~P1 NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW. No. CCXXXIV. JANUARY, 18T2. ART. I. POOR-LAW ADMINISTRATION IN NEW ENGLAND. THE scope of this paper will be to show, by the exhibition of such facts as seem pertinent and are accessible, first, whether poverty is increasing in New England or not; and next, if it appears not to be gaining ground, to point out some causes, greater or less, of such a state of things. Among the lesser causes that check the extreme form of poverty known as pauperism, it is hoped to prove that the poor-law administra- tion of New England, and particularly the policy of Massachu- setts, which has been of late maligned and misconstrued for political purposes, holds an important place. At the outset I would observe, in entire accord with Pro- fessor Fawcetts remarks on this point, though compelled to dissent from his conclusions in many cases, that the rapid accumulation of wealth in a community by no means protects it from the worst evils of poverty known to modern life. There is a certain truth as well as an epigrammatic point in Gold- smiths well-worn couplet, Ill fares the land, to hastening ills a prey, Where wealth accumulates and men decay, though it was not so true in Goldsmiths day as in that of Professor Fawcett. How comes it, asks that able writer on English pauperism, that the augmented produce of agricul VOL. cxiv. NO. 234. 1 2 Poor-Law Administration in New England. [Jan. ture is so distributed that the condition of those who till the soil Las not only not improved, but has in some eases retro- graded? How, again, does it happen that the greater is the wealth acc.umulated in our large towns, the deeper seem to be the depths of poverty into which vast multitudes sink? ~ These are the same complaining questions that Goldsmith asked a century ago, and with less reason than they are now asked in England. There is even some excuse for asking the second one in New England, where, in a few of the cities, the depths of sickening poverty are quite discernible, amid the evidences of great and fast-growing wealth. But that the poor, as well as the rich, are growing richer in New England, however it may be in the mother-country, cannot well be doubted, when we consider the whole population of a State or even of a county. For, while pauperism, which is the final stage of poverty, is perhaps keeping pace with the growth ot population in some of the New England cities, it is absolutely stationary, if not receding, in the six States as a whole, and is actually diminishing in Massachusetts, which now has a popu- lation nearly as large as all the rest of New England.t At the same time, the valuation of property is increasing much faster than the gain in population, and that share of this in- crease which falls to the industrious classes, or to those who may be called, in a general way, poor, is a very large one4 This is known in various ways, among others by the constant and rapid increase of those deposits in savings banks which come from the laboring poor; by the testimony of town and city assessors, who have reason to know how the facts stand; and by the con- * Pauperism, its Causes and Remedies. By Henry Fawcett, M. A., M. P., etc. London and New York: Macmillan & Co. 1871. The passage quoted is on the fourth page. t The population of all New England in June, 1870, was 3,487,924, and now no donht exceeds 3,550,000. Massachusetts, which then had 1,457,351, has now more than 1,500,000 people, leaving hut about 2,000,000 in the other five States. The density to the square mile in Massachusetts now is nearly 200, while that of Great Britain and Ireland is hut little more than 250. ~ The taxables of Massachusetts, including the deposits in savings hanks, the tax- able excess of corporation property, and the stock of national banks, amounted in 1870 to 1,647,423,623, while in 1865 this amount was hut $ 1,132,675,881. The gain in population in these five years was not quite 200,000, or sixteen per cent, while the gain in taxables yes hardly less than fifty per cent. 1872.] Poor-Law Administration in New England. 3 tinual purchases of real estate by the laboring poor, especially those of Irish parentage, which the registry of deeds discloses in most of the rural counties of New England. Indeed, one of the things complained of by those who lament the decay of farming in Massachusetts is this great change in the ownership of land, passing, as it so often does, from the family that had held it ever since the township was settled, in the seventeenth or eighteenth century, into the grasp of persons born in Europe, or of their children in the first generation. This is a change sometimes to be regretted on local or senti- mental grounds, but one that is producing excellent effects on this new class of landholders. It is giving them a stake in the country, and transforming them from a mere proletariat, as they exist in New York and other great cities, into a terri- torial democracy, to borrow a happy phrase from Mr. Disraeli. So much for the growth and the distribution of wealth. Looking now at the growth and distribution of pauperism, the negative of wealth, we find a singular state of things, already remarked upon by the present writer in this iReview.* From all the statistics that offer them~elves, including the pauperism tables of the census of 1870, now going through the press at Washington, the number of paupers in New England appears to be actually less than in 1860, though the population in the mean time has increased about twelve per cent. The census report of 1860 represents the number of paupers in New Eng- land, June 1, 1860, as 18,133; the report for 1870 gives the num- ber on the 1st of June that year as less than 16,000. Neither report is very correct in its figures, but probably. the errors were no greater in 1870 than in 1860, and therefore we may regard these statistics as showing a decrease in the number of paupers amounting to about one and a quarter per cent a year since 18604 In Massachusetts we have the authority of care- * See an article on Poverty and Public Charity, in the North American Re- view for April, 1870. t The census table of 1870 is somewhat more in detail than that of 1860, but the general result for each of the New England States, after ndding the State pau- pers omitted in Massachnsetts, stands thus Number of paupers supported in Maine, June 1, 1860, 4,618; June 1, 1870, 3,631 : in New Hampshire (1860), 2,311 (18:0), 2,129: Vermont (1860), 1,850; (1870), 1,785: Massachusetts (1860), 6,503; (1870), 5,819: Rhode Island (1860), 613; (1570),634; Connecticut (1860),2,23s; (1870), 1,705. 4 Poor-Law Administration in New England. [Jan. fully prepared yearly reports for saying that this decrease has actually been taking place there, and the same general causes that operate there would affect the other New England States about equally. We find that, iii Massachusetts, the average number of State and town paupers receiving in-door relief was 5,276 in 1860, 4,983 in 18(35, and only 4,457 in 1870; a de- crease, in ten years, of fifteen per cent, or one and a half per cent a year. In the class of State paupers, in consequence chiefi~ of the labors of the Board of State Charities, the de- crease was even greater. The average number of this class, including pauper lunatics, was 2,537 in 1860, 2,591 in 1865, 2,150 in 1870, and 2,125 in 1871. The number receiving in- door relief from the State on the 1st of October in each year was as follows: 1860, 2,322; 1861, 3,112; 1862, 2,748; 1863, 2,544; 1864, 2,307; (from the State and towns, 5,814;) 1865, 2,259; (State and towns, 6,110;) 1866, 2,148; (State and towns, 6,029;) 1867, 2,209; (State and towns, 6,116;) 186~, 2,142; (State and towns, 6,131;) 1869, 1,882; (State and towns, 5,727;) 1870, 1,737 ; (State and towns, 5,574;) 1871, 1,785; (State and towns about 5,700.) Here the comparison is imperfect, for we have not the exact number of those receiv- ing in-door relief at the expense of the towns previous to 1865, and therefore cannot give the total of both classes of the poor, on the 1st of October, 1860 and 1861. It cannot well have been less then 6,400 at that date in 1860, and 7,000 in 1861. Here, too, for special reasons, the numbers vary more from year to year than in the comparisons given above, and the regularity of the decrease of pauperism is not so obvious. But the general deduction to be drawn from the pauper statis- tics of Massachusetts is this, that though the cost of relieving the poor has much augmented since 1860, their number has diminished from ten to fifteen per cent. In regard to this increased cost of relieving the public poor, Mr. Goschen, President of the English Poor Law Board in 1870, made some judicious remarks in his report of that year.* He said: The same number of paupers cost at the present day very much more than twenty years ago. Several causes have contributed to this result. It cannot be denied that the w * Twenty-second Annual Report of the Poor-Law Board, p. x. 1 872.] Poor-Law Administration in New England. S more humane views which have prevailed during the last few years, as to the treatment of the sick poor, have added most materially to poor-law expenditure. Workhouses, originally designed mainly as a test for the able bodied, have, especially in the large towns, been of necessity gradually transferred into infirmaries for the sick; and the higher standard for hospital accommodations has had a material effect upon the expendi- ture. This explanation of the increase in the English outlay for the poor is true in New England ; besides which we have the additional circumstance that our currency has depreciated greatly in purchasing power within ten years past, so that a dollar goes no further now than seventy-five cents did in 1860. In consequence of all causes, the pauper expenses of New Eng- land, in general, have risen to be nominally sixty per cent more than they were in 1859 60. At that time, according to the defective census report, the sum expended in the six States was $1,249,913; in 1869 70, according to the last census report, which is rather more exact, the sum expended was $ 2,180,496.* Nearly half of this money was expended in the single State of Massachusetts, which, from its position and the character of its industry, has attracted within its borders more of the class from which paupers come than the other States have, in proportion to their population. In Massachusetts, also, the appliances for the better treatment of the poor are more in use than in the other States. Here, then, we have an apparent paradox; the State in which the number of the public poor has decreased most is also that in which the expenditure for their relief increases fastest, so far as we can judge by the imperfect returns from the other States. At any rate, this is true of the pauper expenses of the cities and towns of Massachusetts, which, in 1859, were but $522,313, and in 1869 were reported as $854,609; an appar * Making allowance for the increased population, here would be an increased ex- penditure of just about sixty per cent. But we know that the pauper expenses of Massachusetts in 1859 60 exceeded the sum named in the census report by about $ 180,000, the true expenditure in that State being some $ 760,000. This makes it probable that the actual sum expended in all New England was more than $ 1,500,000 in 1859 60. In the census report of 1870 the pauper expenses of Massachusetts are given as $ 1,108,574, which is but little less than the true amount the actual sum in all New England was perhaps $ 2,450,000. 6 Poor-Law Administration in New England. [Jan. ent increase in ten years of $ 331,704, or more than sixty per cent. During the same period the pauper expenses of the State, for its beneficiaries, only increased about $ 60,000, or a little more than twenty-five per cent, an excess that can be fully accounted for by the depreciation in the value of the currency. But whether our seeming paradox is true or not, there can be little doubt that the better classification and more humane treatment of the poor, against which General Butler declaimed so loosely, does really diminish their number, if it is accom- panied with a strict supervision of the poor-law administration. The experience of Massachusetts since 1863 proves this; and we find that, while the average amount of money expended on each poor person is greater than formerly, the whole number of the poor is so much reduced, that those supported by the State now cost no more in the aggregate than they did in 1860, after allowance has been made for the change in the value of money. In fact, the State officials whom General Butler accused of ex- travagance had been demonstrating, for eight years, the most economical as well as the most humane method of dealing with the poor, which had ever been put in practice in New England, inasmuch as it was the method by which the adult poor were best cared for, and their children preserved from growing up to pauperism. The example set by Massachusetts since 1863 has already been followed in Rhode Island, and now New Hampshire is in the way to repeat the same experience. In course of time we may reasonably expect Maine, Vermont, and Connecticut to take a similar course ; but before that time, probably, Massachusetts will have come nearer to the present system of poor-law administration in those three States; having passed from (1) Local Relief without State supervision, through a period of (2) Mixed Local and State Relief, to (3) Local Relief supplemented and supervised by the State. These are the three progressive stages of poor-law administration in Massachusetts; the first having been discon- tinued since 1854, and the second and third now existing side by side, until, in course of time, the third stage shall take the place of both the others. In the opinion of those best qualified to judge, this third method Local (or Municipal) Relief, supplemented and supervised by the State is that which 1872.] Poor-Law Adrninistratjon in New England. 7 must ultimately be adopted in order to reduce pauperism in New England t.o a minimum, and keep it there. By means of it, coupled, as it naturally would be, with a good understanding between the poor-law authorities of the several States, such as now exists between the overseers of the poor in different towns of the same State, it will be comparatively easy to prevent the formation, in New England, of such a persistent class of paupers as is now the curse of the mother-country. In former numbers of this iReview the poor-laws of New England have been historically traced, and the origin of the large class of persons in Massachusetts known as State paupers~ has been explained ; * as well as the modifications in their condition recently made under the administration of the Massachusetts Board of Charities. Without repeating these former statements, when repetition ean be avoided, it may be permitted to continue the discussion thus begun, and to indicate the present condition of the laws of pauper settle- ment and the general management of the poor in the six States of New England. In only two of these, as we understand, have the settlement laws been materially changed since April, 1868, namely, in Massachusetts and New Hampshire. In the former, the terms of settlement have been made so much easier by the act of June 9, 1868 (removing the restriction of citizen- ship, imposed by the statute of 1794), by the more liberal pro- visions of the acts of 1868 and 1870 concerning military settlements, by the grudging admission of single women to a settlement by residence, and by cutting off all settlements prior to 1794, that the class of State paupers has been very consider- ably diminished in number, and many of the poor who used to be sent to State almshouses are now relieved or supported in the place of their residence. In the gradual operation of the new laws the State pauper class will be still further diminished, until it is probable they will not number more than a fourth part of all the paupers in the State, instead of half, as formerly. In New Hampshire the effect of legislation has been precisely the reverse of this, and more like what Massachusetts did in 1850 1854. There is no class of State paupers in New * See a paper on The Poor-Laws of New En~Jand in this Review for April, 1868, and one on Poverty and Public Charity, in April, 1870. 8 Poor-Law Administration in New England. [Jan. Hampshire, but the unsettled poor, who in Massachusetts are supported from the State treasury, are there maintained by the several counties, and are termed county paupers. Till within the last ten years, this class in New Hampshire was small; but two successive acts, one before 1868, cutting off all settlements prior to 1820, and another since 1868, bringing this date down to 1840, have had such a sweeping effect that, in most counties, the settled poor are now much less numerous than the unsettled or county poor. Coincident with this growth of the class of county paupers, large county almshouses have sprung up, and are now maintained in all, or nearly all, the ten counties of the State. From the published reports of these county almshouses it would seem that the class of permanent county paupers is much larger, in proportion to the population, than is the class of permanent State paupers in Massachusetts. In the five New Hampshire counties of Rockiugham, Strafford, Hullsborough, Belkuap, and Carroll, containing 176,791 inhab- itants, in 1870, less than an eighth part of the population of Massachusetts, the average number of county paupers sup- ported at the five almshouses * was 478, in 1870. If this pro- portion held good in Massachusetts of the State paupers, their average number ought to be nearly 4,000, whereas it is but little more than half that. It is plain, therefore, that the unsettled or county poor in New Hampshire are more numerous than the settled or town poor; indeed, in some counties they are esti- mated at three times as many. Probably in the whole State the proportion is about two to one, whereas ten years ago it was perhaps three to one the other way; the town poor being then much the most numerous. One result of this change has been that the town almshouses have been sold, in a great many in- * The county almshouse of Rockingham is in Brentwood, near Epping; that of Strafford at Dover; of Hhlisborough at Wilton; of Belkuap at Laconia; of Carroll at Ossipee. The average numher of paupers at these establishments in 1870 was, in the order given above, 130, 135, 107, 60, and 46; in all, 478. Of these at least a fourth part were insane or idiotic persons. The counties also supported and relieved a great many of their poor in the towns of their residence, probably more in num- ber than those at the almshouses. In the five counties above named the whole number of different persons at the county almshonses, in 1870, was about 800; the number of outside poor was perhaps 1,200, and their average number 220. The cost of both classes was about $ 80,000. 1872.] Poor-Law Administration in New England. 9 stances, so that the number of these establishments is hardly more than half what it was in 1868.* The change in New Hampshire from the old mode of local support to the present system of district almshouses is, there- fare, much greater than the change in Massachusetts when the State almshouses were opened in 1854; for the latter, at the utmost, never contained more than two thirds as many inmates as were left in the town and city almshouses; while in New Hampshire there are, as we have estimated, about twice as many in-door paupers of the counties as of the towns. In other respects the case of the two States is not unlike, with this dif- ference, that the New Hampshire law unsettling the poor loses something of its force with every successive year, so that the relative number of town paupers will increase constantly, while the Massachusetts laws, for at least ten years after 1854, tended to enlarge the relative number of the unsettled or State paupers. The change in New Hampshire has been followed, as in Massa- chusetts, by a great mortality among the poor transplanted from their places of residence to the large county almshouses; most of them being old or infirm persons, to whom an entire change of surrounding~ is often as fatal as an epidemic dis- ease.f From this and other causes, a great prejudice against the county almshouses exists in the minds of the New Hamp- shire poor, which will eventually result in an extension of the system of local relief at their homes, as has been the case in Massachusetts. What is especially lacking in New Hampshire * The present writer estimated the whole number of town and city almshouses in New England, in 1868, at 600. Notwithstanding the decrease in New Hamp- shire, it is probable that the present number is at least 650; there are also three State almshouses in Massachusetts, a State Workhouse, and a State Primary School; in Rhode Island a State Workhouse and an Asylum for the chronic in- sane, on the State farm at Cranston; and in New Hampshire nine or ten county almshouses. Reckoning the inmates of these establishments, and also the pauper lunatics in various establishments, the in-door poor of New England average per- haps 14,000. t Out of 147 persons remaining in the Strafford County almshouse, March 1, 1871, 63 were above fifty years old and 23 above seventy; of 105 at the Hills- borough almshouse, 52 were above fifty and 16 above seventy; of 136 in the Rock- iagham almshouse, 70 were above fifty and 30 above seventy; of 76 supported in the Belknap almshouse, 40 were above fifty and 22 above seventy. The average age of the New Hampshire county paupers is nearly fifty years, of the Massachu- setts State paupers less than thirty years. 10 Poor-Law Administration in New England. [Jan. is a general State supervision; at present the several counties do not even report to each other or to the State the numbers, cost, etc. of their poor; nor do the towns report to the county com- missioners nor to the State authorities, save in case of persons for whom aid is sought, either of the county or State. Such reports will eventually be required by law, as in Massachusetts, most likely; and it would be of great service to the public if a single State official had the general supervision of all the alms- houses and establishments where the poor are supported. One of these establishments is the State Asylum for the Insane at Concord, where about one hundred poor persons were last year maintained at the expense of the towns and counties, and. some thirty were aided by the State. A great many of these pauper lunatics have been removed from the Asylum within the past few years to the county almshouses, where they are maintained at much less cost, but not always in the most satisfactory man- ner. Another feature of the county almshouses is the exist- ence in several of them of a workhouse or house of correc- tion, to which persons of the pauper class are sentenced for minor offences; and in two counties, at least, Belkuap and Carroll, the small county jails are included within the alms- house limits, and managed by the keeper of the poor. This mixture of paupers and criminals in one establishment is objec- tionable, but, for the present, it seems inevitable. We also find that many of the towns board their own poor at the county almshouses, in preference to maintaining them at home, which is one of the many facts showing that the present mode of sup- porting the poor is more economical than the former one. * The whole tendency of the system is to diminish and check pauperism in New Hampshire. The fact that Rhode Island had adopted a pauper system in some respects similar to that of Massachusetts was briefly men- * The census report for 1870 gives the whole number of paupers in New Hamp- shire, June 1, 1870, as 2,129, of whom all but fifteen were white, and only 375 were of foreign birth. It is probable that about one thousand of these were in-door pau- pers, and between eleven and twelve hundred were in receipt of out-door relief. The total cost of the poor for 186970, as given, is $235,126; it probably exceeded $ 250,000. Assuming the census figures to be correct, the number of the public poor in New Hampshire is somewhat greater than in Massachusetts, in proportion to the population, and their cost a little less. 1872.] Poor-Law Administration in New England. 11 tioned in these pages in 1870. The IRhode Island Board of State Charities and Corrections was established by law in 1869, and empowered to construct upon the State farm at Cranston the necessary buildings for receiving the insane, vicious, and honest poor of the State. The first class were to be maintained in an Asylum for Incurable Insane; the vicious were to be sentenced to a State Workhouse, modelled after that at Bridgewater in Massachusetts; and for the honest poor a State Almshouse was to be built. The latter has not yet been built, and this class of the Rhode Island poor are still kept in the town and city almshouses, unless they are insane. The Workhouse was first opened July 1, 1869, and up to January 1, 1871 had received 452 sentenced persons, of whom 169 remained at that date. The Asylum was opened Novem- ber 7, 1870, and on January 1, 1871, contained 118 insane persons, reckoned incurable, of whom 93 were removed from lunatic hospitals, and 25 from city and town almshouses. A little more than half of these insane (62) were town paupers; the rest (56) were supported by the State. The inmates of the State Workhouse, averaging about 140, seem to be sup- ported wholly by the State. The annual cost to the State of these persons (nearly two hundred in both classes) would seem to be about $ 25,000 for 1870. The sums expended by the thirty-six cities and towns of Rhode Island for in-door paupers during the same year was $45,656 (the average num- ber supported being 514) ; and for out-door relief $ 42,320 (the whole number aided being 3,782); making a total of pauper expenses for the municipalities of $87,956. Adding to this the $25,000 expended by the State, and the cost of pauper lunatics at the Butler Hospital and elsewhere, the whole cost for the year was about $ 120,000.* In proportion to the popula- tion, therefore, both the number fully supported and the whole cost are cc~nsiderably less than in Massachusetts, but the num- ber receiving out-door relief is greater, and their cost about the same. The success of the new system in Rhode Island has * The census report gives the cost for 1869 70 as $ 97,702, which probably rep- resents only the municipal expenditure. The number of paupers supported June 1, 1870, is given as 634; of whom 35 were colored, and 192 were of foreign birth. No account is here taken of those partially supported, of whom more than three fifths were foreign born. 12 Poor-Law Administration in New England. [Jan. not been very marked as yet; there have been many changes in the State Board and its subordinates, and the condition of things at the State establishments has been experimental and unsettled. Much has been done, however, by the able Secre- tary of the Board, Dr. E. M. Snow of Providence, and the agent, Mr. Wightman, to exhibit the character and cost of pauperism in the State, and something has been accomplished toward checking its growth, by the new policy of removals and sentences. State supervision in Rhode Island has been firmly established, ajid, in time, will show satisfactory results. In Maine, Vermont, and Connecticut, the old system of local support without State supervision continues, as has been said, but efforts are constantly making in the last-nam~d State to change it. Connecticut has opened, since 1868, a large State Hospital, chiefly for pauper lunatics, at Middletown, and now maintains there, at the cost of the State or the municipalities, two hundred or more of this class, mostly incurable. The town and city almshouses also contain many pauper lunatics and im- beciles, but no report gives the true number of these or of the paupers as a whole.* The increasing number of State estab- lishments for charitable uses, and the rapid growth of the foreign pauper element in the Connecticut population, will probably soon lead, as they ought, to the erection of a State Board of Charities, such as now exist in nine or ten States of the Union.t In Maine and Vermont no such boards are likely to be established at present, so far as appears, nor is * The census report for 1870 states the pauper expenses of Connecticut in 1869 70 as only $ 189,918, or less than half the cost of New Hampshire in propor- tion to the population; the paupers supported, June 1, 1870, are given as 1,705, of whom 114 are colored, and 468 of foreign birth. No account is here made of the number relieved and partially supported, and probably the cost of this class, and of the lunatic poor at Middletown, is also omitted. We cannot estimate the actual pauper expenses of Connecticut at less than $ 260,000, and tbey are more likely to be $ 300,000. Even then they would be much less, proportionately, than those of Massachusetts. t The States maintaining such hoards, with the date of the acts creating them, are as follows: Massachusetts, April 9, 1863; Ohio, April 17, 1867; New York, May 23, 1867; Illinois, early in 1869; North Carolina, April 10, 1869; Penusyl- vania, April 24, 1869; Rhode Island, May 28, 1869; Wisconsin, March 23, 1871. It is believed that Michigan and California also organized such hoards last year; if so, tbey exist in States having a population of more than 16,000,000, or nearly half the whole people. 1872.] Poor-Law Administration in New England. 13 any material change proposed in the prevailing system of local support for the poor. Each of these States has a lunatic hos- pital (at Augusta and Brattleborough), where pauper lunatics are maintained at the charge of the State or of the towns and cities. That of Vermont has also contained, till recently, many of the pauper lunatics of Connecticut, Rhode Island, and Mas- sachusetts. In both States and in Connecticut the unsettled poor are relieved in the towns where they are found, except such as are sent to the lunatic hospitals, or moved on from town to town by frugal overseers, who often remove them un- lawfully to neighboring States. Acts of this kind give r~~se to much ill-feeling along the State borders, and the througl~nes of railroads connecting different States: they should dered inexcusable by an official understanding ai~~o~~g the authorities, such as now prevails between Rhode Island and Massachusetts. Nothing has been done to effect this, however, since 1868.* Returning now to Massachusetts, from which we have such full statistical returns every year, we find, as above stated, that, in spite of the growth of population, pauperism is decreasing. The number of the town and city poor is slightly increased, to be sure, in consequence of the great changes in the law of set- tlement, but much less than would be supposed. In 327 of the 340 towns and cities of Massachusetts, the whole number of paupers fully supported was some fifty less in 1871 than in 1870, though the average number was slightly greater, and the cost of support and relief a little increased. The number relieved and partially supported is also about the same as in 1870, when, for the whole State, it was 23,874; the reported cost of such relief being less than $ 300,000, or a little more than one third of the whole pauper expenditure, as it is in Rhode Island.t The number of the vagrant or casual poor grows * The census report gives the paupers supported in Maine, June 1, 1870, as 3,631, of whom 39 were colored, and 443 of foreign birth; the annual cost for 1869 70 is returned as ~ 370,548, which appears to be ~vithin $ 50,000 of the true cost. In Bangor, then a city of 18,500 inhabitants, the cost in 186970 was $ 13,825, or seventy-five cents for each inhabitant. At this rate the wbolc Stite would have paid $470,187. In Vermont the reportcd cost was $ 178,628, but it pm bably ex- ceeded $200,000. Tbe Vermont paupers, June 1, 1870, are givcn as 1,785 (more than Connecticuts), of whom 31 were colored, and 523 of foreign birth. t In the city of New York the cost of out-door relief is but $ 120,000, or less than 14 Poor-Law Administration in New England. [Jan. larger year by year, but measures have been taken recently to diminish them, by arrest and sentence of such as are profes- sional tramps and vagabonds.* The whole reported cost of supporting and relieving the poor in the towns and cities of Massachusetts was last year larger than ever before, and rose, probably, to $ 880,000; a portion of this, however, is reim- bursed by the State, or between one municipality and another, so that the actual cost will not exceed $ 880,000 in all proba- bility. In 1870 the reported cost was $ 854,609, and the actual cost a little more than $ 800,000. The increase has been mainly, perhaps wholly, in the cities and large towns, where pauperism is hardest to deal with. In Suffolk County, for example, with a present population of perhaps 285,000, the pauper expenses, which were but $ 129,443 in 1870, and in the two preceding years less than $ 131,000, in 1871 went up to $ 144,303, an increase in one year of nearly $ 15,000, or more than eleven per cent. In the city of Boston alone the increase was $ 15,078, the rest of Suffolk County having expended less than in 1870. In Boston also the whole number of persons fully supported rose from 960 in 1870 to 1,009 in 1871, and the average number from 434 to 523, showing a more perma- nent class of paupers; the number relieved rose from 5,246 in 1870 to 6,104 in 1871. Very much of this increase is due to the operation of the new settlement laws, which transfer per- sons from the State-pauper class to the list of municipal poor; something is owing, no doubt, to the gain in population, and something to other causes. The number of the State poor has, one eighth of the whols 1)~~~P?t expenditure of the city authoritie3; in Philadel- J)llia it was in 1869 70 only $86,003, or scarcely more than one eighth of the whole cost of the poor ($ 488,346). The whole number of per~ons receiving this out-door relief in New York is not stated, hut is probably ahout 30,000; in Phila- delphia, though given by Profes~or Fawcett as 110,000 (!) it did not probably exceed 20,000. * Although the number of these vagrants looks formidable when made up to in- clude nil vho have had lodgiugs (luring the year at the three hundred almshouses and police-stations which receive them, it should he remembered that those lodged at any oue time are comparatively few, never more than 500 in a siugle night for the whole State, and averaging less than 300, or not a twentieth part of all tha paupers relicved and suplborted. Even in England, with its 22,000,000 people, nod its six or seven hundrel workhouses, the avera~e number of these vagrants lodged at the public cost does not exceed 7,000. (See Twenty-Second Report of the Poor- Law Board, p. xxxii.) 15 1872.] Poor-Law Administration in New England. of course, diminished since 1870, and the cost of their support is also somewhat less, especially in the lunatic hospitals, where the new laws of settlement have greatly changed the propor- tion between the two classes of pauper lunatics. Two years ago, the three State hospitals contained about an equal number of State and of town patients, 430 of each class, the pri- vate patients being a little more than one fourth of the whole number. On the 1st of October last the State patients had fallen to 348, or but little more than a fourth of the whole number (1,238) ; while the town patients had gone up to 528, and the private patients from 301 in 1869 to 362.* The aver- age number of State poor of all classes, including the convicts at Bridgewater, the school-children at Monson, and the sick poor supported by the State in the towns, was a little less in 1871 than in 1870, about 2,120; but the number sup- ported October 1, 1871, was about 1,925 against a few less than 1,900 a year before. This slight increase was not in those strictly classed as paupers, but among the convicts and the school-children, especially the latter, in consequence of the vigorous operation of the new Visiting Agency Act, which reduces the number of children in the prisons and reforma- tories, but swells that in the State Primary School. The boys and girls in the three State reformatories, who numbered 620 in October, 1870, and 704 in October, 1869, were but 547, October 1, 1871, a decrease of more than one fifth in two years, attended with a corresponding reduction in the cost of their maintenance. These figures will have little meaning or interest for the casual reader, but they have been introduced to serve as evidence and justification for the conclusions about to be drawn, and the statements with which this essay will close. It may be said, without the least fear of contradiction, in view of the facts pre- sented, and in spite of the seemingly adverse opinions main- * Out of 1,965 insane persons in the seven hospitals and asylums of Masaehu- setts, October 1, 1870, 663 were supported by the State, 728 by the cities and towns, and 574 by their own property or that of their friends. About one hundred of the last class were from oiher States, so that about three fourths of the patients belong- ing to Mass~ehusetts were paupers. On the 1st of last October the State patients were about 644, the town patients 810, and the private patients 575. 16 Poor-Law Administration in New England. [Jan. tamed by the Massachusetts Labor Bureau, that pauperism in New England, as a whole, and in Massachusetts particularly, has ceased to keep pace with the growth of the population, and is in fact declining; that the condition of the class immediately above the paupers, and from which they are chiefly drawn, was rarely, if ever, better in New England than now, so that fewer and fewer of this class every year fail of self-support, although the proportion of women among them constantly increases; that one cause of the check given to pauperism in Massachu- setts has been the improved poor-law administration for the past eight or ten years, for which the Board of State Charities is mainly responsible; and that the good results of that admin- istration may now be proved by figures and by the testimony of all well-informed persons. The general policy of Drs. Howe, Allen, and Wheelwright, and their associates on this board, was briefly described in these pages in 1870 as one of thor- ough classification and of diffusion among the people, as far as possible, of the exceptional classes with which public charity is compelled to deal; and the outlines of the work done in developing this policy were hastily sketched. Mention was made of the creation of a State Workhouse, a State Primary School for poor children, a Visiting Agency for these children, and an agency to care for the out-door relief of a portion of the State paupers. In the two years since elapsed the work has been steadily carried forward, especially by the three establishments last named, while the Bridgewater Workhouse, though by no means perfect in its plan or its management, has, on the whole, served a useful purpose. The acts relating to the Workhouse are twofold; one disposes of the vicious and lazy who are actually committed to the State almshouses; the other intercepts them in the cities and towns, and causes them to be sentenced at once without the interposition of such com- mitment, which can readily be effected by the co-operation of the local authorities. If the whole number of the vicious adult poor committed to the almshouses for the past five years exceeds twelve hundred, more than eleven hundred have been actually sentenced to the State Workhouse. For the vicious children and those exposed to vice, three State reformatories were pro- vided as long ago as 1860, two on land and one at sea. 1872.] Poor-Law Administration in New England. iT The State Primary School at Monson is not strictly a reform- atory, for it does not receive children because they are vicious, but because they are poor and friendless. Although coming from the pauper class, its pupils are not State paupers in the eyes of the law, but wards and pupils whom the State has undertaken to teach and provide for. It is established in the buildings erected for a State almshouse, and naturally, in the minds of many persons, is still regarded as an almshouse school; but such was not its character when first opened in 1866, and every succeeding year has raised it higher in grade and made more evident to the public the function which it per- forms, and the necessity for its existence. The Visiting Agency was first created by the Board of Charities as an auxiliary to this school, but when established by statute in 1869 it became much more extensive in its operations, and may now be regarded as a peripatetic reformatory, intermediate between the three previous ones and the Monson School. It has constantly under its charge more wards of the State than are found in all the public reformatories in Massachusetts, the number being in the neighborhood of 2,000, and fast increasing. It received and disposed of more than 500 children during the year ending October 1, 1870, of whom less than half were sentenced to the three State reformatories, while nearly one half were provided for without sending the children to any public establishment whatever. It probably relieves the public institutions of at least 200 children every year who would otherwise be commit- ted, and it shortens the period of detention for all those whQ are committed. It deals, in course of a single year, with more unfortunate and vicious children than have ever come under public supervision in Massachusetts before, and disposes of them with greater wisdom and humanity than had ever been officially directed to this class of the poor.* The officers of the * Mr. Gardner Tufts, the present Visiting Agent, said in his Report for 1870: There were on the 1st of October, 1870, 952 children in the institutions named. There were admitted during the year 663; 245 of these were dependent children, 250 new commitments, 130 returned from places and escape; 38 received by transfer and from Visiting Agent. There went out by the several ways of discharge, pro- bation, indenture, etc., 670 children. The average number of minors under sixteen years arraigned before the courts for offences of which the A~ency has cognizance violation of town by-laws or city ordinances, and crimes punishable by imprison- VOL. cXIV.NO. 234. 18 Poor-Law Administration in New England. [Jan. Agency are to attend the trials of all children under sixteen, and see that their interests are protected and themselves prop- erly disposed of. At each trial the Agent or his assistant appears, listens to the testimony, and sifts the evidence by examination of the witnesses; then gives the judge the infor- ination gained elsewhere by the investigation, and urges such considerations as are proper in favor of the accused. His policy is not to secure in all cases an acquittal of the child, but to bring about his reformation or preserve him from a vicious life. If the offence proved is a trivial one, he is not sent to a reform- atory, but placed on a farm or in a workshop; if he is too young or too ignorant to have comprehended the nature of his offence, he is sent to the Primary School, where he is reckoned iieither a pauper nor a criminal, and has a chance for education without contact with convicted offenders. If the offence ap- pears exceptional, and if the childs appearance and surround- ings are such as to give promise of future correct behavior, and if it be the first offence, he is put on probation, and becomes one of the wards of the State by adoption. In other cases he is formally and legally committed to the Agent and comes under his control independent of the parents, except as the Agent permits; but is allowed to return to the parents and remain with them so long as he does well. Those iiitended for the Primary School and those placed in the custody of the Agent for indenture, are also legally committed to the Board of Chari- ties, and the control of parents is suspended. The practical working of this instrumentality for preventing crime and pauperism by looking after the neglected children and giving them a chance in the world, is most satisfactory. No reformatory does so much for its pupils as this Agency does, and it more than justifies the forecasting wit of Judge Hoar, who, when asked (in the days of John Augustus, the Boston philanthropist, who bailed boys brought before the courts for petty crimes) to support in the General Court a scheme to enlarge the great reform school at Westborough, objected, but said he would favor an appropriation to put a couple of wings ment for life are excepted is five and two thirds daily, or 1,773 annually. These statements show the numher of children with whom the Visiting Agency has to do, and in a general way the conditions and circumstances which connect it with them. 1872.] Poor-Law Administration in New England. 19 to John Augustus. The new Visiting Agency furnishes the wings, and sets three or four Augustuses flying over the State, doing their work even better than the original John. Quite as important in another way, as leading back toward the former system of local support for the poor, with careful State supervision, are the results of the Agency to visit the sick State poor, and to audit the bills for their support at or near their own homes. Formerly there was no out-door relief granted to the State paupers, except at the expense of the towns and cities, and the money thus expended was only re- imbursed by the State in a very few special cases. The rule was to carry the State poor, when ill, to a State almshouse, though it might be a hundred miles off, and the poor creatures might die on the journey. Since 1865 this has been changed, and the experience gained under the law of 1863, as set forth in the reports of Dr. Wheelwright, proves that the sick are now cared for no less tenderly, more economically, and with less risk of pauperizing their families, outside of the State almshouses than inside. It appears that nearly 1,600 sick and infirm persons are aided or supported at an expense, during the year, of about $ 25,000, including the whole cost of supervision. From one fifth to one half this number of sick persons were formerly sup- ported during the year at IRainsford Island, at a yearly cost exceeding $25,000; while the mere supervision of this number of inmates in the State almshouse at Tewksbnry during the past year has cost more than half the sum named. It is further to be considered that there were dependent upon these 1,600 invalids, or closely connected with them, as many more persons, children and others, who must have gone to a State almshouse, or otherwise been thrown upon the public for support, if the invalids themselves had been sent thither. And once in an almshouse, it often happens that such persons, especially chil- dren, remain there much longer than their own good or that of the public requires. It is easier to get into an almshouse some- times than to get out, and the period of dependeiice, in many cases, is unnecessarily lengthened by commitment to an alms- house. An observation of this fact, and of the pauperization that results from such commitments, long ago led the Board of Charities to favor a change in the practice, and now they are 20 Poor-Law Administration in New England. [Jan. disposed to go still further, and extend out-door relief to per- sons not invalids.* This is clean contrary to the maxim of Josiah Quincy, fifty years ago, and to the hypotheses of Profes- sor Fawcett and a good many modern theorists, but it seems to be approved by experience, and is likely to become the practice of Massachusetts, particularly if the almshouse departments at Bridgewater and Monson shall be closed this year, as they ought to be. The changes gradually wrought, by which a school and a workhouse have practically been substituted for two of the State almshouses, have been generally accepted as a great improve- ment; but these changes now need to be completed by devot- ing the establishments at Monson and Bridgewater entirely to what is now their main purpose. When this shall have been done, there will be but one State almshouse in Massachusetts, that in Tewksbury, and the State poor of the western and southern counties, to whom Tewksbury is virtually inaccessible, will most naturally be provided for in their own locality, as the sick now are. Respecting the treatment of insanity, and the questions thence arising, the Massachusetts policy now is to classify the insane more carefully than has usually been done, to place the chronic and virtually incurable by themselves, in some degree, and to favor the experiment of boarding ont the harmless patients in private families, as is done at Gheel and in Scot- land. Dr. Howe, for seven years the chairman of the Board of Charities, and lately re-elected for the present year, warmly advocates this experiment, but he can hardly be said to have converted his associates as yet to his faith, though several of them would like to see it tried. The majority are agreed with him, however, in opposing the building of any more great hos- pitals on the old plan, and would recommend the citizens of Boston to content themselves with a modest building, frugally * In his last annual address, in 1868, Governor Bullock took this view, and said: I earnestly recommend a thorough investigation of the expediency of en- couraging the towns to assist at home worthy and industrious families which have no settlement, with a partial or full reimbursement from the State, in the same manner and under the same supervision as that now adopted for the relief of the sick poor therein. It is clear, to my apprehension, that the grant of a little temporary aid, in the way of fuel or supplies, may save the maintenance of the entire household for months in a public institution. 1872.] Poor-Law Administration in New England. 21 managed, for the two or three hundred lunatics of that city. The general condition of the insane poor has been improved of late years in Massachusetts, as it has in Connecticut and Rhode Island; but the number increases considerably every decade, and there is now urgent need of some extension of the facilities for treating the insane of all classes in New England.* Upon the whole, it would seem that the poor-law administra- tion of New England is well conducted, and that its results in Massachusetts are noteworthy and may be found instructive to other States and communities. At a time when European economists are debating whether the condition of their poor, always bad enough, is not steadily growing worse, and when there is doubt and discouragement about this in some parts of America, it is consoling to find a more cheerful doctrine held in Massachusetts. The volume on Pauperism, by Professor Fawcett, the member of Parliament for Brighton, has been cited on a preceding page, and it is worth reading for the infor- mation it contains, but hardly for its arguments and suggestions. A paper by a much more obscure writer, Mr. Charles Lamport, read before the British Social Science Association, at Newcastle, in October, 1870, is far wiser in its treatment of the inveterate plague of England, pauperism, and its compulsory relief. Holding a middle course between those who denounce and satirize the poor-law system of England, without pointing out an available substitute, such as Fawcett and Dickens, and those who perfunctorily defend the existing method, Mr. Lam- port points out, with much acuteness, the actual bane of the system. He says The poor-law theory is, that all occupiers of houses and lands shall contribute to a general fund, localized for better administration, to make provision against the wants and claims of the destitute. Its practice is that no destitute person, however meritorious, can benefit by this organ- ization without having to pass under something very like the old Roman yoke. On the one side of the Caudine forks, a man stands erect, self- * At the suggestion of the Board of Charities, the asylum for the harmless in- sane at Tewksbury, Mass., in connection with the State almshouse, is to be enlarged this winter. The number of insane and imbecile persons there is now about three hundred. 22 Poor-Law Administration in New England. [Jan. respecting and respected, and with name unstained; on the other side he crouches, a changed and degraded being. He has become a social pariah, hopes destroyed, spirit crushed, reputation gone. Society, be- fore it yields what it dare not refuse, so imbitters the morsel by con- tempt, that neither giver nor receiver is blessed in the act. The terms pauper, parish, poor-relief, all savor of social reproach. The poor are taught that it is virtuous to shrink from everything appertaining to the whole system. A beggar, even, will unblushingly ask for alms to keep himself off the parish. On the other hand, the rich avoid the whole system as something tainted by social leprosy, and equally shrink from all but enforced contact.. From father to son, through many a generation, the unconscious legacy of contempt and hard dealing has descended to us. Nothing testifies so clearly to the prevalent feeling of the upper classes as the persistent rigor of all legislation affecting the poor for eight hundred years. From Saxon serfdom down to modern pauperism the old key-note of contempt and isolation vibrates unchanged. * A volume could not make clearer the fundamental mistake at the bottom of poor-law administration in England. What- ever success has been achieved in dealing with pauperism there or here has been gained by reversing this practice of sus- picion, contempt, and abasement, by classifying the poor accord- ing to their real character and needs, and treating the fund for their relief as an insurance fund, to which they or their repre- sentatives had contributed their full share. The poor-rate is, properly, an insurance premium; the poor-law system of any country should be what Mr. Lamport desires to make that of England, a National Friendly Society. This is what the Massachusetts Board of Charities has always held and taught, and its policy for checking and controlling pauperism is the same as Mr. Lamports scheme, only more extended and reach- ing into details which the English writer did not consider. His four points are, (1) punishment for vagrancy; (2) utilization of the weak or vicious portion of the lowest poor; (3) preven- tion, by voluntary effort, of any pauperizing influence upon the independent poor; and (4) to afford an opening for voluntary almsgiving, without the evils attending either individual effort * Pauperism, its Diagnosis and Treatment. By Charles Lamport. Transactions of the National Association for the Promotion of Social Science, Newcastle-upon. Tyne Meeting, 1870. pp. 527 536. 18~2.] American Criticism; its D~fflculties and Prospects. 23 or institutional organization. All these have been put in prac- tice in Massachusetts; the first and third by the instrumental- ity of the Board of Charities, and with gratifying success, espe- cially in what has been done for the children of the poor by means of the State Primary School and the Visiting Agency. More- over, special efforts have been made to induce the kindred of the poor to provide for them, and to have those needing public re- lief cared for by that community to which they properly belong; and a vigilant supervision has been exercised, so far as the power of the board extended, over the expenditure of money and the methods of relief and of discipline. That the plague of pauperism has never spread widely in America is due mainly to our institutions and the opportunity which is offered to the poor man; that it has been controlled and diminished where a dense population and the varied competitions of industry bad given it a foothold must be ascribed, in part at least, to the measures adopted in Massachusetts since 1863, which have been indicated rather than described in this paper. F. B. SANBORN. ART. II. AMERICAN CRITICISM; ITS DIFFICULTIES AND PROSPECTS. MANY persons have found Crabb Robinsons Diary a heavy book to read through; and he has been suspected of owing the reputation which he enjoyed among his contemporaries to some lucky accidents, such as his acquaintance with more dis- tinguished characters, or his being one of the first Englishmen who thought it worth while to make a study of German litera- ture. But we can gather indirectly from his pages that he was a man of rare conversational power and occasionally epi- grammatic speech, and he certainly uttered one sentence which deserves a place among the classic mots of literary history. It was his observation to a friend suspected of being hypercritical: If all the world were like you, there would be no work done. But tf there were no one in the world like you, there would be no work done well.

