Let me here warn my hearers not to forestall this woman in their

judgments. She was not a manlike female. No better wife ever guided her

husband anonymously by her intuitions, or assisted him by her learning.

In the farm house and in the palace she was as wifely and retiring as

any of the excellent women who have been the wives of American

statesmen. Every one knew her abilities and her stupendous acquirements,

and she felt them herself, but, notwithstanding, she never would consent

to write a line for publication and avow it as her own, and never did,

until that time when her husband was an outlaw, when her child was torn

from her, when she herself stood in the shadow of the guillotine, and

writhed under the foulest written and spoken calumnies that can torture

outraged womanhood into eloquence. She then wrote, in twenty-six days,

her immortal Appeal to Posterity, and those stirring letters and papers

incident to her defense, from which some extracts have been here

presented. She was mistress of a faultless style. Her command over the

resources of her language was despotic. She could give to French prose

an Italian rhythmus. She had wit and imagination--a reasoning

imagination. She was erudite. Probably no woman ever lived better

entitled to a high position in literature. But she never claimed it. She

holds it now only as a collateral result of her defense in the struggle

in which her life was the stake, and in which she lost. She says:

"Never, however, did I feel the smallest temptation to become an author.

I perceived at a very early period that a woman who acquires this title

loses far more than she gains. She forfeits the affections of the male

sex, and provokes the criticisms of her own. If her works be bad, she is

ridiculed, and not without reason; if good, her right to them is

disputed; or if envy be forced to acknowledge the best part to be her

own, her character, her morals, her conduct, and her talents are

scrutinized in such a manner that the reputation of her genius is fully

counterbalanced by the publicity given to her defects. Besides, my

happiness was my chief concern, and I never saw the public intermeddle

with that of any one without marring it.... During twelve years of my

life I shared in my husband's labors as I participated in his repasts,

because one was as natural to me as the other. If any part of his works

happened to be quoted in which particular graces of style were

discovered, or if a flattering reception was given to any of the

academic trifles, which he took a pleasure in transmitting to the

learned societies, of which he was a member, I partook of his

satisfaction without reminding him that it was my own composition.... If

during his administration an occasion occurred for the expression of

great and striking truths, I poured forth my whole soul upon the paper,

and it was but natural that its effusions should be preferable to the

laborious teemings of a secretary's brain. I loved my country. I was an

enthusiast in the cause of liberty. I was unacquainted with any interest

or any passions that could enter into competition with that enthusiasm;

my language, consequently, could not but be pure and pathetic, as it was

that of the heart and of truth.... Why should not a woman act as

secretary to her husband without depriving him of any portion of his

merit? It is well known that ministers can not do every thing

themselves; and, surely, if the wives of those of the old governments,

or even of the new, had been capable of making draughts of letters, of

official dispatches, or of proclamations, their time would have been

better employed than in intriguing first for one paramour and then for

another." "An old coxcomb, enamored of himself, and vain of displaying

the slender stock of science he has been so long in acquiring, might be

in the habit of seeing me ten years together without suspecting that I

could do more than cast up a bill or cut out a shirt."

Suitors, she writes, came numerously from her fifteenth year. She

marches them off _en masse_ in her memoirs. As is the custom in France,

the first overture was made to her father, and usually by letter. Her

music teacher was her first devotee. He was followed by her dancing

master, who, as a propitiatory preparation had a wen cut out of his

cheek; then came a wealthy butcher; then a man of rank; then a dissolute

physician, from marrying whom she narrowly escaped; then a jeweler, and

many others. The merits of these gentlemen--particularly those of the

energetic butcher---were warmly commended by their female friends, who,

in France, are brokers in this business on a very extensive scale. It is

a unique proof of her ascendancy over every person near her that the

letters which her father received, requesting his permission to address

her, were submitted by him to her to draft the answer he was to send. So

she placed herself _loco parentis_, and wrote the most paternal letters

of refusal; all of which her father dutifully copied and sent, with many

a pang when she let riches and rank pass by her. The suitors were

dismissed, one and all, and she resumed her books and studies.

Her mother died in 1775. She became the mistress of the house. Her

father formed disreputable connections. Late in that year her future

husband, Roland de la Platiere, presented himself, with a letter from a

friend of her girlhood. He was forty years old; he was a student; his

form was awkward and his manners were stiff; his morals were

irreproachable, his disposition was exacting, but his ability was great.

He was capable of instructing even her on many subjects, and they became

well acquainted by the elective sympathy of scholarship. She became the

critic and depositary of his manuscripts. Finally, one day, after asking

leave, in her father's presence the worthy man actually kissed her, on

his departure for Italy. Her father, sinking lower and lower, squandered

her little fortune of about three thousand dollars, wasted his own

business, and then treated her with brutality. Her only amusement at

this time was playing the violin, accompanied by an old priest who

tortured a bass viol, while her uncle made a flute complain.

Finally, after an acquaintance of five years, Roland, by letter to her

father, proposed marriage. The purity of Roland's life was esteemed by

Phlipon such a reproach to his own dissoluteness that he revenged

himself by an insulting refusal. He then made his daughter's life at

home so insupportable that she took lodgings in a convent. She was

visited there by Roland, and they were finally married, without again

consulting her father. During the year next succeeding their marriage

they remained at Paris. From Paris they went to Amiens, and lived there

four years, where her daughter was born. She assisted her husband in the

preparation of several statistical and scientific articles for the

Encyclopedic. She made a _hortus siccus_ of the plants of Picardy.

In 1784 they removed to the family estate of Roland at Villefranche,

near Lyons. She had, in the course of her studies, acquired considerable

knowledge of medicine. There was no physician in that little community,

and she became the village doctor. Some of her experiences were quite

whimsical. A country-woman came several leagues, and offered her a horse

if she would save the life of her husband, whom a physician had given up

to die. She visited the sick man, and he recovered, but she had great

difficulty in resisting the importunities of his wife that she should

take the horse.

In 1784 they went to England, and in 1787 they made the tour of

Switzerland. Roland was elected member of the constitutional assembly

from Lyons, and they went to Paris.

I am compelled now to pass from the uneventful first ten years of her

married life with the single remark that, through them all, she was the

devoted wife and mother, the kind neighbor, and the most assiduous

student. But her mind bore, as on a mirror, prophetic, shadowy, and

pictured glimpses of those awful events which were marching out of

futurity toward France. Her letters written during this period show that

she gazed upon them with a prescient eye, and heard with keenest ear the

alarum of the legions which were gathering for attack. The young men of

Lyons, where she and her husband spent the Winters, gathered in her

parlors, and heard from the lips of this impassioned seeress of liberty

words which, in such formative periods of a nation's life, hasten events

with a power that seems like absolute physical force.

Her husband was chosen a member of the national assembly, and she went

with him again to Paris in 1791.

Here ends the peaceful period of her life. Here close upon her forever

the doors of home; and here open to her the doors of history, which too

often admits its guests only to immolate them in splendid chambers, as

it immolated her. From this time we miss the pure womanliness of her

character, in which she is so lovely, and see her imperial beauty and

her regal intellect in all their autocratic power, until that time when

her husband, home, child, power, and hope were all forever gone, and her

womanhood again shone out, like a mellow and beauteous sunset, when

life's day drew near its close.

Nothing had become more certain than that the monarchy would undergo

radical constitutional changes. Of this every one was conscious except

the king and the nobility. They were struck with that blindness which

foreruns ruin. They constituted one party, and this party was the common

object of attack by two political and revolutionary divisions, the

Girondists and the Jacobins. The Gironde wished reform, a constitution,

a monarchy, but one limited and constitutional, equality in taxes. They

did not wish to destroy utterly, but they were willing to dislocate and

then readjust, the machinery of state. The Jacobins at first said much,

but proposed little. They aspired to the abolition of the throne and the

establishment of a republic; they wished to overthrow the altar; they

promised, vaguely, to wreak upon the rich and titled full revenge for

the wrongs of the poor and lowly. Every political and social dream which

had found expression for twenty years, every skeptical attack upon

things ancient and holy, found in this body of men a party and an

exponent. Up to a certain point both of these parties necessarily made

common war upon the old order of things. But, beyond that point, it was

equally certain that they would attack each other. The Girondists would

wish to stop, and the Jacobins would wish to go on.

During the session of this assembly the influence of Madame Roland on

men of all modes of thought became most marked. Her parlors were the

rendezvous of eminent men, and men destined to become eminent. It is

impossible to discover, from the carping records of that time, that she

asserted her powers by an unwomanly effort. Men felt in her presence

that they were before a great intellectual being--a creative and

inspiring mind--and it shone upon them without effort, like the sun.

Among these visitors was Maximilien Robespierre, who afterwards took her

life. He was then obscure, despised, and had been coughed down when he

rose to speak. She discerned his talents, and encouraged him. He said

little, but was always near her, listening to all she said; and in his

after days of power, he reproduced, in many a speech, what he had heard

this wondrous woman say. In this time of his unpopularity she

unquestionably saved him from the guillotine by her own personal and

persistent intercession with men in power.

By the time that the session of this assembly drew near its close the

ground-swell began to be felt of that tempest of popular wrath which

eventually swept over France, and which the Jacobins rode and directed

until it dashed even them upon the rocks. Squalor came forth and

consorted with cleanliness; vice crept from its dens and sat down by the

side of purity in high places; atheism took its stand at the altar, and

ministered with the priest.

This assembly adjourned, and the Rolands returned, for a short time, to

Platiere. By this time it was evident that the monarchy could not stand

against the attacks of both its enemies; the king was compelled to

yield; he threw himself into the arms of the Girondists, as his least

obnoxious foes. He formed a new cabinet, and to Roland was given the

ministry of the interior. It was a very great office. Its incumbent had

administrative charge of all the internal affairs of France. The

engraver's daughter was now the mistress of a palace. From the lowly

room where she had read Plutarch until her mind was made grand with

ideas of patriotic glory, until she loved her country as once she loved

her God, she had gone by no base degrees to an eminence where her

beloved France, with all its hopes and woes and needs and resources, lay

like a map beneath her--a map for her and hers to change.

By this time the titled refugees had brought the Prussian armies to the

frontier; a majority of the clergy had identified themselves with the

reaction, were breaking down the revolution among the people, and were

producing a reversionary tendency to absolutism. The king was

vacillating and timid, but the queen had all the spirit and courage of

her mother, Maria Theresa. It is very evident from Madame Roland's

memoirs and letters, that these two women felt that they were in actual

collision. It is a strange contrast; the sceptered wife, looking from

her high places with longing and regret over centuries of hereditary

succession, divine right and unquestioned prerogative, calling on her

house of Hapsburg for aid, appealing to the kings of the earth for

assistance in moving back the irreversible march of destiny:--from

another palace the daughter of the people looking not back, but forward,

speaking of kings and monarchies as gone, or soon to go, into tables of

chronology, listening to what the ancient centuries speak from Grecian

and Roman tombs, summoning old philosophies to attest the inalienable

rights of man, looking beyond the mobs of kings and lords to the great

nation-forming people, upon which these float and pass away like the

shadows of purple Summer clouds; and stranger still, the ending of the

contrast in the identification of these typical women in their death,

both going to the same scaffold, discrowned of all their hopes. Of all

the lessons which life has taught to ambition, none are more touching

than when it points to the figures of these women as they are hurried by

the procession in which they moved to a common fate.

The ministry insisted that the king should proclaim war against those

who were threatening invasion, and that he should proceed stringently

against the unpatriotic clergy. He refused to take either course against

his ancient friends. It was at this time that Madame Roland wrote to the

king in advocacy of those measures that celebrated letter which her

husband signed, and to which all of the ministers assented. It is a most

statesmanlike appeal for the nation. It is predictive of all the woes

which followed. No Hebrew prophet ever spoke bolder to his king. She

writes: "I know that the words of truth are seldom welcome at the foot

of thrones; I know that it is the withholding truth from the councils of

kings that renders revolution necessary."

The king, instead of adopting the policy recommended, dismissed his

ministers. The letter was then made public through the newspapers. Few

state papers have ever produced such an effect. It became a popular

argument, and the people demanded the restoration of the ministry for

the reasons which it contained, and for expressing which the ministry

had been dismissed.

While the Girondists were supporting the ministry of their choice, they,

with the king, were the object of furious attacks by the Jacobins. When

the ministry was dismissed the Gironde renewed its attacks upon the

monarchy, emulated the Jacobins in the severity of its assaults, and

began to conspire for a federative republic, similar to the United

States, which to Madame Roland was the ideal of a free government.

Madame Roland went from the palace to hired lodgings, and in the

temporary fusion which followed of the revolutionists of all parties,

the most eminent leaders gathered around her again. Robespierre came,

but said little, for he was waiting his hour. Danton laid his lion mane

in her lap, all his savagery for the moment tamed. Vergniaud, Buzot, and

all the chiefs of the Gironde, gathered around this oracle of liberty.

Anarchy supervened. Paris and all France were filled with riotings and

murder. The king finally declared war, but battles went against France.

Riot and murder increased. A mob of twenty thousand invaded the

Tuileries then occupied by the royal family. It was divided into three

divisions. The first was composed of armed and disciplined men, led by

Santerre. The male ruffians of Paris, blood-thirsty and atrocious beyond

any thing that civilization has ever produced, formed the second

division. The third, most terrible of all, was composed of the lost

women of Paris, led by Theroigne de Mericourt, clad in a blood-red

riding dress, and armed with sword and pistol. This notorious woman had

acted a prominent part in former scenes. She led the attack upon the

Bastille. She led the mob which brought the king from Versailles to

Paris. In the subsequent riots life and death hung upon her nod, and in

one of them she met her betrayer. He begged piteously for her pardon and

his life, and this was her answer, if we believe Lamartine: "My pardon!"

said she, "at what price can you buy it? My innocence gone, my family

lost to me, my brothers and sisters pursued in their own country by the

jeers of their kindred; the maledictions of my father; my exile from my

native land; my enrollment among courtesans; the blood by which my days

have been and will be stained; that imperishable curse of vice linked to

my name instead of that immortality of virtue which you once taught me

to doubt--it is for this that you would buy my forgiveness--do you know

of any price on earth sufficient to purchase it?" And he was massacred.

