better or more reasonable defense of what are called "the graces" can be given than Chesterfield here gives. This English nobleman greatly admired the French because of the infinite pains they bestow upon the little amenities of life. When reading the innuendoes which English writers constantly throw at the French people, a practice we Americans too often copy, it is well to remember that Lord Chesterfield said: "A Frenchman, who, with a fund of virtue, learning, and good sense, has the manners and good breeding of his country, is the perfection of human nature.” He puts "virtue, learning, and good sense" first. What more could Isaac Watts or Samuel Johnson do? But the world remembers that Lord Chesterfield was a rake, a gambler, and a cynic, and therefore will have none of him. The world would distrust the Ten Commandments if it thought Lord Chesterfield had spoken well of them. So deeply rooted is prejudice! In advice relating to the employment of time and the choice of pleasures neither Smiles's Self-Help nor Mason's Self-Knowledge is more orthodox than Chesterfield's Letters. Says the worldly nobleman to his son: "Do you employ your whole time in the most useful manner? I do not mean, do you study all day long? nor do I require it. But I mean do you make the most of the respective allotments of your time? While you study is it with attention? When you divert yourself is it with spirit? Your diversions may, if you please, employ some part of your time very usefully. It depends entirely upon the nature of them. If they are futile and frivolous it is time worse than lost, for they will give you a habit of futility. habit of futility. . . . The pleasures of a man of parts either flatter the senses or improve the mind. I hope, at least, that there is not one minute of the day in which you do nothing at all. Inaction at your age is unpardonable." Here again we find that core of common sense which is contained in nearly all of Lord Chesterfield's maxims and observations. Take out the cynicism, the low estimate of woman, and the easy morality, which was due to the times in which he lived quite as much as to the man's self, and Lord Chesterfield's letters are a very good mentor for young people. Do you want sound advice upon books and reading? You can find it in Chesterfield. Let us remind ourselves in passing that he lived in an age when a knowledge of the Greek and Latin classics was thought becoming to a gentleman. We call those people old fogies because we know more about electricity than they. They were not old fogies, and many of them had a culture we entirely lack. One would not wish material civilization to go back to that time, but he might well wish that the best ideals of that time were also the ideals of ours. And prominent among these ideals he would place a feeling for the literary glories of Greece and Rome. Something of this sort Chesterfield has in mind when he says to his son, "Can you open Demosthenes at a venture? Can you get through an oration of Cicero or a satire of Horace without difficulty?" To be solicitous about these masters is surely to set a high standard in the art of reading. On the other hand, Chesterfield could give advice as homely as that contained in an almanac or a copybook, as when he says, "Read only useful books, and never quit a subject until you are thoroughly master of it.” Whatever his life was, he never made the theoretical mistake of regarding fine manners as paramount. His philosophy is very well summed up in this last quotation: "For my own part I really think that, next to the consciousness of doing a good action, that of doing a civil one is the most pleasing; and the epithet which I shall covet the most, next to that of Aristides, would be that of well-bred.” Leon Ht. Vincent ART. X.-THE BIBLE IN "EVANGELINE." THE Bible is the oxygen of our Anglo-Saxon atmosphere. Its spirit, thought, and imagery have been incorporated in our best English and American literature. Like gold, it is found in the quartz of our earliest literary formations and in the sands of the seething streams of our book-loving to-day. Our literature began with the translation of the Scriptures. Cadmon's paraphrase and the work of the Venerable Bede, who rendered portions of the Bible into English in the early part of the eighth century, are the golden milestones from which we take our historic bearings. Wyclif, the first great English reformer and translator of the Bible, had for his contemporary Geoffrey Chaucer, the "Father of English Poetry," whose poems are replete with allusions which show his familiarity with the Old Testament and the Apocrypha as well as with the New Testament. Spenser's "Faerie Queene" is as aromatic with the religious spirit as a censer in the hand of an Aaron. Milton's "Paradise Lost," based on the Mosaic account of the fall, still stands as the great epic. And Bunyan's "Pilgrim," with his scroll in his bosom, lives on through the years, an inspiration