plied, as the price of support. It induces men to strive for popularity in order that they may reap a benefit therefrom, and make their countenance valuable to the candidate for public favor. It brings such men into the arena to compete with those whose public aspirations are based upon motives of patriotism and commendable ambition. The contest is unfortunately not an even one, for the mass of voters are more easily controlled by the former, as they are less scrupulous in the means employed for the furtherance of their interests.'

The result is that the better classes have been practically excluded from politics, which has been to a great extent surrendered to their more wily competitors. These latter, constituting themselves a species of brokers between the people and the candidate, make the most of their facilities. They crowd the nominating conventions, and scheme and labor each for his man, with an ardor that is in proportion to the value of the positions promised. For this reason we see the earnest delegate to nominating conventions cropping out, after the election, into a marshál or postmaster in Federal politics, a tax-collector, a wharfinger, or market commissary in State and city affairs. The citizen too honorable and high-toned to owe his selection to such agencies, whatever may be his capacity and integrity, seldom meets with success against his more accommodating antagonist. The result is that office no longer seeks the man, but the man strives and labors for the office. The best fitted are debarred from hope of successful competition. It needs no further elucidation to show that all this must debase politics, by making it a trade and giving it over to men not the best or most honest. These baneful results are universal. In presidential nominations, influential State politicians support the man from whose bounty they expect the most. They in turn owe their position and influence in their States to promises and favors to the lesser lights of county and city. Passing through these last, we come to the country crossroads politician and the ward leader in the cities. And the support of each man constituting this pyramid of power must be frequently purchased, by the promise or confer ring of subordinate positions.

In view of such extended ramifications of self-seeking, has not the man of pure intention, of integrity, of pride, and laudable ambition, most terrible odds against him, when he enters the field against the office-seeker, whose sole ambition is a livelihood and the advancement of selfish interests? And do not the interests of the people suffer by such practical exclusion of our best men and the advancement of their inferiors? Does not the commonwealth lose when its politics degenerate into a matter of trade and barter?

Were appointments made for life, before many years these evil influences would vanish. High officials having little patronage to distribute, place would soon cease to be a controlling power in political affairs. Men of the class described, having no means of foist. ing themselves upon the public, would soon abandon politics. At all events, they would lose the controlling influence which readiness of promise and facility of compliance now accords them. The control would pass again into the hands of the better classes. Candidates having no means of securing nomina. tions but merit, the choice would fall upon worthier objects.

Thus would the rems pass into purer and firmer hands, to the great advantage of the people. The higher officials, owing election to no pledges, could when vacancies occur. red allow merit alone to guide their choice, and by degrees the lowest public office would find the occupant most worthy of it. Defal. cations would become more rare, and the public receive full value for salaries paid.

The system now practiced breeds the professional politician-the man who abandons more useful employment, and looks to poli. tics alone for a livelihood. Taking into consideration the great number of subordinate positions under every department of govern ment, and remembering that each position, although providing for but one, has had a dozen aspirants, we may form some concep tion of the vast number who have their de sires fixed upon public place. We need but to be reminded, in order to appreciate the numbers of those who have no other trade or occupation, that many of the unsuccessful, instead of turning to other employment, pass their time in schemes and plots calculated to insure success upon the next opportunity.

The successful party always finds the spoils of office by no means sufficient to satisfy the hundredth part of the demands upon it. The outs are perpetually scheming to supplant the ins, and then the defeated party has likewise its formidable array of would-be placemen; and were we to add all these together and extend the calculation so as to apply to the national government and all the States, the grand total would be simply astounding.

The disastrous feature of the matter is that, having once fed at the public crib, the placemen lose all taste for aught else in the way of work. Instead of devoting their energies to some other means of livelihood, when, after a few years, they lose public office, their whole attention and endeavors are turned to schemes for the ultimate recovery of the position lost. During the years that class them among the "outs," they are drones upon the community, consuming but adding nothing to the common stock; and when at last they do attain success, it is but to consign some predecessor to the shiftless existence from which they have themselves temporarily escaped. And thus do the ranks of this mighty army remain forever filled, until they outnumber almost by five to one their more fortunate brethren who draw the public pay.