She died forty years afterwards in a mad-house, for in the fate of the

revolution, she was stripped and whipped in the streets to madness by

the very women she had led.

These loathsome cohorts forced their way into the palace. They invaded

the rooms of the king and queen. They struck at him with pikes, and

forced upon his head the red bonnet of the Jacobins, while the most

wretched of her sex encircled the queen with a living wall of vice, and

loaded her with obscene execrations, charges, and epithets.

Although this outbreak has been charged to both the great political

parties, it is probably nearer to truth to say that it originated

spontaneously with that demoniac mob soon to rule France, and which from

this time carried all political organizations with it. The Girondists,

however, still retained enough of their constitutional conservatism to

be the only hope which royalty could have for its preservation. The king

again threw himself into their arms. Roland was reinstated in his

ministry, and the palace again received his wife.

Then every revolutionary element began at once to combine against the

king and the party which was thus supporting him. It was soon apparent

that the king and the Girondists could neither govern the country nor

save themselves if they acted together. The Gironde, from about this

time, pusillanimously conceded point by point to the anarchic demands

made by their enemies and the king's. Madame Roland did not join them in

this, but when she saw that her husband was but a minister in name, that

he and his associates were powerless to punish murder and prevent

anarchy, doubtless the vision which she had seen of a people regenerated

and free began to fade away. The Gironde consented to the imprisonment

of the royal family in the Temple. This was not concession enough. The

Jacobins, with the mob at their back, accused them not only of lack of

works, but of lack of faith, and when such an accusation against a party

becomes the expression of a popular conviction, that party has nothing

to do except to die. To prove this charge untrue, the Gironde united

with their enemies in abolishing the monarchy and establishing a

republic. Madame Roland drew up a plan for a republic, but it was too

late for such a one as she desired. Her scheme was federative, like our

own, in which the provinces of France should have the status of states.

This plan was a blow at the mob of Paris, which, through the Jacobin

clubs, with which France was thickly sown, controlled the nation. The

republic which followed was such only in name. The mob of Paris now

stepped from behind the transparent screen, whence it had moved all

parties like wire-hung puppets, and stood disclosed before the world in

all its colossal horror, stained with blood, breathing flames, and

grasped directly the springs of power. The national assembly was like a

keeper of lunatics captured by his patients. Its members were crowded in

their seats by blood-thirsty men, depraved women, and by merciless

visionaries, who clamored for extirpation and destruction, absolute and

universal.

The power of Roland as a minister became as feeble as a shadow's hand.

The blade of the guillotine rose and fell automatically. Thousands fled

from the city, upon which heaven itself seemed to rain fire and plagues.

The armies of foreign kings were upon the soil of France, and were fast

advancing, and the wild rumors of their coming roused the people to

panic, and frenzied resolutions of resistance and retribution.

Thousands, whose only crime was a suspected want of sympathy, were

crowded into the prisons of Paris. Hoary age, the bounding boy, the

tender virgin, the loving wife, the holy priest, the sainted nun, the

titled lady, filed along with the depraved of both sexes in endless

procession through those massive gates, never more to see the sky and

the green earth again. For the mob had resolved to extirpate its enemies

in the city before marching against foreign invaders. It went from

prison to prison, bursting in the doors, and slaughtering without

distinction of age, sex, or condition. Madame Roland was nearly frantic

over these scenes. Her divinity had turned to Moloch in her very

presence. Her husband called for troops to stop the horrible massacre,

but none were furnished, and it went on until men were too tired to

slay. These acts were doubtless incited by the Jacobin leaders, though

they cloaked with secrecy their complicity in these great crimes. The

Jacobins became all-powerful. The Girondists became the party of the

past, and from this time their history is a record of a party in name,

but in such act of dissolution as to make its efforts spasmodic,

clique-like, and personal; sometimes grand, sometimes cruel, and often

cowardly. They were under the coercion of public opinion, but were

dragged instead of driven by it. They frequently held back, but this was

merely a halt, which accelerated the rapidity of the march which left

them at the scaffold, where they regained their heroism in the presence

of death, while the bloody mob went on to a similar ending a little

distance beyond.

When the lull came, after the massacre, the two parties stood looking at

each other across the river of blood. The Jacobins accused the

Girondists of being enemies of the country. It is characteristic of

revolutionary times to accuse vaguely and to punish severely. Socrates

died as an alleged corrupter of youth. Pilate, after acquitting Jesus of

the crime of high treason, suffered him to be executed for "teaching

throughout all Jewry." "Roundhead" and "Cavalier" were once expressive

terms of condemnation. In our own times the words "slave-holder,"

"abolitionist," "loyal," "disloyal," and "rebel" have formed the

compendious summing up of years of history. An indictment is compressed

into an epithet in such times. In the time of Madame Roland, to be "a

suspect" was to be punishable with death. So the Jacobins suspected the

Girondists, and accused them of being enemies of France. They introduced

measures which pandered to the bloodthirst of the mob, and for which the

Girondists were compelled either to vote or to draw upon themselves its

vengeance. Madame Roland urged and entreated the Girondists to make one

last struggle for law, liberty, and order, by moving to bring to justice

the ringleaders in the massacre, including the Jacobin chiefs, who

instigated it. This issue was made in the assembly, but it was voted

down before the tiger-roar of the mob which raged in the hall. The

Jacobins resolved to destroy Madame Roland, whose courage had prompted

this attack upon them, and for which she had become the object of their

intensest hate. They suborned an adventurer named Viard to accuse her of

being privy to a correspondence with the English Government for the

purpose of saving the life of the king. She was summoned before the

assembly to confront her accuser. She appeared in the midst of her

enemies, armed with innocence, resplendent with beauty, defended by her

own genius. Her very presence extorted applause from reluctant lips. She

looked upon her accuser, and he faltered. By a few womanly words she

tore his calumny into shreds, and left amid plaudits. Justice thus

returned once more to illumine that place by a fleeting gleam, and then

with this woman left it forever.

The Jacobins pressed the trial of the king. The mob demanded him as a

victim. The Girondists voted with the Jacobins that he was guilty; but

they voted to leave the sentence to the determination of the French

people, and when they were defeated in this they voted for his death. I

am unable to find any thing in the memorials of Madame Roland which

shows that she had any sympathy with this. What is written tends rather

to show that she was in the very apathy and lassitude of horror. From

the time when her courageous effort to work justice upon the abettors

and perpetrators of the massacre failed, her history ceases to be

political and becomes personal.

The revolutionary tribunal was reorganized, consisting of twenty judges,

a jury, and a public accuser. Merlin of Douai, a consummate jurist,

proposed a statute, in every line of which suspicion, treachery, and

hate found an arsenal of revenge. It provided that: "Immediately after

the publication of this present decree, all suspected persons who are

found in the territory of the republic, and who are still at liberty,

shall be arrested.

"Are deemed suspected all persona who, by their conduct, writings, or

language, have proved themselves partisans of tyranny, federalism, and

enemies of liberty;

"Those who can not prove they possess the means of existence, and that

they have fully performed all of their duties as citizens;

"Those to whom certificates of citizenship have been refused;

"Those of noble families--fathers, mothers, sons, daughters, sisters,

husbands, wives, and agents--who have not constantly manifested their

attachment to the Revolution."

The traveler, standing upon the stone seats of the Flavian amphitheater,

looks down into the arena, and peoples the Coliseum with the criminals

and the innocent martyrs, shut out from hope by its merciless walls and

by a populace more merciless, and slain by thousands by wild beasts and

swordsmen and spearsmen, to make a Roman holiday. How complacently he

felicitates himself upon the assumption that modern times present

nothing like this. But less than one hundred years ago, the pen of a

lawyer erected in France a statute which inclosed a kingdom with its

architectural horror, made one arena of an empire, and in one year drank

up more blood than sank into the sands of the Coliseum in centuries.

The revolutionary tribunal was in permanent session. Its trials were

summary. It heard with predetermination, and decided without evidence.

It was the mere routine formality of death. Proof often consisted solely

in the identification of the person whose death had been predetermined.

Prostitutes sold acquittals, and revenged themselves by convictions.

Paris now ruled France, the Jacobins ruled Paris, and the mob ruled the

Jacobins. They had pressed the Girondists, those men of lofty genius and

superb eloquence, from their high position into complicity with crimes

with which they had no sympathy, and this want of sympathy now became

their crime. It was resolved to destroy them. The mob of Paris again

came forth. Devilish men and women again crowded the assembly, and even

took part in its deliberations. The act of accusation was passed, and

twenty-six of the leaders of the Gironde went from their places to the

scaffold, where they suffered death sublimely.

Madame Roland was also arrested. Her husband had fled from Paris. She

was consigned to the prison of St. Pelagie, and afterwards, after

suffering the cruel mockery of a release, she was imprisoned in the

Conciergerie. This prison was the abiding place of assassins, thieves,

and all impurity. It was the anteroom to the scaffold, for incarceration

there was an infallible symptom of death. The inmates were crowded into

rooms with merciless disregard of their relative characters or

antecedents. Madame Roland was first associated with the duchess of

Grammont, with a female pick-pocket, with a nun, with an insane woman,

and with a street-walker. She finally procured a cell to herself, which

she made bloom with flowers. The prison was populous with the most

degraded of her sex. Yet she asserted here the same marvelous ascendancy

which she had always possessed over her associates. The obscene outcries

of lost women died away when she approached. Her cell was an ark of

safety for any dove seeking refuge from that deluge of human sin. When

she went into the courtyard the lost of her own sex gathered around her

with reverence, as around a tutelary and interceding angel, the same

women who inflicted upon Madame Du Barry, that princess of their caste,

every torment which the malice of their sex could inspire. Inmates and

visitors crowded to the door of her cell, and she spoke to them through

its iron bars with eloquence, which increased as inspiring death drew

near, of liberty, country, equality, and of better days for France, but

when they went away she would look through her window to the sky, and,

thinking of her hunted husband and sequestered little daughter, cry and

moan like the simplest wife and mother. Then she would send by

surreptitious conveyance, letters to refugee statesmen, which discussed

the political situation as calmly as if written upon the work-table of a

secure and peaceful home. Calumny now busied itself to defile her.

Hebert, vilest of editors, flung the ordure of Pere Duchesne, vilest of

newspapers, upon this spotless woman, soon to be a saint, and sent the

newsmen to cry the disgusting charges under her prison windows, so that

she heard them rendered in all the villainies of a language whose

under-drains have sources of vileness filthier than any other speech of

man. She did not fear death, but she did fear calumny. She had never

delighted in any public display of her enormous intellectual powers, and

she had never made any such display. She had fixed the sentiment of

Lyons by an anonymous newspaper article, of which sixty thousand copies

had been bought in one day. She had written to the king a letter which

drove her husband from power, and which, when read by the people,

compelled the king to restore him. She had written a dispatch to the

pope, claiming rights for certain French in Rome, in which the sanctity

of his office and the dignity of her country was respected, appealed to,

and asserted. It is said that the state papers were hers which persuaded

William Pitt to abstain so long from intervention in the affairs of

France, in that time of English terror and hope, which furnished

arguments to Fox, and which drew from Burke those efforts of massive

reason and gorgeous imagination which will endure as long as the

language itself. The counsel by which she had disentangled the

perplexity of wisest men had been repeated by them to applauding senates

in tones less eloquent than those by which they had been received, and

triumph had followed. In none of these efforts did she avow herself. She

shrank from the honors which solicited her, though the world knew that

they came from her just as the world knows that moon and planets shine

with the reflected light of a hidden sun. But now, when thus assailed,

she resolved to speak personally and for herself. And so, sitting in her

cell, she wrote in concealment and sent out by trusty hands, in cantos,

that autobiography in which she appealed to posterity, and by which

posterity has been convinced. She traced her career from earliest

childhood down to the very brink of the grave into which she was

looking. Her intellectual, affectional and mental history are all there

written with a hand as steady and a mind as serene as though she were at

home, with her baby sleeping in its cradle by her side. Here are found

history, philosophy, political science, poetry, and ethics as they were

received and given out again by one of the most receptive and imparting

minds ever possessed by woman. She knew that husband, home, child, and

friends were not for her any more, and that very soon she was to see the

last of earth from beside the headsman and from the block, and yet she

turned from all regret and fear, and summoned the great assize of

posterity, "of foreign nations and the next ages," to do her justice.

There was no sign of fear. She looked as calmly on what she knew she

must soon undergo as the spirit released into never-ending bliss looks

back upon the corporeal trammels from which it has just earned its

escape.

There are those who believe that a woman can not be great as she was and

still be pure. These ghouls of history will to the end of time dig into

the graves where such queens lie entombed. This woman has slept serenely

for nearly a century. Sweet oblivion has dimmed with denial and

forgetfulness the obloquy which hunted her in her last days. Tears such

as are shed for vestal martyrs have been shed for her, and for all her

faults she has the condonation of universal sorrow. Nothing but the evil

magic of sympathetic malice can restore these calumnies, and even then

they quickly fade away in the sunlight of her life. Nothing can touch

her further. Dismiss them with the exorcism of Carlyle, grown strangely

tender and elegiac here. "Breathe not thy poison breath! Evil speech!

That soul is taintless; clear as the mirror sea." She was brought to

trial. The charge against her was, "That there has existed a horrible

conspiracy against the unity and indivisibility of the French people;

that Marie Jeanne Phlipon, wife of Jean Marie Roland has been one of the

abettors or accomplices of that conspiracy." This was the formula by

which this woman was killed, and it simply meant that the Gironde had

existed and that she had sympathized with it.

She was racked with interrogations, and returned to the prison, weeping

at the infernal imputations which they cast upon her womanhood. On the

day of her final trial she dressed herself in spotless white, and let

fall the voluminous masses of her brown, abundant hair. She was asked to

betray her husband by disclosing his hiding place. Her answer is full of

wifely loyalty and dignity--"Whether I know it or not I neither ought

nor will say."

