FOOTNOTES:

There was once a law making it felony without benefit of clergy to read the Bible in the Englishlanguage. Suppose the government, wishing to make away with an obnoxious man, should get him indicted next term for this offence, and the judge should declare that the old law is still in force. Is the jury not to judge whether we live under the bloody Mary, or the constitution of Massachusetts?—whether what was once law is so now? If not, then the laws of King Darius or King Pharaoh may be revived whenever Judge Hategood sees fit, and Faithful must hang for it.[36]

Suppose the judge makes a law himself, declaring that, if any one speaks against the justice of the court, he shall be whipped with forty stripes save one, and gets a man indicted under it and brought to trial—is the jury not to judge if there be such a law? Then we might as well give up all legislation, and leave all to the "discretion of the court."

A judge of the United States Court was once displaced on account of mental imbecility. Was Judge Simpleton to determine what was law, what not, for a jury of intelligent men?

Another judge, not long ago, in Boston, in his place in court, gave an opinion in a most important affair, and was drunk when he gave it. I do not mean he was horizontally drunk, but only so that his friends feared "he would break down in court, and expose himself." Was the opinion of a drunken judge to be taken for law by sober men?

Suppose the judge is not a simpleton nor a drunkard, but is only an ordinary lawyer and a political partisan, and appointed to his office because he is a fawning sycophant, and will interpret the law to suit the ambition of the government—a thing that has happened in this city. Is he to lay down the law for the jurors who aim only to live in honorable morality, to hurt no one, and give every man his due?

Suppose the attorneys at the bar know the law better than the attorney on the bench,—a thing thatdaily happens,—are not the jurors to decide for themselves?

I have chosen fictitious cases to try the principle. Extreme cases make shipwreck of a wicked law, but are favoring winds to bring every just statute into its happy harbor at the last. Will you say we are not likely to suffer from such usurpation? You know what we have suffered within three months past. God only knows what is to come. But no man is ever to seek for a stick if he wishes to beat a dog, or for a cross if he would murder his Saviour. The only way to preserve liberty is by eternal vigilance: we must be jealous of every president, every minister, every judge, every officer, from a king to the meanest commissioner he appoints to kidnap men. You have seen the attempts made to sap and undermine one of the most valuable safeguards of our social welfare,—seen that it excited very little attention; and I wish to warn you of the danger of a false principle. I have waited for this day to speak on this theme. Executive tyranny, with soldiers at its command, must needs be open in its deeds of shame. It may waste the money of the public which cleaves to the suspected hands of its officers: it is not so easy to get the necks of those it hates; for we have no star-chamber of democracy, and here the executive has not many soldiers at command, must ask before it can get them. It did ask, and got "No" for answer. Legislative tyrannymust needs be public, and is easily seen. But judicial tyranny is secret, subtle, unseen in its action; and all experience shows it is one of the most dangerous forms of tyranny. A corrupt judge poisons the wells of human society.[37]Scroggs and Jeffries are names deservedly hated by mankind, and there are some American names likely to be added to them. The traditionary respect entertained here for an office which has been graced by some of the noblest men in the land, doubles our danger.

But an attack is made on another safeguard of society, yet more important. We have been told that there is no law higher than a human statute, no law of God above an act of the American Congress. You know how this doctrine of the supremacy of the lower law has been taught in the high places of the State, in the high places of the church, and in the low places of the public press. You know with what sneers men have been assailed who appealed to conscience, to religion, and said, "The law of God is supreme; above all the enactments of mortal men." You have been witness to attempts to howldown the justice of the Almighty. We have had declamation and preaching against the law of God. It is said the French Assembly, some fifty or sixty years ago, voted that there should be no public worship of God; that there was no God to worship; but it was left for politicians and preachers of America, in our time, to declare that there is no law above the caprice of mortal men. Did the French "philosophers" decree speculative atheism? the American "wise men" put it in practice. They deny the function of God. "He has nothing to do with mankind." This doctrine is one of the foulest ever taught, and tends directly to debauch the conscience of the people. What if there were no law higher than an act of Parliament? what would become of the Parliament itself? There is such a thing conceivable as personal, speculative atheism. I think it is a very rare thing. I have never known an atheist: for, with all about us speaking of God; all within us speaking of him; every telescope revealing the infinite Mind in nebulæ resolved to groups of systems of suns; every microscope revealing the infinite Father, yea, Mother of the world, in a drop of water, a grain of perishing wood, or an atom of stone; every little pendulum revealing his unchanging law on a small scale; and this whole group of solar systems, in its slow and solemn swing through heavenly space, disclosing the same law on a scale which only genius at first can comprehend,—it is not easy to arrive at personal,speculative atheism. It would be a dreadful thing, the stark denial of a God. To say there is no infinite Mind in finite matter, no order in the universe, in providence only a fate, no God for all, no Father for any, only an inextinguishable nothing that fills the desert and illimitable ether of space and time, the whence and whither of all that are,—such a belief is conceivable; but I do not believe that there is a single atheist living on the whole round world. There is no general danger of personal, speculative atheism. When M. Lalande declared that he saw no God through his telescope, though he meant not to deny the real God of nature, the world rang with indignation at an astronomer undevout and mad. But practical, political atheism has become a common thing in America, in New England. This is not a denial of the essence of God and his being, but of his function as Supreme Ruler of the church, of the State, of the people, of the universe. Of that there is danger. The devil of ambition tempts the great man to it; the devil of covetousness, the little man. Both strike hands, and say, "There is no higher law;" and low men lift up their mean foreheads in the pulpits of America and say, "It is the voice of a God, and not of a man. There is no higher law." The greatest understanding of this land, with haughty scorn, has lately said, "The North Mountain is very high; the Blue Ridge, higher still; the Alleghanies higher than either; andyet this 'higher law' ranges further than an eagle's flight above the highest peaks of the Alleghanies."[38]The impious taunt was received with "laughter" by men who have long acted on the maxim that there is no law of God, and whose State is impoverished by the attempt to tread His law under foot. I know men in America have looked so long at political economy that they have forgotten political morality, and seem to think politics only national housekeeping, and he the best ruler who buys cheapest and sells dearest. But I confess I am amazed when statesmen forget the lessons of those great men that have gone before us, and built up the social state, whose "deep foundations have been laid with prayer." What! is there no law above the North Mountain; above the Blue Ridge; higher than the Alleghanies? Why, the old Hebrew poet told us of One "which removeth the mountains, and they know not; which overturneth them in his anger; which alone spreadeth out the heavens, and treadeth upon the waves of the sea. Lo! he goeth by me, and I see him not; he passeth on also, but I perceive him not." Yes, there is One—his law "an eagle's flight above the Alleghanies"—who humbleth himself to behold the things that are in heaven, whose strong hand setteth fast the mountains; yea, One who hath weighed the mountains in scales; beforewhom all nations are as a very little thing. Yes, Father in heaven! before the mountains were brought forth, or ever thou hadst formed the earth and the world, even from everlasting to everlasting, thou art God. Yea, thou hast been our dwelling-place in all generations. Thy name alone is excellent; thy glory above the earth and heaven!

No higher law for States than the poor statutes they enact!

