Chapter 5

"A primrose by the river's brimA yellow primrose was to him,And it was nothing more."

To him Nature was an open book, from which he continually quoted with a loving freedom, not to illustrate his own deep relationships with her, but to give greater glory to that vast Power which stood behind her beautiful text and was revealed to him in the new religion from Palestine. He loved fruits and flowers and leaves because they were manifestations of the Love of God; and he used them in his Art, not as motives out of which to create abstract forms, out of which to eliminate an ideal humanity, but to show his intense appreciation of the Divine Love which gave them. Had he been a Pantheist, as Orpheus was, it is probable he would have idealized these things and created Greek lines. But believing in a distinct God, the supreme Originator of all things, he was led to a worship of sacrifice and offerings, and needed no Ideal. So, with a lavish hand, he appropriated the abundant Beauty of Nature, imitating its external expressions with his careful chisel, and suffering his sculptured lines to throw their wayward tendrils and vagrant leaflets outside the strict limits of his spandrels. The life of Gothic lines was in their sensuous liberty; the life of Greek lines was in their intellectual reserve. Those arose out of a religion of emotional ardor; these, out of a religion of philosophical reflection. Hence, while the former were wild and picturesque, the latter were serious, chaste, and very human.

Doubtless the nearest approach to ideal abstractions to be found in Mediaeval Art is contained in that remarkable and very characteristic system of foliations and cuspidations in tracery, which were suggested by the leaf-forms in Nature. In this adaptation, when first it was initiated in the earliest phases of Gothic, there is something like Greek Love. The simple trefoil aperture seems a fair architectural version of the clover-leaves. But the propriety of the use of these clover-lines was hinted by a constructive exigency, the pointed arch. The inevitable assimilation of the natural forms of leaves with this feature was too evident not to be improved by such active and ardent worshippers as the Freemasons. Thus originated Gothic tracery, which afterwards branched out into such sumptuous and unrestrained luxury as we find in the Decorated styles of England, the Flamboyant of France, the late Geometric of Germany. Thus were the masons true to the zealous and passionate enthusiasm of their religion. They used foliations, not on account of their subjective significance, as the Greek artists did, but on account of their objective and material applicability to the decoration of their architecture. But no natural form was ever made use of by a Greek artist merely because suggested by a constructive exigency. It was the inward life of the thing itself which he saw, and it was his love for it which made him adopt it. This love refined and purified its object, and never would have permitted it to grow into any wild and licentious Flamboyant under the serene and quiet skies of the Aegean.

And so the Greek lines slept in patient marble through the long Dark Ages, and no one came to awaken them into beautiful life again. No one, consecrated Prince by the chrism of Nature, wandered into the old land to kiss the Sleeping Beauty into life, and break the deep spell which was around her kingdom.

Then came the Renaissance in the fifteenth century. But—alas that we must say it!—it was fundamentally a Renaissance of error rather than of truth. It was a revival of Roman Art, and not of Greek. The line which we call Hogarth's, but which in reality is as old as human life and its passions, was the key-note of it all. So wanton were the wreaths it curled in the sight of the great masters of that period, that they all yielded to its subtle fascinations and sinned,—sinned, inasmuch as they devoted their vast powers to the revival and refinement of a sensuous academic formalism, instead of breathing into all the architectural forms and systems then known (a glorious material to work with) the pure life of the Ideal. Had such men as Michel Angelo, San Gallo, Palladio, Scamozzi, Vignola, San Michele, Bernini, been inspired by the highest principles of Art, and known the thoughtful lines of Greece, so catholic to all human moods, and so wisely adapted to the true spirit of reform,—had they known these, all subsequent Art would have felt the noble impulse, and been developed into that sphere of perfection which we see rendering illustrious the primitive posts and lintels of antiquity, and which we picture to ourselves in the imaginary future of Hope as glorifying a far wider scope of human knowledge and ingenuity.

The Gothic architecture of the early part of the fifteenth century was ripe for the spirit of healthy reform. It had been actively accumulating, during the progress of the age of Christianity, a boundless wealth of forms, a vast amount of constructive resources, and material fit for innumerable architectural expressions of human power. But in the last two centuries of this era the Love which gave life to this architecture in its earlier developments gradually became swallowed up in the Pride of the workman; and the luscious and abandoned luxury of line led it farther and farther astray from the true path, till at last it became like an unweeded garden run to seed, and there was no health in it. In the year 1555, at Beauvais, the masonic workmen uttered their last cry of defiance against the old things made new in Italy. Jean Wast and François Maréchal of that town, two cathedral-builders, said,—"that they had heard of the Church of St. Peter at Rome, and would maintain that their Gothic could be built as high and on as grand a scale as the antique orders of this Michel Angelo." And with this spirit they built a wonderful pyramid over the cross of their cathedral. But, alas! it fell in the fifth year of its arrogant pride, and this is the last we hear of Gothic architecture in those times. Over the wild and picturesque ruins the spirits of the old conquerors of Gaul once more strode with measured tread, and began to set up their prevailing standards in the very strongholds of Gothic supremacy. These conquerors trampled down the true as well as the false in the Mediaevalrégime, and utterly extinguished that sole lamp of knowledge which had given light to the Ages of Darkness and had kindled into life and beauty the cathedrals of Europe.

This was the error of the Renaissance. Its apostles would not recognize the capacities existing in the great architecture they displaced, for opening into a new life under the careful culture of a revived knowledge. But they rooted it out bodily, and planted instead an exotic of the schools. It was the re-birth of an Artsystem, which in its former existence had developed in an atmosphere of conquest. It taught them to kill, burn, and destroy all that opposed the progress of its triumph. It was eminently revolutionary in its character, and its reign, to all those multitudinous expressions of life and thought which had arisen under the intermediate and more liberal dynasty, was one of terror. Truly, it was a fierce and desolating instrument of reform.

It would be a tempting theme of speculation to follow in the imagination the probable progress of a Greek, instead of a Roman Renaissance, into such active, but misguided schools as those of Rouen and Tours in the latter part of the fifteenth century,—of Rouen, with its Roger Arge, its brothers Leroux, who built the old and famous Hôtel Bourgtheroulde there, its Pierre de Saulbeaux, and all that legion of architects and builders who were employed by the Cardinal Amboise in his castle of Gaillon,—of Tours, with its Pierre Valence, its François Marchant, its Viart and Colin Byart, out of whose rich and picturesque craft-spirit arose the quaint fancies of the palaces of Blois and Chambord, and the playfulness of many an old Flemish house-front. Such a Renaissance would not have come among these venial sins ofnaïveté, this sportive affluence of invention, to overturn ruthlessly and annihilate. Its mission would inevitably have been, not to destroy, but to fulfil,—to invest these strange results of human frailty and human power with that grave ideal beauty which nineteen centuries before had done a good work with the simple columns and architraves on the banks of the Ilissus, and which, under the guidance of Love, would have made the arches and vaults and buttresses and pinnacles of a later civilization illustrious with even more eloquent expressions of refinement. For Greek lines do not stand apart from the sympathies of men by any spirit of ceremonious and exclusive rigor, as is undeniably the case with those which were adopted from Rome. They are not asystem, but asentiment, which, wisely directed, might creep into the heart of any condition of society, and leaven all its architecture with a purifying and pervading power without destroying its independence, where an inflexible system could assume a position only by tyrannous oppression.

Yet when we examine the works of the Renaissance, after the system had become more manageable and acclimated under later Italian and French hands, we cannot but admire the skill with which the lightest fancies and the most various expressions of human contrivance were reconciled to the formal rules and proportions of the Roman orders. The Renaissance palaces and civil buildings of the South and West of Europe are so full of ingenuity, and the irrepressible inventive power of the artist moves with so much freedom and grace among the stubborn lines of that revived architecture, that we cannot but regard the results with a sort of scholastic pride and pleasure. We cannot but ask ourselves, If the spirit of those architects could obtain so much liberty under the restrictions of such an unnatural and unnecessary despotism, what would have been the result, if they had been put in possession of the very principles of Hellenic Art, instead of these dangerous and complex models of Rome, which were so far removed from the purity and simplicity of their origin? Up to a late day, the great aim of the Renaissance has been to interpret an advanced civilization with the sensuous line; andso far as this line is capable of such expression, the result has been satisfactory.