18~2.] American Criticism; its D~fflculties and Prospects. 23 or institutional organization. All these have been put in prac- tice in Massachusetts; the first and third by the instrumental- ity of the Board of Charities, and with gratifying success, espe- cially in what has been done for the children of the poor by means of the State Primary School and the Visiting Agency. More- over, special efforts have been made to induce the kindred of the poor to provide for them, and to have those needing public re- lief cared for by that community to which they properly belong; and a vigilant supervision has been exercised, so far as the power of the board extended, over the expenditure of money and the methods of relief and of discipline. That the plague of pauperism has never spread widely in America is due mainly to our institutions and the opportunity which is offered to the poor man; that it has been controlled and diminished where a dense population and the varied competitions of industry bad given it a foothold must be ascribed, in part at least, to the measures adopted in Massachusetts since 1863, which have been indicated rather than described in this paper. F. B. SANBORN. ART. II. AMERICAN CRITICISM; ITS DIFFICULTIES AND PROSPECTS. MANY persons have found Crabb Robinsons Diary a heavy book to read through; and he has been suspected of owing the reputation which he enjoyed among his contemporaries to some lucky accidents, such as his acquaintance with more dis- tinguished characters, or his being one of the first Englishmen who thought it worth while to make a study of German litera- ture. But we can gather indirectly from his pages that he was a man of rare conversational power and occasionally epi- grammatic speech, and he certainly uttered one sentence which deserves a place among the classic mots of literary history. It was his observation to a friend suspected of being hypercritical: If all the world were like you, there would be no work done. But tf there were no one in the world like you, there would be no work done well. 24 American Criticism; its D~fliculties and Prospects. [Jan. Volumes, nay, libraries, might be written without improving on this definition of the critical function. It is at once the explanation and vindication of the critic. It demonstrates the irrelevance of the popular slurs on criticism, such as that which, often uttered before in a better way by stronger men,* recently asserted for itself a pseudo-originality in Disraelis last bundle of paradoxes, namely, that the critics of any de- partment are those who have failed in it; or the opposite sug- gestion of Thackeray, that critics are generally young or at least untried men, who have never experienced the difficulty of executing a conception. The vulgar form in which these and similar strictures usually appear is the assertion that the critic could not produce a work superior to that which he condemns, a retort about equal in point of logic to the proposition that no man has a right to find fault with a house or a dinner, unless he is prepared to build or cook a better offhand. In fact, although we have some fortunate examples, even in our own country, to prove that the parts of producer and critic are not incompatible, the leading qualities which go to make up each are so far from being identical or even analogous, that for many purposes it is safe to consider them antagonistic, and instead of inferring, for instance, that a leading producer in any branch of art or literature will naturally be an excellent critic in it, our a priori conclusion ought rather to be the very reverse. How and why this is we shall endeavor to show further on; this much is said for the present, in order to guard the reader against the assumption that a low standard of American criticism cannot exist in conjunction with indi- vidual instances of brilliant literary success, or that such instances disprove it. That the current standard of our criticism is low lower than it should be, lower than it is elsewhere may be un- pleasant to say, but would be difficult to question. In saying it we have no desire to extol unduly the performances of Euro- peaim workers in this field, or to view their achievements with blind admiration. We readily admit that the best French critics are tainted with Parisian cockneyism, and that the over- whelming accuracy of some English authorities is occasionally * Notably by Swift and Baizac. 18~2.] American Criticism; its Difficulties and Prospects. 25 relieved by very extraordinary blunders in the literary history, not only of the Continent, but even of England. It may also be conceded that partisanship, unfairness, and bad animus are not altogether unknown among the best representatives of the critical world abroad. Still, to the candid and well-informed reader, the broad, general impression is irresistible, that the Europeans work is more workmanlike, inspired by more thorough knowledge, guided by a more cultivated taste, and proceeding under a higher sense of responsibility. Now what are the particular causes of our deficiency in criticism, considered as a special branch of literature apart from creation or production? Some are on the surface, others lie deeper. Among the former the first place may be assigned to our natioiXal good- nature. All the levelling and equalizing tendencies of the age have failed to make the individual par sibi, and the character of a great community must be fertile in contradic- tions. It certainly seems odd that a people who have acquired we wish we could say undeservedly the worst reputation in the world for manners, should be also remarkable for easi- ness of temper and patience under imposition of all sorts; but the fact, however hard to explain, is impossible to deny. And the quality is not so wholly and purely virtuous as some of us may be disposed to claim. Good-nature, whether in the indi- vidual or the class, is composed of at least two elements, benevolence and moral indolence. The desire to be rid of a beggars importunity, the unwillingness to take the trouble of finding out the truth or falsehood of his claim upon the chari- table, are motives which exercise as potent an influence on the pocket of the average passer-by, as a veritable desire to relieve distress. The same lazy long-suffering which allows the Amer- ican public to be bullied and discomforted in the travel which is part of its daily life, by hotel clerks, express clerks, railroad officials, and the whole tribe of jacks-in-office, has also made it and many of its literary representatives who knew better, cul- pably lenient to a multitude of literary pretenders. A habit of promiscuous praise long ago deprived praise of all real meaning and value. In one sense the practice may be called honest; it is not generally the result of downright bribery. 26 American Criticism; its Difficulties and Prospects. [Jan. Purchased panegyric is not more common here than elsewhere, indeed, is less common, though some of our reckless journal- ists have insinuated, if not openly asserted, the contrary. But in another sense it is dishonest, as much so as giving a good character to a worthless servant. The habit of good natured approval may be, indeed has been, defended on the ground that, during our early absorption in material interests, any effort, however feeble, to show that there were other things worth living for besides building, buy- ing, and selling, deserved encouragement and support. But while the positive mischief was done, the hypothetical good was not attained. The founders of our literature were lifted to fame and (so far as they enjoyed it) fortune, not by the undis- criminating eulogy of home reviewers, but by the more bal- anced approval of European critics. This fact was strictly in accordance with the precedents and canons of art, and there is little sense in trying to shirk or disguise it, as if it were a national humiliation. On the other hand, the habit continued long after the supposed necessity had ceased to exist, long after our literary stocks were flourishing with sufficient hardi- hood to need no artificial protection. For some time the principal exception to this general rule of unintelligent good-nature was an exception almost worse than the rule itself. A marked acerbity of interlocal and intersec- tional criticism startled at intervals the indolent propriety (so far as literature was concerned) of the press. New York and Boston, not merely as two individual cities, but also to some extent in a representative capacity, the former being supposed to stand for all New England, and the latter for the Middle and even some of the Border Southern States, were pitted against each other by a petty local jealousy, which constantly imbittered their literary relations. Between the whole North and the whole South ~sthetic disputes were intensified by the intrusion of the terrible political feud which was gradually growing towards its crisis. Some of the very best men of all sections were not free from the influence of these local antago- nisms, and the rank and file were of course impregnated with it. At one time there really seemed a danger that a perma- nent class of literary skirmishers might be formed, whose pre 1872.] American Criticism; its Difficulties and Prospects. 27 tensions to critical merit would be founded on their abuse of whatever was produced iu rival localities. A third obstacle to the formation of a true and generally diffused critical spirit was the vague notion that American literature must have some purely American flavor about it, something that differs from European literature, as our scenery does from European scenery; something new and grand and savage. There was just enough truth about this fancy to make it a perilous delusion. That we should not pro- duce tame copies of Transatlantic mannerisms, that we should not, for instance (to take obvious and trivial illustrations), transplant the nightingale into American groves, or decorate the American millionnaire with the manners and speech of the feudal aristocrat, all this was good, sensible doctrine, worthy of Dr. Holland or of old Hesiod himself. But that we should disown all the established standards, not merely of our own language, but of its classical predecessors, was a dream the fulfilment of which would have required not merely the inven- tion of a new tongue, but the construction of a fundamentally separate civilization. Equally misleading was the supposition that the grandeur of national objects must and ought to be a source of inspiration. In poetry, above all, it was contradicted by the plainest historical facts. The bards Qf Switzerland are yet to come, and some of the most charming English lyrics have been suggested by ordinary, we may even say by vulgar objects, a bird or a barmaid. To make the desired experi- ment under proper conditions, it would be necessary, not to com- plete the civilization of our people, but to throw them back into barbarism; and were this impossibility possible, we should still have to consider that the natural scenery of Greece and Asia Minor supplied but a small part of Homers inspiration, and that his perfection of the picturesque was a formal garden. Yet otherwise sensible men have talked as if Niagara and the prairies and the Rocky Mountains must of their own virtue supply the divine afflatus. The idea of making size do duty for grandeur was nothing new. It had been tried by the Orientals ages ago. It had been tried by that very German Milton, Klopstock. And doubtless there is a certain amount of grandeur, or, it might be 28 American Criticism; its Difficulties and Prospects. [Jan. more accurate to say, appearance of grandeur, in great size and magnitude. We may make a sponge-cake big enough to im- press the ordinary spectator with its quasi-majesty. A drunken revel assumes a sort of sublimity, if we can crowd topers enough and liquor enough into it. But such contrivances are always more or less barbarous, and altogether at variance with the highest cultivation and refinement.* Fully as erroneous was the analogous assumption, that great national actions must call forth great poetry in their own day. The epic seems to be a very lost art, and the only serious at- tempt at one in the present century was founded on the more than semi-fabulous adventures of a scarcely less than mythical British king. We can hardly possess our souls in patience to wait for the American epic.~ It may not be immediately evident to all readers how this craving for a peculiarly American literature could influence American criticism unfavorably. But the effort was in no de- gree less potent for being somewhat indirect. In the hope of originality, any extravagance, anything irregular or spasmodic, was received with toleration, if not welcomed with applause. The impossibility of finding a royal road to learning had passed into a proverb, but there was a seductive fantasy of a repub- lican road to literary eminence. After all, however, the great cause of our critical deficiency was the want of men prepared for the office of critic by direct education and indirect influence of what the French call the milieu. This was the fountain and source of our weakness. If we go back to first principles, there may well be some doubt whether the nil admirari or the omne admirari is the primal condition of the untutored mind. The traditional im * Though we are dealing more particularly with literature, most of what we have to say applies equally well to art. The corner of a wood, the little reaches of a stream, a hit of dead ~vall, rendered with sentiment and true artistic feeling, may be worth more than the biggest panorama of the biggest mountain in the world, though reproduced with almost photographic precision. And here it is not amiss to observe, with reference to another branch of our subject, that the men who have written best about art have not generally heen the greatest painters, far from it. Neither are the greatest musicians the best musical critics. I The work of each immortal hard appears The single wonder of a thousand years. 1872.] American Criticism; its Difficulties and Prospects. 29 mobility of the red man and of some Orientals may be the re- suit of stoic self-control. If it is natural and unaffected, then not only must we hold the gray barbarian lower than the Christian child, but the Indian, as some have supposed that he should, must take intellectual rank below the negro. A question of more practical interest comes up when we inquire if the stage of childish admiration is necessarily succeeded by that of Aristarchian scrutiny and general fault-finding, and if this second stage is in its turn the prelude to a period of just and evenly balanced judgment. That a belligerent and savage critical disposition is the natural reaction from the omne admi- ran seems a fair conclusion from the testimony of literary an- nals; but we can be less sure that this state of things must necessarily be followed by a proper medium between the ex- tremes. Perhaps the next reaction may carry us back nearly to the original position. But whatever answer to these queries some Tame or Arnold might suggest, this one thing is certain, that the genuine critic must be the product of a high intellectual cultivation. Not of material civilization necessarily; lie may be a boor to the fashionable exquisite: not of scientific progress; he may be an object of real or feigned contempt to the positivist: but he must be most liberally educated in all that concerns the humanities. He must be a scholar in the true sense of that often and much abused word. He must understand literary history. The man who is utterly unacquainted with Theocritus, even at second-hand through a translation (and there are many such among our would-be critics), cannot discuss Milton without making an absurd figure; neither can he who is igno- rant of the commonest Greek idioms. And he who has not read Homer, and a trifle of Lucretius to boot, must utterly fail in appreciating the first and best of Tennysons Arthurian fragments. The island Valley of Avilion has but a partial charm to the reader unacqu%inted with its double prototype, and the writer similarly deficient is weilnigh certain to stumble among its bowery hollows. Some decades ago, before German had become a popular study, much doubtful Teutonic philosophy, and some rather better Teutonic poetry, was palmed off on our public as origi 30 American Criticism; its Difficulties and Prospects. [Jan. nal. Even at the present day ignorance of French, which by an amiable social fiction every person claiming to be educated is supposed to know, proves a constant source of blunders and impositions. But all this touches only the elementary and, as we may say, negative qualification. It is very important that the critics eye should be a microscope of wit, but it must also have the comprehensive range of a very different instrument. Accurate and exacting when classical English is to be written, he must enjoy all the humor of a Biglows or a Breitmanns dialect. While revelling in the boundless forest of Shake- speare, he must discern their own perfection in the trim parterres of IRacine. He must be able to see the genius of Victor Hugo through all the clouds and rubbish of his manifold absurdities, and pick out the kernels of good wheat from the multitude of Swinburnian chaff. Plautus will not be too light for him, nor Seneca too heavy. The critic is often, perhaps in a majority of cases, called on to blame; but if he only under- stands the art of blame, he has taken a partial and one- sided view of his profession, just as the lawyer or novelist who has studied the worst aspects of human nature can only be said to have a partial knowledge of it, though he may be more advanced than the fashionable parson, before whom people are always on their good behavior. Here it is eminently that a little learning proves dangerous. There is a condition of the critical mind which, perhaps, rather than the sanguinary and abusive, should be considered the second stage of progress, though, indeed, the two are not unfrequently synchronons, when the literary talent of a com- munity has worn for itself a deep but narrow channel, and can see nothing beyond its own banks. What we have said and hinted about the critics qualifica- tions shows us indirectly the antagonism, sometimes amount- ing to incompatibility, between the constituting elements of the critic and of the maker. The training of the former is such as to render him essentially eclectic; the latter has, in most cases, either by nature or formation, his own peculiar way of work. He is a leader or follower of some school, with which he is most conversant, and to which his preferences naturally gravitate. Deficiency of imagination and entire 1872.] American Criticism; its D~fflculties and Prospects. 31 absence of the creative power do not interfere with the excel- lences of the one; the genius of the other may be alloyed with prejudice and ignorance. If we admit Baizacs assertion, that the critic is impotent as an author, it will still be no less true that the author is apt to make wild work when he assumes the r6le of critic on his rivals. It would be an old and a sad story to repeat our lack of the necessary appliances, direct and indirect, for providing critics of the true stuff. And the worst feature of the unpromising prospect was, not the existence of the deficiency (though that was bad enough), but the inability to see, perhaps it would be more fully correct to say, the disposition to deny that there was a deficiency. Our shortcomings, if frankly acknowledged, we might hope to supply in course of time by probable progress of cultivation; but when influential men set themselves stead- ily against the higher cultivation as a supposed obstacle to material progress, what is to be said or done? To take but one out of countless melancholy instances, it is on record that the proprietor of one of the most widely circulating newspapers in the country, when expressing his opinion about the different varieties of young men whom he had occasion to employ, spoke of college graduates in terms of contempt worthy of Shakespeares Jack Cade. Fortunately men are often obliged to be better than their principles or apologies for principles this very person has been compelled to make frequent use of the despised graduates, but the anirnus remains the same, and its results may be seen when any branch of learning somewhat recondite and out of the way has to be reported to the public. If, for instance, the members of the Philological Association were men to be much affected by newspaper notice, the extraor- dinary relations of their sayings and doings last summer by such members of the press as condescended to mention them at all, must have made them ready to tear their hair, break their spectacles, burn their Corsseus and IRitschls, and subside doggedly into the old commonplace pedagogue routine. Whenever pleasant incidents of this sort are mentioned with disapprobation, a number of worthy but mistaken patriots, who do not like to admit the inferiority of our country in any possible respect, usually have their answer ready. Sometimes it 32 American Criticism; its D~fflculties and Prospects. [Jan. takes the vulgar form of the tu quo que, and consists in pointing out some foreign instance of misappreciation or neglect; but more generally it appeals to individual cases of home work which, in their opinion at least, challenge comparison with the best produced abroad. And it is difficult to make these good people understand that their argument is mostly irrelevant, and that the question is one to be decided, not by particular exam- ples here and there, bnt rather by what lawyers call the general issue. The milieu, to borrow again a pet term of our French friends, is differeiit; the whole tone of respectable and what is supposed to be educated feeling on the snbject is different. The European anthor, who addresses himself to any branch of literature worth the name, is certain to be noticed, and well noticed. If he be a pretendei his shortcomings and impos- tures are pretty sure to be exposed; if he have merit, some one will find it out, and explain it and encourage it. In no case will he be utterly neglected or dismissed with a few unmeaning words, because there is not a public to take interest in him, or a class of professional writers to understand him. Thus, to continue our illustration from philology and classics, it is little to the purpose that Professor West may be as good a scholar as Professor East. The latter has half a dozen well-known chan- nels of communication with a comparatively large and general public whenever he pleases; the former will frequently be obliged to take refuge in some religious or semi-religious peri~ odical of limited circulation, which admits the philology only as a species of padding to the theology. As for plain Mr. West, who has no college at his back, and no more imposing handle than A. B. or A. M. to his name, his lucubrations will sometimes fail to find even that honorable interment. What has been said of one branch is true of all, mutatis mutandis. The current standard is nowhere decided by isolated essays, however bril- liant or acute, but by the. general supply and the general sup- port. We have been told that the Saturday Review lives by advertising dressing-cases; but we may be sure that if there were not a writing public behind, and a reading public before the Saturday, all the dressing-cases in London would not save it. There was no lack of swells or dressing-cases in New York, but they did not save the Round Table. That paper 1872.] American Criticism; its Difficulties and Prospects. 33 went out, according to its own ingenuous dying speech and confession, because it could not find men enough of the right sort either to write for it or to read it. There was only room for one such weekly in the country, against three in England, counting the Athemeum for nothing. If high-priced adver- tisements of fashionable wares were the desideratum in such cases, why might not the reading matter begin just as well at the other end of the intellectual scale, say with something like Our Society? What would the Englishman need be- yond his Morning Post? Such, in our view, are the principal causes which have im- peded the formation of an adequate standard of American literary criticism. The important question now presents itself, how far have they or any of them been removed, or come into process of removal. Our national good-nature certainly continues to put forth its worst as well as its best developments. In morals and politics its effects have been most deplorable. But in literature the best men are less affected by it than formerly; and the in- crease of really good as well as of second-rate matter has forced some sort of discrimination on the most indiscriminat- ing. On the whole, we may consider this impediment dimin- ished, though not entirely removed. In reference to the second obstacle we can take a more sanguine tone. It has virtually disappeared. As our capitals became less provincial and more cosmopolite, as our different sections wefe brought into closer contact, local prejudices have vanished and our republic of letters has acquired something like what European politicians call a solidarity. It is no un- common circumstance for a periodical published in one city to be largely supported by contributions from another. Although the broadest and most desirable schemes for literary union are still in an embryotic state, smaller associations in their par- ticular spheres have done much to combine their specialities all over the country. Of course it is impossible to suppress all local jealousies and cliques till we have a literary millennium, but they no longer assume formidable or even serious propor- tions. Perhaps the consideration of the third difficulty had better VOL. cxiv. NO. 234. 3 34 American Criticism; its D~ffic-ulties and Prospects. [Jan. be included in that of the fourth and principal. And here the prospect is from some points very encouraging. Our workshops of critical stuff, if the expression may be allowed, have been established on deeper and firmer foundations. The progress of our colleges and universities during the present generation is not merely creditable, it is surprising. We may say, without exaggeration, that the good average student of to- day knows more than was thought sufficient to make a good average professor thirty years ago; knows more in the true sense of knowledge, though his apparent range may be less. This is owing not merely to the general progress of the learned world in such matters, but also to the fact that the age of entering and consequently of graduating at our colleges hav- ing advanced about two years, the period of liberal education is lengthened by that time. It is almost a truism to say that we must depend for our supply of critics chiefly on the men who have gone through the universities in the regular fashion. Those who have picked up some sort of liberal education other-. wise as, for instance, later in life, by travel and residence abroad are insufficient in number and apt to be imperfectly grounded. Whatever, therefore, advances the classical standard of our colleges, acts directly to raise the standard of literary criticism, unwritten as well as written. iii this connection we are reminded of some of the paradoxical old proverbs, such as the half being greater than the whole, and the propriety of making haste slowly. It is probable that English literature, and the immediate application of the fruits of college study to it, occupied a larger part of the students nominal attention thirty years ago than now; but the absence of a proper foun- dation and sufficient training generally deprived these prema- ture attempts of vitality and permanence. The barbarous term sophomoric became a popular designation for the rhet- oric of collegians; and if their criticism acquired no similar stigma of epithet, it was because the popular mind really did not know enough about criticism to distinguish one kind of it from another. Other and broader influences, such as easier and more frequent communication with Europe, have lent their assist- ance. The operation of these influences must not be mis- 1872.] American Criticism; its liNificulties and Prospects. 35 understood or misinterpreted. It does not consist in any immediate imitation of foreign models or transplanting of foreign ideas. The man, for instance, who undertook to reproduce the processes of Tame in an Anglo-American form, would only succeed in giving us some of the Frenchmans mannerism and pet words (like that one which we have had occasion to quote); the volatile essence, the fine Gallic wit, would everywhere be wanting in the Saxon imitation. The most valuable lesson to be learned from acquaintance with the current work of French critics is the knowledge how extensive and serious a business criticism can be; and the most valuable to be derived from a corresponding English familiarity is the knowledge how very respectable a business it is. When a young man is once impressed with the fact that cabinet ministers aiid noblemen of the highest rank are not ashamed, indeed are rather proud of writing reviews on purely literary subjects and publishing volumes of critical essays under their own names, he will be less impressed by the other fact that this pork-merchant cr that member of Congress at home thinks such work a waste of time. The result of all which is that the critic occupies a recognized position and has something like a professional standing. Yet we must not be too hasty in accepting the favorable changes and neglecting the contrary symptoms. While learning and taste are strengthening their strongholds, ignorance and brutality are also sending out their champions. The self-made man is happily unable to do as much mischief in literature as in morals and politics, but he does enough. We cannot overlook, however we may wish to despise, a school of writers in com- parison with whom Walt Whitman is a deep scholar and refined artist. Nay, learning of a certain kind, as well as ignorance, has enrolled itself among the foes of literary taste. But here perhaps we should rather say pretence of learning; for our own real savans have not generally thought it worth while to participate in the querelle dAllernand which some English positivists have endeavored to fasten upon English literature. Moreover, a new danger has recently shown itself. The in- crease of literary production has developed out of what many 3~3 American Criticism; its Difficulties and Prospects. [Jan. persons would hail as a sign of progress, a tendency alto- gether damaging to critical investigation. The great demand on all sides is for short books, short articles, short sketches; no elaborate essays, no complete monographs, are wanted. Length, if admitted anywhere, must find refuge in those in- satiable devourers of manuscript, the fine-print columns of the daily triple sheet. Condensed thought, brief expression, the laconian method everywhere, except on the platform, where man is still allowed to inflict himself on his fellow-mortals for two long hours at a time. The volume shrinks to an article, the article dwindles to an item, to conciliate the demands of the public and the needs of the publisher. Now, however desirable or necessary the laconic method may be for many purposes, it is assuredly not adapted to the re- quirements of criticism. The true critical spirit detests broad assertion and sweeping generality and curt dogmatism. It loves to proceed by caveats and qualifications and nice dis- tinctions carefully worked out. It must do so, for it is a com- plex art and has to deal with complexities. Any style of writing, therefore, which admits, even indirectly and re- motely, the item and paragraph as its bases and models, is directly antagonistic to the critical spirit and hostile to critical progress. Once more we allow that for certain purposes systematically condensed thought may be of great value in morals and politics, for instance, where it is often neces- sary to detect and sweep away a great deal of irrelevant rubbish, introduced by ignorance or sophistry. Yet even here we meet with so many complications and find so many errors which are owing to imperfect and partial views, that we must be careful about applying a naked principle too hastily and lay- ing down the very clearest positions too broadly. And in ~sthetic matters, hurry and abbreviation are fatal to proper treatment. Most of all are they so in literary criticism. A book which deserves to be called a book is not a whole in the same sense that a work of art a picture or a statue is a whole. The most exhaustive description of the largest and best filled canvas could not be made to occupy a volume; a book, nay, a single poem may contain whole galleries of pie- tures. Take, as a single illustration, Tennysons Palace of 1872.] American Criticism; its Ihfticulties and Prospects. 87 Art, note the wonderful wealth of description in the single stanzas, the separate rooms of that lordly pleasure-house; mark the figures boldly drawn in single adjectives. Let us glance at another example of suggestive painting by the same poet. Hamerton tells us that when Tennyson mentions the long fields of barley and of rye that lie on either side the river round about Shalott, he imports to us no information as to the color of these fields. He does not directly, it is true; but, given the time of the year and the state of the atmosphere, both which we learn from the context, any artistic reader may form a tolerably clear conception of the hue wherewith they would be clothed. The criticism of which we are speaking is very different from that which has been, with some reason, ob- jected to, as encouraging a spasmodic school of literature. It is not looking out for and calling attention to powder words and thunder words. It is just the contrary, the investigation of deft touches, of little epithets and phrases that are at the same time recondite and natural; and this involves of course the exposure of the diction which is of an opposite character, fussy and false. Much popular literature contains imagery and action and sentiment as untrue to nature as are the land- scape delineations of some of the old masters so boldly de- nounced by Ruskin, but in the one case as in the other a well- trained mind is necessary to detect the error. And here the sham-American, the stag& patriotic idea comes in with mischievous effect. The people are too active, too busy, too much engrossed in commerce and speculation, to read elaborate and many-sided expositions. They must take their criticism (and indeed all their literature) in pills. Even grammatical accuracy is a superfluous refinement, so long as a writer can make himself tersely intelligible. Were such opinions to gain universal currency, we should end by having a public led and fed by publishers puffs, and completely at the mercy of any literary charlatan who could let off from time to time a volley of verbal pyrotechnics. There is a style of soi-disant criticism which bears about the same relation to the real article that the American mode of tanning leather does to the European. The process is very much shorter, but the pioduct is inferior in the same pro- portion. 38 American Criticism; its D~fflculties and Prospects. [Jan. Still, on a survey of the whole ground, after taking account of all influences favorable and unfavorable, the present con- dition gives reasons for satisfaction, and the future prospect is not without hope. A positive progress has been made; there is more learning, better training, clearer understanding, and a more cosmopolitan spirit. It would be ridiculous to deny that there remains a great deal to be done before we can reach the level of England or France, but every year diminishes the dis- tance. And we have at least this crumb of comfort to console us for the vices of our political system, that they cannot touch the editct templa, the safe seat of the gods, the quiet seats which are not shaken by the wind of faction nor drenched by the showers and snows of political calumny. And among the causes which tend to inspire hope we shall take the liberty of mentioning one which, occurring under less favorable circumstances, might have had just the contrary effect, the transfer of the literary sceptre from New York to Boston. The old New York school did its work well, and to pour mock libations of dirty water on its grave is very sorry business. It was not forcibly supplanted; it died a natural death, and this being the case, there were several reasons why Boston should, in no arrogant or monopolizing sense of the term, be the headquarters of American literature. IDiscrim- mating in a broad and general way between the two cities, we may say that for the formation of a permanent literary body having serious claims to be judges and arbiters as well as pro- ducers, coherence is required on the one hand and a cosmo- politan spirit on the other. The practical difficulty is, that the two qualities are apt to interfere with each other, the former degenerating into a narrow and provincial cliquism, the latter into a desultory want of system; and these were pre- cisely the respective dangers that threatened the two cities. But it was and is easier to get the cosmopolitanism into Boston than to establish the concentration and unity of purpose in New York; and therefore, were there no other reason, the former would naturally be the more feasible locality. But there is another reason and a very good one. The preponder- ance of commercial interests in our largest metropolis had im- parted to literature an unduly commercial tinge, and given 1872.] Oratory and Jourflali8m. 39 some currency to a popular estimate of it as foreign to the true appreciation as an ideal of upholstery and millinery would be foreign to the highest conception of art. Nothing can be more hostile to the critical and ~sthetic spirit than any influence which tends to place the publisher, and not only the publisher proper, but the book-manufacturing variety of the species in the position of the authors maker and judge, the creator of the creator. If Boston can resist this influence more success- fully than it has been resisted in some other places, and can also shake off the last lingering traces of her intellectual provincialism, there is nothing to prevent her from forming a true school of deep, wide, and conscientious investigation, and placing New England criticism where it has never yet been, on the level of New England production. CHARLES ASTOR BRISTED. ART. III. ORATORY AND JOURNALISM. FROM the great epochs of English eloquence, we have entire- ly lost the oratory of Pym, llampden, Wentworth, and Falk- land; of Bolingbroke, Pulteney, Wiudham, and Walpole; nearly all the speeches of Sheridan, the greater part of Foxs, many of those of the earlier and greater day of Chatham, and have received Burkes only as set down by himself in forms often differing widely from those in which they fell upon the ears of his hearers. Where the speeches of these men have survived, accuracy in their substance only, not in their diction, is the utmost that can be claimed for them. Chathams earlier speeches were perpetuated by Dr. Johnson, who had not even the advantage of hearing them himself, but composed them from notes taken by others, and who once broke in upon a company engaged in praises of the eloquence of Pitt with, That speech I wrote in a garret in Exeter Street. The re- mains of American orators of the same age are equally unsatis- factory and much rarer. Patrick Henrys speeches perished with their delivery; that notable favorite of declaiming school- boys Mr. President, it is natural to man to indulge in the

1872.] Oratory and Jourflali8m. 39 some currency to a popular estimate of it as foreign to the true appreciation as an ideal of upholstery and millinery would be foreign to the highest conception of art. Nothing can be more hostile to the critical and ~sthetic spirit than any influence which tends to place the publisher, and not only the publisher proper, but the book-manufacturing variety of the species in the position of the authors maker and judge, the creator of the creator. If Boston can resist this influence more success- fully than it has been resisted in some other places, and can also shake off the last lingering traces of her intellectual provincialism, there is nothing to prevent her from forming a true school of deep, wide, and conscientious investigation, and placing New England criticism where it has never yet been, on the level of New England production. CHARLES ASTOR BRISTED. ART. III. ORATORY AND JOURNALISM. FROM the great epochs of English eloquence, we have entire- ly lost the oratory of Pym, llampden, Wentworth, and Falk- land; of Bolingbroke, Pulteney, Wiudham, and Walpole; nearly all the speeches of Sheridan, the greater part of Foxs, many of those of the earlier and greater day of Chatham, and have received Burkes only as set down by himself in forms often differing widely from those in which they fell upon the ears of his hearers. Where the speeches of these men have survived, accuracy in their substance only, not in their diction, is the utmost that can be claimed for them. Chathams earlier speeches were perpetuated by Dr. Johnson, who had not even the advantage of hearing them himself, but composed them from notes taken by others, and who once broke in upon a company engaged in praises of the eloquence of Pitt with, That speech I wrote in a garret in Exeter Street. The re- mains of American orators of the same age are equally unsatis- factory and much rarer. Patrick Henrys speeches perished with their delivery; that notable favorite of declaiming school- boys Mr. President, it is natural to man to indulge in the 40 Oratory and Journalism. [Jan. illusions of hope being due in reality to the imagination of his biographer, Wirt. The scarcely less esteemed oration of John Adams before the Continental Congress was in like manner fabricated and put into his mouth by Daniel Webster. When reporters like Johnson, Wirt, and Webster could be found, the orators scarcely need condolence. In many cases, moreover, their fame might not have been enhanced by how- ever faithful a record. Sheridans wonderful speech upon the Begum princesses and Warren Hastings was deliberately allowed to perish by its author, although it had chiefly been put in writing before its delivery and could easily have been reproduced. He contented himself, says his biographer, Tom Moore, with leaving to imagination, which in most cases he knew transcends reality, the task of justifying his eulogists and perpetuating the tradition of their praise. * The same policy was carried to a much greater length by the famous Single-Speech Hamilton, who, having borne away the laurels from even Pitt and Fox during the memorable four- teen hours assault upon the Duke of Newcastles administra- tion, sat mute at Westminster during the sessions of sixty * Such was the almost marvellous instant triumph of this effort, that Sheridan probably did well to refrain from imperilling it by seeking its prolongation. Burke declared it the most astonishing effort of eloquence, argument, and wit united of which there was any record or tradition. Fox said that all that he had ever heard, all that he had ever read, when compared with it, dwindled into nothing, and vanished like vapor before the sun. Pitt avowed that it surpassed all the eloquence of ancient or modern times, and possessed everything that genius or art could furnish to agitate and control the human mind. Sir William Dolben, mov- ing an adjournment, alleged that, in the state of mind in which Mr. Sheridans speech had left him, it was impossible for him to give a determinate opinion. Mr. Stanhope, seconding this motion, observed that when he entered the House, he was not ashamed to acknowledge his opinion inclined to the side of Mr. Hastings. But such had been the wonderful efficacy of Mr. Sheridans convincing detail of facts and irresistible eloquence, that he could not but say that his sentiments were materially changed. Nothing, indeed, but information almost equal to a miracle could determine him not to vote for the charge; but he had just felt the influence of such a miracle, and he could not but ardently desire to avoid an immediate de- cision. Mr. Logan, who was the author of a defence of Hastings, and had gone to the House strongly prepossessed in his favor, at the close of the first hour of the speech observed to the friend beside him, All this is declamatory assertion with- oat proof; after the second hour, This is a most wonderful oration; after the third, Mr. Hastings has acted very unjustiflably; after the fourth, Mr. Hastings is a most atrocious criminal ; and at the close, Of all monsters of iniquity, the most enormous is Warren Hastings! 1872.] Oratory and Journalism. 41 years, rather than endanger them; although before the less formidable Parliament at Dublin he used subsequently to speak with great effect as the secretary of Lord Halifax. No doubt the orators of that day had good reason to regard reports with apprehension. We have seen, indeed, that Pitt was no sufferer by having his speech flow through Johnsons pen; but the Doctor whose morality, like his Dictionary, though an accepted prodigy in his own time, scarcely bears comparison with modern standards said of his parliamentary reports in the Gentlemans Magazine that he took good care that the Whig dogs should not have the best of it. That the average reporter was worse by many degrees than the Great Moralist could have brought himself to be, may be in- ferred from Sir Robert Walpoles remarks during a debate upon the systematic misrepresentations in vogue. I have read some debates of this House, he said, in which I have been made to speak the very reverse of what I meant. I have read others wherein all the wit, the learning, and the argument has been thrown into one side, and on the other nothing but what was low, mean, and ridiculous; and yet, when it comes to the question, the divisioii has gone against the side which, upon the face of the debate, had reason and jnstice to support it. So that, had I been a stranger to the proceedings and to the na- ture of the arguments themselves, I must have thought this to have been one of the most contemptible assemblies on the face of the earth. Horace Walpoles Short Notes of My Life contain this specific verification of his fathers complaint: March 23, 1742. I spoke in the House of Commons for the first time, against the motion for a secret committee on my father. This speech was published in the magazines, but was entirely false, and had not one paragraph of my real speech in it. Even when deliberate perversion had ceased, there re- mained between the orator and reporter the same antago- nism which has animated authors and printers from time immemorial. Lord Loughborough embodied the grievance in his reply to a motion of Lord Stanhopes, that the amanuenses should read to the House the proceedings of the Hastings trial. God forbid, said the Chancellor, that ever their lordships should call upon the shorthand writers to publish their notes; 42 Oratory and Journalism. [Jan. for, of all people, shorthand writers were ever the furthest from correctness, and there were no mans words they ever heard that they again returned By catching the sound, and not the sense, they perverted the sense of the speaker, and made him appear as ignorant as themselves. That, to a cer- tain extent, this standing complaint is well founded, is quite true; but, on the other hand, the orator is very often Un- suspicious of the extent of his indebtedness to the maligned class, who remedy many a slip and oral carelessness. Reports such as Charles Dickens made of Parliamentary proceedings, or Henry J. Raymond of Daniel Websters spoeches, have contrib- uted in no small degree to orators fame, by producing speeches which contained all their felicities and were less faulty in some points than their own. Till a very late day, nevertheless, op- position to the reporter has survived, even to the extent of advocating his entire suppression. Mr. Pitt, who used to say that he would rather recover a speech of Bolingbroke than the lost books of Livy, was yet averse to Parliamentary reporting. Lord Derby Bulwers Rupert of debate met a motion that the House should provide for the publication of its pro- ceedings, by an ironical argument that foreign powers ought to be informed of every momentous word that fell from the lips of the mover of the reform, so that they might know how to shape their policy. When verbatim reporting was introduced in this country by the New York Courier and Enquirer, the innovation was strenuously opposed by Daniel Webster, who afterwards owed so much to it. Another great orator, who combined equal objections to reporters with exceptional facili- ties for baffling them, was Daniel OConnell. At the time of his oratorical tour in Ireland on the occasion of the Repeal agitation, Mr. W. H. Russell, who attained eminence in this country as the non-observer of Bull Run, was detailed by the London Times to report his speeches. The reporter made himself and his errand known to the Liberator, who affected an excess of cordiality, and, assuming an extraor- dinarily pungent brogue, announced to the expectant multitude that until the jintleman was provided with all writin convay- niencies he would not spake a wurrud. Having whetted the appetite of his hearers by reiterated inquiries whether the 1872.] Orator~y and JournaUsm. 43 Lon don jintleman was entirely ready, the orator delighted his auditory by addressing them in the Irish tongue. Thoroughly as the point has been conceded, and invaluable as the reform has long been acknowledged to be, English ser- vility to precedent and capacity for legal fiction are yet exem- plified in the fact that to this day Parliamentary reports are, in theory, prohibited. It is still competent for a single mem- ber to enforce the unrepealed standing order for the exclusion of strangers, among whom reporters are included. On the debate upon renewing the war with France, in 1803, the speaker made arrangements respecting the admission of stran- gers by which the reporters were excluded, and a speech of Pitts was lost. In 1807 a member of the House of Lords called attention to the fact that a person in the gallery was taking notes. As lately as 1849 the doors have been closed against strangers, and the debates thereby suppressed. And, although in the new Houses of Parliament there are galleries for the accommodation of the reporters, theoretically it still remains a high breach of privilege to publish any speech or proceeding in the Commons ; and it is still irregular to allude in debate to any newspaper report, except for the pur- pose of animadverting upon the breach of privilege. An usage clung to with such tenacity as was the secrecy of debate, long after valid reason for it had ceased to exist, will usually be found originally to have had sound justification. In this case the privilege so cherished had originated in an age when the Crown and the Parliament were in conflict, when a Tudor or a Stuart sovereign had little hesitation in commit- ting to the Tower an active member of the opposition, or one who had spoken or even given his vote against a court measure. Long after the contest had ended in the complete ascendency of Parliament, it clung to its privilege from a diversity of motives, from the instincts of that kind of traditional con- servatism which is indistinguishable from stupidity, from the exigencies of an infinite complexity of briberies and corruptions which could not endure publicity, from oligarchical indisposi- tion to incur any accountability to the populace or extend to them any influence upon the cause of legislation. These mo- tives may be traced in the language held on the occasions when 44 Oratory and Journalism. [Jan. punishment of offenders against the privilege was under con- sideration. During the time of William of Orange news- letter-writers persons, be it observed, who printed nothing were proceeded against by the Commons for intermeddling with their debates and other proceedings, aud enjoined against giving any account or minute of the debates. About the same time it was declared that to print a vote was destruc- tive of the freedom and liberties of Parliament. Long after this, during the reign of George IT., Lord Danvers gave utter- ance to the jealousy with which his class regarded any pop- ular intrusion into its prescriptive domain. I believe, he said, the people of Great Britain are governed by a power that never was heard of as a supreme authority in any age or country before. This power, sir is the government of the press. The stuff which our weekly newspapers are filled with is received with greater reverence than acts of Parliament; and the sentiments of one of these scribblers have more weight with the multitude than the opinion of the best politician in the kingdom. In truth, the crude and scurrilous productions of the minor journalist of the days of Anne and the earlier Georges were little calculated to suggest to statesmen or to reconcile them to the fundamental changes he was destiiied to work, alike in the process of legislation and which more immediately concerns our more limited inquiry in the character and functions of oratory. To trace the means by which he made good his place in political life, in the face of the combined opposition of the Crown and of both Houses of Parliament, and the extent to which his success early became identified with that of popular principles, it will be necessary to revert to the rise and establishment of journalism in England. English vanity for a long time found gratification in the belief that both the Venetian Gazetta so called from the price, gazza, a small coin, for which was sold a sheet of news from the Turkish war in which the Republic was engaged in 1563 and the still-surviving Gazette de France which appeared in 1631, under the editorship of Renaudot, a physi- cian, and included Louis XLII. and Richelieu among its patrons 1872.] Oratory and Journalism. 45 and contributors had been anticipated by the English Mercurie, a journal published at the suggestion of Burleigh, and under the authority of Queen Elizabeth, during the ex- citement of the Spanish Armada, for the prevention of false reports. On investigation of the genuineness of the alleged specimens, however, this journal, which had till lately been treated as authentic, has been added to the long list of liter- ary forgeries; and the germ of the English newspaper must be sought in the news-books and pamphlets which, be- ginning to appear in the time of James I., were so eagerly sought during the crises of the Thirty Years War and the exploits of Gustavus Adoiphus, that, in 1622, one Nathaniel Butter ventured upon the regular weekly publication of The Certain Newes of this Present Week. Under the auspices of the Stuarts and the Star Chamber the newspaper made but little progress. The Commonwealth brought a flood of polit- ical tracts and pamphlets, nearly a score of iDiurnals and Mercuries having been established during the single year 1643, while each of the armies carried with it a printer for the dissemination of controversial sheets, of which the Weekly Discoverer and the Weekly Discoverer Stripped Naked may be named as specimens. The Long Parliament, however, not even affecting toleration, withstood the royalist and prelat- ical writers by passing ordinances for the restraint of printing severe enough to elicit from Milton, partisan and politician as he was, a protest against the work of the licenser, the slayer of an immortality rather than a life. With the Restoration came a new licensing act, which vested the entire control of printing in the government, and provided a censorship which was intrusted by Clarendon to the hands of Sir Roger LEstrange, a Tory pamphleteer and most scurrilous libeller, who himself established, in 1663, a jonrual called the Intel- ligencer, which, in its way, was highly successful. This paper contained only essays, without news; another, consisting entirely of news without comment, the London Gazette, was conducted by a clerk in the office of the Secretary of State, and gave no intelligence other than that functionary thought it expedient to impart to the public. Periodical sheets made up of political dissertations now became quite numerous; 46 Orators,, and Journalism. [Jan. but the embargo upon news was maintained with a rigor which may be estimated from Chief Justice Scroggss charge to a jury, at a time when the licensing act bad temporarily expired, not only that all writers of false news, though not scandalous or seditious, are indictable on that account, but that to print or publish any news-books or pamphlets of news whatsoever is illegal, and that it is a manifest intent to the breach of the peace.~~ With the Revolution came a change. So disgusting had been the hangings, quarterings, mutilations, floggings, exposures in the pillory, fines, and imprisonments of authors under Charles II. and James II., that, on the accession of William and Mary, the Commons refused to renew the licensing act, and the cen- sorship of the press disappeared forever from the law of Eng- land. Newspapers at once multiplied, small and dingy, it is true; issued but once or twice a week, even these intervals being irregular; yet sometimes, when a dearth of news left space to be filled, containing essays which answered to the modern editorial article, and were by no means contemptible in point of composition. At the outset, while there still remained an uncertainty whether their trade might not be illegal, the editors were not only upon their good behavior, but so far exerted themselves to propitiate King William and the parti- sans of the Revolution, that the government, which doubtless preferred to evade any issue of the kind, connived at the pub- lications. From similar reasons the newspapers carefully abstained from any allusion to the doings of Parliament. This period of inoffensiveness fortunately lasted for two years long enough to accustom the public to depend largely upon the journals for amusement and instruction before there occurred a journalistic outrage which for a moment threat- ened to undo all that had beeii accomplished, yet served in its result to place the liberties of the press upon a tenable footing. In 1697, at a critical juncture in the French war, when much depended upon the maintenance of English credit, one John Salisbury, who edited a paper, called the Flying Post, in the interest of certain cliques of London stock-jobbers, published a paragraph calculated to hring the exchequer bills into discredit. In extreme indignation, the House of Coin- 1872.] Oratory and Journalism. 47 mons ordered the arrest of the offender and unanimously resolved to bring in a bill to prohibit the unlicensed publica- tion of news. Forty-eight hours, however, elapsed before the bill was offered, and by that time the members had considered the matter. There was scarcely one of them, says Lord Macaulay, whose residence in the country had not, during the preceding summer, been made more agreeable by the Lon- don journals No Devonshire or Yorkshire gentleman, Whig or Tory, could bear the thought of being again depen- dent, during seven months of every year, for all information about what was going on in the world on news-letters. When, therefore, the demand for the renewal of the censor- ship was brought forward, it was replied that, if the Attorney- General would file information against offending and mis- chievous newspapers, adequate remedies would be found to exist under the common law; and the bill, which had been introduced without a division, failed on its second reading by a vote of sixteen to two hundred. Through tbis incident jour- nalism passed under the control of the laws ; and through their over-strained enforcement in a succeeding reign came its ulti- mate emancipation and the development of its powers and usefulness. Under Queen Anne journalism assumed the proportions of a great political power, combining intelligence with discus- sion at a time when party zeal was intense and universal, and conducted by men whose talents in their peculiar province are unrivalled in English literature. To the influence of three of these writers, representative men and journalists, however widely differing from one another, there may be traced many of the characteristics of subsequent English literature as well as of the modern newspaper. The work of each of these three De Foe, Addison, and Bolingbroke was so significant as to call for a digression. Daniel De Foe, who had previously manifested his political proclivities by joining the insurrection of the Duke of Mon- mouth, entered definitely upon his political career by joining, as a common soldier, the army which escorted the Prince of Orange to London and the throne. For some fifteen years his 48 Orators, and Journalism. [Jan. robust intellect and strongly marked genius were employed with marvellous activity in the almost monthly production of the pamphlets and poems which formed so conspicuous an ele- ment in the political warfare of the times. One of these composed in answer to a vile, abhorred pamphlet, in very ill verse, as he designates The Foreigners, in which John Tutchin fell personally upon the king and then upon the Dutch nation was called The True-born Englishman. The poetical merit of this effusion was not high; and its irony, as was usual with De Foe, was over-subtile, and cut friends as well as foes; yet it was an effective retort upon the kings enemies, gaining an instantaneous popularity and a larger sale within the year than any book had yet enjoyed in Eng- land; and, above all, it obtained for the author the acquaint- ance and friendship of William, who, during the brief remain- der of his life, employed his champion in various confidential services, alike to his honor and profit. Not only, however, was De Foes political prosperity arrested by the death of his patron, but scarcely was Anne upon the throne before his dan- gerous gift of two-edged satire involved him in difficulties graver than any which had previously befallen him. By way of rebuking the inordinate exultation of the High-Church party upon the queens accession, he published a pamphlet called The Shortest Way with the Dissenters; or, Proposals for the Establishment of the Church. These Proposals included one for imitating the precedent of the revocation of the Edict of Nantes among similarly extravagant measures for getting rid of Dissent and Dissenters; but the irony was grave, and so excessively refined as, for the moment, to occasion the live- liest indignation among the sectaries in whose behalf it had been devised, and to effect its cordial acceptance among High Churchmen, one of whom, a fellow of one of the colleges at Cambridge, wrote to the bookseller who had sent him a copy of the work, I join with that author in all that he says, and have such a value for the book, that, next to the Bible and the Sacred Comments, I take it for the most valuable piece I have. I pray God put it into her Majestys heart to put what is there proposed into execution. As the nature and quality of the joke gradually dawned upon the public apprehension, the cha 18~T2.] Oratory and Journalism. 49 grin of the High-Church and Jacobite party at their absurd position knew no bounds; they brought to trial for wilful and malicious libel all persons concerned in the production of the book; and De Foe who, to shield his printer and bookseller, had come out of the concealment in which he was fabricating new pamphlets, and thrown himself on the queens mercy was sentenced to pay a fine of two hundred marks, to stand three times in the pillory, to be imprisoned during the queen s pleasure, and to find, sureties for good behavior during seven years. The punishment of the pillory was transformed into an ovation; for the instrument was hung with flowers, and the crowd assembled for the purpose of applauding and encourag- ing the victim, drank bumpers to his health and happiness, provided him with refreshments, and bought large numbers of his satirical Hymn to the Pillory, and of an entirely new pamphlet, entitled The Shortest Way to Peace and Union,~~ an argument to reconcile Dissenters to the Established Church, both of which had been published on the morning of his first suffering. But the remainder of the punishment was not to be mitigated as the pillory had been, and to the exhaustion of his means by the costly trial and the fine was added the destruction of his pottery business, by reason of his imprisonment, so that his wife and six children were left without means of support. Here the boundless energy of the man, indomitable under any difficulties, asserted itself; for he not ouly persisted in his pamphleteering career, but, in Newgate as he was, and wholly unassisted, commenced the publication of his celebrated Re- view, a wholly original weekly social and political review, upon the model shortly afterwards adopted by the Guardian, Tatler, Spectator, and others of their kind. Not only was IDe Foe equal to this task, under which few men could have failed to break down, but, after eight weekly issues, he converted the Review into a semi-weekly, and again in- creased it to a tn-weekly after his release from Newgate, a release brought about by the interest it awakened in Harley, afterwards Earl of Oxford, who interceded so effectually with the queen that she sent to De Foe, through the hands of Lord- Treasurer Godolphin, means for the relief of his family, for the payment of his fine, and for his discharg& from prison. VOL. CXIV. NO. 234. 4 50 Oratory and Journalism. [Jan. Restored, after eighteen months imprisonment, both to liberty and to court favor, iDe Foe indulged for a short time in retire- ment, and what lie considered rest, a rest which involved no intermission of the Review, and which produced a poet- ical satire in twelve books (the fure Divino), and one of the many poems on Marlboroughs victories, which appeared at this time, and, by their general badness, contributed so auspiciously to Addisons career. For the remainder of Annes reign some nine years De Foes employments were similar to those provided for him under William. Tory aiid Whig ministers alike used him in a diversity of subterranean diplomacy, at home, on the Continent, and especially in Scotland, when the negotiation for the union of the realms, then pending, afforded a specially favorable opportunity for the exercise of his peculiar literary powers. Writing his Review regularly, wherever he chanced to be, and never intermitting the flow of pamphlets and poems, of which it may be said once for all that, while their total number cannot be ascertained, the titles of his works which have been preserved number no less than two hundred and ten, De Foe took up his residence in Edinburgh, and pro- ceeded to manufacture public sentiment in favor of union with England. As one of the means to this end, he doubled his editorial labors by accepting from the corporation of the city the management of the Edinburgh Courant, which was in their gift, and which he continued to hold, so long as his confi- dential embassy to Scotland lasted. Recalled to England soon after the restoration of his friend Harley to power, in 1711, he was presently obliged, in consequence of the stamp duty then imposed on newspapers, to discontinue the Review, to the eighth and concluding volume of which he appended a sketch of his career, which contains, as a summary of his vicissitudes of fortune, the distich, No man has tasted differing fortunes more. And thirteen times I have been rich and poor. I have seen the rough side of the world as well as the smooth, he goes on, and in less than half a year tasted the difference between the closet of a king and the dungeon of Newgate. But the end of his fluctuations had not yet come; for we find him again unable to wean himself from his Re 1& 72.] Oratory and Journalism. 