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and right shall be for a law." And as this sacred, inevitable pact widens, it comes to run thus: "We twoscore, or twoscore thousand, will uphold the law of reason and justice over such a territory; it SHALL be binding on all within that limit; we pledge to good understandings and rational modes of adjustment our total and united force." Some obscure understanding of this sort, prevailing among small numbers, constitutes such beginnings of society as, for example, Atkinson found among the Tartars of the desert of Gobi. But where this pact prevails over a very limited space only, it furnishes a basis of security too narrow, and too little secure, to bear a grand superstructure of mutual trust, with the virtues, amenities, felicities, that exist only where trust is deep and firm. Beyond a very narrow circle, therefore, every man will be, as Atkinson observed, an object of utter distrust, of suspicions without measure; and there is nothing so barbarous, infamous, outrageous, that the possibility of it will not occur at every stranger's approach. The experience, accordingly, of a New York or Paris policeman, who must be perpetually canvassing the worst probabilities, and considering questions that scorch where they touch, must become the experience of every man and every woman; for virgin and matron, for apprehending childhood and resting old age, no forgetting of the worst things, no, not for a day! Ah, what is so precious as this permitted forgetfulness of obscenity and outrage, this golden obliviousness accorded to maidens, wives, young children, and to age, at peace among its beloved? Due remembrance there shall be; we will all bear on our hearts the sorrow and the guilt of humanity: but perpetual remembrance in fear, from this spare the sweet heads and white bosoms and dear retreats! But observe that, if love and reason will enlist terror in their service, they shall be served of it; but if they refuse, terror will become the soldier of confusion, and will scare away the sanctities and refinements it might have championed. Which is the better?

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Truly, it seems rude and harsh, this footing of society; and there are many who long for a civilization that utters no menace, and rests on no basis but that of open friendliness and invitation to all. Nature, however, permits no literal fulfilment of

such wishes, gentle and amiable though they be. We may build high; but may not build solid castles in the air. We may build high and nobly; but the grandest minster, temple, cathedral, must, like the rudest hovel, rest at last on the earth. There is in life the same footing for saints and for sinners; alike they must eat, drink, sleep, walk the same earth, support their weight by the same brute exertion of muscle, pay the like impartial toll to the laws of the world. Basis for bad is basis for good; and the difference between worst and best among men is not in the elements used, but in the use made of them. Man stands and walks erect, with his head uplifted amid the clean atmospheres, that is to say, amid the skies, since the sky is but air; but the feet rest on the less clean ground. If you tell the traveller on the highway, that it is a poor, dusty, undesirable place down there where his feet are dwelling, earth, mere dust and earth, he must admit that it is indeed open to such accusation; and no one would wish the head to be reduced to the same low level and soiled companionship. But will you advise him to jump off his own feet? Undesirable that place may be; yet either the feet will abide there, or the head must; and he who is too proud to touch the soil with the sole of his foot will speedily be humble enough to embrace it with his hands. So human society may rear its head high, bathing heart and brain in an atmosphere of love, of forbearance and co-operation, of reverence for known rights and devotion to mutual duties; but beneath all this, the silent, unobtrusive, unconspicuous feet must press the earth of that hard alternative, Right, or the last Resistance! Right Reason, or the Right Arm! And no sooner shall any society refuse conformity with this order of Nature than despite any sweetness of sentiment that may have begotten such denial — all its towering and sunward glories, all the domed and spiring architectures of so many toiling and believing ages, will totter, will topple, will thunder to the ground, and the dust shall go over them. O you who would attain the best, recognize conditions, yet abase not your heart! Stand on the earth, but be not earth!

We counsel, therefore, a frank acknowledgment of the dignity of the military calling, when worthily embraced; of the

honorableness and sacredness of war in the vindication of justice, else trodden under foot; of the constant uses of possible (which must sometimes be actual) war, as the guardian of a noble peace; and we counsel the final abolition of the Peace Society, except in so far as it seeks peace by the promotion of justice.

