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as to the difference between Christianity and the pagan religions. Has Christianity introduced any fundamental change in the human mind? If it has, the mind must stand in a totally different relation to nature from what it did. Now, it is a common belief, that it has introduced such a change-a change not merely of degree, but of kind; and it is further believed, that our modern activity is the outgrowth, though feeble as yet, of that change. It were too large a question for us here, to enter into an exposition of the whole value of that change; but we may suggest two things: first, that Christianity not only empties nature of its fetiches, of its gods and goddesses, however beautiful, but proclaims it to be in itself dead, worthless, corrupt, even sinful-or the opposite of the divine; and, second, it proclaims that nature has been redeemed, by the divine assumption of it, whereby man, from being the slave, may become the master of it, and not only his own nature, but the whole creation" be glorified. This is the mystical annunciation, which every Christian devoutly believes; but what does it mean practically? Why, that nature is not an end in itself, but is unworthy and corrupt, except as it is made subservient to humanity, in which case it is filled with a divine beauty and significance. Our modern Christian instincts have recognized these truths, and hence our physical sciences, with their immense activities, striving to reduce nature, which has no longer any sanctity, to human uses. Hence, too, the universality and fearlessness of our researches into nature, which impresses us no more as a vast uncontrollable power outside of us, but becomes a benignant mechanism, of whose movements we hold the key. Thus, too, the universe, turned into a world of effects, whose causes lie in the inner spiritual sphere, shines a vast hieroglyph of the Eternal and the Unseen. It is a glorious analogue of the divine; and we love it, because, in its every process, we discern emblems of our own human life; because, along the endless multiplicity of its forms, the angels of God ascend and descend, as in the wonderful ladder of Jacob's dream.

We have dwelt so long upon this last volume, that we have left ourselves little space for the general estimate of

Mr. Ruskin's merits, which we promised ourselves at the outset. But they may be summed up in few words. He is the critic rather than the philosopher of art. Endowed with the keenest sensibility to the influences of nature, he has observed them with the greatest accuracy, and, at the same time, with strong poetic feeling. Few men are more alive to the beauties of art, and none have studied its actual manifestations with more diligence. Applying his knowledge of nature to works of art, he is able to enter upon a judgment of their comparative merits, with decision, taste, and sympathy. He is, therefore, positive and severe, but also enthusiastic. His praise and his blame alike come from the heart. He sees clearly and feels earnestly, and what he both sees and feels, he describes with impetuous eloquence. There are passages of rhetoric in his writings, which possess all the magnificence of Milton or Taylor. But he is not always equal in his style, nor always just in his opinions. As the structure of his sentences is now and then strangely affected, so the spirit of his sentiments now and then betrays a strange conceit. He has a fondness for extravagance, as well of thought as of expression, and is perpetually misled into inconsistency. He is apt to utter decrees instead of criticisms, and, uttering them often on the impulse of the moment, they are not infallible decrees. His principles of art, when they are correct, proceed more from instinct than reason; or, in other words, he has not digested them into a complete and systematic whole. They are drawn from the study of a few arts, and not from the study of the whole field of art. They are, consequently, wanting in the broadest generalization, and do not penetrate to the profoundest grounds. As an active and fearless thinker, however, as a patient scholar, as an energetic, warmhearted liker and hater, and as an eloquent expositor of his own views, he stands unrivaled among the English critics of art. Like Carlyle in literature, or like his own Turner among the landscapists, he has aroused a new spirit in the public mind, and, long after his particular or objectionable opinions shall have been forgotten, he will be gratefully recognized as a reformer and a benefactor in the walk he has chosen to pursue.

"IN

In

the Western District? In the name of Karl Ritter and his Erdkunde," says our traveled friend, "where is that?" Gently, good reader! I write, for your benefit and my own, in the western part of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations, that state which is commonly known, in these hurrying times, among her thirty, overgrown sisters, by the briefer name of Rhode Island. In the western part of Rhode Island? Pray tell me if Rhode Island is large enough to have a western part. It was only yesterday that I was reading of the sea captain, who was sailing from Mobile to Providence, with a cargo of cotton, and could not find your bay and state marked on his chart. alarm he called the mate. This roughhanded fellow, in fingering the spot where Rhode Island ought to be, knocked away a fly-speck, and there stood the map of your sovereignty, in all its grand proportions." Doucement, as your foreign friends used to say, when you indulged in such dangerous sallies of wit. You have, perhaps, heard of the funeral discourse of an ingenious village Antony, over a friend, who was noted alike, for stupidity, dishonesty, and corpulence: There, are three kinds of greatnes--smental, moral, and physical. In the first two kinds, our deceased friend made no claims to distinction; but in the last kind we all know that he was preeminent." O fractional part of

