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not an injury but an addition to the politeness of his carriage."

Such must be the testimony of every candid and careful observer of society. Says the venerable Dr. Miller, "We have only need to see an example of that unaffected kindness, affability, respectfulness, gentleness, and attention to the feelings and comfort of all around us, which real religion at once demands and inspires, united with the gravity, dignity, and prudence, becoming those who remember that for every word and action they must give an account-we have only, I say, to see this happy union of qualities fairly exemplified in human deportment, to be convinced that nothing can be more nobly beautiful or attractive, in the view of every thinking beholder, than the undissembled expression of pure Christian feeling; and, of course, that, to be an humble and assiduous imitator of Christ, is the shortest way for any one to exhibit the most perfect manners of which our nature is capable."

It is not, then, to the circles of the gay, the wealthy, and the fashionable, that we are to look for the best specimens of good breeding. Again and again have I been pained and shocked in society of this description, with such offenses against genuine politeness, and breaches of the rules of good manners, as never could have been committed, in the same circumstances, by the sincere and humble Christian. The most perfect gentlemen with whom it has been my happiness to be acquainted, have learned their politeness not in the school of Chesterfield, but of Christ.

It will be said, however, that Christians are not always well-bred, and many of them are exceedingly deficient in good-manners. Unquestionably; and, at another time, I will develope some of the principal causes of their deficiency in politeness, and show that it is to be attributed not to their religion, but to their circumstances.

LISZT gave a concert at Hamburg, in the " City of London Hotel." In a few minutes the hall was filled to overflowing. I arrived late; but, notwithstanding, obtained a good place close by the platform on which the piano-forte was standing-to which I was conducted by the backstairs. Liszt is one of the monarchs in the realm of music; and, as I have said, I was conducted into his presence by the back-stairs; and I am not ashamed to acknowledge it.

The hall, the very ante-chambers gleamed with brilliancy, with gold chains and diamonds. On a sofa near me sat a Jewish maiden, corpulent and over-dressed: she looked like a hippopotamus with a fan. Solid Hamburg merchants stood crowding each other, as though some weighty stock business was to be transacted. A smile rested on their lips, as though they had been buying bills, and had made a fortune. The mythological Orpheus, by his playing, set trees and rocks in motion: Liszt, our modern Orpheus, had electrified them before he began to play. Common fame, by the halo which surrounded him, had opened the eyes and ears of the people: every body seemed to know and feel beforehand what was to follow. I myself, in the light of those many sparkling eyes, in that anxious beating of the heart, felt the presence of a great genius, whose bold hand, in our own days, has marked out the limits of his art.

In the "great Machine City of the world," London, or in Hamburg, the "European Exchange," would it have been noteworthy to have heard Liszt for the first time. Time and place here harmonized, and in Hamburg was I to hear him.

Ours is not the age of fancy and feeling: it is that of the understanding. Artistical dexterity is an indispensable requisite for the execution of any art or endeavor. Language has been so cultivated that it belongs to our school discipline to be able to express our thoughts in verse, such as would, half a century ago, have been esteemed a work of true poetry. In every great city there are scores of people to be met with who can execute music with a skill which, twenty years ago, would have caused them to be listened to as artists. Everything technical, material, as well as spiritual, has, in our day, reached its utmost de

velopment; and hence, in our times, there is a sort of elevation, even in the inert masses.

Our great genius, if he be a true soul, and not the mere foam flung up by the seething of the age, must be able to endure a critical analysis, and elevate himself far above all that can be learned by mere study. He must be able not merely to fill his own niche in the spiritual world, but must do more: like the coral insect, he must add another bough to the living tree of art, or all his endeavors are of no avail.

There are in our day two masters of the piano, who in this wise fill up their place: THALBERG and LISZT.

When Liszt entered, it was as though an electric shock ran through the room. The ladies mostly rose; it seemed as if a sunbeam diffused itself over every face; as though every eye rested on a dear friend.

I stood close by the artist. He is a hagard young man. Long dark hair surrounds his pale face. He made his salutations and took his seat at the instrument. Liszt's whole aspect and movements indicate him at once to be one of those persons who are noticeable, solely and entirely from their own individuality. God's hand has set upon him a seal which marks him out among thousands.

