earnest student of ecclesiastical annals Gieseler is | bayou, from the French; calaboose, from the Spansurpassed by no modern historian as a trust-wor- ish. 2. Words to express new ideas, growing out thy and impartial, if not an attractive expositor of the peculiarities of our situation, like caucus, of the succession of events in the development of presidential, from our political institutions; associthe Church. He is never enthusiastic, never kin- ational, to fellowship, from our ecclesiastical instidles into a pious glow, never betrays a vital sym-tutions; and diggings, betterments, from our condipathy with the glories of saintship or martyrdom, tion as a new country. 3. Miscellaneous, like back and contemplates the progress of Christian institu- and forth for backward and forward, from phrases tions rather in their bearing on secular politics which have become obsolete in England; to wilt, than as the product and exponent of the spiritual from words that are merely provincial in England; experience of humanity. But he is always con- publishment, requirement, formed by adding the scientious in his narrative, tracing the minute con- French suffix ment to legitimate verbs; variate, nection of events with wonderful patience, and pre- and obligate, to fill the gap between two approved senting the solution of many complicated historical words, as vary and variation, oblige and obligation; problems with equal sagacity of judgment and sim- compound terms for which the English have a difplicity of expression. The most striking feature of ferent compound, like bank-bill for bank-note, bookhis work, however, is the wealth of erudition which store for bookseller's-shop; certain colloquial phrases, he has embodied in his notes. They consist main- like to cave in (to give up), to fork over (to pay ly of quotations from contemporaneous authorities, over), and others. The whole volume is recomselected often from sources equally rare and valu- mended by its simplicity and completeness. It is able, often presenting details of curious interest, founded on the most trustworthy English authoriand always appropriate in application and preg- ties, on philosophical analogies, the best literary nant in instruction. The general reader will no and polite usage, and American common sense. doubt find the copious illustrations of Neander and (Published by Harper and Brothers.) the pithy statements of Hase more in accordance with his taste; but the votary of profound and substantial theological learning will delight to add to his stores from the large and almost exhaustless repository of these erudite volumes.

First Book of Natural l'hilosophy and Astronomy, by WILLIAM A. NORTON. (Published by A. S. Barnes and Co.) The rudiments of natural science are here illustrated in a series of well-devised questions and answers. The catechetical form has been adopted, as better suited to class recitation than the usual didactic form, especially for young pupils; and although objected to by many judicious teachers, is managed by Professor Norton in a manner to relieve it of some of its chief difficulties. His work has evidently been prepared with great care, and presents ample claims on the attention of instructors.

Scenes of Clerical Life, by GEORGE ELIOT. A reprint of the remarkable stories which excited so much interest on their original appearance in Blackwood's Magazine. They present a variety of scenes drawn from everyday rural life in England, and de

New York during the Last Half Century, by JOHN W. FRANCIS, M.D., LL.D. The exuberant reminiscences of a rich experience are here lavishly poured forth by the world-renowned Nestor of the medical profession in this city. Dr. Francis has happily availed himself of the occasion of inaugurating the new edifice of the Historical Society to bring forward many of the worthies of the olden time, in a series of lifelike pictures, which reproduce in brilliant colors the fading realities of the past. No portion of society escapes the touch of his comprehensive pencil. His portraitures embrace distinguished men of every profession, pur-picted with never-failing vivacity, delicate satire, suit, and calling in life. Concerning many names which are known to the present generation only by tradition, he relates a variety of original anecdotes illustrative of their character, and presenting many curious traits of strongly-marked individuality. The lover of antiquarian lore and personal sketches will find an ample feast in the lively narratives of our time-honored chronicler.

