place occasions of the dinner-table and the class-room, are the best or the only response that he has it in his power to make to the demand on him for books? We do not affirm that the genesis of Mr. Lowell's essays is such as we have suggested. That would be presumptuous, for we know nothing about the matter. But it is a perfectly sincere overture of extenuation on Mr. Lowell's behalf to have made the suggestion. And we insist that the texture of much of the composition agrees well with our hypothesis. It is extemporisation. The sallies of wit are frequently, if they are not prevailingly, of just that sort which a very ready-minded and very full-minded man might make, stimulated in a helpful atmosphere of sympathetic social appreciation on the convivial occasion, or from the professor's chair. They are lively, but they are too lively. The criticism likewise and the discussion have that unconsidered and desultory quality which, while very misbecoming to serious composition, is a fault readily excused in the extemporary lecture, and is a positive charm in conversation. The construction of the sentences is indeed often very elaborate, but elaborate in such a way as almost tempts one to think that all were written under some whimsical resolution never once to change the mould of expression in which the crude thought sought first to be cast. The really remarkable incoherences and inconsistencies that characterize Mr. Lowell's prose, considered as an individual body of literature, are most naturally accounted for when we suppose that his essays grew under his hands sentence on sentence and paragraph on paragraph, as chance opportunity served, by a process of distinct accretions separated from each other by irregular intervals of time, without the patience afterward bestowed to fuse all into unity in the costly welding glow of one longcontinued imaginative heat. It is pertinent further to say that criticisms produced as these have been, at different epochs in the history of a living and growing mind, might naturally contain some few expressions of opinion not wholly congruous with one another. The just reason why Mr. Lowell is liable now to critical censure on account of his incongruous expressions is threefold: in the first place, they often occur in one and the same essay; in the second place, they are too serious and too numerous, as found in different essays; and, in the third place, the essays should, at all events, have been made to harmonize when they were finally collected into volumes. Was the

leisure lacking to him for such editorial revision of his work? Then it would have profited to remember that a single one of these essays severely finished-as a patience on Mr. Lowell's part equal to his genius might surely have finished at least one of them-would constitute a better guaranty to him of his individual fame than all of them together do in their actual state. It would, too, be incalculably a more useful genetic and regulative force in literature. Mr. Higginson has learned from Emerson a wiser lesson than Mr. Lowell.

As already suggested, we should despair of making any fair impression of Mr. Lowell's wit by specimen quotations. But here is a good stroke, sudden, light, and, rarest of all qualities in Mr. Lowell's wit, momentary as an electric spark. He is speaking of Lessing's play, "Nathan:" "As a play it has not the interest of Minna or Emilia, though the Germans, who have a praiseworthy national stoicism where one of their great writers is concerned, find in seeing it represented a grave satisfaction, like that of subscribing to a monument."—Among my Books, p. 345.

Again, in the essay on "Witchcraft" he is describing the circumstances under which a man who had sold himself to the Devil was taken away by the purchasing party "as per contract: "The clothes and wig of the involuntary aeronaut were, in the handsomest manner, left upon the bed, as not included in the bill of sale."-Among my Books, p. 98.

Once again, what could be more delicious than this? Mr. Lowell relates one of his experiences in relieving mendicants: "For seven years I helped maintain one heroic man on an imaginary journey to Portland, -as fine an example as I have ever known of hopeless loyalty to an ideal."-My Study Windows, p. 58. One has here, it is true, to blink the element of personal weakness on Mr. Lowell's own part, revealed in the incident, supposed real, or the element of extravagance and improbability in it, supposed imaginary.

We give a few specimens of the faults in wit which we blame in Mr. Lowell. He is speaking of the sixteenth century as prodigal in its production of great men. "An attack of immortality in a family might have been looked for then as scarlet fever would be now," he says.—Among my Books, p. 163. "Shakespeare himself has left us a pregnant satire on dogmatical and categorical esthetics (which commonly in discussion soon lose their ceremonious tails and are reduced to