Is it profitable for any community to have so large a portion of its members who spend their time in expectation and political schemings, instead of legitimate industry? Such are the men who, depending upon place for a living, have made politics a trade. They are the ones who aspire to the control of nominating conventions, and but too frequently succeed. They are the ones who, when successful, accept no guide or prompt er but self-interest, and lose in their selec. tions all consideration for fitness and capacity. If, on the other hand, there were none but life appointments, offices once filled would no longer claim a host of eager aspirants. The hoe which now bears up the outs during their years of famine would be withdrawn, and necessity, breaking their ranks, would force them to more useful occupation. The tendency of rotation is to increase the expenses of government, as it brings into existence the professional politician and the political retainer. It imposes upon successful

parties and elected candidates the obligation of rewarding those who have labored for them. Their number being legion, the legitimate offices are insufficient to afford the means of compliance with such obligations, and gradually the number is increased until they are far in excess of the public need; and each of these unnecessary employés draws pay from the public purse. But beyond this the once-sufficient salaries of many officers must be increased, or else they form no fitting reward for the more zealous among the political henchmen. And so, in unnecessary offices and unjustifiable increases of salary, the treasury bleeds, and the expense of government is sadly increased.

The public welfare demands a more or less frequent change in the heads of government. Our presidents, governors, mayors, and heads of departments should not be permitted to retain perpetually the offices they fill, lest each generation should be ruled according to the ideas of its predecessors. But below these, the deputies, clerks, and subordinates in general, should retain employment as long as life permits or as good behavior merits. In this way alone may politics be expelled from minor offices, and appointments cease to be matters of party exigency. The maxim, "To the victor belongs the spoils," would no longer be disgracefully adopted into the politics of the country. The public service would be sought by our best citizens, and in time be weeded of the dishonest and inefficient. Defalcations would become more rare, and year by year, as experience gave its lessons, the government would find its service better and more complete. The number of offices would be curtailed, and so the public work be done better and with less expense. The era of the ward politician would pass away, and the political drone be forced by starvation to labors more profitable to the community. Politics would be purified, and the baser ingredients of selfishness, fraud, and dishonesty eliminated.

This subject should receive the careful study of our most profound thinkers. From them we should receive some remedy, so well considered that, while it removed the ills we now endure, would not bring upon us others of a more grievous character.

F. MCGLOIN.

THE THEISTIC CONCEPTION OF THE WOrld.

By B. F. Cocker, D. D., LL. D. New York: Harper & Brothers. For sale by

A. L. Bancroft & Co.

We rise from a perusal of this "essay" with a high respect for its author. His purpose in writing it is to reconcile science with theology; to exhibit the recent advances and inductions of physics in their relations to Christianity; and, in doing this, to furnish an antidote for atheism, pantheism, and materialism.

The arrangement of the book is faultless; the style is clear, and unusually free from the small pedantries which have come to be associated with metaphysics; and, given the premises, the argument is cogent, and will doubtless be to certain minds convincing. The aim and design of the author appeals to the best sympathies and instincts of our nat ure. Many of those who doubt the theistic theory, doubt regretfully, and, like Job, go backward and forward unable to find their Creator.

A noticeable and very agreeable feature of this book is the entire absence of that spirit of denunciation which is the bane of all controversy, and especially of that which deals with themes like those under present discussion.

The author traverses a wide field. From the deluge to the millennium is not a circumstance to the sweep of his telescope, which shows him back before the beginning and forward beyond the ending of the present cosmogonic arrangements. "Has the universe always existed? If it had a beginning, what is the originant causative Principle in which or from which it had its begin. ning? What conception are we to form of the nature and mode of that beginning? Was it an unconscious emanation from or a necessary development of the First Principle? Has the process of formation been gradual, continuous, and uniform, a progressive evolution from the homogeneous to the heterogeneous,

from lower to higher forms, according to a changeless law of uniformity and continuity? What is the relation of the Creator to the existing creation? Is the Deity in any sense immanent in, or does he dwell altogether apart from, and out of all connection with the universe? Has any finite thing or being an independent existence? Is there any ethical meaning, any moral significance in the universe? Has man a spiritual and immortal nature? Is he under a moral government?"

