enhanced by the increased extent and complexity of our business relations. We are accustomed to call ours a rich nation. We are rich, as regards the annual products of our industry and our ability to command the comforts and elegances of life; but we are poor as to the movable and convertible capital which alone can preserve the business of a country from disastrous fluctuations. In what we term prosperous times, our people collectively are transacting a business beyond all due proportion to their capital. We are emulating the gigantic and world-wide enterprises of England, with but a mere pittance of that accumulated wealth of cen- turies which constitutes her safety-fund and movement-fund. Among the indications of our lack of capital is the high rate of interest, ranging by law from six to ten per cent in the different States of our Union, seldom falling below the lowest of these rates, except on loans to the national, state, or iity governments for a long term of years, and often rising far above the highest for well-secured business notes that have but a short time to run. Add to this the fact, that but six of our States are free from debt, while the aggregate debt of the States, larger than at any previous period, falls but little short of two hundred and fifty millions, a very great portion of it incurred in the aid of enterprises undertaken by private corporations, which had neither the funds nor the credit to complete them. The amount of county, city, and town debts can hardly be less than the aggregate indebtedness of the States; and where these have not been incurred to aid corporations, they have been incurred because the capital of individual citizens would not bear the full amount of taxation needed for the erection of public buildings and other neces- sary expenses of government. We have before us an imper- fect schedule of the debts of our railways, exceeding three hundred millions of dollars, and a complete schedule could fall very little short of four hundred millions. On all these debts the annual earnings of our national industry are charge- able with not less than sixty millions of dollars, which is about two thirds of the annual value of the cotton exported, 1858.] THE FINANCIAL CRISIS. 169 and nearly one fourth of the entire value of our annual ex- ports. At least one third of this indebtedness is for foreign capital, the interest on which must be transmitted without re- turn in goods or money, and is a dead loss to the country. Much of this debt, it may indeed be apprehended, will be cancelled by the insolvency of railroad corporations. Many of our railways do not, and cannot for years to come, pay their running expenses and keep themselves in repair; and a railway that yields no revenue to the stockholders is worth only the iron, minus the cost of taking it up and conveying it to market, and the land, minus the cost of reducing or rai~ing it to the level of the adjacent fields. But the gainful dis- honor which will throw off the burden by declared insolvency, will ensue only after a long conflict between the sanguine hopefulness of our people and prolonged and chronic disap- pointment. The art of so employing figures as to conceal the facts which they purport to make known, an art which has probably been carried to its highest perfection by the financial employ~s of these corporations, will still, undoubt- edly, juggle wasted millions from capitalists at home and abroad; and we shall carry this increasing load till it receives that last proverbial ounce \vhich breaks the long-suffering back. But it may be said that these railways are developing the resources of the country so rapidly as to compensate for their heavy drain upoI~ our capital. Whether this is the case it may not be difficult to determine. The cost of the railways to whose statistics we have access has been about six hun- dred millions of dollars, or twice their aggregate debt. We will assume this as their actual cost, though the entire cost cannot have been less than eight hundred millions. Our ex- ports show no increase of industrial products; still less do our augmented imports indicate a productiveness keeping more than even pace with our population~ The population of the Union is increasing at the rate of about six hundred thousaiid per annum. Considering that the increase consists of infant children, and of immigrants nine tenths of whom are meagrely fed and clothed, and that the average life in the country of the years new-born and immigrants is but half of vOL. Lxxxvi. NO. 178. 15 170 THE FINANCIAL CRISIS. [Jan. the year, we should find sixty dollars a large estimate for the subsistence of each. Assuming this, however, we have thirty- six millions as the aggregate cost of sustaining the annual increase of our population. In other words, the products of our national industry, which furnish no increased surplus for exportation, are augmented annually by an amount, which at the outside does not exceed six per cent on the lowest esti- mate of the capital expended in the construction of our rail- ways, leaving the cost of their management (fifty millions or more), and their wear and depreciation, without any counter- balancing increase of productiveness. We should reach a similar conclusion by taking any single railway, computing the aggregate amount of interest, running expenses, and de- preciation, and then attempting in vain to imagine an equal increase of productiveness on its route, or in the regions which it serves as a medium of communication. Thus, the New York Central Railroad could compensate the country for its cost only by stimulating an increased productiveness to the mount of eight millions of dollars per annum. Our rail- ways, then, so far from being a means of the increase of cap- ital, fall far short of paying for their continued existence, and are consuming every year more wealth than they nurse into being. Let it not be imagined that we would, if we could, reverse the progress in the means of communication, which has formed the prominent economical feature of the last quarter of a century. Where neither fraud, peculation, nor arrant folly has left its record, we rejoice in the enterprise, however precipitate, which has thus belted the continent. These iron bonds have given more strength to the Federal Union than all other instrumentalities combined; and in the hot war of party with party, and section with section, had it not been for such clamps, the dissilient States might even now have been ar- rayed in rival confederacies. Iron, too, has reasserted in our Western world its old prerogative as the prime material agent in civilization; for, had not locomotion been thus expedited, barbarism must have settled down on our tracts of inland wilderness and prairie, and our nation would have diffused itself in space only to decline in all the elements of culture 1858.] THE FINANCIAL CRISIS. 171 and refinement. Nor do we deem it other than an inestima- ble privilege to have opened genial homes for the fugitives from need and oppression that have poured in upon us from the Old World. We have spoken of railways only in relation to capital; and we maintain that, with all that they have done and are doing for union, civilization, and humanity, they have drained and are still draining the national capital to an amount immeasurably beyond any added wealth of which they have been and are the cause and the medium. Another reason for the deficit of capital in our country is the increasing disrelish of our free native populatioii for pro- ductive industr~y. In the Free States, foreign operatives, with their lower standard of intelligence and the cruel prejudice with which they are regarded, are degrading labor in the gen- eral estimation, in very much the same way in which slavery degrades it in the Southern States. Since Irishmen have swarmed through our land as hod-carriers, coal-heavers, dig- gers, and day-laborers, there has been a growing reluctance to engage in hand-labor on the part of native Americans. For- eigners, as farm servants, are supplanting the children of the soil; as manufacturers, are superseding the sons and daugh- ters of our yeomanry; as domestics, coachmen, and gardeners, are repelling from these posts the classes that once sought in them an honest livelihood. Their children are in training in large numbers for the mechanical professions; and, in that same proportion, mechanics decline educating their sons for their own and similar callings. The consequence is a waste- ful glut of the professions of law and medicine, trad eand corn unerce; and every supernumerary in these professions de- frauds the community of the cost of his own subsistence, and of the revenue that should accrue from his industry to the common stock. It is not too much to say that, with a reduc- tion by one half of the regular practitioners of medicine, and an entire abatement of the multiform nuisance of quacks of every name, our bills of mortality would be essentially les- sened. A similar reduction in the legal profession could have no other effect than the decline of needless litigation. In the various departments of commerce, the stages through which goods must pass from the producer to the consumer are inju 172 THE FINANCIAL CRISIS. [Jan. riously multiplied; and there is hardly a commodity which is not thus retarded in its natural progress, till it has paid black mail to half a dozen intermediary holders who contribute in no wke to its legitimate transfer. Then there is the horde of mere speculators, whether in stocks, wild lands, city lots, or merchandise, whose only function is to derange prices, unset- tle markets, entrap purchasers, defraud sellers, and introduce into transactions intrinsically necessary and honest the haz- ards and chicanery of the gambling-table. Could we turn into the ranks of productive industry all who are not needed elsewhere, this would alone be sufficient to create a large an- nual surplus of industrial earnings, which would contribute most healthfully toward that xvorking capital, the lack of which is a fruitful source of financial embarrassment. Then,too, we are a wasteful people in our personal habits. We live too fast. Our unproductive consumption, in propor- tion to our population, exceeds that of any other country upon earth. Of a part of this excess we can think only with complacency and pride. We rejoice that our laborers and mechanics have an unprecedentedly high standard of intelli- gence, comfort, and refinement. We would not bate one jot from the expenditure which ministers to mental improvement, to the joy of home-life, or to the amenities of social inter- course. But, beyond this, all except the very poorest sacrifice large portions of their earnings to mere idle show, to su- perfluities which are as offensive to good taste as to prudence. Our amusements are expensive, without being genial, refresh- ing, or invigorating. Our holidays, too few were they devot- ed to innocent mirth and simple festivity, are too many for the riotous, wasteful, enervating dissipation to which they are given up. Our people seem to have no hearty love of pleas- ure, and estimate what they call by that naiue, not by their personal revenue of enjoyment from it, but by the amount of money they squander in it. We are prodigal in our tables. Here, again, our standard is not healthful nourishment, but cost. Let the favorite viands of this year be furnished the next year at a reduced price, they xvill be spurned from three fourths of our larders. We reject the more wholesome grains; we look askance at the 1858.] THE FINANCIAL CRISIS. ji~~ C) ho flour darkened with the