JAMES JACKSON JARVES. ISIS-. (Manual, p. 531.)

THE first duty of art, as we have already intimated, is to make our public buildings and places, as instructive and enjoyable as possible. They should be pleasurable, full of attractive beauty and eloquent teachings. Picturesque groupings of natural objects, architectural surprises, sermons from the sculptor's chisel and the painter's palette, the ravishment of the soul by its superior senses, the refinement of mind and body by the sympathetic power of beauty, - these are a portion of the means which a due estimation of art, as an element of civilization, inspires the ruling will to provide freely for all. If art be kept a rare and tabooed thing, a speciality for the rich and powerful, it excites in the vulgar mind, envy and hate; but proffer it freely to the public, and the public soon learns to delight in and protect it as its rightful inheritance. It also tends to develop a brotherhood of thought and feeling. During the civil strifes of Italy, art flourished and was respected. Indeed, to some extent, it operated as a sort of peace society, and was held sacred when nothing else was. Even rude soldiers, amid the perils and necessities of sieges, turned aside destruction from the walls that sheltered it.

The desire for art being awakened, museums to illustrate its technical and historical progress, and galleries to exhibit its master-works, become indispensable. In the light of education, appropriations for such purposes are as much a duty of the government as for any other purpose connected with the true welfare of the people; for its responsibilities extend over the entire social system.

EDWIN P. WHIPPLE.

189.

1819-. (Manual, p. 501.)

From "Essays and Reviews."

POETS AND POETRY OF AMERICA.

In order that America may take its due rank in the commonwealth of nations, a literature is needed which shall be the exponent of its higher life. We live in times of turbulence and change. There is a general dissatisfaction, manifesting itself often in rude contests and ruder speech, with the gulf which separates principles from actions. Men are struggling to realize dim ideals of right and truth, and each failure adds to the desperate earnestness of their efforts. Beneath all the shrewdness and selfishness of the American character, there is a

smouldering enthusiasm which flames out at the first touch of fire, sometimes at the hot and hasty words of party, and sometimes at the bidding of great thoughts and unselfish principles. We want

a poetry which shall speak in clear, loud tones to the people; a poetry which shall make us more in love with our native land, by converting its ennobling scenery into the images of lofty thought; which shall give visible form and life to the abstract ideas of our written constitutions; which shall confer upon virtue all the strength of principle, and all the energy of passion; which shall disentangle freedom from cant and senseless hyperbole, and render it a thing of such loveliness and grandeur as to justify all self-sacrifice; which shall make us love man by the new consecrations it sheds on his life and destiny; which shall force through the thin partitions of conventionalism and expediency, vindicate the majesty of reason, give new power to the voice of conscience, and new vitality to human affection, soften and elevate passion, guide enthusiasm in a right direction, and speak out in high language of men, to a nation of men.

SUSAN FENIMORE COOPER.1 About 1820.

From "Rhyme and Reason of Country Life."

190. BENEFITS OF COUNTRY LIFE.

PROBABLY there never was a people needing more than ourselves all the refreshments, all the solace, to be derived from country life in its better forms. The period at which we have arrived is rife with high excitement. The fever of commercial speculations, the agitation of political passions, the mental exertion required by the rapid progress of science, by the ever-recurring controversies of philosophy, and, above all, that spirit of personal ambition and emulation so wearing upon the individual, and yet so very common in America, — all unite to produce a combination of circumstances rendering it very desirable that we should turn, as frequently as possible, into paths of a more quiet and peaceful character. We need respose of mind. We need the shade of the trees and the play of healthful breezes to refresh our heated brow. We need the cup of water, pure from the spring, to cool our parched lips; we need the flowers, to soothe without flattery; the birds, to cheer without excitement; we need the view of the green turf to teach us the humility of the grave; and we need the view of the open heavens to tell us where all human hopes should centre.

1 One of our most accomplished female writers; a daughter of the celebrated novelist.

ALICE CARY. 1820-1871. (Manual, p. 484.)

From "Clovernook."

191. THE END OF THE HISTORY.

AND SO with the various seasons of the year. May, with her green lap full of sprouting leaves and bright blossoms, her song-birds making the orchards and meadows vocal, and rippling streams and cultivated gardens; June, with full-blown roses and humming-bees, plenteous meadows and wide cornfields, with embattled lines rising thick and green; August, with reddened orchards and heavy-headed harvests of grain; October, with yellow leaves and swart shadows; December, palaced in snow, and idly whistling through his numb fingers; - all have their various charm; and in the rose-bowers of summer, and as we spread our hands before the torches of winter, we say joyfully, "Thou hast made all things beautiful in their time." We sit around the fireside, and the angel feared and dreaded by us all comes in, and one is taken from our midst. Hands that have caressed us, locks that have fallen over us like a bath of beauty, are hidden beneath shroud-folds. We see the steep edges of the grave, and hear the heavy rumble of the clods; and, in the burst of passionate grief, it seems that we can never still the crying of our hearts. But the days rise and set, dimly at first, and seasons come and go, and, by little and little, the weight rises from the heart, and the shadows drift from before the eyes, till we feel again the spirit of gladness, and see again the old beauty of the world.

