"Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Vol. LX, No. ccclvi, Jan. 1880 (4)": electronic edition

Harper's New Monthly Magazine (4) by Various Vol. LX, No. ccclvi, Jan. 1880.

Old Baltimore and Its Merchants by Frank Meyer

Let us seat ourselves beneath the venerable oaks of Druid Hill Park, the pride of Baltimore, and summon its ghostly guardians to our aid. Emerging from the deep shadow, gray and gnarled as the forest around him, stands in rude majestry a venerable Druid, a priest of Baal. In the husky tones of extreme age he tells of a former home under groves of Irish oak, of a Druidical circle and a worship of the sun and of fire, of the sacred mistletoe and the great god Baal, the Phœnician type of life and power; and how, David being then King in Israel, his ancestry had blessed a grove and built a temple in Erin, and called the place Baál-ti-môr, or `the great place of Baal.' Loyal to his sacred office, and like a true Phœnician of old, his spirit braved the ocean, and haunts the grove that bears his name, the guardian of this city of the sun.

And so, Lords of Baltimore in Ireland, the well-beloved Calverts gave the oldet name to the youngest city of our seaboard; for New York was already one hundred and sixteen years old, and Boston aged a century, when, `In the 15th year of the Dominion of the Right Honorable Charles, absolute Lord and Proprietary of the province of Maryland and Avalon, Lord Baron of Baltimore, etc., Anno Domini 1729,' a law was enacted for erecting a town on the Patapsco, and for laying out in lots sixty acres of land, etc. This location was the fruit of a lucky blunder, for when the owner of a previously selected site got wind of the attempt to be made to put a town upon his property, setting prodigious store by certain iron mines which he believed to be upon his territory, he posted off to Annapolis and defeated the plan, much to his own satisfaction and the subsequent regret of his heirs, but greatly to the advantage of posterity. It was on the 12th of January, 1730, that `commissioners, assisted by Philip Jones, the county surveyor, laid off the town,' under the advice of those primitive engineers the cows, whose instinctive selection of easy grades might have continued to save the tear and wear of the breeches and legs of subequent generations, had not that evil genius of American cities, the demon of right angles, found a pliant agent some years later in one Poppleton, whose `plat'—a covenant with the spirits of materialism—has, ever since its adoption as a plan of the city, waged a merciless war against nature's curves in the cause of rectangular inconvenience and monotony. However, hills, water-courses, and marshes were not to be trifled with so curtly as to destroy utterly the cheering irregularity of a varied surface, but, thanks to the cows, and in spite of Poppleton, some street scenery of charming diversity survives in crooked ways and steep ascents and commanding heights.

The town of the enactment was but one of a conglomerate of settlements which became finally merged in the title of Baltimore, but which, under the names of `The Town,' `Old Town,' `Fell's Point,' `The Hill,' etc., held distinctive claims to individuality, and presented defined characteristics as marked as the people of separate provinces, and until finally obliterated through the agency of street railways,these distinctions were a marked peculiarity of the place. It was at Fell's Point, a quarter nearly two miles distant from the spot where Jones and the cows began their survey, that the heavy shipping lay, and where the older merchants, prior to the Revolution, had their spacious residences and their counting-rooms, looking out over their wharves and through the towering spars of shipping to the broad water. Their homes were those of old English merchants, blooming with the added grace of a warmer sun and sharper shadows. They were panelled and tiled, and spacious and secure, honestly built, but not weighed down by extravagant excrescences either in the way of cupola or mortgage. A vague savor of far-away lands suggested itself in odd bits of marine mementos, as in the conch-shell borders of the flower beds, the narwhal's tusk and the sharks' teeth on the mantel, East India settees, and `Forty-theves' jars from the Levant. Old anchors and chains rusted in damp shadows, and the streets and shops had a pungent smell of oakum and tar. Storm-worn figure-heads served as signs of tobacco shops and taverns, and old salts sat around them clinging to their chairs and benches with as tenacious a twist of their legs and arms as though rocked in a gale, spinning the while unconscionable yarns, or lamenting the fate of poor Jack. As in all sea-ports, a sadness and anxiety questioned inscrutable fate, and the awful mystery and uncertainty of the sea penetrated every hearth. Many left these wharves never to return, cast away, wandered off. Far-away sweethearts and husbands were anxious facts, and solaced widows not too sure of the death of the late lamented.

Of the primitive days before the Revolution, it is recorded of `Baltimore town' that `as all were peaceable and healthy, lawyers and doctors found little to do, but tradesmen and working-men found ready pay and constant employment. Women's wages especially were high, as the sex was not numerous; and as they generally married by the time they were twenty, they sought a maid-servant for themselves in turn. A duty of from five to twenty shillings per annum was laid upon all bachelors, and old maids were not to be met with, neither jealousy of husbands. The children were well-favored and beautiful to behold, and without the least blemish. A frank and generous hospitality prevailed, devoid of glare and show, but always abundant and good. Bashfulness and modesty in the young were regarded as virtues, and young lovers listened gravely and took sidelong glances before their elders. At even-tide the family, neatly dressed, sat in the street porch and welcomed their neighbors. It was customary to live at one's place of business, and the wives and daughters served the shop, retailers of dry-goods being mostly widows and spinsters. If a townsman failed in trade, it was a cause of general and deep regret. Every man who met his neighbor expressed his sorrow. Bankruptcy was a rare occurrence, because honesty and temperance in trade were then universal, and none embarked without means adequate to their busines. At Christmas, dinners and suppers went the round of every social circle, and they who partook of the former were expected to remain for the supper. Afernoon visits were made at such an hour as to permit matrons to go home and see their children put to bed.

`Between tradesmen and the gentry there was a marked difference. The aristocracy of the gentleman was noticed, if not felt. Such as followed rough trdes, and all men and boys from the country, were seen on the streets in leather breeches and aprons, and would have been deemed out of place without them. Hired women wore short gowns and linsey-woolsey petticoats, and some are still alive who used to call master and mitress who will no longer do it. Cookery was plainer than now, and coffee as a beverage was used but rarely. Chocolate was the morning and evening drink, and thickened milk for children. A white floor sprinkled with clean silver sand, large tables and high-backed chairs of solid walnut or mahogany, decorated a parlor enough for the best. Sometimes a carpet, not, however, covering the whole floor, was seen upon the dining-room. There was a show parlor up stairs, not used but upon gala occasions. Pewter plates were in general use, but china was a rarity. Plate, in the form of bowls, tankards, and waiters, was seen in most families of easy circumstances. Punch, the most common beverage, was drunk from one large bowl, and beer from a tankard of silver. At dancing assemblies no gentleman under twenty-one or lady under eighteen was admitted, and the supper consisted of tea, chocolate, and rusk. Six married managers distributed partners by lot for the evening, leaving nothing to the success of forwardness or favoritism. Gentlemen always drank tea with the parents of the ladies who were their partners the day after the assembly.' Invitations were printed on playing cards: `The honor of Miss—'s company at a ball to be held at six o'clock, P.M..' indorses the queen of hearts, and is one of many such trophies still preserved.

In sight of his ships and his goods, on the ground-floor of his warehouse usually, the old-time merchant had his counting-room. It was separated by a slight partition from the surrounding mass of merchandise and from his muscular auxiliaries, the stevedores and draymen, who lounged around the archway—lusty negroes generally, who basked in the broiling sun stretched on range of barrels, their yawning mouths displaying a wealth of ivory, and their skin glistening like oiled ebony. From the warehouse beams and joists, which extended in rugged strength through the counting-room, were hung rows of leather buckets and a ladder, `for the more effectual remedy to extinguish fire in Baltimore town,' as the act reads which obliged `every householder to keep two leather buckets hung up near the door of his house.' None of the elegance of modern counting-rooms graced the interior; the affected simplicity of Eastlake was unknown, but in its place a business-like directness and orderly confusion amounting to picturesqueness. In harmony with the rude beams, an arch of solid masonry supported the safe, built into the walls, and closed by its iron door with a lock to make a modern burglar laugh. In the wide hearth a `black-jack' fire was reflected in the brass andirons, and from an armchair by it, as from a throne, the `head of the house' surveyed a row of deferential clerks at their desks, almost buried behind their ponderous ledgers. Six-by-eight panes filled the windows, half closed by green blinds, above which appeared the topmasts of ships and the blue sky. On the walls hung maps, models of ships' hulls, and limnings of the same vessels under full sail, drawn with nautical fidelity, but which would have scarcely escaped the lash of a captious critic in art. Innumerable bills, ruthlessly impaled on wires, met a deserved fate, and were exposed conspicuously, probably as warnings against misplaced confidence. Rows of tin or wooden coffers, marked with the names of dead years, rested in dusty security on a high shelf, and suggested long-passed transactions with correpondents who had closed their accounts in paying the debt of nature.