There was absolutely no evidence against her except of her affiliations

with the Girondists. The mockery ended by her condemnation to death

within twenty-four hours, and this Iphigenia of France went doomed back

to her cell. Her return was awaited with dreadful anxiety by her

associates in confinement, who hoped against hope for her safe

deliverance. As she passed through the massive doors, she smiled, and

drew her hand knife-like across her neck, and then there went up a wail

from all assembled there, the wail of titled women, of sacred nuns, of

magdalens and thieves, a dirge of inconsolable sorrow, of humanity

weeping for its best beloved child.

Late in the afternoon of November 8, 1693, the rude cart which was to

bear her to the guillotine received her. She was dressed in white; her

hair fell like a mantle to her knees. The chilly air and her own courage

brought back to her prison-blanched cheek the rosy hues of youth. She

spoke words of divine patience to the crowd which surged around her on

her way and reviled her. With a few low words she raised the courage of

a terror-stricken old man who took with her the same last journey, and

made him smile. As the hours wore into twilight, she passed the home of

her youth, and perhaps longed to become a little child again and enter

there and be at rest. At the foot of the scaffold she asked for pen and

paper to bequeath to posterity the thoughts which crowded upon her; they

were refused, and thus was one of the books of the sibyls lost. She

bowed to the great statue of Liberty near by, exclaiming, "_O Liberté!

comme on t' a jouée!_"[2] and gave her majestic form to the headsman to

be bound upon the plank.

The knife fell, and the world darkened upon the death of the queenliest

woman who ever lived and loved.--EX-GOVERNOR C.K. DAVIS, _of Minnesota_.

What though the triumph of thy fond forecasting

Lingers till earth is fading from thy sight?

Thy part with Him whose arms are everlasting,

Is not forsaken in a hopeless night.

Paul was begotten in the death of Stephen;

Fruitful through time shall be that precious blood:

No morning yet has ever worn to even

And missed the glory of its crimson flood.

There is a need of all the blood of martyrs,

Forevermore the eloquence of God;

And there is need of him who never barters

His patience in that desert way the Master trod.

What mean the strange, hard words, "through tribulation?"

O Man of sorrows, only Thou canst tell,

And such as in Thy life's humiliation,

Have oft been with Thee, ay, have known Thee well.

The failures of the world are God's successes,

Although their coming be akin to pain;

And frowns of Providence are but caresses,

Prophetic of the rest sought long in vain.

* * * * *

XXXVI.

CHEERFUL AND BRAVE.

THE DUKE OF WELLINGTON--SIR WALTER RALEIGH--XENOPHON--

CÆSAR--NELSON--HENRY OF NAVARRE--QUEEN ELIZABETH-- SYDNEY SMITH--ROBERT

HALL--LATIMER--TOM HOOD.

Baron Muffling relates of the Duke of Wellington, that that great

general remained at the Duchess of Richmond's ball till about three

o'clock on the morning of the 16th of June, 1815, "showing himself very

cheerful." The baron, who is a very good authority on the subject,

having previously proved that every plan was laid in the duke's mind,

and Quatre Bras and Waterloo fully detailed, we may comprehend the value

of the sentence. It was the bold, trusting heart of the hero that made

him cheerful. He showed himself cheerful, too, at Waterloo. He was never

very jocose; but on that memorable 18th of June he showed a symptom of

it. He rode along the line and cheered men by his look and his face, and

they too cheered him. But, when the danger was over--when the 21,000

brave men of his own and the Prussian army lay stiffening in death--the

duke, who was so cheerful in the midst of his danger, covered his face

with his hands and wept. He asked for that friend, and he was slain; for

this, and a bullet had pierced his heart. The men who had devoted

themselves to death for their leader and their country had been blown to

pieces, or pierced with lances, or hacked with sabers, and lay, like

Ponsonby covered with thirteen wounds, upon the ground. Well might the

duke weep, iron though he was. "There is nothing," he writes, "nothing

in the world so dreadful as a battle lost, unless it be such a battle

won. Nothing can compensate for the dreadful cruelty, carnage, and

misery of the scene, save the reflection on the public good which may

arise from it."

Forty years' peace succeeded the great battle. Forty years of

prosperity, during which he himself went honored to his tomb, rewarded

the constant brave look and tongue which answered his men, when he saw

the whole side of a square blown in, with "Hard work, gentlemen! They

are pounding away! We must see who can pound the longest." It is not too

much to say that the constant cheerfulness of the Duke of Wellington was

one great element of success in the greatest battle ever fought, one of

the fifteen decisive battles in the world, great in the number engaged,

greater in the slaughter, greatest in the results. But all commanders

ought to be cheerful. Gloomy looks do not do in the army. A set of

filibusters or pirates may wear looks and brows as black as the

sticking-plasters boots that their representatives are dressed in at the

minor theaters; but a soldier or a sailor should be, and as a rule is,

the most cheerful of fellows, doing his duty in the trench or the storm,

dying when the bullet comes, but living like a hero the while. Look, for

instance, at the whole-hearted cheerfulness of Raleigh, when with his

small English ships he cast himself against the navies of Spain; or at

Xenophon, conducting back from an inhospitable and hostile country, and

through unknown paths, his ten thousand Greeks; or Cæsar, riding up and

down the banks of the Rubicon, sad enough belike when alone, but at the

head of his men cheerful, joyous, well dressed, rather foppish, in fact,

his face shining with good humor as with oil. Again, Nelson, in the

worst of dangers, was as cheerful as the day. He had even a rough but

quiet humor in him just as he carried his coxswain behind him to bundle

the swords of the Spanish and French captains under his arm. He could

clap his telescope to his blind eye, and say, "Gentlemen, I can not make

out the signal," when the signal was adverse to his wishes, and then go

in and win, in spite of recall. Fancy the dry laughs which many an old

sea-dog has had over that cheerful incident. How the story lights up the

dark page of history! Then there was Henry of Navarre, lion in war,

winner of hearts, bravest of the brave, who rode down the ranks at Ivry

when Papist and Protestant were face to face, when more than his own

life and kingdom were at stake, and all the horrors of religious war

were loosened and unbound, ready to ravage poor, unhappy France. That

beaming, hopeful countenance won the battle, and is a parallel to the

brave looks of Queen Elizabeth when she cheered her Englishmen at

Tilbury.

But we are not all soldiers or sailors, although, too, our Christian

profession hath adopted the title of soldiers in the battle of life. It

is all very well to cite great commanders who, in the presence of

danger, excited by hope, with the eyes of twenty thousand men upon them,

are cheerful and happy; but what is that to the solitary author, the

poor artist, the governess, the milliner, the shoemaker, the

factory-girl, they of the thousand persons in profession or trade who

are given to murmur, and who think life so hard and gloomy and wretched

that they can not go through it with a smile on their faces and despair

in their hearts? What are examples and citations to them? "Hecuba!"

cries out poor, melancholy, morbid Hamlet, striking on a vein of

thought, "what's Hecuba to him, or he to Hecuba?" Much.

We all have trials; but it is certain that good temper and cheerfulness

will make us bear them more easily than any thing else. "Temper," said

one of our bishops, "is nine-tenths of Christianity." We do not live now

in the Middle Ages. We can not think that the sect of Flagellants, who

whipped themselves till the blood ran into their shoes, and pulled

uncommonly long faces, were the best masters of philosophy. "True

godliness is cheerful as the day," wrote Cowper, himself melancholy-mad

enough; and we are to remember that the precept of the Founder of our

faith, that when we fast we are to anoint our countenances and not to

seem to fast, enjoins a certain liveliness of face. Sydney Smith, when a

poor curate at Foster-le-Clay, a dreary, desolate place, wrote: "I am

resolved to like it, and to reconcile myself to it, which is more manly

than to fancy myself above it, and to send up complaints by the post of

being thrown away, or being desolated, and such like trash." And he

acted up to this; said his prayers, made his jokes, did his duty, and,

Upon fine mornings, used to draw up the blinds of his parlor, open the

window, and "glorify the room," as he called the operation, with

sunshine. But all the sunshine without was nothing to the sunshine

within the heart. It was that which made him go through life so bravely

and so well; it is that, too, which renders his life a lesson to us all.

We must also remember that the career of a poor curate is not the most

brilliant in the world. That of an apprentice boy has more fun in it;

that of a milliner's girl has more merriment and fewer depressing

circumstances. To hear always the same mistrust of Providence, to see

poverty, to observe all kinds of trial, to witness death-bed

scenes--this is not the most enlivening course of existence, even if a

clergyman be a man of mark and of station. But there was one whose

station was not honored, nay, even by some despised, and who had sorer

trials than Sydney Smith. His name is well known in literature; and his

writings and his example still teach us in religion. This was Robert

Hall, professor of a somber creed in a somber flat country, as flat and

"deadly-lively," as they say, as need be. To add to difficulties and

troubles, the minister was plagued with about as painful an illness as

falls to the lot of humanity to bear. He had fought with infidelity and

doubt; he had refused promotion, because he would do his duty where it

had pleased God to place him; next he had to show how well he could bear

pain. In all his trials he had been cheerful, forcible, natural, and

straightforward. In this deep one he preserved the same character.

Forced to throw himself down and writhe upon the floor in his paroxysms

of pain, he rose up, livid with exhaustion, and with the sweat of

anguish on his brow, without a murmur.

In the whole library of brave anecdote there is no tale of heroism

which, to us, beats this. It very nearly equals that of poor, feeble

Latimer, cheering up his fellow-martyr as he walked to the stake, "Be of

good cheer, brother Ridley; we shall this day light such a fire in

England as by God's grace shall not be readily put out." The very play

upon the torture is brave, yet pathetic. Wonderful, too, was the

boldness and cheerfulness of another martyr, Rowland Taylor, who,

stripped to his shirt, was forced to walk toward the stake, who answered

the jeers of his persecutors and the tears of his friends with the same

noble constant smile, and, meeting two of his very old parishioners who

wept, stopped and cheered _them_ as he went, adding, that he went on his

way rejoicing.

Heroes and martyrs are perhaps too high examples, for they may have, or

rather poor, common, every-day humanity will think they have, a kind of

high-pressure sustainment. Let us look to our own prosaic days; let us

mark the constant cheerfulness and manliness of Dr. Maginn, or that much

higher heroic bearing of Tom Hood. We suppose that every body knows that

Hood's life was not of that brilliant, sparkling, fizzing, banging,

astonishing kind which writers such as Sir Edward Bulwer Lytton, and

some others, depict as the general life of literary men. He did not,

like Byron, "jump up one morning, and find himself famous." All the

libraries were not asking for his novel, though a better was not

written; countesses and dairy-women did not beg his autograph. His was a

life of constant hard work, constant trial or disappointment, and

constant illness, enlivened only by a home affection and a cheerfulness

as constant as his pain. When slowly, slowly dying, he made cheerful fun

as often almost as he said his prayers. He was heard, after, perhaps,

being almost dead, to laugh gently to himself in the still night, when

his wife or children, who were the watchers, thought him asleep. Many of

the hard lessons of fate he seasoned, as old Latimer did his sermons,

with a pun, and he excused himself from sending more "copy" for his

magazine by a sketch, the "Editor's Apologies," a rough pen-and-ink

drawing of physic-bottles and leeches. Yet Hood had not only his own

woes to bear, but felt for others. No one had a more tender heart--few

men a more catholic and Christian sympathy for the poor--than the writer

of the "Song of the Shirt."

What such men as these have done, every one else surely can do.

Cheerfulness is a Christian duty; moroseness, dulness, gloominess, as

false, and wrong, and cruel as they are unchristian. We are too far

advanced now in the light of truth to go back into the Gothic and

conventual gloom of the Middle Ages, any more than we could go back to

the exercises of the Flagellants and the nonsense of the pre-Adamites.

All whole-hearted peoples have been lively and bustling, noisy almost,

in their progress, pushing, energetic, broad in shoulder, strong in

lung, loud in voice, of free brave color, bold look, and bright eyes.

They are the cheerful people in the world--

"Active doers, noble livers--strong to labors sure to conquer;"

and soon pass in the way of progress the more quiet and gloomy of their

fellows. That some of this cheerfulness may be simply animal is true,

and that a man may be a dullard and yet sit and "grin like a Cheshire

cat;" but we are not speaking of grinning. Laughter is all very well; is

a healthy, joyous, natural impulse; the true mark of superiority between

man and beast, for no inferior animal laughs; but we are not writing of

laughter, but of that continued even tone of spirits, which lies in the

middle zone between frantic merriment and excessive despondency.

Cheerfulness arises from various causes: from health; but it is not

dependent upon health;--from good fortune; but it does not arise solely

from that;--from honor, and position, and a tickled pride and vanity;

but, as we have seen, it is quite independent of these. The truth is, it

is a brave habit of the mind; a prime proof of wisdom; capable of being

acquired, and of the very greatest value.

A cheerful man is pre-eminently a useful man. He does not "cramp his

mind, nor take half views of men and things." He knows that there is

much misery, but that misery is not the rule of life. He sees that in

every state people may be cheerful; the lambs skip, birds sing and fly

joyously, puppies play, kittens are full of joyance, the whole air full

of careering and rejoicing insects, that everywhere the good outbalances

the bad, and that every evil that there is has its compensating balm.

Then the brave man, as our German cousins say, possesses the world,

whereas the melancholy man does not even possess his own share of it.

Exercise, or continued employment of some kind, will make a man

cheerful; but sitting at home, brooding and thinking, or doing little,

will bring gloom. The reaction of this feeling is wonderful. It arises

from a sense of duty done, and it also enables us to do our duty.

Cheerful people live long in our memory. We remember joy more readily

than sorrow, and always look back with tenderness on the brave and

cheerful. Autolycus repeats the burden of an old song with the truth

that "a merry heart goes all the day, but your sad ones tires a mile a!"

and what he says any one may notice, not only in ourselves, but in the

inferior animals also. A sulky dog, and a bad-tempered horse, wear

themselves out with half the labor that kindly creatures do. An unkindly

cow will not give down her milk, and a sour sheep will not fatten; nay,

even certain fowls and geese, to those who observe, will evidence

temper--good or bad.

