Chapter III: Front Matter (3)

The love of the world can not be expunged by a mere demonstration of the world’s worthlessness. But may it not be supplanted by the love of that which is more worthy than itself? The heart can not be prevailed upon to part with the world by a single act of resignation. But may not the heart be prevailed upon to admit into its preference another, who shall subordinate the world, and bring it down from its wonted ascendancy? If the throne which is placed there must have an occupier, and the tyrant that now reigns has occupied it wrongfully, he may not leave a bosom which would rather detain him than be left in desolation. But may he not give way to the lawful sovereign, appearing with every charm that can secure his willing admittance, and taking unto himself his great power to subdue the moral nature of man, and to reign over it? In a word, if the way to disengage the heart from the positive love of one great and ascendant object, is to fasten it in positive love to another, then it is not by exposing the worthlessness of the former, but by addressing to the mental eye the worth and excellence of the latter, that all things are to be done away, and all things are become new.

To obliterate all our present affections by simply expunging them, so as to leave the seat of them unoccupied, would be to destroy the old character, and to substitute no new character in its place. But when they take their departure upon the ingress of others, when they resign their sway to the power and the predominance of new affections, when, abandoning the heart to solitude, they merely give place to a successor who turns it into as busy a residence of desire, and interest, and expectation as before—there is nothing in all this to thwart or to overthrow any of the laws of our sentient nature—and we see how, in fullest accordance with the mechanism of the heart, a great moral revolution may be made to take place upon it.

This, we trust, will explain the operation of that charm which accompanies the effectual preaching of the gospel. The love of God, and the love of the world, are two affections, not merely in a state of rivalship, but in a state of enmity—and that so irreconcilable that they can not dwell together in the same bosom. We have already affirmed how impossible it were for the heart, by any innate elasticity of its own, to cast the world away from it, and thus reduce itself to a wilderness. The heart is not so constituted, and the only way to dispossess it of an old affection is by the expulsive power of a new one. Nothing can exceed the magnitude of the required change in a man’s character, when bidden, as he is in the New Testament, not to love the world; no, nor any of the things that are in the world, for this so comprehends all that is dear to him in existence as to be equivalent to a command of self-annihilation. But the same revelation which dictates so mighty an obedience, places within our reach as mighty an instrument of obedience.

It brings for admittance, to the very door of our heart, an affection which, once seated upon its throne, will either subordinate every previous inmate, or bid it away. Beside the world, it places before the eye of the mind Him who made the world, and with this peculiarity, which is all its own—that in the gospel do we so behold God, as that we may love God. It is there, and there only, where God stands revealed as an object of confidence to sinners—and where our desire after Him is not chilled into apathy by that barrier of human guilt which intercepts every approach that is not made to Him through the appointed Mediator. It is the bringing in of this better hope whereby we draw nigh unto God—and to live without hope is to live without God, and if the heart be without God, the world will then have the ascendancy. It is God apprehended by the believer as God in Christ, who alone can disport it from this ascendancy. It is when He stands dismantled of the terrors which belong to Him as an offended lawgiver, and when we are enabled by faith, which is his own gift, to see His glory in the face of Jesus Christ, and to hear His beseeching voice, as it protests good will to men, and entreats the return of all who will, to a full pardon and a gracious acceptance—it is then that a love paramount to the love of the world, and at length expulsive of it, first arises in the regenerating bosom. It is when released from the spirit of bondage, with which love can not dwell, and when to the number of God’s children, through the faith that is in Christ Jesus, the spirit of adoption is found upon us; it is then that the heart, brought under the mastery of one great and predominant affection, is delivered from the tyranny of its former desires, and in the only way in which deliverance is possible. And that faith which is revealed to us from heaven, as indispensable to a sinner’s justification in the sight of God, is also the instrument of the greatest of all moral and spiritual achievements on a nature dead to the influence, and beyond the reach of every other application.

[_April 20._]

Thus may we come to perceive what it is that makes the most effective kind of preaching. It is not enough to hold out to the world’s eye the mirror of its own imperfections. It is not enough to come forth with a demonstration, however pathetic, of the evanescent character of all its enjoyments. It is not enough to travel the walk of experience along with you, and speak to your own conscience and your own recollection of the deceitfulness of the heart, and the deceitfulness of all that the heart is set upon. There is many a bearer of the gospel message who has not shrewdness of natural discernment enough, and who has not power of characteristic description enough, and who has not the talent of moral delineation enough, to present you with a vivid and faithful sketch of the existing follies of society. But that very corruption which he has not the faculty of representing in its visible details, he may practically be the instrument of eradicating in its principle. Let him be but a faithful expounder of the gospel testimony; unable as he may be to apply a descriptive hand to the character of the present world, let him but report with accuracy the matter which revelation has brought to him from a distant world, unskilled as he is in the work of so anatomizing the heart, as with the power of a novelist to create a graphical or impressive exhibition of the worthlessness of its many affections—let him only deal in those mysteries of peculiar doctrine, on which the best of novelists have thrown the wantonness of their derision. He may not be able, with the eye of shrewd and satirical observation, to expose to the ready recognition of his hearers the desires of worldliness—but with the tidings of the gospel in commission, he may wield the only engine that can extirpate them. He can not do what some might have done, when, as if by the hand of a magician they have brought out to view, from the hidden recesses of our nature, the foibles and lurking appetites which belong to it. But he has a truth in the possession, which, into whatever heart it enters, will, like the rod of Aaron, swallow up them all—and unqualified as he may be, to describe the old man in all the nicer shading of his natural and constitutional varieties, with him is deposited that ascendant influence under which the leading tastes and tendencies of the old man are destroyed, and he becomes a new creature in Jesus Christ our Lord.