JOHN L. MCCONNEL. 1826-. (Manual, p. 510.)

From "Western Characters."

192. THE EARLY WESTERN POLITICIAN.

His hair

HE was tall, gaunt, angular, swarthy, active, and athletic. was invariably black as the wing of the raven. Even in that small portion which the cap of raccoon-skin left exposed to the action of sun and rain, the gray was but thinly scattered, imparting to the monotonous darkness only a more iron character. A stoop in the shoulders indicated that, in times past, he had been in the habit of carrying a heavy rifle, and of closely examining the ground over which he walked; but what the chest thus lost in depth it gained in breadth. His lungs had ample space in which to play. There was nothing pulmonary even in the drooping shoulders.

From shoulders thus bowed hung long, muscular arms, sometimes, perhaps, dangling a little ungracefully, but always under the command of their owner, and ready for any effort, however violent. These were terminated by broad, bony hands, which looked like grapnels; their grasp, indeed, bore no faint resemblance to the hold of those symmetrical instruments. Large feet, whose toes were usually turned in, like those of the Indian, were wielded by limbs whose vigor and activity were in keeping with the figure they supported. Imagine, with these peculiarities, a free, bold, rather swaggering gait, a swarthy complexion, and conformable features and tones of voice, and, excepting his costume, you have before your fancy a complete picture of the early western politician.

SARAH J. LIPPINCOTT. About 1833-. (Manual, p. 484.)

From "Records of Five Years."

193. DEATH IN TOWN AND COUNTRY.

Up the long ascent it moved, that shadow of our mortal sorrow and perishable earthly estate, that shadow of the dead man's hearse, along the way his feet had often trod, past the spring over whose brink he may have often bent with thirsting lip, past lovely green glades, mossy banks, and fairy forests of waving ferns, on which his eye had often dwelt with a vague and soft delight, and so passed out of our view. But its memory went not out of our hearts that day.

In this pure, healthful region, where nature seems so unworn, so youthful and vigorous, where dwell simplicity, humble comfort, and quiet happiness, death has startled us as something strange and unnatural.

There, on many a corner,

How different is it in the city! one is confronted with the black, significant sign of the undertaker's “dreadful trade," or comes upon some marble-yard, filled with a ghostly assemblage of anticipatory gravestones and monuments ; graceful broken columns, which are to typify the lovely incompleteness of some young life now full of beauty and promise; melancholy, drooping figures, types of grief forever inconsolable, destined, perhaps, to stand proxy for mourning young widows now happy wives; sculptured lambs, patiently waiting to take their places above the graves of little children whom yet smiling mothers nightly lay to sleep in soft cribs, without the thought of a deeper dark and silence of a night not far away, or of the dreary beds soon to be prepared for their darlings "i' the earth."

1 Originally and very favorably known by the assumed name of "Grace Greenwood."

JANE T. L. WORTHINGTON. 1847-. (Manual, p. 524.)

From "Love Sketches."

194. THE SISTERS.

THE sisters were together, together for the last time, in the happy home of their childhood. The window before them was thrown open, and the shadows of evening were slowly passing from each familiar outline on which the gazers looked. They were both young and fair ; and one, the elder, wore that pale wreath the maiden wears but once. The accustomed smile had forsaken her lip now, and the orange-flowers were scarcely whiter than the cheek they shaded. The sister's hands were clasped in each other, and they sat silently watching the gradual brightening of the crescent moon, and the coming forth, one by one, of the stars. Not a cloud was floating in the quiet sky; the light wind hardly stirred the young leaves, and the air was fraught with the fragrance of early spring flowers. It was the hour when reverie is deepest, and fantasies have the earnestness of truth, when memory is melancholy in its vividness, and we feel, "almost like a reality," the presence of those who may bless our pathway no more. The loved, the lost —

"So many, yet how few!"

gather around us, not as they are, chastened and troubled by battling with trials and disappointments, but as they used to be in the glow of unwearied expectation. Old fears flit before us altered into pleasures, and old hopes return bathed in tears.

FRANCIS BRET HARTE. 1837-.

From "The Luck of Roaring Camp," &c.

195. BIRTH OF A CHILD IN A MINER'S CAMP.

IN the midst of an excited discussion an exclamation came from those nearest the door, and the camp stopped to listen. Above the swaying and moaning of the pines, the swift rush of the river, and the crackling of the fire, rose a sharp, querulous cry. The pines stopped moaning, the river ceased to rush, and the fire to crackle. It seemed as if Nature had stopped to listen too.

The camp rose to its feet as one man! It was proposed to explode a barrel of gunpowder; but, in consideration of the situation of the mother, better counsels prevailed, and only a few revolvers were dis

1 Prominent among the more recent American writers; a native of New York, but has long lived in California.