We can all cultivate our tempers, and one of the employments of some

poor mortals is to cultivate, cherish, and bring to perfection, a

thoroughly bad one; but we may be certain that to do so is a very gross

error and sin, which, like all others, brings its own punishment,

though, unfortunately, it does not punish itself only. If he "to whom

God is pleasant is pleasant to God," the reverse also holds good; and

certainly the major proposition is true with regard to man. Addison says

of cheerfulness, that it lightens sickness, poverty, affliction;

converts ignorance into an amiable simplicity, and renders deformity

itself agreeable; and he says no more than the truth. "Give us,

therefore, O! give us"--let us cry with Carlyle--"the man who sings at

his work! Be his occupation what it may, he is equal to any of those who

follow the same pursuit in silent sullenness. He will do more in the

same time; he will do it better; he will persevere longer. One is

scarcely sensible of fatigue whilst he marches to music. The very stars

are said to make harmony as they revolve in their appointed skies."

"Wondrous is the strength of cheerfulness! altogether past calculation

the powers of its endurance. Efforts, to be permanently useful must be

uniformly joyous--a spirit all sunshine--graceful from very

gladness--beautiful because bright." Such a spirit is within every

body's reach. Let us get out into the light of things. The morbid man

cries out that there is always enough wrong in the world to make a man

miserable. Conceded; but wrong is ever being righted; there is always

enough that is good and right to make us joyful. There is ever sunshine

somewhere; and the brave man will go on his way rejoicing, content to

look forward if under a cloud, not bating one jot of heart or hope if

for a moment cast down; honoring his occupation, whatever it may be;

rendering even rags respectable by the way he wears them; and not only

being happy himself, but causing the happiness of others.

* * * * *

XXXVII.

HAROLD.

THE LAST SAXON KING OF ENGLAND.

The father of Harold, the last Saxon king of England, was named Godwin,

and was the first great English statesman. It was from him that Harold

in a great measure inherited his vigor and power, though, indeed, he

came altogether of a noble race, both by lineage and character, for his

mother was a daughter of Canute the Great.

All the English loved Harold; he was strong and generous, and a better

counselor than Godwin, his father, in many ways. At first he never

sought any thing for himself; but as time went on, and he found how he

was obeyed, and how he was beloved, how the whole country turned her

eyes to him as the fittest king when Edward the Confessor should be

gone, he also took the same idea into his mind, and gave himself to

rule, to teach, and to act as one who should by and by be king.

Edward's queen, Edith, was Harold's sister; but there was another Edith,

who influenced Harold more than any one else in many ways. From his

boyhood he and she had played together, and they grew up, never so much

as thinking that a time would come when they would separate.

The more Harold saw her the more he felt he should like to ask her to be

his wife, and have her always with him; but there were many things which

made that impossible. And then England required Harold. If he thought

only of his own happiness his country must suffer. The great nobles

wished him to establish the kingdom by marrying the daughter of one of

the most powerful lords; this would connect the people and the land more

closely, and prevent quarrels and divisions; and the government required

the whole of Harold's services, and the people required his

watchfulness, his thought, his care, his presence.

All his life through he had consulted Edith, and now at this terrible

moment he consulted her again. He stood before her, and in great trouble

and agony of spirit told her just how things were, scarcely daring to

look at the woman he loved; for if he looked at her, England, her

greatness and her needs, all melted away, and he saw nothing but a

beaming vision of a quiet, beloved home, free from the storms of the

great world outside.

But Edith too was unselfish, pure and good; so she put all thought of

personal happiness away, and putting her hand on his shoulder, said,

"Never, O Harold, did I feel so proud of thee, for Edith could not love

thee as she doth, and will till the grave clasp her, if thou didst not

love England more than Edith." So these two separated.

His whole energy was given to his king and his country. He had no great

love for the monks; but he sought out the good and noble ones, put power

into their hands, and gave them his support in ruling wisely and well.

The Abbey of Waltham had fallen into almost complete decay; he chose two

humbly born men, renowned for the purity and benevolence of their lives,

and gave to them the charge of selecting a new brotherhood there, which

he largely endowed.

At last Edward passed quietly away, and with one accord Harold, the

beloved, was chosen king and crowned.

Over the sea dwelt William, duke of the Normans, With no careless ear

did he hear that Edward was dead Edward dead! Edward! Why, Edward, in a

moment of friendship, had promised the English throne to him--had even,

William asserted, left it him in will; therefore his rage was great when

he heard that Harold was not only proclaimed and crowned king, but was

ready to defend his claim by battle sooner than yield. William was a man

of power and iron will; he forced his reluctant Normans to listen to his

complaint, equipped an army, and sailed for Britain. On came the queer

little ships of war, nearer and nearer to England's white, free cliffs,

and cast anchor in Pevensey Bay.

William, eager and impatient, sprang from his ship; but his foot

slipping, he fell, to rise again with both his hands full of earth,

which he showed to his scared soldiers in triumph, crying:

"So do I grasp the earth of a new country."

Meanwhile Harold had gathered his forces, and they were assembled on

Senlac Hill, an advantageous position. He himself was in the center, his

brave brother Gurth at his right hand.

A general charge of the Norman foot opened the battle, which raged the

whole day, victory now leaning to the English and now to the Normans.

There was a cry that the duke was killed. "I live!" he shouted, "and by

God's help will conquer yet!" And tearing off his helmet he rushed into

the thickest of the battle, and aimed right at the standard. Round that

standard the last sharp, long struggle took place. Harold, Gurth, all

the greatest who still survived, met there. With his tremendous

battle-ax the king did mighty slaughter, till, looking upward as he

swung his ax with both hands, a Norman arrow pierced his eye, and he

fell.

"Fight on!" he gasped. "Conceal my death--England to the rescue!" One

instant he sprang to his feet, and then fell back--lifeless. One by one

the other noble guardians fell around him, till only Gurth was left,

brave chief and last man, with no thought of surrender, though all was

gone and lost.

"Spare him! spare the brave!" shouted one; but the brave heart was

already pierced, and he sank beside his king and brother. So fell the

last of the Saxon kings, and so arose the Norman race.

Long did they search the battlefield for Harold's body, disfigured by

wounds and loss of blood, but long did they seek it in vain, till a

woman whose toil had never ceased burst into a sharp cry over a lifeless

form. It was Edith, who with many another woman had watched the battle.

The body was too changed to be recognized even by its nearest friends;

but beneath his heart was punctured in old Saxon letters "Edith," and

just below, in characters more fresh, "England," the new love he had

taken when duty bade him turn from Edith; which recalls the lines of

Lovelace to Lucasta:

"Tell me not, sweet, I am unkind,

That from the nunnery

Of thy chaste breast and quiet mind

To war and arms I fly.

True, a new mistress now I chase,

The first foe of the field;

And with a stronger faith embrace

A sword, a horse, a shield.

Yet this inconstancy is such

As you too shall adore;

I could not love thee, dear, so much

Loved I not not honor more."

* * * * *

XXXVIII.

PETER COOPER,

(BORN 1791--DIED 1883.)

THE LESSON OF A LONG AND USEFUL LIFE.

Barzillai, of sacred history, was a very old man, a very kind man, a

very affectionate man, a very rich man of the tenth century before

Christ, a type of our American philanthropist, Peter Cooper, in the

nineteenth century after Christ. When I see Barzillai, from his wealthy

country seat at Rogelim, coming out to meet David's retreating army, and

providing them with flour and corn and mattresses, it makes me think of

the hearty response of our modern philanthropist in time of trouble and

disaster, whether individual, municipal, or national. The snow of his

white locks has melted from our sight, and the benediction of his genial

face has come to its long amen. But his influence halted not a

half-second for his obsequies to finish, but goes right on without

change, save that of augmentation, for in the great sum of a useful life

death is a multiplication instead of subtraction, and the tombstone,

instead of being the goal of the race, is only the starting point. What

means this rising up of all good men, with hats off, in reverence to one

who never wielded a sword or delivered masterly oration or stood in

senatorial place? Neither general, nor lord, nor governor, nor

President. The LL. D., which a university bestowed, did not stick to

him. The word mister, as a prefix, or the word esquire, as a suffix,

seemed a superfluity. He was, in all Christendom, plain Peter Cooper.

Why, then, all the flags at half-mast, and the resolutions of common

council, and the eulogium of legislatures, and the deep sighs from

multitudes who have no adequate way to express their bereavement?

First, he was in some respects the father of American philanthropies.

There have been far larger sums donated to the public since this man

founded Cooper Institute, but I think that hundreds of the charities

were born of his example. Sometimes a father will have a large family of

children who grow up to be larger than himself. When that six-storied

temple of instruction was built on Fourth Avenue and Seventh Street by

Mr. Cooper, at an expense of $630,000, and endowed by him with $150,000,

you must remember $100,000 was worth as much as $500,000 now, and that

millionaires, who are so common now that you hardly stop to look at

them, were a rare spectacle. Stephen Girard and John Jacob Astor, of the

olden time, would in our day almost excite the sympathy of some of our

railroad magnates. The nearly $800,000, which built and endowed Cooper

Institute, was as much as $3,000,000 or $5,000,000 now. But there are

institutions in our day that have cost many times more dollars in

building and endowment which have not accomplished more than a fraction

of the good done by this munificence of 1857. This gift brooded

charities all over the land. This mothered educational institutions.

This gave glorious suggestion to many whose large fortune was hitherto

under the iron grasp of selfishness. If the ancestral line of many an

asylum or infirmary or college or university were traced back far

enough, you would learn that Peter Cooper was the illustrious

progenitor. Who can estimate the effect of such an institution, standing

for twenty-six years, saying to all the millions of people passing up

and down the great thoroughfares: "I am here to bless and educate,

without money and without price, all the struggling ones who come under

my wings?" That institution has for twenty-six years been crying shame

on miserliness and cupidity. That free reading-room has been the

inspiration of five hundred free reading-rooms. Great reservoir of

American beneficence!

Again, Peter Cooper showed what a wise thing it is for a man to be his

own executor. How much better is ante-mortem charity than post-mortem

beneficence. Many people keep all their property for themselves till

death, and then make good institutions their legatees. They give up the

money only because they have to. They would take it all with them if

they only had three or four stout pockets in their shroud. Better late

than never, but the reward shall not be as great as the reward of those

who make charitable contribution while yet they have power to keep their

money. Charity, in last will and testament, seems sometimes to be only

an attempt to bribe Charon, the ferryman, to land the boat in celestial

rather than infernal regions. Mean as sin when they disembark from the

banks of this world, they hope to be greeted as benefactors when they

come up the beach on the other side. Skinflints when they die, they hope

to have the reception of a George Peabody. Besides that, how often

donations by will and testament fail of their final destination. The

surrogate's courts are filled with legal quarrels. If a philanthropist

has any pride of intellect, and desires to help Christian institutions,

he had better bestow the gift before death, for the trouble is, if he

leaves any large amount to Christian institutions, the courts will be

appealed to to prove he was crazy. They will bring witnesses to prove

that for a long time he has been becoming imbecile, and as almost every

one of positive nature has idiosyncrasies, these idiosyncrasies will be

brought out on the trial, and ventilated and enlarged and caricatured,

and the man who had mind enough to make $1,000,000, and heart enough to

remember needy institutions, will be proved a fool. If he have a second

wife, the children of the first wife will charge him with being unduly

influenced. Many a man who, when he made his will, had more brain than

all his household put together, has been pronounced a fit subject for a

lunatic asylum. Be your own executor. Do not let the benevolent

institutions of the country get their chief advantage from your last

sickness and death. How much better, like Peter Cooper, to walk through

the halls you have built for others and see the young men being educated

by your beneficence, and to get the sublime satisfaction of your own

charities! I do not wonder that Barzillai, the wealthy Gileadite, lived

to be eighty, for he stood in the perpetual sunshine of his beneficence.

I do not wonder that Peter Cooper, the modern Barzillai, lived to be

ninety-two years of age, for he felt the healthful reaction of helping

others. Doing good was one of the strongest reasons of his longevity.

There is many a man with large estate behind him who calls up his past

dollars as a pack of hounds to go out and hunt up one more dollar before

he dies. Away away the hunter and his hounds for that last dollar!

Hotter and hotter the chase. Closer on the track and closer. Whip up and

spur on the steed! The old man just ahead, and all the pack of hounds

close after him. Now they are coming in at the death, that last dollar

only a short distance ahead. The old hunter, with panting breath and

pale cheek and outstretched arm, clutches for it as it turns on its

track, but, missing it, keeps on till the exhausted dollar plunges into

a hole and burrows and burrows deep; and the old hunter, with both

hands, claws at the earth, and claws deeper down, till the burrowed

embankment gives way, and he rolls over into his own grave. We often

talk of old misers. There are but few old misers. The most of them are

comparatively young. Avarice massacres more than a war. In contrast,

behold the philanthropist in the nineties, and dying of a cold caught in

going to look after the affairs of the institution he himself founded,

and which has now about two thousand five hundred persons a day in its

reading-rooms and libraries, and two thousand students in its evening

schools.

Again, Peter Cooper has shown the world a good way of settling the old

quarrel between capital and labor, the altercation between rich and

poor. There are two ways in which this conflict can never be settled.

One is the violent suppression of the laboring classes, and the other

the violent assault of the rich. This is getting to be the age of

dynamite--dynamite under the Kremlin, dynamite in proximity to

Parliament House and railroad track, dynamite near lordly mansions,

dynamite in Ireland, dynamite in England, dynamite in America. The rich

are becoming more exclusive, and the poor more irate. I prescribe for

the cure of this mighty evil of the world a large allopathic dose of

Peter Cooperism. You never heard of dynamite in Cooper Institute. You

never heard of any one searching the cellar of that man's house for a

keg of dynamite. At times of public excitement, when prominent men had

their houses guarded, there were no sentinels needed at his door. The

poorest man with a hod on his shoulder carrying brick up a wall

begrudged not the philanthropist his carriage as he rode by. No one put

the torch to Peter Cooper's glue factory. When on some great popular

occasion the masses assembled in the hall of Cooper Institute and its

founder came on the platform, there were many hard hands that clapped in

vigorous applause. Let the rich stretch forth toward the great masses of

England, Ireland, and America as generous and kind a hand as that of

Peter Cooper, and the age of dynamite will end. What police can not do,

and shot and shell can not do, and strongest laws severely executed can

not do, and armies can not do, will yet be accomplished by something

that I see fit to baptize as Peter Cooperism. I hail the early twilight

of that day when a man of millions shall come forth and say: "There are

seventy thousand destitute children in New York, and here I put up and

endow out of my fortune a whole line of institutions to take care of

them; here are vast multitudes in filthy and unventilated

tenement-houses, for whom I will build a whole block of residences at

cheap rents; here are nations without Christ, and I turn my fortune

inside out to send them flaming evangels; there shall be no more hunger,

and no more sickness, and no more ignorance, and no more crime, if I can

help it." That spirit among the opulent of this country and other

countries would stop contention, and the last incendiary's torch would

be extinguished, and the last dagger of assassination would go to

slicing bread for poor children, and the last pound of dynamite that

threatens death would go to work in quarries to blast foundation-stones

for asylums and universities and churches. May the spirit of Peter

Cooper and Wm. E. Dodge come down on all the bank stock and government

securities and railroad companies and great business houses of America!