Thus four more weary centuries were added to the fruitless slumbers of Ideal Beauty among the temples of Greece. Meanwhile, in turn, the Byzantine, the Northman, the Frank, the Turk, and finally the bombarding Venetian, left their rude invading footprints among her most cherished haunts, and defiled her very sanctuary with the brutal touch of barbarous conquest. But the kiss which was to dissolve this enchantment was one of Love; and not Love, but cold indifference, or even scorn, was in the hearts of the rude warriors. So she slept on undisturbed in spirit, though broken and shattered in the external type, and it was reserved for a distant future to be made beautiful by her disenchantment and awakening.

In 1672, a pupil of the artist Lebrun, Jacques Carrey, accompanied the Marquis Ollier de Nointee, ambassador of Louis XIV., to Constantinople. On his way he spent two months at Athens, making drawings of the Parthenon, then in an excellent state of preservation. These drawings, more useful in an archaeological than an artistic point of view, are now preserved in the Bibliothèque Impériale of Paris. In 1676, two distinguished travellers, one a Frenchman, Dr. Spon, the other an Englishman, Sir George Wheler, tarried at Athens, and gave valuable testimony, in terms of boundless admiration, to the beauty and splendor of the temples of the Acropolis and its neighborhood, then quite unknown to the world. Other travellers followed these pioneers in the traces of that old civilization. But in 1687 Königsmark and his Venetian forces threw their hideous bombshells among the exquisite temples of the Acropolis, and, igniting thereby the powder-magazine with which the Turks had desecrated the Parthenon, tore into ruins that loveliest of the lovely creations of Hellas. It was not until the publishing of the famous work of Stuart and Revett on "The Antiquities of Athens," in 1762, that the world was made familiar with the external expressions of Greek Architecture. This publication at once created a curious revolution in the practice of architecture,—a revolution extending in its effects throughout Europe. A fever arose to reproduce Greek temples; and to such an extent was this vacant and thoughtless reproduction carried out, that at one time it bid fair to supplant the older Renaissance. The spirit of the new Renaissance, however, was one of mere imitation, and had not the elements of life and power to insure its ultimate success. No attempt was made to acclimate the exotic to suit the new conditions it was thus suddenly called upon to fulfil; for thesentimentwhich actuated it, and the Love with which it was created, were not understood. It was the mere setting up of old forms in new places; and the Grecian porticos and pediments and columns, which were multiplied everywhere from the models supplied by Stuart and Revett, and found their way profusely into this New World, still stare upon us gravely with strange alien looks. The impetuous current of modern life beats impatiently against that cumbrous solidity of peristyle which sheltered well in its day the serene philosophers of the Agora, but which is now the merest impediment in the way of modern traffic and modern necessities. But presently the spirit of formalism, engendered by the old Renaissance, took hold of the revived Greek lines, and stiffened them into acquiescence with a base mathematical system, which effectually deprived them of that life and reproductive power which belong only to a state of artistic freedom. They were reduced to rule and deadened in the very process of their revival.

So the Greek Ideal, though strangely transplanted thus into the noise of modern streets, was not awakened from its long repose by the clatter and roaring of our new civilization. As regarded the uses of life, it still slept in petrifactions of Pentelic marble. And when those petrifactions were repeated in modern quarries, it was merely the shell they gave; the spirit within had not yet broken through.

Greek lines, therefore, owed their earliest revival to the vagaries of a capricious taste, and the desire to give zest to the architecture of the day by their novelty. It was not for the sake of the new life there was in them, and of that pliable spirit of refinement so suited to the wise re-birth of ancient Love in Art. It is not surprising that some of the more modern masters of the old Renaissance, with whom that system had become venerable, from its universal use as the vehicle by which the greatest artists of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries had expressed their thoughts and inspirations, regarded with peculiar distrust these outlandish innovations on the exclusive walks of their own architecture. For they saw only a few external forms which the beautiful principles of Hellenic Art had developed to fit an old civilization; the applicability of these primary principles to the refinement of the architectural expressions of a modern state of society they could not of course comprehend. About the year 1786, we find Sir William Chambers, the leading architect of his day in England, in his famous treatise on "The Decorative Part of Civil Architecture," giving elaborate and emphatic expression to his contempt of that Greek Art, which had presented itself to him in a guise well suited to cause misapprehension and error. "It must candidly be confessed," he says, "that the Grecians have been far excelled by other nations, not only in the magnitude and grandeur of their structures, but likewise in point of fancy, ingenuity, variety, and elegant selection." A heresy, indeed!

Two distinguished German artists—the one, Schinkel of Berlin, born in 1781,—the other, Klenze of Munich, born in 1784—were children when Chambers uttered these treasonable sentiments concerning Greek Art. Later, at separate times, these artists visited Greece, and so filled themselves with the feeling and sentiment of the Art there, so consecrated their souls with the appreciative study of its divine Love, that the patient Ideal at last awoke from its long slumbers, entered into the breathing human temples thus prepared for it by the pure rites of Aphrodite,and once more lived. Thus in the opening years of the nineteenth century was a new and reasonable Renaissance, not of an antique type, but of a spirit which had the gift of immortal youth, and uttered oracles of prophecy to these chosen Pythians of Art.

Through Schinkel, the pure Hellenic style, only hinted at previously in the attempts of less inspired Germans, such as Langhaus, who embodied his crude conceptions in the once celebrated Brandenburg Gate, was fairly and grandly revived in the Hauptwache Theatre and the beautiful Museum and the Bauschule and Observatory of Berlin. He competed with Klenze in a series of designs for the new palace at Athens, rich with a truly royal array of courts, corridors, saloons, and colonnades. But the evil fate which ever hangs over the competitions of genius was baleful even here, and the barrack-like edifice of Gütner was preferred. His latest conception was a design of a summer palace at Orianda, in the Crimea, for the Empress of Russia, where the purity of the old Greek lines was developed into the poetry of terraces and hanging-gardens and towers, far-looking over the Black Sea. Schinkel was called the Luther of Architecture; and the spiritual serenity which he breathed into the pomp and ceremonious luxury of the Art of his day seems to give him some title to this distinction. Yet, with all the freedom and originality with which he wrought out the new advent, he was perhaps rather too timid than too bold in his reforms,—adhering too strictly to the original letter of Greek examples, especially with regard to the orders. He could not entirely shake off the old incubus of Rome.

And so, though in a less degree, with Klenze. When, in 1825, Louis of Bavaria came to the throne, he was appointed Government Architect, and in this capacity gave shape to the noble dreams of that monarch, in the famous Glyptothèque, the Pinacothèque, the palace, and those civil and ecclesiastical buildings which render Munich one of the most monumental cities of Europe. It was his confessed aim to take up the work of the Renaissance artists, having regard to our increased knowledge of that antique civilization of which the masters of the sixteenth century could study only the most complex developments, and those models of Rome which were farthest removed from the pure fountain-head of Greece. "To-day," he said, "put in possession of the very principles of Hellenic Art, we can apply them to all our actual needs,—learning from the Greeks themselves to preserve our independence, and at the same time to be duly novel and unrestrained according to circumstances." These are certainly noble sentiments; and one cannot but wish, that, when, in 1830, Klenze was called upon to prepare plans for the grand Walhalla of Bavaria, he had remembered his sublime theory and worked up to its spirit, instead of recalling the Parthenon in his exterior and the Olympian temple of Agrigentum in his interior. The last effort of this distinguished artist was the building of three superb palaces for the museum of the Emperor at St. Petersburg, finished in 1851.