Let us not cease, then, to ply the only instrument of powerful and positive operation, to do away from you the love of the world. Let us try every legitimate method of finding access to your hearts for the love of Him who is greater than the world. For this purpose, if possible, clear away that shroud of unbelief which so hides and darkens the face of the Deity. Let us insist on His claims to your affection, and whether in the shape of gratitude or in the shape of esteem, let us never cease to affirm that in the whole of that wondrous economy, the purpose of which is to reclaim a sinful world unto Himself, He, the God of love, so sets Himself forth in characters of endearment, that naught but faith, and naught but understanding are wanting, on your part, to call forth the love of your hearts back again.

And here let me advert to the incredulity of a worldly man; when he brings his own sound and secular experience to bear upon the high doctrines of Christianity, when he looks upon regeneration as a thing impossible, when feeling as he does the obstinacies of his own heart, on the side of things present, and casting an intelligent eye, much exercised, perhaps, in the observations of human life, on the equal obstinacies of all who are around him, he pronounces this whole matter about the crucifixion of the old man, and the resurrection of a new man in his place, to be in downright opposition to all that is known and witnessed of the real nature of humanity. We think that we have seen such men, who, firmly trenched in their own vigorous and homebred sagacity, and shrewdly regardful of all that passes before them through the week, and upon the scenes of ordinary business, look on that transition of the heart by which it gradually dies unto time, and awakens in all the life of a new felt and ever growing desire toward God, as a mere Sabbath speculation; and who thus, with all their attention engrossed upon the concerns of earthliness, continue unmoved to the end of their days, amongst the feelings and the appetites, and the pursuits of earthliness.

If the thought of death, and another state of being after it, comes across them at all, it is not with a change so radical as that of being born again, that they ever connect the idea of preparation. They have some vague conception of its being quite enough that they acquit themselves in some decent and tolerable way of their relative obligations; and that upon the strength of some such social and domestic moralities as are often realized by him in whose heart the love of God has never entered, they will be transplanted in safety from this world, where God is the Being with whom it may almost be said that they have had nothing to do, to that world where God is the Being with whom they will have mainly and immediately to do throughout all eternity. They admit all that is said of the utter vanity of time, when taken up with as a resting place. But they resist every application made upon the heart of man, with the view of so shifting its tendencies that it shall not henceforth find in the interests of time, all its rest and all its refreshment. They in fact regard such an attempt as an enterprise that is altogether aerial, and with a tone of secular wisdom caught from the familiarities of every-day experience, do they see a visionary character in all that is said of setting our affections on the things that are above, and of walking by faith, and of keeping our hearts in such a love of God as shall shut out from them the love of the world, and of having no confidence in the flesh, and of so renouncing earthly things as to have our conversation in heaven.

Now, it is altogether worthy of being remarked of those men who thus disrelish spiritual Christianity, and, in fact, deem it an impracticable acquirement, how much of a piece their incredulities about the doctrines of Christianity are with each other. No wonder that they feel the work of the New Testament to be beyond their strength, so long as they hold the words of the New Testament to be beneath their attention. Neither they nor any one else can dispossess the heart of an old affection, but by the impulsive power of a new one, and, if that new affection be the love of God, neither they nor any one else can be made to entertain it, but on such a representation of the Deity as shall draw the heart of the sinner toward Him. Now, it is just their unbelief which screens from the discernment of their minds this representation. They do not see the love of God in sending His Son into the world. They do not see the expression of his tenderness to men, in sparing him not, but giving him up unto the death for us all. They do not see the sufficiency of the atonement, or of the sufferings that were endured by him who bore the burden that sinners should have borne. They do not see the blended holiness and compassion of the Godhead, in that He passed by the transgressions of His creatures, yet could not pass them by without an expiation. It is a mystery to them how a man should pass to a state of godliness from a state of nature—but had they only a believing view of God manifest in the flesh, this would resolve for them the whole mystery of godliness. As it is, they can not get quit of their old affections, because they are out of sight from all those truths which have influence to raise a new one. They are like the children of Israel in the land of Egypt, when required to make bricks without straw—they can not love God, while they want the only food which can aliment this affection in a sinner’s bosom—and however great their errors may be, both in resisting the demands of the gospel as impracticable, and in rejecting the doctrines of the gospel as inadmissible, yet there is not a spiritual man (and it is the prerogative of Him who is spiritual to judge all men) who will not perceive that there is a consistency in these errors.

