trialists-forming, for the most part, the stout main body of Philistinism-are sacrificed to it. In the same way, the result of all the games and sports which oc cupy the passing generation of boys and young men may be the establishment of a better and sounder physical type for the future to work with. Culture does not set itself against the games and sports; it congratulates the future and hopes it will make a good use of its improved physical basis; but it points out that our passing generation of boys and young men are sacrificed. Puritanism was necessary to develop the moral fibre of the English race, Nonconformity to break the yoke of ecclesiastical domination over men's minds and to prepare the way for freedom of thought in the distant future; still, culture points out that the harmonious perfection of generations of Puritans and Nonconformists have been in consequence sacrificed. Freedom of speech is necessary for the society of the future, but the young lions of the Daily Telegraph in the meanwhile are sacrificed. A voice for every man in his country's government is necessary for the future, but meanwhile Mr. Beales and Mr. Bradlaugh are sacrificed. We in Oxford, brought up amidst beauty and sweetness, have not failed to seize the truth that beauty and sweetness are essential characters of a complete human perfection. When I insist on this truth, I am all in the faith and tradition of Oxford. I say boldly that this our sentiment for beauty and sweetness, our sentiment against hideousness and rawness, has been at the bottom of our attachment to so many beaten causes, of our opposition to so many triumphant movements. And the sentiment is true, and has never been wholy defeated, and has shown its power even in its defeat. We have not won our political battles, we have not carried our main points, we have not stopped our adversaries' advance; but we have told silently upon the mind of the country, we have prepared currents of feeling which sap our adversaries' position when it seems gained, we have kept up our own communications with the future. Look at the course of the great movement which shook this place to its NEW SERIES-VOL. VI., No. 2. Quæ regio in terris nostri non plena laboris ? And what was this liberalism, as Dr. Newman saw it, and as it really broke the Oxford movement? It was the great middle-class liberalism, which had for the cardinal points of its belief the Reform Bill of 1832, and local self-government, in politics; in the social sphere, freetrade, unrestricted competition, and the making of large industrial fortunes; in the religious sphere, the dissidence of Dissent and the Protestantism of the Protestant religion. I do not say that other and more intelligent forces than this were not opposed to the Oxford movement: but this was the force which really beat it; this was the force which Dr. Newman felt himself fighting with; this was the force which till only the other day seemed to be the paramount force in this country, and to be in possession of the future; this was the force whose achievements fill Mr. Lowe with such inexpressible admiration, and whose rule he is so horror-struck to see threatened. And where is this great force of Philistinism now? It is thrust into the second rank, it is become a power of yesterday, it has lost the future. A new power has suddenly appeared, a power which it is impossible yet to judge fully, but which is certainly a wholly different force from middle-class liberalism; different in its cardinal points of belief, different in its tendencies in every sphere. It loves and admires neither the legislation of middle-class Parliaments, nor the local self-government of middle-class vestries, nor the unrestricted competition of middle-class industrialists, nor the dissidence of middle-class dissent and the Protestantism of middle-class Protestant religion. I am not now praising this new force, or saying that its own ideals are better; all I say is, that they are wholly different. And who will estimate how 16 much the currents of feeling created by Dr. Newman's movement, the keen deIre for beauty and sweetness which it nourished, the deep aversion it manifested to the hardness and vulgarity of middle-class liberalism, the strong light is turned on the hideous and grotesque illusions of middle class Protestantism,-who will estimate how much all these contributed to swell the tide of secret dissatisfaction which has mined the ground under the self-confident liberalism of the last thirty years, and has prepared the way for its sudden collapse and supersession? It is in this manner that the sentiment of Oxford for beauty and sweetness conquers, and in this manner may it long continue to conquer ! In this manner it works to the same end as culture, and there is plenty of work for it yet to do. I have said that the new and more democratic force which is now superseding our old middle-class liberalism cannot yet be rightly judged. It has its main tendencies still to form: we hear promises of its giving us administrative reform, law reform, reform of education, and I know not what; but those promises come rather from its advocates, wishing to make a good plea for it and to justify it for superseding middle-class liberalism, than from clear tendencies which it has itself yet developed. But meanwhile it has plenty of well-intentioned friends against whom culture may with advantage continue to uphold steadily its ideal of human perfection; that it is an inward spiritual activity, having for its characters increased sweetness, increased light, increased life, increased sympathy. Mr. Bright, who has a foot in both worlds, the world of middle-class liberalism and the world of democracy, but who brings • most of his ideas from the world of middle class liberalism in which he was bred, always inclines to inculcate that faith in machinery to which, as we have seen, Englishmen are so prone, and which has been the bane of middle class liberalism. He complains with a sorrow ful indignation of people who "appear to have no proper estimate of the value of the franchise;" he leads his disciples to believe,-what the Englishman is always too ready to believe,-that the having a vote, like the having a large family, or a large business, or large Other well-meaning friends of this