Again, this Barzillai of the nineteenth century shows us a more sensible

way of monumental and epitaphal commemoration. It is natural to want to

be remembered. It would not be a pleasant thought to us or to any one to

feel that the moment you are out of the world you would be forgotten. If

the executors of Peter Cooper should build on his grave a monument that

would cost $20,000,000, it would not so well commemorate him as that

monument at the junction of Third and Fourth Avenues, New York. How few

people would pass along the silent sepulcher as compared with those

great numbers that will ebb and flow around Cooper Institute in the ages

to come! Of the tens of thousands to be educated there, will there be

one so stupid as not to know who built it, and what a great heart he

had, and how he struggled to achieve a fortune, but always mastered that

fortune, and never allowed the fortune to master him? What is a monument

of Aberdeen granite beside a monument of intellect and souls? What is an

epitaph of a few words cut by a sculptor's chisel beside the epitaph of

coming generations and hundreds writing his praise? Beautiful and

adorned beyond all the crypts and catacombs and shrines of the dead! But

the superfluous and inexcusable expense of catafalque and sarcophagus

and tumulus and necropolis the world over, put into practical help,

would have sent intelligence into every dark mind and provided a home

for every wanderer. The pyramids of Egypt, elevated at vast expense,

were the tombs of kings--their names now obliterated. But the monuments

of good last forever. After "Old Mortality" has worn out his chisel in

reviving the epitaphs on old tombstones, the names of those who have

helped others will be held in everlasting remembrance. The fires of the

Judgment Day will not crumble off one of the letters. The Sabbath-school

teacher builds her monument in the heavenly thrones of her converted

scholars. Geo. Müller's monument is the orphan-houses of England.

Handel's monument was his "Hallelujah Chorus." Peabody's monument, the

library of his native village and the schools for educating the blacks

in the South. They who give or pray for a church have their monument in

all that sacred edifice ever accomplishes. John Jay had his monument in

free America. Wilberforce his monument in the piled up chains of a

demolished slave trade. Livingstone shall have his monument in

regenerated Africa. Peter Cooper has his monument in all the

philanthropies which for the last quarter of a century he encouraged by

his one great practical effort for the education of the common people.

That is a fame worth having. That is a style of immortality for which

any one without degradation may be ambitious. Fill all our cities with

such monuments till the last cripple has his limb straightened, and the

last inebriate learns the luxury of cold water, and the last outcast

comes home to his God, and the last abomination is extirpated, and

"Paradise Lost" has become "Paradise Regained."

But notice, also, that the longest life-path has a terminus. What a

gauntlet to run--the accidents, the epidemics, the ailments of

ninety-two years! It seemed as if this man would live on forever. His

life reached from the administration of George Washington to that of

President Arthur. But the liberal hand is closed, and the beaming eye is

shut, and the world-encompassing heart is still. When he was at my

house, I felt I was entertaining a king. But the king is dead, and we

learn that the largest volume of life has its last chapter, its last

paragraph, and its last word. What are ninety-two years compared with

the years that open the first page of the future? For that let us be

ready. Christ came to reconstruct us for usefulness, happiness, and

heaven.

I know not the minutiae of Peter Cooper's religious opinions. Some men

are worse than their creed, and some are better. The grandest profession

of Jesus Christ is a life devoted to the world's elevation and

betterment. A man may have a membership in all the orthodox Churches in

Christendom, and yet, if he be mean and selfish and careless about the

world's condition, he is no Christian; while, on the other hand, though

he may have many peculiarities of belief, if he live for others more

than for himself, he is Christ-like, and, I think, he must be a

Christian. But let us remember that the greatest philanthropist of the

ages was Jesus Christ, and the greatest charity ever known was that

which gave not its dollars, but its blood, for the purchase of the

world's deliverance. Standing in the shadow of Peter Cooper's death, I

pray God that all the resources of America may be consecrated. We are

coming on to times of prosperity that this country never imagined.

Perhaps here and there a few years of recoil or set-back, but God only

can estimate the wealth that is about to roll into the lap of this

nation. Between five years ago, when I visited the South, and my recent

visit, there has been a change for the better that amounts to a

resurrection. The Chattahoochee is about to rival the Merrimac in

manufactures, and the whole South is being filled with the dash of

water-wheels and the rattle of spindles. Atlanta has already $6,000,000

invested in manufactures. The South has gone out of politics into

business. The West, from its inexhaustible mines, is going to, disgorge

silver and gold, and pour the treasure all over the nation. May God

sanctify the coming prosperity of the people. The needs are as awful as

the opulence is to be tremendous. In 1880 there were 5,000,000 people

over ten years of age in the United States that could not read, and over

6,000,000 who could not write, and nearly 2,000,000 of the voters. We

want 5,000 Cooper Institutes and churches innumerable, and just one

spiritual awakening, but that reaching from the St. Lawrence to Key

West, and from Barnegat Light-house to the Golden Gate. We can all

somewhere be felt in the undertaking. I like the sentiment and the

rhythm of some anonymous poet, who wrote:

"When I am dead and gone,

And the mold upon my breast,

Say not that he did well or ill,

Only 'He did his best.'"

--DR. TALMAGE.

* * * * *

GOODNESS.

Goodness needs no lure:

All compensations are in her enshrined,

Whatever things are right and fair and pure,

Wealth of the heart and mind.

Failure and Success,

The Day and Night of every life below,

Are but the servants of her blessedness,

That come and spend and go.

Life is her reward,

A life brim-full, in every day's employ,

Of sunshine, inspiration, every word

And syllable of joy.

Heaven to thee is known,

If Goodness in the robes of common earth

Becomes a presence thou canst call thine own,

To warm thy heart and hearth.

Clothed in flesh and blood,

She flits about me every blessed day,

The incarnation of sweet womanhood;

And age brings no decay.

* * * * *

XXXIX.

ILLUSIONS

"THEREFORE TRUST TO THY HEART, AND WHAT THE WORLD CALLS

ILLUSIONS."--LONGFELLOW.

This curious sentence of Longfellow's deserves reading again. He is an

earnest man, and does not mean to cheat us; he has done good work in the

world by his poems and writings; he has backed up many, and lifted the

hearts of many, by pure thought; he means what he says. Yet, what is

altogether lighter than vanity? The human heart, answers the

religionist. What is altogether deceitful upon the scales? The human

heart. What is a Vanity Fair, a mob, a hubbub and babel of noises, to be

avoided, shunned, hated? The world. And, lastly, what are our thoughts

and struggles, vain ideas, and wishes? Vain, empty illusions, shadows,

and lies. And yet this man, with the inspiration which God gives every

true poet, tells us to trust to our _hearts_, and what the world calls

_illusions_. And he is right.

Now there are, of course, various sorts of illusions. The world is

itself illusive. None of us are exactly what we seem; and many of those

things that we have the firmest faith in really do not exist. When the

first philosopher declared that the world was round, and not a plane as

flat and circular as a dinner-plate or a halfpenny, people laughed at

him, and would have shut him up in a lunatic asylum. They said he had an

"illusion;" but it was they who had it. He was so bold as to start the

idea that we had people under us, and that the sun went to light them,

and that they walked with their feet to our feet. So they do, we know

well now; but the pope and cardinals would not have it, and so they met

in solemn conclave, and ordered the philosopher's book to be burnt, and

they would have burnt him, too, in their hardly logical way of saving

souls, only he recanted, and, sorely against his will, said that it was

all an "illusion." But the pope and his advisers had an illusion, too,

which was, that dressing up men who did not believe in their faith, in

garments on which flames and devils were represented--such a garment

they called a _san benito_--and then burning them, was really something

done for the glory of God. They called it with admirable satire an _auto

da fé_ (an "act of faith"), and they really did believe--for many of the

inquisitors were mistaken but tender men--that they did good by this;

but surely now they have outgrown this illusion. How many of these have

we yet to outgrow; how far are we off the true and liberal Christianity

which is the ideal of the saint and sage; how ready are we still to

persecute those who happen, by mere circumstances attending their birth

and education, to differ from us!

The inner world of man, no less than the external world, is full of

illusions. They arise from distorted vision, from a disorder of the

senses, or from an error of judgment upon data correctly derived from

their evidence. Under the influence of a predominant train of thought,

an absorbing emotion, a person ready charged with an uncontrolled

imagination will see, as Shakspeare has it--

"More devils than vast hell can hold."

Half, if not all, of the ghost stories, which are equally dangerous and

absorbing to youth, arise from illusion--there they have their

foundation; but believers in them obstinately refuse to believe anything

but that which their overcharged and predisposed imagination leads them

to. Some of us walk about this world of ours--as if it were not of

itself full enough of mystery--as ready to swallow any thing wonderful

or horrible, as the country clown whom a conjurer will get upon his

stage to play tricks with. Fooled by a redundant imagination, delighted

to be tricked by her potency, we dream away, flattered by the idea that

a supernatural messenger is sent to us, and to us alone. We all have our

family ghosts, in whom we more than half believe. Each one of us has a

mother or a wise aunt, or some female relation, who, at one period of

her life, had a dream, difficult to be interpreted, and foreboding good

or evil to a child of the house.

We are so grand, we men, "noble animals, great in our deaths and

splendid even in our ashes," that we can not yield to a common fate

without some overstrained and bombast conceit that the elements

themselves give warning. Casca, in "Julius Caesar," rehearses some few

of the prodigies which predicted Caesar's death:

"A common slave (you know him well by sight)

Held up his left hand, which did flame, and burn

Like twenty torches join'd; and yet his hand,

Not sensible of fire, remained unscorched....

And, yesterday, the bird of night did sit,

Even at noon-day, upon the market-place,

Hooting and shrieking. When these prodigies

Do so conjointly meet, let not men say,

'_These are their reasons--they are natural_;

For, I believe, they are portentous things."

A great many others besides our good Casca believe in these portents and

signs, and their dignity would be much hurt if they were persuaded that

the world would go on just the same if they and their family were

utterly extinct, and that no eclipse would happen to portend that

calamity. In Ireland, in certain great families, a Banshee, or a

_Benshee_, for they differ who spell it, sits and wails all night when

the head of the family is about to stretch his feet towards the dim

portals of the dead; and in England are many families who, by some

unknown means, retain a ghost which walks up and down a terrace, as it

did in that fanciful habitation of Sir Leicester Dedlock. In Scotland,

they have amongst them prophetic shepherds, who, on the cold, misty

mountain top, at eventide, shade their shaggy eyebrows with their hands,

and, peering into the twilight, see funerals pass by, and the decease of

some neighbor portended by all the paraphernalia of death.

With us all these portents "live no longer in the faith of Reason;" we

assert, in Casca's words, that "they are natural;" but we offend the

credulous when we do so. "Illusions of the senses," says an acute

writer, "are common in our appreciation of form, distance, color, and

motion; and also from a lack of comprehension of the physical powers of

Nature, in the production of images of distinct objects. A stick in the

water appears bent or broken; the square tower at the distance looks

round; distant objects appear to move when we are in motion; the

heavenly bodies appear to revolve round the earth." And yet we know that

all these appearances are mere illusions. At the top of a mountain in

Ireland, with our back to the sun, we, two travelers, were looking at

the smiling landscape gilded by the sunshine; suddenly a white cloud

descended between us and the valley, and there upon it were our two

shadows, distorted, gigantic, threatening or supplicatory, as we chose

to move and make them. Here was an exactly similar apparition to the

Specter of the Brocken. The untaught German taxed his wits to make the

thing a ghost; but the philosopher took off his hat and bowed to it, and

the shadow returned the salute; and so with the Fata Morgana, and the

mirage. We now know that these things had no supernatural origin, but

are simply due to the ordinary laws of atmospheric influence and light;

so all our modern illusions are easily rectified by the judgment, and

are fleeting and transitory in the minds of the sane.

But, beyond these, there are the illusions of which we first spoke, from

which we would not willingly be awakened. The sick man in Horace, who

fancied that he was always sitting at a play, and laughed and joked, or

was amazed and wept as they do in a theater, rightly complained to his

friends that they had killed him, not cured him, when they roused him

from his state of hallucination. There are some illusions so beautiful,

so healthful, and so pleasant, that we would that no harshness of this

world's ways, no bitter experience, no sad reality, could awaken us from

them. It is these, we fancy, that the poet tells us to trust to; such

are the illusions--so-called by the world--to which we are always to

give our faith. It will be well if we do so. Faith in man or woman is a

comfortable creed; but you will scarcely find a man of thirty, or a

woman either, who retains it. They will tell you bitterly "they have

been so deceived!" One old gentleman we know, deceived, and ever again

to be deceived, who is a prey to false friends, who lends his money

without surety and gets robbed, who fell in love and was jilted, who has

done much good and has been repaid with much evil. This man is much to

be envied. He can, indeed, "trust in his heart and what the world calls

illusions." To him the earth is yet green and fresh, the world smiling

and good-humored, friends are fast and loving, woman a very well-spring

of innocent and unbought love. The world thinks him an old simpleton;

but he is wiser than the world. He is not to be scared by sad proverbs,

nor frightened by dark sayings. An enviable man, he sits, in the evening

of life, loving and trusting his fellow-men, and, from the mere

freshness of his character, having many gathered round him whom he can

still love and trust.