The discipline, thoroughness, and simplicity of mercantile training in Europe were brought over by our English and salt-water ancestors, and the habits of the quarter-deck in some measure transferred to the counting-room. No slovenly habits of dress or demeanor were allowed among the clerks, who were often inmates of the family, on the basis of equals, but in subordination, and whose hair, in some houses, was daily dressed by the barber, who came for that purpose at a fixed hour to the counting-room. Punctuality and courtesy were exacted, and the neglect to pay his respects to the heads of the house on commencing and terminating his daily duties subjected the delinquent to a caustic reprimand. These youths, whom it was a favor to admit to a great commercial house, were in training as the future merchants and as gentlemen. Memory recalls the vividness of a child's impression of three old merchants, the last of their generation, the one venerable in his bent form, his snowy hair gathered in a queue of black ribbon, his plum-colored coat receiving a share of the powder which covered it, a white cravat and lemon waistcoat, light breeches and broad-brimmed beaver; another in his suit of drab; and the third in the lively blue coat and brass buttons, ruffled shirt and costume of harmonious tints—all scrupulous in niceties of apparel and person, as they were exact in rendering the courtesies of life. The oldest of these gentlemen carried an umbrella which must have been the primeval one. It was a ponderous machine, with a brass handle placed above the frame-work of rattan, and when not in use carried as a staff. Efforts were made in 1772 to introduce the use of umbrellas in Baltimore, then scouted as a ridiculous effeminacy, but finally the doctors, `who recommended them to avert vertigoes, epilepsies, sore eyes, and fevers,' set an example which was generally adopted. Before this time only in severe storms physicians and clergymen wore a roquelaure, or oiled cape, hooked around the shoulder. The gold-headed cane and the watch and seals were distinctions of the gentry of the day, and afforded a mild form of gymnastics to the elderly gentlemen who carried them—the latter particularly, as to extract it from the depths of the breeches fob required a prolonged hand-over-hand movement, involving, if the bearer were pursy, considerable exertion. This nautical exercise took place daily, whenever your old-fashioned merchant on his progress to or from 'change reached the town `regulator'—an immense dial occupying the greater part of a shop window. Assured of the accuracy of the chronometer, he, with great deliberation, lowered his time-piece into its hold again, and resumed his habituaal gait, his tasselled cane keeping time to the cadence of his walk. None of your elevator rapidity existed in those days, when grain was loaded or unloaded in half-bushel measures by a gang of negroes under the guidance of an ancient son of Africa, who was known in his latter days as the `old elevator.' There was no corn exchange, but the captain of a bay craft made his cruise of the counting-rooms with a sample of his cargo tied up in a Madras handkerchief, and the merchant had no nervous apprehensions of a disastrous telegram in naming his terms.

There must have been a gallant array of buckskin breeches when the tradesmen and manufacturers of Baltimore town, from a true patriotic spirit, determined to clothe themselves in home manufactures, and gave an order for the nether garments of the association, hoping at the same time to find sufficient American woollen and linen to clothe their familie.

Under such social influences existed the merchants whose patriotism during all the varying fortune of war had sustained the cause of Independence, so nobly illustrated in the glories of the Maryland line. `We are sending all that we have that can be armed and equipped; and the people of New York, for whom we have great affection, can have no more than our all.' These words from Maryland expressed the spirit of her merchants and people, and the fixed bayonets which in every engagement met the veteran foe attested their sincerity.

By the exertions of the Baltimore merchants the army of Lafayette, on its way to the South, was fed and fully equipped, and the good marquis seems never to have forgotten the ladies whose fair fingers had clothed his ragged troops. The French camps and the cordial intercourse between towns-folk and military remain a cheerful tradition of the war, and Lafayette, after a lapse of forty years, acknowledged with tears the kindness. It is with the naval history of the republic that Baltimore is peculiarly connected. Both in the war of the Revolution and that of 1812 she appears as a champion of the sea, and many a keel laid in her ship-yards brought victory to our flag. Her sailors were the first officers of the Continental navy, and Nicholson, in the Virginia frigate, the first officer in rank in the infant service. The Virginia, the Defense, Buckskin, Enterprise, Sturdy Beggar, Harlequin, Fox, and others were Baltimore ships, whose successful cruises aided Congress with the means of carrying on the war. But it was in the war of 1812 that the `Baltimore clippers' gained world-wide reputation, for on every sea as privateers they smote the enemy with unprecedented audacity, and astonished the stolid Briton by their rapid movements and skillful seamanship and gunnery. This fleet numbered fifty-eight—an excess over every other port of the Union.

It was the successes of these privateers which made Baltimore a peculiar thorn in our adversary's side, and excited a concentrated venom which brought about the attack upon the city, and the enemy's repulse and discomfiture before the guns of Fort McHenry and at North Point.

As sharing the glories of that day, we must recall a forgotten hero that maintained the honor of the `star-spangled banner.' During the bombardment of Fort McHenry, at a time when the explosions were most tremendous, a rooster mounted a parapet and crowed heartily. This excited the laughter and animated the feelings of all present. A man who was worn down with fatigue, and ill, declared that if ever he lived to see Baltimore, the rooster should be treated with pound-cake. Not being able to leave the fort, the day after the bombardment he sent to the city, procured the cake, and had fine sport in treating his favorite.

In recognizing the obligations of wealth, the merchants of Baltimore have left many noble examples, recalled by the names of Patterson, Oliver, McKim, Donnell, Sheppard, Peabody, McDonough, Johns Hopkins, Kelso, Watson, Ready, Wyman, Wilson, and others. In many cases their own executors, their generous endowments, aggregating many millions of dollars, illustrate the true use of money.

The Isms of Forty Years Ago by W. P. Garrison

The seventh chapter of the Rev. O. B. Frothingham's Life of Theodore Parker (Boston, 1874) opens with these words:

`It was a remarkable agitation of mind that went on in Massachusetts thirty years ago. All institutions and all ideas went into the furnace of reason, and were tried by fire. Church and state were put to the proof; and the wood, hay, stubble—everything combustible—were consumed. The process of proving was not confined to Boston: the whole State took part in it. It did not proceed from Boston as a centre: it began simultaneously in different parts of the Commonwealth. It did not seem to be communicated, to spread by contagion, but was rather an intellectual experience produced by some latent causes which were active in the air. No special class of people were reponsible for it, or affected by it....It was a time of meetings and conventions for reforms of every description.'

It was a time, in one word, of isms. Mr. Parker himself, in August, 1840, walked thirty mile from Boston to Groton, to attend a convention called by Second Adventists and `Come-outers.' His companion all the way was George Ripley; at Newton they picked up Christopher Pearse Cranch; at Concord, Bronson Alcott. They heard Brother Jones hold forth on the second coming of Christ, and Mr. Parker too addressed the convention. In September he attended a Non-resistant Convention in Boston. In November he joined in calling a convention to consider questions concerning the Sabbath, the ministry, and the church—a step over which Dr. Channing shook his head. But the good doctor that very year had started a movement not less disruptive of old traditions and usages. He had consulted with Ripley and Emerson and Margaret Fuller as to whether it was possible `to bring cultivated, thoughtful people together, and make a society that deserved the name.' The first result of such an inquiry was the founding of the Dial, the organ of the Transcendentalists, in July, 1840. The next was the establishment, in 1841, of the socialistic community of Brook Farm, which lay only a mile from Parker's residence in West Roxbury, and which, though it did not reckon him among its members, was frequently visited by him for the sake of intercourse with Ripley, Curtis, Hawthorne, Dana, and the rest of that remarkable company. In 1841 the Hopedale Community, in 1842 the Northampton Community, both distinct and original Yankee attempts after an ideal society, were likewise founded. Fourierism came with the following wave. Brisbane, it is true, had published in 1840 his Social Destiny of Mankind, but his zeal first found a proper vehicle in the daily columns of the new-born Tribune, presently to be re-enforced by the Brook Farm Harbinger (harbinger `of the Renaissance,' as they explained it), when that experiment had gone over to the new doctrine. In 1843 Fourierism was at its height. If Transcendentalism had paved the way for it, Swedenborgianism lent it a helping hand. Those who looked upon Swedenborg as `the most remarkable phenomenon of the age,' noticed with satisfaction `the singular fact that the groups and series of Fourier's plan of society are in accordance with Swedenborg's description of the order in heaven,' and thought they beheld the kingdom coming on earth as it is in heaven. `In religion,' wrote John S. Dwight in the Harbinger, `we have Swedenborg; in social economy, Fourier; in music Beethoven.' Finally, Robert Owen was issuing his `manifestoes' in the columns of the Washington National Intelligencer in the winter of 1844-45, and in 1846 addressing that New York Constitutional Convention whose labors were inspired by a sort of `Communism,' not then understood.

Before passing from Socialism to the other isms of the period, let us enjoy this extract from a private letter of the late Charles C. Burleigh, describing a Community Convention held in Boston in the last week of December, 1843, the first exposition of the system in that city:

`Garrison spoke while I was in, and spoke well, but not in accordance with the views of the community leaders. Collins said a few words. Two or three good speeches besides were made, and there was considerble interesting talk, but not much system or method was manifest in what was said, or much definite information given tending to any specific point. Some noble sentiments were uttered in a happy style, but on the whole I was not enough interested to go in again in the afternoon. I was told that the preceding evening's session had been a grand one; that Channing [not the doctor, who had gone to his rest, but his nephew, William H.] had made a splendid speech, and several others had spoken very well....Brisbane and Channing were to present to-day, I believe, somewhat more in detail, with a view to something practical, the Fourier system of social organization. Had it been convenient for me to attend, I doubt not I should have been much more interested and gratified than I was by the desultory discussions of yesterday forenoon.

`The meeting was well attended, though not crowded; yet I do not remember to have ever seen a larger number of distinct individuals at any one gathering than it seemed to me were there. Abby Folsom was present, and had a few words to say—good and to the purpose, too, crazy as she is generally thought to be. One man was there (Lamson by name) who announced himself a sinless man, if I rightly took his meaning. He had a long beard, venerably white—as was also his hair—and was dressed in garments of undyed cloth. A. B. Alcott was there, and S. J. May, and some of the Roxbury and the Hopedale and the Northampton Community people. I had a pleasant chat with Alcott. He classifies the three communities just named as exemplifying—the first, refined and elegant taste; the second, piety, simple-hearted goodness, and honesty of soul; the third, enterprise and reformatory energy. He wants all three to be blended in one association. His little community of himself and Charles Lane, he tells me, is likely to be broken up by various adverse circumstances, one of which is the unfavorableness of the climate to Lane's constitution.'