Professor FOWLER has conferred an excellent service on the cause of education by preparing an abridgment of his large work on The English Language, intended as a practical manual for the use of schools and families. It contains a summary view of the historical elements and relations of language in general-an exposition of the stages and periods of the English language-its phonetic principles, orthographical forms, and its various grammatical characteristics. Several sections of the work have been contributed by Professor G. W. Gibbs, of Yale College, whose studies in the department of comparative philology entitle the productions of his pen on this subject to peculiar respect. One of his papers presents an admirable classification of the different American dialects, which vary from the prevailing use or standard authorities of pure idiomatic English. These are divided into: 1. Words borrowed from other languages with which the English language has come in contact in this country, like succotash, moccasin, from the Indian; boss, from the Dutch; crevasse,

and irresistible appeals to the sense both of the comic and the pathetic. (Published as No. 208 of. Harper's Library of Select Novels.)

Annals of the American Pulpit, by WILLIAM B. SPRAGUE, D.D. Vols. III. and IV. (Published by Robert Carter and Brothers.) Two more goodly volumes of this great biographical work are a signal illustration of the zeal which has prompted the enterprise, and of the vigor and fidelity with which it has thus far been executed. The present volumes are devoted to ministers of the Presbyterian Church, including, of course, copious notices of such prominent divines as Dr. Archibald Alexander, Dr. Miller, President Stanhope Smith, President Green, President Lindsley, Dr. Mason, Dr. Romeyn, Dr. Rice, Dr. Kollok, Dr. Palmer, Dr. Spencer, besides a great number of honored pastors whose names have obtained a less extensive celebrity. The annals of the Presbyterian Church are rich in subjects of biography. They comprise many sturdy pioneers of the faith in the heroic age of American history, numerous specimens of a commanding individualism, in some instances not without a certain quaint and erratic stamp, and not a few representatives of profound scholastic culture and noble pulpit eloquence. Dr. Sprague is to be congratulated on the successful prosecution, hitherto, of his arduous undertaking, and the public on the possession of an admirable monument of biographical research and catholic impartiality.

PANICS

In regard to the causes of what in after years will be known as The Great Panic, it seems to us that those which have been explored by the economist are merely subsidiary to those which force themselves upon the attention of the moralist. The laws of trade were doubtless violated; but the violation of the laws of trade was preceded by a violation of the laws of mind, and a violation of the laws of conscience. Political economy, in its appeals to the industrial and commercial classes, proceeds on the ground that selfishness may be intelligent, and avarice judicious; but selfishness and avarice have an instinctive antipathy to the general principles which promote self-interest by cooling the fever of its desires, by bringing its wishes into some harmony with its capacities, and by showing the limitations which reason imposes on its greed. The month which witnessed the anarchy and chaos of our industrial system found us plentifully gifted with selfishness and avarice, but found us deficient in the power of intelligent action. The characteristic of real intelligence is the capacity to discern objective facts and laws; but intelligence must feel the pressure of some moral impulse, in order to escape from the self-delusions which obstruct the clear view of objects which are independent of self. "Poetry," says Lord Bacon, accommodates the shows of things to the desires of the mind;" and certainly, in this sense, we could have boasted many poets among our men of industrial enterprise, had the "desires" been as poetical as the "accommodation" of facts was complete.