When Liszt seated himself at the piano-forte, the first impression made upon me by his appearance, and by the play of strong passions upon his pale visage, was that he seemed like a demon bound to the instrument from which the tones were pouring forth. They came from his blood, from his thoughts: he was a demon who must play his soul free. He was on the rack; his blood eddied, his nerves thrilled; but as he played on, all the demoniacal disappeared. I saw the pale countenance assume a nobler and more' beautiful expression. The divine soul shone forth from his eyes-from every feature. He became beautiful-as beautiful as life and enthusiasm can render one.

His "Valse Infernale" is more than a daguerreotype from Meyerbeer's "Robert." We do not stand before it gazing on the well-known portraiture we transport ourselves into it; we plunge down into its very depths, and discover new whirling forms. It was not as though the

strings of the piano were sounding; every note seemed like a ringing water-drop.

He who can admire technical dexterity of art, must do homage to Liszt; he who is enraptured by the genial spirit, the gift of God, will do still deeper homage. The Orpheus of our times has sounded his notes through the "great Machine City of the world," and men felt and acknow. ledged, as a Copenhagener phrased it, that "his fingers were true railroads and steam-engines;" his genius is more powerful to bring together the spirits of men, than all the railroads in the world. The Orpheus of our time has sounded his notes through the "European Exchange," and, for the moment at least, the people believed in his gos pel; the spirit's coin rings louder than that of the world.

We often use, without being aware of its significance, the phrase, “a sea of sound:" and such a sea is it which pours forth from the piano at which Liszt is seated. The instrument seems transformed into a whole orchestra. Ten fingers, possessed of such skill, can do that which seems incredible, though guided by a mighty genius. It is a sea of sound, which, in its wildest uproar, is yet a mirror for all the evanescent impulses of every glowing spirit.

I have met with politicians who have comprehended by Liszt's playing, how peaceful peasants could be wrought upon by the notes of the Marseillaise Hymn to seize their weapons, leave home and flocks, to do battle for an idea. I have seen staid citizens of Copenhagen, with all the Danish autumnal chill in their blood, at his playing become political bacchanals. The head of the mathematician has become dizzied by his ringing figures and in the computation of his notes. Young Hegelians-not mere blockheads, but the most highly gifted among them-who in the galvanic currents of philosophy only grimaced intellectually, have in this "sea of sound" perceived the wave-like advance of knowledge towards

the shores of completion. The poet has found herein the whole lyric of his heart, or a rich drapery for his boldest imaginings. The traveller -for I close by speaking of myself-perceived sound-forms of all that he had seen or should see. I listened to his playing as if to the overture to my journey. I heard, how my heart throbbed and bled at parting from my home. I heard the farewell of the waves; waves which I should first again hear dashing on the cliffs of Terracina. It pealed like organ-tones from the old cathedrals of Germany; down from Alpine heights rolled the glaciers; in carnival attire danced Italy, thrusting with harlequin sword of lath, thinking all the while in her heart of Cæsar, of Horace, and of Raffaelle. It blazed forth from Etna and Vesuvius; from Grecian mountains, where the old gods lie dead, sounded the trump of doom; tones which I knew not, tones for which I had no name, shadowed forth the Orient -the poet's second father-land.

When Liszt ceased playing, flowers rained down upon him. Lovely young maidens, ancient dames who yet had once been lovely young maidens, flung their bouquets: but he had flung a thousand bouquets of sound into their hearts and heads.

From Hamburg he was to go to London, there to scatter new bouquets of sound, there to breathe poesy over the material every-day life. Happy he, who can thus journey on his whole life long ; ever beholding mankind in their spiritual Sabbath-day attire; in the festival pomp of inspiration! Shall I again meet him?-such was my last thought; and fortune so ordered it that we should meet again in our journey, in a place where I and my readers could have least expected it, that we should meet, become friends, and again part. This all belongs to the closing chapter of this journey. For the present fared he to Victoria's capital, I to that of Gregory the Sixteenth. A. H. G.

A MOMENT! what art thou? the briefest space
Of time, immeasurable, undefined;
"Twere vain for mortal man of finite mind,
Thy indivisibility to trace.