sweetest and most nutritious particles of its native kernel, and choose for our domestic use tht t for which the demon of dyspepsia might have woven the bolting- cloth. We depend for our nourishment, to a greater degree than any other people not hyperborean, on animal food, and make this carnivorous habit quadruply costly and destructive, by suffering the juices of the meat to evaporate in cooking, and contenting ourselves with scorched fibrine; while a French family might feed luxuriously on the refuse of one of our hugely spread, but coarsely and unhealthfully served Ameri- can tables. In apparel, neatness, appropriateness, and com- fort might be attained for less than half of what is now ex- pended in setting them at defiance. In other countries, only a small fraction of the female population deem it their prov- vince to sacrifipe economy, health, and grace to the reigning fashion, whatever it be; here, almost every woman not a pauper regards herself as under this necessity. Our annual importa- tion of from thirty to fifty million dollars worth of silk and silk goods is but one index of the extravagance in dress, which is certainly not the least prominent of our national character- istics. Among our other follies, our courteous English visit- ors have anticipated our castigation of the absurd prodigality manifested in our inns and steamboats. In our large cities, the sojourner pays at least half of his exorbitant tavern bill for tapestry and gilding that interfere with his comfort, for plate from which food tastes no better than if served on por- celain, and for servants whose duty it is to give as munch annoyance and as little help as the circumstances of each indi- vidual case will admit of. With a still more foolish improvi- dence, on some of our waters, we find double the sum which would build and maintain a stanch and well-appointed stem- boat expended on cobwork and upholstery; thin boilers and Wilton carpets, machinery that may have survived half a dozen wrecks and furniture that has not seen its first winter. In these, and in more ways than we can specify, are our people wasting what ought to be a yearly accumulation of capital. We believe that the industrial interests of the nation de- mand retrenchment and economy in all classes but the ab- 15* 174 THE FINANCIAL CRISIS. [Jan. jeetly poor. We fear that our children will not rise up, and call us blessed. We are taxing posterity for almost every- thing except our daily living, and are leaving them no sinking- fund for the liquidation of their inherited debts. We cannot regard our people as rich enough to be just to coming gen- erations, till we know of at least one costly public building, church, school-house, court-house, jail, or capitol, or one great public work, or one extensive manufactory, that has been paid for by those under whose auspices it was constructed. If the reverses of fortune which have of late befallen so many of the worthiest men and best citizens, and have made all who remain unimpoverished tremble for the permanence of their fair estate, shall have generated more simple and frugal habits among those whose social position gives weight to their example, the disastrous crisis through which we have just passed will have been, not a public calamity, but a public benefit and blessing. But retrenchment must begin with those \VhO cannot incur even the suspicion of being compelled to it, with the acknowledged leaders in wealth as well as in fashion. IReforms of all kinds run down, while they cannot even creep up, the social scale. It may here be asked, If there is a deficiency in our national capital, in working capital, which is money or property convertible into money, why have prices ruled so high, and increased so rapidly for the last ten years? High prices cer- tainly are a prima facie evidence of the abundance of money. If a bushel of wheat will purchase no more iron, or cotton, or beef, than it would ten years ago, yet can be exchanged for twice as much money, this fact might be assumed as a proof that the moneyed wealth of the country has doubled within ten years. This would be the case, had actual money been our medium of exchange, and our sole or chief currency. But if other commodities, under fluctuating conditions, have filled the place and served the office of money, then high prices are no evidence of pecuniary wealth. Should two thirds of the community take to wearing blankets instead of silk and broadeloath, silk and broadcloth might be compara- tively scarce, and yet would decline in value. And so, if the fashion is set of using property of all kinds instead of gold 1858.] THE FINANCIAL CRISIS. 175 and silver, gold and silver may be diminished in quantity, and yet may be cheaper than ever before, that is, may be required in larger quantities than ever before for any definite purpose for which one may see fit to use them. Now this is precisely what has taken place. Property of every description, and reputed property, pretended property, future property, possible property, have all been converted into money. Credits, based on everything and on nothing, have passed current for the payment of dues. Goods and property have been bought on long credits, which, when they expired, have been replaced by other credits, and they by others still; and when at last nomi- nal liquidation took place, it has been by the substitution, for the written notes of individuals, of the engraved notes of cor- porations. These last have been the chief medium of smaller purchases. True, they purport to be the representatives of money, but they are not so. There has not been a solvent bank in the country, not one which could come near the fulfilment of its pledge to pay at sight its promises to pay in circulation..1 On the first of January, 18.56, there were in Mississippi nearly forty-two dollars of bank-notes in circula- tion to one dollar of specie in vault, and in the whole country the circulation of bank-notes exceeded that of specie in the vaults of the banks in the proportion of ten to one. Bank- notes actually represent debts due to the banks, and those debts are represented by the houses, lands, and merchandise which have been purchased by bank loans. The bank-notes in circulation are nearly eqnal in amount to all the specie in the country, and considerably exceed in amonut the specie in circulation; for a large amount of specie always lies inactive in bank vaults and in the Sub-Treasuries. We have then a depreciated currency, even when paper money is nominally redeemable by gold and silver; with only this distinction, that an unredeemable paper currency falls beneath its par value in specie, while redeemable paper depreciates with itself the specie with which it has concurrent circulation. The value of money, like that of everything else, is determined by the relation of the supply to the demand; and if paper not representing actual money is received as equivalent to money, the supply diminishes the value both of the paper and money, 176 THE FINANCIAL CRISIS. [Jan. just as burnt peas, did they suit the general taste as well as coffee, would reduce the market-value of coffee. It is perfectly obvious that an inflated paper currency, together with the habit of lax and long credits, places the industry of a country at a disadvantage as compared with countries which have a sounder and safer system of currency and credit, and turns the balance of trade in their favor. Unlimited paper currency and protective duties hard money and free trade are respectively parts of the same system. Our error has been, not in lowering our tariff of duties, but in refusing to consolidate our currency. We should need no protection for our manufactures, did we pay for our home- grown raw materials and for our labor in gold and silver. But inasmuch as the currency of France and of England approaches nearer than ours to a specie basis, their home- grown materials and their labor are cheaper than ours. Nay, in manufactures in which labor forms a large ingredient, they can afford to purchase materials from us, and can then un- dersell us in the finished goods. Hence it is that they of late years have undersold us in our own markets. The rate at which we purchase their goods is determined by our depre- ciated currency; but at the same time we pay for those goods in gold and silver or their equivalents, thus draining our country of its specie, and inviting still larger issues of paper to meet the increasing deficit. But the evil does not stop here. A paper currency is not only a depreciated, but a necessarily fluctuating currency, especially when it is furnished by numerous independent cor- porations, of which none are sufficiently strong to meet any sudden or continuous draft upon their resources. The ten- dency of the system is to alternate seasons of expansion and paroxysms of contraction, the former generating causes which must needs issue in the latter. It is a system, too, by which the banks can lend the most when their aid is the least requi- site, and the least in the very stress of need. A bank has for the measure of its loans its capital, its average deposits, and its average outstanding circulation, the first a constant element, the last two variable. We have seen that it is the tendency of a depreciated currency, by creating high prices, to 18.58.] THE FINANCIAL CRISIS. 177 encourage importation. When the imports exceed the ex- ports, there is a balance against the country, which must be liquidated in specie. This specie the banks for the most part supply, and the supply is drawn from them by the return of their circulation to their counters. When the draft for specie has been for some time continued, or is at any one time peculiarly urgent, the banks find that their solvency is in danger; and their only remedy is to call in at once their loans (if they have made any) on demand, and their loans on time as fast as they reach maturity. The payment of each loan virtu- ally cancels its own amount of circulation; for the payrheut is made either in the banks own bills, which it thus redeems, or in the bills of other banks which it can exchange for specie. But in this state of things new loans cannot be made; for they must needs be made in the banks own bills, which will at once find their way back to its counter. By this curtail- ment made simultaneously by the banks of the great com- mercial cities, (and if by the New York banks, they necessi- tate the same movement through the country,) the currency is diminished in quantity, the relative value of money is raised, and a general decline of prices ensues. This decline renders securities that were deemed ample inadequate, alarms the whole class of creditors, and leads to prompt and peremp- tory measures against the indebted classes. They, no longer able to obtain bank accommodations, are obliged either to pay a rate of interest which combines compensation for the use of the money and insurance for the safety of the debt, or to sacrifice property at a rate below its cost and its intrinsic value; and if the first alternative be resorted to, it often only staves off the latter till the sacrifice is still more ruinous. Thus the individual or the firm that six months previously could honestly reckon a large surplus of assets over debts, may be forced into bankruptcy with a deficit as large. All this while, importation declines; the demand for specie slack- ens; the bank vaults are filled; and at length it becomes safe for the banks to extend their accommodations and increase their circulation. Then commences the steady process of expansion, till again a crisis ensues which compels a