aimed at. It was wherefore I opposed the whole banking and credit system, and struggled hard to separate the fiscal concerns of the government from the moneyed interests of the country, and to abolish paper currency. I wished to check commerce, to destroy speculation, and for the factory system, which we were enacting tariffs to protect and build up, to restore the old system of real home industry. The business men of the country saw as clearly as I did whither my propositions tended, and took the alarm; and as the business interests, rather than the agricultural and mechanical interests, ruled the minds of my countrymen, I had my labor for my pains. I went directly against the dominant sentiment of the British and American world, and made war on what it holds to be its chief interest and its crowning glory. Here was the gravamen of my offence. I had dared take Democracy at its word, and push its principles to their last logical consequences; I had had the incredible folly of treating the equality asserted as if it meant something, as if it could be made a reality, instead of a miserable sham. It was the attacks I made on the modern industrial and commercial system that gave the offence. Mr. Bancroft, who had been one of my stanchest friends, could not go with me in my views of property, though he did not object to my views with regard to the Church and the priesthood. John C. Calhoun, of South Carolina, told me that in what I had said of the priests I was right. "You have," he said, "told the truth of them. But your doctrine as to the descent and distribution of property is wrong, and you will do well to reexamine it." I was not wrong, if the premises from which I reasoned were tenable; and I am unable even to-day to detect any unsoundness in my views of the relation of capital and labor, or of the modern system of money wages. I believe firmly even still that the economical system I proposed, if it could be introduced, would be favorable to the virtue and happiness of society. But look upon its introduction as wholly impracticable, and therefore reard all thought and effort bestowed on it as worse than thrown away. We must seek its equivalent from another source, in another order ideas, set forth and sustained by religion. My political friends, as may well be believed, were indignant, if not precisely at my views, at my inopportune publication of them. I had injured my party, and defeated by my rashness the success of its candidates. They came to the conclusion that whatever my honesty, my zeal or ability, I was deficient in the essential qualities of a party leader. In this they were right, but they reasoned from wrong premises. I had my own purpose in publishing my essay on the laboring classes; and what they supposed I did from rashness, mere wantonness, I did with deliberation, with "malice aforethought." I have seldom, if ever, published anything in the heat of blood, or without being well aware of what I was doing, and I must bear the full responsibility of doing it. That is, I have always acted from reason, not impulse; my reason may or may not have been a good one, but it always seemed to me a good one at the time, and generally was a good one from the position I occupied. George Henry Calvert. BORN in Baltimore, Md., 1803. THE TRUE GENTLEMAN. [The Gentleman. 1863.] HE gentleman is never unduly familiar; takes no liberties; is chary of questions; is neither artificial nor affected; is as little obtrusive upon the mind or feelings of others as on their persons; bears himself tenderly toward the weak and unprotected; is not arrogant, cannot be supercilious; can be self-denying without struggle; is not vain of his advantages, extrinsic or personal; habitually subordinates his lower to his higher self; is, in his best condition, electric with truth, buoyant with veracity. Gentlemanhood is not compassed by imitation, because inward life is not imitable; nor is it purchasable, because refinement cannot be bought; nor but partially inheritable, because nature discountenances monopolies. It is not superficial, its externals being the tokens of internal needs, its embellishments part and parcel of its substance. The gentleman makes manliness attractive by seemliness: he exemplifies, in the words of Sidney, "high thoughts seated in a heart of courtesy." In all intercourse no armor is so becoming and so protective as a gentlemanly demeanor; and when we think, how intimate, diversified, unavoidable, indispensable, how daily and hourly are our relations with our fellow-men, we cannot but become aware how much it concerns us, for our pleasure and our profit, and for a deeper satisfaction, to be affable and gentlemanly, and arm ourselves with a bearing that shall be the expression of self-respect, purified by respect for others. Stripped of all that is adventitious and conventional, there is in the word gentleman a lofty ideal, which may be, and is, more or less realized in the conduct and carriage of individuals; and which finds expression, not through mere shallow civility and verbal politeness, but through a gentle, kindly bearing in all intercourse, the outward mark of inward fellow-feeling. From this cordial sentiment spring blossoms and flowers of spiritual beauty, that are captivating ornaments to the person, and exhale an atmosphere of refinement and tenderness, wherein the harsher self is soothed into disinterestedness and devotion. At the root of gentlemanhood, in a soil of deep, moral inwardness, lies a high self-respect,-not the pert spoiled child of individual self-estimation, but a growth from the consciousness of illimitable claims as an independent, infinite soul. The gentleman is a Christian product. His high exemplar is He, who delivered the precept, as fresh as, since him, we know it to be vast and deep and true,-whosoever would reign, let him serve, proving its sublime force, by establishing, through such service as has never elsewhere been seen, a reign, to which the sway of all the kings that have been crowned on the earth is empty and theatrical; who from the deeps of one heart poured a love so warm and divine, that it became for mankind a consecration; who up to his resplendent solitary summit, far above all thrones and principalities, carried a humility so noble, a sympathy so fraternal, that he looked down upon no man, not even a malefactor; who rebuked the arrogant and upraised the lowly; by the spiritual splendor of whose being the ages are lighted upward forever; who in his manly tenderness, his celestial justice, stretched forth a hand that lifted woman to her equal place; who to his disciples, and by them through all time to all other men that shall be truly his disciples, gave his peace, that peace which the world cannot give; in whose look and word and action were supreme dignity and beauty and charity, and infinite consolation; of whom "old honest Decker" says "The best of men That e'er wore earth about him was a sufferer, Nathaniel Hawthorne. BORN in Salem, Mass., 1804. DIED at Plymouth, N. H., 1864. YOUNG GOODMAN BROWN. [Mosses from an Old Manse. 