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childhood thus profaned: a conservative is, in vulgar parlance, an old fogy; a retired worthy, however eminent, is a fossil;" precocity in manner, mind, and aspect, is encouraged; the mature and complete, the finished and the formed, are exceptional; crudity and pretension are in the ascendant.

One of my most cherished purposes, as you know, was to utilize my studies as a publicist, and my experience as a republican philosopher, through the press of this free land. In this design I have met with signal discouragement. While a few men, who have thought fully investigated the most imminent problems in modern political and social life, have listened to my views with the most sympathetic attention, and have recognized the importance of the facts of the past which I have so long labored to bring forward as practical illustrations of the present-those who control the press of these States, by virtue of proprietorship, avoid all but immediate topics of public interest, declaring their exclusive discussion essential to the prosperity of their vocation, and failing to appreciate both historic parallels and philosophic comments. I have been surprised to note how soon even men of academic culture yield to the vulgar standard of the immediate, and ignore the vast inspiration of humanity and truth as developed in the career of the race and the salient facts of historic civilization. Nor is this all. With few exceptions, popular journalism and speech here is based upon the sensational element-not upon sentiment or reflection. It is difficult to secure attention, except through a bizarre style or melodramatic incident; the grotesque forms of American humor, seeking, by violation of orthography or ingenious slang, to catch the eye of readers or the ear of audiences, indicate the extremes to which these sensational experiments are carried. Nothing makes a newspaper sell like prurient details of crime, audacious personal attacks, or extravagant inventions. A calm, thoughtful discussion, however wise, original, and sincere, gains comparatively little

sympathy; a profound criticism, a forcible but finished essay, an individual, earnest, and graceful utterance of the choicest experience, or the most characteristic feeling, seem to be lost in the noisy material atmosphere of life in America. I find the best thinkers, the most loyal students, the most aspiring and genial minds, singularly isolated. I have come upon them accidentally, not in what is called society; I have marvelled to perceive how little they are known, even to familiar acquaintances; for there is no esprit du corps in letters or philosophy here; few have the leisure to do justice to what is most auspicious in their fellows; few take a hearty interest in the intellectual efforts or idiosyncrasies of their best endowed comrades; each seems bent seemingly on personal objects; there is no "division of the records of the mind; " people are too busy, too self-absorbed to sympathize with what is highest and most individual in character; all my most intelligent and, I may say, most agreeable friends complain of this isolation. It may sometimes strengthen, but it more frequently narrows and chills. A singular and most unpropitious selfishness belongs to many of the cleverest men and women I have met in America; authorship and art seem often mercenary or egotistic, instead of soulful pursuits; they seem to divide instead of fusing society; on the one hand are the fashionable and the wealthy, many of them pleasant and charitable, but unaspiring and material; on the other, poor scholars, professors, littérateurstoo many of the latter Bohemians; and, although these two classes sometimes come together, it is usually in a conventional way-without any real sympathy or disinterested recognition.

But it is not merely in the negative defect of repudiating the calm, finished, and considerate discussion of vital subjects or aesthetic principles, that the American press and current literature disappoint me; the abuses of journalism are flagrant. I have been disgusted, beyond expression, at the vulgarity of its tone and the recklessness of its

slanders. During my brief sojourn I have read the most infamous charges and the most scurrilous tirades against the most irreproachable and eminent citizens, from the Chief Magistrate to the modest littérateur; and, when I have wondered at the apathy exhibited, I have been answered by a shrug or a laugh. The fact is, there is no redress for these vile abuses but resort to personal violence; the law of libel is practically a nullity, so expensive is the process and uncertain the result; an elective judiciary-one of the most fatal changes in the constitution of the state -has created a class of corrupt judges. To expect justice in cases of slander, is vain. Unfortunately, there is not a sufficient social organization to apply successfully the punishment of ostracism; and a set of improvident, irresponsible writers are usually employed to do the blackguardism; so that, with a few noble exceptions, the press here is venal and vulgar, utterly reckless, and the organ, not of average intelligence, but

of the lowest arts.