51 view, reviving it for one hundred and six numbers more; again sent to Newgate by reason of a pamphlet called What if the Queen should die ?in which, though it was written with the best intentions of loyalty to the Hanoverian suc- cession, there was such a relapse into his old incomprehensible irony as persuaded the impenetrable public that it was an ad- vocacy of the Pretender; again making his peace with the powers that be, by seizing upon the interval between Annes death and George I.s arrival from Hanover to fill the Flying Post with eulogiums upon the new monarch; and yet again employed in the secret service of the government, this time under the auspices of the Earl of Sunderland, and in the dis- charge of functions akin to those of a spy. Not to follow him out of his journalistic career into the years of retirement which produced, among other works, Robinson Crusoe, Moll Flanders, the Memoirs of a Cavalier, and the Account of the Plague, there remains to be mentioned, as the crowning glory of his editorial life, a newspaper enterprise to which he betook himself after the final discontinuance of his Review. This was the Mercator, a publication instigated by the Earl of Oxford, who supplied to it the official documents and statis- tics in the possession of the ministry. This paper was con- tinued, thrice a week, for one hundred and eighty-one numbers, until Oxfords retirement from office. It is notable as showing that at that early period ten years before Adam Smith was born . De Foe was a free-trader. The first number contained what would now be called a prospectus, which set forth the following objects Considerations on the state of British trade, particularly as respects Holland, France, and the Dutch barrier, the trade to and from France, the trade to Portugal, Spain, and the West Indies, and the Fisheries of Newfoundland and Nova Scotia, with other matters and advantages accruing to Great Britain by the Treaty of Peace and Commerce lately concluded at Utrecht. Throughout Addisons career his literary and his political employments contributed reciprocally to the advancement of each other. The Latin poems he wrote at Oxford had already won him some renown, both there and at the sister University of Cambridge, when, at the age of twenty-two, he addressed 52 Oratory and Journalism. [Jan. some complimentary lines to Dryden, which introduced him to the friendship of the veteran poet. By Dryden he was made acquainted with Congreve, and by Congreve with Charles Montagu, afterwards Lord Halifax, who at this time was Chancellor of the Exchequer and Whig leader in the House of Commons. Halifax, a man of distinguished literary taste, and through life an assiduous patron of men of letters, co-operated warmly with his colleague Lord Somers in attaching young men of talent to the fortunes of their party. Discerning the capa- bilities of Addison, Montagu designed employing him in the service of the Crown abroad, and, that he might acquire the knowledge of the French and other languages requisite to a diplomatist, procured for him a pension of 300 a year, to be expended in travel on the Continent. During these travels came the fall of Halifax and his impeachment; but Addisons interests were taken in charge by the Earl of Manchester, and he had just been appointed English agent in attendance upon Prince Eugene in Italy, when the death of King William and the consequent revolution of parties interrupted Addisons fortunes only less rudely than it did Dc Foes. Returning to England, Addison for a time led a life of extreme poverty in London, until the breaking up of party lines and that coalition of the Whigs and moderate Tories which followed the victories of Marlborough. The popularity of these victories was a main reliance of the ministry, and Godolphin was extremely mortified by the surpassingly wretched poems produced by his partisans in honor of the battle of Blenheim, poems of which Lord Macaulay has preserved these specimen lines Think of two thousand gentlemen at least, And each man mounted on his capering beast!. Into the Danube tbey were pushed by shoals. According to a statement to be found in one of the poet Cow- pers letters, these verses were written by one Chapman, but Macaulay, for some unexplained reason, omitted the last and most absurd line as given by Cowper: Into tbe Danube they were pushed by shoals, And sunk and bobbd, and bobbd and sunk, and sunk and bobbd, their souls. Unversed in literature himself, Godoiphin was nevertheless 18~2.] Oratory and Journalism. 53 able to appreciate the proficiency of Halifax, and appealed to him for help in his emergency. Halifax expressed resentment at the manner in which the public money which he had em- ployed while in office for the encouragement of literature had been diverted into discreditable uses, and affected unwillingness to indicate the poet of whom the minister was in search. Go- dolphin, however, gently extracted from him the information that Addison was the man he needed, and having given assur- ances that Halifaxs frieiid should be approached with consid- eration and liberally rewarded, he despatched on the embassy the Chancellor of the Exchequer, Henry Boyle, who found Addison in a garret over a mean shop in the Haymarket, and unfolded to him the desires of the ministry. The poem that resulted was The Campaign, which contains the famous similitude of the angel who Rides in the whirlwind and directs the storm, and which, winning immense and instant applause, effected the authors immediate appointment to a commissionership of 200 a year, with a promise of further advancement. Addison~ s prosperity had now commenced. The publication of a volume of travels and the opera of iRosamond sustained his literary reputation; while the Parliamentary election of 1705 having restored the Whigs to power and Halifax to office, he was suc- cessively employed on a mission to Hanover, as an under- secretary of state; and, having gained a seat in Parliament, as Chief Secretary for Ireland, under the Earl of Wharton as Lord Lieutenant, and ultimately as Secretary of State. It was dur- ing his official residence in Dublin that Addison was drawn into journalism. Before leaving England he had provided for his old schoolmate and fellow-collegian, Richard Steele, by pro- curing from Lord Sunderland his appointment to the editorship of the official Gazette, an office of no literary dignity, but which gave its incumbent earlier and fuller foreign intelligence than any other newspaper writer could possibly obtain. The possession of these facilities suggested to Steele a periodical paper on a new plan, a paper which should be published on the days of the tn-weekly mails from London to the country, and which should combine exceptionally authentic foreign news with the social, literary, and theatrical gossip in which his 54 Oratory and Journalism. [Jan. knowledge of the town made him an adept. The Tatler consequently appeared in 1709, and at once obtained from Addison such contributions that the editor himself, to use his own words, fared like a distressed prince who calls in a powerful neighbor to his aid. I was undone by my auxiliary. Steele continues: When I had once called him in, I could not subsist without dependence on him. It was now for the first time that Addisons real genius appeared. As a poet he was the best during the short interregnum between Dryden and Pope, and he had already established himself as an elegant and popular man of letters. But it was in the Tatler that he originated the social essay which has retained undimin- ished popularity from his day to ours. For an adequate anal- ysis of the combination of powers which Addison displayed in this journal, still more in the Spectator and others of its successors, the graceful facility of his style, his fine satire, his wit, invention, and observation, his diversified humor, high- bred good-temper, humanity, and unsullied moral purity, the reader must turn to Lord Macaulays well-known essay. It is sufficient to say here that Addisons periodical writings fur- nished the model which the best essayists, alike of his gener- ation and of ours, have endeavored to imitate, but have never surpassed. The Tatler ceased by reason of that fall of the Whigs from power in 1710, which not only deprived Steele of his gazetteership, and consequently of the information which formed the groundwork of his journal, but cost Addison his office at a time when other pecuniary losses and personal troubles accumulated upon him. During the stormy election which now ensued, and in which Addison secured his seat without a contest, the partisans of Secretary St. John, after- wards Lord Bohingbroke, established the Examiner,? of which some account will presently be given. To repel its damaging assaults Addison brought out the Whig Examiner, in which his abilities showed as conspicuously in political controversy as they had done in social satire. The journal, however, was de- signed to serve only a momentary purpose, and was discontinued after a few months issue, or rather it passed into other hands and took another title; but it had proved so formidable an antagonist that Swift wrote in great exultation to Stehla to an- 1872.] Oratory and Journalism. 55 nounce that it is now down among the dead men, a re- mark to which Dr. Johnson, for all his Toryism, appends the observation, He might well rejoice at the death of that which he could not have killed. In the next year Steele, to whom a newspaper was as much a necessity of existence as to De Foe, commenced the Spectator, the design of which, as well as the two most notable members of its imaginary club, Sir Roger de Coverley and Will Honeycomb, was the creation of Addison. Addisons contributions were at once the best in the paper, and the specimens of his own writing which have taken the strongest hold upon the popular as well as the critical mind. To their merit undoubtedly it was due that the Spec- tator, instead of justifying the warnings of those who censured Steeles rashness in attempting a daily publication, at once be- came an indispensable accompaniment of the breakfast-table of polite society, and gained a daily circulation of between three and four thousand copies, while particular numbers reached twenty thousand; a popularity which, in view of the rarity of readers at that day, has been accounted relatively equal to that of the works of Scott or Dickens, and which was so firmly es- tablished that, when the imposition of the stamp-tax had the intended effect of killing off most of the existing journals, the Spectator was able to double its price and still to yield a good return to its owners. Addisons further official advance- ments, his works in general literature, and his other journalistic enterprises although the last include the ~ commenced during the Scottish rebellion of 1715, in behalf of the Pretender, the strangest of his political writings present no new features, and need not be dwelt upon. It is sufficient to say that Addisons writings won him a higher place in the state than any other Englishman has gained by the same means, for Mr. Disraelis rise has been due to other things than literature, and that literary and political eminence com- bined to give social station which enabled him to become the husband of the Countess Dowager of Warwick and the master of the world-renowned Holland House. Of his literary work there can be no more admirable summary than in the closing words of Lord Macaulays eloquent essay, which describe it as that of the great satirist, who alone knew how to use ridicule 56 Oratory and Journalism. [Jan. without abusing it, who, without inflicting a wound, effected a great social reform, and who reconciled wit and virtue, after a long and disastrous separation, during which wit had been led astray by profligacy, and virtue by fanaticism. Upon Bolingbrokes dark and involved political life it is not necessary to enlarge. Of his newspapers, the first was the Examiner, brought out in 1710, when, as Secretary of State in the newly formed administration of the Earl of Oxford, it was his purpose to inflame to the utmost the popular fury against the fallen Godoiphin ministry and its Whig following. Writing as often himself as was possible amid the engrossing cares of office at so stormy a period, but forced more frequently to inspire the pens of such assistants as Swift, Atterbury, Arbuthuot, Prior, and Freind, Bolingbroke for the first time made journalism a great power in the state, and displayed in the Examiner the earliest specimen of the capabilities of a great party organ. The unparalleled weight and ferocity of its attacks were such as to call for some counteracting influence on the side of the Whigs, which was put forth, as has been seen, in Addisons Whig Examiner; and this contest, espe- cially the spectacle of two such statesmen as Lords Boling- broke and Cowper, who answered him in the Tatler, engaged in a newspaper controversy, has been dwelt upon by Sir Walter Scott as attesting the influence upon the public mind thus early exercised by the press. Its immediate purpose attained, the conduct of the Examiner was allowed to devolve almost wholly on Dean Swift, who carried it on, as he says, for some eight months, until, becoming tired of it, and disgusted with the enmities it made for him, he transferred it to the notorious Mrs. Manley, from whom it again declined into the hands of Oldisworth, who continued it until the death of the queen and the end of the Oxford ministry. Threatened with impeach- ment for his share in the pacification of Utrecht, Bolingbroke lapsed into exile and treason, and office in the mock court of the Pretender in France. Soon breaking with these squabbling plotters of revolutions, and pursued by them with an innocuous impeachment, he devoted himself to literature and to the vin- dication of his conduct, until, in 1723, he was accorded his pardon and the restoration of h:s inheritance, but not of his 1872.] Oratory and Journalism. 57 seat in the House of Lords. Returning to England and to journalism, for the next ten years he set himself to the task of writing down Sir Robert Walpole and his ministry. The Craftsman was commenced as a weekly paper in 1726, under the editorship of Nicholas Amherst, who took the rwm de plume of Caleb Danvers; but its chief contributors and master-spirits were Bolingbroke and Pulteney, the leader of the opposition in the House of Commons. Bolingbroke was at once its most copious writer and the author of its popularity, the appearance of his series of articles called Oldeastles Re- marks having raised its sale to a point then considered pro- digious, while his immediately succeeding Dissertation upon Parties further increased it to a weekly circulation of twelve thousand copies. More significant, however, than their imme- diate effect are the facts that these political essays were adopted as the model of those which Bolingbrokes strong admirer, Lord Chesterfield, afterwards contributed to the World, that to them is traceable the inspiration which at a later day animated Smollett and Junius, that their form aud manner were those employed by the daily papers when, toward the close of the century, they began to assume strength and respectability, that the Craftsman was the undoubted prototype of Cannings Anti-Jacobin, of Leigh Hunts Examiner, and of Theodore Hooks John Bull, and that to its irresistible advocacy has been attributed that marked predominance of its opinions among the generation growing up under its influence which is illustrated by the circumstance that the men of letters under George III. were represented by such Tories as Johnson, Gibbon, Hume, Goldsmith, Smollett, while Fielding was almost the only Whig of acknowledged literary eminence. It is even claimed that, since George III. was brought up upon Bolingbrokes writings, they are measur- ably responsible not only for the revival of Toryism in the middle of the century, but for a formative influence upon Eng- lish government throughout that long reign which outlasted the American and the French revolutions. Nothing could be more strongly marked than the differences between these three representative men of Queen Annes era, who yet concurred in working out the political supremacy of the 58 Oratory and Journalism. [Jan. press. The difference is illustrated in their style, De Foes, belonging to that school of clear, strong English, of which Swift is the representative and master, was plain almost to rudeness, and the characteristic of his writings was plausible realism and common sense; Addisons classic simplicity and flowing grace furnished the best possible medium for his ex- quisite unlabored humor; while Bolingbrokes more ornate dic- tion falls rather into rank with Burkes and Gibbons, and his withering irony and invective, furious while dignified, were imitated but not improved upon by Chesterfield, Pope, and Junius. The varied parts they filled in partisan warfare are equally striking, De Foe, fertile in resource and of boundless endurance of labor, blundering on through difficulties to the end in view, served as a kind of sharpshooter or guerilla war- rior, diligently picking off the enemys outposts, but seldom merging himself in a general movement or taking recognized rank; Addison, the accomplished executor of enterprises for the general benefit of his party, devolved upon him from no dominating interest of his own in their success, but because no other hand could carry them through with such skill as his Bolingbroke, marshalling battalions of talent for the retention of power while he possessed it, and putting forth the utmost resources of his own splendid genius and learning to recover it when it had been lost. As distinctly contrasted were their characters and aims. De Foe, the plebeian patriot and radical, who, whatever the tergiversations which recent researches have brought to light, bent himself with ardent relish to the redress of the wrongs which came within his view; Addison, the middle-class Whig, whose fidelity to friends and party involved him in conflicts which it is difficult to harmonize with his some- what too placid character, but in which he acquitted himself with none the less honor; Bolingbroke, the Tory aristocrat and doctrinaire, perpetually led by his self-seeking ambition into failure and disgrace, yet the only one of the three great contemporaries to bring his speculations into completeness and clear relief, and to evolve from them a coherent political system. Notably as their lives were at variance, still more so have been the posthumous fortunes of their works. De Foe, qud politi- cian and journalist, has passed into such oblivion that of the 1872.] Oratory and Journalism. 59 greater parfof his effusions in this capacity not even the names survive. Of his very mediocre poetry but four lines have kept their hold on life by dint of passing into the category of stock quotations, the lines which open The Free-born English- man, and which possibly owe their exceptional favor to their curious exemplification of the authors besetting literary sin, the counterpart of the squinting construction of the gram- marians ~ Wherever God erects a house of prayer The Devil always builds a chapel there; And t will be found upon examination The latter has the largest congregation. In spite of reproaches of this sort which he managed so often and so unintentionally to point against his co-sectaries, it is yet as the undaunted champion of Dissenters as much as by reason of his authorship of the most popular book in the language, that De Foes name has passed into immortality. In the case of the second of our great journalists, it is not of the Right Honorable Joseph Addison, Secretary of State, that men now think, nor of the partisan, nor yet of the poet and literary oracle who held in the Kit Cat and the applauding senate of the coffee-houses a position similar to that of Johnson in the next generation. His readers in our time admire the graceful essayist and social moralist who purified a polluted age, and to whose memory, but for the envenomed gall of the brilliant and envious Pope, not the suspicion of even a foible would attach. Bolingbroke, whose personal power attained the greatest height of the three, and whose opinions left the deepest impression upon the minds of immediate posterity and the events of the age, is known to us only at second-hand, and re- calls little more than the friendship of Pope. There are even notably well-read men who have not perused one of his works; and the general reader rarely glances into his writings, unless from curiosity or for critical recreation. Originally, perhaps, this oblivion was due to the treasonable courses which brought a similar fate upon the similarly offending Atterbury; but for its perpetuation we must look to those philosophical specula- tions, with their obnoxious religious tendencies, which have come to be the principal association with the name of Boling- broke. 60 Orator~y and Journalism. [Jan. For this, whatever their dissimilarities, these three great contemporaries are to be held in common honor, that to them and to their fellow-workers we owe the elevation of the press to the position of a great political arbiter, and the accomplish- ment of a revolution in the independence of government and public opinion that only awaited the supplementary reform of which, in another generation, Wilkes was the instrument, to give us, in all except perfection of detail, the essential attri- butes of the newspaper of the nineteenth century. The level to which the periodical press had been raised by the politicians of Queen Annes era was not maintained during the earlier Hanoverian reigns. The age of Johnson, Goldsmith, Jiume, Robertson, Sterne, Gray, Fielding, Smollett, was pre- eminently a literary one; but the newspaper fell into the hands of party hacks, the bravos of the government and of the oppo- sition, and becoming the mere tool of faction, even while it retained the influence which we have seen Lord Danvers com- plain of, sunk into disrepute. The ministerial journalists of this period were characterized by Pulteney as a herd of wretches, whom nether information can enlighten nor afflu- ence elevate ; and the ministerial leader, Sir Robert Walpole, who was no great reader and was singularly indifferent to what was written about himself, completed the sketch by saying, I have never discovered any reason to exalt the authors who write against the administration to a higher degree of reputa- tion than their opponents. In his Citizen of the World, Goldsmith attributes to the pen of his Chinese observer of English manners an account of the newspaper of the day. The universal passion for politics, writes this philosopher, is gratified by daily Gazettes, as with us at China. But as in ours the Emperor endeavors to instruct his people, in theirs the people endeavor to instruct the administration. You must not, however, imagine that they who compile these papers have any actual knowledge of the politics or the gov- ernment of a state; they only collect their materials from the oracle of some coffee-house; which oracle has himself gathered them the night before from a beau at a gaming-table, who has pillaged his knowledge from a great mans porter, who has had his information from the great mans gentleman, who Oratory and Journalism. 61 has invented the whole story for his amusement the night pre- ceding. It was nevertheless during this period of journal- istic degradation that precise knowledge of public affairs began to be embodied in something answering to Parliamentary reporting. From the time of Anne until the earlier part of George III.s reign, pretty correct accounts of the debates were given in an annual publication called Boyers Historical Register. Hitherto, in order to escape the censure of Parlia- ment, these reports had only been printed during its recess; but in 1788 the Commons forbade their publication as well during the recess as the sitting of Parliament, and gave warning that they should proceed with the utmost severity against offenders. When, therefore, about this time, regular monthly reports of the debates began to appear in the London and Gentlemans magazines, it became customary to adopt various disguises, as a means of eluding the vengeance of the two Houses. The debates were assigned in one set of reports to the Political Club, and were put into the mouths of such Roman worthies as Brutus and Mark Antony; and in Dr. Johnsons to the Senate of Great Liliput ; while the speakers and personages alluded to were either designated by such initials as the E. of B., the P of W s, the K , the Q , or by such perversions as calling Mr. Constantine Phipps and Mr. Jeremiah Dyson, representatives respectively of Lincoln and Weymouth, Mr. Constantine Lincoln and Mr. Jeremiah Weymouth. This ridiculous affectation of concealment, says Hallam, was extended to many other words in political writings, and had not wholly ceased in the American war, an affectation which often makes the memoirs and diaries of that period such exasper- ating reading, and which is to this day cherished, as an amusing archaism, by Pnnch and his followers, and, on grounds best known to himself, by the fashionable reporter of ladies toilets. For the transition from this system of subterfuge and circnmlocntion to one of blunt straightforwardness, and for making possible the pnblic scrutiny of mcii and measures by the unreserved daily publication of full intelligence, we are indebted to the resolute pertinacity of the fanmous John Wilkes. 62 Oratory and Journalism. [Jan. There is no character which more certainly excites the ire of the historian than that of the demagogue, and it has fallen to the lot of Wilkes to receive very hard measure even at the hands of those most indebted to the reform he brought about. Undoubtedly he was not a personage whom the most perverse of hero-worshippers could exalt into an idol. One disqualifica- tion existed in an insuperable physical deformity which caused endless taunts to be flung at him. Even in our own time and country we have had illustrations, perhaps intensifications, of the popular inability to conceive that, in public men at least, an obliquity of vision may be unaccompanied by a cor~ responding deviation from moral rectitude; and Wilkes was dis- figured by what so recent a writer as Lord Brougham has seen fit to call his inhuman squint and demoniac grin. From his own day to ours Wilkess sqnint has been persistently forced upon the eye and the imagination of the public. Hogarth was seduced by royal patronage to turn upon his friend and im- mortalize it in caricatures which hold a conspicuous place in his own story and Wilkess, and in the politico-literary feuds of the day. Southey, who had passed from the pautisocratic form of communistic radicalism into the laureateship, a pen- sion, and the post of High Tory literary gladiator to the house of Hanover, introduced Wilkes into that very poor pro- duction, The Vision of Judgment, in a passage containing these lines Beholding the foremost, Him by the cast of his eye oblique, I knew as the firebrand Whom the unthinking populace held for their idol and hero, Lord of Misrule in his day Discontent and disloyalty, like the teeth of the dragon, He had sown on the winds; they had ripened beyond the Atlantic; Thence in natural birth, sedition, revolt, revolution, France had received the seeds, and reaped the harvest of horrors. Byron, in that Second Vision of Judgment, in which he retorted upon what he called Sontheys Apotheosis of George the Third, before bringing in the Laureate with his spay- med dactyls and the recitations which put angels, devils, and gibbering ghosts to flight, and set Michaels teeth on edge to that degree that he was unable to drown the poetic flow with his trump, introduced Wilkes as one of the witnesses sum- 1872.] Oratory and Journalism. 63 moned by Satan against the miserable monarch, describing him as A merry, cock-eyed, curious-looking sprite. Socially, indeed, there could not have been two more con- genial spirits than Wilkes and Byron, had they but been contem- poraries. With all the personal fascination which afterwards marked the noble poet, the popular agitator managed to attain, even among the dissolute wits and men of honor about town of his time, a bad eminence for the extravagance of his de- baucheries and the wild excesses of Medmenham Abbey. A graphic enumeration of the orgies at this place would read more like a leaf from one of Ingoldsbys most bizarre extrav- aganzas than a sober recital of the dissipations of Young England a century and a half ago. In brief, it may be said that the ruins of an old Cistercian abbey on the banks of the Thames had been restored by a band of profligate men of fashion which comprised such ornaments to society as Wilkes, Bubb Dodington (Lord Melcombe), Sir Thomas Sta- pleton, Thomas Potter (son of the Archbishop of Canterbury), Paul Whitehead (the poet so despised by Johnson, and secre- tary to the brotherhood), the 11ev. Lawrence Sterne (though this has been questioned), the Earl of Sandwich (eminent as the most dissolute man in England, and afterwards Secretary of State), and Sir Francis Dasliwood, who, when Chancellor of the Exchequer, became conspicuous as the most incapable of financiers, and who now officiated as father-abbot of the order, which was styled, in his honor, Franciscan. Each member had his cell and monastic robes, in which he officiated at revels so indecent that chroniclers by no means squeamish refuse to dwell upon their nature, and performed, in a chapel adorned with obscene embellishments, rites which blended the ceremonial of the Roman Catholic Church with the mysteries of Bacchus and Venus, and of which one of the features was the administration of the eucharist to an ape. Whether or not these proceedings were youthful excesses which he afterwards outgrew, it is certain that Wilkes was hailed by acclamation one of the most agreeable of companions, that his taste and read- ing were highly esteemed, his wit universally quoted, and his company in great request. Nothing in the Life of Johnson is 64 Oratory and Journalism. [Jan. more amusing than Boswells account of the labored diplomacy by which he prevailed upon the Tory Doctor to meet Wilkes at a dinner and not to insult him, the sulky stand made by his patron against the blandishments of the demagogue, and his final capitulation to the irresistible charm. His name, said Johnson of Wilkes, after the conversion, has been sounded from pole to pole as the pho~nix of convivial felicity. When his dialect was more in dishabille he observed of him, Jack has a great variety of talk; Jack is a scholar; Jack has the manners of a gentleman; and again he writes to Mrs. Thrale, I have been breaking jokes with Jack Wilkes upon the Scotch. Such, madam, are the vicissitudes of things. Still more im- pressive is the testimony of Lord Mansfield, who, after having been one of his most assiduous persecutors, said, Mr. Wilkes was the pleasantest companion, the politest gentleman, and the best scholar I ever knew. Such were the contrasting features in the sufficiently vulnerable character of the man upon whom it devolved to assert and to establish the liberty of the press, in the face of the imbittered combination of every branch of the government, and through a struggle of a dozen years which involved his own ruin. Wilkess first political operation miscarried, but not for want of energy or pluck. In 1754 he contested the borongli of Ber- wick-upon-Tweed, and learning that his opponents voters were to be brought thither by sea, lie bribed the captain to land them on the coast of Norway, but was outvoted nevertheless. His second attempt was made three years later, when he was elected at Aylesbury, by dint of an expenditure of 7,000. Attaching himself at once to the fortunes of Pitt, he promptly became conspicuous for the intensity of his aversions to the French and the Scots, aversions which swayed the thoroughgoing Eng- lishman of that day to an almost incredible extent. The dis- placement of Pitt by the Earl of Bute, a Scot, would no doubt have impelled Wilkes into violent opposition, eveii had the provocations been less than they were; but if the favorite had deliberately proposed to himself the task of making his min- istry and his compatriots obnoxious, he could scarcely have done so more effectually. He at once began to reverse the prosperous and popular policy of Pitt; he bestowed upon hi~ 1872.] Oratory and Journalism. 65 personal adherents the richest prizes in the public gift; he affected to patronize letters, but refused a professorship to the accomplished Gray, the author of the Elegy, to confer it on an obscure Scot, the tutor of his son-in-law; and he bestowed both a pension and a sinecure office upon Home, whose coun- trymen, in honor of his tragedy of Douglas, were shouting in the theatres, Wha s your Wullie Shakespeare noo? The popular hatred of Bute became intense; a mob attacked him in his sedan-chair, and was with difficulty dispersed by a troop of guards; he was forced to go about in disguise; on all sides he encountered, hung upon a gallows, a jack-boot, a pun upon his Christian name and title, coupled with a petticoat, rep- resentative of the kings mother, of whom the Earl was popu- larly believed to be the paramour. Into this turmoil Wilkes plunged with zest. The ministry had established Smollett in charge of a paper called the Briton, written by Scotcbmen, and intrusted with the defence of the existing order of things. Wilkes lost little time in associating with himself the satirist and poet, Charles Churchill, then in the height of his great popularity, and setting up an opposition paper, the famous North Briton, whose mission it was to assail the Scotch and bring odium upon the Bute ministry. The paper embodied the popular wrath, and instantly rose to a large circulation, being written with extreme clearness and plausibility, and with an audacity illustrated by the circumstance that in it, for the first time, initials and dashes were discarded, and persons of the highest station assailed by name. Unquestionably it was libellous; and there is a story, recorded by Crabb Robinson on the authority of the poet Rogers, that Wilkes said, probably in allusion to it, Give me a grain of truth, audi will mix it up with a great mass of falsehood, so that no chemist shall ever be able to separate them. The odium thus cherished and fermented by the North Briton became so intense that Bute was absolutely terrified into submission, and resigned in April, 1763; being succeeded by a ministry having Mr. George Grenville at its head, and among its members Sir Francis Dashwood (now Lord le Despenser) and Lord Sand- wich, both former Franciscans of Medmenham Abbey. Sup- posing its point carried, Wilkes suspended the publication of VOL. cxIv.NO. 234. 5 66 Oratory and Journalism. [Jan. his paper at its forty-fourth number; but it at once became apparent that the changes had been only ostensible, and that Lord Bute continued the adviser of the king and the inspirer of the ministry; so, after three weeks intermission, there ap- peared the famous No. 45 of the North Briton, and the long struggle commenced. So far from being exceptionally violent, the number of the paper upon which the government joined issue was subdued and tame by contrast with its predecessors, being, in the words of Burke, a spiritless though virulent performance, at once vapid and sour. But George III. was bent on suppress- ing Wilkes, and Grenville was anxious at once to distinguish his ministry by some vigorous measure and to avert from it the assaults which had overwhelmed his forerunner. Accordingly, it was given out that the North Britons comments upon the kings recent speech, proroguing Parliament, were disloyal, and that their designation of one of its statements as untrue amounted to a direct personal insult to the king, who was thus charged by a subject with falsehood.* Not content with filing an information for libel in the Court of Kings Bench, the min- istry revived an antiquated relic of royal prerogative, and issued a general warrant against the authors, printers, and publishers of the North Briton, No. 45, of whose identity it sought no evidence, and Lord Halifax, giving verbal in- structions for the apprehension of Wilkes and Churchill, left * As the position of the government, with respect to the libel, depends essential- ly upon the question whether Wilkes had personally assailed the king, it became important to examine the offensive words. Of the principal passage selected by the attorney-general to rest his charge of seditious libel upon, these sentences contain the pith: The kings speech has always been considered by the legislature and by the public at large as the speech of the minister. It has regularly, at the beginning of every session of Parliament, been referred by both Houses to the consideration of a committee, and has been generally canvassed with the utmost freedom, when the minister of the crown has been obnoxious to the nation This week has given to the public the most abandoned instance of ministerial effrontery ever at- tempted to be imposed on mankind. The ministers speech of last Tuesday is not to be paralleled in the annals of this country. I am in doubt whether the imposi- tion is greater on the sovereign or on the nation. Every friend of his country must lament that a prince of so many great and amiable qualities, whom England truly reveres, can be brought to give the sanction of his sacred name to the most odious measures, and to the most unjustifiable public declarations, from a throne ever renowned for truth, honor, and unsullied virtue. 1872.] Oratory and Journalism. 67 the remaining arrests to the discretion of the officers. So diligently did these bestir themselves, and so credulous were they of rumors and guesses, that they soon had forty-nine pub- lishers and printers under arrest, and carried away all their books and papers. Wilkes himself demanded of the kings messenger a sight of the warrant, and, discovering the blunder of the Crown lawyers, declared that it did not respect him, that such a warrant was absolutely illegal and void in itself, and that it was a ridiculous warrant against the whole Eng- lish nation. During this interview Churchill entered the room, and Wilkes, with great presence of mind, addressed him with, Good morrow, Mr. Thomson. How does Mrs. Thomson do to-day? Does she dine in the country? And Churchill, taking the hint, said that she did, and that he had come to bid farewell, and removed himself and his papers to a place of security. Carried before Lords Halifax and Egremont, the Secretaries of State, Wilkess keen retorts entirely baffled their inquiries; but he was committed to the Tower, and held in such close confinement as to be denied writing-materials or the sight of friends or of legal advisers, until after the gov- ernment had several times baffled his allies by transferring him from the custody of one prison to another he was released on a writ of habeas corpus, on the score of his privilege as a member of Parliament. The next move was on the side of Wilkes. Provided with means by Lord Temple, the printers brought actions in the Court of Common Pleas against the mes- sengers who had arrested them, and Chief Justice Pratt de- livering his judgment that the general warrant was illegal, that it was illegally executed, and that the officers were indemnified by statute recovered 300 damages. Wilkes also sued a Mr. Wood, an under-secretary of state, who had superintended his arrest and seized his papers, and, in addition to the triumph of putting Lord Halifax on the stand, was awarded by the jury 1,000 damages. The publishers likewise recovered 400. Besides all these judgments, which, being appealed from, were reaffirmed by Lord Mansfield and three other judges in the Court of Kings Bench, on the ground that general warrants were illegal, and that no degree of antiquity can give sanc- tion to a usage bad in itself, Wilkes brought actions for false 68 Oratory and Journali8m. [Jan. imprisonment against Lords Egremont and Halifax, and re- covered from the latter for Egremont died during the delays that were interposed 4,000 damages. In Parliament, on the contrary, the Court was able to carry things with a high hand. In the House of Commons, on the night of its assembling, Mr. Grenville read a message from the king detailing the proceedings against Wilkes; and this being responded to by a unanimous vote of thanks, Lord North moved a resolution condemnatory of Wilkes in the bitterest terms. During the heated debate which followed, it is said that Pitt who disliked Wilkes, but perceived that he now represented the liberty of the subject and the independence of Parliament spoke forty times; but the adherents of the king were immovable, and carried the resolution by a large majority, as well as another directing that the North Briton should be publicly burned by the common hangman. Wilkes hereupon, with excellent temper, narrated the circumstances of the arrest, and offered to waive his Parliamentary privilege, in order that the libel might be tried before a jury. He was answered by a Mr. Martin, a ministerial placeman, who, having been as~ sailed as such in the North Briton, had prepared himself by pistol practice for the opportunity which now offered, with a declaration that the author of the North Briton~~ was a malignant and infamous scoundrel, who had stabbed him in the dark. When the House next assembled, and it was pro- posed further to consider what measures should be taken against Wilkes, it was announced that he had fallen in a duel with Mr. Martin, and was not expected to survive. In the House of Lords the proceedings were still more extraordinary. As soon as it had assembled, the Earl of Sandwich, one of Wilkess f& rmer Medmenham associates, complained to the Peers of an obscene poem called An Essay on Woman, a parody of Popes Essay on Man, and accompanied by notes which burlesqued those of Bishop Warburton on Popes Essay, and were attributed to that prelate. This poem, although its first few lines were such that Lord Hardwicke begged their ears might be spared the rest, delighted Lord Sandwich so in- tensely that he persisted in reading it to the end; whereupon Bishop Warburton rose to express his surprise and indignation 1872.] Oratoril and Journalism. 69 that his ears and those of his Episcopal brethren should be pol- luted with such filth, to protest strenuously against the associa- tion of his name with its notes, and to exclaim that the blackest fiends in hell would not keep 9ompany with Wilkes when he should arrive there, an outburst of which the sin- cerity may be estimated from this passage in a letter written by Lord Sandwich to Mr. Grenville a week before Parliament met: I have been this morning with the bishop, and showed him the papers. He comes heartily into the affair, says he will not only authorize me to complain in his name of this outrage, but will take any part in it himself that shall be judged proper by the kings administration, and he seems much pleased with the scheme in general. Of the r6le taken by Lord Sandwich, the popular appreciation was embodied in the saying of Lord le Despenser, lately Sir Francis Dashwood, the father-abbot of the Franciscans, that he had never before heard Satan rebuke sin; while a more public and enduring impression, recorded by Horace Walpole, was given a few nights after at Covent Garden Theatre, where Captain Macheaths observation, in the Beggars Opera, That Jemmy Twitcher should peach me, I own surprises me, elicited from the audience roars of perceptive appreciation, and fixed the nickname of Jemmy Twitcher upon the reprobate earl until his dying day. To complete the galaxy of virtue blended in this accusation, it should be added that among the most strenuous reprehenders of Wilkess libertinism was the Earl of March, afterwards Duke of Queensberry, and the original of Thackerays in- imitable portraiture of the Marquis of Steyne. The poem thus commented upon and used, on the score of the liberties taken with Bishop Warburtons name, as a protest for an abor- tive order by the Peers for taking Wilkes into custody has been generally assumed by historians, by Macaulay and May, for instance, to have been the production of Wilkes; and Lord Broughams imagination included among the charges against him that he had prostituted the printing-press to multiply copies of a production that would dye with blushes the cheek of an impure. Now there has never been any evidence that Wilkes was the author; whereas there is reason to suppose that the poem was written, for the delectation of a 70 Oratory and Journali8m. [Jan. circle of rakes of which Lord Sandwich was a member, by Mr. Thomas Potter, already named as a Franciscan, the son of the Archbishop of Canterbury, and notorious for his amours with the wife of Bishop Warburton. Instead, again, of copies hav- ing been multiplied, or even published, there never existed more than thirteen, which had been struck off at Wilkess private press, the copy produced by the ministry having been used in correcting the proof, and obtained, by bribery, from the printer. Beset by spies, pursued with a variety of petty per- secutions, his life menaced, and on one occasion attempted by an infuriate Scot who forced his way into the house, Wilkes sought refuge in Paris until his wound should heal, and for this session the Parliamentary proceedings against him were suspended. On the reassembling of Parliament there was pre- sented to the speaker a medical certificate that Wilkess wound had broken open, and rendered his movement impossible; but the House refused to accept this, on the ground of its infor- mality in not having been sworn to before a notary, and by a large majority declared him expelled; while in the Court of Kings Bench he was convicted in the matters of the North Briton and the Essay on Woman, and, on his non-ap- pearance to receive sentence, was outlawed. With the popu- lace, which had sympathized with the original offence, the re- sult of this unrelenting persecution was to exalt Wilkes to the position of a martyr. Wit, Beauty, Virtue, Honor, ironic designations, Horace Walpole explains, of the king, queen, princess dowager, and Lord Bute, became the popular toast in the city. Chief Justice Pratt, in deliver- ing his judgment on the illegality of general warrants, had re- marked that it might be reversed by a higher court, in which event he must submit, as will become me, and kiss the rod; but I must say I shall always consider it as a rod of iron for the chastisement of the people of Great Britain. At once he became one of the most popular men in the kingdom; his portrait, painted by Sir Joshua Reynolds, and bearing an in- scription In honor of the zealous asserter of English liberty by law, was hung in the Guildhall; and foreigners thronged to see so incredibly intrepid a judge. When the hangman ap- peared to carry out the sentence of burning the North 1872.] Oratory and Journali8m. 71 Briton, it was torn from his hands by the mob, and in its stead a petticoat and jack-boot were thrown into the flames; while the offending number was reprinted and largely circu- lated; and when the printer, Williams, was sent to the pillory for this offence, he went thither in a coach marked No. 45, and was presented with the sum of 200, contributed on the spot by the spectators, who likewise erected beside the pillory a gallows bearing the inevitable jack-boot and a Scotch bonnet. In two years the Duke of Grafton became Premier, and Wilkes visited London and petitioned for a pardon, but was met with an evasive answer, a course which is explained by these words in a letter written at the time by the Bishop of Carlisle to Mr. Grenville: The ministers are embarrassed to the last degree how to act with regard to Wilkes. It seems they are afraid to press the king for his pardon, as that is a subject his Majesty will not easily hear the least mention of; and they are apprehensive, if he has it not, that the mob of London will rise in his favor, which God forbid. In 1768 there was a Parliamentary election, and Wilkes again returned and made a personal application to the king, which was neg- lected on the score of informality. Unpardoned as he was, he at once issued an address as candidate for the city of London, but, though he polled 1,247 votes, he was unsuccessful; where- upon he next day offered himself in Middlesex, and was elected by a vote of 1,292 to 827 for one of his opponents and 807 for the other. On the one side the mob of London compelled the citizens to illuminate their houses and shout for Wilkes and Liberty. On the other, the king wrote to Lord North, The expulsion of Mr. Wilkes appears to be very essential, and must be effected. Before bringing matters to this issue, however, another measure was taken for his suppression, and the old sentence of 1,000 fine and two years imprisonment was put in force. On his way to prison the mob rescued him, but he again surrendered himself, and there was no new disturbance until the day of the meeting of Parliament. Expecting that he would be released to take his seat, a multitude assembled before the prison to escort him to the House, and, finding itself disappointed, became tumultuous. Soldiers were brought up and ordered to fire, which they did, killing several persons. 72 Oratoril and Journalism. [Jan. At the inquest verdicts of wilful murder were rendered against the magistrate who ordered the firing, and one of the soldiers to whom the act was brought home; but the former was ac- quitted on his trial, and the latter, though dismissed the service, was granted a pension for life; while Lord Barrington, by the kings express command, issued an order from the War Office, assuring the troops that had been employed ~ that every pos- sible regard shall be shown to them; their zeal and good behavior on this occasion deserve it; and in case any disagree- able circumstance should happen in the execution of their duty, they shall have every defence and protection that the law can authorize and this office can give. With this order Wilkes coupled a despatch issued in advance of the riots by Lord Weymouth, Secretary of State, directing the use of force with- out scruple, and published a letter commenting unreservedly upon the course of the Secretary and what he termed the bloody massacre. By the Peers this publication was voted a breach of privilege, and by the Commons an insolent, scandalous, and seditious libel. With it the latter House coupled the North Briton matter, now five years old, and already punished by fine, by imprisonment, and by expulsion, and a large majority voted his fresh expulsion, though it was strongly opposed by Burke, Pitt, IJowdeswell, Beckford, Corn- wall, and Grenville; the latter of whom, though he had initiated the persecution, urged the impolicy of perpetuating the demagogues popularity by continuing it, and predicted his re-election. Within ten days Wilkes was re-elected, only five votes being cast against him; whereupon at its next meeting the House resolved that John Wilkes, Esquire, having been in this session of Parliament expelled this House, was and is incapable of being elected a member to serve in this present Parliament, declared the election void, and issued a writ for a new one. At the new election Wilkes was returned with no opposing votes whatever; and the process was gone through with yet again, but with this difference, that Colonel Luttrell, a ministerial member, vacated his seat, stood against Wilkes, managed to get 296 votes against Wilkess 1,143, procured from the House a vote that Wilkess election was null and void, and was declared entitled to the contested seat by a Parlia 1872.] Oratory and Journalism. 73 mentary vote of 197 to 143. Thus, the Court had triumphed, hut at a cost of which its expenditure of 100,000 in the pro- ceedings formed a minor item. Wilkess popularity became enormous; 20,000 was subscribed within a few weeks to de- fray the debts incurred by his resistance; and his cause was espoused in quarters where he had originally been regarded with the liveliest abhorrence; even the Prince of Wales, as Thackeray records for almost the only redeeming trait he can discern in the character of the first gentleman of Europe,~~ poking his head into the royal closet, on the occasion of a dif- ference with his father, and shouting, Wilkes and Liberty forever! The sentiment of the people found expression in electing him, as soon as he was discharged from prison, to the office, at that time highly esteemed, of Alderman, then of Sheriff, then of Lord Mayor of London, finally to that of Chamberlain of the city, which he held for nearly twenty years, until his death. In 1774, moreover, he carried his point by taking his seat as member of Parliament from Middlesex, when he moved that the several resolutions which had been passed against him should be expunged from the journal of the House, as subversive of the rights of the whole body of electors, a motion on which he was defeated in the Parlia- ments of 1775, 1776, 1777, 1779, and 1781, but at last carried in 1782 by a vote of 115 to 47. Much as these events, and the simultaneous prosecutions of the publisher of Juniuss letters and other similar offenders, had done to bring discredit upon the existing doctrines respect- ing the law of libel and to vindicate the liberty of the press, it was reserved for Wilkes, in his capacity of Alderman, to in- augurate the proceedings with which our inquiry is chiefly con- cerned, and by which, in the words of Chancellor Campbell, the right of publishing Parliamentary debates was substan- tially established. The new agitation grew out of the old one. By way of neutralizing Lord Chathams vehement op- position to the anti-Wilkes procedures in 1770, the ministerial majority in the Lords had exercised their privilege of closing the doors, and so suppressed the debate. In the Commons similar measures were adopted ; but as the reports nevertheless continued, Colonel George Onslow who had been mentioned 74 Orator~y and Journali8m. [Jan. in them as little cocking George, the little scoundrel, and that little paltry, insignificant insect made a complaint against two of the offending journals, and obtained an order for the production of their printers at the bar of the House. Although their apprehension was prevented for the time by their servants resisting the officers, similar orders were issued against six more journals which persisted in the same offence; the minority of the House, comprising many who foresaw the impending difficulties in addition to the natural opponents of the principle at stake, delaying the vote until four oclock in the morning by a process of filibustering which involved the unprecedented number of twenty-three divisions. Some of the printers submitted, apologized, and were reprimanded; but others took a well-concerted stand. One of them, Wheble~ by advice of counsel, wrote to the Speaker declaring his resolve to yield no obedience but to the laws of the land; and having been collusively arrested by virtue of a royal proclamation which offered a reward for the offenders, he was brought by prearrangement before Alderman Wilkes. Wilkes, who had set the whole thing in motion, discharged the prisoner, after binding him over to prosecute for assault and false imprison- ment the person who had made the arrest, and wrote to his old enemy, Lord Halifax, Secretary of State, announcing that Wheble had been apprehended by one who was neither a constable nor peace-officer of the city, which was in direct violation of the rights of an Englishman, and of the chartered privileges of a citizen of this metropolis. A similar arrest was similarly dealt with on the same day by Alderman Oliver. Next day a messenger of the House attempted to arrest Miller, another of the printers, in his shop; but Miller sent for a con- stable, accused the messenger of assaulting him in his own house, and brought him before the Lord Mayor and Aldermen Oliver and Wilkes, who, setting aside the Speakers warrant as having not been backed by a city magistrate, and consequently illegal, discharged Miller and committed the messenger, al- though the deputy sergeant-at-arms of the Commons was present and demanded them both. Matters were now brought to this pass, that, whereas the printers were still at large, the House of Commons and the city of London were in open con~ 1872.] Oratory and Journalism. 75 flict. Even members who had deprecated the contest now admitted that there was no retreat. George III. had been persuaded from the first that, in the words of one of his notes to Lord North, it is highly necessary that this strange and lawless method of publishing debates in the papers should be put a stop to; and he now wrote to the same favorite to say that the authority of the House of Commons is totally anni- hilated if it is not in an exemplary manner supported to- morrow by instantly committing the Lord Mayor and Alder- man Oliver to the Tower; as to Wilkes, continued the king, he is below the notice of the House. For several successive days the Lord Mayor (Brass Crosby) and Oliver, both of whom were members of the House, were called to its bar, the Com- mons taking the kings hint and declining, somewhat ignomin- iously, again to measure their resources against Wilkes. After protracted and violent proceedings, during which the con- duct of the House, in Chathams words, was that of a mob, and not of a Parliament, while Oliver on his side declared that he was unconcerned at their threatened punishment, and that, as he expected little from their justice, he defied their power, the popular magistrates were consigned to the Tower. Hither they were escorted by a vast mob, which had previously smashed the carriages of Lord North and Charles James Fox, and violently handled other champions of privilege as they made their way into the House. In the Tower they were waited upon by the most distinguished members of the opposition and by deputations from all parts of England, lauded in complimentary addresses, tendered the freedom of many cities, and loaded with presents. After six weeks of this ovation, the prorogation of Parliament set them at liberty, and the transaction was at an end. Ostensibly Parliament had vindicated its privileges and pun- ished their infringement. In reality a renewal of the conflict was palpably out of the question, and the publication of debates was nevermore challenged. Great as have been the changes occasioned by the newspaper in the processes of legislation and the moulding of public opinion, those it has wrought in the characteristics of oratory Oratory and Journalism. [Jan. have beeii even more thorough. Abstaining from the greater subject for the closer pursuit of an immediate inquiry, a con- trast of the later Parliamentary models of the bygone school with those of the present will exhibit the altered elocutionary fashions that have attended the new conditions under which the orator speaks and the entire transformation in the auditory whom he addresses. The younger Pitt was the first of the great statesmen to come into eminence after the admission of the press to legislative councils had been conceded, and it is noteworthy that it was he who introduced what Wiudham called the state-paper style of speaking. To his sagacious discernment it must have been evident that the impression upon the four hundred legislators before him, though he by no means overlooked that, was of inferior moment to the effect he could produce upon hundreds of thousands of readers throughout the land, and that the powers on which thenceforth it behooved a Parliamentary leader to rely were no longer such as work fas- cination, but those which carry conviction. From Pitt, accordingly, may be dated the decline of the old ornate, rhetorical school, which trusted so largely to epigram and theatrical effect; and the rise of that which prefers thoughtful argument to enthusiasm and display, and seeks the deliberate approval of the public and the critics rather than the instant applause of oratorical connoisseurs. Tried by our more sober standards, the extent to which artifice and by-play and trickery in voice and manner were formerly in vogue seems to us incredible. Lord Bute, for instance, who was so un- fortunate as to make his maiden speech before a very full House on the occasion of his first appearance as Prime Minister, adopted the conceit of making a long pause, not of hesitation but of affectation, before each emphatic word; drawing from Charles Townshend the exclamation, Minute guns! In exposure of a kindred mannerism, this specimen of Lord Folke- stones reduplicative rhetoric was supplied by Sir Robert Peel to the New Whig Guide: He objected he objected to all estimates, original or supplemen- tal or supplemental. He saw portentous signs signs in every street, that this this country was on the eve of becoming a military a military country; Punch Punch, who in the days of our ancestors 1872.] Oratory and Journalism. 77 was accompanied companied by a fiddle, or a fiddle or a dulci- mer, was now accompanied companied by a drum by a drum and fife and fife; every servant wore cock cockadcs, and several cocked cocked-hats. These were enormities ormities not to be borne. Most tricks of this sort have maintained a more or less modified existence down to our own day. In the Democratic Presidential Convention of 1863 the nomination was made by a gentleman, now a conspicuous United States Senator, who is said to have employed a constantly ascending shriek and the following terms: Mister-r Chairman, as Pr-r-r-hes- ident of the United Sta-hates, I no-hominate Ma-hajor Ge- hen-eral Ge-horge Be-he Mac Cl-l-l-l-l-ellan! Returning to the New Whig Guide, we find an example of another kind of exaggeration in its sketch of the manner of Grattan, who strode up and down the House, as if he was measuring ground for a duel; when he spoke his action was so violent that I observed he scratched off the skiii of his knuckles against the floor; ever and anon he gave the red box on the table a thump that electrified the House. Grattan, Lord Byron relates, used to be mimicked by Curran as bowing to the very ground, and thanking God that he had no peculiar- ities of gesture or appearance. The once famous Orator Hunt was noted for the same sort of violence; but its most conspicuous adoption by a really great orator was doubtless in the case of Fox, who, beginning with a stutter, a shrill key- note, and a lifted fist, would presently reach what Macaulay has called the full paroxysm of inspiration, foaming, screaming, choked by the rushing multitude of his words. Among living orators this practice has fallen to Gladstone, whom Mr. Dis- raeli, as he has taken occasion to hint, is fortunate in being sepa- rated from in the House by a substantial table, although observ- ers are said to speculate upon the chances of the Premier~ s some day flying over this barricade and falling bodily upon his rival. As he advances to the table and steps back, says the Saturday Review, glaring and thundering, hitting the box before him, and clapping his hands together with resounding slaps which sometimes drown his most important words, Mr. Gladstone seems to be purposely piling fuel upon his own fire. 78 Orator~,i and Journalism. [Jan. That this particular extravagance may be unconscious or in- voluntary is attested by Mr. Gladstones persisting in a blemish whose absurdity is so at variance with modern taste and has often enough been forced upon his attention. Not so were the theatrical devices which used to be deliberately introduced, and sometimes no doubt to prove effective, if at others they miscarried. Thus Burke, illustrating the atrocity of the French Revolution, dashed a dagger on the floor, to which Sheridan alluded, calling it a knife, and asking whether the gentleman had remembered to bring the fork. Equally premeditated, ob- viously, was the concluding touch which Sheridan himself gave to the second of his great speeches in the Warren Hastings impeachment, a speech which lasted two days, and tempted enthusiasts to pay fifty guineas for tickets of admission to Westminster Hall, sinking back with its last sentence, as if fainting from exhaustion, into the arms of Burke who hugged him in rapture. The success of the most recent conspicuous case of histrionic display was not such as to encourage its repetition. It was on the occasion of the passage of the Reform Bill, when Lord Brougham, then Chancellor, concluded a four hours speech stimulated at intervals by five tumblers of wine with an infusion of brandy with the plea, I warn ~you, I implore you, yea, on my bended knees I supplicate you, reject not this bill, and suited the action to the word. He continued for some time as if in prayer, says his biog- rapher; but his friends, alarmed for him lest he should be suffering from the effects of the mulled port, picked him up and placed him safely on the woolsack. Indulgence in pseudo- pathos is a similar piece of stage art, failure in which is partic- ularly ignominious. Of Sir Robert Peel, admirable as he was in argument and debate, Mr. Disraeli has told us that when he attempted to touch the tender passions it was painful. His face became distorted, like that of a woman who wants to cry, but cannot succeed. An illustration furnished by Chancellor Elden, which is not parliamentary, but is too apt to be omitted, occurs in Mr. Goldwin Smiths eketch of Pitt. Lord Eldon, at that time Attorney-General Sir John Scott, opened his attempt to procure the capital conviction of a man who he knew had done nothing worthy of death with a pathetic exordium on his own 1872.] Oratory and Journali8rn. 79 disinterestedness and virtue. He should have nothing to leave his children but his good name. And then he wept. The Solicitor-General wept with his weeping chief. What is the Solicitor weeping for? said one bystander to another. He is weeping to think how very little the Attorney will have to leave his children. Undoubtedly orators were led into faux pas of this sort by witnessing the supreme sway which pathos exerts over large audiences when employed by a master of it, such as Fox was. When he spoke, Chateaubriand has recorded, It was in vain that the stranger tried to resist the impression made upon him; he turned aside and wept. When Burke, almost distraught by the progress of French anar- chy, declared in the House that after a quarter of a century of companionship his path and Foxs lay in different ways, that he had done his duty at the price of his friend; their friend- ship was at an end, Fox rose to reply and broke down, his voice choked with sobs, while there was scarcely a dry eye in the House. But not only are such emotions by their nature rare, but they can only be evoked by the touch of one possessed of the almost unique personal charm and lovableness that characterized Fox. It is difficult to perceive how any one who had witnessed the affected grief of Joseph Surface during his exquisitely hypocritical t~te-d-tUe with Sir Peter Teazle could expose himself to similar degradation. Nor is precisely this lapse recorded against Sheridan; but it is certain that his arti- ficiality and study of effect were such that any oratorical de- vice in which he might indulge encountered the ready suspicion of his familiars. With the record of the very dramatic pros- tration which closed his great Westminster Hall speech, for instance, we find coupled the statement that, on the day before it commenced, Mrs. Sheridan, overpowered by the eloquence of Burke, was carried from among the hysterical ladies who filled the galleries, in a fit. Nor is it easy to repress a mistrust that his professional eye had noted, with its wonted reference to future availability, the sympathy which attended oratorical exertion under physical disadvantages in the case of the great orator of the preceding generation. Before quoting Macaulays picture of that scene, it is to be premised that his opponents of the Bute and Grenville faction having displaced Pitt from the 80 Orators, and Journalism. [Jan. royal councils, but not from the popular affection, were staking their fortunes upon success on negotiating the close of the Seven Years War by the Peace of Paris; and that the friends of the opposition leader had ineffectually tried to postpone the debate on the treaty until his health permitted his presence. The great day arrived. The discussion had lasted some time, when a loud huzza was heard in Palace Yard. The noise came nearer and nearer, up the stairs, through the lobby. The door opened, and from the midst of a shouting multitude came forth Pitt, borne in the arms of his attendants. His face was thin and ghastly, his limbs swathed in flannels, his crutch in his hand. The bearers set him down within the bar. His friends instantly surrounded him, and with their help he crawled to his seat near the table. In this condition he spoke three hours and a half against the Peace. During that time he was repeat- edly forced to sit down and to use cordials. It may well be supposed that his voice was faint, that his action was languid, and that his speech, though occasionally brilliant and impressive, was feeble when compared with his best oratorical performances. But those who remembered what he had done, and who saw what he suffered, listened to him with emotion stronger than any that mere eloquence can produce. A similar triumph of the will over the body was made long after by a great American orator, Henry Clay. Seventy-two years of age, broken and infirm, he persisted in attending the Senate during the framing of the slavery compromise of 18~0 and though he had frequently to be assisted to his seat, he spoke seventy times during the session, and delivered finally, in defiance of dissuading representations that it would kill him, that great oration of which so much was heard during the Rebellion, and to which there is little doubt his death was attributable, an oration of which Mr. Parton has written When he rose to speak, it was but too evident that he was unfit for the task he had undertaken. But, as he kindled with his subject, his cough left him, and his bent form resumed all its wonted erectness and majesty. He may, in the prime of his strength, have spoken with more energy, but never with so much pathos and grandeur. his speech lasted two days, and though he lived two years longer, he never recov- ered from this effort. Toward the close of the second day his friends repeatedly proposed an adjournment; but he would not desist until he had given complete utterance to his ~. He said afterwards that 1872.] Oratory and Journalism. 