[_April 27._]

But if there be a consistency in the errors, in like manner is there a consistency in the truths which are opposite to them. The man who believes in the peculiar doctrines will readily bow to the peculiar demands of Christianity. When he is told to love God supremely, this may startle him to whom God has been revealed in grace, and in pardon, and in all the freeness of an offered reconciliation. When told he should shut out the world from the heart, this may be impossible with him who has nothing to replace it—but not impossible with him who has found in God a sure and a satisfying portion. When told to withdraw his affections from the things that are beneath, this was laying an order of self-extinction upon the man who knows not another quarter in the whole sphere of his contemplation, to which he could transfer them—but it were not grievous to him whose view has been opened up to the loveliness and glory of the things that are above, and can there find, for every feeling of his soul, a most ample and delighted occupation. When told to look not at the things that are seen and temporal, this were blotting out the light of all that is visible from the prospect of him in whose eye there is a wall of partition between guilty nature and the joys of eternity—but he who believes that Christ has broken down this wall, finds a gathering radiance upon his soul, as he looks onward in faith to the things that are unseen and eternal. Tell a man to be holy—and how can he compass such a performance, when his alone fellowship with holiness is a fellowship of despair? It is the atonement of the cross, reconciling the holiness of the lawgiver with the safety of the offender, that hath opened the way for a sanctifying influence into the sinner’s heart, and he can take a kindred impression from the character of God now brought nigh, and now at peace with him.

Separate the demand from the doctrine, and you have either a system of righteousness that is impracticable, or a barren orthodoxy. Bring the demand and the doctrine together, and the true disciple of Christ is able to do the one through the other strengthening him. The motive is adequate to the movement, and the bidden obedience of the gospel is not beyond the measure of his strength, just because the doctrine of the gospel is not beyond the measure of his acceptance. The shield of faith, and the hope of salvation, and the Word of God, and the girdle of truth—these are the armor that he has put on; and with these the battle is won, and the eminence is reached, and the man stands on the vantage ground of a new field and a new prospect. The effect is great, but the cause is equal to it—and stupendous as this moral resurrection to the precepts of Christianity undoubtedly is, there is an element of strength enough to give it being and continuance in the principles of Christianity.

The object of the gospel is both to pacify the sinner’s conscience, and to purify his heart; and it is of importance to observe that what mars one of these objects, mars the other also. The best way of casting out an impure affection is to admit a pure one; and by the love of what is good, to expel the love of what is evil. Thus it is, that the freer the gospel, the more sanctifying the gospel; and the more it is received as a doctrine of grace, the more will it be felt as a doctrine according to godliness. This is one of the secrets of the Christian life, that the more a man holds of God as a pensioner, the greater is the payment of service that he renders back again. On the tenure of “Do this and live,” a spirit of fearfulness is sure to enter; and the jealousies of a legal bargain chase away all confidence from the intercourse between God and man; and the creature striving to be square and even with his Creator, is, in fact, pursuing all the while his own selfishness instead of God’s glory, and with all the conformities which he labors to accomplish, the soul of obedience is not there, the mind is not subject to the law of God, nor indeed under such an economy ever can be. It is only when, as in the gospel, acceptance is bestowed as a present, without money and without price, that the security which man feels in God is placed beyond the reach of disturbance, or that he can repose in him, as one friend reposes in another, or that any liberal and generous understanding can be established betwixt them—one party rejoicing over the other to do him good—the other finding that the truest gladness of his heart lies in the impulse of a gratitude, by which it is awakened to the charms of a new moral existence. Salvation by grace—salvation on such a footing is not more indispensable to the deliverance of our persons from the hand of justice, than it is to the deliverance of our hearts from the chill and the weight of ungodliness.

Retain a single shred or fragment of legality with the gospel, and you raise a topic of distrust between man and God. You take away from the power of the gospel to melt and to conciliate. For this purpose, the freer it is, the better it is. That very peculiarity which so many dread as the germ of Antinomianism, is in fact the germ of a new spirit, and a new inclination against it. Along with the light of a free gospel, does there enter the love of the gospel, which in proportion as you impair the freeness, you are sure to chase away. And never does the sinner find within himself so mighty a moral transformation, as when under the belief that he is saved by grace, he feels constrained thereby to offer his heart a devoted thing, and to deny ungodliness.

To do any work in the best manner, you would make use of the fittest tools for it. And we trust that what has been said may serve in some degree for the practical guidance of those who would like to reach the great moral achievement of our text—but feel that the tendencies and desires of nature are too strong for them. We know of no other way by which to keep the love of the world out of our heart, than to keep in our heart the love of God—and no other way by which to keep our hearts in the love of God, than building ourselves up on our most holy faith. That denial of the world which is not possible to him that dissents from the gospel testimony, is possible, even as all things are possible to him that believeth. To try this without faith, is to work without the right tool or the right instrument. But faith worketh by love; and the way of expelling from the heart the love that transgresseth the law, is to admit into its receptacles the love which fulfilleth the law.

