ings, not by miles, but by rods. The poles of the great magnet that draws in all the iron tracks through the grooves of all the mountains must be near at hand, for here are crossings, and sudden stops, and screams of alarmed engines heard all around. The tall granite obelisk comes into view far away on the left, its bevelled capstone sharp against the sky; the lofty chimneys of Charlestown and East Cambridge flaunt their smoky banners up in the thin air; and now one fair bosom of the three-hilled city, with its dome-crowned summit, reveals itself, as when manybreasted Ephesian Artemis appeared with half-open chlamys before her worship

pers.

Fling open the window-blinds of the chamber that looks out on the waters and towards the western sun! Let the joyous light shine in upon the pictures that hang upon its walls and the shelves thick-set with the names of poets and philosophers and sacred teachers, in whose pages our boys learn that life is noble only when it is held cheap by the side of honor and of duty. Lay him in his own bed, and let him sleep off his aches and weariness. So comes down another night over this household, unbroken by any messenger of evil tidings, - a night of peaceful rest and grateful thoughts; for this our son and brother was dead and is alive again, and was lost and is found.

Eyes and Ears. By HENRY WARD BEECHER. Boston Ticknor & Fields. pp. 419.

THERE is perhaps no man in America more widely known, more deeply loved, and more heartily hated than the Reverend Henry Ward Beecher. This little book, fragmentary and desultory as it is, gives us a key wherewith to unlock the mystery both of the extent of his influence and the depth of the feelings which he excites. It is but a shower of petals flung down by a frolicsome May breeze; but the beauty and brilliancy of their careless profusion furnish a hint of the real strength and substance and fruitfulness of the tree from which they sprang.

Within the compass of some four hundred pages we have about one hundred articles, most of which had previously appeared in weekly newspapers. They embrace, of course, every variety of subject, grave and gay, practical and poetical. They are not such themes as come to a man in silence and solitude, to be wrought out with deep and deliberate conscientiousness; they are rather such as lie around one in his outgoing and his incoming, in the field and by the way-side, overlooked by the preoccupied multitude, but abundantly patent to the few who will not permit the memories or the hopes of life to thrust away its actualities, and, once pointed out, full of interest and amusement even to the absorbed and hitherto unconscious throngs. We have here no pale-browed, far-sighted philosopher, but a ruddy-faced, high-spirited man, cheerfultempered, yet not equilibrious, susceptible to annoyance, capable of wrathful outbursts, with eyes to see all sweet sights, ears to hear all sweet sounds, and lips to sing their loveliness to others, and also with eyes and ears and lips just as keen to distinguish and just as bold to denounce the sights and sounds that are unlovely; - and this man, with his ringing laugh and his springing step, walks cheerily to and fro in his daily work, striking the rocks here and there by the way-side with his bright steel hammer, eliciting a shower of sparks from each, and then on to the

There are places where a severer taste, or perhaps only a more careful revision, would have changed somewhat. At times an exuberance of spirits carries him to the very verge of coarseness, but this is rare and exceptional. The fabric may be slightly ravelled at the ends and slightly rough at the selvedge, but in the main it is fine and smooth and lustrous as well as strong. A coarse nature carefully clipped and sheared and fashioned down to the commonplace of conventionality will often exhibit a negative refinement, while a mind of real and subtile delicacy, but of rugged and irrepressible individuality, will occasionally shoot out irregular and uncouth branches. Yet between the symmetry of the one and the spontaneity of the other the choice cannot be doubtful. We are not defending coarseness in any guise. It is always to be assailed, and never to be defended. It is always a detriment, and never an ornament. No excellence can justify it. No occasion can palliate it. But coarseness is of two kinds, one of the surface, and one in the grain. The latter is pervading and irremediable. It touches nothing which it does not deface. It makes all things common and unclean. It grows

more repulsive as the roundness of youth falls away and leaves its harsh features more sharply outlined. But the other coarseness is only the overgrowth of excellence, the rankness of lusty life. It is vigor run wild. It is a fault, but it is local and temporal. Culture corrects it. As the mind matures, as experience accumulates, as the vision enlarges, the coarseness disappears, and the rich and healthful juices nourish instead a playful and cheerful serenity that illumines strength with a softened light, that disarms opposition and delights sympathy, that shines without dazzling and attracts without offending.

Here arises a fear lest the apologetic nature of our remarks may seem to indicate

a much greater need of apology than actually exists. We have been led into this line of remark, not so much by a perusal of the book under consideration, in which, indeed, there is very little, if anything, to offend, as by the nature of the objections which we have most frequently heard against this author's productions, both written and spoken. We do not even confine ourselves to defence, but go farther, and question whether the allegations of coarseness may not oftener be the fault of the plaintiff than of the defendant. Is there not a conventional standard of refinement which measures things by its own arbitrary self, and finds material for displeasure in what is really but a sincere and almost unconscious rendering of things as they exist? There are facts which modern fastidiousness justly enough commands to be wrapped around with graceful drapery before they shall have audience. But do we not commit a trespass against virtue, when we demand the same soft disguises to drape facts whose disguise is the worst immorality, whose naked hideousness is the only decency, which must be seen disgusting to warrant their being seen at all? So Mr. Beecher has been censured for irreverence, when what was called his irreverence has seemed to us but the tenderness engendered of close connection. Cannot one live so near to God as that His greatness shall be merged in His goodness? What would be irreverence, if it came from the head, may be but love springing up warm from the heart.