81. he was not sure, if he gave way to an adjournment, that he should ever be able to resume. An appeal, more adroit than ingenuous, is said to have been made to this instinct of compassion by Sydney Smith, in be- half of Lord John Russell. The stalwart Devonshire farmers, who had expected to find in the hero of the Reform Bill a per- sonage of Herculean proportions commensurate with his ex- ploits, felt excessively mortified at being asked to vote for the little creature so familiar to the student of Punch. The difficulty was overcome by the ready-witted Deans assurance that Lord John was naturally a large man, but had been worn down by his labors in the cause of Reform to what they now saw. Sincere or affected, all those appeals to the emotions which require the direct mental contact of speaker and hearer have lost the high regard in which they used to be held, now that the orator has come to address himself in effect to an unseen public over whom his ascendency must be gained by intellectual processes if at all. Beyond this natural influence of the news- paper to repress emotionalism and spontaneity, there must not only be taken into account the natural impatience with which men accustomed to put their thoughts into the terse and im- pregnable statements required for print regard anything like diffuseness or tentative unprecision in the elocutionary pleas which come under their criticism; but there must further be borne in mind the existing fashion among literary men to sneer at enthusiasm, however manifested, and the tendency of the working exponents of modern culture toward a certain cynical hardness and brutality; such, for instance, as marks the English Saturday Review ~ and in some degree the Times.~, The completeness of the revolution required to bring public speaking into conformity with such standards appears by con- trasting them with the question which Fox used to put concern- ing a printed speech, Does it read well? rejoining, if the reply was affirmative, Then it was a bad speech. There has nevertheless always lingered in England as among the actual auditory there, no doubt, always will linger a strong prepos- session in favor of extempore efforts and against those which it is possible to stigmatize as cut and dried. It was reckoned VOL. cxlv.No. 234. 6 82 Oratory and Journalism. [Jan. a most serious blunder in Warren Hastingss conduct of his defence that, instead of opening it with a brief and earnest rejoinder to Burke, he proceeded to read what was really an able and convincing state paper, but which the members of the House listened to only long enough to satisfy their curiosity about the renowned stranger, and then went away, leaving the reader to pursue his task until midnight for the enlightenment of the Parliamentary clerks and sergeant-at-arms. At a later day the brilliant fish declaimer, Sheil, was censured through his whole career for the practice described by Christopher North in one of the Noctes Ambrosian~: He weighs his periods in his study with the nicety of an apothecary in his shop, and models his madness into not unskilful tropes. The practical inexpediency of his plan, in addition to its damaging effect upon his reputation, was shown on one occasion when he undertook to withstand Cobbett and Hunt before an anti-Catho- lic meeting, and, before leaving London, had his speech put iii type for publication in the next mornings Sun, where it accordingly appeared, although the turbulence of the meeting had been such that he relinquished the attempt to speak after his first sentence. Rogers condensed the general sentiment about memorized eloquence into a neat couplet of epigram- matic bitterness: Ward has no heart, they say; but I deny it. He has a heart. He gets his speeches by it. In the recoged usage of eminent orators in this matter we find the variations in practice which might be anticipated from the genuineness of the mens characters and the nature of their oratory. Unpremeditated efforts were so in accordance with Chathams genius, that in his few prepared discourses he sig~ nally failed; and his most labored production an ornate pane- gyric on General Wolfe, the hero of Quebec has been pro- nounced the very worst of all his performances. Of the habits of Sheridan, to whom one rarely turns in vain for examples of showy hollowness, Tom Moore has related that the multi- tudinous note-books and scraps of paper upon which he used to set down the same ideas, over and over, with minute varia- tions, in fastidious quest of verbal felicities, rarely gave much space to the points of his argument, but were devoted almost 1872.] Oratory and Journalism. 83 wholly to the experimental elaboration of the fineries of speak- ing; to the precise place in a sentence, for instance, where the interjection, Good God, Mr. Speaker, could be most effectively introduced. Burke, on the contrary, worked out his argument with the utmost logical precision, trusting to his fertile imagination and the inspiration of the moment for the redundant and luxuriant imagery he used to pour forth with almost bewildering profusion. Broughams eloquence was, be- yond question, full of thought and of force; but the justice of the criticism he early incurred, that in his perorations he became too melodramatically splendid and artificial, is borne out by his own avowal: I composed the peroration of my speech for the Queen [Caroline] in the Lords, after reading and repeating Demosthenes for three or four weeks, and I composed it twenty times over at least, and it certainly suc- ceeded in a very extraordinary degree, and far above any merits of its own. * The prevalent modern usage is probably that of the most effective of living orators, John Bright, who blends offhand digressions and bursts of passion with a care- ful preparation that appears very evidently in the highly artistic rhythmic flow both of thought and diction and the rhetorical sequence of subjects and contrasts of style. For consummate oratorical success there must be super- added to the powers of logical thought and of forcible state- ment requisite for deliberate conviction a certain tact in following the mind of the audience and keeping in consonance with it, a tact which involves a keen eye and the utmost delicacy of apprehension. The Autocrat of the Breakfast.. Table should have limited his remark to the circumstances of conversation when he said that, whereas writing is like rifle- practice, in which you may hit or miss the public mind; talking is like playing at a mark with the pipe of an * The letter in which this characteristic confession occurs was one of advice to the Rev. Zachary Macaulay upon forming the powers of his son, the future Lord Macaulay, then twenty-three years of age. It was upon the father that the inter. locutors of the Noctes Ambrosianm whose unvarying treatment of the son is one of the most striking instances conceivable of the fatuity into which partisan prepossessions can betray really clever men fixed the acrid rhyme, How smooth, persuasive, plausible, and glib From holy lips is dropped the specious fib. 84 Oratory and Journalism. [Jan. engine; if it is within reach, and you have time enough, you cant help hitting it. The mind of a critical audience is, if not fickle, elusive and highly impatient of the least overdoing of an impression which may for the instant have been thor- oughly felicitous; and the thread of personal magnetism, once so overstrained, can no longer be trusted to vibrate in accord. The supreme importance of this kind of perception has been illustrated by the fact brought to light as a means of account- ing for the inadequate effect produced by the brilliant and subtile addresses of Mr. Robert Lowe, the present Chancellor of the Exchequer, that the only instances in which English political parties have been successfully led by near-sighted men were those of Lord North and Lord Derby, the latter of whom, as if by instinct, was notably adept in this very point. Its further enforcement, if it were needed, might be found in the long educating process by which Charles James Fox and Ben- jamin Disraeli, after painful and humiliating failure, acquired the rapid accuracy of eye and flexibility of mind that brought ultimate mastery. It is far from strange, therefore, that there should so rarely be conjoined the diversity of powers essen- tial to make oratory potent alike with hearers, with contempo- rary readers, and with posterity. Few of the great speeches whose electric effect is most warmly attested by tradition can be perused without disclosing a large infusion of rhapsody and rant; and those we now read with the greatest intellectual satisfaction fell, we are told, on inattentive ears, and, but for the printer, would have perished with their birth. No similar productions in the language are so read or quoted or pillaged as the speeches of Burke; yet it is notorious that he was al- ways listened to with impatience and at last not at all; that he became, in short, the Parliamentary dinner-bell. Iii vain did his genius put forth its superb plumage, glittering all over with the hundred eyes of fancy, says a hearer, Tom Moore; the gait of the bird was heavy and awkward, and its voice seemed rather to scare than attract. His speech on the Nabob of Arcots debts, in the Warren Hastings affair, now held in the highest admiration, awakened so little response in the House, that Pitt and Grenville, after consultation whether it was worth while to answer it, concluded that it would be a 1872.] Oratory and Journalism. 85 waste of trouble. The fortune of Sir James Mackintosh was similar; men of infinitely inferior minds commanded far more attention. His luminous and philosophical disquisition on the Reform Bill, wrote Macaulay in the Edinburgh Review, shortly after his death, was spoken to empty benches. Those, indeed, who had the wit to keep their seats picked up hints which, skilfully used, made the fortune of more than one speech. But it was caviare to the general. More striking was the failure of Lord Jeffrey, who entered Parliament with the reputation of a reviewer of almost ideal excellence, and a possessor of distinguished forensic and judicial accomplish- ments. For the account of his first appearance we must turn again, making due allowance for Blackwoods ultra Tory- ism, to the Noctes Ambrosian& Instead of the quick, voluble, fiery declaimer of other days or scenes, I heard a cold thin voice doling out little, quaint, metaphysical sentences, with the air of a provincial lecturer on logic and belles- lettres. The House were confounded; they listened for half an hour with great attention, waiting always for the real burst that should re- veal the redoubtable Jeffrey, but it came not At last lie took to proving to an assembly of six hundred gentlemen, of whom I take it at least five hundred were squires, that property is really a thing de- serving of protection. This will never do, passed round in a whisper. Old Maule tipped the wink to a few good Whigs of the old school, and they adjourned up stairs; the Tories bcgan to converse de omnibus rebus et quibuedam alUs; the Radicals were either snoring or grinning; and the great gun of the North ceased firing amidst such a hubbub of inattention, that even I was not aware of the fact for several minutes. After all, however, the concern read well enough in the newspapers. Upon that pestilent elocutionary phenomenon known as talk- ing Buncombe, though it is palpably a result of the news- paper, and involves a curious deliberate subordination of the actual hearers to an extremely circumscribed portion of the public, it is unnecessary to enter further than to recount what possibly may pass for its earliest recorded employment, and which produced upon different sets of minds impressions that conflicted to a very unusual degree. It was on the occa- sion of George III.s insanity, when the friends of the Prince of Wales were bending every effort to secure his appointment as 86 Oratory and Journalism. [Jan. Regent, and the almost frantic struggles of the antagonizing factions were headed respectively by the ministers actual and the ministers expectant. Lord Chancellor Thurlow, who was of the former, was bent on remaining Vicar of Bray, a fact disclosed by his missing his hat when the kings friends rose from a cabinet meeting, and its immediate production from the room where the Prince and his allies sat in conclave. In the debate which presently came on, the unction of the Chancellor was unbounded, and found expression in the burst, When I forget my king, may my God forget me! a sentiment to which the affectionate loyalty of the people responded by making it a watchword and having it engraved upon snuff- boxes and rings; whereas, in the House, Burke had growled forth, The best thing he can do for you; Pitt had run out, ex- claiming, 0, what a rascal; and Wilkes had ejaculated, Forget you! he 11 see you dd first! Within a very few years, in a not wholly dissimilar emergency, the Commons have taken occasion to confront Buncombe in an unparalleled and signal manner. The offender was a Mr. Rearden, who, responding to the quite unquestionable dislike of a great part of the English public for the entire royal family, suggested the abdication of the queen; whereupon the House, in equally faithful accord with the feelings of the social orders it represents, deliberately called the obnoxious member upon his feet, and with one consent hooted and hissed him into permanent silence. Non omnia possumus omnes may perhaps be taken as an ex- pression of much that has been established by the growth of the newspaper and the division of political labor it has effected. There has been a disintegration, followed by a new develop- ment, of functions which used to be indiscriminately blended in the hands of an oligarchical ruling body jealous of any in- trusion upon what it conceived its province, but capable of only a very crude and inadequate execution of its work. We have seen how, during this reconstructive period, many of the features of oratory once most relied upon have been gradually discarded as inapplicable to modern exigencies; and it prob- ably would not be too much to claim that, as a motive-power in government, reliance upon oratory itself has imperceptibly passed away. As a useful incidental appliance it must always 1872.] Thomas Watson the Poet. be cultivated more or less assiduously; but, by comparison with the days wheu oratorical eminence was amoug the supreme ambitions of statesmen, it must be admitted that oratory is, not certainly a lost art, but a declining one, and that the orator has abdicated his power in favor of the journalist. In the long struggle between debate and the press, the victory of the press has been complete. In the presence of the nation which, in countries like England and our own, is the true deliberative body, determining upon public measures long in advance of legislative action the journalist, though unseen, holds the relative position of the legislator in the assemblage which, though pretending to originate, only goes through the process of formulating enactments already decreed by public opinion. The newspaper has become the natural outlet for the talent which once could find no expression but in oratory, and for the ambition which seeks power rather than applause. DORSEY GARDNER. ART. IV. THoMAs WATSON: Poems, viz. The Hecatom- pat hia, or Passionate Century of Love; Meliba,us, an Eclogue upon the Death of Sir Francis Walsingham; The Tears of Fancy, or Love disdained. Reprinted and care- fully edited by EDWARD ARBER, 5 Queen Square, Blooms- bury. London. 1870. (Arbers English Reprints.) GENERALLY just as the worlds verdict is upon an artist, when time enough for maturing its judgment has gone by, there are cases where, through accidents of various nature, this verdict may require revisal. One of these accidents is the simple material limitation or scarcity of a mans work. The fame of the early painters Duccio and Angelico was long ob- scured, through the fact that their pictures were locked up in buildings not often visited. Pordenone and Moretto have suf- fered because the towns where they painted lie out of the com- mon route. Archilochus, placed by a long series of ancient criticism amongst the very highest poets of Greece, named, indeed, often with Homer, has lost his honors through some

1872.] Thomas Watson the Poet. be cultivated more or less assiduously; but, by comparison with the days wheu oratorical eminence was amoug the supreme ambitions of statesmen, it must be admitted that oratory is, not certainly a lost art, but a declining one, and that the orator has abdicated his power in favor of the journalist. In the long struggle between debate and the press, the victory of the press has been complete. In the presence of the nation which, in countries like England and our own, is the true deliberative body, determining upon public measures long in advance of legislative action the journalist, though unseen, holds the relative position of the legislator in the assemblage which, though pretending to originate, only goes through the process of formulating enactments already decreed by public opinion. The newspaper has become the natural outlet for the talent which once could find no expression but in oratory, and for the ambition which seeks power rather than applause. DORSEY GARDNER. ART. IV. THoMAs WATSON: Poems, viz. The Hecatom- pat hia, or Passionate Century of Love; Meliba,us, an Eclogue upon the Death of Sir Francis Walsingham; The Tears of Fancy, or Love disdained. Reprinted and care- fully edited by EDWARD ARBER, 5 Queen Square, Blooms- bury. London. 1870. (Arbers English Reprints.) GENERALLY just as the worlds verdict is upon an artist, when time enough for maturing its judgment has gone by, there are cases where, through accidents of various nature, this verdict may require revisal. One of these accidents is the simple material limitation or scarcity of a mans work. The fame of the early painters Duccio and Angelico was long ob- scured, through the fact that their pictures were locked up in buildings not often visited. Pordenone and Moretto have suf- fered because the towns where they painted lie out of the com- mon route. Archilochus, placed by a long series of ancient criticism amongst the very highest poets of Greece, named, indeed, often with Homer, has lost his honors through some 88 Thomas Watson the Poet. [Jan. malignant destiny which swept away the last surviving manu- script before transcription recommenced.* Literature presents only too many such gaps, which history records under the brilliant rubric of conquests, Alexander at Babylon, Alaric at Rome, Baldwin at Constantinople, the allied armies at the Summer Palace, and, what would have been had the dominant rabble worked its lust six mouths since in Mazarin Street. Many a gallant nation has been thus beggared of its annals, and turned forth like a parvenu on history, by the brutal con- queror or the brutal mob. But we are rather concerned here with individual loss of fame by external causes. The last period, when thi~ was frequent in England, falls within the reigns of Elizabeth and her successor. Half of Shakespeare himself was saved for us by the wholly exceptional literary taste of four players in his company. The fate of some among his contemporary dramatists is well known. And little but the empty name would have survived for the vast majority of his contemporary lyrical poets, had not the zeal of editors and publishers, rewarded only by the gratitude of those who love poetry, reprinted some unique copy for the benefit of the present generation. In this small and honorable band Mr. Arber (whom we know solely through his publications) is one of the latest volun- teers: having brought out more than thirty volumes of rare prose and verse, belonging mostly to the Elizabethan period, within the last two or three years. These books are published at a price which would, in England, be very low, even for mod- ern popular works; a handsome large-paper volume, giving the reader for four shillings what he might have spent years in waiting for, and would have expended twenty or thirty pounds to purchase. They are also edited with great completeness; every book having sufficient prefatory notes to put us in posses- sion of the main facts, whether biographical or bibliographical, connected with it; whilst the reprints themselves follow the * This, if we take the verdict of ancient literature upon itself~ is considerably the greatest calamity, in point of lost genius, which the modern world has sustained. And there is a quality about the short fragments of Archilochus ~vhich confirms this estimate; although there are a few Greek writers whom, for charm and pleasures sake, one would sooner recover. 1872.] Thomas Watson the Poet. 89 proper rule for reprints of this class, in literally reproducing the text of the originals. Gossons works, Lylys, Gascoignes, Puttenhams and Webbes books on poetry, Tottels Miscel- lany, these names, which we take from the list, will suggest to those who care for the great Elizabethan age the value of Mr. Arbers series, and, we hope, may encourage them to sup- port him in a work which cannot (we suppose) be remunerative, even if it be to the editor a work of love. But the most interesting name among all Mr. Arbers re- prints, to our thinking, is that Thomas Watsons, whose love sonnets it is proposed here to consider. He is, says the ed- itor in his Preface, a lineal successor of Surrey and Wyatt. Among all English poems published during his lifetime, his English poetical works, if an opinion might be ventured, should rank next to Spenser. That is, he should be placed before Sidney as a poet. We shall give reasons for dissent- ing from this latter judgment, whilst, on the other hand, we should place Watsons sonnets above Spensers. At any rate, we claim for him a place in the first rank of the Elizabethan Amourists, Shakespeare, always and in every circumstance exceptional, being here excepted. There is no room for comparison between him and any other man in Europe, from Chaucer before to Milton after, nor then, again (we hold), till we reach Sterne and three or four writers of this century. But this by the way. We return to Watson, giving first the few particulars hitherto recovered of his life, as recorded by Mr. Arber. Watson was born in London, probably about 1557, and closed his short but active career in 1592. He is heard of first as a student at Oxford (his college not specified), where his bent towards literature drew him off from the academical course of the day. Returning to London, he studied at the common law. Before 1581 he visited Paris; but the brief remainder of his life seems to have been spent in London, where. he produced five Latin and three English works, besides much left in manuscript, and lived in friendship with many of the best people of his time, including Lords Arundel and Oxford and the Sidneys. A translation of the Antigone into Latin was his earliest 90 Thomas Watson t7~e Poet. [Jan. publication (1581); Aphoclis Antigone, as it stands regis- tered by a clerk of Dogberrys order in the old books of the Stationers Company. This is dedicated to Philip Howard, Lord Arundel. Next year the Hecatompathia must have followed, for it is entered in March, 1582, as Watsons Passions, a phrase which he employs to designate the separate pieces which compose the book, manifesting the true frenzy of love. He thus put in his first claim to rank in that array of poets who glorify the century; but fortune did not allow him to sustain it. For, although in 1590 appeared his Mad- rigals, printed in collaboration with Byrd, yet these and the Eclogue of the same year are chiefly translations, the first from the Italian words set by Luca Marenzio, the latter from Watsons own Latin Melibceus, and it was not till the year after his death (1593) that his Tears of Fancy came forth. This posthumous child of the youthful poet had no ostensible editor, and appears to have received little attention while passing through the press. It is, in fact, identifiable only as Watsons by his initials at the close, and by the evidence of style; and although these evidences are quite sufficient, yet we may reasonably conjecture that in those days, when reviews were not, a book thus published had not its fair chance of success. At any rate, Watson, though several times placed with the best poets of his time during his life or shortly after, soon was forgotten; and even the single copy in which his last and best poetry had survived, and only reprinted three hundred years distant from his death, wants two leaves. This poet is not a man of commanding genius, magis spes, perhaps, quam res; yet we think that readers will acknowledge that he is very much above those whom the world might willingly let die, and that fate has hitherto been hard upon him. Nunc tandem redit animus. Though Watson apparently took no degree at Oxford, he must have been a prodigious student in those branches of knowledge to which he addicted himself. Greek, Latin, Italian, French, with his own mother tongue, were at his command. He made himself at home with the entire body of Greek and Latin poets, says Mr. Arber; at least, he shows a competent acquaintance with many of them, at a time when the study of 18T2.] Thomas Watson the Poet. 91 Greek was yet young in England. He early occupied himself with translating Petrarchs sonnets into Latin, and seems to have delighted in many of the minor Italian poets of that school; quoting, indeed, one or two of the early lyrists, although (so far as we have observed) making no reference to Dante. William Bird and he first published madrigals in English, music and words together. With the works of Pierre de iRonsard, Estienne Forcadel, and other like French poets, he seems also to have been familiar; he quotes the Eroticon of Hercules Strozza, the Erotop~egnicon of Gervase Sepinus, the Silva of Girolam Parabosco, Sera- phines Strambotti, Agnolo Fiorenzuola of Florence, and other names now little remembered; and he refers to Chaucer and Spenser amongst his own countrymen. This is a sufficiently copious magazine of material, though certainly not more than a poet should have, who desires ade- quately to fulfil his high function of elevating men through that pure and permanent pleasure which is the proper aim of his art. Yet in the Hecatompathia, to which we now turn, Watsons genius appears often weighted down by his own learning. He has, as will be seen, prefixed to each poem a sort of preface, which must be assigned to his own authorship; and when we read these and the poems themselves, we feel strongly how new a thing in England was then the whole range of classical and politeliterature; the peculiar air of the Renaissance hangs about the book; it is like a gay and genial school-boy exulting in his studies; it breathes a kind of inno- cent and attractive pedantry. Indeed, the essential idea of the work as with Surrey and Wyatt before Watson, with Shakespeare and Spenser and Prummond beside and after him is a Renaissance idea. The impulse to throw the subject of the poets song into lyrical form, or to string passion- ate lyrics in series (an impulse which must be taken as the symbol that some unusual intensity of life was working in a nation), has thrice appeared in Europe, and thrice only. The first was that great movement of A~olian and Ionic minstrelsy, which is represented to us by Archilochus, Alc~eus, Sappho, Simonides, Pindar, and other soul-stirring names. The fraction of their work which survives proves that this was the widest 92 Thomas Watson the Poet. [Jan. and deepest of the lyrical outbursts of Europe, and that its almost entire loss is the greatest of all the bitter losses in literature. The second outburst (for Catullus and Horace were Greeks in Italy) is that which broke forth almost at once, with the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, in Provence, in Sicily, in Italy, in Swabia. The genius of this movement was not only different from that which will be most clearly, though unsatisfactorily, expressed by the word medi~val, but in maiiy ways antagonistic to medhevalism. For the lyrical poets, from Troubadour to Minnesinger, not only worked in a style and form wholly unlike that of the romances and fabliaux and monastic legends of the time, but express generally a tone of feeling express often distinct and conscious sentiments opposed to the common theology and morality of mediteval Europe. The third lyrical outburst is that which, with a some- what over-cultured and Alexandrian character, great as has been the genius thrown into it, began in Germany a hundred years ago, under the ill-chosen name Romantic, warmed the academic muse of France to a fervor and a spontaneity hitherto hardly displayed, but reached (in our opinion, indubitably and irresistibly) its highest and most exquisite development in our own poets, from Scott to Tennyson. What a noble subject for a truly critical survey does the barest of sketches suggest, if handled by one who should combine (for both are essential to first-rate and permanent criticism) the clear analysis of a Sainte-Beuve with the penetrative glow of a Ruskin! Under what a galaxy of great stars do we find ourselves! But we must go back to our own little field in this heaven. The Renaissance movement (part of which we have found in the lyrical outburst of Dantes age), it is now beginning to be recognized, must he traced to the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, and may indeed be felt there at least as essentially (though sometimes under curious disguises) as in the centuries often identified with it. But this movement was nearly spent, as a creative power, in its first seats, when it reached the later civilization of Spain, Northern France, and England. The last wave of Italian poetry, we might almost say, wafted the lyrical impulse to Britain; for Tasso (contemporaneous with Eliza- beths reign) was in his poetry, not less than his life, like one 1872.] Thomas Watson the Poet. 93 born a little out of his due time. And, owing to the particular period when lyrical poetry (with literature generally in the modern sense) awoke in England, it was mingled with elements absent from the original outburst three centuries and a half before. The first period of our literature (say from Edward VI. to Charles I.) coincides with the last period of the Re- naissance; it is hence affected by three great powers, com- paratively unfelt in the thirteenth century, the spirit of Greece and Rome, the spirit of theological reformation, the spirit of physical science. These powers of course penetrated our writers in varying degrees: we may trace them distinctly, as they stand above, in Watson and the writers of the Helicon, in Hooker and the writers of the Paradise of Dainty Devices,~~ in Lord Bacon and George Herbert; and all combined in Mil- ton, who is the proper close and consummation of this epoch, as Chaucer is of the strictly medheval. The presence of these elements gives a wider scope to our Elizabethan lyrical poets than was covered by the early poets of Provence or Italy. At the same time, there was so much before English- men of that day to be learned and attempted and incorporated, that there is something Alexandrian and artificial about them also; more material than they could fuse (and even Shakespeares earlier plays contain examples) with the perfect spontaneity and freshness which marks the outburst of Hehlenic lyrical song. These remarks may, we hope, serve as a general criticism upon those specimens of Watsons Hecatompathia which we shall now offer. This was his first English work; he was probably not above twenty-five years of age when it was writ- ten, and portions are clearly of earlier date. Some allowance must hence be made for the immaturity of his genius, especially in case of a man who had obviously thrown himself with more than common earnestness into the new currents of culture then running, who had (as we have said) more material before him than he could completely fuse. To this must be added (what, indeed, may, without discourtesy, be conjectured of many other amourists, ancient and modern*), that Watson does not * The veracity of Dantes passion for Beatrice and Petrarchs for Laura has been repeatedly questioned by the sceptical and the unsentimental; and even Shake- 94 Thomas Watson the Poet. [Jam make profession of any predominant real feeling as the source of his hundred passions. The ilecatompathia, which, after the manner of that ceremonial age, when even an act of Parliament could not be introduced without a moral preface, is preceded by a little group of prefaces (four by the author) and commendatory verse, with the candor that everywhere lends a charm to Watsons writing, avows its imaginary char- acter. lily pains in suffering them, he says of his love-pas- sions, though but supposed. And again in the Elegiac address to his book: Si qua tui nimium Domini miseretur amantis, Sic crepita foliis, ut gemuisse putet. Tetrica si qua tamen blandos damnaverit ignes, Dic tu, mentito me tepuisse foco. With the introduction of our own, now let the author himself speak in the prefatory Quatorzain unto this his book of Love Passions : My little book, go hie thee hence away, Whose price (God knows) will countervail no part Of pains I took to make thee what thou art: And yet I joy thy birth. But hence! I say: Thy brothers are half hurt by thy delay: For thou thyself art like the deadly dart Which bred thy birth from out my wounded heart. But still observe this rule whereer thou stay. In all thou mayst, tender thy fathers fame; Bad is the bird that fileth his own nest. If thou be much misliked, they are to blame Say thou, that deeds well done to evil wrest. Or else confess a Toy to be thy name: This trifling world a Toy beseemeth best. * speares fervid sonnets have found commentators to give them every meaning except that which they naturally bear. * Mr. Arber, reviving an almost unique volume, has properly provided us with an exact textual reprint. But the old spelling and stopping are real hindrances to the enjoyment of poetry, which should always be allowed to penetrate our minds with the very least external friction possible. We therefore, quoting for the gen. eral reader, not editing a lost classic in a monumental form, with equal pro. priety (we think), give to Watsons text the appearance which, were he now repub. lishing his book, it may be presumed he would himself give it. Let us here add, for the benefit of those who may care to possess the book, that although Mr. Arber (whom may the gods reward, for man assuredly never will) offers it for sixteen pence, yet the large.paper issue (four shillings) is the one which the wise will elect. 1872.] Thomas Watson the Poet. 95 Thy brothers may allude to other writings by Watson, waiting publication; or to similar poetry, then in the field. This poem is the only true sonnet in the volume. The hundred passions follow, including, however, one extra poem (twenty lines in Latin) not numbered in the series. Perhaps Watson inserted this to compensate for No. 80, which is a prose preface to the two following poems, pointing out their ingenuities: 81 being a Pasquin Pillar, as he calls it, erected in the despite of Love ; and No. 82, a somewhat simi- lar device, half acrostic and half typographical arrangement, turning upon the posy, or motto, Amare est insanire. Poetry is, of course, not to be thought of in these conceits, something similar to which may be found even in George Her- bert; but they, happily, recur nowhere else in the ilecatom- pathia. Nos. 6 and 66 are translations from Petrarch into the Latin hexameter; and the book ends with another by way of epilogue. With these exceptions, the separate pieces each consist of three six-line stanzas printed together. We quote the third, which is a specimen of Watsons simpler style, with its little preface. This passion is all framed in manner of a dialogue, wherein the author talketh with his own heart, being now through the commandment and force of love separated from his body mi- raculously, and against nature, to follow his mistress; in hope, by long attendance upon her, to purchase in the end her love and favor, and by that means to make himself all one with her own heart. Speak, gentle heart, where is thy dwelling-place? With her, whose birth the heavens themselves have blest. What dost thou there? Sometimes behold her face, And lodge sometimes within her crystal breast: She cold, thou hot, how can you then agree? Not nature now, but love doth govern me. With her wilt thou remain, and let me die? If I return, we both shall die for grief: If still thou stay, what good shall grow thereby? Ill move her heart to purchase thy relief. What if her heart be hard, and stop his ears? I 11 sigh aloud, and make him soft with tears. Thomas Watson the Poet. [Jan. If that prevail, wilt thou return from thence? Not I alone; her heart shall come with me. Then will you both live under my defence? So long as life will let us both agree. Why then, Despair, go pack thee hence away! I live in hope to have a golden day. This metrical system, it will be seen, escapes the hard con- structions or forced rhymes almost inseparable from the (Eng- lish) sonnet proper, when used as stanzas in sequence, as in Wordsworths Ecclesiastical series, but at the cost of a cer- tain monotony. The form adopted by Shakespeare, which is sofinet only to the eye (consisting in reality of three four-line stanzas and a closing couplet), perhaps is a compromise better suited to our language. Watsons elegantly managed dialogue, which may remind some readers of similar passages in the Greek drama, could not, however, have been presented with equal ease in the true sonnet, with its graceful intricacy of structure. The piece which follows is a good example of his mythological vein, and appears to be partly founded upon a set of Latin elegiacs by Forcatulus, the French Poet, of which Watson quotes some lines in his preface Sweet Venus, if as now thou stand my friend, As once thou didst unto King Priams son,* My joyful Muse shall never make an end Of praising thee and all that thou hast done; Nor this my pen shall ever cease to write Of aught wherein sweet Venus takes delight. My temples hedged in with myrtle boughs Shall set aside Apollos laurel-tree, As did Anchises son, when both his brows With myrtle he beset, to honor thee. Then will I say, The rose of flowers is best, And silver doves for birds excel the rest. I 11 praise no star but Hesperus alone, Nor any hill hut Erycinus mount; Nor any wood hut Idaly alone, Nor any spring but Acidalian fount, Nor any land hut only Cyprus shore, Nor gods but Love, and what would Venus more? * Paris. 1872.] Thomas Watson the Poet. 97 To the line As did Anchises son, Watson has appended as a note Virgils Materna redimitus tempora mirto. There is no doubt too much antique allusion here, and that of an order with which school-boys are now familiar; yet more may perhaps be urged for the style than it would at first sight be held to merit. For these echoes from the past, although in one sense the mythology to which they relate is dead, yet bring necessarily before our minds the thoughts and passions of those ancients of our race who lived and felt in ways at once like and unlike our own, and whose existence has a closer tie to us, and a more really vital influence, than natural facts, however important. And Watson has handled his Venus- invocation, we think, with much grace and tenderness; avoid- ing (as he claims for himself in one of his prefaces) any mere sensuousness of idea, and looking at love, as indeed he does throughout, from a more ideal, and yet a more human, point of view than if he had sought for the sensational effect which he might have reached by the free introduction of ~ slipper. Our next specimen is built upon an old legend, though in a different way: Acta~on lost in middle of his sport Both shape and life, for looking but awry; Diana was afraid he would report What secrets he had seen in passing by. To tell hut truth, the selfsaine hurt have I By viewing her, for whom I daily die. I lose my wonted shape, in that my mind Doth suffer wrack upon the stony rock Of her disdain, who, contrary to kind, Doth bear a breast more hard than any stock: And former form of limbs is chang~d quite By cares in love, and want of due delight. I lose my life, in that each secret thought Which I conceive through wanton fond regard, Doth make me say, that life availeth naught Where service cannot have a due reward: I dare not name the nymph that works my smart, Though love hath graven her name within my heart. VOL. CXIV.NO. 234. 7 98 Thomas Watson tke Poet. [Jan. We have here the qualities which mark Spensers long series of sonnets, facile fluency, with a certain thinness of feeling and thought; we are sensible of the feigned fire. The following passion~~ is in a deeper key: I marvel, I, why poets heretofore Extolled Anons harp, or Mercurys, Although the one did bring a fish to shore, And th other as a sign adorned the skies. If they, with me, had heard an angels voice, They would unsay themselves, and praise my choice. Not Philomela now deserves the prize, Though sweetly she recount her cause of moan; Nor Phmbus art in musical devise, Although his lute and voice accord in one: Music herself, and all the Muses nine, For skill or voice their titles may resign. 0 bitter-sweet, or honey mixed with gall! My heart is hurt with overmuch delight: Mine ears well pleased with tunes, yet deaf with all: Through musics help, love bath incrensed his might : I stop mine ears, as wise Ulysses bade, But all too late, now love bath made me mad. How fully charged is this poem with the Elizabethan atmos- phere! How naturally one may read here the young enthusiast who first rendered the exquisite madrigals of Marenzio acces- sible to our speech I * There is yet another picture very brightly fancied: This latter night amidst my troubled rest A dismal dream my fearful heart appalled, Whereof the sum was this: Love made a feast, To which all neighbor saints and gods were called. The cheer was more than mortal men can think, And mirth grew on, by taking in their drink. Then Jove, amid his cups, for service done, Gan thus to jest with Ganymede, his boy: I fain would find for thee, my pretty son, A fairer wife than Paris brought to Troy. Why, sir, quoth he, if Pho~bus stand my friend, Who knows the world, this gear will soon have end. * Should Mr. Arber ever reprint the volume, we trust he will include in it these madrigals, with any other scattered pieces of Watsons English verse. 1872.] Thorn as Watson the Poet. 99 Then Jove replied that Phcebus should not choose But do his best to find the fairest face; And she, once found, should neither will nor choose, But yield herself, and change her dwelling-place. Alas! how much was then my heart aifright, Which bade me wake, and watch my fair delight! The saints and sir here, with the simple plain-spoken phrases about the feast of the gods, belong to the first stage of the English Renaissance; they have a tinge of medit~valism, like the Gothic details which one sees in the Anglo-Italian archi- tecture of that time. We must find space for one more specimen from the ileca- tompathia, before passing on to the later and even less-known work. Watson has been long gone, and fortune proved a hard executor to him and his fame; the reader, if the pathetic and the poetical have any hold over him, we trust will pardon us in our brief revival of his memory. His saltem accumulem donis. XXVI. Here the author, as a man overtaken with some deep melancholy, corn- pareth himself unto the Nighdngale, and conferreth his unhappy estate (fbr that by no means his ]Jliistress will pity him) with her nightly com- plaints: to whose harmony all those that give attentive ear, they con- ceive more delight in the musical variety of her notes, than they take just compassion upon her distressed heaviness: When May is in his prime, and youthful spring Doth clothe the tree with leaves, and ground with flowers, And time of year reviveth everything, And lovely Nature smiles, and nothing lowers: Then Philomela most doth strain her breast With night complaints, and sits in little rest. This birds estate I may compare with mine, To whom fond love doth work such wrongs by day, That in the night my heart must needs repine, And storm with sighs to ease me as I may: Whilst others are becalmed, or lie them still, Or sail secure with tide and wind at will. And as all those which hear this bird complain Conceive in all her tunes a sweet delight, 100 Thomas Watson the Poet. [Jan. Without remorse, or pitying her pain: So she, for whom I wail both day and night, Doth sport herself in hearing my complaint, A just reward for serving such a saint. Let us now turn from the book of 1582 to that of 1593. The poet, it will be remembered, had closed his short life in 1592. The Tears of Fancy, consequently, were printed posthu- mously ; they have no series of prefaces or commendatory verses; they came forth as orphans, and, receiving orphans treatment, survive apparently in the one mutilated copy which adorns the library of S. Christie-Miller, Esq., of Britwell, near Maiden- head. To this gentlemans disinterested kindness (we pre- sume) the present reprint is due. He has parted with the uniqueness of his property, a quality so dear to the mere col- lector, in favor of his countrymen; and it is hoped that he will accept, from a stranger, these thanks for the liberality, not so universal in a selfish world as to be taken for granted, which has thus preferred pleasing others to reserving pleasure for himself. Next to nothing is known of Watsons life, except the few bare facts, mostly relating to his literary career, which we have already enumerated. But there is a difference in the tone and the treatment between the ilecatompathia and the Tears of Fancy (a word used then where we now should say imagina- tion), which leads at once to the inference that in the later work we have no longer the supposed pains of the youth, but the record of some love that never found his earthly close. We are in presence of a vera causa. Beyond this conclu- sion (which we submit to the readers judgment, after perusal of the specimens presently to be given), nothing can be in- ferred; nor is it likely that time has spared us any yet undis- covered information. Watsons is one more life amongst the many which have all but passed into the abyss; a strange loss, and a sad, if we realize to ourselves for one moment the vast freight of hopes and passions, thoughts and deeds, which every human life that reaches manhood must bear with it; and this especially when a man possessing the poets sympathetic nature, and the many motions of his mind, is concerned. Many are the gains ofhumanity;butthe unperceived losses,are they 1872.] Thomas Watson the Poet. 101 less? Here was a life passed during a golden period of Eng- lish history, by one not only gifted more than the average, but living in friendship with some of our best and most moving men, and probably acquainted with more; and these few pages lately recovered, and of no appeal to the general mass even of his countrymen, are all that is left of it. What a singular thought is this! What a pathetic destiny! And should we feel the pathos or the strangeness less, because what was true of this one is true of other uncounted millions? What is it that will last? All things are taken from us, and become Portions and parcels of the dreadful past. Whatever the true story may have been, the Tears of Fancy bear abundant evidence that the tale told cannot have been far from the fact. To his surviving friends the book, if it ever passed into circulation, must have come as a voice of sadness from beyond the grave. Our literature has strains of greater intensity and color in the rendering of grief than any that can be found here, many of Shakespeares sonnets, some of Drum- monds, Grays Elegy, Byron in a few poignant stanzas, cer- tain lyrics by Shelley, the personal portions of In Me- moriam. But we know no complete series (unless Shake- speares be the exception) of a more uniform sadness. This would be wearisome, were not the genuineness of the writers feelings always impressed so strongly upon us, the strange, unmistakable, irresistible note of true passion. This note will never want its fit audience; and every reader can decide at once for himself whether he is of it. Watson might have pre- fixed one of the little prefaces from his earlier book to his latest: The sense contained in these sonnets will seem strange to such as never have acquainted themselves with Love and his laws. Or he might have written in Petrarchs exquisite manner some Ove sia chi per prova intenda amore, Spero trovar piet~t nonchi~ perdono. But our Amourists soul was bent on one thought only, and the Tears of Fancy (as we have noticed) has none of the prelusive introduction and recommendation to the world coin- mon in the Elizabethan age. 102 Thomas Watson the Poet. [Jan. Go, idle lines, unpolished, rude, and base, Unworthy words to blazon Beautys glory; Beauty that bath my restless heart in chase, Beauty the subject of my rueful story. I warn thee, shun the bower of her abiding, Be not so bold nor hardy as to view her; Lest she, enraged with thee, fall a-chiding, And so her anger prove thy woes renewer. Yet if she deign to rue thy dreadful smart, And reading laugh, and, laughing, so mislike thee; Bid her desist, an(l look within my heart, Where she may see how ruthless she did strike me. IC she be pleased, though she reward thee not, What others say of me regard it not. This is the only preface; and no one who is familiar with the literature of that age will doubt (we think) who the model was, whose influence, together with that of real passion, wrought so great a change as will be felt by comparing this sonnet with that, before quoted, which precedes the Hecatompathia. The graceful dignity of march, the increased simplicity of style, even the use of double rhymes (over-familiarized to our eyes by three hundred subsequent years of poetry), all point to Watsons admirable friend, Sir Philip Sidney. We have already remarked that Watson, though entitled to rank above Spenser as an Amourist, must, in our judgment, be held inferior to Sidney. In support of this opinion, and of the re- marks just made upon Sidneys influence over Watson, we quote a sonnet from the Astrophel and Stella, and that lovely song on the Nightingale, in which (as in others by Sidney) we yet hear the far-off plaintive melody of some old Italian air Muses, I oft invoked your holy aid With choicest flowers my speech to engarland so That it despised in true but naked show Might win some grace in your sweet grace arrayed. And oft whole troops of saddest words I stayed, Striving abroad a-foraging to go, Until by your inspiring I might know How their black banner might be best displayed. But now I mean no more your help to try, Nor other sugaring of my speech to prove, 1872.] Thomas Watson the Poet. 103 But on her name incessantly to cry. For let me hut name her whom I do love, So sweet sounds straight mine ear and heart do hit, That I will find no eloquence like it. To the tune of Non credo gia che piu infehice amante. The nightingale, as soon as April bringeth Unto her rested sense a perfect waking, While late-bare earth, proud of new clothing, springeth, Sings out her woes, a thorn her song-book making. And mournfully bewailing, Her throat in tunes expresseth What grief her breath oppresseth For Tereus force on her chaste will prevailing. 0 Philomela fair! 0 take some gladness That here is juster cause of plainful sadness; Thine earth now springs; mine fadeth: Thy thorn without; my thorn my heart invadeth. After Watsons prefatbry sonnet follows at once the rest of the Tears of Fancy. The book contained but sixty sonnets, eight of which are lost.* It opens with a little allegory. SONNET I. In prime of youthful years, as then not wounded With Loves empoisoned dart or hitter gall, Nor mind nor thoughts on fickle Fancy grounded, But careless hunting after pleasures ball, I took delight to laugh at lovers folly, Accounting beauty but a fading blossom; What I esteemed profane, they deemed holy, Joying the thraldom which I counted loathsome. Their plaints were such, as nothing might relieve them, Their hearts did wellnigh break, loves pain enduring; Yet still I smiled to see how love did grieve them Unwise they were their sorrows self procuring. Thus, whilst they honored Cupid for a god, I held him as a boy not past the rod. * One line in the thirty-ninth sonnet appears to have been omitted; and the last but one containsfour quatrains and the closing couplet. The rest are constructed like Shakespeares, except that the arrangement of the rhymes is occasionally varied. 104 Thomas Watson the Poet. [Jan. SONNET 11. Long time I fought, and fiercely waged war Against the god of amorous desire, Who sets the senses mongst themselves at jar, The heart inflaming with his lustful fire. The winged boy upon his mothers knee, Wantonly playing near to Paphos shrine, Scorning that I should check his deity, Whose dreaded power tamed the gods divine, From forth his quiver drew the keenest dart Wherewith high Jove he oftentimes had wounded, And fiercely aimed it at my stubborn heart; But back again the idle shaft rebounded. Love saw, and frowned that he was so beguiled; I laughed outright, and Venus sweetly smiled. Venus and Love combine their stratagems, until he triumphs at last, though not until after a second defeat. Then, on the sudden, fast away he fled, He fled apace as from pursuing foe: Nor ever looked he back, nor turned his head, Until he came whereas he wrought my woe. Though * casting from his back his bended bow, He quickly clad himself in strange disguise, In strange disguise that no man might him know; So couched himself within my ladys eyes. But in her eyes such glorious beams did shine That wellnigh burnt Loves party-colored wings.; Whilst I stood gazing on her sun-bright eyne, The wanton boy she in my bosom flings. He built his pleasant bower in my breast: So I in love, and love in me doth rest. Thus far there is nothing to indicate how the course of true love will take itself. But presently we reach the gap in the Britwell copy, from which two leaves seem to have been torn out. The eight sonnets thus lost must have told the lovers first consciousness of passion, (and it may be presumed) its rejection by his mistress, not in those forms of denial which * Is this used, or a misprint, for Then? 1872.] Thomas Watson the Poet. 105 love could interpret in any sense contrary to their meaning. Henceforth there is that atmosphere of sadness struggling with hope which we have noticed. The twentieth sonnet, which we next quote, may be compared with the third of the llecatom~ pathia, Speak, gentle heart, as a specimen of the Amos.. ba~an style, to which Watson appears to have been partial. It is a dispute between eyes and heart, which had wrought most sorrow: My heart accused mine eyes, and was offended, Vowing the cause was in mine eyes aspiring: Mine eyes affirmed my heart might well amend it, If he at first had hanished loves desiring. Heart said, that love did enter at the eyes, And from the eyes descended to the heart: Eyes said, that in the heart did sparks arise Which kindled flame that wrought the inward smart. Heart said, eyes tears might soon have quenched that flame; Eyes said, hearts sighs at first might love exile: So heart the eyes, and eyes the heart did blame, Whilst both did pine, for both the pain did feel. Heart sighed and bled, eyes wept and gazed too much; Yet must I gaze, because I see none such. None such other, we should say. The next is a vision, which reminds us more of Spensors manner than is frequent in Watson I saw the object of my pining thought Within a garden of sweet natures placing: Wherein an arbor, artificial wrought, By workmans wondrous skill the garden gracing, Did hoast his glory, glory far renowned, For in his shady boughs my mistress slept, And with a garland of his branches crowned Her dainty forehead from the sun y.kept. Imperious Love upon her eyelids tending, Playing his wanton sports at every beck, And into every finest limb descending, From eyes to lips, from lips to ivory neck. And every limb supplied, and to every part Had free access, but durst not touch her heart. 106 Thomas Watson the Poet. [Jan. There is an exquisite suppressed warmth of tenderness about this; the veil of allegory, like some fine Ionic drapery, serves only to reveal and emphasize the beautiful form within. Then follows a little series of sonnets, wherein some real scene may be painted, which transacted itself within the pleasure-grounds of one of Watsons noble friends. We quote two of these son- nets: the first, mainly because of the closing lines. The poet is by some fountain of tears, which he discovers within the woodland : ~ About the well which from mine eyes did flow, The woful witness of hearts desolation, Yet tears, nor woe, nor aught could work compassion, Did divers trees of sundry natures grow. The myrrh, sweet bleeding in the latter wound, Into the crystal waves her tears did pour As pitying me on whom blind love did lower; Upon whose back I wrote my sorrows ground, And on her rugged rind I wrote forlorn, Forlorn I wrote, for sorrow me oppressed; Oppressing sorrow had my heart distressed, And made the abject outcast of loves scorn. The leaves conspiring with the winds sweet sounding, With gentle murmur plained my hearts deep wounding. Spontaneous coincidences, both of thought and of expression, between poets wholly unconscious of each others work, are far more common than is believed by the captious critic, the Word-catcher who lives on syllables. Yet the coincidence here with the lines in Shakespeares Venus and Adonis (published 1593, the same year as Wat- sons book) may, perhaps, not be the result of accident: Melodious discord, heavenly tune harsh-sounding, Ears deep-sweet music, and hearts deep-sore wounding. The following sonnet concludes this little series, as the one which we next quote is the last word of poor Watson : Those whose kind hearts sweet Pity did attaint, With rueful* tears bemoaned my miseries; Rueful is probably used here for rut hful, full of pity. 1872.] Thomas Ifatson the Poet. 107 Those which had heard my never-ceasing plaint, Or read my woes engraven on the trees, At last did win my Lady to consort them * Unto the fountain of my flowing anguish, Where she unkind and they might boldly sport them, Whilst I meanwhile in sorrows lap did languish. Their meaning was, that she some tears should shed Into the well in pity of my pining: She gave consent, and putting forth her head, Did in the well perceive her beauty shining. Which seeing, she withdrew her head, puffed up with pride, And would not shed a tear, should I have died. SONNET LX. Who taught thee first to sigh Alas! sweet heart? Who taught thy tongue to marshal words of plaint? Who filled thine eyes with tears of bitter smart? Who gave thee grief and made thy joys so faint? Who first did paint with colors pale thy face? Who first did break thy sleeps of quiet rest? Who forced thee unto wanton love give place? Who thralled thy thoughts in fancy so distrest? Who made thee hide both constant, firm, and sure? Who made thee scorn the world, and love thy friend? Who made thy mind with patience pains endure? Who made thee settle steadfast to the end? Then love thy choice, though love be never gained: Still live in love despair not, though disdained. The answer is written against each of these twelve inquiries, Love; in Sidneys phrase, Only with this my song begins and endeth ! Then follow FINIS. T. w. There is, apparently, nothing but this signature to connect the book with Watson, so far as external evidence is concerned; but the similarity in style with the ilecatompathia seems to render the ascription certain. If any further proof were needed, we should find it in the dissimilarity; which is precisely what would occur in the natural development of a genius and a temperament like * Consort, accompany. 108 Thomas TFatson the Poet. [Jan. Watsons, as he passed from boyhood to manhood; from the sweet fancies of youth, melancholy for fashions sake, to the sadder yet sweeter passion of real life: though love be never gained, steadfast to the end. We have noticed the descent of our Elizabethan lyrical love poetry from that of Italy and Provence; for the other early school, that of Swabia, does not seem to have affected England. It would be a curious task (worthy of Mr. ID. G. IRQssettis taste and knowledge) to compare the English with the Tuscan Amourists, or rather with the whole range of Italian sonnet and canzone writers from Ciullo d Alcamo to Tasso; for if Our sixteenth-century movement answers in some degree to that of the thirteenth in Italy, it is the later Italian writers, from Petrarch to Tasso, whose direct influence may be traced in England. This comparison of course cannot be attempted here; but we will note a few points in hope that others, more competent and with more leisure, may deal with the subject. The Italian lyrical school, from Dante to Petrarch, has more spontaneity than the Elizabethan; though not so purely fresh as the A~olian, it is less composite in its elements than ours. It is also more perfect and homogeneous in style and structure; reaching in Petrarch (when at his best) an exquisiteness of tender simplicity which is more like perfect Greek art than any other post-ilellenic poetry known to us. Alma felice, che sovente torni A consolar le mie notti dolenti Cogli occhi tuoi, che Morte non ha spenti Ma sovra 1 mortal modo fatti adorni: Quanto gradisco ch i miei tristi giorni A rallegrar di tua vista consenti! Cos~ incomincio a ritrovar presenti Le tue bellezze a suoi usati soggiorni. L~ ye cantando andai di te molt anni, Or, come vedi, vo di te piangendo, Di te piangendo no, ma, de miei danni: Sol un riposo trovo in molti affanni, Che quando torni, ti conosco, e ntendo All andar, alla voce, al volto, a panni. Three or four of Shakespeares sonnets may perhaps equal 1872.] Thomas Watson the Poet. 109 work like this; but the Elizabethan age has nothing else to show of rival perfection within the sphere of poetry before us; neither Sidney, nor Watson, nor Spenser, nor the delightful writers of the Helicon, nor Drummond, who is an Elizabethan born a little after date, and who makes Petrarch his model more peculiarly. On the other hand, our Amourists keep much more strictly within the limits of their art. They very seldom attempt to clothe morality or politics with the disguise of love; they are more free from scholastic pedantry, whilst, at the same time, they profit by the advance of European civilization, as we observed at the beginning of this paper, and range allu- sively over a wider scope of human experience. Our poets also greatly enlarged the lyrical style, extending it beyond the formal though admirably devised structure of the sonnet (which strains our rhyming capability a little), the canzone, and the ballata, to a hundred charming stanza-metres, which in some of the interspersed songs in Shakespeares plays reach a lightness and airy music, both of words and of idea, rarely, if ever, discoverable (at least to an English ear) in the long series of Italian minstrelsy. What place shall we give to our newly regained poet in this noble army? Below Sidney, but above Spenser, and the rest of that day, as an Amourist, was that which we proposed at the outset of our notice; Shakespeare being excepted from the survey. It is hoped that the specimens here given may carry the reader with us in this conclusion. If not, we shall yet venture to hope that he will not think the time wasted which he may have given to these reliques of Watson. Spenser, at least, we may claim on our side. Three years after Watsons death appeared the Cohn, in which these lines are unques- tionably devoted to his memory; and with them our imperfect tribute may best be closed There also is (ah no! he is not, now,) But since I said he is, he quite is gone, Amyntas quite is gone and lies full low, Having his Amaryllis left to moan. Help, 0 ye shepherds, help ye all in this, Help Amaryllis this her loss to mourn: Her loss is yours; your loss Amyntas is, Amyntas, flower of shepherds pride forlorn. 110 Harvard College. 1786 87. [Jan. He, whilst he lived, was the nohlest swain That ever pip6d in an oaten quill: Both did he other, which could pipe, maintain,* And eke himself could pipe with passing skill. F. T. PALGUAVE. ART. V. 1. Old Cambridge and New. By THOMAS C. AMORY. Reprinted from the New England Historical and Genea- logical Register. Boston: J. R. Osgood & Co. 1871. 2. Edward Everetts College Life: An Autobiographical Frag.. ment. Old and New, July and August, 1871. Mu. AMoRYs little work contains some cnrions and not unin- teresting details of local history, all the more welcome because it is not an easy matter for the historian to pursue small game of this kind through the forests of manuscript in which it is their custom to hide; and any one who will undertake the labor, or happens to know the secret places of forgotten and curious facts, has a right to claim the historians gratitude, even though the actual result of the sport is not precisely rich. Cambridge to the world at large is a place of limited importance, no doubt, and even in the eyes of Boston, her neighbor, is only a con- siderable suburb, which contains an University; but the prin- ciple of solidarity in modern society extends even to suburbs, and Cambridge has some right to claim that neither Massachu- setts nor America would have been the better for losing Cam- bridge from their roll of cities. Nature has not been prodigal to her; art has added but few attractions to the small number of those that nature conferred; but she is, nevertheless, one of the largest cities in the Commonwealth, and she contains its only considerable school of knowledge. Her history is there- fore a fair subject for more than local interest. Nevertheless, to the great mass of persons who know Cam- bridge only by name, it is the College and not the town which * In our ignorance of Watsons life, it is douhtful whether these words refer to some act of liberality to another poet, or to his translations from Greek and Italian poetry.

