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stop liquor-selling. Just as long as there are eight cents profit on a ten-cent drink, rum will be sold and no one can stop it." Personal appetite and personal greed together make a thin edge by which the liquor-traffic tends to work back wherever it has been expelled. It has an edge like a circular saw, pulling in and cutting at once. There is no thin edge of the wedge to slavery; it has no teeth that draw and cut. It must come back, if at all, by an ordinance as abrupt as that by which it was removed, by legislative fiat such as that which established the system of national banks; in this case, however, not meeting a felt want but setting up a social system wholly incompati ble with that into which the South has been steadily settling down. There is no temptation and no power to do a little illicit slaveholding; to a little intemperance human nature turns as naturally and as easily as the sparks fly upward, and the fire grows greater as long as it burns.

The terrorism which the liquor-interest holds over the ordinary politician is well known. It works, all the way up, from the constable who must not be too officious in applying the law, to the President who may rake together with pains from every quarter topics to be discussed in his messages but must not find any problems for Congress to solve in the enormous mischiefs of the traffic in drink. The mass of our Congressmen know that they must not take an interest in these questions if they wish to be considered "available" candidates for the next election.

Through all runs that easy American independence that cares little for laws, so far as they do not seem reasonable, necessary or pleasing. As we write, there fall under our eyes two examples of this: In a little city a young man becomes impressed with the fact that trade is carried on by a few people on Sunday, and he notifies them that they are breaking the law; thereupon the newspapers inform him sternly that the Sunday-law is not to be literally enforced, but that the com munity wants the law to stand for the protection of those who can get a quiet Sunday only by appealing to the courts. In one of our largest cities the chief of police announces that he shall not enforce the law against gambling beyond a certain limit. Why not? In Europe the law rides over all personal

preference. You cannot even take your own risks by stepping upon a moving train or writing upon the face of your postal card; but here the great mass of the people disregard the law if they like, asking only whether their neglect will give an opponent the opportunity to press the letter of the law against them in the furtherance of his personal ends. The public sentiment of each community is held to have the veto-power even upon enacted laws. It is the ultimate authority in most

of our public affairs.

The theorist, the doctrinaire, thinking in his study and little aware of the practical difficulties besetting reform through law, can sketch a smooth path and a beautiful progress for the temperance work. So can all the petitioners for constitutional amendments dispatching the liquor-traffic at a blow. It is "all so plain." The politico-economical bearings of the matter are so evident and so important, the personal miseries and loss of the drinker and his family are so great, that every one must see • that prohibition by law, prohibition doubly and irrevocably prohibiting by constitutional enactment, is the wisest course and must succeed. The law is passed, even the amendment to the constitution is worked through the various stages till it becomes the law above and behind all other law (except public sentiment) and intemperance is killed. Yes, but is it "killed dead"? or is it only killed so that we shall have to go on killing it all the same? We must be forgiven if from large experience and observation of the reputed corpse we come back with something of that discouraging scepticism that was shown by Charles Kingsley's Scotchman when told that the Devil was dead. "Hoot! toot!" said Sandy doubtfully, "aiblins he's on'y shammin'." He who, before the Millennium, sits down satisfied that intemperance or the Devil is dead, has a painful revelation before him. He will wake up to find that for either of the two the killing is only begun.

That was a splendid thought in Wilberforce when he wrote in his diary this deliberate conviction as to his future work: "God Almighty has set before me two great objects, the sup pression of the slave-trade and the reformation of manners." The first half of that task took tangible shape: it lay in agitation for a certain parliamentary measure. Wilberforce and his

associates fought a great battle and won a great victory. The slave-trade was terribly wounded, much of it was at once destroyed, the rest has been dying ever since and now is almost gone. But how is it with "the reformation of manners"? That goes but slowly on, and there is still most of the work to do. Why? Because it is manners that are to be reformed, and not a trade or a form of property that is to be destroyed. Because legislation cannot reach to the source of all evil manners or even of that one which we call intemperance.

It is no part of our present subject to show what the friends of soberness are to do. Indeed, the inferences on that point may safely be left to be drawn by each reader for himself. Legislation should certainly be pressed to the utmost limit that public sentiment will bear, and what law we have should be made to yield the utmost possible result. If any community desires to go farther than the rest in repression, it should have the opportunity so to do. Every where education should do its beneficent work, upon body and mind and heart, through pulpit and press and school and home, till the evil shall be searched out and cured in its deepest springs.