One of the strongest characteristics of Mr. Beecher's mind, the one that has, perhaps, the strongest influence in producing his power over men, is his quick insight into common things, his quick sympathy with common minds. He knows common dangers. He understands common interests. He is sensitive to common sorrows. He appreciates common joys. Without necessarily being practical himself, he is full of practical suggestions. He is a leveller; but he levels up, not down. He continually seeks to lift men from the plane of mere toil and thrift to the loftier levels of aspiration. He would disinthrall them from what is low, and introduce them to the freedom of the heights. He would bring them out of the dungeons of the senses into the domains of taste and principles. He believes in man, and he battles

for men. With him, humanity is chief: science, art, wealth are its handmaidens. Yet, writing for ordinary people, he never falls into the sin of declaiming against extraordinary ones. No part of his power over the poor is obtained by inveighing against the rich, as no part of his power over the rich is obtained by pandering to their prejudices or their passions. He builds up no influence for himself on the ruins of another man's influence. The elevation which he aims to produce is real, not factitious, —absolute, not relative. It is the elevation to be obtained by ascending the mountain, not by digging it away so that the valley seems no longer low by contrast.

cere.

For the manner of his teaching, he is not always gentle, but he is always sinHe speaks soft words to persuade; but if that is not enough, he does not scruple to knock the muck-rake out of sordid hands with a fine, sudden stroke, if so he may make men look up from the rubbish under their feet to the flowers that bloom around them and the stars that glow above and the God that reigns over all.

Thinking of the multitudes of hardworking, weary-hearted people whom he weekly met with these words of cheer: sometimes homely advice on homely things; sometimes wise counsels in art; sometimes tender lessons from Nature; sometimes noble words from his own earnest soul; sometimes sympathy in sorrow; sometimes strength in weakness; sometimes only the indirect, but real help that comes from the mere distraction wrought by his sportiveness, and wild, winsome mirth; but all kindly, hearty, honest, sympathetic,- indignation softening, even while it surges, into pity and love, and itself finding or framing excuses for the very outrage which it lashes: thinking of this, we do not marvel that he has furrowed for himself so deep a groove in so many hearts. Nor, on the other hand, is it difficult to see, even from so genial a book as this, whence polemics are not so much banished as where there is no niche for them, should they apply, why it is that he is so fiercely opposed. When a man like Mr. Beecher encounters that which excites his moral disapprobation, there is no possibility of mistaking him. He flings himself against it with all the strength and might of his manly, uncompromising na

ture. There is no coquetting with the proprieties, no toning down of objurgation to meet the requirements of personal dignity, but an audacious and aggressive repugnance of the whole man to the meanness or malignity. And the very clearness of his vision gives terrible power to his vituperation. With his keen, bright eye he sees just where the vulnerable spot is, and with his firm, strong hand he sends the arrow in. The victim writhes and reels and does not love the marksman. And as the victim has a large circle of relatives by birth and marriage, he inoculates them with his own animosity; and so, at a safe distance, Mr. Beecher is sometimes considerably torn in pieces. Yet we have no doubt that by far the greater number of these opponents would, if once fairly brought within the circle of his influence, acknowledge the truth as well as the force of his principles; and certainly it is a matter of surprise that a man with such a magnificent mastery of all the weapons of attack and defence should be so sparing and discreet in their use as is Mr. Beecher. In this book, compiled of articles thrown off upon the spur of the moment, with so much to amuse, to awaken, to suggest, and to inspire, there is hardly a sentence which can arouse antagonism or inflict pain. You may not agree with his conclusions, but you cannot resist his good-nature.

Long may he live to do yeoman's service in the cause of the beautiful and the true!

History of the War in the Peninsula and in the South of France from A. D. 1807 to A. D. 1814. By MAJOR-GENERAL SIR W. F. P. NAPIER, K. C. B., etc. In Five Volumes, with Portraits and Plans. New York: W. J. Widdleton.