Yet such as thee compose the circling yearOur threescore years and ten, that narrow span, Prescribed by Heaven to bound the life of man;

That gone, how short indeed doth it appear. How soon a moment's swallowed in the vast Unfathomable ocean of the past!

Quick, as the quickest twinkle of the eye,
"Tis lost forever in immensity;

Yet in a moment's space, to endless day,
The vital spark starts from the still warm clay.

Do what you will, use what instrument you please, you cannot drive Nature out of the human heart. She will return to it again like the bird to its nest. And Poetry is Nature, as truly as Reason or Conscience. They are all God's witnesses and agents of good. Reason bears witness to the actual and the true; Conscience to the fitting and the right; Imagination to the beautiful, the awful, and the possible. Man cannot forego either without injury. Rob him of reason, and he is without a guide; of conscience, and he is without a prompter; of imagination, and you condemn him to a barren and cheerless existence on earth, and deprive him of the chief means by which he realizes the unseen future; for religion is the highest poetry, and without the faculty of imagination could not be received into the human heart. Angelic existence is an eternity of pure poetry, and the awful change which fits man for communion with angels and spirits is one that begins by destroying and dissolving that gross framework of matter which now drags down and cripples, and defiles the pure and subtle workings of the poetic fire. But in this mortal state, "prisoner of earth, and pent beneath the moon," Poetry must work with such poor materials as she can find. The visible and the tangible are about her, and from these she must distil her nectared sweets, weave her garment of many colors, and rear her airy mansion. Sensation, Reason, Conscience, Sentiment, and Passion, are her fellows, and she must adapt herself as best she may to their companionship.

Is or is not the pursuit of science favorable to the culture and growth of poetry? Perhaps the simple fact that poetry has actually survived steam-engines, gas-works, water-works, railroads, and electric telegraphs—that it flourishes in spite of them, and breaks forth into song amid the very whirl and clatter of the factory-may be deemed a sufficient answer to the question if it refer to the practical applications of science; but if it relate to the more recondite inquiries in which science especially delights, then is the answer to the question still more conclusive, for philosophy and poetry have too often dwelt in harmony together to be suspected of any antagonism. The names of Haller, and Jenner, and Davy, and Goethe, occur at once to our recollection as those of men who found the pursuit of science by no means incompatible with a more or less earnest devotion to the muse; and others

might be adduced who have exhibited, in the peculiar graces of their prose compositions, all the attributes of the true poet.

The philosophic and the poetic mind and temperament have marked analogies. An abiding sense of the beautiful, the awful, and the mysterious, is an element in both. The same emotions which stir to its lowest depths the soul of the poet, equally shake the mind of the philosopher. The highest poetic inventions and the most comprehensive scientific discoveries have much in common. An observation of nature, more or less close and accurate-a subtle generalization of natural phenomena-will always be found at the core of the poet's most successful creations. In like manner, the "scientific insight" will be found, if closely analyzed, to be of the true essence of poetry. Had Shakspeare been a philosopher, his Ariel would have been a force; had Newton been a poet, the theory of universal gravitation would have been embodied in a form of surpassing power and loveliness. Prospero is Science personified, ruling over brute forces ever ripe for revolt, and commanding the willing services of the powers of nature; Science still resembles the solitary master of Caliban and Ariel, with the wand of a magician, the benevolence of an angel, the humility of a servant, and the sublime sadness of a mortal agent wielding delegated forces. This sadness, this moody melancholy, this overwhelming sense of insignificance, waging a painful war with the consciousness of a high destiny, which forms so essential a characteristic of the true poet, is it not also an element in the character of the true philosopher?

"We are such stuff

As dreams are made of, and our little life

Is rounded with a sleep,"

breathes the same spirit of sadness as Newton's retrospect of a life: "I know not what the world will think of my labors, but to myself it seems that I have been but as a child playing on the sea-shore; now finding some pebble rather more polished, and now some shell rather more agreeably variegated than another, while the immense ocean of truth extended itself, unexplored, before me."

