made its revolutionary purpose so definite that despotism feared its very language. I only wished that injustice and despotism every where might one day have as good cause to hate and to fear everything American.

At last that disgraceful seal of slave complicity is broken. Let us inaugurate a new departure, recognize that we are afloat on the current of Niagara, eternal vigilance the condition of our safety, that we are ir revocably pledged to the world not to go back to bolts and bars, could not if we would, and would not if we could. Never again be ours the fastidious scholarship that shrinks from rude contact with the masses. Very pleasant it is to sit high up in the world's theatre and criticise the ungraceful struggles of the gladiators, shrug one's shoulders at the actors' harsh cries, and let every one know that but for "this villanous saltpetre you would yourself have been a soldier." But Bacon says, "In the theatre of man's life, God and his angels only should be lookers-on." "Sin is not taken out of man as Eve was out of Adam, by putting him to sleep." "Very beautiful," says Richter, "is the eagle when he floats with outstretched wings aloft in the clear blue; but sublime when he plunges down through the tempest to his eyry on the cliff, where his unfledged young ones dwell and are starving." Accept proudly the analysis of Fisher Ames: "A monarchy is a man-of-war, stanch, iron-ribbed, and resistless when under full sail; yet a single hidden rock sends her to the bottom. Our republic is a raft hard to steer, and your feet always wet; but nothing can sink her." If the Alps, piled in cold and silence, be the emblem of despotism, we joyfully take the ever-restless ocean for ours, only pure because never still.

Journalism must have more self-respect. Now it praises good and bad men so indiscriminately that a

good word from nine tenths of our journals is worthless. In burying our Aaron Burrs, both political parties — in order to get the credit of magnanimity - exhaust the vocabulary of eulogy so thoroughly that there is nothing left with which to distinguish our John Jays. The love of a good name in life and a fair reputation to survive us that strong bond to well-doing- is lost where every career, however stained, is covered with the same fulsome flattery, and where what men say in the streets is the exact opposite of what they say to each other. De mortuis nil nisi bonum, most men translate," Speak only good of the dead." I prefer to construe it, "Of the dead say nothing unless you can tell something good." And if the sin and the recreancy have been marked and far-reaching in their evil, even the charity of silence is not permissible.

To be as good as our fathers we must be better. They silenced their fears and subdued their prejudices, inaugurating free speech and equality with no precedent on the file. Europe shouted "Madmen!" and gave us forty years for the shipwreck. With serene faith they persevered. Let us rise to their level. Crush appetite, and prohibit temptation if it rots great cities. Intrench labor in sufficient bulwarks against that wealth which, without the tenfold strength of modern incorporation, wrecked the Grecian and Roman States; and with a sterner effort still, summon women into civil life as reinforcement to our laboring ranks in the effort to make our civilization a success.

Sit not, like the figure on our silver coin, looking ever backward.

"New occasions teach new duties;

Time makes ancient good uncouth;

They must upward still, and onward,
Who would keep abreast of Truth.

Lo! before us gleam her camp-fires!
We ourselves must Pilgrims be,
Launch our Mayflower, and steer boldly
Through the desperate winter sea,
Nor attempt the Future's portal
With the Past's blood-rusted key."

NOTE. See page 353.

For George William Curtis, the leader of the civil-service reform, I have the most sincere respect. His place as statesman, scholar, and reformer is such, and so universally recognized, that praise from me would be almost impertinence. But a large proportion of the party in New York, and a still larger proportion of its adherents in Massachusetts, justify all I have said of it and thein.

My plan of civil-service reform would be the opposite of what they propose. I should seek a remedy for the evils they describe in a wholly different direction from theirs, in fearless recourse to a further extension of the democratic principles of our institutions.

Let each district choose its own postmaster and custom-house officials. This course would appeal to the best sense and sober second thought of each district. Responsibility would purify and elevate the masses, while government would be relieved from that mass or patronage which debauches it.

Their plan is impracticable, and ought to be; for it contravenes the fundamental idea of our institutions, and contemplates a coterie of men kept long in office, largely independent of the people, -a miniature aristocracy, filled with a dangerous esprit de corps. The liberal party in England has long felt the dead weight and obstructive influence of such a class. The worst element at Washington in 1861; the one that hated Lincoln most bitterly, and gave him the most trouble; the one that resisted the new order of things most angrily and obstinately, and put the safety of the city into most serious peril, was the body of old office-holders, poisoned with length of official life, scoffing at the people as intrusive intermeddlers; men in whom something like a fixed tenure of office had killed all sympathy with the democratic tendency of our system.

Some might fear that our government could not be carried on without this patronage.

Hamilton is quoted as saying, "Purge the British Government of its corruption, and give to its popular branch equality of representation, and it would become an impracticable governinent."

The British Government has been pretty well purged, and its popular branch comes now very near to equality of representation. Yet, spite of Hamilton's prophecy, the machine still works, and works better and better for every successive measure of such purification and reform.

So our government, relieved of the weight of this debasing patronage, would disappoint the sullen forebodings of Tory misgiving, and rise to nobler action.

THE LOST ARTS.

No lecture in the American lyceum ever met with a wider or more enthusiastic welcome than this. It was first delivered in the winter of 1838-39. Mr. Phillips had spoken before this upon subjects taken from chemistry and physies, and on discoveries and inventions in the field of mechanics. Called suddenly to address a certain audience, he thought there might be a charm in a familiar résumé of those arts which the ancients carried to a perfection still unrivalled. Hastily outlined in a series of notes, it was an almost impromptu delivery. But so great was the interest which it excited, that Mr. Phillips was called to repeat it over two thousand times.

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About twenty years ago Mr. Phillips was engaged to deliver the lecture in the Redpath Lyceum." A stenographer was employed to make a verbatim report; it was carefully written out in full, was elegantly bound, and then presented to its author. Mr. Phillips expressed himself exceedingly grateful to his friends, but was much overcome by the reply: "We have not done it for your sake, Mr. Phillips, but for posterity."

L

ADIES AND GENTLEMEN: I am to talk to you to-night about "The Lost Arts," a lecture which has grown under my hand year after year, and which belongs to that first phase of the lyceum system, before it undertook to meddle with political duties or dangerous and angry questions of ethics; when it was merely an academic institution, trying to win busy men back to books, teaching a little science, or repeating some tale of foreign travel, or painting some great representative character, the symbol of his age. I think I can claim a purpose beyond a moment's amusement in this glance at early civilization.