sudden and rapid change of policy. We thus see, that, were all 178 THE FINANCIAL CRISIS. [Jan. other causes inactive, our banking system alone would pro- duce a periodical pressure, panic, and convulsion in the money market. It may be fittingly inquired, On what defensible grounds of justice are private corporations permitted to furnish the cur- rency of the country? The transaction is intrinsically unfair. It affixes the government sanction to a procedure by which the bank gets a double interest on every dollar of its circula- tion. The bank, by issuing its bills, virtually borrows so much money of the community without interest, for every holder of its bills is its creditor to that amount; and while it can ward off the payment of these debts, it may hold on interest to their full amount the obligations of its borrowers. In the States where bank capital is taxed, the tax is indeed regarded in the light of compensation for this monopoly; but it may rea- sonably be doubted whether it is an adequate compensation, and if it be, it properly belongs, not to the government, but to the holders of bills, who, if compelled (as they are virtually, if not legally) to use evidences of debt instead of money, are equitably entitled to interest from the corporations that are their creditors. The sudden suppression of a paper currency, however, would occasion a decline of prices ruinous to all holders of property, and would render the cancelling of all existing obli- gations oppressive to debtors, and unduly advantageous to creditors. Approaches to a specie currency should therefore be gradually made. The first step might be the prohibition of the issue of small bills. On commercial grounds it would he well that our currency should be assimilated to that of France and of England, the countries with which our mer- cantile intercourse is the most intimate, and which therefore should not have the opportunity of underselling us in our own markets, by means of the depreciation of our currency below theirs. In England no bank-notes are permitted below the value of five pounds; in France, none below one hundred francs. Our first step should be the suppression of bank issues below the denomination of twenty dollars. The change brought about by such a measure would be very great; but it would be gradual. At first, in the scarcity of specie, there 1858.] THE FINANCIAL CRISIS. 179 would be a largely increased issue of bills of the higher de- nominations, and individual credits would be more frequently employed than now to hold smaller dues in suspense. But the needs of the community would by degrees draw into cir- culation increased quantities of the precious metals, till in a few years the entire place now occupied by bills of from one to ten dollars, inclusive, would be filled by gold and silver. When this state of things should have been reached, it would be seasonable to agitate the question of a still further reform, with the view of confining the circulation, properly so called, to the precious metals. There would, indeed, still be needed convertible paper of some kind for the transmission of values between distant places. This need might be met by drafts on the United States Treasury, obtainable for a slight per- centage, by bills of exchange, or by bank orders made redeem- able by arrangements that could be easily effected between city and city. There can be no doubt that the ultimate effect of a purely specie currency xvould be in the highest degree beneficial to all departments of industry and enterprise. It is a currency that cannot fluctuate. It may expand with the increased quantity of the precious metals, but there is hardly a possibil- ity of its contracting; and its expansion must take place by the operation of causes which operate equally throughout the civilized world, thus keeping the international relations of currency unchanged. Our country, by ridding itself of its bank circulation, would attain for itself a higher level of gen- eral prosperity than could be witnessed elsewhere, and a van- tage-ground in every career of honorable competition, for the not far distant period when the same reform shall have taken effect through the whole commercial world. With a metallic currency, the low prices of labor, provisions, and home-grown materials would at once give our manufacturers such protec- tion as a precarious tariff could never afford, and would insure them the command of the domestic market, and a sufficient foreign outlet for their surplus products. The growth of man- ufacturing industry would stim ul ate agriculture, whose pro- ducts would not be compelled to cross continent or ocean to find purchasers, but would be in perpetual demand among the 180 [Jan. THE FINANCIAL CRISIS. artisans and operatives. Then, too, the cheapness of our fab- rics would enable us to export them with ample profit, and to offer them even in competition with EngliTh or French manu- factures on their own soil, thus furnishing a far more lucra- tive husiness for our ships than when they load with deal on the Canadian rivers, or sail in ballast from New York, with the mere chance of engaging a paying freight in Liverpool. Whenever this state of things is r cached, exchange will be in our favor, and the current of metallic wealth will set in upon us, instead of receding from us. But for years, nay, for cen- turies to come, till our whole territory from ocean to ocean is reclaimed, settled, and developed in all its capacities, the in- flux of the precious metals may continue, without raising our prices in comparison with those of other countries; for our growing population, the immense expenditure of capital and labor which will he demanded in bringing successively less and less eligible soils into productiveness, and the enterprise needed to feed and clothe our increasing millions, will absorb into use every accession of the circulating medium as fast as it accrues. Bnt how can a reform in the currency he effected? It is beyond hope that the individual States should concur in any measure of the kind. But is it beyond the scope of the gen- eral government? A strict constructionist might not indeed find license for it in the Constitution. But recent judicial de- cisions have taught us that the Constitution, as expounded by its official expositors, means whatever the people or the gov- eminent would have it mean. And they are right. We yield to none in our regret for the ground assumed by the Supreme Conrt in the IDred Scott case; but we regard such a construc- tion as inevitable, so long as the national administration was committed to the principles it recognizes; and we even rejoice in the demonstration it furnishes of the flexibility of our Consti- tution, and its capacity to adapt itself, without formal change, to the general will. A pernIanent written constitution is in the nature of things impossible. A nations constitution is at every moment composed of the nations existing usages, opinions, and resolves. The only difference between the Brit- ish and the American Constitution is that the former is modi 18~8.I TILE FINANCIAL CRISIS. 181 fled directly by the will of the nation, as expressed in acts of Parliament; while the latter demands the word-jugglery of the Supreme Bench to consummate any modification made by Congress, or by the general voice. The Constitution confers on Congress the exclusive right to coin money, and to reg- ulate the value thereof; and what is engraving but an alias for coining? or why may not Congress, as a regulator of value, declare engraved money to be without value? Again, the States are forbidden to emit bills of credit, and to make anything but gold and silver coin a tender in payment of debts. But qui facit per aliurn facit per se. Bank-bills are bills of credit, and the State virtually issues them in au- thorizing their issue. Moreover, their currency makes them, if not a legal, a necessary tender in payment of debts; for it renders the procuring of specie for the payment of debts at all times difficult, and often impossible without a premium. And especially, when a State legalizes the suspension of specie payments by the banks, (as Pennsylvania has recently, and as most of the States did in 1837,) such legislation can have no other intent than that bank-bills shall take the place of specie in the payment of debts. Yet more, when, by a fluctuating paper currency, specie itself is depreciated, and made of uncertain and varying value, that which the Consti- tution declares to be the only legal tender is deprived of its function as an equitable measure of value, and the undoubted and manifest intent of that constitutional provision is frus- trated. We cannot but think, then, that the whole subject of a paper currency falls within the province of the general gov- ernment; and we earnestly hope that there may be a lull of fruitless sectional strife for the consideration of an interest which vitally concerns all portions of the Union. A properly regulated currency, by giving free scope to the enterprise and industrial capacities of the whole country, would tend to the peaceful settlement of the controversies which now agitate us, and which are only inflamed by the retaliatory legislation by which the North and the South alternately seek to depress each others prosperity. On a field of open competition, if free labor does not demonstrate its superiority, and win the reluctant and in time~the hearty suffrage of its opponents, we vOL. Lxxxvi. NO. 178. 16 182 THE FINANCIAL CRISIS. [Jan. are content to take issue on the side of slavery; for we do not believe that economical and moral laws can work other- wise than harmoniously; and did what we conceive to be a moral law fail by economical tests, we should regard our judg- ment as reversed by the decision without appeal of Him whose providence is the arbiter of national fortunes no less than of individual destiny.. Let it not be supposed that what we have written has been dictated by hostility to banking corporations. Could we enter into the detail of our personal relations and sympathies, they would snggest a bias in the opposite direction. Were xve to strike those concerned in the management of these institu- tions from our list of friends and associates, the catalogue of the residue would be meagre indeed. But it would be for the interest of the banks to be relieved from the responsibility of furnishing a circulating medium. Their chief dangers are those incurred in consequence of this function. The most arduous and harassing duty of their officers is to protect their circulation. And when the contraction of their currency is forced upon them, it is only at the hazard of the most serious losses from the insolvency of their borrowers. Banks could still lend to the amount of their entire circulation, plus the minimum, if not the average, of their deposits; and the inter- est on such loans as were based on their deposits would leave a surplus above the expenses of management, thus affording for net profits more than the legal or usual interest upon their capital. The average deposits in the banks in Massachusetts exceed one third of their aggregate capital, and in the New England States collectively the proportion exceeds one fourth. Moreover, the repeal of usury laws would be the necessary accompaniment of such measures as should look toward the establishment of a specie currency. These laws, by depriving money of its value in open market, compel its holders to increase its quantity by its paper representatives. It must for the most part be only a depreciated currency that is worth bnt six per cent in New England. Were sugar or pepper legally restricted to a low average price, its adulteration would be necessary whenever an increased demand or a diminished supply augmented its actual value. Bank issues are an adul 1858.] TIlE FINANCIAL CRISIS. 