"Among the assemblies of the greatA greater Ruler takes his seat;The God of heaven as Judge surveysThese 'gods of earth' and all their ways:—'Why will you frame oppressive laws?Or why support the unrighteous cause?When will you once defend the poor,That foes may vex the saints no more?'They know not, Lord, nor will they know;Dark are the ways in which they go;Their name of 'earthly gods' is vain,For they shall fall and die like men."

It would be a great calamity for this nation to lose all of its mighty riches, and have nothing left but the soil we stand on. But, in seven or eight generations, it would all be restored again; for all the wealth of America has been won in less time. We are not two hundred and fifty years from Jamestown and Plymouth. It would be a great misfortune to lose all the foremost families of the nation. ButEngland lost hers in the War of the Roses; France, in her Revolution. Nature bore great men anew, and fresh families sprung up as noble as the old. But, if this generation in America could believe that there was no law of God for you and me to keep,—say the acts of Congress what they might say,—no law to tame the ambition of men of mountain greatness, and curb the eagle's flight of human tyranny, that would be a calamity which the nation would never recover from. No! then religion would die out; affection fall dead; conscience would perish; intellect give up the ghost, and be no more. No law higher than human will! No watchmaker can make a long pendulum vibrate so quick as a short. In this very body there is that law. I wake and watch and will; my private caprice turns my hand, now here, now there. But who controls my breath? Who bids this heart beat all day long, and all the night, sleep I or wake? Whose subtle law holds together these particles of flesh, of blood, and bone in marvellous vitality? Who gives this eye its power to see, and opens wide the portal of the ear? and who enchants, with most mysterious life, this wondrous commonwealth of dust I call myself? It is the same Hand whose law is "higher than the Blue Ridge," an "eagle's flight above the Alleghanies." Who rules the State, and, out of a few stragglers that fled here to New England for conscience sake, built up this mighty, wealthy State? Was itCarver and Winthrop who did all this; Standish and Saltonstall? Was it the cunning craftiness of mightiest men that consciously, well knowing what they did, laid the foundations of our New England State and our New England Church? Why, the boys at school know better. It was the eternal God whose higher law the Pilgrim and the Puritan essayed to keep, not knowing whereunto the thing would grow. Shall the fool say in his heart there is no God? He cannot make a hair grow on his head but by the eternal law of his Father in heaven. Will the politician say there is no law of God for States? Ask the sorrowing world; let Austria and Hungary make reply. Nay, ask the Southern States of America to show us their rapid increase in riches, in civilization; to show us their schools and their scholars, their literature, their science, and their art! No law of God for States! It is writ on the iron leaf of destiny, "Righteousness exalteth a nation, but sin is a curse to any people." Let the wicked hand of the South join with the Northern wicked hand, iniquity shall not prosper. But the eye of the wicked shall fail; they shall not escape; their hope shall be as giving up the ghost, because their tongue and their doings are against the Lord, to provoke the eyes of his glory. Their root shall be as rottenness, and their blossom shall go up as dust, if they cast away the law of the Lord, and despise the word of the Holy One.

In America the people are strongly attached to the institutions, constitutions, and statutes of the land. On the whole, they are just establishments. If not, we made them ourselves, and can make them better when we will. The execution of laws is also popular. Nowhere in the world is there a people so orderly, so much attached to law, as the people of these Northern States. But one law is an exception. The people of the North hate the fugitive slave law, as they have never hated any law since the stamp act. I know there are men in the Northern States who like it,—who would have invented slavery, had it not existed long before. But the mass of the Northern people hate this law, because it is hostile to the purpose of all just human law, hostile to the purpose of society, hostile to the purpose of individual life; because it is hostile to the law of God,—bids the wrong, forbids the right. We disobey that, for the same reason that we keep other laws: because we reverence the law of God. Why should we keep that odious law which makes us hated wherever justice is loved? Because we must sometimes do a disagreeable deed to accomplish an agreeable purpose? The purpose of that law is to enable three hundred thousand slaveholders to retake on our soil the men they once stole on other soil! Most of the city churches of the North seem to think that is a good thing. Very well: is it worth while for fifteen million freemen to transgress the plainestof natural laws, the most obvious instincts of the human heart, and the plainest duties of Christianity, for that purpose? The price to pay is the religious integrity of fifteen million men; the thing to buy is a privilege for three hundred thousand slaveholders to use the North as a hunting-field whereon to kidnap men at our cost. Judge you of that bargain.

But I must end this long discourse. The other day I spoke of the vices of passion: great and terrible evils they wrought. They were as nothing to the vices of calculation. Passion was the flesh, ambition the devil. There are vices of democracy, vices of radicalism; very great vices they are too. You may read of them in Hume and Alison. They are painted black as night and bloody as battle in tory journals of England, and the more vulgar tory journals of America. Democracy wrought terrible evils in Britain in Cromwell's time; in France at her Revolution. But to the vices, the crimes, the sins of aristocracy, of conservatism,—they are what the fleeting lust of the youth is to the cool, hard, calculating, and indomitable ambition of the grown man. Radicalism pillaged Governor Hutchinson's house, threw some tea into the ocean; conservatism set up its stamp act, and drove America into revolution. Radicalism helped Shadrach out of court;conservatism enacted the fugitive slave bill. Radicalism sets up a republic that is red for six months; conservatism sets up a red monarchy covered with blood for hundreds of years. Judge you from which we have the most to fear.

Such are the safeguards of society; such our condition. What shall we do? Nobody would dare pretend to build a church except on righteousness; that is, the rock of ages. Can you build a state on any other foundation—that house upon the sand? What should you think of a minister of the church who got his deacons together, and made a creed, and said, "There is no higher law; no law of God. You, laymen, must take our word for your guidance, and do just as we bid you, and violate the plainest commands of conscience?" What would be atheism in a minister of the church,—is that patriotism in a minister of the state? A bad law is a most powerful instrument to demoralize and debauch the people. If it is a law of their own making, it is all the worse. There is no real and manly welfare for a man, without a sense of religious obligation to God; none in a family, none in a church, none in a state. We want righteousness in the people, in their establishments, in their officers. I adjure you to reverence a government that is right, statutes that are right, officers that are right; but to disobey everything that is wrong. I entreat you by your love for your country, by the memory of your fathers, by your reverence for Jesus Christ, yea, by the deep and holy love of God which Jesus taught, and you now feel.