Conceive a man to be standing on the margin of this green world; and that, when he looked toward it, he saw abundance smiling upon every field, and all the blessings which earth can afford scattered in profusion throughout every family, and the light of the sun sweetly resting upon all the pleasant habitations, and the joys of human companionship brightening many a happy circle of society—conceive of this as being the general character of the scene upon one side of his contemplation; and that on the other, beyond the verge of the goodly planet on which he was situated, he could descry nothing but a dark and fathomless unknown. Think you that he would bid a voluntary adieu to all the brightness and all the beauty that were before him on earth, and commit himself to the frightful solitude away from it? Would he leave its peopled dwelling places, and become a solitary wanderer through the fields of nonentity? If space offered him nothing but a wilderness, would he abandon the homebred scenes of life and of cheerfulness that lay so near, and exerted such a power of urgency to detain him? Would not he cling to the regions of sense, and of life, and of society?—and shrinking away from the desolation that was beyond it, would not he be glad to keep his firm footing on the territory of this world, and to take shelter under the silver canopy that was stretched over it?

But if, during the time of his contemplation, some happy island of the blest had floated by; and there had burst upon his senses the light of its surpassing glories, and its sounds of sweeter melody; and he clearly saw that there a purer beauty rested upon every field, and a more heartfelt joy spread itself among all the families; and he could discern there a peace, and a piety, and a benevolence, which put a moral gladness into every bosom, and united the whole society in one rejoicing sympathy with each other, and with the beneficent Father of them all. Could he further see that pain and mortality were there unknown, and above all, that signals of welcome were hung out, and an avenue of communication was made for him, perceive you not, that what was before the wilderness, would become the land of invitation; and that now the world would be the wilderness? What unpeopled space could not do, can be done by space teeming with beatific scenes and beatific society. And let the existing tendencies of the heart be what they may to the scene that is near and visible around us, still, if another stood revealed to the prospect of man, either through the channel of faith, or through the channel of his senses—then, without violence done to the constitution of his moral nature, may he die unto the present world, and live to the lovelier world that stands in the distance, away from it.

SELECTIONS FROM AMERICAN LITERATURE.

THOMAS WENTWORTH HIGGINSON.

Quiet and fair in tone; condensed to the last point, and still
perfectly clear; written in such pure English that the youngest
reader can understand, yet free from an affectation of baby talk,
which is often considered indispensable in children’s books—the
“Young Folks’ History of the United States” makes a refreshing
contrast to the kind of school book with which Abbott and Loomis,
and men of their stamp have inundated the country. Not that these
latter, in spite of bombast and dryness, may not have served a
purpose in their day and generation, no better men having come
forward heretofore, but that a more thoughtful and scientific age
demands better work.—_Scribner’s Monthly._

Criticism on “Back-Log Studies.”

In “Back-Log Studies” there are, no doubt, some essentially inartistic things—some long episodes; for example, such as the “New Vision of Sin” and the “Uncle in India,” which are clearly inferior in texture to the rest, and not quite worth the space they occupy; but, as a whole, the book is certainly a most agreeable contribution to the literature of the Meditative school. And it is saying a great deal to say this. To make such an attempt successful there must be a lightness of touch sustained through everything; there must be a predominant sweetness of flavor, and that air of joyous ease which is often the final triumph of labor. There must also be a power of analysis, always subtle, never prolonged; there must be description, minute enough to be graphic, yet never carried to the borders of fatigue; there must also be glimpses of restrained passion, and of earnestness kept in reserve. All these are essential, and all these the “Back-Log Studies” show. If other resources were added—as depth of thought, or powerful imagination, or wide learning, or constructive power—they would only carry the book beyond the proper ranks of the Meditative school, and place it in that higher grade of literature to which Holmes’ “Autocrat of the Breakfast Table” belongs. Yet it may be better not to insist on this distinction, for it is Mr. Warner himself who wisely reminds us that “the most unprofitable and unsatisfactory criticism is that of comparison.”

It is as true in literature as in painting that “it is in the perfection and precision of the instantaneous line that the claim to immortality is made.” The first and simplest test of good writing is in the fresh and incisive phrases it yields; and in this respect “Back-Log Studies” is strong. The author has not only the courage of his opinions, but he has the courage of his phrases, which is quite as essential. What an admirable touch, for instance, is that where Mr. Warner says that a great wood-fire in a wide kitchen chimney, with all the pots and kettles boiling and bubbling, and a roasting spit turning in front of it, “makes a person as hungry as one of Scott’s novels!” Fancy the bewilderment of some slow and well-meaning man upon encountering that stroke of fancy; his going over it slowly from beginning to end, and then again backward from end to beginning, studying it with microscopic eye, to find where the resemblance comes in, until at last it occurs to him that possibly there may be a typographical error somewhere, and that, with a little revision, the sentence might become intelligible! He does not know that in literature, as in life, nothing venture, nothing have; and that it often requires precisely such an audacious stroke as this to capture the most telling analogies.

