prize and the temptation of worldly and time-serv- | men, learned men, better men every way than their ing clergymen, it is hard to say which would be censor-and yet we can not help distrusting the wisworse, the heathenism of the exclusion, or the blas-dom of the proceeding. The malign, cunning, sneerphemy of the observance. We would touch lightly ing infidel might well ask-What is this professed upon this point, but there are other cases where Christianity which is thus to be hunted out like a light charity must be strained to the utmost to invent under a bed or a bushel? What kind of professors even the semblance of truthfulness. When we hear are those who, instead of being known by their acts, of the political caucus being opened by prayer-when must have the census of their unknown statistics we call to mind the long course of selfish, dark in- so laboriously taken? The discovery is all the trigue that has preceded some one of these patriotic more remarkable from the strange coincidences it gatherings-when we think of the train of manoeuvres brings to light. How comes it that the votes of that have attended its organization, and then that these followers of Christ should ever be found in some clergyman has been invited to invoke Heav- such exact correspondence with certain party conen's guidance for men who have come there with nections? No exceptions here. There they stand minds made up to follow the guidance alone of their ever, rank and file, column against column, like own corrupt party interests-when we read the pieces upon a chess-board-men of the same reformal resolution by which he has been graciously ligious profession in this strange and unaccountable requested to implore divine illumination for a body relation to each other-the same steady disagreewhose whole machinery of action has been planned ment with their Christian brethren of the opposite by "the wisdom that is of the earth," if not from political party, the same unvarying agreement with below the earth, and which does not expect to be the men of the world who belong to their own. influenced in one single vote or measure by "the What explanation can be given of this remarkable wisdom which is from above"-no language can phenomenon? Should not religious sympathy somecharacterize too severely the profanity of the whole times snap the political cord? Are both parties alproceeding. The political trifling with the highest ways in the right? Or is there some evidence here earthly interests of mankind, bad as that may be, is of an allegiance which is stronger, if not higher, not so bad as this direct insult to Heaven. The than the spiritual? clergyman--honest and pious man-does doubtless fancy that he is doing great service to the cause of religion. He is filled with hope and triumph, perhaps, at the thought of the worldly powers thus seeking aid of the spiritual kingdom. But alas, it all contributes to the movement of which we have been speaking. The spoil-hunting faction has felt the need of no divine guidance, has cared for no divine guidance, has received no divine guidance; but another step has been taken in that movement which would make the spiritual subservient to the secular, and the chief value of the Church to consist in its political utility. No clergyman should ever officiate clerically in such a caucus, until he has some reason to believe that its after-scenes will not be in most direct contrast with its religious initiation.

Akin to this is the practice of obtaining testimonials from the great men at Washington to the truth and value of "our holy religion." It is not long since a tract was published entirely made up of such matters. We had the opinion of Cass, and Everett, and Douglass-although of this we are not quite certain-and Seward, and Sumner, and Clayton, and Benton, if we are not mistaken, that the Bible was true, that Christianity was a most useful institution, and the "foundation of our liberties." Now we would not say a word against all or any of the very respectable and distinguished gentlemen whose names have been mentioned. But then, again, the questions will come up, What is the real value of such testimony? Toward which side-the supremacy of the Church or the world-is the real tendency of the proceeding by which it is obtained? Our clerical friends will bear with us, if we point It is gathered for the sake of the young, to strengthen out some other cases which, in our editorial judgment, them in their faith. But does it not really argue furnish illustrations of the same tendency. Too distrust? Can there be true confidence in a note much importance is attached to mere religious pro- which has to be strengthened by so many and such fession in our public men. From the way in which endorsements? With all respect for the persons it is sometimes treated in our religious newspapers, named, their testimony is not to be compared, for it would really seem as though they regarded it as real value, with other that can be obtained from a boon to Christianity that it should be professed some of the obscurest walks of life. What is this by a member of Congress, or the Governor of a to that witness of the power of Christianity which State. Above all, that a President should show a man may find, if he seeks for it, in the humblest respect to religion, is thought worthy of the most Christian who ever taught in a Sabbath-school, or grateful acknowledgment. The testimony of so told his experience in a Methodist class-meeting? great a man as he must surely be, is certainly in- Do our young men want testimonies? Let them valuable. That he should maintain a devout atti-read the history and martyrology of the Church. We tude during the service, should clearly pronounce the responses, or should actually stand up during the whole of the prayer, are facts worthy to be trumpeted throughout the land, as full of hope for the progress and triumph of the Gospel.

