within my knowledge, because his small comrades disapproved his political sentiments. For higher intellectual pursuits there are not only no such penalties among us, but there are no such opportunities. Yet in Athens - with its twenty thousand statues, with the tragedies of Æschylus enacted for civic prizes, and the histories of Herodotus read at the public games - a boy could no more grow up ignorant of art than he could here remain untrained in politics.

When we are once convinced that this result is desirable, we shall begin to feel the worth of our accumulated wealth. That is true of wealth which Talleyrand said of wisdom, — everybody is richer than anybody. The richest man in the world cannot afford the parks, the edifices, the galleries, the libraries, which this community can have for itself, whenever it chooses to create them. The Central Park in New York, the Public Library at Boston, the Museum of Comparative Zoology at Cambridge, - these are steps towards a more than Athenian culture. These institutions open their vast privileges, free from that sting of selfishness which the private monopolizer feels. Public enthusiasm is roused to sustain them, gifts flow in upon them, and they ennoble the common life around. It was claimed for Athens, that wealth could buy few facilities for culture which poverty did not also share. I take it, we aim at least to secure for the poorest American opportunities such as no wealth could buy in Europe. It may take centuries to accomplish it, but it can be done.

And it will not take so long as one might imagine. Although the great intellectual institutions of Europe are often nominally ancient, yet their effective life has been chiefly in the last few centuries. A hundred years ago, the British Museum and the Bodleian Library had each but about ten thousand volumes. The Imperial Library at Paris had then but fifty thousand, and the present century has added the most valuable half of its seven hundred thou

sand books. At the time of our Revolution, there were but three public galleries of art in Europe; and the Louvre, "the chief attraction of the most attractive city of the world," is of later origin. One half of the leading German universities are younger than Harvard College. With the immense wealth accumulating in America, and the impulse inherent in democracies to identify one's own name and successes with the common weal, such institutions will rise among us like Aladdin's palace, when public spirit is once thoroughly turned that way.

For we must carefully distinguish between a want of cultivated sympathy with the higher intellectual pursuits, and a want of popular respect for them. It is this distinction which relieves the American people from the imputation of materialism. I solemnly believe that no race of practical laborers since the world began was ever so ready to feel respect for those higher pursuits to which it could as yet give no time. The test of a people is not in its occupations, but in its heroes. Whose photographs are for sale in the shop-windows? I remember to have observed with delight, in a trade-list of photographic likenesses which reached me while in camp, that even in the very height of the war the civilians outnumbered the soldiers. Who are these civilians? There is not a millionnaire among them; scarcely a man eminent in mere business pursuits; scarcely a man whose fame is based on his income. They are statesmen, preachers, lecturers, poets, men who stand low on the income-lists, and high only on the scale of intangible services, - heroes whose popularity is often exaggerated in quantity, no doubt, but in its quality always honorable. The community seeks wealth, but it knows how to respect its public men who are poor through honesty, or its scholars who are poor for the sake of knowledge. Agassiz never said anything which more endeared him to the mass of his adopted fellow-countrymen, than when he declined a profitable lecturing en

gagement on the ground that he had no time to make money.

Such a community is at least building the nursery whence artists may be born. All that institutions can do is to saturate the mass with culture, and give a career to genius when it comes. Great men are rarely isolated mountain peaks; they are the summits of ranges. The thought of a century seems to posterity to have been intrusted to very few minds, but those minds have always been fed by a myriad minds unseen. Why ask

Ge

whether there was one Homer or a hundred? The hundred contributed their lives, their hopes, their passions, their despairs, to enrich the one. nius is lonely without the surrounding presence of a people to inspire it. How sad seems the intellectual isolation of Voltaire with his "Le peuple n'est rien." To have loved America is a liberal education. Let the student think with reverence of the value of this great race to him, and of his possible worth to it, though his very name be forgotten. Every act of his may be a solid contribution towards a nation's training.

But as the value of a nation to the human race does not depend upon its wealth or numbers, so it does not depend even upon the distribution of clementary knowledge, but upon the highwater mark of its highest mind. Before the permanent tribunal, copyists and popularizers count for nothing, and even the statistics of common schools are of secondary value. So long as the sources of art and science are still Transatlantic, we are still a province, not a nation. For these are the highest pursuits of man, higher than trades or professions, higher than statesmanship, far higher than war. Jean Paul said: "Schiller and Herder were both destined for physicians, but Providence said, No, there are deeper wounds than those of the body, and so they both became authors." "After all," said Rufus Choate, at the zenith of his professional success, a book is the only immortality."