The first time I dined out in New York was at the house of a very wealthy citizen, identified with fashionable society. The dinner was luxurious, and every thing thereat, from the plate and porcelain to the furniture and toilettes, indicated enormous means. My neighbor at table was a chatty, elegantly dressed young man, to whom I had been formally presented by my host. Our conversation turned upon investments, and my companion seemed familiar with all the stocks in the market, and spoke so highly of the prospects of one, that I accepted his invitation to call at his office the next day and examine the details of the scheme. These were given me in writing, with the names of the board of directors, among which I recognized several before suggested to me as those of gentlemen of probity and position. I accordingly invested; and discovered, a few weeks later, that the representations made to me were false; that the stock was worthless, and that the so-called "Company," consisting of half-a-dozen per

sons, among whom my adviser was one, had pocketed the amount advanced by those who, like myself, had been deluded by the fallacious programme and its respectable endorsement. Fraud may be practised in any country; but here the swindler was encountered in what is called good society; and when I complained to his "directors," they declared they had allowed their names to be used inadvertently, and that they knew nothing of the matter. I instituted a suit, but failed to obtain a verdict.

My first morning's walk down a fashionable avenue was interrupted by a shout and sign of alarm from the opposite side of the street. I had just time to rush up a flight of steps and ensconce myself in a friendly doorway, when by ran a mad ox, and gored a laborer before my sickened sight; nor was he captured until he had carried dismay and destruction for two miles through the heart of this populous city! This rabid beast had escaped from a drove waiting to be slaughtered in the suburbs. Such occurrences are not uncommon here, and, apparently, make little impression and induce little effort for reform.

The municipal magnates levied a tax of three hundred dollars on one of my friends, resident of a street they intended to re-pave. Now it so happened that the pavement of this street was in excellent order; I could see no reason for the expense and inconvenience proposed. Upon inquiry I learned that an asphaltum was to be substituted for the stone-pavement. Going around among my neighbors, with a petition against this useless, costly, and annoying proceeding, my friend found that every resident of the street agreed with us in condemning the project. Moreover, we ascertained from the contractor that he offered to do the job for two dollars the square yard, but had been advised to charge four, the balance going into the pockets of the officials. In spite of the expressed wishes of those chiefly interested, in spite of this flagrant swindle, our excellent pavement was torn up;

for weeks no vehicle could approach our doors; boiling tar and heaps of gravel and knots of laborers made the whole thoroughfare a nuisance, for which each victim, whose dwelling bordered the way, had to pay three hundred dollars; and now that the rubbish is cleared away, the composite pavement laid, and the street open, owing to the bad quality, the unscientific preparation of the asphaltum, it is a mass of black clinging mud, which, after a rain, is a pitchy morass, and in dry weather a floating atmosphere of pulverized dirt and tar. The newspapers call it a poultice.

The universal law of vicissitude finds here the most signal illustration. Change is not only frequent, but rapid; not only comparative, but absolute. I came back to this city last autumn, after three months' sojourn at the seaside, to find a new rector in the church I attend; a new chef in the journal for which I write; my favorite domestic nook for a leisure evening, the abode of intelligent and cordial hospitality, in the process of demolition, to give place to a block of stores; my club a scene of disorder, on account of repairs; my broker a bankrupt; my belle a bride; my tailor, doctor, dentist, and laundress removed "up-town "-every body and every thing I had become familiar with and attached to changed, either locally or intrinsically; and life, as it were, to begin anew. It makes a head, with a large organ of adhesiveness, whirl and ache to thus perpetually forego the accustomed.

