river, gauging them by the fathom instead of appreciating them as individuals. Such men are reckoned and weighed merely as so many bodies; they have never been individualized by conscience, after the manner of souls. He who floats with the current, who does not guide himself according to higher principles, who has no ideal, no convictions, such a man is a mere article of the world's furniture—a thing moved, instead of a living and moving being an echo, not a voice. The man who has no inner life is the slave of his surroundings, as the barometer is the obedient servant of the air at rest, and the weathercock the humble servant of the air in motion. January 7th, 1866. THE «JOHN HALIFAX, GENTLEMAN » HE novel by Miss Mulock, "John Halifax, Gentleman," is a bolder book than it seems, for it attacks in the English way the social problem of equality. And the solution reached is that every one may become a gentleman, even though he may be born in the gutter. In its way the story protests against conventional superiorities, and shows that true nobility consists in character, in personal merit, in moral distinction, in elevation of feeling and of language, in dignity of life, and in self-respect. This is better than Jacobinism, and the opposite of the mere brutal passion for equality. Instead of dragging everybody down, the author simply proclaims the right of every one to rise. man may be born rich and noble-he is not born a gentleman. This word is the Shibboleth of England; it divides her into halves, and civilized society into two castes. Among gentlemen -courtesy, equality, and politeness; toward those below-contempt, disdain, coldness, and indifference. It is the old separation between the ingenui and all others; between the ¿sú@spot and the Bávavoor, the continuation of the feudal division between the gentry and the roturiers. A What, then, is a gentleman? Apparently he is the free man, the man who is stronger than things, and believes in personality as superior to all the accessory attributes of fortune, such as rank and power, and as constituting what is essential, real, and intrinsically valuable in the individual. will tell you what you are worth. Tell me what you are, and I "God and my Right"; there 170 is the only motto he believes in. Such an ideal is happily opposed to that vulgar ideal which is equally English, the ideal of wealth, with its formula, "How much is he worth?" In a country where poverty is a crime, it is good to be able to say that a nabob need not as such be a gentleman. The mercantile ideal and the chivalrous ideal counterbalance each other; and if the one produces the ugliness of English society and its brutal side, the other serves as a compensation. It The gentleman, then, is the man who is master of himself, who respects himself, and makes others respect him. The essence of gentlemanliness is self-rule, the sovereignty of the soul. means a character which possesses itself, a force which governs itself, a liberty which affirms and regulates itself, according to the type of true dignity. Such an ideal is closely akin to the Roman type of dignitas cum auctoritate. It is more moral than intellectual, and is particularly suited to England, which is preeminently the country of will. But from self-respect a thousand other things are derived—such as the care of a man's person, of his language, of his manners; watchfulness over his body and over his soul; dominion over his instincts and his passions; the effort to be self-sufficient; the pride which will accept no favor; carefulness not to expose himself to any humiliation or mortification, and to maintain himself independent of any human caprice; the constant protection of his honor and of his self-respect. Such a condition of sovereignty, insomuch as it is only easy to the man who is well-born, well-bred, and rich, was naturally long identified with birth, rank, and above all with property. The idea 'gentleman" is, then, derived from feudality; it is, as it were, a milder version of the seigneur. In order to lay himself open to no reproach, a gentleman will keep himself irreproachable; in order to be treated with consideration, he will always be careful himself to observe distances, to apportion respect, and to observe all the gradations of conventional politeness, according to rank, age, and situation. Hence it follows that he will be imperturbably cautious in the presence of a stranger, whose name and worth are unknown to him, and to whom he might perhaps show too much or too little courtesy. He ignores and avoids him; if he is approached, he turns away; if he is addressed, he answers shortly and with hauteur. His politeness is not human and general, but individual and relative to persons. This is why every Englishman contains two different men one turned toward the world, and another. The first, the outer man, is a citadel,- a cold and angular wall; the other, the inner man, is a sensible, affectionate, cordial, and loving creature. Such a type is only formed in a moral climate full of icicles, where, in the face of an indifferent world, the hearth alone is hospitable. So that an analysis of the national type of gentleman reveals to us the nature and the history of the nation, as the fruit reveals the tree. April 6th, 1866. THE MOZART AND BEETHOVEN HE work of Mozart, penetrated as it is with mind and thought, represents a solved problem, a