A NEW edition of the great military history of Sir William Napier, printed in the approved luxurious style which the good examples of the Cambridge University Press have made a necessity with all intelligent book - purchasers, calls at the present time for a special word of recognition. Of the merits and character of the work itself it is scarcely required that we should speak. An observer of, and participant in, the deeds which he describes, cautious, deliberate, keen-sighted, candid,

and unsparing, General Napier's book has qualities seldom united in a single production. Southey wrote an eloquent history of the War in the Peninsula, perhaps as good a history as an author well-trained in compositions of the kind could be expected to produce at a distance. But that was its defect. It lacked that knowledge and judgment of a complicated series of events which could be acquired only on the field and by one possessed of consummate military training. On the other hand, we can seldom look for any laborious work of authorship from a general in active service. Men of action exhaust their energies in doing, and are usually impatient of the slow process of unwinding the tangled skein of events which at the moment they had been compelled to cut with the sword. It is by no means every campaign which furnishes the Commentaries of its Cæsar. To Sir William Napier, however, we are indebted for a work which has taken its place as a model history of modern campaigning. The protracted struggle of the Peninsular War through six full years of skilful operations, conducted by the greatest masters of military science, in a country whose topographical features called out the rarest resources of the art of war, at a time when the military system of Napoleon was at its height, summing up the experience of a quarter of a century in France of active military pursuits, the story of sieges, marches, countermarches, lines of retreat and defence, followed by the most energetic assaults, blended with the disturbing political elements of the day at home and the contrarieties of the battle-field amidst a population foreign to both armies, - certainly presented a subject or series of subjects calculated to tax the powers of a conscientious writer to the uttermost. To furnish such a narrative was the work undertaken by General Napier. Sixteen years of unintermitted toil were given by him to the task. He spared no labor of research. Materials were placed at his disposal by the generals of both armies, by Soult and Wellington. The correspondence left behind in Spain by Joseph Bonaparte, written in three languages and partly in cipher of which the key had to be discovered, was patiently arranged, translated, and at length deciphered by Lady Napier, who also greatly assisted her husband in copying his manuscript,

which, from the frequent changes made, was in effect transcribed three times. By such labors was the immense mass of contemporary evidence brought into order, clearly narrated, and submitted to exact scientific criticism. For it is the distinguishing characteristic of the book, that it is a critical history, constantly illuminating facts by principles and deducing the most important maxims of political and military science from the abundant material lavishly contributed by the virtues, follies, and superabundant exertions of three great nations in the heart of Europe, in the midst of the complex civilization of the nineteenth century. The ever earnest, animated style in which all this is written grows out of the subject and is supported by it, always rising naturally with the requirements of the occasion. If our officers in the field would learn how despatches should be written and a record of their exploits be prepared to catch the ear of posterity, let them give their leisure hours of the camp to the study of Napier. The public also may learn many lessons of patience and philosophy from these pages, when they turn from the book to the actual warfare writing its ineffaceable characters on so many fair fields of our own land.

The Patience of Hope. By the Author of "A Present Heaven." With an Introduction by JOHN G. WHITTIER. Boston: Ticknor & Fields.

As the method by which an individual soul reaches conclusions with regard to the Saviour and the conditions of salvation, "The Patience of Hope" is worthy of particular attention. It does not, however, stand alone, but belongs to a class. Its peculiarity is that it proceeds by apposite text and inference, more than by the illumination of feeling, -aiming to convince rather than to reveal, as is the manner of those whose convictions have not quite become as a star in a firmament where neither eclipse nor cloud ever comes. Evidently there was a most searching examination of the Scriptures preparatory to the work; and yet the ample quotation, often fresh and felicitous, appears to be made to sustain a preconceived opinion, or, more strictly, an emotion. This emotion is so single and absorbing that there is some

gleam of it in each varying view, and every sentiment is warm with it, however the flame may lurk as beneath a crust of lava. Only from a richly gifted mind, and a heart whose longings no fulness of mortal affection has power to permanently appease, could these aspirations issue. It is the tender complaint and patient hope of one whom the earth, and all that is therein, cannot satisfy. Moreover, so pure and irrepressible is the natural desire of the heart, so does it color and constitute all the dream of Paradise, that the divinest Hope not only thrills and palpitates with Love's ripest imaginings, but puts on nuptial robes. Touchingly she pictures herself as "The Mystic Spouse, — her that cometh up from the wilderness, leaning upon the arm of her Beloved, — and we shall see that she, like her Lord, is wounded in her heart, her hands, and her feet." Though sowing in such still remembered pain, she yet reaps with unspeakable joy. She has now the full assurance that the mystic and immortal embrace is for her, and in the fulness of her heart cries, "When were Love's arms stretched so wide as upon the Cross?"

It is in keeping with such an aspiration that this and kindred natures should perceive in Christianity the sacred mystery from which is to be drawn, in the world to come, the full fruition of the tenderest and most vital impulse of the human heart, and therefore to be most fitly meditated and vividly anticipated in cloistered seclusion. Throughout their revelations there is a yearning for Infinite Love; and ardent receptivity is regarded as the true condition for the conception and enjoyment of religion. It is clear that they have a passion, sublimated and glorified indeed, but still a passion, for Christ. This is the mightiest impulse to that exaltation of His person against which the calm and consummate reasoner contends in vain. Truly we are fearfully and wonderfully made! The soul is touched with the strong necessity of loving; and its power becomes intense and inappeasable in proportion to the capacity of the heart; and yet some of the greatest of these have reposed so supremely in the innate and ineffable Ideal that to the uninitiated they have seemed in their serenity as pulseless as pearls. Through this sublime influence lovely women have become nuns, and have lived and died