ICS AND INVESTMENTS.-The financial | hit upon no more felicitous method of wreaking storm which of late swept so pitilessly over the their wrath than by burning all his bills they could commercial world has, like all other calamities, find in circulation. If the crisis was produced by produced reflection in producing ruin. Amidst recklessness, it was met by timidity and folly. Inthe wreck of their property men began to meditate deed, one of the most mortifying characteristics upon the laws of trade, and, if they could not pay of a panic is the feebleness of thought and nervetheir creditors, they were at least singularly fruit- lessness of will it reveals in those respectable meful in reasons why such payment was impossible. diocrities who occupy the summit of financial soA note of hand falling due at a certain day was the ciety, and who convert the storm into a hurricane occasion, not of the disbursement of money, but of by refusing to face it resolutely from the first. profound speculations on the complications of the Currency Question and the fluctuations of values. Merchants became political economists, not when their obligations were incurred, but when they matured; and the connection between debtor and creditor assumed the character of an edifying interchange of philosophic thought, in which they were mutually improved, instead of being a cold and harsh relation of profit and loss. As nearly all creditors were likewise debtors, and as nearly all debtors were likewise creditors, the transition from mercenary to meditative relations between men of business was effected without that profuse expenditure of profane language which in ordinary times vulgarizes the passage from facts to ideas. It was seen that to take legal means to enforce the payment of debts would be, simply, to transfer the property that remained-if such a thing as property really existed-into the hands of lawyers, and as law is made by mutual assent, it was by mutual assent suspended. Meanwhile all the ethical and theological maxims relating to the evanescent nature of worldly goods were hunted out from the innermost recesses of memory, brightened into epigrams, and tossed about as good jokes from the banker who could not pay his bills to the merchant who could not pay his banker. "Base is the slave who pays!" was no longer a rhetorical flourish of Ancient Pistol, but a settled principle of modern finance. Property, deified but a short time before, was now a broken and prostrate idol. From being the one solid and permanent thing in the universe, it became the most visionary and elusive of all objects of contemplation. It was ten thousand millions of dollars a month ago-riant, exulting, glorying in its strength-and now it hid its face in shame before the abhorred spectacle of debt. The feeling of poverty shivered in every heart; and no person, in the skepticism provoked by the tumbling of values, had the impudence to call himself rich. Wealth, indeed, was an obsolete idea. Men eyed their debts with a comical horror, and the shriveled assets for which the debts were incurred with a comical contempt. The real sufferers and grum-mercial revulsion has been a wholesale confiscation blers were those capitalists who had lent but had not borrowed, and it was but natural that disappointed greed should prevent them from viewing the matter in its wider relations and higher philosophical aspects. The fabric of our splendid prosperity rested, in a great degree, on credit. This, argued the debtor class, ought to have been known by those who supplied the credit. But credit, as Mirabeau says, is "Suspicion asleep." One fine autumnal day the fiend woke up; confidence fled at his first withering glance; each man believed at once in universal depravity, with but one honorable exception-himself; and persons reputed wise and cautious but a day before, forthwith acted in the spirit of those Hibernian thinkers on currency who, in their rage against a Dublin banker, could

Some thinkers on the subject find consolation in the thought that there has been no absolute destruction of wealth by the panic, but only a downfall of values. The injury to individuals, however, has been the same as if wealth, and not values, had been destroyed. A government which should violently take the property of some portions of the community and transfer it to other portions, would not destroy any of the wealth of that community, though such an act of monstrous wrong would justify a revolution. The practical result of our com

of property, which, had it been done by the Government, would have led to civil war; for it is not so much the characteristic of a good government that it protects the property of a nation, as that it protects the property of a nation by protecting its individual possessors. It is frightful to think of the number of individuals who have seen the hard earnings of a life of labor melt and mysteriously disappear in a single day, under the operation of merciless laws, which avenged on the whole community the disregard of their monitions and menaces by the improvident, ignorant, and knavish portion of it. The average honesty and intelligence of the country is also satirized in the indifference with which this individual spoliation is commonly regarded. In situations of financial re