I experienced, on first landing, a sensation, as it were, of this precarious tenure. Scarcely had the exhilaration felt on entering the beautiful harbor from a ten days' sojourn on the "melancholy waste" of ocean subsided, when, as we drove up the dock and through the mud and squalor of the river-side, the commonplace style of edifice, and the sight of temporary and unsubstantial architecture, depressed my spirits; then the innumerable and glaring advertisements of quack medicines on every curb-stone and pile of bricks sug

gested a reckless, experimental habit— which was confirmed by the careless driving of vociferous urchins in butchercarts or express-wagons. When we emerged into Broadway, the throng, the gilded signs, the cheerful rush, and curious variety of faces and vehicles, raised my spirits and quickened my observation, while a walk in Fifth avenue and through the Central Park, the next day, which was Sunday, and the weather beautiful, impressed me cheerily with the feeling of prosperous and progressive life.

Despite these characteristic features, however, it is often difficult to realize that I am in America, so many traits and traces of Europe are visible. The other morning, for instance, while at the pier, waiting to see a friend off in the French steamer, knots of sailors, like those we see at Havre and Brest, were eating soup in the open air, and hucksters tempting them to buy bead-baskets and pin-cushions for their "sweethearts and wives;" the garb, the gab, the odor of garlic, the figure of a priest here and there, the very hats of some of the passengers, made the scene like one at a French quay. There are German beer-gardens, Italian restaurants, journals in all the European languages, tables d'hôte, where they only are spoken; churches, theatres, clubs, and coteries, distinctly national and representative of the Old World.

Do not rashly infer that my political principles have changed because of these critical complaints. No; they are the same, but my delight in them is chastened. I feel that they involve self-sacrifice, even when triumphant democracy entails duty, and that of a nature to interfere with private taste and individual enjoyment. Democracy, my friend, is no pastime, but a peril. Republican institutions demand the surrender of much that is pleasant in personal life, and include responsibilities so grave, that gayety is quelled and care inaugurated-just as the man leaves behind him, in quitting his father's roof to assert himself in the world, much of the liberty and nurture which made life

pleasant, in order to assume the serious business of independent existence-excellent as a discipline, noble as a destiny, but solemn as a law of action.

Disenchantment, my friend, does not inevitably, imply renunciation; on the contrary, truth is often ushered in through a delusive pursuit, as the history of scientific discovery proves. The moment we regard the equalizing process going on in the world, as a discipline and a destiny, and accept it as a duty, we recognize what perhaps is, after all, the practical aim and end of Christianity-self-sacrifice, humanity, "good-will to men," in place of self

hood. Thus imbued and inspired, the welfare of the race becomes a great personal interest; we are content to suffer and forego for the advantage of our fellow-creatures; we look upon life not as the arena of private success, but of beneficent coöperation; and, instead of complaining of privation and encroachment, learn to regard them as a legitimate element in the method and means whereby the mass of men, so long condemned to ignorance, want, and sordid labor, are to be raised and reared into a higher sphere, and harmonized by fellowship, freedom, and faith, into a complete and auspicious development.

BRET HARTE ONCE MORE.

EDITORIAL NOTES.

CRITICISM is too often tame and timid in its reception of contemporary genius, because it is without hope; its distrust, its close and prolonged acquaintance with mediocrity and pretension, constitutes its mental habit, and it is with difficulty that it drops its patronizing tone and ceases its frigid comment. But Bret Harte's stories mean so much; they are so terse, simple, searching, and unpretentious; they present the most difficult, novel, and bold situations with so much conciseness of expression, so much neatness and force; they take up and drop the subject with so sure a sense of dramatic fitness, that the usual reserve and the common tone of criticism before them is priggish and insufferable.

It is not enough to say of them: This is good work. Something fervid and emphatic is called for. We must say : This is the work of a man of genius. It is something unforeseen; it is something so natural and actual, so profound in its significance, so moving in its development, that you must glow with the generous emotions which it excites, and respond to it as to the influences of nature, and as when heart answereth to heart in the actual intercourse of living men and women.