The year 1840 marked a new era in the progress of Second Adventism. Not only was the `day of probation' drawing nigh—the day on which the univere should shrivel with fire, the resurrection and ascension of the just attend the awful coming of Christ, and the millennium begin, after which the wicked would be raised for their eternal dicomfort—of which the date was at first approximately fixed between the vernal equinoxes of 1843-44; but Father Miller, `the end-of-the-world man,' as he was irreverently called by those whose sense of humor was greater than that of his followers, began more freely to extend the sphere of his personal exhortations, particularly in Eastern New England. Though a native of Pittsfield, his labors up to his fifty-eighth year had been almost wholly confined to the border counties of New York and Vermont, until in April, 1839, he appeared for the first time in Massachusetts as a prophet—a reed shaken by palsy, if not by the wind. In December he was again in Boston; and in February, 1840, he saw the publication of the Signs of the Times (afterward Advent Herald) begun, the first of the Millerite organs, which afterward reckoned the Midnight Cry (New York), the Glad Tidins (Rochester), the Millennial Harbinger, etc. From this time to his death he lectured frequently in his native State in halls and groves, expounding his rules of interpretation by which the harmony of the Scriptures was assured, and interpreting by the aid of Revelations the `time, times and a half' of Daniel, on which his destructive calculations rested. It was in Massachusetts that his venerable and sincere presence first failed to restrain the rotten egg, which in those times awaited the utterer of unpopular doctrine, for he was mobbed with missles at Newburyport in May, 1842. A month later we find him holding forth at the first Second Advent camp-meeting, held at East Kingston, New Hampshire, and in the audience the poet Whittier taking notes of the strange, impressive, picturesque scene—a tall growth of pine and hemlock throwing its melanchly shadow over the multitude, who were arranged upon rough seats of boards and logs; the white tents, drawn about in a circle, forminmg a background of snowy whiteness to the dark masses of men and foliage; a hymn pealing through the dim aisles of the forest; preachers thundering from a bower of hemlock boughs. The poet continues:

Suspended from the front of the rude pulpit were two broad sheets of canvas, upon one of which was the figure of a man, the head of gold, the breast and arms of silver, the belly of brass, the legs of iron, and feet of clay—the dream of Nebuchadnezzar! On the other were depicted the wonders of the Apocalyptic vision: the beasts, the dragons, the scarlet woman seen by the seer of Patmos—Oriental types and figures and mystic symbols, translated into staring Yankee realities, and exhibited like the beasts of a travelling menagerie. One horrible image, with its hideous heads and caly caudal extremity, reminded me of the tremendous line of Milton, who, in speaking of the same evil dragon, describes him as ``Swinging the scaly horrors of his folded tail.'' To an imaginative mind the scene was full of novel interest. The white circle of tents; the dim wood arches; the upturned, earnest faces; the loud voices of the speakers, burdened with the awful symbolic language of the Bible; the smoke from the fires, rising like incense from forest altars, carrying one back to the days of primitive worship, when ```The groves were God's first temples. Ere man learned To hew the shaft, and lay the architrave, And spread the roof above them.'''

On the 14th of March, 1844, Father Miller closed the diary of his public labors, and reckoned up his 3200 lectures given since 1832. It was almost the only change in the regularity of his daily life which betokened the approach of `the burning day.' When March had gone out, and April saw not the heavens in commotion, and May had come, the poor old man was heard confessing his error and acknowledging his disappointment, but not his unbelief. October might yet witness the fulfillment of prophecy: `The Lord will certainly leave the mercy-seat on the 13th, and appear visibly in the clouds of heaven on the 22d.' During the interval of ten days, secular business was suspended among the Adventists. In New York, as Mrs. Child records, at a shop in the Bowery, muslin for ascension robes was offered; tradesmen shut up shop, or gave away goods, or dealt more liberial measure, to make their record good with the Almighty—all the while that the ungodly disturbed the meetings with stones and brickbats, and crackers and torpedoes. The Advent Herald issued its last number with a valedictory. And then the sun rose on the 23d, and the sad prophet could only say, `I have fixed my mind on another time, and here I mean to stand until God gives me more light, and that is, to-day, to-day, and TO-DAY, until He comes.' Some, however, alleged that the Lord had come, but invisibly, and `closed the door of mercy to the sinner;' and then arose a contention between the orthodox and the `shut-door' party as to which should gain over Father Miller. This was exquisite cruelty, but not without a logical cause. The shut-door faction, given up to fanatical excesses, or neglecting its wordly affairs in a way to call for guardianship or the work-house at the hands of judges and selectmen, did not in the end prevail. The orthodox party became a tame and uninteresting sect like any other, with an indefinite lease of life. The `Come-outers,' who had made with the Adventists the joint convention at Groton, were chiefly from Cape Cod, and appear to have formed a lasting union with them. The Cape is still the country par excellence of camp-meetings and Adventists, and there the wretched Freeman, offering his little daughter as a sacrifice, recalled an almost forgotten superstition.

A Non-resistant Convention was perhaps the last place in which to expect to find the grandson of Captain John Parker. And in truth even then the gentle and tender-hearted Theodore regarded none of his earthly possessions more fondly—more proudly, too—than that ancestor's fowling-piece and the musket yielded to him by a grenadier at Bunker Hill—the twin ornaments of his study; while ten years after that Boston gathering, in marrying two fugitive slaves, he gave the husband a copy of the Bible `for the salvation of his own soul and his wife's soul,' and, `with words of equal pertinency,' says Mr. Frothingham, a bowie-knife for the defense of his wife's liberty. Still, in 1840, as we have seen, the spirit of Lexington and Bunker Hill was not exempt from being put to the test. The year before (January 3, 1839) had been issued the first number of the Non-Resistant, a paper which, while not an official mouth-piece of the Abolitionists, represented the peaceful methods to which they had pledged themselves as an organization, and was conducted by William Lloyd Garrison, Edmund Quincy, and Mrs. Maria Weston Chapman—three eminent associates in the antislavery warfare. Mr. Quincy was the chief editor, and furnished most of the original articles, Mr. Garrison's part being confined to the `selections' and to the general oversight. The paper barely survived a couple of years, for the disastrous division in the antislavery ranks in 1840 made it necesary to avoid dissipation of forces. Its significance for the philosophic historian is that it is one more proof of the millennial character of the reformatory ferment of that wonderful period. It should not be overlooked, too, that the military provisions of the Constitution prevented many Abolitionists from voting as effectively as did its pro-slavery guarantees.

Chance had given some distinction to Boston as the focus of a doctrine which, though probably to be classed as pseudo-scientific, has had a permanent effect on theological belief through it bearing on the question of moral accountability—we mean phrenology. Those admitted to the intimacy of a late popular physician in Boston remember an ear of Spurzheim's neatly preserved in alcohol; and thousands of vistors to Mount Auburn have had their attention called to the monument which marks his last resting-place. Six years after the German apostle had planted his seed and been himself interred in a foreign soil, the interest already excited in figured and lettered skulls, and bumps, and organs, and `examinations,' was confirmed by the arrival of George Combe, with his dry, unhumorous Scotch mind, his pure and earnest nature, and his considerable reputation as a writer and as a strictly scientific expounder of the truths of phrenology. For nearly two years his lectures were listened to in all the great cities of the Union. In June, 1840, he returned to England. `It was the frequent remark of Mr. Combe,' says Mrs. Child, in her familiar Letters from New York, `that of all nations whose heads he had ever had the opportunity to observe, the Americans had the organ of veneration the least developed.' `Veneration' was marked `full' on the chart made of Father Miller in 1842 by a `phrenological friend,' and on the same chart `Marvellousness' was set down as `moderate.' But the good old man perhaps made some allowance for the prepossessions of the examiner, seeing that the prejudice of another had in that very year laughably betrayed the uncertainties of this sort of divination. His incognito being preserved, as was customary, the phrenologist remarked to his introducer: `I tell you what it is, Mr. Miller could not easily make a convert of this man to his harebrained theory. He has too much good sense.' Putting his hand on the organ of marvellousness, he proceeded: `There! I'll bet you anything that old Miller has got a bump on his head there as big as my fist.' Such mistakes seem like a reductio ad absurdum of the whole system; but, other considerations apart, they hardly do more than prove the incompetency or charlatanry of the individual professor who makes them. Every attempt to popularize the result of learning and research is exposed to such disgraces, and it was for this reason that the old Puritans founded Harvard College, expressly to avoid `leaving an illiterate ministry to the churches,' Father Miller himself being precisely one of this kind, and his calculations and predictions being the result of his want of scholarly discipline, though it must in candor be allowed that his theory of Scriptural interpretation is not open to this objection from the orthodox. Some of these, by the way, complained of phrenology as favoring fatalism too much. Mrs. Child, on the other hand, hailed it as `the democracy of metaphysics'—a view not less abhorrent to the clergy, whose occupation it threatened to take away.

Both the physics and the metaphysics of the brain were embraced in another rage of the period under review—the still mysterious and scientifically unexplored and unexplained mesmerism. Harriet Martineau, whose experience with `practical' phrenologists had been as ludicrous as Father Miller's, had at least the excuse of bodily restoration—resurrection, she would rather call it—for a profound belief in the virtues of mesmerism. Her letters on this subject were published by the Messrs. Harper in 1845, at which time such advances had been made in this country that teeth were extracted mesmerically, without pain, in Washington, in the certified presence of Congressmen. Nevertheless, in spite of this high indorsement, mesmerists were generally classed among Millerites, Mormons, and other fanatics of the hour. Mrs. Child, writing in 1842 of the `recent phenomena in animal magnetism or mesmerism,' tells her correspondent that she was `ten year ago convinced that animal magnetism was destined to produce great changes in the science of medicine, and in the whole philosophy of spirit and matter.' When she goes on to relate how a venerable friend of hers fell into a deadly swoon, in the midst of which she was conscious of being dizzy, and of standing beside her own lifeless body, watching the effort to resuscitate it, she seems to be anticipating those spiritual manifestations which the `Rochester knockings' were presently to revive and rename, but not to originate. Some of the terminology of spiritualism is already to be found in an English work published in 1840, entitle, `Facts in Mesmerism (as Somnambulism, Sleep-walking, Consciousness, Sensation, Mediums, etc.), with Reasons for a Dispassionate Enquiry into it,' by C. H. Townsend.