110 Harvard College. 1786 87. [Jan. He, whilst he lived, was the nohlest swain That ever pip6d in an oaten quill: Both did he other, which could pipe, maintain,* And eke himself could pipe with passing skill. F. T. PALGUAVE. ART. V. 1. Old Cambridge and New. By THOMAS C. AMORY. Reprinted from the New England Historical and Genea- logical Register. Boston: J. R. Osgood & Co. 1871. 2. Edward Everetts College Life: An Autobiographical Frag.. ment. Old and New, July and August, 1871. Mu. AMoRYs little work contains some cnrions and not unin- teresting details of local history, all the more welcome because it is not an easy matter for the historian to pursue small game of this kind through the forests of manuscript in which it is their custom to hide; and any one who will undertake the labor, or happens to know the secret places of forgotten and curious facts, has a right to claim the historians gratitude, even though the actual result of the sport is not precisely rich. Cambridge to the world at large is a place of limited importance, no doubt, and even in the eyes of Boston, her neighbor, is only a con- siderable suburb, which contains an University; but the prin- ciple of solidarity in modern society extends even to suburbs, and Cambridge has some right to claim that neither Massachu- setts nor America would have been the better for losing Cam- bridge from their roll of cities. Nature has not been prodigal to her; art has added but few attractions to the small number of those that nature conferred; but she is, nevertheless, one of the largest cities in the Commonwealth, and she contains its only considerable school of knowledge. Her history is there- fore a fair subject for more than local interest. Nevertheless, to the great mass of persons who know Cam- bridge only by name, it is the College and not the town which * In our ignorance of Watsons life, it is douhtful whether these words refer to some act of liberality to another poet, or to his translations from Greek and Italian poetry. 1872.] Harvard College. 178687. 111 lends the subject such interest as it has. Indeed, under the most flattering light, the public or popular concern in the Cob lege itself, or in its sister at New Haven, is by no means deep, and the traveller who undertakes to cross the continent soon reaches the limits beyond which the two Universities, if men- tioned at all, present only vague ideas to the listener. Yet such general interest as there is attaches itself to the University, and as the small circle of cultivated readers is reached, this interest becomes very decided, and extends to matters which are apparently trivial, and certainly have only a very slight historical or literary value. This feeling was curiously shown in the attention which Mr. Everetts reminiscences excited, as they were printed in the course of last year. Mr. Everett him- self belonged to the present century. He took his degree in 1811, and there are graduates in plenty who could amplify his short sketch indefinitely. Yet the public seemed to feel a cer- tain amount of active interest in the little account, extracts from which may without harm be quoted, of student life and manners in the first decade of the century I was thirteen years old in April, 1807, and entered as freshman the following August, being the youngest member of my class. I lived the first year with my classmate, Charles P. Curtis, in a wooden build- ing standing at the corner of the Main and Church Street. It was officially known as the College House, but known by the students as Wiswalls Den, or more concisely, The Den, whether from its comfortless character as a habitation, or from some worse cause, I do not know. There was a tradition that it had been the scene of a horrid domestic tragedy, and that it was haunted by the ghosts of the Wis- walls; but I cannot say that during the twelvemouth I lived in the Den this tale was confirmed by my own experience. We occupied the southwest corner chamber, up two flights of stairs, a room about fourteen feet square, in which were contained two beds and the rest of our furniture, and our fuel, which was wood, and was kept under the beds.. Two very small closets afforded a little additional space; but the accommodations certainly were far from brilliant. A good many young men who go to college are idlers, some worse than idlers. I suppose my class in this respect was like other classes; but there was a fair proportion of faithful, studious students, and of well-conducted young men. I was protected in part, perhaps, by my youth from the grosser temptations. I went through the prescribed 112 Harvard College. 1786 87. [Jan. studies of the year which were principally a few books of Livy and Horace for the Latin, and. Collectanea Gra~ca Majora for the Greek about as well as most of the class; but the manner in which the ancient languages were then studied was deplorably superficial. It was con- fined to the most cursory reading of the text. Besides the Latin and Greek languages, we had a weekly recitation in Lowths English Grammar, and in the Hebrew grammar witbout pOints; also in arith- metic and history, the last from Millots compend as a text-book. In all these branches there was an entire want of apparatus, and the standard compared with that which now exists was extremely low. And yet, in all respects, I imagine a gre at improvement had taken place in reference to college education over the state of things which existed in the previous generation. The intense political excitement of the Revolutionary period seems to have unsettled the minds of men from the quiet pursuits of life. President Webber was at the head of the University when I entered it, having succeeded to President Willard, who died in 1804 President Webber was a man of great worth, but destitute of pop- ular gifts. He was a person of tradition and routine, and never at- tempted to say a word to the students except from a manuscript pre- pared beforehand. He could not be said to be popular .with the young men, but it was simply from the want of the art of kindly intercourse. I remember going to his office in my freshman year to ask leave of absence for one night, that I might be at home for some family gather- ing, as I did not like to have to return to Cambridge at a very late hour. I found the whole academic corps assembled in the Presidents office, a circumstance which did not diminish my trepidation at being there for the first time. I modestly stated my request and the reason. I had never asked a favor nor incurred a penalty; and I had never passed an hour away from the college without permission. I received my answer, however, in the monosyllable No, without the addition of a word to soften the fiat refusal. Such was the tone of authority in those days. The mode of life of students in Cambridge is greatly changed since my day. We then lived in commons; the five classes assembling daily for the three meals in the Commons Hall, where the tutors and other parietal officers occupied an upper table. Till the year 1806, the even- ing meal was not even served in the hall, but was received by the students at the kitchen window, and conveyed to their rooms. The disagreeable nature of this operation in bad weather in a New England winter may easily be conceived. This practice was done away with, and supper, like the two other meals, provided in the hall, the year be- 1872.] harvard College. 1786 87. 113 fore I entered college. The tables were served by beneficiary stu- dents, according to the custom formerly existing in the English col- leges; and I believe it may with strict truth be added, that the said position of the waiters, as they were called, was in no degree impaired by performing this office for their fellow-students. Although commons were attended with some inconveniences and evils, I have regretted that some other remedy could not have been found than entire discon- tinuance. The rooms were furnished in a very simple style. I do not recollect that there was a carpet, a window-curtain, a sofa, or an easy- chair in any students room; and nearly all the young men brought their own water from the pumps, and trimmed their own lamps. A little luxury in this respect crept into the higher classes. One or two persons got their living about college as general boot-blacks. Charles Lennox, a respectable colored man, became in this way, I have heard, the richest man of his complexion in the State. He used to bring in his bill so much for brushing bootes. The practice of fagging, borrowed from the English schools, or rather, perhaps, growing out of that amiable propensity in human na- ture which leads the strong to find pleasure in oppressing the weak, prevailed to some extent in the last century at Cambridge. A mem- ber of the freshman class was obliged to take off his hat in the pres- ence of members of the higher classes, and to do their errands if re- quired. As a check on the abuse of this latter obligation, each freshman placed himself under a member of the senior class, who was called his senior; and it was a lawful excuse for not obeying the orders of any other student, that you were doing an errand for your senior. These practices in my time were obsolete, though it was still not unusual for a freshman to have his senior, usually some family friend, to whom he could go in case of need for a word of advice. I was considered, I believe, as taking rank among the best scholars in the class; although there was no branch in which I was not equalled, and in several was excelled, by some one of my classmates, except, perhaps, metaphysics. I have mentioned metaphysics as a study in which I succeeded. I mean, of course, only that I prepared myself thoroughly in the text- books. Wattss Logic was the first book studied in this branch; not a very inviting treatise compared with that of Archbishop Whately, but easily comprehended, and not repulsive. The account of the syllogistic method amused me; and the barbarous stanzas describing the various syllogistic modes and figures dwelt for a long time in my memory, and have not wholly faded away. Lockes Essay on Human Understand- ing caine next. This was more difficult. We recited from it three VOL. CXIV.NO. 234. 8 114 Harvard College. 17868L [Jan. times a day the four first days of the week; the recitation of Thursday afternoon being a review of the rest. We were expected to give the substance of the authors remarks, but were at liberty to condense them, and to use our own words. At the close of the junior year I received the appointment of Eng- lish orator at the public exhibition. This appointment, according to the usage then prevailing, implied that I was considered by the faculty one of the three first scholars in the class. I called my subject the Prejudices of Criticism, a not very significant phrase, borrowed from the phraseology at that time prevalent at college. I passed the winter vacation of this year at college, principally employed in miscellaneous reading. Among other standard works, I read Gibbons Decline and Fall with considerable care, with a con- siderable portion of Burke. The gorgeous style of the latter, and the stately eloquence of Gibbon and Johnson, caught my youthful fancy, and pleased me more than the simple diction of Goldsmith and Addison. These last I had always read with pleasure; but I thought the three great masters I have just named were rather to be imitated as models of style; an error which it took me some years to discover and correct. During my senior year I relaxed a little from my studious habits, though I did not fall into serious neglect of my college duties, still less into any vicious indulgence. But I had become weary of the restraints of college life, and the natural restlessness of the age I had reached (seventeen) rendered me impatient of academic confinement and rou- tine. I was in some danger of going astray. In August, 1811, I took my degree, and delivered the valedictory oration of the class on Commencement Day. I called my subject Literary Evils, an unmeaning phrase, like that which I chose as the subject of my exhibition oration. It was, I suspect, an inferior per- formance. Not much can be effected, even by a mature mind, in a set discourse of only twelve minutes in length, of which some portion had to be given up by the valedictory orator to the enumeration of some of the chief benefactors of the College, a practice borrowed from the commemoration, of the English universities, and now discontinued at Harvard. Our class was the first to which these English orations had been assigned, and it was some years before the example was followed. An entire change in the arrangement of the literary exercises of Coin- mencement Day has since taken place, and there is still room for great improvement. At present, they are greatly too numerous, and the time devoted to them necessarily too long. The average character of these juvenile efforts is now vastly beyond the standard in my time. 1872.] Harvard College. 178687. 115 This is certainly entertaining, so far as it goes, but one can- not help wishing it went further. For the large and increasing class of instructors, or persons interested in the improvement of instruction in this country, there could be few more enter- taining and suggestive books than a history of instruction at Harvard College; an account, not of the numbers of students, nor of the gifts of donors, but of the processes tried, the ex- periments that failed, the discipline enforced, the customs observed, and, above all, the steady improvement in scholarship, if any such can be shown to have existed. One wishes to know with what standard the College started, and to what extent this standard has been raised or lowered. In fixing once for all the facts of the case, whatever they may be, and in ascer- taining precisely what direction the College has followed during its two centuries and a half of activity, some light might per- haps be thrown on the very disputed question of the future. Since its foundation the College has vastly altered its character, and there is every reason to suppose that it will continue to experiment with new methods and in new directions as rapidly as is safe. There is all the more reason for bearing in mind that its history is of no small importance as illustrating the growth of American society and as indicating its future pro- gress. Both as a social and as an educational question, there- fore, the matter is of considerable interest. Such a story, however, to be well told, should come directly from first sources, and, with the exception of the College rec- ords, first sources are not easily reached. The College records, too, have the disadvantage that they tell a somewhat stiff and often ludicrously formal tale of boys experiences and petty discipline, without in the least entering into boys feeling. For after all it is primarily with students that education deals, and the opinion of students is therefore an essential part of all successful education. One wishes to know what the student, at any given time, thought of himself, of his studies and his instructors; what his studies and his habits were; how much he knew and how thoroughly; with what spirit he met his work, and with what amount of active aid and sympathy his instructors met him in dealing with his work or his amuse- ments. The past brings down traditions of solid learning and 116 Harvard College. 1786 87. [Jan. careful training in the branches of study it assumed to deal with. One would like to know how such learning was gained, the methods and the instruments by which great results were reached. In short, one cannot but feel that ones self-esteem is a little at stake in the question whether the present genera- tion, in making what it calls its progress, has sacrificed anything which was once useful to its predecessors, and this too, quite aside from the further question whether such a sacrifice, if ever made, was a matter of necessity or of mere recklessness. If it were possible by some chance to disinter from the repositories of old manuscripts a series of students diaries throughout the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, from which, by any careful process of sifting out the chaff, a certain continuity of thought and experience could be discovered, the greatest difficulty would be overcome. Unfortunately, students diaries are apt to be so feeble productions that the writers, if they ever think to read them in later years, commonly put them in the fire. Yet feeble as they are, they represent the most important part of any educational system, and their place can by no means be taken by mere reminiscences, no matter how entertaining or extensive the latter may be. A skilful instructor ought, perhaps, to derive as many ideas from the absurdities or extravagances of the scholars who are in his charge, as he does from their better qualities; and, above all, no instructor can well be allowed to forget the fact, which, never- theless, is extremely apt to be forgotten in practice, that the teacher exists for the sake of the scholars, not the scholars for the sake of the teacher. No system of education can be very successful which does not make the scholar its chief object of interest; a principle which may sound like a truism, but which, in fact, will be found to have been rarely put in practice on any great scale, and which, in the daily work of education, is the most difficult of all principles to act upon. In the great majority of cases the teacher is, in his own eyes, the most im- portant part of a school; the institution or school or system itself ranks next, and the scholar comes last of all. To re- verse this order of things in an historical treatment of the sub- ject may seem trivial enough to grown men who look upon a great and influential corporation like Harvard College in the 1872.] Harvard College. 1786 87. 117 same light as a railway or a banking corporation, with a history which is thoroughly economical, made up of charters, deeds, and statistics of passengers carried, discounts effected, boys educated, and stock watered; but it is, nevertheless, the true historical method, if there were but the means of carrying it out. Unfortunately, as has been already said, the means are wanting. But it is not only the means which are wanting. The work itself could only be done to advantage by some one peculiarly constituted. Attempts without number have been made to use college life as a groundwork for fiction, and the result has almost if not quite invariably been failure, for the reason that the field of interest is too narrow, and that the attempt to enlarge it by introducing forced situations is more fatal to success than the narrowness of the field itself. The same difficulty would be found in a more practical treat- ment of the same subject. The details are numerous and fatiguing; the possible combinations few and simple; the treatment itself must make atonement for the want of incident, and such treatment could only come from a master critic who could employ his labor to more effect in matters of wider and deeper interest. The student must probably, therefore, remain content to have no history which shall deal with education from his stand-point. Nevertheless, such material as exists, which can throw light on the movement of high education in America, ought not to be wasted. No doubt the family records of more than one household in New England contain papers that might be of service in following out this path of inquiry; but one such manuscript record at least lies before us, and offers a curious and extremely characteristic picture of the education which was given at Cambridge towards the close of the last century. The record in question is a students diary for fifteen months in the years 1786 87; years, it will be remembered, of great depression in America, immediately following the peace with Great Britain, but preceding the establishment of a responsible national government. The winter was famous for the out- break and forcible repression of Shays rebellion, which was the principal subject of interest in Massachusetts, and threat- ened for a time to affect Cambridge itself The student in 118 Harvard Uollege. P18687. [Jan. question was a young man in his nineteenth year, who came late to the University, and joined the junior class on the 15th March, 1186. As will be seen, he had a fair share of youthful crudities, but he appears to have been as free from extreme prejudices as could reasonably be expected from a young man of his age, while his manner of looking at things occasionally indicates a mind which had come into closer contact with grown and educated men than with people of his own age. It is perhaps almost unduly mature. In the present days of ever-increasing severity in examina- tions for admission to college, it is interesting to inquire what the requisites were in the last century. The student here gives, it is true, no indication of what examination was re- quired for entrance into either of the two lower classes. He am plied for admission to the junior class, and not only that, but for admission in the third term of the junior year, when more than half of the years work\as done. His examination, there- fore, indicates the minimum required by the College after about three years of college education. The examination itself am pears to have been a very formal proceeding, and although the proportion of absolute rejections was smaller then than now, yet admission was far from a matter of course. In this par- ticular instance the applicant appears to have had a special ex- amination as he applied for admission at a time when no one else wished to eiiter. He tells his own story, as follows: 15 Marc/i, 1786. Between 9 and 10 in the morning I went to the Presidents, and was there admitted before the President, the four tutors, three professors, and Librarian. The first book was Horace, where Mr. J , the Latin tutor, told me to turn to the Carmen sa~culare, where I construed three stanzas and parsed the word syl- varum, hut called potens a substantive. Mr. J, the Greek tutor, thea put me to the beginning of th~ fourth book of Homer. I construed lines, but parsed wrong dXX~Xov~. I had then ,rapaflX~rji given me. I was then asked a few questions in Wattss Logic by Mr. H, and a considerable number in Locke on the Understanding, very few of which I was able to answer. The next thing was geog- raphy, where Mr. R asked me,,what was the figure of the earth, and several other questions, some of which I answered, and others not. Mr. Williams asked me if I had studied Euclid and arithmetic, after which the President conducted me to another room and gave me the 1872.] Harvard College. 178687. 119 following piece of English to turn into Latin, from the World: There cannot certainly be an higher ridicule than to give an air of importance to amusements, if they are in themselves contemptible and void of taste; but if they are the object and care of the judicious and polite and really deserve that distinction, the conduct of them is certainly of consequence. I made it thus: Nihil profecto risu dignior quam magni a~stimare delectamenta, si per se despicienda sunt atque sine sapore. At si res oblata~ atque cura sunt sagacibus et artibus excultis et revera bane distinctionem merent, administratio eorum baud dubie utilitatis est. I take it from memory only, as no scholar is suffered to take a copy of the Latin he made at his examination. The President then took it, was gone about ~ of an hour, returned and said, You are admitted; and gave me a paper to carry to the steward. Certainly the examination was not a very difficult one, and the candidate, according to his own account, does not appear to have made a very brilliant figure at it. Setting aside Watts and Locke, which are no longer so important a part of the liberal education as they formerly were, one may perhaps say that the freshman of our day would think himself the happiest of beings if he could escape with no more severe an examination than this. But the most remarkable fact of all is, that this ex- amination, so far as the classics are concerned, represents not the minimum but the maximum of requirements, not for the junior year, but for the entire college course. Homer, Horace, Terence, and Caesar were all that the student attempted to study. With the junior year, instruction in the classics ended. As evidence of the condition of classical studies in the Univer- sity at this time the following entry would seem to be very significant: July 5, 1786. Mr. J gave us a piece of Latin to make; the first the class have had since I have been here. This is the last week that we attend the Latin tutor, and last week we closed with Mr. J (Greek). In the senior year there are no languages studied in college. It is very popular here to dislike the study of Greek and Latin. All that the student could do in college, at least in the direction of classical acquirements, was therefore limited within a very narrow margin, which is perfectly represented by the examination described above. Another extract will illustrate this fact: 120 Harvard College. 1T8687. [Jan. May 10, 1786. We finished the Andria of Terence this morning. The class I)egan it last February. I went through it at Haverhill in three evenings. However, it must be said that they study it only one week in four, and that week only four mornings, but even in that way it has taken thirteen lessons to go through this one play. We recite afternoons the Latin week in C~esar, but I have had nothing to say this week. The class is so numerous that he (the tutor) cannot hear more than one half of them recite at once, and so he takes turns. It seems tolerably clear, therefore, that where students dropped the classics at Cambridge in the last century, there students begin the study in the present one. If this be the case, an interesting question rises as to how and where the last generation, or any preceding generation in America, got its classical knowledge, if it had any. Cambridge was its best school, and at Cambridge the classics were unpopular and neg- lected. Homer and Horace or Terence and a simple sentence in Latin composition represent all the classical knowledge that Harvard gave; and it is quite clear that beyond the simple construing of the text and the application of the elementary rules of grammar, nothing was even attempted. In regard to mathematics, the same relative position seems to have been held. Euclid and arithmetic are no further ad- vanced as mathematics than Homer and Horace as classics, if indeed they are so far. But mathematics were continued through the senior year, and apparently with comparative energy. Any other requirement, with the exception of logic and metaphysics, seems to have been unknown, unless geog- raphy were something more than the mere form which the single question repeated in the diary would imply. So far, then, as the standard of knowledge was concerned, it was low enough; and to judge from the account of the student himself, his success in satisfying even this low standard was not so brilliant as it might have been. Yet the best acquire- ments of the highest scholars in his class appear to have been no greater. At all events there was no one of sufficient superi- ority, among the fifty graduates of his year, to prevent him from carrying away an English oration at his Commencement, a prize commonly given only to the best scholars. The examination being over, the new student was fairly a 1872.] Harvard College. 1786 87. 121 member of the College. The first matter of interest is naturally his studies. One who is familiar with the elaborate system of instruction now in use, is curious to know the steps which have led up to it. And so far as the student himself is concerned, his information is reasonably exact. He did not appear at the college exercises until a week after his admission, when he went to the President. March 22. Immediately after prayers I went to the President, who said, You may live with Sir Ware, a Bachelor of Arts. I made a most respectful bow, and retired. To persons who have forgotten this use of the title Sir, an- other extract may be of interest: July 19. Commencement Day. The new Sirs got quite high in the evening, at Derbys chamber, and made considerable of a noise. Recitations now began. For one week the class recited in Euclid. The following week it recited in Homer and the Greek Testament; the third week, in Locke; the fourth, in Terence and Ca~sar. This was the round of studies, and when the four weeks were passed, the process was begun again. But the weeks were classed as mathematical, metaphysical, Greek, and Latin weeks, and no two of these subjects were ever recited at the same time. There appear to have been six recitations in these branches every week. On Mondays and Wednesdays, both morning and afternoon; on Tuesdays and Thursdays, only in the morn- ing. Friday was a leisure day for the whole College, so far as recitations were concerned. On Saturdays there was one early recitation in Doddridges Divinity, a work which appears not to have been a favorite text-book. This seems to have been all the work of the College in respect to recitations. In addition to this, however, there were frequent lectures, both philosoph- ical and doctrinal, which the students of all classes seem to have attended, and there were also literary exercises, as well as a regular exercise in declamation. As the description of a single day, the following is sufficiently clear: May 3, 1786. Wednesday and Monday are our two busiest days in the week. This morning (Wednesday) at 6 we went into prayers, 122 Harvard College. 178687. [Jan. after which we immediately recited (Homer). This took us till 7~. At 7~ we breakfasted. At 10 we had a lecture on Divinity, from Mr. Wigglesworth. It was upon the wisdom of all Gods actions, and justi- fying those parts of Scripture which some have reproached as contrary to justice. At 11 we had a philosophical lecture from Mr. Williams upon the mechanical powers, and particularly the lever and the pulley. At 12k, dinner. At 3, an astronomical public lecture upon the planet Mercury, a very circumstantial account of all its transits over the suns disk. At 4 again we recited (Greek Testament), and at 5 attended prayers again, after which there are no more exercises for this day, but we are obliged in the evening to prepare our recitation for to-morrow morning. This I think is quite sufficient employment for one day, but the three last days in the week we have very little to do; Thursdays and Saturdays reciting only in the morning, and Fridays a philosophical lecture. A modern student would not think this work very severe, for except the two recitations there is nothing which requires prep- aration. Perhaps the most curious part of the old arrange- ment is the very subordinate place filled by recitations, and it is certainly interesting to hear a student in 1786, who has but seven recitations a week, finding fault with the system in lan- guage like this September 4, 1786. As we have no metaphysical tutor here at present, we supposed that for the ensuing fortnight we should have no reciting. But the government have determined that we shall continue to attend Mr. R . This is not an agreeable circumstance. A person who does not belong to the University and hears only the word reciting, naturally concludes that the scholars are an idle set of fellows, because they are always averse to recitations. INow the fact is just the con- trary. A person fond of study regards the time spent in reciting as absolutely lost. He has studied the book before he recites; and the tutors here are so averse to giving ideas different from those of the author whom they are supposed to explain, that they always speak in his own words and never pretend to add anything of their own. Re- citing is indeed of some service to idle fellows, because it brings the matter immediately before them and obliges them at least for a short time to attend to something. But a hard student will always dislike it, because it takes time from him which he supposes might have been em- ployed to greater advantage. A change in the recitations occurred in the senior year. Greek and Latin were entirely dropped, and during the whole 1872.] Harvard College. 1786 87. 12.3 first quarter the seniors recited in mathematics alone, because the tutor in metaphysics had resigned, and his place had not been filled. Only on the 3d October did the new tutor make his appearance and begin upon Burlamaquis Natural Law, after which the two studies alternated during the rest of the year. The lectures were continued, and a new course, very dry, was added, upon language. The principal professor would seem, however, to have not satisfied the more zealous students, if the following extract can be trusted: April 5, 1787. At 11 this forenoon Mr. Williams gave us the second philosophical lecture. It was upon the incidental properties of matter, and, excepting very few deviations, was expressed, in the same terms with that we had last year upon the same subject. Indeed, whether the professors time is taken up by other studies, or whether he is too indolent to make any improvements in his lectures, it is said he gives every year the same course, without adding or erasin galine. April 7. Mr. Williams gave us this forenoon a lecture upon motion, the same which we heard a twelvemonth past upon that subject. The fourth year appears, therefore, to have been principally occupied by the study of mathematics. Indeed, except for read- ing Burlamaqui and writing a large number of literary disqui- sitions, of a somewhat stereotyped and~academic class, for cob lege societies and public occasions, it is difficult to see that even the best students had any other employment at all. After the winter vacation, that is, after the middle of February, afternoon recitations were dropped in the senior year, and the class had but five recitations a week for nine weeks, at the end of which recitations entirely ceased. This analysis of the College studies leads naturally to the conclusion, which is enforced by every word of this diary, that, for the ordinary enjoyments of university life, the last century was the golden age of the College. It was hard, indeed, if the most modest capacity could not manage to maintain itself upon such a level. This seems to have been the impression which prevailed among the students themselves, for the writer of this diary, in speaking of a classmate who was in his twenty- fifth year, says: He was, as he says himself, too old when he entered the University. 124 Harvard College. 178687. [Jan. From fourteen to eighteen I should suppose the best age for entering. The studies which are pursued here are just calculated for the tender minds of youth. In comparison with the present system, the simplicity of the older one seems marvellously attractive. One cannot detect a sign of unreasonable coercion on the part of the College gov- ernment. An examination of any kind within the college career was still a thing unheard of among our happy ancestors. Rank was apparently unknown, except so far as it was vaguely intimated in the assignment of parts at exhibitions. These parts, if the President is to be believed, were the only incentive to study; at least such is the inference from the following curious entry: April 11, 1787. I went down this morning to the President to know the determination of the corporation with respect to a private Commencement, and was told that the petition of the class was rejected, because they supposed that if public Commencements were lain aside, there would be no stimulus to study among the scholars, and they are afraid that by granting our petition they might establish a precedent which the following classes would take advantage of, and claim as a right what we only request as a favor. Another reason which Mr. Willard said had weight, although the gentlemen did not choose to avow it publicly, was the fear of offending the future Governor by depriving him of that opportunity to show himself in splendor and magnificence. Here is another extract, delightful in its patriarchal sim- plicity. It was the students first day in college : Miarch 23, 1786. I did not hear the bell ring this morning, and was tardy at prayers. Every time a student is tardy at prayers he is punished a penny, and there is no eluding that law; so that a stu- dent must prefer not attending prayers at all to being half a minute too late. The instructors appear to have trusted only their general impressions in awarding distinctions. Misdemeanors, ab- sences, and other shortcomings were punished by fines. As for the recitations themselves, here is a picture of them: June 13, 1786. This reciting in Locke is the most ridiculous of all. When the tutor inquires what is contained in such a section, many of the scholars repeat the two first lines in it, which are very frequently 1872.] Harvard College. 1786 87. 125 nothing to the purpose, and leave the rest for the tutor to explain, which he commonly does by saying over again the words of the author. In regard to vacations and permissions of absence, there was no rigidity in the College law. In April the students had two weeks holiday by law, but in practice at least three. On the 13th July the summer vacation began, and closed by law on the 16th August, lasting five weeks, but recitations were only resumed on the 21st. There were two weeks more in October, with the same liberal margin. And in the middle of December, 1786, the supply of wood fell short, and as none could be obtained from the country, the students were sent home and enjoyed a vacation of eight weeks, till February 7th. Recitations began on the 12th. On the 23d about half the class had arrived. Thus in the course of the year the College had seventeen weeks of actual vacation, and twenty-one weeks of freedom from all required exercises. Add to this a very liberal interpretation of the rule of attendance, and an equally liberal practice in regard to leaves of absence, and it cannot be dis- puted that the actual working terms of the College were by no means unreasonably long or severe. In point of fact, when the exercises were most regular, there were many interruptions, and the amount of work accomplished would seem, from a modern point of view, to have been but small. In proof of these statements, the following extracts will be sufficient: April 26, 1786. Put my name in at the buttery. At the end of each vacation every scholar must go in person and give his name to the butler. Any scholar who stays away after the expiration of the vacancy, unless he gives good reasons for it, forfeits 1 s. 6 d. every night. April 27. No reciting this day, nor indeed this week. The schol- ars that live near Cambridge commonly come and enter their names in the buttery, and then go home again and stay the remainder of the week. April 28. About half the college are now here. The bill at prayers is not kept till the Friday after the vacation ends. May 1. We recite this week, etc. August 17. The scholars are coming in very fast. August 19. Almost all the college have got here now, and the new 126 Harvard College. 178687. [Jan. monitors, who must always belong to the junior class, took their seats yesterday. August 21. We recite this week, etc. December 12. The government this morning determined that if more than half the students should be destitute of wood, the college should be dismissed. The President went to Boston to consult the corporation upon the subject, and he informed Little this evening that the students would be permitted to disperse to-morrow morning. December 13. This morning, immediately after prayers, the Presi- dent informed us that the vacation would begin at present, and be for eight weeks, and hinted that the spring vacation might on that account be omitted. But the spring vacation was not in the least shortened by the hint. Perhaps it is no concern of the public to inquire how the student occupied these eight weeks. He had a right to do what he pleased with them. Nevertheless, since it is possible that the extreme exertions which were evidently not made in term-time may have fallen on the vacation, it is worth the while to ask how the most distinguished students of the oldest standing occupied their two months of winter vacation. The particular student now under consideration remained in college rooms to devote his time to his work, with less interruption than was otherwise possible. As I thought I should be able to study much more conveniently here than anywhere else, I obtained leave to remain in town. Bridge proposes staying likewise, and we shall live together. Bridge engaged for us both to board at Professor Wigglesworths. Other young men remained, no doubt for the same purpose, since their names occur afterwards on the list of parts at Com- mencement, attached to English orations and other unusual honors. Immediately afterwards, however, an entry occurs which is calculated to raise some interesting doubts in the readers mind December 18, 1786. The young ladies at Mr. Wigglesworths dined at Judge Danas. I went down there with Bridge to tea, and passed the evening very sociably. The conversation turned upon divers topics, and among the rest upon love, which is almost always the case when there are ladies present. 1872.] Harvard College. 1786 87. 127 Nowhere in this diary is love mentioned as one of the College studies; but if it is always discussed when there are ladies present, these young gentlemen would seem during this vaca- tion to have devoted far more attention to it than ever they had paid to Locke or Euclid. The next day, however, a slight improvement in tone is visible December 19. Several of the class still remain, and until they are gone it will be impossible for us to study much. As they expect to go every day, they are rather dissipated, and more or less make us so. December 20. I have been rather more attentive to-day, and have written considerably. After this spark of energy, however, comes a fearful relapse. Descriptions of young ladies recur with alarming frequency, while, except for a single reference to Montesquien, there is by no meaiis any indication of absorbing mental application. December 22. Miss is but eighteen, rather giddy and unex- perienced. She has a very fair complexioa and good eyes, of which she is sensible. Her face is rather capricious than beautiful, and some of her features are not handsome. Of this she is not so well apprised. 11cr shape is not inelegant, but her limbs are rather large. She is sus- ceptible of the tender sentiments, but the passion rather than the lover is the object of her affection. December 26. Mason finally took his leave and left us to ourselves, so that we shall henceforth be able to study with much less interruption than we have hitherto done. December 27. In the evening we went down with Mr. Ware and Freeman to Judge Danas. We conversed, and played whist, and sung till 10 oclock. The ladies seem to have settled that we are to be in love; but ideas of this kind are very common with the ladies, who think it impossible to live without love. Exemplary young man! And yet it would be instructive to learn what is the meaning of a succession of remarks like these January 17, 1787. After tea we went down to Mr. Danas. Miss was there, and Miss J with her. Bridge accompanied this lady home, and after they were gone I had a deal of chat with Miss E , who has a larger share of sense than commonly falls to an in- (lividual of her sex. We conversed upon divers subjects, hut I can never give anything but general accounts of conversations, for I cannot 128 Harvard College. 178687. [Jan. always keep this book under lock and key, and some people have a vast deal of curiosity. .January 22. Almy [the young gentleman no doubt meant to write Miss Almy E ] has a larger share of sense than commonly falls to the lot of her sex, and that sense is cultivated and improved, a cir- cumstance still more uncommon. KMiarch 2. I went to take tea at Mr. Pearsons. I got seated be- tween Miss E and Miss H, but could not enjoy the pleasures of conversation, because the music was introduced. Music is a great enemy to sociability, and however agreeable it may be sometimes, there are occasions when I should wish it might be dispensed with. Perhaps it is best to quit this subject here, since the vacation has already expired, and the student has returned to the labors of five recitations a week. Besides the Spirit of Laws, he had read, so far as can be gathered from his diary, Watsons Chem- ical Essays, Sheridans Lectures on Elocution, a volume of the Idler, and some algebra, in two months. He had also devel- oped an uncommonly strong fancy for the study of female char- acter, a study not embraced in the College curiculum, either then or afterwards. The 7th of February began the new term. On the 12th recitations began, one every day, except Friday. On the 15th there was a ball, at which it need hardly be said that Miss E heads the list of ladies. The young gentlemen, among whom were most of the first scholars, retired to bed at about 4 oclock, and rose just before the commons bell rang for dinner, quite refreshed, and not more fatigued than I commonly am. In fact, the dances have now become nearly as frequent as the recitations. On the 23d, about one half the class are here. On the 27th, almost all our class have arrived. Among other lectures, on March 5th, Professor P gave a lecture with which he concluded his observations upon the arti- cle. I did not hear many of them; but the same evening there was a meeting of the !l~ B K at Cranchs chamber, at which a dissertation was read, of which the text is here pre- served, on the extremely erudite question, Whether love or fortune ought to be the chief inducement to marriage. This essay is done with much calm reflection and elaborate knowl- edge of the human heart, but is not precisely a college exer 1872.] Harvard College. 1786 87. 129 cise. On the 7th March he went to ilaverhill, probably to obtain relief from the severe pressure of recitations, and re- turned on the 10th. On the 12th the parts were distributed for the next exhibition, and he received an English Confer- ence, with Freeman and Little, upon the Comparative Utility of Law, Physic, and Divinity. March 14, 1787. Was employed almost all day in thinking upon the subject of my Conference. Wrote a few lines with much difficulty. Did not like the subject. Wished the Conference to the Devil. Little and Freeman, it seems, were of the same mind. After a weeks labor, however, the Conference was written, and the next week was devoted to the voluntary work of calculating the elements for a solar eclipse for May 15, 1836. This was also for an exhibition. Akzrch 30. I have been somewhat idle for several days, and expect to continue so till the exhibition is over, for so long as that is before me I can pay very little attention to anything else. I found this to be the case last fall, and do now still more so, hut thank fortune I have only one more trial, at the worst, of this kind to go through, which will be at Commencement, unless we should obtain a private one. Dis- tinctions of this kind are not, I think, very desirable; for besides the trouble and~anxiety which they unavoidably create, they seldom fail of raising the envy of other students. I have oftentimes witnessed this with respect to others, and I am much deceived if I have not lately per- ceived it with respect to myself. April 9. This is the last week on which our class attend recita-. tions. If such were the laborious duties of the most distinguished: scholars, one would like to know what was done by those sti~ dents who were not remarkable for scholarship; but on thispoint no certain information is given, beyond allusions to gwining, fishing, and an occasional high-go. Meanwhile a difficulty had occurred: August 26, 1786. Immediately after prayers we had a elass meeting for the purpose of choosing a Valedictory Orator, and ColleetGrs of~heses. When the votes were collected it was found that there was-nG choice. A second attempt was made, equally fruitless. It was then~ resolved that the choice of an Orator should be deferred, and that the class shoild pro- ceed to that of the choice of Collectors. The one for Technology, %1~ram- VOL. Cxiv. NO. 234. 9 130 Harvard College. 1786 87. [Jan. mar, and Rhetoric was first balloted. Abbot 2d was chosen. The second Collector, for Logic, Metaphysics, Ethics, Theology, and Politics, was then chosen. Fiske was the person. The Mathematical part fell to Adams, and the Physical to Johnstone. The meeting at about 7 oclock was adjourned till Monday evening, when we shall proceed to the choice of an Orator. August 28. After prayers the class met by adjournment. The second ballot was between Freeman, Little, and Waldo. The third was between Freeman and Little, who finally carried it by a considerable majority. The class then all went to his chamber, but did not stay there more than an hour. August 31. We had a class meeting immediately after prayers. The committee of the class that was appointed to inform the President of the choice for an Orator, etc., reported that the President had not given his consent to have the Oration in English, because he thought it would show a neglect of classical learning. I motioned that the vote for having it in English should be reconsidered, but there was a con- siderable majority against it. It was then voted that the President should be informed that the class had determined to have an English Oration or none at all. The former committee all declined going again. Johastone, Fiske, and Welch were chosen, but declined. It was much like A~sops fable of the mice, who determined to have a bell tied round the cats neck; they were all desirous that it should be done, but no one was willing to undertake the performance of it. The meeting was finally adjourned till Monday next. September 12. We had a class meeting after prayers for deter- mining the matter concerning a Yaledictory Oration. By dint of obsti- nate inipudence, vociferation, and noise, the minority so wearied out those on the other side that several of them went out, after which a vote was passed ratifying the proceedings of the last meeting. John- son, Sever, and Chandler 3d were thea chosen as a committee to inform the President of the proceedings in the class. September 18. We had a class meeting after breakfast. The committee that was sent to inform the President of the proceedings of the class, informed that he had said he feared he should be obliged to direct the class to have the Oration in Latin. Notwithstanding this, it was voted by a majority of two that the class should still persist. 4?he result was that the President carried his point in so far that there was no Class Day. In consequence of this, the members of the class began to leave Cambridge long before the 21st of June, the usual day for separation. The parts for Commencement were distributed on the 17th May 1812.] Harvard College. 178687. 131 May 24, 1787. Our class having no College exercises to attend to, and many of them having now finished their parts for Commencement, are generally very indolent. Riding and playing and eating and drinking employ the chief part of their time. Long before Class Day the graduating students were scattered in every direction, only to return on the 18th July to Commence- ment. Thus,to sum up the result of the half-year since the 13th December, the students who were now to take their degrees had attended recitations at the rate of five per week, for nine weeks, and had further prepared exercises for one exhibition and Com- mencement. They had listened to one course of lectures, which they had for the most part already heard, and another on the parts of speech, which the best of them thought a mere waste of time. And they dispersed in May, without the faintest con- ception that there could be such a thing in the student world as an examination for degrees. One or two more extracts, to illustrate the stringency of rules during term-time, must be admitted May 4, 1786. iNo reciting this morning, on account of last nights class meeting. This is a privilege that all the classes enjoy, and I am told there have been in our class fellows so lazy and so foolish as to call a class meeting merely for that purpose. Naturally, class meetings were very frequent. April 10,1786. No reciting this day, because the government met to examine the reasons of those scholars that are absent, or have been within the last two quarters. September 22. Mr. R sent for me this morning, informed me that the exhibition was to come on next Thursday, and offered to ex- cuse me from recitations till then, in case I was not prepared, as the time that had been given for getting ready was so short. But, as it hap- pened, I was not in need of more time. October 9. No reciting. Mr. B is engaged to preach several Sundays at Hiagham, and does not return early enough for the next morning recitation. These extracts need not he multiplied. The rules were not snore rigidly applied in regard to required exercises than they were in other respects, and neither instructors nor students considered themselves to be under any very inflexible law. Students who lived under so mild and beneficent a govern- 132 Harvard College. 1786 87. [Jan. ment as this should have had no just cause of complaint, unless it were that the means of the College did not reach far enough to satisfy all the requirements of a liberal education. They might, indeed, urge that Euclid and Burlamaqui were only dry nutriment to satisfy the hunger of a whole year, but they could scarcely maintain that it was a step-mothers hand which, when they cried for bread, threw them these husks. This leads naturally to the further subject of the relations between the teachers and the taught. There seems to have been no obvious reason why, under a system so nearly voluntary, a thorough ac- cord should not exist between the instructors and their best scholars. And if such a harmony was wanting, it may be of some practical value to inquire what the causes were which stood in its way, and whether the fault, if there was a fault, lay with the older or the younger men. The President, Mr. Jose ph Willard, was a graduate of the year 1765, and therefore still a comparatively young man. Many instructive hints as to his character are scattered through this diary, as for example the following: It is against the laws of the College to call any undergraduate by ~any but his Sir name, and I am told the President, who is remarkably strict on all those matters, reproved a gentleman at his table for calling ,a student Mr. while he was present. Again March 24, 1786. After prayers I declaimed, as it is termed; two students every evening speak from memory any piece they choose, if it be approved by the President. It was this evening my turn, and I spoke from As You Like It: All the world s a stage, etc. When I came to the description of the Justice, in fair, round belly with good capon lined, tutors and scholars all laughed, as I myself truly repre- sented the cbaracter. But the President did not move a feature of his face. And indeed ii believe it is no small matter that shall extort a smile from him when he is before the College. September 10, 1786. Cranch and myself dined at the Presidents. He is sti*f ~nd formal, attached to every custom and trifling form, as much as to what is of consequence. However, he was quite sociable; xziucb more so, indeed, than I should have expected. A little portrait of the President in the pulpit : U February 18, 1787. The President preached in the afternoon, 1872.] Harvard College. 178687. 133 when we were improved by a very laborious encomium upon Moses. Whatever the Presidents literary talents may be, he is certainly not an elegant composuist nor a graceful orator. June 21, 1786. Class Day. This day the seniors leave college. There is no recitation in the morning, and prayers are deferred till 10 oclock. The class then went down in procession two by two with the Poet at their head, and escorted the President to the chapel. The President made a very long prayer, in which, in addition to what he commonly says, he prayed a great deal for the seniors; but I think he ought to get his occasional prayers by heart before he delivers them. He bungled always when he endeavored to go out of the beaten track, and he has no talent at extempore composition. April 6, 1786. Fast Day. The President preached two sermons; that in the afternoon especially I thought excellent. No flowers of rhetoric, no eloquence, but plain common sense, and upon a liberal plan. But the President has by no means a pleasing delivery. He appears to labor and struggle very much, and sometimes strains very hard; and making faces, which do not render his harsh countenance more agreeable. The description is evidently true to the life, and certainly indicates no ill-feeling towards the President. There is no indication throughout this diary that the President was disliked by the students, or that he failed in any way to maintain the dignity of his position. But it is clear that a man cast in such a mould was not likely to throw much life or much novelty into the system over which he presided. He was one of those men already mentioned, in whose eyes it was not the students whose interests stood first; nor, to do him justice, was it merely his own importance which filled his thoughts; it was the institution, the University, as one of the most important corporations in the Commonwealth, on which his thoughts were bent, and the students, who are quick to feel such distinctions, responded with respect and indifference. He was, after all, an excellent representative of the old New England school, which lost its hold, as a clerical body, on American education, before it had time to give an American Arnold to Harvard College. But the President seems to have had little immediate con- nection with the undergraduates. The burden of labor fell almost entirely on the four tutors, and yet it may be doubted 134 Harvard College. 