agement, or the caprice of fortune, but he becomes great because he is great in individual power and feeling, because in his soul he cherishes great conceptions and ripens his taste to a more and more perfect refinement, and matures and perfects his power of expression, and most of all because in heart and life, in every thought and feeling, he works in childlike harmony with truth and God, till at last it is found that in all his generation, there is not his equal. A lesson like this so forcibly impressed and so splendidly illustrated, is worth very much at a time, when influences so numerous and so exciting, act with such prodigious power in every department of science, of art and of literature.

We have already alluded to the Christian spirit in which Allston toiled, and have shown how largely he was indebted for his wonderful attainments to the humility and simplicity of his Christian faith. Indeed, he seems worthy for his childlike simplicity and the fervor of his love, to be classed with the devotional painters of an earlier age, in whose minds seraphic fire seems to have been as intense and as inspiring as the love of art itself, or rather in whose hearts the two emotions were so blended in one, that they could not distinguish the one from the other. Allston did not however adopt the mediaval Christianity, from servile and factitious deference to its associations with art. He did not perforce, as some of our artists seem inclined to do, adopt and shape his religion to the graceful and artistic in order that he might be the better artist, but his religious soul first worshiped God intensely in the inner sanctuary, and then sought to express his emotions in appropriate creations. It is interesting to see how, in the lectures on art, the strong religious feeling of Allston, unconsciously reveals itself; and how naturally a line of thought is made to terminate in the beauty of holiness, and to lead up even to the wonderful presence of Jehovah. There is no effort, no affectation. The effort would be to avoid this direction, the affectation would be to repress and turn back the thought from God. The reader feels that not merely the man, but the artist lived upon such thoughts and was animated by such feelings, and the character so beautified with the halo of genius, seems also to shine with a saintly splendor and to be adorned with somewhat of a celestial majesty.

We quote the following fragment which was written with a pencil in a book of sketches, as an illustration of the way in which his thoughts were led up to higher themes.

"A real debt of gratitude-that is, founded on a disinterested act of kindness-can not be cancelled by any subsequent unkindness on the part of our benefactor. If the favor be of a pecuniary nature, we may, indeed, by returning an equal or greater sum, balance the moneyed part; but we can not liquidate the kind motive by the setting off against it any number of unkind ones. For an after injury can no more undo a previous kindness, than we can prevent in the future what has happened in the past. So neither can a good act undo an ill one: a fearful truth! For good and evil have a moral life, which nothing

in time can extinguish; the instant they exist, they start for Eternity. How, then, can a man who has once sinned, and who has not of himself cleansed his soul, be fit for heaven where no sin can enter? I seek not to enter into the mystery of the atonement, which even the angels sought to comprehend and could not; but I feel its truth in an unutterable conviction, and that, without it, all flesh must perish. Equally deep, too, and unalienable, is my conviction that 'the fruit of sin is misery.' A second birth to the soul is therefore a necessity which sin forces upon us. Ay, but not against the desperate will that rejects it.

"This conclusion was not anticipated when I wrote the first sentence of the preceding paragraph. But it does not surprise me. For it is but a recurrence of what I have repeatedly experienced; namely, that I never lighted on any truth which I inwardly felt as such, however apparently remote from our religious being, (as, for instance, in the philosophy of my art,) that, by following it out, did not find its illustration and confirmation in some great doctrine of the Bible, the only true philosophy, the sole fountain of light, where the dark questions of the understanding which have so long stood, like chaotic spectres, between the fallen soul and its reason, at once lose their darkness and their terror."-pp. 176, 177.

The question has been often asked, whether the arts of poetry and painting and others of kindred character will flourish when Christianity shall prevail throughout the earth, and what will be the style of artists and of art which may then be expected. We reply by pointing to Allston, whose example and whose memory were given to the earth before their time, to sustain the soul with a most blessed assurance, that this earth and man may now and then be honored by a presence so pure, and to cheer us with the hope that the day will dawn when many such shall sojourn among the dwellings of men.

ART. IX.-SOCIAL REFORMS.

Hints toward Reforms, in Lectures, Addresses, and other writings. By HORACE GREELEY. New York: Harper & Brothers. 1850. The Age and its Architects; ten chapters on the English people in relation to the times. By EDWIN PAXTON HOOD. London: Charles Gilpin. 1850.

MABLY. Théories Sociales et Politiques, avec une Introduction et des Notes. Par PAUL ROCHERY. Paris: Gustave Sandré. 1849. L'Europe en 1848, ou Considérations sur L'organization du Travail, Le Communism et Le Christianisme. Par L'ABBÉ J. GAUME, Vicaire-Général du Diocèse de Neveurs. Paris: Gaume Freres.

THE first of these authors needs no introduction to our readers. Widely known through his connection with the political press, he is known also through that and other channels as a zealous advocate of all those movements which, whether originating

in philanthropy, in political policy, in a morbid theology, in sentimentalism or in sectional and class interests, pass current under the name of Social Reforms.

The second is an English author of some repute, residing at Fulford, near York, a member of the party of progress, who in a free, dashing, and at times an extravagant style, yet with much force of argument and earnestness of will, discusses the political and social evils of his country and the age, and seeks to remedy them not by revolution nor by any violent and extreme measure whatever, but by sound legislation and the application of the moral forces of the Family, the School, and the Church.

To these authors we have added the name of the historian and political philosopher, Mably, who nearly a century since broached those social and political theories which have become rife under the new republicanism of France. In him we find perhaps the most moderate and consistent advocate of Socialism. His biographer says of him that "of all the philosophers of his time, Mably, both in his works and in himself, was the best embodiment of democratic tendencies. At once a socialist, a republican and a revolutionist, he overlooked no phase of the great problem. In revolution he saw the moral agency; in a republican government the political agency; in social equality the final consummation. Are there many of the socialists of the present day who are thus thorough and logical ?"