some Missouri or Virginia, beware lest a like eulogy awaits you and your state, while you scorn our narrow domain! Laugh, if you will, at our legislators, who all walk home from the State House to dinner. Laugh as you think of the gigantic Kentuckian, whose toes were infringing on Connecticut, while his heels were stretching into Massachusetts. Roar as you imagine our old Roger Williams walking around his farm (at present our state), before breakfast, and rowing the whole length of our bay to quarrel with a bellicose Quaker. Crack your republican sides, as you see our sovereign state refusing to accept the Constitution of the United States, and become an integral part of the Union; and Massachusetts and Connecticut bravely debating the propriety of partitioning the recusant between them. Let me not be proscribed

as a disunionist, fanatic, or sectionalist, when I say, that I have often wished that she had not sunk her individuality in the great agglomerated confed

eracy.

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How many advantages would she have enjoyed, to which she is now a stranger! How glorious to have our gallant soldiers guarding our whole frontier; to have every Connecticut pine ham, and every Taunton herring, and every injured package of New York Schiedam Schnapps, examined by our officers. How imposing to have our navy ever standing in a menacing triangle, whose vertex should be Block Island, and whose base should reach from Seaconnet to Stonington! How fine to have our diplomatic corps! to hear announced, in the saloons of St. Cloud, Monsieur l'ambassadeur de Rhode Island et Providence Plantations;" to read, in the Moniteur, of the departure of • M. Petit, ambassadeur auprès de S. E. le gouverneur de R. I. et P. P.;" to read, in Her Majesty's address in the Parliament House, of her great joy at the prospect of continued peaceful relations between Rhode Island and herself; and then, again, what careers of usefulness and honor, for myself, and the thousands who are, like me, unknown to fortune and to fame! At present there are offices for only about one-half of the male population; of course, in such a case, wealth conquers talent. A large manufacturer distributes cloth enough to carpet the district, and goes to Congress. Humble and modest genius has no field. But I have made a fair calculation, and found, that without changing our foreign ministers, secretaries and attachés, half as often as the general government now does, just nineteen-twentieths might attain to office, and inscribe their names on the roll of fame. What fools our ancestors were! Why did not they read the history of Venice and Genoa, and the Hanse towns; and then make doges and burgomasters, who should bid your President tremble? Alas! that physical greatness has always had such power, even back to the days when Goliah swung his weaver's beam in the face of the Israelites.

Well, then, I am in the western part of Rhode Island. It is not a molecule of

a state, absolutely indivisible. It really is large enough to be divided into two parts by a line running north and south. The portion on the east of this line is the place in which some gentleman distributes money once in two years, before he goes to Washington, and is called the Eastern District. On the other side of

the line lies the Western District, in which, at the present moment, sits your humble and corpulent servant, totus, teres, atque rotundus.

For further geographical features, see Smith, Mitchell, and Ritter; for history, see Bancroft and Peterson.

His

Much as the state, in its entirety, has been slandered, this particular portion of it has suffered disproportionately; Bryant has enshrined, in poetry, a scandalous name, "Rogue's Island,"* which Connecticut malice, long ago, applied to us, because their neighbors, on the east, were so peculiar. It is well known that Massachusetts and Connecticut have both tried to swallow us at once. Majesty's loyal colony of Plymouth claimed, that the present western boundary of our state was their western line; and His Majesty's equally loyal colony of Connecticut pretended that its domain extended to the eastern shore of Narragansett Bay. It is maliciously declared, that a frightful war was avoided, by requiring commissioners from the two colonies to meet upon the disputed territory. It is affirmed that these worthy gentlemen only waited to exchange compliments, and then ran to their respective homes—each party desiring to leave the other in possession of such a land. And thus, they say, our little state actually owes its existence to its ugliness. Indeed, our pious brethren in Connecticut, flatter themselves that they support a missionary in this heathen ground. I have never seen any except those who are mounted on the tinpeddlers' carts, and whose words are as tinkling brass and sounding cymbals."

I am not aiming to advance my own interests, by pretending to show the attractions of this goodly land, like that modest worshiper of genius, who has placed a bust of Milton in Westminster Abbey, and devoted two lines of a long epitaph to the poet, and the rest to himself. Therefore, I do not pause to tell you how I came here.