183 teratioii of the currency, which is rendered necessary and legitimate by a similar error of legislation. But were specie the only article offered in the money market, its value, the profits of its lenders, and of course the profits of the banks, would be regulated by the relation of the supply to the de- mand. And the use of money is essentially a merchantable commodity, which ought to be left to be influenced by the same laws which determine the current value of all other commodities. The only legislation needed on this subject is a legal determination of the iuterest to be charged ou ac- counts and dues, with reference to which there has been no stipulation of the rate of interest. We have now presented such views as have occurred to us in connection with those great financial questions which have been forced upon us by the stress of the times. We are aware that they differ from views that have been ably advo- cated in this journal in former years. They do not represent the creed of any sect in politics or in political economy, but are simply our own opinions, offered with all proper diffi- dence, yet as a contribution which we have deemed it our duty to make to the fair discussion of subjects that are pressed upon the immediate and decisive action of our mer- chants, financiers, and legislators. While on not a few con- cerns of national interest we dissent lob CWlo from our Chief Magistrate and the party shown to be dominant by his elec- tion, we are glad to quote authority so eminent for some of the views developed in the foregoing pages. Since we wrote them, we have received from a friend a copy of remarks made by Mr. Buchanan in the United States Senate on the suspension of specie payments in 1837, from which we make the following extract. Let me now recur to the proposition with which I commenced; and I repeat that I do not pretend to mathematical accuracy in the illustra- tion which I shall present. The United States carry on a trade with Germany and France, the former a hard-money country, and the latter approaching it so nearly as to have no bank-notes in circulation under the denomination of five hundred francs, or nearly one hundred dollars. On the contrary, the United States is emphatically a paper- money country, havin~, eight hundred banks of issue, all of them 184 TIlE FINANCIAL CRISIS. [Jan. emitting notes of a denomination as low as five dollars, and most of them one, two, and three dollar notes. For every dollar of gold and silver in the vaults of these banks, they issue three, four, five, and some of them as high as ten, and even fifteen dollars of paper. This produces a vast but ever-changing expansion of the currency, and con- sequent increase of the prices of all articles, the value of which is not regulated by the foreign demand, above the prices of similar articles in Germany and France. At particular stages of our expansions, we might with justice apply the principle which I have stated to our trade with these countries, and assert that, from the great redundancy of our currency, articles are manufactured in France and Germany for one half of their actual cost in this country. Let me present an example. In Germany, where the currency is purely metallic, and the cost of everything is reduced to a hard-money standard, a piece of broadcloth can be manufactured for fifty dollars, the manufacture of which, in our country, from the expansion of our paper currency, would cost one hundred dollars. What is the consequence? The foreign French or German manufacturer imports this cloth into our country and sells it for a hundred dollars. Does not every person perceive that the redun. dancy of our currency is equal to a premium of one hundred per cent in favor of the foreiga manufacturer? No tariff of protection, unless it amounted to prohibition, could counteract this advantage in favor of foreiga manufactures. I would to Heaven that I could arouKe the attention of every manufacturer of the nation to this important subject. The foreign manufacturer will not receive our bank-notes in pay- ment. He will take nothing home except gold and silver, or bills of exchange, which are equivalent. He does not expend this money here, where he would be compelled to support his family, and to purchase his labor and materials at the same rate of prices which he receives for his manufactures. On the contrary; he goes home, purchases his labor, his wool, and all other articles which enter into his manufacture, at half their cost in this country, and again returns to inundate us with foreign woollens, and to ruin our domestic manufactures. I might cite many other examples, but this, I trust, will be sufficient to draw public atten- tion to the subject. This depreciation of our currency is, therefore, equivalent to a direct protection granted to the foreign over the domes- tic manufacturer. It is impossible that our manufacturers should be able to sustain such an unequal competition. Sir, I solemnly believe that, if we could but reduce this inflated paper bubble to anything like reasonable dimensions, New Engh~nd would become the most prosperous manufacturing country that the sun ever shone upon. Why cannot we manufacture goods, and especially 1858.] THE FINANCIAL CRISIS. 185 cotton goods, which will go into successful competition with British manufactures in foreign markets? Have we not the necessary capital? Have we not the industry? Have we not the machinery? And, above all, are not our skill, energy, and enterprise proverbial throughout the world? Land is also cheaper here than in any other country on the face of the earth. We possess every advantage which Providence can bestow on us for the manufacture of cotton; but they are all counter- acted by the folly of man. The raw material costs us less than it does the English, because this is an article the price of which depends upon foreign markets, and is not regulated by our own inflated currency. We therefore save the freight of the cotton across the Atlantic, and that of the manufactured article on its return here. What is the rea- son that, with all these advantages, and with the protective duties which our laws afford to the domestic manufacturer of cotton, we can- not obtain exclusive possession of the home market, and successfully contend for the markets of the world? It is simply because we manu- facture at the nominal prices of our own inflated currency, and are compelled to sell at the real prices of other nations. Reduce our nominal to the real standard of prices throughout the world, and you cover our country with blessings and benefits. I wish to Heaven I could speak in a voice loud enough to be heard throughout New Eng- land; because, if the attention of manufacturers could once be directed to the subject, their own intelligence and native sagacity would teach them how injuriously they are affected by our bloated banking and credit system, and would enable them to apply the proper corrective. In what we have now written, we have purposely confined our discussion to the causes of financial disturbance most nearly concerning ourselves. We forget not that, while we write, England is approaching or passing a crisis bearing some resemblance to our oxvn recent experience, though evl- dently less extensive and severe; and that the other com- mercial nations show symptoms of derangement in their monetary relations. The whole civilized world now virtually constitutes one confederate nationality as to matters of finance. Every quickened or slackened pulse-beat in the circulation of one member is felt in all. Especially must England be pro- foundly affected by the sudden suspension of purchases on the part of her best customer, by the unlooked for insolvency of her largest debtor. At the same time, the Crimean war and Australian emigration had largely reduced her produc- 16* 186 [Jan. THE FINANCIAL CRISIS. tive force, while the war had drawn from the pecuniary re- sources of the country at least all the accessions of wealth derived from Australia; and now the peril of her Eastern empire is renewing the drain of men and money. In France, too, the Credit ]illiobilier, of which our limited space precludes more than the mere mention, and which presents on a gigan- tic scale many of the worst features of our banking system, has been expanding credits to a dangerous extent, and thus rendering the financial condition of the country precarious and alarming. But, while we cannot now extend our re- marks so as to embrace the financial history or condition of France or England, it is worthy of note that from the sus- pension of specie payments by the Bank of England in 1793, to the suppression of the small-bill circulation in 1829, pe- riods of financial distress had occurred at no very distant intervals; while from the last-named date to the present crisis, the fluctuations in the money-market have never been rapid and violent, nor has there been in the kingdom any general stagnation of business, or strongly defined ebb of commercial prosperity. But it is time that we return to the pamphlet named at the head of this article. It commences with a definition of money, an enumeration of the grounds on which gold and silver commend themselves for monetary uses, and the prin- ciples on which prices regulate themselves in the ratio of the relative supply of money and of the commodities for which it is exchanged. Then follows a demonstration of the in- evitable tendency of paper money, whether irredeemable or nominally convertible, to depreciate the currency of which it forms a part. We have next a detailed Sketch of the His- tory of the Modern Currency of Great Britain, which is followed by a masterly treatise, historical and argumentative, on the currency of the United States. This survey of the subject prepares the way and furnishes the grounds for an exhibition of the incomparably superior advantages of a specie oveW a mixed currency. The discussion is then nar- rowed to The Practice of Banking, and Effects of the Cur- rency in New England. The closing chapter exhibits the fatal facility of establishing new banks in Massachusetts. It 1858.1 THE FINANCIAL CRISIS. 187 is shown that it is perfectly easy for a company, not of capi- talists and lenders, but of borrowers, to procure a bank charter, and to comply in form with all the legal conditions of their charter. No money need be furnished by the sub- scribers to the capital stock. Their subscription may be paid by checks on the new bank, and balanced by discounts made on the same day; or, still better, by checks on other banks, based on the deposit in those banks of the bills of the new corporation obtained by loans. In the last case these checks, being payable in specie, may furnish the necessary specie for the vault of the new bank, while the bills paid out for the discounts obtained by its stockholders constitute its circula- tion, and their notes its loans. Thus the new bank enters at once on a thriving business, and can present a fair show of its condition, just so long as its directors and large stock- holders remain solvent. But it furnishes them with the means of putting their solvency still further in peril. Its shares are hypothecated as collateral security for yet- other loans, so that every dollar of its stock represents a double indebtedness on the part of those who virtually placed them- selves before the community as capitalists. Banks thus or- ganized are driven to desperate expedients to prevent their circulation from returning too rapidly upon them. Distant loans are made in small bills, which, from the very nature of the case, may pass through many hands before they find their way whence they came. Railroad and manufacturing com- panies have peculiar business facilities allowed them, and sometimes a bonus paid them, on condition of their using the small bills of a particular bank in change for the price of tickets or in payment of the wages of operatives. There is one of our principal railroads, at whose Boston terminus the bills given in change are always on the same bank. We have even known an itinerant umbrella-mender supplied with a huge roll of the bills of a bank, whose continued solvency has from its birthday been deemed a financial miracle. In proposing the approach and the ultimate resort to a specie currency, Mr. looper gives the following approximate estimate of the amount of money required in a community for the transaction of its business. 