The Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 4, October, 1863

The Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 4, October, 1863
Various

Various

The Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 4, October, 1863 / Devoted to Literature and National Policy

THE FREEDOM OF THE PRESS

An important discussion has arisen since the commencement of the war, bearing upon the interests of the American Press. The Government has seen fit, at various times, through its authorities, civil and military, to suppress the circulation and even the publication of journals which, in its judgment, gave aid and comfort to the enemy, either by disloyal publications in reference to our affairs, or by encouraging and laudatory statements concerning the enemy. The various papers of the country have severally censured or commended the course of the Government in this matter, and the issue between the Press and the Authorities has been regarded as of a sufficiently serious nature to demand a convocation of editors to consider the subject; of which convention Horace Greeley was chairman. A few remarks on the nature of the liberty of the press and on its relations to the governing powers will not, therefore, at this time, be inopportune.

Men are apt, at times, in the excitement of political partisanship, to forget that the freedom of the press is, like all other social liberty, relative and not absolute; that it is not license to publish whatsoever they please, but only that which is within certain defined limits prescribed by the people as the legitimate extent to which expression through the public prints should be permitted; and that it is because these limits are regulated by the whole people, for the whole people, and not by the arbitrary caprice of a single individual or of an aristocracy, that the press is denominated free. Let it be remembered, then, as a starting point, that the press is amenable to the people; that it is controlled and regulated by them, and indebted to them for whatever measure of freedom it enjoys.

The scope of this liberty is carefully defined by the statutes, as also the method by which its transgression is to be punished. These enactments minutely define the nature of an infringement of their provisions, and point out the various methods of procedure in order to redress private grievance or to punish public wrong, in such instances. These statutes emanate from the people, are the expression of their will, and in consonance with them the action of the executive authorities must proceed, whenever the civil law is sufficient for the execution of legal measures.

But there comes a time, in the course of a nation's existence, when the usual and regular methods of its life are interrupted; when peaceful systems and civilized adaptations are forced to give place to the ruder and more peremptory modes of procedure which belong to seasons of hostile strife. The slow, methodical, oftentimes tedious contrivances of ordinary law, admirably adapted for periods of national quietude, are utterly inadequate to the stern and unforeseen contingencies of civil war. Laws which are commonly sufficient to secure justice and afford protection, are then comparatively powerless for such ends. The large measure of liberty of speech and of the press safely accorded when there is ample time to correct false doctrines and to redress grievances through common methods, is incompatible with the rigorous promptitude, energy, celerity, and unity of action necessary to the preservation of national existence in times of rebellion. If an individual be suspected of conspiring against his country, at such a time, to leave him at liberty while the usual processes of law were being undertaken, would perhaps give him opportunity for consummating his designs and delivering the republic into the hands of its enemies. If a portion of the press circulate information calculated to aid the foe in the defeat of the national armies, to endeavor to prevent this evil by the slow routine of civil law, might result in the destruction of the state. The fact that we raise armies to secure obedience commonly enforced by the ordinary civil officers is a virtual and actual acknowledgment that a new order of things has arisen for which the usual methods are insufficient, civil authority inadequate, and to contend with which powers must be exercised not before in vogue. Codes of procedure arranged for an established and harmoniously working Government cannot answer all the requirements of that Government when it is repudiated by a large body of its subjects, and the existence of the nation itself is in peril.

It is evident, therefore, that at times the accustomed methods of Civil government must, in deference to national safety, be laid aside, to some extent, and the more vigorous adaptations of Military government substituted in their stead. But it does not follow from this that arbitrary power is necessarily employed, or that such methods are not strictly legal. There is a despotic Civil government and a despotic Military government, a free Civil government and a free Military government. The Civil government of Russia is despotic; so would its Military government be if internal strife should demand that military authority supersede the civil; the Civil government of the United States is free, so must its Military government be in order to be sustained.

But what is a free Military government? There is precisely the same difference between a free and a despotic military polity as between a free and a despotic civil polity. It is the essential nature of despotic rule that it recognizes the fountain head of all power to be the ruler, and the people are held as the mere creatures of his pleasure. It is the essence of free government that it regards the people as the source of all power, and the rulers as their agents, possessing only such authority as is committed by the former into the hands of the latter. It matters not, therefore, whether a ruler be exercising the civil power in times of peaceful national life, or whether, in times of rebellion, he wields the military authority essential to security, he is alike, at either time, a despot or a republican, accordingly as he exercises his power without regard to the will of the people, or as he exercises such power only as the national voice delegates to him.