say again, we would not disparage these namesbut "what is the chaff to the wheat?" What are all these, and ten thousand more like them, to one life like that of Paul, or Augustin, or Luther, or Fenelon, or Ken, or Wesley, or Edwards? Ay, but these were professed theologians; we want something which shall operate more powerfully on the

A few years ago we well recollect reading, in one of our religious papers, a letter from a correspondent in Washington, containing a statement of the mem-young heart, because coming from men in the secubers of Congress who were also members of the Church. The writer had obtained his information from the most reliable sources; and it was doubtless thought that the publication would do great good to the cause of Christianity. We doubt not the perfect purity of motive which influenced the editor and his correspondent. They were good men, intelligent

lar ways of life, and who are therefore the more impartial witnesses. It comes then to this-and this is the sophism which such teaching would put at the commencement of a religious course-the casual endorsement of a worldly politician, even granting it all supposable purity of motive, is worth more, because more disinterested, than that of one who

has given his whole life, and perhaps a martyr death, enthusiasm. It is the same feeling which has led to the truth which he professes.

to that most false position that the moral power of the clergy would be increased, the more they mingled in the world, and took part in all secular movements.

Many who are tending to these views, would still retain, in some sense, the idea of a special mission. Others have arrived at so transcendent a rationalism that they can afford utterly to discard the thought. All men are inspired, all days are alike religious, all life is faith, all acts are worship, all emotion is prayer, all truth is holy-science is Christianity, all conceivable measures of social reform are Christianity, political economy is Christianity-the man who lectures on trade, or astronomy, or the "moral significance of the Crystal Palace," is preaching the Gospel as truly as ever Paul preached it at Corinth, or Xavier in the Indies, or Whitfield among the colliers of England. And yet some of these men have no hesitation in suffering themselves to be styled Reverend,

Christianity, we may well believe, had suffered some deterioration in the days of Constantine. There was more of the worldly in the Church than in some of the preceding centuries. But what would we think, should we read in authentic Church history that the pious people and clergy of those days were in the habit of seeking testimonials to the truth and utility of their religion from Roman Senators, or Roman Prætors, or Roman Generals? In view of such modern practices, we find an argument for the truth of revelation a thousand times stronger than was ever gathered in the purlieus of the Capitol. Christianity must be indeed divine when it still maintains its hold upon the human soul under circumstances so calculated to shake all faith. It has fought many a hard battle with its malignant foes, but one of the highest proofs of its heavenly origin is found in the fact that it can stand such treatment from the hands of its professed friends. The dead-after having, as far as they could, destroyed all revliest attack of the infidel is not so faith-destroying as these attempts to prop up our belief by the endorsement of the politician, or the patronizing certificate of the minimifidian man of science, neither of whom, it may very possibly be, knows as much of the Scriptures and Christianity as the once dark savage who sits clothed and in his right mind at the feet of the missionary of the cross.

erence; just as they have no moral scruple in calling themselves, and suffering others to call them, "ministers of Christ," while sitting in judgment on their master, and talking of "the mistakes of Jesus."