1854.] YOUNG Goodman Brown came forth at sunset into the street of Salem village; but put his head back, after crossing the threshold, to exchange a parting kiss with his young wife. And Faith, as the wife VOL. VI.-12 was aptly named, thrust her own pretty head into the street, letting the wind play with the pink ribbons of her cap while she called to Goodman Brown. "Dearest heart," whispered she, softly and rather sadly, when her lips were close to his ear, "prithee put off your journey until sunrise and sleep in your own bed to-night. A lone woman is troubled with such dreams and such thoughts that she's afeared of herself sometimes. Pray tarry with me this night, dear husband, of all nights in the year." "My love and my Faith," replied young Goodman Brown, "of all nights in the year, this one night must I tarry away from thee. My journey, as thou callest it, forth and back again, must needs be done 'twixt now and sunrise. What, my sweet, pretty wife, dost thou doubt me already, and we but three months married?" "Then God bless you!" said Faith, with the pink ribbons; "and may you find all well when you come back." "Amen!" cried Goodman Brown. "Say thy prayers, dear Faith, and go to bed at dusk, and no harm will come to thee." So they parted; and the young man pursued his way until, being about to turn the corner by the meeting-house, he looked back and saw the head of Faith still peeping after him with a melancholy air, in spite of her pink ribbons. "What a "Poor little Faith!" thought he, for his heart smote him. wretch am I to leave her on such an errand! She talks of dreams, too. Methought as she spoke there was trouble in her face, as if a dream had warned her what work is to be done to-night. But no, no; 'twould kill her to think it. Well, she's a blessed angel on earth; and after this one night I'll cling to her skirts and follow her to heaven." With this excellent resolve for the future, Goodman Brown felt himself justified in making more haste on his present evil purpose. He had taken a dreary road, darkened by all the gloomiest trees of the forest, which barely stood aside to let the narrow path creep through, and closed immediately behind. It was all as lonely as could be; and there is this peculiarity in such a solitude, that the traveller knows not who may be concealed by the innumerable trunks and the thick boughs overhead; so that with lonely footsteps he may yet be passing through an unseen multitude. "There may be a devilish Indian behind every tree," said Goodman Brown to himself; and he glanced fearfully behind him as he added, "What if the Devil himself should be at my very elbow!" His head being turned back, he passed a crook of the road, and, looking forward again, beheld the figure of a man, in grave and decent attire, seated at the foot of an old tree. He arose at Goodman Brown's approach and walked onward side by side with him. "You are late, Goodman Brown," said he. "The clock of the Old South was striking as I came through Boston; and that is full fifteen minutes agone." "Faith kept me back awhile," replied the young man, with a tremor in his voice, caused by the sudden appearance of his companion, though not wholly unexpected. It was now deep dusk in the forest, and deepest in that part of it where these two were journeying. As nearly as could be discerned, the second traveller was about fifty years old, apparently in the same rank of life as Goodman Brown, and bearing a considerable resemblance to him, though perhaps more in expression than features. Still they might have been taken for father and son. And yet, though the elder person was as simply clad as the younger and as simple in manner too, he had an indescribable air of one who knew the world, and who would not have felt abashed at the governor's dinner-table or in King William's court, were it possible that his affairs should call him thither. But the only thing about him that could be fixed upon as remarkable was his staff, which bore the likeness of a great black snake, so curiously wrought that it might almost be seen to twist and wriggle itself like a living serpent. This, of course, must have been an ocular deception, assisted by the uncertain light. "Come, Goodman Brown," cried his fellow-traveller, "this is a dull pace for the beginning of a journey. Take my staff, if you are so soon weary." "Friend," said the other, exchanging his slow pace for a full stop, "having kept covenant by meeting thee here, it is my purpose now to return whence I came. I have scruples touching the matter thou wot'st of." "Sayest thou so?" replied he of the serpent, smiling apart. "Let us walk on, nevertheless, reasoning as we go; and if I convince thee not thou shalt turn back. We are but a little way in the forest yet." "Too far! too far!" exclaimed the goodman, unconsciously resuming his walk. "My father never went into the woods on such an errand, nor his father before him. We have been a race of honest men and good Christians since the days of the martyrs; and shall I be the first of the name of Brown that ever took this path and kept "Such company, thou wouldst say," observed the elder person, interpreting his pause. "Well said, Goodman Brown! I have been as well acquainted with your family as with ever a one among the Puritans ; and that's no trifle to say. I helped your grandfather, the constable, when he lashed the Quaker woman so smartly through the streets of Salem; and it was I that brought your father a pitch-pine knot, kindled |