only the title, more honorable than lucrative, of my associate. But that will satisfy him, and his gratitude assures me in advance my daughter's welfare."

"This whole arrangement is perfect, M. Crépinel; and when does the wedding come off?"

"Here is precisely the second motive of my visit, sir; the wedding! We shall go in the morning to the magistracy and to the church, then each will return to his business; but in the evening, about ten o'clock, some old friends and loving relatives will be assembled at my hearth; and a supper, in the fashion of our forefathers will celebrate the wedding, which in the shop of a musical instrument-maker may at least enjoy the auspices of harmony."

Tis well, very well, M. Crépinel," replied the artist, thoughtfully.

"I invite you, then, sir, earnestly, to join the few guests who will meet around my modest table on that solemn day. "And is it fixed upon "A week from this." "Irrevocably?" "Irrevocably."

"Well, M. Crépinel, I give on that very evening a great concert, which will be honored, I believe, by the presence of the Empress. I place a box at the disposal of your family."

"Ah! a thousand thanks, sir."

"After the concert, a carriage, at my orders, will take you home, where I shall soon have the pleasure of rejoining you, to share your wedding-feast and associate myself in the joy of your family."

The sturdy artisan took leave of Baillot, who busied himself with the organization of the concert, whose future existence and date he had improvised. A generous thought germed in his heart, and he had not a moment to lose in maturing it into a plan, and in realizing that plan.

The concert took place, and with our readers' permission we return from it to the parlor of Crépinel, street Maza

rine.

This parlor is a large, square room, the walls of which are tapestried in the style of the 17th century, with that pictured Bruges leather which rivalled

the tapestries of Gueldres and Brabant. An immense white marble chimney, bearing the sculptured arms and cipher of Cardinal Mazarin, which indicated that the house had been built by the founder of the College des Quatre-Nations, and that it had probably been destined for the professors of this college-is surmounted by a beautiful glass, in front of which is a colossal pendulum, whose precious ornaments are of Boule's hands; two rich copper candelabras each held four wax candles; twelve armchairs, and some folding-seats covered with Utrecht velvet, flanked two enormous downy bergeres at the chimneycorners, while a fire of oak and ash-wood cheered the room.

In the angles of this spacious parlor stand four consoles, graceful furniture invented in the 17th century by the inconsolable widow of the brave and unfortunate Duke de Montmorency; on one of these consoles appears the bust of Philidor, due to the chisel of Houdon. On the walls are hung portraits of Lulli, Gluck, Mozart, Grétry, Haydn and Rameau. On the two sides of the chimney are a grand piano and a splendid harp. A colossal guéridon occupies the middle of the room, its shelves laden with French, Italian, and German music.

Eight persons, besides Mr. and Mrs. Crépinel and the bride and bridegroom, were assembled, talking of the brilliant concert from which they had just returned. There was no end to the praises accorded to Baillot for his lively, learned, and delicate play, which had borne away the palm, and obtained the approbation of the Empress herself.

at a gallop, shook the houses of the street Mazarine, and stopped at the door. A minute after, M. Baillot entered and underwent a fresh shower of compliments.

"To table! to table! gentlemen and ladies," called Madame Crépinel, who had but little taste for the mummeries of empty politeness. The mistress of the house was eagerly followed, and they sat down to table.

They drank as at the wedding of Cana; they ate as at the wedding of Gamache. Every one was in spirits, for pleasure and liberty are democratic sovereigns, and freely dispense among the humblest intellects the feast of humor and the flow of soul. The gownsman forgot his code and his pandects, and was almost imaginative; the shopkeeper found happy repartees; the beaurocrat came out of his cravat and his habitual nullity. Robineau, even, notwithstanding the funereal memories of his three wives and his approaching hymen, notwithstanding especially the checkmate he had received that morning from M. Crépinel, was jovial without vulgar temerity. Baillot talked agreeably, related his Odyssey of the street Mouffetard and the finding of the Amati violin, which had become in his hands, thanks to Crépinel's skilful science, a true gold mine. Then they sang good old songs of Panard and Collé, and the modern songs of Armand Gouffe's and that kindly and merry Desaugiers, who never decks the Gallic muse with the bloody attire of revolution, or the banners of impiety or materialism. Finally they returned to the parlor, and Baillot, acceding to the desires of the company, played on his violin one of his sweetest fantasias. Then the bride seated herself at her harp, and sang with a melodious voice to the accompaniment of this royal instrument, a delicious romance of Millevovés.

