Mr. Trench or La Rochefaucauld may desire to impose on words which, though they may indicate dark human possibilities that man oftener speaks of than enters, nevertheless do not make an absolute badness any more possible than absolute blackness or whiteness.

Mr. Trench seems to have tried to establish a right of possession warranty. For it is against the fearful and false views of our nature, for his dogmas on an estate where they could obtain no other to which nearly all churches have more or less committed themselves, that the Word bears its most signal and inevitable testimony, and one which will justify our claim for it as incorruptible, where Religions and Letters falter. The long-faced brother, who is never weary of proving that man's natural element is sin, as that of a fish is water, could he ever go deeper than the shell of that wondrous volume under his belaboring fist, would find that therein the word to sin is duaprávo — that is, to miss something; he might discover that man is not sent on earth to sin, but that sin is a missing of the design of a man's being. In the words by which sin and evil are described in human language, the profound and patiently-formed convictions of the human mind are confronting and refuting the conceits and phantasms of ephemeral theologies. To one who knows words, the fanatic is pledged to tell the truth; and whilst he denounces man as degraded, depraved, degenerate, etc., he is suggesting the question how man could be de-graded if he had no altitude from which to be brought down; how he could be de-generate if he were not of exalted birth-right? If man's nature is inherently vile, manliness (man-likeness) ought to be another name for excess of villainy; if the human heart is as hard as the nether millstone, a humane act must be the most grinding in its hardness. Natural affection would be lust. But the everlasting ages came forth with that voice of the people, which here at least is the voice of God, declaring that everywhere and forever bad acts shall be called unnatural, not natural, unmanly, not manly, brutal, not human; that virtue is one with the vir or The brave heart, though in the light of the past it can not be content with men, turns away from the husks of theology given him by the Churches, to be led by one who said of the prodigal that "he came to himself," not that he denounced or mistrusted, or left off reliance on himself. He has pondered well the saying of the wise man, Whoso sinneth wrongeth his own soul.

man.

So also when the transient and purblind sentiment of which the Church, and even Literature, are too often the willing slaves, would lift up diseased prejudices against eternal laws, words are the soldiers which can never be bribed or browbeaten to their behests, but even in their seeming coöperation are sapping and mining their defences. Spoken with harshest tone, written with ink mingled. with gall, very thick in this time as in all time fall the words latitudinarian, skeptic, heretic, freethinker; yet each word calls up the noble army of those in whose independent and heroic words and deeds the thunderstep of God in history and civilization has been heard. What does latitudinarian mean? Why, one who is broad and catholic; who will not bind to any dogmas of his own the salvation or excellence of others, and will admit that he may omit seeing one side of a sphere whilst looking at the other. Skeptic (σkeлTOμaì) means, as we have seen, one who considers; and there is no more terrible satire on what the creeds have given men to believe, than the fact that the word skeptic has come to be almost synonymous with infidel; that is, considering these dogmas has proved the sure way to reject them. The same may be said of the word heretic; it is simply from aipéw, to choose, and signifies one whose own reason and conscience, and not those of another man or set of men, have decided what he shall or shall not believe. And that this word, signifying to choose, should popularly mean an unbeliever, states with the unconscious candor of words that men who have the choice of their own faith, heretics, have rarely been known to tie themselves to the creeds. The grandeur of the word free-thinker is written upon its face, and he who denounces free thought or rationalism (ratio-reason) must blaspheme God in his construction of the necessary functions of the human mind, and insult the noblest attributes of man!

These facts show sufficiently the power and superiority of words. They show that whilst Literature marks sentimental or possible states, the word marks a real elevation, and states with incorruptible simplicity, Thus far man reached; This he believed! Words are thus sifted and condensed Literatures. They do not share the suspicion which must rest upon the tendency of this generation, to resolve itself into TALK, and to satisfy the world with

what Richter calls the "paper nobility." Such wise and now proverbial expressions as "One should be silent or say something better than silence;" "Speech is silvern, silence golden," and this