Wendell Phillips said in his oration before the Smithsonian Institute: 'Abraham Lincoln sits to-day the greatest despot this side of China.' The mistake of Mr. Phillips was this: He confounded the method of exercising power with the nature of the power exercised. It is the latter which decides the question of despotism or of freedom. The methods of the republican governor and of the despot may be, in times of war must be, for the most part, identical. But the one is, nevertheless, as truly a republican as the other is a despot. Freedom of speech, freedom of the press, the right of travel, the writ of habeas corpus—these insignia of liberty in a people are dispensed with in despotic Governments, because the ruler chooses to deprive the people of their benefits, and for that reason only; they were suspended in our Government because the national safety seemed to demand it, and because the President, as the accredited executive of the wishes of the people, fulfilled their clearly indicated will. In the former case it is lordly authority overriding the necks of the people for personal pride or power; in the latter, it is the ripe fruit of republican civilization, which, in times of danger, can with safety and security overleap, for the moment, the mere forms of law, in order to secure its beneficial results. They seem to resemble each other; but are as wide apart as irreligion and that highest religious life which, transcending all external observances, seems to the mere religious formalist to be identical with it.

But how is the Executive to ascertain the behest of the people? In accordance with the modes which they, as a part of their behest, indicate. But as there are two methods of fulfilling the wishes of the people, one adapted to the ordinary routine of peaceful times, and another to the more summary necessities of war, so there are two methods, calculated for these diverse national states, by which the Government must discover the will of the people. The slow, deliberate action of the ballot box and of the legislative body is amply expeditious for the purposes of undisturbed and tranquil periods. But in times of rebellion or invasion, the waiting and delay which are often essential to the prosecution of forms prescribed for undisturbed epochs are, as has been said, simply impossible. War is a period in which methods and procedures are required diametrically opposite to those which are so fruitful of good in days of peace. The lawbreaker who comes with an army at his back cannot be served with a sheriff's warrant, nor arrested by a constable. War involves unforeseen emergencies, to meet which there is no time for calling Congress together, or taking the sense of the populace by a ballot. It is full of attempted surprises, which must be guarded against on the instant, and of dangers which must be quickly avoided, but for whose guardance or avoidance the statutes make no provision. Hence arises a necessity for a mode of ascertaining the will of the people other than the slow medium of formal legislation or of balloting.

The Government of the United States is the servant of its people. It was ordained to insure for them 'domestic tranquillity, provide for the common defence, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to' themselves and their posterity. Its laws and statutes are but the forms by which the people attempt to secure these things. But the people are sovereign, even over their laws. As they have instituted them for their own good, so may they dispense with them for their own good, whenever the national safety requires this. As they have established certain modes of lawful procedure for their own security, so may they adopt other modes when their safety demands it. Their laws and their codes of procedure are for their uses, not for their destruction. 'When a sister State is endangered, red tape must be cut,' said Governor Seymour, when it was telegraphed to him that some delaying forms must be gone through in order to arm and send off our State troops who were ordered to the defence of Harrisburg; and all the people said, Amen! The people of the United States inaugurated a government, whose forms of law were admirably suited to times of peace, but have been found inadequate to seasons of intestine strife. They have, as we have seen, superadded, in some degree, other methods of action, indorsing and adopting those to which the Executive was compelled to resort as better adapted to changed conditions. They have not done this in accordance with prescribed forms, in all instances, because the forms of civil government do not provide for a condition of society in which civil authority is virtually abrogated, to a greater or less extent, for military authority.

In the same way and by virtue of the same sovereignty, the people of the United States may lay aside the common method of indicating their pleasure to the Executive, and substitute one more in consonance with the requirements of the times. They may make known that they do lay aside an established mode, either by a formal notice or by a general tacit understanding, as the exigencies of the case require. They may recognize the right, aye, the duty of the Executive to act in accordance with other methods than those prescribed for ordinary seasons, in cases where the national security demands this.