FOOTNOTES:[34]See note on Function of the Jury, above, p. 165.[35]In these times of political corruption, when a postmaster in a country village is turned out of office for voting for a representative to Congress who exposed the wickedness of a prominent member of the cabinet, it is pleasant to read such letters as those of Washington to Benjamin Lincoln, March 11, 1789, and to Bushrod Washington, July 27, 1789, in Sparks's Writings of Washington, vol. ix. p. 477,et seq., and x. p. 73,et seq.[36]In the Pilgrim's Progress, Bunyan gives a case which it is probable was fictitious only in the names of the parties. Faithful was indicted before Lord Hategood for a capital offence. Mr. Envy testified. Then the judge asked him, Hast thou any more to say? Envy replied: "My Lord, I could say much more, only I would not be tedious to the court. Yet, if need be, when the other gentlemen have given in their evidence, rather than any thing should be wanting that will dispatch him, I will enlarge my testimony against him."Lord Hategood stated the law—there were three statutes against the prisoner: 1. The act of King Pharaoh, in 1 Exodus 22; 2. That of King Nebuchadnezzar in 3 Daniel 6; and 3. That of King Darius in 6 Daniel 7. The jury took "the law from the ruling of the court," and, having been carefully packed, to judge from the names, and all just men expelled from their number, they readily found such a verdict as the government had previously determined upon.The same thing,mutatis mutandis, has been attempted in America, in Boston, and we may fear that in some instances it will succeed.[37]Since the first publication of this sermon we have seen eight-and-thirty men indicted for treason under the fugitive slave law, because they resisted the attempt to kidnap one of their number, and killed one of the kidnappers. This indictment was found at the instigation of an officer of the government, who adds new infamy to the name of the great first murderer.[38]Speech at Capon Springs.

[34]See note on Function of the Jury, above, p. 165.

[35]In these times of political corruption, when a postmaster in a country village is turned out of office for voting for a representative to Congress who exposed the wickedness of a prominent member of the cabinet, it is pleasant to read such letters as those of Washington to Benjamin Lincoln, March 11, 1789, and to Bushrod Washington, July 27, 1789, in Sparks's Writings of Washington, vol. ix. p. 477,et seq., and x. p. 73,et seq.

[36]In the Pilgrim's Progress, Bunyan gives a case which it is probable was fictitious only in the names of the parties. Faithful was indicted before Lord Hategood for a capital offence. Mr. Envy testified. Then the judge asked him, Hast thou any more to say? Envy replied: "My Lord, I could say much more, only I would not be tedious to the court. Yet, if need be, when the other gentlemen have given in their evidence, rather than any thing should be wanting that will dispatch him, I will enlarge my testimony against him."Lord Hategood stated the law—there were three statutes against the prisoner: 1. The act of King Pharaoh, in 1 Exodus 22; 2. That of King Nebuchadnezzar in 3 Daniel 6; and 3. That of King Darius in 6 Daniel 7. The jury took "the law from the ruling of the court," and, having been carefully packed, to judge from the names, and all just men expelled from their number, they readily found such a verdict as the government had previously determined upon.The same thing,mutatis mutandis, has been attempted in America, in Boston, and we may fear that in some instances it will succeed.

Lord Hategood stated the law—there were three statutes against the prisoner: 1. The act of King Pharaoh, in 1 Exodus 22; 2. That of King Nebuchadnezzar in 3 Daniel 6; and 3. That of King Darius in 6 Daniel 7. The jury took "the law from the ruling of the court," and, having been carefully packed, to judge from the names, and all just men expelled from their number, they readily found such a verdict as the government had previously determined upon.

The same thing,mutatis mutandis, has been attempted in America, in Boston, and we may fear that in some instances it will succeed.

[37]Since the first publication of this sermon we have seen eight-and-thirty men indicted for treason under the fugitive slave law, because they resisted the attempt to kidnap one of their number, and killed one of the kidnappers. This indictment was found at the instigation of an officer of the government, who adds new infamy to the name of the great first murderer.

[38]Speech at Capon Springs.

Men of a superior culture get it at the cost of the whole community, and therefore, at first owe for their education. They must pay back an equivalent, or else remain debtors to mankind, debtors forever; that is, beggars or thieves, such being the only class that are thus perpetually in debt and a burden to the race.

It is true that every man, the rudest Prussian boor, as well as Von Humboldt, is indebted to mankind for his culture, to their past history and their existing institutions, to their daily toil. Taking the whole culture into the account, the debt bears about the same ratio to the receipt in all men. I speak not of genius, the inborn faculty which costs mankind nothing, only of the education thereof, which the man obtains. The Irishman who can only handle his spade,wear his garments, talk his wild brogue, and bid his beads, has four or five hundred generations of ancestors behind him, and is as long descended, and from as old a stock, as the accomplished patrician scholar at Oxford and Berlin. The Irishman depends on them all, and on the present generation for his culture. But he has obtained his development with no special outlay and cost of the human race. In getting that rude culture, he has appropriated nothing to himself which is taken from another man's share. He has paid as he went along, so he owes nothing in particular for his education; and mankind has no claim on him as for value received. But the Oxford graduate has been a long time at school and college; not earning, but learning; living therefore at the cost of mankind, with an obligation and an implied promise to pay back when he comes of age and takes possession of his educated faculties. He therefore has not only the general debt which he shares with all men, but an obligation quite special and peculiar for his support while at study.

This rule is general, and applies to the class of educated men with some apparent exceptions, and a very few real ones. Some men are born of poor but strong-bodied parents, and endowed with great abilities; they inherit nothing except their share of the general civilization of mankind, and the onward impulse which that has given. These men devote themselves to study; and having behind them an ancestryof broad-shouldered, hard-handed, stalwart, temperate men, and deep-bosomed, red-armed and industrious mothers, they are able to do the work of two or three men at the time. Such men work while they study; they teach while they learn; they hew their own way through the wood by superior strength and skill born in their bones, with an axe themselves have chipped out from the stone, or forged of metal, or paid for with the result of their first hewings. They are specially indebted to nobody for their culture. They pay as they go, owing the academic ferryman nothing for setting them over into the elysium of the scholar.

Only few men ever make this heroic and crucial experiment. None but poor men's sons essay the trial. Nothing but poverty has whips sharp enough to sting indolent men, even of genius, to such exertion of the manly part. But even this proud race often runs into another debt: they run up long scores with the body, which must one day be paid "with aching head and squeamish heart-burnings." The credit on account of the hardy fathers, is not without limit. It is soon exhausted; especially in a land where the atmosphere, the institutions, and the youth of the people all excite to premature and excessive prodigality of effort. The body takes a mortgage on the spendthrift spirit, demands certain regular periodic payments, and will one day foreclose for breach of condition, impede the spirit's action in the premises,putting a very disagreeable keeper there, and finally expel the prodigal mortgagor. So it often happens, that a man, who in his youth scorned a pecuniary debt to mankind, and would receive no favor even to buy culture with, has yet, unconsciously and against his will, contracted debts which trouble him in manhood, and impede his action all his life; with swollen feet and blear eyes famous Griesbach pays for the austere heroism of his penurious and needy youth. The rosy bud of genius, on the poor man's tree, too often opens into a lean and ghastly flower. Could not Burns tell us this?

With the rare exceptions just hinted at, any man of a superior culture owes for it when obtained. Sometimes the debt is obvious: a farmer with small means and a large family sends the most hopeful of his sons to college. Look at the cost of the boy's culture. His hands are kept from work that his mind may be free. He fares on daintier food, wears more and more costly garments. Other members of the family must feed and clothe him, earn his tuition-fees, buy his books, pay for his fuel and room-rent. For this the father rises earlier than of old, yoking the oxen a great while before day of a winter's morning, and toils till long after dark of a winter's night, enduring cold and hardship. For this the mother stints her frugal fare, her humble dress; for this the brothers must forego sleep and pastime, must toil harder, late and early both; for this the sistersmust seek new modes of profitable work, must wear their old finery long after it is finery no more. The spare wealth of the family, stinted to spare it, is spent on this one youth. From the father to the daughters, all lay their bones to extraordinary work for him; the whole family is pinched in body that this one youth may go brave and full. Even the family horse pays his tax to raise the education fee.