new power are for leading it, not in the old ruts of middle-class Philistinism, but in ways which are naturally alluring to the feet of democracy, though in this country they are novel and untried ways. I may call them the ways of Jacobinism. Violent indignation with the past, abstract systems of renovation applied wholesale, a new doctrine drawn up in black and white for elaborating down to the very smallest details a rational society for the future, these are the ways of Jacobinism. Mr. Frederic Harrison and other disciples of Comte-one of them, Mr. Congreve, is and old acquaintance of mine, and I am glad to have an opportunity of publicly expressing my respect for his talents and character-are among the friends of democracy who are for leading it in paths of this kind. Mr. Frederic Harrison is very hostile to culture, and from a natural enough motive; for culture is the eternal opponent of the two things which are the signal marks of Jacobinism,-its fierceness, and its addiction to an abstract system. A current in people's minds sets towards new ideas; people are dissatisfied with their old narrow stock of Philistine ideas, Anglo-Saxon ideas, or any other; and some man, some Bentham or Comte, who has the real merit of having early and strongly felt and helped the new current, but who brings plenty of narrownesses and mistakes of his own into his feeling and help of it, is credited with being the author of the whole current, the fit person to be entrusted with its regulation and to guide the human race. The excellent German historian of the mythology of Rome, Preller, relating to the introduction at Rome under the Tarquins of the worship of Apollo, the god of light, healing, and reconciliation, observes that it was not so much the Tarquins who brought to Rome the new worship of Apollo, as a current in the mind of the Roman people which set powerfully at that time towards a new worship of this kind, and away from the old run of Latin and Sabine religious ideas. In a similar way, culture is always assigning to the system-maker and the system a smaller share in the bent of human destiny than their friends like. Culture feels even a pleasure, a sense of an increased freedom and of an ampler future, by so doing I remember when I was under the influence of a mind to which I feel the greatest obligations, the mind of a man who was the very incarnation of sanity and clear sense, a man the most considerable, it seems to me, whom America has yet produced,-Benjamin Franklin-I remember the relief with which, after long feeling the sway of Franklin's imperturbable common-sense, I came upon a project of his for a new version of the Book of Job, to replace the old version, the style of which, says Franklin, has become obsolete, and thence less agreeable. "I give," he continues, "a few verses, which may serve as a sample of the kind of version I would recommend." We all recollect the famous verse in our translation:" Then Satan answered the Lord and said: 'Doth Job fear God for nought?"" Franklin makes this: "Does Your Majesty imagine that Job's good conduct is the effect of mere personal attachment and affection?" I well remember how when first I read that, I drew a deep breath of relief, and said to myself: "After all, there is a stretch of humanity behind Franklin's victorious good sense!" So, after hearing Bentham cried loudly up as the renovator of modern society, and Bentham's mind and ideas proposed as the rulers of our future, I open the Deontology. There I read: "While Xenophon was writing his history and Euclid teaching geometry, Socrates and Plato were talking nonsense under pretence of talking wisdom and morality. This morality of theirs consisted in words; this wisdom of theirs was the denial of matters known to every man's experience." From the moment of reading that, I am delivered from the bondage of Bentham; the fanaticism of his adherents can touch me no longer, I feel the inadequacy of his mind and ideas for being the rule of human society, for perfection. Culture tends always thus to deal with the men of a system, with disciples, of a school, with men like Comte, or the late Mr. Buckle, or Mr. Mill. remembers the text: "Be not ye called Rabbi!" and it soon passes on from any Rabbi. But Jacobinism loves a Rabbi; it does not want to pass on from its Rabbi in pursuit of a future, and unreached It perfection; it wants its Rabbi and his ideas to stand for perfection that they may with the more authority recast the world; and for Jacobinism, therefore, culture-eternally passing onwards and seeking is an impertinence and an offence. But culture, just because it resists this tendency of Jacobinism to impose on us a man with limitations and errors of his own along with the true ideas of which he is the organ, really does the world and Jacobinism itself a service. So, too, Jacobinism, in its fierce hatred of the past and of those whom it makes liable for the sins of the past, cannot away with culture, culture with its inexhaustible indulgence, its consideration of circumstances, its severe judg ment of actions joined to its merciful judgment of persons. "The man of culture is in politics," cries Mr. Frederic Harrison, "one of the poorest mortals alive." Mr. Frederic Harrison wants to be doing business, and he complains that the man of culture stops him with a "turn for small fault-finding, love of selfish ease, and indecision in action." Of what use is culture, he asks, except for "a critic of new books or a professor of belles lettres?" Why,it is of use because, in presence of the fierce exasperation which breathes, or rather, I may say, hisses, through the whole production in which Mr. Frederic Harrison asks that question, it reminds us that the perfection of human nature is sweetness and light. It is of use because, like religion,-that other effort after perfection,-it testifies that, where bitter envying and strife are, there is confusion and every evil work. On this the last time that I am to speak from this place, I have permitted myself, in justifying culture and in enforcing the reasons for it, to keep chiefly on ground where I am at one with the central instinct and sympathy of Oxford. The pursuit of perfection is the pursuit of sweetness and light. Oxford has worked with all the bent of her