Such is the natural result of this view of the clerical office. If the clergyman is a moral lecturer, his truths, his doctrines, are his own as much as those of any other lecturer. He may make progress in them; he may adapt them to the age; he may claim the merit of new discoveries; he may get up a new

doubtless have preached, had they possessed his light. His hearers, too, may hear by the same rule. The preacher is to them no divine embassador; his message is no divine message, to be received with solemn deference for Him who sent it. The lecturer himself has taught them to discard every such thought, and hence its moral power, if it have any moral power at all, must suffer a corresponding debasement. We may be very much interested in the rhetoric of Mr. Gilfillan, his stilted exaggerations, his wondrous talent of turning all science into gos

One great cause which has contributed to give the clergy the false rearward position of which we have been speaking, is the wrong opinion enter-gospel, such as the founders of Christianity would tained of the nature, and hence of the true rank, of their office an opinion to which they themselves, or many of them, at least, have greatly contributed. We refer to that very common view which regards them as merely moral lecturers instead of men clothed with a divine commission, and charged with the delivery of a divine message. The difference between the two ideas is immense; and immense, too, must be the difference in the practical consequences. Especially is it worthy of note, that the lower opinion should prevail in an age distinguished above all others by its cant about "mis-pel, or all gospel into science; but then it is only sions." The editor has his mission, the schoolmaster has his mission, the author, the poet, the novelist, even the actor and the actress, each have their mission; but the clergyman, forsooth, is getting to be more and more thought of, and spoken of, as a voluntary, self-sent lecturer on morals. Now we know well enough that the language, as commonly used, is nothing but cant and bubble. Still there is something significant in the fact that its general prevalence should be accompanied with such a denial of the truest and highest mission-gry with his fierce and intolerant invectives, but it indeed we may say the only real mission on our earth or that apparent recognition of it which nullifies by putting it simply on a par with every other calling, trade, or profession in human life.

The clergy, we say, have contributed to this. They have thought to conciliate the world, and thus gain power with the world, by lowering their claims, or rather the claims of their office. They would fain be more rational men, more practical, more sensible, and hence more useful men, than their pious but mistaken predecessors. Hence the "call to the ministry," about which there used to be so much superstitious sacredness, has come to be explained as a rational conviction of fitness for doing good to the world by teaching the truths of Christianity. All else is undervalued, if not wholly rejected; the outward call is but priestly formality, the inward little better than a false and irrational

the rhetoric of Mr. Gilfillan after all. It has no other moral power than his genius, whatever we may think of it, or his personal merit, whatever that may be, may impart to it. We may be quite certain that he, and Mr. Cummings, and Mr. Maurice will never do the work of John Knox, or Andrew Melville, or Richard Baxter. Mr. Parkerwe mean no disrespect in naming him after such evangelical clergymen-may delight us with his extremely liberal sentimentalisms, or make us an

is Mr. Parker's inspiration after all-nothing more nor less. It is the moral power of a man, not sent, but coming in his own name, and whose doctrine is his own-a man of some striking traits of character, but many imperfections-a man very much like ourselves-a man who possibly may deceive himself, as other men have often done, with a show of zeal for philanthropy, which is, after all, but an acrimonious spirit of party, or a malignant spirit of opinion often more bigoted than party feeling, and more intolerant than any fanaticism that ever mistakingly assumed the name of a message from Heaven. What is worse, we can not know at all how long the new gospel will last, or when the new light shall come which will make it all comparative darkness. Indeed, we may be certain it will soon pass away. The speculations that many regard as standing highest in philosophy, and newest in theology,

offering from earth to Heaven, the other of a message from Heaven to earth. This, we maintain, must belong to all, or must be assumed by all, who undertake to proclaim to their fellow men the truths that relate to an eternal kingdom. Is the assump

will, in another generation, be among the things that are remembered, and remembered, too, by few. These bubbles must burst. Such a result is distinctly known by the conservative mind-the only mind that truly sees beyond its age, because grounded on those truths that overlook all ages, that sur-tion a proud one? How much more arrogant the vive all ages, and that are the same for all ages.

delivery of such a message without it. The affected humility here is more irrational than any false priestly claim that ever came from ignorant or fanatical excess.