sponsibility, incompetency is a moral offense, and | deed, principles level to trade are clearly perceived its good intentions are proverbially the pavement only by minds which survey them from a higher of hell; the wrong man in the right place is the level. Pure selfishness never generalizes. Its plague and curse of modern society; but when guiding idea is best expressed in the imperfect Enrecklessness and greed are united with incompeten-glish of the French coxcomb, "Every man for mycy, the wholesome wrath of all good men should be self." roused against the monstrous combination. Yet We, therefore, are reluctantly compelled to beevery panic in the money market is a revelation lieve that the notorious abuses of our credit sysof presumptuous folly wielding and wasting the for- tem, the frightful commercial revulsions they octunes of credulous and trusting prudence. Whole- casion, and the agrarian laws they practically insale robberies, which no professional thief would augurate, will continue to afflict the country as ever have the opportunities of perpetrating, are long as so much absurd and mischievous importranked among the necessary incidents and risks ance is attached to the idea of wealth, and as long of capital invested in corporations. Haydon, the as it is pursued with such ravenous intensity. The painter, tells us that, in one of his many Micawber- desire of wealth is the dominant desire of the larger like financial entanglements, he applied to Coutts, portion of our population; a desire not so much to the rich banker, for a loan of four hundred pounds. create wealth by industrial genius as to get it by The banker, though he seems to have apprehended speculative ingenuity. The morbid phenomena that the investment would be a permanent one, presented in our world of business only embody in gratified the martyr of debt and "High Art" by palpable facts qualities of our national character. graciously assenting to his request. As the paint- The intellect of the country is under the dominion er was leaving the house, he noticed the footman of a low order of motives, which prevent it from spurning from the door a pauper who came to beg exercising the higher functions of intellect. Smart for bread. The supplicant for four hundred pounds men push themselves into the places of able men; was received as a distinguished visitor by the mas- and their only notion of progress is speed which ter of the house, in the gilded parlor; the suppli- trusts in luck, with no discernment of paths, and cant for a penny was hooted by the master's flunky no foresight of the goal. Now, business can not from the door-step into the street. This is the type be honestly and intelligently conducted when it of the American mode of dealing with big and litis conducted under the simple impulse of getting tle thieves.

so flashy and superficial is much of the mind engaged in trade, that it lacks thought sharply to discriminate between acuteness and knavery, a wise reticence and direct falsehood. Half of the light and airy swindlers whose schemes of business rapine end in failure, are unconscious of the true nature of their misdeeds, and are really surprised at the hard names sputtered out by the gruff honesty of the old fogies of commerce, when their equivocal modes of obtaining money are brought to light. At the worst, they probably conceived their creditors would indulge in language no harsher than that in which little Isaac, in the Duenna, chuckles over his sharp practice: "Roguish, perhaps, but keen-devilish keen!"

money at any rate. That honesty is the best polThere are some persons who think that the ras-icy is a principle too large and general to influcalities and follies of our business are referable to ence the bargain or speculation of the hour; and our paper currency-especially to bank bills of low denominations. In answer to this it might be said that in Hamburg, where they have a specie currency-in England, where they have no bank bills under five pounds-some of the worst abuses of the credit system have been developed. The most superficial examination of our own credit system will prove that bank bills form but a small portion of it. We have lately seen a careful estimate of the losses by the failures in the United States since the month of September, and the amount is considerably larger than the whole paper currency of the country. It is, indeed, but natural that men and corporations should issue bills payable on demand with more caution than bills payable in six or nine" months. We doubt if excessive credits are produced by a paper currency, or could be prevented by a gold currency. We doubt if any law could be framed which would meet the evils and abuses of the credit system. As long as capitalists think they can make their capital remunerative and reproductive by giving credits-as long as borrowers think they can use capital profitably-so long will credits be given and received. The moment that capital becomes redundant new enterprises start up, more than sufficient to absorb it, and the brilliancy of their pretensions blinds avarice to their folly.

A person once asked Horne Tooke, the celebrated writer of political libels, how far a man could libel the Government and escape being hanged? "I have passed my life," replied Tooke, "in trying to find that out." So each man of business, in our country, seems to learn political economy, not through Adam Smith and Mill, but through experience of protested notes and ruinous speculations; and economic principles, of the most elementary character, are frequently purchased at the expense of whole fortunes. It costs some men a hundred thousand dollars to learn the relations which subsist between supply and demand. In

