beautiful indeed. (To give the curious an opportunity to try their skill at rendering hard Latin, we withhold the translation, by permission of the writer, till our next number.-EDS.) My duties called me away, and I left him, exacting a promise that he would come to my room. He never came. I have offered this sentence to tutors and prize scholars, and others, but have in only one instance found a translator, and he was not quite right. This is a true story, entirely true, and though simple, may have the interest to others that it has to me. R. Recipe for a Chemical Lecture. LINES WRITTEN IN THE LABORATORY WHILE UNDER THE ILL-HUMOROUS INFLUENCE OF SULPHURETTED HYDROGEN. TAKE about two dozen girls, Some with smooth hair, one with curls; Take the Senior Class of College, Some making love, some getting knowledge; With dirty hands and towzeled heads; Bottles, flasks and champagne glasses; And Weld, the jovial Yale Agassiz; Mix these up as I direct you, Mingle the single ones! "Robert! come here!" "Robert! go there!" Let this be upheld, Let that be withheld, "Take this, Mr. Weld!" "Take that, Mr. Weld !" Bubble bubble! Mix like this and I expect you 'L get a comic chemic lecture! N. W. T. B. YALE LITERARY PRIZE ESSAY. The Greater Distinctions in Statesmanship. BY A. D. WHITE, SYRACUSE, N. Y. EVERY age must find men to mould into useful forms its whims, and to clench sturdily its temporal heresies. These are, by common consent, pontiffs among the mental hierarchs of their times, and representatives of the aggregate worldliness of their nations. Propped by stout shafts of native wit, invested in the robes of acquired learning, served by their own tensely-nerved energies, they play at will the sinews of the body politic, of which, theoretically, they are but single constituents. These are they, who delve among the imbedded weaknesses of their times, to bring forth new motive principles,—who stir the passions of men, that these principles be developed in action, who shiver the incrustations of national folly, that this action be unrestrained. Perfect statesmanship is, at any period, cast in a prophetic mould,--a type of that which, as yet, is not; future perfectness outlined by present need gives it swathing; it is of the present only by sufferance; too often, it is cradled reluctantly, yet it is the most veritable of autochthons, a true bantling of the earth's present. There was a statesmanship of old, which, pampered by emperors and urged on by courtiers, too often made the trampling on inferior states and the covert undermining of superior sovereignties, its main endeavor. There was a medieval statesmanship, which could be influenced, at any time, by the bickerings of old houses; and which, beneath the kindliest facery, but by means despicable between man and man, was wont to plot perplexities for its neighbors. Haughty patronage to the sciences, and crusts flung to men of letters, wheedle from us a benediction on the former; skillfully-planned jousts, and bestowal of honor on deserving commoners do a like service for the latter. Each has been neatly aproned with a fabric of occasional victories, or discoveries, or works of genius. Either might, in its nobler aspects, be identified with the architecture of its age. The Greek and Roman, cold, symmetrical, glossy; every line straight or curved geometrically; every combination in outline, squared, or triangulate. Seeming exceptions, like the Acanthus, were trained into a supercilious regularity. Of grotesqueness there was nothing. In the mediæval statesmanship, as in its architecture, there was as great haughtiness, as in the ancient; but it was a haughtiness, between lord and bound helper; not as of old, between master and man; a haughtiness, which, after toil, could become mirthfulness, and which exacted little, that any scrupled to pay. Through the manifold austerities of the time, there came gleams of kindness, and even of joviality. The old smoothness was roughened; old gothic crocketry, and oaken high-backs, might frown upon the populace; demons' eyes peering through the carved leafing, and seeming tongues of flame, lambent in the enchasements of a capital, or flickering about a window, may have discomposed those brought before the medieval tribunal; but there were also laughing eyes, and pleasing pictures. Curiously modelled jests, and most mirthful bundles of carved witticisms, appear even among the crosses and monograms of their cathedrals. Ancient statesmanship, more particularly that of the Roman Empire, seems bent on aiding those, who, by mere luck, had clambered into power; the mediæval, to have defended those in authority, as the anointed of the Deity. In one, all seems harmonious rule-in the other, a kind of illegitimate inspiration; the former, usurps an obility by its isolation--the latter, a sympathy by its close jointure to the swarm below; the manifestations of one, were as like, and as regular, as the pillars of its temples→→→ the others shot into forms as unlike and disconnected, as its notched and scattered pinnacles. One system seems best expounded by the classic historians-the other has found no better vehicle than Froissart's Chronicles, tangled in the movement, simple in the plot, often approximating to the barbarian, yet none the less fascinating or instructive. The former ruled as its own tutelar divinity, fresh from the brain of infinite fore cast-the latter, as one of the Scandinavian