The great expectations in regard to the therapeutic province of mesmerism have not been justified, but neither have those of the new schools of medicine whose exclusive claims forty years ago were the subject of so much and so vehement discussion. `The Water-Cure applied to every known Disease: a complete Demonstration of the Hydropathic System of Curing Diseases; showing, also, the Fallacy of the Medicinal Method, and its utter Inability to effect a Permanent Cure'—such is the modest title of a work translated from the German, and published by the phrenological house of Fowler and Wells, in New York, in 1847. Priessnitz, who was still alive, might have blushed a little at this. As usual, Massachusetts was early in applying the test. The Round Hill Water-Cure at Northampton succeeded Mr. Bancroft's famous school on the same site; and not far away, in the suburb now known as Florence, a blind &Aelig;.sculapius, named Ruggles, profiting by the attractions of the neighboring Northampton Community, established a water-cure on Mill River, which !or a quarter of a century at least found abundant patronage. No such odium attached to hydropathy as to homœopathy, a system originally founded by Hahnemann, and which, about 1840, was beginning to acquire respectability in Boston through the skillful practice of the Wesselhoefts. Nor did either of these important systems fare so hardly at the hands of the `regular' practitioners as did Thomsonianism, a pure Yankee product, whose founder, Dr. Samuel Thomson, was a native of New Hamphire, but practiced largely in Massachusetts, and was long a resident of Boston, where he died in 1843. The persecutions to which he was subjected read strangely now, whatever predilection we may have for a learned basis to every profession. Dr. Thomson was self-taught, it is true, but he was sincere and unaggressive; he was undoubtedly philanthropic, and we must now acknowledge that he co-operated with hydropathy and homœopathy in asserting the vis medicatrix naturæ—the most important principle established in medicine during the century—and in forcing the regular school to diminish the quantity of drugs administered, and otherwise to modify its practice for the better. Smile as we may at the doctrinaire who held that `all diseases are the effect of one general cause, and may be removed by one general remedy,' i.e., by restoring the natural heat of the body, starting the perspiration, and clearing away `canker' and `putrefaction,' `we must not forget his opposition to the reckless and frightful use of mercury and the indiscriminate blood-letting which he found in vogue; and the steam-bath alone would entitle him to grateful recollection. `All in time must become Thomsonian,' wrote his son in 1841; but the failure of this prophecy does not excuse the atrocity of his treatment when thrown into prison on a charge of murder preferred by one Dr. French. In Dr. Thomson's autobiography we read (and the extract throws light on the state of society at the time, as well as on the bigotry and malignity of the prosecutor):

`I was then put in irons by the sheriff, and conveyed to the jail in Newburyport, and confined in a dungeon with a man who had been convicted of an assault on a girl six years of age, and sentenced to solitary confinement for one year. He seemed to be glad of company, and reminded me of the old saying that misery loves company. I was not allowed a chair or a table, and nothing but a miserable straw bunk on the floor, with one poor blanket which had never been washed. I was put into this prison on the 10th day of November, 1809; the weather was very cold, and no fire, and not even the light of the sun or a candle; and, to complete the whole, the filth ran from the upper rooms into our cell, and was so offensive that I was almost stifled with the smell. I tried to rest myself as well as I could, but got no sleep that night, for I felt something crawling over me which caused an itching, and not knowing what the cause was, inquired of my fellow-sufferer; he said that it was the lice, and that there were enough of them to shingle a meeting-house.

`In the morning there was just light enough came through the iron grates to show the horror of my situation. My spirits and the justice of my cause prevented me from making any lamentation, and I bore my sufferings without complaint. At breakfast-time I was called on through the grates to take our miserable breakfast. It consisted of an old tin pot of musty coffee, without sweetening or milk, and was so bad as to be unwholesome, with a tin pan containing a hard piece of Indian-bread, and the nape of a fish, which was so hard I could not eat it. This had to serve us till three o'clock in the afternoon, when we had about an equal fare, which was all we had till the next morning.'

If Dr. Thomson aroused the ire of physicians whose patients, given up by them to die, he succeeded in saving, other classes were incensed by the doctrines of Dr. Sylvester Graham, a native of Connecticut, who preached the moral and physical advantages of a vegetable diet. In the ranks of his opponents one would naturally expect to find the butchers, but Graham contrived to outrage the bakers also, by extolling the superiority of home-made bread. It is ludicrous to read of the stir this caused, and of the measures they took to suppress him. He was lecturing in Amory Hall, Boston, in the winter of 1837, when the bakers' rising took place. The proprietors of the hall, becoming alarmed for their property, closed it on him, and no other could be had. Happily the owner of the new Marlborough Hotel, then nearly completed, offered Dr. Graham the use of his dining-room. The mayor interposed, protesting that he could not protect the meeting with his constables; but the warning was unheeded. The lower story of the hotel was barricaded, the upper stories provided with a quantity of slacked lime and a shovel brigade. The brave proprietor planted himself at the door, parleyed with the mob that filled the street, and then, as the crisis approached, gave the signal to the shovellers above, whereupon, the `eyes` having it, the rabble incontinently adjourned. Graham died, by no violence, in 1851, having by his Lectures on the Science of Human Life made numerous proselytes, not yet extinct; and if he failed to establish his system of dietetics, he at least favorably modified the prevailing habit by showing that muscular strength does not depend on the consumption of meat, by popularizing the unbolted flour to which his name was given, and generally by paving the way for the use of the coarser grains which now regularly appear on the most refined breakfast tables. His rank as a benefactor will not seem slight to those who reflect on the gain to the public health and wealth resulting from the enlarged use of fruit and vegetables, and that variety which so distinguishes the American from the European menu.

In 1830 Dr. Graham was lecturing on temperance, some three years before the firt National Temperance Convention was held in this country, and this early advocacy of the good cause made it fitting that he should find shelter in the firt temperance house in America, which the Marlborough Hotel had the honorable ditinction of being. In legislation what characterized this later period was the continued struggle between license and no license. In April, 1838, Massachusetts had passed its famous Fifteen-gallon Law—far more stringent than that of Mississippi (1839), which forbade the selling of liquor in quantities of less than a gallon. In 1840 the Massachusetts statute was repealed, with twelve month' notice. How intense the struggle was, was illustrated that year in Boston by the dissensions in the Hollis Street Church, whose pastor, John Pierpont, was arraigned in July before an ecclesiastical council by a committee of his parish. He was charged with `too busy interference' with prohibitory legislation, with legislation on imprisonment for debt, and with the popular controversy on abolition. He had even shown scruples about the letting of the basement of the church for the storage of liquors. The result of the trial was that the connection existing between him and the parish was then and there dissolved—a milder penalty than that which the courts awarded the Rev. George B. Cheever, of Salem, whose Deacon Giles's Distillery cost him a few days' imprisonment. But that was in 1835. What further signalized the year 1840 was the `Washington movement,' instituted on April 2 at Chase's Tavern, Baltimore, by six inebriates, for the conversion of drunkards and rum-sellers by moral suasion. Its success did not prevent the subsequent resort to `pledges' and prohibition, but its influence is still visible in the Washingtonian homes which usefully supplement the charities of our large cities.

Like temperance, the woman's right agitation may be said to have passed its fervid stage of growth. It is the youngest of the isms, and the legitimate offspring of the antislavery movement. In 1836 and 1837 two refined and cultivated South Carolina ladies, Sarah and Angelina Grimké, were giving private parlor addresses to women at the North on the subject of slavery. These conferences were presently attended by men also, and before long pulpits were opened to them by Samuel J. May and others. At the May meeting of the New England Antislavery Society, in 1838, all persons, men or women, were invited to become members, and participate in the proceedings. As half the slaves were females, this seemed a very rational invitation; but eight orthodox clergymen immediately took their names off the rolls, while the General Association of clergymen in Massachusetts launched a pastoral letter against the speaking of women in public. The division of sentiment on this important question reached a climax at the annual convention of the American Antislavery Society in New York in May, 1840. The chairman, Francis Jackson, of Boston, placed on one of the committees Miss Abby Kelley, a well-known lecturer (afterward Mrs. Stephen Foster), and the split then declared itself. Henceforth the `Old Organization' went its way, welcoming without question all who were opposed to slavery, the `New Organization' declining all fellowhip with women and infidels. At another time it may be in place to narrate what happened a little later in the same eventful year, when the question of the sexes sitting and acting together for a philanthropic purpose arose in the World's Antislavery Convention in London. The two incidents in the metropolis of the Old and in that of the New World make the year 1840 the proper one from which to date the woman's rights movement, and both markedly show its relation to the antislavery cause.