And if wealth and poverty are respectively the heaven and hell of our concrete religion, why wonder that men will do any thing to obtain the one and escape from the other? "Worth makes the man," says a character in one of Bulwer's plays; "and the more a man is worth the worthier he is." Sydney Smith once declared that, in England, "poverty is infamous;" and in the United States, where man was supposed to have achieved some victory "over his accidents," the accident of property domineers in the public mind over the substance of mind and virtue. To be poor is to be a " 'poor devil." It is pathetic to observe the moral prostration of our free and independent citizens before some affluent boor or well-invested booby; or to watch the complacent simper that comes over the face of scornful beauty as she listens to the imbecilities chattered by some weak stripling of fortune who presents to the eye of science nothing but "a watery smile and educated whisker." These follies proceed from no respect for what the rich are, but from a worship of what they possess. Indeed, the worship of the wealth is often combined with a secret contempt, hatred, or envy, of the possessor. Property makes a distinction between man

The idealists have convicted the

materialists of mistaking the shifting sand for the immovable rock, and it is now their turn to dogmatize from the throne of common sense. Facts have demonstrated two of their propositions, which are most repugnant to selfishness and evident to reason: first, that the commercial world being a unit, shocks in one quarter are felt in all quarters, and that the whole body is made to suffer for the stupidities and rascalities of any of its individual members; second, that the good of all is bound up in the real good of each; and now, after thus inthe general interest, and placed political economy on its true foundation in the Christian religion, the idealists can further show the perfect practical sagacity of their great principle, that material possessions lack all the elements of permanency, certainty, and satisfying content which inhere in spiritual possessions.

We think the most rapid and superficial survey of the things in which men invest, and in which they are invested, will prove the proposition. In regard to the darling object to which American

and man as arbitrary and artificial as aristocratic | abstractions. privilege; and our people feel that the doctrine of equality-the doctrine that one man is as good as another can only be realized by striving to make one man as rich as another. For one person who pursues wealth as an end, from the impulse of avarice, there are hundreds who pursue it as a means, from the impulses of vanity, sensuality, egotism, and the desire to make a good appearance. If the capitalist asserts himself socially as an aristocrat, the democrat trades recklessly on what he borrows from the capitalist in order to be as good an aristocrat as he. A few affluent families, composed mis-dicating the identity of individual interests with cellaneously of millionaires vulgar and millionaires refined, of millionaires intelligent and millionaires stupid, combine together, and impudently attempt to confine the meaning of "good society" to the possession of a splendid establishment in a fashionable street, with a large income to support it; and it is curious to see with what ludicrous simplicity their pretensions are admitted, and with what wear and tear of brain and conscience, with what sacrifices of health, comfort, and honor, thousands aim to qualify themselves for entrance into that terrestrial paradise. Under this system the style of liv-energy and intelligence are directed, the obtaining ing quickly becomes of more importance than the pleasure of living or the object of living. Life means the appearances of life. It means houses, equipages, dress, dinners, a crowd of servants, reception into the awful company of fops and belles -every thing but human souls. A higher lifeslightly changed from the definition of the idealist -means a life exalted from West Broadway to the Fifth Avenue. Without ten thousand a year it is impossible to be and know ladies and gentlemen. Existence is fretted away in desperate attempts to make it splendid, conspicuous, and uncomfortable; and after the object is reached, it is found to be a stupendous imposture. As regards any satisfaction in life, it is much better to adopt the theory of that unsophisticated mechanic who asserted that he was as rich as the richest man in town, and supported his assertion by this train of argument. The rich man, he said, had only what he wanted, and he had the same. In regard to luxuries, he doubted if the rich man could claim any superiority; "for at his house they had dough-nuts for dinner every day, whether they had company or not." The ideal of good living may not have been high, but there was something sublime in the content.