Just as we were all saying to each other, How much we need a story-writer who shall treat our American life in an artistic form, satisfying to the most exacting sense of the highest literary merit-just as we were deploring that Irving, and Hawthorne, and Poe, men of another generation, who were retrospective, and not on a level with the present hour, were the only men of fine talent among our story-writers-Francis Bret Harte, in the newest and remotest part of our land, gives us an expression of its early, rude, and lawless life, at once unexpected and potent, and which shames our distrust of the genius of our race in its new home. It is an expression so honest, so free from cant, so exactly corresponding with its subject, so unsqueamish and hearty, so manly, that it is to be accepted like a bit of nature. His stories are like so many convincing facts; they need no argument; they lodge themselves in our minds, and germinate like living things.

We are struck by the varied power which he exhibits, and the diverse emo tions which he touches, in such narrow dramatic limits. Within the little frame of a sketch he is terse, graphic, vivid; his humor and pathos are irresistible; his sentiment delicate and true; his

poetry magical and suggestive; his feeling of out-of-door life constant and delightful. His use of the minor key of nature, as a contrast to the soiled and troubled lives of his men and women, is comparable to the accidental influences which touch and soothe an unhappy man when his attention is caught by sunlight in wood-paths, or by the sound of the wind in trees, or by any of the silencing and flood-like influences that sweep over us when we are open to the beautiful, the unnamable, and mysterious.

Bret Harte's genius is not unlike Rembrandt's, so far as it is a matter of art. Take Miggles-Miggles telling her story at the feet of the paralytic Jim—take the description of his old face, with its solemn eyes; take the alternate gloom and light that hides or illuminates the group in Miggles' cabin; and then consider the gleam and grace with which the portrait of that racy and heroic boywoman is placed before you. Does it not touch your sense of the picturesque as, and is it not unexpected, and startling, and admirable, like a sketch by Rembrandt? But for the pathos, but for the "tears that rise in the heart and gather to the eyes," where shall we find any homely art to be compared with that? Beauty in painting or sculpture may so touch a man. It did so touch Heine, at the feet of the Venus of Milo. It may be pathetic to us, as in Da Vinci's wonderful heads. But no great plastic artist, no mere pictorial talent, is potent over the sources of our tears, as is the unheralded story-writer from the Western shores. In this he employs a means beyond the reach of Holbein or Hogarth. We liken Bret Harte to Rembrandt, rather than to Hogarth or to Holbein men of great and sincere genius, and therefore having an equally great and sincere trust in actual life-because of his magic touch, his certainty and suddenness of expression; his perfect trust in his subject; because he deals with the actual in its widest and commonest aspects, without infecting us with the dulness of the prosaic; because he is never formal, never trite; and because

-unlike Hogarth-he does not consider the vicious, the unfortunate, the weak, so as to "put up the keerds on a chap from the start."

He makes us feel our kinship with the outcast; he draws us by our very hearts towards the feeble and reckless, and by a certain something-the felt inexplicableness of the difference and yet the equality of men-forbids us to execrate the sinner as we do the sin. One may say of him, as of Rembrandt, that he sees Christ not in the noble and consecrated, certainly not only in a type hallowed by centuries of human admiration; but he reveals a Saviour and friend in the forlorn, in the despised, in the outcast.

Will the reader accuse us of extravagance, if we say we cannot understand how a man can read these stories, and not believe in immortality and in God? They touch one so profoundly; they exalt one's sense of the redemptive spirit that may live in a man, and they make one so humble! They hush the Pharisee and the materialist who lives so comfortably under his white shirt-front, in clean linen, under immaculate conditions of self-righteousness. We compare Bret Harte to the greatest name in modern art-Rembrandt-rather than to Hogarth, because there is no brutality, no censure, no made-up mind for or against his subjects, as in Hogarth. Rembrandt's poetry, his honest reception of his subject-all this is in Bret Harte; but also a grace unknown to the great Flemish master.

Some have questioned the service he has done our poor human nature in its most despised forms, and some have censured him for not adopting the Hogarthian method. But it seems to us his instinct has been his best guide; that his morality, his lesson to us, is as superior to Hogarth's gross and material one, as the Sermon on the Mount is superior to the prayer of the Phari

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