The seed thus planted fell upon good ground and brought forth a hundred-fold. Then, throughout Germany, the scholastic formalism of the old Renaissance began to fall into disrepute, and a finer feeling for the eloquence of pure lines began to show itself. The strict limitations of the classic orders were no longer recognized as impassable; a sentiment of artistic freedom, a consciousness of enlarged resources, a far wider range of form and expression, were evident in town and country, in civil and ecclesiastical structures; and with all this delightful and refreshing liberty was mingled that peculiar refinement of line which was revived from Greece and was the secret of this change. It was not over monumental edifices alone that this calm and thoughtful spirit was breathed, but the most playful fancies of domestic architecture derived from it an increased grace and purity, and the study of Love moved over them, elegant and light-footed as Camilla.

"The flower she touched on dipped and rose,And turned to look at her."

This revival of Hellenic principles is now infusing life into modern German designs; and so well are these principles beginning to be understood, that architects do not content themselves with the mere reproduction of that narrow range of motives which was uttered in the temples of heroic Greece, but, under these new impulses, they gather in for their use all that has been done in ancient or modern Italy, in the Romanesque of Europe, in the Gothic period, in Saracenic or Arabic Art, in all the expressions of the old Renaissance. By the very necessity of the Greek line, they are rendered catholic and unexcluding in their choice of forms, but fastidious and hesitating in their interpretation of them into this new language of Art. Thus the good work is going on in Germany, and architecturelivesthere, thanks to those two illustrious pilgrims who brought back from the land of epics, not only the scallop-shells upon their shoulders, but in their hearts the consecration of Ideal Beauty.

According to the usual custom, in the year 1827, a scholar of the École des Beaux Arts in Paris, having achieved the distinguished honor of being namedGrand Pensionnaireof Architecture for that year,—was sent to the Académie Française in the Villa Medici at Rome, to pursue his studies there for five years at the expense of the Government. This scholar was Henri Labrouste. While in Italy, his attention was directed to the Greek temples of Paestum. Trained, as he had been, in the strictest academic architecture of the Renaissance, he was struck by many points of difference between these temples and the Palladian formulae which had hitherto held despotic sway over his studies. In grand and minor proportions, in the disposition of triglyphs in the frieze, in mouldings and general sentiment, he perceived a remarkable freedom from the restraints of his school,—a freedom which, so far from detracting from the grandeur of the architecture, gave to it a degree of life and refinement which his appreciative eye now sought for in vain among the approved models of the Academy. Studying these new revelations with love and veneration, it was not long before the pure Hellenic spirit, confined in the severe peristyles and cellas of the Paestum temples, entered into his heart, with all its elastic capacities, all its secret and mysterious sympathies for the new life which had sprung up during its long imprisonment in those stained and shattered marbles. Labrouste, on his return to Paris, in 1830, surprised the grave professors of the Academy, Le Bas, Baltard, and the rest, by presenting to them, as the result of his studies, carefully elaborated drawings of the temples at Paestum. Witnessing, with pious horror, the grave departures from their rules contained in the drawings of their former favorite, they charged him with error, even as a copyist. True to their prejudices, their eyes did not penetrate beyond the outward type, and they at once began to find technical objections. They told him, never did such an absurdity occur in classic architecture as a triglyph on a corner! Palladio and the Italian masters never committed such an obvious crime against propriety, nor could an instance of it be found in all Roman antiquities. It was in vain that poor Labrouste upheld the accuracy of his work, and reminded the Academy that among the Roman models no instance had been found of a Doric corner,—that this order occurred only so ruined that no corner was left for examination, or in the grand circumferences of the Colosseum and the Theatre of Marcellus, where, from the nature of the case, no corner could be. The professors still maintained the integrity of their long-established ordinances, and, to disprove the assertions of the young pretender, even sent a commission to examine the temples in question. The result was a confirmation of the fact, the ridicule of Paris, the consequent branding of the young artist as an architectural heretic, and a continued persecution of him by the École des Beaux Arts. Undaunted, however, Labrouste established anatelierin Paris, to which flocked many intelligent students, sympathizing with the courage which could be so strong in the conviction of truth as to brave in its defence the displeasure of the powerful hierarchy of the School.

Thus was founded the new Renaissance in France; and, in this genial atmosphere, Greek lines began to exercise an influence far more thorough and healthy than had hitherto been experienced in the whole history of Art. To the lithe and elegant fancy of the French this Revelation was especially grateful. For the youth of this nation soon learned that in these newly opened paths, their invention and sentiment, so long straitened and confined within the severe limits of the old system, could move with the utmost freedom, and at the same time be preserved from licentious excess by the delicate spirit of the new lines. Thus natural fervor, grace, and fecundity of thought found here a most welcome outlet.

For some time the designs of the new school were not recognized in the competitions of the École des Beaux Arts; but when, in the course of Nature, some two or three of the more strenuous and bigoted professors of Palladio's golden rules were removed from the scene of contest, theRomantique(for so the new system had been named) was received at length into the bosom of the architectural church, and now it may be justly deemedthe distinctive architectural expression of French Art.

Labrouste was not alone in his efforts; but Duban and Constant Dufeux seconded him with genius and energy. Most of the important buildings which have been erected in France within the last six or eight years have either been unreservedly and frankly in the new style, or been refined by more limited applications of Hellenic principles. Even the revived Mediaeval school, which, under the distinguished leadership of M. Viollet le Duc and the lamented M. J.B.A. Lassus, has lately been strengthened to a remarkable degree in France, and which shared with theRomantiquethe displeasure of the Academy,—even this has tacitly acknowledged the power of Greek lines, and instinctively suffered them to purify, to a certain degree, the old grotesque Gothic license. Most of the modern buildings of Paris along the new Boulevards, around the tower of St. Jacques, and wherever else the activity of the Emperor has made itself felt in the improvements of the French capital, are by masters or pupils of theRomantiquepersuasion, and, in their design, are distinguished by that tenderness of Love and earnestness of Thought which are the fountains of living Art. One of the most remarkable peculiarities of this school is, that it brings out of every mind which studies and builds in it strong traits of individuality; so that every work appears as if its author had something particular to express in it,—something to say with especial grace and emphasis. The ordinary decorations of windows and doors are not made in conventional shapes, as of yore, but are highly idiosyncratic. The designer had a distinct thought about this window or that door,—and when he would use his thought to ornament these features, he idealized it with his Greek lines to make it architectural, just as a poet attunes his thought to the harmony and rhythm of verse. Antique prejudices, bent into rigid conformity with antique rubrics, are often shocked at the strange innovations of these new Dissenters from the faith of Palladio and Philibert Delorme,—shocked at the naked humanity in the new works, and would cover it with the conventional fig-leaves prescribed in the homilies of Vignola. Laymen, accustomed to the cold architectural proprieties of the old Renaissance, and habituated to the formalities of the five orders, the prudish decorum of Italian window-dressings and pediments and pilasters and scrolls, are apt to be surprised at such strange dispositions of unprecedented and heretical features, that the intention of the building in which they occur is at once patent to the most casual observer, and the story of its destination told with the eloquence of a poetical and monumental language. All great revolutions have proved how hard it is to break through the crust of custom, and this has been no exception to the rule; yet in justice it must be said that every intelligent mind, every eye possessing the "gifted simplicity of vision", to use a happy phrase of Hawthorne's, recognizes the truth and wisdom there are in the blessed renovations of theRomantique, and looks upon them as the sweeps of a besom clearing away the dust and cobwebs which ages of prejudice have spread thickly around the magnificent art of architecture.