188 [Jan. THE FINANCIAL CRISIS. The amount of money required to transact the business of a com- munity, for which paper money can be substituted, is much less than is usually supposed by those who have not considered the subject. Fi- nancial writers variously calculate the whole amount required in an active business community at sums varying between ten and fifteen dollars a head for the population. With a mixed currency, consisting only in part of paper money, still less would be required. Ten dollars a head would probably be a large estimate for the amount of paper that could be substituted for coined money without greatly depreciating the currency. The amount of paper circulation in England, Scotland, and Ireland is less than forty millions sterling, equal to nearly thirty shillings sterling, or little more than seven dollars a head for the popu- lation. In the State of New York, containing as active a trading and commercial community as can be found in any part of the world, all the bank-notes are supplied by the State, and registered and counter- si~,n ed by a State officer. No bank, whether it be incorporated or organized under the general law, is allowed to issue any other notes for circulation. According to the official returns on the 30th of Septem- ber, 1854, the whole amount of such notes furnished to incorporated banks was $ 19,300,963, and to banks organized under the general banking law, $ 24,661,572, making together $ 43,962,535; or about twelve dollars a head for the population of the State, including the amounts held by the banks, and therefore not in circulation. There is probably no community in the world where paper money is so freely used as in the State of Massachusetts. Each one of its hundred and sixty-eight banks can have printed and ready for use as many notes as they please. The law allows them to be circulated to the extent of one quarter more than their capital, but attaches no penalty for exceeding that amount. The capital of the banks of Massachusetts exceeds fifty- six millions of dollars, which would allow an aggregate circulation of more than seventy millions of dollars. Some of the banks often ex- ceed their proportion, but no notice has been taken of it, when the published returns have shown any of them to have exceeded the lawful limit of circulation. It appears by the annual official return for 1854, that there are nearly twenty-five millions of the notes of the banks of Massachusetts in circulation. A large amount, however, of each others notes is returned as held by the banks themselves. Moreover, there is always a large amount of notes issued by banks in the country, in- stead of checks, which do not really become general circulation, being merely transmitted for payments in large sums, instead of a check or draft, to gain the advantage of a few days in interest, nnd they are immediately sent into the Suffolk or some other bank in Boston, which 1858.J THE FINANCIAL CRISIS. 189 acts as the agent of the country bank. There are, likewise, large amounts of bills at these agency banks in Boston, which have been redeemed, but not yet sent back to the country banks that issued them, and must therefore appear in the returns as circulation. Making these allowances, the whole amount of bills actually circulating among the people in Massachusetts, does not probably exceed twelve or fifteen millions of dollars, or about from twelve to fifteen dollars a head for the whole population of the Commonwealth. This conforms very nearly with the issues of bank paper in the State of New York. If the actual amount of paper circulating in Massachusetts amounts to fifteen millions of dollars, since checks and drafts could be advanta- geously substituted for many of the purposes for which hank-bills are now used, it would not require more than ten millions of coined money, less than the product of California in three months, to supply a sound, uniform, and substantial currency in its place. pp. 72 74. The following paragraph shows the ease and rapidity with which the desired substitution of specie for paper might be made. What would be the cost to Massachusetts of ten millions of the precious metals to use for currency, instead of paper money? If the $ 41,197,300 of gold and silver that were exported from the United States during the single year ending in June, 1854, had remained in the country, at least one tenth part of the amount would have rightly belonged to Massachusetts with her extensive commerce and manufac- tures. This would have supplied nearly one half of the amount re- quired in a single year. To the industry of Massachusetts, it would have been worth, at the least, as much more, by the protection it would have given to her manufactures against foreign competition, by lessening, to that extent, the amounts of foreign importations, which it was sent abroad to pay for. p. 75. In illustrating the feasibility of this change, if gradually made, Mr. looper says With the large quantities of gold that are constantly brought from California by the enterprise of the citizens of Massachusetts, there could not be any t~rouble or inconvenience in supplying, by degrees, the place of the present paper money with the precious metals. To avoid trouble and inconvenience, it ought to be done gradually, by a law to prohibit the circulation of any notes below the denomination of ten dollars, after one year from the passage of the act. This would give the banks time to recall the notes of smaller denominations, and for the specie to be circulated to take the place of them. 190 THE FINANCIAL cmrsis. [Jan. In England and France, the two greatest commercial countries of Europe, paper money can hardly be said to exist, in the sense in which it exists in the United States. For the Bank of England and the Bank of France, both of which are so organized that those governments exercise great influence in their management, are not permitted to issue bills of a denomination so small as to be used in the every-day trans- actions of retail purchases and sales. In England, the lowest denomi- nation of bills is five pounds, equal to nearly twenty-five dollars of our money; and in France, until recently, the limit was five hundred francs, nearly one hundred dollars of our money. The Bank of France has, within a few years, issued bills for one hundred and two hundred francs, equal to about twenty and forty dollars. The smallest denomination of bank-notes in England and France are too large for the common use of the people; their use is confined almost entirely to purposes of trade, or for transactions that require large sums of money. pp. 76, 77. According to our author, our republic holds at the present time a solitary pre-eminence as regards a paper currency. When the Bank of England was rechartered, in 1844, it was not intrusted with the unrestricted power to expand and contract the cur- rency by its issues of paper money. Its issue of paper without a cash foundation is limited to fourteen millions of pounds sterling, equal to about sixty-eight millions of dollars, and it is required to keep that amount specially invested in government stocks. The Bank of Eng- land must have specie in its vaults for every note issued for circulation beyond that sum. Thus it has no interest in extending the issue of paper beyond the fourteen millions, as it could not loan or invest it, but would be obliged to keep the amount on hand in bullion or coin. No bank organized since 1844 is allowed to issue any bills for circulation, and a limit is fixed to the circulation of all banks organized before that period. Paper money has been sometimes used in times of war, for the purpose of giving to government the control and use of the real money of a country. It exists in Austria and some other despotic countries, where the governments can control it, and where~ they control all property. But it is only in the United States that communities can be found willing to delegate to individuals and to private corporations the despotic and sovereign and irresponsible power of furnishing and con- trolling the currency, which measures the value of all the property of the country. pp. 77, 78. 1858.] JERUSALEM. 191 The illegitimateness of a paper currency its existence by sufferance rather than of right is stated as follows : The use of paper money was long since discontinued by the na- tional government, but it has been permitted, and indirectly protected and sanctioned, by most of the State governments, though it has never been directly recognized or legalized by any of them as real money. Paper money is an excrescence which has grown up illegitimately on the body politic; but, as it is based on false principles, it cannot be expected to endure. Either its evils will continue to augment until an enlightened public will no longer bear them, or an intelligent, judicious, and gradual change to a more substantial and to a more just system will be introduced. p. 79. We regret that we cannot give a detailed analysis of the lucid statements and cogent arguments which make this pamphlet well-nigh a complete manual within its range of subjects. We trust that recent events will draxv attention to a work so replete with the wisdom of experience, and so thoroughly demonstrative of the evils and the remedies of our present financial condition. We know not that it needs our introduction to those who are students in the science of finance; we are certain that, where it is read, it cannot need our encomium. ART. VIII. The Guy of the Great Kino~ or, Jerusalem as it was, as it is, and as it is to be. By J. T. BARCLAY, M. ID., Missionary to Jerusalem. Philadelphia: James Challen and Sons. 1857. A 1\JoNoGnAPn upon Jerusalem is by no means a novelty. Dr. Titus Tobler, a paragon of precision and accuracy, has recorded in two stout German volumes the results of his sur- veys and measurements; with a supplement on the medici- nal topography of the neighborhood where mandrakes grow, and rivers run from hidden fountains. The learned work of Ernst Gustav Schultz, whose untimely death was a severe loss to Biblical science, proves that an Eastern consulate need not