But this is not an abandonment of the methods and forms of law! This is not the establishment of an arbitrary government! This is not passing from freedom to despotism! The people of this country are sovereign, let it be repeated. So long as its Government is conducted as its people or as the majority of them wish, it is conducted in accordance with its established principle. There were no freedom if the vital spirit of liberty were to be held in bondage to the dead forms of powerless or obsolete prescriptions in the very crisis of the nation's death struggle! Freedom means freedom to act, in all cases and under all circumstances, so as to secure the highest individual and national well-being. It does not mean freedom to establish certain codes of procedure under certain regulations, and to be forever bound under these when the preservation of liberty itself demands their temporary abeyance. So long as the Government fulfils the wishes of the people, it is not arbitrary, it is not despotic, no matter what methods an emergency may require it to adopt for this purpose, or in what manner it ascertains these wishes; provided always that the methods adopted and the modes of ascertainment are also in accordance with the people's desires.

But how is the Executive to discover the will of the people if he does not wait for its formal expression? How is he to be sure that he does not outrun their desires? How is he to be checked and punished, should he do so? Precisely the same law must apply here as has been indicated to be the true one in reference to the fulfilment of the people's behest. Fixed, definite, precise, formal expressions of popular will, when time is wanting for these, must be replaced by those which are more quickly ascertained and less systematically expressed. The Executive must forecast the general desire and forestall its commands, regarding the tacit acceptance of the people or their informal laws, such as resolutions, conventions, and various modes of expressing popular accord or dissent, as indications of the course which they approve. Nor is this an anomaly in our legal system. The citizen ordinarily is not at liberty to take the law into his own hands; he must appeal to the constituted authorities, and through the machinery of a law court obtain his redress or protection. But there are times when contingencies arise in which more wrong would be done by such delay than by a summary process transcending the customary law. The man who sees a child, a woman, or even an animal treated with cruelty, does not wait to secure protection for the injured party by the common methods of legal procedure, but, on the instant, prevents, with blows if need be, the outrage. He oversteps the forms of law to secure the ends of law, and rests in the consciousness that the law itself will accept his action. When the case is more desperate, his usurpation of power generally prohibited to him is still greater, up to that last extremity in which he deliberately takes the whole law into his own hands, and, acting as accuser, witness, judge, executioner, slays the individual who assaults him with deadly weapons or with hostile intent.

In this case now stands the nation. Along her borders flashes the steel of hostile armies, their cannon thunder almost in hearing of our capitol, their horses but recently trampled the soil of neighboring States. A deadly enemy is trying to get its gripe upon the republic's throat and its knife into her heart. The nation must act as an individual would under similar circumstances; and the nation must act through its Executive. If one person, attacked by another, should snatch from the hands of a passer his cane, in order to defend his life; if, in his struggles with his assailant, he should strike a second through misconception, how immeasurably ridiculous would be the action of these individuals, should they, while the death struggle were still raging, berate the man, one for breaking the law by taking away his cane, and the other for breaking the law by the commission of a battery! Every man feels instinctively that in such a crisis all weapons of defence are at his disposal, and that he takes them, not in violation of law, but in obedience to the law of extraordinary contingencies, which every community adopts, but which no community can inscribe upon its statute book, because it is the law of contingencies.

The Executive of this, as of every country, resorts to this law when, in the nature of things, the statute law is inadequate. In doing this, he does not violate law; he only adopts another kind of law. A subtle, delicate law, indeed, which can neither be inscribed among the enactments, nor exactly defined, circumscribed, or expressed. When it is to be substituted for the ordinary modes of legal procedure, how far it is to be used, when its use must cease—these are questions which the people, as the sole final arbiters, must decide. As the individual in society must judge wisely when the community will sanction his use of the contingent law, the law of private military power, so to speak, in his own behalf; so must the Executive judge when the urgency of the national defence demands the exercise of the summary power in the place of more technical methods. If the public sentiment of the community sustain the individual, it is an indorsement that he acted justifiably in accordance with this exceptional law; if it do not, he is liable for an unwarranted usurpation of power. The Executive stands in the same relation to the nation. The Mohammedans relate that the road to heaven is two miles long, stretching over a fathomless abyss, the only pathway across which is narrower than a razor's edge. Delicately balanced must be the body which goes over in safety! The intangible path which the Executive must walk to meet the people's wishes on the one side, and to avoid their fears upon the other, in the national peril, is narrower than the Mahommedan's road to heaven, and cautiously bold must be the feet that safely tread it! Blessed shall that man be who succeeds in crossing. The nations shall rise up and call him blessed, and succeeding generations shall praise him.