Is the pursuit of science favorable to the culture and growth of poetry? Is the march of scientific knowledge, and scientific adaptation to practice, favorable or otherwise to that highest

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exercise of the poetic faculty-adoration of the Supreme Being? Propound these questions to intelligent and thinking men, and a fair proportion would answer them, if not in the negative, at least doubtfully. There is certainly a misgiving as to the tendency of science in both directions; some fearing lest it should destroy the charm of this life, others that it may weaken the consciousness of a future existence.

The progress of science, though it may not destroy poetry, or impair the sentiment of religion, must work a revolution in the sources of emotion. It may not affect the force of the current, but it must, of necessity, change its direction. The spring must have a deeper source, if not a larger volume. Science, which looks from the surfaces and shows of things to their substance and essence, if it conduce to poetry, must supply the poet with new materials. Are they such materials as he

can work with? Let us narrow this question before we can answer it. We must first eliminate all the sources of emotion which science leaves untouched, and then examine those which are likely to be dried up or turned aside by its searching inquiries.

In the first place, it is evident that science does in no way interfere with that inexhaustible well-spring of poetry, the human heart. Its affections, emotions, and passions remain, in these utilitarian days, much what they were before the flood. If some objects of interest and attachment have been replaced by others, poetry has certainly gained by the exchange. Covetousness, for instance, which displayed itself of old by the hoarding of money and objects of barter, now embodies itself in the library, the gallery, or the museum, which have less of narrow selfishness in them, and more of the elements of poetry. In spite of all that has been said of the levelling and disfiguring tendencies of railroads, the fair face of nature beams upon us with all its pristine beauty; and the iron intruder, who has scared away the deities and nymphs of many a rural scene, makes ample amends in the speed with which he bears us to their more favored haunts. The heavens above us, though here and there somewhat overcast by the clouds and vapors of our crowded cities, remain unchanged; and science does but add to the sublime immensity of the ocean the idea of a growing and expanding usefulness, rich in all the elements of poetry.

Science will infallibly destroy the kind of poetry to which the world has been hitherto accustomed, and work an entire change, not in the nature, but the expression of the poetic emotions. Science will not affect our appreciation of the

poetry of past generations; but it must exercise a very important influence on the poet of the future. It must deprive him of many of the choicest materials of his predecessors. Comets, eclipses, meteors; ghosts, fairies, witches; oracles, miracles, and the awful tricks of the heathen temples; sylphs, gnomes, salamanders, and undines; the marvellous personifications of the Greeks, and the thirty thousand gods of the Romans, have ceased to create in us emotions of affection, admiration, or terror. The cloud on the mountain-top no longer shapes itself into a gigantic form, striking fear into the stoutest heart; the meteor of the grave-yard refuses to embody itself as the ghost of the departed dead; the whistling of the wind and the rustling of trees have ceased to utter articulate sentences; and even the earthquake and the tempest are more terrible in their effects than in their immediate The lightning-rod, which extracts elec tricity from the cloud, draws off with it, not merely the mystery that wrapped itself in its threatening form, but part of the terror which in any case it is fitted to inspire.

cause.

Nor does science, by its practical adaptations, replace the elements of poetry which it has destroyed. The science of war, aided as it is by the invention of gunpowder, and by fearful means of destruction which it is painful even to think of, is less fruitful in the elements of poetry than in the old hand-to-hand combat, which centred the interest of armies in the heroic prowess of angry chiefs. It would task the genius of Homer himself to make a good poetic hero out of a mere modern hard fighter. The same march of invention which has made war a system of tactics, has converted the hero of a hundred fights into a cautious calcula tor of chances; a player of the game of chess, with the battle-field for his board and men for his pieces. When we give ourselves the trouble of reflection, we see at once the vast superiority of the modern to the ancient hero; but that very reflection is destructive of poetry, which is a thing of impulse and intuition, not of convie

tion.

So, also, with inventions of a more peaceful na ture. The sailing-vessel, to a great extent at the mercy of the winds and waves, has ten times as much poetry in it as the dark steamer, with all its vast practical superiority and comparative independence of the elements. The same remarks apply to those other great inventions of our times, the railroad and the electric telegraph. The horse and his rider, the coach and prancing steeds, in had more of life, and therefore more of poetry them, than the railroad with all its power and speed. The solitary messenger with his impor