There occurs just after this, in “Back-Log Studies,” a sentence which has long since found its way to the universal heart, and which is worth citing, as an example of the delicate rhetorical art of under-statement. To construct a climax is within the reach of every one; there is not a Fourth-of-July orator who can not erect for himself a heaven-scaling ladder of that description, climb its successive steps, and then tumble from the top. But to let your climax swell beneath you like a wave of the sea, and then let it subside under you so gently that your hearer shall find himself more stirred by your moderation than by your impulse; this is a triumph of style. Thus our author paints a day of winter storm; for instance, the wild snow-drifts beating against the cottage window, and the boy in the chimney-corner reading about General Burgoyne and the Indian wars. “I should like to know what heroism a boy in an old New England farm-house, rough-nursed by nature, and fed on the traditions of the old wars, did not aspire to—‘John,’ says the mother, ‘you’ll burn your head to a crisp in that heat.’ But John does not hear; he is storming the Plains of Abraham just now. ‘Johnny, dear, bring in a stick of wood.’ How can Johnny bring in wood when he is in that defile with Braddock, and the Indians are popping at him from behind every tree? There is something about a boy that I like, after all.”

I defy any one who has a heart for children to resist that last sentence. Considered critically, it is the very triumph of under-statement—of delicious, provoking, perfectly unexpected, moderation. It is a refreshing dash of cool water just as we were beginning to grow heated. Like that, it calls our latent heat to the surface by a kindly reaction; the writer surprises us by claiming so little that we concede everything; we at once compensate by our own enthusiasm for this inexplicable lowering of the demand. Like him! of course we like him—that curly-pated, rosy-cheeked boy, with his story books and his Indians! But if we had been called upon to adore him, it is very doubtful whether we should have liked him at all. And this preference for effects secured by quiet methods—for producing emphasis without the use of italics, and arresting attention without resorting to exclamation points—is the crowning merit of the later style of Mr. Warner.

HENRY JAMES, Jr.

Mr. Henry James, Jr., inherits from his father a diction so rich
and pure, so fluent and copious, so finely shaded, yet capable
of such varied service, that it is, in itself, a form of genius.
Few men have ever been so brilliantly equipped for literary
performance. Carefully trained taste, large acquirements of
knowledge, experience of lands and races, and association with
the best minds have combined to supply him with all the purely
intellectual requisites which an author could desire.—_Bayard
Taylor._

As a story-teller, we know of no one who is entitled to rank
higher, since Poe and Hawthorne are gone, than Mr. James.
His style is pure and finished, and marked by the nicety of
expression which is so noticeable among the best French writers
of fiction.—_Louisville Courier-Journal._

The “Portrait of a Lady” is a very clever book, and a book of
very great interest. We do not know a living English novelist who
could have written it.—_Pall Mall Gazette._

Carlyle’s Letters to Emerson.

Carlyle takes his place among the first of English, among the very first of all letter-writers. All his great merits come out in this form of expression; and his defects are not felt as defects, but only as striking characteristics and as tones in the picture. Originality, nature, humor, imagination, freedom, the disposition to talk, the play of mood, the touch of confidence—these qualities, of which the letters are full, will with the aid of an inimitable use of language—a style which glances at nothing that it does not render grotesque—preserve their life for readers even further removed from the occasion than ourselves, and for whom possibly the vogue of Carlyle’s published writings in his day will be to a certain degree a subject of wonder.

Carlyle is here in intercourse with a friend for whom, almost alone among the persons with whom he had dealings, he appears to have entertained a sentiment of respect—a constancy of affection untinged by that humorous contempt in which (in most cases) he indulges when he wishes to be kind, and which was the best refuge open to him from his other alternative of absolutely savage mockery.

It is singular, indeed, that throughout his intercourse with Emerson he never appears to have known the satiric fury which he directed at so many other objects, accepting his friend _en bloc_, once for all, with reservations and protests so light that, as addressed to Emerson’s own character, they are only a finer form of consideration.… Other persons have enjoyed life as little as Carlyle; other men have been pessimists and cynics; but few men have rioted so in their disenchantments, or thumped so perpetually upon the hollowness of things with the idea of making it resound. Pessimism, cynicism, usually imply a certain amount of indifference and resignation; but in Carlyle these forces were nothing if not querulous and vocal. It must be remembered that he had an imagination which made acquiescence difficult—an imagination haunted with theological and apocalyptic visions. We have no occasion here to attempt to estimate his position in literature, but we may be permitted to say that it is mainly to this splendid imagination that he owes it. Both the moral and the physical world were full of pictures for him, and it would seem to be by his great pictorial energy that he will live.

Anthony Trollope.