We come then to the relations of the press and the Executive. We have seen that all liberty is relative, and not absolute; that the people, the sovereigns in this country, have prescribed certain methods for securing, in ordinary periods, those blessings which it is their desire to enjoy; that when, under special contingencies, these methods become insufficient for this purpose, the people may, in virtue of their sovereignty, suspend them and adopt others adequate to the occasion; that these may not, indeed, from their very nature, cannot be of a fixed and circumscribed kind, but must give large discretionary power into the hands of the Executive, to be used by him in a summary manner as contingencies may indicate; that this abrogation or suspension, for the time, of so much of the ordinary civil law, in favor of the contingent law, is not an abandonment of free government for arbitary or despotic government, because it is still in accordance with the will of the people, and hence is merely the substitution of a new form of law, which, being required for occasions when instant action is demanded, is necessarily summary in its character; that the extent to which this law is to be substituted for the ordinary one is to be discovered by the Executive from the general sense of the nation, when it cannot be made known through the common method of the ballot box and the legislature; that in the people resides the power ultimately to determine whether their wishes have been correctly interpreted or not; and, finally, that the Executive is equally responsible for coming short of the behests of the nation in the use of the contingent law or for transgressing the boundaries within which they desire him to constrain his actions.

The press of the United States has always been free to the extent that it might publish whatsoever it listed, within certain limits prescribed by the law. The press may still do this. But the nature of the law which prescribes the limits has changed with the times. The constituted authorities of the people of the United States are obliged now, in the people's interest, to employ the processes of summary rather than those of routine law. Hence when the press infringes too violently the boundaries indicated, and persists in so doing, the sterner penalty demanded by the dangers of the hour is enforced by the sterner method likewise rendered necessary. So long as Executive action concerning the press shall be in accordance with the general sentiment of the people, it will be within the strict scope of the highest law of the land. Should the Executive persistently exercise this summary law in a manner not countenanced by the nation, he is amenable to it under the strict letter of the Constitution for high crimes or misdemeanors, not the least of which would be the usurpation of powers not delegated to him by the people.

The Executive of the United States occupies at this time an exceedingly trying and dangerous position, which demands for him the cordial, patient, and delicate consideration of the American nation. He is placed in a situation where the very existence of the republic requires that he use powers not technically delegated to him, and in which the people expect, yea, demand him, to adopt methods transcending the strict letter of statute law, the use of which powers and the adoption of which methods would be denounced as the worst of crimes, even made the basis of an impeachment, should the mass of the populace be dissatisfied with his proceedings. It is easy to find fault, easy in positions devoid of public responsibility to think we see how errors might have been avoided, how powers might have been more successfully employed and greater results achieved. But the American Executive is surrounded with difficulties too little appreciated by the public, while an almost merciless criticism, emanating both from injudicious friends and vigilant foes, follows his every action. Criticism should not be relaxed; but it should be exercised by those only who are competent to undertake its office. The perusal of the morning paper does not ordinarily put us in possession of sufficient information to enable us to understand, in all their bearings, the measures of the Government. Something more is required than a reading of the accounts of battles furnished by the correspondents of the press to entitle one to express an opinion on military movements. It should not be forgotten that the officers engaged in the army of the United States are better judges of military affairs than civilians at home; that the proceedings of the Government, with rare exceptions, possibly, are based upon a fuller knowledge of all the facts relating to a special case, than is obtained by private persons, and that its judgment is therefore more likely to be correct, in any given instance, than our own. The injury done to the national cause by the persistent animadversion of well-intentioned men, who cannot conceive that their judgments may perchance be incorrect, is scarcely less, than the openly hostile invective of the friends of the South. The intelligent citizens of the North, especially those who occupy prominent positions as teachers and instructors of the people through the press, the pulpit, and other avenues, should ever be mindful that the political liberty which they possess of free thought and free speech, has imposed upon them the moral duty of using this wisely for the welfare of humanity, and that they cannot be faithless to this obligation without injuring their fellow men and incurring a heavy moral guilt.