Men see the hopeful scholar, graceful and accomplished, receiving his academic honors, but they see not the hard-featured father standing unheeded in the aisle, nor the older sister in an obscure corner of the gallery, who had toiled in the factory for the favored brother, tending his vineyard, her own not kept, who had perhaps learned the letters of Greek to hear him recite the grammar at home. Father and sister know not a word of the language in which his diploma is writ and delivered. At what cost of the family tree is this one flower produced? How many leaves, possible blossoms, yea, possible branches have been absorbed to create this one flower, which shall perpetuate the kind, after being beautiful and fragrant in its own season? Yet, while these leaves are growing for the blossom's sake, and the life of the tree is directed thither with special and urgent emphasis, the difference between branch and blossom, leaf and petal, is getting more and more. By and by the two cannot comprehend each other; the acorn has forgotten the leaf which reared it, andthinks itself of another kin. Grotius, who speaks a host of languages, talking with the learned of all countries, and of every age, has forgot his mother tongue, and speech is at an end with her that bore him. The son, accomplished with many a science, many an art, ceases to understand the simple consciousness of his father and mother. They are proud of him—that he has outgrown them; he ashamed of them when they visit him amid his scholarly company. To them he is a philosopher; they only clowns in his eyes. He learns to neglect, perhaps to despise them, and forgets his obligation and his debt. Yet by their rudeness is it that he is refined. His science and literary skill are purchased by their ignorance and uncouthness of manner and of speech. Had the educational cost been equally divided, all had still continued on a level; he had known no Latin, but the whole family might have spoken good English. For all the difference which education has made betwixt him and his kinsfolk he is a debtor.

In New England you sometimes see extremes of social condition brought together. The blue-frocked father, well advanced, but hale as an October morning, jostles into Boston in a milk-cart, his red-cheeked grand-daughter beside him, also coming for some useful daily work, while the youngest son, cultured at the cost of that grand-daughter's sire and by that father's toil, is already a famous man; perhaps alsoa proud one, eloquent at the bar, or powerful in the pulpit, or mighty in the senate. The family was not rich enough to educate all the children after this costly sort; one becomes famous, the rest are neglected, obscure, and perhaps ignorant; the cultivated son has little sympathy with them. So the men that built up the cathedrals of Strasbourg and Milan slept in mean hutches of mud and straw, dirty, cold, and wet; the finished tower looks proudly down upon the lowly thatch, all heedless of the cost at which itself arose.

It is plain that this man owes for his education; it is plain whom he owes. But all men of a superior culture, though born to wealth, get their education in the same way, only there is this additional mischief to complicate the matter: the burden of self-denial is not borne by the man's own family, but by other fathers and mothers, other brothers and sisters. They also pay the cost of his culture, bear the burden for no special end, and have no personal or family joy in the success; they do not even know the scholar they help to train. They who hewed the topstone of society are far away when it is hoisted up with shouting. Most of the youths now-a-days trained at Harvard College are the sons of rich men, yet they also, not less, are educated at the public charge; beneficiaries not of the "Hopkins' Fund," but of the whole community. Society is not yet rich enough to afford so generous a culture to allwho ask, who deserve, or who would pay for it a hundred-fold. The accomplished man who sits in his well-endowed scholarship at Oxford, or rejoices to be "Master of Trinity," though he have the estate of the Westminsters and Sutherlands behind him, is still the beneficiary of the public, and owes for his schooling.

In the general way among the industrious classes of New England, a boy earns his living after he is twelve years old. If he gets the superior education of the scholar solely by the pecuniary aid of his father or others, when he is twenty-five and enters on his profession, law, medicine, or divinity, politics, school-keeping, or trade, he has not earned his Latin grammar; has rendered no appreciable service to mankind; others have worked that he might study, and taught that he might learn. He has not paid the first cent towards his own schooling; he is indebted for it to the whole community. The ox-driver in the fields, the pavior in the city streets, the laborer on the railroad, the lumberer in the woods, the girl in the factory, each has a claim on him. If he despises these persons, or cuts himself off from sympathy with them; if he refuses to perform his function for them after they have done their possible to fit him for it; he is not only the perpetual and ungrateful debtor, but is more guilty than the poor man's son who forgets the family that sent him to college: for that family consciously and willinglymade the sacrifice, and got some satisfaction for it in the visible success of their scheme, nay, are sometimes proud of the pride which scorns them, while with the mass of men thus slighted there is no return for their sacrifice. They did their part, faithfully did it; their beneficiary forgets his function.

The democratic party in New England does not much favor the higher seminaries of education. There has long been a suspicion against them in the mass of the community, and among the friends of the public education of the people a serious distrust. This is the philosophy of that discontent: public money spent on the higher seminaries is so much taken from the humbler schools, so much taken from the colleges of all for the college of the few; men educated at such cost have not adequately repaid the public for the sacrifice made on their account; men of superior education have not been eminently the friends of mankind, they do not eminently represent Truth, Justice, Philanthropy, and Piety; they do not point men to lofty human life, and go thitherward in advance of mankind; their superior education has narrowed their sympathies, instead of widening; they use their opportunities against mankind, and not in its behalf; think, write, legislate, and live not for the interest of mankind, but only for a class; instead of eminent wisdom, justice, piety, they have eminent cunning, selfishness, and want of faith.These charges are matters of allegation; judge you if they be not also matters of fact.

Now there is a common feeling amongst men that the scholar is their debtor, and, in virtue of this, that they have a right to various services from him. No honest man asks the aid of a farmer or a blacksmith without intending to repay him in money; no assembly of mechanics would ask another to come two hundred miles and give them a month's work, or a day's work. Yet they will ask a scholar to do so. What gratuitous services are demanded of the physician, of the minister, of the man of science and letters in general! No poor man in Boston but thinks he has a good claim on any doctor; no culprit in danger of liberty or life but will ask the services of a lawyer, wholly without recompense, to plead his cause. The poorest and most neglected class of men look on every good clergyman as their missionary and minister and friend; the better educated and more powerful he is, the juster and greater do they feel their claim on him. A pirate in jail may command the services of any Christian minister in the land. Most of the high achievements in science, letters and art, have had no apparent pay. The pay came beforehand: in general and from God, in the greater ability, "the vision and the faculty divine," but in particular also and from men, in the opportunity afforded them by others for the use and culture thereof. Divinely and humanly they are wellpaid. Men feel that they have this right to the services of the scholar, in part because they dimly know that his superior education is purchased at the general cost. Hence, too, they are proud of the few able and accomplished men, feeling that all have a certain property therein, as having contributed their mite to the accumulation, by their divine nature related to the men of genius, by their human toil partners in the acquirements of the scholar. This feeling is not confined to men who intellectually can appreciate intellectual excellence. The little parish in the mountains, and the great parish in the city, are alike proud of the able-headed and accomplished scholar, who ministers to them; though neither the poor clowns of the village nor the wealthy clowns of the metropolis could enter into his consciousness and understand his favorite pursuits or loftiest thought. Both would think it insulting to pay such a man in full proportion to his work or their receipt. Nobody offers a salary to the House of Lords: their lordship is their pay, and they must give back, in the form of justice and sound government, an equivalent for all they take in high social rank. They must pay for their nobility by being noble lords.