Unlike the unwieldy and ponderous classic or Italian systems, whose pride cannot stoop to anything beneath the haughtiest uses of life without being broken into the whims of the grotesque andRococo, theRomantiquehas already exhibited the graceful ease with which it may be applied to the most playful as well as the most serious employments of Art. It has decorated the perfumer's shop on the Boulevards with the most delicate fancies woven out of the odor of flowers and the finest fabrics of Nature, and, in the hands of Labrouste, has built the great Bibliothèque Ste. Geneviève, the most important work with pure Greek lines, and perhaps the most exquisite, while it is one of the most serious, of modern buildings. The lore of the classics and the knowledge of the natural world, idealized and harmonized by affectionate study, are built up in its walls, and, internally and externally, it is a work of the highest Art. TheRomantiquehas also been used with especial success in funereal monuments. Structures of this character, demanding earnestly in their composition the expression of human sentiment, have hitherto been in most cases unsatisfactory, as they have been built out of a narrow range of Renaissance, Egyptian and Gothicmotives, originally invented for far different purposes, and, since then,classified, as it were, for use, and reduced to that inflexible system out of which have come the formal restrictions of modern architecture. Hence thesemotiveshave never come near enough to human life, in its individual characteristics, to be plastic for the expression of those emotions to which we desire to give the immortality of stone in memory of departed friends. TheRomantique, however, confined to no rigid types of external form, out of its noble freedom is capable of giving "a local habitation and a name" to a thousand affections which hitherto have wandered unseen from heart to heart, or been palpable only in words and gestures which disturb our sympathies for a while and then die. Probably the most remarkable indication of this capacity, as yet shown, is contained in a tomb erected by Constant Dufeux in the Cimetière du Sud, near Paris, for the late Admiral Dumont d'Urville. This structure contains in its outlines a symbolic expression of human life, death, and immortality, and in its details an architectural version of the character and public services of the distinguished deceased. The finest and most eloquent resources of color and the chisel are brought to bear on the work; and the whole, combined by a very sensitive and delicate feeling for proportion, thus embodies one of the most expressive elegies ever written. The tomb of Madame Delaroche,néeVernet, in the Cimetière Montmartre, by Duban, is another remarkable instance of this elastic capacity of Greek lines; and though taken frankly, in its general form, from a common Gothic type, its chaste and graceful freedom from Gothic restrictions in detail gives it a life and poetic expressiveness which must be exceedingly grateful to the Love which commanded its erection.

Paris thus affords us, in its modern architecture, a happy proof of the inevitable reforming and refining tendencies of the abstract lines of Greece, when properly understood and fairly applied. Under their influence old things have been made new, and the coldness and hardness of Academic Art have been warmed and softened into life. Through the agency of theRomantiqueschool, perhaps more new and directly symbolic architectural expressions have been uttered within the last four years than within the last four centuries combined. Like the gestures of pantomime, which constitute an instinctive and universal language, these abstract lines, coming out of our humanity and rendered elegant by the idealization of study, are restoring to architecture its highest capacity of conveying thought in a monumental manner. One of the most dangerous results of that eclecticism which the advanced state of our archaeological knowledge has made the principal characteristic of modern design consists in the fatal facility thus afforded us of availing ourselves of vast resources of forms and combinations ready-made to suit almost all the exigencies of composition, as we have understood it. The public has thus been made so familiar with the set variations of classic orders and Palladian windows and cornices, with all manner of Gothic chamfers and cuspidations and foliations, and the other conventional symbols of architecture, which undeniably have more ofknowledgethanlovein them,—so accustomed have the people become to these things, that the great art of which these have been the only language now almost invariably fails to strike any responsive chord in the human heart or to do any of that work which it is the peculiar province of the fine arts to accomplish. Instead of leading the age, it seems to lag behind it, and to content itself with reflecting into our eyes the splendor of the sun which has set, instead of facing the east and foretelling the glory which is coming. Architecture, properly conceived, should always contain within itself a direct appeal to the sense of fitness and propriety, the common-sense of mankind, which is ever ready to recognize reason, whether conveyed by the natural motions of the mute or the no less natural motions of lines. Now history has proved to us, as has been shown, how, when the eloquence of these simple, instinctive lines has been used as the primary element of design, great eras of Art have arisen, full of the sympathies of humanity, immortal records of their age. It cannot be denied, on the other hand, that our eclectic architecture, popularly speaking, is not comprehended, even by the most intelligent of cultivated people; and this is plainly because it is based on learning and archeology, instead of that natural love which scorns the limitations of any otherauthorities and precedentsthan those which can be found in the human heart, where the true architecture of our time is lying unsuspected, save in those half-conscious Ideals which yearn for free expression in Art.

Let our artists turn to Greece, and learn how, in the meditative repose of that antiquity, these Ideals arose to life beneficent with the baptism of grace, and became visible in the loveliness of a hundred temples. Let them there learn how in our own humanity is the essence of form as a language, and thatto create, as true artists, we must know ourselves and our own distinctive capacities for the utterance of monumental history. After this sublime knowledge comes the necessity of the knowledge of precedent. The great Past supplies us with the raw material, with orders, colonnades and arcades, pediments, consoles, cornices, friezes and architraves, buttresses, battlements, vaults, pinnacles, arches, lintels, rustications, balustrades, piers, pilasters, trefoils, and all the innumerable conventionalities of architecture. It is plainly our duty not to revive and combine these in those cold and weary changes which constitute modern design, but to make them live and speak intelligibly to the people through the eloquent modifications of our own instinctive lines of Life and Beauty.

The riddle of the modern Sphinx is, How to create a new architecture? and we find the Oedipus who shall solve it concealed in our own hearts.

* * * * *

Virginia, which began by volunteering as peacemaker in our civil troubles, seems likely to end by being their battleground; as Mr. Pickwick, interfering between the belligerent rival editors, only brought upon his own head the united concussion of their carpet-bags. And as Dickens declares that the warriors engaged far more eagerly in that mimic strife, on discovering that all blows were to be received by deputy, so there is evidently an increased willingness to deal hard knocks on both sides, in the present case, so long as it is clear that only Virginia will take them. Maryland, under protection of our army, adroitly contrives to shift the scene of action farther South. The Gulf States, with profuse courtesies for the Old Dominion, consent to shift it farther North. The Southern Confederacy has talked about paying Richmond the "compliment" of selecting it for the seat of government;—as if a bully, about to be lynched in his own house by the crowd, should compliment his next-door neighbor by climbing in at his window. It is very pleasant to have a hospitable friend; but it is counting on his hospitality rather too strongly, when you make choice of his apartments to be tarred and feathered in.

Thus fades the fancy of an "independent neutrality" for the Old Dominion. It ought to fade;—for neutrality is a crime, where one's mother's life is at stake; and the Border theory of independence only reminds one of Pitt's definition of an independent statesman, "a statesman not to be depended on". How sad has been the decline of Virginia! How strange, that in 1790, of the ten American post-offices yielding more than a thousand dollars annually, that stately old commonwealth held five! Now "a poverty-stricken State", by confession of her own newspapers,—beleaguered, blockaded,—with no imports but hungry and moneyless soldiers, and no exports save fugitives of all colors,—what has she to hope from the present warfare? Elsewhere riches have wings; in Virginia they are yet more transitory, having legs. Two hundred million dollars' worth of her property has become unsalable, if not worthless, within two months. She has but two great staples: tobacco to send North, and slaves to send South. The slaves at present go only to the wrong point of the compass, at rates remunerative to themselves alone; and the tobacco-trade, for this season, will not even end in smoke.

But that which is now the condition of Virginia must ultimately be the condition of the other seceding States. The tide of Secession has already turned, and such tides never turn twice. The conspirators in Maryland and Missouri had but one opportunity, and it was lost; with it also went the whole cause of the Secessionists. For one week the North shuddered, knowing the defenceless condition of Washington. Now no Northern man shudders, except those whose Southern female cousins have not yet found a refuge with the household gods of the eminent Senator from Texas.