We stop here, but not because our subject is exhausted. One must turn over the newspapers of the time to realize the charaacter of the period 1835-1845, of which we have dwelt on a few phases. We have not mentioned the societies for the reform of prisons and their inmates, and for the abolition of capital punishment, nor a host of minor traits, like the popular lectures on anatomy, illustrated with manikins, or Professor Gouraud's lectures at the New York Tabernacle on phreno-mnemotechny—a new sytem of mnemonics in ten lessons of one hour each, insuring `a memory of incalculable powers of retention.' We have not even alluded to phonography, a name first borne on the title of the second edition of Isaac Pitman's Stenographic Hand-Book in January, 1840. What remains to be emphasized, in order to bind all these together into the `spirit of the age,' is the interlacing of them. Theodore Parker, as we have seen, could give attention (not necessarily sympathy) to half a dozen causes. Graham, in addition to temperance and dietetics, we find lecturing on the water-cure in 1845. Fowler and Wells thirty years ago advertised as part of their regular list `the works of Gall, Spurzheim, Combe, and Graham, together with all works on phrenology, physiology, and magnetism; also on the water-cure;' and in the same connection the following titles:—Woman: her Education and Influence; Tobacco: its Use and Abuse; Tea and Coffee; Temperance and Tight Lacing; Phonographic Class-Book and Reader, etc. Their successors have this year (1879) put forth a translation of Deleuze's Practical Instructions in Animal Magnetism. On the other hand, the current list of publications of the New Church Board of Publication, New York, begins with Swedenborg's theological works, and adds what it calls `collateral works,' among which we find Ellis's Family Homœopathy (!). It is but a few years since the Oneida Community gave up, with an effort almost equivalent to a moral scruple, the use of Graham bread as a staple and orothodox article of socialistic diet. In New England, within twenty years, in certain circles, it has seemed strange that any one who was a homæopathist could be at the same time a Calvinist; and Dr. Holmes's intolerance of homæopathy has been deemed inconsistent with his ardent Unitarianism. This may seem ridiculous, but there is here a nexus between premise and conclusion which is real if not logical. We can not pause to point it out.

Compulsory Education in Brooklyn by F. E. Fryatt

Difficult is an ascent to the `mount of learning' for the unwilling little disciple in the chief cities of the Empire State, but especially in Brooklyn. Let the birds sing ever so sweetly, he knows where, and the brooks flow murmurously in familiar woods; let the apples gleam ever so distractingly in sunny orchards, just beyond the city line; ay, let every breeze and leaflet whisper, `Come'—still he may not listen, but, like the youth who toiled up the enchanted mountain in the Arabian tale, press steadily on, his ears stuffed with the figurative cotton of steadfast aim, lest, hearing the alluring voices on every side, he be tempted to loiter, and turning backward his longing gaze, find himself suddenly beset by all the terrors prepared for those who wander from the `strait and narrow way.' The secret of his hardships lies not in the air, the earth, or the water, nor altogether in his own personality, as compared with that of the `small boy' in other States, but in the more than parental care with which this city provides for and watches over his intellectual growth.

Loves he, `not wisely, but too well,' to roam, then there lieth in wait to seize him, not only the police, but a non-uniformed individual from whom there is no escape—the attendance agent, whose mission it is to let loose upon truant scholars and non-attendants the legal `dogs of war,' and woe be to the hapless urchin who becomes the target of his terrible eye! Petitions, complaints, warrants, and commitments are hurled at his devoted head, until he is thrust headlong into the Attendance School—a sort of earthly purgatory in which he may expiate the errors of his youthful way, or insure himself a rapid transit to another institution, whence he will not return until he is duly impressed with the majesty and power of the compulsory law.

Such was the tenor of my conclusions after patiently studying a pile of legal papers, and arranging a collection of notes on the educational statutes of New York.

I remember hearing of the passage in 1874 of an `act to secure to children the benefits of an elementary education,' and of its amendment in 1876, but until now I had not thoroughly realized that every parent is bound under penalty of fine, nolens volens, to cause his children to be instructed at home or in school.

I was sitting in a `brown-study' of the subject, when my library door opened, and Rhene, in her immpetuous way, entered, and flinging down her sketch-book, exclaimed, in a tone of vast discontent: `I can not think what has come over all the children in Brooklyn! Every time this blessed summer that I have wanted a model, this child is in school, and that one is in school, another is studying at home; and there are none to be found on the streets where they were thicker than blackberries last fall. I wonder if they send them to the pound with the dogs?'

`Patience, patience, Rhene.' replied I, soothingly; `I have the key to your puzzle in two words—it's compulsory education. Let me read you the law on the subject. Listen:

``An Act to secure to Children the Benefits of an Elementary Education. Passed May 11, 1874, by the Legislature of New York.

``Section 1. All parents, and those who have the care of children, shall instruct them, or cause them to be instructed, in spelling, reading, writing, English grammar, geography, and arithmetic. And every parent, guardian, or other person having control and charge of any child between the ages of eight and fourteen years, shall cause such child to attend some public or private day school at least fourteen weeks in each year, eight weeks at least of which attendance shall be consecutive; or to be instructed regularly at home at least fourteen weeks in each year in spelling, reading, writing, English grammar, geography, and arithmetic, unless the physical or mental condition of the child is such as to render such attendance or instruction inexpedient, or impracticable.

``Section 2. No child under the age of fourteen years shall be employed by any person to labor in any business whatever during the school hours of any school day—''

`Dear me!' interrupted Rhene, her blue eyes opened wide in wonder; `that's the reason, is it? Don't read any more; that's sufficient.'

`If you want any models after three o'clock, you will be sure to get them if you will come with me to the new reform school. It will be worth your while to study faces there.'

`Odious and tyrannical!' murmurs Rhene, catching up her sketch-book and preparing to follow me.

In a quaint old chapel of one of the Brooklyn churches, in Pacific Street, we find the first Attendance School established in America. There are as yet only two of these schools, one in the Eastern and one in the Western Dictrict of the city, both founded toward the close of 1878, mainly through the efforts of Mr. R. H. Huntley, chairman of the Committee on Attendance, and his colleagues, Messrs. Cole, Klein, Fisher, McKellar, Fox, and Davies. They form an intermediate station between the public schools and the Truant Home, to the manifest relief of both institutions.

A curious picture of contrasts presents itself to us as we enter the little chapel. On either side and over the platform hang the gayly painted banners and gilded mottoes of some Sunday-school festival, whose withered garlands still depend from dingy roof and wall. A cool soft light shimmers through the green vines that clamber around the pointed windows, and fall on the faces of forty or fifty boys seated on narrow benches on either side the aisle, a few neatly dressed, well shod, and bright, but the majority ragged, barefooted, and forlorn.

Here a dozen mites are poring with troubled countenances over their well-worn readers, there half a score labor painfully over their writing lessons, while a group in the corner, with knotted brows, study the intricacies of a problem in fractions on the blackboard, listening anxiously to the explanations of the master, who stands over them, keeping, however, a watchful eye on the rest of the school.

Rhene, who only sees models in these small bits of humanity, has already commenced to sketch them, seating herself conveniently to study their faces. On invitation from the master I follow her example.

The lessons are slowly being learned, the problem in fractions proceeds, and pot-hooks appear on all the little slates as long as the eye of the master watches. But let him step down a moment to explain to us the discipline of the school, and lo! a perfect Babel of sound invades the ear; he does not see the especial offenders, but, as if by intuition, he turns speedily around, selects two or three of them, and, rod in hand, administers correction.

We were informed that these were all bad little boy, expelled from the public schools for truancy, and that if they accomplished their allotted tasks for fourteen week, and were punctual in attendance, they would earn a certificate entitling them to re-admission to the public schools; if not, they well knew what was in store for them at the Truant Home.

`Time and the hour runs through the roughest day,' so at last the problem is finished, the reading class has stumbled or drawled in weary monotone through the appointed chapters, the pot-hooks have been exhibited, books and slate put away, and all sit, with folded arms, in attitudes of unpleasant expectation. The master is going to unfold the law to its victims. He steps down, with the rod still in his hand, fronts the boys, and with a grave, magisterial expression, intensified to suit the occasion, addresses them a follows:

`Boys, attention! I am now about to inform you of a proposed change in the Truancy Law. I presume that many of you, either by personal experience or common report, are aware of the far from agreeable characteristics of the Truant Home. Are you not?'

By way of answer forty pairs of shoulders gradually ascend to the neighborhood of forty pair of ears, and forty pairs of eyes turn so obliquely toward the master that little but the whites is visible.

`Truly this is sufficient commentary on the boys' memories and sentiments of the Home,' whispered I to Rhene.

`The Board of Education, Sirs, finding that fourteen weeks' incarceration in the Home has not been sufficient warning to such of you as have been within its walls, and that threats of recommitment have no power to deter you from violation of the law, or to intimidate you to the point of desistance from the evil tenor of your ways, have concluded, after serious deliberations—do you attend, Sirs?—yes, after serious deliberations, have decided to extend the term of sojournment to such of you as prove delinquent from the paths of educational duty to at least one year!'

Here the rod falls with a crash on the desk before the speaker. Thereafter silence fills the room.

The address has had its effect for the time; some are puzzled, some amazed, and some afraid. The majority do not comprehend the words, but over all there hangs a sense of doom.

`Busby redivivus!' exclaims Rhene, as we leave Attendance School No. 1, and taking the cars, depart for Williamsburg, in the Eastern District.

There we find Attendance School No. 2 in the top story of an old public-school building in South Third Street, near Fifth. Mounting the long last flight of stairs, we pause on the landing and listen to the pleasant voice of the master. What is this he is relating? Ah, it is a story, with a suitable moral, you may depend.

A boy will be tried to-morrow for stealing a dress from an old lady in his mother's house. Step by step his career is graphically traced: his first disobedience; his truancy from school; his bad companions' advice; his following it, and being led to lie, and then to steal the dress; his probable commitment to the House of Refuge, and his terrible life there until he is twenty-one years of age. And then the moral of the tale.

Here we peep through the half-open door, and see about sixty boys sitting in attitudes of grave attention, their arms folded, their eyes fixed on the benevolent face of the teacher.

We enter just as the boys are dismissed for recess. Everything, contrary to our expectation, is done in perfect order. Two boys receive the slates and books, and two others hand around the hats; then all file slowly out in divisions, passing down to the play-grounds

`We wished to see how moral suasion suits the ``bad little boy'' of Williamsburg,' explain I, as the teacher approaches us.