Let the sword be baptized, not broken. Let charity, faith, intelligence, wield it; not wantonness and outrage. All rightminded men will sympathize with the aspiration for a society and a manhood that shall be the friend and the sanctuary of all; that shall bear in its heart only the impulses, and in its hand only the ministries of love. But all men should remember that love does not alone caress and persuade; it may also be of an edge sharper than any anger, and of a sternness more resolute than any hate. Sweet is not the only good principle in the world; acid is good also, and bitter is good, and much is good that is neither saccharine nor the contrary. And if love is to be master of the world, it must not be a love with no armory save smiles and smoothnesses; it must, on occasion, be pungent, penetrating, sharper than a two-edged sword, overmastered by a divine compassion that will not suffer rivalships of any weak pities, and intent beyond persuasion or perturbation on its celestial surgery. Love shall be lord; but it is no lord, if it be able to deal only in the ordinary shows of love, if it cannot grasp the sword, and still be love. Love that is not master of all instrumentalities, superior to all, and of unabated purity in the use of all, is not wholly of a divine blood, but has been debased by hybrid admixtures. The purest charity is, on the one hand, able to wait, as Providence waits, with an exquisite heavenly patience tempering its own heart; the purest charity, on the other hand, needs not to forswear the sterner instrumentalities, but, pure and perfect still, may, when the rare occasion shall call, be as severe as Nature, as Destiny, as God.

Now, finally, comes the question of limits. These, after such vindication of needful severities, ought indeed to be stated with emphasis.

The first grand limit has already been suggested, — only fire is to be met with fire, -only the sword quelled by the

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sword, only the destroyer visited with destruction. Rightful war is always defensive war,-defence of ourselves or of others. Falsehood can be met by truth, opinion by argument, each agent of iniquity by its equal agent in the service of good: so that it is only the armed hand of injustice which justice with irresistible hand may smite. Secondly, in all preparations against violence and crime, the aim must be the prevention of ill deeds, their punishment or open resistance being simply an inferential result, upon failure of the primary aim. Thirdly, so far as the use of these hindrances can be superseded by positive attractions toward reason, right, and good, superseded they must be; and that society which flagrantly fails in this particular is false to its most sacred obligations, false as no society can be and yet deserve to live. Finally, forbearance is to be held in perpetual honor. Love, having in vain done its utmost to cause continuance of public and private rectitude, that is to say, of noble peace, by mild inducements, is yet to wait, trusting somewhat to the ministries of time, and somewhat accepting as a burden to be borne. With brave wisdom it will wait; yet, while staying its hand from blows, will not withhold it from preparations, while commanding its heart, will cherish and enhance its resolution. Always there are allowances to be made; always there is a call for tolerance, for endurance and forgiveness; always must there be somewhat of that grand indifference of Providence, which makes the sun to rise and the rain to fall upon just and unjust alike. Eyes are given us wherewith to see; but lids are furnished them not alone to exclude the dust, but also that we may upon occasion decline to see; and no use of the eyes can be more noble than may be at times this use of the lids. He who must forever peep and peer will be welcome at no doors. For nations, as for individual men, there is this generous overlooking, this fine obtuseness, this dimness of eye and dulness of ear that is due to largeness of heart. In individuals it is one of the indispensable requisites of gentle manners; in nations, one of the especial pledges of long continuance. Yet if this refusal to see come of cowardice, indolence, avarice, or unintelligence, then it is of all things most fatal. And therefore only when

impersuasible wrong has stifled its conscience, gathered its force, taken death in its hands, and now comes to destroy forever your power of reasoning and of bearing with it,― only then, when fruitful, noble waiting is no longer possible,— may you, must you, arise to pronounce against it the extreme rebuke, and to pierce with that one keen argument, which secures for itself a hearing, those ears that the inward clamor and clank of accursed intents have deafened to every other. Not till then may love in your soul become consuming fire; not till then shall you lift up your voice to utter against destroying evil the tones of that sharp and terrible charity, which, if it be not charity, is butchery,- never till then may you, but then, brave and true heart, you MUST. Man may lawfully use no other sword than that which pure Heaven puts into his hand; but the sword that Heaven gives, if he make it not sharp against those that deserve its edge, will become sharp against himself.

ART. II. - BERNAYS'S CHRONICLE OF SULPICIUS SEVERUS.

Ueber die Chronik des SULPICIUS SEverus. Ein Beitrag zur Geschichte der Klassischen und Biblischen Studien. Von JACOB BERNAYS. Berlin. 1861.

133.

THE above publication is a striking specimen of German thorough scholarship, as well as critical ingenuity. The work with regard to which Bernays endeavors to set the modern reader right, was some two or three centuries ago a common and popular school-book; but it has for some time past fallen into such forgetfulness that many are scarcely aware of its existence. The nature and object of the Chronicle are well stated by S. Severus himself in the opening paragraph of the work: "Res a mundi exordio sacris literis editas breviter constringere et cum distinctione temporum usque ad nostram memoriam carptim dicere aggressus sum, multis id a me et studiose efflagitantibus, qui divina compendiosa lectione cognoscere propera

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