NOTE.-We have not tried to learn the success of the movement for constitutional prohibition in every State, but have noticed in the newspapers that the people of Iowa are to vote on such an amendment this year, and that a bill to submit such an amendment to a popular vote was passed by one branch of the Wisconsin legislature. It is doubtful if the matter was seriously entertained in Wisconsin, for parts of that State are so thoroughly German that any kind of prohibitory legislation would be utterly ignored.

ARTICLE IX.-THE TICKNOR SPANISH LIBRARY.

Catalogue of the Spanish Library bequeathed by George Ticknor to the Boston Public Library. by J. L. WHITNEY. Boston, 1879. Large 8vo. pp. xv., 476, double columns.

A VISIT to the Ticknor Spanish Collection in the Boston Public Library, awakens a line of reminiscences which would be flattering to the literary annals of any country. Early in this century four young men finished their university education and went abroad to make the journey of Spain with more than ordinary care. Filled with the aroma of that wonderful land, whose monuments bristle with the traditions of three thousand years, they devoted themselves to its history, its poetry, and its spirit, and returned home to develop their thoughts. One familiarized the world with the incomparable legends of Granada and her now peaceful vega; of the Alhambra and the Vermillion Towers; of the fate of Boabdil and the passage over the "Last Sigh of the Moor." Another told the story of letters, the marvelous genius of the Spanish pen, and illustrated the fierce but fruitless struggle of the intellect against the fatal alliance between the altar and the throne. He, too, filled the world with his one life-thought, and accomplished that wherein he had no predecessors, and has since had no peer. The third wrote the most brilliant pages of Spain's civil history, from the time of her political autonomy down to the brink of her awful decline. The fourth caught the spirit

* Of course Spain touched in her pundonór, looked about for a quick avenger of Mr. Ticknor. The queen offered her University Professor of the National literature a handsome annuity to overshadow the American's book. After sixteen years of patient toil, Mr. Amador de los Rios, a true hater of foreigners, brought out seven large volumes of the "Critical History" which only reached, however, the close of the Fifteenth century. Well known scholars at Madrid have frequently assured the writer that Don José paused at a convenient period for his reputation, for he was a consummate critic in the origins of the literature. But Spanish honor was at least vindicated in the title, and, though the author lived eleven years after the seventh volume had seen the light, he never cared to pursue the vendetta further.

of the courtly poets of don Juan Segundo, immortalizing Manrique and the lighter lyrics of the Gil Vicente school.

What a record for our country in only fifty years! The Chronicle of Granada and the Alhambra, by Irving; the Ferdinand and Isabella, and the Second Philip, by Prescott; the History of the Spanish Literature, by Ticknor, and the Coplas de Manrique, translated by Longfellow, form a galaxy of which any nation might be justly proud. The three first were promptly turned into the leading languages of Europe, and in Spain they have long been naturalized glories.* At the portals

of the Alhambra to-day, the Castilian versions of Washington Irving are served to the traveler with the local guide-book of the Moor Bensaken. The name Eerveen is as much a household word in Granada, as the gate of Elvira, or the little square of the Zacatin on the Darro.

In view of these facts, augmented of late by another illus trious name, that of Mr. Motley, the location of a great Spanish library in this country, is peculiarly appropriate. If five of our distinguished citizens have repaid to the Spains of Colum bus the debt of the discovery, let us have a fitting monument to their genius and an incentive to further exertions. Why should we still have to go abroad to gather materials to illus trate any department of Peninsular history or letters? Other countries are rapidly filling the vacancies in their collections, and sparing their subjects the pains of long voluntary expatri ation. The British Museum has shrewdly employed now for many years Spain's great bibliographer, don Pascual de Gayangos, and busied him with enriching its shelves with the thousands of Iberian waifs that are occasionally floated from their lurking-places of centuries. They have also had men of learning at the "National," at Simancas and the Colombina, making copies of the most important documents of history. The Bibliothèque Impériale, now Nationale, of Paris, has of late commissioned one of the ablest classical scholars of France to examine and technically describe the Greek manuscripts at the Escorial, Madrid, and Salamanca, ancient codices of Byzance,

* Between 1833, when the Spanish version of the Tales of the Alhambra first appeared at Valencia, and 1856, the date of the fourth and last volume of the translation of Mr. Ticknor's History.

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