shore, nor so much as a narrow strip of glistening sand, in any part of its course. It slumbers between broad prairies, kissing the long meadow-grass, and bathes the overhanging boughs of elder-bushes and willows, or the roots of elm and ash trees, and clumps of maples. Flags and rushes grow along its plashy shore; the yellow water-lily spreads its broad, flat leaves on the margin; and the fragrant white pond-lily abounds, generally selecting a position just so far from the river's bank that it cannot be grasped, save at the hazard of plunging in.

It is a marvel whence this perfect flower derives its loveliness and perfume, springing, as it does, from the black mud over which the river sleeps, and where lurk the slimy eel, and speckled frog, and the mud-turtle, whom continual washing cannot cleanse. It is the same black mud out of which the yellow lily sucks its rank life and noisome odor. Thus we see, too, in the world, that some persons assimilate only what is ugly and evil from the same moral circumstances which supply good and beautiful results the fragrance of celestial flowers to the daily life of others.

The Old Manse! we had almost forgotten it, but will return thither through the orchard. This was set out by the last clergyman, in the decline of his life, when the neighbors laughed at the hoaryheaded man for planting trees from which he could have no prospect of gathering fruit. Even had that been the case, there was only so much the better motive for planting them, in the pure and unselfish hope of benefiting his successors, an end so seldom achieved by more ambitious efforts. But the old minister, before reaching his patriarchal age of ninety, ate the apples from this orchard during many years, and added silver and gold to his annual stipend by disposing of the superfluity.

It is pleasant to think of him, walking among the trees in the quiet afternoons of early autumn, and picking up here and there a windfall; while he observes how heavily the branches are weighed down, and computes the number of empty flour-barrels that will be filled by their burden. He loved each tree, doubtless, as if it had been his own child. An orchard has a relation to mankind, and readily connects itself with matters of the heart. The trees possess a domestic character; they have lost the wild nature of their forest kindred, and have grown humanized by receiving the care of man, as well as by contributing to his wants.

I have met with no other such pleasant trouble in the world, as that of finding myself, with only the two or three mouths which it was my privilege to feed, the sole inheritor of the old clergyman's wealth of fruits. Throughout the summer, there were cherries and currants; and then came Autumn, with his immense burden of apples, dropping them continually from his overladen shoulders as he trudged along. In the stillest afternoon, if I listened, the thump of a great apple was audible, falling without a breath of wind, from the mere necessity of perfect ripeness. And, besides, there were pear-trees, that flung down bushels upon bushels of heavy pears; and peachtrees, which, in a good year, tormented me with peaches, neither to be eaten nor kept, nor, without labor and perplexity, to be given away.

The idea of an infinite generosity and inexhaustible bounty, on the part of our mother Nature, was well worth obtaining through such cares as these. That feeling can be enjoyed in perfection not only by the natives of summer islands, where the bread-fruit, the cocoa, the palm, and the orange grow spontaneously, and hold forth the everready meal; but, likewise, almost as well, by a man long habituated to city life, who plunges into such a solitude as that of the Old Manse, where he plucks the fruit of trees that he did not plant; and which, therefore, to my heterodox taste, bear the closer resemblance to those that grew in Eden.

Not that it can be disputed that the light toil requisite to cultivate a moderately sized garden imparts such zest to kitchen vegetables as is never found in those of the market-gardener. Childless men, if they would know something of the bliss of paternity, should plant a seed, - be it squash, bean, Indian corn, or perhaps a mere flower, or worthless weed, — should plant it with their own hands, and nurse it from infancy to maturity, altogether by their own care. If there be not too many of them, each individual plant becomes an object of separate interest.

My garden, that skirted the avenue of the Manse, was of precisely the right extent. An hour or two of morning labor was all that it required. But I used to visit and revisit it a dozen times a day, and stand in deep contemplation over my vegetable progeny, with a love that nobody could share or conceive of, who had never taken part in the process of creation. It was one of the most bewitching sights in the world to observe a hill of beans thrusting aside the soil, or a row of early peas just peeping forth sufficiently to trace a line of delicate

green.