I am at present among the two-legged men. Not that men, generally, in these regions, have not those two useful appendages, with which they continually prevent bodily contact with the ground in the act of falling foward— vulgo, walking. The epithet, two-legged, here means that the person to whom it is applied wears both legs of his pantaloons over his boots, and is used to distinguish such bipeds from the citizens of two neighboring towns, in one of which, one pantaloons' leg is thrust into the boot, and in the other of which, nothing but boots is visible below the knees. Our Manhattan readers will remember that their ancestors chose to

distinguish themselves from the world by the number of their breeches. Cur erudite ethnologists may, perhaps, find in these facts material for meditation.

Between these bipeds, unipeds, and no-peds, no love is lost. Last night I wended my way to the village store, to hear the village-talk. A tall, indolent fellow, called Labe, who did little but tell stories for a livelihood, was amusing his comrades with his tales, when in stepped one of the rarest specimens of the unipeds. He was tall and gaunt as famine herself; his matted hair seemed never to have been combed, except by the shrubs through which his townsmen are said to run bare-headed, once in six weeks, to perform the work of hairdressing. His upper jaw protruded far beyond the lower, and wide spaces were visible between his long, greenish teeth. The teeth seemed to be loose, and they moved in the jaw every time that the mouth was opened and shut. His chin receded so rapidly that he seemed scarcely to have one. His mouth seemed to be in his neck. A line drawn from the crown of his head to the end of his upper teeth, and another one from the teeth to his breast-bone, would have quite well represented his profile.

“How d'ye dew, Sim?" says Labe to the new comer; 64 how d'ye dew? rather cold, aint ye? I see you've got your leg ready to draw up like a rooster in a frosty morning. Ye've seen 'em stand, aint ye?"

"I'll tell you what," says Sim, in a husky, mumbling voice, "you'll find, if you don't shet your oyster-shell, that

that leg can straighten some. I aint afeard on you, wi' all your pack around you."

Words ran high, and hostilities seemed about to commence, when Labe's face suddenly gleamed with a new idea. "Look 'ere," said he; "this 'ere fighting is bad business; it on'y makes sewing for our old women, and a sale for plaster. You all know that Sim is a reg'lar beauty-famous, even up in his parts. I don't say nothin' about my looks, but I'll bet that I will make up a face so as to look more like Sim than he does himself. If I dew it, I beat, and Sim shall treat, and we'll be friends; if I don't, I'll stand treat."

Every one said that this was fair, and Sim was obliged to yield to this trial. Umpires were chosen, and the combatants were seated, each upon a candlebox, and a tallow candle was held close before their faces. Labe looked for a moment at Sim, smiled, and then said, in a desponding tone: "It is a hard one; forgive me, mother, for ever trying to twist my face into that shape, but here goes." And then he pulled down his hair, stuck out his jaw, and drew back his chin, till really his resemblance to Sim was striking. Then he snivelled up his nose, and said, in Sim's husky voice, "Aint we a pretty pair!" The effect was irresistible. Even the grave umpires burst into laughter. The candle-holder dropped the melting tallow into Sim's fair hair, and the whole company shouted out, "Labe has beatLabe has beat." Sim was obliged to pay the forfeit, and the two Dromios parted with a hearty shake of the hand.

To-day, law, with even balance, has weighed out justice to our village. The honorable court has been in session. It consisted of a sleepy man, who is a turner-not that he belongs to any of your foreign clans, or Turn-vereins, but he makes bobbins in his lathe, when he is not too somnolent. Anotorious scoundrel was arraigned for pilfering "beans, cabbage, potatoes, and other agricultural products," from a man less dishonest than himself by one degree. No one, except the parties themselves, and the learned counsel, seemed to care who should triumph. The hon. justice of the peace was seated in a chair; while the spectators, who did not choose to sit on sticks of wood placed on end, were obliged to stand. Two youngsters

brought the milking-stools from the barn-yard, and stationing themselves on each side of the judge, sat like priests upon their tripods. The mouth of his honor seemed to be parched and dry, as his attempts at spitting evinced. This did not escape the cagle eye of the astute counsel for the defendant. He knew the idiosyncrasies of the court, and promptly offered his honor a plug of tobacco. Shrewd casuists, who trace connections between all sorts of causes and effects, may hang a loop upon this innocent roll of pressed leaves, and spin a thread of sequences down to the final decision. Of that, I say nothing. The witnesses were called. It seemed difficult to prove anything against the defendant, except that he had shot a couple of the plaintiff's Mus covy drakes. Indeed, he confessed that.

