also of an hazy and changing indefiniteness of conception and statement, which turns our admiration into wonder and our wonder into astonishment. As an example of what a certain style of training, conjoined with a certain subjective habit of conceiving religious truth may make of a quick-witted and facile mind, of refined literary associations, the work is very instructive. Its instructiveness, however, often takes the forms of warning and repulsion. The old orthodoxies may have been harsh and bitter, but they were positive and logical. The old heresies may have been extreme and audacious, but they were ethical and heroic. The old mystics may have been overstrained in their fervors, but they were ready to die for what their souls loved and longed for. But the so-called Faith of Reason which these discourses exemplify, seems neither positive in its assertions nor definite in its denials, nor fervent in its worship, but a sort of holiday affectation in a carpet knight of the pulpit, who has ample and many-sided religious sentimentalities, but little appreciation of that Faith which overcomes the world.

BIOGRAPHICAL AND HISTORICAL.

MEMOIR OF HENRY ARMITT BROWN.*-The secret of the magnetism which invested Harry Brown, as he is still with a species of affection called even by many who never knew him personally, was in the intense ardor which he threw into life. In the admirable account of his student days, with which Professor Hoppin commences his memoir, even a stranger cannot fail to follow with something like enthusiasm the "unspoiled youth" of seventeen, who came up from Philadelphia for admission to Yale in 1861. At first he seems half dazed by the immense vistas of a great college suddenly opened before him, and the unlimited opportunities of every description. Soon, however, he is in the current. He imbibes the genuine college spirit. He identifies himself whole-heartedly with college life. While he does not lose sight of the importance of gaining intellectual discipline from the regular college curriculum, he enters with intense ardor into all that concerns or interests the great brotherhood in which he begins to find that he is himself a power. Professor Hoppin says that his life in college was irreproachable, and his sense of honor exqui

* Memoir of Henry Armitt Brown, together with four Historical Orations. Edited by J. M. HOPPIN, Professor in Yale College. Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott & Co. 1880. 8vo, pp. 395. For sale by E. P. Judd, New Haven.

site. He took a respectable rank as a scholar, but when fun was in order, he was "Master of the Revels." As humorist, there was no end to his exuberant drollery, his sportive fancies, and his witty inventions. The Pow-wow of June 7, 1862, in which he largely participated, will ever be memorable as being the best of its kind. In resolutions drafted by committees; in speeches delivered at class suppers; in Delta Kappa, Alpha Sigma Phi, and Psi Upsilon lyrics; in debates and war songs of the Brothers in Unity; in the organization and carrying out of Thanksgiving Jubilees of Sophomore, Junior, and Senior years; and above all, as one of the illustrious "Cochleaureate" of his class, his pen and voice were foremost. He was class Mercury and Apolloorator and poet. He was Momus, too, . . . The big "Wooden Spoon," wreathed with ivy, "now hanging on the wall of his silent room," is a memento, the significance of which all Yale men will at once understand.

There is a disposition among those who do not know by experience what life in a great college is-a disposition, it must be confessed, which is shared by not a few who are well acquainted with it-to deplore the multiplicity of objects which offer themselves to the students to engage their attention. It is feared that these will call them off from study. How many jeremiads are poured forth every year over the injurious influence of socie ties, of boating, and of ball playing, etc., etc. But there is another side to it. It is to be remembered that no one student is interested in all. Tastes differ; and when young men are massed in great numbers, there is an opportunity for each to select what is in accordance with his own fancies. We are confident that the evil-if there is any evil-is very much overestimated. At any rate, we believe that it is of great advantage for those who expect hereafter to rule men, and take the lead in our large cities, to be educated in the midst of great numbers, and to become accustomed to study amidst the excitements of a great college. The life of Harry Brown illustrates what we mean. There is something exceptional in college life at Yale, even among the larger colleges of the country. Its students are not drawn from the immediate neighborhood of New Haven. For the most part they come from a distance, a large proportion from very remote distances. They are so far away from their homes that they are necessarily thrown upon the society of each other, and have thus been obliged to make a community among themselves, which is

in many respects peculiar. The man who has tried his powers and maintained a leading place among a thousand such students for four years, has gained a training for public life which is invaluable to him. So it was with Harry Brown. His life at New Haven seems to have admirably fitted him for the work which he was called to do. The habit which he had formed at college of throwing himself with all his ardor into whatever was attracting the public attention, he carried into his professional and public life. When he first established himself in Philadelphia as a lawyer, municipal reform was the subject which filled the minds of all, and a "citizen's municipal reform association" was forming. From the beginning Harry Brown identified himself with it, and went into the fight with such a will that, young as he was, he was recognized as a leader. One of his colleagues said "he was worth a whole army corps to the cause." A complimentary dinner was given by the Philadelphia bar, which attracted all the best legal talent of the city. "It was one of the most marked and impressive occasions of the kind which had ever taken place in the city." The toasts were responded to by the most distinguished lawyers of the country. The eighth and last toast was "the Juniors of the bar," and Harry Brown was selected to reply. We are told that "there was some astonishment, and perhaps a little touch of prejudice," excited by the announcement that one of the very youngest members, who was as yet comparatively unknown, was to speak. "But all such feelings were dispelled like mists, the instant the clear and calm tones of his exquisitely finished elocution fell upon the ear."