K

LYTTON.

1805-1873.

SIR EDWARD BULWER (raised to the peerage with the title of Lord Lytton) was born in England in 1805 and died in 1873. He graduated at Trinity College, Cambridge, in 1826. In 1832 he entered Parliament, continuing a member till 1841; in 1852 he was re-elected to a seat in that body, where he served until his elevation to the peerage. In 1856 he was chosen Lord Rector of the University of Glasgow. At a very tender age he began to write verses, and long before he reached his majority, had published a volume. His first book, Ismael, an Oriental Tale, bears the date of 1820. It was followed by several volumes of verse, and his first novel, Falkland, appeared in 1827, the year of his marriage. The next year he gave to the world his famous novel, Pelham, which established his reputation on a firm basis. It was surpassed in merit, however, by some of his subsequent works, especially by Rienzi. Lord Lytton distinguished himself in almost every department of literature, - - as poet, essayist, novelist, and dramatist. Several of his plays, The Lady of Lyons and Richelieu, rank among the most popular plays on the modern stage. He was a most prolific writer; even a catalogue of his productions would be too long for a place here. During the ten years preceding his death Lord Lytton published almost nothing, but found time, amid his political duties, to do a good deal of literary work. Since his death two of his novels have been given to the world, Kenelm Chillingly and The Parisians. The former is superior to any of his earlier books, representing the high culture of the author in its fullest development. Judged by his first compositions, he won the reputation of a literary fop, to whose ultra-fastidious taste finish was the chief merit in composition. He seemed to hold himself aloof from the world, as from possible contamination. In his later novels this tendency was less marked; and in Kenelm Chillingly it disappears wholly, being replaced by a catholic, warm-hearted philosophy that bespeaks a healthy and genial nature. For the work of the novelist he was most happily equipped. The art of delineating the passion of love was his in full measure, and he was a master of graphic and dramatic narrative. In his earlier books, Falkland and Paul Clifford, he exhibits the license and levity of youth; but these vices were corrected in later life, and morally, his last novels are unexceptionable. Regarded as a whole, Lord Lytton's literary career was conspicuously successful, and he left behind him not only an honored name, but many enduring fruits of his genius and industry. The first extract is from My Novel, the second is from Leila, or the Siege of Granada; the poetry from The Lady of Lyons.

66

ON REVOLUTION.

My dear boy," cried Riccabocca kindly, "the only thing sure and tangible to which these writers would lead you lies at the first step, and that is what is commonly called a Revolution. Now, I know what that is. I have gone, not indeed through a revolution, but an attempt at one."

Leonard raised his eyes towards his master with a look of profound respect and great curiosity.

"Yes," added Riccabocca, and the face on which the boy gazed exchanged its usual grotesque and sardonic expression for one animated, noble, and heroic. "Yes, not a revolution for chimeras, but for that cause which the coldest allow to be good, and which, when successful, all time approves as divine, the redemption of our native

soil from the rule of the foreigner! I have shared in such an attempt. And," continued the Italian, mournfully, "recalling now all the evil passions it arouses, all the ties it dissolves, all the blood that it commands to flow, all the healthful industry it arrests, all the madmen that it arms, all the victims that it dupes, I question whether one man really honest, pure, and humane, who has once gone through such an ordeal, would ever hazard it again, unless he was assured that the victory was certain, - ay, and the object for which he fights not to be wrested from his hands amidst the uproar of the elements that the battle has released."