THE BROTHERS

AN ALLEGORY

DEDICATION, TO ONE WHO WILL UNDERSTAND IT:

'I love thee freely, as men strive for right;
I love thee purely, us they turn from praise
I love thee with the passion put to use
In my old griefs, and with my childhood's faith;
I love thee with a love I seemed to lose
With my lost saints,—I love thee with the breath,
Smiles, tears, of all my life!—and, if God choose,
I shall but love thee dearer after death.'

The Creator still loved and guarded the earth, although its children had departed from their early obedience. In evidence of His care, He sent, from time to time, gifted spirits among men to aid them in developing and elevating the souls so fallen from their primal innocence. These spirits He clad in sensuous bodies, that they might be prepared to enter the far country of Human Life. Earth was rapidly falling under the merciless rule of a hopeless and crushing materialism, when He determined upon sending among men, Anselm, the saint; Angelo, the tone artist; Zophiel, the poet; and Jemschid, the painter. The spirits murmured not, although they knew they were to relinquish their heaven life for that torment of perpetual struggle which the forbidden knowledge of Good and Evil has entailed upon all incarcerated in a human form.

For self-abnegation is the law of heaven!

'Brothers,' said the merciful Father, 'go, and sin not, for of all things that pass among men must a strict account be rendered. For are not their evil deeds written upon the eternally living memory of a just God? Evil lurks in the land of your exile; it may find its way into your own hearts, for you are to become wholly human, and to lose for a time the memory of your home in heaven. But even in that far country you will find the Book of Life, which I have given for the guidance and consolation of the fallen. For it is known even there that 'God is Love!''

Then the journey of the Heaven Brothers began through the blinding clouds and trailing mists of chaos, in whose palpable gloom all memories are obliterated. Naked, trembling, and human, they arrived upon the shifting sands of the world of Time and Death.

A vague, shadowy sense, like a forgotten dream which we struggle vainly to recall, often flitted through their clay-clogged souls, of a strangely glorious life in some higher sphere; but all attempts to give definite form to such bewildering visions ended but in fantastic reveries of mystic possibilities or dim yearnings of unseen glories. They found the Book of Life, but they remembered not that the Father had told them the Word was His.

For the thread of Identity, on which are strung the pearls of Memory, in the passage through chaos had snapped in twain!

Like the silver light through the storm clouds flitting over the fair face of the moon, gleam the antenatal splendors through the gloom of the earth life.

As Anselm wonderingly turned the pages of the Book of Life, strange memories awoke within him. So inextricably were the dreams of his past woven with the burning visions of the Prophets, that the darkness of Revelation, like the heaven vault at midnight, was illumined by the light of distant worlds; his own vague reminiscences supplying the inner sense of the inspired but mystic leaves. What wonder that he loved the Book, when in its descriptions of the life to come, he felt the history of the life already past; and through its sternest threatenings, like the rainbow girdling storm clouds, shone the promise of a blessed future!

He spent the hours of exile in a constant effort to commune with the Father; in humble prayer and supplication for strength to resist the power of sin. For he feared the Evil which lurked in the land. He examined the springs of his own actions, analyzed his motives, and tortured himself lest any of the evils denounced in the Book should lurk in the folds of his own soul. In contemplating the awful justice of the Father, he sometimes forgot that He is Love. He feared close commune with the children of the earth, for Evil dwelt among them; he looked not into the winecup, nor danced with the maidens under the caressing tendrils of the vine or the luxuriant branches of the myrtle—nay, the rose cheek of the maiden was a terror to him, for lo! Evil might lurk under its brilliant bloom. The Dread of Evil sapped the Joy of Life!

He turned from all the lovely Present, to catch faint traces of the dim Past, to picture the unseen Future, about which it is vain to disquiet ourselves, since, like everything else, it rests upon the heart of God! His life was holy, innocent, and self-sacrificing. He sought to serve his fellow men, yet feared to give them his heart, lest he should rob the Father of His just due. He knew not from his own experience that Love is infinite, and grows on what it gives. He bore religious consolation to the afflicted, aid to the needy, sympathy to the suffering. He was universally esteemed, but the spirit of his brethren broke not into joy at his approach, for the trusting heart of genial humanity throbbed not in his sad breast. He was no Pharisee, but he dined not with the Publican, and the precious ointment of the Magdalen never bathed his weary head. His language was: 'All is fleeting and evil, save Thee, O my Father; in Thee alone can rest be found!'