With another sort of philosophers all around is mere illusion, and the

mind of man shall in no way be separated from it; from the beginning to

the end it is all the same. Our organization, they would have us

believe, creates most of our pleasure and our pain. Life is in itself an

ecstasy. "Life is as sweet as nitrous oxide; and the fisherman, dripping

all day over a cold pond, the switchman at the railway intersection, the

farmer in the field, the negro in the rice-swamp, the fop in the street,

the hunter in the woods, the barrister with the jury, the belle at the

ball--all ascribe a certain pleasure to their employment which they

themselves give to it. Health and appetite impart the sweetness to

sugar, bread, and meat." So fancy plays with us; but, while she tricks

us, she blesses us. The mere prosaic man, who strips the tinsel from

every thing, who sneers at a bridal and gladdens at a funeral; who tests

every coin and every pleasure, and tells you that it has not the true

ring; who checks capering Fancy and stops her caracoling by the whip of

reality, is not to be envied. "In the life of the dreariest alderman,

Fancy enters into all details, and colors them with a rosy hue," says

Emerson. "He imitates the air and action of people whom he admires, and

is raised in his own eyes.... In London, in Paris, in Boston, in San

Francisco, the masquerade is at its height. Nobody drops his domino. The

chapter of fascinations is very long. Great is paint; nay, God is the

painter; and we rightly accuse the critic who destroys too many

illusions."

Happy are they with whom this domino is never completely dropped! Happy,

thrice happy, they who believe, and still maintain that belief, like

champion knights, against all comers, in honor, chastity, friendship,

goodness, virtue, gratitude. It is a long odds that the men who do not

believe in these virtues have none themselves; for we speak from our

hearts, and we tell of others that which we think of ourselves. The

French, a mournful, sad, and unhappy nation--even at the bottom of all

their external gaiety--have a sad word, a participle, _désillusionné_,

disillusioned; and by it they mean one who has worn out all his youthful

ideas, who has been behind the scenes, and has seen the bare walls of

the theater, without the light and paint, and has watched the ugly

actors and gaunt actresses by daylight. The taste of life is very bitter

in the mouth of such a man; his joys are Dead Sea apples--dust and ashes

in the mouths of those who bite them. No flowers spring up about his

path; he is very melancholy and suspicious, very hard and incredulous;

he has faith neither in the honesty of man nor in the purity of woman.

He is _désillusionné_--by far too wise to be taken in with painted toys.

Every one acts with self-interest! His doctor, his friend, or his valet

will be sorry for his death merely from the amount of money interest

that they have in his life. Bare and grim unto tears, even if he had

any, is the life of such a man. With him, sadder than Lethe or the Styx,

the river of time runs between stony banks, and, often a calm suicide,

it bears him to the Morgue. Happier by far is he who, with whitened hair

and wrinkled brow, sits crowned with the flowers of illusion; and who,

with the ear of age, still remains a charmed listener to the songs which

pleased his youth, trusting "his heart and what the world calls

illusions."

* * * * *

XL.

PHILLIPS BROOKS

AT HOME.

Phillips Brooks at home, of course, means Phillips Brooks in Trinity

Church, Boston. Other than his church, home proper he has none, for he

abides a bachelor.

And somehow it seems almost fit that a man like Mr. Brooks, a man so

ample, so overflowing; a man, as it were, more than sufficient to

himself, sufficient also to a multitude of others, should have his home

large and public; such a home, in fact, as Trinity Church. Here Phillips

Brooks shines like a sun--diffusing warmth and light and life. What a

blessing to what a number! To what a number of souls, it would have been

natural to say; but, almost as natural, to what a number of bodies! For

the physical man is a source of comfort, in its kind, hardly less so

than the intellectual and the spiritual. How that massive, majestic

manhood makes temperature where it is, and what temperature! Broad,

equable, temperate, calm; yet tonic, withal, and inspiring. You rejoice

in it. You have an irrational feeling that it would be a wrong to shut

up so much opulence of personal vitality in any home less wide and open

than a great basilica like Trinity Church. At least, you are not pained

with sympathy for homelessness in the case of a man so richly endowed.

To be so pained would be like shivering on behalf of the sun, because,

forsooth, the sun had nothing to make him warm and bright. Phillips

Brooks in Trinity Church is like the sun in its sphere. Still, and were

it not impertinent, I could even wish for Phillips Brooks an every-day

home, such as would be worthy of him. What a home it should be! And with

thus much of loyal, if of doubtfully appropriate tribute, irresistibly

prompted, and therefore not to be repressed, let me go on to speak of

Phillips Brooks as he is to be seen and heard Sunday after Sunday at

home in Trinity Church.

Every body knows how magnificent an edifice, with its arrested tower yet

waiting and probably long to wait completion, Trinity Church is. The

interior is decorated almost to the point of gorgeousness. The effect,

however, is imposing for "the height, the glow, the glory." Good taste

reigning over lavish expenditure has prevented chromatic richness from

seeming to approach tawdriness. It is much to say for any man preaching

here that the building does not make him look disproportionate,

inadequate. This may strongly be said for Phillips Brooks. But even for

him it can not be said that the form and construction of the interior do

not oppose a serious embarrassment to the proper effect of oratory. I

could not help feeling it to be a great wrong to the truth, or, to put

it personally, a great wrong to the preacher and to his hearers, that an

audience-room should be so broken up with pillars, angles, recesses, so

sown with contrasts of light and shade, as necessarily, inevitably, to

disperse and waste an immense fraction of the power exerted by the

preacher, whatever the measure, great or small, of that power might be.

The reaction of this audience-room upon the oratorical instinct and

habit of the man who should customarily speak in it could not but be

mischievous in a very high degree. The sense, which ought to live in

every public speaker, of his being fast bound in a grapple of mind to

mind, and heart to heart, and soul to soul, with his audience, must be

oppressed, if not extinguished, amid such architectural conditions as

those which surround Phillips Brooks when he stands to preach. That in

him this needful sense is not extinguished is a thing to be thankful

for. That it is, in fact, oppressed, I can not doubt. There is evidence

of it, I think, in his manner of preaching. For Mr. Brooks is not an

orator such as Mr. Beecher is. He does not speak _to_ people _with_

people, as Mr. Beecher does; rather he speaks _before_ them, in their

presence. He soliloquizes. There is almost a minimum of mutual relation

between speaker and hearer. Undoubtedly the swift, urgent monologue is

quickened, reinforced, by the consciousness of an audience present. That

consciousness, of course, penetrates to the mind of the speaker. But it

does not dominate the speaker's mind; it does not turn monologue into

dialogue; the speech is monologue still.

This is not invariably the case; for, occasionally, the preacher turns

his noble face toward you, and for that instant you feel the aim of his

discourse leveled full at your personality. Now there is a glimpse of

true oratorical power. But the glimpse passes quickly. The countenance

is again directed forward toward a horizon, or even lifted toward a

quarter of the sky above the horizon, and the but momentarily

interrupted rapt soliloquy proceeds.

Such I understand to have been the style of Robert Hall's pulpit speech.

It is a rare gift to be a speaker of this sort. The speaker must be a

thinker as well as a speaker. The speech is, in truth, a process of

thinking aloud--thinking accelerated, exhilarated, by the vocal exercise

accompanying, and then, too, by the blindfold sense of a listening

audience near. This is the preaching of Mr. Brooks.

It is, perhaps, not generally known that Mr. Brooks practices two

distinct methods of preaching: one, that with the manuscript; the other,

that without. The last time that I had the chance of a Sunday in Trinity

Church was Luther's day. The morning discourse was a luminous and

generous appreciation of the great reformer's character and work. This

was read in that rapid, vehement, incessant manner which description has

made sufficiently familiar to the public. The precipitation of utterance

is like the flowing forth of the liquid contents of a bottle suddenly

inverted; every word seems hurrying to be foremost. The unaccustomed

hearer is at first left hopelessly in the rear; but presently the

contagion of the speaker's rushing thought reaches him, and he is drawn

into the wake of that urgent ongoing; he is towed along in the great

multitudinous convoy that follows the mighty motor-vessel, steaming,

unconscious of the weight it bears, across the sea of thought. The

energy is sufficient for all; it overflows so amply that you scarcely

feel it not to be your own energy. The writing is like in character to

the speaking--continuous, no break, no shock, no rest, not much change

of swifter and slower till the end. The apparent mass of the speaker,

physical and mental, might at first seem equal to making up a full,

adequate momentum without multiplication by such a component of

velocity; but by-and-by you come to feel that the motion is a necessary

part of the power. I am told, indeed, that a constitutional tendency to

hesitation in utterance is the speaker's real reason for this indulged

precipitancy of speech. Not unlikely; but the final result of habit is

as if of nature.

Of the discourse itself on Luther, I have left myself room to say no

more than that Mr. Brooks's master formula for power in the preacher,

truth plus personality, came very fitly in to explain the problem of

Luther's prodigious career. It was the man himself, not less than the

truth he found, that gave Luther such possession of the present and such

a heritage in the future.

In the afternoon, Mr. Brooks took Luther's "The just shall live by

faith," and preached extemporarily. The character of the composition and

of the delivery was strikingly the same as that belonging to morning's

discourse. It was hurried, impetuous soliloquy; in this particular case

hurried first, and then impetuous. That is, I judged from various little

indications that Mr. Brooks used his will to urge himself on against

some obstructiveness felt in the current mood and movement of his mind.

But it was a noteworthy discourse, full and fresh with thought. The

interpretation put upon Luther's doctrine of justification by faith was

free rather than historic. If one should apply the formula, truth plus

personality, the personality--Mr. Brooks's personality--would perhaps be

found to prevail in the interpretation over the strict historic

truth.--W.C. WILKINSON _in The Christian Union_.

* * * * *

XLI.

SAINT JOHN AND THE ROBBER.

A LEGEND OF THE FIRST CENTURY.

There is a beautiful legend

Come down from ancient time,

Of John, the beloved disciple,

With the marks of his life sublime.

Eusebius has the story

On his quaint, suggestive page;

And God in the hearts of his people

Has preserved it from age to age.

It was after the vision in Patmos,

After the sanctified love

Which flowed to the Seven Churches,

Glowing with light from above:

When his years had outrun the measure

Allotted to men at the best,

And Peter and James and the others

Had followed the Master to rest,

In the hope of the resurrection,

And the blessed life to come

In the house of many mansions,

The Father's eternal home;

It was in this golden season,

At the going down of his sun,

When his work in the mighty harvest

Of the Lord was almost done;

At Ephesus came a message,

Where he was still at his post,

Which unto the aged Apostle

Was the voice of the Holy Ghost.

Into the country he hastened

With all the ardor of youth,

Shod with the preparation

Of the Gospel of peace and truth.

His mission was one of mercy

To the sheep that were scattered abroad,

And abundant consolation,

Which flowed through him from the Lord.

O, would my heart could paint him,

The venerable man of God,

So lovingly showing and treading

The way the Master had trod!

O, would my art could paint him,

Whose life was a fact to prove

The joy of the Master's story,

And fill their hearts with his love!

At length, when the service was ended,

His eye on a young man fell,

Of beautiful form and feature,

And grace we love so well.

At once he turned to the bishop,

And said with a love unpriced,

"To thee, to thee I commit him

Before the Church and Christ."

He then returned to the city,

The beloved disciple, John,

Where the strong unceasing current

Of his deathless love flowed on.

The bishop discharged his duty

To the youth so graceful and fair;

With restraining hand he held him,

And trained him with loving care.

At last, when his preparation

Was made for the holy rite,

He was cleansed in the sanctified water,

And pronounced a child of light.

For a time he adorned the doctrine

Which Christ in the Church has set.

But, alas! for a passionate nature

When Satan has spread his net!

Through comrades base and abandoned

He was lured from day to day,

Until, like a steed unbridled,

He struck from the rightful way;

And a wild consuming passion

Raised him unto the head

Of a mighty band of robbers,

Of all the country the dread.

Time passed. Again a message

Unto the Apostle was sent,

To set their affairs in order,

And tell them the Lord's intent.

And when he had come and attended

To all that needed his care,

He turned him and said, "Come, Bishop,

Give back my deposit so rare."

"What deposit?" was the answer,

Which could not confusion hide.

"I demand the soul of a brother,"

Plainly the Apostle replied,

"Which Christ and I committed

Before the Church to thee."

Trembling and even weeping,

"The young man is dead," groaned he.

"How dead? What death?" John demanded.

"He the way of the tempter trod,

Forgetting the Master's weapon,

And now he is dead unto God.

Yonder he roves a robber."

"A fine keeper," said John, "indeed,

Of a brother's soul. Get ready

A guide and a saddled steed."

And all as he was the Apostle

Into the region rode

Where the robber youth and captain

Had fixed his strong abode.

When hardly over the border,

He a prisoner was made,

And into their leader's presence

Demanded to be conveyed.

And he who could brave a thousand

When each was an enemy,

Beholding John approaching,

Turned him in shame to flee.

But John, of his age forgetful,

Pursued him with all his might.

"Why from thy defenseless father,"

He cried, "dost thou turn in flight?

Fear not; there is hope and a refuge,

And life shall yet be thine.

I will intercede with the Master

And task His love divine."

Subdued by love that is stronger

Than was ever an arméd band,

He became once more to the Father

A child to feel for His hand.

Subdued by a love that is stronger

Than a world full of terrors and fears,

He returned to the House of the Father

Athrough the baptism of tears.

Such is the beautiful legend

Come down from ancient days,

Of love that is young forever;

And is he not blind who says

That charity ever faileth,

Or doth for a moment despair,

Or that there is any danger

Too great for her to dare;

When John, the beloved disciple,

With the faith of the Gospel shod,

Went forth in pursuit of the robber,

And brought him back to God?

O Church, whose strength is the doctrine

Of the blessed Evangelist,

This doctrine of love undying

Which the world can not resist!

