How much does the man of great poetic genius or eloquence owe to mankind! If he sing not the highest word of joy or woe, how great is his remissness! If he dedicate his pen to lust and wine, to ribald mock and scoff, it is the greatest charity that can say to him, 'Neither do I condemn thee; go and sin no more.' The glory that burns around the brow of the Nazarene, so that we see him two thousand years off, was the birth of this thought -The Son of Man has come to save that which is lost.' DIFFUSIVE PERIOD. CHAPTER VI. FEATURES. On, like the comet's way, through infinite space, Politics.-Legislative measures are but temporary expedients. Because times are progressive, institutions must change. The Act of 1832 came to be regarded by many as a mere instalment of justice. Further expansion was demanded, and the advocacy of reform was no longer attended with personal risk. The agitators grew into a formidable party. The chief were extreme Liberals, the 'Chartists.' Vast meetings were held, at one of which two hundred thousand persons were computed to be present A monster petition, bearing more than a million names, was rolled into Parliament in a huge tub. Six points were embodied, most of which, in whole or in part, have since been incorporated in British law: universal suffrage; annual parliaments; secret voting, vote by ballot; abolition of the property qualification for a seat in the House of Commons; payment of members; equal electoral districts. In 1846 the Corn Law, the key-stone of the protective system, was repealed. Free Trade was soon adopted in every department of commerce, and for nearly forty years the commercial policy of Britain has accepted the maxim,- Buy in the cheapest market, and sell in the dearest.' Among later political achievements are the disestablishment and disendowment of the Irish Protestant Church, and the abolition of all religious tests for admission to office or for university degrees. Evidently England in this era has entered upon the victories of peace. The only war which properly recalls the battleperiod of her history was the Crimean, waged with Russia in defence of Turkey. Insular security and national sense have left her tranquil. The stormy contentions that rage abroad and imperil the fortunes of continental nations, present themselves to her islands in a mitigated form. Anglo-Americans, troubled with no fear of their neighbors, entertaining no purposes of aggression, and occupying a continent of boundless resources, had elected from the first a career of peaceful industry. Two notable wars have interrupted this development,- that of 1812, and the Great Rebellion; the first originating in the British claim to search American ships, the second in the awakened conscience on the subject of slavery, and the conflict of opinion regarding state sovereignty. The South maintained the right of each state to withdraw, at pleasure, from the Union; and the northern antipathy to the slave system furnished the pretext for secession. The rebellion quelled, industry was resumed with quickened energy. The restoration of order in the wasted and disorganized South, however, has been slow. In the North, growth has been rapid beyond all precedent. To-day united America presents a record of industrial progress without parallel in the annals of the human family. Her population has increased to more than fifty millions. To her hospitable shores men throng from the four quarters of the globe. Yet only a fraction of her magnificent heritage is under cultivation. A century since, in the words of Chatham, she was not allowed to make a horse-shoe nail. Year by year her imports have diminished, and may so continue, till she virtually ceases to be a customer, and supplies her own wants. Her industries have rooted firmly in the soil under the shelter of protective duties. That she will adopt ultimately the broad principle of unrestricted commerce, it may be safe to predict. Meanwhile the disastrous experience of the Old World, in the creation of sectional jealousies and class tyrannies, gives warning of the increasing peril of a tariff which has outlived its necessity. In 1879 Mr. Bright wrote to the editor of the North American Review: 'It is a grief to me that your people do not yet see their way to a more moderate tariff. You are doing wonders, unequalled in the world's history, in paying off your national debt. A more moderate tariff, I should think, would give you a better revenue, and by degrees you might approach a more civilized system. What can be more strange than for your great free country to build barriers against that commerce which is everywhere the handmaid of freedom and civilization? I should despair of the prospects of mankind if I did not believe that before long the intelligence of your people would revolt against the barbarism of your tariff. It seems now your one great