How shall the scholar pay for his education? He is to give a service for the service received. Thus the miller and the farmer pay one another, each paying with service in his own kind. The scholar cannotpay back bread for bread, and cloth for cloth. He must pay in the scholar's kind, not the woodman's or the weaver's. He is to represent the higher modes of human consciousness; his culture and opportunities of position fit him for that. So he is not merely to go through the routine of his profession, as minister, doctor, lawyer, merchant, schoolmaster, politician, or maker of almanacs, and for his own advantage; he is also to represent truth, justice, beauty, philanthropy, and religion—the highest facts of human experience; he must be common, but not vulgar, and, as a star, must dwell apart from the vulgarity of the selfish and the low. He may win money without doing this, get fame and power, and thereby seem to pay mankind for their advance to him, while he rides upon their neck; but as he has not paid back the scholar's cost and in the scholar's way, he is a debtor still, and owes for his past culture and present position.

Such is the position of the scholar everywhere, and such his consequent obligation. But in America there are some circumstances which make the position and the duty still more important. Beside the natural aristocracy of genius, talent, and educated skill, in most countries there is also a conventional and permanent nobility based on royal or patrician descent and immovable aristocracy. Its members monopolize the high places of society, and if notstrong by nature are so by position. Those men check the natural power of the class of scholars. The descendant of some famous chief of old time, takes rank before the Bacons, the Shakspeares, and the Miltons of new families, born yesterday, to-day gladdened and gladdening with the joy of their genius, usurps their place, and for a time "shoves away the worthy bidden guest" from the honors of the public board. Here there is no such class: a man born at all is well born; with a great nature, nobly born; the career opens to all that can run, to all men that wish to try; our aristocracy is movable, and the scholar has scope and verge enough.

Germany has the largest class of scholars; men of talent, sometimes of genius, of great working power, exceedingly well furnished for their work, with a knowledge of the past and the present. On the whole, they seem to have a greater power of thought than the scholars of any other land. They live in a country where intellectual worth is rated at its highest value. As England is the paradise of the patrician and the millionnaire, so is Germany for the man of thought; Goethe and Schiller, and the Humboldts took precedence of the mere conventional aristocracy. The empire of money is for England; that of mind is for Germany. But there the scholar is positively hindered in his function by the power of the government, which allows freedom of thought, and by education tends to promote it, yet not itscorrelative freedom of speech, and still less the consequent of that—freedom of act. Revelations of new thought are indeed looked for, and encouraged in certain forms, but the corresponding revolution of old things is forbidden. An idea must remain an idea; the government will not allow it to become a deed, an institution, an idea organized in men. The children of the mind must be exposed to die, or, if left alive, their feet are cramped, so that they cannot go alone; useless, joyless, and unwed, they remain in their father's house. The government seeks to establish national unity of action, by the sacrifice of individual variety of action, personal freedom; every man must be a soldier and a Christian, wearing the livery of the government on the body and in the soul, and going through the spiritual exercises of the church, as through the manual exercise of the camp. In a nation so enlightened, personal freedom cannot be wholly sacrificed, so thought is left free, but speech restricted by censorship—speech with the human mouth or the iron lips of the press. Now, as of old, is there a controversy between the temporal and the spiritual powers, about the investiture of the children of the soul.

Then, on the other side, the scholar is negatively impeded by the comparative ignorance of the people, by their consequent lack of administrative power and self-help, and their distrust of themselves. There a great illumination has gone on in the upperheavens of the learned, meteors coruscating into extraordinary glory; it has hardly dawned on the low valleys of the common people. If it shines there at all, it is but as the Northern Aurora with a little crackling noise, lending a feeble and uncertain light, not enough to walk with, and no warmth at all; a light which disturbs the dip and alters the variation of the old historical compass, bewilders the eye, hides the stars, and yet is not bright enough to walk by without stumbling. There is a learned class, very learned and very large, with whom the scholar thinks, and for whom he writes, most uncouthly, in the language only of the schools, and, if not kept in awe by the government, they are contented that a thought should remain always a thought; while in their own heart they disdain all authority but that of truth, justice, and love, they leave the people subject to no rule but the priest, the magistrate, and old custom, which usurp the place of reason, conscience, and the affections. There is a very enlightened pulpit, and a very dull audience. In America, it is said, for every dough-faced representative there is a dough-faced constituency, but in Germany there is not an intelligent people for each intelligent scholar. So on condition a great thought be true and revolutionary, it is hard to get it made a thing. Ideas go into a nunnery, not a family. Phidias must keep his awful Jove only in his head; there is no marble to carve it on. Eichhorn andStrauss, and Kant and Hegel, with all their pother among the learned, have kept no boor from the communion-table, nor made him discontented with the despotism of the State. They wrote for scholars, perhaps for gentlemen, for the enlightened, not for the great mass of the people, in whom they had no confidence. There is no class of hucksters of thought, who retail philosophy to the million. The million have as yet no appetite for it. So the German scholar is hindered from his function on either hand by the power of the government, or the ignorance of the people. He talks to scholars and not men; his great ideas are often as idle as shells in a lady's cabinet.

In America all is quite different. There are no royal or patrician patrons, no plebeian clients in literature, no immovable aristocracy to withstand or even retard the new genius, talent, or skill of the scholar. There is no class organized, accredited and confided in, to resist a new idea; only the unorganized inertia of mankind retards the circulation of thought and the march of men. Our historical men do not found historical families; our famous names of to-day are all new names in the State. American aristocracy is bottomed on money which no unnatural laws make steadfast and immovable. To exclude a scholar from the company of rich men, is not to exclude him from an audience that will welcome and appreciate.

Then the government does not interfere to prohibit the free exercise of thought. Speaking is free, preaching free, printing free. No administration in America could put down a newspaper or suppress the discussion of an unwelcome theme. The attempt would be folly and madness. There is no "tonnage and poundage" on thought. It is seldom that lawless violence usurps the place of despotic government. The chief opponent of the new philosophy is the old philosophy. The old has only the advantage of a few years; the advantage of possession of the ground. It has no weapons of defence which the new has not for attack. What hinders the growth of the new democracy of to-day?—only the old democracy of yesterday, once green, and then full blown, but now going to seed. Everywhere else walled gardens have been built for it to go quietly to seed in, and men appointed, in God's name or the States', to exterminate as a weed every new plant of democratic thought which may spring up and suck the soil or keep off the sun, so that the old may quietly occupy the ground, and undisturbed continue to decay and contaminate the air. Here it has nothing but its own stalk to hold up its head, and is armed with only such spines as it has grown out of its own substance.