178687. [Jan. whether even the tutors were obliged to perform so much work as would seem very alarming to the most lightly burdened tutor of the present day. Six or seven hours a week in the recitation- room, and the simplest instruction on tl~e letter of the text- book, appear to represent the full extent of their duties, over and above the charge of the College discipline. Under these circumstances it might be supposed that a considerable oppor- tunity for usefulness was open to the four tutors, and that at least one or two of them might have impressed the students with some appreciable degree of sympathetic activity. One may therefore feel some interest to know what the relations were between the students and their tutors; and on this point there is a great quantity of information: ifay 1,1786. The Greek tutor is a young man; indeed much too young (A. B. of 1782), as are all the tutors, for the place he occupies. Before he took his second degree, which was last Commencement, he was chosen a tutor of mathematics, in which he betrayed his ignorance often. Last fall he changed departments, and took up the Greek. His own class, the freshmen, were the first that laughed at him in that. He has improved since that, but still makes frequent mistakes. It is cer- tainly wrong that the tutors should so often be changed, and be so young as they are. It would be better to choose a person immediately after he has taken his degree, than as they do; because when a youth leaves college he is obliged to turn his attention to other studies, and forgets a great deal of what he studied at college, whereas when he has lately graduated he has all fresh in his mind. The Doctor affects a great deal of popularity in his class, and with the help of the late disagreement between the classes, he has pretty well succeeded, but he does not seem to care what the other classes think of him. Akty 2. Our tutor gave us this morning a most extraordinary con- struction of a passage in Homer. Abbot 1st was beginning to con- strue the 181st line of the 6th Book, llpoo~Oe Xe~cov, o~r& Oev ~ ~paKcozJ, $E0017 ~E ~ he said: a lion before; but the Doctor corrected him by saying it meant superior to a lion. Abbot immediately took the hint and made it: superior to a lion, inferior to a dragon, and equal to a wild boar. An account of the metaphysical tutor is still less flattering: 15 21fay, 1786. We recite this week to Mr. H in Locke. This is, upon the whole, the most unpopular tutor in College. He is hated 1872.] Harvard College. 178687. 1~5 even by his own class. He is reputed to be very ill-natured and severe in his punishments. He proposes leaving College at Commencement, and I believe there is not an individual among the students who is not very well pleased with it. One of my classmates said the other day, I do not believe it yet; it is too good news to be true. Such are the sentiments of all the students with respect to him. The writer passes on to the mathematical tutor: May 22, 1786. We recite this week to our own tutor, in Grave- sandes Experimental Philosophy. This gentleman is not much more popular than the rest of the tutors. He is said to be very prejudiced and very vindictive. He is liked in general by the class, however, and this may be a reason why I have not heard as much said against him as against the others. He closes the list with a blast of indignation : KM~y 8. We recite this week in Terence and C~esar to Mr. J This is the tutor of the oldest standing in the College; he is very well acquainted with the branch he has undertaken, and persons that are not students say that he is much of a gentleman. But it seems almost to be a maxim among the governors of the College to treat the students pretty much like brute beasts. There is an important air and a haughty look that every person belonging to the government (Mr. [Professor] Williams excepted) assumes, which indeed it is hard for me to submit to. But it may be of use to me, as it mortifies my vanity, and if any- thing in the world can teach me humility, it will be to see myself sub- jected to the commands of a person that I must despise. Mr. J is also accused of having many partialities and carrying them to very great length, and moreover that those partialities do not arise from any superior talents or virtues in the students, but from closer and more in- terested motives. There are some in our class with whom he has been particularly severe, and some he has shown more favor than any tutor ought to show to a student. I wish not his favor, as he may prize it too high; and I fear not his severity, which he can never display if I do my duty. Some light is thrown on the interested motives by the following: May 3, 1786. We had after prayers a class meeting about making a present to our tutor. It is customary at the end of the freshman year to make a present to the tutor of the class, but it has been delayed by ours to the present time, and many would still delay it and lay it wholly aside. The custom, I think, is a bad one, because it creates 136 Harvard College. 1786 87. [Jan. partialities in a tutor, because it increases the distinction between the wealthy and the poor scholars, because it makes the tutor in some measure dependent upon his class, and because to many that subscribe it is a considerable expense; but the salaries of the tutors being so low, and it having been for many years an universal custom, I am sorry to see our class so behindhand, and several who could well afford it and have really subscribed meanly endeavoring to put off the matter from quarter to quarter till they leave College. A year later the writer has become aware that there is another side to the question. Speaking of one of his class- mates, he says His spirit he discovers by relating how many times he has insulted the President and the tutors, particularly Mr. R. (the class tutor). He damns Mr. II for being partial towards those who have always treated him with respect, and against those who have always made it a practice to insult him. In short, it is quite evident that the relations between in- structors and scholars were far from satisfactory. Thoroughly cordial these relations never could be and never can become so long as any means of coercion or any connection with college discipline remain in the hands of the instructors. To be sub- jected to the commands of a person, rarely teaches humility and almost inevitably breeds ill-feeling. The duty of giving instruction, and the duty of judging offences and inflicting punishment, are in their nature discordant, and can never be intrusted to the same hands, without the most serious injury to the usefulness of the instructor. This evil was conspicuous at the time now under attention. Gentle as the rein was, and mild as were the punishments, an invincible hostility between students and instructors was one of the traditional customs of the College, and the one which created most annoyance to both divisions of the University, the teachers as well as the taught. There is perhaps a certain amount of practical interest in this matter still. The question as to the allotment of responsibility for such a state of things as these extracts describe, is one worth considering in connection with all systems of education, since it leads directly to the problem, so difficult to solve, how the necessary friction between young and old, students and 1872.] Harvard College. 1786 87. 137 instructors, can be reduced to the lowest possible point. That young men of twenty or thereabouts are not always distin- guished for courtesy and good-breeding, is a fact that no one will question; but that the habit of instruction and the inces- sant consciousness of authority tends to develop extremely disagreeable traits in human character, especially wherever character naturally inclines towards selfishness, is another fact which is better known to young men than to old. Be- tween these two influences it is natural that incessant annoy- ance should be generated, and it is equally natural that each party should invariably throw the blame on the other. Nevertheless, after setting aside exceptional cases of individ- ual character, which make themselves disagreeably prominent both in old and young, and which can be controlled by no law, something is always due to the assistance or discouragement which the system itself offers to the development of discordant influences. And in the last century the system was radically a wrong one. It was a system which, while perhaps more lib- eral in its forms than anything which has succeeded it, rested on an assumption of social superiority such as invariably galls to the quick every one who is subjected to it. This assumption was due in part perhaps to the fact that the instructors had commonly belonged to that clerical body which in the early history of New England formed what one may almost call a caste, and which stood towards the public in something like the same ifisulated and dominating attitude which it assumed to- wards the young; but it was also in part due to the fact that in regard to the student there existed, not only the conscious- ness of social superiority, but the consciousness of power to en- force obedience. The jealousy of this assumption, backed as it was by force, naturally created a spirit of opposition in the stu- dents minds, and the records of the College show how persistent the attempt was, on the part of the students, to break down the social barrier. Generation after generation followed the same course. Rebellion after rebellion broke out among the undergraduates. And it was only in proportion as the College government began to concede and act upon the principle that the student was in all respects the social equal of the instruc- tor, entitled to every courtesy due to equals, that these disor 138 Harvard College. 1Th6 87. [Jan. ders began gradually to subside. Even then, however, the question of discipline remained a source of incessant uneasi- ness, and the instructor who was known as a strict discipli- narian, who in other words attempted to combine his duty of acting as police-officer, judge, jury, and executioner, with his duties of instruction, necessarily sacrificed no inconsiderable share of his usefulness as instructor, in consequence of the same jealousy in the students minds. That the spirit of insubordination so persistently exhibited was not due to any mere distinctions of age, or to any peculiar hostility to the instructing body as such, is proved by the fact that it was by no means shown in conflicts with the instructors alone. Another series of extracts will illustrate this point: August 21, 1786. This afternoon, after prayers, the customs were read to the freshmen in the chapel. They are read three Mondays running in the beginning of every year, by the three first in the sophi- more class, who are ordered to see them put in execution. JJliarch 27, 1786. After prayers the senior class had a class meet- ing, in order to check the freshmen, who, they suppose, have taken of late too great liberties. By the laws of the College all freshmen are obliged to walk in the yard with their heads uncovered, unless in stormy weather, and to go on any errand that any other scholar choses to send them, at a mile distance. But the present freshmen have been indulged very much with respect to those laws, and it is said they have presumed further thnn they ought to have done. March 28,1786. After prayers, Bancroft, one of the sophimore class, read the customs to the freshmen, one of whom (1~1cNeal) stood with his hat on all the time. He, with three others, were immediately hoisted (as the term is) before a tutor, and punished. There was immediately after a class meeting of the freshmen, who, it is said, determined they would hoist any scholar of the other classes who should be seen with his hat on in the yard, when any of the government are there. June 14, 1786. The freshmen, by their high spirit of liberty, have again involved themselves in difficulties. The sophimores consider themselves as insulted by them, and in a class meeting, last evening, determined to oblige all the freshmen to take off their hats in the yard, and to send them. There has been a great deal of business be- tween them to-day. Mr. H has had several of them before him. June 15, 1786. The struggle between the freshmen and sophi- mores still continues. They have been mutually hoisting one another all day. 1872.] Harvard College. 1786 87. 139 July, 12, 1786. The freshmen carry their enmity against the sophimores a great deal too far. They injure themselves both in the eyes of the other class and in those of the government. This after- noon, while Cabot was declaiming, they kept up a continual groaning and shuffling and hissing, as almost prevented him from going through. The freshmen ultimately carried their point and established their right to complete social equality; but they were obliged to struggle violently both against the College system and against their immediate masters. These disorders committed by them were but a repetition, as against a different authority, of still greater disorders on the part of older classes, in their attempt to establish their own social rights as regarded the College government. It is true that the manners of the time were far from polished. A glimpse of students amusements is furnished by the follow- ing: March 22, 1786. As we passed by Milton Hall, we saw the ruins of the windows. On the 21st of March the junior sophister class cease reciting at 11 in the forenoon. They generally, in the evening, have a frolic. Yesterday they had it at Milton Hall, and as they are not by any means at such times remarkable for their discretion, we saw many fractures in the windows of the hall they were in. March 15, 1786. The sophimore class had what is called in Col- lege an high-go. They assembled all together in the chamber of one of the class, where some of them got drunk, then sallied out and broke a number of windows for three of the tutors, and after this sublime maneuvre staggered to their chambers. Such are the great achieve- ments of many of the sons of Harvard! Such the delights of many of the students here! The manners indicated by these extracts were certainly rude enough. But it does not appear that such offeuces were looked upon as extremely heinous by the College government or by public opinion. And it is plain from other facts that the sever- ity of discipline in the College was by no means such as to explain the ill-will between the students and the government. Although the students undoubtedly considered this discipline as very annoying at the time, they learned afterwards to accept, without a murmur, punishments which, in the last century, would have been thought monstrous; and this submission was 140 Harvard College. 178687. [Jan. due principally to the fact that the old antipathy to the govern- ment was beginning to subside. Had they supposed that they were still treated as a body with the old haughtiness, the mod- ern discipline, made necessary by an extreme compactness of organization such as no European University knows, would not have been accepted at all. The old punishments, so far from being severe, were remarkably light, notwithstanding the loud complaints against them. A number of amusing passages will show this to have been the case. As mentioned above, certain members of the College had, on the night of March 15, 1786, indulged themselves in a very drunken disturbance in the College grounds: March 23, 1786. After prayers the President read a paper to this effect: That on the evening of the 15th it appeared the sophimores had assembled at the chambers of one in the class, and had behaved in a tumultuous, noisy manner; that at length they sallied out and were very riotous, to the disturbance and dishonor of the University. But as their conduct till then had been such as deserved approbation, and was submissive, and as they early shew a proper repentance for their fault, having presented an humble petition to be forgiven; there- fore it had been voted that no further notice should be taken of it, but it was hoped the students would not abuse the lenity of the govern- ment, but rather show that they were deserving of it. The freshmen, who are always as a class at variance with the sophimores, thought the government had been partial; and the consequenee was that Mr. , the tutor of the sophimore class, and who was supposed to have favored them, and to have been the means of saving them from severe punish- ment, had four squares of glass broken in his windows. Such was the effect of the lenity which was to induce the students to do their duty. A more curious case, which showed a considerable sense of humor on the part of our ancestors, was the following: May 23, 1786. This morning a number of the seniors were sent for by the President to go to his house at 8 oclock. They went, and the parts were distributed thug: Thompson, English Oration, A. M. Champhin, Latin Oration, A. M. Fowle and Gardner 2d, each a Poem. Blake, English, and Andrews 1st, Latin Orations, P. M. Harris, Dwight, Hubbard, and Parker, a Conference. Bigelow and Crosby, Lowell and Taylor, Loring and Sullivan, Forensics. Lincoln and War~ land, a Greek Dialogue. Bradford, Norton, Simpkins, and Wyeth, re- spondents in Syllogistics, and all the rest opponents to the same. These 1872.] Harvard College. 178687. 141 Syllogistics are very much despised by the scholars, and no attention seems to be paid to them by the company at Commencement. The scholars in general think that the government, in giving them those parts, write on their foreheads DUNCE in capital letters. Notwithstand- ing this, some of the most learned men in the country had Syllogistics when they graduated here. The good parts, as they are called, are more numerous this year than they have ever been. Before this there has been only one English and one Latin Oration, and no Poems. It is a doubt whether they intend to establish this as a precedent or whether it is only a distinguished favor to the present class, who pretend to be the best class for learning and genius that ever graduated here. It is said that the parts have been exceedingly well distributed, and all the College are pleased. However that may be, the syllogists all got together this evening and drank till not one of them could stand straight, or was sensible of what he did. A little after 9 they sallied out, and for a quarter of an hour made such a noise as might be heard at a mile distant. The tutors went out and after a short time persuaded them to disperse. Mr. had two squares of his windows broke. .M~iy 24. It is feared that some bad consequences will ensue from the high-go of the syllogists last evening. Borland, it seems, was the most active of them all; he collared Mr. and threw an handful of gravel in his face, and was rather disrespectful to Mr.. He went this morning to the former to make an apology for his conduct, but was told it could not be received, as the matter was already laid before the government. Thus those fellows play the tyrants here; they have no regard, no allowances for youth and circumstances. They go out when they are almost certain of being insulted, and then bring the scholar for a crime of which he knew nothing under public censure. They cannot with any face say that a scholar ought to be so severely punished for depriving himself of his senses. For there are here in Col- lege persons who have seen as much intoxicated as Borland was yesterday and behaving quite as ill. But compassion is too great a virtue ever to be admitted into the breast of a tutor here. It is sup- posed, however, that Borlands punishment will not be very severe, be- cause it requires an unanimous vote among the governors of the College to punish a student, and they are said to be at such variance one with the other that they can very seldom all agree. May 25. Government met and were assembled almost all this day to determine what punishment to inflict upon Borland. He was in- formed of it in the evening, and the class petitioned that it might be mitigated, but probably without much success. May 26. This morning after prayers Borland was called out to 142 Harvard College. 178687. [Jan. read an humble confession, signifying his repentance of his conduct, etc. The President read the votes of the government; the affair was stated, and it was said that Borland. had insulted, in a flagrant manner, two of the governors of the University: whereupon it was voted, that he read a confession; and secondly, that he be degraded to the bottom of his class, and that he take his place there accordingly. The other scholars were warned by this example not to run into such excesses, and to be- have respectfully. I wanted, I think, neither of these warnings, but the event has warned me to alter my opinion concerning . I thought him the best of the tutors, but now I do not think he is a jot better than the rest. Six weeks afterwards Borland was restored to his regular place in class. This is certainly a proof that the spirit of liberty in the Americans of the last century has not been underrated. No student of a later day would have dreamed of calling such a penalty severe. Any undergraduate of the nineteenth century who indulged in the agreeable but dangerous amusement of col- laring an unpopular tutor and rubbing gravel in his face, would have accepted the extremest penalty of the law without a mur- mur, recognizing the fundamental principle of society, that no man can violate the law and enjoy it at the same time, can eat his cake and have it too. And further the notion that drunken- ness is anything but an aggravation of the offence hardly com- mends itself to modern New England. Such difficulties were by no means uncommon under this r~gime. But it is fair to say that they appear occasionally to have been due in no small part to the instructors themselves. The following seems to have been such a case 3fay 31, 1786. Election Day. There is a custom among the scholars here which some of the classes follow and others do not. It is choosing a Governor and Lieutenant-Governor for the class. They commonly take some rich fellow who can treat the class now and then. The seniors this morning chose Champlin Governor, and Lowell Lieu- tenant-Governor. The Lieutenant-Governor treated immediately, and they chose their other officers. At commons they all went into the hall in procession. Thomas, who was appointed Sheriff, marched at their head, with a paper cockade in his hat, and brandishing a cane in his hand instead of a sword. He conducted the Governor and Lieu- tenant. Governor to their seats, made his bow, and retired to the other 1872.] Harvard College. 1786 87. 143 table, for which Jackey H punished him four shillings. However, he performed his part so well that the spectators were much pleased and clapped their hands. H happened to see Baron, the junior, clapping, and sent orders for him to go to him after commons. Baron, not happening to go before 2 oclock, was punished five shillings for impudence, and four for disobedience. That is the way these modest tutors tyrannize over us. As there was a little noise in the hall, H struck the handle of his knife three times on the table to still it, but instead of that almost every knife in the hall was struck on the table three times. At last the tutors rose, and as they were going out about half a dozen fellows hissed them. They were enraged, turned round and looked as if they would devour us, but they did not discover one person, which made them look silly enough. When they turned their backs again, there was nothing but hissing and groaning and clapping hands and stamping heard in the hall, till they got into the yard, where a few potatoes were sent out to meet them. A difficulty of such a kind would, probably, in later times, have been avoided by a little good-nature and forbearance on the part of the tutor. But it made little difference to the stu- dent whether he was in the right or the wrong. The true grievance lay in the assumption of social superiority; in the fitct that the College government set itself in a position of semi- hostility to the students, and refused to acknowledge them as entitled to active assistance and sympathy. The manner, not the act, of discipline, was the cause of the evil. Hence the mildest punishments were made a cause of as much complaint as the most arbitrary vexatious. iifarch 14, 1787. The junior class being displeased with the dis- tribution of parts for exhibition, so far as respected their class, assem- bled this evening at Prescotts chamber and made a great deal of noise. March 17. The government met this forenoon to make inquiries concerning the noise at Prescotts and at Wiers chamber. March 19. This morning, the juniors Prescott and Wier were publicly admonished for having had riotous noises at their chambers last week. The sentence is considered all over College as uncommonly severe, and by many as wholly unmerited, at least on the part of Prescott. March 22. In consequence of the late severity of the College governors there has been, yesterday and this day, a subscription paper handed about among all the classes, to promote a meeting of the whole 141: Harvard College. 1T86 8rT. [Jan. College to-morrow evening in the chapel, every person having a pipe, a glass, and a bottle of wine, and there to convince the government that the students are possessed of a noble spirit, a spirit which shall nip the bud of tyrannical oppression. They will get as drunk as beasts, and probably break every tutors windows in College. This absurd and ridiculous plan has found so many votaries, that a large majority of every class, except ours, have already subscribed; but I am happy that in our class there are but few who have joined the association, and, as it is to take place only upon condition that there be a majority of every class, the plan will most probably fail. At the risk of serious injury to the dignity of history, already gravely compromised by this sketch, the fact of the extreme leniency of the government in the punishment inflicted in this case must be shown by a final extract from the diary so often quoted. Some verses, which are not absolutely contemptible, represent all the facts, and the general impression made by the different members of the government on the students, more exactly than anything which the regular entries of a prosaic diary can be expected to supply. The verses in question are entitled LINES UPON THE LATE PROCEEDINGS OF THE COLLEGE GOVERNMENT. BY A STUDENT. The government of College met, And Willard ruled the stern debate. The witty J declared That he had been completely scared. Last night (says he) when I came home I heard a noise in Prescotts room. I went and listened at the door, As I have often done before. I found the juniors in a high rant; They called the President a tyrant; They said as how I was a fool, A long-eared ass, a sottish mule, Without the smallest grain of spunk; So I concluded they were drunk. From Xenophon whole pages torn As trophies in their hats were worn. Thus all their learning they had spread Upon the outside of the head; For I can swear without a sin There s not a line of Greek within. 1872.] Harvard College. 1786 87. 145 At length I knocked, and Prescott came; I told him t was a burning shame That he should give his classmates wine, And he should pay an heavy fine. Meanwhile the rest grew so outrageous, That though I boast of being courageous, I could not help being in a fright, For one of them put out the light, And t was, as you may well suppose, So dark I could not see my nose. I thought it best to run away And wait for vengeance till to-day. For he s a fool at any rate Who 11 fight when he can rusticate. When they found out that I was gone, They ran through College up and down, And I could hear them very plain Take the Lords holy name in vain. To Wiers chamber they repaired, And there the wine they freely shared. They drank and sung till they were tired, And then they peacefully retired. When this Homeric speech was said, With drawling tongue and hanging head, The learned Doctor took his seat, Thinking he d done a noble feat. Quoth Joe: The crime is great, I own. Send for the juniors one by one! By this almighty wig I swear, Which with such majesty I wear, And in its orbit vast contains My dignity, my power and brains, That Wier and Prescott both shall see That College boys must not be free! He spoke, and gave the awful nod, Like Homers Dodonean God. The College to its centre shook, And every pipe and wineglass broke. Williams, with countenance humane, Which scarce from laughing could refrain, Thought that such youthful scenes of mirth To punishments should not give birth. Nor could he easily divine What was the harm of drinking wine. But P, with an awful frown, Full of his article and noun, Spoke thus: By all the parts of speech, VOL. CXIV.NO. 284. 10 146 Harvard College. 1786 8T. [Jan. Which with such elegance I teach, By all the blood which fills my veins, By all the power of Handels strains, With mercy I will never stain The character which I maintain. Pray tell me why the laws were made, If they are not to be obeyed. saw t would be in vain t oppose, And therefore to be silent chose. R, with his two enormous eyes Enlarged to thrice their common size, And brow contracted, staring wild, Said government was much too mild. Were I (said he) to have my will, I soon would teach them to be still. Their wicked rioting to quell, I d rusticate, degrade, expel; And rather than give up my plan, Id clear the College to a man. B, who has little wit or pride, Preferred to take the strongest side; And Willard soon received commission To give a public admonition. With pedant strut to prayers he came, Called out the criminals by name: Obedient to his dire command, Before him Wier and Prescott stand. The rulers, merciful and kind, With equal grief and wonder find That you should laugh, and drink, and sing, And make with noise the College ring. I therefore warn you to beware Of drinking more than you can bear. Wine an incentive is to riot, Destructive of the public quiet. Full well your tutors know this truth, For sad experience taught their youth. Take then this friendly exhortation! The next oWence is rustication. This sketch of the historical development of th~ College has already been drawn out too far, and most readers will probably be of the opinion that it deals with the subject in too trivial a manner, and from too low a stand-point. Yet one may fairly doubt whether it is possible in any other way to obtain a cor- rect idea of the gradual steps by which the standard of high 1872.] The Butler Canvass. 147 education in America has been slowly raised; and it is certainly the fact that, in this age, when instruction has become a science, any person who attempts to deal with the education of young men in actual practice, without attempting in some degree to understand their motives and susceptibilities, runs great danger of neutralizing the whole effect of his most con- scientious exertions. HENRY ADAMS. ART. VI. THE BUTLER CANVASS. I. THE LABOR QUESTION. THE State Convention of the Republican party, held at Worcester on the 27th of September, 1871, brought a very ex- traordinary political canvass to an unexpected close. It was extraordinary in many respects, but was especially character- ized throughout by a tone of discussion of the lowesf possible order, conducted with a spirit of personality unusual eveii in American politics. The key-note of the campaign in this re- spect was, indeed, struck at the very outset by a master hand. It was at Springfield that the first public meeting was held. Something rather unusual was here anticipated, and the result did not in any way fall short of expectation. The meeting might not inaptly be described as a true, intellectual Donny- brook Fair, in which every head that was seen was impartially hit. General Hawley, of Connecticut, John Brown, of Harpers Ferry fame, Miss Anna Dickinson, Mr. Sanborn, of the Spring- field Republican, Warrington, Mr. Edward Atkinson, the editors of the Boston Adverti~er and the Boston Journal, and many other well-known characters, were now and again dimly visible, or audible, amid the tumult of assault, which was carried on to a vigorous accompaniment of cat-calls, dis- orderly explanations from the assailed, and responses through the various forms of the lie circumstantial and the lie direct: the united efforts of a brass band were finally called upon, as

1872.] The Butler Canvass. 147 education in America has been slowly raised; and it is certainly the fact that, in this age, when instruction has become a science, any person who attempts to deal with the education of young men in actual practice, without attempting in some degree to understand their motives and susceptibilities, runs great danger of neutralizing the whole effect of his most con- scientious exertions. HENRY ADAMS. ART. VI. THE BUTLER CANVASS. I. THE LABOR QUESTION. THE State Convention of the Republican party, held at Worcester on the 27th of September, 1871, brought a very ex- traordinary political canvass to an unexpected close. It was extraordinary in many respects, but was especially character- ized throughout by a tone of discussion of the lowesf possible order, conducted with a spirit of personality unusual eveii in American politics. The key-note of the campaign in this re- spect was, indeed, struck at the very outset by a master hand. It was at Springfield that the first public meeting was held. Something rather unusual was here anticipated, and the result did not in any way fall short of expectation. The meeting might not inaptly be described as a true, intellectual Donny- brook Fair, in which every head that was seen was impartially hit. General Hawley, of Connecticut, John Brown, of Harpers Ferry fame, Miss Anna Dickinson, Mr. Sanborn, of the Spring- field Republican, Warrington, Mr. Edward Atkinson, the editors of the Boston Adverti~er and the Boston Journal, and many other well-known characters, were now and again dimly visible, or audible, amid the tumult of assault, which was carried on to a vigorous accompaniment of cat-calls, dis- orderly explanations from the assailed, and responses through the various forms of the lie circumstantial and the lie direct: the united efforts of a brass band were finally called upon, as 148 The Butler Canvass. [Jan. an ingenious substitute for the previous question, to put a stop to further debate, and the astonished audience dispersed under the influence of this, the single blast of harmony of which the occasion was guilty. Certain familiar political catch-words, such as temperance, labor reform, retrenchment, etc., had, indeed, been faintly distinguished at intervals above the din of personal allusion, but they were lost as soon as heard, and attracted little attention. The initial meeting was in no respect unworthy of the entire canvass. Throughout it the political fortune of one man was the single question at issue. There was indeed a large amount of fault-finding over alleged existing abuses, though this apparently was intended only to preserve appearances; and there was also more or less blind groping after remedies; but it was nevertheless well under- stood upon all sides that these were but the rooks and pawns of the game. Yet in a vague, meaningless way the discus- sion now and again approached some of the most interesting economical and political problems of the day; never present- ing them fairly or grappling with them, but showing rather a disposition to make use of them as a means to an end, if, through their agency, the end might more certainly be at- tained. It is, however, these indistinct surroundings of the canvass, these mere accessories to the one issue really involved, which gave to it all its permanent interest. The past or future polit- ical fortunes of Mr. B. F. Butler do not present a very in- teresting subject for thoughtful discussion. Possessed of great energy, both of body and mind, and with an amount of vitality for which a parallel would probably be sought in vain in the political annals of this country, neither the military nor the political career of General Butler has hitherto afforded any iiidication of the possession by him of any of those lofty intel- lectual or moral qualities which can alone place a public man among the very small class of those who have, by their per- sonal influence, greatly swayed the course of human events. Hitherto this gentlemans career has been more distinguished for those stage effects calculated to draw a startled round of applause from the groundlings, than by~any defined and persist- ent line of policy indicative of one who has either reflected 1872.] The Butler Canvass. 149 much or who believes strongly. He is essentially a se~isation- alist. Whether coining a legal phrase to meet a military exigency, or hanging a traitor, or exploding a powder-boat, or impeaching a President, or attacking a metallic currency, or proposing a new way to pay old debts, or conducting a canvass, General Butlers eye is always fixed on his audience. His heart cannot be in his work, for he is intently watching th~ momentary effect he is producing; his public career, in fact, may be said to have hitherto consisted mainly of a varied pyrotechnic exhibition, not qf the most successful character. Passing at once, therefore, over the personal controversies which gave such an unattractive character to the canvass, it is here proposed to discuss at some length those other economical and political questions which gave to that canvass a real signifi- cance. First among these were those questions affecting the re- lations of labor and capital, which are now attracting so much anxious attention both in Europe and in America. When the Worcester Convention at last reached a ballot, it was found that the friends of General Butler numbered about two fifths of the whole number of delegates, the exact pro- portion being as forty-one to fifty-nine. This formidable mi- nority was very largely, perhaps one half, made up of those especially interested in what is known as the question of labor reform. Where so large a proportion of the more active po- litical members of any community combine around a party name, they are certainly entitled to demand of their fellow-citi- zens the respectful consideration of any political views they may entertain. This is their right, which no one should seek to abridge. Every right, however, includes a correlative duty. The duty in this case is clear. It is that those advancing novel opinions, or putting forward new claims, or seeking to engraft an untried policy upon the political system of the com- munity in which they live, shall clearly and succinctly state what they desire, to the end that it may receive an intelligent consideration. In America, from the beginning, this obligation has always been acknowledged. The very first act of the peo- ple of the United States, when they came forward to claim a place among the nations of the earth, was formally to recognize it. Jefferson then appeared as their spokesman. Out of a 150 The Butler canvass. [Jan. decent respect to the opinions of mankind which required that they should declare the causes which impelled them to the course then taken, Jefferson expressed in words which will not soon be forgotten the demands of his countrymen. From that day to this, whenever any considerable portion of the Amer- ican people has sought to organize itself into a separate politi- cal existence, it has not failed to follow the precedent thus created. Its first act has been to formulate its demands. When, therefore, the labor reformers of Massachusetts seek to modify the public policy of the State in conformity with their peculiar ideas, the single duty incumbent upon them before they can claim as of right a respectful consideration of their demands, is that they shall state what those demands are, that their fel- low-citizens may pass upon them intelligently and decidedly. This duty they have more than once undertaken to perform, but the success which has hitherto attended their efforts has not been encouraging. Their last attempt was made at the party convention held at Framingham, oii the 4th of October, one week subsequent to the day on which the Republican Con- vention was held at Worcester. The declaration of principles then put forward not only failed to justify their movement, but it is not too much to say that it was an insult to the intelligence of those whose respectful consideration it challenged. In sup- port of a criticism thus unmodified, it is only necessary to quote without comment a few words from the preamble of this singu- lar manifesto, which began thus: We affirm as a fundamental principle that labor, the creation of wealth, is entitled to all it creates; and then proceeded, among other logical results of this proposition, to accept as the best and grandest of all, the final obliteration of that foul stigma upon o.ur so-called Chris- tian civilization, the poverty of the masses. After this pre- amble naturally followed a declaration of war with things in gen- eral, including more especially the whole wages system, the present system of finance, the aristocracy of capital, and public interest-bearing debts, which last were to be paid at once, or, rather, as the inference would seem to be, at once converted into non-interest-bearing public debts. A declaration of principles such as this, which, if carried into effect, every common-sense human being in the community 1872.] The Butler Canvass. 151 could not but see must only result in starving the laborer by putting a stop to all production, naturally failed to recommend itself to the sober judgment of those to whom it was addressed. This important fact very shortly seemed to suggest itself to the minds of those who had assumed a leadership in the move- ment. Prominent among these was Mr. Wendell Phillips, who was currently reported to be himself the author of the Framing- ham resolutions. To one honestly attempting by a calm study of first principles to arrive at some satisfactory solution of the great social, political, and economical questions of the day, Mr. Phillips is perhaps a scarcely more profitable subject of con- templation than General Butler. This gentlemans mind, never strong in its reasoning and reflecting attributes, would seem to have been entirely thrown from its poise by the brilliant success which attended his connection with the anti- slavery struggle. Throughout that long contest he was in his element. Well adapted by nature to any work of destruction, it simply devolved upon him there to sustain a vehement and incessant assault upon an institution which was the mere crea- ture of law. The labor question, however, manifestly required for its treatment far higher qualities of mind. In America, at least, there was no law to be repealed, no institution to be assailed and overthrown. Elated with his success as a puller down, Mr. Phillips has shown a strong disposition to thrust himself prominently forward as a builder up. The very ac- complishments, however, which had constituted the essential element of his strength in carrying out the self-ordained task of his earlier life seemed peculiarly calculated to unfit him for the task now assumed in his later years. Essentially, no less by nature than by long study and habit of mind, a rhetorician, and a very brilliant one, rhetoric has long since become with Mr. Phillips a disease. He is a leading advocate of the cause of temperance as well as of that of labor reform, but his temper- ance does not extend beyond the use of alcoholic stimulants, and includes no moderation in the use of language. A striking figure of speech or a brilliant metaphor is to him what his dram is to the confirmed inebriate. Neither discretion nor logic nor fact nor reflection seem able to restrain this diseased ap- petite; the temptation is irresistible, he is nothing unless 152 The Butler Canva8s. [Jan. rhetorical. Accordingly the marginal glosses, as they from time to time, and with short intervals between, emanated from the author of the Framingham resolutions, did not greatly pro- mote the cause of his followers. At one time he resorted to illustration, reverting like an American Rousseau to some imaginary condition of human affairs antecedent to all civiliza- tion. He pictured the naked savage gathering the natur~il fruits of the earth, and in this case he declared that the funda- mental principle enunciated at Framiugham held true. The ingenious savage next contrives a hoe, and uses it himself; and still the fundamental principle was there. Pleased with his invention, the simple child of rhetoric makes another hoe, and using this himself, proceeds to allow a less ingenious con- temporary to make use of the old hoe for a consideration. At this point the fundamental principle seemed in jeopardy, but its author, nothing daunted, rushed forward and imagined the savage creation of his eloquence abandoning the handling of his hoe and betaking himself wholly to hoe-making and hoe- letting, and then, at last, he fearlessly denounced him as a monopolist. The fundamental principle might tolerate the letting of one hoe and perhaps the letting of ten; neverthe- less, somewhere the line must be drawn, and clearly the funda- mental principle could not tolerate a thousand hoes. Not unnaturally this lucid abandonment of a position calmly assumed but a few days before, failed to commend itself to the general judgment. In a few days Mr. Phillips tried again. He struck deeper now; he was more radical and more rhetori- cal than was customary even with him. He took for his text the words, In the sweat of thy face thou shalt eat bread until thou return unto the ground, and proceeded to denounce that natural order of things which had resulted in making toil a condition precedent to eating. The inference was not to be avoided that a vigorous labor-reform movement had been greatly needed at the time of the expulsion from Eden, and that even yet well-organized political action might result in the reversal of the primal curse and in the restoration of mankind to its pre- historic privileges. It is scarcely necessary to say that this utterance fell upon the ~istonished ears of his fellow-citizens with scarcely more 1872.] The Butler Canvass. 153 practical effect than the previous ones. Once more Mr. Phil- lips had recourse to his rhetoric. There are two ways of stat- ing the proposition he next enunciated. There is the way prosaic and the way sensational. Mr. Phillips naturally re- sorted to the latter, and in this form it had a certain aspect of novelty; in its prosaic form, however, the identical proposition had been stated of another people at least forty years before. In 1830 an American clergyman returning from a visit to Eu- rope had remarked, no less wisely than wittily, The people of France dont know what they want, and will ilever be satisfied till they get it. On behalf of the labor-reformers of Massa- chusetts, Mr. Phillips now assumed exactly this position; he took the epigrammatic saying of Mr. Harness, revolved it in his own mind,andgave it to the public in this rhetoricaldress: Well, there are a set of men, with everything convenient about them, with two suits a year, as Dogberry says, enough to spend, and a good credit at the bank, and they say, Hul- ba, what is your remedy? Tell us now, right off. Why, we say, we are not prepared to tell you, and you have no right to ask. All we know is, that there are uncounted millions of men that have not a fair chance in the world, and somehow or other we mean to right it, and if you want to help us, come on, and if you do not we will trample you under our feet. (Ap- plause.) Of course further discussion was useless. The destroyer had ignominiously failed in his self-assumed task of construc- tion. Not only had be failed, but there was something which touched the verge of the ludicrous, in his utter inability to appreciate the cause of his failure; he could only vaguely be conscious of it, and then, angrily resorting to his familiar weap- ons, threaten dire destruction to all around if they did not do for him what he, had so confidently undertaken to do for him- self. It was with no such poverty-stricken declamation as this that slavery was assailed, and it very fitly concluded with an appeal to brute force and to fear. Paris has long been accus- tomed to this mode of reasoning, and it is very remotely possible that Mr. Phillips may succeed in importing it into Massachusetts. The labor-reform party of the State as a po- litical organization may develop great strength at the polls, 154 The Butler Ganva8s. [Jan. and secure a strong hold on the popular sympathy, such as a similar party has long enjoyed and used in France; guided by the brilliant rhetoric of their leader, it is possible that they may achieve great political success in America, as more than once they have done in Europe; they may remodel the statute-book to suit their views, recording upon it per- haps an indignant repeal of the obnoxious sweat-of-the- brow law; they may decree that all property is robbery, and that ~ll toil is but one form of oppression; they may perhaps do all this and much more, for others have already elsewhere done no less, and as much will often be done here- after: one thing, however, they cannot do; they cannot, ap- pearing as a distinct political organization in the calm forum of reason and common sense, they cannot demand a discussion of the political remedies which shall go to the root of their grievances, until they are in some degree prepared to state what those grievances and their remedies are. Meanwhile it is certainly a most noticeable fact that so large an element of inarticulate discontent should exist in Massachu- setts. There it is, however, and because it is discontented, because it is inarticulate, not being able to express what it wants, it instinctively resorts to political agitation and seeks comfort in rhetoric. The result is that a vague despairing sort of cry goes up from all political circles that something must be done; that one party must take decided and advanced ground upon the labor question, or else that the other will. In other words, political success is to be purchased by throwing a tub to this whale. It nevertheless remains to be proved that any such ground can be taken which will constitute anything more than a mere tub to a whale. There is, in fact, a frightful gap in the labor-reform logic. The leaders of the movement assert that great poverty and distress and inequality of fortune exist in this world. Yes; so do much disease and sickness and deformity. When they take the next step, however, and declare that the remedy for the evils of the first class is to be worked out through political agitation, they assume a position for which some ground may exist in Europe, but which, in view of the political system which has always obtained in America, is apparently as unwarranted as it would be to as- 1872.] The Butler Canva8s. 155 semble in convention the lame, the halt, the blind, and the in- sane, and, after duly denouncing that foul stigma upon our so-called Christian civilization, the disease of the masses; they were to organize for the purpose of emancipating mankind from it by the conquest of political power. In each case both premise and conclusion are at fault. The masses in New England are no more afflicted with poverty than they are with disease; unless the poverty-stricken class is made to include the whole of those ninety-nine out of every hundred in New England who in some way have to work, and work hard, for a living. Even, however, if the premise was sound, unless this general poverty was the result of legislation, how could legisla- tion remedy it? Mr. Phillips confesses his inability to point to any law which either has caused or will mitigate the woes which he asserts exist. His complaint then reduces itself to this, that in a community where almost every one earns his bread by the sweat of his brow, the toil of one man, commands from the community a higher price than the toil of some or most other men. This is doubtless in the eyes of many conclu- sive evidence of the unjust and clumsy handiwork of the Al- mighty, and, perhaps, an advancing civilization may remedy this evil, and, through some ingenious state machinery, may turn out men and women, like bullets or Waltham watches, on a standard pattern of exact equality. Then, of course, the capacity of all men being exactly equal, the services of none will command a premium, and inequality of condition will dis- appear. Meanwhile, now and for a long time to come, neither the individual American nor that social system of which he is a part at all partake of the character of those ductile substances which may be run in a uniform mould. Individuality, indeed, rather than uniformity, is the characteristic of the race. It would apparently, therefore, be futile even to attempt a radical measure of reform, and Mr. Phillips himself would seem to re- coil from it. The average man is, however, singularly subject to all kinds of political deception; he loves, in fact, above all things, to be doctored; and, if political organizations desire, it will call for no great degree of cunning skill to compound some soothing-syrup, or even an infallible nostrum, to meet the pres- out demand; an additional lie upon the statute-book is a 156 The Butler Canvass. [Jan. matter of no great consequence. But to the honest investi- gator, the good citizen, or the practical philanthropist, such a course is not satisfactory, it partakes too much of the nature of a trick. Here is a setious question; it deserves serious consid- eration. The presence of a recognized discontented class is per- haps the most alarming symptom which can develop itself in a free country. When the existence of such a class is once ac- knowledged, as it now is in Massachusetts, those who wish well to the public can hardly apply themselves to a more profitable work than to a study of the causes from whence this discontent originated, and to the conditions upon which its development de- pends. Such an investigation is not likely to lead to any brilliant remedial results, for few except the ignorant or cunning have any faith in the statute panaceas, the labor-reform Buchus and the temperance Mandrake Pills with which the political llelmbolds and old IDr. Jacobs are constantly drenching the body politic; it is scarcely probable that this generation will see the Garden of Eden restored by act of Legislature. Nevertheless, if a disorder is confessed in the body politic, the discussion of its causes and conditions will be far from unprofitable, if it only induces a few to value at their real worth the infallible nos- trums of political knaves and charlatans. The change of political character which has of late become so noticeable in Massachusetts is a thing of no sudden growth. For many years the State has been passing through a phase of social alteration as complete as it was gradual. It was the peculiar growth of its people which made New England, as a whole, the force which it had ever been upon this continent at the time this change began. Exacting a scanty subsistence out of a penurious soil, under a temperate but rugged climate, its population seemed to afford a certain illustration of the Dar- winian principle of natural selection. The rough, variable cli- mate and the harsh east winds killed off all but the more robust and enduring, who slowly developed in the course of generations into a race characterized it may be by not a few unattractive qualities, but withal shrewd, saving, energetic, and conservative; hard-headed, perhaps, but singularly self-balanced. The introduction of railroads revolutionized New England even more completely than most other countries. It did this in two 1872.] The Butler Canvass. 157 ways: in the first place by opening to the New-Englander an easy path out of his native land to the fertile regions of the inte- rior; and, on the other hand, it opened into New England a way no less easy for all the products of that rich interior. To any person endowed, not with a gift of prophecy, but with an un- common degree of human foresight, the future of the New Eng- land population in 1830 would have seemed welinigh hopeless. How was this people to continue to produce, when the results of production did not pay for their cost? Then it was that the New England population displayed once more that singular fertility of resource which has never yet proved unequal to an emergency. Up to that time, or very nearly up to it, the sea and the soil had been the two great sources from which this people had forced a subsistence; and it was the con- tact with their rugged sea and scarcely less rugged soil which, as a people, had made them what they were. They were gradually driven from the sea by the principle of protection to home industry, which was engrafted upon the policy of the national government; and they were driven from the soil by the superior productive power of the West. In the one case protection deprived them of their occupation, and in the other free-trade put it out of their power to raise food. Crushed ap- parently between the upper and the nether millstone, they took counsel, not of politicians and orators and legislatures, but~ of their own ingenuity. The sea and the farm ceased to be their chosen fields of labor, and they turned their busy brains and cunning hands to the manufacture of those myriad useful and ingenious articles of which others stood in need. The whole population, however, as a consequence of this change in phys- ical life; entered upon a new phase of development; it passed from being an active, out-of-door race of fishermen and farmers, living in small villages and enjoying a singular equality of hu- man possessions, into a manufacturing community drawn closely together in large towns and working under cover, with a vast accumulation of worldly possessions very unequally divided. The political system of the community, meanwhile, under- went no corresponding change. It was still in outward form the old, democratic system of New England; a system based upon local self-government, and real as well as theoretical 158 The Butler Canvass. [Jan. equality. For the democracy of New England from the begin- fling had little in it of the doctrinaire, nor was it run to order in any statute mould; 110 Rousseau nor Voltaire, no Victor Hugo nor Louis Blanc, had ever acted as sponsor for it, but it had grown up the guarly offspring of the farm and of the fish- ing-smack, so that, like most good things of natural growth, it possessed in no small degree the strong, racy flavor of a native product of the soil. It was a practical, as contradistin- guished from a theoretical rule of the people. Every one took part in the government, because the government was simple in form and every one felt a direct interest in having it good. Though the forms have remained to the present time in all material respects the same, yet that subtle influence which from the beginning communicated to them their essential principle of life long since began to disappear. A manufac- turing population cannot fail in the long run to develop char- acteristics very unlike those of a rural or sea-going people. So it has been in the case of New England, and especially of Massachusetts. Fifty years ago there was not a city gov- ernment in the State; the citizens governed themselves from their own town-halls. In the year 1820 at which time the industrial change referred to was in its earliest stages of development there were but six towns in Massachusetts which numbered a population of over five thousand souls. These were all situated upon the seaboard and took rank in the following order Boston . . . . 