"

It is observable that in English books and magazines everything seems written for some limited circle, - tales for those who can speak French, essays for those who can understand a Latin quotation. But every American writer must address himself to a vast audience, possessing the greatest quickness and common-sense, with but little culture; and he must command their attention as he may. This has some admirable results: one must put some life into what he writes, or his thirty million auditors will go to sleep; he must write clearly, or they will cease to follow him; must keep clear of pedantry and unknown tongues, or they will turn to some one who can address them in English. On the other hand, these same conditions tempt one to accept a low standard of execution, to substitute artifice for art, and to disregard the more permanent verdict of more select tribunals. The richest thought and the finest literary handling which America has yet produced as of Emerson, Hawthorne, and Thoreau — reached at first but a small audience, and are but very gradually attaining a wider hold. Rénan has said that every man's work is superficial, until he has learned to content himself with the approbation of a few. This is only one half the truth; but it is the half which Americans find hardest to remember.

But American literature, though its full harvest be postponed for another hundred years, is sure to come to ripeness at last. Our national development in this direction, though slow, is perfectly healthy. There are many influences to retard, but none to distort. Even if the more ideal aims of the artist are treated with indifference, it is a frank indifference; there is no contempt, no jealousy, no call for petty manœuvres. No man is asked to flatter this vast audience; no man can succeed by flattering; it simply reserves its attention, and lets one obtain its ear if he can. When won, it is worth the winning, generous in its confidence, noble in its rewards. There is abun

dant cause for strenuous effort among those who give their lives to the intellectual service of America, but there is no cause for fear. If we can only avoid incorporating superficiality into our institutions, literature will come when all is ready, and when it comes will be of the best. It is not enough to make England or France our standard. There is something in the present atmosphere of England which seems fatal to genius: its fruits do not mature and mellow, but grow more and more acid until they drop. Give Ruskin space enough, and he grows frantic and beats the air like Carlyle; and Browning's last volume is scarcely better. Thackeray was tinged with the same bitterness, but he was the last Englishman who could be said, in any artistic sense, to have a style; as Heine was the last German. The French seems the only prose literature of the present day in which the element of form has any prominent place; and literature in France is after all but a favored slave. This surely leaves a clear field for America.

But it is peculiarly important for us to remember that we can make no progress through affectation or spasm, only by accepting the essential laws of art, which are the same for the whole human race. Any misconceived patronage to call anything art merely because it interests us as American must react against us in the end. A certain point of culture once reached, we become citizens of the world.

Art

is higher than nations, older than many centuries; its code includes no local or partial provisions. No Paris Exposition is truly universal, compared with that vast gallery of Time to which nations and ages are but contributors. So far as circumstances excuse America from being yet amenable before this high tribunal, she is safe; but if she enters its jurisdiction, she must own its laws. Neither man nor nation can develop by defying traditions, but by first mastering and then remoulding them. That genius is feeble which

cannot hold its own before the masterpieces of the world.

Above all other races and all other times, we should be full of hearty faith. It is but a few years since we heard it said that the age was dull and mean, and inspiration gone. A single gunshot turned meanness to self-sacrifice, mercenary toil to the vigils of the camp and the transports of battle. It linked boyish and girlish life to new opportunities, sweeter self-devotions, more heroic endings; tied and loosed the threads of existence in profounder complications. That is all past now; but its results can never pass. The nation has found its true grandeur by war, but must retain it in peace.

Peace too has its infinite resources, after a nation has once become conscious of itself. It is impossible that human life should ever be utterly impoverished, and all the currents of American civilization now tend to its enrichment. This vast development of rudimentary intellect, this mingling of nationalities, these opportunities of books and travel, educate in this new race a thousand new susceptibilities. Then comes Passion, a hand straying freely through all the chords, and thrilling all with magic. We cannot exclude it, a forbidden guest. It re-creates itself in each generation, and bids art live. Rouge gagne. If the romance of life does not assert itself in safe and innocent ways, it finds its outlet with fatal certainty in guilt; as we see colorless Puritanism touched with scarlet glory through the glass of Hawthorne. Every form of human life is romantic; every age may become classic. Lamentations, doubts, discouragements, all are wasted things. Everything is here, between these Atlantic and Pacific shores, save only the perfected utterance that comes with years. Between Shakespeare in his cradle and Shakespeare in Hamlet there was needed but an interval of time, and the same sublime condition is all that lies between the America of toil and the America of art.

Is

S there anything in America more peculiar to America, or more curious in itself, than one of our "fashionable" Protestant churches, such as we see in New York, on the Fifth Avenue and in the adjacent streets? The lion and the lamb in the Millennium will not lie down together more lovingly than the Church and the World have blended in these singular establishments. We are far from objecting to the coalition, but note it only as something curious, new, and interesting.