of property and social station, we have already shown its transitory and visionary character. All of us have seen men go up and down with Erie and Michigan Southern, with Cumberland Coal and Cotton, until the doubt insinuated itself whether they were not mere phantasms to which stocks and stones gave all the appearance of reality they possessed. Soul, manhood, vitality, dropped out of them as Erie fell twenty per cent., or Cotton tumbled from its proud eminence of price and place. This fact shows that while these men were cunningly investing in Erie and Cotton, Erie and Cotton were far more cunningly investing in them. To say that they became bankrupt is not to express the whole tragedy of their lives. In the pursuit of material objects they were insensibly building up their characters, and becoming what they pursued. Mentally and morally they were "breeding in and in" with the transactions of their business. When they failed, their bankruptcy was not merely a bankruptcy of the purse but a bankruptcy of nature. Their souls were insolvent. They consented to be nothing in themselves in order to be every thing by the grace of the objects in which they dealt, and when these last proved deceptions they literally had nothing they could call their own. Wall Street bowed before them for the wealth which was in them. When the wealth vanished, neither civility nor servility could detect any thing in what was left to repay the trouble of a nod or a cringe. "Fifth Avenue made them members of its society for their establishments. When these came under the auctioneer's hammer, no social qualities were left which "good company," even by the aid of a microscope, could recognize. The universe, it is true, was still full of objects which wealth could neither purchase nor take away, but in them our ruined millionaires had never thought of investing any portion of their souls. We might have pardoned their venturing their whole fortunes in two or three securities, but it is difficult to tolerate their venturing also in them their whole natures, with a like oversight of the prudence which keeps on the safe side of the world's chances by a wise distribution of its resources. When we contrast the attitude of resolute scorn which these men formerly assumed toward the highest objects of human con

Now one great result of such a panic as we have lately witnessed is, that it disenchants the mind of the illusions created by the hope of wealth, and the vanities created by the ambition for social position. People, at least sensible people, learn what substances they are and what "shadows they pursue.' Events preach to them truths which the most persuasive preachers would fail to convey. And among these truths there is none more important, or more fertile of sobering reflections, than the truth that what a man invests in trade and industry, in railroads and manufactures, is not merely his labor, or talent, or money, but himself; and that property, resting as it does on a deceitful basis of fluctuating values, is among the least solid and permanent of all the things in which a man can invest himself. This proposition would have been scouted as transcendental a year ago; but within a few months the most practical of men have been compelled to admit that wealth, with all its bullying solidity of appearance, has proved the most visionary, elusive, and transcendental of

cern with their present forlorn aspect, we can but | That his qualifications for the office are undoubtmurmur pathetically, "O Bottom! how art thou invested!"

tion.

But investments of the kind we are now considering, namely, investments of human nature, are not merely made in property; they are also made in politics and party, and when made in politics and party they rest on a foundation as insecure, and are liable to end in bankruptcies as fatal, as when made in business. Investment of the soul in politics is often investment in the changing caprice of the hour-in rage, envy, hatred, disappointed ambition, in lies, heartache, hypocrisy, and self-decepThe man is possessed by the delusions and passions, instead of possessing the realities, of political power. Even if he be so fortunate as to obtain an office, he finds that he has to undergo a larger amount of vituperation for a smaller amount of money than the holder of any other kind of office. No president of a railroad or manufacturing company would consent, for ten thousand a year, to be the subject of so much public abuse as is lavished on many a postmaster whose salary is hardly a thousand a year. Few voters will take the trouble to perform the necessary business of a political organization, but they are all willing to indulge in more or less contempt for those who do-for those who do the "dirty work," as they are too fond of calling the work which is done for their profit and success. There is enough sympathy for broken-down merchants, but who has any sympathy for a brokendown politician? The orange is thoroughly squeezed -who heeds the peel that is cast into the street?

ed, the peculiar style of his eloquence abundantly proves, but we would respectfully suggest to him the remote chance that some three or four millions of his countrymen may not be sufficiently familiar with his claims to select him for the post.