Here the only power which continually impedes the progress of mankind, and is conservative in the bad sense, is Wealth, which represents life lived, notnow a-living, and labor accumulated, not now a-doing. Thus the obstacle to free trade is not the notion that our meat must be home-grown and our coat home-spun, but the money invested in manufactures. Slavery is sustained by no prestige of antiquity, no abstract fondness for a patriarchal institution, no special zeal for "Christianity" which the churches often tell us demands it, but solely because the Americans have invested some twelve hundred millions of dollars in the bodies and souls of their countrymen, and fear they shall lose their capital. Whitney's gin for separating the cotton from its blue seed, making its culture and the labor of the slave profitable, did more to perpetuate slavery than all the "Compromises of the Constitution." The last argument in its favor is always this: It brings money, and we would not lose our investment. Weapon a man with iron he will stand and fight; with gold, he will shrink and run. The class of capitalists are always cowardly; here they are the only cowardly class that has much political or social influence. Here gold is the imperial metal; nothing but wealth is consecrated for life: the tonsure gets covered up or grown over; vows of celibacy are no more binding than dicers' oaths; allegiance to the State is as transferable as a cent, and may be alienated by going over the border; church-communion may be changed or neglected; as men will, they sign off from Church and State; only the dollar holds its own continually,and is the same under all administrations, "safe from the bar, the pulpit and the throne." Obstinate money continues in office spite of the proscriptive policy of Polk and Taylor; the laws may change, South Carolina move out of the nation, the Constitution be broken, the Union dissolved, still money holds its own. That is the only peculiar weapon which the old has wherewith to repel the new.

Here, too, the scholar has as much freedom as he will take; himself alone stands in his own light, nothing else between him and the infinite majesty of Truth. He is free to think, to speak, to print his word and organize his thought. No class of men monopolize public attention or high place. He comes up to the Genius of America, and she asks: "What would you have, my little man?" "More liberty," lisps he. "Just as much as you can carry," is the answer. "Pay for it and take it, as much as you like, there it is." "But it is guarded!" "Only by gilded flies in the daytime; they look like hornets, but can only buzz, not bite with their beak, nor sting with their tail. At night it is defended by daws and beetles, noisy but harmless. Here is marble, my son, not classic and famous as yet, but good as the Parian stone; quarry as much as you will, enough for a nymph or a temple. Say your wisest and do your best thing; nobody will hurt you!"

Not much more is the scholar impeded by the ignorance of the people, not at all in respect to thesubstance of his thought. There is no danger that he will shoot over the heads of the people by thinking too high for the multitude. We have many authors below the market; scarce one above it. The people are continually looking for something better than our authors give. No American author has yet been too high for the comprehension of the people, and compelled to leave his writings "to posterity after some centuries shall have passed by." If he has thought with the thinkers and has something to say, and can speak it in plain speech, he is sure to be widely understood. There is no learned class to whom he may talk Latin or Sanscrit, and who will understand him if he write as ill as Immanuel Kant; there is not a large class to buy costly editions of ancient classics, however beautiful, or magnificent works on India, Egypt, Mexico—the class of scholars is too poor for that, the rich men have not the taste for such beauty—but there is an intelligent class of men who will hear a man if he has what is worth listening to and says it plain. It will be understood and appreciated, and soon reduced to practice. Let him think as much in advance of men as he will, as far removed from the popular opinion as he may, if he arrives at a great truth he is sure of an audience, not an audience of fellow-scholars, as in Germany, but of fellow-men; not of the children of distinguished or rich men—rather of the young parents of such, an audience of earnest, practical people,who, if his thought be a truth, will soon make it a thing. They will appreciate the substance of his thought, though not the artistic form which clothes it.

This peculiar relation of the man of genius to the people comes from American institutions. Here the greatest man stands nearest to the people, and without a mediator speaks to them face to face. This is a new thing: in the classic nations oratory was for the people, so was the drama, and the ballad; that was all their literature. But this came to the people only in cities: the tongue travels slow and addresses only the ear, while swiftly hurries on the printed word and speaks at once to a million eyes. Thucydides and Tacitus wrote for a few; Virgil sang the labors of the shepherd in old Ascræan verse, but only to the wealthy wits of Rome. "I hate the impious crowd and stave them off," was the scholar's maxim then. All writing was for the few. The best English literature of the sixteenth and seventeenth and eighteenth centuries is amenable to the same criticism, except the dramatic and the religious. It is so with all the permanent literature of Europe of that time. The same must be said even of much of the religious literature of the scholars then. The writings of Taylor, of Barrow, and South, of Bossuet, Massillon and Bourdaloue, clergymen though they were, speaking with a religious and therefore a universal aim, always presuppose anarrow audience of men of nice culture. So they drew their figures from the schoolmen, from the Greek anthology, from heathen classics and the Christian Fathers. Their illustrations were embellishments to the scholar, but only palpable darkness to the people. This fact of writing for a few nice judges was of great advantage to the form of the literature thus produced, but a disadvantage to the substance thereof, a misfortune to the scholar himself, for it belittled his sympathies and kept him within a narrow range. Even the religious literature of the men just named betrays a lack of freedom, a thinking for the learned and not for mankind; it has breathed the air of the cloister, not the sky, and is tainted with academic and monastic diseases. So the best of it is over-sentimental, timid, and does not point to hardy, manly life. Only Luther and Latimer preached to the million hearts of their contemporaries. The dramatic literature, on the other hand, was for box, pit and gallery; hence the width of poetry in its great masters; hence many of its faults of form; and hence the wild and wanton luxuriance of beauty which flowers out all over the marvellous field of art where Shakspeare walked and sung. In the pulpit, excellence was painted as a priest, or monk, or nun, loving nothing but God; on the stage, as a soldier, magistrate, a gentleman or simpleman, a wife and mother, loving also child andfriend. Only the literature of the player and the singer of ballads was for the people.

Here all is changed, every thing that is written is for the hands of the million. In three months Mr. Macaulay has more readers in America than Thucydides and Tacitus in twelve centuries. Literature, which was once the sacrament of the few, only a shew-bread to the people, is now the daily meat of the multitude. The best works get reprinted with great speed; the highest poetry is soon in all the newspapers. Authors know this, and write accordingly. It is only scientific works which ask for a special public. But even science, the proudest of the day, must come down from the clouds of the academy, lay off its scholastic garb, and appear before the eyes of the multitude in common work-day clothes. To large and mainly unlearned audiences Agassiz and Walker set forth the highest teachings of physics and metaphysics, not sparing difficult things, but putting them in plain speech. Emerson takes his majestic intuitions of truth and justice, which transcend the experience of the ages, and expounds them to the mechanics' apprentices, to the factory girls at Lowell and Chicopee, and to the merchants' clerks at Boston. The more original the speaker, and the more profound, the better is he relished; the beauty of the form is not appreciated, but the original substance welcomedinto new life over the bench, the loom, and even the desk of the counting-house. Of a deep man the people ask clearness also, thinking he does not see a thing wholly till he sees it plain.