Solace for human anguish can only be found upon the heart of love. 'Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, with all thy soul, with all thy mind: and thy neighbor as thyself!' Blessed Son of Mary! Thou alone hast fully kept these two commandments!

'For wisdom is justified of her children!'

Angelo, Zophiel, and Jemschid also resolved to avoid the Evil spoken of in the Book of Life. But the far country into which the Father had sent them was lovely in their eyes, and they were charmed with the Beauty with which He had surrounded them. They dreamed by the shady fountains, with their silver flow and gentle ripples; roamed by the darker rivers as they hurry on to plunge themselves into the sea; gazed on the restless ocean breakers when the dying sun fringes their crest with rainbow hues, and the flushing sky, to cool her burning blushes, flings herself into the heart of the restless waters. They loved to breathe the 'difficult air' of mountain tops, so softly pillowed and curtained by the fleecy vapors, which they win again from heaven in limpid streams, leading them in wild leaps through gloomy chasms fringed by timid harebells, whose soft blue eyes look love upon the rocks, while the myriad forest leaves musically murmur above their flinty couch. They watched the fitful shadow-dance of clouds over the green earth. They loved to see these heaven tents where Beauty dwells chased by the young zephyrs, or, driven on in heavy masses by the bolder winds, blush under the fiery glances of the sun, and melt into the sky upon his nearer approach. Ah! these clouds and vapors had more than human tenderness, for had they not seen them throng around the ghastly disc of the star-deserted moon, weaving their light webs into flowing veils to shadow the majestic sorrow written upon her melancholy but lovely face, shielding the mystic pallor of the virgin brow from the desecrating gaze of the profane?

The three brothers were happy upon earth, for they looked into the heart of their fellow mortals, and felt the genial feeling beating there; and so luxuriantly twined its vivid green around, that the evil core was hidden from their charmed eyes, and they ceased not to bless the Father for a gift so divine as Human Love! They could not weep and pray the long night through, as did the saintly Anselm, for their eyes were fastened upon the wildering lustre of the thronging stars as they wove their magic rings through the dim abysses of distant space, yet the incense of constant praise rose from their happy souls to the Beauty-giving Father.

They struggled to awake the sleeping powers of men to a perception of the glories of creation; to lead them 'through nature up to nature's God.' The Artist-Brothers were closely united in feeling, striving through different mediums to refine the soul of man.

For the spirit of Beauty always awakens the spirit of Love, sent by God to elevate and consecrate the heart of man!