We enter an edifice, upon the interior of which the upholsterer and the cabinet-maker have exhausted the resources of their trades. The word "subdued " describes the effect at which those artists have aimed. The woods employed are costly and rich, but usually of a sombre hue, and, though elaborately carved, are frequently unpolished. The light which comes through the stained windows, or through the small diamond panes, is of that description which Mr. Verplanck, in an unfortunate moment, styled "dim, religious." Every part of the floor is thickly carpeted. The pews differ little from sofas, except in being more comfortable, and the cushions for the feet or the knees are as soft as hair and cloth can make them. It is a fashion, at present, to put the organ out of sight, and to have a clock so unobtrusive as not to be observed. Galleries are now viewed with an unfriendly eye by the projectors of churches, and they are going out of use. Everything in the way of conspicuous lighting apparatus, such as the gorgeous and dazzling chandeliers of fifteen years ago, and the translucent globes of later date, is discarded, and an attempt is sometimes made to hide the vulgar fact that the church is ever open in the evening. In a word, the design of the fashionable church-builder of the present moment is to produce a richly furnished, quietly adorned, dimly illuminated, eccle

siastical parlor, in which a few hundred ladies and gentlemen, attired in kindred taste, may sit perfectly at their ease, and see no object not in harmony with the scene around them.

To say that the object of these costly and elegant arrangements is to repel poor people would be a calumny. On the contrary, persons who show by their dress and air that they exercise the less remunerative vocations are as politely shown to seats as those who roll up to the door in carriages, and the presence of such persons is desired, and, in many instances, systematically sought. Nevertheless, the poor are repelled. They know they cannot pay their proportion of the expense of maintaining such establishments, and they do not wish to enjoy what others pay for. Everything in and around the church seems to proclaim it a kind of exclusive ecclesiastical club, designed for the accommodation of persons of ten thousand dollars a year, and upward. Or it is as though the carriages on the Road to Heaven were divided into firstclass, second-class, and third-class, and a man either takes the one that accords with his means, or denies himself the advantage of travelling that road, or prefers to trudge along on foot, an independent wayfarer.

It is Sunday morning, and the doors of this beautiful drawing - room are thrown open. Ladies dressed with subdued magnificence glide in, along with some who have not been able to leave at home the showier articles of their wardrobe. Black silk, black velvet, black lace, relieved by intimations of brighter colors, and by gleams from half-hidden jewelry, are the materials most employed. Gentlemen in uniform of black cloth and white linen announce their coming by the creaking of their boots, quenched in the padded carpeting. It cannot be said of these churches, as Mr. Carlyle remarked of certain London ones, that a pistol could be

fired into a window across the church without much danger of hitting a Christian. The attendance is not generally very large; but as the audience is evenly distributed over the whole surface, it looks larger than it is. In a commercial city everything is apt to be measured by the commercial standard, and accordingly a church numerically weak, but financially strong, ranks, in the estimation of the town, not according to its number of souls, but its number of dollars. We heard a fine young fellow, last summer, full of zeal for everything high and good, conclude a glowing account of a sermon by saying that it was the direct means of adding to the church a capital of one hundred and seventy-five thousand dollars. He meant nothing low or mercenary: he honestly exulted in the fact that the power and influence attached to the possession of one hundred and seventyfive thousand dollars were thenceforward to be exerted on behalf of objects which he esteemed the highest. therefore the church before our view cannot boast of a numerous attendance, it more than consoles itself by the reflection, that there are a dozen names of talismanic power in Wall Street on its list of members.

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"But suppose the Doctor should leave you?" objected a friend of ours to a trustee, who had been urging him to buy a pew in a fashionable church.

"Well, my dear sir," was the business-like reply; "suppose he should. We should immediately engage the very first talent which money can command."

We can hardly help taking this simple view of things in rich commercial cities. Our worthy trustee merely put the thing on the correct basis. He frankly said what every church does, ought to do, and must do. He stated a universal fact in the plain and sensible language to which he was accustomed. In the same way, these business-like Christians have borrowed the language of the Church, and speak of men who are "good" for a million.

The congregation is assembled. The low mumble of the organ ceases. A female voice rises melodiously above the rustle of dry-goods and the whispers of those who wear them. So sweet and powerful is it, that a stranger might almost suppose it borrowed from the choir of heaven; but the inhabitants of the town recognize it as one they have often heard at concerts or at the opera; and they listen critically, as to a professional performance, which it is. It is well that highly artificial singing prevents the hearer from catching the words of the song; for it would have rather an odd effect to hear rendered, in the modern Italian style, such plain, straightforward words as these:

"Can sinners hope for heaven
Who love this world so well?
Or dream of future happiness
While on the road to hell?”

The performance, however, is so exquisite that we do not think of these things, but listen in rapture to the voice alone. When the lady has finished her stanza, a noble barytone, also recognized as professional, takes up the strain, and performs a stanza, solo; at the conclusion of which, four voices, in enchanting accord, breathe out a third. It is evident that the "first talent that money can command" has been " "engaged for the entertainment of the congregation; and we are not surprised when the information is proudly communiIcated that the music costs a hundred and twenty dollars per Sunday.

What is very surprising and well worthy of consideration is, that this beautiful music does not "draw." In our rovings about among the noted churches of New York,- of the kind which " engage the first talent that money can command," we could never see that the audience was much increased by expensive professional music. On the contrary, we can lay it down as a general rule, that the costlier the music, the smaller is the average attendance. The afternoon service at Trinity Church, for example, is little more than a delightful gratuitous concert of boys, men, and organ; and the