The man who ever doubted that the first gun fired by the insurgents would instantly unite the nation against them knew as little of the American people as if he were editor of the London "Times." There is no chemical solvent like gunpowder. Even the Mexican War, utterly opposed to the moral convictions of the majority of Northern men, swept them away in such a current that the very party which opposed it could find no path to the Presidency but for its chief hero. Had the present outbreak occurred far less favorably than it has, had the discretion of President Lincoln been much less, or that of Mr. Davis much greater, still the unanimity would have been merely a question of time, and the danger of Washington would have reconciled all minor feuds. The Democratic party would inevitably have embraced the war, when once declared; Douglas would have made speeches for it, Buchanan subscribed money for it, and Butler joined in it; Bennett would still have floated triumphant on the tide of zeal, and Caleb Cushing still have offered to the Government his cavalry company of one. It is a grace not given to any American party, to stand out long against the enthusiasm of a war.

No doubt the Secession leaders have treated us very handsomely, as to amount of provocation. It is rare that any great contest begins by a blow so unequivocal as the bombardment of Fort Sumter; and rare in recent days for any set of belligerents to risk the ignominy of privateering. But, after all, it is the startling social theories announced by the new "government" which form the chief strength of its enemies. Either slavery is essential to a community, or it must be fatal to it,—there is no middle ground; and the Secessionists have taken one horn of the dilemma with so delightful a frankness as to leave us no possible escape from taking the other. Never, in modern days, has there been a conflict in which the contending principles were so clearly antagonistic. The most bigoted royal house in Europe never dreamed of throwing down the gauntlet for the actual ownership of man by man. Even Russia never fought for serfdom, and Austria has only enslaved nations, not individuals. In civil wars, especially, all historic divergences have been trivial compared to ours, so far as concerned the avowed principles of strife. In the French wars of the Fronde, the only available motto for anybody was theTout arrive en France, "Anything may happen in France," which gayly recognized the absurd chaos of the conflict. In the English civil wars, the contending factions first disagreed upon a shade more or less of royal prerogative, and it took years to stereotype the hostility into the solid forms with which we now associate it. Even at the end of that contest, no one had ventured to claim such a freedom as our Declaration of Independence asserts, on the one side,—nor to recognize the possibility of such a barbarism as Jefferson Davis glorifies, on the other. The more strongly the Secessionists state their cause, the more glaringly it is seen to differ from any cause for which any sane person has taken up arms since the Roman servile wars. Their leaders may be exhibiting very sublime qualities; all we can say is, as Richardson said of Fielding's heroes, that their virtues are the vices of a decent man.

We are now going through not merely the severest, but the only danger which has ever seriously clouded our horizon. The perils which harass other nations are mostly traditional for us. Apart from slavery, democratic government is long sinceun fait accompli, a fixed fact, and the Anglo-American race can no more revert in the direction of monarchy than of the Saurian epoch. Our geographical position frees us from foreign disturbance, and there is no really formidable internal trouble, slavery alone excepted. Let us come out of this conflict victorious in the field, escaping also the more serious danger of conquering ourselves by compromise, and the case of free government is settled past cavil. History may put up her spy-glass, like Wellington at Waterloo, saying, "The field is won. Let the whole line advance."

There has been a foolish suspicion that the North was strong in diplomacy and weak in war. The contrary is the case. We are proving ourselves formidable enough in war to cover our shortcomings in diplomacy. How narrowly we escaped demoralizing ourselves, at the last moment before Congress adjourned, by some concession which would have destroyed our consistency without strengthening our position! If we could even now bind our generals to imitate our Cabinet in its admirable and novel policy of silence,—to eschew pen and ink as carefully as if they were in training for the Presidency! The country is safe so long as they shut their mouths and open their batteries.

The ordeal by battle is a stern test of the solid power of a nation. There must always be some great quality to produce great military superiority,—skill, or daring, or endurance, or numbers, or wealth, or all together. Except the first two, neither of these special qualifications has been even claimed by the Secessionists; and these two have been taken for granted with such superfluous boastfulness as to yield strong internal evidence against the claim. Certainly their general strategy, up to this moment, has yielded not a single evidence of far-sighted judgment or conscious power, while it has shown decided glimpses of weakness and indecision. Indeed, how can an army like theirs be strong? Its members mostly unaccustomed to steady exertion or precise organization; without mechanic skill or invention; without cash or credit; fettered in their movements by the limited rolling stock of their scanty railways; tethered to their own homes by the fear of insurrection;—what element of solid strength have they, to set against these things? In the present state of the world, strong in peace is strong in war. In modern times an army of heroes is useless without facilities for arming, transporting, and feeding it, to say nothing of the more ignoble circumstance of pay. Considerations of simple political economy render it almost impossible for a slaveholding army to be strong collectively, nor do the habits of Southern life usually fit its members to be strong singly.

In remembering the Battle of New Orleans, we forget that the Southwest was then a region of hardy pioneers, such as are now rather to be sought for in Kansas and California. The famous Tennessee riflemen of that day were not necessarily slaveholders, and their legitimate descendants are yet to be found among the brave men who rally round the nearest approach to Andrew Jackson whom the State now boasts,—a tolerable fac-simile both as to character and etymology,—Andrew Johnson. There is no need of disparaging the personal courage of any man, and the Southern army has some good officers,—too good, probably, in spite of themselves, to bring to bear their clearest judgment and their best energies in striking down the flag they have all sworn to die for. They have eminent foreign advisers also, or one at least; for Mr. W.H. Russell, self-appointed plenipotentiary near the Court of St. Jefferson, is said to have lent the aid of his valuable military experience to that commanding officer so appropriately named Captain Bragg. But, Bragg or no brag, it is almost a moral impossibility that a slaveholding army should be strong.

The Secessionists have suggested to us a fatal argument. "The superior race must control the inferior." Very well; if they insist on invoking the ordeal by battle to decide which is the superior, let it be so. It will be found that they have made the common mistake of confounding barbarism with strength. Because the Southern masses are as ignorant of letters and of arts as the Scottish Highlanders, they infer themselves to be as warlike. But even the brave and hardy Highlanders proved powerless against the imperfect military resources of England, a century ago, and it is not easy to see why those who now parody them should fare better. The absence of the alphabet does not necessarily prove the presence of strength, nor is the ignorance of all useful arts the best preparation for the elaborate warfare of modern times. The nation is grown well weary of this sham "chivalry," that would sell Bayard or Du Gueselin at auction, if it could be shown that the mother of either had a drop of marketable blood in her veins. It had always been charitably fancied that in South Carolina at least there was some remnant of more knightly honor, until a kind Providence sent Preston S. Brooks to dispel the illusion. It may be possible that even a brave man, in some moment of insane inconsistency, may commit some act which is the consummation of all cowardice; but it is utterly and absolutely impossible that any brave community should approve it. Time has long since carried the perpetrator of that dastardly outrage to a higher tribunal, but nothing can ever redeem the State of his birth from the crowning shame of its indorsement.

It is not recorded whether the proverbial English army in Flanders lied as terribly as they swore; the genius of the nation did not take that direction. But if they did, they have now met their match in audacity of falsehood. Captain Bobadil in the play, who submitted a plan of killing off an army of forty thousand men by the prowess of twenty, each man to do his twentyper diemin successive single combats, might have raised his proposed score of heroes among any handful of Secessionists. There seems to be no one to stop these prodigious fellows as a party of Buford's men were once checked by their commander, in the writer's hearing, on their way down the Missouri River, in 1856. "Boys," quoth the contemptuous official, "you had better shut up. Whenever we came in sight of the enemy, you always took a vote whether to fight or run, and you always voted to run." Then the astounding tales they have told respecting our people, down to the last infamous fabrication of "Booty and Beauty," as the supposed war-cry for the placid Pennsylvanians! Booty, forsooth! In the words of the "Richmond Whig," "there is more rich spoil within a square mile of New York and Philadelphia than can be found in the whole of the poverty-stricken State of Virginia"; and the imaginary war-cry suggests Wilkes's joke about the immense plunder carried off by some freebooter from the complete pillage of seven Scotch isles: he reëmbarked with three-and-sixpence.