that

"Broad land of wealth unknown,

But are not the clergy, in any view that can be taken of them, men of like passions with others? True indeed-most deplorably true, and, therefore, the more important the fact, or the belief at least in The tendency of which we speak shows itself in the fact, that the moral power of their mission comes what is getting to be the prevalent style of preachfrom something higher, purer, more stable, than ing. This is becoming too sentimental and declamatheir own personality. We can only listen to them tory on the one hand, or too argumentative on the intently, earnestly, and we may also add, rationally, other, as though men could be converted by sheer when we regard them as messengers from Heaven. force of eloquence, or logic, or fairly reasoned out Their words have weight with us for the very cause of the unreasonableness of sin. The Bible supplies that their doctrine is not their own. Aside from the preacher with the text, but his own brain furexpress revelation on the subject, our position is nishes the sermon. A divine declaration is taken made out by the shortest and simplest reasoning. as an exordial motto, and then we have a discusThe argument is both a posteriori from experience, sion of "abilities and disabilities," and "subjective and a priori from the very nature of truth itself. and objective," and moral this and moral that, and We appeal to every man's personal knowledge. an everlasting proving of moral obligation, until Where are the conversions, sudden or gradual, from there may arise in the hearers' minds the most sethe preaching that claims no such mission? When rious doubts whether men are moral beings at all, has it made the proud humble, or the worldly man or moral convictions any the less speculations of spiritually-minded? When has it ever reclaimed the intellect than the axioms of geometry or the the profligate, or rendered charitable the malevolent, statements of algebraic equations. Oh, it is indeed or broken down the hardened wretch to penitence a piteous spectacle, to see one who stands in the and faith? It has indeed sometimes produced very place of the divine embassador thus spinning out his marked effects, but not like those which character-own poor web from his own psychological materials, ized the day of Pentecost, when men were "pricked while the rich Bible lies all neglected before himin their hearts" and "smote upon their breasts." It may boast of its reforms, but we fear that it has set men to reforming every thing but themselves, and to cleansing every thing but the defiled sanctuary of their own spirits. There comes the same conclusion when we reason from the very nature of things or ideas. The soul of the serious hearer in-language, of antiquities, of the history of the Church, stinctively demands the higher sanction for the higher truth. A man may lecture to us on science, on political economy, on utilitarian ethics, and we listen to him with complacency, although he comes in his own name. We take his instructions for what they are worth, or for what we may regard him as being worth. But what right has a fellow mortal to preach to us of perdition, and salvation, and the life to come, unless he has a message from the universal Judge, or believes, at least, that he has such message, or is delivering the doctrine, not as his own, but as having come from those who were the inspired media through whom it was at first specially given to our blind and wandering race? If he discard this idea of embassadorship from the clerical office, we will not listen to him. Let the order be abolished as a deception, and therefore a moral nuisance, if it take not that high ground which reason and conscience as well as Scripture would assign to it as its only legitimate, its only tenable position.

We have presented our idea in its most catholic aspect. We meddle not with the vexed questions respecting the mode and validities of ministerial succession. It is not essential to our general argument. We do not say whether an unwarranted priestly assumption on the one hand, may not have led to this lax latitudinarianism on the other. We contend not for or against the priestly idea, strictly so called, which consists in the offering of sacrifice and prayer. We are content with taking the more clearly revealed, and, as we think, the higher ground, of the embassadorial character-higher, we say, because the one suggests the idea of a request or an

Where hidden glory lies"

that mine of ideas unfathomable, which it is his great business to study, to interpret, to illustrate by all the aids that can be drawn from the knowledge of

and then to apply it to the consciences of his hearers with the clearness and conviction of one who knows that whatever may be his own personal merit or demerit, he is delivering a message that came from Heaven.

Is there a real objective body of revealed truth in the world? It matters not, for the sake of our main argument, which we adopt of the three great opinions that have prevailed respecting it in the Christian Church-whether it is the Scriptures and pontifical decision, or the Scriptures and general church tradition grounded thereon, or the Scriptures alone of the Old and New Testament, as they were handed down by the Church, and received at the Protestant Reformation-in either case the fundamental position is unaffected. It is the preacher's business to study this objective truth, this outward "rule of faith," to interpret it, to ascertain it, to deliver it to the world, "whether men will hear or whether they will forbear." He loses all moral power, and forfeits all respect, even the respect that might be paid to the scientific lecturer, if he present religious doctrines as his own thoughts, or the result of his own reasoning, except in that field where his reasoning may be legitimately employed-the field of sober, devout, faithful interpretation.