Put on thy beautiful garments

In this sordid and selfish day,

And be as of old a glory

To turn us from Mammon away;

Until to the prayer of thy children,

The sweetly simple prayer,

That bathed in the light of Heaven

Thy courts may grow more fair,

There comes the eternal answer

Of works that are loving and grand,

To remain for the generations

The praises of God in the land.

O Church, whose strength is the doctrine

Of the blessed Evangelist,

The doctrine of love undying

Which the world can not resist!

Go forth to the highways and hedges

To gather the sheep that are lost,

Conveying the joyful tidings,

Their redemption at infinite cost.

Proclaim there is hope and a refuge

For every wanderer there;

For every sin there is mercy--

Yea, even the sin of despair!

O, then will thy beautiful garments,

As once in the prime of thy youth,

Appear in celestial splendor,

Thou pillar and ground of the Truth!

* * * * *

XLII.

JOHN PLOUGHMAN AGAIN

THE PITH AND MARROW OF CERTAIN OLD PROVERBS.

The Rev. C.H. Spurgeon, of London, who has furnished our readers with

several specimens of "John Ploughman's Talk," has also published "John

Ploughman's Pictures," some of which we present in pen and ink, without

any help from the engraver. John thus introduces himself:

IF THE CAP FITS, WEAR IT.

Friendly Readers: Last time I made a book I trod on some people's corns

and bunions, and they wrote me angry letters, asking, "Did you mean me?"

This time, to save them the expense of a halfpenny card, I will begin my

book by saying--

Whether I please or whether I tease,

I'll give you my honest mind;

If the cap should fit, pray wear it a bit;

If not, you can leave it behind.

No offense is meant; but if any thing in these pages should come home to

a man, let him not send it next door, but get a coop for his own

chickens. What is the use of reading or hearing for other people? We do

not eat and drink for them: why should we lend them our ears and not our

mouths? Please then, good friend, if you find a hoe on these premises,

weed your own garden with it.

I was speaking with Will Shepherd the other day about our master's old

donkey, and I said, "He is so old and stubborn, he really is not worth

his keep." "No," said Will, "and worse still, he is so vicious that I

feel sure he'll do somebody a mischief one of these days." You know they

say that walls have ears; we were talking rather loud, but we did not

know that there were ears to haystacks. We stared, I tell you, when we

saw Joe Scroggs come from behind the stack, looking as red as a

turkey-cock, and raving like mad. He burst out swearing at Will and me,

like a cat spitting at a dog. His monkey was up and no mistake. He'd let

us know that he was as good a man as either of us, or the two put

together, for the matter of that. Talk about _him_ in that way; he'd

do--I don't know what. I told old Joe we had never thought of him nor

said a word about him, and he might just as well save his breath to cool

his porridge, for nobody meant him any harm. This only made him call me

a liar and roar the louder. My friend Will was walking away, holding his

sides; but when he saw that Scroggs was still in a fume, he laughed

outright, and turned round on him and said, "Why, Joe, we were talking

about master's old donkey, and not about you; but, upon my word, I shall

never see that donkey again without thinking of Joe Scroggs." Joe puffed

and blowed, but perhaps he thought it an awkward job, for he backed out

of it, and Will and I went off to our work in rather a merry cue, for

old Joe had blundered on the truth about himself for once in his life.

The aforesaid Will Shepherd has sometimes come down rather heavy upon me

in his remarks, but it has done me good. It is partly through his

home-thrusts that I have come to write this new book, for he thought I

was idle; perhaps I am, and perhaps I am not. Will forgets that I have

other fish to fry and tails to butter; and he does not recollect that a

ploughman's mind wants to lie fallow a little, and can't give a crop

every year. It is hard to make rope when your hemp is all used up, or

pancakes without batter, or rook pie without the birds; and so I found

it hard to write more when I had said just about all I knew. Giving much

to the poor doth increase a man's store, but it is not the same with

writing; at least, I am such a poor scribe that I don't find it come

because I pull. If your thoughts only flow by drops, you can't pour them

out in bucketfuls.

However, Will has ferreted me out, and I am obliged to him so far. I

told him the other day what the winkle said to the pin: "Thank you for

drawing me out, but you are rather sharp about it." Still, Master Will

is not far from the mark: after three hundred thousand people had bought

my book it certainly was time to write another. So, though I am not a

hatter, I will again turn capmaker, and those who have heads may try on

my wares; those who have none won't touch them. So, friends, I am,

Yours, rough and ready, JOHN PLOUGHMAN.

BURN A CANDLE AT BOTH ENDS, AND IT WILL SOON BE GONE.

Well may he scratch his head who burns his candle at both ends; but do

what he may, his light will soon be gone and he will be all in the dark.

Young Jack Careless squandered his property, and now he is without a

shoe to his foot. His was a case of "easy come, easy go; soon gotten,

soon spent." He that earns an estate will keep it better than he that

inherits it. As the Scotchman says, "He that gets gear before he gets

wit is but a short time master of it," and so it was with Jack. His

money burned holes in his pocket. He could not get rid of it fast enough

himself, and so he got a pretty set to help him, which they did by

helping themselves. His fortune went like a pound of meat in a kennel of

hounds. He was every body's friend, and now he is every body's fool.

HUNCHBACK SEES NOT HIS OWN HUMP, BUT HE SEES HIS NEIGHBOR'S.

He points at the man in front of him, but he is a good deal more of a

guy himself. He should not laugh at the crooked until he is straight

himself, and not then. I hate to hear a raven croak at a crow for being

black. A blind man should not blame his brother for squinting, and he

who has lost his legs should not sneer at the lame. Yet so it is, the

rottenest bough cracks first, and he who should be the last to speak is

the first to rail. Bespattered hogs bespatter others, and he who is full

of fault finds fault. They are most apt to speak ill of others who do

most ill themselves.

We may chide a friend, and so prove our friendship, but it must be done

very daintily, or we may lose our friend for our pains. Before we rebuke

another we must consider, and take heed that we are not guilty of the

same thing, for he who cleanses a blot with inky fingers makes it worse.

To despise others is a worse fault than any we are likely to see in

them, and to make merry over their weaknesses shows our own weakness and

our own malice too. Wit should be a shield for defense, and not a sword

for offense. A mocking word cuts worse than a scythe, and the wound is

harder to heal. A blow is much sooner forgotten than a jeer. Mocking is

shocking.

A LOOKING-GLASS IS OF NO USE TO A BLIND MAN.

Some men are blinded by their worldly business, and could not see heaven

itself if the windows were open over their heads. Look at farmer Grab,

he is like Nebuchadnezzar, for his conversation is all among beasts, and

if he does not eat grass it is because he never could stomach salads.

His dinner is his best devotion; he is a terrible fastener on a piece of

beef, and sweats at it more than at his labor. As old Master Earle says:

"His religion is a part of his copyhold, which he takes from his

landlord, and refers wholly to his lordship's discretion. If he gives

him leave, he goes to church in his best clothes, and sits there with

his neighbors, but never prays more than two prayers--for rain and for

fair weather, as the case may be. He is a niggard all the week, except

on market-days, where, if his corn sell well, he thinks he may be drunk

with a good conscience. He is sensible of no calamity but the burning of

a stack of corn, or the overflowing of a meadow, and he thinks Noah's

flood the greatest plague that ever was, not because it drowned the

world, but spoiled the grass. For death he is never troubled, and if he

gets in his harvest before it happens, it may come when it will, he

cares not." He is as stubborn as he is stupid, and to get a new thought

into his head you would need to bore a hole in his skull with a

center-bit. The game would not be worth the candle. We must leave him

alone, for he is too old in the tooth, and too blind to be made to see.

DON'T CUT OFF YOUR NOSE TO SPITE YOUR FACE.

Anger is a short madness. The less we do when we go mad the better for

every body, and the less we go mad the better for ourselves. He is far

gone who hurts himself to wreak his vengeance on others. The old saying

is: "Don't cut off your head because it aches," and another says: "Set

not your house on fire to spite the moon." If things go awry, it is a

poor way of mending to make them worse, as the man did who took to

drinking because he could not marry the girl he liked. He must be a fool

who cuts off his nose to spite his face, and yet this is what Dick did

when he had vexed his old master, and because he was chid must needs

give up his place, throw himself out of work, and starve his wife and

family. Jane had been idle, and she knew it, but sooner than let her

mistress speak to her, she gave warning, and lost as good a service as a

maid could wish for. Old Griggs was wrong, and could not deny it, and

yet because the parson's sermon fitted him rather close he took the

sulks, and vowed he would never hear the good man again. It was his own

loss, but he wouldn't listen to reason, but was as willful as a pig.

IT IS HARD FOR AN EMPTY SACK TO STAND UPRIGHT.

Sam may try a fine while before he will make one of his empty sacks

stand upright. If he were not half daft he would have left off that job

before he began it, and not have been an Irishman either. He will come

to his wit's end before he sets the sack on its end. The old proverb,

printed at the top, was made by a man who had burned his fingers with

debtors, and it just means that when folks have no money and are over

head and ears in debt, as often as not they leave off being upright, and

tumble over one way or another. He that has but four and spends five

will soon need no purse, but he will most likely begin to use his wits

to keep himself afloat, and take to all sorts of dodges to manage it.

Nine times out of ten they begin by making promises to pay on a certain

day when it is certain they have nothing to pay with. They are as bold

at fixing the time as if they had my lord's income; the day comes round

as sure as Christmas, and then they haven't a penny-piece in the world,

and so they make all sorts of excuses and begin to promise again. Those

who are quick to promise are generally slow to perform. They promise

mountains and perform mole-hills. He who gives you fair words and

nothing more feeds you with an empty spoon, and hungry creditors soon

grow tired of that game. Promises don't fill the belly. Promising men

are not great favorites if they are not performing men. When such a

fellow is called a liar he thinks he is hardly done by; and yet he is

so, as sure as eggs are eggs, and there's no denying it, as the boy said

when the gardener caught him up the cherry-tree.

A HAND-SAW IS A GOOD THING, BUT NOT TO SHAVE WITH.

Our friend will cut more than he will eat, and shave oft something more

than hair, and then he will blame the saw. His brains don't lie in his

beard, nor yet in the skull above it, or he would see that his saw will

only make sores. There's sense in choosing your tools, for a pig's tail

will never make a good arrow, nor will his ear make a silk purse. You

can't catch rabbits with drums, nor pigeons with plums. A good thing is

not good out of its place. It is much the same with lads and girls; you

can't put all boys to one trade, nor send all girls to the same service.

One chap will make a London clerk, and another will do better to plough,

and sow, and reap, and mow, and be a farmer's boy. It's no use forcing

them; a snail will never run a race, nor a mouse drive a wagon.

"Send a boy to the well against his will,

The pitcher will break, and the water spill."

With unwilling hounds it is hard to hunt hares. To go against nature and

inclination is to row against wind and tide. They say you may praise a

fool till you make him useful. I don't know so much about that, but I do

know that if I get a bad knife I generally cut my finger, and a blunt

axe is more trouble than profit. No, let me shave with a razor if I

shave at all, and do my work with the best tools I can get.

Never set a man to work he is not fit for, for he will never do it well.

They say that if pigs fly they always go with their tails forward, and

awkward workmen are much the same. Nobody expects cows to catch crows,

or hens to wear hats. There's reason in roasting eggs, and there should

be reason in choosing servants. Don't put a round peg into a square

hole, nor wind up your watch with a corkscrew, nor set a tender-hearted

man to whip wife-beaters, nor a bear to be a relieving-officer, nor a

publican to judge of the licensing laws. Get the right man in the right

place, and then all goes as smooth as skates on ice; but the wrong man

puts all awry, as the sow did when she folded the linen.

TWO DOGS FIGHT FOR A BONE, AND A THIRD RUNS AWAY WITH IT.

We have all heard of the two men who quarreled over an oyster, and

called in a judge to settle the question; he ate the oyster himself, and

gave them a shell each. This reminds me of the story of the cow which

two farmers could not agree about, and so the lawyers stepped in and

milked the cow for them, and charged them for their trouble in drinking

the milk. Little is got by law, but much is lost by it. A suit in law

may last longer than any suit a tailor can make you, and you may

yourself be worn out before it comes to an end. It is better far to make

matters up and keep out of court, for if you are caught there you are

caught in the brambles, and won't get out without damage. John Ploughman

feels a cold sweat at the thought of getting into the hands of lawyers.

He does not mind going to Jericho, but he dreads the gentlemen on the

road, for they seldom leave a feather upon any goose which they pick up.

HE HAS A HOLE UNDER HIS NOSE. AND HIS MONEY RUNS INTO IT.

This is the man who is always dry, because he takes so much heavy wet.

He is a loose fellow who is fond of getting tight. He is no sooner up

than his nose is in the cup, and his money begins to run down the hole

which is just under his nose. He is not a blacksmith, but he has a spark

in his throat, and all the publican's barrels can't put it out. If a pot

of beer is a yard of land, he must have swallowed more acres than a

ploughman could get over for many a day, and still he goes on swallowing

until he takes to wallowing. All goes down Gutter Lane. Like the snipe,

he lives by suction. If you ask him how he is, he says he would be quite

right if he could moisten his mouth. His purse is a bottle, his bank is

the publican's till, and his casket is a cask; pewter is his precious

metal, and his pearl is a mixture of gin and beer. The dew of his youth

comes from Ben Nevis, and the comfort of his soul is cordial gin. He is

a walking barrel, a living drain-pipe, a moving swill-tub. They say

"loath to drink and loath to leave off," but he never needs persuading

to begin, and as to ending that is out of the question while he can

borrow twopence.

STICK TO IT AND DO IT.

Set a stout heart to a stiff hill, and the wagon will get to the top of

it. There's nothing so hard but a harder thing will get through it; a

strong job can be managed by a strong resolution. Have at it and have

it. Stick to it and succeed. Till a thing is done men wonder that you

think it can be done, and when you have done it they wonder it was never

done before.

In my picture the wagon is drawn by two horses; but I would have every

man who wants to make his way in life pull as if all depended on

himself. Very little is done right when it is left to other people. The

more hands to do work the less there is done. One man will carry two

pails of water for himself; two men will only carry one pail between

them, and three will come home with never a drop at all. A child with

several mothers will die before it runs alone. Know your business and

give your mind to it, and you will find a buttered loaf where a sluggard

loses his last crust.