"MR. PRESIDENT,-Somewhere in the varied reading of a boyhood, from which, as you have no doubt observed, I have but recently emerged, I remember to have found an anecdote of the elephant. In a truthful work, compiled by a philanthropic lady, called Anecdotes of Animals,' you will find it somewhere written that it is the habit of those sagacious brutes, when they come to a deep and rapid river, to send over first the smallest of the herd, assured that if he ford it in safety the largest may attempt the crossing without inconvenience or danger. To-night, sir, you have reversed this proceeding. One by one the leaders of this company have passed this current of good-fellowship with firm. footsteps and majestic tread, and now, safe upon the other side, you summon to the crossing the smallest of you all, that from your places of ease and security you may enjoy his flounderings.

I represent that portion of the Junior Bar which may be called the "great unemployed." I speak for those unfortunates to whom, thus far, the law has seemed less of a practice than of a profession. I am well aware, sir, that in the early days of our seniors at the bar things were quite different. I am credibly informed that in their time the client did the waiting, not the lawyer. When they had crammed into two years the work of seven,-when they had skimmed through such text-books as chance and their inclinations had suggested,-when they had satisfied the inquiring minds of the board of examiners as to the action of assumpsit or the estate in fee-simple, they doubtless found an impatient turba clientium awaiting their coming from the examination room, burning to seek their counsel and cram their pockets with glittering fees. The times are changed; clients are changed, and we have fallen on degenerate days. We sit long years in solitude. Like Mariana, in the moated grange, 'He cometh not, she said.""

"The years are fleeting; and on us, in our turn, must fall the responsibilities and trusts of life. Then when time shall have made us stronger, and suffering more patient, if we have been earnest in endeavor, firm in purpose, honest in emulation, true to our exemplars and ourselves, the bar that has so often found them in the generations of yesterday and to-day may not search hopelessly among her servants of to-morrow for the skill, the learning, the eloquence, the strict integrity, the calm devotion to his threefold duty which make the perfect lawyer; nor our Republic seek in vain among her younger children for that broad and generous statesmanship which embraces all humanity, is firm, benevolent, consistent, which, lifted above the passions of the hour, acts not for to-day but for all time,-tried though it may be by both extremes of fortune, still stands four-square to all the winds that blow.

"I am but one in this company, and stand on the threshold of professional life. I am altogether unworthy to speak for my brethren of the younger bar, and yet, to-night, I feel their hearts beating with my heart, and hear their voices ring in mine, bidding me tell you that we seek no higher glory and cherish no loftier ambition than to tread worthily in the footsteps of our fathers, and at the end of lives of usefulness, and it may be of honor, to hand down unspotted and unstained the institutions they committed to our care into the keeping of their children's children's sons."

The commencement of his career in Philadelphia was also the commencement of the epoch of the centennial celebrations of our country's birth; and here again, in all the work of preparation for those celebrations he bore a principal part. "No one more distinguished himself as a speaker on those occasions than he." Having done good service in Pennsylvania, he was sent on to Boston to represent Philadelphia at the celebrated "Boston tea party," Dec. 16, 1873; and his speech at that time added one more to the long list of brilliant addresses which have made Faneuil Hall so famous. But we have not space to enumerate the different subjects of public interest which received his hearty support. His native city and State put him forward on every important occasion, and he could always be counted on for efficient help in every worthy cause. He made speeches before all kinds of societies-political, philosophical, social, and literary. He was a member of the famous Fifth Avenue Conference, May 16, 1876; a delegate to the Cincinnati Convention, June, 1876; and, in the Presidential campaign of the same year, "went on the stump." A prominent member of the Cincinnati Convention said that "no one Eastern man did more at the West to insure Mr. Hayes' election to the Presidency than Henry Armitt Brown."

Such had been the laborious and useful life of a young man of thirty-three, when in response to an invitation to deliver an oration on the centennial anniversary of the occupation of Valley Forge by the American Army, under Washington, he made the attempt when his physical system was completely run down by hard work. The address was one of his most brilliant efforts, and although a severe cold almost prevented him from speaking, he held the interest of the vast crowd for two hours without flagging, and without the slightest manifestation of weariness. "The last words were delivered with immense effect, and in perfect silence, when he turned, took two or three steps back to his chair, dropped into it, and almost fainted. Cheer on cheer rang out, and a large number rushed forward to shake hands with him; but the first person who reached him noticed his condition, and called out: 'Boys, the man is used up, we must wait till he is better, to shake hands with him,' and the crowd fell back." But the tension of the bow had been too great and too long continued. He was seized with typhoid fever, and after a long struggle of fiftyeight days with the disease, on the 21st day of August, 1878, he

was at rest.