These pure, fresh tones, these chaste and last accents of a young girl, dropping a tear into her voice, that seemed to bewail her virginity, like the companions of Seila upon the mountains of Saphat, touched the assembly, and Baillot exclaimed in his enthusiasm, "Ah, divine Colombier, you are equalled if not surpassed!"

This ended the evening, or rather the

morning of the wedding. The guests went away enchanted. Baillot remained last with the family.

When they were alone, "M. Crépinel," he said to the artisan, whose eyes were still moist with tears, 66 allow me to offer your son-in-law, who, on his part, has also contributed to restore to my Amati its power and glory, a testimonial of my esteem and gratitude." "Sir," said the artisan, bowing.

"My dear M. Firmin," resumed the artist, turning toward the bridegroom, "the success of last evening's concert is due in great measure to your skill; we ought to divide the profits. Accept, I pray you, this little sum, which will not be useless in your young housekeeping." And he handed Firmin a roll of six thousand-franc notes.

The poor boy could scarce keep his feet, and stammered some unintelligible compliment. "M. Crépinel," pursued Baillot, drawing from his pocket a folded parchment, which he placed in the hands of the other; "her Majesty, the Empress, to whom I had the honor of mentioning your very useful and remarkable works, has commissioned me to present you this brevet of appointment as her own instrument-maker."

"Ah, M. Baillot! M. Baillot! what an honor! and what gratitude !"

"Toward our august sovereign, yes; but toward me, no; for that word is erased from our dictionary, and there can be no other tie between us than that of friendship and fraternity." And he extended his hand to Crépinel, who pressed it with energetic warmth.

"And you, dear madam," added Baillot, approaching Cecilia, who contemplated, pale and agitated, the rapture of her father and her husband, “you know that nothing brings good-luck to a young household like beneficence; be therefore so kind as to take this thousand-franc note to the poor mother who sold me, without knowing it, the masterpiece of Amati. Such an embassy can hardly be otherwise than agreeable to you, and offered by your hand-by the hand of beauty and of talent-this small gift will acquire a value which it could not otherwise possess."

"I gladly accept the mission you confide to me, sir," replied Cecilia, blushing, "and will fulfil it, unworthy as I am to

perform such a mission. But certainly the poor woman will take me for the ambassadress of a prince, or of a god." "Not of a prince, no," replied Baillot, laughing, "but of a god, it may well be,―of the god Pan."

Macmillan's Magazine.

THE PROPHET OF CULTURE.

BY HENRY SIDG WICK, FELLOW OF TRINITY COLLEGE, CAMBRIDGE.

THE movement against anonymous writing, in which this journal some years ago took a part, has received, I think, an undeniable accession of strength from the development (then unexpected) of Mr. Matthew Arnold. Some persons who sympathized on the whole with that movement yet felt that the case was balanced, and that if it succeeded we should have sacrificed something that we could not sacrifice without regret. One felt the evils that "irresponsible reviewers" were continually inflicting on the progress of thought and society: and yet one felt that, in form and expression, anonymous writing tended to be good writing. The buoyant confidence of youth was invigorated and yet sobered by having to sustain the prestige of a well-earned reputation: while the practised weapon of age, relieved from the restraints of responsibility, was wielded with almost the elasticity of youth. It was thought we should miss the freedom, the boldness, the reckless vivacity with which one talented writer after another had discharged his missiles from behind the common shield of a coterie of unknown extent, or at least half veiled by a pseudonyme. It was thought that periodical literature would gain in carefulness, in earnestness, in sincerity, in real moral influence; but that possibly it might become just a trifle dull. We did not foresee that the dashing insolences of "we-dom" that we should lose would be more than compensated by the delicate impertinences of egotism that we should gain. We did not imagine the new and exquisite literary enjoyments that would be created when a man of genius and ripe thought, perhaps even elevated by a position of academic dignity, should deliver profound truths and subtle obser

vations with all the dogmatic authority and self-confidence of a prophet: at the same time titillating the public by something like the airs and graces, the playful affectations of a favorite comedian. We did not, in short, foresee a Matthew Arnold: and I think it must be allowed that our apprehensions have been much removed, and our cause much strengthened, by this new phenomenon.