1858.] JERUSALEM. 191 The illegitimateness of a paper currency its existence by sufferance rather than of right is stated as follows : The use of paper money was long since discontinued by the na- tional government, but it has been permitted, and indirectly protected and sanctioned, by most of the State governments, though it has never been directly recognized or legalized by any of them as real money. Paper money is an excrescence which has grown up illegitimately on the body politic; but, as it is based on false principles, it cannot be expected to endure. Either its evils will continue to augment until an enlightened public will no longer bear them, or an intelligent, judicious, and gradual change to a more substantial and to a more just system will be introduced. p. 79. We regret that we cannot give a detailed analysis of the lucid statements and cogent arguments which make this pamphlet well-nigh a complete manual within its range of subjects. We trust that recent events will draxv attention to a work so replete with the wisdom of experience, and so thoroughly demonstrative of the evils and the remedies of our present financial condition. We know not that it needs our introduction to those who are students in the science of finance; we are certain that, where it is read, it cannot need our encomium. ART. VIII. The Guy of the Great Kino~ or, Jerusalem as it was, as it is, and as it is to be. By J. T. BARCLAY, M. ID., Missionary to Jerusalem. Philadelphia: James Challen and Sons. 1857. A 1\JoNoGnAPn upon Jerusalem is by no means a novelty. Dr. Titus Tobler, a paragon of precision and accuracy, has recorded in two stout German volumes the results of his sur- veys and measurements; with a supplement on the medici- nal topography of the neighborhood where mandrakes grow, and rivers run from hidden fountains. The learned work of Ernst Gustav Schultz, whose untimely death was a severe loss to Biblical science, proves that an Eastern consulate need not [Jan. 192 - be altogether a life of lazy dreaming, a round of coffee, chibouks, and siestas. The airs of Palestine could not subdue the ardor of this enthusiastic Prussian. His zeal, we must add, often outran his discretion, and his conclusions are not always free from mistakes. Kraffts work, published at Bonn in 1846, on the topography of Jerusalem, is dry, but very minute. Mr. Bartletts Walks about Jerusalem is very pleasant reading, but has only the intrinsic value of a charm- ing picture-book. Of all the regions, East and West, which his pencil illustrated, this Syrian region was the favorite. A secret longing compelled him back to Mount Zion, and we have a second series of landscapes and impressions of the scenery around the Holy City, a last parting gift to the world of art. His Judean sketches, though by no means as perfect as photographs, are yet, according to our judgment, his best efforts. The Holy City, by the Rev. George Williams, B. D., is in many respects the most valuable special treatise on that subject. It is spoiled as a scientific work, however, by its untenable theory, and by the distortion of facts to suit this theory. Mr. Williams carried with him to Jerusalem an imperturbable belief in legends, and a determination to gather arguments for the identity of all the traditional sacred places, and of course he found what he sought. He is the most dis- tinguished English defender of monkery, and ought to be admitted an honorary member of the goodly fellowship of Romish prophets. The most credulous of Catholic pilgrims could not vindicate more chivalrously the pious frauds of former ages. Beside the solid works to which we have alluded, very frequent articles have appeared in the religious periodicals of various sects. The Zeitschrifts, Monatsblatts, and Academic Memoirs of Germany, Jewish and Christian, have not omitted that fascinating dispute, which began with St. Helena, and is still as fresh as ever; the light papers of the Eclectic, and the heavier essays of the Quarterly, have acquainted England with the matter and the magnitude of the long quarrel; and the volumes of the Bibliotheca Sacra store away the gleanings of more than one sagacious investi- gator. From time to time the columns of a small magazine in JERUSALEM. 18~8.] JERUSALEM. 193 Philadelphia, hardly known farther north, have been enriched with sketches of Jerusalem, evidently by one whose facilities for observation were unusual. Those sketches have not ob- scurely predicted a future work of more importance, and their prediction is now verified in the volume named at the head of this article. The author is a man whose views and opinions, even when they do not command acquiescence, are entitled to respect. At once a physician and a preacher, a practised chemist and a skilful draughtsman, he carried to his labors in Jerusalem more than the heart and faith of a missionary. The intervals of professional toil were filled by researches not less conge- nial; and extending, as they did, over so considerable a period, three years and a half these researches have led to some novel conclusions. As a critic of facts in Jerusalem, Dr. Barclay had great advantage His residence in several quarters of the city, first in the Moslem neighborhood on Mount Bezetha, afterward between the Jewish houses on Mount Zion and the Mogrebin huts around the mosque, and in the summer on the Mount of Olives, the intimate associa- tion of his family with the various races, Jewish, Armenian, Turkish, Syrian, and Bedouin, the assistance which he was able to secure in his explorations, his signal good fortune in gaining free and frequent admission to the forbidden pre- cincts of the Hararn es Sherif, mosques, chambers, vaults, and all, even to the extent of taking sketches and measuring dimensions, his patient study, on the spot, of the various conflicting hypotheses, historical and topographical, would lead us to expect from him a very valuable treatise. He had the opportunity of seeing Jerusalem under all its aspects, in winter and in summer, in the dry season and in the rainy season, in its Easter crowds and its Hebrew festivals, by night as well as by day. Most of those who have written in English abbut the Holy City have stayed there only a few days or a few weeks, and have been obliged to borrow their facts from other authorities. Dr. Barclay was able to perform for himself the work of examination. He had time and opportunity to ~o over all the ground. He had the pho- tographic art as an efficient auxiliary, and his demonstrations voL. Lxxxvi. NO. 178. 17 [Jan. 194 JERUSALEM. of antiquities and proportions are verified by the stamp of the unerring solar ray. Dr. Barclays style is not always that of a practised writer, and we notice some phrases and witticisms which severe taste would have excluded. There are occasionally involved sentences, and here and there inaccurate forms of expres- sion. We cannot quite reconcile ourselves to the phono- graphic printing of Gree1i~ words in English type, or to the orthography adopted for many of the proper names. A fault-finding critic might frequently object to the choice of words and the structure of sentences. These, however, are trifling faults. Though not chosen with the most fastidious care, the language is, in general, perspicuous, and the fa- miliarities of style, which seem out of place in a scientific treatise, will doubtless make the book more readable. It is a misfortune of the plan which Dr. Barclay has adopted (otherwise a very judicious plan), that it involves a great deal of repetition. Jerusalem as it was requires mention and discussion of many things which belong to Jerusalem as it is. The ancient city cannot be described apart from its existing remai us, nor can the modern city be separated from those monuments of antiquity which are its best treasure. The account of Rome as it is to-day may leave out the Forum and the ruins of the Palatine and Esquiline Hills. There is enough to satisfy one in galleries, churches, and festivals. But Jerusalem has no galleries, and only a few churches. Its artistic, social, and sacred interest still resides in its walls, its pools, and its sepulebres. These are as truly parts of the city El Khuds, with its motley throng of races, as of the city of Herod and David. We cannot find fault, therefore, with the frequent repetitions which are necessarily incidental to the plan of the work. Professing the highest regard for the judgment and the conclusions of Dr. Robinson, in several important particulars Dr. Barclay ventures to disagree with that eminent writer. As to the direction of the Tyropccon he fully coincides with Dr. Robinson; but he pronounces very confidently that the ravine xvest of the city is not the valley of Gihon, but is part of Hinnom, as it was formerly believed to be. He finds the 1858.] JERUSALEM. 195 valley of Gihon in the depression which begins north of the Damascus Gate, and continues southward, between Acra on one side and Bezetha and Moriah on the other, until it joins the Tyropteon at the northeast corner of Zion. This is certainly a novel hypothesis, and it seems at first almostpre- posterous. Dr. Barclay defends it bravely, and by plausible arguments, which we have here no space to repeat. He in- sists that the statement of the Hebrew records (2 Chronicles xxxiii. 114) is entirely at variance with the common theory; that Manasseh never would have built a wall on the west side of that farther valley for any purpose of defence; and that, as the Fish Gate is the present Damascus Gate, the valley must have extended through some more central portion of the city to reach that gate. The fountains or pools of Gihon, which Dr. Robinson, contrary to the views of Schultz and Krafft, holds to be the existing reservoirs west of the Jaffa Gate, Dr. Barclay locates in conformity xvith his theory ; the lower one, at a point near the Damascus Gate, the upper one farther to the north in the Fuilers Field ; and he strongly urges the improbability of the coronation of Solo- mon having taken place in the deep valley of Hinnom. In spite of his earnest argument, we may doubt if the advocates of the prevailing theory will yield at once. In a recent sup- plernentary volume, Dr. Robinson takes occasion to review his statements in regard to Gihon, and reaffirms with emphasis his former position. The point is now opened for new dis- cussion, and a nice topographical controversy may be ex- pected. A denial of the genuineness of the Pool of Heze- kiah is of course involved. Dr. Robinson is very cautious in speaking of this reservoir, though, on the whole, he allows it to pass unquestioned. But Barclay is positive that this is the Amygdalon of Josephus, and is long posterior to the age of the good king of Judah. Unlike Robinson, he is not content with proving a negative, but never rests satisfied until he has found a place for every site or object mentioned in the Scriptures or the Rabbinical stories. Such a cata- logue of fountains, aqueducts, pools, wells, cisterns, and the like, has nowhere else been brought together. If all these waters are to be separately located, we might almost imagine 196 JERUSALEM. [Jan. Jerusalem to be a mountain Venice, half city, half lagoon, with pools in every square, conduits in every street, and pierced by a network of subterranean rivers. Marvellous is the change at the present day, when sharp economy catches ev9ry rain-drop from the roofs and domes. In regard to the hills of Jerusalem Dr. Barclay makes no important correction in the received topography. Some slight emendations are suggested upon the Mount of Olives, and some names which have been given to sites on the north and west are questioned; but Zion, Acm, Bezetha, the Hill of Evil Council, Scopus, and the region intervening, are left un- disturbed. The Ash Mounds are summarily disposed of, and our hope that these singular hills might be the remains of the temple sacrifices must yield to the discovery of these ashes in another more convenient place. The theory of the Ascension from the mosque village on Mount Olivet is demol- ished in a most satisfactory manner, and this village is de- graded to mark only the lunar telegraphic station, whence signals were passed from the land of Juda~a to the land of Moab. Dr. Barclay shares Dr. Robinsons distressing indiffer- ence to tradition. TTxvo important discoveries, however, on the hills around Jerusalem, are here confidently brought forward. The first is the site of Bethphage, the house of figs, which Robinson settled by the concise remark that no trace exists of it. The trace has since been found, and not only the place where it ought to be, according to the Evangelists narrative, but the place where its ruins actually remain, has been ascertained. On this point Dr. Barclays reasonings win our full assent, and it is only singular that a site so obviously appropriate should have so long escaped the scrutiny of investigators. The hill of Bethphage is over against the winding road leading from Bethany across Mount Olivet, and is almost in sight from Mount Zion, at the distance of about a mile. The other discovery, which will not be so easily accepted, is the discovery of the true place of the Crucifixion, of Cal- vary, and of Golgotha. We shall not review the arguments which condemn the traditional site, or criticise those offered for the new site. In the absence of any other reasonable sup- 1858.] JERUSALEM. 