His great, his inestimable merit was a complete appreciation of reality. This gift is not rare in the annals of English fiction; it would naturally be found in a walk of literature in which the feminine mind has labored so fruitfully. Women are delicate and patient observers; they hold their noses close, as it were, to the texture of life. They feel and perceive the real (as well as the desirable), and their observations are recorded in a thousand delightful volumes. Trollope therefore, with his eyes comfortably fixed on the familiar, the actual, was far from having invented a _genre_, as the French say; his great distinction is that, in resting there, his vision took in so much of the field. And then he _felt_ all common, human things as well as saw them; felt them in a simple, direct, salubrious way, with their sadness, their gladness, their charm, their comicality, all their obvious and measurable meanings.

Du Maurier.

He is predominantly a painter of social, as distinguished from popular life, and when the other day he collected some of his drawings into a volume, he found it natural to give them the title of “English Society at Home.” He looks at the “accomplished” classes more than at the people, though he by no means ignores the humors of humble life. His consideration of the peculiarities of costermongers and “cadgers” is comparatively perfunctory, as he is too fond of civilization and of the higher refinements of the grotesque. His colleague, the frank and as the metaphysicians say, objective, Keene, has a more natural familiarity with the British populace. There is a whole side of English life, at which du Maurier scarcely glances—the great sporting element, which supplies half of their gayety and all their conversation to millions of her Majesty’s subjects. He is shy of the turf and of the cricket field; he only touches here and there upon the river. But he has made “society” completely his own—he has sounded its depths, explored its mysteries, discovered and divulged its secrets. His observation of these things is extraordinarily acute, and his illustrations, taken together, form a complete comedy of manners, in which the same personages constantly re-appear, so that we have the sense, indispensable to keenness of interest, of tracing their adventures to a climax. So many of the conditions of English life are picturesque (and, to American eyes, even romantic), that du Maurier has never been at a loss for subjects. We mean that he is never at a loss for pictures. English society makes pictures all round him, and he has only to look to see the most charming things, which at the same time have the merit that you can always take the satirical view of them.

WILLIAM DEAN HOWELLS.

He is equal as an artist to the best French writers. His books
are not only artistically fine, but morally wholesome.—_Magazin
für die Literatur des Auslandes._

The great body of the cultivated public has an instinctive
delight in original genius, whether it be refined or sensational.
Mr. Howells’s is eminently refined. His humor, however vivid in
form, is subtle and elusive in its essence. He depends, perhaps,
somewhat too much on the feelings of humor in his readers to
appreciate his own. He has the true Addisonian touch; hits his
mark in the white, and instead of provoking uproarious laughter,
strives to evoke that satisfied smile which testifies to the
quiet enjoyment of the reader. His humor is the humor of a
poet.—_E. P. Whipple._

Mr. Howells has been compared to Washington Irving for the
exquisite purity of his style, and to Hawthorne for a certain
subtle recognition of a hidden meaning in familiar things. A more
thoroughly genial writer, certainly, we have not, nor one more
conscientious in the practice of his art.—_Scribner’s Monthly._

The Young Editor, from “A Modern Instance.”

“Hullo!” he cried, with a suddenness that startled the boy, who had finished his meditation upon Bartley’s trowsers, and was now deeply dwelling on his boots. “Do you like ’em? See what sort of a shine you can give ’em for Sunday-go-to-meeting-to-morrow-morning.” He put out his hand and laid hold of the boy’s head, passing his fingers through the thick red hair. “Sorrel-top!” he said with a grin of agreeable reminiscence. “They emptied all the freckles they had left into your face—didn’t they, Andy?”

This free, joking way of Bartley’s was one of the things that made him popular; he passed the time of day, and would give and take right along, as his admirers expressed it from the first, in a community where his smartness had that honor which gives us more smart men to the square mile than any other country in the world. The fact of his smartness had been affirmed and established in the strongest manner by the authorities of the college at which he was graduated, in answer to the reference he made to them when negotiating with the committee in charge for the place he now held as editor of the Equity _Free Press_.… They perhaps had their misgivings when the young man, in his well-blacked boots, his grey trowsers neatly fitting over them, and his diagonal coat buttoned high with one button, stood before them with his thumbs in his waistcoat pockets, and looked down over his mustache at the floor, with sentiments concerning their wisdom which they could not explore; they must have resented the fashionable keeping of everything about him, for Bartley wore his one suit as if it were but one of many; but when they understood that he had come by everything through his own unaided smartness, they could no longer hesitate. One, indeed, still felt it a duty to call attention to the fact that the college authorities said nothing of the young man’s moral characteristics in a letter dwelling so largely upon his intellectual qualifications. The others referred this point by a silent look to ’Squire Gaylord. “I don’t know,” said the ’Squire, “as I ever heard that a great deal of morality was required by a newspaper editor.” The rest laughed at the joke, and the ’Squire continued: “But I guess if he worked his own way through college, as they say, that he hain’t had time to be up to a great deal of mischief. You know it’s for idle hands that the devil provides, doctor.”