It might not be wise to claim that the probable lease of life for our soldiers is any longer than for the Secessionists, but it certainly looks as if ours would have the credit of dying more modestly. Indeed, the men of the Free States, as was the wont of their ancestors, have made up their minds to this fight with a slow reluctance which would have been almost provoking but for the astonishing promptness which marked their action when once begun. It is interesting to notice how clearly the future is sometimes foreseen by foreigners, while still veiled from the persons most concerned. Thus, twelve years before the Battle of Bunker's Hill, the Duc de Choiseul predicted and prepared for the separation of the American colonies from England. One month after that, the Continental Congress still clung to the belief that they should escape a division. And so, some seven years ago, the veteran French advocate Guépin, in a most able essay suggested by the "Burns affair" in Boston, prophesied civil war in America within ten years. "Une grande lutte s'apprête donc," he wrote; "A great contest is at hand."

Thus things looked to foreigners, both in 1775 and in 1854, while in both cases our people were yielding only step by step to the inevitable current which swept events along. It is the penalty of caution, that it sometimes appears, even to itself, like irresolution, or timidity. Not a foolish charge has been brought against Northern energy in this contest, that was not urged equally in the time of the Revolution. The royal troops thought Massachusetts as easy to subdue as the South Carolinians affect to think, and expressed it in almost the same language:—"Whenever it comes to blows, he that can run the fastest will think himself best off." The revolutionists admitted that "the people abroad have too generally got the idea that the Americans are all cowards and poltroons." A single regiment, it was generally asserted, could march triumphant through New England. The people took no pains to deny it. The guard in Boston captured thirteen thousand cartridges at a stroke. The people did not prevent it. A citizen was tarred and feathered in the streets by the royal soldiery, while the band played "Yankee Doodle." The people did not interfere. "John Adams writes, there is a great spirit in the Congress, and that we must furnish ourselves with artillery and arms and ammunition, but avoid war, if possible,—if possible." At last, one day, these deliberate people finally made up their minds that it was time to rise,—and when they rose, everything else fell. In less than a year afterwards, Boston being finally evacuated, one of General Howe's mortified officers wrote home to England, in words which might form a Complete Letter-Writer for every army-officer who has turned traitor, from Beauregard downward,—"Bad times, my dear friend. The displeasure I feel in the small share I have in our present insignificancy is so great, that I do not know the thing so desperate I would not undertake, in order to change our situation."

It is fortunate that the impending general contest has also been recently preceded by a local one, which, though waged under circumstances far less favorable to the North, yet afforded important hints by its results. It was worth all the cost of Kansas to have the lesson she taught, in passing through her ordeal. It was not the Emigrant Aid Society which gave peace at last to her borders, nor was it her shifting panorama of evanescent governors; it was the sheer physical superiority of her Free-State emigrants, after they took up arms. Kansas afforded the important discovery, as some Southern officers once naïvely owned at Lecompton, that "Yankeeswouldfight." Patient to the verge of humiliation, the settlers rose at last only to achieve a victory so absurdly rapid that it was almost a new disappointment; the contest was not so much a series of battles as a succession of steeplechases, of efforts to get within shot,—Missouri, Virginia, and South Carolina invariably disappearing over one prairie-swell, precisely as the Sharp's rifles of the emigrants appeared on the verge of the next. The slaveholders had immense advantages: many of the settlers were in league with them to drive out the remainder; they had the General Government always aiding them, more or less openly, with money, arms, provisions, horses, men, and leaders; they had always the Missouri border to retreat upon, and the Missouri River to blockade. Yet they failed so miserably, that every Kansas boy at last had his story to tell of the company of ruffians whom he had set scampering by the casual hint that Brown or Lane was lurking in the bushes. The terror became such a superstition, that the largest army which ever entered Kansas—three thousand men, by the admission of both sides—turned back before a redoubt at Lawrence garrisoned by only two hundred, and retreated over the border without risking an engagement.

It is idle to say that these wore not fair specimens of Southern companies. They were composed of precisely the same material as the flower of the Secession army,—if flower it have. They were members of the first families, planters' sons and embryo Wigfalls. South Carolina sent them forth, like the present troops, with toasts and boasts and everything but money. They had officers of some repute; and they had enthusiasm with no limit except the supply of whiskey. Slavery was divine, and Colonel Buford was its prophet. The city of Atchison was before the dose of 1857 to be made the capital of a Southern republic. Kansas was to be conquered: "We will make her a Slave State, or form a chain of locked arms and hearts together, and die in the attempt." Yet in the end there were no chains, either of flesh or iron,—no chains, and little dying, but very liberal running away. Thus ended the war in Kansas. It seems impossible that Slavery should not make in this case a rather better fight, where all is at stake. But it is well to remember that no Border Ruffian of Secession can now threaten more loudly, swear more fiercely, or retreat more rapidly, than his predecessors did then.

One does not hear much lately of that pleasant fiction, so abundant a year or two ago, that North and South really only needed to visit each other and become better acquainted. How cordially these endearing words sounded, to be sure, from the lips of Southern gentlemen, as they sat at Northern banquets and partook unreluctantly of Northern wine! Can those be the gay cavaliers who are now uplifting their war-whoops with such a modest grace at Richmond and Montgomery? Can the privations of the camp so instantaneously dethrone Bacchus and set up Mars? It is to be regretted; they appeared more creditably in their cups, and one would gladly appeal from Philip sober to Philip drunk. Intimate intercourse has lost its charm. New York merchants more than ever desire an increased acquaintance with the coffers of their repudiating debtors; but so far as the knowledge of their peculiar moral traits is concerned, enough is as good as a feast. No Abolitionist has ever dared to pillory the slave-propagandists so conspicuously as they are doing it for themselves every day. Sumner's "Barbarism of Slavery" seemed tolerably graphic in its time, but how tamely it reads beside the "New Orleans Delta"!

A Scotchman once asked Dr. Johnson what opinion he would form ofScotland from what strangers had said of it.

"Sir," said the Doctor, "I should think it a region of the earth to be avoided, so far as convenient."

"But how," persisted the patriot, "if you listened to what its natives say of it?"

"Then, Sir," roared Old Obstinacy, "I should avoid it altogether."

Take the seceded States upon their own showing, and it is absurd to suppose that they can ever resume their former standing in the nation. Are there any stronger oaths than their generals have broken, any closer ties to honesty than their financiers have spurned, any deeds more damning than their legislatures have voted thanks for? No one supposes that the individual traitors can be restored to confidence, that Twiggs can re-dye his reputation, or any deep-sea-soundings fish up Maury's drowned honor. But the influence of the States is gone with that of their representatives. They may worship the graven image of President Lincoln in Mobile; they may do homage to the ample stuffed regimentals of General Butler in Charleston; but it will not make the nation forget. Could their whole delegation resume its seat in Congress to-morrow, with the three-fifths representation intact, it would not help them. Can we ever trust them to build a ship or construct a rifle again? No time, no formal act can restore the past relations, so long as slavery shall live. It is easy for the Executive to pardon some convict from the penitentiary; but who can pardon him out of that sterner prison of public distrust which closes its disembodied walls around him, moves with his motions, and never suffers him to walk unconscious of it again? Henceforth he dwells as under the shadow of swords, and holds intercourse with men only by courtesy, not confidence. And so will they.