Theaters and Theater-going. To say that a theater cannot teach good morals, is to say that it cannot teach bad morals: is to deny to it the ability to exercise any moral influence whatsoever. What the theater can be, in any direction, is really a question with which we have no practical concern. It can be, if it tries to be, a great power for good in the world, and equally a great power for evil; but we have yet to learn either that managers and actors are generally endowed with a missionary spirit, or that they have a desire to degrade and demoralize their audiences. There are some professions which are endowed with a strong if not a supreme desire to make men better; but we do not remember any manager of a theater who has been called upon to suffer martyrdom for his devotion to religion or morality. We will go still further and say that we do not believe there is a manager in America who tries to do moral injury to his patrons. As a rule, so far as managers and actors are concerned, there are no moral motives of any sort involved. The motive of the manager is to make money. The motive of the actor is to make reputation, and win applause and popular favor, that he also may make money. There is probably one actor in ten who is a genuine artist, and who endeavors to win an honorable place in his profession by the hard and patient study of his art, by pure associations, and by the nurture and preservation of his self-respect. There are actors and actresses who are as true gentlemen and gentlewomen as are to be found in the world, and who deserve and receive the affectionate respect of all who know them.

An examination of the motives of actors and audiences will show us that theaters are not, and are not likely to become, "schools of morals" of any

sort.

No man ever goes to a theater for moral instruction. He may go for instruction in the graces of oratory, or for instruction in dramatic literature, but never for any moral or religious object. Ninetynine out of every one hundred persons, in every theater-full of people, are there to be intellectually interested or amused. On the stage are the people who wholly recognize this motive, and who invariably address themselves to it; for, by the degree in which they can gratify the popular desire for amusement, are they successful in their profession. In this way, inevitably, the morals of the stage become the mirror of the popular morals. If they are good, it is because the tone of morality is high in the audience; if they are bad, it is simply because the audience is vulgar and low, and sympathetic with that which is bad. There is only one way in which the theater will ever be elevated, and that is by elevating the community in which it exists. We do not say that there can be no other way; but so long as actors live on the good-will of their audiences, they will never be either much above or much below them. Perhaps there is no one institution connected with American

life that is more thoroughly the reflection of the public morality than the stage. If a profane word, or a ribald jest, or a double-entendre is indulged in by an actor, it is indulged in because it pays,—because it catches the response of vulgar sympathy from his patrons. Men who live as actors live can never afford to be either too good or too bad for those upon whose plaudits and pence they rely for bread.

Of one thing we may be certain: the theater exists, and will never cease to exist, until something can be contrived to take its place. It seems to be based wholly on the universal love of and demand for amusement, and the fondness which nature has implanted in every mind for the dramatic element in life. Strip Mr. Gough of his dramatic power, and we have only a common-place lecturer left. Denude Mr. Beecher's sermons of their dramatic element, and, though still excellent, they are no longer Mr. Beecher's sermons. The man whose writings or spoken words have great dramatic power is always the favorite of the people. In the pulpit, at the bar, on the stump, in the salon, the dramatic man carries everything before him. So strong is the natural taste for the dramatic in life, literature and conversation, that, more than anything else, it enchains the popu lar interest; while the greatest poems of all literatures are dramatic always in material, and mainly in form. It is to this taste for the dramatic and the love of amusement that the theater appeals; and we can see at once that if the theater is with us, it has come to stay. It thrives under opposition, like all plants that have their root in human nature.

The theater is here, then, and will remain. What shall we do with it, and what shall be done about it? We do not propose to do anything about it, except to endeavor so to elevate the popular mind and taste that the stage, as the reflection of that mind and taste, shall grow purer and better all the time. When truly meritorious men and women appear as actors, it will be the duty and privilege of this MAGAZINE to recognize them and all there is of good in them. When charlatans appear, it will be equally its duty and privilege to condemn them. Their art is undoubtedly legitimate, though it is surrounded by a thousand more temptations for themselves than for those whom they entertain. Artists of all names and callings-singers as well as actors-who are dependent upon the popular applause almost inevitably grow mean and childish and jealous in their greed for praise, and especially for partiality of praise. These temptations seem to be almost inseparable from their calling; but there have been noble men and women enough on the stage to show that they can be resisted.