goddesses, strong and buxom, something less than the deified, yet by shrewdness and skill in intrigue, able to vex mightily the strongest of the old deities. Between their less satisfactory workings, Coleridge's pithy distinction holds, that formerly, "Men were worse than Principles, but that afterward, Principles were worse than Men." These systems have passed away. Old thought, with its old proportions of kindness, surliness and bigotry, has been newly crucibled, to meet the wants of an age, far differently composed. The statesmanship of today, is that, which, after the outlawry of medieval school doctrine, in its conjunction with the vagaries of the olden philosophy, first began to creep into the world's notice, during the last years of Henry the Eighth of England; that which the fires of Smithfield could not blister; that which was bearing all before it, when Laud, opposing, spoke of passive obedience with vague beauty, and Filmer, with sophistical force; that which James the Second tried to modify, and lost his crown; that which, more than any other, is clutched fast from beneath, by the popular will. It can hardly be denied, that the ascendant policy of the present, tends toward Republicanism. Genius in Political affairs, rarely among us seeks its apotheosis, by adherence to old families. Our idea of a favored son of the present, gives us no image of talent, playing the part of Atlas, beneath a bulk of rejected systems. Autocracy may sneer at all warrant for its acts, save the Dei Gratiâ, but its servants know well that scores of popular edicts, must be roped about one, which shall strengthen its despotism; know it, and practice on their knowledge. Why else are concessions, or fêtes, or progresses? Old clamps of superstition, which formerly fixed the poorer blocks of the social fabric, to its polished corner-stones, are well rusted, and men seek for better; all the nicely shuttled vestments of loyal proverbs, and cunningly twisted logic, grow threadbare; warp and woof are decayed, and men scan closely the proportions of the wearer. Among the most prominent characteristics of modern statesmanship, is plainly a greater directness in its operations. Certain principles have become so generally recognized, that a weaker nation can come directly at any just object, though it be to the detriment of its more powerful neighbors. Hence, national alliances do not hold their former importance; they hardly compass more than an ancient treaty, while they are far more burdensome to our master minds. The moves which so well suited old sluggishness, are out of vogue, and nations now push their interests more freely; single agencies are preferred, and men laugh over their old trivi alities. The leaders of the middle ages were in the beginnings of statesmanship, and were scrawling their boyish pothooks; our time sees its prime servants, advanced to the straight, keenly-pointed strokes in state management. There remains in diplomacy, much of the old politeness; but new truths are broached with a bluntness, of which our ancestors knew nothing. Where the course of hostile procedure was in the middle ages covered with smiles, and in times more ancient foreshadowed by cruelties, the modern system, often with ludicrous earnestness, lays down reasons, or loudly denies blame. Another trait of the modern statesman is boldness in coming at the means of power. A leading spirit in mediaval times had a monastic love for old treatises, and their conservative effluvium. There was about his natural good sense, an enamel of strange learning; of deductions from those sly hypotheses, which men then loved to propose as puzzles; of liturgic stiffness, which made him awkward, in many of his boldest endeavors. A crevice, through which came ancient light, was widened with great caution, and greater formality. The modern leader hastens at once toward the light, which shall aid him; old barriers are pried asunder, or broken down; old causeways unheeded, and thought takes the most direct path to its object. These scramblings may not seem so dignified, as the steady tramp in former years; but their achievements are more satisfactory, because more abrupt. A titter may run round the earth, at such seeming oddities in polity, but wonder at the results, soon compensates the ridiculed. No doubt Bacon, with all his wish to break his nation from its anchorage in past abuses, would have been more fully assured of the possible insanity of states, had he foreseen the prim decencies of his age, ripped and scorched by the impetuosity of ours; but he would, also, have gained new ideas of mental capacity, and given new canons for mental force. Great men of these latter days, most clearly show this boldness, when they plunge among the dynasties of error. Then comes the world's surfeit of jocularity. Popular feeling may read its riot act against forcible encroachments on established principles, but it could hardly bear the loss of its hearty laugh at the sight of young energy upsetting old pomposity. Modern statesmanship is also less diffuse in its appliances. It is becoming an axiom, the world over, that the statesman has to do wholly with temporal affairs. The last and strongest arguments against this noble advance, were annihilated, when Macaulay answered Mr. Gladstone. This doctrine of equality among thinkers, now scorns all aid from casuistry. Willing to be tried by those laws only, which are supreme over |