`My boys,' replies the teacher, with a smile, `are not at all bad; indeed, the majority are very good and clever, poor fellows! It's only their overflowing animal spirits that get them into disgrace in the public schools, and their love of sport; and then their home surroundings! Ah, if we could but instruct the parents!'

`You believe, then, in moral suasion, evidently?'

`I do indeed. When I consider the treatment many of them receive at home, the upbraidings and beatings, the complete misery of their little lives, how can I bring myself to touch them? Of course in rare instances I must, but not so much to give pain as to humiliate them. I desire my boys to grow up into manly men; and in my opinion the rod hardens: it dose not ennoble. Our percentage,' continues the teacher, with pardonable pride, `is ninety-eight. No school in the city can boast a better record than that, and these, too, are supposed to be the worst little fellows in Brooklyn. What a gross mistake!'

Touching a bell at this moment, the teacher leave us, stationing himself near the doorway. Presently, with an orderly tramp, on they come, the sixty little urchins on whom the law has laid its iron fingers—Irish, Germans, Americans, and one wee son of Ham, all more or less `tattered and torn,' but flushed, smiling, and out of breath; each glances confidently up into the face of the master in passing him.

Two of the elder boys—none are over fourteen—hang up the hats, and two hand around the books and slates, both parties holding their offices as posts of honor, and soon all are engaged in study.

At leisure once more, the master explains that the Attendance School relieves the public school of it disturbing element and the Truant Home from overcrowding, but that its true mission is to give to truants an opportunity to redeem themselves, and to incorrigibles a chance to earn a good reputation, and thereby salvation from the degradation of imprisonment in the Truant Home.

We remain through the final exercises, note the earnest and even cheerful faces of the little fellows, watch their hearty hand-shakes and cheery `Good-day' as each extends a brown hand to the master, and coming away with the babbling throng, cast our mental vote in favor of moral suasion.

Although compulsory education was authorized throughout the State of New York as far back as 1874, no steps were taken to comply with its regulations until 1877. The initial efforts to enforce the law were met by the violent opposition of the people in general, and the principals of both public and private schools. Among the people, the idle, the avaricious, and the extremely poor oppposed it, because it deprived them of their children's earning; the teachers in the public schools, because they feared a lowering of their percentage; the teachers in the private schools, because they considered it a high-handed interference in matters over which they arrogated to themselve supreme control. No one was prepared to accept what was regarded as a tyrannical innovation, but least of all the heads of these pay schools, many of which were long established and famous.

An incident which occurred a few months ago illustrates this feeling. It was an old educational establishment to which Brooklynites refer with pardonable pride; it was elegant and above par in all respects; so was its learned professor. An attendance agent, in the line of his regular duties, called, explained his instructions from the `Board,' and inquired if he could do anything for the professor. That gentleman, being thus addressed, drew himself up to his full height, regarded the truant fficer for a moment, and then loftily asked him by what right he presumed to interfere with the management of such an institution as this. The agent read the law to him. This only incensed the already irate professor still more, for he declared, in high tones, that the law could not possibly be intended to affect such a well-conducted and well-known institute. `Besides,' added he, `we have no truants here; they are all young ladies.' `Good-morning, Sir,' replied the agent; `I'll call again.'

Meanwhile a young gentleman had called at the office of the Board of Attendance with a complaint that his two young sisters—who, by-the-way, were pupils of the above institute—were in the habit of playing truant, and going off to Prospect Park with young gentlemen; he had discovered it, and found it was not an infrequent occurrence, and not wishing to make trouble for the girls at home, he determined to go quietly to the superintendent, whom he knew to be a kindly and honorable gentleman, and ask his advice. The superintendent called at the residence of the young ladies. Only one of them was at home. After a tearful interview on the part of the girl, and passionate promises never to do so any more, but be faithful to her school duties, the official left.

The next morning the attendance agent escorted both of the girls to school, handing them over to the surprised professor with these words: `I have brought two of your truants back to you, Sir. Shall be glad to serve you at any time, Sir. Good-morning.'

That the popular prejudice to compulsory education is steadily decreasing is shown by the fact that the office of the Superintendent of Attendance is daily besieged by anxious parents or guardians begging his advice in regard to their refractory little one. The Board of Attendance has undertaken a vast and noble work, and that it is well performed by the superintendent and his five agents will also be shown when it is stated that seven thousand cases of truancy have been disposed of within the past year, the majority of these having been returned, or for the first time placed in their proper schools, the remainder being committed to the Attendance Schools, whence some have passed to the tender mercies of the Truant Home.

One of the best results of the compulsory law has been the breaking up of many gangs of small boys, some of whom had not been near their homes for months. These are ferreted out of their dens—for dens they are—and brought before the superintendent, who, it should be mentioned to his credit, is a faithful and philanthropic worker in the cause. They are questioned closely as to their mode of living, and sent to their homes, accompanied by the agent of the district, and notice given to their parents to send them to school.

As an instance of this herding together, five small children were discovered sleeping under an old barn. They had conveyed thither a mass of rags and straw, which served them for a bed; they subsisted by begging and thieving, and when these resources failed them, they turned to the garbage boxes and swill pails in the better portions of the city, rising early in the morning to forestall the city scavengers. They had comrades who slept in ash-boxes, empty coal-bins, and under stoops; but they preferred the nest under the barn, where they huddled together like rats.

The Attendance Schools have been so powerful an instrument in aiding the enforcement of the law that permanent buildings are soon to be erected for their accommodation. Vigorous measures are being taken in other cities, reform schools as adjuncts to the public schools and Truant Homes having proved to be a necessity. New York and Buffalo have sent committees to inquire into the system practiced in Brooklyn. Other towns are also seeking the way, and it is to be hoped that soon all will feel the benefit of a law that admonishes parents so imperatively that they must needs learn that to feed and clothe is but the beginning of their duty to their offpring.

So far the law has twice placed its grasp on the `small boy,' first as a non-attendant, then as a truant; next, as an incorrigible, its iron hand closes over him. He now passes to the Truant Home— `A house of study and contemplation, A place of discipline and reformation'— which, chained, bolted, and doubly barred, keeps its own secrets from the outer world.

Thither, to this grim abode, go Rhene and I early the next morning; armed with lunch-baskets, note-books, and sketching material, we mean to spend the day. A five-mile crawl in the East New York horse-car, a bit of rapid transit on the Jamaica Railway, and a five-minute ride in the oddest of Dutch conveyances, passing the old toll-gate and the flourishing gardens of Cypress Hills, and we halt at the Truant Home, which stands on the old Jamaica plank-road near Eldert's Lane.

The firt impression of the visitor can not fail to be a pleasing one. The main building occupied by the scholars stands back from sight, and one only sees an extremely picturesque old mansion showing a sloping roof overshadowed by majestic trees, a long low front, and a broad piazza with an imposing colonnade. This was once the famous `Snedekor's Long Island Hotel,' of pleasant memory to Brooklynites and old New-Yorkers, but now an adjunct of the Truant Home.

As we enter the gate the superintendent meets us. We are conducted through the spacious kitchen of the hotel, with its huge soup boilers and piles of bright tin platers, to a sunny garden beyond. We are reminded of the prison aspect of affairs when the great door is unlocked and we are ushered into the melancholy presence of the ninety and nine little pisoners, sixty of whom occupy the main room, called the Senior Department, the remainder being only separated from them by a glass partition. Never shall I forget my first impression of the despondent boys with awe-stricken faces; tanned and freckled, save here and there that of a pale new-comer, with their closely cropped heads, and full suits of Kentucky jean, each seemed but a repetition of his neighbor.

On entering the Home the boy passes through various processes of mutation. His hair is clipped by an instrument constructed on the same principle as the lawn-mower; the clipping occupies twenty seconds' time, and is done with as little ceremony as a performance of that machine on a bit of greensward.

The victim is then seized by two boy inmates of the Home, who enjoy their `brief authority,' stripped, plunged into a bath, and plentifully doused with soap and water, and scrubbed with a scrubbing-brush from crown to heel till he glows again. He is then arrayed in the uniform of dark brown jean, a large gray felt hat placed on his head, and stout shoes on his feet. `Led like a lamb to the slaughter,' he soon finds himself in the dreaded prison school-room, where before the sun sets he is initiated into the rules of the institution, and warned by ocular demonstration of the consequences of breaking them.

The doors being locked and the windows iron-barred, Rhene and I are prisoners for the hour, so we employ our time in studying the situation. Of all the little faces before us, not one can be called really a bad one; many have finely cut and even noble features, but the majority are childishly simple and unformed.

The principal of the school takes no notice of our intrusion, but with head bent on his breast keeps up from under his dark brows a penetrating gaze on the flock before him. Behind him on the wall hang three narrow blackboards, labelled `Caution,' `Censure,' and `Disgrace,' each showing its list of victims.

Seated near the platform at his right hand are half a dozen boys whose woful faces, with their swollen eyes and tear-strained cheeks, testify only too well that the rod on his desk has not been idle.

We long for a rush of the free outer air, and are glad, when the noon bell rings, to follow the little ones out to the school grounds—a large open space inclosed by a very high fence, around which are long wooden seats. On the right hand stands a row of trees, shading some gay flower beds and bits of grass-plat; the remainder is bare ground, trodden hard by the tramp of many feet.

`Forward—march!' shouts the principal; and the little army passes, troop by troop, in double file. After many orders and evolutions, they form in open square, and halt, standing in perfect silence under the noonday glare.

A large box is brought out, and placed on trestles near the stoop, and two huge wooden pails carried to a table beyond.

`What is this ceremony?' asks Rhene, turning toward the principal.