Not that the United States Government is yet prepared to avow itself anti-slavery, in the sense in which the South is pro-slavery. We conscientiously strain at gnats of Constitutional clauses, while they gulp down whole camels of treason. We still look after their legal safeguards long after they have hoisted them with their own petards. But both sides have trusted themselves to the logic of events, and there is no mistaking the direction in which that tends. In times like these, men care more for facts than for phrases, and reason quite as rapidly as they act. It is impossible to blink the fact that Slavery is the root of the rebellion; and so War is proving itself an Abolitionist, whoever else is. Practically speaking, the verdict is already entered, and the doom of the destructive institution pronounced, in the popular mind. Either the Secessionists will show fight handsomely, or they will fail to do so. If they fail to do it, they are the derision of the world forever,—since no one ever spares a beaten bully,—and thenceforward their social system must go down of itself. If, on the other hand, they make a resistance which proves formidable and costly, then the adoption of the John-Quincy-Adams policy of military emancipation is an ultimate necessity, and there is nobody more likely to put it in effective operation than a certain gentleman who lately wrote an eloquent letter to his Governor on the horrors of slave-insurrection. No doubt insurrection is a terrible thing, but so is all war, and every man of humanity approaches either with a shudder. But if the truth were told, it would be that the Anglo-Saxon habitually despises the negro because he isnotan insurgent, for the Anglo-Saxon would certainly be one in his place. Our race does not take naturally to non-resistance, and has far more spontaneous sympathy with Nat Turner than with Uncle Tom. But be it as it may with our desires, the rising of the slaves, in case of continued war, is a mere destiny. We must take facts as they are.

Insurrection is one of the risks voluntarily assumed by Slavery,—and the greatest of them. The slaves know it, and so do the masters. When they seriously assert that they feel safe on this point, there is really no answer to be made but that by which Traddles in "David Copperfield" puts down Uriah Heep's wild hypothesis of believing himself an innocent man. "But you don't, you know," quoth the straightforward Traddles; "therefore, if you please, we won't suppose any such thing." They cannot deceive us, for they do not deceive themselves. Every traveller who has seen the faces of a household suddenly grow pale, in a Southern city, when some street tumult struck to their hearts the fear of insurrection,—every one who has seen the heavy negro face brighten unguardedly at the name of John Brown, though a thousand miles away from Harper's Ferry,—has penetrated the final secret of the military weakness which saved Washington for us and lost the war for them.

It is time to expose this mad inconsistency which paralyzes common sense on all Southern tongues, so soon as Slavery becomes the topic. These same negroes, whom we hear claimed, at one moment, as petted darlings whom no allurements can seduce, are denounced, next instant, as fiends whom a whisper can madden. Northern sympathizers are first ridiculed as imbecile, then lynched as destructive. Either position is in itself intelligible, but the combination is an absurdity. We can understand why the proprietor of a powder-house trembles at the sight of flint and steel; and we can also understand why some new journeyman, being inexperienced, may regard the peril without due concern. But we should decide either to be a lunatic, if he in one breath proclaimed his gunpowder to be incombustible, and at the next moment assassinated a visitor for lighting a cigar on the premises. A slave population is either contented and safe, or discontented and unsafe; it cannot at the same time be friendly and hostile, blissful and desperate.

The result described is inevitable, should the Secessionists dare to tempt the ordeal by battle long enough. If it stop short of this, it will be because the prestige of Southern military power is so easily broken down that there is no temptation to declare the Adams policy. But even this consummation must have the most momentous results, and entirely modify the whole anti-slavery movement of the nation. Should the war cease to-morrow, it has inaugurated a new era in our nation's history. The folly of the Gulf States, in throwing away a political condition where the conservative sentiment stood by them only too well, must inevitably recoil on their own heads, whether the strife last a day or a generation. No man can estimate the new measures and combinations to which it is destined to give rise. There stands the Constitution, with all its severe conditions,—severe or weak, however, according to its interpretations;—which interpretations, again, will always prove plastic before the popular will. The popular will is plainly destined to a change; and who dare predict the results of its changing? The scrupulous may still hold by the letter of the bond; but since the South has confessedly prized all legal guaranties only for the sake of Slavery, the North, once free to act, will long to construe them, up to the very verge of faith, in the interest of Liberty. Was the original compromise, a Shylock bond?—the war has been our Portia. Slavery long ruled the nation politically. The nation rose and conquered it with votes. With desperate disloyalty, Slavery struck down all political safeguards, and appealed to arms. The nation has risen again, ready to meet it with any weapons, sure to conquer with any Twice conquered, what further claim will this defeated desperado have? If it was a disturbing element before, and so put under restriction, shall it be spared when it has openly proclaimed itself a destroying element also? Is this to be the last of American civil wars, or only the first one? These are the questions which will haunt men's minds, when the cannon are all bushed, and the bells are pealing peace, and the sons of our hearth-stones come home. The watchword "Irrepressible Conflict" only gave the key, but War has flung the door wide open, and four million slaves stand ready to file through. It is merely a question of time, circumstance, and method. There is not a statesman so wise but this war has given him new light, nor an Abolitionist so self-confident but must own its promise better than his foresight. Henceforth, the first duty of an American legislator must be, by the use of all legitimate means, to weaken Slavery.Delenda est Servitudo. What the peace which the South has broken was not doing, the war which she has instituted must secure.

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The modern world differs from the world of antiquity in nothing more than in the existence of a brotherhood of nations, which was unknown to the ancients, who seem to have been incapable of understanding that it was impossible for either good or evil to be confined within certain limits. The attempts of the Persians to extend their dominion into Europe did for a time cause some faint approach to ideas and practices that are common to the moderns; but, as a general rule, every monarchy or people had its own system, to which it adhered until it was worn out by internal decay, or was overthrown by foreign conquest. It was owing to this exclusiveness, and to the inability of ancient statesmen to work out an international system, that the Romans were enabled to extend their dominion until it comprehended the best parts of the world. Had the rulers and peoples of Carthage, Macedonia, Greece, and Syria been capable of forming an alliance for common defence, the conquests of Rome in the East might have been early checked, and her efforts have been necessarily confined to the North and the West. But no international system then existed, and the rude attempts at mutual assistance that were occasionally made, as the conquering race strode forward, were of no avail; and the swords of the legionaries reaped the whole field. It is singular that what is so well known to the moderns, and was known to them at times when they were far inferior to the best races of antiquity, should have remained unknown to the latter. The chief reason of this want of combining power in men who have never been surpassed in ability is to be found in the then prevailing idea, that every stranger was an enemy. There was a total want of confidence in one another among the peoples of the ante-Christian period. Differences of race were augmented by differences in religion, and by the absence of strong business interests. Christianity had not been vouchsafed to man, and commerce had very imperfectly done its work, while war was carried on in the most ruthless and destructive manner.