LIKE CAT LIKE KIT.

Most men are what their mothers made them. The father is away from home

all day, and has not half the influence over the children that the

mother has. The cow has most to do with the calf. If a ragged colt grows

into a good horse, we know who it is that combed him. A mother is

therefore a very responsible woman, even though she may be the poorest

in the land, for the bad or the good of her boys and girls very much

depends upon her. As is the gardener such is the garden, as is the wife

such is the family. Samuel's mother made him a little coat every year,

but she had done a deal for him before that; Samuel would not have been

Samuel if Hannah had not been Hannah. We shall never see a better set of

men till the mothers are better. We must have Sarahs and Rebekahs before

we shall see Isaacs and Jacobs. Grace does not run in the blood, but we

generally find that the Timothies have mothers of a goodly sort.

Little children give their mother the headache, but if she lets them

have their own way, when they grow up to be great children they will

give her the heartache. Foolish fondness spoils many, and letting faults

alone spoils more. Gardens that are never weeded will grow very little

worth, gathering; all watering and no hoeing will make a bad crop. A

child may have too much of its mother's love, and in the long run it may

turn out that it had too little. Soft-hearted mothers rear soft-hearted

children; they hurt them for life because they are afraid of hurting

them when they are young. Coddle your children, and they will turn out

noodles. You may sugar a child till every body is sick of it. Boys'

jackets need a little dusting every now and then, and girls' dresses are

all the better for occasional trimming. Children without chastisement

are fields without ploughing. The very best colts want breaking in. Not

that we like severity; cruel mothers are not mothers, and those who are

always flogging and fault-finding ought to be flogged themselves. There

is reason in all things, as the madman said when he cut off his nose.

Good mothers are very dear to their children. There's no mother in the

world like our own mother. My friend Sanders, from Glasgow, says, "The

mither's breath is aye sweet." Every woman is a handsome woman to her

own son. That man is not worth hanging who does not love his mother.

When good women lead their little ones to the Saviour, the Lord Jesus

blesses not only the children, but their mothers as well. Happy are they

among women who see their sons and daughters walking in the truth.

A BLACK HEN LAYS A WHITE EGG.

The egg is white enough, though the hen is black as a coal. This is a

very simple thing, but it has pleased the simple mind of John Ploughman,

and made him cheer up when things have gone hard with him. Out of evil

comes good, through the great goodness of God. From threatening clouds

we get refreshing showers; in dark mines men find bright jewels; and so

from our worst troubles come our best blessings. The bitter cold

sweetens the ground, and the rough winds fasten the roots of the old

oaks, God sends us letters of love in envelopes with black borders. Many

a time have I plucked sweet fruit from bramble bushes, and taken lovely

roses from among prickly thorns. Trouble is to believing men and women

like the sweetbrier in our hedges, and where it grows there is a

delicious smell all around, if the dew do but fall upon it from above.

Cheer up, mates, all will come right in the end. The darkest night will

turn to a fair morning in due time. Only let us trust in God, and keep

our heads above the waves of fear. When our hearts are right with God

every thing is right. Let us look for the silver which lines every

cloud, and when we do not see it let us believe that it is there. We are

all at school, and our great Teacher writes many a bright lesson on the

blackboard of affliction. Scant fare teaches us to live on heavenly

bread, sickness bids us send off for the good Physician, loss of friends

makes Jesus more precious, and even the sinking of our spirits brings us

to live more entirely upon God. All things are working together for the

good of those who love God, and even death itself will bring them their

highest gain. Thus the black hen lays a white egg.

EVERY BIRD LIKES ITS OWN NEST.

It pleases me to see how fond the birds are of their little homes. No

doubt each one thinks his own nest is the very best; and so it is for

him, just as my home is the best palace for me, even for me, King John,

the king of the Cottage of Content. I will ask no more if Providence

only continues to give me

"A little field well tilled,

A little house well filled,

And a little wife well willed."

An Englishman's house is his castle, and the true Briton is always fond

of the old roof-tree. Green grows the house-leek on the thatch, and

sweet is the honeysuckle at the porch, and dear are the gilly-flowers in

the front garden; but best of all is the good wife within, who keeps all

as neat as a new pin. Frenchmen may live in their coffee-houses, but an

Englishman's best life is seen at home.

"My own house, though small,

Is the best house of all."

When boys get tired of eating tarts, and maids have done with winning

hearts, and lawyers cease to take their fees, and leaves leave off to

grow on trees, then will John Ploughman cease to love his own dear home.

John likes to hear some sweet voice sing,

"'Mid pleasures and palaces though we may roam,

Be it ever so humble, there's no place like home;

A charm from the sky seems to hallow us there,

Which, wherever we rove, is not met with elsewhere.

Home! Home! sweet, sweet home!

There's no place like home!"

* * * * *

XLIII.

HENRY WILSON

(BORN 1812--DIED 1875.)

FROM THE SHOEMAKER'S BENCH TO THE CHAIR OF VICE-PRESIDENT.

Henry Wilson, the Vice-president of the United States, was at my

tea-table with the strangest appetite I ever knew. The fact was, his

last sickness was on him, and his inward fever demanded everything cold.

It was tea without any tea. He was full of reminiscence, and talked over

his life from boyhood till then. He impressed me with the fact that he

was nearly through his earthly journey. Going to my Church that evening

to speak at our young peoples' anniversary, he delivered the last

address of his public life. While seated at the beginning of the

exercises, his modesty seemed to overcome him, and he said: "I am not

prepared to address such a magnificent audience as that. Can not you get

somebody else to speak? I wish you would." "O no," I said, "these people

came to hear Henry Wilson." He placed a chair in the center of the

platform to lean on. Not knowing he had put it in that position, I

removed it twice. Then he whispered to me, saying: "Why do you remove

that chair? I want it to lean on." The fact was, his physical strength

was gone. When he arose his bands and knees trembled with excitement,

and the more so as the entire audience arose and cheered him. One hand

on the top of the chair, he stood for half an hour, saying useful

things, and, among others, these words: "I hear men sometimes say, when

a man writes his name on the records of a visible Church, that he had

better let other things alone, especially public affairs. I am not a

believer in that Christianity which hides itself away. I believe in that

robust Christianity that goes right out in God's world and works. If

there ever was a time in our country, that time is now, when the young

men of this country should reflect and act according to the teachings of

God's holy Word, and attempt to purify, lift up, and carry our country

onward and forward, so that it shall be in practice what it is in

theory--the great leading Christian nation of the globe. You will be

disappointed in many of your hopes and aspirations. The friends near and

dear to you will turn sometimes coldly from you; the wives of your bosom

and the children of your love will be taken from you; your high hopes

may be blasted; but, gentlemen, when friends turn their backs upon you,

when you lay your dear ones away, when disappointments come to you on

the right hand and on the left, there is one source for a true and brave

heart, and that is an abiding faith in God, and a trust in the Lord

Jesus Christ."

Having concluded his address he sat down, physically exhausted. When we

helped him into his carriage we never expected to see him again. The

telegram from Washington announcing his prostration and certain death

was no surprise. But there and then ended as remarkable a life as was

ever lived in America.

It is no great thing if a man who has been carefully nurtured by

intelligent parents, and then passed through school, college, and those

additional years of professional study, go directly to the front. But

start a man amid every possible disadvantage, and pile in his way all

possible obstacles, and then if he take his position among those whose

path was smooth, he must have the elements of power. Henry Wilson was

great in the mastering and overcoming all disadvantageous circumstances.

He began at the bottom, and without any help fought his own way to the

top. If there ever was a man who had a right at the start to give up his

earthly existence as a failure, that man was Henry Wilson. Born of a

dissolute father, so that the son took another name in order to escape

the disgrace; never having a dollar of his own before he was twenty-one

years of age; toiling industriously in a shoemaker's shop, that he might

get the means of schooling and culture; then loaning his money to a man

who swamped it all and returned none of it; but still toiling on and up

until he came to the State Legislature, and on and up until he reached

the American Senate, and on and up till he became Vice-president. In all

this there ought to be great encouragement to those who wake up late in

life to find themselves unequipped. Henry Wilson did not begin his

education until most of our young men think they have finished theirs.

If you are twenty-five or thirty, or forty or fifty, it is not too late

to begin. Isaac Walton at ninety years of age wrote his valuable book;

Benjamin Franklin, almost an octogenarian, went into philosophic

discoveries; Fontenelle's mind blossomed even in the Winter of old age;

Arnauld made valuable translations at eighty years of age; Christopher

Wren added to the astronomical and religious knowledge of the world at

eighty-six years of age.

Do not let any one, in the light of Henry Wilson's career, be

discouraged. Rittenhouse conquered his poverty; John Milton overcame his

blindness; Robert Hall overleaped his sickness; and plane and hammer,

and adze and pickax, and crowbar and yardstick, and shoe-last have

routed many an army of opposition and oppression. Let every disheartened

man look at two pictures--Henry Wilson teaching fifteen hours a day at

five dollars a week to get his education, and Henry Wilson under the

admiring gaze of Christendom at the national capital. He was one of the

few men who maintained his integrity against violent temptations. The

tides of political life all set toward dissipation. The congressional

burying-ground at Washington holds the bones of many congressional

drunkards. Henry Wilson seated at a banquet with senators and presidents

and foreign ministers, the nearest he ever came to taking their

expensive brandies and wines was to say, "No, sir, I thank you; I never

indulge." He never drank the health of other people in any thing that

hurt his own. He never was more vehement than in flinging his

thunderbolts of scorn against the decanter and the dram-shop. What a

rebuke it is for men in high and exposed positions in this country who

say, "We can not be in our positions without drinking." If Henry Wilson,

under the gaze of senators and presidents, could say No, certainly you

under the jeers of your commercial associates ought to be able to say

No. Henry Wilson also conquered all temptations to political corruption.

He died comparatively a poor man, when he might have filled his own

pockets and the pockets of his friends if he had only consented to go

into some of the infamous opportunities which tempted our public men.

_Credit Mobilier_, which took down so many senators and representatives,

touched him, but glanced off, leaving him uncontaminated in the opinion

of all fair-minded men. He steered clear of the "Lobby," that maelstrom

which has swallowed up so many strong political crafts. The bribing

railroad schemes that ran over half of our public men always left him on

the right side of the track. With opportunities to have made millions of

dollars by the surrender of good principles, he never made a cent. Along

by the coasts strewn with the hulks of political adventurers he voyaged

without loss of rudder or spar. We were not surprised at his funeral

honors. If there ever was a man after death fit to lie on Abraham

Lincoln's catafalque, and near the marble representation of Alexander

Hamilton, and under Crawford's splendid statue of Freedom, with a

sheathed sword in her hand and a wreath of stars on her brow, and to be

carried out amid the acclamation and conclamation of a grateful people,

that man was Henry Wilson.

The ministers did not at his obsequies have a hard time to make out a

good case as to his future destiny, as in one case where a clergyman in

offering consolation as to the departure of a man who had been very

eminent, but went down through intemperance till he died in a snow-bank,

his rum-jug beside him. At the obsequies of that unfortunate, the

officiating pastor declared that the departed was a good Greek and Latin

scholar. We have had United States senators who used the name of God

rhetorically, and talked grandly about virtue and religion, when at that

moment they were so drunk they could scarcely stand up. But Henry Wilson

was an old-fashioned Christian, who had repented of his sins and put his

trust in Christ. By profession he was a Congregationalist; but years ago

he stood up in a Methodist meeting-house and told how he had found the

Lord, and recommending all the people to choose Christ as their

portion--the same Christ about whom he was reading the very night before

he died, in that little book called "The Changed Cross," the more tender

passages marked with his own lead-pencil; and amid these poems of Christ

Henry Wilson had placed the pictures of his departed wife and departed

son, for I suppose he thought as these were with Christ in heaven their

dear faces might as well be next to His name in the book.

It was appropriate that our Vice-president expire in the Capitol

buildings, the scene of so many years of his patriotic work. At the door

of that marbled and pictured Vice-president's room many a man has been

obliged to wait because of the necessities of business, and to wait a

great while before he could get in; but that morning, while the

Vice-president was talking about taking a ride, a sable messenger

arrived at the door, not halting a moment, not even knocking to see if

he might get in, but passed up and smote the lips into silence forever.

The sable messenger moving that morning through the splendid Capitol

stopped not to look at the mosaics, or the fresco, or the panels of

Tennessee and Italian marble, but darted in and darted out in an

instant, and his work was done. It is said that Charles Sumner was more

scholarly, and that Stephen A. Douglas was a better organizer, and that

John J. Crittenden was more eloquent; but calling up my memory of Henry

Wilson, I have come to the conclusion that that life is grandly eloquent

whose peroration is heaven.--DR. TALMADGE, _in The Sunday Magazine_.

* * * * *

XLIV.

JOAN OF ARC

(BORN 1412--DIED 1431.)

THE PEASANT MAIDEN WHO DELIVERED HER COUNTRY AND BECAME A MARTYR IN ITS

CAUSE.

No story of heroism has greater attractions for youthful readers than

that of Joan of Arc, the Maid of Orleans. It would be long to tell how

for hundreds of years the greatest jealousy and mistrust existed between

England and France, and how constant disputes between their several

sovereigns led to wars and tumults; how, in the time of Henry the Fifth,

of England, a state of wild confusion existed on the continent, and how

that king also claimed to be king of France; how this fifth Henry was

married to Catherine, daughter of King Charles, and how they were

crowned king and queen of France; how, in the midst of his triumphs,

Henry died, and his son, an infant less than a year old, was declared

king in his stead; how wars broke out, and how, at last, a simple maiden

saved her country from the grasp of ambitious men. Hardly anything in

history is more wonderful than, the way in which she was raised up to

serve her country's need, and, having served it, died a martyr in its

cause.

Joan of Arc, Maid of Orleans, was born in the forest of Greux, upon the

Meuse, in the village of Domremy, in Lorraine, in the year 1412. At this

time France was divided into two factions--the Burgundians and the

Armagnacs--the former of whom favored the English cause, and the latter

pledged to the cause of their country.