43,298 Salem . . . . . . . 12,731 Newburyport . . . . 6,852 Charlestown . . . . . . 6,591 Gloucester . . . . . 6,384 Marblehead . . 5,630 Total . . . 81,486 They were all commercial or fishing communities, and were accounted the flourishing and wealthy centres of a Common- wealth, the entire population of which amounted to only 523,287 souls. But sixteen per cent of the population of half a century ago in Massachusetts dwelt in towns of over 1872.] The Butler Canva88. 159 5,000 inhabitants. Then began the growth of manufactories and the rise of interior towns. The figures of the recent cen- sus reveal the progress of this industrial revolution with start- ling significance. Instead of only six towns of over 5,000 inhabitants, as in 1820, the returns of 1870 showed nineteen cities and towns of over 12,000. They ranked as follows: Population in Population in 1870. 1820. 1. Boston, 250,526 43,298 2. Worcester, 41,107 2,962 3. Lowell, 40,928 4. Cambridge, 39,634 3,295 5. Lawrence 28,921 6. Charlestown, 28,323 6,591 7. Lynn, 28,233 4,515 5. Fall River, 26,766 1,594 9. Springfield, 26,703 3,914 10. Salem, 24,117 12,731 11. New Bedford, 21,320 3,947 12. Tnunton, 18,629 4,520 13. Chelsea, 18,547 642 14. Gloucester, 15,389 6,364 15. Somerville, 14,685 16. Haverhull, 13,082 3,070 17. Newton, 12,825 1,850 18. Newburyport, 12,593 6,852 19. Adams, 12,090 1,836 Totals, 674,420 107,981 The second town of the Commonwealth in 1820 was the tenth in 1870, while the third in the first period ranked as the eighteenth in the second; and three manufacturing cities, which in 1820 had no corporate existence at all, in 1870 ex- ceeded in population the six leading places of Massachusetts taken together at the earlier date. In 1820, again, 84 per cent of the population of the State lived in communities which aver- aged less than 1,500 inhabitants each; in 1870,50 per cent lived in communities of over 10,000 each. To those in any way ac- quainted with the industries of Massachusetts, a single glance at the list of cities just enumerated will sufficiently indicate the change which has taken place in the character of the occupa- tions of her people; were such proof not at hand, however, conclusive evidence of it would be found in the fact that, in the twenty years between 1845 and 1865, the proportion in 160 The Butler Canvass. [Jan. money value of the manufactures of the State to her entire industry increased from 61 to 73 per cent, while the value of her fisheries and foreign imports, though positively undimished, had experienced a proportional decrease of from 22 to 8 per cent of the whole. Meanwhile this shifting of the population from the deck and the farm to the mill and the workshop, this abandonment of out-of-door in favor of in-door occupation, has not yet had time fully to develop its results. One half of the population of the State still live in towns of the smaller size, and cling to the forms of New England town government. This cannot, however, much longer continue to be the case. The census of 1890 will, not improbably, find three quarters of the inhabitants of Massachusetts crowded together at a comparatively few centres, belonging to the operative class, and dwelling under representative, municipal governments. Yet twenty years should in the life of a commonwealth be re- garded as hardly more than a day; certainly 1852 does not now seem very far removed from the present time. Since 1850, however, the growth of the population of the nineteen towns just enumerated has been 90 per cent, while the three hundred and nineteen remaining towns of the Commonwealth have averaged an increase of but 21 per cent. The same pro- portional growth during the next twenty years would, in 1890, place nearly two thirds of the inhabitants of the State within these nineteen municipalities alone. Hence it seems not improbable that it must soon devolve upon the Massachusetts community to grapple with the difficult task of maintaining a government, republican in spirit as well as in form, with a population a majority of which is congre- gated in cities. Now there are many things in the nature of conditions precedent essential to the stability of any form of popular government; for, popular cant to the contrary notwith- standing, a republic can no more spring from the smoke of a street-fight, than a self-contained population can be improvised in a day. Long training in the school of self-restraint, in- telligence, a sufficiency of education, a spirit of accustomed respect for the law as contradistinguished from the sentiment of dynastic loyalty, a belief in their own destiny springing from that indefinable something known as public spirit, 1872.] The Butler Canvass. 161 all these are essential to the permanence of popular govern- ment; but both above and below all these there must exist throughout the mass of the people a solid basis of general contentment and average prosperity. The old English catch- word, that the country must be governed by those who have a stake in the soil, contains iii it not only a considerable element of solid sense, but, when broadly considered, a vast deal of human happiness; for there is no possible community at once so contented, so conservative, and so tenacious of the rights of property as one largely made up of those who have by their own efforts made themselves the owners of a moderate com- petence. It matters little whether this be a stake in the land, in the public debt, in the railroad system, or in the savings banks, the ownership of that which a person has toiled for hard and long, of that which, in spite of all rhetorical de- nunciation, he has earned by the sweat of his brow, makes of that person a conservative in politics. Where wealth accu- mulates, education and reflection not infrequently make men radical reformers; they see, or think they see, through and be- yond many human regulations, and they chafe at the obstinacy with which mankind insists on hampering its own progress. It is this class which commonly furnishes the great reformers the Smiths, the Benthams, the Cobdens, the Romillys, and the Mills who leave landmarks in history. Among the less wealthy, however, the case is otherwise. Education is with them rarely elaborated to that point which enables a man to look through the superficial aspect of problems and clearly see the hidden truth beyond. Accordingly, when persons of this class possess any property, they are apt to meet in a spirit of fierce hostility any attack upon what custom has taught them to consider the vested rights or established muniments of that property. There is probably no community in the world to.. day so intensely and hopelessly conservative as the rural population of France; that population which, three quarters of a century ago, in the abject despair of utter destitution, recog~ nized no rights of property and cared for no form of govern.. ment. The provisions of the code Napoleon regulating the transmission of land worked the complete metamorphosis of this people in a single generation. The soil was divided up, VOL. cxiv. NO. 234. 11 162 The Butler Canvass. [Jan. and each new subdivision was a reinforcement of conservatism. The Empire gave to French peasants a stake in the soil, and the Empire failed to sustain itself simply because it was unable to give the same bribe to the dwellers in large cities. Passing away from these general considerations, it remains to state the essence of the problem now confronting Massachu- setts. That a social and political change is going forward in the State is indisputable; its nature and course of probable development have already been pointed out. The old divisions of population are shifting; industry and growth are passing from the country into the towns, from the yeoman to the operative. Political control is thus passing out of the hands of those who have a direct and easily perceptible stake in the government into the hands of those who, under the existing social and economical arrangement, either have no such stake, or if they have, enjoy it only in some more remote form, as government securities or savings-bank deposits, the connection of which for profit or loss with the political changes they may seek to inaugurate is not to them immediately apparent. It is this last class, the remotely interested, which is now the most growing political element in Massachusetts. There are few in- deed of the citizens of this State who have nothing. The tax returns, it is true, apparently indicate that forty-two per cent of the voters of the Commonwealth pay only the poll-tax. Numerous alarming conclusions have been drawn from them, but these, like many official figures, are calculated only to deceive. The statement is in fact rather assuring than alarm- ing. The return includes only those property-holders who themselves pay a property in addition to a poll tax. The savings banks of the State, however, also return 488,T9T de- positors; how many of these pay any tax other than the poll- tax? Yet the deposits amount to $ 135,T45,09T, in nearly every dollar of which some voter has an interest direct or in- direct, and the total number of voters in the State is probably less than 285,000 in all. The holders of United States securi- ties, again, pay no tax upon that class of property, which has lent to it a practical value in the eyes of many citizens who do not deposit in savings banks, but who have a strong antipa- thy to taxes. Finally, there is an immense mass of stocks, 1872.] The Butler Canvass. 163 bonds, and secnrities of all kinds in regard to property in which no record exists, but which are eagerly sought, because, in practice, it rests solely with the holder whether he will contrib- ute his share to the public expenditure or not. It is probably safe to say of the voting population of Massachusetts, that, in- stead of being nearly equally divided between those who have and those who have not, nine out of every ten should be classed among those who have, and, of those nine who have, probably not less than six hold their possessions as bought by the sweat of their brows. The vast majority of the people are therefore capitalists ; they themselves belong in a greater or less degree to the class of oppressors with whom some of their number declare such relentless war. Let a new plank be inserted in the next Framiugham platform, denouncing the aggressions of the savings-bank capitalists, and proposing to curtail the profits which these privileged classes ex- tort from needy debtors, and probably a good deal of new light would be shed upon the ownership of property in Massachu- setts. At present the great political difficulty in the case arises from the fact that the smaller holders of this class of property fail to appreciate what is known as the solidarity of capital; they do not understand how a war waged on capital in one form in which they are not interested can possibly affect capital in some other form in which they are interested. Yet upon no interest in the Commonwealth would an honest reduction to practice of the Framingham declaration fall more fatally than upon the savings banks; for through the machin- ery of these savings banks the working men and women habit- ually lend their capital in vast amounts to the capitalists, and then the labor-reform leaders, so called, fiercely denounce them for using it. When the connection is one step less remote, the depositor is not slow to perceive it. This was seen in the case of General Butlers earlier proposition to tax the coupons on United States bonds. With the mass of the people this fell upon wholly unsympathetic ears, and in no small degree because so large a proportion of these securities ($ 23,000,000 in Massachusetts alone) were held by the say- ings banks; thousands who had never seen a United States bond yet had a sense of proprietorship in them. 164 The Butler Canvass. [Jan. The mass of the American people, including all the labor reformers, are therefore already capitalists, and, as such, are subject to all those appeals to which capitalists are of all men most liable. The difficulty in the case is that, through the agency of savings banks, etc., they prefer to lend their money to be used by others, rather than to use it themselves. Every dollar of the $ 136,000,000 held by this class in Massachusetts is somewhere used in production; and it is against its aggres- sions that in part they are so fiercely contending. The savings- bank capitalists, for instance, in very great degree built the Western Railroad of Massachusetts, and the operation they found a very profitable one. The marvellous complexity of modern civilization, however, has made the interconnection and interdependence of all the parts hard to understand. Formerly, in the early, simple days of Massachusetts, almost every man himself owned or was directly interested in the tools with which he worked; the share of that which he pro- duced which fell to his lot was sufficiently apparent to give him a sense of ownership. But the operative of to-day, as produc- tion is now carried on, has no perceptible interest in the qual- ity or quantity of that which results from his labor; his tools do not belong to him, and that they ever will is very remotely possible. As a rule, therefore, the Massachusetts operative has two different characters, in so far as he is a capitalist, he belongs to the savings-bank system; in so far as he is a la- borer, he belongs to the manufacturing system: it will then invariably be found that quoad capitalist he is the most con- servative of mortals, while quoad operative he is the most radical. Unquestionably this indicates a but partially developed con- dition of intelligence. It would, however, be possible to bring home these great principles of solidarity to the minds of the mass of mankind only through a slow process of education. One thing, however, is appreciated by the lowest order of in- telligence, that is, ownership. As the operative class in America have, through the agency of savings banks, been taught during the last half-century to make themselves capi- talists, it now remains in the next half-century to carry the system of education one step further in advance, and to teach 1872.] The Butler Canva8s. 165 them to use their own capital, or, in other words, to make themselves capitalists in the line of their own occupations. Labor, says Mr. Mill, needs capital, not the capitalist. This may be true of England, but it is not of America; labor with us has capital; it has superabundance of capital, but it has not yet learnt how itself to employ it. Up to this time the subdivisions of labor have greatly outstripped the combinations of capital belonging to labor. The end to which all true friends either of labor reform or of free institutions should now, and for a long time to come, direct their efforts, is the development among all classes of this savings-bank system, but extending its field of operatiou beyond being a mere machinery for the safe- keeping of hoardings, over the wide field of all other occupa- tions in which capital is the most important tool which labor needs. The mill and the factory must be made the savings bank of the future. The operative must again feel as he works that he himself has accumulated by the sweat of his brow, not an account in the institution over the way, but a share in the building in which he works, in the machine with which he works, and in the results of his daily labor. The sense of pro- prietorship, that dignity of ownership which has in all times and in all countries accompanied the possession of any part, no matter how small, of the soil, must be imparted to those who handle the tool. In this way, and in this way only, can that subtle essence of conservatism, which is the underlying strength of all free institutions, be widely disseminated among the opera- tive class. When at last it is, as in progress of time it surely will be, so disseminated, then, and not till then, will labor have capital, itself being the capitalist; and should New England work out for itself this new problem in its existence, the last and greatest danger confronting the existence of free institu- tions in America would be postponed to a remote future. Nor indeed is this great change so remote as many sup- pose. It is but the first step which costs~ and in the insti- tution of savings banks the first step was long since taken. It now only remains for the individual members of the la- boring class themselves to take control of that which they have long accumulated. It is in this respect that New Eng- land is now behind the head of the movement. Yet the 166 The Butler Canvass. [Jan. most flourishing of all the New England cities, that in which the growth most nearly resembles the mushroom development of the West, fails but little of being a monument both of the feasibility and of the great material success of this theory re- duced to practice. The spindles of Fall River have multiplied from 241,218 in 1865 to 1,017,114 in the present year. The great secret of this development lies in the fact that almost every person at all prominently concerned in the operation of any mill in that thriving town is himself a stockholder di- rectly interested in it. The division of capital and of industry has not as yet experienced its complete development; but the principle is established ; the rest can hardly. fail to follow. No matter how soon it may follow, the initiative in this reform cannot now be claimed by the operatives of Massachu- setts. They are already and must long continue far behind those of England. They may learn much more from the statis- tics of Oldham than from the rhetoric of Mr. Phillips. They might learn that in this single manufacturing borough, num- bering only twice the population of Fall River, there are now seven thousand operatives who have not only declared war upon the wages system, but have emancipated themselves from it. That these men and women now have a capital of $1,500,000 invested in cotton mills and in looms, and that in a single one of these mills, itself representing not less than half a million of dollars, nine tenths of the shareholders are work- ingmen. Lest they should be doubtful of their own capacity to take charge of their own savings, they might further ascer- tain that eight per cent was the average profit on the invest- ments of these people, and that their profit on cotton-spinning was over twelve per cent. Should they desire to examine the accounts of any particular institution, they might select those of the Sun Mill, which during six years has averaged sixteen and a half per cent of profit, and in the third quarter of 1871 realized not less than forty per cent.* * The profits here specified seem large, and yet a suggestive illustration of the increased economy resulting from a direct interest of the employee in the results of his saving has recently been furnished in the experience of the Pennsylvania Rail- road. The superintendent of motive-power and machinery of that company says 1872.] The Butler Canvass. 167 That with all their great natural adaptation and resource, and that with all their vast accumulation of savings at com- mand, the operatives of New England have not already ac- cepted and bettered this instruction can hardly be considered as otherwise than evidence weilnigh conclusive that the wages system has not yet pressed very harshly upon them. When the mill-owner becomes oppressive, we may be tolerably sure that a large portion of our operatives will own their own mills. As yet in Massachusetts the workshop has, as a rule, proved a less remunerative place of deposit than the savings bank. A few experiments have succeeded, such as those at Somerset, at Wakefield, and at North Adams, and it is pleasant to read of these in an official report that the operatives speak with pride of their new feelings of self-reliance and freedom, as well as of the quality of their work and the tendencies developed toward a more economical production than before. In spite, however, of an incipient restlessness, it is very evident that in Massachusetts at least no spirit of dissatisfaction as yet exists too deep to be satisfied with the dry husks of political agitation. Meanwhile it is not probable that this simple and humane solution of a question which they are striving to convert into one of great politi~al magnitude will seem in any way satis- factory to those who have assumed the leadership of the labor movement. Their object is the incorporation into the statute- book of something which shall have the appearance of regulat- ing the relations between capital and labor. This in fact is the ignis fatuus of the Anglo-Saxon mind, this faith in legisla- tion. That a vision, a dream, should be stereotyped into a law, is the ultimate idea of the doctrinaire reformer. That this law in a recent report: The plan adopted by my predecessor for encouraging the engineers and firemen to economize in the use of fuel and stores has also been beneficial in reducing the expenses in these items, and for this year there has been a saving of $63,576.44 (total expenditure, $ 728,719.08), one half of which will be divided as premiums among the men In the economical use of oil for lubricating freight and passenger cars there has also been a saving over that of 1869 amounting to 49,096 quarts; and, taking the consumption of 1868 as the basis, the moneyed value of saving at the average cost for this year is $ 11,682.23, one third of which will be distributed in premiums. Twenty-fourth Annual lIe- port of the Pennsylvania Railroad Company, pp. 51, 52. 168 The Butler Canvass. [Jan. may seek to regulate something far too subtle to admit of reg- ulation through the machinery of the statute-book is a matter of secondary consideration; the mere existence of the law, though it be violated openly and notoriously, though its friends delight in proclaiming it a lie upon the statute-book, is still considered a something worth struggling for. With such a sentiment it is useless to reason; it is, after all, little more than the Anglo-Saxon method of appealing to force, after the moral sense of the community has long since refused to allow the use of force. Accordingly with that solid good sense which constitutes the surest guaranty of social stability, the whole community, agitated simply upon the surface, subsides into a tacit agreement that every one shall have all that he desires; upon the one hand, he who wants it places his law upon the statute-book, and, on the other hand, he who does not desire it commits almost unmolested the acts forbidden by it. Such a singular compromise may for a time bear the outward aspect of an ingenious solution of a troublesome problem; in reality, however, it is effected only at the cost of that deep respect for the law which corresponds in republics to that loyalty which is the essence of monarchical institutions. A free community which purchases a temporary repose at this price is continually expending its capital. Massachusetts should then meet this grave question neither in the spirit of the doctrinaire nor of the charlatan; her citizens can learn no good lesson from the doings of the Commune nor from the teachings of the Internationals. Hith- erto when questions not less nearly affecting social or material well-being have confronted them, the difficulty has been over- come, not so much by tricks of speech or cunning sleight-of- hand, as by the exercise of a hard, practical common sense. It must be the same here now, if any results worthy of the past record of the State are to ensue. Every citizen must from his inmost soul desire to see each industrious member of the com- munity enjoying that sense of dignity which is inseparable from the consciousness of proprietorship; can this, however, be communicated by law? There is no man who himself has a stake in the country who must not wish that every other citizen had a stake in it also; but is this a matter for statute 1872.] The Butler Canvass. 169 regulation? When, therefore, politicians and party organs cry out despairingly that some ground must be taken on these questions; when they cast about vaguely to see what new and meaningless enactment, to amuse and dispel a recognized popu- lar discontent, can be recorded on the statute-book, it is then especially incumbent upon every honest and thinking citizen to assert distinctly, not only that reform does not lie in this direc- tion, but also that every such new departure is but one more false departure, the worst feature of which is that it distracts attention from the real remedy. He should at all times and in all places, steadily and temperately, maintain that what the oc- casion demands of Massachusetts is to make of herself one great voluntary industrial copartnership, a vast co-operative work- shop, in which every industrious man might, should he so de- sire, feel, in the midst of his toil, that he worked with his own tools and to his own profit. He should point out that here capital already belongs to labor, and in no stinted measure also; and that capital, intelligence, skill, and industry, every condition necessary to success, being thus at hand, the Massachusetts community might now enter upon this momen- tous experiment with a great assurance of success. Above all, he should denounce every attempt to promote the interests of labor through political agitation as a dangerous error, calcu- lated only to postpone that which it seeks to expedite. If, therefore, it should prove to be one consequence of the But- icr campaign, that the attention of the so-called workingmen is distracted from the pursuit of those solid results for the attainment of which they need seek no aid outside of them- selves, then will that campaign have inflicted a lasting injury both upon the laboring men and upon the Commonwealth. An experience, none the less bitter because very old, will finally con- vince them also that the millennium, when it comes, will not be heralded by a constable enforcing a law. In spite of all the politicians and party exigencies and campaign platforms that ever existed, neither this generation nor many succeeding ones will ever materially improve the condition of mankind in any way other than by a considerable expenditure of muscle in honest toil, under the direction of an educated brain. Epigrams and promises will no more elevate labor than they will produce wealth. 170 The Buder canvass. [Jan. The relation of labor to capital was not the only subject discussed during the Butler canvass. Many other questions of equal, if not in America at least, of more general inter- est were remotely involved, questions closely affecting the existence of all government under written constitutions, be- cause they affect the practical working of those governments ;~ such questions, for instance, as those relating to the allocation of powers among the several departments, the relations of the legislative, the executive, and the judiciary to the coin munity and to each other, the evils of excessive and the absurdities of special legislation, the creation and useful- ness of commissions charged with the care of particular inter- ests, and indeed most of those important features in constitu- tion-making with which Frenchmen always, and Americans of late, have shown so strong a disposition to try logical and theo- retical experiments. It cannot truthfully be asserted that Gen- eral Butlers discussion of these topics was any more creditable to his taste, honesty, or political knowledge, or any more respect- ful to the intelligence of his audience, than were the personal- ities or the economical doctrines which marked his treatment of the other subjects which he saw fit to present. At this time, however, so peculiarly prolific of constitutional conven- tions, these questions of government will have an interest, no matter who may belittle their discussion~ The Constitution of Massachusetts is the most time-honored of all the written con- stitutions now in existence, and the day is evidently not very remote when it must again pass into the hands of the work- men. In another paper, in a future number of this Review, it is proposed to follow up the discussions of the Butler canvass in its other aspect, no longer as stimulating class enmities, but now as initiating an agitation which seems likely to lead in Massa- chusetts, not to the personal aggrandizement which the agita- tor promised himselg hut to that of which probably he never thought, and for which certainly he did not care, a conven- tion to revise the Constitution of the State, after half a century of continuous and successful working. 18~2.] Trenchs Synonyms of the New Testament. 171 ART. VII. CRITICAL NOTICES. 1. Synonyms of the New Testament. By RICHARD CLIENEVIX TRENCH, D. D., Archbishop of Dublin. Seventh Edition, revised and enlarged. London: Macmillan & Co. 1871. 8vo. pp. xxvi, 363. THE treatise of Archbishop Trench on the Synonyms of the iNew Testament first appeared in 1854, and was at once republished in this country. After passing through five editions, it was followed in 1863 by a Second Part, likewise reprinted in New York in 1864. The two parts were published in one volume in 1865; and now the seventh edition, revised and enlarged, attests the well-merited favor with which the work has been received. The Preface to this new edition is much enlarged, and contains some excellent observations on the value of the study of synonyms, and on the method in which it should be pursued. Other parts of the book bear marks of the careful revision which it has undergone. The amount of new matter, however, is not very large. Sections xlix., 1., lxviii., xcii. xcvi., xcviii., xcix., and part of section c., are new, as compared with the first and third editions, reprinted in this country; section xlix. of the third edition has been can- celled. In sections ix., xix., xxii., lxxxiv. (= xxxiv. of Part II.), the synonyms OLKET?7~, EvTpO7I-1), Aprcos~, and K~KOS~ are added. I do not propose to enter upon a general review of a work which is universally recognized as the best on the subject of which it treats. It is enriched with observations gathered from a wide range of reading, and is full of acute remarks and fruitful suggestions; but the ingenious author has not elaborated all its parts with equal care, and in some cases his distinctions appear to be strikingly at variance with the actual usage of the words which he undertakes to discriminate. One exam- ple of this kind, involving questions of considerable theological interest, particularly deserves to be pointed out, as the statements of the Arch- bishop have been incautiously adopted by several respectable scholars both in England and Germany, and are likely to be received without question by the generality of readers. I refer to his distinction between the words aIT~O, and ~paTd~, discussed in section xl. of his work. He says : The distinction between the words is this. AITECO, the Latin peto, is more submissive and suppliant, indeed the constant word for the seeking of the inferior from the superior (Acts xii. 20); of the beggar from him that should give alms (Acts iii. 2); of the child from the parent (Matt. vii. 9;

18~2.] Trenchs Synonyms of the New Testament. 171 ART. VII. CRITICAL NOTICES. 1. Synonyms of the New Testament. By RICHARD CLIENEVIX TRENCH, D. D., Archbishop of Dublin. Seventh Edition, revised and enlarged. London: Macmillan & Co. 1871. 8vo. pp. xxvi, 363. THE treatise of Archbishop Trench on the Synonyms of the iNew Testament first appeared in 1854, and was at once republished in this country. After passing through five editions, it was followed in 1863 by a Second Part, likewise reprinted in New York in 1864. The two parts were published in one volume in 1865; and now the seventh edition, revised and enlarged, attests the well-merited favor with which the work has been received. The Preface to this new edition is much enlarged, and contains some excellent observations on the value of the study of synonyms, and on the method in which it should be pursued. Other parts of the book bear marks of the careful revision which it has undergone. The amount of new matter, however, is not very large. Sections xlix., 1., lxviii., xcii. xcvi., xcviii., xcix., and part of section c., are new, as compared with the first and third editions, reprinted in this country; section xlix. of the third edition has been can- celled. In sections ix., xix., xxii., lxxxiv. (= xxxiv. of Part II.), the synonyms OLKET?7~, EvTpO7I-1), Aprcos~, and K~KOS~ are added. I do not propose to enter upon a general review of a work which is universally recognized as the best on the subject of which it treats. It is enriched with observations gathered from a wide range of reading, and is full of acute remarks and fruitful suggestions; but the ingenious author has not elaborated all its parts with equal care, and in some cases his distinctions appear to be strikingly at variance with the actual usage of the words which he undertakes to discriminate. One exam- ple of this kind, involving questions of considerable theological interest, particularly deserves to be pointed out, as the statements of the Arch- bishop have been incautiously adopted by several respectable scholars both in England and Germany, and are likely to be received without question by the generality of readers. I refer to his distinction between the words aIT~O, and ~paTd~, discussed in section xl. of his work. He says : The distinction between the words is this. AITECO, the Latin peto, is more submissive and suppliant, indeed the constant word for the seeking of the inferior from the superior (Acts xii. 20); of the beggar from him that should give alms (Acts iii. 2); of the child from the parent (Matt. vii. 9;

18~2.] Trenchs Synonyms of the New Testament. 171 ART. VII. CRITICAL NOTICES. 1. Synonyms of the New Testament. By RICHARD CLIENEVIX TRENCH, D. D., Archbishop of Dublin. Seventh Edition, revised and enlarged. London: Macmillan & Co. 1871. 8vo. pp. xxvi, 363. THE treatise of Archbishop Trench on the Synonyms of the iNew Testament first appeared in 1854, and was at once republished in this country. After passing through five editions, it was followed in 1863 by a Second Part, likewise reprinted in New York in 1864. The two parts were published in one volume in 1865; and now the seventh edition, revised and enlarged, attests the well-merited favor with which the work has been received. The Preface to this new edition is much enlarged, and contains some excellent observations on the value of the study of synonyms, and on the method in which it should be pursued. Other parts of the book bear marks of the careful revision which it has undergone. The amount of new matter, however, is not very large. Sections xlix., 1., lxviii., xcii. xcvi., xcviii., xcix., and part of section c., are new, as compared with the first and third editions, reprinted in this country; section xlix. of the third edition has been can- celled. In sections ix., xix., xxii., lxxxiv. (= xxxiv. of Part II.), the synonyms OLKET?7~, EvTpO7I-1), Aprcos~, and K~KOS~ are added. I do not propose to enter upon a general review of a work which is universally recognized as the best on the subject of which it treats. It is enriched with observations gathered from a wide range of reading, and is full of acute remarks and fruitful suggestions; but the ingenious author has not elaborated all its parts with equal care, and in some cases his distinctions appear to be strikingly at variance with the actual usage of the words which he undertakes to discriminate. One exam- ple of this kind, involving questions of considerable theological interest, particularly deserves to be pointed out, as the statements of the Arch- bishop have been incautiously adopted by several respectable scholars both in England and Germany, and are likely to be received without question by the generality of readers. I refer to his distinction between the words aIT~O, and ~paTd~, discussed in section xl. of his work. He says : The distinction between the words is this. AITECO, the Latin peto, is more submissive and suppliant, indeed the constant word for the seeking of the inferior from the superior (Acts xii. 20); of the beggar from him that should give alms (Acts iii. 2); of the child from the parent (Matt. vii. 9; 172 Trenchs Synonyms of the New Testament. [Jan. Luke xi. 11; Lam. iv. 4); of the subject from the ruler (Ezra viii. 22); of man from God (1 Kin. iii. 11; Matt. vii. 7; Jam. i. 5; 1 John iii. 22; cf. Plato, Euthyph. 14; eS~so-Oat [~o-rtv] aireZi ro~ Oeov~). Epcor~u, on the other hand, is the Latin rogo; or sometimes (as John xvi. 23; cf. Gen. xliv. 19) inter- rogo, its only meaning in classical Greek, where it never signifies to ask, but only to interrogate, or to inquire. Like rogare, * it implies that he who asks stands on a certain footing of equality with him from whom the boon is asked, as king with king (Luke xiv. 32), or, if not of equality, on such a footing of familiarity as lends authority to the request. Thus it is very noteworthy, and witnesses for the singular accuracy in the employment of words, and in the record of that employment, which prevails throughout the IN. T., that our Lord never uses ~LTELV or atrewOa~ of himself, in respect of that which he seeks on behalf of his disciples from God; for his is not the petition of the creature to the Creator, but the request of the Son to the Father. The consciousness of his equal dignity, of his potent and prevailing intercession, speaks out in this, that often as he asks, or declares that he will ask, anything of the Father, it is always epcorc7 ipuri~w, an asking, that is, as upon equal terms (John xiv. 16; xvi. 26; xvii. 9, 15, 20), never aLTEO) or airi~oco. Synonyms, etc. pp. 136, 137. The view here presented by Archbishop Trench, which is, I believe, original, so far as his account of ~pwrdco is concerned, has been substan- tinily ndopted by Di.isterdieck in his commentary on 1 John v. 16 (Die drei jolian. Briefe, II. 417), by Wordsworth (Greek Test.) on John xvi. 23 and 1 John v. 16, and by Webster and Wilkinson, Alford, and Braune in Langes Bibeiwerk, in their notes on 1 John v. 16. Braune says, without qualification, ~purav is = rogare, and implies equality on the part of the asker with him from whom the favor is sought (p. 171, Amer. transl.). In opposition to these assertions, I shall endeavor to show that there is in the word ~pcorcico no implication of equality on the part of the asker with him from whom the favor is sought, any more than there is in the English word ask; that there is not only no ground whatever for con- necting such a notion with the word, but that its common use is totally inconsistent with this assumption. The materials for forming a judgment upon this matter fortunately lie within a small compass. The use of JpwTdu in the sense of to request, as Archbishop Trench has remarked, does not belong to classical Greek; and in the later Greek, outside of the New Testament, it seems to be infrequent. After a pretty extensive examination of the general Greek Lexicons, from Stephenss Thesaurus in its several editions to the great work of Professor Sophocles on the Greek of the Roman and Byzantine * Thus Cicero (Plauc. x. 25) Neque enim ego sic rogabaas ut petere viderer, quia familiaris esset meus. 1872.] Trenchs S~,,nonyms of the New Testament. 173 periods, and also of the special Lexicons, Commentaries, etc., illustrat- ing the New Testament, I cannot find that more than nine examples of it have hitherto been adduced; while in one of these the meaning is questionable, and in another the text is uncertain.* In the New Tes- tament, however, we have thirty-six clear examples of the use of the word in the sense referred to, besides one (John xvi. 23) in which its meaning has been disputed. The comparative frequency of this use of ~pon-cio in the New Testament, though some have considered it a Latinism, is probably to be explained by the influence of the Hebrew or Arama~an on the Greek-speaking Jews, the Hebrew ~ with its cognates in Chaldee and Syriac, being freely employed in both of the principal senses of the English word ask. Let us then try the theory of Archbishop Trench by a few examples of the use of ~poxrdo in the New Testament. (In quoting, I give the rendering of the common English version.) The first instance of its occurrence is in the account of the woman of Canaan or Syropheenicia in Matt. xv. 23, where we rend that the disciples of Jesus came and besought him (~p~Tov or ~p& Tovv), saying, Send her away, etc. Were the disciples of Jesus on a footing of equality with their Master, or of such familiarity as to lend authority to their request? The next example is in Mark vii. 26, where we are told respecting the Syrophe- nician woman herself; that she came and fell at his feet, and besought him (~pc~Ta) that he would cast forth the devil out of her daughter. Did she address Christ on a footing of equality? In Luke vii. 3 the centurion is represented as sending elders of the Jews to Jesus, beseeching him Qpe~T~v) that he would come and heal his servant. So far from this petition having authority in it, or implying a con- sciousness of equal dignity, the centurion says (vv. 6, 7), that he was not worthy that Jesus should enter under his roof, and that he did not think himself worthy to come to him. In Luke viii. 37 we i-end that the Gadarenes besought Jesus Qjpc~Ti7o-av) to depart from them; for * They are as follows: Sept. Ps. cxxi. 6 (doubtful). Joseph. Ant. v. 1. 14 (text uncertain). Hermog. De Meth. Eloq. c. 3, condemning this use of the word. Apollon. Dysc. Synt. p. 289, 1. 20, ed. Bekker. Hermas, Vis. i. 2. Mart. Polyc. c. 12. Strato, Epigr. liii. 8 (Anthol. Gr. ed. Jacobs, iii. p. 80). Babr. Fab. xcvii. 3. Chant. viii. 7~ To these may be added the twenty-four follo~ving, which I have not seen before referred to: Jos. Ant. vii. 8. 1. Barnab. Ep. 4, 21 (ter). Hermas, Vis. ii. 2 ; iii. 1 (bis), 2, 10; iv. 1 ; Sin. v. 4 ; ix. 2, 11. l)uai Vim vel Judic. Petni, in Hilgenfelds N. T. extra Canonem, iv. p. 100, 1. 20; 105, 1. 1. Orac. Sibyl. ii. 310; viii. 355. Coast. Apost. ii. 16. Babr. Fab. x. 8; xlii. 3. Snidas, s. vv. e~pcei-c$ YE and i~p~ra. Zonaras, s. vv. EpcoTco 0E. The more important of these passages will be cited hereafter. 1T4 Trenchs $ynonyms of the New Testament. [Jan. they were taken with great fear. In Luke xvi. 27 the word is used of the petition addressed to Abraham by the rich man in Hades, I pray thee therefore, father (~poTc7. oi~v o-e), etc. Did he, when he lifted up his eyes, being in torments, consider himself as on a footing of equality with the patriarch? But perhaps the usage of John may favor the Archbishops theory. Let us see. If the disciples of Christ addressed their Master with authority (John iv. 31), if the Samaritans when they besought Jesus that he would tarry with them (iv. 40), and the nobleman at Caper- naum, who besought him that he would come down and heal his son (iv. 47), the Greeks who came to Philip and desired him, saying, Sir, we would see Jesus (xii. 21), the Jews who besought Pilate that the legs of the crucified might be broken, and that they might be taken away (xix. 31), and Joseph of Arimathtea, who besought Pilate that he might take away the body of Jesus (xix. 38), made these requests as being on a footing of equality, and if it is also clear that this idea is expressed in these passages by the word e~po~Tdo itself, then, and not otherwise, is Archbishop Trenchs view confirmed by the usage of John. In reference to the last passage cited, it deserves particular notice that the first three evangelists, in describing this request of Joseph of Arimatheen, use the word GLTEO/IaL (~ri~oaTo TO rw,ia I,1ooi3, Matt. xxvii. 58, Mark xv. 43, Luke xxiii. 52), where John employs EpcoTaco (s)pc~r~o-ev rbv IIELXaTOV . . . 7va ~Jp~ rb o-fi,ua, K. r. It can hardly be necessary to proceed much further in the citation of passages from the New Testament. The first example in the Book of Acts (iii. 3) may seem alone decisive of the question. There, in the account of the man lame from his birth, it is said that he was laid daily at the Beautiful Gate of the Temple to ask alms (a~Teiv EXE77/LOTVV17V) of those who went into the Temple, and seeing Peter and John about to go into the Temple he asked alms (~p~ra eT)/L001Jv1Thi XaI3ELV). Did he ask this as a right, or as being on a footing of equality ? We may * I am indebted for this observation to a Clergyman of the Church of Eng- land, the anonymous author of An Examination of Canon Liddons Bampton Lectures on the Divinity of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ (Load. 1871), p. 263, note, to whom belongs the credit, so far as I know, of first pointing out the untenableness of Archbishop Trenchs statements respecting the use of the word EpcuTdxo. This able writer, however, enters into no full discussion of the subject, and is far too liberal in conceding that about the general accuracy of the distinction on which the Archbishop insists, there can be no dispute, contending merely for an exception in the New Testament usage. We shall see that the examples of the word outside of the New Testament are equally at war with the Archbishops theory. 1872.] Trenchs Synon~,ms of the New Testament. r~5 further observe that a~~-eo is here interchanged with ~pin-do, though this is one of the very passages adduced by Archbishop Trench to illustrate the distinction between the words. The other passages in which the word ~pc~n-dco occurs in the Acts are ch. x. 48; xvi. 39; xviii. 20; xxiii. 18, 20. iNone of them favors the Archbishops view.* What now are the facts adduced by Archbishop Trench in proof of his position that ~pon-cio implies a certain equality between the asker and the person asked? The reader may be somewhat surprised to learn that no evidence is adduced by him or his followers except what is contained in the extracts from his article already given. Passing by the mere assertion that in certain passages of Johns Gospel ~pcoTdw is used by Christ with this implication, we find that the only passage of the New Testament referred to in support of this theory is Luke xiv. 32. Here the argument is, that as one king is represented as asking another king for conditions of peace, the word implies that he who asks stands on a certain footing of equality with him from whom the boon is asked. Now the mere fact that, in any single case of the use of the word cpco~aco, the parties in question are equals, obviously cannot prove that such equality is implied by the word itself. The only possible proof of the Archbishops thesis must consist in establishing the fact, by induction from a large number of examples, that the word is always, or at least generally, used of requests made by one who is regarded as standing on a footing of equality with him from whom the favor is sought. That the word is not so used has already been shown. But waiving all this, the Archbishop seems to forget that the king in the passage referred to is represented, not as conscious of equality with the hostile king, but of his inequality, his inability to meet, with tea thousand men, him that cometh against him with twenty thousand; so that, when the other is a great way off, he sends an embassy to ask for conditions of peace, or, as Campbell and Norton in their transla- tions have very naturally phrased it, to sue for peace. It is difficult to imagine that this passage of the New Testament, or any other, could have suggested the notion which the Archbishop has affixed to the word. He seems to have been really influenced by the supposed analogy of the Latin rogo, which does correspond, in its * For completeness, the only passages in the New Testament not already cited in which ~pc~yrt~ has or may have the meaning to request are here referred to, with the rendering of the word in the common English version: Asic, John xvi. 23, first part I Desire, Luke vii. 36; xiv. 32. Pray, Lnke v. 3; xiv. 18, 19; John xiv. 16; xvi. 26; xvii. 9 bis, 15, 20; 1 John v. 16. Beseech, Luke iv. 38; xi. 37; 1 Thes. iv. 1; v. 12; 2 Thes. ii. 1; 2 John 5. Entreat, Phil. iv. 3. 1~0 Trenchs Synon~yrns of the New Testament. [Jan. double meaning and otherwise, very closely with ~porc~co, and is used as its representative throughout the Latin Vulgate. Trench, as we have seen, asserts that rogo implies that he who asks stands on a certain footing of equality with him from whom the boon is asked, while peto, corresponding with aLTEO~, is the word appropriate to an inferior; and the following passage of Cicero is quoted to prove it: Neque enim ego sic rogabam, ut petere viderer, quia familiaris esset meus (Planc. x. 25). This statement in regard to the use of rogo I believe to be incorrect, though something like it may be found in Doederleins Latin Synonyms, and in the valuable English-Latin Dictionary lately pub- lished by Dr. William Smith and Theophilus D. Hall (see the art. Ask). The passage from Cicero quoted above seems to have been sup- posed by Trench and Alford (who, with Dtisterdieck, has quoted it after him) to have the following meaning: For I did not ask in such a way as to seem to 6eg, because he [of whom I asked the favor] was my intimate friend; though a careful reader who should thus construe the words might be a little staggered by the subjunctive esset, where erat would seem to be required by the laws of grammar. Now noth- ing like this is the real meaning of the passage. The object of rogabam and petere is not the person spoken of as familiaris meus. The sentence is imperfectly quoted, and the Archbishop appears to have caught it up hastily from his Latin Dictionary, without taking the trouble to look into Cicero. It is necessary, therefore, to point out the connection in which it stands, and to explain the true force and bearing of the words. Plancius was accused of having obtained the ~edileship by bribery of voters. Cicero in defending him urges, among other things, that he had himself secured many votes for him by his personal influence. Ciceros private obligations to Plancius were so great that the friends of Cicero were constrained to vote for him. ]?ogabam in the passage in question is a technical term, denoting the soliciting of votes for a candidate for office. The full sentence reads as follows: Neque enim ego sic rogabam, ut petere viderer, quia familiaris esset incus, quia vicinus, quia huius parente semper plurimum essem usus, sed ut quasi parenti et custodi salutis mete. It may be thus translated: For I did not solicit the votes of the people in such a way as to seem to beg them for Plancius because he was my intimate friend, because he was my neighbor, because I had always been on terms of the most familiar intercourse with his father; but as asking them for one who was as it were my own parent, and the guardian of my safety. The meaning of the passage does not turn, as Trench seems to suppose, on a contrast between rogare and petere. On the (oHtrary, the words are here interchanged, the rogatlo is described 1872.] Trenchs Synonyms of the New Testament. 177 as a petit~o; and Cicero had just before spoken of it in the follow- ino~ terms: . . . . precibus aliquid attuijinus etiam nos. Appellavi populum tributim; submisi me et supplicavi. Instead, therefore, of favoring Archbishop Trenchs view of the use of rogare, the passage is directly opposed to it. It would lead us too far from our proper subject to discuss the uses of rogo and its distinction from peto, hut it may be worth while to refer to a few passages which show how false is the supposition that it im- plies the asking of what one has a right to, or carries with it any notion of equality. Molestum verbum est, onerosum, demisso voltu dicen- dum, l?ogo, says Seneca. Properet licet, sero beneficium dedit, qui roganti dedit. (De Benef. ii. 2. Comp. also c. 1.) In blandi- endo, fatendo, satisfaciendo, rogando, says Quintilian, the voice should be lenis et summissa. (Inst. Or. xi. 3. 63.) Comp. Ovid, Met. vii. 90, auxilium submissa voce rogavit, and Pont. iv. 3. 41. Finally, rogare is often used of prayer to the gods, who are not usually sup- posed to be addressed on terms of equality; e. g. Deos supplex rogavi, Ovid. Ep. ii. 17; Suppliciter rogate Deos, Id. Pont. i. 10. 44, comp. ii. 3, 100, iv. 8, 3; Otium divos rogat, Hor. Carm. u. 16. 1. We have seen that Archbishop Trench finds in the use of EpoTaw and the non-use of aLTECO on the part of our Lord in his prayers to the Father, the consciousness of his equal dignity. We shall consider hereafter the real distinction between the words, and shall not find, I think, that the phenomenon in question requires us to assume that, in the passages to which he refers, an idea is implied in the word ~p~aw which cannot be shown to belong to it anywhere else. And the Arch- bishop does not seem to have observed that very different and rather startling conclusions might be drawn, with equal plausibility, from the premises which he assumes in regard to this word. We might say, for example, that it is very noteworthy, and witnesses for the singular accuracy in the employment of words which prevails throughout the New Testament, that at~ew or aLTELO-Vat, the constant word for the seek- ing of the inferior from the superior, is never used in respect of that which the Apostles ask of Christ, but is appropriated to their petitions to God (Matt. xviii. 19; xxi. 22; John xv. 16; xvi. 23, etc.). When they are represented as requesting anything of Christ, the word ~poxrav is employed (Matt. xv. 23; Luke iv. 38; John iv. 31), implying an asking as upon equal terms. The only exception is in Mark x. 35, but in that case, as we learn from the parallel passage (Mutt. xx. 20), the petition was not really presented by the Apostles James and John directly, but through their mother, who fell down before Jesus and VOL. CXIV. NO. 234. 12 178 Trenchs Synonyms of the New Testament. [Jan. begged the favor, so that the apparent exception really confirms the rule. This may suffice for an argumentum ad hom~nem. The concluding paragraph of Archbishop Trenchs article reads thus in the seventh edition (p. 138) It will follow that the ~pcorav, being thus proper for Christ, inasmuch as it has authority in it, is not proper for us; and in no single instance is it used in the N. T. to express the prayer of man to God, of the creature to the Crea- tor. The only passage seeming to contradict this assertion is 1 John v. 16. The verse is difficult, but whichever of the various ways of overcoming its difficulty may find favor, it will be found to constitute no true exception to the rule, and perhaps, in the substitution of ~pceTi~o-u for the aIi4JeTEC of the earlier clause of the verse, will rather confirm it. The passage in question is as follows in the common version If any man see his brother sin a sin which is not unto death, he shall ask (aiTs~aEL), and he shall give him life for them that sin not unto death. There i~ a sin unto death; I do not say that he shall pray for it (o~ 7rEpL EKELV?)~ X~yco va EpcoTrJO7l). It should be noted here that the word translated it in the last clause of the verse is emphatic in the original, and should have beeii rendered that or this. The Archbishop unfortunately does not favor us with his view of the passage, and indeed seems to be doubtful about its meaning; he is only sure that, at all events, the true explanation will present no excep- tion to his rule about the use of ~pcordco. In the earlier editions of the Synonyms reprinted in this country he did propose an explanation, which, though adopted by Alford and others, seems now to have been discreetly abandoned by its original propounder. According to his former view, it was the design of the Apostle by the use of the word Jpwr,~o,~ in the last clause to declare that the Christian intercessor for his brethren shall not assume the authority which would be implied in making request for a sinner who had sinned the sin unto death (Syn., p. 198, Amer. ed.). The Archbishop has probably since perceived that the result of assigning this meaning to ~porck here, and laying stress on the supposed difference between it and a~rew, must be to sug- gest that, though a person is not permitted ~pwr~v, to ask with authority for the pardon of a sin unto death, he is permitted airciv, to ask hum- bly for it. But thfs is evidently contrary to the meaning of the Apostle, as it would render nugatory the restriction in the first clause of the verse. Saint John, moreover, would hardly deem it necessary to tell his readers that he did not mean to have them address their pray- ers to God as being on a footing of equality with him. Bishop Wordsworth gives a different explanation. He adopts the 1872.] Trenchs Synonyms of the New Testament. 