From this new relation of the scholar to the people, and the direct intimacy of his intercourse with men, there comes a new modification of his duty: he is to represent the higher facts of human consciousness to the people, and express them in the speech of the people; to think with the sage and saint, but talk with common men. It is easy to discourse with scholars, and in the old academic carriage drive through the broad gateway of the cultivated class; but here the man of genius is to take the new thought on his shoulders and climb up the stiff, steep hill, and find his way where the wild asses quench their thirst, and the untamed eagle builds his nest. Hence our American scholar must cultivate the dialectics of speech as well as thought. Power of speech without thought, a long tongue in an empty head, calls the people together once or twice, but soon its only echo is from an audience of empty pews. Thought without power of speech finds little welcome here; there are not scholars enough to keep it in countenance. This popularity of intelligence gives a great advantage to the man of letters, who is also a man. He can occupy the whole space between the extremes of mankind; can be at once philosopher in his thought and people inhis speech, deliver his word without an interpreter to mediate, and, like King Mithridates in the story, talk with the fourscore nations of his camp each in his own tongue.

Further still, there are some peculiarities of the American mind, in which we differ from our English brothers. They are more inclined to the matter of fact, and appeal to history; we, to the matter of ideas, and having no national history but of a revolution, may appeal at once to human nature. So while they are more historical, fond of names and precedents, enamoured of limited facts and coy towards abstract and universal ideas, with the maxim, "Stand by the fixed," we are more metaphysical, ideal, do not think a thing right because actual, nor impossible because it has never been. The Americans are more metaphysical than the English; have departed more from the old sensational philosophy, have welcomed more warmly the transcendental philosophy of Germany and France. The Declaration of Independence and all the State Constitutions of the North begin with a universal and abstract idea. Even preaching is abstract and of ideas. Calvinism bears metaphysical fruit in New England.

This fact modifies still more the function of the duty of the scholar. It determines him to ideas, to facts for the ideas they cover, not so much to the past as the future, to the past only that he mayguide the present and construct the future. He is to take his run in the past to acquire the momentum of history, his stand in the present and leap into the future.

In this manner the position and duty of the scholar in America are modified and made peculiar; and thus is the mode determined for him, in which to pay for his education in the manner most profitable to the public that has been at the cost of his training.

There is a test by which we measure the force of a horse or a steam-engine: the raising of so many pounds through so many feet in a given time. The test of the scholar's power is his ability to raise men in their development.

In America there are three chief modes of acting upon the public, omitting others of small account. The first is the power which comes of National Wealth; the next, that of Political Station; the third, power of Spiritual Wealth, so to say, eminent wisdom, justice, love, piety, the power of sentiments and ideas, and the faculty of communicating them to other men, and organizing them therein. For the sake of shortness, let each mode of power be symbolized by its instrument, and we have the power of the Purse, of the Office, and the Pen.

The Purse represents the favorite mode of power with us. This is natural in our present stage of national existence and human development; it is likelyto continue for a long time. In all civilized countries which have outgrown the period when the sword was the favorite emblem, the Purse represents the favorite mode of power with the mass of men; but here it is so with the men of superior education. This power is not wholly personal, but extra-personal, and the man's centre of gravity lies out of himself, less or more; somewhere between the man and his last cent, the distance being greater or less as the man is less or greater than the estate. This is wielded chiefly by men of little education, except the practical culture which they have gained in the process of accumulation. Their riches they get purposely, their training by the way and accidentally. It is a singular misfortune of the country, that, while the majority of the people are better cultivated and more enlightened than any other population in the world, the greater part of the wealth of the nation is owned by men of less education and consequently of less enlightenment than the rich men of any leading nation in Europe. In England and France the wealth of this generation is chiefly inherited, and has generally fallen to men carefully trained, with minds disciplined by academic culture. Here wealth is new, and mainly in the hands of men who have scrambled for it adroitly and with vigor. They have energy, vigor, forecast, and a certain generosity, but as a class, are narrow, vulgar, and conceited. Nine tenths of the property of the people is owned by onetenth of the persons, and these capitalists are men of little culture, little moral elevation. This is an accident of our position unavoidable, perhaps transient; but it is certainly a misfortune that the great estates of the country, and the social and political power of such wealth, should be mainly in the hands of such men. The melancholy result appears in many a disastrous shape: in the tone of the pulpit, of the press, and of the national politics; much of the vulgarity of the nation is to be ascribed to this fact, that wealth belongs to men who know nothing better.

The Office represents the next most popular mode of power. This also is extra-personal, the man's centre of gravity is out of himself, somewhere between him and the lowest man in the State; the distance depending on the proportion of manhood in him and the multitude, if the office is much greater than the man, then the officer's centre of gravity is further removed from his person. This is sought for by the ablest and best educated men in the land. But there is a large class of educated persons who do not aspire to it from lack of ability, for in our form of government it commonly takes some saliency of character to win the high places of office and use respectably this mode of power, while it demands no great or lofty talents to accumulate the largest fortune in America. It is true the whirlwind of an election, by the pressure of votes, may, now andthen, take a very heavy body up to a great height. Yet it does not keep him from growing giddy and ridiculous while there, and after a few years lets him fall again into complete insignificance, whence no Hercules can ever lift him up. A corrupt administration may do the same, but with the same result. This consideration keeps many educated men from the political arena; others are unwilling to endure the unsavory atmosphere of politics, and take part in a scramble so vulgar; but still a large portion of the educated and scholarly talent of the nation goes to that work.

The power of the Pen is wholly personal. It is the appropriate instrument of the scholar, but it is least of all desired and sought for. The rich man sends his sons to trade, to make too much of inheritance yet more by fresh acquisitions of superfluity. He does not send them to literature, art or science. You find the scholar slipping in to other modes of action, not the merchants and politicians migrating into this. He longs to act by the gravity of his money or station, not draw merely by his head. The Office carries the day before the Pen; the Purse takes precedence of both. Educated men do not so much seek places that demand great powers, as those which bring much gold. Self-denial for money or office is common, for scholarship rare and unpopular. To act by money, not mind, is the ill-concealed ambition of many a well-bred man; the desire ofthis colors his day-dream, which is less of wisdom and more of wealth, or of political station; so a first-rate clergyman desires to be razed to a second-rate politician, and some "tall admiral" of a politician consents to be cut down and turned into a mere sloop of trade. The representative in Congress becomes a president of an insurance office or a bank, or the agent of a cotton mill; the judge deserts his station on the bench and presides over a railroad; the governor or senator wants a place in the post-office; the historian longs for a "chance in the custom-house." The Pen stoops to the Office, that to the Purse. The scholar would rather make a fortune by a balsam of wild cherry than write Hamlet or Paradise Lost for nothing; rather than help mankind by making a Paradise Regained. The well-endowed minister thinks how much more money he might have made had he speculated in stocks and not theology, and mourns that the kingdom of heaven does not pay in this present life fourfold. The professor of Greek is sorry he was not a surveyor and superintendent of a railroad, he should have so much more money; that is what he has learned from Plato and Diogenes. We estimate the skill of an artist like that of a peddler, not by the pictures he has made, but by the money. There is a mercantile way of determining literary merit not by the author's books, but by his balance with the publisher. No church is yet called after a man who is merely rich,something in the New Testament might hinder that; but the ministers estimate their brother minister by the greatness of his position, not of his character; not by his piety and goodness, not even by his reason and understanding, the culture he has attained thereby, and the use he makes thereof, but by the wealth of his church and the largeness of his salary; so that he is not thought the fortunate and great minister who has a large outgo of spiritual riches, rebukes the sins of the nation and turns many to righteousness, but he who has a large material income, ministers, though poorly, to rich men, and is richly paid for that function. The well-paid clergymen of a city tell the professor of theology that he must teach "such doctrines as the merchants approve," or they will not give money to the college, and he, it, and "the cause of the Lord" will all come to the ground at the same time and in kindred confusion. So blind Money would put out the heavenly eyes of Science, and lead her also to his own ditch. It must not be forgotten that there are men in the midst of us, rich, respectable and highly honored with social rank and political power, who practically and in strict conformity with their theory, honor Judas, who made money by his treachery, far more than Jesus who laid down his life for men, whose money is deemed better than manhood. It must indeed be so. Any outrage that is profitable to the controlling portion of society is sure to be welcometo the leaders of the State, and is soon pronounced divine by the leaders of the church.