“That’s true, as far as it goes,” said the doctor. “But it isn’t the whole truth. The devil provides for some busy hands, too.”

“There’s a good deal of sense in that,” the ’Squire admitted. “The worst scamps I ever knew were active fellows. Still, industry is in a man’s favor. If the faculty knew anything against this young man they would have given us a hint of it. I guess we had better take him; we shan’t do better. Is it a vote?”

CHARLES DUDLEY WARNER.

Humor he has, and of the very highest order. It is as delicate
as Washington Irving’s, and quite as spontaneous. But humor is
hardly his predominant quality. He has all the wit of Holmes,
and all the tenderness of Ik Marvel. He is often charmingly
thoughtful, earnest and suggestive.—_San Francisco Bulletin._

There is only one other pair of microscopic eyes like his owned
by an American, and they belong to W. D. Howells. These two men
will ferret out fun from arid sands and naked rocks, and in one
trip of a league, less or more, over a barren waste, see and hear
more that is amusing and entertaining than the rest of the world
will discover in crossing a continent. Such men should do our
traveling for us.—_Chicago Tribune._

From “Back-Log Studies.”

The fire on the hearth has almost gone out in New England; the hearth has gone out; the family has lost its center; age ceases to be respected; sex is only distinguished by the difference between millinery bills and tailors’ bills; there is no more toast-and-cider; the young are not allowed to eat mince pies at ten o’clock at night; half a cheese is no longer set to toast before the fire; you scarcely ever see in front of the coals a row of roasting apples, which a bright little girl, with many a dive and start, shielding her sunny face from the fire with one hand, turns from time to time; scarce are the grey-haired sires who strop their razors on the family Bible, and doze in the chimney corner. A good many things have gone out with the fire on the hearth.

I do not mean to say that public and private morality have vanished with the hearth. A good degree of purity and considerable happiness are possible with grates and blowers; it is a day of trial, when we are all passing through a fiery furnace, and very likely we shall be purified as we are dried up and wasted away. Of course the family is gone as an institution, though there still are attempts to bring up a family round a “register.” But you might just as well try to bring it up by hand as without the rallying-point of a hearth-stone. Are there any homesteads now-a-days? Do people hesitate to change houses any more than they do to change their clothes? People hire houses as they would a masquerade costume, liking, sometimes, to appear for a year in a little fictitious stone-front splendor above their means. Thus it happens that so many people live in houses that do not fit them. I should almost as soon think of wearing another person’s clothes as his house; unless I could let it out and take it in until it fitted, and somehow expressed my own character and taste.

From “Being a Boy.”

It is a wonder that every New England boy does not turn out a poet, or a missionary or a peddler. Most of them used to. There is something in the heart of the New England hills to feed the imagination of the boy and excite his longing for strange countries. I scarcely know what the subtle influence is that forms him and attracts him in the most fascinating and aromatic of all lands, and yet urges him away from all the sweet delights of his home to become roamer in literature and in the world a poet and a wanderer. There is something in the soil and in the pure air, I suspect, that promises more romance than is forthcoming, and that excites the imagination without satisfying it, and begets the desire of adventure.

* * * * *

What John said was, that he didn’t care much for pumpkin pie; but that was after he had eaten a whole one. It seemed to him then that mince would be better. The feeling of a boy toward pumpkin pie has never been properly considered.… His elders say that the boy is always hungry; but that is a very coarse way of putting it. He has only recently come into a world that is full of good things to eat, and there is on the whole a very short time in which to eat them; at least he is told, among the first information he receives, that life is brief. Life being brief, and pie and the like fleeting, he very soon decides on an active campaign. It may be an old story to people who have been eating for forty or fifty years; but it is different with a beginner. He takes the thick and thin as it comes—as to pie, for instance. Some people do make them very thin.

UNITED STATES HISTORY.

SETTLEMENT OF NEW YORK.

The most favorably situated, and, for its extent, the most valuable region of the country was first settled by the Dutch, Hollanders and Swedes.

For some ten years there had been a trading post and small village on Manhattan Island; and, in 1623 the “Dutch West India Co.,” with a charter covering the whole coast from the Strait of Magellan to Hudson’s Bay, landed a colony of thirty families at New Amsterdam.

The first colonists were mostly Protestant refugees from Belgium, who came to America to escape the persecutions endured in their own country. A part of the colonists took up their abode at New Amsterdam; others went down the New Jersey coast, and landed on the eastern shore of the Bay of Delaware. The same year a colony of 18 families ascended the Hudson, and located at or near Albany. This was the most northern post, and was called Fort Orange.

A civil government was established for New Netherlands, in 1624, Cornelius May being the first governor.

In 1626 Peter Minuit was appointed governor, and during his administration he purchased of the native inhabitants the whole of Manhattan Island, containing more than 20,000 acres, for forty dollars.