The very title he bears shows the falsity of this common tendency. His name in the Scriptures is Knov, Herald, Crier, Proclaimer. He is an Apostle, a man sent to make a proclamation. He is a Præco, Prædicans, Preacher-all conveying the same idea, and having no meaning on the argumentative or lecturing hypothesis.

From this tendency to take a low and secular

Vienna, or St. Petersburg, how much clearer a view of us and our society the lucky purchaser would enjoy, than they who shall only read of us in some future dignified historical octavo. The reason of the interest, undoubtedly, is that the genuine and peculiar character of a people best exhibits itself in the unconscious play of its individuality, which appears, of course, most fully in its social life. In great historical events it stands upon its interest and dignity, and national interest and dignity are the same at all times and in all places.

view of the clerical calling, has mainly come that rearward tendency and position of the clergy which is so lamentable for the world as well as the Church. There must be assumed and maintained by them more of the true ministerial or embassadorial character. They must do this fearless of consequences, and with a full trust that the simple truth thus announced will be attended by its own intrinsic moral power. Learning, of course, is demanded as a requisite-a learning which shall meet and conquer all that science or philosophy can bring against it, a learning which knows well how much this world This supposititious observer being, we will say, needs revelation, and how very, very dark it ever in New York, during this winter, would have a has been, and ever will be, without it. But the singular report to make. He would state that, after other is the essential element of force. In the ex-being well battered by all kinds of sarcasm and ercise of this, not merely assumed on certain ecclesi- ridicule, for its manifest attempt to affect a social astical occasions, but firmly and consistently main-state which does not and can not really exist here, tained, the clerical character will take its true rank; and in the nineteenth century, as well as in the days of our fathers, the corrupt politician, instead of drawing the clergy into his ignominious wake, will stand abashed and confounded by their rebuke.

Editor's Easy Chair.

society rushed into other extremes with the same ardor and the same characteristics, but, happily, with much more tangible and agreeable results. We, who pass life sitting in our Easy Chair, whence we note and criticise the world, know of these things only by report. We depend mainly upon our young friend, and ornament of polished circles, Agneau, who strolls in to see us during these warm Spring

PICTURES of manners and satires upon society mornings, and enlivens our solitude with his chat

of society and the gossip of the upper world.

always subscribe to all societies of young ladies: he also knew, and ventured smilingly to suggest it as a reason for our alacrity in pulling out our purse, that we should probably apply for the aid of the Society in behalf of breeches exhausted by too constant and severe sitting in this very Easy Chair.

are always interesting. The pleasantest part of old books of travel is generally that which treats The amiable Agneau came in, not many days of the familiar habits which History does not deign since, and, pulling a paper from his pocket, into recognize. So much the worse for History! The quired if we would subscribe something to the consequence is, that where one man reads his- Young Ladies' Charitable Trowser-patching Sotory conscientiously, fifty men devour with eager-ciety. He knew our weakness. He knew that we ness private diaries and the letters of unambitious observers. It is from these last that the best impression of places is generally derived. A man puts all his individuality into a letter which is destined for friendly eyes only, and in which he allows full play to his conceits, and feelings, and fancy. But a book is a serious affair. Just as a man is the soul of humor in the unrestrained conversation of a circle, and, when he rises to address an assembly, becomes stiff, conscious, and ineffective, so a man who sketches life around him with a sparkling pen when he writes a letter to a friend, becomes solemn and heavy and pointless when he writes a letter to the world.