balance struck between aspiration and executive capacity, the sovereignty of a grace which is always mistress of itself, marvelous harmony and perfect unity. His quartet describes a day in one of those Attic souls. who prefigure on earth the serenity of Elysium. The first scene is a pleasant conversation, like that of Socrates on the banks of the Ilissus; its chief mark is an exquisite urbanity. The second scene is deeply pathetic. A cloud has risen in the blue of this. Greek heaven. A storm, such as life inevitably brings with it, even in the case of great souls who love and esteem each other, has come to trouble the original harmony. What is the cause of it a misunderstanding, a piece of neglect? Impossible to say, it-a but it breaks out notwithstanding. The andante is a scene of reproach and complaint, but as between immortals. What loftiness in complaint; what dignity, what feeling, what noble sweetness in reproach! The voice trembles and grows graver, but remains affectionate and dignified. Then, the storm has passed, the sun has come back, the explanation has taken place, peace is re-established. The third scene paints the brightness of reconciliation. Love, in its restored confidence, and as though in sly self-testing, permits itself even gentle mocking and friendly badinage. And the finale brings us back to that tempered gayety and happy serenity, that supreme freedom, flower of the inner life, which is the leading motive of the whole composition. In Beethoven on the other hand, a spirit of tragic irony paints for you the mad tumult of existence as it dances forever above the threatening abyss of the infinite. No more unity, no 172 The more satisfaction, no more serenity! We are spectators of the eternal duel between the great forces, that of the abyss which absorbs all finite things, and that of life which defends and asserts itself, expands, and enjoys. The first bars break the seals and open the caverns of the great deep. The struggle begins. It is long. Life is born, and disports itself gay and careless as the butterfly which flutters above a precipice. Then it expands the realm of its conquests, and chants its successes. It founds a kingdom, it constructs a system of nature. But the typhon rises from the yawning gulf, and the Titans beat upon the gates of the new empire. A battle of giants begins. You hear the tumultuous efforts of the powers of chaos. Life triumphs at last, but the victory is not final, and through all the intoxication of it there is a certain note of terror and bewilderment. soul of Beethoven was a tormented soul. The passion and the awe of the infinite seemed to toss it to and fro from heaven to hell. Hence its vastness. Which is the greater, Mozart or Beethoven ? Idle question! The one is more perfect, the other more colossal. The first gives you the peace of perfect art, beauty at first sight. The second gives you sublimity, terror, pity, a beauty of second impression. The one gives that for which the other rouses a desire. Mozart has the classic purity of light and the blue ocean; Beethoven the romantic grandeur which belongs to the storms of air and sea, and while the soul of Mozart seems to dwell on the ethereal peaks of Olympus, that of Beethoven climbs shuddering the storm-beaten sides of a Sinai. Blessed be they both! Each represents a moment of the ideal life, each does us good. Our love is due to both. December 17th, 1856. SAINT THOMAS AQUINAS (c. 1225-1274) HOMAS AQUINAS, the greatest theologian of the Middle Ages, was called the "Father of Moral Philosophy" and the "An gelic Doctor" by his contemporaries, and he is so far from suffering under modern tests, that he is probably in greater favor in the Catholic Church at the beginning of the twentieth century than he was in the thirteenth. He was born near Aquino, Italy, in 1225, according to some authorities, while others put the date of his birth two years later. He owed the first great stimulus his intellect received to Albertus Magnus, under whom he studied in the Dominican School at Cologne. He followed Albertus to Paris, and, after graduating there in theology, entered on the career as teacher and lecturer, which made him famous throughout Europe. As a scholastic philosopher Saint Thomas used the mode of Aristotle in developing and illustrating the principles of Christian theology. It is to his skill in this that he owes the attractiveness he has for the modern mind. The resemblance of his style as an essayist to that of Lord Bacon is unquestionably due to the fact that both had Aristotle for a model. While on his way to Rome to attempt the settlement of differences between the Eastern and Western churches, he died in the monastery of Fossa Nuova, near Terracina in Italy, March 7th, 1274. He was canonized by Pope John XXII. in 1323. THE THE EFFECTS OF LOVE HERE are three regards of union to love. One union is the cause of love: in the love with which one loves oneself this is a substantial union; while in the love with which one loves other beings, it is a union of likeness. Another union is essentially love itself; and this is union of hearts: which is lik ened to substantial union, inasmuch as the lover is to the object of his love as to himself in the love of friendship; as to something belonging to himself in the love of desire. A third union is the effect of love; and this is a real union which the lover seeks |