197 position, the new location of Calvary has a certain prerogative right, and should be hailed rather than rebuked. Its claim is supported on philological grounds, as well as on the general ground of local adaptation. In the book of Jeremiah (xxxi. 39), the word Goath occurs in such a connection that it is not difficult to fix that desecrated spot, where idols were bro- ken, idolaters were slain, and the bodies of dead malefactors were buried, ~omexvhere in the valley of the Kidron. Accord- ing to Krafft, whose interpretation Dr. Barclay adopts, Goath means violent death. Gol he explains to mean an ele- vation or swell of land. Gol-goth a or Gol-goath (for the two expressions are identical) means, therefore, the hill of violent death. No place in the valley of the Kidron be- low Gethsemane answers to this description. There is no- where any prominent hill or elevation. But just above, there is a spur of land projecting southeastwardly into the valley, which only lacks its hillock of rock to answer exactly to the Evangelical accounts of the Saviours death. Dr. Barclay gets over this difficulty of the absence of the rock, by suppos- ing that the enemies of the new religion had it removed, that there might be no witness of their bloody deed. In the neigh- borhood of this eminence, lower down in the valley, is a spot where there are to this day numerous sepulchres, yet at the same time traces of an adjoining garden. There is no sign, he maintains, that the west side of the city was used in ancient times as a place of burial. Moreover, he argues that, even supposing the present Church of the Sepulchre to he beyond the western wall, the Jews would never have risked the transit of their victim through the city, but would have hurried him to the nearest place of execution. The rapidity with which the exa~iination, the trial, and the crucifixion followed the arrest, is evidence that they had fear of a rescue. On the west side of the city, too, there is no place where the crucifixion could have been witnessed by the immense crowd then gathered. The suburbs in that direction were occupied and peopled, the intervening walls and buildings would have prevented the priests of the temple from seeing the spectacle, and there was no spot where the women could stand over against the cross and note the movements of the soldiers. All these 17 * 198 JERUSALEM. [Jan. objections are obviated in the site which Dr. Barclay proposes. It is a site where myriads could have looked on without bin- derance, visible from the temple, visible from the sides of Oh- vet, and directly opposite the lower ledges of this hill. The road to the priestly cities of Anathoth and Nob must have passed very near, and the travellers on this road would have been just the men to wag their heads and revile the Say- ~our. In the absence of any more reasonable theory, we must allow that these suggestions make a strong case of prob- ability. Dr. Barclay differs from Dr. Robinson in regard to the beau- tifut monument commonly known as the Tombs of the Kings. While he readily allows that the name is a misno- mer, he thinks it equally a mistake to call this the tomb of Helena, queen of Adiabene. The mechanism and material of the door do not correspond with the account of Pausanias. The door is not of the same rock as the catacombs, but of a rock quite different. Besides, he asks, what would this widowed old lady want with a sepulchre containing about thirty loculi, even if her son, niece, and five grandsons, sent to Jerusalem by Izates to be educated, were also interred with her? He imagines that the monument may belong to some branch of the Herodian family. The Red Heifer Bridge, a lofty structure spanning the Kidron, opposite the eastern gate of the Temple, is mentioned and described for the first time in English in this work on the Holy City. It was a double-arched bridge, the foot of each upper arch resting upon two arches beneath. Over it the red heifer was led to be burned on the Mount of Olives, and over this bridge Jesus was led after his arrest, on the way to the house of Annas. Another discovery, of which Dr. Barclay is entitled to the credit, (although the account of a subsequent visitor has an- ticipated the novelty of his description,) is that of the great cave under Mount Bezetha, from which the stone was quarried for the walls and palaces of the city. The narrative of our authors nocturnal adventure is very entertaining. It was at- tended not only with ludicrous inconvenience, but with seri- ous danger, such as can be appreciated only by those who 1858.1 JERUSALEM. 199 have crawled through the cavities, and threaded the mazes, and glided by dim candle-light along the edges of the pitfalls, in the Egyptian catacombs. The skull of some former adven- turer, which one of the party picked up, was a caution against such hazardous attempts. The Turkish authorities are very jealous of these subterranean investigations, and during the day a fanatical Moslem watches this quarter from the oppo- site grotto of Jeremiah. Dr. Barclay is convinced that the ravine between this grotto and Mount Bezetha is an artificial trench, made by the removal of the rock which once extended in a long ledge northward from the city. It supplied the building material, which left by its removal a better defence to the northern hill. Another piece of good fortune which attended one of the expeditions of Dr. Barclay in the neighborhood of the Holy City was the discovery of that lEn on, near to Salim, the place where John baptized, which Dr. Robinson in his last visit fruitlessly sought. Robinson, following Jerome and the tra- dition, looked for it in Galilee, in the neighborhood of Beisan. But the account of Jerome contradicts itself and is of no real authority. The waters of Farah, in a wady about six miles northeast of Jerusalem, correspond entirely to the Scriptural account. The name of the wady, as the Arabs to-day pro- nounce it, is Salun, or something very near that word; the fountain itself is in a position very central, easily accessible, and snre to be known to all the dwellers at Jerusalem; the water is extremely abundant, and there grow still near it those wild reeds which probably suggested the Saviours comparison. The authority of Lightfoot is mentioned in confirmation of this view. The fountain of Farah becomes afterward that river Kelt which empties into the Jordan near Jericho, the brook Cherith of the Hebrew Scriptures. It is probable, therefore, that the place where John baptized was the place where Elijah was fed by ravens. Ravens still infest that lo- cality, and dispute its possession and plunder with the roving Arabs. A curious fact which Dr. Barclay mentions is that the word Orebim, rendered ravens, may be equally well translated Arabs. Only a slight change of the arbitrary Masoretic points is required. The miracle, he adds, would [Jan. 200 JERUSALEM. be quite as great for Arabs to feed or succor a despised Jew, as for the fowls of the air to become his ministers. The account of Jerusalem as it was, is contained in four- teen chapters, filling about two thirds of the volume. These chapters treat in succession of the name of the city; its local features, hills, valleys, ravines, bridges, and surrounding villa- ges; its various quarters and their successive developments; the walls and treuches of the city from Melehisedec to Zede- kiah, with an estimate of the population at the time of its de- struction by the IRomans, justifying the large numbers given by Josephus; the rro\\Ters and Gates, a concise, yet a full and vain able chapter; the Castles and Palaces, with the names of the ancient streets, markets, and monumental pillars with- in the city; the Tombs and Sepulchral Monuments, includ- ing an elaborate discussion and description of the Holy Sep- ulchre, special notices of the numerous caves in the valleys of Jehosaphat and Hinnom, in which doubt is expressed as to the genuineness of the supposed pit of Aceldama, and a very interesting narrative is given of a visit which the authors daughter was enabled to make to the tomb of David on Mount Zion, a Moslem shrine most jealously guarded, and described by no modern xvriter; the Tern pie, a long and c& reful topo- graphical study, reducing its dimensions, its arrangement, arid its splendor to a picture before the eye as distinct if not as brilliant as the chrornograph of the mosque of Ornar; the Water Supply of the City, a chapter exhaustive in its fulness; and, finally, connected notices of the history of the city from its subversiOn by Titus to the present century, in which, in addition to the well-known stories of medi~val travellers and pilgrims, from Wihihard to Maundrell, we have a long ex- tract from the Moslem history of the Cadi Mejr-ed-din, and an excellent summary of the chronology of the Crusades. This first portion of the work, though scientifically the most impor- tant, will have less interest for the general reader than the six chapters which treat of Jerusalem as it is, in which are re- lated the personal experiences and adventures of the author, and facts take the place of argument and conjecture. These chapters treat of the climate and productions, the walls, tow- ers, and streets, the Noble Sanctuary, the water resources 1858.J JERUSALEM. 