`Lunch,' replies he, sententiously.

Again the columns are in motion; this time, in single file, they swing toward the wooden bin, and Rhene, with an expression of high disdain, watches the pilot-crackers shovelled out, two to each boy.

The line passes on toward the pails, each boy pausing long enough to drain a pint cup of milk, and giving way to his successor.

`Scanty nourishment for growing lads,' whispers Rhene, as we saunter down under the trees to the lower part of the grounds.

`Yes,'I reply; `and they have not eaten a morsel since seven o'clock—five hours. Think of it.'

We sit in the shade, take our luncheon, and watch a group of boys in a corner; they are discussing oranges, cakes, and other dainties sent them by remembering friends in the outer world, and are evidently the aristocrats of the home. Presently the teacher of the Junior Department invites us to visit his part of the school. He is a bright young fellow, who manages to keep up a sunshine of his own, notwithstanding the gloom of his surroundings. As we watch his little flock and hear them recite, we wonder if they will take away with them a touch of his culture to brighten their homes.

As the hour for closing school draws near, the young assistant leads the primaries into the larger school-room. Marshalled with military exactness, they stand line upon line. He opens the piano, and soon scores of voices are singing, somewhat dolefully, it must be confessed, though in fair time: `I met a lad the other day That ran away from school, He doubted all his teacher aid, And hated every rule. His books were underneath his coat, His dinner in his hat, And down upon a cheerless stone, All sorrowful, he sat. Oh, fie, fie, truant! Oh, fie, fie, for shame! Who can respect an idle boy Who can not spell his name?'

```They that carrried us away captive required of us a song,''' murmurs Rhene, pensively gazing at the singers; but her gravity is soon changed to delight when the player singles out a boy of perhaps twelve summers, opens an organ near at hand, and bids him sing. The rest of the school remain standing in perfect silence. Hush! listen. It is a hymn to the Virgin, composed by the young player. `Mary, mother immaculate,' sings the young voice, faint and low. Now it rises in a pathetic wail sweeter than a flute, clearer than crystal, trembling like a bird, to the soft accompaniment of the reed instrument. Once more it rises, faints, and dies; and we leave the room glad of the refining influences of the `divine art' for these young souls.

We are speedily brought down from our atmosphere of loftier contemplation to the stern realities of life at the Home by hearing the superintendent order the `dining-room committee' to proceed at once to the refectory.

We follow the six little lads whose duty it is this week to fill the office, and watch them put on their snow-white aprons, and remove the tin soup plates and cups from three long wooden tables of more than mediæval rudeness of structure. The platters are piled on a fourth table near the kitchen door; iron spoons brought on, and placed in order.

We now follow the boys into another room, and watch the bread-cutting. Here is apparently an old-fashioned hay-cutter; the blade is clean and bright. One boy takes down loaves from an immense pile standing against the wall, a man works the knife, and as each loaf is placed in the cutter, slices it into a box underneath. Two boys fill their arms, and bear away the bread to the refectory. Meantime the superintendent is ladling out soup from a large tin boiler; the plates are all filled, and carried to the three long tables in the refectory; a slice of bread lies near each. A whistle sounds, there comes a tramp of feet, and in march the boys with a quick step. Soon all are standing at the long tables. The master again sounds his whistle, all heads are bowed, and a blessing is asked on the bounty before them, at the close of which the little Catholics of the company reverently cross themselves on forehead and breast.

Not a word is spoken, but the silence is broken by a din of spoons and platters, and we feel as if witnessing a funeral feast. As each boy concludes his meal he wipes his hands on a towel hanging near, folds his arms, and stands with his back to the table until the whistle sound again and grace is repeated by the principal; then ho for the play-ground! where they play in solemn fashion, occasionally giving way to bursts of boyish spirits, which, when advancing too far, are speedily checked, in due deference to order—and the Kentucky jeans.

We have visited the dormitories before, coming away with pleasant impressions, marred only by the memory of an ominous `cat-o'-nine-tails' hanging on the wall. Ere we leave we take another look. It is now evening; the clock strikes eight; the lamps are lighted, revealing a hundred snowy little beds and fair white pillows, soon to be pressed by as many weary forms. At the foot of each bed, robed in loose white gowns, with hands clasped on their breasts, kneel the children. It is a touching picture! Listen once more! With one voice, as it were, they repeat" `Here on my bed my limbs I lay; O, hear, great God, the words I say! Preserve my friends and kindred dear In life and health for many a year. And still, O Lord, to me impart A gentle and a grateful heart, That after my last sleep I may Awake unto eternal day!' As they conclude with the simple `Now I lay me down to sleep' they remain kneeling for private prayer. We softly say `Good-night,' and come away, hoping that soon in happy dreams the cares and trials of the day will be forgotten.

Ferdinand De Lesseps as Minister at Rome in 1849 by Edwin De Leon

The name and fame of Ferdinand de Lesseps have been so closely identified with the Suez Canal that the fact is familiar to few of his having had two careers. He was in the diplomatic service of his country until his forty-fifth year, and did not commence his efforts in behalf of the great work by which he is now generally known until he had closed that career in a way and for a reason eminently characteristic of the man. He may be said to have been almost born in the French diplomatic service, his father, Matthew de Lesseps, having acted as France's first representative at the court of Mehemet Ali, and for many year having figured in Eastern diplomacy.

The son at an early age was enlisted in the same service, commencing with consular duties in or near Egypt, rising to the grade of acting consul-general there, and finally filling the important post of French minister at Rome in 1849, when the old historic city was made a battle-field by factions, and her young republic, under Mazzini, bombarded out of existence by General Oudinot with French cannon.

From the seed of Ferdinand de Lesseps's early intimacy with the young Said Pasha, younger son of Mehemet Ali, and afterward Viceroy, germinated the Suez Canal concession. For it was from the hands of his former playmate, twenty-five years later, that De Lesseps received that grant—the stepping stone to his fame and fortune. The young men, though so widely different in blood, training, and culture, yet had qualities in common which attached them to each other. Both were frank, fearless, gay, and adventurous in temper; both loved manly sports and horsemanship; both had a keen zest for feats of strength or skill, and the management of the unrivalled Arab steeds.

But Said Pasha did not obtain the throne until 1854; and De Lesseps, many years before, had drifted far away from the East, and in 1849 was French minister at Rome—a position equally critical and embarrassing, owing to the vacillating policy of the government he served, at one time encouraging the revolutionists, at another sending them greeting in the shape of shot and shell.

Mazzini (perhap next to Cavour the most remarkable Italian of the century) was the heart and soul of the movement for Italian liberation, and a more enthusiastic and self-devoted patriot no land could boast of. At that period he stood before the world as the first of Romans, and the charm of his society and the contagion of his enthusiasm were caught by the French minister, himself ever an enthusiast for liberty.

No man ever aw and conversed freely with Mazzini (as has the writer) without being impressed with the thorough sincerity and unselfish patriotism of the man, beside whom that soldier of fortune and filibuster Garibaldi was almost dwarfed into an adventurer. The broad open brow, the luminous eyes, the earnest intensity of look, the silvery persuasivenes of voice and speech, and the enthusiasm which glowed under all like a flame, made Mazzini an irresistible advocate with men of kindred natures. In the rôle he was then playing at Rome there was everything to assist these personal attributes. For whatever errors may be charged on Mazzini's later acts, when driven to be a plotter in exile, this Roman episode is luminous, and casts no shadow on his name.

The year 1848-49 was memorable as a year of national convulsions—of an upheaval of populations and crash of falling thrones. The Pope, who had commenced as a reformer, but turned into other paths, terrified at the disaffection of his people, fled from Rome in diguise, and left the Romans free to adopt what form of government they might prefer. The Pope's flight was accepted as an abdication, and on the 9th February, 1849, the Roman Parliament proclaimed Rome a republic. Mazzini was declared a Roman citizen, and made a member of the Assembly, and he forthwith hurried to Rome, where he soon was placed at the head of the republic as one of three Triumvirs. He at once prepared for war with Austria, flushed with her victory over Charles Albert at Novara. While they were organizing their forces to resist their avowed enemy, before a month had elaped, France, from whom they had every reason to expect aid, perfidiously sent an army, under General Qudinot, to crush the republic. Yet even against these fearful odds Mazzini inspired his people to resistance. He took the bold measure of assembling all the troops, defiling them in battalions before the palace of the Assembly, and put the quetion of peace or war to them. The universal shout of `War!' that rose from the ranks `drowned in an instant the timid doubts of their leaders,' to use his own language in narrating this event. Louis Napoleon was then President of the French Republic, and Italy never forgave him for this act, which he afterward strove to redeem. After two months' siege, during which time the Romans proved worthy of their old renown, the French gained possession of the heights dominating the city, and threatened to detroy it with their artillery, as they easily could have done. The Assembly, declaring further resistance to be impossible, called on the Triumvirate to treat for peace with the French general. This Mazzini refued to do, saying he `had been elected a Triumvir to defend, not destroy, the republic;' and, with his two colleagues, sent in his resignation.

It was at this critical period, when the army of France was sent to Rome, that Ferdinand de Lesseps showed the stuff that was in him. He, as minister of France at Rome, boldly took issue with the French ministry, and denounced the sin and shame of the bombardment of a sister republic, in violation of solemn pledges. He refused absolutely to have act or part in such proceedings, and finding his protest to the ministry and Council of State disregarded, resigned his position, and passed from the service to which he had devoted his life, rather than violate principle, truth and justice; for he surrendered not only his high position, but his diplomatic career at the same time, and met the denunciation not only of the ministers, but also of the National Assembly, for daring to run counter to the action of France. With the franknes and fearlessness of his nature, M. De Lesseps confronted his accusers and adversaries, and in a printed brochure of thirty-eight pages, under his own signature, dated 25th August, 1849, with merciless logic and irrefragable facts, vindicated himself, and hurled back the denunciations of his accusers in the cabinet and the Assembly.