The Italian paused, shaded his brow with his hand, and remained long silent. Then, gradually resuming his ordinary tone, he continued:

Revolutions that have no definite objects made clear by the positive experience of history, revolutions, in a word, that aim less at substituting one law or one dynasty for another, than at changing the whole scheme of society, have been little attempted by real statesmen. Even Lycurgus is proved to be a myth who never existed. Such organic changes are but in the day-dreams of philosophers who lived apart from the actual world, and whose opinions (though generally they were very benevolent, good sort of men, and wrote in an elegant poetical style) one would no more take on a plain matter of life than one would look upon Virgil's Eclogues as a faithful picture of the ordinary pains and pleasures of the peasants who tend our sheep. Read them as you would read poets, and they are delightful. But attempt to shape the world according to the poetry, and fit yourself for a madhouse. The farther off the age is from the realization of such projects, the more these poor philosophers have indulged them. Thus, it was amidst the saddest corruption of court manners that it became the fashion in Paris to sit for one's picture, with a crook in one's hand, as Alexis or Daphne. Just as liberty was fast dying out of Greece, and the successors of Alexander were founding their monarchies, and Rome was growing up to crush in its iron grasp all states save its own, Plato withdraws his eyes from the world, to open them in his dreamy Atlantis. Just in the grimmest period of English history, with the ax hanging over his head, Sir Thomas More gives

* LYCURGUS. A famous Spartan lawgiver, supposed to have lived about 850 B. C. See Plutarch's Lives.

+ Plato's idea of a perfect state is unfolded in the Laws and the Republic.

you his Utopia.* Just when the world is to be the theater of a new Sesostris, the sages of France tell you that the age is too enlightened for war, that man is henceforth to be governed by pure reason and live in a paradise. Very pretty reading all this to a man like me, Lenny, who can admire and smile at it. But to you, to the man who has to work for his living, to the man who thinks it would be so much more pleasant to live at his ease in a phalanstery † than to work eight or ten hours a day; to the man of talent and action and industry, whose future is invested in that tranquillity and order of a state in which talent and action and industry are a certain capital; why, the great bankers had better encourage a theory to upset the system of banking! Whatever disturbs society, yea, even by a causeless panic, much more by an actual struggle, falls first upon the market of labor, and thence affects prejudicially every department of intelligence. In such times the arts are arrested, literature is neglected, people are too busy to read anything save appeals to their passions. And capital, shaken in its sense of security, no longer ventures boldly through the land, calling forth all the energies of toil and enterprise, and extending to every workman his reward. Now, Lenny, take this piece of advice. You are young, clever, and aspiring: men rarely succeed in changing the world; but a man seldom fails of success if he lets the world alone, and resolves to make the best of it. You are in the midst of the great crisis of your life; it is the struggle between the new desires knowledge excites, and that sense of poverty, which those desires convert either into hope and emulation or into envy and despair. I grant that it is an up-hill work that lies before you; but don't you think it is always easier to climb a mountain than it is to level it? These books call on you to level the mountain; and that moun

* UTOPIA. (See note, page 317.) This work, named from a king Utopus, written in Latin, was published at Louvain in 1516. The first English edition, translated by Robynson, was published in London in 1551. Bishop Burnet's translation appeared in 1684. Hallam says: "The Republic of Plato no doubt furnished More with the germ of his perfect society: but it would be unreasonable to deny him the merit of having struck out the fiction of its real existence from his own fertile imagination; and it is manifest that some of his most distinguished successors in the same walk of romance, especially Swift, were largely indebted to his reasoning as well as inventive talents. Those who read the Utopia in Burnet's translation may believe that they are in Brobdingnag; so similar is the vein of satirical humor and easy language. If false and impracticable theories are found in the Utopia (and, perhaps, he knew them to be such), this is in a much greater degree true of the Platonic republic." In a note to a later edition of his Literary History, Hallam qualifies the assertion that More borrowed the germ of his Utopia from Plato, and says, "Neither the Republic nor the Laws of Plato bear any resemblance to the Utopia." Lord Bacon's treatise on the same subject, The New Atlantis, a Fragment, was published in 1635, and Swift's Gulliver's Travels in 1726-27.

+ PHALANSTERY. An organized community of socialists.