Of a more subtle genius and more daring spirit than Zophiel or Jemschid, Angelo boldly launched into the bewildering chaos of the realm of sound. As yet the laws of the Acoustic Prism were unknown; the seven-ranged ladder was all unformed, and without its aid it seemed impossible to scale the ever-renewing heights, to sound the ever-growing depths of this enchanted kingdom. But Angelo was a bold adventurer. Haunted by the heaven sounds, vague memories of his antenatal existence, although he had entirely lost the meaning of their flow, as one may recall snatches of the melody of a song when he cannot remember one of its words—he commenced his subtle task. He resolved the Acoustic Prism; he built the seven-runged ladder; he charmed the wandering Tones, and bound them in the holy laws of Rhythm. Divining the hidden secrets of their affiliations, relations, loves, and hates, he wrought them into gorgeous webs of harmonics, to clothe the tender but fiery soul of ever-living melodies. Soothing their jarring dissonances into sweet accord, he filled their pining wails with that 'divine sorrow,' that mystic longing for the Infinite, which is the inner voice of every created heart. If he could not find the heaven sense of the tones, he found their earthly meaning, and caused them to repeat or suggest every joy and sorrow of which our nature is capable. He forced the heaven tongue to become human, while it retained its divine. Without a model or external archetype, he formed his realm and divined its changing limits; wide enough to contain all that is noble, holy enough to exclude all that is low or profane. He forever exorcised the spirits of Evil—the strong Demons of materialism—from his rhythmed world. Flinging his spells on the unseen air, he forced it to breathe his passion, his sighs; he saddened it with his tears, kindled it with his rapture, until fired and charged with the electric breath of the soul, it glowed into an atmosphere of Life, swaying at will the wild and restless heart. He created Music, the only universal language, holding the keys of Memory, and wearing the crown of Hope. Angelo, strange architect in that dim domain of chaos, thy creation, fleeting, invisible, and unembodied, is in perpetual, flow; changeful as the play of clouds, yet stable as the eternal laws by which they form their misty towers, their glittering fanes, and foam-crested pinnacles! Trackless as the wind, yet as powerful, thy sweet spirit, Music, floats wherever beats the human heart, for Rhythm rocks the core of life. Music nerves the soul with strength or dissolves it in love; she idealizes Pain into soul-touching Beauty; assuming all garbs, robing herself in all modes, and moving at ease through every phase of our complicated existence. White and glittering are her robes, yet she is no aristocrat. She disdains not to soothe the weary negro in his chains, or to rock the cradle of the child of shame, as the betrayed and forsaken girl murmurs broken-hearted lullabies around the young 'inheritor of pain.' She is with the maiden in the graceful mazes of the gay Mazourka; she inflames the savage in the barbaric clang of the fierce war-dance; or marks the measured tramp of the drilled soldiery of civilization. She is in the court of kings; she makes eloquent the ripe lip of the cultured beauty; she chants in the dreary cell of the hermit; she lightens the dusty wallet of the wanderer. She glitters through the dreams of the Poet; she breathes through the direst tragedies of noblest souls. On—on she floats through the wide world, everywhere present, everywhere welcome, refining, and consecrating our dull life from the Baptismal Font to the Grave!

All the inner processes of life are guarded by the hand of nature. In vain would the curiosity of the scalpel knife invade the sanctuary of the beating heart to lay open the burning mystery of Being. The outraged Life retreats before it to its last citadel, and the indignant heart, upon its entrance, refuses to throb more. The citadel is taken; but the secret of Life is not to be discovered in the kingdom of Death. It is because Music is essentially a living art that we find it impossible to read the mystery of its being. If Painting touch us, we can always trace the emotion to its exciting cause; if we weep over the pages of the Poet, it is because we find our own blighted hopes imaged there. But why does Music sway us? Where did we learn that language without words? in what consists its mystic affinities with our spirits? Why does the harp of David soothe the insanity of Saul? Is not its festal voice too triumphant to be the accompaniment of our own sad, fallen being; its breath of sorrow too divine to be the echo of our petty cares? All other arts arise from the facts of our earthly existence, but Music has no external archetype, and refuses to submit her ethereal soul to our curious analysis. 'I am so, because so I am,' is the only answer she gives to the queries of materialism. Like the primitive rock, the skeleton of earth's burning heart, she looms up through the base of our existence. Addressing herself to some mystic faculty born before thought or language, she lulls the suffering baby into its first sleep, using perhaps the primeval and universal language of the race. For the love which receives the New Born, cadences the monotonous chant; and human sympathies are felt by the innocent and confiding infant before his eyes are opened fully upon the light, before his tongue can syllable a word, his ear detect their divisions, or his mind divine their significations. But Music looms not only through the base of our being; like the encompassing sky, her arch spans our horizon. Lo! is it not the language through which the Angels convey the secrets of their profound adoration to the Heart of God!

'Having every one of them harps'—'and they sung a new song'—in which are to join 'every creature which is in heaven, and on the earth, and under the earth, and such as are in the sea'—'and the number of them was ten thousand times ten thousand, and thousands of thousands.' (Revelation, chap, v.)

While Angelo linked the fiery tones in rhythmed laws, Zophiel sketched with glowing pen the joys of virtue, the glories of the intellect, and the pleasures, pains, raptures, woes, and loves of the heart. The deeds of heroes were sung in Epic; Dramas, Elegies, and Lyrics syllabled the inner life; men listened to the ennobling strains, and became freemen as they heard. The intermingling flow of high thought and melodious measures elevated and soothed the soul, and love for, and faith in, humanity, were awakened and nourished by the true Poet.

Jemschid wrought with brush and pencil, until the canvas imaged his loved skies and mountains, glowed with the noble deeds of men, and pictured that spiritual force which strangely characterizes and mingles with the ethereal grace of woman's fragile form.