to each new generation of wayfaring men. This beneficent influence is no less in the writings of Tennyson, Browning, and Ruskin. Tennyson quoted or alluded to Scripture four hundred and sixty times in his poems, and these references are from fifty-two of the sixty-six books of the Bible. Browning, as every student knows, was also "mighty in the Scriptures," while texts fell as naturally from Ruskin's pen as raindrops from an April cloud. These facts are so patent that Professor Huxley has acknowledged that "It is an unquestionable fact that for the last three centuries this Book has been woven into all that is best in English literature and history." When we examine American literature we observe that all our great poets have been dominated by a reverent religious spirit, and none more so than Longfellow. "The poetry of Longfellow furnishes a most signal proof of the benefits conferred by poets upon mankind. It is a gospel of good will set to music. It has carried sweetness and light to thousands of homes. It is blended with our holiest affections and immortal hopes." He has been the favorite interpreter of life and the teacher of the common people in English-speaking lands for the last half century, and is read more to-day than any other poet except David. An Oxford professor is quoted as declaring that Longfellow had a hundred readers in England where Browning had one. He, "as the priest with his hyssop sprinkles the congregation," has scattered biblical thoughts, familiar to the common mind, through some of his finest verses. Christian ideals drew him with stronger cords than worldly philosophies and heathen mythologies. He heard the "Footsteps of Angels" as well as the whisperings of the Muses. He finds a theme in "The Sifting of Peter" as well as in "The Masque of Pandora." The fountain opened for sin and uncleanness sparkled brighter before his eyes than the fabled rills of Helicon. He did not sing, as so many poets have done, too far above our heads; but, like the robin, he built his nest in the orchards near our doors. Elizabeth Barrett Browning's desire was realized in him; for, said she, "We want the touch of Christ's hand upon our literature as it touched other dead things; we want the sense of the saturation of Christ's blood upon the souls of our poets, that it may cry through them in answer to the ceaseless wail of the sphinx of our humanity expounding agony into renovation." "Evangeline" beautifully illustrates Longfellow's power in the use of the Bible. While in this exquisite poem we find some. classic references, such as, "like Druids of eld," "Titan-like," "the revel of frenzied Bacchantes," "the Fates," "like a god of Olympus," and "the Dryads whose haunts they molested," and a few similes founded on historical incidents, like a reference to Xerxes in "the plane-tree the Persian adored;" yet his most striking pictures and rhetorical figures originated in nature and the Scriptures. In the view of Benedict Bellefontaine's barns and farmyards we find that there, in his feathered seraglio, Strutted the lordly turkey, and crowed the cock, with the selfsame Fall has come to those Acadian shores. The harvests have been gathered. All signs foretell the winter, for "with the wild winds of September wrestled the trees of the forests, as Jacob of old with the angel." What is more delightfully descriptive than the portrait of Evangeline framed in her chamber window? She is thinking of Gabriel, who, at the ringing of the curfew, had just bidden his sweetheart many a fond good night. Thoughts of sadness steal upon her as the clouds drift over the moon and leave their shadows on the floor. And, as she gazed from the window, she saw serenely the moon pass When the men of Grand-Prè have gathered in the village church, and the announcement is made by the English officer that they are to be torn, like worthless briers, from their soil and thrown in some out-of-the-way place, Basil the blacksmith, the father of Gabriel, cries out in his red-hot anger, "Down with the tyrants of England!" In the midst of the tumult Father Felician enters through the door in the chancel. He raises his hand and hushes the throng. His words are worthy of an apostle: "What is this that ye do, my children? what madness has seized you? Forty years of my life have I labored among you, and taught you, Not in word alone, but in deed, to love one another! Is this the fruit of my toils, of my vigils and prayers and privations? At the evening service that night, as they sang the "Ave Maria,” they "fell on their knees, and their souls, with devotion translated, rose on the ardor of prayer, like Elijah ascending to heaven." Father Felician is sketched in that last drear night on the Acadian coast in his ministrations among his wronged people as "consoling and blessing and cheering, like unto shipwrecked Paul on Melita's desolate seashore." In a glimpse along a Southern bayou there is this delicate fancy concerning a cedar: |