It would seem as if the Pen ought to represent the favorite mode of power at a college; but even there the waters of Pactolus are thought fairer than the Castalian, Heliconian spring, or "Siloa's brook that flowed fast by the oracle of God." The college is named after the men of wealth, not genius. How few professorships in America bear the names of men of science or letters, and not of mere rich men! Which is thought the greatest benefactor of a college, he who endows it with money or with mind? Even there it is the Purse, not the Pen that is the symbol of honor, and the University is "up for California," not Parnassus.

Even in politics the Purse turns the scale. Let a party wrestle never so hard it cannot throw the dollar. Money controls and commands talent, not talent money. The successful shopkeeper frowns on and browbeats the accomplished politician, who has too much justice for the wharf and the board of brokers; he notices that the rich men avert their eye, or keep their beaver down, trembles and is sad, fearing that his daughter will never find a fitting spouse. The Purse buys up able men of superior education, corrupts and keeps them as its retained attorneys, in congress or the church, not as counsel but advocate, bribed to make the worse appear the better reason, and so help money to control the State and wieldits power against the interest of mankind. This is perfectly well known; but no politician or minister, bribed to silence or to speech, ever loses his respectability because he is bought by respectable men,—if he get his pay. In all countries but this the Office is before the Purse; here the State is chiefly an accessory of the Exchange, and our politics only mercantile. This appears sometimes against our will, in symbols not meant to tell the tale. Thus in the House of Representatives in Massachusetts, a codfish stares the speaker in the face—not a very intellectual looking fish. When it was put there it was a symbol of the riches of the State, and so of the Commonwealth. With singular and unconscious satire it tells the legislature to have an eye "to the main chance," and, but for its fidelity to its highest instincts and its obstinate silence, might be a symbol good enough for the place.

Now after the Office and the Purse have taken their votaries from the educated class, the ablest men are certainly not left behind. Three roads open before our young Hercules as he leaves college, having respectively as finger-post, the Pen, the Office, and the Purse. Few follow the road of Letters. This need not be much complained of; nay it might be rejoiced in, if the Purse and the Office in their modes of power did represent the higher consciousness of mankind. But no one contends it is so.

Still there are men who devote themselves to someliterary callings which have no connection with political office, and which are not pursued for the sake of great wealth. Such men produce the greater part of the permanent literature of the country. They are eminently scholars; permanent scholars who act by their scholar-craft, not by the state-craft of the politician, or the purse-craft of the capitalist. How are these men paying their debt and performing their function? The answer must be found in the science and the literature of the land.

American Science is something of which we may well be proud. Mr. Liebig in Germany has found it necessary to defend himself from the charge of following science for the loaves and fishes thereof, and he declares that he espoused Chemistry not for her wealthy dower, not even for the services her possible children might render to mankind, but solely for her own sweet sake. Amongst the English race, on both sides of the ocean, science is loved rather for the fruit than the blossom; its service to the body is thought of more value than its service to the mind. A man's respectability would be in danger, in America, if he loved any science better than the money or fame it might bring. It is characteristic of us that a scholar should write for reputation and gold. Here, as elsewhere, the unprofitable parts of science fall to the lot of poor men. When the rich man's son has the natural calling that way, public opinion would dissuade him from the study of nature. The greatestscientific attainments do not give a man so high social consideration as a political office or a successful speculation—unless it be the science which makes money. Scientific schools we call after merely rich men, not men of wealthy minds. It is true we name streets and squares, towns and counties after Franklin, but it is because he keeps the lightning from factories, churches, and barns; tells us not "to give too much for the whistle," and teaches "the way to make money plenty in every man's pocket." We should not name them after Cuvier and La Place.

Notwithstanding this, the scientific scholars of America, both the home-born and the adopted sons, have manfully paid for their culture, and done honor to the land. This is true of men in all departments of science,—from that which searches the deeps of the sky to that which explores the shallows of the sea. Individuals, States, and the nation have all done themselves honor by the scientific researches and discoveries that have been made. The outlay of money and of genius for things which only pay the head and not the mouth of man, is beautiful and a little surprising in such a utilitarian land as this. Time would fail me to attend to particular cases.

Look at the Literature of America. Reserving the exceptional portion thereof to be examined in a moment, let us study the instantial portion of it,American Literature as a whole. This may be distributed into two main divisions: First comes the Permanent Literature, consisting of works not designed merely for a single and transient occasion, but elaborately wrought for a general purpose. This is literature proper. Next follows the Transient Literature, which is brought out for a particular occasion, and designed to serve a special purpose. Let us look at each.

The Permanent Literature of America is poor and meagre; it does not bear the mark of manly hands, of original, creative minds. Most of it is rather milk for babes than meat for men, though much of it is neither fresh meat nor new milk, but the old dish often served up before. In respect to its form, this portion of our literature is an imitation. That is natural enough, considering the youth of the country. Every nation, like every man, even one born to genius, begins by imitation. Raphael, with servile pencil, followed his masters in his youth, but at length his artistic eye attracted new-born angels from the calm stillness of their upper heaven, and with liberal, free hand, with masterly and original touch, the painter of the newness amazed the world.

The early Christian literature is an imitation of the Hebrew or the classic type: even after centuries had passed by, Sidonius, though a bishop of the church, and destined to become a saint, uses the old heathen imagery, referring to Triptolemus as a modelfor Christian work, and talks about Triton and Galatea, to the Christian Queen of the Goths. Saint Ambrose is a notorious imitator of pagan Cicero. The Christians were all anointed with Jewish nard; and the sour grapes they ate in sacrament have set on edge their children's teeth till now. The modern nations of Europe began their literature by the driest copies of Livy and Virgil. The Germans have the most original literature of the last hundred years. But till the middle of the past century their permanent literature was chiefly in Latin and French, with as little originality as our own. The real poetic life of the nation found vent in other forms. It is natural therefore, and according to the course of history, that we should begin in this way. The best political institutions of England are cherished here, so her best literature, and it is not surprising that we are content with this rich inheritance of artistic toil. In many things we are independent, but in much that relates to the higher works of man, we are still colonies of England. This appears not only in the vulgar fondness for English fashions, manners and the like, which is chiefly an affectation, but in the servile style with which we copy the great or little models of English literature. Sometimes this is done consciously, oftener without knowing it.

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