nature for sweetness, for beauty; and I have allowed myself to-day chiefly to insist on sweetness, on beauty, as necessary characters of perfection. Light, too, is a necessary character of perfection; Oxford must not suffer herself to forget that! At other times, during my passage in this chair, I have not failed to remind her, so far as my feeble voice availed, that light is a necessary character of perfection. I never shall cease. so long as anywhere my voice finds any utterance, to insist on the need of light as well as of sweetness. To-day I have spoken most of that which Oxford has loved most. But he who works for sweetness works in the end for light also; he who works for light works in the end for sweetness also. He who works for sweetness and light works to make reason and the will of God to prevail. He who works for machinery, he who works for hatred, works only for confusion. Culture looks beyond machinery, culture hates hatred; culture has but one great passion, the passion for sweetness and light. Yes, it has one yet greater-the passion for making them prevail. It is not satisfied till we all come to a perfect man; it knows that the sweetness and light of the few must be imperfect until the raw and unkindled masses of humanity are touched with sweetness and light. If I have not shrunk from saying that we must work for sweetness and light, so neither have I shrunk from saying that we must have a broad basis, must have sweetness and light for as many as possible. I have again and again insisted how those are the happy moments of humanity, how those are the marking epochs of a people's life, how those are the flowering times for literature and art and all the creative power of genius, when there is a national glow of life and thought, when the whole of society is in the fullest measure permeated by thought, sensible to beauty, intelligent and alive. Only it must be real thought and real beauty; real sweetness and real light. Plenty of people will try to give the masses an intellectual food prepared and adapted in the way they think proper for the actual condition of the masses. The ordinary popular literature is an example of this way of working on the masses. Plenty of people will try to indoctrinate the masses with the set of ideas and judgments constituting the creed of their own profession or party. The religious organizations give an example of this way of working on the masses. I disparage neither; but culture works differently. It does not try to teach down to the level of inferior classes; it does not try to win them for this or that sect of its own, with readymade judgments and watchwords; but it seeks to do away with classes, to make all live in an atmosphere of sweetness and light, and use ideas, as it uses them itself, freely, to be nourished and not bound by them. This is the social idea; and the men of culture are the true apostles of equality. The great men of culture are those who have had a passion for diffusing, for making prevail, for carrying from one end of society to the other, the best knowledge, the best ideas of their time; who have labored to divest knowledge of all that was harsh, uncouth, difficult, abstract, professional, exclusive; to humanize it, to make it efficient outside the clique of the cultivated and learned, yet still remaining the best knowledge and thought of the time, and a true source, therefore, of sweetness and light. Such a man was Abelard in the Middle Ages; and thence the boundless emotion and enthusiasm which Abelard excited. Such were Lessing and Herder in Germany, at the end of the last century; and their services to Germany were inestimably precious. Generations will pass, and literary monuments will accumulate, and works far more perfect than the works of Lessing and Herder will be produced in Germany, and yet their names will fill a German with a reverence and enthusiasm such as the names of the most gifted masters will hardly awaken. Because they humanized knowledge; because they broadened the basis of life and intelligence; because they worked powerfully to diffuse sweetness and light, to make reason and the will of God prevail. With Saint Augustine they said: "Let us not leave Thee alone to make in the secret of thy knowledge, as thou didst before the creation of the firmament, the division of light from darkness; let the children of thy spirit, placed in their firmament, make their light shine upon the earth, mark the division of night and day, and announce the revolution of the times; for the old order is passed and the new arises; the night is spent, the day is come forth; and thou shalt crown the year with thy blessing, when thou shalt send forth la Bayard Taylor is at present one of the best known and most popular of American writers. He is a native of Pennsylvania, and was born in the year 1825. He early exhibited a taste for literature, and his first literary effort was made when he was but eighteen, being a lengthy poem on an incident in Spanish history. In 1844, having a great desire to see the Old World, he visited Europe and spent two years, chiefly on foot, in seeing the chief objects of interest, and on his return published an account of his travels entitled, "Views a-Foot, or Europe seen with Knapsack and Staff." On his return he became connected with the New York Tribune, and in 1848-9 spent sometime in California as its correspondent. He has since traveled extensively in the same capacity, visiting Egypt, and other parts of the East, Sicily and Spain He also accompanied the American expedition to Japan. The results of these and various other journies, have been separately published under the titles of "ElDorado," "Life and Landscapes from Egypt," "Pictures of Palestine," "Japan, India and China," etc. Mr. Taylor has also published a "Cyclopædia of Modern Travel," comprising narratives of Distinguished Travelers since the beginning of this century. He is also a poet of no mean parts. He has published a volume of "Eastern Poems," and quite recently a long and elaborately wrought poem entitled "The Picture of St. John." He has written in addition one or two novels which exhibit very considerable talent in this line. Mr. Taylor is still in the prime of life and we may naturally expect from him many other charming productions. |