We thought of all this lately, as we were looking over a volume of Italian travels, written nearly a century since, by a smug Londoner, who went down into Italy-stopping to visit Voltaire upon the way -and who never suffers himself to be seduced into enthusiasm by any blandishment of romance, but, like a sagacious smug Londoner, "couldn't keep his one eye idle," and recorded all that he saw with the precision of an accountant. The result was that his letters, written to a circle of friends, are now one of the most interesting memoirs of Italian life in the latter part of the last century, and are particularly rich in their account of the decline of the Venetian republic. The book shows how utterly effete was the society which Napoleon had no sooner touched than it crumbled, and abounds in interesting statistics and details, which would be invaluable to any future historian of the gloomy and gorgeous state of the Lagunes.

The subscription was much too insignificant to mention here, especially to you, who have contributed so generously to the Ragged Schools and the News-boys' Aid Society, but it was a large sum for us, and the whole heart of this old Easy Chair went with it. The evidence of approval and sympathy touched the tender Agneau.

"We all go in for charity now," said he. "Charity is quite the thing."

"Was it not always the thing?" we asked, with deference to Agneau's superior experience of "the thing."

"Oh, yes! Sundays, and all that, you know," he replied blandly. "But all the first people are charitable this winter. Why, Miss Bottomrybond herself goes to teach in the Ragged School twice a week, and all the girls meet about at each other's houses, and cut garments, and go and visit the poor people in such places as you can hardly conceive. Dancing has quite gone out, I assure you, and all the good young men are coming in. There has even been a charity concert, at which you might have heard singing better than any since Sontag and Alboni went, and which netted the very handsome sum of fifteen hundred dollars for the Society. I tell you what, old, Easy Chair, charity's all the go."

We thought of it all lately, but not only in refer- Now there have been sharp criticisms upon Mr. ence to Venice. An Easy Chair like this has al- Dickens's Mrs. Jellyby, with her profound interest ways its own diocese at heart. If some smug Lon-in Borrioboola-Gha, and her profound contempt for doner, or pert Parisian, or lazy Italian, or heavy German, who may be now among us, and weekly writing home to his friends, should be persuaded to publish his letters, and they should be found a century hence upon an out-door book-stall in Paris, or

any misery of any people of her own color and country. It has been said that it was an unfair and unnecessary satire upon the generous efforts of humane people to reduce the amount of human suffering, and that no man who sincerely wished well to

charitable efforts of any kind would have been ers were splitting upon all sides in a most fearful guilty of dealing such a stab to the cause.

As usual, whenever Dickens is censured, we do not agree. We believe that the satire was the result of very shrewd observation and a wise consideration. Mr. Dickens sees, with great clearness, that the field for English charity is England; that the lachrymose Londoner may find around the corner more misery than he bewails in Timbuctoo, and that, in every possible light in which the subject can be regarded, it is better, and absolutely essential, to begin at home. The Borrioboola-Gha style of philanthropy is the most fatal blow to real charity. Factitious feeling exhales in a fancied sympathy, which not only tends to bring the actual sympathy into disrepute, but dissipates the action and the charity of those who are truly, but not wisely, gen

erous.

It is easy enough to fancy how pleased we were to learn that, since charity was "all the go," it was a wise and not a foolish charity; that it was not a charity which merely bemoaned the unhappiness of Sodom and Gomorrah, but alleviated the misery of New York.

manner, and although she was really very anxious to do something to arrest the evil, until Mrs. B. and C. joined. It simply shows that her feeling, though real, is not strong enough to stand and act by itself; but when, under favorable circumstances, it has once commenced that action, it will not be very likely to stop or shift with the fashion. Moral shame will prevent her discontinuing a work which moral conviction was not strong enough to make her practically begin."

Besides, all motives are so mixed. Little Agneau always insists that his cousin Polyhymnia married old Baggs merely because he was rich. Agneau will not allow that Polly could have had the slightest sympathy with any taste or predilection of her spouse. He is a good, generous, hearty fellow, not much cultivated, and of rather coarse than fine sympathies; but because he is a good deal older than Polyhymnia, Agneau is resolved that it was only the money. Yet, to tell the truth, his cousin, who, in the early days, confided much to this Easy Chair, has confessed that she would have married Baggs had he been only half as wealthy. She want

freedom; she loved the country (Baggs has a place up the river); she found Baggs a generous, kind companion; she had given up Byron and the heroics, and she was discreetly married to John Baggs.