These are a few of the questions which Doctor Cocker proposes to himself. He may well approach them "with a profound sense of their magnitude and difficulty"—a difficulty which would have been disheartening, one would think, when he found it necessary to expend from ten to twenty pages in proving, contrary to the teaching of various eminent philosophers and theologians, that time and space are not entities, and that there is no such thing as infinite space or absolute time! Indeed, he is himself a little shaky on this point, for, after declaring time to be only "a certain correlation of successive existences," and eternity "the timelessness of God"—a striking characterization-he refers to the time which elapsed before creation, or, in other words, to the time which passed before there was any time. Apart from such a confusion, to what materialism must not religious philosophy have descended to be capable of the astonishing assertion quoted and refuted by Doctor Cocker, that "space, matter, time, and number are coeval and coeternal with God, and yet independent of Him!" It reminds one of that most downright and explicit of the early fathers who explains that the second person in the trinity is of the same substance as the first, but is a smaller portion of the original mass.

It is refreshing to find that Doctor Cocker's theory of creation does not make the Creator a sort of magician performing a species of creative legerdemain, nor yet a vainglorious

manufacturer getting up the universe from motives which would disgrace an average showman. Doctor Cocker finds love to be the motive of creation, "the highest determining principle of the Divine efficiency." All honor to such a solution of the great problem of existence !

Doctor Cocker will by no means admit the Topsy theory of the evolutionists, that things "wasn't never made by nobody; s'pose they growed." Yet it seems scarcely necessary to emphasize, as he does, the destruction of all things as a correlative of creation. An end as a necessary consequence of a begin. ning seems to prove too much. But at Ann Arbor it seems en règle to entertain rather a sombre view of future prospects. "Even the planets must at length be ensepulchred in the sun. .... Not one can escape its fiery end. And finally the heat of the sun itself must be transformed into radiant energy, and diffused and lost as a working force in infinite space. Then at last all dif. ferences of temperature must disappear, and everything end in a universal death." It is much to be hoped that our own University will find us some escape from the necessity of believing in such a frozen wreck of matter and crash of worlds, or at least will not set its face against a more cheerful outlook into the next few quintillions of æons.

We are not of those who fear the discov. eries of science or the overthrow of religion. Our little century noisily proclaims its doubts and its discoveries, and good people are anxious in consequence. Let them possess their souls in peace. Present theology will, doubt. less, be compelled to submit to reconstruc. tion, and present interpretations of Scripture will be demoralized. But theology is not religion, and commentaries are not Holy Writ. Meanwhile we look with respect and sym. pathy upon all such efforts as the one under consideration.

MADAME RECAMIER AND HER FRIENDS. From the French of Madame Lenormant, by Isaphene M. Luyster. Boston: Roberts Brothers. For sale by A. L. Bancroft & Co.

Men and women of rare and splendid genius are not only themselves stamped with the image and superscription of the times in

which they live, but they in turn stamp their image and superscription upon their own and succeeding ages. Though dead, they yet speak.

To such as have read and appreciated the Memoirs and Correspondence of Madame Récamier, translated from the French and edited by the same author, the present volume will prove a grateful supplemental work. From the mirror of private correspondence we catch a clear and vivid por. traiture of the character of this remarkable woman, whose marvelous career extended over such a momentous and exciting epoch of modern history. Though less voluminous, less rich in anecdote and incident than the Memoirs, the present volume may justly claim precedence in its vivid and natural representation of the inner life and personality of its subject, as shadowed forth in her own writings and those of her most intimate friends. We catch satisfactory glimpses of the matchless Récamier at her own fireside, not only as the regnant queen of her famous salon, but in the slippered stillness of the more cloistered introspective life, which, after all, is the truest index of personal character.