In regard to all the lower forms of politics, we much doubt the wisdom of the man who invests his nature in their perilous chances and changes, But politics have their higher ambitions and more splendid rewards-those which inflame the passions and stimulate the intellect of the statesman. Even here it is dangerous to invest in any thing lower than patriotism; for patriotism affords the only real compensations for that "laborious, invidious, closely-watched slavery which is mocked with the name of Power." It is the misfortune of the United States that few of our eminent statesmen can be content to serve their country and gain an honorable fame in those situations which, though really of the first, are seemingly of secondary importance. As Representatives and Senators, the clear perception of their duties is disturbed by a beatific vision of the Presidential Chair. This magnificent delusion, created by a visionary hope, is too often the bauble in which they invest their hearts and souls. Disappointed in that, they are stripped of all that makes life worth living. Now, for the real purposes of ambition and patriotism, the office of Senator is a nobler one than the office of President; and a Senator is certain to be an honester, wiser, and braver man, more likely to prove himself qualified for the Presidency, provided the hope of It may also be doubted if the investment of the being President has not warped his convictions and brain in partisan catchwords and declamation is a complicated his patriotism with intrigue. But rub judicious investment of the mental powers. No off the varnish which gives such a mischievous more efficacious mode of dissipating the mind from shine to the White House, and to the eye of reason a force into a vaporous phantom has ever been de- the office of President has little in it to inflame an vised than the mode of cramming the minds of the honorable ambition. Events daily tend to make young with political phrases, and then irritating the President little more than the Distributor-Gentheir sensibilities to that pitch of enthusiasm which eral of the spoils of office, and for every office he urges them to "utter all themselves into the air." gives he turns ten sycophants into nine personal The tendency of such speechifying is to make the enemies and one lukewarm friend. Lord Broughmind incapable of observing a fact, analyzing a com- am, in a passage black with bile, but which should bination, grasping a principle, or thinking closely, be deeply meditated by every aspirant for execuaccurately, and consecutively upon any subject. tive office, has shown what a charming and digni The vagabond thoughts and shreds of thought, deck-fied occupation that is which attempts to feed the ed out in faded finery selected from the "old clo'" of eloquence, reel from the orator's lips in jubilant defiance of order and sequence. Or, to change the figure, the brain is inflated to that extent which justifies the hope that the defects of a logic of wind will be overlooked in a rhetoric of whirlwind, and that the absence of ideas will hardly be noted in the ter-tues to which such hateful qualities stand opposed. rific clatter of words. Such are the characteristics of many of those astonishing displays of juvenile political eloquence, which should be witnessed, not by citizens desirous of obtaining some facts and principles to guide them in voting sensibly and honestly, but by an audience composed of ladies whose lips are engaged in dissolving the organized perfume of peppermints, and gentlemen whose teeth are busy in penetrating into those appetizing "Aids to Reflection" which lie hid in the shell of the peanut. It is next to impossible ever to reclaim a young man who has once accustomed his mind to think vagrantly in order that he may spout "eloquently." But we still may be permitted to hope that every young person who has made a foolish speech, and been applauded therefor by his party, will consent, for his own good, to abandon his intention of being President of the United States.

hunger for place. Writing from his own experience of office-hunters, he says that "no one who has long been the dispenser of patronage among large bodies of his fellow-citizens can fail to see infinitely more numerous instances of sordid, selfish, greedy, ungrateful conduct, than of the vir

Daily examples come before him of the most unfeeling acrimony toward competitors, the most farfetched squeamish jealousy of conflicting claims— unblushing falsehood in both its branches, boasting and detraction-grasping selfishness in both kinds, greedy pursuit of men's own bread, and cold calculating on others' blood—the fury of disappointment when that has not been done which it was impossible to do-swift oblivion of all that has been granted-unreasonable expectation of more only because much has been given-not seldom favors repaid with hatred and ill-treatment, as if by this unnatural course the account might be settled between gratitude and pride-such are the secrets of the human heart which power soon discloses to its possessor: add to these that which, however, deceives no one-the never-ending hypocrisy of declaring that whatever is most eagerly