That vindication (presented me by M. De Lesseps when he came on his new private mission to Egypt in 1854 to agitate the Suez Canal question) is now lying before me, and a few extracts from it will open a new page of Roman history as well as of personal biography. In this defense he convicts the ministry of falsehood and treachery, and furnishes a curious chapter of history, from extracts from notes daily jotted down by him from the 15th of May until his departure.

The pamphlet is divided into three parts: firstly, a reply to the ministry; secondly, appearance before the Council of State; thirdly, reponse to the report of the Council of State.

His defense commences thus: `The ministry which, after confiding to me, under circumstances of the most critical kind for its own existence, a mission bristling with difficulties, and which, its own peril passed, so easily abandoned me, wthout even deigning to examine into my acts, has also instigated public attacks on me from the highest national tribunal, before the Council of State, charged with the examination into my conduct, had even commenced its inquiry. I have been slow in using my right of self-defense, and I now do so with all reserve, moderation, and sincerity, as becomes a man who, through respect for public opinion and his own dignity, will not imitate the arts of his adversaries. Yet for this I am denounced as having taken too great a liberty. I am accused of insubordination; and because a simple statement of the facts lays bare the policy under which I have been so unreasonable as not to permit myself to be crushed silently, they again assail me with new blows—always in advance of an inquiry into the facts—in the meetings of the Legislative Assembly of the 6th and 7th of August. I shall therefore briefly respond to the later allegations of the ministry, and shall then show the character of the examination made by the Council of State, as well as its report, based thereon, which, by another peculiarity in this strange affair, was first made known to me through a publication in the official Moniteur of the 22d August.'

He commences by complaining of the use and falsification of a private letter addressed by him to M. Drouyn de Lhuys, his personal friend, former Minister of Foreign Affairs, by the then minister, who attempted to prove that this letter was the moving cause of the French occupation.

By a citation of dates M. De Lesseps proves the falsity of this statement, and at the same time reveals the remarkable fact that from the 10th May to the 1st of June he was left by the ministry without one word of instruction, or response to his repeated requests for such answer or instructions, were it but in the words `Yes' or `No' by telegram.

The ministry was silent, evidently intending to make their representative their scapegoat, should it be necessary for their own safety. But they found to their cost that their scapegoat had sharp horns, and they came badly damaged out of the conflict they had provoked. M. DeTocqueville and M. De Falloux were the chief assailants of M. De Lesseps in the Assembly, and to these gentlemen he pays his respects, politely proving their utter ignorance of the facts of the case on which they dogmatized so arrogantly.

`In my answers to an investigation which lasted four hours,' he goes on to say, `I have covered all the facts of the case, I have shown how impartially I judged the internal condition of Rome, absolutely free, as I was, of all political prejudice or private interest. Intercepted by the ministry at Paris a few days after my return from Madrid, on my way to Berne, my new post, I only accepted a temporary mission to Italy which was then offered me, and could have had no preconceived policy to carry out. My sole purpose was, if possible, to prevent a renewal of hostilities between the French forces and the Romans, and to avoid any misunderstandings between them. But chiefly to avoid the destruction of the Roman Republic by our arms, was the point on which my attention was fixed on leaving Paris.'

He proves that M. Drouyn de Lhuys, one of the cleverest heads in French diplomacy, was equally anxious to keep the peace with Rome, and placed him in relations with M. Accursi, Minister of the Interior at Rome—then an envoy to France—who was to meet him at Toulon, and furthermore that Drouyn de Lhuys placed him in immediate communication with Mazzini through a mutual friend, an Italian.

The `notes' of M. De Lesseps, referred to above, contain some curious facts. Among others, he cites the opinion of the captain of an American man-of-war, who, having visited the defenses, declared that it would require at least 30,000 or 40,000 men and a protracted siege to take the city. In this opinion our American was right, and Lord Napier, captain of the Bull-dog, expressed the same opinion. De Lesseps's opinion of the policy to be pursued is thus briefly sketched:

`It were unworthy of France, under the pretext of diputing Austrian influence in Italy, to charge herself with the odious task which the policy, natural tendencies, and interests of that power have devolved upon her. Austria has ever been better informed than we as to the opinions which constitute the strength of parties on the peninsula. She knows the horror inspired by the government of priests in the Roman mind, and would gladly see us charge ourselves with a restoration more political than religious, one greatly more desired by absolutism than by the Church.

`Should we seek to occupy Rome by force, without the papal sanction, we will be greatly embarrassed. Certainly our soldiers can triumph over mere material difficulties, but that is the smallest consideration. For should we crush the republic, the Pope will not return under the conditions we must impose upon him. M. D'Harcourt agrees with me on this point. We should therefore be forced into a permanent occupation. We would finish by losing our influence over all parties, and forfeiting all the objects of our expedition. Our efforts and expenditures will end in uniting against us the passions of the whole Italian people.'

These statements M. D'Harcourt confirmed at the Council of State, of which he was a member, expressing astonishment that M. De Lesseps should be blamed for conduct of which the Council had previously approved, as he personally knew. But his opinion was overruled, although, as the testimony of an able and eminent statesman, it carries great weight with it, and makes the vindication conclusive.

In the third division of M. De Lesseps's plea there occur some reflections on the `theory of the infallibility of instructions,' which are ingenious and forcible. He says: `The theory of the infallibility of instructions inaugurated by the report of the Council of State overturns all received ideas on diplomacy, making an ambassador but an automaton, without the power of initiating anything, and binding him with a chain which prevents his making any movement under circumstances unforeseen, or not literally explained by his government in advance. For my own part, while insisting that neither in letter nor spirit did I act against any instructions, I yet can not admit the doctrine, and proceed to lay down the true principles from indisputable authorities.' After which he quotes from Marten's Diplomatic Manual to sustain his position, as well as the instructions of M. Drouyn de Lhuys, which say, `Your enlightened judgment must guide you, according to the circumstances; for to make your instructions more precise we should require detailed information as to the condition of the Roman States, inaccessible to us;' and he triumphantly adds, `Must, therefore, all that was said to me by M. Drouyn de Lhuys, by M. Odilon Barrot, and by the President of the Republic [Louis Napoleon], count for nothing, as weighed against this dictum of the Council of State?' He then quotes largely from the declarations of the Minister of Foreign Affairs, in his proclamations, and explanations to Parliament, as to the scope and object of the Oudinot expedition, one of which gives him discretionary power, thus: `As to the real purpose and scope of this expedition, to preserve them intact in spite of all eventualities, by decision of the cabinet we have sent to Rome an envoy who enjoys our entire confidence, and who has proven under difficult circumstances that he would ever advocate the cause of liberty and humanity. M. De Lesseps has been chosen as that envoy.'

The justification of this eulogium by the minister thus sent was the moving cause of his withdrawal from the diplomatic service. He would palter neither with truth nor justice; he would not lend himself to a policy equally cowardly and cruel; nor sanction the crushing out of a young republic whose baptism of blood and tears appealed to the sympathy of every enlightened mind and generous heart in Europe. Under the timid and truckling policy of the then French cabinet the crime against the Italian people was perpetrated, equally against policy and principle, and years since Ferdinand de Lesseps stood justified before France and the world for the attitude he then assumed and the predictions he then made. It is a curious fact that Louis Napoleon but ten years later, when Emperor, should have taken M. De Lesseps into his confidence, and exerted all the weight of his then powerful influence in behalf of the Suez Canal scheme, essentially aiding in its speedy execution.

Equally curious is it to speculate on the consequences that might have resulted to Mr. De Lesseps and the world had his government not disapproved of his action at Rome, and had he continued in his diplomatic career. For when he came to seek that concession in 1854 he was upward of fifty years old—an age in which few men change the whole direction of their thoughts and labors, although it can not be doubted that his diplomatic training aided greatly in his successful prosecution of his work. For the natural difficulties in cutting through that narrow isthmus of sand were as nothing to the international rivalries and jealousies to be removed before spade or dredging-machine could be set to work efficiently. The Suez Canal had to be cut as much with tongue and pen as with pick and shovel, and to this work the ever-ready tongue and pen of the ex-diplomate were invaluable adjuncts. Like Cleopatra, `age can not wither him, Nor custom stale his infinite variety.'

Although past the allotted Scriptural term of man's life, M. De Lesseps is as youthful in body, brain, and heart as men twenty years his juniors, and the charm of his manner and presence and vivacity as unflagging as when he went on that mission to Rome just thirty years ago. The only indications of the touch of time are to be found in the plentiful snowy hair which crowns a vivacious countenance, a healthy complexion, and a lustrous eye. With a family of small children clustering around him, and a lovely young wife, he seems to have renewed his youth by some process like that which Bulwer assigned to Zanoni; and even now, like Alexander, is sighing, not for new worlds to conquer, but for new canals to cut in Greece, in Africa, and in America.

One curious trait of the man, from youth to age, has been his utter incapacity for concealment of his plans or purposes, or indirection of any kind. He has always taken the world into his confidence, and gone to his object straight as an arrow to its mark, with a conviction of his own success always which has greatly assisted in his attaining it. The frankness with which he admits his changes of conviction is a key-note to his character. In the defense from which I have been quoting he says: `I can not see why I should be blamed for not having persevered in following up an erroneous appreciation of the situation. No man is infallible, nor is there any representative man who does not find good cause under altered circumstances to rectify his original impressions, without incurring the reproach of inconsistency.'

But space will not allow an extended notice of the personal traits of a man who has stamped himself on his era, and whose career, like a bright sunset, throws as brilliant hues over the heavens as when it rose up to public view more than a quarter of a century ago.