The modern world differs in this matter entirely from the ancient world; and though the change is perfect only in Christendom, the effect of it is felt in countries where the Christian religion does not prevail, but into which Christian armies and Christian merchants have penetrated. Christendom is the leading portion of the world, and is fast giving law to lands in which Christianity is still hated. It is the policy of Christendom that orders the world. A Christian race rules over the whole of that immense country, or collection of countries, which is known as India. Another Christian race threatens to seize upon Persia. Christians from the extreme West of Europe have dictated the terms of treaties to the Tartar lords of China; and Christians from America have led the way in breaking through the exclusive system of Japan. Christian soldiers have for a year past acted as the police of Syria, Christianity's early home, but now held by the most bigoted and cruel of Mussulmans; and it is only the circumstance that they cannot agree upon a division of the spoil that prevents the five great powers of Europe—the representatives of the leading branches of the Christian religion—from partitioning the vast, but feeble Ottoman Empire. The Christian idea of man's brotherhood, so powerful in itself, is supported by material forces so vast, and by ingenuity and industry so comprehensive and so various in themselves and their results, that it must supersede all others, and be accepted in every country where there are people capable of understanding it. From the time of the first Crusade there has been a steady tendency to the unity of Christian countries; and notwithstanding all their conflicts with one another, and partly as one of the effects of those conflicts, they have "fraternized," until now there exists a mighty Christian Commonwealth, the members of which ought to be able to govern the world in accordance with the principles of a religion that is in itself peace. Under the influence of these principles, the Christian nations, though not in equal degrees, have developed their resources, and a commercial system has been created which has enlisted the material interests of men on the same side with the highest teachings of the purest religion. Selfishness and self-denial march under the same banner, and men are taught to do unto others as they would that others should do unto them, because the rule is as golden economically as it is morally. This teaching, however, it must be allowed, is very imperfectly done, and it encounters so many disturbing forces to its proper development that an observer of the course of Christian nations might be pardoned, if he were at times to suppose there is little of the spirit of Christianity in the ordering of the policy of Christendom, and also that the true nature of material interests is frequently misunderstood. Still, it is undeniable that there is a general bond of union in Christendom, and that no part of that division of the world can be injured or improved without all the other parts of it being thereby affected. What is known as "the business world" exists everywhere, but it is in Christendom that it has its principal seats, and in which its mightiest works are done. It forms one community of mankind; and what depresses or exalts one nation is felt by its effects in all nations. There cannot be a Russian war, or a Sepoy mutiny, or an Anglo-French invasion of China, or an emancipation of the serfs of Russia, without the effect thereof being sensibly experienced on the shores of Superior or on the banks of the Sacramento; and the civil war that is raging in the United States promises to produce permanent consequences to the inhabitants of Central India and of Central Africa. The wars, floods, plagues, and famines of the farthest East bear upon the people of the remotest West. The Oregon flows in sympathy with the Ganges; and a very mild winter in New England might give additional value to the ice-crop of the Neva. So closely identified are all nations at this time, that the hope that there may be no serious difficulties between the United States and the Western powers of Europe, as a consequence of the Federal Government's blockade of the Southern ports of the Union, is based as much upon the prospect of the European food-crops being small this year as upon the sense of justice that may exist in the bosoms of the rulers of France and England. If those crops should prove to be of limited amount, peace could be counted upon; if abundant, we might as well make ample preparation for a foreign war. Nations threatened with scarcity cannot afford to begin war, though they may find themselves compelled to wage it. A cold season in Europe would be the best security that we could have that we shall not be vexed with European intervention in our troubles; for then Europeans would desire to have the privilege of securing that portion of our food which should not be needed for home-consumption. This is the fair side of the picture that is presented by the bond of nations. There is another side to the picture, which is far from being so agreeable to us, and which may be called the Cotton side; and it is because England, and to a lesser degree France, is of opinion that American cotton must be had, that our civil troubles threaten to bring upon us, if not a foreign war, at least grave disputes and difficulties with those European nations with which we are most desirous of remaining on the best of terms, and to secure the friendship of which all Americans are disposed to make every sacrifice that is compatible with the preservation of national honor.

From the beginning of the troubles in this country that have led to civil war, the desire to know what course would be pursued by the principal nations of Europe toward the contending parties has been very strongly felt on both sides; but the feeling has been greater on the side of the rebels than on that of the nation, because the rebellion has depended even for the merest chance of success upon the favorable view of European governments, and the nation has got beyond the point of caring much for the opinions or the actions of those governments. The Union's existence depends not upon European friendship or enmity; but without the aid of the Old World, the new Confederacy could not look for success, had it received twice the assistance it did from the Buchanan administration, and were it formed of every Slaveholding State, with not a Union man in it to wound the susceptible minds of traitors by his presence. The belief among the friends of order was, that Europe would maintain a rigid neutrality, not so much from regard to this country as from disgust at the character of the Confederacy's polity, and at the opinions avowed by its officers, its orators, and its journals, opinions which had been most forcibly illustrated in advance by acts of the grossest robbery. That any civilized nation should be willing to afford any countenance, and exclusively on grounds of interest, to a band of ruffians who avowed opinions that could not now find open supporters in Bokhara or Barbary, was what the American people could not believe. Conscious that the Southern rebellion was utterly without provocation, and that it had been brought about by the arts of disappointed politicians, most of us were convinced that the rebels would be discountenanced by the rulers of every European state to whom their commissioners should apply either for recognition or for assistance. We knew the power of King Cotton was great, though much exaggerated in words by his servile subjects; but we did not, because we could not, believe that he was able to control the policy of old empires, to subvert the principle of honor upon which aristocracies profess to rely as their chief support, and to turn whole nations from the roads in which they had been accustomed to travel. That Cotton has done this we do not assert; but it has done not a little to show how feeble; the regard of certain classes in Europe for morality, when adherence to principle may possibly cause them some trouble, and perhaps lead to some loss. If the Southern plant has not become the tyrant of Europe, as for a long time it was of America, it has certainly done much in a brief time to unsettle English opinion, and to convert the Abolitionists of Great Britain, the men who could tax the whites of their empire in the annual interest of one hundred million dollars in order that the slavery of the blacks in that empire might come to an end, into the supporters of American slavery, and of its extension over this continent, which might be made into a Cotton paradise, if the supply of negroes from Africa should not be interrupted; and the logical conclusion from the position laid down by Lord John Russell is, that the slave-trade must be revived, as that is what his "belligerent" friends of the Southern Confederacy are contending for. The American people had long been taunted by the English with their subserviency to the slaveholding interest, and with their readiness to sacrifice the welfare of a weak and wronged race on the altars of Mammon. Whether these taunts were well deserved by us, we shall not stop to inquire; but it is the most melancholy of facts, that, no sooner have we given the best evidence which it is in our power to give of our determination to confine slavery within its present limits, and to put an end to the abuse of our Government's power by the slaveholders, than the Government of Great Britain, acting as the agent and representative of the British nation, places itself directly across our path, and prepares to tell us to stay our hand, and not dare to meddle with the institution of slavery, because from the success of that institution proceeds cotton, and upon the supply of cotton not being interfered with depend the welfare and the strength of the liberty-and-order loving and morality-and-religion worshipping race! So far as they have dared to do it, the British ministers have placed their country on the side of those men who have revolted in America because they saw that they could no longer make use of slavery to misgovern the Union; and we must wait to see how far they are to be supported by the opinion of that country, before a distinction can be made between the ministers and the people. Left to themselves, and unbiased by any of those selfish motives that go to make up the sum of politics, we have not the slightest doubt that the English people, in the proportion of ten to one, would decide in behalf of the supporters of freedom in this country; but we are by no means so sure that the ministers would not be sustained, were they to plunge their country into a third American War, and sustained, too, in sending fleets to raise our blockade of the American coast of Africa, and armies to fight the battles of Slavery in Virginia and the Carolinas, where British officers stole negroes eighty years ago, and sent them to the West India markets, and found that that kind of commerce flourished well in war. A war for the maintenance of American slavery, and to secure for slaveholders the full and perfect enjoyment of all the "rights" of their "peculiar" property, would be no worse than was the war which was waged against our ancestors of the Revolution, or than those wars which were carried on against Republican and Imperial France, ostensibly for the preservation of order, but really for the restoration of a despotism which cannot now find a single apologist on earth. There is often a wide distinction to be made between a nation and its government, as our own recent history but too deplorably proves; and the men who govern England may be enabled to do that now which has more than once been done by their predecessors, array their country in support of evil against that country's sense and wishes. We should be prepared for this, and should look the evil that threatens us fairly in the face, as the first thing to be done to prevent it from getting beyond the threatening-point. The words of Sir Boyle Roche, that the best way to avoid danger is to meet it plump, are strikingly applicable to our condition. If we would not have a foreign war on our hands before we shall have settled with the rebels, we should make it very clear to foreigners that to fight with us would be a sort of business that would be sure not to pay.

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