And in order to present the question of social reform under every aspect, we have introduced the treatise of the Abbé Gaume, which is deserving of our notice merely as applying Christianity to social questions from the Catholic side, as did the work of Mr. Pressensé, noticed in our last number, from the Protestant or liberal side.

We shall not attempt to follow Mr. Greeley through the wide range of topics embraced in his book. This article shall leave undisturbed the "Death-Penalty" and "Flogging in the Navy;" strongly as we advocate the former under due restrictions, and cordially as we detest the latter. Tobacco, against whose fumes and filth our Reformer has fulminated a counterblast, rivaling that of King James himself, shall be suffered to fumigate and salivate its victims without present remonstrance from us; and even Alcohol with its ten thousand woes shall herein receive no check nor admonition. As to Slavery we shall not touch it, morally or politically, in the territories, the District or the States. shall we run a tilt against Mr. Greeley's high-tariff scheme, a retrogressive Reform, nor attempt to demonstrate-however sanguine of success-that free trade in its broadest, fullest sense, must be the attendant if not the pioneer of a civilization and a Christianity properly universal. "Land Reform" and "Homestead Exemption," we shall leave to the wisdom of our National

and State legislatures. Thus reducing the compass of Mr. Greeley's volume to topics of which he treats in common with the other authors to whom we shall have occasion to refer, we shall confine ourselves in this discussion to those evils of society which stand connected with the unequal distribution of property and for which Communism is proposed as a remedy.

The rise of the poor as a class is to be traced to the progress of civilization. Among savage tribes, wildly roaming the forest and the desert, none are distinctively poor because none are rich except in those spoils of war and the chase which are alike within the reach of all. In the higher nomadic state, though there is more room for the distinction of property in the number and quality of herds, yet as pasturage is common and all subsist alike upon herbage of natural growth, and the property itself is perishable, there can be no wide distinction of tribes into classes, the rich and the poor. But when men form settled communities and engage in agricultural pursuits, there arises a fixed property in land, which being augmented in value by the avails of industry, becomes the basis of social distinctions in the community. Yet in such a community the extremes of social distinction are seldom reached: it is not till cities arise, and Commerce pours her treasures into the lap of the few and wrings from the many the ill-requited toil of intense competition, that the inordinately rich become separated from the abject poor upon opposite sides of a great and impassable gulf. Then the poor, the poor who feel their poverty, the miserably poor, the poor who have lost the hope and the ambition of bettering their condition, become a fixed element in the social system, and with the growth of cities and the increasing pressure of population and of competition in trade, this class seems to increase in numbers and in wretchedness. And yet the review of only a few centuries will show a marked improvement in the general condition of society and even in the condition of the poorer classes. It is common with poets and philosophical dreamers to fix the Arcadian era of our race in a remote antiquity, among gentle shepherds and simple rustics, or yet farther back among the untutored children of the forest. "All times when old are good." But who that is read in history, or that comprehends the elements of a true social state, would bring back the age of feudalism or of barbarism, or indeed any age which has preceded the present, with a whit more of real welcome than he would greet again his own childhood and pupilage? Though in those remote ages the poor, as we now use the term, were not known as a class in society, yet poverty was more widely known and felt than now; serfdom and slavery existed in all permanent communities, while in nomadic tribes often predatory and hostile, the uncertainty of subsistence and the insecurity of life left to man few pleasures above those of the wild beasts which he hunted as his prey.

No former state of civilization has been as favorable to the poor as is the present civilization of Christian countries. The cruel slavery of Rome which gave the master unlimited power over the person of the slave, and which on the murder of the master demanded a whole hecatomb of slaves as an expiatory sacrifice, is but one illustration of what the civilization of Rome effected for the masses of her dependent citizens. The Helotism of Sparta may serve as an illustration from Grecian history and from a people who boasted in their justice. Who would recall the days of 66 merry old England," when "wheaten bread was never tasted by the laborer, but swine formed the great provision of the people," when "not a single edible root grew in any part of the island," when "kidnapping was the law of the land and children were slaves to those who could catch them," when the diet and clothing of the people were prescribed by law, or when in the progress of liberty among the lower classes, "the laborer exchanged wives with his neighbor or carried his bedfellow to market with a halter about her neck and sold her for 5s. ?"

"It is now the fashion" says Macaulay, "to place the golden age of England in times when noblemen were destitute of comforts the want of which would be intolerable to a modern footman, when farmers and shop-keepers breakfasted on loaves, the very sight of which would raise a riot in a modern workhousewhen men died faster in the purest country air than they now do in the most pestilential lanes of our towns-and when men died faster in our towns than they now do on the coast of Guinea; we too shall in our turn be outstripped, and in our turn be envied. It may well be in the twentieth century that the peasant of Dorsetshire may think himself miserably paid with fifteen shillings a week-that the carpenter of Greenwich may receive ten shillings a day-that laboring men may be as little used to dine without meat, as they now are to eat rye bread-that sanitary, police and medical discoveries may have added several more years to the average length of human life-that numerous comforts and luxuries which are now unknown or confined to a few, may be within the reach of every diligent and thrifty working-man. And yet it may then be the mode to assert, that the increase of wealth and the progress of science have benefitted the few at the expense of the many; and to talk of the reign of Queen Victoria, as the time when England was truly merry England, when all classes were bound together by brotherly sympathy, when the rich did not grind the faces of the poor, and when the poor did not envy the splendor of the rich."*

In illustration of the beneficial influence of civilization upon the lower orders of society in England, Mr. Hood has collected

徘 * History of England, Vol. I, pp. 426, 427.