humiliation; the world looks to you for example in all forms of freedom. As to commerce, the great civilizer, shall it look in vain?' A deplorable taint which has gradually infected the body politic, is the Corruption of the Civil Service. The doctrine of spoils and the system of appointments and removals offend the morality and impair the independence of the dominant party. A difficulty which more or less perplexes and troubles both sides of the Atlantic is the Labor Question-the problem of reconciling the rights of employers and employed. The relations of Capital and Labor are the angriest and most important with which we have to deal. But we have no such feudal relics as Game Laws, no such irritable associations as Orangemen, no convulsing Representative Reform, no collision of Church and State or of Church and Dissenters, no conquered territories to manage. Among us, of all communities in either hemisphere, the development of the democratic principle - the power of the people—has been most peaceful and most complete. Heirs of all the Past, we are the true Ancients, who from the vantage ground of our liberal institutions may first recognize the ascending sun of a new era, as those on the mountain-top first discern the coming beams of the morning. 'All crimes shall cease, and ancient frauds shall fail, Peace o'er the world her olive wand extend, And white-robed Innocence from heaven descend.' Society. An unlimited possibility of improvement seems to have revealed itself. A main fact is the creation of value. England is a garden, with here and there a grove. Her fields have been combed and rolled till they seem finished with a pencil.' She presents an accumulation of toil and work which has no equal on the planet. Her Thames is an inextricable forest of masts, yards, and cables. Her docks, six miles long, resemble towns. Her air is darkened with the smoke of furnaces. Her warehouses are Babylonian. The East brings her tribute. Her colonies are becoming other Englands. Money, goods, business, flow hither, and pour thence. Her prosperity is the argument of materialism. A part of this wealth, in compensation, returns to the brain, to establish schools and libraries, to create preachers, astronomers, and chemists, to found hospitals, savings-banks, mechanics' insti tutes, parks, and other charities and amenities. The cultivated are many, and ever becoming more numerous. The press, which voices the will of the people as the source of sovereignty, is more powerful than fleets and armies. Universities provide munificently for the education of the upper classes; and National Schools, for the 'lower million.' The advantages once confined to men of family are now open to the untitled nobility, who possess the power without the inconveniences that belong to rank. Insular limitation remains. With a pitiless logic, the serious Swedenborg shut up the English souls in a heaven by themselves. Race strives immortally to keep its own. Anciently two monarchs would divert themselves, after dinner, by thrusting each his sword through the other's body. It was the redundancy of animal vigor. The primitive Teuton still lives-though in well-cut modern garments—in the love of full stomachs, of great feasts; in the passion for stimulants; in the necessity for violent impressions; in the furor for horses and races; in the combative and daring instinct which requires prodigious risks; in the abounding sap which, averse to culture, prefers eating and drinking, boxing and cricket, equestrianism and boating. In the schools, athletic games occupy a portion of every day. When Tom Brown asks himself why he comes to school, he replies: 'I want to be A 1 at cricket and football and all the other games, and to make my hands keep my head against my fellow, lont or gentleman. . . . I want to carry away just as much Latin and Greek as will take me through Oxford respectably. . . . I want to leave behind me the name of a fellow who never bullied a little boy or turned his back on a big one.' Doubtless these athletes will behave rudely. A fist-fight is the natural way of settling their quarrels. During the exercises of Commemoration week, the undergraduates keep up an incessant howl. When the Oxford degree was conferred upon Longfellow, they proposed 'Three cheers for the red man of the West.' When the Vice-Chancellor was reading a Latin address, they called out, 'Now construe.' A man, whose attire was not in taste, was stormed at: Take off that coat, sir.' 'Go out, sir.' 'Won't you go at once?' 'Ladies, request him to leave.' 'Doctor Brown, won't you put that man out?' The school is a sort of primitive society. Each big boy has several who are bound to be his servants. Says a witness: 'I state as a fact, that from the 1st of January to the 31st of December, the young foundation scholar has not a single moment which is not exposed to interruption. At |