fine sentence of Carlyle's, "So much the more the disposition in thee to say the thing, so much the less will there be in thee to do it," indicate unmistakably a higher Leader than the Tongue, the apotheosis of which has made the Church of this age the highway of Cant, and the State an excessively tiresome stump-speech. Is not the adoration of the Grand Llama of the East, worshipped with all the more awe because the veil has never been lifted from it, higher than a Church which reduces the Incomprehensible to a question of arithmetic, and leaves no Holy of Holies in the soul unprofaned by the hoof of babbling Dogmatism? Do any but fools talk whilst there is music, or beneath the glory of a sunset? Surely the profounder souls know that the deepest thing within can not be spoken, and come forth from their communion feeling with Paul that they have there heard "unspeakable things, which it is not lawful for a man to utter." In the Desatir or Persian Book of Prophets, we read: "The spider said, Wherein consisteth the superior excellence of man? The sage Simrash replied, Men understand talismans and magic arts, whilst animals do not. The spider said, Animals exceed man in these respects; knowest thou not that crawling things and insects build triangular and square houses without wood or stone? Behold my work, how without loom I weave fine cloth. Simrash answered, Man can write and express his thoughts on paper, whilst animals can not. The spider said, Animals do not transfer the secrets of Mezdam from a living heart to a lifeless body. Simrash hung down his head from shame.'

We have seen that Speech is Nature bursting her chain for a nobler service, and, found only in man, records his history and announces his destiny; certifies also his connection on one side with the animal, on the other with absolute Being. This that we call human language was predicted in the first song of the first bird, which, a myriad ages before man appeared on earth, uttered the first note that invaded the ancient kingdom of Silence; and that effort to sing its little hymn of joy at its relation to the beautiful creation, was a prophesy fulfilled in the lisp of the first human child, which in its turn enfolded all eloquence and the highest vocalization. Swelling along the endless gamut of life, that first bird-warble not alone gushes at length from the throat of Malibran; for where vocalization ends the genius of man does not end, but weds its power with instrumentation; and the bird-note,

now winged with the instrumentation of Beethoven, passes on, leaving men on earth to be the language of archangels.

But still is silence Alpha and Omega-its kingdom was first and shall be last! Action will speak louder than the word, and the best in each not seek to flow out at the lips, but remain within to transform all and radiate in the unconscious presence and life! This eager searching into our words and languages is the sign of their transition; we are seeing through this illusion of rhetoric; "when we dream that we dream, we are near to waking." It has already startled certain living writers, that their writing out their thought is a lame apology for not living it; and there is a sad tone under the best writing of the day.

Who that has heard the Messiah of Handel, does not remember that finest chorus of the sublime work, For unto us a child is born? When in that chorus the words of Isaiah seem nearest the threshold of the Infinite, and the spirit of Handel is in its highest rapture, and we feel flooded with the too much glory, as the thousand voices rise to their climax in THE MIGHTY GOD- there is a sudden silence! In that silence the music of all music is heard, and the reverent soul knows that should the morning stars sing together for joy, and the angels unite in the choir, they could in their highest note only uplift the spirit to the threshold of the more godlike silence.

WALDEN WOODS.

Leaves are heaped upon leaves on the rustling walks of the woodland

There they fall and decay, wearisome year upon year;

So are the men and women who find not the fugitive moment

Rich in work and results, dull and poor as it seems.
Never afar, believe me, lurks the goddess Occasion,

Bearing before her the task, hiding the glorious prize:

Hast thou eyes to behold her, and quick ears to catch the music

Of her delicate wings hovering over thy way?

Then shall thy days be blithe, thy memory fresh and fragrant
Be the unresting wind, not the withering leaf!

WALDEN WATER.

SEE Walden shining in the sun,
And creeping up to kiss the feet
Of oak and pine and drooping birch,

Whose tremulous forms his waves repeat.

This green abyss, this lucid well,

Gives glimpses into endless peace :
Come rest with me beside the brink,
And let thine idle labor cease.

From whispering tree and billow bright,
From silent sky and wandering cloud,
A sweet persuasion steals o'er all,

And soothes the sad and tames the proud.

As softly lies the brooding light,
And fair the flitting shadow falls,

So gently in these better hours

The sacred voice of Nature calls.

THE NATURE OF MORAL ACCOUNTABILITY.

By the late JAMES P. ESPY, author of "Philosophy of Storms," etc.

SCIENCE has demonstrated that this earth was once fluid, from heat, to the surface; it follows that man has not existed on this earth from eternity, and it is manifest that the first man had not a man for his father, nor the first woman a woman for her mother; and as there is no known cause now in existence to produce man, but that of ordinary generation, and as it is plainly impossible for him to have originated from any fortuitous concourse of atoms, we are constrained to believe that the first man and first woman were contrived and brought into existence by a being of superior wisdom, power and goodness. And as this same reason applies to all the animals and vegetables on the face of the earth, we may safely infer that the power, wisdom and goodness of this being are indefinitely great. This inference is greatly confirmed, when we dis