To say that his money did it all, is a libel upon Mrs. Polyhymnia Baggs. It helped-of course it helped. We say simply that motives are mixed. (Agneau insists, until he is black in the face, that it was all mercenary. It was no more purely mercenary than the prevalent charity is purely fashionable. Agneau and his friends can not criticise and condemn in this wholesale manner. The fact is that we heard another account of the concert, and from a woman.

There had been so much said of Five-Point Mis-ed to be married; she wanted a certain kind of sions, and so many moral dramas had been played for the benefit of immoral personages, and there was such a general posting, in large letters and bewildering hand-bills, of the public virtue and sympathy, that we began to have the usual fear of such a universal whitening and beautifying. And yet it makes not so much difference by what means the bread gets into the mouth of the famishing, if it only does get there, and life is saved. A charity concert, at which Mrs. C. and D. sing because Mrs. A. and B. are going to sing, and which keeps itself fashionably fine and unspotted from the vulgar, is absurd enough if you choose to contemplate it from some points of view. It is as hollow, so far as genuine charity or real human tenderness and sympathy are concerned, as the family prayers of Sir Brian Newcome, which Thackeray berates so roundly. Yet, as those family prayers, cold, hard, and unreal as he describes them, and as they so often really are, may be the means of consolation and strength to some obscure servant, so a fashionable charity concert may, by its results, really wipe away tears and pour balm into broken and breaking hearts.

So we ventured to say to Agneau, who was evidently at bottom rather skeptical of the whole thing. He clearly regarded the present charitable movements among the fashionable circles as itself a mere fashion, a new form of excitement.

"Do you suppose," said he, "that my sister Lucia attends to the ragged children at the school with any different feeling from that with which she would tend sick kittens at home? All women's hearts are tender, and they please themselves, in this case, by gratifying their instincts and sopping their consciences. However, I look upon the whole thing as a very fortunate fashion; but I as certainly believe that it will be as evanescent as other fashions."

"But remember," we replied, "if fashion forces people into charity, so it often shames them away from it. For our part, it seems clear enough that many of those who are now ardent in the cause are really ardent, and have hitherto only waited for social permission to begin. That argues some weakness, of course; but in such matters we Americans at the North are especially weak. Mrs. D. would never join the Society for Trowsers-patching, although she might be conscientiously convinced that trows

"It was a glorious sight," she said; "a church crowded as soon as the doors were opened, and by a throng such as few occasions assemble. It was Easter-time, and the spring bonnets were fresh and gay, and the galleries brilliant with smiles and bright with silks and ribbons. The church itself was gloomy, being one of the pseudo-Gothic cathedrals in which we so much delight; but it was illuminated by the loveliness that shone in every pew. The seats all faced the choir, so that it was not necessary to rise when the music commenced. The choir is very lofty, and a high screen of colored silk protects the singers from the eager gaze of the spectators below. They seemed, on this evening, lifted up and separated from the audience, as in the Monte Trinitá at Rome the nuns are inclosed in a gallery high up under the ceiling, and there sing, invisibly. Presently from the depth of the lofty choir rolled out a full stream of chords from the organ, and the concert began. Sweet, tender, tremulous voices, fresh with youth and half-hushed by the novelty of the place and occasion, overflowed the screen and poured into the solemn church. The concert was a long strain of music, sometimes sinking quite away into modulations pianissimo; then gathering again, and ringing jubilant through the church and through the heart of every listener. It was a singular success. The thought of such a concert was generous and humane, its fulfillment was entirely adequate. It was very foolish for Mr. Agneau to pull his gloves and smile, half-scornfully, and say that the charity of the singers was only surpassed by that of the audience. In fact," said our gentle informant, "since his cousin Polyhymnia became