Some settlements were also made on Long Island. The Dutch of New Amsterdam and the Pilgrims of New England were early friends, and helped each other. Both enjoyed a good degree of prosperity, and the population steadily increased.

For more than ten years the Indians, with few exceptions, received the strangers who came among them kindly and in good faith. When injured and wronged their resentment was kindled, and terribly did they avenge themselves on their enemies. The first notable instance was at Lewistown, on Delaware Bay, where Hosset, a governor of violent temper and little sagacity, seized and put to death a chief, who in some way offended him. The tribe was aroused, and assailed the place with such violence that not a man was left alive. When the next ship-load of colonists arrived, instead of a thrifty town, and friends eagerly waiting to receive them, they found but the bones of the slain, and the ashes of the homes that had sheltered them. Afterward there was not, for many years, the same sense of security; and in 1640 New Netherlands became involved in a general war with the Indians of Long Island and New Jersey, a war that, on both sides, was far from honorable, and marked with treachery, cruelty, and murders most revolting. If the whites were surprised and massacred by the Indians, there were as terrible massacres of Indians by the whites, who were, too often, the aggressors. An impartial historian says: “Nearly all the bloodshed and sorrow of those five years of war may be charged to Governor Kief. He was a revengeful, cruel man, whose idea of government was to destroy whatever opposed him.” For his headstrong course and cruelty he lost his position, and, to the great relief of the colonists, who had suffered much on his account, sailed for England. But the ship was wrecked on the coast of Wales, and the guilty governor found a grave in the sea. He was succeeded by Peter Stuyvesant, a resolute man, of more ability than most who preceded him. He, for seventeen years, managed the affairs of the colonists successfully. He conciliated the savages, settled the boundaries of his territory, and enforced the surrender of New Sweden, which became a part of his dominion. There was afterward some difficulty with the Indians, but more from a quarter whence no danger was expected. Lord Baltimore, of Maryland, claimed, under his charter, all the territory between the Chesapeake and Delaware Bay. Berkley claimed New Sweden, while Connecticut and Massachusetts were equally aggressive on the territories adjacent to their lines.

In 1664 the unscrupulous king of England, Charles II., issued patents to his brother, the Duke of York, covering the territory called New Netherlands, and more beside. It was in utter disregard of the rights of Holland, and of the West India Co., who had settled the country. No time was given for protest against the outrage. An English squadron soon appeared before New Amsterdam, and demanded the immediate surrender of the country, and the acknowledgment of the sovereignty of England. No effectual resistance could be made, and the indignant old governor, his council ordering it, had to sign the capitulation; and, on the 8th of September, 1664, the English flag was hoisted over the fort and town. The Swedish and Dutch settlements likewise capitulated, and the conquest was complete. From Maine to Georgia, in every settlement near the coast, the British flag was unfurled. This high-handed injustice, which robbed a sister state of her well earned colonial possessions, was but slightly mitigated by the fact that the armament was insufficient to enforce submission without the shedding of blood. The capitulation was on favorable terms, and with fair promises, that were never fulfilled. The government was despotic, and the people were sorely oppressed. The policy of the tyrannical governor was to tax the people till they could do nothing but think how possibly to pay the amount assessed.

In 1673, England and Holland being at war, the latter sent a small squadron to recover the possessions wrested from her in America. When the little fleet appeared before New York, the governor was absent, and his deputy, either from cowardice, or, knowing the people preferred to have it so, at once surrendered the city, and the whole province yielded without a struggle.

But the re-conquest of New York by the Dutch, gave them no permanent possession, as the war was soon closed by a treaty of peace, in which all the rights of Holland in America were surrendered.

The Dutch and Swedes again became subject to English authority. Popular government was overthrown, and the officers appointed by the crown, directly or otherwise, with few exceptions, were unjust and tyrannical. Their oppressive measures were met with resistance, and, so intense was the hatred excited, that obstructions were thrown in the way of everything that was attempted. The people, when not repelling the attacks of the French and the Indians, or carrying the war into the territory of the invaders—campaigns in which much was sacrificed and nothing gained—were in a constant struggle with the royal governors, intent on collecting the revenues and enriching themselves, but careless of the best interests of the people.

PENNSYLVANIA.

In 1681 William Penn, a man of convictions, who, with other Quakers, had suffered persecution on account of his religious convictions, obtained a charter with proprietary rights, for a large tract of American territory. Geographically its position was nearly central as regards the original colonies, but at first somewhat indefinitely bounded. In the final adjustment of colonial limits it was made a regular parallelogram, a small addition being made to give access to Lake Erie, and a good harbor. The average length is 310 miles; the width, 160 miles. In naming his territory the proprietor modestly omitted any allusion to himself. He suggested Sylvania, because of the extensive and almost unbroken forest. The clerk prefixed “Penn.” From this he appealed to the king, who decided the prefix should be retained; but, as a relief to the wounded modesty of the Quaker, said it would be in honor of the Admiral, his friend, and the deceased father of William. For whomever the compliment was intended, the citizens of the commonwealth have always liked the name.