The counsel for the plaintiff labored earnestly to show, that while there was strong ground for believing that the defendant had crept into the plaintiff's garden, and stolen his "airly sass," he was willing magnanimously to waive that "pint," and ask for justice only in the name of the slaughtered ducks. "Yer honor," he concluded, "has seen 'em, these 'ere ducks, a-sailin' along so pooty and peaceful, scarcely waggin' their tails once in three minutes, as tho'f they knowed that justice and purtection, in the form of yer honor, lived next door, and so seemin' as innercent and calm as yer honor's own pure heart and conscience. And now they're laid low; that 'ere canniball has eat 'em up. Shall sich things be allowed under our constitootion? No, sir! I know yer honor will slap the fines and costs on to him, as the law directs; and so I leave the case to your honor's consideration."

The counsel for the defense briefly reviewed the charges, and said that his opponent might well try to seem magnanimous about the "sass," for thero was no shadow of proof that his client was a man of so little taste as ever to wish to get into the garden of such a man as the plaintiff. He was not without thoughts of suing for damages, on account of the plaintiff's defamation of the fair character for which his client had so long been distinguished. But as to these ducks, he proposed to show, to the satisfaction of the court, and the intelligent audience (and he was glad to be able to vindicate his client before

such an assembly), that the accused was not to blame for shooting the ducks, and if he was, that the indictment did not cover the offense.

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In the first place, any one has a right to shoot wild ducks, wherever he finds them, and everybody does so, except the cross-eyed plaintiff, who shoots on both sides of them. Now, if the plaintiff has ducks which look so near like wild ones that a man of sound mind (mens AND womens sana in corpore sano, as the law hath it, wisely cautious, in making it extend to women also), that a man of common sense, I say, cannot, at shooting distance, tell the difference between them and wild ones, who will blame the man for shooting them? Suppose your honor went on any other principle; suppose you had to wait, and creep up to every duck, and put fresh salt on his tail, before you fired, where would be the noble and ancient amusement of shooting? How many of the twenty ducks which your honor bagged so finely last week, would have graced your tasteful and bountiful table? Thank justice, your honor dispenses no such folly as that for law. Now does not every one know how sensitive my client is to his reputation as a shooter? Don't you know that he would rather be shot than fire at a bird at a less distance than a hundred yards? Don't he always scare up the game, and take it on the fly? Would not he blush to aim at a duck sitting on the water? Now who can tell a wild duck from a tame one at one hundred yards? Impossible; my client's escutcheon is not tarnished in the least, by the blood of these ducks.

"The second, and the remaining points of my argument, I address chiefly to your honor, as they require considerable learning to be understood. The defendant is charged with taking agricultural products. Now, what is agriculture? Your honor knows very well that the word agriculture comes from the old words, agri, the ground, and culture, to farm it. Now, how, in

In the second place, we are charged with stealing Pro ducks. Now your

Honor knows very well, that the ducks which the defendant shot were not Pro ducks; for the plaintiff confesses that they were 'Scovy ducks.

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In the third place, they are not ducks at all, but drakes. Nothing is more important to the welfare of the race than this distinction of gender. The law always recognizes it-society could not exist without it.

"On these points I rest the case. Your honor has the genius and the acumen to appreciate arguments of this kind, and I need not expand them. The counsel for the plaintiff has endeavored to work on your sympathies as though you were a common juryman. I do not so insult you. I rejoice that we have a court in whose hands the cause of a client of mine, with the facts in his favor, is entirely safe."

The hon. court had been sitting with his chair tipped back against the wall, with one leg crossed over the other, and in a state apparently resembling drowsiness very closely. He now slowly uncrossed his legs, and quietly re-crossed them again; then he slowly spake :

"I had, in the first place, kinder s'posed that the defendant was guilty, until he said he shot the ducks. Then I thought he didn't shoot 'em, 'cause he so seldom speaks the truth. But the law says that a man aint obleeged to criminate himself—that is, you can't obleege him to do it. So, then, we must not twist anything the man says, so as to make himself appear guilty. Therefore, notwithstanding he says he shot 'em, I think the evidence is not strong enough. So I bring him in guilty-but acquitted, for want of evidence.""

"Fiat Justitia," said I, as I walked home."