179 view of Archbishop Trench, that eporao.~ expresses the request of an equal, who has a right to ask and obtain, but does not introduce that meaning here. His translation of the passage is certainly remarkable: I am not speaking concerning that, in order that he (the Christian brother) should ask; and the explanation matches it. He under- stands Saint John to intimate that no interrogatory questions are to be addressed to God concerning the person who is sinning a sin unto death. The view of Webster and Wilkinson is similar: The Apostle checks the approach to the throne of grace as to an oracle to inquire Qpcoriiv) with the intention of aireZv. Whether this is the view which Archbishop Trench is now inclined to entertain, I do not know; it does not appear to have occurred to any commentator, ancient or modern, except those whom I have just quoted. Dismissing, then, these unnatural explanations, which seem to have been suggested by the exigencies of a theory, let us turn once more to the passage. Is it not evident that the Apostle is stating in a positive form, in the last clause of the verse, the restriction implied in the first? There is a sin unto death; [when I say that he shall ask, air?~oE~,] I do not say that he shall pray (or, I do not bid him pray ) for that (d~ lrEpi EKeivrjs~ Xs~yco 7va ~pcon~ow).* He has been speaking of petitions, not of an oracle, or of interrogatory questions addressed to God. We may now consider the use of the word epo~~-a~ outside of the New Testament. The earliest example adduced is from the Septun- gint, Ps. cxxi. (Heb. cxxii.) 6, Epe)T?)oaTE ~7) TaEL~ELpJ7v7)v TYJZJ Iepovo-aXi~,t, which has been translated, Pray for the peace of Jerusalem. This is probably the true rendering of the original Hebrew (see Maurer and Hupfeld in bc.), though some understand it differently. But if we follow the analogy of precisely the same phraseology in other pas- sages of the Septuagint (see 1 Sam. x. 4, E~COTT)OOVO.L OE Ta EL~ ELp?~77V, also xxx. 21; 2 Sam. viii. 10; 1 Chr. xviii. 10), we shall make the verbal meaning of the Greek translation to be, Ask Jerusalem con- cerning her peace, that is, as the phrase is used elsewhere, Salute Jerusalem, wish her all prosperity. (Comp. the rendering of Symma- chus, dao-ao-Oe.) If Epo~T?~o-aTE is here taken in the sense of pray, * If Viyco here means to say, and not to speak (for which XaXia~ would be the proper word), ~va cannot mean in order that, but introduces an object- clause, as in Acts xix. 4, John xiii. 29, comp. Rev. vi. 11, ix. 4, Matt. iv. 3, etc., and Sophocles, Gr. Lex. art. Xiya. The word as used here and in the other examples cited is nearly equivalent to KEXEVO. The preposition ,jr~pl is to he con- nected with 4WTT~O~, as in Luke iv. 38, John xvii. 9, etc. Comp. ~o~iaL ,repi a~Laprww, Ecclus. xxi. 1, xxviii. 4, xxxix. 5. 180 Trenchs Synonyms of the New Testament. [Jan. we must suppose an ellipsis of TOV OEOJJ as the being addressed, which would give us the extraordinary construction of three accusatives after the verb. We should expect, instead of the third accusative, ~ Iepov- O~aX~)/.L, as the verse is inaccurately quoted by Bishop Ellicott oa 1 Thess. iv. 1, and by Webster in his Syntax and Synonyms of the Greek Testament. It is also to be observed, that we thus assign to EpoTaco a meaning which it has nowhere else in the Septuagint. Such being the state of the case, although the passage is adduced by Bretschneider, Robinson, Bloomfield, Grimm, Sophocles, and other lexicographers, as an example of ~pe~rda in the sense ofto pray, I shall not urge it against Archbishop Trenchs theory. The next passage in chronological order is in Josephus, Ant. v. 1. 14, where, after giving the prayer of Joshua, he says, ma /1EV I71(TOvS~ E2TL 0-To/la 7TEOWV ?1pQ)Ta TOi OEOV. Here, if the text is correct, ~pon-cie is clearly used of the prayer of man to God. This is the reading in the editions of Hudson and Havercamp, and in the earlier editions of Josephus. IDindorf and Bekker, however, have substituted for r~p1i~ra TOV OEOV~ TbZ BEOV IKETEVE. Notwithstanding the authority of these eminent critical editors, it seems to me that not only does the external evidence, as given in Bernards note in Havercamps edition, decidedly favor the reading ~Jp~Ta, but the internal still more. This use of ipcordco being rare, and condemned by some of the rhetoricians, it was very natural that a gloss like LKETEVE should be substituted for it in some MISS. ; just as Zonaras (Ann. i. 20), in copying this account of Josephus, has substi- tuted E& ETO TOU OEOV. Comp. Suidas: Hpc~ma~ 7rapEKaXEL, EOVEV, T/f~XET0, ~kETEVEV~~ and see also his art. epaTo, OF, cited on the next page. But whatever may be thought of this passage of Josephus, a plenty of unquestionable examples may be cited of EpnTao~ used in reference to prayer addressed to God, or to heathen deities. See Hermas, J7is. i. 2, EpOTT~OO3 rbV KlpLOV, .~a iXare% [Sin. iXUTE~O77TOL] /1OL, also ibid. ii. 2, iii. 1 (bis), iv. 1 ; Sim. v. 4, ix. 2, in all of which passages KVpLOV is the object; Gino. Sibyl. ii. 310, floXXa ~ EpCOT?)OOVOL /.LnT~V BEOV 1AkL/LE~iOYTa, and viii. 355, floXX~ ~ ~pom~oovOL & OV ye i-b aiev hivTa (so Alexandre; Friedlieb makes the line identical with ii. 310); and Babr. Fab. x. 8, 7~v A~po& m~v . . . EOiJEV, 7~VxEO , LKET~VEV, 7/pwTa. Other passages may be adduced in opposition to Archbishop Trenchs * Here, however, as ~OVEV is inappropriate as an explanation, I would suggest that Suidas needs emendation, and tbat we should read, Hpc~ma~ irapexaXet. #EOVEV, ~7v~ETO, LKETEVEV, ~~p& ra, taking all after ITapEK& AEL as a quotation from Babrins, Feb. x. 8, to be cited below. Hpc~ma is actually added after LKETEVEV~ making the line complete, in three MSS. and the first edition of Suidas. See Bernhardys note. 1872.] Trenchs Synonyms of the New Testament. 181 notion that ~pa~-c~o implies an asking as upon equal terms, or with authority. In the Epistle ascribed to Barnabas, where the word ~pcin-cici occurs four times (cc. 4, 21 thrice) in exhortation, ia the sense of to entreat, beseech, we read (c. 21), epoT(J ~i~s xapw airoi4sevos~, I entreat you, asking it as a favor. In 1-lermas it is used of the humble entreaty addressed by the writer to the woman, representing the Church, who appeared to him in a vision (Vis. iii. 2, oc~w ~E aUTTJ~ irpo~ TO1J~ 7roaas~ ~ a~~~~... eva, K. T. X.~ also ibid. iii. 10), and to the Shepherd or angel of repentance (Sim. ix. 11). In the epistle of the Church at Smyrna. giving an account of the martyrdom of Polycarp (c. 12), the angry multitude are said to have besought (~pc~rwv) the Asiarch to let loose a lion upon Polycarp. And in the Apostolical Constitutions (Lib. ii. c. 16) the word is used of the entreaty to be addressed to the bishop in behalf of a penitent brother. The notices of the word by the old grammarians and lexicographers may now be quoted. Hermogenes (De Jilieth. Eloq. c. 3) condemns the use of Epo)Taco and 7rapaKaX~o in the sense of & o,& ai, to beg, to entreat, restricting the former to the meaning to inquire: EU-7 TL~ EpcoT KaL TrOpaKaXO dVTL TOy bEOMOL, aKUpo)~ ELp?7KE. rb ~L~V v~ 71-apa- KaXELV ~ KaXELV EOTLV ~ ,iporperrecrOcu, Tb ~ ~pwTav lflivOavEcrOaL. (Walz, J?ket. Cr. iii. 404.) Apollonius Dyscolus enumerates among the words which denote supplication, Ta KETELaV a?~,IaLvEL, yOtWOU/LEU, EpcoTO) cTE EV LOS) T(t) 13-apa- KaXco o~, XLTUVEI.%,, LKVOlJ,LaL. (Synt. p. 289 ed. Bekker.) Suidas under the word 7~pcn-a has already been quoted. He also has: EpaTc~ cYE 7rapaKaXc) ae~ LKETEUCO oe, o,~at. Kai ai3OL~~ EXOEZv 7TpO~ aVTOV E7rL Tb aEL7TVoV ?jpcJ~Ta, avTL TOU ITapEKaXEL. Here the line is quoted from Babrius, Fab. xlii. 3. Compare also Babrius, Fab. xcvii. 3, rbv TaIpov eXOeZi ~1d Tb ~~L7TVOV i~pw~a, and the same use of the word in Luke vii. 36, xi. 37. Zonaras has Epc.n-c5 ~e 7rapaKaXc3 ~TE, IKETEUCs) oe, and quotes the same passage as Suidas. The word does not appear to have been noticed by Ilesychius, Photius, and the other old lexicographers and gramma- rians. The few remaining examples of ~pco~aw outside of the New Testament are not of sufficient interest to be quoted. The preceding examination of the use of ~pordo may satisfy us that Archbishop Trenchs theory not only has no foundation to rest upon, but that it is directly contradicted by a large majority of the passages in which the word occurs, both in the New Testament and the later Greek writers. We will now consider the use of aii-~o. 182 Trenchs Synonyms of the New Testament. [Jan. In the extract already given from Archbishop Trenchs article, he represents airico, compared with 4uorao, as more submissive and sup- pliant, indeed the constant word for the seeking of the inferior from the superior, and this statement may seem to be supported by the prevail- ing usage of the word. His view accords also with that of Bengel (notes on John xi. 22 and 1 John v. 16), and of Webster in his Syntax and Synonyms of the Greek Testament, p. 190. The following passages, however, must at least be regarded as exceptions, and may suggest a doubt as to the correctness of the dis- tinction asserted: Luke i. 63, he asked for a writing-table and wrote (aiT~~o-a~ . . . ~ypaip~v) ; xii. 48, to whom men have com- mitted much, of him they will ask (require) the more (aiTr5o-ovo~Lv) Acts xvi. 29, Then he called frr a light (ah~o-a~) ; 1 Cor. i. 22, For the Jews require signs (a7Tovcnv) ; and 1 Pet. iii. 15, Be always ready to give an answer to every man that asketh you (aiTo~vTL) a reason for the hope that is in you. In the Septuagint we read, What doth the Lord thy God require (aITEZTaL) of thee? (Dent. x. 12.) See also 2 Macc. vii. 10. Similar examples from Philo and Jose- phus are given by Loesner, Obs. p. 118, and Krebs, Obs. p. 117, though is generally used to express the idea of demanding. If we are guided by the actual usage of the words, we shall be led to the conclusion that the distinction between aii-ico and EpcoTaco in Hel- lenistic Greek does not depend upon the relative dignity of the asker and the person asked. In this respect they seem to be neutral, as much so as our English word ask. The main distinction appears to be this: ALTECO is, in general, to ask for something which one desires to receive, something to be given, rarely for something to be done; it is therefore used when the object sought, rather than the person of whom it is sought, is prominent in the mind of the writer; hence also it is very rarely employed in exhortation. Epcordo, on the other hand, is to request or beseech a person to do something, rarely to give something; it refers more directly to the person of whom the favor is sought, and is therefore naturally used in exhortation and entreaty. Doederlein notes a similar distinction between petere and rogare. As compared with petere, he says, rogare refers immediately to the person who is applied to for a service; petere, on the other hand, to the object sought. Cic. in Verr. Iste petit a rege et eum pluribus verbis rogat, uti ad se mittat, etc. (Lat. San. v. 229, 230.) In confirmation of this view, I will give the results of an examina- tion of the use of air~co in the New Testhment, the Septuagint, the so- called Apostolical Fathers, and some other early Christian writings. 1872.] Trenchs Synonyms of the New Testament. 183 For the canonical books of the Septuagint I have used the Concordance of Trornmius, and for the Apocrypha Walls C7avis; for Clement of Rome, Polycarp, and the Ignatian writings, Jacobsons Index to his edition of the Patres Apostolici; for Barnabas and Hermas, the Testa- ments of the Twelve Patriarchs, and the Epistle to Diognetus, my own notes. The classical use of the word is not important for our present purpose. To illustrate the distinction referred to, little will be needed besides the statistics of the construction of aLTEC.) as contrasted with JpWTd0. Both words must of course have both a person and a thing as their objects, expressed or implied. But the different construction of the words shows that their relation t@ these objects was usually conceived of differently. In the case of air~c., which occurs in the New Testa- ment seventy-one times, we have: 1. The thing only expressed, thirty-six times. Twice (Luke xxii. 23; Acts iii. 14) the object is an accusative with the infinitive; twice (Acts vii. 46; Eph. iii. 13) an infinitive only; once (Col. i. 9) ~va with the subjunctive. 2. Thing, and person with the preposition irapdi or d,r~, three times. 3. Person and thing, two accusatives, ten times; thing expressed by accusative with infinitive, once (Acts xiii. 28). 4. The person only expressed, in the accusative case, six times; Matt. v. 42; vi. 8; vii. 11; Luke vi. 30; xi. 13; John iv. 10. 6. Neither person nor thing expressed, but the thing more promi- nent in the context, fifteen times. One who shall examine the New Testament examples by the aid of his Concordance, will find that in a great majority of the seventy-one passages the request is for something to be given, not done; and that the thing asked for, rather than the person, is chiefly prominent in the mind of the writer. Even in the six examples cited under number four, where the personal object alone is expressed, the exception is rather apparent than real; e. g. Matt. v. 42, give to him that asketh thee, where the thing to be given is not specified on account of the compre- hensiveness of the injunction. In the Septuagint airio occurs about eighty-two times, including thirteen in the Apocrypha. We have: 1. The thing asked for only expressed, thirty-six times. (In 1 Sam. xii. 13 I adopt the reading of the Alexandrine manuscript.) 2. Thing in the accusative (with one exception), and person in the genitive with 7rapci, twenty-six times. 3. Person and thing hoth expressed in the accusative, ten times. Passive participle, perhaps with accusative of thing, once (2 Macc. vii. 10). 184 Trenchs AS~,mnonyms of the New Testament. [Jan. 4. Person only, in the genitive with ~z-ap~, four times. There is no example of the construction with the accusative of a person only. (In Esth. vii. 7 1 adopt the reading of the Roman edition and the Alexan- drine manuscript.) 5. Neither person nor thing expressed, five times. The result is that in nearly all, perhaps in all, the examples found in the Septuagint we may reasonably regard the object asked for as made more prominent than the person. This object is also almost always something to be given, rather than something to be done; and accordingly is only once expressed hy ~ with the subjunctive, never by ~va, and never by an infinitive of which the person asked is the sub- ject. We shall see a striking contrast in the construction of ~pwT& o. In the Apostolical Fathers and other early Christian writings hefore mentioned I have noted forty-four examples of aLTEC.) or aLTEG/LaL, namely: Clem. Rom. Ep. i. 50, 53, 55. Barn. 21 (in c. 19 probably spurious). Polyc. PIdi. 7. Ignat. Trail. 12; Rorn. 1, 3, 8 (bis); Pol~yc. 1, 2. Mart. Ignat. 6. Hermas, Vis. iii. 3, 10 (four times); Mand. ix. (eleven times), xii. 5; Sun. iv., v. 3, 4 (five times), vi. 3. Ep. ad Diogn. 1. Test. xii. Patr., fad. 9, .Jos. 15, 16 (three times; I adopt the reading of the Oxford MS.). They are constructed as follows : 1. Thing only expressed, twenty times. 2. Thing, and person with 7rapci or dro, ten times. 8. Person and thing, two accusatives, t~vice. Person in accusative, and object represented by XEyQJJTE~ with imperative, once (Test. xii. Patr., .Jos. 15). 4. Person only in genitive with wapci, seven times. 5. Person only, in the accusative, twice. 6. Neither person nor thing expressed, twice. Without going into a more minute analysis, we perceive that the result is essentially the same as in our examination of the usage of the New Testament and the Septuagint. Contrast now the construction of Jp~Taca, of which we have in all sixty-six or sixty-seven examples. We find: 1. The person only directly expressed (in the accusative), eighteen times. The object sought is understood nine times (Luke iv. 38; John xiv. 16; xvi. 26; Barn. 21; Const. Apost. ii. 16; Apollon. Dysc. Synt. p. 289; Bnbr. x. 8; Suidas, s. v. ~pcorc~ a-i; Zonaras, do.) ; indirectly signified by an imperative, six times (Luke xiv. 18, 19; Phil. iv. 8; Barn. 21 (his); Dua~ Vhe, p. 100, 1. 20, ed. Hilgenf.); by an imperative preceded by X~yOVTE~, twice (Matt. xv. 23; John iv. 81); by XEyOYTE~ introducing a sentence with the verb in the indic 1872.] Trenchs Synonyms of the New Testament. 185 ative, once (John xii. 21). The passive participle is used, without object expressed, twice (Strato, Epigr. liii. 8; Chant. viii. 7). 2. Accusative of person; thing variously expressed, viz. (a) by an accusative, five or six times (John xvi. 23? Jos. Ant. v. 1. 14; Barn. 4; Herm. Vis. ii. 2; Orac. Sibyl. ii. 310; viii. 355). (b) By an infinitive, eight times (Luke v. 3; viii. 37; John iv. 40; Acts x. 48; 1 Thes. v. 12; Jos. Ant. vii. 8. 1; Dua~ Yiai, p. 105,1. 2; Babr. xcvii. 3). (c) By iva with subjunctive, fifteen times (Mark vii. 26; Luke vii. 26; xvi. 27; John xix. 31, 38; 1 Thes. iv. 1 ; 2 John 5 Mart. Polyc. 12; Herm. Vis. i. 2; iii. 2, 10; iv. 1; S4rn. v. 4; ix. 2, 11). (d) By 6~rco~ with the subjunctive, three times (Luke vii. 3; xi. 37; Acts xxiii. 20). (e) By EI~ TO with infinitive, once (2 Thes. ii. 1). In all, thirty-two or thirty-three times. 3. Thing only expressed; (a) by an accusative, once (Luke xiv. 32). (b) By an infinitive, four times (Acts iii. 3; xvi. 39; xxiii. 18; Babr. xlii. 3). (c) By 7va with subjunctive, four times (John iv. 47 (Tisch.); xvii. 15, 20; Herm. Vis. iii. 1). In all these cases the person is prominent in the context. (Nine times.) 4. Neither person nor thing expressed, five times (John xvii. 9, bis; I John v. 16; Herm. l7is. iii. 1, bis). The difference of construction illustrates palpably the reality of the distinction pointed out. Of the sixty-six or sixty-seven examples of the use of ~pcordc.~, there are only six or seven in which the object asked for is expressed by an accusative; in a great majority of cases it is expressed by an infinitive, or by 7ia or ~irco~ with the subjunctive, or indirectly by an imperative, the thing asked for being usually some~ thing which the person asked is requested to do. In the one hundred and ninety-seven examples, on the other hand, which have been cited of the use of aLTE~ or aLTEO/IOL, there is not a single instance in which the thing asked for is something which the person is directly requested to do; generally, it is something to be given, and the object asked for is expressed by an accusative. Thus we see why in Matt. xxvii. 58 and the parallel passages in Mark and Luke we have ~JT7O~aTO Tb oii~ia K. T. A. but in John r~pi.~r?~O-Ev Tbi flELXaTOV. . . wa apy TO Oc.ij~a, K. T. A. In John xiv. 16 and xvi. 26, ~pur& ,J may be preferred to aIr~co, because the personal object not only is prominent, but is alone expressed; in the prayer John xvii. 9,15, 20, the personal object indeed is not ex- pressed, but is prominent in the mind from the nature of the case. It may also be true that 4x~rao, though not implying equality or authority, accords better than aiTh,) with the intimate personal relation between Christ and the Father, and also with that between Christ and his disciples. In Acts iii. 2, 3, the transition from OLTEW to 186 Trenchs S~ynonyms of the New Testament. [Jan. ~pcin-av may perhaps be explained by the prominence given in the third verse to Peter and John, the persons from whom the alms was asked, though the personal object is not expressed after the verb. It is fur- ther evident that with ~pwrc~o, the idea of earnestness is often asso- ciated; see, e. g. Mark vii. 26; Luke viii. 37; xvi. 27. Our transla- tors have felt this, in rendering the word so often beseech or en- treat. This is much more rarely the case with aiT~o or air~o,ia~, which is accordingly seldom used in exhortations. The exception in Ignat. Trail. 8 is so unusual, that Vossius insists that the true rending there must be irapaKaXc~. The use of cdroi3,ia~ in Eph. iii. 13, L~ILI~ airoi4~a. ~ ~v rair OX1~freo-U~ ,wv & ir~p i~4ui;v, accordingly favors the rendering, Wherefore I pray that I may not be disheartened in my afflictions in your behalf, rather than, I entreat you not to be disheartened, etc., though many of the best scholars prefer the latter.* If the preceding statements are correct, we cannot accept the dis- tinction between ~pco~ao, and ainco which Huther proposes, in the last edition of his Commentary on the First Epistle of John (note on 1 John v. 16). He says that ~povr~v, properly to inquire (fragen), is a milder asking than aireiv, which properly means to demand (fordern), and expresses greater urgency. Bengel, in his note on the same passage, regards EpcoTav as denoting the genus, of which atreiv is a species humilior; in other words, ~pcorav is to ask, in general, while air~Zv is to ask humbly, to beg. (Compare his note on John xi. 22.) But we have seen that this view is not sufficiently supported by usage. In the comparison which has been made between ~pw~-~co and airec~, it must be borne in mind that the former word, in the sense of to request or entreat, appears never to have had a wide currency. It seems to have been familiar in this sense to Luke, John, Paul, Hermas, the author of the Epistle ascribed to Barnabas, and Babrius; it does not occur in the Septuagint, is rare in Josephus, and seems to be very rare in the later Greek generally. We find commonly in its place d~soco, ~EO/La& , or 7s-apakaX. Though this use of rrapaicaX~e is condemned by Hermogenes, it is remarkably frequent in Josephus; it occurs a few times in the Se~tuagint, but there we have more commonly 3 o~a& or d$wo. One might suppose from its etymology and classical use that * On the side of the former construction (for which comp. Ignat. Trail. 12, aLTOv/.LEvo~ Oeov EIrLTvXELZ/) are the Syriac version, Theodoret, Bengel, Riickert, Harless, Baumgarten-Crusius, Gishausen, Wahi, Bretschneider, Conybeare, Braune, Ewald; the latter is supported by Theophylact, Grotius, LeClere, Beau- sobre, Wolf, Matthies, Dc Wette, Meyer, Bleek, Schenkel, Alford, Ellicott, Eadie, Noyes, and the majority of expositors. 1872.] Trenchs Synonyms of the New Testament. 187 the latter word would have the sense which Archbishop Trench ascribes to ~pOTL~O, of asking for something to which one has a certain right; but it is not so. It is used in the simple sense of to express a desire for something; or, with reference to a person, to ask, re- quest, pray. It often occurs with v~w Bcov or KVpLOV as its object; and is even used absolutely, as we should use to pray in English. A~o~at is also frequently thus used; and, what will seem very strange to a merely classical scholar, is often followed in the Septuagint, and once in the New Testament, by ~rpo~ with the accusative, like dxottai and 1rpoe7Cv~O/saL. We will conclude this long discussion with the examination of a passage of considerable interest, in which the meaning of ~pwraco has been disputed. I refer to John xvi. 23, which reads as follows in Tischendorfs last edition: Kai ~v EKELVy~ rj~ ~,i~pq 4~ 00K EpWT7JO~TE o~v. ~djv d1i,)v XEyco v,Iw, dv Ti aLT7~o7~TE TOP rrarepa, & 00EL V/ill EP TCO ~vo4iad ~iov. And in that day ye will ask nothing of me. rrruly, truly do I say to you, if ye ask anything of the Father, he will give it to you in my name.~~ The question is, whether ~pcordo is here used in the sense ofto in- quire, as in vv. 19, 30, or to request, as in ver. 26. Archbishop Trench remarks: Every one competent to judge is a.greed, that ye shall ask of the first half of the verse has nothing to do with ye shall ask of the second; that in the first Christ is referring back to the ~& Xov a,~-i5v EpA~Tav of ver. 19; to the questions which the disciples would fain have asked of him, if only they dared to set these before him. In that day, he would say, in the day of my seeing you again, I will by the Spirit so teach you all things, that ye shall be no longer perplexed, no longer wishing to ask me questions (cf. John xxi. 12) if only you might venture to do so. Syn., p. 136. The explanation given by Archbishop Trench is supported by Lampe, Bengel, Rosenmfiller, Kuinoel, De Wette, Meyer, Ewald, Godet, Bloomnfield, Alford, and a large majority of modern expositors; also by Wakefield and Norton in their translations of the New Testa- ment. But it seems to involve serious difficulties, which are not satis- factorily explained by these eminent commentators. Our Saviour is referring to the time when he was to be personally withdrawn from the disciples, and another Helper (,rapi~KX~Toi), the Holy Spirit, should, as it were, take his place. But why should he say that then they would ask him no questions? Was it worth while to tell them that they would not do what from the nature of the case was impossible? It is to be oh- Berved further that me is the emphatic word in the sentence, emphatic 188 Trenchs Synonyms of the New Testament. [Jan. both by form (~a) and position. We have then the meaning, In that day you ~vi1l ask no questions of me, but what is the antithesis? We are told that the meaning is, You will have no need to question me, because the Holy Spirit will enlighten you. But is not this put- ting violence on the simple 4t~ QUK ~pon-J~OETe o1AIEv? Further, though an antithesis is so strongly demanded by the emphatic ~4, according to this explanation we have none expressed, and none which is plainly suggested by the immediate context. If now, on the other hand, we take ~puTi~TETE in the sense of to re- quest, all is smooth and natural. The emphatic 4~ finds its immediate antithesis in 7-iv 7raT~pa; and we have no sudden transition from the subject of putting questions to that of petitioning. We have similar examples of the interchange of cpo~6.w and aii-~co in Acts iii. 2, 3, and 1 John v. 16; and it accords with the ordinary use of the words, ~pcordco being elsewhere employed of the requests addressed by the disciples to Christ, aIr~co of their petitions to God. Though after the departure of their Master from the earth the disciples would not address their peti- tions directly to him, as they had done when he was personally present with them, they would have all needed aid; whatever they should ask of the Father, he would give them in his name, that is on his account, or on account of their relation to him, they being as it were his repre- sentatives, carrying on his work upon the earth; comp. ch. xiv. 26, also Matt. xviii. 19, 20. Though a majority of the best scholars adopt the other interpreta- tion, it is too much to say, with Archbishop Trench, that every one competent to judge is agreed that the words must be so understood. Among the scholars who take ~pcor& o here in the sense ofto request, are Henry Stephens in his Thesaurus s. v. ~pcorc~o, Grotius, Vossius (Harm. Ev. i. c. 18, 18; Opp. vi. 151), Le Clerc (Nouv. Test.), Beausobre and Lenfant (N. 7.), Schoettgen, Archbishop Newcome in his translation, Baumgarten-Crusius, Weizsiicker (fahrb. f. deutsche Theol., 1857, ii. 183, note), and Weiss (Derjohan. Lehrbegriff BerI. 1862, p. 278), who in a pretty full discussion of the passage does not hesitate to call this an evidente exegetische Resultat. Schleusner, in his Lexicon, though explaining the clause in question by habebitis idoneam et perfectam scientiam, says, Alii non minus commode red- dunt, tum nihil amplius a me petetis. Confer sequentia, and Schir- litz (W6rterb. zum N. 21., 3e Aufi., 1868) assigns to EpWTaO. here the meaning bitten, to request. Bretschneider, WahI, and Robinson do not notice the passage. Among our American commentators who have assigned this meaning to ~pOT6.CO here may be mentioned Barnes (though he thinks there may be a reference to both meanings of the 1872.] Baxters National Debts. 189 word), and Dr. Howard Crosby in his Notes on the New Testa- ment. According to Bloomfield (Recensio Synoptica in bc.), ~pwTao is explained in this passage as meaning to request by Chrysostom, Theodore of Mopsuestia, Theodore of Heraclea, and Theophylact. This is, however, not quite correct. Chrysostom, Theophylact, and also Euthymius recognize both meanings of ~pon-c~o in their notes on the verse, kindly allowing the reader his choice. The expression used by Nonnus in his Paraphrase may be regarded as ambiguous. There seems to be nothing bearing on the point in the writings of Theodore of Mopsuestia (Mignes Patrol. Grceca, Vol. LXVI.). Theodore of Heraclea is probably the author of some of the notes on the Gos- pel of John, of which fragments have been preserved in a Gothic trans- lation published by Massmann under the title Skeireins Aivagge~ons thairk .Jokannen, Milnehen, 1834; but there appears to be among them no note on John xvi. 23, nor do I know on what the statement of Bloomfield respecting this writer can be founded. Whatever view may be taken of the disputed passage, the interpre- tation just given has too much in its favor, and is supported by too many respectable scholars, to be dismissed at once with contempt. It may be said, however, that the above explanation of ~ oi~~ Epo~T?~oETE o~z is forbidden by the fact that the early Christians habitually addressed their prayers to Christ, as is shown by the use of the expres- sion to call upon the name of the Lord, Acts ix. 14, 21; xxii. 16; Rom. x. 12 14; 1 Cor. i. 2 (comp. Acts ii. 21; 2 Tim. ii. 22) ; and by the examples of Stephen (Acts vii. 59) and Paul (2 Cor. xii. 8). I admit that if the phrase ol e73-LIcaXov/Le~t Tb OVOFL~ TOP KVpLOt) as applied to the early Christians implies that their petitions were habitually addressed to Christ instead of to the Father in his name, this fact is an objection to the interpretation proposed. The question is one of no little interest; but to discuss it here would carry us much too far, and might lead into the thorny paths of dogmatic theology. E. A. 2. National Debts. By R. DUDLEY BAXTER, M. A. Partly read before the British Association at Liverpool, September, 1870. London. 1871. 8vo. pp. 139. THAT the expenditures of the principal nations of Europe have, since the French Revolution, greatly exceeded their income, that the payment of the mere interest on the debts now accumulated absorbs a large fraction of the annual revenue, and that every war largely increases the total accumulation, are familiar facts. But the history of the sue- 190 Baxters National De6ts. [Jan. cessive steps by which these debts have been incurred, and the present state and rate of progress of the debt of each individual nation, are sub- jects of which little is known by the general public, and of which the sources of knowledge are not readily accessible. In the work before us the more important parts of this subject are presented in a form which, so far as perspicuity is concerned, leaves little to be desired. Under the head of each nation, we find the amount of its public debt at the principal epochs of its history, with allusions to the circumstances which lead to its increase or diminution. With this is generally given the annual charge for interest, the author being careful not to in- clude under this head any payments on account of principal. As it is impossible to judge of the pressure of the debt without knowing the num- ber of people or the amount of wealth by which it is supported, two additional exhibits are given; the one, amount of annual interest per head of population; the other, percentage of annual interest on total income of population. The last is about as good a measure as statistics can furnish of the ability of a people to sustain a debt, but it is still totally inadequate. Willingness of the people to be taxed for the con- tinued payment of interest or principal is really the most essential con- dition. A people determined to carry out the object for which money is to be raised may give up a fourth of their income as readily as a dis- contented people will give up a fortieth. In such a case the former are, for all practical purposes, possessed of ten times the tax-paying ability of the latter. In the facts that such countries as France and Austria have not for twenty years found it politically expedient to raise enough revenue for their ciwrent expenses, we have evidence of unwillingness to be taxed which no statistics can invalidate, and which seems tantamount to absolute inability to continue the payment of in- terest on their debt. Mr. Baxters work seems arranged rather with a view of instructing the general reader than of forming a repository of original information. We notice, for instance, that all the sums are expressed solely in ster- ling money, without any indication of the actual moneys in which pay- ment is made, a feature very convenient for the reader, but not at all scientific. His data have the appearance of being carefully collected, but in his statements of our own debt he shows that proneness to neglect official sources of information which so generally marks English writers on American affairs. His principal authority on this subject seems to be some American Year-Book, from which he finds that the Federal debt, on July 1, 1865, was 551,000,000. If he had consulted the Treasury Reports he would probably have selected the date at which the debt reached its maximum, which was two months 18Y2.] Baxter s National Debts. 191 later. Its amount was then $ 2,757,000,000, or, in round numbers, 569,000,000. Among the most important facts brought out by Mr. Baxter is the enormous general increase in the public debts of the world within the present generation. From 1848 to 1869 70 the aggregate debt of Europe increased from fifteen to twenty-nine hundred million pounds, without reckoning the French war indemnity. The addition of this would make the entire increase more than double. Omitting Great Britain, whose debt in 1843 was greater than all the rest together, we find that the Continental debts have more than trebled during this interval. If the future is as fruitful of wars as the past, what is to become of nations which, even in times of peace, cannot raise surplus revenue to pay the interest on their accumulated debt? We conceive that an encouraging answer can be given only by assuming an improb- able rate of growth, or an improbable increase in the power of govern- ments to levy taxes. Experience seems to preclude the latter suppo- sition, the general tendency of modern civilization being to diminish the power of the government over the individual. Indeed, this diminu- tion is what has led to the borrowing system, go4ernments borrowing only when they find it impracticable to meet their expenditures by taxation. The relief thus obtained is not only temporary, but must ultimately increase the evil through the necessity of providing in- definitely for the interest. If, indeed, a debt is incurred only under extraordinary circumstances, to be paid off again before another emergency arises, the case is different. But this is not the policy of Continental nations, and the financial future of Continental Europe can hardly be regarded as encouraging from any admissible point of view. There are several things conducive to a clear understanding of the subject which we should have been glad to see added. One is the annual expenditure of each nation for other purposes than the payment of interest, which would enable the reader to estimate the real difficulties the government has to deal with in providing the interest. Another is a statement of the present policy of each nation with respect to the management of its debt. On the latter point our author is entirely silent. Mr. Baxters work attempts the double task of giving information and teaching wisdom. A portion of the latter is scattered among his statistics, thus detracting from the unity of the subject. But most of it is found in a concluding chapter on Debt Evils and Debt Reduction. We are disappointed in this chapter. Its principal merits are negative ones, which would perhaps be notable in an American work; the author has no startling theory to support, and his conclusions are in accordance 192 Baxters National Debts. [Jan. with the average good sense of the community. But the subject is discussed from the usual narrow stand-point, and the reasoning is im- bued with the current popular fallacies which surround the subject. The question is considered for the most part as one of debt or no debt, simply. If all other conditions were equal, even if they could possibly be equal, this would be the proper mode of treatment. But they can- not be so because something must always be done with borrowed money. Now, an economical truth which is obvious on a little careful considera- tion, but which is almost universally ignored, is this: The economical effect of borrowing money or raising revenue depends, mainly, not on the mode in which it is obtained, supposing, of course, that it is obtained by reasonable means, but on the mode in which it is expended. Con- sequently, when Mr. Baxter says that a national debt weakens a nation by withdrawing capital from productive employments and im- provements, he asserts a proposition to which, as a general truth, we beg leave to take exception. Suppose the borrowed money is em- ployed in building a system of railways, the profits from which pay the interest on the debt: there is surely no weakening of the nation, and no withdrawal of capital from productive employment. Mr. Baxter would probably reply, that such a disposal of borrowed money is too unusual to be worth considering, and that his proposition presupposes the money to be expended in war. But, in this case, it. is the war, and not the (lebt, that does the mischief. The latter will be about the same whether the war be supported by the system of Xerxes, by taxation, or by bori~owed money, because it consists essentially, not in any mere financial operation, but in the turning of a large fraction of the indus- trial forces of the nation from the channels of production into those of destruction. JE, then, the immediate evil is the same whether a debt is or is not incurred, it is not logical to make the debt the cause of the evil. A large part of the chapter under review is devoted to a compari- son of the effects of borrowing and taxation, and we are hound in jus- tice to say that so long as these policies are considered solely with respect to their relative effect, the discussion is not open to the above criticism. We understand our author to give the preference to a sys- tem of temporary heavy taxation during the emergency of war, instead of depending almost entirely on loans, as the United States did during the civil ~var. In this we heartily agree with him, conceiving that his position may be supported by much stronger arguments than those he ad- duces. TIme omme proposition of his chapter which is more important than all the rest put together, is disposed of in one sente~ice, without discus- sion. The industrial capital of a nation is rather increased than 1812.] Freemans Historical Essays. 193 diminished by reducing a debt. We call this proposition most im- portant, because it is the only one which corrects a grent and wide- spread popular misapprehension. The general public idea seems to be that if a nation incurs a thousand millions of debt to carry on a wnr, raising no taxes, she is as rich as when she commenced, and that the impoverishment only commences when she undertakes to pay the debt. As a logical consequence, if she leaves this task to posterity, she throws on them all the burden of the war. We conceive this view to be entirely fallacious. The mischief is all done when the war is closed, and the operation of paying off the debt incurred is rather a process of repairing this mischief than one of further exhaustion. We wonder that any clear-headed student of this subject should fail to see the fallacy of the popular notion that, by incurring a debt, the burden of a war is thrown upon posterity, even when the nation borrows the money from its own citizens. We may, indeed, leave a debt to be paid by posterity, but it must be paid to posterity as well as by it, so that the nccount is balanced. War destroys wealth posterity would other- wise have inherited, so that the latter suffers by it, but this destruction and consequent suffering are quite independent of the financial policy of the combatants. 3. Historical Essays. By EDWARD A. FREEMAN, M. A .,Hon. D. C. L., late Fellow of Trinity College, Oxford. London: Macmillan & Co. 1871. pp. 406. MR. FREEMAN stands in the very front rank of living English his- torians. He is a legitimate successor of Hallam, Palgrave, and Grote. Any book coming from him is therefore sure to attract attention and to receive its full share of approval. Every library which has any pre- tensions to merit must possess it, and the literary man who neglects to examine it does so at his imminent peril. Having said so much, we have said all that is required in recom- mendation of this book, the contents of which are rather necessary to an elementary education than to the attainment of any very advanced knowledge. There is little or no original investigation in these essays, and as for speculation or novel theory, Mr. Freeman cannot be charged with rashness of experiment in this direction. More than half the volume concerns points of continental history, and Mr. Freeman s special grievance, as appears here, is that French ideas of continental history are utterly distorted, and that Englishmen, and we may add Americans, are profoundly ignorant of anything except French ideas. VOL. CXIV. NO. 234. 13

1812.] Freemans Historical Essays. 193 diminished by reducing a debt. We call this proposition most im- portant, because it is the only one which corrects a grent and wide- spread popular misapprehension. The general public idea seems to be that if a nation incurs a thousand millions of debt to carry on a wnr, raising no taxes, she is as rich as when she commenced, and that the impoverishment only commences when she undertakes to pay the debt. As a logical consequence, if she leaves this task to posterity, she throws on them all the burden of the war. We conceive this view to be entirely fallacious. The mischief is all done when the war is closed, and the operation of paying off the debt incurred is rather a process of repairing this mischief than one of further exhaustion. We wonder that any clear-headed student of this subject should fail to see the fallacy of the popular notion that, by incurring a debt, the burden of a war is thrown upon posterity, even when the nation borrows the money from its own citizens. We may, indeed, leave a debt to be paid by posterity, but it must be paid to posterity as well as by it, so that the nccount is balanced. War destroys wealth posterity would other- wise have inherited, so that the latter suffers by it, but this destruction and consequent suffering are quite independent of the financial policy of the combatants. 3. Historical Essays. By EDWARD A. FREEMAN, M. A .,Hon. D. C. L., late Fellow of Trinity College, Oxford. London: Macmillan & Co. 1871. pp. 406. MR. FREEMAN stands in the very front rank of living English his- torians. He is a legitimate successor of Hallam, Palgrave, and Grote. Any book coming from him is therefore sure to attract attention and to receive its full share of approval. Every library which has any pre- tensions to merit must possess it, and the literary man who neglects to examine it does so at his imminent peril. Having said so much, we have said all that is required in recom- mendation of this book, the contents of which are rather necessary to an elementary education than to the attainment of any very advanced knowledge. There is little or no original investigation in these essays, and as for speculation or novel theory, Mr. Freeman cannot be charged with rashness of experiment in this direction. More than half the volume concerns points of continental history, and Mr. Freeman s special grievance, as appears here, is that French ideas of continental history are utterly distorted, and that Englishmen, and we may add Americans, are profoundly ignorant of anything except French ideas. VOL. CXIV. NO. 234. 13

1812.] Freemans Historical Essays. 193 diminished by reducing a debt. We call this proposition most im- portant, because it is the only one which corrects a grent and wide- spread popular misapprehension. The general public idea seems to be that if a nation incurs a thousand millions of debt to carry on a wnr, raising no taxes, she is as rich as when she commenced, and that the impoverishment only commences when she undertakes to pay the debt. As a logical consequence, if she leaves this task to posterity, she throws on them all the burden of the war. We conceive this view to be entirely fallacious. The mischief is all done when the war is closed, and the operation of paying off the debt incurred is rather a process of repairing this mischief than one of further exhaustion. We wonder that any clear-headed student of this subject should fail to see the fallacy of the popular notion that, by incurring a debt, the burden of a war is thrown upon posterity, even when the nation borrows the money from its own citizens. We may, indeed, leave a debt to be paid by posterity, but it must be paid to posterity as well as by it, so that the nccount is balanced. War destroys wealth posterity would other- wise have inherited, so that the latter suffers by it, but this destruction and consequent suffering are quite independent of the financial policy of the combatants. 3. Historical Essays. By EDWARD A. FREEMAN, M. A .,Hon. D. C. L., late Fellow of Trinity College, Oxford. London: Macmillan & Co. 1871. pp. 406. MR. FREEMAN stands in the very front rank of living English his- torians. He is a legitimate successor of Hallam, Palgrave, and Grote. Any book coming from him is therefore sure to attract attention and to receive its full share of approval. Every library which has any pre- tensions to merit must possess it, and the literary man who neglects to examine it does so at his imminent peril. Having said so much, we have said all that is required in recom- mendation of this book, the contents of which are rather necessary to an elementary education than to the attainment of any very advanced knowledge. There is little or no original investigation in these essays, and as for speculation or novel theory, Mr. Freeman cannot be charged with rashness of experiment in this direction. More than half the volume concerns points of continental history, and Mr. Freeman s special grievance, as appears here, is that French ideas of continental history are utterly distorted, and that Englishmen, and we may add Americans, are profoundly ignorant of anything except French ideas. VOL. CXIV. NO. 234. 13 191 Freemans Historical Essays. [Jan. This is not a very lofty aim for an historian of Mr. Freemans rank; if he stops to fight with elementary ignorance and to teach his readers their alphabet, he is not likely ever to do much more. The audience which requires to be taught that Burgundy and Guienne were once independent of Normandy and Paris, is not likely to grasp more than a very few such facts, and will not advance far into the study of real difficulties. As the best example of more serious work of the same kind, the essay on Kirks Charles the Bold will probably most interest American readers. In three other essays, passim, Mr. Freeman as- saults the French Empire with much success, but with a very vicious temper. As usual with his controversial work, he ends in pro- ducing a feeling of reaction against himself and his very just though rather commonplace ideas. That France has grown wholly at the ex- pense of her old neighbors is naturally true; she must have done so or not have grown at all. That she has covered many very infamous viola- tions of international comity with a special excuse of a quite imaginary national unity, is as true as it is that the German Reich (since Mr. Freeman objects to the word Empire in a narrow sense) habitually covered very ugly transactions with its Eastern neighbors under the veil of religion, and exacted tributes or annexed territory solely in the interests of Christ and the Church. But a passage like the following is altogether bungling and inartistic in effect; it would drive even a German into remonstrance, and fail to rouse anything but a laugh in the most sensitive of Frenchmen: When Louis Napoleon Buonaparte first expressed his wish to be- come master of Savoy, the word selected for the occasion was the verb rdvendiquer, and the actual process of annexation is expressed by the noun rdunion and the verb r~unir. At first sight this seems very much as if a burglar who asked for your money or your life should be said to rdvendiquer the contents of your purse, and afterwards to effect a reunion between them and the contents of his own. Accord- ing to all etymology r~vendiquer must mean to claim back again something which you have lost, and r6union must mean the joining together of things which have been separated after being originally one. Now undoubtedly in modern French usage the particle re has lost its natural force, and rduaion has come simply to mean union. It is a most speaking fact that in any language reunion should have come to mean the same as union. It could only have come to do so in the language of a country where a long series of fraudulent or violent unions had been ingeniously passed off as lawful r& unions. Here is an ingenious etymological theory, much livelier at any rate, 1872.] Freeman s Historical IJssa~qs. 195 it not better founded, than many of its authors favorite historical notions. But in the first place, even if it is assumed that Mr. Free- mans philology is equal to the very best German standard, one must still remonstrate against one wilful, malicious, and unjustifiable calumny of Louis Napoleon Buonaparte, a calumny which must add a con- siderable sting to the sufferings of that unfortunate man. The literary style of the ex-Emperor has often been sharply criticised, as it possibly deserved, but it certainly passes the limits of fair play when Mr. Free- man actually ventures to make the Emperor responsible for Mr. Free- mans own French. We will risk a heavy stake on the assertion that the Emperor never used the word r6vendiquer, and that no one but an Englishman not very much at home in French, nor very well fitted for philological theorizing, would ever have put the word in a French- mans mouth. But setting aside such trifles as accents, which Englishmen have for many centuries agreed to despise, it still seems a little surprising that Mr. Freeman should ever have committed himself to such a statement as the one quoted above. It is surprising because there is in English history a curious anecdote with which Mr. Freeman must be perfectly well acquainted, which bears on this very point. The story is told of Harry Marten the regicide, who in the fervor of republicanism spoke of England, in full Parliament, as restored to its ancient government of Commonwealth. Marten was at once attacked for ignorance of the English language and of history, with as much temper as if he had been a French Emperor and Mr. Freeman his critic, and as he was neither Emperor nor historian nor philologist, but only a wit, he fell back on an authority which Mr. Freeman might also consult to advantage. There was, said he, a text which had often troubled his spirit concerning the man who was blind from his mothers womb, but at length whose sight was restored to the sight which he should have had. Barring Mr. Freemans most inveterate prejudices, he is, when there is neither a French Emperor to abuse nor an Anglo-Saxon king or earl to worship, a hard student and an honest workman. That he is or ever can be a great historian, in any high sense of the word, is diffi- cult to believe. He has read the great German historians, and he probably admires them, but he has certainly failed to understand either their method or their aims. He shows only a limited capacity for critical combinations, and he has a true English contempt for novel theories. In spite of his labors, the history of the Norman Conquest and an accurate stafement of Anglo-Saxon institutions still remain as far from realization as ever. Yet Americans owe him some love, if 196 Aliaines Village Communities. [Jan. only because he was not one of their English enemies in days when they had few English friends. A few slight errors in this volume require correction. Page 190: King Charles was succeeded by his son Lothair, should read, King Louis ; Louis dOutremer. Mr. Freeman comes near treating Mr. Kington as unfairly as he does the Emperor Napoleon. Page 297: Ia 1210 Frederick was elected king; two years later, Otto, in Mr. [Kington] Oliphants words, rushed on his doom. The words are indeed Mr. Kingtons, but the date belongs to Mr. Freeman. Frederick II. had the ill fortune to be three times elected king, but never in the year 1210. The election here meant is that of 1212, from which Frederick dated the years of his reign. Again, p. 186: In 888 Charles the Fat was deposed, and in 963 Otto the Great finally annexed the Roman Empire and the Italian Kingdom to his own Teutonic crown. Charles the Fat was deposed in 887, and setting aside the fact that Otto did not finally annex the Italian Kingdom to his Teutonic crown, but that the Italians continued after him to dis- pose of their own crown as in the case of Ardoin of Ivrea in 1002, the date itself is incorrect. Otto the Great was crowned Emperor on the 2d of February, 962. 4. 1. Village Communities in the East and West. Six Lectures delivered at Oxford by HENRY SUMNER MAINE, Corpus Professor of Jurisprudence in the University. London: John Murray. 1871. pp. 226. 2. Agricultural Communities of the Middle Ages. From the German of E. NASSE. Translated by H. A. OUVRY. Published by the Cobden Club. London: Macmillan & Co. 1871. pp. 100. 3. Die Altdeutsche Reic/is-und Geric/ltsverfassung. Von DR. Ru- DOLPH SORM, ord. Professor an der Universit~t Freiburg i. Br. Erster Band. Die Friinkische Reichs-und Gerichtsverfassung. Weimar: Hermann Bohlau. 1871. pp. 588. THERE are many indications that a new historical school must soon develop itself in England, with new methods and with a deeper basis than has yet been required of English historical students. It is clear that the old school is practically worn out, and in spite of various false starts and much premature theorizing, that the new one sooner or later will run its course and triumph. It is now some years since Sir Henry Maine in his Ancient Law sketched out with great breadth and boldness one principal path which the new student would

196 Aliaines Village Communities. [Jan. only because he was not one of their English enemies in days when they had few English friends. A few slight errors in this volume require correction. Page 190: King Charles was succeeded by his son Lothair, should read, King Louis ; Louis dOutremer. Mr. Freeman comes near treating Mr. Kington as unfairly as he does the Emperor Napoleon. Page 297: Ia 1210 Frederick was elected king; two years later, Otto, in Mr. [Kington] Oliphants words, rushed on his doom. The words are indeed Mr. Kingtons, but the date belongs to Mr. Freeman. Frederick II. had the ill fortune to be three times elected king, but never in the year 1210. The election here meant is that of 1212, from which Frederick dated the years of his reign. Again, p. 186: In 888 Charles the Fat was deposed, and in 963 Otto the Great finally annexed the Roman Empire and the Italian Kingdom to his own Teutonic crown. Charles the Fat was deposed in 887, and setting aside the fact that Otto did not finally annex the Italian Kingdom to his Teutonic crown, but that the Italians continued after him to dis- pose of their own crown as in the case of Ardoin of Ivrea in 1002, the date itself is incorrect. Otto the Great was crowned Emperor on the 2d of February, 962. 4. 1. Village Communities in the East and West. Six Lectures delivered at Oxford by HENRY SUMNER MAINE, Corpus Professor of Jurisprudence in the University. London: John Murray. 1871. pp. 226. 2. Agricultural Communities of the Middle Ages. From the German of E. NASSE. Translated by H. A. OUVRY. Published by the Cobden Club. London: Macmillan & Co. 1871. pp. 100. 3. Die Altdeutsche Reic/is-und Geric/ltsverfassung. Von DR. Ru- DOLPH SORM, ord. Professor an der Universit~t Freiburg i. Br. Erster Band. Die Friinkische Reichs-und Gerichtsverfassung. Weimar: Hermann Bohlau. 1871. pp. 588. THERE are many indications that a new historical school must soon develop itself in England, with new methods and with a deeper basis than has yet been required of English historical students. It is clear that the old school is practically worn out, and in spite of various false starts and much premature theorizing, that the new one sooner or later will run its course and triumph. It is now some years since Sir Henry Maine in his Ancient Law sketched out with great breadth and boldness one principal path which the new student would

196 Aliaines Village Communities. [Jan. only because he was not one of their English enemies in days when they had few English friends. A few slight errors in this volume require correction. Page 190: King Charles was succeeded by his son Lothair, should read, King Louis ; Louis dOutremer. Mr. Freeman comes near treating Mr. Kington as unfairly as he does the Emperor Napoleon. Page 297: Ia 1210 Frederick was elected king; two years later, Otto, in Mr. [Kington] Oliphants words, rushed on his doom. The words are indeed Mr. Kingtons, but the date belongs to Mr. Freeman. Frederick II. had the ill fortune to be three times elected king, but never in the year 1210. The election here meant is that of 1212, from which Frederick dated the years of his reign. Again, p. 186: In 888 Charles the Fat was deposed, and in 963 Otto the Great finally annexed the Roman Empire and the Italian Kingdom to his own Teutonic crown. Charles the Fat was deposed in 887, and setting aside the fact that Otto did not finally annex the Italian Kingdom to his Teutonic crown, but that the Italians continued after him to dis- pose of their own crown as in the case of Ardoin of Ivrea in 1002, the date itself i