201 within and around the city, and the missionary operations. They afford ample material for a comprehensive sketch of the Holy City. There are some features of Jernsalem which scarcely change in the lapse of years. It is still, as when it was a fort of the Jebusites, a bold promontory standing out from surrounding hills, a mountain of the Lord on the top of the mountains. The deep ravines of 1-Jinnom and Jehosaphat still belt its scarped and battered sides, a natural moat which the rub- bish of ages of destruction has not obliterated. The innu- merable caverns are there, restored from their long use as sep- ulchres, to become again the lairs of foxes and jackals, and the haunts of wandering robbers. The eastern hill still proves the fitness of its ancient name, and olive.trees yet live and shade the pathways around its sides and up to its summit, along which the Saviour loved to wander. For a time in the spring, after the latter rains, there is beauty enough in the fresh foli- age, the many-colored blossoms, and the verdant terraces which stretch from Siloam to En Rogel, to recall the meta- phors of the Canticles, and to show that this narrow acre might well have been the garden of a magnificent king. The aque- duct arches of Solomon, which were gray with age when Clandius led his line of arches across the Roman Campagna, are more than a picturesque ruin, adorning desolation; they bear a stream to a shrine. The great stones, so massive that the wrath of conquest has been compelled to spare what the earthquake could not move from their place, so carefully laid and finely rebated that the cemented walls of Rome seem mean in the comparison, attest to the eye to-day the solid grand- eur of the Hebrew power. If the beautiful columns have been thrown down, and the entablatures of temple and palace cast into the streets, the curious observer detects their grace of color and carving as they are tessellated in the worn pave- ment or inserted into the modern walls. Zion still stands over against Moriah, the Upper over against the Lower City, though the ruins of its towers have lifted almost to its level the divid- ing valley. Ophel still shoots its spur far downward to the Kidron, and beneath its ridge the waters still flow softly from the sacred spring to the sacred basin. They gather 202 JERUSALEM. [Jan. ears in the season from the near plain of iRephaim as in Isaiahs vision, and not seldom the muster there of Arab clans repeats that spreading of the Philistines when they came up against David. The landmarks of the city remain sub- stantially the same as the Queen of Sheba saw them when she came to wonder at the Holy House, and as Joseph saw them when he jonrneyed from Hebron to Shechem. The area of the modern city, though narrow in comparison with the extent of the city when the army of Titus encamped before it, is yet nearly or quite as great as the area which Adrian enclosed in his LElia Capitolina, and the present Sar- acenic wall follows nearly the line of his defences. Its gates, if less numerous than those which were opened at Nehemiahs festival, are not without beauty of a certain sort, and still re- pay the study of an architect. The lions above St. Stephens portal are as boldly sculptured and as properly placed as the lions in St. Peters before the tomb of iRezzonico. Of the forty towers, some are formidable to look upon, and all help to relieve the long monotony of the serrated battlemei~ts. A path within these battlements on the top of the wall makes it easy now to xvalk about Zion, and to tell her towers and bul- warks. There are points in this path where the downward view, taking in not only the seventy feet of artificial structure, but the scarped rock beneath, even to the bottom of the Hin- nom ravine, is truly terrific. The wall, however, is rather a fence than a fortification, and it would be no protection against artillery or the scientific assault of modern warfare. It is constructed without curtains or bastions, and is defended by a half-dozen of rusty guns on the western castle, which speak only on occasions of Mohammedan festival. The streets of Jerusalem as they are resemble the streets which Josephus described in being very narrow, but they differ from his description in being the reverse of clean. The central ditch, which is the thoroughfare of beasts of burden, is usually not wide enough for two animals to walk abreast, and is the receptacle, moreover, for the filth of the bordering shops and houses. On either side, a raised ledge of half a yard in width oilers to human feet a precarious path, only less foul than the central way. Daring a shower, the 1858.] JEnUSALEM. 203 streets are rivers of mud; during a drought,their dust is as penetrating as the dust of Maiibdeh mummy pits, and the Turkish authorities experience what Nahum predicts of the Assyrian nobles. The streets are less labyrinthine than those of most Oriental cities, so that it is not easy to lose ones way. Patriarch Street and Damascus Street would delight the gardener of Versailles by their right lines, hardly broken by a projecting lattice. The Via iDolorosa, on the other hand, annoys one by its needless angles and the grievous irregu- larity of its pavement. It is literally a way of penance to the pilgrim. Solomon, in all his glory, could not number in his capital so many races as are now gathered in these streets of Jerusa- lem. No city in the world has a more heterogeneous pop- ulation. Every variety of complexion and feature, from the flaxen-haired Teuton to the swarthy Mogrebin, every in- flection of speech, from mellifluous Tuscan to guttural Copt, costumes in motley confusion, the round hat, the cap of Hydra, the Turkish tarboosh, and the Bedouin keflych, long boots, short boots, slippers, and naked feet, the strangest styles of armor, here a belt full of pistols and cartridges, there a long scymitar rattling on the stones as its owner strides forward, there a ten-foot lance adorned with plumes and streamers, and there again a Koran chained to the girdle, officials of every description, muftis and janissaries, Rabbins and Pharisees, monks of all colors, black, blue, brown, and gray, hangers- on upon the synagogue, the mosque, and the altar, with lying tales to proffer, and holy trinkets to barter, soldiers, dervishes, missionaries, beggars, and lepers, such magis- trates as the judge in the parable, such priests as the priest who passed the wounded man on the other side, and such blind men as Bartimeus, may all be met, on any day, pass- ing and repassing along the Street of David. Of all these races, the ancient race of Israel is still in num- bers predominant, though basest in condition, with scarcely a shadow of poxver. The whole Jewish population, as com- puted by Dr. Barclay, amounts to nearly twelve thousand. Of these the Sephardim, who are mostly Spanish Jews by descent, number about nine thousand, and the various classes [Jan. 204 JERUSALEM. of the Askenazim about two thousand three hundred. The spiritual lords of this Hebrew household number two hundred and forty-six. To them is committed the instruc- tion, the worship, the government, the disbursement of money, and all the important functions of the community. The mass of the Jews are miserably poor, supported chiefly by foreign contributions. The average share of each man, about two cents a day, is the minimum of wages to an Egyp- tian Fellab. The homes of the Roman Ghetto are luxu- rious, compared with the habitations of the Jews in Jerusa- lem. Crowded upon the smaller half of this half of ancient Zion, in huts and hovels which betoken the most squalid poverty, breathing an air feculent and poisoned by the odor of the most revolting of shambles, hated by Christians, de- spised by Moslems, victims of a threefold oppression, they stay as a race of Pariahs in their sacred home, waiting for a grave in the valley of Jehosaphat, and praying for the restora- tion of the fallen Temple. If they may not venture, on pain of death, within the precincts of the Christian shrine, or share the traffic of that religious Exchange, they have the sad compensation of mourning before the dear stones which re- tain the sign of their fathers honor. There is no more touch- ing spectacle than the meeting of the Jews of Jerusalem on every Friday at their wailing-place. The proud spirit and the low fortune, the hope and the misery of the nation, are centred in that strange service. Old men, with beards long as the beard of Aaron and eyes dim as the eyes of Eli, mothers with infants in their arms, teaching lamentation as the earliest of childhoods lessons, ruler of the synagogue, proud even in their prostrations, on some faces the frown of wrath, on more the smile of wretched idiocy, frantic and convulsive gestures, as some fanatic rushes up to kiss the stones, and the low murmur of prayers muttered in concert by some family group, the contrast of the bright clothing which the better class wear to that mockery of festival, and the squalid rags which are all that the poorer class have to bring,the mingling of patience and sorrow, of bitter joy, vindictive hope, and abject grief, combine to make this cer- emony of wailing the most suggestive of all the singular customs of modern Jerusalem. 1858.] JERUSALEM. 205 Dr. Barclay reckons the synagogues of the Jews as four- teen in number. Three or four of these, gathered in a single enclosure, near the centre of the Jewish quarter, are accessible to visitors, and afford an opportunity to compare the present with the ancient ritual, and note the changes which time has brought. The Hebrews have a tradition that this was the site of a synagogue in the time of the Maccabees, and in proof of its genuineness urge that the mass of ruins heaped around has lowered the present buildings to the position of cellars, their roofs being but little above the level of the streets. Of this tradition Dr. Barclay makes no mention, and it is perhaps not worthy of heed. But, at any rate, the interior of these synagogues indicates extreme antiquity. The chairs are as quaintly shaped as the most approved of Anglican Se- dilia. The reading-desk is as ancient in form, if not as pre- cious in material, as the Presbytery of St. Clements at the foot of the Esquiline Hill. The faded tapestry would make the hues of Raphaels cartoons at Hampton seem bright, and the old rolls of the Law are matched only by that precious fragment at Nablous which a handful of Samaritan monks spend their days in guarding. The worshippers correspond with the place, and if one would go back a thousand or two thousand years, he can do it in no way more effectually than by creeping down on a Sabbath morning at dayhreak, through the dark streets, to the assemblies in the synagogues on Mount Zion. The better class of the Jews earn a scanty living in small mechanical trades, but the mass have no regular occupation. No community is the object of a larger philanthropic sympa- thy. In addition to the gifts which come from brethren in London, Frankfort, and Vienna, the largesses of the Roths- childs, and the missions of such benevolent men as Sir Moses Montefiore, the Christian concern of many nations has been redundantly exercised for this remnant of Israel in the city of David. In proportion to its results, the mission to the Jews, in which England and Prussia co-operate, is the most expensive Evangelical work in the world. The endowments of the episcopal establishment near the Jaffa Gate, with its showy cathedral, its college, hospital, houses for the staff, and VOL. Lxxxvi. NO. 178. 18 206 JERUSALEM. [Jan. palace for the bishop, its numerous and liberal salaries, vary- ing from fifty to fifteen hundred pounds, its funds for relief of the destitute, assistance to the converts, and encouragement for the wavering, reach a prodigious figure, when the number of converts is considered. Up to 1854, the sum of the prose- lytes had amounted to ninety-nine; enough to make the expense of each convert somewhat more than a thousand pounds. The title of the resident bishop is very imposing, and his assistants and subordinates form a fair proportion of the congregation which worships in the Gothic cathedral. Yet, in spite of such discouragements, the humanity of Berlin and London perseveres, and if money can bring it about, the tribes of Zion shall yet be won to the joint creed and liturgy of Cranrner and Luther. The success of the most recent American mission, of which iDr. Barclay himself is the head, though not positively very great, has been such as to warrant the renewal of his labors. We must confess, however, that the inspection of the table of missionary effort which is given in the volume before us for- bids the hope