I have called Mr. Arnold the prophet of culture: I will not call him an "elegant Jeremiah," because he seems to have been a little annoyed (he who is never annoyed) by that phrase of the Daily Telegraph. "Jeremiah!" he exclaims, "the very Hebrew prophet whose style I admire the least." I 'confess I thought the phrase tolerably felicitous for a Philistine, from whom one would not expect any very subtle discrimination of the differentiæ of prophets. Nor can I quite determine which Hebrew prophet Mr. Arnold does most resemble. But it is certainly hard to compare him to Jeremiah, for Jeremiah is our type of the lugubrious; whereas there is nothing more striking than the imperturbable cheerfulness with which Mr. Arnold seems to sustain himself on the fragment of culture that is left him, amid the deluge of Philistinism that he sees submerging our age and country. A prophet, however, I gather, Mr. Arnold does not object to be called; as such I wish to consider and weigh him; and thus I am led to examine the lecture with which he has closed his connection with Oxford,-the most full, distinct, and complete of the various utterances in which he has set forth the Gospel of Culture.

As it will clearly appear in the course of this article, how highly I admire Mr. Arnold as a writer, I may say at once, without reserve or qualification, that this utterance has disappointed me very much. It is not even so good in style as former essays; it has more of the mannerism of repeating his own phrases, which, though very effective up to a certain point, may be carried too far. But this is a small point: and Mr. Arnold's style, when most faulty, is very charming. My complaint is, that though there is much in it beautifully and subtly said, and many fine glimpses of great truths, it is, as a whole, ambitious,

vague, and perverse. It seems to me over-ambitious, because it treats of the most profound and difficult problems of individual and social life with an airy dogmatism that ignores their depth and difficulty. And though dogmatic, Mr. Arnold is yet vague; because when he employs indefinite terms he does not attempt to limit their indefiniteness, but rather avails himself of it. Thus he speaks of the relation of culture and religion, and sums it up by saying, that the idea of culture is destined to "transform and govern" the idea of religion. Now I do not wish to be pedantic; and I think that we may discuss culture and religion, and feel that we are talking about the same social and intellectual facts, without attempting any rigorous definition of our terms. But there is one indefiniteness that ought to be avoided. When we speak of culture and religion in common conversation, we sometimes refer to an ideal state of things and sometimes to an actual. But if we are appraising, weighing, as it were, these two, one with the other, it is necessary to know whether it is the ideal or the actual that we are weighing. When I say ideal, I do not mean some thing that is not realized at all by individuals at present, but something not realized sufficiently to be much called to mind by the term denoting the general social fact. I think it clear that Mr. Arnold, when he speaks of culture, is speaking sometimes of an ideal, sometimes of an actual culture, and does not always know which. He describes it in one page as "a study of perfection, moving by the force, not merely or primarily of the scientific passion for pure knowledge, but of the moral and social passion for doing good." A study of this vast aim, moving with the impetus of this double passion, is something that does, I hope, exist among us, but to a limited extent: it is hardly that which has got itself stamped and recognized as culture. And Mr. Arnold afterwards admits as much. For we might bave thought, from the words I have quoted, that we had in culture, thus possessed by the passion of doing good, a mighty social power, continually tending to make 66 reason and the will of God prevail." But we find that this power only acts in fine weather. "It needs

times of faith and ardor to flourish in." Exactly; it is not itself a spring and source of faith and ardor. Culture "believes" in making reason and the will of God prevail, and will even "endeavor" to make them prevail, but it must be under very favorable circumstances. This is rather a languid form of the passion of doing good; and we feel that we have passed from the ideal culture, toward which Mr. Arnold aspires, to the actual culture in which he lives and moves.

