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And we'll all feel gay,

When Johnny comes marching home.

Get ready for the jubilee,

Hurrah! hurrah!

We'll give the hero three times three,
Hurrah! hurrah!

The laurel-wreath is ready now
To place upon his loyal brow;
And we'll all feel gay,

When Johnny comes marching home.

Let love and friendship on that day,
Hurrah! hurrah!

Their choicest treasures then display,
Hurrah! hurrah!

And let each one perform some part,
To fill with joy the warrior's heart;
And we'll all feel gay,

When Johnny comes marching home.

The men will cheer, the boys will shout,
The ladies, they will all turn out,

And we'll all feel gay,

When Johnny comes marching home.

PATRICK SArsfield GilmORE. 1829

Τ

John Bascom.

BORN in Genoa, N. Y., 1827.

THE POPULAR PRESS.

[Philosophy of English Literature. 1874.]

IT may be said against much that may be urged for the periodical

press, that it is in large part instrumental; that it is a great whispering-gallery, carrying light things and scandalous things and wicked things a long way to many ears that might otherwise happily have missed of them; that the press is often but the tell-tale mechanism of disgraceful national gossip, that has nothing whatever to recommend it. Granting freely the truth of this and other accusations, still we must remember that village gossip is better than family gossip, town gossip is better than village gossip, state gossip than town gossip and national gossip than either. Gossip loses something of its banefulness, obscurity, and petty personality and private hate, at every remove, and the coun

try scandal of a low tavern is as much more concentrate, vicious, and unclean than that of a news-room or county paper as its range is more restricted. Simply to get men out of doors, away from the trite, stupid vulgarity of their cronies, is a great gain. A national interest and the air of national intelligence make way for national truth, and these for universal truth.

It may also be urged against the press, that it gives ready circulation to vice. The accusation is most true. Such, however, is not the natural fellowship even of news, much less of popular discussion. Pestilence may fly on the wings of morning, but these more often distil the dewy fragrance of abounding life. Publicity is allied to light, and favors virtue. Vice, as a rule, has more to gain from concealment than exposure. It settles as a miasma in dark and secluded places, rather than on wind-swept slopes under open heavens.

The literary accusation is thought to lie strongly against newspaper influence, that it debauches language, introducing questionable words and street phrases, passing them from one grade of literary recognition to another, till, forgetful of their low extraction, they are able in quiet. effrontery to usurp good society. Here, too, there is truth in the statement; but the fact expressed by it has also its compensations, and by no means unimportant ones. Mere formal criticism, a cold conventional pedantry, the literary barrenness that overtakes letters from time to time, encounter resistance in the somewhat coarse yet vigorous popular appetite; and language is kept more flexible, lithe, and nervous than it otherwise would be. The purely literary tendency cannot safely be left to itself. It is too overwrought and finical. If it is wedded to creative power, well; but when this is wanting, its place may be supplied in part by the popular impulse, by the homely, changeable, but always lively service to which language is put in the newspaper world. As a matter of fact, recent years have been characterized by a large number of critical works on the English language. Some of our periodicals assiduously cultivate style, and many works of the present time could be pointed out which show a high popular estimate of pure, simple composition. It remains to be shown that the language has really been injured by the freedom and license of the popular press. Departure at one point from the staidness of ordinary labor no more incapacitates us to return with relish to it at another than does the raciness of conversation unfit us for the formalities of sober speech.

One pronounced tendency, which has been with us through the entire century, is literary criticism, bold, fearless criticism in all departments. This is the fruit of the large and varied audience which the press gives to every leading work. The world's estimate of it, the discrepancies of

opinion which it calls forth, are as instant and inevitable as the sympathetic approval or censure, or the divided feeling that runs through the gathered multitude listening around a political stand. Aside from systematic and direct criticism, aside from that involved in discussion, there are many popular writers who, with open, inquiring eye, arraign topic after topic before them for judgment. Our popular novelists are often of this character, Dickens, George Eliot, George MacDonald; and in more general literature, Carlyle, Ruskin, Emerson. Such men are personified criticism, who search all they see.

The present diffusion of literature, so hopeful a sign to philanthropy, does, indeed, intensify the struggle for literary life. In the tossing of the multitudinous waves, much floats for a little that is of slight value, and works that can ill be spared are occasionally engulfed, overwhelmed by things more trivial but more buoyant. Composite tendencies, the half-unconscious conjoint movement of many minds, interlocked in their life, take the place of individual leadership, and thus the conditions of progress are removed, more and more, from the hands of single men. Some pictorial interest, some individual development, may seem to be lost in this upheaval, this uprising of the masses, this general diffusion and stir of intellectual life; but an organic, social growth, that indicates a conquering force at work freely on many minds, is much the more stable, and, at bottom, much the more stimulating and spiritually interesting development.

Edward Atkinson.

BORN in Brookline, Mass., 1827.

THE BASIS OF PROSPERITY FOR THE NEW SOUTH.

[Conclusion of an Address before the leading men of Georgia, in anticipation of the Cotton Exposition of 1881.-Senate Chamber, Atlanta, Ga., 1880.]

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HAVE claimed to be a Republican of Republicans, because, from the time I came to man's estate, and even before, I had opposed slavery-not only because I thought it morally and politically wrong, but even more because I considered it the greatest economic blunder under which a State could suffer.

During one of the last months of the civil war I happened to visit the camp near Washington, in which the deserters from Petersburg and Richmond were daily collecting in increasing numbers. I talked with many of them, and found them to be mostly veteran soldiers who had

fought on the Confederate side from the beginning. At last I asked a soldier from Louisiana-a vigorous, intelligent-looking man-why he had surrendered. His black eyes gleamed with subdued passion, as he replied: "I have just found out what we have been fighting for."— "What was it?" said I. 66 'Fighting for rich men's niggers, dI won't fight for them any longer."

'em!

When I heard these words, gentlemen, I saw before me a vision of the prosperity on which you have just entered in the land of the sunny South. I knew then that no longer would white and black alike be kept in the bonds of poverty and ignorance in order that the few might live in luxury on what they had not earned. It was that man's insight into the cause of the war that marked its end.

That time of prosperity has come; and you, gentlemen, are my wit nesses that never has the general welfare of the people of Georgia been as great as in this last year of abundance, and that never before has there been open to you such an opportunity to accumulate wealth as now appears in your near future: but this new wealth will be of that highest type gained by rightful methods, in which each dollar that any man passes to his own credit on his business ledger will mark a dollar's worth of service that he has rendered to his fellow-men.

I have claimed also to be a Democrat of Democrats upon the ground that only those are entitled to the name who fully accept the rule that every man, be he rich or poor, black or white, has an equal stake in righteous government. The rich man has no greater claim to influence merely because he possesses wealth, than the poor man because he desires to attain it, except so far as in the attainment of his property he has gained an honest influence over others. The best reason that could have been assigned for the change of the government of the State of South Carolina when Wade Hampton was chosen was given me by an old negro whom I met at the Capitol in Columbia a few months after the change, of which I asked him the reason: "De reason, boss,” said he, "de reason is dat you can't put ign'ance ober intelligence, and make it stay.

Gentlemen, when you trust fully in the democratic principle that every man is entitled to one vote, and when no man fears to have that vote counted, there will be less danger of the continued control of ignorance over intelligence than there is when resort is had to any other method; and only when such is the rule will free institutions be fully established.

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In fact, what is needed now, and what is growing fast, is the sense of national existence. Where is the leader at whose trumpet-call the great party of the nation will arise? Look for your analogy in the very art to which our attention has been devoted. In the kingdom of cotton

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