The question touching the right or wrong of attending the theater, we do not propose to discuss. It certainly is not right for any man to offend his conscience in anything; but we do not keep any

man's conscience, and do not permit any man to keep ours. There is no doubt that the theater has dangerous associations, which the young should shun. There are natures that are very much fascinated by the stage-so much so as to make theater-going a snare and a temptation to them. Again, it is a very expensive amusement, which young men and women dependent on their own labor can very rarely afford. A day's work in real life for an evening's enjoyment of mimic life is a very poor exchange. Yet there are men and women to whom the theater is an inspiration, a recreation, and a rest. If there were not a great many such, the theater could not live a month. The life of cities is most intense-almost intolerable, often-and anything not vicious or degrading in itself-which can bring diversion and forgetfulness, is healthful and helpful.

Admitting that the theater is to remain, that it really has its root in human nature and human want, that it possesses unhealthy fascinations for some natures, that it is expensive, and that it holds its life in the midst of untoward incidents and associations, what are we to do about it? When the dweller upon the prairie sees the fire sweeping toward him he does not fly out to it to fight it, but he lights the grass and stubble around his dwelling, and meets half-way and vanquishes his enemy by the destruction of that which feeds him. The desire for amusement and for dramatic amusement is of nature's own implantation; and if there is any amusement more innocent, delightful, stimulating, instructive, and inspiring than that which comes of amateur dramatic representations, we are not aware of its existence. If we would make the theater better, we must make the community better, of whose morals it is, by its very constitution and necessities, the most faithful reflex❘ and representative. If we would feed the desire for dramatic amusement in some other way, and so destroy the fascination of the theater for the young, let good people frown no longer upon the home and neighbor. hood representations of the drama, but countenance and cultivate them. The young are easily driven from us by irrational restraint. Let us show by our sympathy with them, that we recognize their needs and desires, and feed at home, or in neighborly assemblies, the tastes which only find aliment elsewhere in dangerous places.

The Loneliness of Farming-life in America. AN American traveler in the Old World notices, among the multitude of things that are new to his eye, the gathering of agricultural populations into villages. He has been accustomed in his own country to see them distributed upon the farms they cultivate. The isolated farm-life, so universal here, either does not exist at all in the greater part of continental Europe, or it exists as a comparatively modern institution. The old populations, of all callings and professions, clustered together for self-defense, and

built walls around themselves. Out from these walls, for miles around, went the tillers of the soil in the morning, and back into the gates they thronged at night. Cottages were clustered around feudal castles, and grew into towns; and so Europe for many centuries was cultivated mainly by people who lived in villages and cities, many of which were walled, and all of which possessed appointments of defense. The early settlers in our own country took the same means to defend themselves from the treacherous Indian. The towns of Hadley, Hatfield, Northfield, and Deerfield, on the Connecticut River, are notable examples of this kind of building; and to this day they remain villages of agriculturists. That this is the way in which farmers ought to live we have no question, and we wish to say a few words about it.

There is some reason for the general disposition of American men and women to shun agricultural pursuits which the observers and philosophers have been slow to find. We see young men pushing everywhere into trade, into mechanical pursuits, into the learned professions, into insignificant clerkships, into salaried positions of every sort that will take them into towns and support and hold them there. We find it impossible to drive poor people from the cities with, the threat of starvation, or to coax them with the promise of better pay and cheaper fare. There they stay, and starve, and sicken, and sink. Young women resort to the shops and the factories rather than take service in farmers' houses, where they are received as members of the family; and when they marry, they seek an alliance, when practicable, with mechanics and tradesmen who live in villages and large towns. The daughters of the farmer fly the farm at the first opportunity. The towns grow larger all the time, and, in New England at least, the farms are becoming wider and longer, and the farming population are diminished in numbers, and, in some localities, degraded in quality

and character.

It all comes to this, that isolated life has very little significance to a social being. The social life of the village and the city has intense fascination to the lonely dwellers on the farm, or to a great multitude of them. Especially is this the case with the young. The youth of both sexes who have seen nothing of the world have an overwhelming desire to meet life and to be among the multitude. They feel their life to be narrow in its opportunities and its rewards, and the pulsations of the great social heart that comes to them in rushing trains and passing steamers and daily newspapers, damp with the dews of a hundred brows, thrill them with longings for the places where the rhythmic throb is felt and heard. They are not to be blamed for this. It is the most natural thing in the world. If all of life were labor,-if the great object of life were the scraping together of a few dollars, more or less,-why, isolation without diversion would be economy and profit; but so long as the object of life is life, and the best and purest and happiest that can come of it, all needless isolation is a crine against