Mr. Arnold afterwards explains to us a little further how much of the passion for doing good culture involves, and how it involves it. "Men are all members of one great whole, and the sympathy which is in human nature will not allow one member to be indifferent to the rest, or to have a perfect welfare independent of the rest. . . . . The individual is obliged, under pain of being stunted and enfeebled in his own development if he disobeys, to carry others along with him in his march toward perfection." These phrases are true of culture as we know it. In using them Mr. Arnold assumes implicitly what, perhaps, should have been expressly avowed

that the study of perfection, as it forms itself in members of the human race, is naturally and primarily a study of the individual's perfection, and only incidentally and secondarily a study of the general perfection of humanity. It is so incidentally and secondarily for the two reasons Mr. Arnold gives, one internal, and the other external: first, because it finds sympathy as one element of the human nature that it desires harmoniously to develop; and secondly, because the development of one individual is bound up by the laws of the universe. with the development of at least some other individuals. Still the root of culture, when examined ethically, is found to be a refined eudæmonism: in it the social impulse springs out of and reënters into the self-regarding, which remains predominant. That is, I think, the way in which the love of culture is generally developed an exquisite pleasure is experienced in refined states of thought and feeling, and a desire for this pleasure is generated, which may amount to a passion, and lead to the utmost intellectual and moral effort. Mr. Arnold may,

perhaps, urge (and I would allow it true in certain cases) that the direct impulse toward perfection, whether realized in a man's self or in the world around, may inspire and impassion some minds, without any consideration of the enjoyment connected with it. In any case, it must be admitted that the impulse toward perfection in a man of culture is not practically limited to himself, but tends to expand in infinitely increasing circles. It is the wish of culture, taking ever wider and wider sweeps, to carry the whole race, the whole universe, harmoniously toward perfection.

And, if it were possible that all men, under all circumstances, should feel what some men, in some fortunate spheres, may truly feel that there is no conflict, no antagonism, between the full development of the individual and the progress of the world-I should be loath to hint at any jar or discord in this harmonious movement. But this paradisiacal state of culture is rare. We dwell in it a little space, and then it vanishes into the ideal. Life shows us the conflict and the discord: on one side are the claims of harmonious self-development, on the other the cries of struggling humanity: we have hitherto let our sympathies expand along with our other refined instincts, but now they threaten to sweep us into regions from which those refined instincts shrink. Not that harmonious self-development calls on us to crush our sympathies; it asks only that they should be a little repressed, a little kept under: we may become (as Mr. Arnold delicately words it) philanthropists "tempered by renouncement." There is much useful and important work to be done, which may be done harmoniously still we cannot honestly say that this seems to us the most useful, the most important work, or what in the interests of the world is most pressingly entreated and demanded. This latter, if done at all, must be done as self-sacrifice, not as self-development. And so we are brought face to face with the most momentous and profound problem of ethics.

It is at this point, I think, that the relation of culture and religion is clearly tested and defined. Culture (if I have understood and analyzed it rightly) inevitably takes one course. It recognizes

with a sigh the limits of self-development, and its first enthusiasm becomes "tempered by renouncement." Religion, of which the essence is self-sacrifice, inevitably takes the other course. We see this daily realized in practice: we see those we know and love, we see the elite of humanity in history and literature, coming to this question, and after a struggle answering it: going, if they are strong clear souls, some one way and some the other; if they are irresolute, vacillating and "moving in a strange diagonal" between the two. It is because he ignores this antago nism, which seems to me so clear and undeniable if stated without the needless and perilous exaggerations which preachers have used about it, that I have called Mr. Arnold perverse. A philosopher with whom he is more familiar than I am, speaks, I think, of "the reconciliation of antagonisms the essential feature of the most important steps in the progress of humanity. I seem to see profound truth in this conception, and perhaps Mr. Arnold has intended to realize it. But, in order to reconcile antagonisms, it is needful to probe them to the bottom; whereas Mr. Arnold skims over them with a lightly-won tranquillity that irritates instead of soothing.

as

Of course we are all continually trying to reconcile this and other antagonisms, and many persuade themselves that they have found a reconciliation. The religious man tells himself that in obeying the instinct of self-sacrifice he has chosen true culture, and the man of culture tells himself that by seeking self-development he is really taking the best course to "make reason and the will of God prevail." But I do not think either is quite convinced. I think each dimly feels that it is necessary for the world that the other line of life should be chosen by some, and each and all look forward with yearning to a time when circumstances shall have become kinder and more pliable to our desires, and when the complex impulses of humanity that we share shall have been chastened and purified into something more easy to harmonize. And sometimes the human race seems to the

* Hegel.