Mr. Maurice's idea that history should be made up of a series of biographies is, in some respects, entitled to consideration. The best exponents and interpreters of any epoch are the leading spirits that intone that epoch, and the very best way to catch the harmonies of the age to which they give inspiration is to permit them to interpret their own music. Hence, he is the true biographer and historian who brings his subject into bold relief, and loses his own identity in an all-absorbing sympathy with the personality of his subject-in other words, who introduces the artist, and lets him warble his own melodies.

This is exactly what Madame Lenormant has done in the volume before us. She with Madame Récamier, and then permits modestly tells the story of her own relations us to trace the development and growth of that intrinsically exalted and unique nature through the medium of her own recorded thoughts and inspirations. We see her among the coterie of distinguished friends of earlier and riper years. We note the harmony and

progress of heart and soul life; we see the coquetry of youth giving place to loftier aspirations and deeper impulses; we trace the gentle footfall of society's sceptered queen through the glittering salons of social splendors into the more sequestered avenues of gentle and loving ministries; we see the incomparable lady expand into the gracious, tender, and lovely woman, dispensing kindness as the heavens dispense the dew.

Of the brilliant circle of devoted friends who constituted the court of which Récamier was the central figure, very few survive. The private letters, which for the first time appear in this volume, have been gathered from the correspondence of that charming circle, "that vanished world," of which she was at once the life and inspiration.

We note, as among the more valuable indicators of character, a series of letters written by Madame Récamier to her niece, the author of the volume under review, whom she adopted and reared with tenderest care, and who rewarded her gentle ministries with a lifelong love and devotion.

In the publication of the different series of letters and correspondence, the author has very wisely chosen a chronological order of detail, thus disposing of the several intimacies of Madame Récamier, so as the better to exhibit the growth and development of her wonderful nature through the different stages of youth, womanhood, and matured years. The prominent figures in the volume before us, as friends and contemporaries of the great Récamier, are Camille Jordan, Madame de Boigne, and J. J. Ampère. Of Chateaubriand we catch, here and there, an occasional glimpse, but with no hint of the turbulent, exclusive, and exacting temper that caused her so much vexation and distress, through the long years of rare and beautiful fidelity to friendship, which for nearly a quarter of a century she cherished for this eminent and extraordinary man, until at the age of fourscore years she closed his eyes in death, her own having been long sealed in blindness. Verily it has been well said, that "Madame Récamier brought the art of friendship to perfection."

Among other pleasing characteristics of this readable book, we note the letters of Alexis de Tocqueville, and the sparkling

correspondence of Madame de Boigne. We lay aside the book in a spirit of heartfelt commendation, conscious of a closer fellowship with that most remarkable of women, Madame Récamier.

THE HISTORY OF OUR COUNTRY. From its Discovery by Columbus to the Celebration of the Centennial Anniversary of its Declaration of Independence. By Abby Sage Richardson. New York: Hurd & Hough. ton. For sale by A. L. Bancroft & Co.

A history of this country, adorned with many beautiful engravings, and written in the attractive style of this volume, is sure to be popular with the class for whom it is intended. It is a book for boys, and is dedi cated by Mrs. Richardson to her own children. The accounts of the discovery of the continent, of the courage and sufferings of the first settlers, of the horrors of Indian warfare, of the conflict with the British crown, on to the Declaration of Independence, are written in such a way as to rivet the attention of the reader. All through the book there is plenty of the bright incident and brilliant description so necessary to make the study of history attractive to the young. The sketches of the leading characters are well drawn, and generally-not always-the position of parties and the political situation are clearly stated. Considering the large extent of ground covered in a volume of only five hundred and ninety pages, it must be granted that the promi nent features of American history have been well brought out. The book has one grave fault. Mrs. Richardson's writing lacks the repose of history. She too often allows her history to become a defense and justification of the American people, instead of a record of facts, and a calm statement of the causes which produced them. This kind of writing, which disfigures many pages in the early part of the volume, almost destroys the historical value of her account of the great rebellion. In the spring of 1864 some one asked President Lincoln for a pass to Richmond. "I should be glad to oblige you, said the President, "but my passes are not respected. I have given passes to a quarter of a million, and not one of them has got there except as a prisoner of war." Does not